Jim Collins — What to Make of a Life

Joanne just one day she gasps out to me and it was just one of those moments.

It's just like etched in my emotional memory. She just gasps.

memory. She just gasps.

I feel like I'm dying. And in a sense, she was right cuz that identity as as a world champion athlete, this thing that

she was so encoded for, that she so loved doing was being taken away from her. And I realized that one way to

her. And I realized that one way to study self-renewal would be to look at people who go through what in the book we call cliff

events. These times in life where life

events. These times in life where life in some really significant way changes under your feet.

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

>> Absolutely. I I really really truly just revel in the idea of a conversation with you. We've had two previous dances and I

you. We've had two previous dances and I wanted to thank you slashblame you for a very difficult morning because I had

done lots of research and reading certainly on your latest work which took quite a tour of duty to complete. And I

decided that this morning I would go back with a lot of coffee to reread the transcripts of our prior two conversations. And typically when I do

conversations. And typically when I do something like that, >> I have a few highlights, a few marginelia to refer back to. And I ended up underlining about 50 different

things. And it caused a bit of a crisis

things. And it caused a bit of a crisis in terms of where to start and what to do.

>> Yeah. But I do have a lot of notes in the latest work, what to make of a life.

And we will certainly get to that, but we're going to meander all over the place.

>> You got it.

>> And I wanted to start with, and I'm paraphrasing here, but a line in this new work, which is effectively that you have more energy at 67 than 37.

>> You are now 68. And I wanted to dig into that for a minute or maybe even a few minutes.

>> Yeah.

>> Because looking back at the last two conversations, I wanted to spot gaps in the terrain. What had we not discussed?

the terrain. What had we not discussed?

>> Yep.

>> And I wanted to look at some of maybe the mundane things related to routine >> food. Do you consume caffeine? Are you

>> food. Do you consume caffeine? Are you

still rock climbing? Maybe we'll start with rock climbing cuz I just had elbow surgery and I'm looking to get back into it. Are you still climbing?

it. Are you still climbing?

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

>> Okay.

>> She has gotten me into going off to Italy and the Dolommites and places like that to do these huge mountain passes and >> it's something we can share together.

>> Mhm.

>> With whatever years we have left. And I

think that maybe the intense aerobic aspect of that, you know, if you have your heart rate above 160 for an hour, 2 hours, I mean, and spiking into the

170s, that's I think that has does something for you. I'm not sure what.

>> Mhm.

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

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

really explain entirely. In fact, that my team has heard me say multiple times, where's all this energy come from? Cuz

it's only increased. I really do feel that I have more energy. I had a lot of energy at 37. I had a lot of energy at 17. I have more energy at 67 when I

17. I have more energy at 67 when I wrote that. 68 now.

wrote that. 68 now.

>> Mhm.

>> I need less sleep. My clarity, if anything, I think is higher. And I I mean, I really really look forward to 4:00 a.m. because that's the point at

4:00 a.m. because that's the point at which I give myself permission >> if I'm awake to leap into the day. And

it really is true that I will wake up and I will think to myself, please, oh, please, oh, please let it be at least 4:00 a.m. so that I can get up and get

4:00 a.m. so that I can get up and get going. And that is it's hard to explain,

going. And that is it's hard to explain, but that sense of almost childlike anticipation >> uh to get up and get rolling is is

palpable. It's there almost every single

palpable. It's there almost every single day. Well, I do get one, we might have

day. Well, I do get one, we might have spoken about this in our first conversation, but I've always been a morning person. So, I actually figured

morning person. So, I actually figured out how to get two mornings a day and that I I'm just really fortunate that I

have the ability to nap under any conditions anywhere at any time I can nap. And I I was doing a a talk once and

nap. And I I was doing a a talk once and I was a few thousand people in the room and they had a nice couch backstage and I'm supposed to go on and I don't know whatever it was 30 minutes or something

and I laid down on the couch and I just went bang right out to sleep. I'm like

I'm dreaming and I'm having a sleep etc. And they come back and they look at me and they're like he's asleep. Oh my

goodness, he's supposed to be on in like 5 minutes and they shake me and I'm like okay good to go. I I can go asleep immediately and then I can wake up immediately and then I can walk out

3,000 people and I was asleep five minutes before. I don't know where that

minutes before. I don't know where that comes from. That's just a fortunate

comes from. That's just a fortunate thing. But what that allows me is I get

thing. But what that allows me is I get two mornings a day. I get first morning, you know, that when after a night's sleep, but then I get second morning,

which is after a nap. And and in fact, my team knows that I'll sometimes say to them, "I'm going to go get ready for second morning," which basically is, "I'm going to go take a nap." And then I

get second morning. And then I've learned really systematically what kinds of activities

really fit with what times of day. So is

your first morning, Jim, sorry to interrupt. Is that 4:00 a.m. to 7:00

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

a.m. Something like that? What does your first morning look like?

>> That's ideal. I love I love the 4:00 a.m. to 7 a.m. Joanne tends to sleep

a.m. to 7 a.m. Joanne tends to sleep later than me. So, especially when I was like really working on the book, but this is a general pattern as well. I

love to be up at 4:00.

I have one cup of coffee that I make in the day. I don't have caffeine after

the day. I don't have caffeine after that. I travel with my own coffee cuz

that. I travel with my own coffee cuz you you really need to. The only place I go where I don't take my own coffee is Italy. I make my own coffee and I start

Italy. I make my own coffee and I start the day and that's that one one cup that I make and I get right into usually that's when I do my most intense

creative work and I love that sort of 3 to four hours if I can get it of just you know the light changing and bang into it. I like within 15 minutes I'm

into it. I like within 15 minutes I'm fully into it and just go.

>> When do you consume your first food typically and what is what does that meal look like if it's a meal? I always

have something with my morning cup of coffee so that I I have enough calories to keep my brain going. And I just I just grab something that's fairly easy

to eat with with a cup of coffee, a Kind bar or maybe a yogurt or something like that.

>> And then I have breakfast with Joanne.

We have a morning when, you know, when I'm in town, which is most days. I don't

like to travel that much. And once

Joann's up and going, I make her a latte. We joke that I'm a coffee elf and

latte. We joke that I'm a coffee elf and I make her a latte and then Joanne curates stories from, you know, the Wall Street Journal or from, you know,

wherever and she reads them out loud and then we talk about them.

>> Is this after your first morning?

>> Usually after first morning. Exactly.

>> Mhm.

>> Yeah. Sometimes we might get up at about the same time, but most times I'm up early. And so then I have a pretty a

early. And so then I have a pretty a more robust breakfast and and really listen to Joanne's curation. And I'm

always just really curious what she thinks. Could I just add a little

thinks. Could I just add a little running commentary if I could?

>> Sure, please. So, the first is that I've noticed this across a few different disciplines that as a comparison, Marcelo Garcia,

ninetime world champion in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, considered by many to be the greatest of all time, he is incredibly good at going from

effectively 1 to 10 on an intensity scale. So even before his finals match

scale. So even before his finals match in the world championships, my friend Josh Whiteskin, who is the basis for searching for Bobby Fischer, also very good at this, told the story of them

trying to track down Marcelo because he was about to be in the final match >> for his particular weight class. It

might have been the unlimited division.

And they couldn't find him because he was sleeping under the bleachers.

Yeah, I kind of had to wake him up and then he walked to the mat, kind of shook his head and went from 1 to 10. And what

Josh has said, and Marcelo echoes this certainly in different language is avoiding the simmering six. So basically not being in

simmering six. So basically not being in this simmering six, but oscillating between rest or full activation, so to speak. The second

thing I wanted to comment on is the gear shift to shared activities >> and biking with Joanne because I have

seen in some of the most successful relationships that I've observed and certainly that I'm modeling now for myself >> that at some point there's often an

activity shift to focus on what you can share together. Kelly Starret, very

share together. Kelly Starret, very famous performance coach, PT and other things, has done this with his wife Juliet, who's amazing, where he's shifted from some of the things he used

to do to actually mountain biking. This

is in Northern California. So, just

wanted to make those observations to ask a very very specific question. You said

you travel with your own coffee.

>> Yeah.

>> I have to scratch the itch. What are you actually packing specifically? So I take I pack Pete's

specifically? So I take I pack Pete's ground coffee, Arabian mocha java, a cone filter, the filters themselves,

a water boiler so that you can, you know, make sure that you have hot water and and have kind of the whole setup that way. And then when I start the day,

that way. And then when I start the day, you know, I I get the whole sort of system going. And it doesn't really

system going. And it doesn't really matter where I am or what time of day it is. It's actually an interesting thing

is. It's actually an interesting thing because if I'm doing some kind of session that really requires me to be absolutely at my best, which I expect of

myself anytime that I'm out there, there is a ritualistic aspect of it, but it's also kind of this sense of it doesn't matter if room service is open. It

doesn't matter any of that kind of stuff, that opening kind of bubble of the day. And now if it didn't work, I'd

the day. And now if it didn't work, I'd still be fine because you always have to be able to like that, you know, if something just went ary, you just adapt.

But for the most part, you got that opening bubble of the day. And to be able to basically replicate that >> no matter where I am, no matter what time of day, it could be 4:00 a.m. East

Coast time or it could be 7 a.m.

California time or wherever. Right. It

replicates that morning bubble.

>> Yeah. It's like a bootup sequence that you're able to preserve.

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

exactly what it is. And I don't have to control any variables or wonder like are they going to have any good coffee or is it, you know, does room service run on time or the room service isn't open at

4:30 or whatever. You don't think about any of that stuff. You just move.

>> So the the particular idiosyncrasies, eccentricities, I think that's what you say of successful people, right?

>> Yeah. Their own idiosyncratic encodings.

Yes.

>> Yeah. There we go. And we're going to really double click on this word in codings is endlessly fascinating to me.

I have a few of my own and certainly in what to make of a life which I found very inspiring because at least in your cohort and we'll talk about this

>> they did a lot of their best work after 50 after 60 in some cases after 70 and I am 48 at the moment. So

>> I found it very reassuring that there were so many case studies.

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

warming up which which is very exciting on a lot of levels. I did note a few things. For instance,

things. For instance, >> and I've got lots and lots and lots of notes that I took while reading the book. For instance, Allan Paige, former

book. For instance, Allan Paige, former NFL player, became very engrossed with running. Woke up every morning at 5:19

running. Woke up every morning at 5:19 a.m. Exactly. Right. 519. And you gave a

a.m. Exactly. Right. 519. And you gave a list at one point, this is going to be a pretty odd segue, but you gave a list of some of the, let's call it, side

passions or eccentricities of different people. And one of them, a lot of them

people. And one of them, a lot of them were like, okay, okay, sure, I can see that some of my friends do that. And

then one of them was studying the occult.

>> And I'm just wondering who was who was the person. You know, if I want to say

the person. You know, if I want to say who it was, I would have put it in the book. But that list was really

book. But that list was really interesting because one of the things that I was very curious about because our people became really once they really locked on to a big thing for a given period of their life as you know

from the reading.

>> I mean they were really really really focused and the level of intensity and energy over years or decades or multiple decades they put into it. And I was

really I was just curious though, did they have any room for anything else in their lives or were they just monoomaniacally obsessed freaks? Right?

And and then I just kind of went through just a very simple like okay on that particular dimension did they have really intense side passions of some kind even if the big thing was over here

and I think I can remember there was something like 80ome percent had some kind of an intense side passion and what I was struck by is the range of them. Oh

my goodness. I mean, disco dancing, they the studying the occult, but also like teaching Sunday school and running and mountain climbing and some people were

really into just hosting interesting dinner parties. Others wouldn't have

dinner parties. Others wouldn't have been interested in that at all, but they had things that absolutely they were incredibly passionate outside of the big thing that they focused on. And I found

that a just an interesting data point that they didn't make a life where they had nothing else except the primary arena of their work to focus on.

>> So let's set the table a little bit and I apologize in advance. I know you like to shine the spotlight on other people and research and data sets, but I'm I'm probably going to turn the spotlight

back on Jim.

>> Mhm.

>> The bug called Jim.

>> Oh yeah. That's a call back for people that listen to the first conversation.

>> Yeah.

>> So when we spoke the second conversation we had, >> I asked you what was on deck coming up and you said, "I'm 5 years into research on self-renewal." And I really like this

on self-renewal." And I really like this term self-renewal. Y

term self-renewal. Y >> and before we go back to Jim, I guess this is related to Jim, but I'm curious

how you thought about framing this book, >> self-renewal versus say the title, what to make of a life as I'm looking at it.

How did you think about >> presenting this? And then if you wouldn't mind because we were chatting before we pressed record. I think my our first conversation was your first long form podcast. Yeah. And I believe this

form podcast. Yeah. And I believe this will hopefully be the first conversation about the new book that comes out. Just

giving a little bit of context or genesis on on how you wrote it. So you

can tackle it in any direction you like.

In my 30s, I came across a a remarkable man, a w one of the many sages I've I've had the joy to be affected by in my life

of John W. gardener who was kind of a wise man in residence at Stamford Business School ameritus at that point just down the hall from me when I was teaching there

and he'd written a great book a little book back a number of years ago on self-renewal and I was very interested in the question of I don't know why I was interested but I was just interested in why would some entities or some

people have a life of continuous self-renewal rather than a a life of this followed by you know just kind of a long degradation >> peak and then a decline.

>> Exactly. And John encouraged me to consider doing eventually some research on the question of self-renewal and I was off working on built to last and good to great and I was working on my company research but I still have my

notes from long conversations with John about how you might think about self-renewal and so that seed had sort of been in there and it was justating and I thought someday I might return to

that. Then what happened is I started

that. Then what happened is I started thinking that that question was always there like how would you actually study it and and then

a seed got activated that had been planted back a decade before that in my 20s.

>> Joanne who you know is so central in my life. We've been married 45 years and

life. We've been married 45 years and Joanne was a world-class athlete. She

was world champion in the Iron Man. She

was the first female figure in the original Nike just do it campaigns back in the 1980 with Bo Jackson and Howie Howie Long and she was really

constructed to compete and that sense of we talk about when we'll talk later about this being encoded for something there's just some athletes that they

need to win it's a need they need to win >> and that was Joanne when she came when she gave up all these other opportunities she had in life to focus

on ultimately trying to win the Iron Man and went in on that. It's like

everything came together and we go off to Hawaii and she raced in ' 84, 85,86 and 85 she won the world championship in Hawaii and there was a backstory to that

race which is that Joanne had a hamstring injury and that hamstring injury just was chronic and it wouldn't really go away. And in the race it began to catch up with her. So, she had this

10-minute lead with 10 miles to go in the marathon. As you know, it's 2.4 mile

the marathon. As you know, it's 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, and 26.2 mile marathon in sort of 90° temperatures and 80 some% humidity on the lava fields. I

mean, it's just horrendous out there.

And she had a good swim and a great bike, and she had this 10-minute lead with just 10 miles to go coming back into town. and the hamstring caught up

into town. and the hamstring caught up with her partly because it did limited her training and and you know that was always there and she began to lose a minute at a mile and I remember watching

the ABC feed cuz the wet will the sports truck was in front of her and I could sort of see the race unfolding. I could

watch it in real time with the camera of the truck right in front of her and you could see her starting to lose time like she's a you know 9 minute lead, 8 minute lead, 7 minute lead, 6 minute lead like

and you're getting closer and closer to the end but is she going to get there before somebody else does and there is this moment I mean I'll never forget the

moment where she stops in the middle of the lava fields and she has this extraordinary discomfort and pain and she's looking at her legs hoping they would move. And she reaches down and she

would move. And she reaches down and she sort of massages them and she kind of like pounds on her quadriceps and she looks up to the sky and it almost looked like she was pleading with somebody to

help her somehow.

And then she just kind of fixed her gaze on the horizon and there was this sort of stoic countenance that came over and she just

like started to move and then she started to run and she ended up winning a 10-hour plus race by about 90 seconds.

And it's like one of those things in life like you have very few experiences like that.

And then when we got back to Palo Alto where we lived at the time, you know, the hamstring just didn't heal.

>> Mhm.

>> And she tried everything. Surgery,

physical therapy, rest, stretching, you name it.

And eventually she just had to confront the brutal fact that her athletic career was going to end at her peak.

And we were sitting there in a little townhouse in Palo Alto. We're sitting at our kitchen table and Joanne just one day she gasps out to me and it was just

one of those moments. It's just like etched in my emotional memory. She just

gasps, I feel like I'm dying. And I had no answer. It's not like you can solve that

answer. It's not like you can solve that or anything like that. It's just I feel like I'm dying.

And it and in a sense she was right because that identity as as a world champion athlete, this thing that she was so encoded for, that she so

loved doing was being taken away from her. And in a sense, it was dying, a

her. And in a sense, it was dying, a certain kind of dying. And that seed

somehow mixed with the John Gardner thing because what happened is I somehow sort of fused these together in my mind. I think that actually

Joann's experience is what gave me the original interest in self-renewal because I just didn't have the language for it. I didn't really see the

for it. I didn't really see the connection so clearly. It was kind of murky. But I think they fused together.

murky. But I think they fused together.

And I realized that one way to study self-renewal would be to look at people who go through what in the book we call cliff

events. These times in life where life

events. These times in life where life in some really significant way changes under your feet. Either you choose it to change or or it happens to you. But

there's kind of a before and an after and and and your life is so changed at that time that you have to really reorient and reconsider. And sometimes

those cliffs like Joann's are really monumental moments in life. They are

real cliff events. And I thought if I could find people, if I could study people at the cliff and I could study their lives up to the cliff, through the

cliff and after the cliff and how they come out and how they how they kind of constructed life after that, I would be able to have a method for understanding

this thing that I used to sort of think of as about self-renewal.

And so I just need to fill in a couple other pieces cuz yeah sort of the creative journey of how I got here. But

then as you know I always like pairs. I

like to have two entities in the same situation to kind of set next to each other. I did that in all my prior works.

other. I did that in all my prior works.

And so the idea was wow what if you could find pairs of people that were at the same cliff and their lives were really similar up to that cliff. And

then you look at how their lives, how they come under the cliff, through the cliff and out of the cliff. And then by looking at that, I would understand this

process of renewal out here through this methodology. And so that's when I

methodology. And so that's when I started the whole journey. Now let's

just zoom way out. As I got into it and I really began I I selected my I had my match pairs. I had my my people had gone

match pairs. I had my my people had gone through these cliffs. I was studying their whole lives. It was overwhelming in scale. this project. I honestly

in scale. this project. I honestly

thought at times I might never be able to finish it because it was just so monstrously big. But it began to dawn on

monstrously big. But it began to dawn on me the more I worked on it because I was looking at you couldn't understand this cliff out thing if you didn't understand

the whole life. And so I had to study, you know, from their entire lives, right? And most of them are deceased. a

right? And most of them are deceased. a

few were in their 80s, you know, but but basically I I had the the record of their lives pretty much intact. And all

of a sudden, I began to realize two things. First of all, none of them

things. First of all, none of them thought about self-renewal as like an objective. And rather what I really saw

objective. And rather what I really saw were people who achieved what I might call self-renewal, but that's kind of not what they were doing. They were

leading their lives. And they were leading their lives through these cliff events and in between the cliff events.

and somehow all the way through to the end for the ones that had passed away.

And I began to realize that what I had was a huge and rich data source for really the big question. And and just

just so that you kind of grasp this, this has happened to me multiple times.

back and built to last which was about visionary companies and enduring great companies and all that. Jerry Poris and I set out our original question was to study the concept of corporate vision because it was sort of what would that

be was back before it was something that anybody had ever studied. And then our method of match pairs of these visionary companies over long periods of history

led to a much bigger question which was how do you build an enduring great visionary company which is very different than the smaller question of what is corporate vision and how does

that work and so repeatedly in my journey I've started out with what I think is the question self-renewal corporate vision whatever and I've ended

up with the method leading me to a much bigger question that the method answers.

And so in this case, all of a sudden, as I got deeper and deeper into it, I realized I'm not studying self-renewal.

Self-renewal is a residual artifact of really the big question. And the big question is the title of the book, which is the question we all face with, which

is what to make of a life. And we face that question when we're young. You and

I faced it coming out of the fog of youth. And what I came to grasp is that

youth. And what I came to grasp is that cliffs are an amazing way to look at the question of wrestling with what to make of a life. Because

when you have a big enough cliff, like Joannne's cliff, like the cliffs in the study, you have to answer the question again,

right? Partway through your life, when

right? Partway through your life, when you have one of a a big enough cliff, you have to answer the question, well, well, now what to make of a life?

because all that's done or all that's changed. And then I realized there's a

changed. And then I realized there's a third time which is when you're in the later decades of life and many never get around to answering this question and I hope they will after reading this is

well now what to make of a life so that my 50s 60s7s 80s maybe my 90s turn out to be my biggest most creative most impactful most interesting years rather

than sitting over here in inferiority to my younger years. And so I essentially it's very similar to what happened with Bill to last with good to great whatever. I started with a narrower

whatever. I started with a narrower question. I came up with a method to

question. I came up with a method to answer it and then realized that that method was actually answering a big question >> bigger question

>> and then I just gave myself over to that question and that's how I ended up really framing the whole book. And then

as you know, and we'll probably get into this, the seeds of that go all the way back to a shattered kid, right? Trying

to figure out life. That is really kind of the creative journey. And when you get the book, it feels like God, it's so it's almost like clearly linear, but you

write that way because you want it to hang together conceptually, but the creative journey of how you get there is wonderfully dynamic. Well, a

few things. So, we are going to get to childhood for sure, probably sooner rather than later. And separately, as I was reading this book, particularly given the end of our second

conversation, I was really cheering for you because I am in the middle of a fog with a draft that is 850 pages long. And

I won't get into that, but I was like, "Oh, so there can be light at the end of the tunnel because honestly, I'm looking at this thing and I'm like, this rock just seems to get denser and denser. It

gets harder and harder to chip away at it." So, congratulations. and I was also

it." So, congratulations. and I was also very helpful as moral support to >> me.

>> So are you in the fog on the book itself or in a general Tim wandering in the fog

time? So I am I would say

time? So I am I would say in the inverse of where I've found myself typically before and what I mean by that is before

>> I would say I have had a lot of clarity around specific projects. Here is the book in front of me. Here is the podcast I am building. Here is the fill-in-theblank business project where

I would have extreme clarity.

>> Yep. And then in contrast to that I would say broadly for life direction I would feel like I had less clarity right

now and I I am quite content with this for the time being. I have the flip side which is I'm with a wonderful partner.

We are very clear on where we're headed together >> and I feel like that is the Archimedes lever for everything else. I don't feel like I have much to prove anymore from a

professional perspective, but I do also want to end up where you are in the sense of feeling like you have or in

fact having more energy, more fire within you at 67 and 37, I do want that.

But on a project level, I have much less clarity >> in terms of what does Tim 3.0 4.0 look like? because I do love the podcast. I

like? because I do love the podcast. I

plan to continue doing it, but it's also become one of the most saturated, noisefilled playing fields imaginable.

And I think anyone who expects the same music to play forever probably does not anticipate the inevitable, which is probably a cliff of

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

some type. Right? So, I have a fog as it stands currently around a few things.

One of which would be writing. M so for instance this 850 page behemoth do I chip away at that which I find a little bit draining to be honest. So, I've

actually put it on the back burner, or do I say focus on a newer writing project that I'm very, very excited about. And is that in fact leaning into

about. And is that in fact leaning into my encodings, which is a term we should probably define, or is it just the allure of the novelty of the new? And

guess what? Surprise, surprise, as soon as I get into the mud, I'm going to still be paying the taxes that you need to be prepared to pay. So that is a bit

of a crossroads at which I find myself right now.

>> My question for you is so first of all just for anyone who's listening to this, we're using the term fog and I'm just going to put a quick context on that and then ask a question >> and so we just talked about the notion

of cliffs and as you you know the whole study structure was around cliffs and so forth and and so I I knew cliffs would play a critical role in how I look at

things. I was really overwhelmed with

things. I was really overwhelmed with the prevalence of fog in the lives that we studied. That was not something I

we studied. That was not something I expected to find. And fog are these periods of time where you're kind of either in some portion of your life or maybe overall in life at a given point

where you're lost, confused, befuddled, disoriented, uncertain, right? And

there's kind of these clarity phases of life. Like I'm in a clarity phase right

life. Like I'm in a clarity phase right now. I was in a fog phase about 2013

now. I was in a fog phase about 2013 2014 certainly in a fog in my 20s.

There's kind of fog phases and these clarity phases and every person in our study had these sometimes even extended episodes of of fog which I found very

comforting in the end because the people we studied had remarkable lives when you summed up the entire thing but they could lose a decade in the fog along the

way. And then in the wake of cliffs in

way. And then in the wake of cliffs in particular, there seems to almost always be fog. So

fog can come at any time for a variety of reasons, but the likelihood of fog will follow a cliff based on what we looked at in the study is that if you

have a big enough cliff, especially if it was unexpected, the fog is likely to roll in and can be very thick and very befuddling. So that's why we're talking

befuddling. So that's why we're talking about fog. So my question for you is I'm

about fog. So my question for you is I'm curious as you are wandering around a little bit in the fog and I think it's a very interesting time as you describe it

of kind of well this question of the things that you'd done up to this point.

Are you ready to be done with them? Are

you are you ready to extend out in a different direction?

All these sorts of questions that are swirling about. I'm curious if anything

swirling about. I'm curious if anything in the book as you read it illuminated for you or got you thinking about navigating through this fog.

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

So, either I'm a very bad notetaker or there are things for me to focus on from the book. So, I would say a number of

the book. So, I would say a number of things come to mind and I I could send you photographs of these if if you're curious at some point. Yeah. But in

terms of navigating fog, I think the first is rule number one, don't freak out. So,

and that was more of an interpretation than something you said literally. But

in effect, like, hey, if you're in the fog, guess what? Everybody ends up in the fog.

>> That's right.

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

there were a few there were more than a few things but certainly a few things that I found helpful and also a few things that gave me terminology for some explanatory power of things that have

happened to me in the past or things that I've done in the past and we'll we'll definitely talk about this but the concept of return on luck and different

types of luck I found very compelling >> and thinking of how you take advantage of or widen the aperture on luck because

I I think broadly speaking luck is thrown around as something you either have or you don't >> and it lands on you and exerts its force but it's not quite that simple and I

think you put words to that that I found very helpful and then in terms of navigating the fog I would say you talked about simplex stepping which I think we may spend some time on but I

have I think upstream kind of cascading questions that I want to ask you about first principally around encoding.

>> Yeah, >> I would say that with the fog there were questions that I began to ask myself that I've not yet answered and this is part of the reason I was looking

forward to chatting with you. One of

which is how do I think about energy as a core currency of life? And the reason I say that this is not taken verbatim

from the book but it seems to be fundamental right like outside of accidents and so on like there is a point when you die and that is the sessation of energy

>> and if you have all of the greatest intentions in the world the best laid plans if you do not have the energy to implement those things to execute >> I don't want to say all is for not but

you're caught at a bit of a problematic situation so when I'm reading about these different case studies, these profiles in the books and there were there were so many fantastic ones. I

really have to say I love the Katherine Graham >> piece. Hard to love Katherine Graham.

>> piece. Hard to love Katherine Graham.

>> Hard not to love because you see people who are put into say cliff situations and they are unprepared and then there are counterex examples where people are effectively have prepped for 10 or 20

years for the cliff they eventually face and those are very very different.

>> Yes. in a lot of ways. And you also, not to keep burying the lead on this, have people who sort of methodically find their encodings. And I want you to

distinguish that from strengths. You

have people who are forced into a situation and thank God they just happen to have an overlap with the circumstances forced upon them and these

inner workings that allow them to find their stride. as if you know Michael

their stride. as if you know Michael Jordan was sent to like basketball prison camp and like lo and behold what luck you know he happens to be incredibly good and and built for

basketball. So my question for you that

basketball. So my question for you that I want to hit on before we dive in if I asked Joanne why does Jim have more energy now than he did at 37? How would she answer it?

because it seems to me like there might be a piece of honing in on encodings as a wellspring of energy, but you seem like you've always been pretty good at that, at least after some of your experiences at Stanford. What would her

answer be, do you think?

>> Years ago, there was a profile being done on me, and I I'm not big on a lot of profiles. I'd rather just have people

of profiles. I'd rather just have people read my books and take away the ideas.

But anyways, the profile was going to happen. And so I said, "If we're going

happen. And so I said, "If we're going to do it, we'll do it right." and I invited the reporter out to Boulder and he said, "I'd really like to spend some time with Joanne." And I'm like, "Oo,

okay, here we go." And what kind of profile is this going to be?

>> So, we're at breakfast and he says, "I have one real question I really want to ask you." If you just pick one word to

ask you." If you just pick one word to describe what it's like to live with Jim, what one word would you use? Okay.

So, you got a picture.

I'm sitting there waiting for the answer and I I'm wonder, you know, always an adventure inspired energizing creative, right? All these things are

creative, right? All these things are going through my mind as possible. She

gets one word and after a long pause, she just kind of looks at him completely, completely serious, completely just straight, you know, single answer, exhausting. You know,

it's hilarious cuz I knew that word was coming. I like And that's me projecting.

coming. I like And that's me projecting.

I'm thinking about my partner. That's

hilarious. I literally in my head have exhausted >> exhausting.

So she would relate to the question.

I think what she would say is that yes, I've always had a high energy set point.

And just as an aside, it's not something I think I even put in the book, but the way I came to think of it is that we all have kind of an energy set point. And

maybe mine is just a reasonably high energy set point. And just to be clear though, I think that the thing I would want people to take away from what they read here is that whatever your energy set point, you know, you can have

variation around that set point and and the question is how do you lead your life in such a way that you're on the positive side of that variation in the set point and it sustains until you run

out of breath. Because so many what happens is they reach a certain point and they go below the energy set point because of whatever sets of reasons and end up with maybe 20 or 30 years of

their life essentially off the table and that's an unfortunate loss to the world.

I think Joanne would say one, I'm one of those people who really set out in life somehow to end up

expending my energy in things that I derive tremendous intrinsic pleasure from doing the actual doing of

it. M

it. M >> that sense of if you're doing it, you can't not do it right. Like I like you, I don't have to demonstrate that I can

do well at what I do. I don't have to worry about do I know how to I don't know have a teaching moment or whatever, right? How to come up with the right

right? How to come up with the right questions to ask somebody running a big company. But if I sit down, I still get

company. But if I sit down, I still get joy out of preparing for a a moment or being at it or or just a sense of excitement that morning because the

actual doing is something that I so love that I put in the book and Joanne is the one that helped me sort of see this. I'd

always thought of myself as an incredibly disciplined person and everybody else saw me as really disciplined and I kind finally came to the conclusion I'm really not very disciplined. I mean, I am somewhat. But

disciplined. I mean, I am somewhat. But

look, if you just can't help, you just can't stop yourself >> from preparing, from getting ready to do the very best you can because you're doing something that just so pulls it

like you can't stop yourself. Well,

that's not discipline. You're just

compelled. You're just it's it's almost a form of compulsion, which isn't discipline, right? and and if it's sheer

discipline, right? and and if it's sheer love of the actual doing itself, well, how's that discipline? Just love

doing it. So, that's one. But I think she would also say that like you love having a big project and this has been a huge project, right? So, for 12 years

from the time I first started noodling on this till when I finally finished the writing, when I wake up in the morning, I don't have any question until the book's done. Maybe I'll go into a fog

book's done. Maybe I'll go into a fog now. I had no question what was in front

now. I had no question what was in front of me at 4:00 a.m. There's always the project, right? Every single day there's

project, right? Every single day there's the project and that's energizing even if it's huge and monstrous. And and then the third is this sense of extending out

and circling back that that I saw in all the people in the study of that this really interesting it'll be very interesting to see for you as well as happens with this with this sense of this notion of kind of radical

reinvention isn't really what we saw.

There weren't people who quote radically reinvented themselves. It was this

reinvented themselves. It was this organic process of kind of extending and pushing themselves out into new modes or new things or new activities etc. Kind

of an extension outward. But then they would always find a way to circle back to things that they had built upon

previously as almost a form of fuel to further extend out. Robert Plant's one of my favorite people in the study and I love how over the, you know, what keeps

him so full of fire for music and for singing all these decades later. And if

you look at him, he's like, you know, he sure he's no longer in Zeppelin. He

doesn't need to be. He's he was extending out into bluegrass and he was extending out into, you know, going off to the desert and playing with trans musicians and all these kinds of really and learning to blend his voice with

Allison Krauss. I mean, utterly

Allison Krauss. I mean, utterly marvelous extensions with Allison Krauss or with some of his extensions. He'd

come back and rebring to life a Led Zeppelin song.

>> Mhm.

>> And then they would do a bluegrass version of Black Dog and just that sense of this extending and circling back.

Well, this study for me, you could look at it as I'm doing something radically new. Yes, it's a new question, new study

new. Yes, it's a new question, new study set, all that. But I'm also circling back and to what I've always loved to do, which is to take a big giant messy

question, put a methodology around it, and spend years figuring it out. Right? That's

consistent. That's a circle back. The

extendout is it's a different question and different unit of analysis. So, as

both. And then the last is this, and we talked about this, I think, a little bit in one of our previous ones, but I would really put it this way. When I was younger, I had a lot of fire, but it was

really painful fire.

It was burning hot red molten lava in my stomach.

Almost like channeled rage, chneled ferocity.

>> Yeah, I know the feeling.

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

I used to worry that if I ever lost that, I'd lose my drive.

And I think what's happened, I know what's happened is the fire's changed.

The fire used to be like this molten hot burning ferocity in the belly. And now

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

think of it as green and yellow and it's like this sustained warming glow. And I

don't have that. I do not have those kind of insecurity. prove myself kinds of things that are driving me

and as a result my energyy's gone up and I think that because the fire is different because the fire is this sustained warming glow it is just like

constantly generative and I think that's a really really big part of it that sense of like you write a sentence and you look at it and you go wow that's almost a good sentence

>> so let me ask you about color shift, right? Going from the red to the greenish yellow. Yeah.

>> Is that a byproduct of age in the sense that you've amassed a corpus of work that at some point you cannot with a straight face to yourself justify being

redot because you're like, look at this CV. I cannot with any sincerity say that

CV. I cannot with any sincerity say that I have anything left to prove. Is is

that what provoked the shift? Is there

something else? What what actually happened that led to that shift in fuel, so to speak?

>> First of all, I would imagine that a number of people and maybe you yourself relate to the raging burning lava coals.

>> Oh, yeah. Oh, boy.

>> And you kind of cling on to them because you feel you need them. And I guess I'm just a data point of one that I don't need them to have even more energy. And

so there is life without them that's really wonderful. and your best stuff,

really wonderful. and your best stuff, your best work coming from it. I don't

think it was, oh, I mean, it's nice that Joan and I don't need to worry about like are we going to hit the pavement like having no safety net and all that kind of worry and fear that we used to

live with of just genuine almost terror of are things going to work.

>> So, it's nice to not have that, but I I don't think that's the essence of it. I

think it didn't happen like a flash.

I think what a lot of what really happened happened as a result of studying the lives in this book. I really mean it.

the last 12 now plus years since I started the first nibblings of this project in 2013 and the journey of doing this book so

transformed me and I think that I was probably prepped for that but it was by somehow living alongside them in their lives it was like affecting me and I

think one of the ways it affected me is was I saw them you just look at the sheer rapturous joy of Robert Plant blend ending his voice with Allison Krauss.

Or you look at that this wonderful video I came across of Grace Hopper, the great computer scientist who invented software essentially. It's amazing story. Silicon

essentially. It's amazing story. Silicon

Valley should know her story more. It's

really an incredible story. And she's on Letterman at I think age 79. And she is like one of the most sparklefilled, firefilled. She just radiates out of

firefilled. She just radiates out of that Letterman interview. And it's just absolutely marvelous. I could just go

absolutely marvelous. I could just go through case after case where what I saw was, you know, Barbara Mcccleintoch solving the geneticist solving a genetics puzzle and and her sense of she

didn't fear dying in a car crash because there were all these car crashes that she was driving across the country so much as she feared dying in a car crash before she'd solved the puzzle that she had, right? Cuz she just so needed to

had, right? Cuz she just so needed to solve the puzzle. And every life was one of these ones where it's like they got to this point where the thing that they

were engaged in in doing was so reinforcing in itself for itself.

And I think somehow just being so close to their lives while I walked through them had this effect on me and it began

to soften me. It's very hard to explain, but if you spent years alongside them at each step of the way through their lives, which is what I did,

they like rubbed off on me.

>> Mhm.

>> And they all somehow got to this point and I think that it just affected me. I

mean, I can't really explain it and other than that is it just affected me.

>> Mhm. Let's look at another facet of this same prism because looking at for instance whether it's you whether it's a

geneticist or any real figure in the book that you've profiled finding your power zone with respect to encodings and

I want you to differentiate that from strengths seems at the very top of the pyramid in some respects or the base depending on how you want to look at it But if we're trying to put dominoes in

order, that seems like a very important domino to tip over first.

>> It seems to be a prerequisite for a lot of the other things. And I'm wondering if somebody flew out to spend time with you for a day and they were like, "Jim,

I know you're good at asking questions.

That's what you do. How the hell do I find what my encodings are?" Because

without that, it seems like having the conviction to know when you wake up exactly what you're going to do becomes a lot harder. And I'm not trying to

speak for you, but it does seem to me that if you are always suffering from decision fatigue, paradox of choice, man, that's a great way to use up all your chi and end up dead before you

should be. I mean, creatively or

should be. I mean, creatively or physically or otherwise. What are

encodings? If they're different from strengths, how are they different? And

how do you find them if you're not lucky enough to be like a Yo-Yo Ma who gets a cello handed to him when he's four or a Tiger Woods whose dad's like here you go buddy at age god knows whatever right so

we should go back and forth on this a little bit because there's kind of two strands that will come together and I think they're for me were really >> really really eye opening and very uplifting in the end by looking you know

the study across these lives because there's the luck piece of kind of how the roulette wheel of your life spins as to which encodings you discover.

And then there's what the encodings are.

They're actually kind of joined, if you will, as an idea. We have multiple examples in the book of where people it was almost like by well chance in some

ways that they discovered the set of encodings that they that they decided to dedicate themselves to.

>> So first of all, let's just talk about encodings. I'm going to describe what

encodings. I'm going to describe what encodings are and how they kind of work.

But if you don't mind, Tim, given that you're in the fog, I want to ask you a question about encodings for yourself.

>> Love questions.

>> Encodings are these kind of durable capacities that reside within and they're awaiting discovery through the experiences of life.

And first huge thing about encodings is most of us our lives will come to the end with probably vast swaths of our encodings never discovered.

And the way I think about it and and you know this from the book but I really like to help people who are listening hear this is that I came to think of it as like a constellation of encodings.

They're just you have a constellation of encodings. I have a constellation of

encodings. I have a constellation of encodings. Everybody on the planet has a

encodings. Everybody on the planet has a constellation of encodings. And it's

like a vast galaxy of encodings. But at

any given moment, your life is looking through like a window frame at those encodings. And that what happens is that

encodings. And that what happens is that there's points in life where the window frame, right, captures a set of a big bright set of those encodings coming

through the window and you're kind of in frame with them. And then if the window frame shifts again and doesn't capture very many encodings, you're kind of, if you will, out of frame, you're not really capturing many encodings. the

encodings are still there, right?

They're they're just there, but the kind of your life can shift around whether you're capturing a set of encodings or whether you're really not. So, I think

about the test pilot John Glenn, who you read about, and how he was not capturing encodings when he was a young man. At

first, I mean, his parents thought, well, maybe he'll come into the family business or, you know, maybe you should go try to be a doctor. But he just wasn't I mean, the encodings were not really in frame when he was like taking

chemistry and physics and things like this. And then through a a happen stance

this. And then through a a happen stance event, he was able to get a pilot's license paid for by the government that

was looking to train some pilots. And he

goes and he signs up for this, convinces his parents to let him do it. And the

moment he gets into an aircraft, it was like click. I mean, the way the aircraft

click. I mean, the way the aircraft felt, eventually being able to wear the aircraft like a glove, his encoded ability that he only discovered, he

didn't add it. It was just there, that under extreme danger and immense speed, he could have a heart rate that is, you know, everything slows down. If

somebody's flying behind me in a supersonic jet trying to knock me out of the sky over Korea in the Korean War, my heart rate's probably not going to go down. But John Glenn's would go down,

down. But John Glenn's would go down, right? And then of course he becomes an

right? And then of course he becomes an astronaut. Gordon Cooper is match pair

astronaut. Gordon Cooper is match pair very similar. And so it's all of a

very similar. And so it's all of a sudden bang. And then after his career

sudden bang. And then after his career that came to an end. Very interesting

little story of how he thought they finally concluded that John Kennedy had pulled him out of the rotation so that he wouldn't be able to go to the moon because Kennedy felt he was too valuable

as a national hero. And so he couldn't be an astronaut anymore really. And that

was his cliff. and 10 years and he went off to Royal Crown Cola. And what I love is this little detail where he's got of

his memoir, his time at Royal Crown Cola is like almost 10% of his life and it's 0.2% of his memoir.

>> Not much to report here.

>> Exactly. Exactly. And so he's still John Glenn, but what happened is the window frame shift shifted and it wasn't until he got back into the Senate where it shifted again. You know, he I'm sure he

shifted again. You know, he I'm sure he was an adequate executive, but it wasn't like when he was flying fighter jets and >> going up and orbiting the Earth, right?

He was now kind of out of frame.

>> Yeah.

>> And so the essence of it is encodings are there to be discovered by the experiences of life.

And when they click into frame, it's trusting them almost if you don't know where they're going to go. In many

cases, the people didn't know where they were going to go. And

yes, you turn encodings into more strengths by training and discipline and you know, all those sorts of things. But

John Glenn could have done 10 MBAs and he would have never been as encoded for being a business executive, >> right, >> the way he was encoded for being a

senator and encoded for being a fighter pilot and an astronaut. And so the key is discovering some set of them and letting

them letting them go. And that's an empirical set of observations. So now I come back to the question for you.

you've written.

>> I mean, you clearly have encodings for doing what we're doing today.

You have other kinds of encodings around just sheer curiosity and so forth. So

have you thought about this as you were making notes as you were thinking about what are your encodings as distinct from sure you've turned your encodings that you've discovered into

strengths but the things that were really have a basis of of encoding coming into frame I'm curious what occurred to you and especially as you

think about like what's going to be next >> all right I'll return serve so I'll I'll then have a ton of other questions But

I'll answer that in a maybe a bit of a roundabout way. I have tried to ferret

roundabout way. I have tried to ferret it this out before for myself. I think

with different degrees of success. I

think I have in most cases because I assume my self-awareness is very imperfect at best >> benefited from asking other people

questions who are very close to me. And

those have been coaches agents friends collaborators almost like a 360

degree kind of analysis. And some of those questions have included, when have you seen me at my best and when have you seen me at my worst?

Right? What do you think I find easier to do than other people? These types of questions. And I suppose where I've

questions. And I suppose where I've landed, but let me postpone the punchline first to say that I've really found it fascinating to look

at, this is going to be seem like a hard left to people, but the sort of Soviet and also Chinese approaches to sourcing athletes.

>> How on earth are they so successful? How

were they so dominant for so long? And

yes, you can explain some of it with kind of top- down autocratic decision-m and policym and so on. But in

China, for instance, they will scout by doing some very very simple things. They'll go to every

simple things. They'll go to every elementary school you can imagine and have kids do a broad jump, right? And

they'll make it fun. It's not some kind of back whipping exercise, but they'll have them do a handful of things. Hold a

broomstick overhead and get into a squat, right? And that's how they start

squat, right? And that's how they start to source potential candidates for >> Olympic weightlifting gold. But

unfortunately, as a single person, as an N of one, you don't have the luxury of infinite time to try everything, right?

This has been an ongoing open question for me and I haven't yet used any of them, but looking at things like, okay, well, is is a strength finder test helpful for this? It's like could you do

five or six of these and look for the overlap to try to get some direction so that you're not penalized for trial and error by losing decade after decade.

Where I've landed for myself is through my own experimentation, I think asking a lot of dumb questions. I'm very

good at asking seemingly dumb questions, which often are not dumb. Sometimes they

are just straight up dumb, let's be honest. But often times they're

honest. But often times they're questions that could be or already are on the minds of a lot of people. And I

think I'm good at putting on beginners glasses and being very persistent like a dog with a bone if I don't get an answer to a supposedly dumb question. And those

lead interesting places. I think I am also good and this is a blessing and a curse which will lead into some later questions about not getting trapped in various doom cycles and something we

talked about before which is sort of the 50 3020 from respected faculty.

I am a novelty seeker that's an intrinsic drive that I have in a lot of ways and the upside of that is that I can do angel investing in in different

industries. I can interview people from

industries. I can interview people from yet a different set of worlds and I can borrow practices and copy and

paste different principles from one area into a disperate area and sometimes those really really work. So I think I'm good at combining those worlds

separately and maybe people listening can give me feedback if they're interested in this. A friend of mine, one of my closest friends said to me, you know, you should really do some

podcast episodes where you are recording conversations that you have with founders because I've I've invested in 100 plus companies over more than a decade, probably close to two decades.

And he said to me, he's like, "There are things that you are really good at that I don't think you realize you're good at in terms of really pinpointing terms, positioning,

and various other things that I do routinely every week with startup founders anyway. I'm having those

founders anyway. I'm having those conversations anyway." And so I've been

conversations anyway." And so I've been experimenting with recording those.

>> And I even go back and listen to it and I'm like, "Yeah, I don't think there's anything special in here." And he's like, "That's the problem." He's like, "You don't think it's anything special because it's so easy for you." He's

like, "It's actually not easy for most people." So, those are a few scattershot

people." So, those are a few scattershot thoughts that come to mind, but for myself and certainly also for people listening, I I am still wondering if

there are ways that people can facilitate the process of finding those encodings. So I was listening very

encodings. So I was listening very carefully to what you're saying and a couple things really popped into my mind as as you were you were talking is that first of all I think if we reround well

I did rewind the tape of their lives right and you know I wouldn't describe that the process of kind of coming into a frame with a set of encodings was a systematic process it was pretty organic

and pretty messy if you will and I think the thing that really stood out is it wasn't that there was some kind of you know deliberate test taking or anything like at it was that light kind of spun

them into a situation where they could feel the the encodings kind of light up if you will. And I think what really stood out the more I think

about this the question is less about well there are two ways in which I want to kind of sharpen the question a little bit for you. One is is that it's not even entirely about discovering encodings. I think people are getting

encodings. I think people are getting clues to their encodings based on their experiences in life and input from others, which is a very interesting piece of this all the time.

>> What I think really stands out to me about the people that I studied is that regardless of whether they got support from others, like John Glenn's parents didn't want him to be a pilot and they wanted him to be in the family business

or be a doctor, Robert Plant's parents didn't want him to be a singer, they wanted him to be an accountant. Think

about that. I mean with all that I mean you know you go through these these different ones. What really stood out is

different ones. What really stood out is that when they got a sense for them they trusted them. It was their trust of them

trusted them. It was their trust of them when they got a glimpse of them. That is

what really stood out to me. They once

they felt them they didn't really start questioning them or let other people talk them out of them or listen to what other people think they should do. And

so if you said Jim 100 points allocate between two buckets. How much of it is about discovering a set of encodings and how much of it is it about trusting the encodings you've discovered? I'm going

to put 70 points on trust because I think we're getting clues all the time.

The second is that you said something about asking people what you think you do better than others.

>> This study changed my view on that. I

think it's about doubling down on what you can do better than other ways you could expend yourself.

>> Mhm. which is a very different question.

>> Yeah, it's very different. It's a very different question. It's like I could

different question. It's like I could expend myself asking these supposedly dumb questions or I could expend myself, you know, in some other way. And it's

not competitive comparative to others.

It's this is in frame and this is out of frame. And then I have learned something

frame. And then I have learned something in my own experience. This book is not about business. It's not about

about business. It's not about leadership. It's not about management.

leadership. It's not about management.

There's a few ways though that it's really affected me a lot when I think back to my prior my classic work and one way that it has really affected me is we

talk about the right people on the bus from good to great still true but what I've really come to see is it's about the seats and whether people are in seats where they're in frame in that

seat whether they are in a seat for which they are encoded for that seat and in a seat that feeds their fire and As I began to study the people in in my work,

what I found is that they gravitated towards some walk of life, some arena of activity where they really hit a big bright set of their encodings. It really

fed their fire and then they just kind of went once they kind of clicked into frame. And I think that I used to spend

frame. And I think that I used to spend a lot of time trying to turn people into what they're not and feeling very frustrated with what they're not. And as

I did this study, one of the things that just really went over me like water and like just softening me and softening me and softening me is I began to realize

that what I really had to learn how to do was to begin to find what the people around me what their encodings are. me for people on my team.

encodings are. me for people on my team.

Part of my responsibility as a leader of a small bus is to really be attuned to me observing the encodings based upon

what people do of the people around me and then to begin to shift in steps their responsibility so that in what they're doing here is increasingly

clicking into frame so that then what happens is my emotional experience is not being frustrated with what they're

not and truly being almost at a level of almost awe grateful for what they are.

And when that happened, their lives got better, my life got better, and I played a role in helping them discover their encodings, mainly by experiments, like testing them with something, see how

something works, right? And then I could see the encoding flash, and then I'd move the responsibility, and I'd click them some into frame. And it's been a marvelous joyful journey to see that happen. And I have people who are in

happen. And I have people who are in frame and they just it's astounding for me to see. And so I think that notion of other people, but I'd flip it around which anybody who has teams, anyone who leads organizations or

companies, if you spend emotional energy feeling frustrated with what people are not, you've got them in the wrong seat.

They're out of frame. And the question is, if you have a bus issue, you deal with it. they're not they shouldn't be

with it. they're not they shouldn't be on the bus. But the real question could be you have them in a seat for which they that doesn't line up with their encodings that doesn't feed their inner

fire. And if you try to spend your life

fire. And if you try to spend your life trying to turn them into what they're not, they'll be miserable and you'll be miserable.

And I think you other people can really play a role in helping you see what those encodings are. I've had number of friends who run large companies who and

not not to say this is the right tool for everyone but who've used any actually as a sort of huristic.

>> What's your point on the anagram?

>> Which type am I or what's my perspective on it?

>> Both.

>> Have you identified an anagram point for yourself?

>> I'm a self-preservation six which >> honestly >> I'm married to a >> There you go. It resonates for me. I

have a bunch of caveats that I'm about to put out, but it resonates for me. I

have found it to greatly inform doing a post-mortem on things and people who have not worked in my organization.

Organization is a very high flutin term for a very very small team and people who have worked over time. There are, I would say,

to my mind, irrefutable patterns. Like,

it's so clear the types that work and the types that don't. And there's no right or wrong. It's just for me as a strong willed, hopefully decent leader,

but at the same time very demanding person with certain preferences and so on. There are certain people on the bus

on. There are certain people on the bus who work and certain people who don't, and anyagram I found very helpful for that. I think Shopify and Dropbox both I

that. I think Shopify and Dropbox both I think still use enagram as two examples but very good for conflict resolution as well. The the caveat is sometimes I

well. The the caveat is sometimes I think at least say in Silicon Valley that anyagram is an acceptable horoscope for tech guys. Um,

I mean it definitely rhymes in some ways, but when I read my particular and it's helpful to have a person who is experienced with typing do this. I'm

sure there are online tools that can also help. Side note, also found this

also help. Side note, also found this incredibly helpful. People are going to

incredibly helpful. People are going to hate this. Some people are going to hate

hate this. Some people are going to hate this, but for thinking about dating and ultimately ending up with a woman who is an incredibly incredibly good match for me and vice versa, I'm a good match for

her, >> but the enagram was dead on. I was like, this is nonsense for the like I just don't believe it can be that simple. And

it's not that simple, but incredibly helpful. So I would say there are some

helpful. So I would say there are some people who go down the rabbit hole to an extent that I think ends up turning everything into an enagram exercise. I

think that's probably losing the forest for trees. But as one input of many,

for trees. But as one input of many, I've I've found it helpful. And let me ask you a question for for you personally, and this could also be

reflected in people in the book, but for you, this is one of the 7,000 highlights I had from this morning over my several cups of coffee.

>> So, this is I I can't recall if this is from our first or second conversation, but let me just read for a second here.

All right. Well, here here's the the recap. Jim was clear that he didn't want

recap. Jim was clear that he didn't want a half-life of quality in his work. I'll

skip forward a little bit. When he was invisible at Stanford, he could do deep work and long cycles of reflection for six years. He worried that if he became

six years. He worried that if he became visible, he might wake up years later and realize his subsequent books were only half as good because he hadn't returned to the wellspring of quiet solitude.

>> Yeah.

>> Separate note, people should listen to these conversations, but one of the commonalities of your plus two days in your spreadsheets were either, I believe, intense solitude or highly

socialized, but very little in between.

All right, coming back to what I was reading. He wanted quality to get

reading. He wanted quality to get better. Here's the part that I

better. Here's the part that I underlined. He asked respected faculty,

underlined. He asked respected faculty, this is at Stanford, how they spent their time and got a consistent answer.

50 30 20.

>> Yep.

>> And to elaborate on that, it's pretty simple. 50% equals new intellectual

simple. 50% equals new intellectual creative work. 30% equals teaching. 20%

creative work. 30% equals teaching. 20%

equals other stuff, committees, etc. >> Yep.

>> Okay. And you organized your life and tallying things. I do still to this day

tallying things. I do still to this day >> and you still do that. So people should listen to our prior conversations on that. But this 50% new intellectual

that. But this 50% new intellectual creative work, 30% teaching, 20% other stuff, committees, etc. And this might feed into the going to screw up the exact terminology, but the sort of doom

cycle of competence or or whatever it might be. What I found is one of the

might be. What I found is one of the penalties of being a novelty seeker is that sometimes I will get pulled into things that I am quite good at. They

could be new, they could be older, that do not align super strongly with my encodings, right? Y and so the days end

encodings, right? Y and so the days end up being very choppy. In other words, I'm doing a lot of management stuff.

Maybe I've said yes to a speaking engagement I regret. Maybe I've invested in a few too many startups and all of a sudden I'm on Zoom calls when I'm

quietly grinding my teeth because I feel like I should be working on a book project etc etc. And my question is a have you ever succumbed to this type of

gravitational pull to other things where you end up kind of managing more than making perhaps >> and then separately if that's true how have you corrected course

>> there's kind of two aspects of how I have really struggled getting pulled first of all just way earlier in my life I I was very close to you know I was

getting pulled into things that I was not going to be coded for. And

fortunately, by a series of really good events and choices, I ended up very much in frame. But if id stayed too long

in frame. But if id stayed too long doing some of those things or taken some opportunities that were very glittering opportunities that my life may have taken a very different path, I think I

would have ended up successful and out of frame and I think that that would have been an unfortunate outcome. I

think that so the two areas that I've had to work with and I eventually finally got my way to both to succeed at both of them. The second one was harder.

First one was that you're right about that thing about visibility.

I was always prepared for failure.

I was not prepared for success.

>> Yeah.

>> And when success came, it surprised me.

Number one, I was like, you know, okay, I was prepared for the catastrophe on the other side. I didn't expect this to be coming and now I got to deal with all this stuff coming at me. And all of a

sudden you have all these wonderful things. Some of them maybe not so

things. Some of them maybe not so wonderful, but they're all coming at you, right? And you have all these all

you, right? And you have all these all these voices and and people and opportunities and glittering things that that could pull you out of what you're

really encoded for because of all this wonderful opportunity and noise coming at you. And early in that sort of

at you. And early in that sort of reeling from the su I was in sort of a fog of success phase and I was I was really trying to sort through like how I

would allocate my time and I was kind of reeling on my back feet and I would say yes to things that later that today I would never in a million years say yes to but I did whether it be involving too

much travel or whatever sorts of things but I began to realize man my whole life could be sucked away accepting opportunities and so I had to really fight that and to eventually just kind

of clamp it all down, but to do it in a really systematic and disciplined way.

And that's when I started counting my hours, right? I basically just like I

hours, right? I basically just like I got to have above a thousand creative hours every 365 day cycle every single day looking back for 50 years without a miss, right? I just set that I will not

miss, right? I just set that I will not ever break it. And and then the other was to begin using very very disciplined mechanisms for what I would say yes to.

We have a punch card system as something that I, you know, was very impressed by Warren Buffett's view of the world, which is, you know, any use of you is an investment. It's a punch and you can't

investment. It's a punch and you can't get it back. And so when we're laying out for the year what sorts of things I will say yes to, we literally have every year we we will be talking, well, what's

the punch card look like? How many

punches are left? And it's not a question if somebody calls up and says, are you free to give a speech on October 17? It's irrelevant whether I'm free to

17? It's irrelevant whether I'm free to give a speech on October 17. The

relevant question is do I have any punches left? That's the first question.

punches left? That's the first question.

Or how many punches are left? And we

limit them. We limit them tightly. And

so that became another way of like it's punches. It's punches and they go away.

punches. It's punches and they go away.

And one thing I've learned I've come to see now at age 68, life is the ultimate punch card. I mean, think about it,

punch card. I mean, think about it, right? So you're 48. If any given

right? So you're 48. If any given goodsized project is call it a five-year project, you got a bunch of fiveyear punches left. I'm 68.

punches left. I'm 68.

I probably have really good health, but I know the number of punches that I have left is a lower number than yours. And

and so life is the ultimate punch card, right? And if you end up spending 5

right? And if you end up spending 5 years or 10 years, you know, pulled away from what you're really encoded for in some way because

of whatever sets of reasons, you can't get that punch back. And so I began a punch card process and that's how I how I managed that. But then the other goes back to what we were talking about earlier.

>> Could I pause for one second? Please

don't lose your train of thought. But

for the punch cards, are those on a category bycategory basis? In other

words, or for example, >> speaking engagements, I'll only do five speaking engagements per year. They need

to be within X number of hours of my home. Is it on a category bycategory

home. Is it on a category bycategory basis?

>> The way we've done it, it's taken us a few years iterating on the exact process, but every week we calculate the punch card. And the way it works is we

punch card. And the way it works is we have a point system. And the way the point system works is, you know, if I'm going to do an

engagement that involves an airplane, it costs more points. If I'm going to do a virtual presentation from here, it

costs fewer points. If I'm going to do an intense, we have these lab sessions where people bring their executive team to Boulder for 2 days and be essentially grilled by me for two days. If it's

going to be one of those, that actually, even though it's in Boulder, it actually takes a fair number of points because the intensity of it is so high. And so

what we've done is we've kind of basically kind of use a numerical sense and then in any given period of time there's only so many points. So if I end

up agreeing to do a commitment in London, I'm just going to blow like the equivalent of three punches.

>> It's like a reverse frequent flyer program.

>> Oh yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

>> You just get points subtracted.

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

then we always have a running kind of what the total of the punch card is. And

there's, you know, it doesn't have to hit the exact number at a given time, but you can't start going over. It's

okay if you get to the end of the year and you haven't spent all your punches.

What's bad is if you get to the end of the year and you did twice as many as you should have. And so our conversations are always everything is in the context of where's the punch card? Like there's only one and a half

card? Like there's only one and a half points left on the punch card.

>> So when you and your team are turning something down because you're lower on points.

>> Well, we turn things down sort of all the time. Do they say we're very sorry

the time. Do they say we're very sorry but Jim is out of points or do they say sorry Jim has reached his maximum a lotment of commitments? Actually it's a real question. What is the language that

real question. What is the language that you use for those polite declines?

>> So first of all I have absolutely people totally in frame doing things that they're incredibly encoded for. And one

of the people on my team is a person who is incredibly encoded to build relationships and make friends and to

learn a lot and then to help me think.

And this person who's been with me now for quite a number of years. What she

does that's so marvelous is that everything begins with making a friend and building a relationship in everything we do. And as part of that, we're always thinking ahead to the fact

that we're likely to say no. And all

just statistically, we're almost certainly likely going to say no to almost everything that comes through.

And so by establishing a relationship and friendship and setting expectations right out of the gate, the odds that Jim will be able to do this are very, very

low. You should know that at the very

low. You should know that at the very beginning of this conversation. So,

we're thinking ahead to preserving the sense of relationship when we say no from the very beginning of how the conversation begins. And then this

conversation begins. And then this person helps the person on the other end understand Jim has a punch card and so that he can focus on his research

and his writing. It's a limited punch card and I have to set expectations that there just aren't very many spots on it.

And then once we've sort of established all that then there's a conversation about what what the event is, what the invitation is, etc. And then we have our

conversations and then the communication will come back as in most cases a no, a few cases a yes where we will say, you

know, we're unable for Jim to be able to join you. Punch card constraints. And

join you. Punch card constraints. And

that's just very real. But they've been prepared for that right from the get-go.

Because we want people to walk away feeling better, no matter what answer they get, we want them to walk away feeling better about us than before they ever reached out to us, even though

they're likely to get a disappointing answer. And then in some cases I will

answer. And then in some cases I will follow up. Not all cases because I

follow up. Not all cases because I couldn't do it for all but for some I will personally record a voice memo for the the person expressing my

appreciation for for what they're doing and for the invitation and sort of try to close the whole thing out with a sense of I want them to walk away and say that is the most wonderful

disappointing answer I've ever received.

>> I love that. Fantastic. Very very

helpful. By the way, the 850 page monster that I was describing >> shouldn't malign it by calling it a monster.

>> Oh, no. All books are monsters.

>> Yeah. Okay, there we go. Right. My

little pet monster. Maybe it's more like a monster from Monsters Inc. as opposed to like a a Kraken. But it's entirely about how to say no. And that's a simple

way of putting it. But turns out just like I think what you realized with what to make of a life. I can't remember if it was Emerson who said this. Of course,

I want to call it Emerson or throw, but you know, whenever you try to isolate one thing, you find that it's hitched to everything else in the universe.

>> Turns out that saying no is related to saying yes, which is related to decisions, which then you're like, [ __ ] now I have to talk about everything in life.

>> So, >> pardon my French, but thank you for that answer. I would love to come back to a

answer. I would love to come back to a few things you said, which can one quick thing out, which was you asked about this notion of dealing with the staying on track, right?

>> And and not getting sex. I'll just very briefly, we talked earlier about right people in the key seats. Are they

encoded for it? When they're in frame, you're grateful for what they are. I

used to a lot of getting knocked out of frame was trying to manage my small system and I did a pretty bad job of it. Took a lot of my energy. What

changed is once I got really good at people in seats for which they're encoded, my time and energy that goes to that has shrunk to almost nothing. in

terms of that extraneous angst and replaced with just the joy of working with my people. So I think that's the second answer is go all the way back to first two from good to great. It's

always still first two and especially with people in key seats for which they're encoded. So enough on that.

they're encoded. So enough on that.

>> So let's let's double click on that actually before I hop to where I was going. I'm imagining and maybe this is

going. I'm imagining and maybe this is not the right way to think of it but if you have a small team like I have a very small team three or four people in terms of full-time I suspect you have at least if we're

looking at broader corporate America let's say you have a small team >> yes absolutely >> and you can run some trial and error >> y >> once you get up to 100 people a thousand people 10,000 people maybe the trial and

error becomes a little harder to systematize but even on a small scale one could make the argument that you have fewer players on the chess board,

so you also don't want to chew up too much of their cycles with endless trial and error, >> right?

>> Are there ways that you have thought about making that process as fruitful as possible? You're like, "Hey, there are

possible? You're like, "Hey, there are five types of tasks. I'm going to have everybody do trial and error with five types of tasks, and that'll help us hone in quickly."

in quickly." I'll stop there.

>> First of all, I just want to comment something about scale. two aspects of scale. The first is this.

scale. The first is this.

Never confuse scale of impact with scale of enterprise.

>> Yeah.

>> You and I are like a special operations team, right? A small special operations team

right? A small special operations team can have an immense impact with six people in the unit.

And I think people confuse scale and impact all the time. And so, first of all, I don't think you have to be big to have big impact, right? So you and I have chosen that that model. The second

is I think one of the best reasons to grow a company is you have a lot of seats and it's an everexpanding range of types of seats

which means that there are more opportunities for being able to shift people across seats into seats for which they're really encoded because there's a

wider range and a larger number of seats in which you could do that. And and then I think what really good unit level leadership is is that an individual unit

leader is really good at kind of shifting people around on their unit across the seats by a process of kind of sensing when they're in frame or out of frame. My own process is I guess there's

frame. My own process is I guess there's a little bit of systematic, but it's very I'm not going to package any of this because I don't know how to package any of it and it's not my it's not my

encoding to package and put out programs or anything. For me, it's been just I

or anything. For me, it's been just I observe. So, I I have a member on my

observe. So, I I have a member on my team that is absolutely marvelous at keeping a cool head in the

face of unexpected crisis. It's not me because I I have a little bit of the four anagram in me and I can go pretty overly dramatic. It's not helpful. But

overly dramatic. It's not helpful. But

this person has really really really encoded for this calm for the unexpected crisis. We had an unexpected thing

crisis. We had an unexpected thing happen yesterday that was like whoa. But

how did I discover that? It was just it was observation. And what really became

was observation. And what really became clear to me was in the middle of CO when everything is kind of chaos and you know there's just this sense of just everything spinning out of control and

what I observed was this person was was like the calm balance through everything right just I could just see the behavior and it was more just kind of recognizing

it and then once I recognize it and I just see little snippets it could be just something I just notice then I kick the frame to the side. I

just kind of kick it a little bit so that what they're doing captures more of that and it's it's a very iterative process. So I don't have any magic dust

process. So I don't have any magic dust on this. That's just kind of what I do.

on this. That's just kind of what I do.

>> So in that example, this is a great example for a follow-up question, which is if someone is good, you don't want to manufacture crises to >> Yeah. Let's see how we all do of the of

>> Yeah. Let's see how we all do of the of the crisis manager. So, how do you harness that? If it seems like

harness that? If it seems like intrinsically it's contending with destabilizing unexpected events, how do you use that in coding? So, it was

really interesting, you know, so yesterday it was just my it was really simple. It's like, boy, I'm really glad

simple. It's like, boy, I'm really glad you're encoded for this. It was that simple. Like, let me know how it goes.

simple. Like, let me know how it goes.

And uh so remember I talked earlier about I think if if you talk to people on my team they would they would reinforce this. We talked earlier about

reinforce this. We talked earlier about for yourself it's not just recognizing your coding it's probably I put sort of 70 points on trusting them. What I've

learned with my small team is it's also true with like I think this really fits with that person's encodings. I'm going

to trust them.

And I think that's the real key is I sort of trust and get out of the way because it's like they're so well encoded for this that I don't need to worry.

I just need to let them do what's actually going to be really quite natural for them. And I think that's not a particularly maybe satisfying answer, but I think the essence of it is I don't tend to just like you don't want to

second guessess your own encodings, I don't second guess their encodings. I

just trust that letting them go with their encodings is going to produce a great result and I just breathe calmly and stay out of the way.

>> So with that person again not to belabor the point but I I guess I specialize in belaboring the point to my earlier point of dumb questions.

>> Yeah.

>> In this particular employees case team member's case >> team member. Yeah.

>> If we look at say Google right they have a lot of seats on the bus. if they have some people are underutilized but who are critical when they are needed like firefighters let's just say sure they're playing cards

>> all day long until you need them or when you need them you really want them >> does that team member fit that description in other words they're underutilized most of the time or how how do you think about that

>> no I think my people would tell you that I've got them overutilized almost all the time so back to the exhausting thing this is I think actually leads to something really important for us I

think to talk about. People are not encoded for just one thing. And so for example with with this person this person is also incredibly well encoded

to coach people is really phenomenal just instinctive coach and the coaching responsibility is something that's there all the time. We have young people who come in who are on my research team

young people who are here with us for a couple of years before they head off to do what they're going to do in the world. other people on our team who are

world. other people on our team who are handling you know range of different types of things and they're in seats for which they're encoded but then with that extra bit of coaching they just kind of have a big inflection and this

particular person is really really good at coaching so the crises come kind of unexpectedly they just kind of happen but the the notion of coaching other

people is there all the time and and so pretty probably pretty fully utilized on that I mean sure I mean if you're in a special operations unit you're not out on patrol every minute, right? But

there's a whole lot of other activities that are taking place and you can be activating different encodings in those kinds of activities. But I want to I want to come to this. This is I think

and I speak to the world of like founders on this especially.

But look, here's one of the things that let me just pause for a moment. I said

there a moment ago. I'll let you kind of pick how you'd like to go with it. It is

one of the most uplifting aspects of this study that you're not encoded for just one thing.

And this idea that you have to find what you're made for or even Abe Maslo's original definition of self-actualization which was discovering what you were made to do and then

committing to pursue it with excellence which I think is actually quite good definition of self.

>> Say that one more time please.

>> Yeah. I think he defined it as discovering what you were made to do and then commit to pursue it with excellence. And I think at some level

excellence. And I think at some level that's what all of our people did at different phases of their life when they were in frame. But there's a little asterisk to it that this study has

really changed my view which is that this idea of like as if there's this one thing that you've got to discover that you're made to do.

And what this study has done is blown that apart for me completely in the idea that the range of things that you're encoded to potentially do is incredibly

vast. And all you have to do is find one

vast. And all you have to do is find one of them.

And the way you find that can be really random. It doesn't matter how it

random. It doesn't matter how it happens. It just matters that it

happens. It just matters that it happens. And it doesn't matter whether

happens. And it doesn't matter whether it's this portion of the encodings or that portion of the encodings or that portion of the encodings. Whether it's

playing NFL football like Allen Paige is the first defensive player ever to be league MVP and then becoming a Supreme Court justice in the state of Minnesota.

There's almost no overlap in codings in that at all. But he's encoded for both.

And we see that notion of it's not just one thing. You may find one and stay

one thing. You may find one and stay with it for your whole life. Some of the people in our study once they found it, they never left it. And there are other

people who because of a cliff ending it or because of some other driving interests, they were in one frame and

then they were way over here in another frame and the encodings that they were drawing upon could have been radically different. You look at Benjamin

different. You look at Benjamin Franklin, right? built one of the first

Franklin, right? built one of the first media empires in history, then becomes a scientist, then becomes our greatest diplomat and helps found a nation.

Three really different frames. And

I'll get very excited here because I think that there is an really really important set of questions here for company builders and company founders

because personally I think how you think about the intersection of your life to the cycles of building a company

can be radically affected by how you think about this question of in frame or out of frame. So, I'm just going to pause there and you can be curious, Tim, however you'd like to go.

>> Well, I'm curious in maybe too many ways. That can be problematic. And

ways. That can be problematic. And

actually, that relates to I do want to come back to what you just said since that's that's a nice cliffhanger, pun intended.

>> Yeah.

>> What I do want to ask you, because this is after all in some ways a self-indulgent therapy session for myself, >> let's take a sidebar. I want to talk about return on luck because it's been

so present on my mind. It came up in passing in one of our earlier conversations, but we never really did a deep dive and then it comes up again more substantially in what to make of a life. A

life. A >> whole chapter on it.

>> Yeah. I want to talk about it because it strikes me and I want you to poke holes in this if need be. It strikes me that one of my encodings might actually be

maximizing return on luck because I do so many different things and very often if and we have to be careful about

hindsight 2020 and survivorship bias and blah blah blah but when I look at a lot of the home runs whether that's from

personal reward external accolades or both a lot of the time it is connecting these disperate worlds. And

the way that comes about frequently is I'll have these dozens and dozens of conversations which I do every week and they could be with scientists, they

could be with startup founders, you name it. And most things are a no in one form

it. And most things are a no in one form or another. But I suppose the picture I

or another. But I suppose the picture I might paint is I feel like sometimes by the virtue of how I live my life, I'm standing on one side of a tennis net and

there are 600 tennis ball shooting machines on the other side.

>> Y >> and I seem to be very good at picking out when there's 600 balls in the air which one I should actually take a swing at. And I may be giving myself too much

at. And I may be giving myself too much credit, but I think my closest friends would say that also some version of that.

>> If we step back, could you just describe the different types of luck that you've identified and what return on luck is?

>> Yeah.

>> And I might add something else that I picked up from someone in Silicon Valley that I think is also pretty helpful. But

let's start there because I do think it's a mistake for folks to think I either have this thing called big luck or I don't and that's the end of the

story because you mentioned clues all the time and I think this relates.

>> This has always been a real interesting question for me because I think I've always been kind of attuned to the role

of luck in life, good luck and bad luck.

And I was always really interested and curious about well you know in the end what role does luck play? Now real brief background the first time that I began

to see this distinction between luck and return on luck will goes all the way back to when Morton Hansen and I were doing our book Great by Choice. We're

looking at really chaotic environments and some of the most successful startups to great companies that came out of really turbulent worlds. And because of the environment we're looking at, it allowed us to be able to say, well, wait

a minute. These are environments where

a minute. These are environments where luck events can happen, right? I mean,

you can think about, you know, two companies both having IBM walk in the door looking for an operating system and they both get the same luck event, right? But one got a

return on that luck event.

>> And so what we did was we said, well, we need to systematically understand this.

And and Morton really gets a lot of credit for for this because we we figured out how to do it. You have to first of all define what luck is. If

you're going to study luck, you have to understand what it is and realize that luck is not an aura or something. It's

an event. It's a luck event. And and if we could put the parameters of what is a luck event and what with Morton's collaborating together, we defined a luck event and I think this is a really

good definition is a you didn't cause it. So if somebody says you make your

it. So if somebody says you make your own luck, it's not luck by definition, right? Because there's bad luck too. If

right? Because there's bad luck too. If

I get a cancer diagnosis, am I going to say I make my own luck? No, you didn't cause it. The second is it has a

cause it. The second is it has a potentially significant consequence, good or bad. And the third is in some way it came as a surprise. You you

didn't know that it would happen or when it would happen or what form it would take, right? But there it is. And any

take, right? But there it is. And any

event that meets those three tests is a luck event. And once you have that lens, you didn't cause a potential significant consequence, some element, some significant way as a surprise. You begin

to see their luck events happening all the time.

And and and so then what Morton and I did was we looked at these companies and we said, well, now let's actually run the numbers and see because we always

had comparatives in that study. And we

were able to demonstrate that the big winners, the ones who had the huge outsized returns relative to their direct comparisons, did not get more good luck. They did not get less bad

good luck. They did not get less bad luck. They did not get bigger spikes of

luck. They did not get bigger spikes of luck. And they didn't get better timing

luck. And they didn't get better timing of luck. So luck as a distributed

of luck. So luck as a distributed variable was pretty even between those that were the huge 10x winners and their direct comparisons. So clearly luck

direct comparisons. So clearly luck didn't separate. And then that led to

didn't separate. And then that led to the observation that but it was the return on luck that when the luck came they had this amazing ability relative

to the comparison to make more of the luck and that led to the return on luck as the critical variable. So now we come to this study and I I was looking through you know just looking at the

amount of luck that's in these people's lives and it's you know there's a whole chapter on it. There's lots of permutations of luck, including the roulette wheel, which which set of encodings you get thrown into at some,

you know, stage of life that just puts you there that you didn't expect to be there. We were talking about Grace

there. We were talking about Grace Hopper earlier. How'd she end up in

Hopper earlier. How'd she end up in computer scientists? Well, World War II

computer scientists? Well, World War II happened. She got pulled out of being a

happened. She got pulled out of being a professor at Vasser. She was assigned to this project at Harvard she didn't even know existed. And it was the first

know existed. And it was the first computer, the Mark 1. And that cast the dive for the rest of her life. without

World War II or without that assignment without right it would have been some other set of encodings that that went off but then I started looking at what are the types of luck and I through this

study came to see I think there are three there's what luck which is a good event that goes your way or a bad event you know a cancer event would be a bad luck what luck there's who luck and I

think this is the often underappreciated gigantic kind of luck in life my life is a continuous theories of hool luck events starting with Joanne but others

as well and bad luck the bad luck of my father and then there's zit luck and zit luck which I didn't really see until

this study is when what you're doing just you know happens to fit with a particular zeitgeist that's happening at

the time you did not cause but it is a huge reality so I mean Benjamin Franklin you and I would never talk about Benjamin Franklin if he had born at a time that he wasn't there for the revolution and the founding of the

country. And Alice Paul, if she'd been

country. And Alice Paul, if she'd been born 20 years later or 20 years earlier, she wouldn't have been there to bring the 19th amendment and suffrage to a successful close. She would have done

successful close. She would have done something else, right? But not that. And

so Jimmy Paige and had not been born in England coming of age in the blues rock revolution right there as all this great music was happening. Right. I'll just

say briefly, people need to read it, but the the entire founding story of Led Zeppelin is kind of the same when you look at the number of things that had to go right. Yeah. It's just wild. Yeah.

go right. Yeah. It's just wild. Yeah.

>> And there's that great quote from Robert Plant saying, "What was that? The gods

roared and you know, lightning crackled and Blake wrote a poem from under the ground and all England was reunited."

You know, it's just this great moment in that basement that where they had that first song when they played Train Kept Rolling and the four of them came together. Anyway, zeit luck is a big one

together. Anyway, zeit luck is a big one too. And then what we found in this

too. And then what we found in this study is and I think it really is a it's a very true finding.

They were really good at getting a return on luck when luck came because they these things we called Natalie moments. Not all time in life is equal.

moments. Not all time in life is equal.

And you recognize this is a not all time in life is equal moment. And it requires an unequal response to an unequal moment. And so now I come back to you,

moment. And so now I come back to you, Tim. If you're good at this return on

Tim. If you're good at this return on luck thing, okay.

>> Yeah.

>> So the 600 tennis balls are coming at you. One of them is the one that you

you. One of them is the one that you decide to to hit. What about your ability to kind of recognize it's a not all time in life is equal moment

>> and to go to kind of a 10x intensity in that moment. I'm curious how that plays out for you. I think there's a lot of overlap and and certainly I I think

my maximizing return on luck has an ROI distribution very similar to angel investing. I so 80% of the times I hit

investing. I so 80% of the times I hit the ball it's like Marco and there's no polo. Nobody hits it back. Right.

polo. Nobody hits it back. Right.

>> But but every once in a while I'm like holy cow I just scored the winning point in Wibbleton. That's crazy. Didn't see

in Wibbleton. That's crazy. Didn't see

that coming. Yeah. So I'll come back and answer that. I think they're very

answer that. I think they're very closely related and I identify with the what who and zeit luck. For instance,

when I started angel investing 2008 roughly 2008, 2009, 2010, I mean it was >> just a beautiful time to angel invest.

Yes, there's some skill involved. I tend

to disbelieve people who attribute anything solely to luck or solely to skill. It's usually some combination.

skill. It's usually some combination.

But there are definitely periods of time where I felt that not all time in life is equal and this is where you need to apply some pressure

to the vessel. Yeah. Right. And that

could be the first book which you know we don't need to get into right now. It

could be early on the angel investing.

>> Mhm. It could be for instance around 2015 deciding to like 10x 20x 30x down

my bet on supporting science related to psychedelic assisted therapies and even back then starting also but now

typically non-invasive but sometimes invasive bioelectric medicine brain stimulation I think that's I have very high conviction that that is around the corner So taking a peek at the future

that's not evenly distributed. I feel

>> that way about biologic medicine right now. So I think they're very tightly

now. So I think they're very tightly bound in a sense. And question for you.

There's this term that I came across. I

I wish I had the attribution but believe it was from someone in Silicon Valley or at least someone in tech. They talked

about increasing the surface area of luck. In other words,

luck. In other words, if you need luck, if we're talking about good luck to stick to you, >> how do you increase the surface area

available to which that luck can stick?

And when I think about my own hoolock, for instance, >> it was entirely dependent in the world of startups and even one could argue the success of the first book on me moving

to Silicon Valley, being in the middle of that switchbox. Without that, forget it. there was not enough surface area to

it. there was not enough surface area to which hool luck could really stick.

>> Yeah.

>> And I'm just wondering if that resonates. So first of all I think

resonates. So first of all I think whatever the size of the surface the idea of luck and return on luck is always operating if you will right

because I mean you could be you know my family in rural northern Oklahoma my on my father's side isn't Silicon Valley but my grandmother who grew up there you

know she had luck and return on luck that her life was affected by I mean she was this beautiful Oklahoma farm girl and she was working at the Witchah

airport and this dashing test pilot who was my grandfather Jimmy Collins landed for fuel on a Memorial Day weekend and they met and 4 days later they were

married and it was like okay this is a hoolock moment but we're both going to seize that not all time in life is equal and boom right you know so that notion of the luck and return on luck can

happen sort of anywhere so one I don't think it's contingent that it has to be the largest sphere That said, I absolutely agree with you that one of the reasons to be in certain environments if you're fortunate enough

to be there is there's just a lot more tennis balls coming at you and there's a lot more around the hoolock side of it.

In my life, I've often said, you know, there are lots of ways to be wealthy, but the way in which I have been incredibly wealthy.

I've done well on many dimensions, but probably the way in which I have the greatest wealth is in a vast vast set of hoolock events. And that happened, it

hoolock events. And that happened, it started because I started being in environments where I would come in contact with with people who ended up

being hoolock. John Gardner down the

being hoolock. John Gardner down the hall from me at Stanford. But I mean just a couple to really illustrate like that really affected my own life because

I was in a place where the surface area was fairly large. When I went off to Stanford business school second year and the the course sorting machine I wanted

to get into an entrepreneurship small business course. it filled up and so the

business course. it filled up and so the course sorting machine just randomly put me into a section with a totally unproven guy named Bill Lazir who we spoke about in one of our previous

conversations. It was truly just the

conversations. It was truly just the random course sorting. So it is absolutely it's like a coin flip. And

then Bill ended up, it was the first time he taught, no one knew who he was, was the first person that was ever like a father for me. And Bill, despite all

of my, you know, challenges to be somebody to deal with or whatever and those hot coals and he had to manage those. But the return on luck was I

those. But the return on luck was I recognized Bill's caring and I I invested in our friendship and our relationship all the way along as well.

And then that led to another luck event, a what luck followed by a hoolock. So I

was 28 29 years old I think 29 maybe 30 right around that age. So how did I end up teaching at Stanford business school?

Well, shortly before the start of the fall term in 1988, Bill was teaching entrepreneurship and small business. I was kind of still in

small business. I was kind of still in the fog of my 20s and I'd been managing Jo-Ann's athletic career and one of the sections of entrepreneurship

and small business because of a family tragedy all of a sudden lost the professor who was going to be teaching it.

I mean, it was a really bad luck event for that person, but all of a sudden, it hit me with a luck event in the sense it was the luck event was all of a sudden

that class had nobody to teach it. And

Bill taught the other section of it and Bill went to the deans and said, "How about we let Jim teach it?" I wasn't teaching there at the time and and they were very skeptical of this, but Bill

said, "I'll, you know, I'll take responsibility and so forth." And that's what opened up the door for me to teach at Stanford. It was a like had that

at Stanford. It was a like had that tragedy not happened, I wouldn't have had that opportunity. And if I had not had Bill from the previous luck event, I would not have had that opportunity. And

then and then Bill was said, "Okay, you know, this is like you unexpectedly got to pitch in Yankee Stadium and you only get to pitch once if you don't throw a

good game, but if you throw a no hitter, you might get to pitch again."

And so that's the Natalie time, right?

Not all time in life is equal. Is that

moment I get this, you know, it's look, if you had one shot, one opportunity to seize everything you wanted in one moment, would you capture it or let it slip? I mean, it's one of the great

slip? I mean, it's one of the great songs of all time because it gets right to this thing, right? That's the Natalie moment. And then the next luck event,

moment. And then the next luck event, which was a who luck thing, happened, which is I'd written a little article for the San Jose Mercury News. a fellow

by the name of Jerry Porus just happened to read it who happened to be on the faculty with me who sent me an email saying I noticed you're interested in this stuff on corporate vision can we

talk so I go have a conversation with Jerry Porus we he'd been a professor of mine before but he didn't even probably remember that and then we ended up that became where we started the project that

eventually led to built to last right so another hoolock and then those years of like teaching and you know basically having no time for anything except the research and the teaching and the whole

bit. And then that leads to built to

bit. And then that leads to built to last, which then leads to another luck event, which is this thing that that no one knew who we were and totally

unexpected. The day that built to last

unexpected. The day that built to last was published.

I wake up in a small in a a hotel room in a small hotel down in Halfoon Bay, California.

And I think pub date was October 17 or something like that. Anyways, and I was down there to do a little thing for the Stanford Alumni Association, kind of a talk or something. And I get up and I open the door to pick up my morning USA

Today. And I pick it up and the top of

Today. And I pick it up and the top of the USA Today says built to last author something. See money section. I'm like,

something. See money section. I'm like,

well, that's kind of weird. Okay. So

then I flipped to the money section and there's a picture this big of Jerry and me and we own the entire front page of the money section and with a picture of

the book and the two of us and it goes on for like three pages. We had zero idea any of this was going to happen and it simply there's a series of things that led to that happening which related

to hoolock. I thought it was a joke. So

to hoolock. I thought it was a joke. So

I called Joanne and I said you know god my friends are taking pity on me.

They're playing a joke. They made this mockup copy of USA Today and they left it on my doorstep and well actually I didn't call her at first cuz I went downstairs and then I saw there were

other USA Today's there and I went and I looked and they all had the same thing.

I said, "Man, this is a really elaborate hoax cuz they changed all the newspapers."

newspapers." And then I called Joanne and she said, "Oh my gosh, now we're in trouble because that actually is real and we're 50,000 copies backordered overnight."

>> Oh wow.

Quality problem.

>> And then of course there was the year after that which was a Natalie year at the end of which I put so much into it I ended up getting shingles because my immune system was so shot. So the each

of those were there was the luck event often a who luck event sometimes a what luck event but every one of them what followed was

the return on luck aspect of it of yes I get the email from Jerry Porus but then there's the five years of doing the research and inventing the match pair

method and you know like what a wonderful opportunity to do that and and those are my life is just hooluck after hoolock after hooluck and then the sphere I was in a place where there was

a lot of this fear I just have to say though there's one thing which is sometimes you have hoolock though and that doesn't necessarily mean that the key is you can have opportunities come

at you and the hard part is when not to make a return on luck event out of it because it wouldn't fit your encodings and so just because something's a once

in a-lifetime opportunity is merely a fact. It's not a reason.

>> I mean, everything's kind of a once in a-lifetime event if you sit down and really think about it, right?

>> Each and every day, >> I think about this line, and I'm going to paraphrase, although I think I'm very close, by the late Lord Rabbi Jonathan

Saxs, who I had on the podcast a few years before he passed.

And I think he said something along the lines of the great challenge in life is to separate an opportunity to be seized from a temptation to be resisted.

>> Exactly. Oh, that's that's exactly that's really good words.

>> I think about that a lot. And

>> to follow up on the the luck question, so if we look at return on luck, it doesn't specify good or bad. I was

thinking about this in the process of reading and I'm wondering if you look at the people you have studied

>> whether it's for what to make of a life or other books or outside of the context of books >> it seems like yes you can conclude distribution of luck for these matched

pairs seems roughly equivalent but the return on luck is not and I'm wondering if that applies not only to good luck and I'll I'll tell you what went through my head I Hm. If you were teaching, let's just say you, Jim, teaching a

class at Stanford called luck or >> return on luck.

>> Return on luck.

>> Yeah.

>> Is it possible there's actually a progression of skill related to return on luck just as there might be with different types of investing in that if

there's big good luck, that's sort of the white belt level. Most people can recognize that. Some percentage of those

recognize that. Some percentage of those people can capitalize on it. Then

there's small good luck which is is a little more challenging.

Then let's skip over neutral. Just say

there's like small bad luck, little bad things that people can sometimes make use of along the lines of the apocryphal Chinese saying never let a good crisis

go to waste type of thing. And then

there's big bad luck. And I'm I'm just wondering, we could think of these all as forms of chance.

If you've noticed any patterns among the match pairs where we're able to make good use of big good luck or small good

luck, were they also able to reframe bad events or make use of quote unquote bad events? Just a question. I've struggled

events? Just a question. I've struggled

with this myself because I I feel like I've done better at return on good luck than return on bad luck myself. I've had

some return on bad luck too, but I can more easily zero in on the return on good luck. So, so first of all, I just

good luck. So, so first of all, I just want to clarify one thing that's really worth mentioning. In my prior work, good

worth mentioning. In my prior work, good great bill to last, great by choice, how the mighty fall, so forth, where I was doing match pair studies, and Jerry Porus really gets the credit for coming up with the idea of the historical match

pair method that's been so central to me. And you were always asking, I got

me. And you were always asking, I got two companies and then multiple pairs of companies and they're in similar circumstances and then one does one really well and the other doesn't. and

you're you're looking at the contrast and asking what's different and that's how you see the ideas. And so that was really good for my corporate research.

This study is different in how I use pairs. Joanne came into me one day and

pairs. Joanne came into me one day and she just said, "Jim, people are not stock returns." And what she meant by

stock returns." And what she meant by that is, you know, was if I'm studying companies, I have these objective output variables, right? Right? I can look at

variables, right? Right? I can look at cumulative returns relative to investors for example and I can really I can definitively prove this company over time did better than that company. I can

unassalably demonstrate that. But

there's no legitimate way for me to define what is a better life than another life. And so what happened in

another life. And so what happened in doing this study and this was a big change in how I just even look at the whole world is that the way it actually turned out because there were really interesting people all the way around is

my other studies it was like this right you know there was always one that was better than the other. In this study I had two people and then they would hit a similar cliff and they would come out and they would maybe go different

directions but you couldn't necessarily say one direction is better than another direction. You could say maybe one

direction. You could say maybe one person had more trouble getting in frame before they got to the other side or whatever. And so this study is very much

whatever. And so this study is very much about people going through similar cliffs and coming out making different choices which is a very different thing than saying making better choices. So I

want to be really careful that that I use pairs here. I learned a lot from having pairs. Pairs were essential to

having pairs. Pairs were essential to this. But the way I think about them

this. But the way I think about them when it comes to human beings is different than the way I think about them when it comes to companies. the bad

luck part. I want to speak from a company standpoint. I want to speak from

company standpoint. I want to speak from a personal standpoint. Company

standpoint. What Morton and I found in Great by Choice is that the only mistakes you can learn from and the only bad luck events you can learn from are the ones you survive.

And so it's true, right?

And so what we found is that there's sort of a part of getting a return on bad luck for companies. And speaking for any founders or people who are building companies, what what we really found is

that the way they manage the bad luck side of things is you think of like a curve of a rising curve of a company or you know company moving through and and say it's you know its growth or its success or whatever it's like this but

around this like these events like you know COVID financial crisis massive technological disruption whatever it happens to be like these are sort of these things that are happening along the way. And meanwhile down here is this

the way. And meanwhile down here is this line that you'd think of as the death line. And if you ever hit the death

line. And if you ever hit the death line, it's over, right? You never get a chance to get a return on what comes next because it's done. And so what we found is the kind of the secret to

managing from a company standpoint, the the bad luck side of it is you got to stay alive. And the part of getting a

stay alive. And the part of getting a return on luck is if you manage yourself with such discipline and with such financial reserves and with such buffers and such relationships and so forth such

that when you get a triple hit of bad luck, you're alive.

You don't hit the death line. Part of

the return on luck is you get to the other side and others got wiped out, but you didn't.

And that sets you up for a return after the fact. And so this notion of kind of

the fact. And so this notion of kind of part of the secret to getting a high return on bad luck as a company is to have constant productive paranoia so

that you never hit the death line.

Because if you're one of the ones who never hits the death line, then you get a return by almost definition because you survived and others didn't. So

that's the company side of it. And then

of course you make the most of the things you learned and all that sort of stuff. From a personal standpoint, I

stuff. From a personal standpoint, I think about one of the people in the study who you met. We have a pair of women whose husbands died with tragic

luck events.

One died in a plane crash and the other died of a heart attack.

So these two women got hit with a massive blow of bad luck.

I mean, it's the ultimate, right? You

didn't cause a plane crash. Huge

negative consequence. Total surprise out of the blue when you get that call that afternoon. And you look at Cartis

afternoon. And you look at Cartis Collins who husband, both of these women, their husband serves in Congress, which meant that they had the opportunity to take their husband's seats because the way that works with

this mandate that opens up the possibility if your spouse dies, you get to take their seat. And Cartis Collins, she felt that her husband would have wanted her to at least give it a try.

And she goes off to Washington DC. She

was totally unprepared for being she had never thought of being a congressperson.

The whole frame of her life had shifted and her life had been shattered.

And while she was there, she began making these steps like she just started, you know, she would serve on a committee. She started right and she

committee. She started right and she wasn't even sure she was going to stay.

And then what happened is she began to discover a marvelous set like she had these amazing encodings probably I mean just really amazing encodings for being

an incredible legislator. She became

chair of the congressional black caucus at one point. She was there for 25 years. She really flourished in the role

years. She really flourished in the role of being a congressperson 7th district of Chicago. Now I I want to be really

of Chicago. Now I I want to be really clear. I wouldn't look at it as that oh

clear. I wouldn't look at it as that oh it turned out that it was a good thing she lost her husband. It wasn't. It was

terrible thing. So you don't look at it and kind of denigrate or in any way dismiss the pain and the grief of losing her husband. That's just awful, tragic,

her husband. That's just awful, tragic, terrible luck.

But what the story illustrates is that sometimes these bad luck events, cliff events, number of the people in our study, these cliff events have a way of

knocking your life to the side. And when

that gets knocked to the side, you're thrown off to Congress, you know, or you have a disease, your life has just been just bang.

And what happens, I think the way I think of it through this study is it isn't just kind of like I will make good from bad. Look, it's just awful to lose

from bad. Look, it's just awful to lose your husband.

But in many ways what it showed is this sense of that those cliff events which are often a form of bad luck in some cases or sometimes good cliff events but can be bad luck events

can reframe your life in incredibly unexpected ways and expose encodings

you never knew you had.

And then the return on that is right back to the very earlier part of the conversation which is those encodings pop into frame. You recognize them. You

begin to trust them and your life takes a different vector.

And that's how I really kind of came to see it on these big ones. You're not

polyianish about it at all. They can be terrible, terrible things. Katherine

Graham, another one, right? just she had no idea she had the encodings to be one of the greatest corporate leaders of all time. But when the frame shifted and she

time. But when the frame shifted and she began to discover those leadership encodings doesn't take away the pain of what she lived through.

But when she really committed to and trusted, I am the leader of the Washington Post company,

that was the ultimate return for the company, for her, for journalism, for the whole deal. So that's kind of how I how I think about it. And and think about it this way. This is going to happen. There are going to be founders.

happen. There are going to be founders.

There's just I know you have founders in your world. One of the big luck events

your world. One of the big luck events that happens to a lot of founders is They lost control of their company.

Then they lost their company. And

sometimes it comes as a terrible ripping shock almost like a death and they're cast into the fog.

Or the other version of it is they sell their company and then they lose three decades of their life because they don't get back in frame.

There's multiple groups of people that I really, really, really hope engage with this book, but one of them are my friends in the military, veterans coming out of places like special operations

who have to reframe their life, etc. But I think the for for people who aren't going to build a company till the day they die, like Sam Walton or Steve Jobs, you're going to face this

cliff event.

And I think a lot of them are not well prepared for it. And I think they just jump right off another cliff. I would

love to see that not happen. And one of the big questions I would put to corporate I really believe this is to ask yourself the question is ultimately in the end are you going to

be a founder who actually the big thing you discovered in your life is building your company and you will do it until you're out of breath.

or are you going to be somebody who that's one frame of your life and then there'll be a second very very different frame that comes after that.

What worries me is how many people either they lose their company or they sell their company and they actually don't know how to get back in frame.

And then a year goes by and five years goes by and 10 years goes by and 15 years goes by and as you know from the

book your best years are starting to hit at about 55 60 65 70 anyway.

and all of a sudden those punches in life have just expired without being really used.

>> I would say very few founders have a plan. They have scripts they can copy,

plan. They have scripts they can copy, but it's not reasoning from first principles or from seeking encodings.

It's I guess this is what you do now.

And that typically ends up with a crisis of identity much like you described after an athletic career, after special ops, after

anything that has been a lynch pin of your identity for such a long time. I'd

love to ask you a question that may tie into a lot of what we've discussed already.

It came about in reviewing our earlier conversations >> and I'd love for you to expand on it. So

here here's the line. His mentor Irv Grouse, hopefully I'm pronouncing that correctly, told him >> y >> an option to come back in quotation marks has negative value on a creative path because it will change your

behavior.

>> Could you expand on this? Because part

of the reason why I have the confidence, I'm not sure if that's quite the right word, to pursue all these different

paths and chase different laser pointers of novelty is that I know I don't have to stick with any given boondoggle if it turns out to be a boondoggle. So could

you just expand on this? I want to make sure I'm understanding it correctly and where it applies, where it might not apply. If this Irv grasp

apply. If this Irv grasp >> Irv was another one of the you know wonderful people that hit my my surface if you will a great hoolock event the story

you're referring to essentially was I was at the point where I was going to be really you know contemplating and confronting leaving Stanford to head out on my own bed on my own work and and of

course the key is you know now we know the result right it worked and I'm really glad that I carved my own path I wouldn't have been encoded to be successful in a political environment

anyway. And then most universities are

anyway. And then most universities are political. You could be good at that.

political. You could be good at that.

I'm I wasn't very good at it. I was

singularly terrible at it. But, you

know, there was a question in my mind about should I try to build some bridges and threads back such that if I stepped away for 6 months or a year or whatever that I could have the option to return,

right? If this if built to last didn't

right? If this if built to last didn't work or whatever, right? Because it was all right at about that time. And Irv

said, 'It's not in your interest to have the option to come back.

And I said, 'Well, I thought options always have positive value. He said, 'N no, options sometimes can have negative value because if you know you have the option to come

back, it will change your behavior, the level of commitment. If you know there's no

of commitment. If you know there's no option to come back, you're going to have to do it's ultimately it's a Natalie time, right? it's going to be

ultra Natalie time and it will change your behavior if you don't have the option to come back. And so that idea of I think you can have a lot of things in

life that are sort of you know small test options and things like that. But I

also what I really took from that is that there come these times when you just go all in. And this is the key in low odds games, games where there's a

very low odds of success statistically.

If you don't go 100% allin, the odds will be zero. Mhm.

>> So you're either looking at a 2% chance or a 0% chance. I'll take two over zero.

>> And zero is like anything from 0% to 80% commitment is a zero.

>> Exactly. And and you can see it in the people in our study at certain points in their life when they went once they got clear right they got out of a fog phase or they were

sort of clicked into frame for the first time. I mean, the extent to which they

time. I mean, the extent to which they were in, I mean, it was it was this is what I'm doing. I'm not looking back.

Here we go. That moment

when Franklin gets dressed down by the privy council and he realizes that it is finally, you know, there has to be the separation from

>> such a great story.

>> Oh god, they're dressing him down and he's just like >> walked in an Englishman and walked out an American.

>> Yeah. as a history professor put it and I I I'm pretty sure I quoted him the history professor because this is perfect. He walked in an Englishman,

perfect. He walked in an Englishman, walked out an American. But then think think about then when they did the Declaration of Independence because what I came to understand by studying Roger

Sherman and Benjamin Franklin who are the pair in this is obviously historians know this really well. But I had to learn a lot about the American Revolution, the founding of the country, the constitution, all this kind of stuff through the pair of these people and

this difference between separating from like parliament and separating from the king. And the declaration of

king. And the declaration of independence was separating from the king and that thing of an understanding that when we signed this document,

we lose, we die, we all die. This is a death warrant if we don't win. And that

moment of putting your signature on the Declaration of Independence would result in your death if you don't win

has a way of focusing the mind to win.

>> Yeah.

>> No options.

I'd love to hear you discuss for a bit >> what you learned from simply choosing who to include in the book because >> you've applied much like sometimes

people think of options as always good things not true >> people may think of constraints as bad things but very often necessary positive

constraints are a real thing so having matched pairs requires it's a forcing function filtering Right. And even with matched pairs, you have many you could

ostensibly choose from, and you had to winnow that down to something that could be contained in a coherent way in this book.

>> And I'm wondering if as an entire group >> Mhm. you learned from who you chose to

>> Mhm. you learned from who you chose to omit as opposed to who to include and if anything distinguished one group from another meaning who made

it and who didn't make it >> outside of the matched pair forcing function. there was a

function. there was a a journey of really looking for a range of people who would shine a light on the

questions that I was interested in. But

there's lots of folks that for whatever reason in the end I ended up not including and partly one of the first you put it right on number one. If I was

going to have matched pairs I've got to find the opposite side of the pair. So

if I found somebody so I'll give a really good example. We're just talking about Roger Sherman and Benjamin Franklin. I thought that this was back

Franklin. I thought that this was back when I originally flamed it as renewal, but then began to look at an entire life. But I always thought Franklin

life. But I always thought Franklin would be fascinating to study. He is the kind of first poster child of great stuff late. I mean, the things that he

stuff late. I mean, the things that he did 70 and beyond. And of course, most of the people in our study did great stuff late, too. That's one of the most uplifting findings of the study is how much great stuff happens late. But I was

just fascinated by Franklin that way.

But then, how do you find a match pair for Benjamin Franklin? And I was like, well, we may not be able to have Franklin because I don't think there's going to be a match. How do you find a match for Franklin? And so member of my

team and I kind of puzzled on this and we came up with this idea which is we said, well, let's just take all the names of all the people who signed the Declaration of Independence and who were also at the Constitutional Convention.

That'll be a starting set. Now, what

we'll do is we'll go pull apart all those lives looking to see if there's anybody that meets the following tests. One came from

what they call the leather apron class.

Two through self-education became a successful business person and hard work. Three then went on to sort of a

work. Three then went on to sort of a second life after that in some form some sort of interesting way. Four played a significant role in the founding

documents of the United States and five would have been kind of a comparable age cohort to Benjamin Franklin. Right? the

whole thing like just go through and you start taking all these people in this long list and you start ticking it off and ticking off and then all of a sudden we discovered Roger Sherman who met all of those tests who turns out to be one

of the great finds for me in the study.

Almost no one knows about Roger Well, that's not true. I didn't know much about Roger Sherman.

>> I didn't either.

>> And he saved the Constitution twice.

>> The way you penned the introduction to that >> Oh, yeah. Who is this >> section was really really funny.

>> Yeah. Who is this guy? And he turns out to be amazing. and they were the two oldest people at the constitutional convention. They played a seinal role in

convention. They played a seinal role in the founding of the country. And so it was but if I wouldn't have found Sherman, I wouldn't have been able to have Franklin because I wouldn't have

had the match. And and so throughout the entire study, there was this constant process of God, that'd be really interesting, but is there a match? I

thought it'd be fabulous to have like Lenin and McCartney, but you have an asymmetry. Tragically, sadly, we lost

asymmetry. Tragically, sadly, we lost John Lennon at a point where all of a sudden his life's truncated and so it just wouldn't have been as good of a

match to look all the way out, right?

So, ended up with Plant and Paige from Zeppelin, which I think was a phenomenal match. And so, just time and again. And

match. And so, just time and again. And

then the other part was I wanted different walks of life. I wanted

scientists. I wanted writers. I wanted,

you know, I wanted different very different kinds of roles and things that people did. and different eras, right?

people did. and different eras, right?

I've got the suffrage era. I've got the founding of the country. I've got, you know, the 19, you know, 20s or 40s or 60s or whatever. But the other is they

all had to be people where their life, even if it's not over, and most of them it is over, is largely in the record books, right?

They couldn't be at an age where you you sort of don't know what's really going to happen. There's too much more yet to

to happen. There's too much more yet to live. And I'm really glad I stuck to

live. And I'm really glad I stuck to that because that's what really showed the hey look at what happens after 50 60 70 and beyond. So let me ask a sort of

holistic question about all the folks that were included also and that is it's dangerous to assume but presumably you could have chosen a cohort

and I've looked a lot just given my involvement in science and studies and so on these metaanalyses of

key contributions to science and perhaps they're awarded with the Nobel Prize or something much much later but >> a lot of scientists it seems, produce their most compelling

work, let's just say sort of in their startup years, right? In quintessential

startup Silicon Valley terms like 18 to 25 or 18 to 30, something like that.

If that if we take that just as a placeholder to be true for some many scientists and maybe even more broadly speaking in other disciplines,

what separates the people who in the book are so consistently incredibly productive in their later years from the

people who don't do that? First of all, before we even just get into this a little bit, I want to ask you a question, which is where do you think this mythology comes from? That

creativity innovation breakthroughs best work, etc., etc., is the province of the young.

>> Where do I think it comes from?

>> Yeah.

>> Well, okay. My thoughts may not be appetizing, but let's give it a shot. So

I I think about this part of how I'll answer echoes I think some of how you approach your work in the sense

that why do you study publicly traded companies because you can compare them across metrics and criteria that are publicly available. You have the data

publicly available. You have the data >> have the data >> and I don't want to make everything about startups but I do find startups a really strange fascinating

laboratory within which you can look at different types of phenomena. And I'm

currently right now I have a whole group of people and we're also using cloud code and all sorts of stuff to do the most intense fine detailed analysis of my last 20 years of investing in startups that you could possibly

imagine.

>> It's pretty incredible what you can do with enriching data and >> so on. But one of the questions is age of founder, right? What do you see when

you're when you're sorting by age as a founder as as one variable which is not independent and I would say that I think the belief whether it's a myth or not

and I think it's situationally dependent part of it is and hence my incessant annoying questions about energy is that

for certain disciplines the intensity required to sustain like a Natalie over years of intensity is constrained

by energy and you and sometimes it's also constrained by responsibilities. So

if you are early 20s, you're living on a futon in a cockroachinfested apartment eating ramen to survive and that's good enough for you at the time. There is a certain competitive advantage to that. I

think there's also possibly just a mitochondrial physical advantage. So you see a lot of

physical advantage. So you see a lot of home runs are created in it seems like to me I haven't done a fine tooth comb analysis of this people produce a lot of

their best work when they're in those kind of professional sports peak years.

It's not that they're limited to that. I

think that's a piece of it is just energetic intensity endurance advantage which may be physiologically bound.

>> Yeah. You know that's one that's one.

Yeah. What are your thoughts?

>> First of all, I think it's really interesting and I would I would process this through a different lens actually at this point which is that >> yeah the way I would process this having

done this study is I think it's not a question of energy. I think it's a question of being in frame with your encodings and that if you are I don't

think the energy is I mean there's physical things like you can have a something that catches up with you physically of course right or you might have a autoimmune disease or something like that okay but setting aside things

physically health-wise that begin to to come at you I just see repeated levels of evidence from the lives I studied here and people I've known over the

course of my more classic work people building companies and so on and so forth that there's no evidence to me that the energy goes down it goes up that the creativity goes down it goes up

and what I would say is that a founder that kind of burns out might have not even really been in frame being a founder and the ones who really are in frame building a company is just so if

you take a Sam Walton or a Walt Disney or Steve Jobs there's no evidence to me that their creativity that their intensity

waned until they were basically like expiring. And I mean Sam, he had bone

expiring. And I mean Sam, he had bone cancer and he lived a very simple life.

I don't think that some of the people I studied that their lives changed very much. Their circumstances changed terms

much. Their circumstances changed terms of the amount of wealth they had, but the way they lived didn't really change.

And still get up every day and they go to work and they do the thing that they're there to do. And Walt is still thinking about like what the next thing at Epcot might be. and and Sam is still thinking about the expansion of stores

and what could happen with the culture and Steve Jobs is thinking about you know what will be the next iteration of sorts of things and how can he set up Apple to be outstanding beyond him and then and then life the clock stops at

some point but until then they don't stop they don't stop they just don't >> yeah yeah >> so this idea that somehow it goes like this peak and fall right

>> peak and fall I see it as a peak when you're young isn't this it's a peak and then there's Yes. And it just goes up and up and up and up and up and up and

up. I mean, you found a media empire

up. I mean, you found a media empire peak. You found a nation.

peak. You found a nation.

>> It's a pretty tough act to follow.

>> Yeah. Exactly. And even in the science or creative areas, you know what it's like to write a book.

>> Yeah.

>> And how exhausting it is, how draining it is. And you look at Tony Morrison

it is. And you look at Tony Morrison doesn't even become a writer until her 40s. She comes into frame as a writer.

40s. She comes into frame as a writer.

She doesn't publish Beloved till she's 56. She doesn't publish Jazz until 61,

56. She doesn't publish Jazz until 61, which is an astounding thing. And then

she just goes on and there's no evidence. Anybody want to say that?

evidence. Anybody want to say that?

Well, Tony Morrison was slowing down when she did Beloved because she's after 50.

>> No, >> no, not true.

>> And Barbara McClinintok, Grace Hopper, Grace Hopper made huge contributions to computer science. those happened as her

computer science. those happened as her second career.

Barbara Mcccleintoch's breakthrough on transpositional genetic elements when it all came together happened after the midpoint of her life which was in her late 40s. So this idea that it happens

late 40s. So this idea that it happens early and then I can and if I go back to my classic work and the people who built companies, the ones who really built companies, the reason why I think they didn't like have this peak early and

then they're just sort of exhausted and burned out is because they were in frame. Sam Walton was encoded to build

frame. Sam Walton was encoded to build Walmart. Steve Jobs was encoded to build

Walmart. Steve Jobs was encoded to build Apple. Walt Disney was encoded to build

Apple. Walt Disney was encoded to build Disney. And if you're encoded to build

Disney. And if you're encoded to build your company the way they were encoded to build their companies, a startup is just kind of the first step. And you

would still eat ramen to do it. Can I

offer an an alternate?

>> Forget me. I just I I I I chafe against the >> I love it. I want the chafing. A

sentence you don't hear very often. No,

I'm into it. the the alternate explanation I wanted to offer maybe it's complimentary but let's let's just say we rule out my theory of professional

sports physiological advantage I think there's a piece of that sometimes >> sure for like singing and stuff sure >> I won't drag that particular piece out but let's say I take it off the table

the reason I was asking about the 50 30 20 right how do you actually maintain the 50% of your time allocated to new intellectual creative work is because

the alternate explanation I would probably vote for as to why some people seem to get lost or certainly don't

focus on their encodings after some initial success and therefore you do see a peak and maybe a decline or plateau is that in the beginning sounds like you've sustained this very well. They

wake up they know exactly what they're doing. they are doing one or two things

doing. they are doing one or two things but there is a primary and let's just say it's a startup it's making this metric go up 5% per week or per month compounding over time that's it that is

the focus period end of story and when you have a modeicum of success or a lightning bolt of success and you see this in Nobel Prize winners right I can't remember the term for it it's like no syndrome or something

>> yeah where their productivity just plummets afterwards why because they're now getting all of these invitations over the transom And similarly, it's like when when fill in the blank founder putting Steve Jobs

aside, although he had his periods in the fog for sure.

>> Well, for sure after he got fired, which was a cliff, >> right? So, taking someone who's maybe,

>> right? So, taking someone who's maybe, you could take your pick, of hundreds of founders who've had an exit of some type or done well enough that now they don't necessarily feel like they have a demon

whipping them at their back. Again, that

>> Mhm.

>> is not necessarily entirely compatible with the the encodings, but the the point being now they're thinking about the charity whose board they just

joined. They're thinking about any

joined. They're thinking about any number of other things that slowly or quickly eat up the pie chart of time

such that they are well below their 50% in terms of new intellectual creative work or applying it to their encodings.

How have you seen people most reliably preserve that outside of some mutants who are maybe like I certainly see this in Silicon Valley on the spectrum who are seem unable to do anything but focus

on their encodings. What have you observed in in all of your studies to people who are how they are good at preserving the majority of the pie chart for their encodings because I find it

very very very challenging.

>> I do. I do. I'm not going to lie.

>> It is just for myself. I have one great advantage which just part of my encodings going all the way back to the way you even wrote about described our first conversation. I'm belligerently

first conversation. I'm belligerently reclusive. It's a temperament, right?

reclusive. It's a temperament, right?

It's a temperament. People have often said, "Well, Jim, you must be feel really lucky that you're, you know, you're in you're such an enviable position because it's easy for you to be selective and to say no to stuff because

you have so much to select from." And

what they don't see is that I was always selective even when I didn't have anything to select from. Right? It's an

encoded mode that I've always had. So

for me, it's it's been I think easier than for some people because they maybe don't have that encoded mode of belligerently reclusive and naturally

selective as a way of being independent of circumstance. But then that that

of circumstance. But then that that brings me to I think what I would really see with the people in our study is that there's phases of life. I don't think they're common stages by the way. They're just

phases. You're kind of in a phase or out of a phase. And there's what I would describe as kind of clarity phases and fog phases. And we talked about the fog

fog phases. And we talked about the fog phases. But there are also these times

phases. But there are also these times of great clarity when they click into frame with a really big thing. And

sometimes they click into frame with a really big thing. And it is the big thing till the day they die, right? It

just they just all the way to the end.

They may have cliffs, but it doesn't knock them into doing something else.

Tony Morrison just kept writing and Barbara McClend just kept doing her genetics and Robert Plant is still doing music, right? They found the big thing

music, right? They found the big thing and and it's just like that's just what I'm going to do. And then there are others who life would hit them or they would make a change and they kind of go through a fog phase and then there can

be a lot of these different sort of noisy things around them. But then they click in again with a big thing. And

what happened with the people in our lives is there are these times when they're doing something they're encoded for that really feeds their fire that they're willing to flip the arrow of money to do. And this is the other part

we need to talk about about this. What

happens is once they do that, it's a big thing, right? And they go into what I

thing, right? And they go into what I describe in the book as hedgehog mode.

There are times in life when you're in hedgehog mode. This is the big thing I'm

hedgehog mode. This is the big thing I'm doing. Now I may have some other things

doing. Now I may have some other things around here but I'm really clear on the big thing and sometimes they get out of that but then they'll come back to a

version of being in the big thing science building my company founding a nation right you know big big big right >> Tuesdays got to focus on founding the nation yeah

>> exactly and so I think that once you click in with the really big thing you give yourself over to it and it sort of dominates it's kind of like sure you may tributaries in your life of water, but

there's a big river which is the Mississippi of how you allocate yourself. Now, there can be a lot of

yourself. Now, there can be a lot of pieces within it. It can have a lot of subpoints to it, right? It might not be as simple as just I solve genetics puzzles, but it's got a big organizing theme around it.

>> If that's simple, man, I don't know what my life is, but yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Pickup sticks.

>> But this thing about flipping the arrow of money. So now thinking about it this

of money. So now thinking about it this with the startup community and so forth.

One of the things that is very clear about how people really got in frame in our study and I really resonate with

this as I reflect on my own life too but question is what's the arrow of money?

Are you doing what you do to make money or do you need money to do your work? Is

money fuel back to the flywheel? Is it simply fuel to make the flywheel go further? Is

money fuel to write your next book? Is

money fuel to do the next Zeppelin album? Is money fuel to be able to do

album? Is money fuel to be able to do your science? Is money fuel to be able

your science? Is money fuel to be able to be a provocative questionnaire in the world? Is money fuel? Money is a fuel

world? Is money fuel? Money is a fuel and that's the direction of arrow this way. The other is the direction, the

way. The other is the direction, the flipping of the arrow of money of actually the truth is if I strip it away, the truth is in the end, a big part of this is I'm doing this to make

money. And what I found with our people

money. And what I found with our people is if they had flipped the arrow of money that the only purpose of money is to be able to do what I'm encoded for that feeds the fire that that's that that's the point of it. So I never have

to stop. Then you have a very different

to stop. Then you have a very different relationship to success when it comes.

if it was about the money and then you get the money and you were never really in frame in the first place maybe or maybe you were but I think that notion of what is the direction of the arrow

plays a big role in what happens when you get say to the other side of having built something succeeded or whatever and I go back all the way to my classic work I think the great company builders

that I studied it was never about the money it was what they were building and that's why they never ran out of steam no matter how much money they made, they never ran out of steam. And I think

that's a really critical part of how this cycle gets gets managed.

>> It's a huge piece from what I can tell.

And I'll just throw a few things out there and then I want to also make sure I don't forget to ask you about this live event that I believe you're doing.

>> Oh yeah.

>> Not too not too far from now.

>> Thank you for reminding me about that.

Yeah, >> absolutely. So I'll sprinkle some some

>> absolutely. So I'll sprinkle some some thoughts. So the the first is the older

thoughts. So the the first is the older I get the more I think about I guess finite and infinite games cars >> and just along the lines of what you

were saying like fuel being very clear to distinguish between fuel for the journey and the journey itself and it makes me think of this quote people should look up I think I may have had

him on the podcast in fact Tim O'Reilly >> fascinating figure in Silicon Valley publisher but much more than that and I'll paraphrase his quote which is

imagine life as a road trip across the country, you need fuel for the trip, but it's not a tour of gas stations.

And >> also, if you're selecting perhaps using a reframed question from Seth Goden, so the question people often hear is, "What would you do if you knew

you could not fail?" It's like, okay.

And I have a mug with that on it, and it's helpful to think about that.

>> You're a six. You're always going to be worried about failing.

>> Well, the way Seth puts it is he said, "What would you do if you knew you would fail, >> right?" Which forces you to think about

>> right?" Which forces you to think about the actual day-to-day process of traveling on whatever that journey happens to be. Those are just a few things that came to mind.

>> Yeah. And also it's like the more I do certain things in my life, the more I realize, yes, there might be there might be it's a big might, a monetary reward.

And I've maybe been rewarded in the past, but now I just want those additional chips if they come so I can keep putting them back into play,

which may not be the most financially responsible all the time, but I'm also not anywhere. I'm much like Richard

not anywhere. I'm much like Richard Branson or a lot of these other folks people think of as risktakers. They're

actually really expert risk mitigators if you really dig into their stories.

They're very rarely at risk of ever touching that death line that you were talking about.

>> So let's let's if you want to hop into it since I know we're got to be coming up on three hours now.

Do you want to mention this live event?

>> There are very few times when I'm just out there in a public event that people can sign up for. but related to this on April 9th at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.

>> Great spot.

>> Yeah. We're going to be doing a conversation on the evening around the ideas in this book. I don't know what direction the conversation exactly will go, but I know sometimes people are like, "Is Jim ever, you know, going to

be live at something?" And usually there are things people can't sign up for, but this is one they can. So, I would hope to see some friendly faces there and maybe even people are provoked a little

bit by our conversation in some way. And

I would look forward to that very much.

>> So if people search Jim Collins Commonwealth Club, would they >> I think they should be able to. I would

hope so. Yeah. Does the Commonwealth Club April 9, San Francisco?

Yeah. What to make of a life Jim Collins. They can find it there.

Collins. They can find it there.

>> In our second conversation, we're going to start to land the plane shortly, but I was looking at a reference to the good to great acknowledgements. M

acknowledgements. M >> uh this was also something that I think you may have brought up and I'll just read the line because there may be something that was elided here >> but success dot dot dot is that my

spouse likes and respects me ever more as the years go by >> and I'm wondering if you would keep it to that if you would revise that add to

it simplify it how do you think about success these days >> I think that's one of the best paragraphs I ever wrote is the final acknowledgement paragraph and good to

great and I really would still see that as for me the ultimate definition of success in life. Joanne and I the ultimate hoolock, right? We got engaged four days after our first date.

>> Seems to run in the family. I guess

>> it does. And the Natalie moment was she's saying yes now. I should say yes.

Let's get married.

>> A smart man.

>> It was very much. But then the the thing is that and then 45 years is the return on luck, right? They were going to do 46 this year. your spouse knows you like no

this year. your spouse knows you like no one.

and kind of to me, I mean, my the depth of my not just my love for Joanne, but the depth of my respect for

her, for her intellect, for her integrity, for her amazing ability to to speak so

directly and sharply to me about what needs attention. our marriage works

needs attention. our marriage works because multiple reasons it works but one of it is Joanne is incredibly good at seeing what's needs attention

and I'm encoded to hear it and the combination is what is a great combination for us and she's strategic

guidance mechanism I'm creative propulsion and I over the years somehow just began to

realize that Joanne can see me for really who and what I am, what my real motivations are, why I'm doing things, my weaknesses, my flaws, my fracture

points, my unlikable tendencies, whatever they might be. When I wrote that sentence, and it's as true today as ever, the measure for me is that Joanne will love me unless I did something

really stupid. Joanne will love me

really stupid. Joanne will love me regardless, but will she like me more as the years go by?

Will she respect me more as the years go by?

And for me, that like the truest, most searing test is if Joanne likes and respects what she sees,

I'm not too far off the mark. and other

kinds of success have come and I want my work to be read and all those sorts of things. But that really is if I had all

things. But that really is if I had all kinds of external success but I lost Joannne's respect or Joanne woke up one day and was like well I actually don't really like you anymore.

>> That'd be a bummer of a day.

>> Yeah, that would be the worst possible kind of failure.

>> Jim, that's deeply inspiring. I find

your life and your examination of your life and the lives of others deeply inspiring. People can find you at

inspiring. People can find you at jimconins.com. The new book, I encourage

jimconins.com. The new book, I encourage people to check it out. I read every page of it. What to make of a life, subtitle, Cliff's Fog, Fire, and the Self-nowledge Imperative. That's the

Self-nowledge Imperative. That's the book that people will be able to find everywhere. Is there anything else you'd

everywhere. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wind to a close?

>> I would just add that it is truly a great joy to connect with you in conversation. Again

conversation. Again the range of things that we get to talk about the quality of your questions it

is as you know I track my days minus 2 -1 0 + 1 + two our conversation makes

today absolutely for me a plus two day I would converse with you anytime >> thanks Jim that makes my makes my day and

always a pleasure to connect. Hopefully,

we'll have a chance to break bread in person in the not too distant future.

That would be nice.

>> Yeah.

>> Or like get into the mountains.

>> Yep.

>> And for everybody listening, we will link to everything, including the new book, What to Make of a Life, and the Commonwealth Club and so on. In the show

notes tim.blog/mpodcast.

notes tim.blog/mpodcast.

Just search Jim Collins and go to the most recent episode. And until next time, be just a bit kinder than is necessary, not only to others, but also

to yourself.

>> Oh, I love that.

>> Thank you, Jim.

>> You're welcome.

>> And thanks to everybody for tuning in.

Till next time, take care.