Frederik Pferdt | How to Live Future Ready

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We wanted to show our kids the power of saying yes, right? And we did something that I think was even like filmed in a movie called A Yes Day. And so what we told our kids is that for one day, we're going to say yes to everything. And that sounds risky, right, in the first place. But what ended up happening is that our kids chose the things that they value, that they always wanted to do, And nothing was out of bounds or nothing was totally crazy, right? You know, we went to the beach and did a couple of other things, and then kids wanted to go into a toy store, right? I said, fantastic, here's my credit card. You can literally get everything you want. And what ended up happening is that they actually bought nothing. This idea of like, hey, I can get literally everything I want. You fall back on the values that you have.

I'm Srini Rao, and this is the Unmistakable Creative Podcast, where you get a window into the stories and insights of the most innovative and creative minds who've started movements, built thriving businesses, written bestselling books, and created insanely interesting art. For more, check out our 500-episode archive at unmistakablecreative.com. Frederic, welcome to The Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, so you have a new book out called What's Next Is Now: How to Live Future Ready, all of which we will get into. I know part of the answer to this question from having read the book, but before you get into the book, I wanted to start by asking, where in the world were you born and raised, and what impact did that end up having on what you ended up doing with your life and your career?

Yes, that's a great question. So I was born in southern Germany in a place called Lake Constance, or close to a place called Lake Constance, which is actually at the Switzerland and Austrian border. So Germany has, you know, a border to Switzerland and Austria, and it's at that lake. So it's a beautiful area. And so I grew up in a town called Ravensburg. Ravensburg, they actually produce games, puzzles and other kids' games and adults' games. So it's a really fun city to be in. The interesting thing about it is it's a very traditional city, right? So imagine you have these old towers and old buildings kind of like from the 1400s and 1500s. And so there's a lot of tradition around, right? Traditional festivals, traditional buildings and so forth. And, you know, some of the thinking of the people is also related to like just cherishing these traditions, right? And for me, that was always fascinating because, you know, not a lot of things changed in the city and not a lot of things have changed probably since then as well, which, you know, for me, when I grew up, was a very safe place to be, right? So safe in a way that there's not a lot of change. There's not a lot of things that are rapidly changing around you. And so I grew up in a family where my parents just provided a lot of love and care for me, right? I remember when I wanted to leave to study abroad, they basically just said, hey, you know, son, if that's not going to work out, you know, if you fail or something is not going the right way, you always can come back to us, right? There's always going to be a room for you, a small room that you can, you know, go back into and stay with us. So that really helped me to have that I would say like psychological safety to then go on bigger adventures. And I remember when I first kind of like crossed that lake that I was talking about to actually go study at University of Konstanz. It's not far away, but it's kind of like crossing one lake. And that for me was a big first step into the unknown. And that really helped me to find excitement in the unknown, excitement to dive into something I am not familiar with and so forth. So I got a little bit addicted, I think, towards that, that I started to travel the world and wanted to live in as many places as possible and work and study in as many places as possible. And I managed to, you know, go to Cape Town and Shanghai and to Buenos Aires and to other places as well and to New York. And really try to find comfort in the unknown. And so to summarize, kind of like growing up in a city that cherishes traditions and then ending up in a way to really fall in love with the unknown has probably helped me a lot in my career.

Yeah. Well, the thing that I think is interesting about that is you mentioned, you know, this very traditional city and one of the very first things that you say in the book is that I've always lived according to the belief that change change is constructive, not a threat. And you seem to have this almost inherent ability to embrace the unknown. And I think humans at large, it's really kind of an odd paradox where uncertainty is the very thing that makes us feel alive. If every day was completely predictable, our lives would be boring as hell. Yet the irony of that is that we kind of want certainty as well. Like, I had a friend who once told me, he said, there 3 great illusions, security and like 2, you know, security was a big one. He's security is an illusion. Certainty is an illusion. I don't remember the other one. I can't remember it off the top of my head, but when he said the idea of security and certainty being illusions, I thought, yet the irony of this is that we spend our whole lives trying to basically make sure both happen.

Absolutely. Yes. I, I, I like what you're saying and I think that can be summed up in the way that we humans are built by change but not built for change, right? And I think it's just, you know, when we grow up, kind of like there's change all around us and change is constant, right? So we are built by change but not built for change, right? We are always trying to not necessarily fight change, but be in a way not embracing change, to say the least. And one of the things that I want to point out is that there is a difference between the future, right? And the future you want to create, right? I think most people think about You know, the future in a way that it's uncertain. Uh, it's exactly what you're describing, kind of like it's, it's not defined and so forth. Where I feel like if you trying to shift that towards like the future you want to build, right? It creates a little bit more clarity because then you can describe it and in a way choose it so that you feel a little bit more comfortable and less uncertain about the future. And so most people feel anxious and even uncertain about the future exactly as you described. And we live in that world where change is constant and accelerating. And this can really be feeling— this can create a feeling of feeling overwhelmed. And so the challenge we all face is that our minds are looking for certainty. And if we don't find that certainty, we feel anxiety, right? And we spend a lot of time worrying about the future because our minds just crave that certainty. And our brains are wired to make this feel uncomfortable. So what I want to do is help people to move away from feeling anxious about the future to feeling a little bit more in control about their future.

Yeah.

Well, I think that, you know, one of the notes I have in my knowledge base is this idea that the future is always unwritten, but I think you make a point that we get to kind of write that story. I wonder, and this is just based on observing my 19-month-old nephew and what I have noticed that he thrives on novelty. Like every time we show him something new, he gets really excited. He pays a lot more attention to when we're talking to him on FaceTime. But my sister is like, you guys are running out of stuff to show him at your house. He's seen all this shit before. How many times are you going to show him your headphones and Apple remote? You know, he was like, I already know what this is. So, and so I noticed that a couple of things that one, he's hyper aware of any change in the environment around him and he is he thrives on novelty in a way that I think we lose as adults. Like my dad, and I'll give you an example of this. My dad came back from India and he hung these 3 or 4 paintings in the entryway to our home in California. And I've walked through that door probably 7,000 times, if not more. And the funny thing is I didn't actually notice them for weeks until he mentioned them. I was like, Oh yeah, those are cool. And it got me thinking about the fact that if it was my nephew, he would've immediately noticed that something had changed.

Yes. Isn't that fascinating? Right. That, you know, you describing kind of like a child that thrives on novelty. And if you ask yourself, like how many of us adults, right, do the same, I think curiosity lays dormant in all of us, but it really can be awakened. And so for me, curiosity drives us to explore and understand our world better, right? Which is crucial in our, again, described rapidly changing environment. So we are all born with that curiosity and you describe it perfectly, right? Where we really firing on all cylinders as children, where we crawl around the floors and you know, we take everything in with our senses, right? We taste everything, we smell everything, we look at everything, and it drives our parents mostly crazy, right? I have 3 children too. And so you want to protect them, right? You want to say kind of like, you know, try this, but don't try that, right? Which is actually not really helpful because Again, as you described, they thrive on curiosity and novelty. And I think for myself, I do the same. So I have my own kind of philosophy that I never want to do things twice, right? I always want to go to, like, for example, a new restaurant or stay in a different hotel when I travel somewhere or, you know, meet new people. And this is something that is something that you can train yourself in and you can relearn, I guess. So curiosity is something truly fascinating. And when you describe kind of like the children that you observe, kind of like your nephew, for me, it's always fascinating as well that they really like to ask questions, right? Asking things like, hey, why is it that way? Or why can't it be different? Or, you know, what if, or imagine if. And we as adults, we lose that ability to ask questions. We rather kind of like, you know, give answers or solutions or ideas that are finished instead of staying in that curiosity or the land of the unknown. Where we are trying to explore and investigate.

Yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll actually go deeper into curiosity and some of the things you wrote about in the book, but talk to me, talk to me about the trajectory that has led you down this path to, and ultimately to writing this book. Like how did you arrive at this place?

Yes. So again, like I, I'm fascinated by this, this concept of the future, right? Where I spend 12 and a half years at Google, literally with people that are building the future, right? So for me, it was always fascinating when I could help these folks to come up with better ideas and come up with, you know, these world-changing technologies and solutions that I was always curious to find out, like, what is the secret sauce? Like, what is something they're doing that is helping them to build that future? And what I found is that it's not about resources. It's not about specific environments they're in. It's not about, you know, them being part of a specific team as well. It's literally the way they think and the way they are. So what I found is that it's a mind state that they show that really helps them to build a future that they want to see happening. And so I took this concept and felt like, you know, I have to share that with the world. And I left Google and was engaging in a 2-year writing process where I wrote everything down that I found interesting and fascinating about these people who are building the future for themselves. And at the same time, I wanted to provide exercises and activities and practices for people that they can do themselves to literally learn how you can build a better future for yourself. Yeah.

Howdy howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

And I'm Steven, your bookish internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch: Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

That's right, hey hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert, he'll be wrong.

News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellas wherever you get your podcasts.

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Well, the— one of the things that you say in the book early on is that to be prepared for the future is to be in a frame of mind that is tuned to what you don't know yet. Normally we look to the past to find patterns that help us guess at what's likely to happen. Then we organize our behavior around that, those expectations. If that crutch is taken away, how do you decide what to do next without a sliver of hindsight or foresight? You can actually determine where the future is going to go. Now, as I'd kind of mentioned to you before we hit record, I think the thing that really kind of struck me most is so many people when they talk about the future or write about the future, tend to use the language of future-proof, which I, you know, in a lot of ways, I think it makes the— makes it clear that, you know, you see the future as an opportunity, while many of these people, I think, use the language of future-proof, see it as a threat. So explain to me, like, you know, why you use the language future-ready mind state. Like, I think that's such a different distinction than future-proof. Can you kind of expand on that?

Yes. Yes. So the equation for me is pretty simple. It's the choices you make equal your future. So the choices you make today equal how your future will unfold, right? And if you really start living by this equation, by this principle, I think something very powerful can happen. And a future-ready mindset is literally a way of thinking and being that equips you to thrive in an ever-changing world. And there's 5 elements that I am trying to help people to develop and grow. One is related to optimism, right? Which I not just share, like, you know, you need to be an optimistic person, but you need to be radically optimistic. The second one is related to openness, right? And not just being open to a couple of ideas, you know, from time to time, but unreserved open. Then curiosity as a third one. We touched on that briefly. I say it needs to be compulsive curious, and you need to be compulsive curious as well. Then you need to experiment and show empathy. So those 5 dimensions really are for me essential when we are trying to build the future and be ready for the future that we wanna shape. Yeah. And mindset is also something that I, that I highlight in the book. You know, I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of a mindset, right? A mindset refers to that attitude determined by your history and other formative factors that really have shaped you, how you interpret and respond to the events in in your life.

Yeah.

And your mindset tends to be fairly fixed, right? And hard to change because it's again based on your deeply ingrained beliefs. And if we put it that way, when someone tries to convince you to change your mindset, and I think you've heard that a lot, you're going to have to work pretty hard to break down this mental framework you have in order to replace it with another one. And so for me, in contrast, a mind state is fluid and dynamic. It's kind of a lens that influenced by an ever-changing mix of immediate factors that perceptually and cognitively influence the choices you make about how you act or react. So that sounds a little theoretical, but it's the same way your pupils in your eyes get bigger or smaller to adapt to the amount of light in your environment, and your mind state again, fluctuates based on the content and context of the moment. So the mindset is really powerful because it gives you so much control over how you perceive the events in your life. And I want to help people to really realize that power that they have with their mind state and using optimism, openness, curiosity, experimentation, empathy to really be ready for the future.

Yeah, I think the— so let's start with radical optimism, because one of the things you say is that being a radical optimist both grounds and elevates your expectations. You're a clear-eyed realist. You can see there's a mountain in front of you, but you're confident that there's better on the other side of that mountain. And there's no question you're going to make your way to whatever the unknown potential may be. And the reason that struck me so much was I think that, you know, particularly when you think about sort of the personal development circles, there's this fine line between delusional optimism and realism. And it's funny because the delusional optimists will refer to the realists as pessimists, and the pessimists basically refer to the delusional optimists as people who are out of their fucking minds. And the thing is, I think there's a middle ground, which I feel like what you are describing as radical optimism is, because it seems like you are not saying throw caution to the wind and leave rationality out of this altogether.

Yes. Usually we are trying to put, you know, people in two buckets, right? It's either you're a pessimist or you're an optimist. And for me, this is not your usual glass half full or glass half empty kind of like theory, right? For me, it's when you are considering radically optimistic people, they really transform challenges into opportunities and every situation into a chance for something exceptional. And this perspective really encourages us to aim for better, as I would like to say, making every moment an opportunity for growth. And if you are trying to use that metaphor of glass half full and glass half empty, for me, a radically optimistic person Sees not just the glass half full, but sees the potential to fill the glass even further. So that is something that where I say you're not ignoring kind of like the reality, right? But you're looking for the potential that every situation has. And regular optimism often, you know, involves that passive acceptance of things being good enough or yeah, better than expected, right? We say that very often. But a radically optimistic person actively seeks to transform situations, asking themselves, how can this be better? So really looking for potential improvements and opportunities for growth. And for me, that's something fascinating when we look at maybe an example I can share. If you are Trying to, you know, look out your window and maybe you see like a noisy, busy street, you know, outside your window. A regular optimistic person would say, yeah, at least I live in a lively area, right? That's already like an optimistic view on things. A radically optimistic person would say, what's better is that I'm part of a vibrant, maybe alive community that offers constant inspiration and connection. Right? You see that there's a difference in how you look at that situation. And for me, radical optimism in times like we live in is essential because it really helps you to look for opportunities and for something that can be better. Yeah.

Well, let me give you a more concrete example. Like, this is something that I just, I've been dealing with personally and I thought about it as we were talking about this. So for example, you know, one of the things that happened with podcasts sometime at the beginning of the year. Apple made some sort of iOS update that kind of hosed numbers for a lot of podcasters and we didn't recover and our ad revenue took a pretty substantial hit. And I was kind of like having a freakout moment yesterday. Then I just sat down and I was like, okay, let me see what ChatGPT will come up with for me. Like, here's, you know, I'm going to provide the numbers. But it got me thinking. I was like, wait a minute, like maybe this is the opportunity to reduce our dependency on advertisers completely.

Exactly. That's the radical optimist in you, right? We, we, like, uh, I have a recent example too, right? Where like, you know, you have sometimes technical difficulties during a presentation, right? We still haven't figured that out, that everything runs smoothly, right? So again, like a regular optimist would say, hey, at least I had my notes, right? That I could look at even if my presentation, uh, you know, didn't work. A radically optimistic person says, what's better is that this challenge gives me the opportunity to engage more directly with the audience, improvising and making the presentation even more interactive and memorable, right? So that's where you look for the better in this situation. And exactly as you were describing it, right, you are now moving away from, from ads and trying to come up with something even better, and this is an opportunity that we can look for and search for that we just need to shift our perspective towards. And I think that's something everybody can learn and everybody can train.

Well, let's talk about this idea of saying yes as it relates to radical optimism, because you say the most important result of saying yes is igniting the potential of the moment, seeing something that happened that hasn't been planned or otherwise calculated. And I remember, I think it was Kamal Ravikant. In his book, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. Maybe it was the one that came after, but I remember, I don't know why it was, for some reason it was 2013. That year struck me as sort of one that I was just like, I'm just going to say yes to anything that makes my life better or interesting. And funny enough, that ended up being the year that forever changed my life. That like the self-published book I wrote became a Wall Street Journal bestseller. I don't know what it was about that time. But for some reason, I remember feeling like this is like a, it was like a rocket ride to the moon for probably 8 months. And tell me about this idea of saying yes, because I think you're right. We do often say no to anything that is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, inconvenient, whatever it is. And to your point, like you talk about the idea that we don't even engage with the people who are right in our orbit. For example, you sit next to somebody on a plane, you just kind of keep your head buried in your phone.

Yeah, it's a powerful way of living your life, right? And living future-ready is by using the word yes more often. How often tells our mind ourselves that, you know, just say no, right? Because it's the safest thing to do. You can walk away, you're not getting engaged in anything, right? And you don't take a risk. Saying yes is the opposite. You're taking a risk, you're getting engaged in something, and you're diving into something that you're not sure of and you probably don't know about. But this is very powerful. So I recently had a wonderful experience where we actually practice as a family to say yes to everything. And so we wanted to show our kids the power of saying yes, right? And we did something that I think was even like filmed in a movie called A Yes Day. And so what we told our kids is that for one day, we're going to say yes to everything. And that sounds risky, right? In the first place, right? But what ended up happening is that our kids chose the things that they value that they, you know, always wanted to do and nothing was out of bounds or nothing was totally crazy, right? Even, you know, we went on a beach walk, you know, we went to the beach and did a couple of other things and then, you know, obviously kids wanted to go into a toy store, right? And so I said, fantastic, go in there. Like, here's my credit card, you know, You have yes as a way to, you know, you can literally get everything you want. And what ended up happening is that they actually bought nothing because they were probably, I don't know, so overwhelmed. And just by this idea of like, hey, I can get literally everything I want, you fall back on the values that you have. And probably they said like, okay, you know, we don't want to break the bank. We don't want to be irresponsible, right? And so forth. And that made me very happy because at the end of the day, we had a couple of great experiences together, mostly didn't cost any money, most didn't cost any money, and we just had a wonderful time together. And in their minds, there was always this notion like, the parents will say yes to everything, so we can ask everything, but We probably, you know, don't want to be irresponsible or we don't want to, you know, push the boundaries too hard. And that made me very happy. So give it a try. Yes. Just saying yes to something or to everything for a day and see what happens. As you described, you know, incredible things can happen. With no, usually things stop, right? And won't happen. So using more yeses in your life, I think, is the way to go. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about this idea of unreserved openness. You say that openness is generative, that is, a little bit generates more openness, which generates even more openness, and so forth. Every time you choose to jump, you reinforce your openness. The more you choose to close yourself off, the more you deny yourself. It's really as simple as that. So talk to me about this in a more, like, expand on this for me in a more practical sense.

Yes, there's this wonderful quote from a Zen master who actually was influential here in a couple of Zen centers in the Santa Cruz Mountains and in California. And he said, to quote him, if your mind is empty, it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind, there are few. For me, that's a perfect example of being open, right? And being open to everything. And that unreserved openness is about embracing change and really embracing the unknown with confidence and curiosity. And being open, you know, to use a metaphor, right? Someone with unreserved openness doesn't just peek cautiously behind unopened doors, right? Imagine you're walking down a corridor and there are many doors, right? The person who is unreserved open would actually not worry about what might be on the other side of the door. Instead, they approach every door with that eagerness and ready to fling it open without hesitation. So that is, for me, a wonderful picture of being unreserved open because every Behind every door, there's an opportunity, but you need to open that door in the first place. And this kind of openness is hard and challenging, right? Because again, our brains are wired to cling to what we know, and the unknown is exactly where we want to be because that's where all the opportunities lie. And maybe sharing a quick story that you're hopefully familiar with. It's the story of the Chinese farmer that lives in a small village. He has one horse that helps him during the day doing his work. And one day this horse runs away. And so the neighbors come over, the villagers and go to the farmer and say like, oh, we are so sorry that your horse ran away. And then the farmer responds, maybe. The next day, the horse comes back with 7 other horses, right? Wild horses. So now he has 8 horses. The other neighbors come over, they tell the farmer, oh, you're so lucky, right? Now you have 8 horses. You must feel, you know, very lucky. The farmer responds, maybe. Next day, the son of the farmer wants to break one of the horses, so he rides on it and falls off, breaks his leg. Again, the neighbors come over in the evening and say like, oh, we're so sorry that your son broke his leg, you know. The farmer responds, maybe. And then the next day, The army passes through and wants to recruit people for the war. And obviously they don't pick the one with the broken leg. The neighbors come over and say like, oh, you must be so lucky and feel so lucky because your son doesn't have to go to war. The farmer responds, maybe. So you can go on and on and on with that story. What I want to say with that metaphor is, and that story is that you don't have to judge immediately if something is good or bad, right? A maybe, right, is sometimes a good response and just see, you know, if that situation turns into something good the next day or turns into something bad, right? And I think we always inclined to respond immediately with saying this is good or this is bad and we judge things too quickly. Instead of staying open and see what hap—

happens. Yeah.

Hey, this is Adam Grant, host of TED's podcast, Rethinking with Adam Grant. Let me share with you why smart finance leaders turn to Bill. They know that clarity isn't just helpful, it's strategic. As the intelligent finance platform, Bill uses AI to automate the busy work for nearly half a million businesses so they can focus on intentional growth. Eliminate the friction and start scaling with the proven choice. Visit bill.com/proven to talk with an expert about automating your business finances and get a $250 gift card as a thank you. That's bill.com/proven. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details.

Howdy, howdy, ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

And I'm Steven, your bookish internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic, Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

That's right, hey hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert, he'll be wrong.

Newsflash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellas wherever you get your podcasts.

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It's kind of funny because I think that So often we only see that something that we thought was horrible in the moment was really good in retrospect. The two things that come to mind as you describe this sort of unreserved openness, the first is, you know, the way we educate. I've talked about this before. Like when I think back to college and, you know, the course catalog and all these other things, and the one thing I always, you know, tell people is don't let that— like I'm realizing when you describe those sort of open doors and, you know, hallways, is like, you know what, don't let the opportunities in front of you blind you to the possibilities that surround you. That I feel is often what happens when you lack this kind of openness. But the other is, you know, like I remember when I graduated from business school in 2009, no job, it was a terrible time. I was just like, this is my funeral. Like this is the worst thing ever. And had that not happened, you would not be talking to me right now. Like I, it, set me off on a completely different trajectory. But the funny thing is that in those moments, I think we're like, one of my old mentors had a good way of saying it. He's like, when something, you're going through a challenge in your life, it's the worst thing in the world because it's happening to you. Yeah. So one thing, is there any way to see the value of something like right now, this revenue issue that I'm having is a pain in the ass. I don't necessarily think like on the one hand, I know I might look back at it and be like, all right, that was great. Right now it's like, holy fuck, this is a problem.

Yeah. You know, like you can choose how you look at that situation, right? Do you see that as an opportunity to do something different or do you choose to complain, you know, for the rest of your lives, right? The rest of your life. And it's your choice, right? And I think going into perspective that allows you to see that as a wonderful opportunity to do something different and explore something unknown and be open about all the possibilities that might come on the way, I think is probably the best way to prepare yourself for the future and be future ready. And, you know, one of the ways I'm trying to live by this principle of unreserved openness is also through my teaching. So at Stanford, we did an experiment with our students where at the beginning of class, where you usually have to share kind of like the whole, you know, curriculum and, you know, the dates and times when we meet and so forth. Instead, we shared an empty curriculum with only the dates, but nothing else.

I remember that thinking, I was like, I had that idea once. That was in my mind when I read that. It struck me because I thought, you know, if I were ever asked to teach a class on entrepreneurship, that's exactly how I would do it.

Exactly. But you can imagine the responses from the students, right? Like everybody had a question like, can you tell us a little bit about, you know, what's going to happen? Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, what's going to happen on that date or this date and so forth? And we said, no, just stay open and we're going to build this as we go. And so we have a chance to pivot, you know, in any direction as we are building this journey towards the future. And that really helped the students to embrace that openness and see the power of it and not just having something that is, you know, set in stone and like we're just going to follow an agenda, but being really flexible and and dynamic in the moment. Yeah.

Well, I'd love to ask you the question that I ask everybody who has spent some amount of time in our education system, you particularly being, you know, and teaching at an elite university like Stanford. If you were brought in as the head of education policy for the United States, knowing what you do based on the ideas in this book, and you were told that your job is to redesign the entire thing from the ground up, what would you do?

Yes, that's probably the greatest job you can have, right? Is like building and crafting the education system for the future. I think what I would do are probably two things, right? First one is I would build a curriculum about the dimensions that I mentioned in the book, that help you to be future-ready. And those are very deeply human qualities that we can all grow and develop, right? Optimism, openness, curiosity, experimentation, empathy, all of those things are not part of the curriculum at the moment, and I would love to see them as being part of the curriculum in the future. So that's the first thing I would do. The second thing I would do, and we tried that actually with some visioning exercises we did at Stanford University about the future of education is I would like to have students move away from declaring majors, right, and choosing majors towards choosing missions. I would like to have students go into a college declaring a mission they have, and then based on that mission,, you know, choose the classes, courses, lectures, whatever it is accordingly. Because I feel like if you can declare a mission and a problem you want to solve very early on in your career, right, you're going to choose something that is going to be supportive of you to try to find solutions to either solve this problem or, you know, accomplish that mission.

Well, I want to bring back a clip from a conversation I had with David Epstein, who wrote the book Range, as it relates to what you just said.

Take a listen. Going forward to higher ed, which you mentioned, I think there are two main issues here, main problems. First is what I write about in Range called the end of history illusion, this psychological finding that at every time point in life, we will all recognize that we have changed a lot in the past based on our experiences, and then say, but now I'm pretty much done. At every time point in life, we will say that and we will be wrong. We will underestimate future change at every time point, even when we're very old. But at no time is that more true than from about 18 to the late 20s. That's when you undergo the fastest time of personality change. And so essentially right at the start of that period, we're telling someone pick now, which is really asking them to pick for a person they don't yet know and certainly in a world they can't yet conceive unless they have a crystal ball that most people don't.

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Howdy howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

And I'm Steven, your bookish internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch: Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

That's right, hey hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next.

Next.

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News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellas wherever you get your podcasts.

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So I, I think that really kind of piggybacks nicely on a lot of what you said. I, I like the fact that you, you know, talked about missions rather than majors. But I think to David's point, like I look back and this was one of the things that I told at a, one of my parents' friends had a son who was starting college at Berkeley, much smarter than I was, good grades in high school. I was like, you're going to do much better than I ever did. I got shit grades, but I'm going to tell you this one thing. And that is not to make a commitment to any one path too soon. And that sounds counterintuitive considering you've grown up in an Indian family where your whole life has been basically planned out for you. But hearing that, what is your take on that?

Yes, I think sometimes we, I wouldn't say make the mistake, but like we are in this planning a lot, right? So we're trying to plan out our whole lives, right? And we're trying to do the same for our children. Which I don't think is helpful because if you're planning things out, right? And you lay out the plan and say like, this is gonna happen, you know, when you're 10 and then this is gonna happen when you're 15 and this is what we plan for you when you're 20 and so forth. It sets specific expectations and if those expectations are not met, you are unhappy, right? And so I don't want to have people being unhappy, you know, I don't want be unhappy myself and I don't want to have unhappy kids. So I move away from planning and go more into that state of being open, right? And improvise. And there's a wonderful person I feature in the book. His name is Adam. I've worked with him a lot and he really lives that openness towards the future. He goes on these week-long trips where he doesn't set a plan, he just packs his backpack and then he just sees whatever's gonna happen, right? And he's ready for that because he's embracing that. He sees that as an opportunity and so forth. So I think we should start moving away from predicting. And I like what David said about nobody has a crystal ball, or at least kind of like we should not listen to those people who apparently say they have a crystal ball and do predictions about the future. We should rather listen to ourselves and say like, hey, what future do I want to create and how do I respond in every situation, right? And responding in every situation is a choice you can make. You can respond with openness, curiosity, with empathy and so forth. And if you do that, I think you have a tremendous amount of opportunities at your fingertips.

Yeah, it's interesting because it reminds me of this guy who wrote a book called Goal-Free Living. And the thing that stayed with me most from that conversation was this notion of choosing a direction rather than a destination. And I thought that was really, you know, well put because I realized when I, when I started to really dissect it, I thought, finally, I get it. What he means is that a destination gives you one possibility, a direction gives you a multitude. Very powerful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, the way I plan my travel drives my mom crazy. You know, when we go to India, she's like packing 10 days in advance. I bring a backpack and I always tell her, look, if it's essential to my survival, there are a billion people there. I'm sure I can find it.

Absolutely. And I, I, I would say that, you know, sometimes we confuse that with imagination, right? That we should actually practice that muscle of imagining, like imagining, you know, what do you want to discover and experience on your travels or in your future life? And I think that's something we can all practice more, doing that visualization of ourselves in the future. And there is a fascinating project at Stanford University. Some of my colleagues did that, which is related to your future self. And so what they did is they asked 20-year-old students if they could imagine themselves 10 years in the future. And the students were like, yeah, I can totally see myself. You know, I'll have a little bit more money maybe and a better car. And then they asked the same students if they can picture themselves 20 years in the future. And they said, definitely, I will have a family maybe and a good job and maybe also a house, uh, and so forth. But when they asked the students to see themselves in 30 to 40 years, the picture got really fuzzy and blurry. They couldn't describe anything about where they might be or what they might be doing. So they didn't have an image at all. And so another of the project studies put the 20-year-old students into virtual reality glasses, or they, they, they set virtual reality glasses on their heads that showed them much older versions of themselves. So they can actually see themselves, you know,, in 10 to 20 years or even 30 years. And after several minutes, this is fascinating, taking in this image of their future self, the majority of the students said that they intended to pay more attention to their health and save more money for retirement, actually double the amount for, uh, retirement. So what that means is that the future has more meaning when it's right in front of us instead of being far off in the horizon. And this is powerful as we trying to imagine ourselves in the future. You know, we can practice to see ourselves more clearer so that we can make better decisions and better choices today.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's so funny because I think so often we have this vision of who we're gonna be, what our lives are gonna be like. Like I always think like if my 20-year-old self saw how things had turned out on one level, He'd be like, what the fuck did you do to us? Why did you ditch, you know, like, you know, chasing everything that was like material to go be a surfer? Like, I, my 20-year-old self, like, would not have believed that, you know, I'm going to go be a surfer and snowboarder and spend years of my life doing this. But it's, yeah, I mean, it's such an interesting thing to think about, but that's, that's a fascinating insight about the experiment.

And isn't it fascinating just to build on your idea? Isn't it fascinating that we always tend to come back to that notion of what do you want to be in the future, right? That question that, you know, I was asked a lot when I was little and I never had an answer for that, right? What do you want to be in the future, right? Like doctor, you know, firefighter or, you know, any of those things. And I feel the question is not the right question to ask because it really, you know, leads you to a job description or a position or, you know, something that we can maybe imagine today, but might not be even relevant in the next couple of years. I think we should rather ask ourselves and our children, how do you want to be in the future? What qualities do you want to actually show? Do you want to be a loving person? Do you want to be a kind person? Do you want to be someone who is open, who shows empathy? All of those things, because that is very powerful. Then we can start working towards how we want to be in the future. And, you know, if we can achieve that, I think we have an advantage instead of like ending up in a in a job that, you know, that might not be even relevant in the future.

The funny thing about that question is that, you know, after thousands of conversations on this show, I always— I came to the conclusion, I was like, you're asking a 6-year-old kid what he wants to be when he grows up. Effectively, you're asking this kid, what do you want to do for the rest of your life when you've only lived a fraction of it?

Exactly. It's absurd. It is. And, and if you change that question to how do you want to be, yeah, right, it's it's infinite, right? Because you can be infinite kind and infinite loving, infinite open, infinite curious, and so forth. So it doesn't have an endpoint when you actually achieve that.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Let's finish this up by talking about two final concepts, experimentation and expansive empathy. Like, I think that the experimentation in my mind at this point, especially with the advances we're making with AI, like we can experiment so fast right now, which kind of makes me think like the only thing standing in most people's way is, is the way that they're thinking about it.

Yes. Experimentation for me is, is, you know, really helping you to become future ready because what you're doing is you test, test, test, test, right? You, you're trying things out and see what you can learn from it. And that is very powerful even in, you know, today's world with, you know, AI, as you mentioned, being around, you know, you have to get into a mode of experimenting, try those things out because otherwise you can't form an opinion. You can't actually, you know, learn anything if you're not experimenting. Yeah. And experimentation is such a powerful way of figuring out the path towards the future, right? Because you're literally trying things out and you say like, okay, that works for me and that doesn't work for me. Coming back to the example you shared that, you know, you are moving away from an ad-supported podcast, right? You need now to start experimenting, trying things out and see what works and what doesn't work. And the more you do that, the quicker you learn, and the better your choices and better decisions you can actually make.

Well, I'll give you one that has been like an incredible breakthrough for me in the last like week or so. We had Cal Newport here talking about his new book, Slow Productivity, and we were talking about AI. I asked him why was there not an AI chapter, and he said, well, he said one, it's, you know, it's advancing too fast for the publishing cycle to actually include anything. But he mentioned this concept of what he called the AI chief of staff that basically would be like Leo McGarry in The West Wing. And when he said that, I thought to myself, like, wait a minute, some of what you're talking about here is actually feasible. I think, let me see if I can deal with the one problem that annoys the hell out of me, email. And let's see if I can build something that literally will sort, manage, and draft replies to my email. Let me do it on my own where I can customize it in detail. It took about 3 days and the only screw up it made was based on an error I made and I looked at my inbox, like I looked at the inbox now, because I realized 98% of the time I was spending in my inbox is just deleting things I don't need to read. And so I got it down from like 153 to 3 emails based on that. That's just one of the many things this like thing that I built can do. But he said, when he said, you know, forget the Turing test, what we care about is the Inbox Zero test. I was like, wait a minute, that seems totally doable as long as you keep the parameters simple. And that was my experiment. And it turned out to be like ground, like a really big breakthrough for me.

Yes.

Wonderful.

Thanks. Thanks for sharing that. You know, you can experiment obviously with technology and products and anything like that, but you can also experiment with relationships, right? So when I first met my now wife many years back, right? I, I had a radically optimistic view of our relationship and said, like, you know, this is going to be fantastic. This is going to be the best relationship in our lives. And at the same time, I also said, like, we need to find this out quickly, right? If that relationship might actually work or not. And she looked a little strange at me and said, like, okay, how should we do that? And I said, let's go on a on a trip where we don't have a plan, we just have a backpack and we go in, in to places where we don't speak the language, where we've never been. And, you know, let's just see how in these extreme situations when we are hungry, we can't speak the language, we don't have a place to sleep and so forth, where we, how we actually respond, right? And how we work together. And so we, we literally after 6 weeks, we, we went on this trip. For 3 weeks. And it was incredible because we really could test out, you know, different situations we ended up in and really felt incredibly because we had a lot of fun. You know, we were bonding quickly and also we were very supportive of each other, right? And that's still true for today. That's still true today. And so I think, you know, taking an experimentation approach to your relationship where you test out things really rapidly and quickly is a great way of learning, right? If that relationship might actually work out or not.

Yeah. I also like the fact that you talked about changing small things every day, like just taking a different route to the same place. I remember somebody else had mentioned that to me because like, I remember that, you know, when I was in Riverside at my parents' house all last year after my nephew was born, I realized it was like, wow, my dad probably has taken the same exact road home for 25+ years and never seen, you know, what would happen if you took a turn in a different direction. And I was that, I remember I was just like, let me just see where this leads. And I thought to myself, how have I never known this after 25+ years in this town?

Like there are things here that I've never seen. Exactly. And sometimes that happens to, you know, many people in their lives where they just are on autopilot most of the time, right? Not really trying to, you know, look around anymore or kind of like trying to discover or be curious about something, right? Where we just, again, like take the same route to work or like speak with the same people or do the same things over and over again. And that's where like life happens to us, right? Where we, where we don't learn anything new, where we don't have any discoveries anymore, where we probably don't get excited as well. Anymore. And I think that's where we need to get off autopilot. And, you know, with little things like changing your daily route to work or like your daily, whatever your routines are and changing them around really helps you to open up again and discover new things. And discovering new things is something that is truly exciting because that can lead to a bigger opportunity that might be, you know, an opportunity that you want to pursue for the rest of your life.

Yeah. Well, let's finish this up by talking about expansive empathy and then Dimension X. So talk to me, like, you kind of alluded to how expansive empathy shapes, you know, both product, but I think it also is about people as well.

Absolutely. So, you know, Empathy is such a powerful quality that all humans have, right? Empathy, and the research is pretty clear, makes you a better partner, a better teacher, a better politician, a better human being, right? So there's a lot of power in empathy. And expansive empathy for me is not just empathy towards others, but also empathy towards yourself. And I talked a little bit about that future self research, right? And for me, if you can close that gap with your future self so that you can really see a clear picture about who you want to be in the future and how you want to be in the future and build that empathy towards your future self, I think you have something very powerful because then you are starting to empathize with yourself and understanding your own needs that you're gonna have in the future and use empathy towards others as well. And that's the power of empathy is that if you use it for yourself and if you use it for others, you can actually see more opportunities for you.

Well, let's finish this by talking about what you call Dimension X, which basically You say that dimension X, your dimension X is unique to you and is the lens through which you see the world, not as it is, but as you are, to gently paraphrase Anais Nin. Your dimension X is the through line of the events of your life that move you forward. Explain that to me. Like, how did you arrive at this dimension X concept? Because it's funny, I think that like, I kind of can predict what your answer to my final question will be based on just having read this.

Perfect. So what's your prediction?

Tell me. Well, okay. So when I read the section on Dimension X, my, you know, one of the, when you write a book called Unmistakable, as you know, from having written a book, if you use a term terminology, you have to define what the hell it means. And so the idea of unmistakable was that this is the thing that's so distinctive that nobody could do it but you. And I, when I saw the description of Dimension X, I thought, you know, what makes you unmistakable is your Dimension X.

Exactly. Perfect.

Love it. Yes.

So what I really wanted to do is, you know, give people these 5 dimensions as I described them, like, you know, with optimism, openness, curiosity, experimentation, empathy. But there's a 6th dimension, which I feel every human being has. And it's a unique superpower that plays a big role in shaping your future. And so helping people to discover their unique superpower and then use it more often, I think is is something I want to help people to do. And so my dimension X is a bias towards action, right? That always helped me to overcome challenges and basically helped me to also discover new opportunities. And so to find your dimension X, I, I guide people through a reflection exercise that really helps you to unpack some of the events in your life and how you responded to them. And this reflection often reveals your unique strengths and passions, and I think it's something powerful that we all need to do more of.

Yeah. Amazing. Well, this has been really thought-provoking and insightful. I love conversations like this because you, in a lot of ways, books like yours and people like you give us more of a compass than a map. So I think that in many ways that is so much more expansive. So, you know, as we always do, even though I kind of answered the question for you, I want to finish with my final question. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

I think I would relate it to the Dimension X, right? Your unique superpower and trying to discover that in your life and finding what your unique superpower is and then using it I think makes you unmistakable.

Yeah. Amazing. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom, and your insights with our listeners.

Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything else? Yes, everywhere, basically. So just, you know, find the book What's Next Is Now: How to Live Future Ready. And you're gonna find some more of my work that I, you know, wanna share with lots of people. And yeah, tell me how, you know, the book helps you to be future ready. I would love to hear the stories and examples from people.

So please feel free to reach out. Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.

Howdy howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

And I'm Steven, your bookish internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn, but here's the catch: Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

That's right, hey hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every every single chapter.

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next.

Spoiler alert: he'll be wrong. News flash: I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellas wherever you get your podcasts.

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