MS01┃Jonathan Reichental, PhD - Perfection, Creativity, and Who’s Actually Having Fun?

I remember early on in my tech career, the feeling that when I went to help somebody, they call me and say, I can't do something on my computer. And I would go and help them, and they would stand by as I worked on their computer and fixed it. And then they would, like, be so grateful, they'd say, thank you so much. It's made my day. That was always a nice feeling and a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that I'd added value and I made somebody a little happier that day. And by the way, that's very. A very big part of my life today.

Well, to keep. I promised myself I'll keep this podcast playful for me as well. So one last question is going to be a quick one.

I'm only hesitating because there's so many ways I can think about this question. And just for the purposes of efficiency here, I would say they should ask me, why do I do what I do? That tells them a lot about who I am, the kind of person I am.

My intention is not to start with the introductions. Don't expect anything like that. I have actually a quick fire question.

Sure.

So no long thinking, just instinct.

Oh, no. Okay.

It's very brief. Are you ready?

I'm absolutely ready for you.

More rules? No rules.

If you're giving me that choice, I have to say more rules.

Okay. Certainty or uncertainty?

Certainty.

Journey or final destination?

Journey.

Why?

Because that's life. Life is a big, long journey. We never really have a final destination until it's the very end, which I assume is the end because of the discovery. You know, I'm a traveler myself. I travel a lot for work and for pleasure. A lot for work. And I make it into fun and I enjoy it. I love meeting people and eating different foods from different places. So that's the literal journey. The more, you know, kind of bigger, abstract notion is what's going to happen tomorrow, what will happen in a month, what will happen next year? We don't know. It's just. There's a life is a journey, and it's. It's unknown and uncertain, and even though I want certainty, it's a little uncertain.

Well, to connect with this. This question, why I asked this question, it feels like, at least from my perspective, and I always think about the end goal. Right. I think, oh, okay. Okay. This is. This sounds good. So I will go towards that.

So you're more inclined to the final destination?

I'm more inclined to the journey. Thankfully, I had this experience on, like, realization. Okay. Well, when I'm lucky, if I have a lucky day. I realize, oh, this is it.

But

why I asked this question is we usually, or I usually tend to wish to be somewhere else. You know, you always see, like a higher mountain, but the journey towards the higher mountain is what I was seeking, actually, but I didn't know. Well, in the act of creating. And we connect it to the perfection. What is perfection for you?

It's a problem, that's what it is. Because I am inclined to want to get to the best state of something. You know, having been a leader, a manager of people and organizations and projects for a lot of my career, you know, determining what level of outcome, you know, I want has been a common occurrence. Right. You know, and I think there has to be an important. There was an important recognition on my part that perfection isn't really possible. Try to get close to it and in getting too close, trying to get to it, to something that actually is not achievable. Well, it can hurt people, it can hurt yourself. It can be highly anxious, anxiety inducing. Right. It's an. It's an impossible goal, but it's also probably the wrong goal for me, although it forms a consistent thread in my life.

When did you realize it doesn't have to be like a poem that just perhaps, like, how do you apply this perspective? You know, like.

Yeah, later than you would think, actually, you know, there's a lot of things in my life that I wish I had discovered earlier, that others discover earlier. And some reason, for some reason I didn't, but I guess it wouldn't. I wouldn't be me if it was any different. Right. So maybe a different way for me to think about your question is when did I become comfortable with things being fine, being good, not perfect, like letting things roll off my shoulders that I would have carried with me for much longer? Only in the last decade, I would say, probably. And even getting better at it just in the last few years, I'm much more comfortable with the way things are during an imperfect process and having outcomes that are just good.

Right.

Good enough. Rather than, you know, I wish this could have been better, but I look to be completely transparent, you know, as a professor and, you know, somebody who reviews, for example, submissions from startups and, you know, ideas, I can be quite critical. And not because I'm. Well, I'm saying this from my perspective, not because I'm a bad person, because I want everybody to do good work and I want there to be great outcomes. I. I want it to be good quality, and that drives me. And sometimes you know, doing it, and

I catch myself doing it and I

have to ask myself, why, you know, why is this important to me? And it does come back to this, my desire for everyone to rise up, to be at a higher level. And frankly, that can be unfair.

It can actually be really unfair.

So having sort of evolved a little bit and be less super focused on

the highest quality, the closeness to perfection,

it actually creates a better life and things that are just fine and good quality are good enough.

Well, that's very interesting. Just the whole brainstorming of the idea. Right. Because you said certainty, uncertainty, now it looks like uncertainty. Well, I think I'm connecting. The stretching of being okay without certainty became perhaps the reason why you are now more fine with knowing how good outcome is going to be, but just you're doing your best and having fun with it.

Well, I like that last piece. You know, it's important to remember to

have fun all the time.

But you did give me only two options. Right. Uncertainty and uncertainty. So I, I, to play the game properly, I had to choose one.

Right.

But I do have a recognition that the life is generally more probabilistic than it is deterministic.

Right, right.

So it's likely to be, you know, on a continuum between certainty on one

side and uncertainty, you're probably trending towards

either the middle or a little bit

towards more towards the uncertainty.

Our relationship started as a professor student. Right. And, well, I'm always when I, when someone asks me, how was college for you? In terms of, I think, like as everything else, at least what I see for now is about people. So I'm glad I met you. I met other professors that brought a lot in terms of learning, not information, but how they learn, how they approach certain subjects.

Yeah.

What is happening in academia about what we talked about, you know, about any separation, right or wrong, is 100 out of 100 perfection, or what is happening?

Well, let me say, first of all, look, we're, we're in the beginning of a major transformation of education. I think we should recognize that. Lots of options now. You know, people are definitely excited about learning on their own. You know, using the University of YouTube as a metaphor.

Right.

Just lots of options in terms of different institutions. But, you know, this sort of pushback that is, you know, sitting in a classroom in, you know, rows of chairs and desks, listening to an older person who's supposed to be wiser, you know, lecture for two, four, five hours. This model hasn't changed for a long, long time. And people are sort of punching, pushing back on it now. But I will say if, you know, there's, there's massive value to learning online, if that's your thing. Right. And actually, selfishly, as somebody who creates online education, you know, I'm very successful at LinkedIn learning specifically. I'm going to be a big advocate and I like it and my students love it. I've over, you know, almost 3 million students who've taken my online courses. But then the question is, why am I a professor in the classroom? Well, what's the distinction? And I think you kind of got to it a little bit in your question. The difference is that human experience, right. First of all, obviously the networking and meeting people and building social skills, but also having the ability to interact with a professor, somebody who has had experiences, hopefully who does bring unique insights into the room. So, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. It doesn't surprise me that one of the major differentiators of university that people are recognizing is that unique in person experiences that you can't at least replicate easily online yet.

Although if we just generalize it systematically, education again, back to creation in school, essentially you learn how to create.

Hmm.

Also a part of all the rest of the stuff. Right. You can start from your own experience in terms of any limiting thoughts or beliefs that comes up when you're creating. And I would, I would like to hear your opinion or your point of view, perspective, what you've seen in the classroom. So I think when you were talking about, you know, you want to deliver good work and you want to inspire others to deliver good work, do you sense sometimes the good work perhaps is walled down by these thoughts or beliefs, how the good work should look like? So either you can start from you personally when you were creating something and there were some even like repeating story in your, in your head, perhaps that's also connected to burning out. But I don't want to delve more and more and more.

But sure, what's. These are big questions. Of course. I think you, you and I met about four years ago, five tops. But I think four years ago we met in the class you were in one of my first classes.

Three and a half.

Three and a half. So you would know specifically. Okay. Seems longer. That's, that's interesting. Okay. And even in that short time, right, you say three and a half years since we met to now I see the classroom even changing. And one of the major things that I observe and I'm going to, by the way, I'm going to get your, the heart of your question is the Distraction. Right. I do see students, you know, using their phones a lot more. Students have always used laptops. I mean, even when I was, you know, back doing my PhD, it's almost 20 years ago, I was using a laptop in the classroom. You're taking notes, surfing the web, you know, researching, sometimes goofing off, of course. So that has continued. But now I do observe students being very distracted by their phones and their. And their devices. So that is changing, you know, part of the dynamic. How does. How do you, as a professor, create the conditions in the classroom where people are really engaged and excited about the topics and inspired? This is what I'm working on a lot. Group activities, you know, but. But finding out, trying to discover early in the class, what is it that, you know, collectively the students are interested in?

What.

What is the thing that's. Will make them move their head up from the phone to look at me or to look at other students? So I think we're dealing with some very powerful forces, you know, that are distracting people. If you're not fully engaged, if you are looking at your laptop, writing or on your phone, I can't imagine you're absorbing and thinking about the topic that's at hand in the optimal way, you know, basically. So. So there's. The classroom dynamic has changed. I'm not yet at the point where, you know, I wouldn't allow technology. I mean, I'm a. I teach computer science classes a lot. So it would be just so ironic to say you can't use technology.

But when it comes to creation, imagine, okay, when you really have the engagement, have the attention, and the creation process starts.

Right.

What do you think are some thoughts or beliefs when we connect it to this vision of, oh, this is how it should look like. Right. Because in terms of, like, creation, there first, no limits, but also there is like no certain outcome because we go beyond. Right. So perhaps when we are writing papers, it should be like some structured. Right. But the creation is just like very abstract, almost like it's not concrete. So in your own work, when you were working on something new. Right. Is there any pattern, any story that repeats that is perhaps connected to this? Oh, it has to be perfect. It can be imperfect. What does it mean? Like, how do you. Is there a story that repeats in your. Repeated in your life?

Yeah.

And after. If you see it in younger generations, you teach beyond, beyond if they're engaged or not, when they are engaged already, because I can see myself, I was doing the whole same thing. But it's about interest.

Right. So

did I. Is my. Is my.

I'll try to answer or give you my views on this very again, once again, a very large question. So just going back to the classroom for a moment as a professor, first of all, it's interesting. You see a lot of things. I think you see more than students think you see. You can tell if a person is engaged, if they're distracted, if they are bored, if they're really concerned about something outside of class. You can sometimes tell. And if you spend a lot of time with students, you can really tell that's they're. They're not how they normally are. You know, they haven't slept, they're partying too hard, or they've got issues, there's something going on in their life.

Right.

And then there's a moment as a professor where you're saying something or you brought something up on the screen, or you're on the whiteboard and their head pops up and you see, you can see the look in the face and the eyes. And you know, I got that person, I got them engaged. And hopefully you get a few people doing that. But you look out of the classroom and you see many students are going to be sitting there with the appearance of listening to you. But, you know, there's a group that are not, and you want to get those on board too. So, you know, it's hard to know what that is. Right. I won't just say provocative statements for the sake of it. Some professors will just to kind of get a reaction. But stories are very important. We know this now. Making it personal. When I do keynote speeches, I've been doing this for years now, and I'm quite successful at it in that I get compensated well by lots of organizations to go and speak in front of their people or at these events. And there's been a real change in the audience reaction. When I make it personal, I say either this is what I believe or this is what happened to me. You know, that's very different from just telling, being factual or just telling stories about others. But I want you. You're asking a lot about the creativity part, and I want to. Here I'll demonstrate a personal story. Right now I'm actually writing a new video series and I won't. No spoilers. So what does that mean? That means I have to sit in front of my computer for long periods of time and write. And I don't use generative AI. When you read an article or a story or a book or video that I've written, it's my Words. I don't use AI for that. And hopefully that will continue for a long time. So, you know, you're getting original thought from, you know, this brain here and.

Can I stop here?

Okay.

I think that's exactly what I was trying to understand your point of view on. For you, we talk about the journey, we talk about the perfection. Perhaps this is already the base construct of perfection for you because it's original, it's from you, and it's exactly this thought of you creating something original is fun. And it's the journey for you, and it's the activity that is filling you up and having fun with it. Right. So sometimes when I. Or when I. You 100% correct a lot of exams, papers and these things. Right. And we also talk about founders. Right. We talk about even room. When we talk about founders, we talk about creators. We talk about the Nvidia SEO story when he was saying, oh, I wish I had more fun with it, you know?

Yes.

Sometimes in my life, I will take it personal. Also from my side. Sometimes it feels like I would rather choose a systematic approach and delve in waters that I'm not sure. I'm not certain I can survive. Okay. Right. So I was, I was curious exactly. In the academia world, you know, when you want to have a good result for you, 100% is important. Authenticity of the students. Right. Because we're unique. The best thing that they can deliver is their uniqueness. So when I, When I, When I was thinking about thoughts or beliefs that might be the wall in between the. Their authenticity and they just would just. They deliver. And also from your life. Right. I was trying to like, tackle. Tackle this. This fear to rather fit in, in the system than being authentic. Mm. And we can also. We can switch to. To the founder side.

Right.

I have, I have just such a simple question, but we had a lot of fun with it last time.

Okay.

So I asked you about. I think there were two stories. The. The CEO of nvm, when he commented, when he was asked would. Right. I think you should.

He said no. He said no.

And there was another story. And I also. Either from your own experience, I'm. I am knowledgeable that you work with, with people, with founders, creators.

Yes.

Here it comes. Who's having fun?

Yeah. Yeah. Some of them are. Some don't know that they can have fun. Like when you're building a new company and every decision you make is meaningful, that's a lot of pressure. I mean, I know myself, again, having built my own business over the last seven years, When I first went into it, I was reluctant to start the company to start with. And then when you start it, you worry because, you know, if you have a lifetime working for someone else, you're driving to an office, parking your car, going to an office, doing work, and then leaving. There's a completely different set of responsibilities and sense of responsibilities, too. Right. Somebody else is taking care of it. You know, when you have your own business, everything comes down to the decisions you make. And it could be the difference between there's no money coming in, you're not going to make payroll, or if you're a solo entrepreneur, you're dipping into your savings to make this thing work. So those dimensions make it stressful, and therefore, I think many of them lose sight of the fact that all of this is just part of the journey. And no matter what happens, if you become a billionaire or, you know, you have a series of adventures and learnings that ultimately don't amount to a successful business, in both instances, you had a set of experiences and things that were very unique and will be part of defining who you have become as a result of all of those things. So let me see if I can bring it back to your question. Certainly when I think of the small portfolio of startups, I work with about 10 or 12 startups right now, at any point in time, I try to keep it like that. Some will fail, some will exit, you know, and I'll bring on another one. So I don't like to get, you know, have too many because I can't give the attention they all need. Yeah, there's. I can tell. I can tell you right now, one of them, he's having amazing amount of fun. But I think I shared this with you in our conversation prior to the podcast is in one instance, the CEO was traveling a lot, and we met in San Francisco, where I live and play. You know, I'm just south of the city. And we met for lunch, and I hadn't seen him in ages, and I said, tell me about what you're doing. He says, well, I just, I'm here in San Francisco and tomorrow I'm flying out to New York for three days, then to D.C. and then I go to France, and then, you know, then I'm finally back in my home country. And my reaction immediately was, that sounds amazing. Wow, what a great life.

Wow.

You're on the road, you're meeting people, you're. You're pitching your startup, you know, you're. You're hopefully enjoying the cities that you're in. And his reaction was. He hates it. Absolutely hates it. He can't wait to get home. So a little bit was projection on my part. That's what I love. It's not what he loves. And you got to respect that. I wonder, statistically, I don't know the data on this, but if you took, you know, 100 startups and you asked them, you know, or the CEOs, the founders, are you enjoying the process versus, you know, this goal that you have to. To build a big business or whatever it is that your goal is, how many would recognize? Right now, I'm just enjoying it. You know, anecdotally, I guess, less than we probably think.

Well, the perfect part is I asked you about an exercise, something creative, something that actually brings us back to this, to this question of why perhaps, right. This feeling and this, this. I was. I guess I got inspired with these little exercises, these little tools in the end, right. Because you can used it already today. So I'm like, repeating myself. But I just love that you can, like, really repair something without the proper tools. Right. And it's not about reparation even. Like, it's just like knowing that there is. There are also these tools available. The thing I mentioned, like, you can do that. You can also, like, do it like this. You know, I'm really curious what you brought.

Oh, yeah.

Because I was like, okay, Jonathan, he's a professor. He 100% tried thousands of exercises with his students.

So for the listener or the person watching on video, they should know that you have no idea what I'm about to do. But I will also say, and that's the truth, pushing this a little bit, is there a reason? Is this preferable over what you're doing right now, or are you doing the thing that's preferable?

And you said, I'm asking you big questions.

I just want to be clear. Your fear is that you can't live an authentic life, the life of who you absolutely are.

Yeah.

What this exercise is called? This is called sort of a different version of you. Right. I'll tell you something, just make it personal. I didn't do the exercise with you right now, but I'll just. The first one if I was to do it. Because I was thinking about this, coming to this podcast today, for me, there also could be several things, but the dominant one would be physician, would be a medical doctor. And this has been a consistent threat my whole life. And what I mean by that is it never disappeared. Now, for a brief moment when I was a teenager, I thought I'd be an airline pilot, but that was fleeting. And in fact, later on in life, I got my pilot's license and I kind of scratched that itch and Perfectly fine. But when I go into hospitals or I even, you know, to visit somebody, or I even go into a clinic for something for myself, there's this weird thing that comes over me that, like, I should be here. This is the work I should be doing. And at several moments in my life, I said I should just go to medical school. I should just do this. And I didn't. And it's a funny thing. I'm. I'm comfortable with my life's choices. I mean, I'm. I've done well and I'm. I'm continue to do well right now, career wise. But it's under. It's sort of this. This little, you know, thing that. That doesn't go away. And, you know, it just has a sort of funny kind of side to this. I watch medical dramas on tv. I'm currently watching ER again. Fifteen seasons, you know, hundreds of episodes.

So you said again.

Yeah, because I watched it when it originally showed.

Okay.

And so, you know, it's 30 years old, so, you know, I forgot that I don't remember barely any of the shows. And I love. Really feels like it was going to be my world. I've had a girlfriend who was a doctor, and actually she was just at the end of her studies, so I got to know her as a medical student, and it didn't turn me off. It actually made me more interested in the topic. So for me, I'll be happy that I'll have. I'll be comfortable when I say happy. I'll be comfortable with a life when I didn't become a doctor, but it. It was the thing that I probably should have been if it wasn't doing what I'm doing right now.

I was thinking about it, the intersection of what you were doing today and physician. I think there again, there's an element that is shared between these two pathways. I wouldn't even say they're separate. I think it's the same circle that just changes a bit color. It's just like gradient. Yeah. I would choose your career. I know I would choose the activities you're doing today than the physician. And just because of the bias I have of the world of physicians.

Well, that's fair. It's a. It's a tough world, but very rewarding. What I like about my work today, it's so varied. Every day is different. I mean, it really is. I don't repeat much stuff at all. Whereas, you know, if I was a general practitioner or had specialization and there, you know, if there's some time, there's some repetition. And, you know, when I was younger and I reached out to some physicians to ask them, you know, are they happy with their life's choices and stuff? I didn't get an overwhelming sense that they were delighted that they'd made that choice and that they felt particularly special in society because of their role. At some point, it just became another job. This was the thing I heard a lot of. So, so I think that's something I am comfortable with, is that I chose something that for me is quite creative but also very variable. The connection for me, by the way, because I'm very impressed that you sort of saw connection for me it is as a problem solver. So I'm in technology. I'm building products or helping others build products or earlier I was in sort of service management, fixing data centers and computers and software. And there's a great satisfaction in fixing and solving. And that's a very consistent. It's a core to medicine, is that you are helping, fixing, hopefully solving. Not always, of course. And you didn't know he's. We know we solved the technology problems either. And so, you know, I remember early on in my tech career the feeling that when I went to help somebody, they call me and say I can't do something on my computer. And I would go and help them and they would stand by as I worked on their computer and fixed it. And then they would like be so grateful, they'd say, thank you so much. It's made my day. That was always a nice feeling and a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that I'd added value and I made somebody a little happier that day. And by the way, that's very, a very big part of my life today.

I think what I heard from a physician recently is that the point of the hospitals and being a physician is to relieve from pain. Right. And perhaps sometimes it's not just a fix, just releasing from pain. Right. That's where I found the world you are in right now much more inspiring because essentially leads to not being pain, perhaps how I feel, because in the end we all will be in pain. But that's, that's how I see my life in the world you're. You are living then in the, the world of physician. Yeah, I would rather to. I would rather to educate myself to not be in pain, then fixing the pain that perhaps might return you know, just like building a house. I would like to learn to build a house, not to build a house. And after I have to repair it all, the wall. Okay. I don't know if this is like. This is just like something I had in my head right now, and it's very connected to this feeling that I have about medicine is just like the. The point of surgery. Right. But.

Yeah, well, I think going very deep

into it, but I don't want to. Like, I'm sure this won't affect your passion towards that world.

Let me tell you, if you. If you have a bad Internet connection, that's a pain. Right. Or you write something, you do your best work and you. The file crashes and gets corrupt, or, you know, it's not backed up and you lose it. That gives a lot of pain. You know, Happens much, much with. With cloud computing and happens much less today.

Yeah. Well, to keep. I promised myself I'll keep this podcast playful for me as well. So one last question is going to be a quick one. What is one thing you wish people would ask you more often?

I'm laughing because I think people should ask more questions generally. I was asked recently, what do I think is one of the great weaknesses of society in 2025? And my answer is that we're not curious enough. There's an absence of curiosity. We seem to be less curious. So any question is good. Just ask more questions about the people in your life, you know, your world, Maybe. I. I'm. I'm only hesitating because there's so many ways I can think about this question. And just for the purposes of efficiency here, I would say they should ask me, why do I do what I do? That tells them a lot about who I am, the kind of person I am. Are you gonna ask me that question? I thought it was a setup.

No, I can. I can. But I have a. Now. Now, you made me ask you. I think people can tell who you are by just watching what you do instead of asking. That's what I think. Okay.

I'd like to believe that.

So I hope that if I do something good, I don't have to explain it or, you know, just because that's the worst thing like. Or worst thing. I want to prove people my motivations. But why do you do what you do?

I knew you were going to go, there's not a. I'll give you the answer. There's not a short answer, unfortunately, to give it merit, part of the question is, what's the context? Why did I do that? Or what drives me to do the thing I'm doing. One big answer to your question is I'm an educator. I like to educate. And this is a theme throughout my life, whether I was a leader in a business or as I write or do keynotes or teach, I'm an educator. And so why do I do that? Maybe this goes back to my feelings of why I could have been a good medical doctor is I like to help people. I like to help people be better.

Right.

And better in the broader sense. So if you are in my class and I'm teaching, my goal is that at the end of the class, whether it's one class or 12 weeks, you leave a slightly better person more informed. You have new thoughts, new ideas. Something I've said or done has helped you. And that's my joy of life. And so that drives what I do.