#18 Bullshit Jobs With Carl Davidson!

Foreign.

And welcome to Purpose Fueled Performance with me, your host, Tim Jones, the grow good guy.

Hey, and welcome to another podcast episode, although this one and the previous one are a slightly different event in that these were originally recorded and live streamed on LinkedIn. So it's a new thing I'm trying as part of my content is, yeah, interviewing live streaming people on LinkedIn and then obviously I can extract the audio and put it here as a podcast. So in this episode I'm talking to Carl Davidson, who is a good friend of mine, a very smart guy, very funny guy all round, as we would call them in New Zealand, good buggers who, yeah, we just talk about a little bit about meaning and jobs in particular. So, yeah, trying to get to the. Get to the heart a little bit of perhaps why in a world of abundance and everything that we could ever really hope for, we are lacking so much meaning and purpose. So, yeah, sit back, relax, get yourself a cup of tea, enjoy, Catch you soon. Streamyard or we're live. There we go. I don't believe we're live until I see it live on LinkedIn. So I've got all sorts of windows open here. So if we are live, if you can hear us, if we need proof of life.

Are we truly alive? So welcome back to what is theoretically episode two of what I am work in progress, calling PFP tv. Purpose Fuel, Performance tv. And today I have got amazing human, brilliantly, fantastically educated, funny, humorous and just all around, as we would say in New Zealand, good bugger, Carl Davidson.

Hey, Tim, how am I supposed to. What am I supposed to do with an introduction like that, mate?

I don't know. I was pondering on introducing you and things that people need to know about you, and the one thing that did spring to mind was the fact that we spend a decent amount of time catching up regularly for a cup of tea and a coffee at an establishment that we won't name. But I am hoping to get some sponsorship for PfP TV. So if you'd like to have yourself named, let let me know. And the really interesting thing about you is you typically buy two meals when we meet. You buy some granola or some muesli and some bacon and you give one to the dog, which is the bacon.

Thanks.

Yeah, that's. That, that's entirely true. Yeah.

Anyway, we won't go there.

So purposeful PFP tv, like, what's the point behind this? So what I'm wanting to do is highlight purpose as a thing because I think it's the missing ingredient in A lot of the world. And like I say, other than the fact that Carl is just a really smart. I think you probably are the cleverest guy I know. I'm pretty. Is that, is that, is that, is it Jim Bolger, you know, something about reducing the iq, you know, both nations. I don't know, does that say more about me or you?

And stop it. Yeah.

And we do have some pretty cool conversations around like the state of the world and why humanity is where it's at and what's really going on. And you have a background as a psychologist. We trained in psychology. And you've lectured psychology and research first. Which, which the more I ponder on your name like research first. Like get the data first and then work out what to do. I just thought, well I want to have a chat with you live on LinkedIn. So here we are. So.

Yeah, no it's great. And look, one of the things we talked about a lot right is about the role of work in, in, you know, in a purpose filled life. And I, you know, I guess the, the, the overlap is we do a lot of work around productivity and there's a beautiful link between workplace performance and well being. And I keep thinking about this. You know, you're going to spend 90,000 hours of your life at work. You know, that's like.

Like I don't know you're going to spend at work. So you better damn well be sure you've got a job that has meaning. Right. Meaning for you. And so we've talked a lot about what's happening in the world of work and why are so many jobs meaningless. Right. And what does that do for well being for everybody?

100 and I guess a lot of that stemmed from the David Graeber and his work. Seminal work you could argue on. Are we allowed to say the word? I don't know, do we have to call it BS Jobs? Maybe. Maybe for episode two we can say okay, Jobs. And yeah, I think I'm pretty sure you introduced me to his work and I was just like, okay, this just makes a whole lot of sense. And then there are some really frighteningly good. They're frighteningly good in how bad they are. Statistics that I rely on. I talk about a lot in my kind of work and workshops and presentations is it was a YouGov survey from the British government that found about 43% of British employees felt that their job provides them with no meaning. And in fact they considered their job was making the world a worse place. And then there was which I just think Is, I don't know, it's just like, it's, it's so beautiful in its insanity that.

Oh, well, well, so let's back up a bit.

Yeah, so let's back up a bit. Let's acknowledge, let's acknowledge that David Graber is well missed. He died a couple years ago. And, and we need more people like him. And, and I'm sorry if it offends anybody watching, but it's really important that we, that we do focus on the notion of jobs. Because, you know, Graer was really clear that he's not talking about old fashioned jobs. So he doesn't mean jobs that tie you out and make you dirty and can hurt you. He's talking about jobs that just basically have no meaning, right? And, and he has a whole category of them. I love it. You know, does your job exist to cover up somebody else's mistakes or fix up their mistakes? Does it exist to make them look good? So the duct tape is, you know, does it, do you exist? The Funkies is great, right? Make somebody else look good. What about kind of the goons? Your job is to enforce somebody else to do something. And he's like, you know.

Half the jobs into this category now, what have we done to the world of work?

And I think what was great was again, it's great in how terrible it is that a lot of the people were self identifying and even contacting him and saying, I have a bullshit job.

I've built my life around it and I don't know what to do.

And what's hilarious is like, he's a professor of anthropology, right? And so he writes the book kind of with a tongue in his cheek, knowing full well that he can hardly be the one throwing stones. Right? Greenhouses and stones. But because he really, he really jumps on corporate lawyers as one of his favorites, right? About, you know, do you really.

Think you're actually adding some value? Hey, but there's a, there's a more serious point. Yeah, you go.

I was gonna say, clearly, David, graver views about corporate lawyers are no way, you know, categorized or, or, you know, we don't totally agree. We don't want to be sued by corporate lawyers who.

No, absolutely not. You know, we're citing his work, right? I mean, you know. Yes, but, but I think there's a bigger point in Gra's argument though. So Gra's argument, essentially half the jobs in the modern economy are meaningless and going to destroy your mental health. But he also talks about kind of the creeping bullshitization of Every other.

The job as well. So that might be meaningful and have some purpose. More and more of that work is going to be taken up with meetings and filling out forms and going to committees and all of that stuff. And I mean, he's an academic, so he talks about how today to be an academic means you do less and less research and teaching and more and more admin. Right. So even the jobs that look like they might be things that you would care about and aspire to might actually still drive you crazy because of the way we go about structuring work today.

I mean, and I, I guess I was also pondering on this. It's, you know, like you say, you and I would probably be right up there in terms of potential bullshittery for our job. Know, I do corporate coaching and training. It's like no, no one, no one seemingly wakes up in the morning. I, I know what I need. I need a corporate coach and trainer to come in and help me do stuff.

Yeah, but to what end though, right? No, no, no, come on, Tim. To be fair, I mean, to what end? Right? I mean, yeah, if you were just coaching for the sake of it and all you cared about was getting to the end of the day and handing out the certificates. Yes. Then that probably fits into Graeber's category. But actually if what you're trying to do through that teaching is empower people to live a, a more purpose filled life, then that's got to be a good thing, doesn't it?

I should probably get on and do that then, shouldn't I?

Somebody should. Yeah. During the insights game, we're the market research and, and you know, yes, you can make endless jokes about that. But, but if you think about it actually being about gathering evidence so that you can improve something so the world can change as a result of that, be that in a consumer market or in a policy setting, well, then that's not bad either.

Totally.

You know, and I think we're changing the world one research project at a time.

Well, I mean, you are because you've worked, I know you've worked on some pretty cool research projects over your time.

Yeah.

But I think you're right and you touched on a really cool point. There is almost any job that there's kind of like the, the, the divergent point of, of it goes to bullshittery. Or actually we can make some meaning out of this and absolutely. This was a big part for me. I used to sell medical devices and there's potentially a lot of meaning in that. Like, you know, my job was to stand in the operating theater. This probably some, hopefully none of the orthopedic surgeons are on LinkedIn live at lunchtime you should be operating. But there's probably some, some colleagues of mine who are still medical reps and you know, there's a genuine level of meaning and knowing that you're standing in the corner of operating theatre helping a surgery go to the best of its ability.

Absolutely.

But there was, I guess for me the bullshittery was in some of the.

Interesting activities on a broader scale of the. Some of the organizations and people involved in terms of how the company was ran, which led to me have a little bit of a meaning crisis. But yeah, pretty much any job. And this is where I start when I'm talking with people particularly well with individuals who are seeking more purpose and, or organizations that are like, hey, there's this B core thing. We kind of want to be less bad. You know, big evil bastards incurs. I lovingly refer to writer, corporate. You know, it's all about the money.

Yeah.

We want to start connecting to more good. Well, the good is there already. It's just that you're not recognizing it and Absolutely that's half the battle is, you know, just recognize that you, you can watch the quote. It's a really good. Narrow is the path to lightness, but broad is the path to darkness. Paraphrasing it really badly, but it's like there is a, there's always a glimmer of light to do more good and find more meaning. But it's just there, there, there are kind of broader forces that maybe stop you from doing that.

So stick, stick a psychological perspective on there. Right. So that's the whole notion of reframing. So rather than thinking about how do we reduce all the bad parts in our day to day job, how can we amplify the positive? So, you know, a good example about that is if you went and saw a psychologist and you had.

Just kind of generalized anxiety, reducing that anxiety. What your psychologist would probably do is help you nurture and, and, and cultivate joy in your life. The idea being that if you nurture enough joy, it will crowd out that anxiety. Right. Well, same with, same with purpose. If we can actually rather than think about how do I cut down the amount of meetings and forms I've got to fill out, if I can amplify the piece that I do, that really makes a difference, you know, through that question we've talked about, which is what are the best day your job you've ever had look like right. And why isn't every day like that? Let's, let's focus on what was really good about that and that's your path.

Yeah. So more broadly though, what, what do you think is stopping people.

Finding or connecting to this idea of meaning or purpose? Because like when I run workshops and sessions on purpose and about halfway through I'll typically ask people, so we're half an hour in, you know, or 45 minutes into a 90 minute session. The reason why you're finding some of these questions hard is because this is probably the first time you've spent 45 minutes thinking of purpose in your life. And most people go, yeah, you're right, actually, I've not thought of that. So busyness seems to be one thing, but what else do you see is kind of stopping people finding more meaning at work?

So, but we'll back up a bit. I mean, if you think about what do we actually know about wellbeing? So even if you take a kind of an instrumental lens.

To purpose, so how will purpose improve your life? Right. So that's a pretty simple way. And to have a purpose conversation, you think about the determinants of well being and we know what they are. You know, you need to stay curious, you need to stay active, you need to stay connected and, and you need to find something that you can actually believe in. So purpose is actually a fundamental part of you building a rewarding and a meaningful life. You've got to have something you believe in. You've got to have a mission that you're working towards. And that can be in your private life, it can be in your community, it can be in your church, can be in your sports group, it can be at work, whatever it is, right?

You've got to have something that's big and believe in. So then you think about, well, how do we do that at work? And one of the ways we can do that at work is we can think about what's actually the mission of the company, right? So what is the company really trying to do? So this story is not true. It's entirely apocryphal. But it's the one that everybody tells, right? You know, when JFK is going to Cape Canaveral and the, the janitors there, and he asked the janitor, what are you doing? And the janitor says, I'm putting a.

Man on the moon, sir.

I'm putting a man on the moon, sir. Right, exactly. And I really like that. You know, if, if your company exists to.

Do something wonderful at organization, you're supporting that greater purpose. And so you can own some of that purpose in terms of your own identity and your own kind of metaphysics.

So where did we, where, where have we lost sight of this? Because, because the, the data. I mean. Well, this is, I know we've had the conversation around this in terms of. There's the Gallup poll which is the, the, the annual global poll which, I mean what are the. The latest numbers were sort of about 60 to 70% disengagement at work.

Yeah, yeah. And they're always like that. And the numbers are always like that. In fact than that. You know, like I think 17 to 20% of people actually actively hate their jobs. There's a bunch who just turn up to get the paycheck.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

And steal, steal the pens. That's how I always, that's how I always.

Disengagement group.

Which is hilarious. Right? Yeah. Well, well, it's interesting. I mean clearly at some level it's a product of industrialization and the way that we've gone about creating work. So one of the things we talk about through a productivity and a well being lens is if you think about just something that is so obvious, nobody even talks about.

In the world we live in today, the world of work, we make an assumption that any hour of any day you're at work is like any other hour, any other day. So if you work for 40 hours a week, the idea is I can just put a meeting in any of those hours.

Tim. And you'll be. That's the logic of a machine. That isn't the logic of a human being who's going to go through. He's going to have circadian rhythms, going to be better at some times than others, is going to have some overhang from stuff that's happened in their personal life or even in a meeting they've been in. Might be operating under stress. So actually thinking about how do human beings work and get along? And then could you design a workplace which is, you know, that supports that? I mean it's hilarious to the extent to which modern workplaces and the rhythm of modern work, kind of.

Everything psychology knows about how people perform and get along.

It's. I do often ponder that if you wanted to create a, create a way of living and being that was almost guaranteed to create negative mental health outputs, you'd do harder. You'd be hard pressed to create something better than what we currently have in terms of the pressures that we put on ourselves as a, you know, collectively as a society, in terms of aspirations that we adhere, you know, we're chasing. And how, just how we're running the show, it's like, it just seems, and, and again, you know, I think for me a big part of the mental health piece which isn't really touched on, I don't think enough is that lack of meaning and purpose. If you, you know, you can, you can, you can do the other interventions, go and have a, you know, go and talk to a friend, go and get outside, be active. But if all you're doing is putting a band aid on the broken leg of I hate my job. And I actually see how we're contributing to massive systemic challenges every day that I go to work, that I actually am diametrically opposed to, but I have to pay the bills. Yeah.

So I mean, that's the point, isn't it? I mean the, the issue you haven't raised, which is the really controversial one, is so what's the role of capitalism and all.

Did he, did he just. This, right, did he just drop the C word?

Sociologists. Yeah, I'm sorry, right, but, but sociologists often call the, the period that we're in right now late capitalism. Like it's a different kind of capitalism to the original version. Right? And so what that means is we're all saturated in a world of advertising and marketing, for instance, which is giving us messages all day, every day about what a meaningful life looks like and what happiness looks like. And we've made this joke, right? You know, the idea that if you could just have a bigger house or a newer car or a stainless.

Steel toaster, there's a whole industry that exists to tell you that. And the idea that you as an individual could resist those pressures is nonsense, right? There's no way you're going to be able to resist that because you're swimming in it. Everybody you love is swimming in it and everybody you meet is swimming in it. But, but in a world of finite resources, you know, economic growth forever just simply can't go on like that.

Yeah, and that's, yeah, because I mean that, because it all comes down to the guy, Edward Bernays, and not, not many people, not a lot of people know this. He was the cousin of Sigmund Freud and he took all the work that the psycho, psychoanalytical psychologists were creating in the sort of the, the early tens and nineteen twenties, and basically went to.

Went to the consumer world and said, hey, I can, I can make people buy stuff they don't need. Watch this.

Well, two, two, two things, right? Well, three things. First of all, he was Sigmund Freud's nephew. So. Yeah, nephew, Right. So that's the first thing. Two, he taught America how to eat bacon for breakfast. So every time you eat.

Eggs, Benny in the morning. And secondly, he was the one that got women smoking. He set up the campaign as Tortures of liberty.

Yeah, it's genius, genius, genius. How do we get more people smoking?

Yeah, yeah.

And that's, Yeah, I did, I just. Because I did a lot of research on this when I was sort of trying to work out, well, what, what's missing? Like why have I, why did I go down this wrong path? And this was research I did from you. You probably, you would probably know this number, but maybe four or five years ago, the average amount of money spent globally by the advertising and marketing sector was $500 billion.

Yeah.

And you do not have $500 billion of anti jamming software in your head to, to stop all that stuff coming in. So it's, you're right up against it.

Well, you can't. Right then if you, if you zoom that down to a, an idea that everybody can understand. You know, your smartphone is designed to distract you. That's how its business model works. So the brightest people in Silicon Valley right now are working out how can they get you and keep your attention and get you to click away from what you're doing? So if you think about, you know, some people break out on a cold sweat if you say to them, just turn your smartphone off at the end of the day or try going for a weekend without your smartphone because there's this fear that we're going to miss out on something, something urgent and essential. Right. And again, that's, that's part of the, that's part of the.

Narrative. So you got to always miss opportunity. Yeah.

So in terms of like, so this sort of late capitalist, late capitalism.

When do you see historically, what, when did it, when did we go down, you know, slightly the wrong path? Or is it not as obvious as like a bifurcation? Is it lots of little.

Yeah, I don't think it's that obvious. And we should say, I mean, we're letting our privilege show too. Right. Because it's easy to, it's easy to think that now we have these jobs and you know, pity pours, there's not enough meaning in that work. But.

But, but you know, people have toiled and yes, they didn't necessarily work to the same rhythm we do now, but they work to live and, and we don't need to do that, which has created the opportunity for us to reflect and think and ask, is there a better way? There have been people throughout history that have been able to do that, but they've always been from either the, you know, the aristocracy or the, you know, some sort of privileged class. So we absolutely have a privilege to do it. But the question you keep raising is, given that, given all that privilege and given all the hard work that got us here, surely we can do something better than this.

Exactly that.

I mean, really, I mean, four and a half.

Million years of human evolution.

The answer, yeah, the one that I refer to most frequently is there's a product. It was designed in Australia, I believe, and it's a dog selfie phone attachment so that you can clip it to the top of your phone so that you can get a better picture of you and your dog. And it's like, yeah, is this peak humanity? I mean, the other one was, was it maybe four or five years ago now, a group of Japanese scientists landed a robot on a meteoroid in outer space. You know, we've had Elon Musk land a rocket ship on a floating pontoon in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I'll never forget the day that happened because on the same day we had a guy, we just finished building a house and the guy was trying. The door would either either wouldn't lock properly or it was loose. And I was like, could you just make the door work? And after an hour of fiddling, he said, I'm really sorry, mate, but I can't do any better. And I'm like, you do realize I've just watched a guy landing a rocket.

You can't make my door. Okay, just go.

Yeah, but that's, but that's brilliant too, isn't it? Because, I mean, you're highlighting just how incredibly inventive and, and, and smart human beings can be, right? I mean, you know.

I mean, I, I think about is, you know, the world is so much more affluent now than it's ever been. At least in the west, you know, people are living longer than they ever did. And yet what are we doing with that? You know, and this isn't, this isn't a call to storm the barricades and overturn capitalism. It's just a case of, can we find a way to soften it so that we all have the opportunity to think about what is our legacy and what really matters to us? And, you know, how can we be the best we can be? And that goes back to the graver piece, right? Because often it's Our jobs that create that, that frustrate.

I mean, the thing I should have said at the beginning, you know, I wasn't. I was an academic too, for a long time ago, for a few years. And I left because I ended up hating the job. But I never. I never lost my love for the work. In fact, I still do the work now, the scholarship, the research, the writing, the teaching. But I hated the job. You know, it's like, well, how can we then take the bits of the work that matter and give people joy and present that in a way that doesn't drive them crazy?

Yeah, totally. And then you bang on the money, as far as I'm concerned. You know, we've. A phrase I like to say is, you know, we've never had it so good, but we've never felt so bad. We've got, you know, we have. We have this in our. Everyone pretty much watching. If you're watching this, you've got one of these, you know, you can get the answer to any question that you've ever pondered within milliseconds. You can go on to AliExpress or whatever or Amazon and buy anything that you could possibly imagine. And it will get here, barring. I believe the man in the sewers has moved his ship now. But, you know, in general, within a couple of days, it's here.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we are, we are so depressed and so disconnected if we can. And this is where my hopes. That's my Carl was asking me what's. That's my B Corporation certificate. You know, if more businesses could take the talents, the skills, the competencies, the capital, the. Everything that we've got and actually solve some meaningful challenges or just do something that actually matters to a few more people, we'd be in a better place.

So we, we say all the time, you know, we've created a world where we can do anything we want, but actually we've run out of ideas. Why would we do anything at all? Because we've lost that, that bigger purpose. I mean, there is some serious psychology in here as well, right? So, you know, we talk about. You talk about go online and buy the AliExpress thing. You get the little, little opiate hit in your brain, you think you're going to be happy. It turns up and you're not. That's called hedonic adaption, right? Which is. The idea is that you're going to get used to.

Anything in your life. So if you buy yourself a bigger house and a newer car and a stainless steel toaster, even if you're craving those things, you've had them for a little while, they will cease to bring you any joy. So in terms of consumption, what psychologists say is by experiences and not things, you know, because you, the experience will last much longer than the thing will give you joy. And this goes for, you know, anything almost totally.

So again, something I refer to quite often in my sessions, you know, as, as a jones, I release you from having to keep up with any of us. We are completely full of it. We do not have all the answers, we don't have all the cool toys. You know, it's, you know, there's quite a few sort of cheesy one liners, but, you know, stop competing with who you kind of could be based on someone else's perceived success. Just be a better version of you day by day, play your own game. Absolutely understand the good that you can do and get on with it. But because of that social media and the marketing, it's, it's hard.

But don't forget, okay? But it's important to note that things like social media and marketing work because they play on what goes on in our brains. The fact that we're tribal and that we make those comparisons. I mean, social media is not the problem, it's the symptom of a much bigger problem. Right. And distraction by your smart devices isn't the problem.

The problem is you're craving. So the thing about keeping up with the Joneses is that you always, your brain's wired to make upward social comparisons. So you'll notice that when your wife's talking about can we have a bigger house? Or I'm talking about, can we get a faster car? You're never looking around at the people that have a smaller house or a shittier car. You're always looking at your mates that got a bigger house and a nicer car. And if you've got some rich mates, that's a pretty, pretty difficult place to be, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, because you're always thinking, I could have that, I can have that. So here's the great example of that. I love this story.

The most dissatisfied airlines used to fly around the world are people in first class on average. And the reason people in first class are the most dissatisfied is if you're flying first class all the time, you have friends that have private jets, right?

So you're not thinking about those suckers down a row 48 who are jammed in, right? You're thinking about your mates that didn't have to go through security and have just Taken off to the Caribbean in their private jet. Up with social comparisons. Yeah, yeah.

Which is tough. So.

It seems to me, you know, in all the research that I undertook, in terms of like, purpose, like, what is it? Well, when I discovered that maybe purpose was the thing that had been missing and I'd been sent down this path, you know, been on that hedonic treadmill, a big thing for me. Maybe we'll touch on this in a minute. Is what I call that tribalization. So, you know, between 0 and 7, you basically are created as you and your belief systems and where that takes you.

You know, for us to have better systems, we need better organizations that demand better systems. But to get better organizations, we need better people, which is. I kind of keep coming back to the fact that there's the individual, but the individual working to the betterment of the collective seems to be the sweet spot. Because if you try and collectivize, you end up where we seem to have tried some situations around the world where it's all about collectivism and it's, you know, every.

You. The.

The collective above the individual. And clearly, you know, dear old Maggie, there's no such thing as society. Just do you. Every time I read that, I just do you. Did you. Did you really say that?

I know, but hold on, but rewind a bit. Right? So I mean, even if you're thinking at the level of individual, you still.

Got to think about what are the assignments. So imagine a world. Right? This is Brigman's work. You know, the guy that wrote Utopia for Realists just wrote that brilliant book.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And. And why that's a great book, a great read, is because essentially the argument is what happens if you start from the assumption that people are good? So what happens if you. You just start from assumption that people are good and they want to be excellent? Imagine. Imagine the differences that would make. Go back to workplaces. Every workplace policy is based on the.

On that one person centers.

Break the. Break the rules. Try and rip you off. Imagine if you wrote policies for the.

99 in your workplace with a single policy that says, just don't be a dick.

I was gonna. I was gonna. How do I weave that in from that post? Cool. Yeah. Obviously you just.

That's why I love that post so much. Right. You know, like. Yeah, what's. What's our policy on drinking a workplace? Yeah. What's our policy on driving work cars?

Don't be a dick. Yeah, yeah.

Shout out to Michael Philpot.

Yeah, I'm surprised he hasn't. He's not commenting and giving you some abuse yet, but he's obviously out for lunch.

So. And I, I hear a totally and I've dug into. I'll make, try and make sure I put a link to Brigman's work or some of his resources. And, and part of me is like, it's all good. You're right. Most people are brilliant. But then you go and meet some humans and you go, oh, my word, like, we're doomed.

Well, again, let me, let me stick my psychologist hat on again. So in psychology, there's a thing called the fundamental attribution error. Right. Right. And, and what.

This says is that you try and describe your own behavior. You're really sensitive to the external conditions under which your behavior occurs. So let's say you go home, you've had a really tough day, and you snap at your wife. Right. You know, at some level you'll go, that's not really me. I had a really tough day. I'm tired. And even when you apologize, you'll still refer to those external conditions that drove your behavior. But when we see somebody else behaving badly that we don't know and love, we attribute that to something fundamental about them. So somebody else snaps and it's like, well, they're just a. Angry, you know, or a womble or something.

Right. And, and we. But to ourselves, we always give ourselves a break. So that's when you start thinking about, are other people bad or good? Do they have good intentions? Just because we see them behave badly doesn't necessarily mean they don't have good intentions. It could have just been a really bad day. 1. Somebody said to me years ago, and I've always loved this, try and seek explanations of the behavior of other people in charity. Try and think, what is the most generous interpretation of that behavior. So if you see somebody driving like an idiot.

Yeah.

Either they're an idiot or they're in a hurry to get somewhere. Yep.

They've got to get to the hospital because maybe they're not sick or they're.

Just something they need. Yeah. You know, and that way, suddenly you feel much more generous towards them because we've all been there and we know what that feels like.

Yeah. And I think. Yeah. I guess that plays out more broadly in the whole.

Just society in general. You know, there are some people who. Yeah. Will whatever system you created to try and make sort of the closest to utopia you could get, where everyone's having a great time, there's always going to be someone who wants to game the system, but that number is actually generally quite low and like you say, there's probably a reason as to why they're behaving that way. And if you can get to the heart of that, at the bottom of that, you'd be able to solve some stuff.

And, and if you put an evolutionary perspective over this, don't remember once upon a time, don't forget once upon a time we would have lived in small tribes. So if that person tried to game the system, we might let them get away with it once or twice, but they would banish them and banishment was a death sentence. Right. Because if you didn't have a tribe to look after you and feed you, you're not going to make it on your own. Yeah, but now we don't live in tribes and you know, absent things like social media, you can get away with. Yeah, yeah.

And that was, that was an interesting piece of read a few years ago again was how the advent of agriculture kind of was perhaps the beginning of the lack of empathy because I can now grow everything that I need and I don't need car. Whereas, whereas two weeks before I had my farm all ready to go, you know, you might have some, I don't know, some boar, wild boar meat, and I've got some berries and we put them together, we can make a really nice dinner together. Whereas now I don't need you.

Yeah, but you might not know, but you're talking in an instrumental sense. Right. But I mean think about all that research about, well being, about communities, about friendship groups. You absolutely need people who care about you, around you because that's, you know, you don't just need your tight knit family.

Group. You're also going to need a bridge to need four or five really good close friends. You need somebody in your life who you can call at 3 o' clock in the morning to come and bail you out of whatever it is.

Right, yeah.

And, and no matter how successful you are by other measures, if you don't have that kind of core group of support at some level your life will just feel like it's a failure.

Totally. But it seems to be that the last, you know, I look back on growing up as a kid in the 80s and 90s, you know, you had, you know, in the UK, where I grew up, we had the no Fear brand. You know, he who dies with the most toys wins. You've got Maggie, Maggie and Ronald kind of going, yeah, just do your own thing, man, you know, fight your own battle, you know, again, you know, just play your own game. It just, I don't know, I just kind of feel like there's a lot of things going against.

Against the, the ease of you being more community focused in the modern world, whereas compared to that tribe.

But what a sociologist would say is, you know, the reason why those that no Fear brand and that whole narrative played so well in the 90s. Is it fat? It fitted beautifully with kind of neoliberalism. It was sort of the underpinning of neoliberalism and we know how.

How neoliberalism ended up. You know, the narrative often follows the much broader power settings in society. And now the great news is we've got really good empirical psychological research that shows that none of those things are going to work for you. They're not going to bring you happiness. They're going to, you know, they're not going to contribute to your well being. They're actually going to contribute to your, you know, to you becoming sick, all of those other things. Which is why I said at the beginning you can take an incredibly selfish view about being altruistic, right? You can take the view that being.

Altruistic and will be the best thing you can do for you. We say to people that designing a psychologically sophisticated workplace might be the most economically rational thing you can do in terms of getting people to stay engaged, to be productive and to, you know, and remain at work.

And that is exactly the same when I sort of talk about purpose. Like if you, if you truly connect to your purpose, you are contributing to the highest level of good that you can, to the sort of the broadest level that you can. And by doing that you get the deepest sense of contentment. So it's actually like a very deep act of selfishness. But you're also providing good as an outcome. So why wouldn't you, why wouldn't you do it?

Yeah, I've had this, this conversation with lots of friends of mine who are economists and at some point those words cease to have any meaning, right? So if I'm being altruistic because it works for me and it works for everybody else, what does it matter, Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We just want you to be, yeah, we just don't want you to be that kind of Margaret Thatcher. That's. There is no society. It's all about you.

Let them eat cake.

Yeah, got you.

So how, how do. What's like, purpose is so great. Like having more meaning in life is so great, yet the, the, the data is that a lot of people don't have it. So what what is the block? Where do you see, like, what. What could. Someone's listening to this and they're like, I need to. Like, what's the number one thing that's probably stopping them finding more meaning from your perspective, from a research perspective?

Yeah. Well, two things. So, I mean, you know, the research says two things. One is start where you are and start small. So.

Everybody already more empowered or more authentic than other parts of their lives, you know, actually think about what that is. And you see this in New Year's resolutions and other places like that, right? So a lot of people already know. So that's the first thing. Start where you are and start small. The second thing is the flip side of that, which is sometimes it's really, really hard to be able to identify what it is that you want, but it's pretty damned easy to identify the things you don't want. So, you know, one of the paths towards a more meaningful life or life with purpose is just to stop doing the things you don't like.

You know, crazy idea.

That's easy stuff about being part of a. Having a much bigger narrative, a much bigger vision.

Nice.

I mean, one of the. One of the. You know, one of the things people play is the. The deathbed game, right? Which is so fast forward to the end whenever it is for you. And what is it that you want people to be able to say about you? What do you want as your epitaph? What do you want people to say at your funeral? You know, that we all heard it, right? You know, no one ever said in those dying moments, God, I wish I'd spent more time at the office or, you know.

Yeah.

I just wish I'd uploaded my. That, you know, think about you. You introduced me to this. The top five regrets of the dying.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yep. Not. And although having said that, there's a couple of people I know who actually probably would be. Can I just have one more go on Excel? But they are deeply, deeply bad people.

I think Michelle Sharp actually might be one of those people, though she does quite like Excel.

Yeah, right. Shout out to Michelle. That's. That's hilarious. Yeah.

But, yeah, and this. This is the thing. I don't know, like, for me, it just. When I did all my research on purpose and what is it? And why don't we have it? You put it all together and it's. It's almost screamingly obvious what's wrong and what you need to do. And yet we're still. We still don't seem to be there. Yeah, I Mean the top five regrets of those. I'm Close to Death was written by a. She was a lady working in a hospice in the uk and she basically just sat down and was having, initially she was having conversations with people, you know, getting to the end of their life and she would just be asking them, you know, so what did you like about your life? What did you, what would you like to have done? And the number one, which, which just closes the loop on the purpose thing so well, and actually we can bring in this tribalization piece on the back of this is I wished I'd lived a life true to myself, not the life that others had wished for me. And that for me is like, that's at the heart of why most people are struggling and suffering needlessly with this complete lack of meaning in a world of abundance where we can have pretty much anything that we want. And for me, that, that looked like going to a good school in the uk, but the outcome that the school wanted was for me to go to university. There wasn't. There was. And the we talked about framing. Their framing wasn't would you like to go to university or would you like to leave and start a business? It was, which universities are you applying for, Timothy? Oh, okay, well, I guess I'm going to university then because as a 16, 18 year old boy, you have no to make it, to make a decision. And so I was kind of sent on this path and for me it was the earthquakes followed by birth of child. Clearly not much work for me done on that. Thank you to my wife for the heavy lifting. That was like the, the what, what I guess would be called a subconscious awakening that I had to kind of go, what are you doing? And I think it's, it's not uncommon that for guys that sort of 35 to 40 age group, that's where I get a lot of people coming to me saying, I had a conversation with a couple of guys last week. They're like, I just don't know what I'm doing. Like, it's just all hit me in the face and I don't know.

Yeah, so there's a, there's a phenomenon in psychology called temporal landmarks. One of the, one of the most interesting. Well, a fun study in psychology is they analyze people who signed up for the New York marathon. And you are much more likely to be 29, 39 or 49 than any other age. So people wanting to, wanting to run that marathon before they hit.

Yeah.

So the idea, yeah. So the idea of a temporal landmark is really good. Right. Like, you know, by the time you're 30 or 40, you know, where do you want to be and who do you want to be and, and how, you know, you.

Get there. To my thing, it might seem like it's just too big. Like, you know, like I've got to go from this life where I don't seem to have much agency because I've got a wife and kids and I'm working, my wife's working and we, we've got bills to pay, we've got kids in school and, you know, I'm running frantically to stand still to this kind of nirvana idea of a life of purpose. Right. And so I think the question is not how do we get to there, but how do we introduce some purpose into that everyday life? And, and I like to think it's a cascade. Right. You know, once you start making a purpose.

Full choice, you'll be ultimate.

Totally no 100. And that, you know, that's. That would be exactly my advice to anyone is find, find some meaning where you are right now because there will be meaning. You, like, you know, if you were still working in university, you know, it's like, well, you, it is meaningful what you're doing. It's just there are other things around it that are not so meaningful. And like you say, it's okay, cool, now I've recognized it's, it's not and it's interesting. Shout out to Holly Woods, a colleague of mine in the Global Purpose Leadership Group. She, she calls it the golden thread. And it's kind of, you know, you doing research and writing and teaching is, is obviously a core component of who you are. At the deepest level of Carl Davidson, you're still doing it. You're just doing it in a different manner, in a more commercial setting in your own business, where you get to, I guess, do mostly what you want to do, obviously, without being. But I know that you'd be a benevolent dictator and you would def. You would get my vote to lead.

At least Christchurch, if not New Zealand.

Yeah. So a key issue here is that the question of absorption. Right. So there's just been a.

Really good global stuff. You know, hilariously, they end up just exactly where the Buddhists left off, which is you need to find those moments in your life where you are fully inhabiting a moment. They, and they call it absorption rather than mindfulness or whatever. Right. But that's a great way for you to start identifying where in your life are you, you know, like. So for me, it's writing amongst Other things. But often I'll sit down, I'll start writing, and two hours will go by and I will feel like I'm, you know, the writing's happening through me rather than happening forcefully. It doesn't always happen like that. But, yeah.

At its best, that's what it. You know, I'm right where I need to be and I'm connected into the flow of the universe. And that all sounds way too hippie, but it could be anything, right? Yeah. Yeah. So thinking about, where are you absorbed? You know, so we say to people, look for those moments when you're fully absorbed and also trust your irritation. So where you're getting irritated, you know, pay attention to that irritation because it's telling you something important.

Yep. 100. So I guess two parts for me on that one. So the. The flow or that absorption. I think that the reason why that is so important is because when you are in a state of flow, you lose track of time. And when you have lost track of time, getting building on your hippie. You started it. You.

You. There's a.

You. Well, you are literally having a transcendental experience. You. You are outside of your lived bodily experience. So states of flow. So I. I typically advise people there's three ways to connect to purpose in your life. It's serve flow, grow. So old mate, Gandhi had it right. You know, the best way to find yourself is in the service of others. So be clear on how you are serving another human. Whether it's in business or go and volunteer at a charity, go and serve another human.

Flow are critical because if you're having a transcendental experience, you are outside of yourself. You are therefore doing something that is bigger than you. So if you can serve someone else by using your states of flow, you're in a really good place. And then you need to grow because as you start doing, as you said, start doing some good, you want to do more good, and you want to do more good more regularly. And so you have to grow. And this is what becomes then the true transcendence. And this is why it's interesting, at the basis of every religious belief system is the idea of a death and a rebirth is that you have to kill yourself off and become a new, better version of you so that you can go and do more good. Hence, grow. Good.

Yeah. No, I love it. And look, I know you did the research, but that aligns perfectly with what we're seeing in the psychological world, right? Those that serve flow and grow. It's just. It's just. It's a perfect summary. That should be your next corporate T shirt. I'm a. I'm a medium. I'm a medium.

I think it's great. And the serve one's really good too, you know, because again, that's great advice for people that have time on their hands and you know, like, how do you, how do you actually.

Find as you go and help other people? And again, that can be the most selfish thing you're ever going to do. Go and volunteer, you know, and do it and do it because it will, it will fill a hole in your life.

Yeah.

And at the same time you. And then you'll do some good in the world and it will inspire you to want to do more good.

Do more good. There was. But it's also the thing that irritates you. That's the other piece of advice. I'm just going to try and find this because it was a genius. I want to read it because it was genius. The other part. And this, this is the part. There's. There's a lot of what I call Purpose light out there in the world. It's like it's unicorns and rainbows. Follow your, follow your passion. What are you good at? Just do that. And. And away you go. And that is definitely a part of it, but it's not the full story. And let me just find this. I've got to find this because it was. Come on.

You keep looking. I mean, so that I think of that. Purpose light, where it's informed by psychology, has been quite a good gateway drug. You know, like, so there's a lot of rubbish around, but there's actually a whole lot of life hacks that are informed by good psychological evidence. And they're often really good gateway. Gateways into more important changes you can make. But once you can actually see the value of them, you know, you can actually trust that they'll make a difference. That might make you hungry for a more significant.

Yeah, but it's. So this is building on two parts of it. So in terms of where you could serve, you know, what, what is it that you see in the world that makes you angry or frustrated? So the thing that like the thing that winds you up. Well, pause for a minute and just have a check. Hang on. Am I actually contributing to that? Either wittingly, you know, sins of omission, sins of commission. Am I wittingly or unwittingly actually making that worse? But secondly, if you have skills and resources to use your flow and grow to serve solving that problem. But this is the other thing. I'm going to read this out. So think of someone or something you hate. Now write down everything you despise about them in a long list. All the things about them that enrage you, that make you cry out at the injustice, the venality, the idiocy and cruelty of that personal thing. Now take that list and write your own name at the top of it. Say, say hello to your shadow.

I'm going to talk about Jung now. I mean, I'm surprised we haven't dropped nature. I'm surprised we haven't dropped nature.

We'll get there. We'll get there in a minute. Well, the two things, it's like, yeah, this, this seems to be at the heart of it. Like, like I say, the path to righteousness. I think, I think it's a. It's a song, it's a high energy dance song that has this quote and it's like the. The path to righteousness is. Or the path to illumination is narrow. The path to destruction is wide. And.

There was another quote I heard on this other day summarizing the same thing. It's like true illumination in a Jungian sense has to be. You go into your shadow, you find all those bits of you. This is all that tribalized. Why am I, who I am? Who and what has made me who I am? Burn off the bits of me that I don't like, that don't serve me anymore. How do I now become who I could be? And that really is the ultimate purpose. Question is, who could I be? And. But it's hard. And I think it was a 26, which is one University of Virginia study. Sorry, 2017 University of Virginia study. They got a whole lot of students to go into a room one by one. And I said, right, what we want to do is spend 10 minutes alone with nothing but your own thoughts.

I love the study. Yeah.

If you can't do that, self administer an electric shock and we'll let you out. 70% plus, remind me, 80% self administer the electric shock. That's why I think it's hard to find purpose.

Well, and most of those were men, right? Like, so men were much more likely than women to do that. So there's a gender.

Component of that. Hey. Earlier, which is the thing that I think a lot of people overlook on this journey, is that it's okay to ask for help. In fact, again, there's really good empirical evidence that shows people are much more likely to help in every way than you could ever imagine. So being you know, being able to ask for help from others is really, really key. But so is focus. You know, you talked about making a list and putting your name at the top of it. We often work with companies at the beginning of the year and we, we get them to write down 15, you know, 15 goals for the year.

Yeah. And then we get them to. From 12 and just focus on three. You know, like focus isn't, you know, like, because focus is important and as soon as you split your attention, the chance of you achieving those goes down. So, you know, just two or three big things.

So the other one. So I want to definitely go a bit Carl Jung on you. Were you named after Carl Jung? Was that, did you change your name?

No, no.

But that wasn't the other, the other one is Maslow.

Yeah.

And not. Again, not a lot of people know this, but his hierarchy of needs, when he, just before he died, he had an unpublished updated version. And above self actualization, he had worked out that transcendental purpose absolutely was the answer. And again, it's, it doesn't seem to be even that well taught to psychology students, let alone more broadly the wider species. So what's all that about?

But that goes back to what we said at the beginning though, right. So you've got to acknowledge our privilege. So, you know, that's, that's exactly the point. So we can have a conversation about transpersonal experiences because we're well fed, we're warm, we're healthy.

You know, all of those psychological needs are taken care of. Which frees us up to think, is there something more going on than this? So you said, you know, how did we get here? You know, there's, there's both a negative driver and a positive driver that's brought us to this moment to be able to sit down right now in safety and have a conversation about, you know, how do we find more purpose.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a luxury. Right. But it's great that we. Is this.

Yeah.

I mean, this is so tough. Yeah.

What's the.

And we, and we asked this, we asked this in our well being seminars.

Right. How, how far better go before the only thing anybody would care about is how are we going to get fit tonight.

Yeah. Well, clearly based on lockdowns around the world. Not very far.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, what do you mean there's no toilet paper?

Yeah. We get one boat stuck in the Suez Canal and the price of gas goes up around the world.

Yeah. Go figure.

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I want to say one other thing too which is a great insight from psychology that isn't sexy, is that often we focus on.

Creating new things. We overlook the value of maintenance. So what I mean by that is it's easy to envision a different you or the ideal you, and. And much harder to think about all the things you're doing at the moment that are working really well.

Yep.

Right. And. And being. Being really happy about that. Owning. Owning that.

Yeah. And I guess it's sort of that negativity bias as well. You're more likely to remember the bad stuff that happened during your day and how awful and, you know, despicable you are as a human and all the things you haven't done today that you should have done. And. Yeah, rather than going, actually, I did do something meaningful today. Yeah.

Well, you're adding two things there, so that negativity bias and that tendency to catastrophize. So not only are we much more likely to remember the negative, we are much more likely to pile negative upon negative, and suddenly we're a worthless person, Our life is empty and meaningless. Rather than, I just had a really bad day, got a few things wrong. But, you know, and then.

And then just as you're thinking that, the Facebook ad pops up saying, buy this and all your troubles will go away. Yeah. So being.

Going easy on yourself, you know, treating.

Yourself with the same kind of respect you love is really important. Again, this sounds like it comes out of the world of, you know, hippie.

It'S 101, but. And giving yourself some. Some slack.

Totally. And I think that's. Yeah, we're all. I was talking to someone last night, someone who just about to start doing some work with. And we. And we had a phone call after work hours, and we were talking about, you know, parenting and partners and. And stuff. And, you know, it's. It's.

There's.

There's no manual. You're just thrown into the world and I will have a. Have a kid and go and get a job and good luck. It's. I mean, it is quite insane, really, when you sort of think the responsibility that we shouldered with.

Well.

No, no, Homo sapiens have been around for at least quarter of a million years. We've been having kids that long. Right. So, yeah, you know, mostly we're doing okay. I mean, if. If your idea of success is, I need this kid to get into the best. Yeah. You know, if that's what you're measuring your success.

Yeah.

You're probably in for a bad time. But if.

But that's. If that's okay. You, you just pay that guy some money, don't you? And it's all good.

Is that.

Point that my wife and I keep making is we're not raising children, we're raising adults.

Yes. Nice.

You know.

Yeah, yeah. How would this, how would this little human become a big human now?

We're running out of time. Yeah. Sorry. I just want to. The thing, I want to say that I know we're running out of time now, but to recognize that not making a choice is still making a choice. So psychologists talk about this a lot. So people often drift because they think they're waiting for a moment to make a choice. Like an act of choice. I mean, like an act of commission. Yes. But actually as you talked about with lying, not making a choice, the act of omission is itself a choice.

A choice you just maybe haven't. Yes. Or rationalized it so deeply. And I think that that is a. Is a big thing that does sort of stop people maybe going on that purpose journey. Certainly my experience is two parts to it. It's almost like a sense of Stockholm syndrome. Yeah. My life's may be lacking in meaning, but what if it was worse, you know, if I, if I change this. And I guess it's this one straight from Michael Philpott. People only change when they're sick and tired of being sick and tired. And we typically wait for a truly, you know, traumatic event or near death experience before we make, you know, we need that fire underneath us to.

Yeah. Well, and the reason for that, again, psychological hat on is because we often.

Mistake reversible decisions for being irreversible. So you know, what we talk about a lot in my world is if it's an irreversible decision, you better choose carefully. Right. But if it's a reversible decision, you might as well just experiment, move fast and break things. That goes for the workplace and it goes for your personality.

Yeah.

Because you can just reverse it.

Totally. And what is it we typically regret the things that we didn't do rather than the things that we did do that didn't work out. So.

Yeah.

Yeah, there we go. So if maybe you didn't change the research first tagline to just do it. I'm sure that hasn't been taken.

Awesome. Hey, well, you have to go. Thank you so much for agreeing to be part of my little psychological experiment as much as anything. Yeah. If people want to get hold of you, how do they do that? I've got to research first. Banner. Yeah.

I'm on LinkedIn I'm all over the place.

Nice. Thoroughly recommend. If you are looking for some research, Carl is your man. And I should also say before we finish off, those are genuine books behind you. On a zoom call earlier on today, someone said, oh, I love your background. No, those are all actually and your room is just full of books. So he genuinely does know stuff.

Yeah, this is my happy place. Hey, this was great fun, Tim. Thanks a lot.

I really appreciate it. Awesome.

All right, cheers.

Cheers, mate. Catch you later.

Hey, well, thank you for tuning in. If you tune in live. Thank you so much. If you are watching this on a replay either here or it might be on YouTube, this here being on LinkedIn. I also might try and put this one on my podcast. Thank you so much. Yes, it's number two in a series that I'm hopefully going to kick on with. So yeah, plan is to interview more people who know stuff about purpose. I'm going to really dig into some of the B Corporation community and get to speak to those people and see what purpose fuel performance in real life looks like. People really, really doing it. So yeah, thank you for tuning in. Let me know if you want me to interview anyone specifically or if there's any big questions you'd like to have answered on this platform. But between, between now next time, which might be next week, I don't know, see how we go. Thank you very much. Catch you soon. Ta da. End Broadcast.

Foreign.

That's a wrap. Hey, thank you so much for listening into my podcast. I hope you found it informative and inspirational. I'd love to know where you are on your purpose journey and if you have any specific questions or people you'd like me to interview to help you on that journey, please do let me know. Also, feel free to connect with me on other social media platforms. You can check out all those links in the show notes below. And if you want to see how I might be able to help you specifically on your purpose journey, you can go and check out my website, www.growgood.co or drop me a line by email timogrogood.co. all those links will also be in the show notes. I would genuinely love to hear from you. But anyway, until next time, go well and keep seeking that purpose fuel performance in your life.