The Ultimate Guide to Making Good Decisions

[00:00:00] Jay, I have made many, many bad decisions in my life and I've made some good ones.

[00:00:25] And overall, I think it's worked out.

[00:00:28] But no one's going to make 100% correct decisions.

[00:00:31] No one's going to make 100% bad decisions.

[00:00:33] But you have to have some methodology or model for making many decisions in your life or else

[00:00:41] you're just going to be sitting around deciding things most of the time.

[00:00:45] And so I wanted to talk about my decision-making process in a variety of situations.

[00:00:52] But I know when we first discussed this, you said you had some questions about decision-making.

[00:00:56] Yeah.

[00:00:57] Like, because I remember this is when I was really young.

[00:01:00] I was like, got to be 17, 18.

[00:01:02] I was dating a girl then.

[00:01:03] You were dating a girl when you were 17?

[00:01:05] Yeah, dude.

[00:01:07] Everyone started dating around like 17, 18.

[00:01:09] I think now like...

[00:01:11] In Malaysia?

[00:01:12] In Malaysia, yeah.

[00:01:13] I did not have my first girlfriend until I was almost 19 years old.

[00:01:17] No.

[00:01:18] Yeah.

[00:01:19] I always wanted a girlfriend from seventh grade on but I didn't really have what it takes.

[00:01:24] So I didn't start dating someone until I was almost 19.

[00:01:27] I think I started dating when I was 13, 14.

[00:01:30] But it's like a popular love.

[00:01:32] They call it a popular love.

[00:01:34] But yeah, at 17, 18 I was dating this girl and believe it or not, I used to run a choir.

[00:01:39] I used to be in a choir and then I used to like the president of the choir club that

[00:01:44] she founded.

[00:01:46] But you know, I'm like, I don't know if I would be qualified because I am very

[00:01:52] bad at decision-making because I try to make...

[00:01:55] What do you mean?

[00:01:56] You're great at decision-making.

[00:01:57] You decided to work for the best podcast ever and you became the podcast producer, the producer

[00:02:03] of that podcast.

[00:02:04] After 20 years, after like 10 years, actually after 10 years, actually after I worked for

[00:02:10] you for...

[00:02:11] I think I recorded five episodes in and then I decided, okay, I want to work for you

[00:02:14] since then.

[00:02:15] But back then she's like this very controlled woman.

[00:02:21] She's like sort of manipulative but that's another story.

[00:02:25] She's like, what do you mean by you don't know how to decide, how to make a decision?

[00:02:29] Just make whatever decisions and deal with it after.

[00:02:32] I'm like, I don't know if there's a good or a bad advice.

[00:02:35] That might be a good advice.

[00:02:37] Before I talk about that out, I actually want to briefly talk about something completely

[00:02:39] unrelated which is this theory that I just read about this morning that somehow

[00:02:46] Donald Trump is a time traveler.

[00:02:49] Okay, okay.

[00:02:50] I heard about it when he was president.

[00:02:53] Yep, I heard about it four years ago.

[00:02:55] Four years ago?

[00:02:56] Yeah, okay right because in 2017, I had never heard about this till yesterday but in 2017

[00:03:01] apparently a bunch of people started talking about how...

[00:03:06] And I realized yesterday someone sent me a text of a book called The Adventures of

[00:03:14] Little Baron Trump.

[00:03:16] But the book was written in like 1889.

[00:03:19] And there's another book, The Marvelous Underground Journey of Baron Trump.

[00:03:22] And so apparently this guy Ingersoll Lockwood who was born in 1841 died in 1918, was a real

[00:03:28] person, was like an ambassador appointed by Abraham Lincoln for instance.

[00:03:33] He was a diplomat, he was a writer, he was a lawyer, it was all these things.

[00:03:38] And he wrote this book that was supposed to be like Alice in Wonderland but it was

[00:03:44] about this character, this little kid Baron Trump who was the son of some rich person and

[00:03:52] he would go on all these like amazing adventures and until eventually he would go home to Castle

[00:03:57] Trump which a.k.a. Trump Tower.

[00:04:00] And then the next book that Ingersoll Lockwood wrote was called The Last President and

[00:04:05] he wrote this book again in the 1890s and it was about here 1896 on November 3rd

[00:04:11] there would be an election and essentially it's about Americans are really upset they

[00:04:19] think that the presidential election process had been corrupted and that some fake president

[00:04:24] had been elected and the president lives in New York City and people start rioting in

[00:04:30] New York City because everybody's afraid of the collapse of the United States once the

[00:04:36] transition of presidential power occurs and they start rioting and they're going to attack

[00:04:43] where this person lives apparently in a big hotel on Fifth Avenue a.k.a. Trump Towers

[00:04:48] on Fifth Avenue and so it's this weird thing where this guy wrote two books one about

[00:04:53] Baron Trump and the other about The Last President which is a president who is involved

[00:05:00] in some kind of scandal or it's unclear to me because I haven't read the book it's unclear

[00:05:06] whether it's this person was corrupt or the person he's protesting is corrupt but it ends

[00:05:12] up with this sort of riot happening in New York City on Fifth Avenue at this big tower.

[00:05:16] So you had heard of this before?

[00:05:18] Yeah I have heard of this before and then you know that was like four years ago when

[00:05:24] Trump was president and some of them even talk about you know John Theater TITOR

[00:05:30] Okay yeah that's another one where but that's related to this guy was posting kind of predict

[00:05:37] in 2000 this guy John TITOR was posting some predictions for the year 2020 or 2030 and I

[00:05:44] haven't really delved into that theory I was more fascinated with this Baron Trump thing

[00:05:48] because that actually because the John TITOR one someone admitted oh he made that up right

[00:05:53] this actually was the adventures of Baron Trump or Baron Trump's marvelous underground journey

[00:05:58] was actually written in like 1890 by this guy Ingersoll Lockwood.

[00:06:03] Do you read the book at all?

[00:06:05] I skim through it and it's really really bad it's like unbelievably bad.

[00:06:09] Wait do you so okay so do you think Donald Trump is a traveler or the writer is a traveler?

[00:06:17] I don't know could be the writer so here's the description oh here's the description

[00:06:22] from The Last President which was written in 1896 right the entire east side of New York

[00:06:25] City is in a state of uproar mobs of vast size are organizing under the lead of anarchists and

[00:06:31] socialists and threatened to plunder and to spoil the house of the ritual of wronged and oppressed

[00:06:35] them for so many years it's weird so during 2017 this book became noticed and people started

[00:06:42] thinking all these time traveling things but it really reminds me more of 2020 when people were

[00:06:48] on both sides like if Trump won everybody was going to say he manipulated the election

[00:06:52] and there was going to be in New York City police were preparing for like riots and of course

[00:06:57] Trump lost and so the reverse happened which is that you know he said there was a whole corrupt

[00:07:01] election process and there was all these protests and there was January 6th and by the way the

[00:07:06] election was on November 3rd in 2020 just like it was in 1896 or 1900 whenever the novel was about

[00:07:12] and uh so there's all these weird coincidences now do I actually believe there's oh there's one

[00:07:17] more thing it's an interesting thing so we all know Tesla the company but of course many people

[00:07:23] have forgotten that Nikola Tesla was a real person he was a a competitor to Thomas Edison the details

[00:07:30] of which are not they are important historically but I won't mention him now but he was this genius

[00:07:35] this electricity genius and when he died the FBI he died in like I think 1943 yeah when he died

[00:07:42] the FBI wanted to make sure that none of his papers were described any weapons because for

[00:07:49] instance Tesla was trying to get funding he said he made this new weapon called the death ray that

[00:07:54] could kill anybody with like a wave so the FBI wanted to do some due diligence was this true

[00:07:58] or not so they asked a professor at MIT named John G. Trump to investigate and John Trump took

[00:08:06] all of Tesla's papers and went through them and said oh no there's nothing here to look at

[00:08:11] but do we really what does this have to do with Donald Trump well John Trump actually is Donald

[00:08:16] Trump's uncle and so there's another connection here that maybe Trump you know John Trump you know

[00:08:25] worked with Tesla to come up with some weird technology that now Donald Trump is aware of

[00:08:29] but I'm just saying I don't believe in any of these things but there's just like all these

[00:08:33] weird conspiracy very floating around so you think you think Donald Trump actually

[00:08:37] it has death ray in his process or maybe he's maybe John Trump actually created the time machine

[00:08:44] that that that baron trump went back because yeah that's a theory too isn't baron like his middle

[00:08:51] name or something like that I could be wrong oh that's his son's name yeah it's his son's name

[00:08:55] so so in the baron trump series and by the way there's a picture of baron trump on the cover

[00:09:00] of this 1890 novel and it does look a little bit like the baron trump if you look at the cover so I

[00:09:07] encourage people to google ingersall lockwood and the baron trump novels and it's just funny like

[00:09:14] I find this to be funny more than anything I do think the book The Last President that Ingersoll

[00:09:18] Lockwood is a little bit more like Donald Trump but it's this weird coincidence and he wrote

[00:09:22] that book and the baron trump series I will state that he the baron trump the way he

[00:09:28] writes it is spelled b a r on because he's actually a baron and this baron trump Donald Trump son is

[00:09:34] b a r r on and also in the baron trump series someone named Don gives baron trump advice on

[00:09:42] where he should journey to but that was not a real name it was like how it was like a Spanish

[00:09:48] person so it's how Don is mister in Spanish so it's crazy how maybe baron trump is actually

[00:09:54] the the time traveler and then you know he he's forced he saw all this happen and then he went back

[00:10:00] and write write it and then you know maybe there's another theory that you know maybe all this could

[00:10:06] have happened but you know let's call them a time traveler police that actually stopped all this

[00:10:12] from happening because it was so close of happening right like and then somehow you know it just

[00:10:18] didn't happen yeah and what what tv shows have time traveler police there's like quantum leap

[00:10:23] yes that's kind of a time traveler police right it's called the messenger or oh and wait isn't there one

[00:10:30] with Bruce Willis uh looper it's called a looper oh no yeah there was looper and I get that confused

[00:10:36] with jumper yeah yeah yeah looper is the one with uh Bruce Willis and uh who is the guy named

[00:10:42] uh who was like the young yeah I remember oh Joseph Gordon Libet oh yeah I like him

[00:10:49] Joseph Gordon Libet yeah he's great um I think there's a couple others too but uh and obviously

[00:10:54] Terminator is is a little bit under that uh Terminator is it a police though Terminator it's

[00:11:00] well like Terminator is like the evil robot police that go back to to get the person who

[00:11:07] who leads the rebellion right oh right but it's not like to correct yeah it's not it's not to

[00:11:12] correct problems in the space time continuum well maybe maybe maybe it's not police maybe

[00:11:18] it's like two rival right just like Terminator he's going back and trying to create all this new

[00:11:22] timeline and these the other person trying to go back and and um trying to prevent that happen

[00:11:27] it's just like killing Hitler baby you know baby Hitler killing baby Hitler I will tell you and

[00:11:33] then we'll stop this topic but the best Star Trek episode ever of the original uh series is

[00:11:42] do you know the one I I'm not Star Trek friends I am all through and through Star Wars I am

[00:11:48] through and through Star Wars as well but City on the Edge of Forever was a beautiful beautiful

[00:11:53] Star Wars episode from Star Trek episode from the original like 1968 series where uh

[00:12:00] they do something that destroys the earth in the future and so the whole episode is about

[00:12:04] correcting what Dr. McCoy accidentally did back in depression era New York beautiful episode

[00:12:10] such a beautiful episode didn't Einstein has like this time travel theory is that like

[00:12:15] anything that change you know if someone go back and change a timeline or the past

[00:12:23] eventually the time will fix itself but I can't remember what it's called I don't know I thought

[00:12:28] I won't have to ask professor Brian Keating almost winner of the Nobel Prize we'll have

[00:12:34] to ask him about this but I think in Einstein's theory he basically theorizes that it is possible

[00:12:39] to travel oh I forgot what Brian said one direction or the other but not both you can't

[00:12:45] right I forgot which direction though you could travel and the I think to the future not to the

[00:12:49] to the past I think oh yeah not to the past I so in any case this is just a side note if you

[00:12:56] want to have a lot of fun an afternoon of fun for the family for everyone look up Ingersoll Lockwood

[00:13:03] and the adventures of Baron Trump written in 1889 and also the book The Last President written in

[00:13:10] 1896 that describes very accurately including a mob a mob riding at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue

[00:13:19] go check it out was Ingersoll Lockwood talking to a time traveler or not yeah well you should

[00:13:25] one day we should have some like like a prophet come on to talk about all the all the time

[00:13:32] someone has prophesied someone you know who would be an expert on this is our old friend

[00:13:38] Jesse Michaels we should get him back on oh probably he's probably an expert on this I thought

[00:13:43] he's only only you have to be on Jeffos yeah you don't think okay well let's get Robert F. Kennedy

[00:13:49] Jr. back on and he's probably an expert so he's probably done some or also anyway back to

[00:13:57] decisions making all right decision making so it's very interesting because again I think there's a lot

[00:14:21] of bad things you could do with decision making and I think the key with decision making is what

[00:14:27] what are the goals of decision making is a you want to take actions that make your life better

[00:14:32] and b you don't want to waste too much time doing it or you could spend all your time

[00:14:38] trying to decide things let me ask you this if you know sometimes you have to decide between

[00:14:43] which is less severe or less worse will you consider those decision making as well

[00:14:49] absolutely I mean there's all kinds of decision making there's long-term decision making like

[00:14:53] should I take this job or this job should I go out with this person or this person should I have

[00:14:57] a baby or not have a baby should I buy a house or not buy a house like there's these very long

[00:15:03] term decisions that one can make and then there's everyday decisions that you have to make on a

[00:15:10] daily basis like oh what should I wear today what should I eat today what should I do today it's a

[00:15:14] free day like so there's very short-term decision making and by the way those whether you make good

[00:15:23] decisions or bad decisions on even very very short-term decisions those the good and the

[00:15:28] bad add up and they compound so you don't want to make consistently bad short-term decisions or else

[00:15:34] like oh I'll just eat another cupcake today because eventually you'll weigh 500 pounds

[00:15:40] so short-term decisions could have just as much effect as long-term decisions particularly

[00:15:44] since you have to make them every day if you you don't have a process for short-term decisions

[00:15:48] your life could turn out very bad and there's also this kind of like creative decisions like oh you

[00:15:54] have to be creative about something how do you be creative and you would think that well creativity

[00:15:59] isn't about having a system for decision making that's the whole point of creativity is to be like

[00:16:06] thinking out of the box and and like going crazy a little bit and coming up with stuff you never

[00:16:11] came up with before but there's actually a model and methodology you could use for

[00:16:15] creativity as well so I look at big decisions that I've made in my life and particularly

[00:16:20] bad ones and fortunately I've learned a lot from them so sorry can I can I ask you what's your

[00:16:28] worst decision to ever make well if you have to choose one yeah I think I mean it's hard to say

[00:16:34] what's the worst because I don't have a way of measuring them but maybe you measure them by

[00:16:38] how unhappy you were later or maybe you measure them by how much you learned later

[00:16:42] or maybe you measure them by how much money you made but what about those that you keep

[00:16:46] thinking about you think you keep going back and like oh maybe I should have like yeah I definitely

[00:16:50] made bad financial decisions several times in my life that made me to go broke not once but more than

[00:16:56] once and I regret them like a lot of people will say and I understand why they say I'm like

[00:17:01] I have no regrets because I wouldn't be the person I am today I wouldn't want to change my life

[00:17:05] now for what my life was then and I agree with that too but I do wish I had made smarter

[00:17:10] decisions about money and and that my life still turned out the way it is now even if I made

[00:17:18] you know good decisions instead of bad decisions about money so I do have some regrets maybe it

[00:17:23] wouldn't be possible to live the life I have now if I had only made good decisions about money

[00:17:27] earlier and you know but also you you know I've made certain decisions about you know

[00:17:32] you know partners spouses friends all sorts of things that I regret later and and again but

[00:17:40] again though full circle there's obviously it's hard to have regrets and this is actually

[00:17:46] this is actually a very important concept for short term decision making like if you're

[00:17:52] thinking too much about something you regret regret from the past and or something you're

[00:17:58] worried about in the future even a decision about what to think about is a bad decision

[00:18:02] so like if I'm thinking if I'm choosing to think about something I regret and I'm just

[00:18:06] wallowing in it or something I'm worried about it and I'm just like up at night thinking about it

[00:18:10] I could be doing something better with my thoughts and better with my time so one

[00:18:15] one good methodology I use when I'm deciding even when I notice myself thinking about

[00:18:23] a regret too much or a worry too much is am I living in the here and now because a regret

[00:18:28] you're sort of time traveling to the past and you're putting yourself in the past

[00:18:32] and imagining what if I would have made a different decision and a worry you're sort

[00:18:36] of time traveling to the future which you can't possibly predict unless you're barren trump

[00:18:40] and and you're you're thinking too much about decisions that haven't happened yet

[00:18:44] that put you in some futuristic situation that you're worried about and so yeah it's

[00:18:50] good to avoid some of the worries and it's good to learn from your regrets and things that you've

[00:18:55] been did poorly in the past but you don't want to spend too much time time traveling to the past

[00:19:01] or time traveling to the future again unless you're a time travel policeman like barren trump

[00:19:06] so so that's one good model of how to think another model for short term

[00:19:11] that's very important to me and I wrote about this in the book choose yourself

[00:19:16] but when I had been on my worst moments when broke I really as many listeners know I really

[00:19:24] decided okay I can't change what happened but I need to move forward and I can't worry too much

[00:19:29] about the future like at the time I was really in a state of nonstop panic and regret regret over

[00:19:35] the financial decisions that made me broke and this was not just in 2000 but also in 2008

[00:19:42] 2009 other other times in my life 2004 anyway there was many times and I really decided okay

[00:19:49] I just today the only thing I have control over is not what I already did and not what's going to

[00:19:55] happen in the future but can I make decisions that today improve myself physically you know

[00:20:01] whether it's improving my diet improving my sleep improving my exercise can I make decisions that

[00:20:06] improve myself emotionally so improves the relationships I have and that means like am I

[00:20:12] really cultivating this concept of you're the average of the five people you spend your time with

[00:20:16] and are you doing stuff to nurture those five relationships and and and on and on am I doing

[00:20:22] making decisions in the short term that help myself mentally or creatively and so that came

[00:20:27] to this you know I would write down 10 ideas a day and and so on and am I doing making decisions

[00:20:33] that improve me spiritually and that doesn't mean going to some church or synagogue or whatever but

[00:20:39] am I getting used to the concept of surrendering to things that are outside my control and so

[00:20:47] to some extent that's a notion of faith not in let's say the you know a mythical being although

[00:20:56] it could be that but also faith in myself like if I do my best do I have faith that the best

[00:21:01] things will turn out well everything will turn out okay or if they don't I did the best I could do

[00:21:07] anyway and that's all I you know that's kind of a spiritual way of looking a secular spiritual

[00:21:12] way of looking at daily situations now I remember one time by the way it's not so bad to have faith

[00:21:18] in a religion because it also helps you avoid worry I remember one time this was in 2000

[00:21:25] early 2004 I was running my fund of hedge funds or maybe it was 2005 or I forget what you're now

[00:21:32] but I was running with my fund of hedge funds and something happened that was going to make this

[00:21:37] spiral out of control and I would go out of business and so I remember I bought all these

[00:21:41] books about the philosophy of Star Wars you know I watched all the movies over I bought these

[00:21:46] books about the force basically I you know analyzing the philosophy of the force and

[00:21:52] I totally devoted myself to surrendering to the force and I actually think it is connected that my

[00:21:59] business did work out because having faith in something and surrendering to something that

[00:22:04] was larger than myself I don't think the force necessarily came in and saved my business

[00:22:09] but I think it allowed me to not worry or regret so much and it gave me faith that

[00:22:15] I was going to try my best and make the best decisions because it was going to be

[00:22:19] you know natural and I was trusting basically my personal efforts rather than trying to

[00:22:26] control the universe around me I was trusting that the universe will respond accordingly if I did

[00:22:31] my best do you think it could be some sort of bias is like hey I'm just gonna I'm just gonna

[00:22:36] let go everything and just move forward like I just trust this decision yeah because you might

[00:22:42] be biased for instance there's all sorts of biases that affect your decision-making

[00:22:46] like for instance I think I'm gonna fail and I'm only going to notice stories of people that failed

[00:22:53] and I would kind of attach myself too much to those stories and I would start making decisions

[00:23:01] that reminded me of those stories almost like self-sabotaging myself so I would end up like

[00:23:05] those stories as well that could happen in relationships as well like you want your

[00:23:08] relationship to succeed but you start noticing all the relationships that are

[00:23:12] failing and you start thinking oh that's just like me and you start making decisions that mirror

[00:23:18] you know you basically mirror what you're looking at like your like your brain has these mirror

[00:23:25] neurons so if I look at let's say I've never climbed a ladder before but I looked at but

[00:23:29] I watched them on climbing a ladder my mirror my mirror neurons will trigger and I'll

[00:23:34] kind of learn by just looking at I'll learn how to climb a ladder myself

[00:23:39] and so if all I'm looking at and all I'm noticing are you know this kind of bias is called the Toyota

[00:23:44] effect like once you buy a Toyota you notice all the other Toyotas on the road you never notice you

[00:23:49] never you never said to yourself boy I can't believe how many Toyotas there are but after

[00:23:53] you buy a Toyota or a Tesla like Jay I bet you notice all the Tesla's on the road right now

[00:23:57] since you bought a Tesla I'm not a special anymore right so if you think you're in a

[00:24:02] bad job or bad relationship or you're going broke you'll start to notice all the other

[00:24:06] stories that you see in your life or in the news or whatever that are like what you imagine

[00:24:11] yourself to be and you'll start you only have those as examples so you start to make

[00:24:16] it's almost like you won't be able to stop yourself like a magnet from making decisions

[00:24:21] related to these stories reviewing and so so that's why it's very important to have this

[00:24:27] sense of surrender and and again you have to be in good physical health good emotional health

[00:24:33] good creative health good spiritual health to be able to do this but you detach yourself from

[00:24:39] these bad stories you just surrender so you don't assume that any story that you're gonna

[00:24:44] or you could start looking at stories of success like you could surrender and you could say I'm

[00:24:49] going to do my best and that's going to be enough to make me successful and I'll trust

[00:24:54] that because I'm everything else is rolling smoothly like my physical health creative

[00:24:59] health whatever I'll trust that good things will happen and so you start attaching yourself

[00:25:04] and noticing good stories wait I'm gonna talk a little bit more about the decision making of

[00:25:08] creativity in a bit but go ahead yeah so what about the phrase like f is that considered

[00:25:15] as surrendering yourself a little bit it depends it depends a little bit like let's say you're like

[00:25:23] oh I can't pay my mortgage this month so I'm going to take all my savings and I'm

[00:25:28] going to put it on I'm going to go to Las Vegas and I'm going to put it on black at the

[00:25:31] roulette table you know screw it like screw it just do it as Richard Branson would say

[00:25:37] like you have to be able to model risks also and and you have to be able to understand the

[00:25:42] consequences of risk like would you rather not make your mortgage and still have $3,000

[00:25:47] in the bank or would you take the risk that you're going to have $0 in the bank and not

[00:25:51] make your mortgage like so what are the consequences of that and are there other

[00:25:56] choices you could have like could you just stop paying your mortgage for instance what would happen

[00:26:00] well maybe it would take 90 days to evict you and during that time you could have time to either

[00:26:05] find another place to live or you could have time to make enough money to to make a new deal with

[00:26:10] the banks so they don't evict you or you could have time to you know raise or borrow or make

[00:26:14] the money to pay your mortgage so you have to understand all the risks of every decision

[00:26:20] you do like let's say again I was going to put all my money in one investment okay I know

[00:26:29] that that investment decision might be good let's say I have a good investment decision

[00:26:34] making process which I'll talk about my personal decision making process in a little bit but let's

[00:26:38] say I have a good investment decision making process a stock still could go up or down on

[00:26:42] the short term we don't know so we know this we also know the stock market could crash and then

[00:26:46] the stock I invested in could go down we know this I also know that there are things I don't know I

[00:26:52] don't know if there's fraud for instance in the business so there are things I don't know and

[00:26:58] there also just be some weird thing like I don't know if a 9-11 is going to happen like I was

[00:27:03] I was 100 like the day before 9-11 is a good example I was a day trader then the market had

[00:27:10] just fallen something like four or five days in a row and I had basically one of the first AI-based

[00:27:16] trading systems software that I wrote to trade the markets and it signaled this is a huge enormous buy

[00:27:22] so I was like 150 invested in the market on the morning of 9-11 of course nobody would have

[00:27:28] guessed a terrorist attack was going to occur three blocks away from my house at the time

[00:27:35] and so that was as Donald as Donald Rumsfeld once put it that's an unknown unknown like I didn't had no

[00:27:41] clue that was going to happen and my system of course didn't know that that was going to happen

[00:27:45] and so that's a risk I should have you know contemplated which I didn't back then and

[00:27:51] and this was when I was first learning trading and and it was a very excruciating process to

[00:27:57] say the least but I just want to emphasize again these short-term decisions like

[00:28:03] very very important on a daily basis like I even asked myself at the end of each day and I tell my

[00:28:08] kids to do this you know did you make decisions that improved yourself 1% physically emotionally

[00:28:15] creatively spiritually and that will compound and you know other you know short-term models

[00:28:22] for decision making there's something called choice overload so let's say like in Steve Jobs

[00:28:29] is very famous for this like he wore I think he wore jeans and like a black turtleneck every day

[00:28:34] something like that so he didn't want to have to decide I mean he's a very smart guy he could

[00:28:39] have decided every day oh I'm going to wear a different outfit he's certainly smart enough to

[00:28:42] figure out what outfit to wear and to vary it up a little bit but you decide I'm not going to use

[00:28:47] a single spare thought on things I don't have to every thought you could think of every thought

[00:28:53] as requiring some energy and you start off the day with a lot of energy and by the end of

[00:28:58] the day you don't have any energy left you've you've done your 60,000 thoughts they people estimate

[00:29:03] their you think 60,000 thoughts a day I don't know if that's how they come up with that number

[00:29:07] but he didn't want to waste any of those thoughts Mark Zuckerberg does something similar about his

[00:29:11] clothes or you could just decide you don't have to be so obsessive about it you could just

[00:29:17] decide that if I have two choices that are roughly similar it doesn't really matter what choice

[00:29:23] so if I'm in the store I'm trying to decide whether to buy Kellogg's corn flakes or Quaker Oats

[00:29:30] corn flakes well they're basically the same so don't try to make a decision just pick one

[00:29:35] or make a rule I'm always going to pick Kellogg's corn flakes what reason no reason because it just

[00:29:40] doesn't matter so Steve Jobs made a rule I'm always going to wear this so it it's simplified

[00:29:46] how he bought outfits what outfits to wear what outfits to clean you know and so on

[00:29:51] like it's simplified that whole process in his life or if someone eats the same meal again simplifies

[00:29:57] the whole process I'm not saying you should do this but I'm saying what things in your life

[00:30:02] do you put too much time thinking about and for someone like Steve Jobs the clothes he wore we

[00:30:07] don't know what other short-term decisions he simplified but try to simplify if you if

[00:30:12] you're driving to work oh do you decide between taking the highway or taking these other roads

[00:30:17] even though they both take the same amount of time most of the time or you're trying to say

[00:30:22] what lane to get into on the highway it doesn't really matter don't decide just pick a lane and stick

[00:30:27] with it and you might not be always happiest with Kellogg's corn flakes as opposed to Captain

[00:30:34] Crunch cereal but in the long run you would have saved so much time and energy making having

[00:30:40] a process for making a simple decision that you'll benefit in other ways so you won't always

[00:30:45] make the optimal decision but you'll make on average pretty good decisions using a very simple

[00:30:51] rule-based technique to avoid what's called choice overload yeah that's what I did for my meals

[00:30:57] like every day my breakfast is the same and same with breakfast lunch and dinner and then if I go

[00:31:02] out I tell myself if I go out just by myself I only go to Chick-fil-A yeah that that's a good

[00:31:10] for me if it's not easy for me to you know cook a meal which is never easy for me unless there's a

[00:31:16] meal already lying around the house I'll use Uber Eats and I always order from the same place on Uber

[00:31:22] Eats or if I'm trying to decide in an Uber you know you already have a rule in place whether you're

[00:31:26] going to do Uber you know are you going to choose Uber XL all the time are you going to

[00:31:30] choose the cheapest one all the time are you going to choose the fastest one these are simple

[00:31:34] rules that you don't have to think or decide because that adds up imagine if everything of your 60,000

[00:31:40] thoughts let's say 20,000 of those thoughts took an extra three seconds to decide well that's

[00:31:48] 60,000 extra seconds you use I'm making these numbers out because that seems too high but

[00:31:55] even if every thought cost you an extra half a second all right it's just too much time so

[00:32:00] as much as possible if you could simplify or for instance you can use the the choose yourself

[00:32:06] model of the physical emotional creative spiritual like if you're deciding what to do next during the

[00:32:12] day does it fall under one of those four categories if not then forget it like if you're about

[00:32:18] to decide making to watch tiktok for an hour that might not conform to the choose yourself

[00:32:24] model even though it might be fun so you wouldn't do it but now like I say let's say I'm

[00:32:29] going to watch a youtube video and I say okay I'm going to watch a youtube video but it's going to be

[00:32:33] educational or it's going to help me in some way then that might fit into the mental or if it's going

[00:32:38] to make me feel better it might fit into the emotional or spiritual I don't know so you could

[00:32:44] use some model of how you want to live your life like let's say I'm going to make a phone

[00:32:47] call to a friend well is this one of the five people I want to surround myself with you

[00:32:52] know you're again you're the average of the five people you surround yourself with

[00:32:56] or you're the average of the 25 people your five people surround themselves with right and so you

[00:33:02] could call one of those people and improve your relationship with that person or you could call

[00:33:08] someone you want to have an argument with and you could call them and have an argument that

[00:33:11] might not improve you emotionally and it might be a source of misery for you in life

[00:33:17] you know so these are all again we're going to talk about long term and we're I think

[00:33:20] there's three types of decision making there's short term slash short term energetic ones like

[00:33:26] where you have this physical emotional mental spiritual framework of making most decisions

[00:33:33] during your day and for other things you can use a bunch of simple rules like okay I'm not going

[00:33:38] to wallow in regrets I'm not going to wallow in worries am I living in the here and now

[00:33:43] am I avoiding choice overload one thing I want to say also if if I'm saying you know a lot

[00:33:49] of times people call me and say hey do you want to do x y or z do you want to speak at this

[00:33:53] conference do you want to go on this podcast you want to blah blah blah I like the Derek

[00:33:57] Sivers model if it's not a hell yeah then say no and so sometimes even after I say yes if I

[00:34:04] realize later oh that wasn't a hell yeah I'll say no and it's very important if I find

[00:34:09] myself wondering later like why did I agree to that just because I said yes earlier I'm not

[00:34:14] going to necessarily just do it just because I said yes earlier I'll still say no and you know you

[00:34:20] have to nurture yourself and take care of yourself and you do that long enough and you discipline

[00:34:24] yourself long enough to be aware when it's not a hell yeah eventually you stop saying yes

[00:34:29] I say yes now to maybe I mean I say no now to maybe 99% of the things I used to say yes to

[00:34:35] so when I say yes to something now I pretty much it's a hell yeah but that takes practice

[00:34:40] like you can't just do that overnight that's like a muscle that you have to practice so I would say

[00:34:44] that's the entirety of my short-term decision making oh one more thing which when I'm having

[00:34:51] conversation with someone let's say I'm at a meeting or a party or whatever before I say

[00:34:55] something I usually try to think is this more of a question or more of a me stating my opinion

[00:35:01] and I would rather make decisions about saying questions than opinions so again that's a very

[00:35:07] short-term type of decision making technique what do you mean by questions or or let's say I'm at a

[00:35:13] party and everyone's arguing about I don't know gun control you know and I don't want to enter the

[00:35:18] conversation and I feel like I want to say well you know oh we need guns to protect ourselves or

[00:35:25] if I'm if I feel like I'm saying oh uh you know guns kill people so if you were guns let fewer

[00:35:31] people kill rather than stating an opinion I'd rather say hey what's a country that eliminated guns

[00:35:38] and then what were the statistics afterwards so better to ask a question than to give it opinion

[00:35:42] you know what because no one really gives a shit about my opinions anyway sorry for the language

[00:35:46] but I want to better for me to learn more anyway and then there's long term like what sort of

[00:36:08] long-term decisions do we have to make do you make Jay financial long-term financial and

[00:36:14] then like buying cars or not buying cars where to live or go back to Malaysia or stay here or you know

[00:36:20] what are you thinking of going back to Malaysia no no like oh oh like um uh you know should I start a

[00:36:27] studio or should I not build a studio should I not uh where do I want to live and stuff like

[00:36:32] those are the long-term uh decisions but let me answer this though yeah it's voting for presidential

[00:36:40] elections or any elections consider a long-term or short term uh that's a good question I would say it's

[00:36:47] not short term because it's not it's not short term in the sense this is what I have to deal with every

[00:36:51] day I don't have to vote for president every day so it's sort of long term like and you could argue

[00:36:55] it's long term because it's like oh what kind of political system do I want to live in for the

[00:36:59] next four years and voting's an interesting one because I on purpose have never voted in a

[00:37:06] presidential election in my entire life and there's a lot of reasons and before the 2020

[00:37:13] election I had written why I wasn't going to vote and somebody invited me to participate in

[00:37:18] debate I wrote about this maybe we could put the URL uh in the show links because I wrote about

[00:37:26] how this about this debate and how the person I was debating or the people I were debating

[00:37:30] did not they didn't really debate properly meaning they just instead decided to use anecdotes or

[00:37:37] insult me personally or whatever and you know again I'd rather get facts than opinions and I'd rather

[00:37:47] understand what all the facts are but just to say like I have a role which is that if

[00:37:51] something prevents me from being neutral politically for the purposes of this podcast

[00:37:57] then I won't do it so before going into the 2020 election I had liberals conservatives

[00:38:05] libertarians people of all political stripes on this podcast like Tim Ryan was running for

[00:38:12] president in the democrat primaries very liberal but you know on the flip side we've had on

[00:38:17] conservative campaign managers we had a barack obama's speechwriter we had on

[00:38:21] rfk jr well though we didn't release that till recently um we had on andrew yang

[00:38:26] I've had on ron paul like all angles of the political spectrum because it helps me which I

[00:38:31] hope helps the listeners make a more informed decision and so I feel like if I vote that'll

[00:38:38] cognitively bias me towards one side or the other it's like if you make a bet it's hard to be

[00:38:43] neutral after you've placed a bet but uh but meddy uh argue out of vice right who who will

[00:38:49] argue otherwise uh meddy has uh what's what's his name oh right yeah meddy isn't he has the

[00:38:55] msnbc show he's been on the podcast yeah and he's gonna come on again i'm really looking forward to it

[00:39:00] and uh yeah he said it's impossible for someone to be neutral and you know he wrote a great book

[00:39:06] win every argument the art of debating persuading and public speaking great book highly recommended

[00:39:11] listen to my podcast with him meddy hassan um really nice guy and yeah he argues that

[00:39:18] I can't possibly neutral be neutral I don't know if that's true because I do think

[00:39:24] creativity plays more of a role in our lives than who the president of the united states is

[00:39:31] like you know and this is something I'll ask meddy because I want to know like what has

[00:39:37] changed politically you know for instance all the immigration rules from what I understand have

[00:39:42] stayed the same between Biden and Trump I don't know I don't want to get into a political thing

[00:39:46] because I'm not just not that interested in it right now but if meddy came back on maybe

[00:39:50] we could discuss this and I have a bunch of questions for him to understand to try and understand

[00:39:55] what has changed that's affected our lives you know now you can argue

[00:40:02] roe versus wade has made things change a lot but that was already you know the court was

[00:40:06] already in place before biden but that's something that does affect people's lives

[00:40:11] is who's on the supreme court you know so there was a recent rulings on affirmative action

[00:40:16] on reversing roe versus wade and that's definitely probably going to affect people's lives but

[00:40:22] it's something that you know I'm happy to talk about in another podcast right but so yeah so maybe voting

[00:40:29] is an important decision but I think I can make better decisions with my political time

[00:40:33] for me personally by using the podcast as a platform for all sorts of opinions and and views

[00:40:40] that I so I could ask questions and help myself and other people learn most people vote

[00:40:45] without knowing anything so better to vote with some knowledge and I think this podcast is a

[00:40:49] platform for for knowledge and better for me to be unbiased for me personally so I'm not saying

[00:40:55] everyone shouldn't vote I'm just saying for me personally um but like I would say for long-term

[00:41:00] decisions there's jobs there's relationships there's education there's things like should you start

[00:41:07] a business and if so what kind of business should you start there's should you have a baby

[00:41:11] or not there's you know all sorts of things like that and I do want to say you know people have all

[00:41:17] sorts of models like oh write down the pros write down the cons which list is bigger but I would say

[00:41:23] there are situations where you can't really make a good or bad decision for instance whether or

[00:41:30] not you should have a baby it's hard to know in advance whether you're making a good or bad

[00:41:35] decision right maybe you say to yourself if it's not a hell yeah then no that would probably

[00:41:40] be a good framework for having a baby but other than that I don't think you know you could say well

[00:41:46] if I'm too if I don't have enough money I can't have a baby or if I don't live in a certain area or

[00:41:51] if I'm not a certain age or don't have an achieved a certain area and goal in my life

[00:41:56] I can't have a baby I think all of those are BS like you can't use any of those to

[00:42:02] in other words in some cases okay to just make any decision and not worry about it too much

[00:42:07] if you actually want to have a baby don't have a baby if you don't want to have a baby that's the

[00:42:11] one thing yeah because like a lot of people once they have a baby is already a view about baby

[00:42:15] have changed yeah and and right and you know but something like education let's look at education

[00:42:23] for a second so there's there's education in the traditional route like what college should I go to

[00:42:29] and should I even go to college or not or there's an education about how can I best I

[00:42:34] want to learn something how can I best learn so that's two different types of education one's about

[00:42:39] actually learning the other is kind of a lifestyle choice and I would say with decisions like that

[00:42:44] and I talked to Annie Duke about this in our podcast like several years ago you sort of look

[00:42:49] at what's important to you like it could be how much money you're going to make how much you're

[00:42:53] going to learn and quality of life and you say well you kind of just add it up well what's

[00:43:01] the expected value if I decide to go to Harvard as opposed to community college as opposed to no

[00:43:05] college what's the odds that I'm going to make more money what's the odds that I'm going to have

[00:43:09] higher quality of life what's the odds that you know I'm going to be a happier person

[00:43:14] and we don't really know the answer so you just have to figure it out but

[00:43:17] you could but I would research it like oh it turns out people from Harvard make on average

[00:43:22] 70,000 a year and people who go to community college make on average 60,000 a year but

[00:43:27] have zero debt whereas someone from Harvard might have 400,000 in debt and so you could do research

[00:43:33] on the things that are important to you and make decisions that way and then people could have

[00:43:38] arguments with you oh no you're wrong about this or you're wrong about that but if you do enough

[00:43:41] research it's not going to help you make a decision but you'll at least you'll be equipped with

[00:43:46] more facts to maybe make a decision but again it's one of those areas like having a baby where

[00:43:52] you know it's going to end up how it's going to end up and better to learn how to be happy than to

[00:43:59] regret any past decision you know whether you went to Harvard or vocational school or

[00:44:04] don't even have a high school degree and I know many smart people people who have been on this

[00:44:09] podcast who don't even have a high school degree and have become very successful and of

[00:44:12] course without many Harvard grads or whatever who have come on the podcast as well so but

[00:44:19] I would say like if you're trying to learn something new I wrote about a framework where I

[00:44:24] if I wanted to learn how to play the guitar for instance I asked myself okay what are the

[00:44:29] micro skills I need to learn well I need to learn about music and music theory maybe I need

[00:44:33] to know how to read music I need to learn how to actually make a sound from a guitar

[00:44:40] and so these are micro skills I would need to learn maybe I could look up some of that on

[00:44:44] YouTube or whatever and then very important for me is who's my plus who's my minus who's my equals

[00:44:50] so plus is who's going to be your teacher or coach minus who are you going to teach because if you

[00:44:57] can't explain something simply then you don't truly understand it and who are going to be my

[00:45:00] equals like who's learning how to play the guitar at the same time as me that we could

[00:45:05] trade notes and study together and learn together and so on and then with the coach

[00:45:11] you sort of study what you need to know the coach you do something like you play a song

[00:45:17] and the coach tells you what you did you were wrong and then you go back to the drawing board you

[00:45:21] study you practice you you do and then you get some feedback and then repeat and this is

[00:45:29] you know this is the way I learned so micro skills and then plus minus equals and then study

[00:45:35] do feedback repeat and it's very important to do these things you know I will say for some

[00:45:42] things though you want to have a process like investing if I am going to invest in something

[00:45:47] and it might be a stock or it might be a private investment or it might be a house or it might be

[00:45:53] a car or whatever here's my rule-based model that I built up over many many years of making

[00:46:01] bad decisions particularly with investments I basically asked myself is someone smarter than me

[00:46:08] in this investment at the same basically in the same way that I'm in it so did Warren Buffett

[00:46:15] buy this stock at roughly the same price I want to buy this stock and then I don't need to then

[00:46:21] I don't need to wonder anymore like oh Warren Buffett put one percent of his portfolio in

[00:46:27] let's say you know IBM stock so I'll put one percent of my portfolio in IBM stock knowing of course that

[00:46:33] Warren Buffett is in a different financial situation than me so I take that into account

[00:46:37] but I always say to myself I'm never going to argue with Warren Buffett like Warren why did you

[00:46:43] buy IBM are you an idiot or something like he's smarter than me as an investor so I like people

[00:46:48] smarter than me to do something so another thing is if I am buying a house I'll look at

[00:46:56] well okay what town should I pick well I can't really I don't really know enough to

[00:47:02] to predict that you know suburban Denver is the right place to buy a home because the

[00:47:10] real estate market's going to explode there in the next 10 years or the middle of Kansas City

[00:47:15] or Cincinnati or Atlanta or Miami or whatever but I'll look okay where are smart investors

[00:47:23] buying houses and you know I'll try to figure out what does it mean to be a smart investor in a house

[00:47:30] and then I'll look like oh is BlackRock buying a bunch of houses in suburban Atlanta oh yeah they

[00:47:36] are so that might be an interesting place to buy a house that would be the beginnings

[00:47:40] of my research this works better with stocks or private investments but it could be used for

[00:47:45] other things as well is that how you buy your current house yeah so with my current place by the way

[00:47:51] I've always been against owning a home I still might not have changed my opinion on that but I do own a home

[00:47:57] and what I did was I looked at all the change of address data coming out of New York City so New

[00:48:03] York City there is a net outflow of people the past three or four years and I looked at what

[00:48:09] cities they were moving to and I also talked to we even had on the podcast a guy from a home

[00:48:16] moving business a house moving business and where was everybody moving to and that gave me an idea

[00:48:21] of what cities to look at and then I found you know I looked at houses that seem to be

[00:48:27] undervalued given the size of the house or where or the location or the size of the property

[00:48:33] and I had to ask why is it undervalued and and then I made decision based on that so I looked at

[00:48:40] several cities I narrowed in on Atlanta and outside of Atlanta and found a place I thought was

[00:48:46] sufficiently undervalued and so why is something undervalued like isn't that a bad sign well no

[00:48:52] maybe somebody needs to move because they just got a divorce or maybe they owe money to the IRS

[00:48:58] so they're paying a debt or maybe you know they had a business that just went out of business or

[00:49:04] or maybe they have a parent that's sick and so they need to move to where the parent is

[00:49:10] so there's reasons why some place might be undervalued and and the person might be eager to sell

[00:49:15] other than that the house might be bad so I think there's something called the 5Ds disease

[00:49:20] debt divorce death maybe something else so but these are all models like for big decisions

[00:49:28] like this right people have done a lot of work into coming up with models that are easy to remember

[00:49:32] like the 5Ds or like if I'm writing we've had a podcast about like copywriting that there's the

[00:49:38] five or six use urgency uniqueness ultra specific user friendly blah blah blah that are models for

[00:49:45] doing writing good copy or you know what's a model for writing a good novel oh the arc of the hero

[00:49:51] and we've talked about that in podcast before so lots of types of decisions there's really

[00:49:56] good models for already investing there are many models whether you're a value investor or growth

[00:50:02] investor an arbitrage investor values a very very simple one is someone smarter than me making this

[00:50:08] investment and then I know at least that whatever amount of work I could do to determine this is

[00:50:15] good or bad someone's done more work than me and smarter work than me and so that's a good

[00:50:20] way at least the starting point for me it's often an endpoint for what kind of stocks or

[00:50:27] private businesses I should invest in another thing like relationships I think that's like the

[00:50:32] baby decision like oh should I stay with this person or break up with this person and I think

[00:50:37] there's no easy there's no decision model that really works other than looking at extremes

[00:50:42] so I think of two things I think of is there some line that this person has crossed over like

[00:50:47] and what is that line so I decide in advance what those lines are like has someone physically beating

[00:50:53] me up which has happened in the past what I ended up they ended that relationship or it is

[00:50:58] is someone verbally abusive to me or someone being very secretive or lying to me wait someone beat

[00:51:04] you up well let's just say someone physically abused me and I had I had ultimately and I stuck

[00:51:11] you stick with those relationships because you don't know how to decide like now with

[00:51:15] experience I know that this is like a really bad thing and nothing would tolerate staying with that

[00:51:20] person but it's hard when you're in the moment to end it so you have a line and that's a good reason

[00:51:28] to break up and then the other extreme I always imagine I'm writing the acknowledgments of a book

[00:51:33] and if I'm not willing to put someone if someone's my spouse and I'm not willing

[00:51:38] to or partner in some way and I'm not willing to put them in the acknowledgments

[00:51:43] of my book then that's usually a bad sign and if I put them in the acknowledgments of the book

[00:51:48] what would I say so I've I study people's acknowledgments like everybody who's ever been on this

[00:51:52] podcast I've read all of the acknowledgments they've written in their books so I'm I know how

[00:51:57] people thank their spouses and thank their partners and thank their friends and and

[00:52:02] I think hmm would I say this about my friends and my partners and so on and that helps me

[00:52:07] make decisions is like I picture what would I say about this person I might not even have

[00:52:12] an acknowledgment but I picture if I did have an acknowledgments what would I say about this

[00:52:16] person in my acknowledgments and if it's generally a lot of positive stuff then okay

[00:52:20] this is a good person to have in my life two very important models I want to talk about

[00:52:24] are kind of life goals what are good goals versus bad goals if you could say such a thing

[00:52:30] and also jobs so let's talk about jobs first and this is very much related to the choose

[00:52:36] yourself mentality that I've tried to develop for myself sometimes successfully sometimes not

[00:52:42] let's say you're trying to decide whether you should stay at a job or not here's an important

[00:52:49] model that I use which is half two versus one two so here's what you should do every day for the

[00:52:55] next two weeks three weeks maybe four weeks at the end of the day write down what percentage

[00:53:03] of activities that I do at the job that I had to do versus wanted to do and if it's both obviously

[00:53:10] then you want wanted to do takes precedence so if you wanted to do it and you had to do it that's

[00:53:13] a good thing so you put it under that under the wanted to do and so let's say 60% of the things

[00:53:20] on Monday you had to do in 40% you actually wanted to do and write that down every day for

[00:53:28] three or four weeks at the end ask yourself am I am I okay with this breakdown like if 90% of the

[00:53:36] things I had to do only 10% of the things I wanted to do that doesn't sound very good well then you

[00:53:41] ask did it change over the three weeks like let's say the first day was 90% versus 10%

[00:53:48] had to want to and by the end it was 80 20 80% had to 20% wanted to well that's a good

[00:53:54] trend so maybe you stay at the job because it's trending over time towards things you want to do

[00:54:01] you know that that you're doing as part of the job and that's an important thing to look at

[00:54:07] so I very early on I was working at HBO and I got another job offer and I kind of without

[00:54:16] thinking about it did this process like the other job offer was almost double what I was

[00:54:21] making at HBO so financially everybody like my parents my friends everybody was encouraging me

[00:54:27] to take the new job but at HBO I really wanted to do a TV show and was I more likely to do a TV

[00:54:34] show or something creative at HBO or at the new job and my old line answer was at HBO I'd be

[00:54:42] more likely to do what I wanted to do so I chose to stay at HBO and and then that helped

[00:54:48] me negotiate a better salary and so on because I really wanted to stay there but I still had room

[00:54:53] to negotiate so that's a good model for whether you should pursue a job stay at a job continue at a job

[00:55:01] you know let's say your trend the trend is bad you're moving towards more things you had to do

[00:55:06] versus wanting to do you might not leave the job but you could negotiate hey I'd like to do this

[00:55:10] this and this and Jay's going to call me later and say James I really don't want to do audio

[00:55:15] engineering anymore blow but but in general you can figure out this helps you figure out what

[00:55:21] you want to negotiate it's not just about money and by the way here's a good negotiating model

[00:55:26] this was taught to me by Dr. Larry Brilliant his real name who uh eradicated we should get him on the

[00:55:33] podcast but I don't know I haven't spoken to him he was head of Google charities for a while

[00:55:37] he he helped eradicate smallpox in India in the 70s but anyway he told me always have a

[00:55:43] bigger list than the person you're negotiating with so it shouldn't be just about money it should

[00:55:47] be about quality of life it should be about had to versus want to it should be about you know you

[00:55:51] can have health care benefits vacation bet time just make sure you have more things than the

[00:55:57] other person on your list of things to negotiate so you could give up the nickels for the dimes

[00:56:01] and I've always thought that was a very good negotiating model so that's you know again for

[00:56:07] everything whether it's jobs relationship education starting a business okay let's talk about starting

[00:56:13] a business for a second is an idea a good a good idea or a bad idea should I start this business or

[00:56:20] not so given the fact that you might have a full-time job and so it's hard to start a business

[00:56:25] because of your lifestyle that's a different sort of thing but I like the Jim McKelvie model

[00:56:31] of starting a business which is so I wrote about this in skip the line three different models

[00:56:36] that you could use to start a business the Jim McKelvie model which he wrote about he's the founder

[00:56:41] of square and he wrote about in his book the innovation stack there's the access economy

[00:56:47] model and there's the humans versus data model but I won't talk about that as much

[00:56:53] Matt Ridley wrote about that in the evolution of everything Matt Ridley is a great friend

[00:56:57] of the podcast and it's been on several times so the Jim McKelvie model for starting a business

[00:57:02] is and can I do something is there an industry that doesn't service the needs of the bottom

[00:57:07] one-third of society so he determined oh mom and pop stores like he ran a mom and pop business

[00:57:14] they can't accept credit cards they couldn't accept credit cards so he started square

[00:57:18] to service all the small businesses that weren't big enough to accept credit cards

[00:57:22] and he made it possible for them to accept credit cards so boom great business made billions

[00:57:27] of dollars the access economy is the model of there's three categories there's people who have a

[00:57:35] lot of something there's people who want a lot of what other people have and there's the intermediary

[00:57:43] the software platform in the middle so uber is an example this oh there's a lot of people

[00:57:48] who have empty car seats during the day there's other people who want to use empty car seats to

[00:57:53] get from one place to another and uber is the software in the middle that helps eat that helps

[00:57:59] the two sides find each other pay each other securely deal with customer service deal with

[00:58:05] you know reviews and all sorts of things so that's you know air bnb's in that model even

[00:58:12] newsletters are in that model oh somebody might have a lot of knowledge about stocks another

[00:58:17] person might want some knowledge about stocks and the newsletter is kind of the access helps

[00:58:22] people access one side access the other people so that's the access economy and then the humans to data

[00:58:30] oh if something's done by humans is there a way to automate this and we're seeing this a lot with

[00:58:34] ai right now like ai has unleashed this model a new generation in this model just like the

[00:58:41] internet did before that so just like crypto sometimes does and so on so i guess what i'm

[00:58:48] trying to say with all of these long-term models is there's no one set of rules but with each thing you

[00:58:53] do there's a model for doing it better and i hope i described i described what how i the model i use

[00:59:01] for different things and some of that might make sense to people others might say oh i have there's

[00:59:07] other things but that's my long-term sets of decision making models and then the final

[00:59:14] thing i want to talk about is creativity models but jade did you have a question or anything i'm

[00:59:19] gonna i'm gonna use all those model because like starting starting business is hard right like

[00:59:25] like like i always want to start a studio but but you're right like if i start a studio

[00:59:31] it's my studio is going to serve another one third of of the populations or what's the

[00:59:37] purpose of my studio is it just my need or is it yeah i want to be it could be that you want to do

[00:59:45] a higher percentage of what you what you want to do versus have to do so you're fine starting a

[00:59:51] me-to-business like oh there's not other studios all over the place but there's such high demand

[00:59:55] that i know i'll at least make a living and i get to do what i want to do all day long

[00:59:59] so you know whether or not you should start a business you know it depends what your goals are

[01:00:07] and oh i did want to talk about goals so it's great to have goals and there's a saying you know

[01:00:13] it's the journey not the destination that you should value which i don't know if that's true

[01:00:17] or not but i do want to say that if you have a goal make sure your goal is consistent with

[01:00:26] your happiness so right here's a here's a mathematical formula to think about happiness

[01:00:32] happiness is expectations divided by reality so let's say um you you have a weight loss goal

[01:00:41] let's say you're 500 pounds i'm just making this up let's say you're 500 pounds and your goal

[01:00:47] is to weigh you know 150 pounds so happiness is expectations over reality so so expectations

[01:00:59] those oh i'm not going to be happy till i have 150 pounds that's my you know that's my goal and

[01:01:06] reality is your 500 pounds and you're not doing anything to lose weight well your happiness is

[01:01:12] going to be very small it's like it's 150 divided by 500 is almost you know like one between one third

[01:01:18] and one fourth so it's not very high whereas let's say you have a financial goal and let's say your

[01:01:24] financial goal is to make a million dollars uh and you actually have uh uh you know or let's let's

[01:01:34] say i don't know how to describe this so essentially make sure that your expectations

[01:01:43] are not out of whack with reality right and you could still you could still say your goal is to be 150

[01:01:49] pounds but today my goal might be this is where the process is important it's not that the process

[01:01:55] or the journey is more important than the goal they're equal it's just that the goal and the

[01:02:01] journey are the same thing so if your goal is to be 150 pounds then your happiness is determined not

[01:02:06] by whether or not you're 150 pounds versus the reality of 500 but just today i you know did

[01:02:15] intermittent fasting so i only ate you know a plate of vegetables for lunch and then a plate of

[01:02:21] vegetables a few hours later and boom that was my you know chunk down your expectations

[01:02:29] so that they're so that they could be favorable compared to your reality uh so that you're as happy

[01:02:36] as possible while you're achieving your goal so this is very important like if if i want to be

[01:02:42] a better chess player i can't say oh my goal is to be the world champion because there's no process

[01:02:47] that will make me the world champion chess player that's not an achievable goal for me and

[01:02:54] you know so this way i could be happy and just enjoy the game even if i'm not the world champion

[01:03:00] because you know i know that i will work hard and seek to improve today and i have a set of

[01:03:06] things i do to improve i could judge myself against that versus a final goal right i could say well

[01:03:11] did i study my games that i played today did i study some classical games did i uh

[01:03:17] uh you know work on some puzzles that improve my calculation oh i did all those things good

[01:03:24] now my expectations and reality are in line with each other but isn't that like a saying that

[01:03:29] like always aim higher than where you you wanted to be sure so i can aim higher by the way

[01:03:39] instead of aiming for a certain ring i can aim to play higher than that but

[01:03:45] the process will stay the same if i focus on the process i'll be happy with the goal so if my goal

[01:03:51] is to to be you know again i can't be world champion that's ridiculous but i can maybe

[01:03:57] aim for slightly higher than my goal you know my real goal for myself right now is to achieve

[01:04:01] a higher rank than i achieved when i was 25 years old it's a long time ago it was 30 years ago

[01:04:07] and uh you know that's achievable but really what does it take to achieve that and did i do

[01:04:15] that today am i respecting the goal and as long as you're respecting the goal and you do the right

[01:04:21] things you don't you don't you know you you treat your goal with respect you don't just

[01:04:27] i don't play just one minute chess all day long and then say oh i'm trying to get better

[01:04:31] because that wouldn't be respecting the goal so my my my expectations won't be in line with my

[01:04:37] reality but if i do the right kind of studying i could expect you know high achievements and

[01:04:42] then that's in line with reality is that oh if i the reality is if i do these things i will

[01:04:47] achieve my goal i don't know that one didn't make as much sense but let's go with it anyway

[01:04:53] and then the final thing i want to talk about is creativity so everything we've talked about

[01:04:58] involves creativity like jay let's take your example let's say you want to start your own audio studio

[01:05:05] right okay well other people have started an audio studio what are you going to do differently

[01:05:10] well so like the one that i envisioned ideally it's the combinations of a music studio podcast

[01:05:16] studio and post-production studio so it's like a it's like a multi multi sort of like a

[01:05:21] multimedia studio um and then what i would do i would link all the room up and then i

[01:05:26] will have one room that large enough to have a live event so people want to shoot something or

[01:05:31] we want to do like a live podcast or live show they can do that and i can link all the room together

[01:05:38] and create like a multi room experience of recording and mixing so i think that's a great

[01:05:44] idea and what you did uses the creativity technique that i call idea sex right which

[01:05:49] is that you take two ideas and you combine them like okay you don't want to just do a music

[01:05:54] studio but since you have all the equipment there you can it could be a music studio and a podcast

[01:05:58] studio and if you want to throw in a third thing you can you also have everything set up to do live

[01:06:03] events like so you get a big enough space that you could do live events and the purpose of

[01:06:09] the live events is to not only make money through ticketing but also so people are exposed to your

[01:06:13] studio yes and so this combination is very powerful creativity technique uh let me talk about

[01:06:21] like some ways and i wrote i i read about this also in skip the line i call it the secrets of idea

[01:06:26] calculus uh which i talk about idea subtraction idea multiplication idea division um but and i

[01:06:35] talk about idea sex so idea sex is what you did there was you know merging two ideas into one

[01:06:41] or let's take let's take um harry potter as an example let's say i want to write i want to

[01:06:50] write something let's say i really enjoyed harry potter and i really enjoyed the tv show friends

[01:06:55] and i want to make a new tv show well i can have a bunch of wizards after they graduate

[01:07:01] from some sort of wizarding school i'm not jk rolling so i can't use hot words but right i

[01:07:05] have a bunch of wizards who graduated from wizarding school and i put them in an expensive

[01:07:11] apartment in new york city and while they're dealing with their daily lives of being wizards

[01:07:15] in new york city they're also having relationship issues with their friends who live in the apartment

[01:07:20] or live in the apartment across the hall or whatever so that's you know combining you

[01:07:26] know using idea sex to make a new tv show out of out of the components of two things that i love

[01:07:31] harry potter and the tv show friends actually hate the tv show friends but how did the how

[01:07:35] did s and l haven't done this already i know that would be a great idea so but i bet you

[01:07:40] that's how comedians do come up with ideas i know this because i've been a stand-up comedian like

[01:07:45] oh let's take amazon reviews and combine it with satire and there's all sorts of things you could

[01:07:53] find in amazon reviews that are just insane but or or look music does this all the time with

[01:07:58] sampling like remember when the fuji's we've had why clef gene on the podcast from the fuji's

[01:08:03] remember when the fuji's did a rap version of the song the disco song by the bg's stay in alive

[01:08:10] right that was such that was automatically going to be a bestseller like staying alive

[01:08:14] was the top disco song of all time a rap the fuji's was the top band at that time 1996 1997

[01:08:21] of course a combination between the two was going to be a number one hit so and i would

[01:08:27] encourage people to listen to the song we try and to stay alive it was a great song or think

[01:08:32] about stan weston he wanted to make a doll for boys but the only dolls out there were like barbie

[01:08:39] dolls so he made gi joe combined military like all the boys like military stuff with barbies and

[01:08:47] you had gi joe so that's combination is a very powerful technique another one is what i call

[01:08:53] idea subtraction idea subtraction might be take something a good idea like let's say you

[01:09:02] write a book and publish it and now subtract something from the but didn't you say to yourself

[01:09:05] well i can't do it like it's five years before i write a book and get an agent and find an editor

[01:09:10] and get a publishing house and they have to publish it and so on well let's subtract part of that

[01:09:15] process maybe you don't have to use a traditional publisher turns out self-publishing paperback

[01:09:21] hardcover audiobook kindle on amazon on average makes people more money anyway than going

[01:09:26] through a traditional publisher so 50 shades of gray which was a horribly written book

[01:09:32] was originally a self-published book and sold you know 100 million copies or whatever it was

[01:09:37] so that i say horribly written book but who am i to judge sold 100 million copies more copies

[01:09:42] than i'll ever sell probably in my lifetime so subtraction is often an effective way

[01:09:48] to get creative things done another thing is not subtraction but substitution so let's say i want

[01:09:54] i love tarry potter but i want to i want to do i want to write my own version but i can't write

[01:10:02] about a little boy with glasses who is sort of abused by his family who then discovers he's a

[01:10:08] wizard or can i because i don't know if we ever talked about this before you ever read

[01:10:13] the books of magic by neil gayman uh no but i think i think i saw your post on twitter

[01:10:19] yeah so if you look at the cover of this comic book written in the early 90s

[01:10:23] by neil gayman who's a famous comic book writer and movie writer now it looks exactly like harry

[01:10:28] potter and the plot is exactly like harry potter i don't know if jk rolling read the books of

[01:10:32] magic or maybe she read it and forgot it or heard about it but the exact same concept as harry

[01:10:37] potter so but okay for that aside because you can't do similar ideas over and over and over again

[01:10:44] but that aside let's just come up with some substitutions what if harry potters a girl instead

[01:10:50] of a boy what if harry potter or your what if your your wizard is an old man versus a young person

[01:10:57] what are what are other substitutions what if what if harry potter in space yeah what if it's harry

[01:11:02] potter yeah on on mars or what if harry potter's evil and bold amore is good yeah so i think there

[01:11:08] was uh there was something like that snickety lemony snicket was sort of like that or i don't

[01:11:12] know if that's a what about like the harry potter where he has to decide you know he's a good

[01:11:18] wizard but because he had cancer or whatever he has to find some way to support the family so he has

[01:11:25] to become sort of like a wizard drug dealer or something oh yeah yeah what if there's a wizard

[01:11:30] who has to become a drug dealer to get because he's you know trying to raise money to get his mom

[01:11:36] cured from cancer something like that yeah like great and that's like a little bit of combination

[01:11:41] little bit of substitution or you could substitute or let's say adapt uh with the time so what if harry

[01:11:49] potter is not a wizard but is the same story someone who's being you know verbally or physically abused

[01:11:56] by their family sort of a geeky looking kid but someone comes into him and says hey you're a mutant

[01:12:03] like you know professor x comes into your mutant or someone comes to him from some top secret

[01:12:09] organization and says look we genetically bred you to be a super scientist like you we if you go to

[01:12:14] our special school science warts you'll be a super scientist of the best physicist beyond albert

[01:12:21] einstein and everything whatever it is like oh we're going to take you out of this bad situation

[01:12:27] that you're in because we realize you're the best secretly the best investor in the world and

[01:12:31] we're gonna you're gonna study at our hedge fund and turn into the best investor in the world

[01:12:36] so you kind of modify other things or i don't know if you remember when i did the subway talk show

[01:12:44] yeah i took the format of a talk show which is a late night comedian does some stand up and then

[01:12:52] sits behind a desk has a musical act and interviews celebrities so i took the city the format of a

[01:13:00] late night show and i substituted hey stage with subway so i did stand up on a subway i interviewed

[01:13:07] aj jacob's inside the subway we had a musical act which is this guy banging on trash cans and it was

[01:13:13] actually really good music and i actually videotaped the whole thing and pitched it as a tv show

[01:13:19] which was rejected but that's when you substitute just one element of a very common format

[01:13:25] it's a very potentially creative thing to do so basically even though creativity feels like it

[01:13:31] should be without rules there are very common ways and these are just a few of them combine

[01:13:35] substitute subtract or another thing is adapt like let's say i i want to do friends but i don't

[01:13:43] have a 70 million dollar budget okay maybe i could do it on youtube with my friends so you

[01:13:48] know adapt to what you have like you know set restrictions and boundaries on what you have

[01:13:53] robert rubriguez the movie director he originally made movies in the early 90s now he's a huge movie

[01:13:59] director but he did his first movie oh mariachi for less than 20 000 dollars because that was his budget

[01:14:07] and he couldn't spend more than that budget so he made though a huge movie made millions of dollars

[01:14:11] for him and it started to launch his career by putting boundaries and restrictions around

[01:14:16] what he could do so he eliminated things oh we don't need to have 70 different camera angles

[01:14:22] we don't need to have a million different settings where we film a little bit on the

[01:14:26] desert a little bit in an apartment building a little bit in the super bowl uh we're just

[01:14:31] going to have one setting and and on and on so he eliminated things that normally happen in

[01:14:36] movies to fit a movie within his restrictions but he kept the arc of the hero so these are some

[01:14:43] rules of decision making around creativity and uh if people have questions i'm happy to

[01:14:49] talk more about that but jay this has been a long enough episode i think we could probably divide

[01:14:56] this into two don't you think i think i think it would be great if people can just listen

[01:15:01] you know once through you know so they can take notes and stuff like that you know and then if

[01:15:05] you want they want to stop and come back to it yeah good decision and since it doesn't matter

[01:15:09] so much to me whether it's one episode or two and you're the expert you're the producer of

[01:15:13] this podcast i will out your decision and we'll do it as one episode so i don't have to think

[01:15:19] about it anymore yeah great decisions thank you james for you know asking me to ignore my advice

[01:15:26] from my xxxx girlfriend all the time i will always be happily to recommend people ignore advice

[01:15:35] all right thank you