watch this if you want to find your purpose in life

Like, why does life need to be meaningful? It doesn't. I mean, a lot of Olympians have huge depression after they get a gold. Because now what? Like, of course, if he doesn't make you happy, you suck at it.

Like, what is that to make you feel happy?

Yeah, well, right off the bat, I don't optimize for subjective well being. I do that more for the audience. That's never been a goal of mine. I think When I was 19 or 20, I said, Fuck happiness, and I've pretty much stuck with that. There's two concepts I'll bring up on this. So one is people who want to be happy treat it like I want to eat so good, I'm never hungry again, or I want to sleep so well I never need to sleep again. But I think happiness is much more like that than it is this achievement thing that you check a box of. It doesn't really work that way. Secondly, I think that all the people that I know who obsess about happiness are the least happy people outwardly, sure, but they're the ones who are committing suicide. I worry about that because it's a goal, that by having it as a goal, it automatically sits outside of you, which means there's space between you and the goal, which means you're not actually happy. My goal is to be happy, which means you aren't right now. So I have made meaning, which is ironic because I don't find things inherently meaningful, but I have found meaningful work as I deem meaningful to be the thing that I derive the most joy from. And so I have it broken down to a more tactical level, which is what days have. I enjoyed and looked back on and been proud of myself for that day. And over probably a three or four year period, I just looked at the good days and the bad days and I looked at what the good days had in common and looked at what the bad days had in common. I've just over time, minimized the things that happen on the bad days and maximize the things that happen on the good days. Even. Even to big investments. Like, I am much happier when I work out. Like, rather not even much happier when I work out. When I look back on my day, this was a good day, almost always has a workout in it and usually with people I like. And so workouts take probably longer for me than most people because I'm not the. I'm in and out in 45 minutes and I did my morning routine and I can send out 40 emails from Whatever. Everyone was different. But for Me, I work out for like two hours. It's cause I like to. And so I do it and I do it with people that I like. And so I'm willing to invest the time because what's the point anyways? Why make all the money to what, enjoy it? I enjoy doing that. So I do that every day. I like writing, so I write for four to six hours a day. And those are probably the two biggest activities that I do. And if I can write with somebody that I like, then I do something I like with people I like. And I think that that's probably been the single simplest formula is doing things you like with people you like and trying to maximize as much time as I can on that bucket. And then everything else I try and minimize is overhead or outsource. Most people are like, why am I not happy? They also see a problem with them not happy. They have it as an expectation of the world and the universe that they should be happy. Right? And to the same degree people have an expectation that life should be meaningful. Like why does life need to be meaningful? Why does the universe need to make you happy? It doesn't. You can choose that, but it's just like not a requirement. And so they think there's something wrong with it when in reality, like you're alive and you might procreate, you might not, but like that's the only reason that you're here. Oh man, there we go. Broke my wedding ring. It's a sign. I don't know. Silicon. It's like my third one. I break them every like two years. As a side note, this is fucking. Oh cool. Oh good.

Take that shit again on 30.

It smells like commitment. So like if I, if I boil it down like happiness is fleeting because you get hungry again, you get sleepy again. Meaning you can only really tell at the end, like, did I do something that contributed? But on the day to day perspective, I can know that what I'm doing is useful. And if what you're doing is not useful, then I think that that's harder. And I also think that men and women are different here. So we use like happy. I hate the term in general, but like I think men and women want different things out of life and I think we bucket them together. It's also the same degree, like why therapy with men doesn't work necessarily the same. We have to have a different approach. Like people think men need more love. And I just don't think that's true. I think we want more respect. And like you get respect from being useful. And so I make that the goal. Like, no one casts aside a man who is useful. And being useful is an attractive trait. Like, if you see someone who's really good at something, it's hard, like, for like women, it's a contributing member of society. They do stuff that help other people. We want them here. You get status from that. And so that means that skill mastery in a very real way can help you attract the mate you want. Which is why I indexed a ton of my life around getting better at stuff. And also from a stress perspective. I remember I see sometimes these podcasts from successful entrepreneurs and, and they're like, man, I'm still worried I could lose it all tomorrow. I don't have that. I'm genuinely not afraid of losing it all tomorrow because I have lost it before and I got it back. And the thing is, if you were lucky, because there are guys who get lucky and if you are lucky, then absolutely you should be worried about it because if you do lose it, you don't know how to get it back. But if you have skills, I know that I can go to any business and help grow it. And that's valuable, that's useful. And so even reframing the word value as usefulness is probably also an easier way to do it for people to kind of like, comprehend. But I think if you make that the goal, it also takes it away from you. So the reason I hate. So there's a. I would say a friend. Ish. Well, I have a friend who's single and struggles because he's not happy. Successful, but not happy. And so he obsesses on happiness. And I was like, do you know that when you obsess on happiness, all you do is think about you all day? It's all you're doing. You're just thinking about you all fucking day. And like, how useless. And so the nice thing with being useful is that in order to be useful, you have to be useful to other people. Like, no one can be useful on their own. You have to be useful to other people. So there's a service element, but there's also a self improvement element, which is to be useful to other people, you need to improve yourself. And so that's why I think being useful has been probably my day to day goal of what I need to do. And that served me well not saying anyone should or should they can do whatever they want. But for me that's helped me.

It for sure offers clarity. They've done brain scans, people with depression in the Areas of the brain that are responsible for, for, like, self reflection and rumination are, like, overly active.

Yeah, they think about themselves too much. I mean, this is a Tony Robbins quote. He said, if you stay in your head, you're dead. And because it rhymes, it's true. And so. But for real, though, like, when I was 19, the reason I said fuck happiness is, like, I realized that I was in this cycle, this loop of trying to like everything you analyze of like, does this make me happy? Does this pizza make me happy? Does this class make me happy? I mean, I quit pre med because I thought biology didn't make me happy. Now I'm very glad that I did because I like business a lot more now. But that was the reason I did it. I studied really hard, I did well, but I was like, this doesn't make me happy. Of course, if fucking doesn't make you happy, you suck at it. You're learning something. You're gonna suck for a very long time. It's only when all these skills go together that you'll be good at something and you'll actually be useful to society. Of course, you learning the fucking chromosomes doesn't do anything, but it's because of what it shows a school that you're willing to put up with so that you might be useful to society in the particular skill set. And so, yeah, I think being useful is a far better goal. And this is me just shouting out specifically to men, if you could just try this on for a month. If you're happy, do whatever the fuck you want. Really, just do whatever you want either way. But if what you're working isn't working for you or what you're doing isn't working for you, I would try this on for size one. Say that you're gonna stop trying to be happy. Just give up on it. Just like, just stop thinking about it. Like, I'm not. You know what? I'm actually okay with being unhappy. I'm fine with it. I'm still here. Like, it doesn't mean anything. Okay? And so then you can take action despite your lack of happiness and think, okay, how can I be useful to other people? And I think if you do that, you'll actually start focusing on the tasks and on people outside of yourself, and you'll be amazed at how much better you feel overall. And what happened to me when I went into my fuck happiness thing is that I stopped thinking about happiness altogether. And then, like, years later, I was like, you know what? Because I was so used to. Because I wanted to label myself that way and be okay with it. People would ask me like, hey, xyz. I'd be like, oh, I'm not a happy person. I would just, like, say that up front. That way I didn't have to. And I remember catching myself probably like five years later, and I was like, huh? I say that. I was like, but I actually really do like my life a lot. So I stopped saying I'm not a happy person because, like, I actually kind of do like my life. But I feel like I only got to liking my life by being willing to not like what I was doing for a long period of time.

It's like, also, what time frame are you thinking about?

Totally.

Like, most of the things that feel good for you are, what is it? Feel good or bad for you in the long run. But also, like, things that feel bad are probably good in the long run.

I actually, I only disagree because it's so vague. Because, like, I think people just only think of the things that, quote, feel good. But there's tons of things that feel good that are not bad for you. Like, sex feels good, it's not bad for you. You know, like, it's just. We immediately jump to, like, cigarettes, booze, you know, whatever. But it's really, anything in excess is bad for you. Like, you have so much sex that you don't go to work, you don't eat. It's bad for you. You know what I mean? If you like, even cigarettes, like, if you have one cigarette a week doesn't do anything for you. Probably you smoke more than that just walking outside, you know what I mean? For a week in terms of just CO2 from cars. So it's always, you know, it's always in the dose. Yeah.

Maybe the usefulness of that.

People want a binary when it's really a continuum.

What do you mean by that?

People say, oh, I like it. Therefore they want a simple rule. But, like, life has way more continuums than binaries. Like, good and bad. First off, define good, define bad. Second off, like it or not, how much, to what degree, how often, what is good, Whatever. I mean, a really fun one is that. I think so. Dr. Kashi and I have talked about this, but there was this whole thing on drinking a glass of wine every day. Resveratrol is one of the key ingredients that's anti cancer fighting, whatever. But if you look at, like, centenarians, people who live over 100, a disproportionate amount of them smoke. And so I find that interesting because I think that genetically it means that that person probably has some sort of protection against lung based carcinogens, which then means they get all the benefits of cigarettes and none of the downsides. And so they're able to basically benefit from all the stress reducing components of nicotine and smoking, but then just don't get cancer. And so I would argue that like drinking a glass of wine every night has less to do with the resveratrol and more to do with the stress reduction on a continuous basis.

So anyways, so interesting, like the blue zone research, right? Like where those people live.

That's diet stuff. More. So more diet stuff? Yeah, it's more diet stuff. Why do people smoke a lot everywhere but here? Yeah, we started it, spread it everywhere else and then said it wasn't cool anymore. Everyone else was like, what the fuck? China's like, yo, we still smoke nicotine. Men make good times.

I have a question for you. Do you feel like you have a better descriptor of the subjective experience you're having when you're in quote unquote, like the flow state, like when you're writing?

Sure.

You wouldn't say you're happy, but I know you like writing.

Yeah, yeah, I enjoy writing. Well, I think one thing is the idea of learning how to enjoy a challenge. So I think a lot of people can get there quickly. Like a lot of people play video games because, okay, so video games are designed to increase in difficulty proportional to people's willingness to. Basically, they extend intermittent reinforcement. So your first level is always easy and they extend it a little bit more. They extend a little more and eventually, believe it or not, you'll have learned the behavior such that they can push it out so far they never need to reward you again. Which is why people stay in abusive relationships. Like in the beginning, it's good, oh, I fucked up. Oh, everything's good again. And then I fucked up more and then it's good again. And then I fucked up more and then it's good again. And then eventually it's never good again. But they got reinforced on enough spaces each time that they stay in it. And so I think the difference between a video game and life is that that interval isn't set. And so you're not necessarily gonna have a quick win at level one because it's more like you basically get none until you're at level like 20. And then all of a sudden it all comes. And so I think that's the difficult part. And so I think being willing, I think athletes do particularly well. Like College athletes do really well transitioning because they've learned a meta skill, which is that you're going to suck for a long time at something before you become a master at it. And most people don't have the ability, don't have any experience mastering anything in life early on. And so they have to learn how to work. And so I think, I think learning to work is the most useful thing that you can do. I mean, I think for me, I love finding input, output equations that equal, like, success of some kind. So it's like if you're giving public speak, I'm going to give this example because it's perfect. So Caleb, who's on my team, had said years ago when we met, I don't really like public speaking, I don't like presenting, I don't like any of that stuff. I was like, cool. And I think he said something to the degree of like, I don't like it or I'm bad at it, whatever. And he did a presentation for the team and it was good. And then he had a bunch of things that he wanted to do better on the next one. Now, between those time periods, I had done the book launch and so he had seen me prepare for my presentation. And so I did it 100 times over 30 days. I did it three times a day before I gave the book launch. And when there was 500,000 people or whatever there were the launch when we had 500,000 people registered for the launch and I was about to step on stage, the team that was doing it all said, we do this every day. And I've never seen anyone so, like, relaxed. And it wasn't a front, it was because I had done it so many times. And so fast forward, Caleb had another presentation he had to give and this time he prepared three times as long. So he did instead of 10 hours of prep, he did 30 hours of prep. And instead of having 80 slides, he had 330 slides. And the presentation went way better. And he noted that he wasn't nervous at all going into the second presentation compared to the first presentation. And so he messaged me afterwards, said, I shoot. It wasn't that I was bad at speaking, I was just lazy. And I think that a lot of people mistakenly think they're bad at things. They haven't even learned how to try. And I do think learning how to try is also domain specific. And so like, Caleb's an exceptional video editor and media strategist and great with building the team and those skills, but those had been skills that he knew how to work hard at, but this was a completely different skill. And so it's like writing. Like, I have a lot of entrepreneur friends who are writing books now. Now they don't know that I come from background of writing. I got a full writing scholarship to Tufts University, which is a good school. I got a personal letter from their writing seller, like, we love all your stuff. We want you to be here. I ended up going to Vanderbilt, but I was the vice editor of the newspaper. I was the editor in chief of literary magazine when I was in high school. I like writing and so I know what hard work looks like in writing, which is just editing and editing and editing and editing, which is basically like doing the speech again and doing the speech again and doing the speech again. And it's the same as ping pong, which is 500 backhands, 500 forehands. It's just repetition, right? And so right now, if you're doing work or you feel like you're not as good at something, you have to figure out what the input output equation is. You have to figure out like, what's the thing that I have to do a lot of, because every skill's like this, is that there's a period where you have to do a lot of something and if you don't know what it is, then you're not going to get better sales. Is like, I have to do a hundred calls a day. I have to do, you know, I have to do 10 conversations a day. Whatever it is, you do that every single day. And you do that for a year, you get pretty fucking good. And so you have to learn what that output equation is so that you can push as much. If it's me, once I know it, then I just jam as much input as I possibly can into that thing. And then that's where the whole quote that went viral was. Confidence doesn't come from shouting affirmations in the mirror by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are, outwork your self doubt. And so, like, you become confident by giving yourself the stack of evidence. The hundred times I went over the presentation, I felt confident going into that because I had a stack of proof that I'd already done it perfectly the last 20 times in a row that I'd done it. So why would 21 be different? And if you've had a thousand sales calls on your thousand first, if people are watching, they're like, man, you sound so confident. You're like, it's just how it is. It's not like I'm confident. I just know, I know what's going to happen next. And so I prefer to think about it as like, do it. So many times you get bored of doing it and like, that's when you'll look confident to everyone on the outside because you'll have no emotional affect to the outcome because you'll have recognized the patterns so many times that there's nothing that's going to surprise you. And I think that most people just don't know how to work that hard. Like there is no way that anyone will know how hard I've worked on the books. They just imagine that there's a reason that they're all, you know, all time best sellers for each of the categories they're in. And still they're like, it's because you're following. It's like, no, you know why I know that? Look at every other fucking person who has a following and their books don't fucking sell even though they have a big following. They launch it and then they stop selling. Why? Because the book sucked. They had a ghostwriter, they voiced it in whatever and they make their, whatever, 5 million bucks or whatever it is.

They published it on the second edit instead of the next.

Yeah, I mean, shit, they think the book is finished when it has reached the number of pages that creates a book. Like, I can write a book in two weeks if I was just trying to write a certain number of pages. But like, I've usually written five times the amount of pages as what actually comes out in the final draft. And I've rewritten end to end the whole thing, not once or twice, but like 10 times end to end. But you know what happens when you do that? You get really fucking good at knowing what is important, what isn't. And you also give yourself way more outside life exposures that trigger new thoughts over that period of time that remind you of things that can make it better. And so it's kind of like a, like when you paint, it's like putting coats of paint and letting it dry. And so I kind of see editing drafts as like another coat of paint. And then you think you're like, you know what? I just saw that, like I went to a new area today and I saw this new yellow. I, I wonder if I could throw that in. If you had immediately shipped it, you wouldn't have had the opportunity to see the yellow thing because time didn't transpire during the creation of the thing. And so I think there's A reason that books that take 10 years to write look and read like they took 10 years to write. There's just a depth to the quality.

Do you then now to bring this back kind of to like the happiness or whatever.

I find happiness in figuring out what my input output equation is and doing it as much as humanly possible.

Do you then engineer your environment to reinforce yourself to do more inputs?

Absolutely.

How do you do that?

You want to make it easy as possible to work as hard as you can. And so everything that is not that input output equation is interference. And so like relationships, like, I mean, I said this before, but everything that you are not willing to sacrifice to be the best, the person who's best in the world is willing to and already has sacrificed. And so I'm not saying good or bad, do whatever you want, but if you want to be number one, and a lot of people say I want to be the best, it's like, no you don't. You want to be better. And you can be really good, you can be really good and not sacrifice plenty of things. But if you want to be the best, then you just have to assume that the best person in the world has the genetic predisposition, has all the environmental cues aligned with their ultimate goal, and is willing to give up everything that is not achieving that goal. And if you're not in that boat, then you're not going to be the best. People just like saying, because it makes it feel good, but it's false. And so in terms of aligning the environment, if you know what you put out of equation. So for me, it's writing right now is the season that I'm in, because writing kind of is the pillar of everything else we do. Content wise, internal communications, the books, everything comes from me taking time to write because I organize my thoughts better that way, because I've become skilled at writing. So it's the best way, it's the most succinct way that I can communicate. And so. There's a reason that the first six hours of my day, when I'm freshest, most well rested, I have no meetings and I have only one thing that I do which is right, there's nothing else. And so if you know what the input out equation is, find the time, the four to six hours a day, every day that you can do that and then allow nothing to interfere with it. And that's it. Like nothing interferes with it. And if you do that for five years, you'll be really fucking good and you'll Be useful and you'll feel good about it. Because the thing is, at a certain point, the work itself becomes reinforcing. Like when editors edit and then they make a change, and then the story goes or the video goes the way they want it to. It's like, boom, that was reinforcing. And if I, like, work really hard on a paragraph and I can just shrink it to one sentence, I'm like, fuck, yeah. And that might take that literally, might take two hours to just keep beating it down until I get it to, like, the one most succinct thing, but that's satisfying. And so the beginning, you suck. And you do the reps so that you can learn the skills, so that eventually you do the work itself. Because the work itself is rewarding, but that takes time to get to.

Yeah, it's like you are at this point writing the third book, and it's.

Like my fourth book overall. Yes.

And getting those sentences is the win, the little win, which also makes it easier because then you're not waiting for the 6,000, of course. What if you could talk a little bit to that?

Well, yeah. I mean, in the beginning, you start the. Start the journey because you have this big ultimate payoff you want to have, but that's way too far out to actually wait. Like, you have to be an exceptional person who's been reinforced in the past for waiting for a very long period of time. That's why I said the athletes thing is kind of interesting because. Because they've had to wait a long period of time. And so they have to practice for a long period before they get the thing. But typically they get enough reinforcers early on that the act itself becomes reinforcing. And that's what mastery is. You transition from having some sort of external motivator to external. I believe all motivators are external. But from the work itself being intrinsically rewarding versus having a carrot of some kind that's been artificially put there, like status or an award or number one or a ranking. And masters, can masters enjoy the work more than novices do? So it's actually easier for masters.

Do you find, ironically, that hard work has felt less hard these days, or is it still hard work because you're pushing?

It's still hard. It's different in terms of the hard. I would say the hard thing that I have now is that my level of quality, the standard that I have, is only mine. Like, I know that I could probably put out the first draft and it would probably be a best seller. It's just that I would know that it could have been better and that would eat me alive. And so the hard part is still maintaining. So it's actually the hard part for me now is that I maintain my standard as the number one standard that I optimize for. And if the world so chooses to also like it, great. But it also divorces me somewhat from the outcome because if it were just about getting the best selling book, then I would publish it on the first shot because at this point I do have enough skill that probably would be a bestseller on its own. But I also think there's a difference between being a bestseller for a season and being bestseller for 100 years. And so I'm trying to write these books to be bestsellers when I'm dead. So they're still useful.

How do you know when you've met that bar? Like, how do you know when a.

Sentence is like, when there's nothing else I can do to it to make it better.

And you sleep on it and then.

You wake up the next day and you look at it again, there's nothing else I can do to it to make it better. Same thing for the presentation. There's nothing else I can do to make this better. I can't practice it more. Because even at a certain point, if you get past a certain point of practicing, you start, you start knowing it almost too well that you start cutting corn because you're like, it gets too natural. Like, I actually, I borderline over prepared for the GMATs. I like peaked. I like, because I took tests every week and my math score, sorry, my English score peaked before my math score did. So my math score peaked at the test. But my English score, I had done it so many times real like, shoot, man, I've done. You recognize so many patterns that you're like, man, which pattern is this one? Cause like I, I'm so good at all of them. I have to remember, you peak. So there is a point where it's not even diminishing returns. You actually start getting worse. At least in my opinion or at least in my experience. And so if you regress something down to its simple form and then I just cut the sentence in half, I lose material, I lose stuff that needs to be there. And so you get it as simple as possible. But no simple.

You talked about if someone comes to you and you're like, what would you do if you had six more hours on that?

Oh, yeah, yeah. So a really fun thought exercise for somebody who's just like, all of this is like, wow, that's so much work. I'm not really prepared for that. Well, I'll walk you through what it looks like in a micro example. So if a video editor comes to me and says, hey, do you like this clip? And I say, yeah, I do like the clip. If you had another two hours to work on it, what would you do? And they're like, well, if I had another two hours, I'd do this, this, and this. I'd be like, okay, go do that. Come back. They come back and I'm like, do you think it's better? And they say, yeah, and they show it to me, and I'm like, it is better. Okay, now, if you had another two hours, what would you do? They're like, well, I do this, this, and this. I'm like, okay, cool. They go. They come back, same conversation, like, okay, if you had a week, what would you do? Well, then they're like, well, shoot, I'd probably scrap this whole style overall. And I'd actually make a totally new framework for how I'd approach the video. And I'd want to come at it from this angle altogether. It would just take a lot more work, but I think it would still make a better outcome. It's like, okay, so that idea, just do it on five years. And so. Everybody just wants to get it done rather than get it right. And getting it right is where all the money is.

I bet you've asked yourself, like, what would you. You do if you had 50 years to work on acquisition?

100%. And I do have 50 years, and I do what I'm doing. Yeah.

And not trying to chase the quick reinforcement so that you.

Well, it's the quick external loop. But I mean, like, at a certain point, you start to develop mastery even around pursuing goals. So, like, I've had enough past. Like, this is book three from the $100 million series. Every month, I get thousands of reviews and DMs, and people who say their lives change from the first two books. The hard part was book one, when I have none of that for a year and a half. But once that one's out, leads, I'm like, well, I'm getting reinforcement every day from my writing. And so I write. And so now I have two books worth of that. Once the third book's out, there'll be three books worth of that. So maintaining that gets easier and easier just because I have regular enforcement for writing. Not necessarily this book, but writing in general. And so that then means I can generalize past good experiences onto how I act and work. Now, that's why you become an expert at pursuing goals, because you have pursued goals in the past. I just use writing as an example, but I've pursued goals in the past, and sticking it out has had big payoffs. And so when I feel like I'm sticking it out again, I'm reminded of the past times I've stuck it out, and it's been worth it. The hard part is for the people who haven't stuck anything out because they've never seen it work. And so the first one's always the hard one. It's like you just have to have faith on some level. You just have to fucking believe that it'll work out. And the thing that carries you over the bridge in the short term is that you are getting better. And if you can just focus on that, then even if the crowd doesn't cheer when you give your presentation or you don't sell books or whatever it is, you'll know. And so it's funny because I look back at the presentation that I gave five years ago, and I really am embarrassed, but I'm not embarrassed at the effort I put in then, because the effort I put in then I really did think it was really good. I just didn't know what good could be because I also gave myself 20 hours rather than 200 hours. And so if I only had 20 hours, maybe that is the best I can do. And maybe today that's still the best I could do. I just give myself way more time. But the problem with giving yourself way more time, once you see how much good good can be, is that you realize how few projects you can do, which is why you just have to be. That's why, like, the biggest guys and biggest business titans in the world talk so much about focus. Because it's not. It's not that, like, focus is the thing. It's just that it takes so much fucking time to do something right, that you can't do more than one thing.

So it might be almost part of that, like, I know we keep saying the word happiness, but, like, happiness equation, to have less things that you're trying to optimize for in your set of things that you're working on.

If you want to be exceptional at something, it means you have to put a lot of input into it. And you can't be exceptional at very many things because of how many inputs you have and how limited they are. So if time is an input, we all have the same amount of time. And if it takes a huge amount of that time to get good at one thing. Then if you take that as the assumption we're basing this on, then there's just not many things you can get very good at. And so then it takes some level of selection to be like, what thing do I want to get good at?

How does the One of Zero brand fit into this and how did you concentrate?

Well, the one of your brands very much aligned with this. I should have my nostril. I took it off this morning. You just pasted on. The whole idea was, you know, it's so funny, I saw the background of my gym. It said that picture that I posted of like one of my first video content. Yeah, it said the back of the wall. I made this quote up that I painted it. You can see how ugly the paint is on the back wall. It says strength doesn't come from what. Strength doesn't come from doing what you think you can, but doing what you think you can't is what I think it says, which I don't agree with the word strength. It should be growth. But anyways, I like the idea. And so I think that One of Zero is very much like that, which is, you know, one of one is doing something that only you can do. One of zero is doing something that you've never done before and that ideally no one else could do. And so it's an amount of work that most people just don't comprehend. And it's really hard to even describe it because like I can say I spent six hours a day for 18 months on this one project and people nod their heads but spend six fucking hours on one thing once and then do it 500 times. And then you'll start to see the soul crushing amount of effort that it takes to stick with it. Now I've been able to extend how long I work on projects because just like the abusive husband thing or the abusive spouse thing, in the beginning you can have a short project, you get a win. I can work a little longer the next time. I can work a little longer the next time. Really good books are one of the hardest projects to do because you get almost zero reinforcement. It's very punishing for most of the time until, quote, the end. But the process itself, there is some sort of joy in being the type of person who is able to endure that. Because I have a lot of entrepreneur friends who are like, I just finished my book, I'm going to write a book just like you did. I was like, no, you won't. No, you won't.

Because you know, they're not willing to.

Put in the time. No, they're like, it worked well for him. I'll do that too. His book was so good. I'll write one too. Doesn't work that way. They've never even written anything. So they're starting at like where I was when I was 15 and I would say the same degree. It's probably like people who look at Mr. Beast now who are like, oh, I'll just go make YouTube videos. Like he started with 13 and he's been spending more than six hours a day trying to make videos since then. And so there's just like so much depth of knowledge that you can get that just takes time. But the thing is, from the happiness perspective, I find a lot of joy and excellence. And I think that work well done provides dividends forever. So if we were to think about like subjective well being or like purpose or meaning or utility or usefulness, any of those, whatever one you want to optimize for. Like, I am proud of the first book I wrote, I'm proud of the second book I wrote, I'm proud of the third book I wrote and I'm proud of the book that I'm writing right now. And when I look back on them, every time I see them and I see people benefit from them, I get a reward for a one time input. Even though it was a year, for the rest of my life, I will get rewarded for that effort. And so it just encourages me more and more to do things the right way. And I think people who build exceptional products think about products the same way, which is like, it has to be right. It just has to. It's all the hundred details. It's not the big idea. It's the hundred details that make the difference between like the MrBeast videos versus other people who try to be like Mr. Beast. It's 100 details that make his videos better.

It's not like one caption.

Yeah, it's not just the thumbnail. Right? Like, it's not that, it's a hundred things.

I've heard you say the word joy a couple times and I'm wondering if you have a distinction between happiness and joy and if that's a helpful thing to explain.

I see joy a lot as just being present in the moment because I think you can joyfully mourn. Like if someone's, you know, died. I think you can, there's, there's, you can find joy in a morning experience if you're consoling someone else. I think it's just being present and being okay with experiencing life. So I mean that's how I see joy now. I haven't defined it and I'll probably spend more time defining the words, but I just see it as being present. Like I experience joy when I am present, like I'm enjoying this. I feel very present right now. As soon as you give up the goal of happiness or even meaning, then it stops being this thing that's outside of you. And so it allows you to be present in the moment and do what you want to do or do what you need to do. And so if you always have this thing that you're measuring against one, there's always a delta between where you are and where it is. But I think oftentimes it'll optimize for the wrong path. And I think happiness for most people is pleasure seeking. So they call it happiness, but it's really hedonism. And most, I don't like to appeal to religion, but in terms of old ideologies, most people have found, and I'm sure there is some science that I don't know, that people who pursue hedonistic lifestyles tend to be the most empty and the least fulfilled. And so I think people have just swapped the word happy or hedonism for happiness and they think they wouldn't want to say that. But if you look at the actual activities they're pursuing, they're almost purely pleasure seeking.

What makes an activity only pleasure seeking for something that will build long term good?

Well, I think it's just timescale, it's short term, long term, like something that most pleasure based activities are their pleasure now at the sacrifice of goal or something later. To be fair, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying like know what we're optimizing for.

Is that why that line that I think we talked about once of desire is a contract?

Yeah. So there was this big philosophy website and then naval quoted that site and it was a desire as a contract we make with ourselves to be unhappy until we get what we want. And I mean I fundamentally agree whenever you want something, it means you don't have it. And you basically create deprivation within yourself to motivate behavior. So if we see motivation as the equal opposite of deprivation, like you're horniest when you haven't fucked for a while, you are hungriest when you haven't eaten for a while. You're. You have a huge motivation to sleep when you're exhausted. Right. And so if we want something, we create deprivation within ourselves to motivate ourselves to get it. But by creating deprivation, we basically create. Now he calls it unhappiness, but I don't know if I necessarily agree with that as the. I think we just. We create deprivation because.

Would you still say there is a gap between what you have and what you want?

Sure. Yeah. Like, you want something that you don't have. But, I mean, I think the way to skirt that is wanting a challenge. And so if you just genuinely want to fight bigger and bigger bosses, then the fact that you get the gold at the end becomes like. If anything, the gold at the end is, like, irrelevant. You just want to find the next boss. And most of the champions that are out there that I've seen, you have the Michael Jordans, the. I mean, a lot of Olympians have huge depression after they get a gold, because now what? And so it really. And I think you can see how people. How people react to victory tells you what motivated them, or rather what they were deprived of. So if the goal was to be exceptional, then that person hits the gold, sees it as a foregone conclusion, and is just excited to move on to the next thing. If they made their entire life about getting the gold, then they have no idea what to do because they were married to the outcome, not the process. And again, I think that you can win either way. I absolutely think you can win either way. But it definitely changes how long you can play.

Yeah, it's like, for the right thing, that gap actually becomes an enjoyable prosecutor.

Well, it's not even the gap. It's just that if you want the challenge, then you basically create goals to create challenges. You don't create goals to achieve goals. You set new goalposts just so that you can have the trial. And so someone's like, what happens when you hit a billion? I was like, I'll make it 10, and when I hit 10, I'll hit 100. It doesn't matter, because I'll die and I'll give it all away anyways. It's irrelevant. But it's just, like, I want to be better. And the only way to be better is to do the work that I know I should do. And so that way, every day, I'm doing the work. And at least for me, that has worked. Do whatever you want. That has worked for me.

Because I feel like some people talk about that, like, moving the goalpost things and the negative of, like, oh, people teach one thing. But I guess if you take it from the frame of these are just more challenges that I'll enjoy from. And it's not a problem with the goal.

I don't think it's a problem. I mean, if you beat level one boss, then what? The game moves you up, you play harder monsters. And then you try and beat level two boss. It's this whole fallacy around being done. It's this whole idea that we can finish, we can work so hard, we never have to work again, we can fuck so good, we never have to fuck again, we can eat so big, we never have to eat again, we can sleep so well, we never have to sleep again. It's just a fallacy. It's the not true. And people lose their lives trying to find that one meal or that one fuck or that one sleep or that one goal that'll satisfy them for good. And it never does.

I think a story that would really contextualize this for the audience is like that period when you were getting ready to sell gym launch that you just sounded like you felt a little lower.

Oh, yeah. So when I was selling gym lunch, there was basically a year where I couldn't really work mostly because if I worked in the business, then it would look like I was a key man to the business. And I didn't know if we were going to sell. So I didn't want to start another company. So I basically just had to subsist. I could even start new endeavors or initiatives within the company. So I just had to do nothing basically. And so for me, it was the most depressed I've been. If you look at some of the videos during that time period, a lot of them are me being pretty sad and being like, what the fuck is life about? But it's just that for me, like, you know, again, I'm not religious, but I do find it interesting that the first thing God gave Adam in the Bible before giving him a wife was giving him a job. Work, tend to the garden before he gave him a wife. And I find that really interesting. I don't like Religion aside, we're built to work. And so for me especially, I'm built to work. And so if I'm working, I'm good. And like the days that I enjoy the most are the days that I work the longest. And so I just try and remove everything that stops me from doing that.

You said something interesting about hell the other day or heaven. Having the idea of heaven potentially being kind of like a hell. It's like, no, not doing anything.

Oh, sounds horrible. Well, I mean, if the idea, like I think most people envision. Most people envision heaven. Like the one meal that's going to be so good they're never going to eat again. They're going to be so elated. To just be singing with the angels, it's like, yeah, but play it out. Like, then what? Like, okay, got it. We sang with the angels from 9 to 10. And then from, you know, then I had a feast, you know what I mean? From 10 to 11. But I got to keep my idealized body. I don't know Christianese for idealized body. Glorified physical form. I got to keep that the whole time. It's like, okay, well, now it's noon. Now what do I do? Well, dogs are all there because all dogs go to heaven. Great, good to know. But if your wife dies, then it's like you have three wives up there. You're like, but I mean, technically we were at different times. So it's like, how do we deal with that? Whatever, God's figured it out. But again, I think it's just this fallacy of work life balance. Like, I think heaven is literally just an extrapolation of work life balance as a concept, which is I will just be able to do life and no work. But the first thing God fucking does in the Bible is give someone work. And so I think so many people would be helped out if they just stopped labeling it as a bad thing and started seeing it as the way to get what they want and then eventually to make it the thing they want. Because the. And this is like a little bit of an abstract idea. So it takes a little bit more processing power to conceptualize this. But there's goals and then there's working to hit the goals. And then there's the idea of love the process, but there's the subscript of so that you can hit the goal. But in my opinion, it's just work. Not so that you can. It's just work. And it's like, what do you mean? It means like, working is the goal. Like working as hard as you can and learning how hard you can work and how well you can work and how right you can make things and how well you can do them. Like pushing that, expanding my capacity to work, not so that I can like expanding my capacity to work so that I can work more. Like if you can do that, then you have the self fulfilling loop. And then you also become completely divorced from the outcomes, which ironically, when you do work that way, you do have outsized outcomes. Compared to everybody else. But you do it because you work so fucking hard. Because you're addicted to working and you like that game. And the goals just happen as a consequence. But I don't even like saying the goals just happen as a consequence because it still gives the idea to the listener or the watcher right now that that's the point. And it's not because even if your goal is to be the richest man in the world, okay, let's say that's your goal for how long? Every richest man in the world is the richest man in the world for they touch the top and then boom, something changes in the economy, whatever it is, and then another richest man in the world comes up. Like, who was the richest man 20 years ago? Actually 30 years ago, a bunch of Japanese guys. And then Japan's economy crashed. No one even knows their guys names. And so it's like making the goal even as audacious as those guys goals were. Right. Let's say you're number two, but even let's say you're number one for how long? And so that's why I think that the work is the goal, not so that you can just. The work is the goal. And learning how hard you can work and being proud of yourself for how much harder you work today than you did yesterday.

You have a tweet that perfectly ties us together. You hit the goals that you said you wanted to. To be happy a long time ago.

Yeah.

Is that kind of what you mean here?

Well, it's, it's. You've already hit goals that you said would make you happy. And I might have put years ago or something like that in there, but it's just fun to be. Like years ago you set goals that today you've hit and you said you would be happy and yet you're not. And so it's because the concept of setting these goals presumed, like the ultimate unhappiness equation is if I get X, I'll be happy. Right? Like we all know that one, because that's the guarantee of it not not happening. Because it automatically the entirety of your existence is outside of yourself. And then the moment you hit it, then what you said another one, and then it's outside yourself, right? And so if the goal doesn't change your entire life, then you can basically be achieving it every day. If the goal is to work as hard as you can every day you can work as hard as you can.

You can be in the state that you're desiring. If the goal is the state.

Yeah. The goal is the state of being that you have when you work exceptionally hard, when you do hard work worth doing, and, you know, if you left some in the tank. And I love. I think this is. Jesse Itzler says this, but I really love it. There's a handful of, like, sayings that I've gotten from other entrepreneurs that I really love. I'll give you three right now. I'm side questing, but just deal with it. One is Michael Dell says, play nice, but win. I just love that. The second one is andy Frisell has 100 to 0, which I really, really like, which is basically like, society. When you're up, you know, in football, let's say you're up 30 to nothing and it's halftime. Society says, put in your backups, put in your third strings, like, take it easy and play. And he's like, no, fuck that. 100 to 0. Step on their throat and fucking kill everyone. And I like that. From a perspective of, like, don't let off the gas. Like, just because they lost doesn't mean that you now have to dilute yourself to lower yourself to their standard. And so it's like, yeah, so what if it takes this much to win? I don't care if it takes this much to win. I want to be here. Because if you then change how you play because everybody else isn't as good, you lower yourself, you don't raise them up. That's society trying to make it appear as though people are better than they are. And I'm a big fan of, like, they should know they lost 100 to 0. They should know how much room they have to improve. And also to the same degree, I should know how much further ahead I am. And the goal shouldn't be the way. Mm, I'm gonna keep playing the way I play. If we happen to finish at 100 0, we happen to finish at 100 0. But I'm not gonna let off because that's who I am. And the third one was Jesse Itzler has this thing where he has with his kids, which I really like, after they do a marathon because he's really big in endurance sports, and so his kids are too. And. And so whenever they finish, a lot of them pulled up a zero, which I really like, and it means nothing left in the tank. And he said, I just want you. I don't care if you win. He's like, I just want you to have nothing left. And I think about that as, like, the goal. So the goal is to have nothing Left. And I think that on the micro level and on the macro level, like, if every day, like, my favorite days are the days that I get into bed, I'm fucking exhausted, but proud of the work that I've done, I have nothing left. I've left it all on the field. And so, like, that's the goal. The other stuff society chooses to measure me by. But when I measured myself that way, it distracted me and I didn't enjoy my life. But just living that day as many times in a row as I can until I die is my plan. And at the end on the macro, they want to hold this up and be like, I got nothing left. I'm used up. But until then, I will continue to try and be useful. And so I like all three of those statements, and they, to me, kind of embody a lot of the values of one of zero, which is not just doing only what you can do, but doing things that you didn't know you could yet.

Let's say someone wants to take this frame of infinite games, but their thing isn't work. You have someone like Mother Teresa who's like, I just want to.

Dude, I'd love to extrapolate this. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so, Alex, what if my goal isn't work? The goal is always work. It's just what you're working on. And so whether you're like, I want to have the best marriage, then cool, it takes fucking work. If the goal is to have the best kids, then parenting, is that not fucking. It's fucking work. If the goal is to have the best physique, it's fucking work. If the goal is to have the best career, it's work. If the goal is to just be the ultimate version of you, it's work in all those arenas and being mindful of what you want to optimize for in terms of how many hours you want to allocate to each. And so most people live lives. I mean, I'm going to use Rogan's quote from somebody else, but of quiet desperation, because they're hoping to find a way around work. But work is the way, it's the only way. Because everything else, if it didn't require work, then you'd already have it. Breathing doesn't really require work. Most people do it. There's plenty of things that we just don't think about because we have them automatically. And so everything that you don't automatically have, you have to expend effort to get. And so everyone just wants a way to get things without working, which I understand, don't get me wrong. But the thing is that I remember. Actually, this is a weird thought. So I remember when I was graduating college, I had this. It was like a billion dollar Powerball. Like, it was like, you know, when it kind of goes over a billion dollars and I bought a Powerball ticket with my girlfriend. Just as like a. Like a fun joke. Not like I didn't. I was like, hoping to win. And what's weird is that I remember as the drawing was happening, I actually had this huge fear that I win. Because if I would win, then it would mean that I would never get a shot to prove myself, that I could have done it. Because literally from that point on, if you win, nothing you do matters. Like, I could never prove that I had any medal whatsoever. Like, everyone would always say it was because you won the fucking Powerball, dude. And I think the big reason that I didn't become a physician was because my dad has a successful practice. And I knew that if I became a physician, it didn't matter how good of a physician I was, it would always be because people would say it was because of him. Now, that was then. I cared a lot about what people saying. I probably still do less so, but still in some degree. But that was. And so just to give, I guess, the audience an insight into, like, how I think about things, if it's valuable for you, like, if you are afraid of winning the lottery because it won't give you a chance to prove to yourself who you want to be or who you want to become, then I think you're on the right path.

I love the inverse of that, which is that everything that's right now, which is hard, it's the opposite of the lottery, is the biggest fucking blessing.

Yeah. And if we were to take this in the equal, opportunist perspective of if winning the lottery is the ultimate way to not win, because you never get the opportunity to prove yourself. Not necessarily prove to other people, but prove to yourself. And so maybe said differently, the reason the Powerball terrified me is like, I wouldn't be able to prove to me independent of what other people said, but I would never know if I could do it because I had a billion dollars behind me. And so every hardship that you encounter if you reframe it as the story that you will someday tell to yourself of the person.