The Daily Stoic - Russ Roberts on Making Better Decisions

Episode Date: October 1, 2022

Ryan talks to economist and author Russ Roberts about his new book Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us, the tension between being ambitious and being a good person, strategies for reducing the fear and the loss of control that inevitably come when a wild problem requires a leap in the dark, and more.Russ Roberts is the President of Shalem College in Jerusalem and the John and Jean De Nault Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Russ is interested and invested in making complicated ideas understandable. He is the founder and host of the award-winning weekly podcast EconTalk—hour-long conversations with interesting thinkers. His two rap videos on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek, created with filmmaker John Papola, have had more than twelve million views on YouTube, have been subtitled in eleven languages, and are used in high school and college classrooms around the world.📕Pre-order Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" and get exclusive bonuses at https://dailystoic.com/preorder ✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have. Here on the weekend when you have a

little bit more space when things have slowed down be sure to take some time to think to go for a walk to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi I'm David Brown the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast.

I'm sneaking in the recording of this intro. I was in Denver yesterday. I gave a talk here in Austin today, and then I am doing a talk in Las Vegas the next day. Then I'm driving to Saravore to the ghost town to do some YouTube videos. I'm going to try to do this sort of physical challenge that I've been trying to do. I'll tell you more about that. Then I'm to LA for more interviews. Then the book is coming out here very, very shortly.

Discipline is destiny. It's been kind of a grind. I love writing. I love making books. Obviously, the process of releasing them takes me out of that routine and structure a little bit. It's always exhausting, but it comes with the territory. I appreciate everyone's support. If you haven't pre-ordered discipline as destiny or ordered it yet depending on when you're listening to this, it would mean so

much to me. Discipline as destiny, the power of self-control. You can get pre-order bonuses at dailystoke.com slash pre-order. You can pick it up, books are sold starting on September 27th. But that's just a little preface to what I think I've talked about here before, which is that I'm a product of some major life decisions. I dropped out of college when I was 20, that changed my life. I left my career in American Imperial to be a writer, that changed my life. I met my wife when I was 19. We decided to stay together. We got married in 2015.

We decided to have kids. These are decisions that are slightly out of step with my generation. Certainly age wise, that they were risky at the time. Some people agreed with. Some people didn't agree with. They were scary.

I wish I had more of a guide to making those big decisions. I was lucky enough to have a mentor like Robert Green who gave me quite a bit of advice. But when you are leaping into the dark and as they say all growth is a leap in the dark. That's more what the courage book is about. Courage is calling. Check that out. But when you leap into the dark, you don't know. You just don't know. And that's what I want to talk about today. My editor, Nikki Papadopoulos, many years ago gave me this wonderful book called How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life by Russ Roberts, which also turned me on to Adam Smith's more philosophical work. You might be familiar with wealth of nations, the Indian and the invisible hand, but he also

writes a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments. And both these books hit me so much. I think this is right around the time I was writing the Eagles the enemy. I ended up buying copies and sending them to all my friends, carrying them at the pain of porch. If you haven't read either, you absolutely should. But that turned me on to the work of Russ Roberts, an economist who was a well-known fascinating economist who has also been a pioneering podcaster and blogger. He's someone I try to see whenever I was in the DC area, which during the pandemic changed because he is now the president of Shalem College in Jerusalem. He's also a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institute. If you haven't

listened to his weekly podcast, Econ Talk, it's great. I've been on it a couple times. I'll link to those episodes. And he's an interesting filmmaker. He did these two videos about Keynes and Hayek that have more than 12 million views on YouTube. We'll link to those. His latest book is really interesting while the problems, a guide to the decisions that define us.

And it looks at the big life-changing decisions, whether to marry, whether to have children, what career path to follow. And when we can't rely on sheer rationality or data to support us. And this lens of human flourishing in a life well-lived are important philosophical organizing principles that I'm excited to bring to you in this interview. The book was released in August of 2022. You can follow him on Twitter at eCon Talker and of course listen to the eCon Talk podcast. So I gave this talk to this group of young people the other day and well young

young compared to me and they someone asked like sort of what was the what was the best decision that I made or the most important decision that I'd made as far as contributing to where I ended up. And I was thinking we'd start, given the topic of your new book. To me, the decision that contributed the most to where I am, historically seems very common, but in our modern age is relatively rare. So I met

my wife when I was 19, and I would, we didn't get married till we were in our late 20s, but I would say that decision to stay with that person and build a relationship and a life with that person was probably the most important decision that I made. And why is that almost a radical statement in today's world? Well, it's a strange little bit off the beaten track kind of answer, I think, for this generation because many people don't stick with the person they were with at 19.

But I think the more complicated aspect of your statement, which I'm sure is a true statement per ryan holiday, is that if tragically perhaps, but often the case, you had decided not to stay with that person, or she had decided not to stay with you, you'd married someone else.

And then one of the most important decisions would have been that you didn't stay with that. Your child, teenage sweetheart, and instead had had the foresight to open up your mind to another richer possibility. So I think it's really tricky to think about what our most influential decisions are. And it's equally hard to figure out whether we made the right decision often after the fact. That is very true. Although I do sense, especially generationally, but I guess that there's also timelessness to it, there is this belief that a spouse, relationship, etc. is in direct conflict with pursuing or actualizing one's career potential. Oh, absolutely. Often, and often the opposite, by the way,

that getting married changes your whole perspective on many things as does having children. As I write about in the book, I have a friend. I don't think it's spayed into the book, but I have a friend whose father told him until you get married, you're an idiot. And there are successful idiots, but often getting married, a person grows up and things that weren't important, suddenly are important.

But it is true that in general, children, family, spouse, take away time for other things and require the famous work-like balance issue for both men and women. We have this belief that these things tie you down. And to a certain degree, that's true. For sure. And I actually think that that's why it's important. So if you're an ambitious person, if you're a creative person, your head is in the clouds,

if you're a driven person, you need to be tied down to reality, to earth, right? In an important way. So like, to me, the argument has always been aside from the fact that it's genuinely pleasurable. I love this person, et cetera. But the argument is, you actually need the counterbalance of like a life, you know, I think I think about how how easily I could be totally unbalanced, given a lot of my natural predilections and then also the incentives or the rewards that society offers when you're good at something. Well, Ryan, you know, I have a lot of respect for you.

I've read a bunch of books. I think they're fantastic. But you're probably not in the category of, say, Albert Einstein. Sure. Pick your favorite genius. Yeah. And I think most geniuses have imperfect marriages. We all have imperfect marriages. Yes, but I think certain types of people, the tied down thing is just not in the cards for them. They will not be right in my book about Kafka. Kafka decided not for him getting married and he didn't. And it was torment to him, by the way. You, it was a hard decision for him.

But there are people who are in an extraordinary right-hand tail kind of way are going to be more productive tied down. For most of us, the tied down thing is a form of anchoring, really useful, really good. And otherwise we float unward and are not as effective in life as we could be. Well speaking of geniuses, Darwin famously makes his list when he's deciding about getting married. Walk us through that decision-making process Because it is that in many cases, the biggest decision one will make in their life. Who are you going to be with?

Correct. And of course, you can get divorced. It's not as irrevocable as some decisions. But the worst is unpleasant costly. And certainly, Darwin's time really, really harder than it is in our day. Sure. Darwin was 29 years old. He had already made something of a beginnings of a mark as a scientist. And I think he saw something about where he might end up. I don't think he sat around thinking I will one day be one of the two or three greatest

scientists of all time. But he was very serious about his career. And if I digass it says a little bit unnormal as the kind of person we're talking about earlier. So he thought, you know, maybe I should get married, he makes a list of the pros and the cons. It's fast-staying lists, very embarrassing. When he's assessing the pros, he says things like

better than a dog anyway to come home to. Not really his finest moment. Sure. He has no idea what married life is like. So his main vision is, well, there'll be somebody at home when I come home, that's mostly good. But on the downside, she's going to have relatives where I've spent time with. Maybe she doesn't want to live in London.

She can take time away from my work. Her relatives will take time away from my work. Our kids will take time away from my work. Some of her kids will get sick and that's gonna make me scared and nervous and anxious. And that's his pro-com list. Then he just took it as a rational person, you'd say, you shouldn't get married.

But despite that pro-com list, he gets married. And he has sort of a stream of, this is from his journal, which we have in his handwriting. We have another, his other piece is a sort of stream of consciousness thing where he kind of like goes, oh, but if I didn't get married, it'd be weird and I'd be in a dingy flat out by myself. And I'm going gonna get married. Like, whoa, oh, here's one of the greatest scientific minds of all time making what appears to be sort of a gut decision

after he's made this careful, calm, sober list of the pluses of minuses. And my argument is that these kind of decisions I call them wild problems where you don't have access to any data and often very little information about what's the right thing to do or the best thing to do for you. You're making a leap in the dark and the dark part isn't just, I don't know if I'm going to like living with this person, the dark part is you have no conception of what a shared life is

with another person that is ineffective for comforting or transcend of marriage. And you can look at married couples. If you do that, it doesn't look very exciting. They often are not so happy looking and sometimes it was ever really unhappy. If you ask them, well, is it worth it? They will not want to talk about it generally. And if they try to, they would

not be able to put into words the parts of marriage that were the upside. Downside is pretty clear by the way, in many of these decisions, we kind of know what the downside is. So like the decision to have children, which are right about, just have children. Now, you see, you know, the downside, downside is mediocre vacations for a long time, lots of expenditures, you're driving a minivan, saving for college, changing diapers, I mean, really, what's the upside? Oh, my kid was toiletry today. That's the upside.

That is inappable. It can't be inappable. Correct. And part of the inappability of it is that you will be a different person. And I'm really happy with the person I became as a father and as a spouse or happy-ish. I think I have any room to grow in both categories, but it changed who I am. It changed my sense of self. It changed the texture of everyday life. Movies that I watch now felt different as a father than they did before. And that's certainly ineffable.

It's very, very hard to explain. It's a beautiful thing. But if you have been there, you're going to make a leap of the dark and you've got to decide what to do. Darwin leapt. He got married. He married his cousin a few months later. I don got to decide what to do. Darwin leapt. He got married. He married his cousin a few months later. I think I'm not sure he had a remind when he made that list. He doesn't mention her. She didn't like London. She ended up moving into the countryside.

One of his kids died. It's sick. Right. And some of them died. Some of them died. It's a horrible torment to him as he worried about. And I'd say until near the end of his life and marriage, he had a very, very good marriage toward the end, his wife's religious views and his own loss of faith, this whatever extent it was, was a source of discomfort between them. But most of his married life was profoundly satisfying. She read to him every night, he loved it. He ended up liking, I think, living in the countryside. And you know, he had a pretty good career. Now you could argue, he didn't have a better one. He would have discovered relativity and natural selection and evolution.

But I think he did okay. And his anxiety about that, akin to what we were talking about earlier, turned out to be probably misplaced. It's true, he had to spend time with his wife, they probably saw the relatives now and then, but maybe that other side that is unimaginable before he got married,

that anchoring, that feeling of contentment, that connection with another person as you go through the storms of life, that that actually made him a better scientist. So it's hard to know, but he made a decision on the surface that was irrational. His column sober pro-con list, he ignored it. And I give a whole bunch of other examples of scientists

in the book who do the same, and analytical people and academics and scholars who do the same thing. They don't like to make the column rational decision. So the question is why? What else is going on there? And I think most people recognize, either because of norms, culture, tradition,

that there's more than meets the eye. Do these things so they don't just go with the pro-coms? No, and I take your point about geniuses. And yet there's a line from the novelist Jenny Ophel, I forget I'm not answering it, it's probably O from the novelist, Jenny Awful or Awful, I forget on a pronunciation name, that's probably Awful, I doubt her, last name is Awful. But she says, I never wanted to get married.

I planned to be an art monster. Like her point was that she wanted to be what we're talking about. And I have a sort of reflexive disgust when I hear that sentence, right? And when I look at certain people who were extremely good at what they do, you could put statesmen on one side, you could put artists on another, you could put entrepreneurs, scientists. There is something where we've, there is something hollow about these incredible achievements that seem to come at the cost of not just like getting married because they often did get married and

then they were horrible to that person or to those people. And so I almost find the impression, the achievement to be more majestic or impressive when you find like in a Darwin where they do their world class at what they do and they manage to have a happy reasonably well-adjusted life as a human being in the world. I think it's a small list. Yes, the Darwin's. And I haven't thought about it until now. I wonder And I haven't thought about it until now. I wonder why he was such an apparently devoted husband and father. Yeah, he wasn't.

It's not like he went to every soccer game. Okay, let's be honest. But, but I think he appears to have spent a reasonable amount of time with his kids. And he seemed to be close to his wife and he treated him seem to treat her well. The modern world, I think it's harder for whatever reason. Great writers, great scientists often have troubled domestic lives.

Why Darwin turned out relatively well, I'm guessing is because of the cultural norms that bit more hard on his desire for freedom, say, or whatever you want to call it. Now, the interesting question for me is, do you judge those people? I'm not sure. I'm uneasy with that. I'm uneasy with that. Let me give you a line. You can try to convince me. you try to convince me. I'll give you an example, by the way, words worth the power. Oh, I don't love, but he's had a good run. I think his best line is getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. And he said a few other things that are memorable. But, you know, he never married his sister did all his domestic chores. And I'm sure there are many people who wish they had a sister or brother

to do the day-to-day things that often we're doing as spouses or parents. And instead, we don't have those people in our lives different time, or we do all. But often a genius has somebody like Wordsworth's sister who puts, I would say, puts up with them because they are genius, because they want to be in the orbit of the person. And let me take a more mundane example. Steve Jobs, who whose family life was complicated, you can judge that too if you want. But he was that way as an employer.

I mean, he's a very difficult person. He did not pay enough enough, so that's the wrong word. He did not pay much attention to the nice cities, to the civilities. He was hard to work for. And, and yet, people loved working for him. They, they wanted to work for him because he was so extraordinary. They wanted to be around him. They wanted to work for him because he was so extraordinary. They wanted to be around him. They wanted to be part of the adventure. And I think there are people who put up with us as a spouse, they put up with the husband or wife

because they're in that presence and they're odd by it or exhilarated by it or seduced by it. It's probably sometimes all three. Well, I think the other part of that is having worked for some of those people. They almost always are attractive to you to work for because of the issues of your own parents. So, if you had an exacting, demanding, not particularly empathetic father, let's say, that is something you're very attracted to. So I tend to find that it's sort of daddy issues all the way.

And I see that happen very often. Well, that's cool. I've never heard that theory. I don't spend much time reading that literature, but you're suggesting that those of us who did not get enough approval from the dominant pairing in our childhood seek it elsewhere. We're needy. That's interesting. That's it. That could be, therefore, I could just be all of us. It's not that specific theory because it applies to most of us.

Most of us, most of you in history didn't feel they got enough. Well, my dad would be an exception, of course, and of course my children. But other than that, that's interesting. That could be a side out there. I think what happens, too, is there's a Plutarch line that I think about often. He wrote this book called How to Be a Leader. It's an essay and then there's a new Penguin University, Princeton University Press collection that I like called How to Be a Leader, some of his essays on leadership.

He talks about how often people are attracted to positions of power or governance He says we're attracted to being in government because we think it means freedom from being governed Right, so we're we want to be the number one person so we can tell other people what to do But not be told what to do right? And I think one of the traits of genius or skill or You know power or whatever is that you now have an attraction to, but you now have the opportunity to use that to exempt yourself from the ordinary inconveniences of life, but also the ordinary obligations of being a decent human being. So I guess I would question or wonder

how much of this is geniuses can't do these things or shouldn't do these things and how much of it is just a power. It's like, hey, I'm gonna abuse this person sort of because I can't abuse this strong word here, but like, nobody wants to do stuff you don't have to do. And then when you have the opportunity to not do it, of course you don't do it.

And this creates the Steve Jobs archetype that every Silicon Valley entrepreneur wants to be because it seems easier than doing the harder way. That's fantastic. I know if anyone's listening who is married, but if they are, it really gives you, most of us are not Steve Jobs, or Einstein or Darwin, or even Wordsworth. And here's the irony. We feel like that anyway.

Yes. I may not be Wordsworth, but even if I'm a third-tier poet, I may feel I deserve to be exempt from some of these obligations, because I'm so special and I'm such a good poet and I'm just a fabulous person. So of course, someone's going to stick around with me because I can't push them around. And I urge all married people to remember that even when you have that urge, not only is fighting it off the right thing to do, it's also good strategy, because it will make it make a better marriage.

But it's fast. I mean, it's a really, you know, joking, we're kind of joking around about it. But I think it's a very, it's a, you know, joking word kind of joke around about it, but I think it's a very deep question, a deep point. I often give advice to young people who don't want it about marriage, and I say, I think I said this in my Adam Smith book, don't keep score. Yeah. It's so human to keep score. Let's see, I did the dishes last night and they're in Carpool and I took care of the deposit. Yeah, I think she should. And it's much better to even, if you're not in love every moment, which is sometimes hard, pretend you are.

Pretend you have a perfect spouse. Pretend your spouse is the genius who deserves to be exempt from some of these unpleasant tasks. You have a much better marriage, much better life, you'll be a happier person. Unless your spouse takes advantage of you, in case you probably married the wrong person, and really nice, it's really important

that both people have the same attitude toward the keeping score thing. Because sometimes you got a non-score keeper with scorekeeper, and the scorekeeper can run roughshot over the non-score keeper. But I advise you to find someone who doesn't keep score and do the same. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellasai. And I'm Sydney Battle. And we're the host of Wonderys

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You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondery app. Well, I remember, and I was almost certainly wrong because in retrospect, the thing doesn't seem that important. But I remember right after we had our second kid, there was some thing, some career thing, like an opportunity that I got offered to do, and I thought I should do it, and my wife is like, we just had a baby, it's too soon. And I remember saying something like, you know, I know these NBA players, when they have kids during the season, they miss like one game, and then they're back. And she just said, are you in the NBA? And it was just like, you know,

and she, I mean, she was totally right, but that's, we do, we go like, who is the person who gets away with the most because of how talented or great they are? And you're like, I'm that person. That's, that's, because I know, that's the level of scrutiny or constraint I should be under. Right, and you think it's you, but I'm the center of

the universe. It's not you. It's me. It's a very human. It's what it's the way we're hardwired. We tend to feel the way. I'm reminded of George Allen, the former coach of the Washington Redskins who said, I don't send Christmas cards. They don't help you win football games. And that attitude, which is a, in the NFL, it's very common, right? You stay at the office till all night till one of the more at the same time, you sleep in the office. And the difference is that there's only 32, I think, maybe I think it's 32. It's under 35. There's only a handful of NFL teams, so the competition for those very scarce slots is intense. And so if you don't play by the rules, they'll find someone out. If you don't play by the norms of work at this all the time, it's expensive. Your

marriage and children will find someone else who can do better. And most of us thank goodness, or not in that rat race. We are merely if we're lucky, successful. And we have the space to spend some time with our family to take care of that second child that arrived. And often, of course, the benefits of that second child time is intangible. That career opportunity, you knew what it was about, probably more fame, more glory, more money, all above. So, any more time with the child is not something you can kind of, again, doesn't easily go on the pro-con list, the satisfaction of it, and the impact on the child.

And so, it's easily underrated. And so, it's very nice to have a harder and faster rule that says, you know, and I'm just had a kid, I better do the right thing and help my spouse, my wife, with that second kid. And the first kid. So, well, I want to talk about rules because I think that's an important part of decision making, but I want to go back

to something you said earlier, which strikes me as true. You were talking about how Darwin puts together this pros and con list and then it seems like it would be clear that he should go one direction and he goes the other direction. He makes the leap of faith. My friend Mark Manson who wrote the Settle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. He has this rule. He talks about, he says it should be hell yes or no. So if you're not like a thousand percent into it, it's definitely a no, which I find to be true on trivial things. Like it's like, hey, do you want to go out to dinner? If you're not feeling it, you should just not go.

But I found that all the big lifestyle, life changing decisions that I've made, it's been like 51, 49, at best. It was a total shot in the dark. I had no idea. I mean, even my decision to drop out of college and go the path that I did, I almost made the exact opposite decision.

In fact, just like Darwin, when I ran the pros and cons, it made more sense to me to stay. And it was only somebody else going, look, trust me on this, you should do it this way, it'll work out. Right? It's the hard decisions are never clear. Yeah, in fact, I go, my first impulse is to say, if it's a Hell Yes decision, you're really ought to be careful because these, these almost by definition and that again, as a theme part of the theme, my book, they're not, there's never a hell yes. Yeah, it's always

whoa, that's a tough one. And that's because so much of what we're talking about can't be foreseen. No, if I said to you, like you talked about going on to dinner, get a pretty good idea of what going up to dinner is about. Sure. Now, it could be a new restaurant. And you might like it, might not like it, but the costs are small on the mistake either way. And so, you know, if it's a hell of a yes, because you haven't had Chinese in so long, okay, yeah, go for it. But when you're talking about who to marry, whether to marry, whether to have kids, how many, what kind of career you're going to pursue, whether to drop out of college, if they're, they can't be,

how yes, as if you're dangerous. And there are people like that, of course. We call them impulsive rash. And often, of course, the opposite is an equally bad mistake. I don't know. I can't make a decision. I'm scared. And I'll just sit back. And of course, you've made a decision, which is not to marry, not to change your career, not to drop out. And but it feels like you did, because I'm waiting. I need more information.

I'm going to think about it some more. I'm going to take counsel. And it's OK to take counsel. You did in that situation. And you found someone you trusted, which is usually dangerous because that person doesn't have skin in the game unless they're very close to you

and you have all the skin in the game, almost by definition. But a lot of times you need that person you trust to help you deal with what's not a 51.49, so 50, 50 as far as you can tell, or it's a 55-55, if you can see why, you know, one decision looks like a good idea, and they look at that, that seems like a good idea.

So, what do I do now? And I think often asking someone to help you, that, you know, I moved to Jerusalem a year ago and took a job as president of a college, Shalom college, crazy thing to do. And I took counsel, of course, before I made that decision. And half the people I talked to said, oh my gosh, that's a horribly good job. You're happy and where you are.

Why would you do that? You're going to be a failure, probably. It's a possible job, academics, Israel, New Country. You know, speak Hebrew, hardly at all. And other said, if you don't do this, it's the biggest mistake of your life. This will be a shot of epinephrine into your heart. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. So I had to, then I had to pick which, which counsel, which protested person do, and I of course didn't make that decision that way. Exactly. I didn't decide who I trusted more. But a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person who was a person near this little town that I live in. And I got a bunch of different advice either way.

And I called him, I called him because I wanted him to tell me not to do it, right? I was like, I'm all the people that I know Tim will make the most persuasive case for why it's a bad idea. And I'll listen to him because I respect him, and admire him a lot. And he always seems to think about it differently than other people. And he goes seems to think about it differently than other people.

And he goes, how are you going to know whether you like running a bookstore unless you start a bookstore? And I was like, you know, this isn't what I wanted to hear to him. It basically said, he's like the way to think about these big decisions is don't think about it as, you know, I'm opening a bookstore for the rest of my life or whatever. So think about these things as experiments. Say, I'm going to run a bookstore for two years and see if I like it. And that's been actually really helpful for me. The idea that everything is a phase, that things have seasons, is a way to sort of get into a decision and then feel around in it. Because I think one of the problems, one of the reasons

things are mistakes is that we make the decision, then that thing that we did becomes part of our identity, and then we can't get out of it quickly or change or alter it in such a way that would make it sustainable or bearable or different because we were so public about it because we took the, you know, we did it like that also helped me was I was thinking about doing the bookstore. It's like, hey, since I'm not sure how long I'm going to do this, the amount that I'm going to spend and the way that I'm going to do it is going to is going to be different because I want to be able to get out of it if I can. So this idea of seeing big decisions as experiments or trials was actually really helpful for me. How's that working for

your marriage? Well, my wife was more into the idea than I would. So it worked out. In this case, we were, in this case, we were very aligned. And it's actually been great for a whole bunch of unexpected reasons. But I'm just suggesting that I think there's some decisions where you do have to make a commitment. It might be, yeah, it doesn't just say it'd be a lifetime, but it often should have. It has to be long enough to give it a real shot. For bookstore, for bookstore, that might be two years, or it might be six months. And for a person, it might be 25 years versus six months or three weeks or coffee. So that the argument about prenups

is like, do you want to have an exit strategy when you make the biggest commitment of your life or is it better to have the cost of changing your mind to be quite high? Yeah, it's a tricky thing. The economists, I think, this economist anyway assumes that the reason that we buy a godly, unbelievably expensive rock brought out from the bells of the earth called Diamond. And it's a really stupid idea, right?

I mean, it's got no, it's just bizarre. Yeah. And it should be about all six years of salary. That's the advice from the diamond industry, right? Other people might say, yeah, but it is a, it's a constraining device. It's tying yourself to the mass, massed as Odysseus did when he went to hear the sirens. And they say that when the Spaniards came to South America, maybe it's the Vikings, does a man, I'm sure it's both. You get to the shore, you burn your boat. It's the first thing you do. No going back. So we understand, and sometimes it's good to be constrained. The camp, go back. Other times, the whole idea that you're not making

a lifetime decision is very powerful in helping you make the leap. And then you find out you love it, or it's much better than you thought. And you stick with it. But you stick with it in a different way than if you'd done it. And you might not have leaped at all

if you didn't have that out. Yeah. Well, so to go back to rules. So I had this kid who works for me. He just with a group of people just tried to climb to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. And they were going and everything was going well. And then one of the members got really sick. And he and that member had to go all the way down to get medical attention.

And I said, I was asking him, I said, how, how did you make that decision? I mean, you just spent all this money, you flew there, you were fine, you had a shot at making the summit. And then how did you decide which one of you would go down with the person who was sick? And he said, Oh, I had decided before we left that if anyone needed to go down, I would accompany that person. So he's like, I made the decision with like a sort of a moral, selfless decision before I left. And then we all knew that that was the case.

And it just, it preempted the moral dilemma at, you know, whatever elevation at whatever. It was a difficulty. It was a pre-up instead of a pre-nup. Before they went up, they agreed on who, It was a difficulty. It was a pre-up instead of a pre-nup. Before they went up, they agreed on who... Now, it's a brilliant idea. And it's a destiny to drive a right here, right?

We're going to the party. When you get there and the music's glaring, and you're having a good time, and you're thinking, what are we, Chef, for a drink? Okay, which one of us... Now, in that situation, if it's a group of friends you go out with regularly,

you can alternate, you can take turns. You're only probably going to climb out Kilimanjaro maybe once and you might not be going to five or six other climbs with that same group. So there's no chance to take turns. And this person decided they wanted to do that service for their friends in advance, an amazing commitment. And they kept it, by the way, which is the way that that's a little other part of it that's hard to remember. It's easy to pre-commit. It's harder to keep the commitment sometimes. But that's an amazing story. Did that person, how does that person feel after the fact? He feels good. And then those two people now have a sort of bond together, they're going to go back and do it.

So he was like, he's cool. That's cool. You know, his point was, if that person has to go down alone, you know, if we do it together, then we have a reason that we have to come back and try this again. So I thought it was good. But it struck me as an important device, right? It's like, no, absolutely. Because decisions that we face in life, the wild decisions are not like, always, hey, should

I move across the country for a new job? Should I, should I ask this person to marry me? You know, should I invest in this company or not? Oftentimes they're like, they can be like, you know, should I blow the whistle on this or not, right? Should I, you know, so when we have these moral quandaries quantities where maybe something is not good for us as a career choice, but good for our soul, this is where having pre-commitments to certain ideals or ideas can help take you out of the immediacy of the thing and pre-decide that vexing choice for you. And it's a special kind because this is a kind that you make with other people. So you're holding yourself accountable that way. The more challenging kind of the kind

of community make to yourself. And you might not make them public. You might to tire yourself to the bass. But in general, there are a lot of decisions that I think are important is that it's good to have a role. I write a little bit in the book, not as much as as I might like, but I didn't think I'd much say about it, but this question, what kind of friend do you want to be? It's a very deep question, right? How much time do we want to both forget we're done about marriage and family earlier, but you could ask the question, how much time do you want to devote to building connections to other human beings outside of work. And what sacrifices will you make work and otherwise to maintain those friendships? And those are hard decisions. And I think

often if you go on a case by case basis, you'll make a lot of bad ones because you'll convince yourself that it's okay in this case, the same is true as parenting, situational ethics. Exactly. I think that's dangerous. A bunch better to have universal ethics or whatever. Where would be? So, you know, I think I've written about it. Number of places, should you go to a funeral? It's almost inevitable that you level 1000 reasons to not go to a funeral.

A funeral is of a friend, a loved one or a parent of a friend. Often what will happen is it's almost always unexpected. It comes as a tragic surprise. It's tomorrow. You've got four meetings tomorrow, and it's really easy to sack. You don't have to love to go. And I won't go to the funeral, but I'll do such and such for the widow or whatever it is. And it's what I think personally, it's up to every person to make their own call, but my view is almost always, if, unless it's unimaginably costly, go to the funeral. You'll be glad you did.

It'll make you a better person. You'll have done a good deed for the deceased who won't be able to thank you, but more importantly for the loved ones of the person who passed away. And I think in friendship and in ethics, I use the phrase in my book, purplish your principles, pick them, figure out what they are.

They can change over time. You may decide to do something different eventually, but try to have rules because in the press of day to day life, you've got the, I'm the center of the universe problem, you've got your rationalization for doing what's easy, you have your rationalization doing what's worth fun, and you're a regulator. So, have rules to help you make the thing that you'll be glad to have done later. Well, so at the same, the talk that I was mentioning, so I talked to all the incoming freshmen

or plebs at the US Naval Academy. And so they were asking one about career choices. But one of the things I had talked about during the talk was, I guess I'll probably run it on the podcast at some point, but I was saying that, you know, what's interesting about military culture and what's so powerful about it is that it gives you those rules, right? It's same, same haircuts, same dress, same training, live together. It's years and years of this indoctrination in a good sense that makes you of sort of one mind and one spirit. And that's really, really powerful and important.

And the military force could not operate without that. And you see the difficulty in civilian society when you don't have any of that, right? And then you see the benefits like in America, you know, after the Second World War, when you had so many millions of people do that and then go back in this civilian life. But I said, the paradox or the tricky part of what you're all undergoing is that there will be moments in your career where you have to make profoundly individualistic decisions.

These are moral dilemmas. This is where you have to go against the group. This is where you bump headfirst into the group. This is where you bump head first into the way we've always done things. And if you haven't maintained or cultivated that true sense of who you are and what your values are inside that larger culture, you'll probably fail in that moment of truth.

Just like we're saying, the situational ethics, the reasons that you don't want to turn in your supervisor, the reason you want to disobey a certain order, the reason you want to speak out about this or that moment, but that sense butts up against the years of indoctrination or collectiveness that you have been, you know, swimming. And that's the real challenge of life. And of course, religion can do the same thing in daily life. It can strange a bunch of your choices, especially in Judaism, where there's a lot more rules than there are in other active religions as far as I know. And you're suggesting, which is a really interesting idea, that if you're

not careful, you will lose the muscle that says, okay, now you're in a situation where the rule isn't obvious. Yeah. And now you're at C, you're a float and which way do you paddle? And I, you know, it's interesting. I'm one of my favorite stories is a former CEO, his business went bankrupt. And he confessed to me and I'm probably a moment. He was a Harvard MBA, which is very well known for its case study approach. And he said to me, he sort of blurted out. He said, you know, I just picked the wrong case study. He went to the shelf, he had a crisis of work. He went to the shelf and he thought it was applicable this case and he picked the wrong

one. And you might argue, maybe you shouldn't pick a case study. Now, you ought to get used to the complexity of things and I'm not judging them at all. I'm probably a difficult job, but just the point that, so that's a second, actually, a variant of what you're talking about. So one, you have to use the muscle. Yes, I remember which rules, the right rule, because sometimes there's conflicting rules and, you know, you want to be loyal to your to your colleagues at work. So you should skip the funeral, but you want to be loyal to your

cousins. So you go to the funeral. Now what? Well, there's a case where your principles conflict and you have to decide, you know, which one you're going to privilege. They're both principles. Um, that's not a bad time to get counsel. By the way, in those kind of situations, you know, I'm not talking about just, you should go to work.

I'm talking about where you're supposed to give a big presentation, a lot's on the line. We're with other people. they're recounting on you, and now, you know, you're you're going to go to this funeral. Sometimes you might have to say no to the funeral, it might be a principle of yours. That's real life. I like to believe, I don't know if it's true. I like to believe that the exercising of these decision-making ethical, both ethical and practical decision-making powers helps you get better at it. When I see older people, well, not about their age, but when I see older people and say in finance or in management

who've had successful careers, they're often not people who apply algorithms or some formula. They just quote, feel the father got, if all their intuition, the father instinct. And that makes it sound like it's a wild guess. It's not. I really think you get better at cultivating those, those skills, the world's complicated. There is no right case study. There is no formula. So you've got a way a bunch of things at once. And skill people, as world's complicated, there is no right case study, there is no formula. So you've got to weigh a bunch of things it wants. And skill people, as they get experience, have found ways to do that effectively. And I think what you're suggesting for those plebs of the Naval Academy is that these

this time when you're disciplined to become part of a cohesive unit is fabulous. And you get many things from it, but you lose the skill that you will de-tacultivate as well. I think it's a deep insight. And I think it, you know, it's important. One second here, my computer is being weird. Let me just save it,

and then we'll wrap up here in a sec, but I just need to save this. I got all kinds of good stuff here. I've got YouTube, by the way. I'm recording you and me. So I have very high audio of both of us. Sorry, I call it quality. We're quick time stop for a second.

So I'm just, I just want to make sure. Well, to go to your point about, it really experienced and why as people sort of going off intuition, I write about Queen Elizabeth, the second quite a bit in the discipline book that I just finished, as I think about the,

that I think primarily her job is to not do things, right? Or primarily her job is just to be restrained, to not have an opinion, to have all the information, but to not be able to have an opinion. to have all the information, but to not be able to have an opinion. But I think about the number of prime ministers, I think it's 12, maybe 13, the number of US presidents, the number of people that she has seen come and go, she has watched people struggle with difficult decisions just over and over and over again.

And obviously we don't know what she says in these weekly meetings that she has. But I have to imagine the amount of just effortless, sort of indirect subtle counsel that she is able to give must be incredible given the amount of experience is what I've heard is that she doesn't she never said she never makes statements she only asks questions that are designed to prompt the person to where she wants them to go. And you just think I mean she has like 70 years of experience that exact thing and it must be incredible to watch. That's a super power. I'd like to have that one. Maybe I'll try to cultivate it. I think it's a very high level. I would not be certain that she is good at anything from watching anything for 70 years. Not everybody gets good at it. I bet she's really good at picking out an outfit for the royal flower exhibit or whatever ceremonial duty of the day is. She's definitely better at that probably when she was played by Claire Foy in the first season of the crown. I'd

go with her by the way, General Diana Christus, I guess Claire. I'd like to her more than the second one. Yeah. And the third one. Who is there a third one? Well, Olivia Coleman is Olivia Coleman the second one? Is that who's the second one? I feel the third one they have in the third one. There'll be two. Okay.

Yes. No, I think there's three, but there could be only three people play in three seasons. But anyway, I stopped watching. I lost interest when it became two princesses. I focused. So I, I, I fell on the wagon became two princesses. I focused. So I fallen off the wagon of the crown, which I thought the first two seasons were extraordinarily rolled on and an amazing level of quality sustained over a long period of time. But here's what I want to ask you. Let's say you're right. Yeah, let's say that's 70 years in the presence of

people under great stress, both within her own governments and Leaders from around the world. She's seen a lot of gaps and embarrassment and brilliance and courage and it's an extraordinary thing Which by the way that hard drive we can't download. I'd love to wouldn't yet Whether she got enough out of it as I'm sort of jokingly suggesting she didn't but It's an amazing set of life experiences. Do you think you're younger than I am? But you've been a pretty serious person. I'd say you're something of an old soul right in all of the day. Do you think you are better at the kind of life skills that you care about than you were 10 years ago? That's a really good question.

I would think so, and I think it's doing it over and over again, having, you know, when there's this line from Epic Teedis that I loved where he says, you want to get to a point where when you reach situations, you're able to say, this is what I trained for. Right? And so the exposure to things that you go through in your life should be preparing you for some future moment. And I do

feel like that's true. And although if I'm trying to argue both ways, maybe I would say, I'm actually equally good at it, but I'm less emotional about it. I'm able to strip out emotion. And so the muscle or the skill works better. So even if your ability remains constant, like you're born with a certain amount of ability to make good decisions or to respond under pressure, etc. That's constant. I do feel like emotion, just like being hungry or not sleeping enough can undermine physical skill. I think

I'm less emotional, less reactive about things than I was when I was 20. I feel like I'm less intense about things now than I was then, and that makes me better or more rational in these important moments. I mean, I need to really interest in question. And I think I'm sure there are many things you're better at. When I'm interested in, I don't have an answer is how what's the breadth of that improvement. I'm much better at suppressing

my emotions than I was when I was younger. I learned a lesson I read in a book called The Heart A Rouse. It's a great book by David White. I recommend it. He has a little story in there. The punch on the story is hold your anger for a day. And one of the things that's nice about it is that it's easy to remember. And Montre is, I think, are very helpful. They're like rules. They pop into your head and you realize, oh, yeah,

I'm holding my anger for a day. I think I'm a little better at that than I was when I was the young person. And better at just suppressing in general, in case some people would say, that's actually a poll. to a young person and better just suppressing in general. Some people would say, that's actually a pull. You should never suppress anger or emotion. It's good to, yeah, you're gonna be a better person,

you'll be more effective, be yourself. But I actually think that to be a real sell, you do need to suppress some of those impulses and anger and emotions. And certainly the idea of decision making that we've been talking about. I love that epictetus quote, because I think that's really a good way to think about

how to prepare for life and live it at the same time. And it's a good line for a movie. It's a really good time for a locker and a pep talk. Has anyone stole that? It's a little bit like. So like for Russell's speech in the, in the US hockey team, an Olympics movie, which I'm unbelievably forgetting

the name of right now. Miracle. Miracle. Yes, that is a course. It's called Miracle. My kids have only seen it four, cater 15 times, and I only see them like twice. So, but yeah, that pep talk is fabulous, and I think it's kind of in there. Yeah, definitely right. He definitely read up data.

So I'm sure the idea that you're a work in progress, though, I think is is important. I mean, one of the interesting passages towards the end of Mark Siriois' meditations, which we suspect he's writing towards the end of his life, because the last entry, it sort of seems like he's preparing to die. You know, he says something like, you're an old man, and still, you know, any list like the things that he's struggling with, basically, the fundamental precepts of stoicism, the thing that he's written so eloquently about and modeled, you know, historically as far as we know. And then he's just like, but you're still not effortless at it. And I think the idea that like, yeah,

you get better at it as you go is is probably the way to think about it. And certainly, certainly, I'm not sure the belief that you can't get any better at it. That's probably a self-fulfilling prophecy there. So you might as well act that. You talked about acting as if, you might as well act as if you can improve. And maybe you can get one chance. Got a chance.

We're here there. Yeah. Well, our college here in Jerusalem is called Shalom College. Shalom means hold, complete. It's what we aspire to. It's not what we achieve. Not in the four years, three and a half years, our students are here and not going forward, but we like to think of it as an aspiration. And I think it's a good aspiration for all of us to aspire to self-control, aspire to holding

your anger for a day, aspiring to be a better spouse and parent friend, and so on, even though we recognize that we will fail because we are part of the Crick Crooked Timber of Humanity. But that's the way we're made. And that's the perfect place to stop. Thank you so much. Great talk with you, Ryan. Hey, it's Ryan.

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