Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Don't you hope that what happens is, no matter what you thought the future was, I'm going to do this and do this and maybe I'll pivot to that. When you start this process, don't you hope you're going to find something even cooler that you didn't know was out there?
[00:00:13] Speaker B: I'm Diana Earley, and I've spent most of my life learning firsthand what privilege actually costs.
The legacy control, the family expectations, the guilt of feeling trapped in a life everyone thinks you should be grateful for.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: If you've ever wondered why having everything
[00:00:30] Speaker B: still feels like something's missing, you're in the right place.
Welcome to Pressures of Privilege.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: My Guest today spent 45 years helping people build things. Laptops at Apple, Star wars toys, award winning products. But his most popular creation wasn't a product at all. He and Dave Evans built a course at Stanford, one of the most popular electives on campus, because it helps students answer that. The one question no syllabus ever touches. What do you actually want to do with your life? They wrote the book, created a coaching certification in their method, and now he's bringing that same thinking to people climbing their second mountain. Bill Burnett is the executive director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford. He co wrote Designing youg Life, the number one New York Times bestseller that helps millions of people stop asking what should I do? And start asking what can I try?
His brand new book, co written again with Dave Evans and just out this February, is called how to Live a Meaningful Life.
And the premise is basically my show in book form. Many of us have lives that look successful on paper but feel strangely empty.
He's also been watching me do my own work with the what's Next Program this past year.
Here's the thing about Bill. He leads with a quote that I have not been able to get out of my head since I first heard it. You can't read the label from inside the bottle. We're really good at reading everyone else's label, our own. That's where it gets hard. Bill, welcome to the Precious or Privilege.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Thank you, Diana. It's great to be here. I got that quote from Scott Galloway.
I think he said in one of his newsletters or something I read or something I heard him say, but it's in a great light. You can't read the label from inside the bottle. You know, we, we have a saying at the Lifestyle lab is you can't hear yourself by yourself. You have to have a community for this journey because you know, it's hard and, and, you know, friends and other people can see stuff about you that you just can't see for yourself.
[00:02:37] Speaker C: Yeah. And especially you. You're very good at challenging people. People like you're really good at challenging me.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Maybe it's challenging. Maybe it's just, just, just asking.
I don't know. To me, asking obvious questions like, what makes you happy? Why do you do these? I mean, I believe everybody does something for a reason. It's strange. Even people with lots and lots of resources do stuff that doesn't, doesn't serve them.
You do stuff that, do stuff that creates chaos in your life or pain in your life, or know, help, doesn't, doesn't support relationships in your life. And you, and I was wondering, I know you're doing this for a reason. What's, what's the reason? And often that's what starts the conversation about, you know, what is meaningful for people. You always put enough time in that. In our culture, Our culture is all about transactions, getting stuff done.
In the book, we talk about the transaction world and the flow world, and they're kind of one's right below the other, like a little aquifer flows right there. You can get at any time. But everybody's spending time in the transaction world, which isn't bad. I mean, you gotta get stuff done. You gotta get, you know, you gotta do your job, get your paycheck, you know, do your laundry. But people turn things like meditation into transaction. Oh, I'm gonna meditate. I, I, I meditated for 20 minutes. I'm gonna meditate for 30. Now that's better. It's like. No, that's, you missed the point. That's not what meditation's about. It's not a transaction. We spend a lot of time in our, our transaction brain and not enough time in our, in the part of our brain that really change generates a sense of meaning and purpose.
[00:04:03] Speaker C: So running on that hamster wheel, many people are on, that doesn't help, right?
[00:04:09] Speaker A: No. And, you know, and what, and the stuff that you write about, which, which I, I, I, I'm, I am a paid subscriber to I know, Diana's newsletter. It's funny that people who have more than enough, way more than enough, still want more and not more because it might, you know, accelerate their philanthropic journey and help more people. Just more. I just gotta have more. And it's what, you know, psychologists call the hedonic treadmill, the pleasure treadmill. It's, it's the same thing as addiction. You know, that. Hey, that first snip that first line of Coke felt really good.
The 500th line, the 2000th, you know, the, the, I just want to get that high back, but it's not quite as high as it used to be. So I have to have more. I have to have more, I have to have more. Why do addicts overdose? Because they want, they're trying to get back to that original experience.
Or, or I got, I've got some money, I've got to have more.
I got promoted, felt good for a little while. I, I gotta get promoted again. And we, we just know this is a psychology of humans. It's, it's, it's probably built into us because that was evolutionarily valuable to. Well, I, you know, I've got some food, I gotta go catch more food or something. But, but it just doesn't work in our modern life because there's so many triggers for, there's so many people looking at us now at our label and, and, and judging us or reading us or telling us who we are or social media comparing us to other people that this whole treadmill of more and more and more and more and more has gone crazy. And it's making people, it's making people crazy, it's making people miserable. It's a bigger effect in people who have lots who want more than people who have, you know, they're fine, middle class, whatever they're doing okay, they'd like a little bit more, they'd like more vacation time. Their self worth is not tied up in their net worth.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: That's, that's huge. Self worth is not tied up in their net worth. Also, wealthy people can buy almost any
[00:06:15] Speaker A: experience, but can they actually enjoy it? Can they actually have it? Can they, can they stop for the, you know, so our, our premise in the new book is there's a transaction world and a flow world. Meaning, meaning shows up in the flow world. But you kind of have to pay attention.
You can't just buy the experience, do it and then go to the next experience. I mean, you have to enjoy, savor the moments that show up in these experiences. One of the reason, you know, to, to buy the experience, to go on the safari, to do the thing, isn't to come back and show everybody your pictures of the animals.
It's to be in the rapture of the Serengeti and, and seeing the lion or whatever, whatever it is. We mediate all these experiences through digital pictures or digital experiences. But, and, and then when we come home, we didn't have the experience. We, we Reported it, but we didn't have it.
[00:07:09] Speaker C: They weren't open to what you describe in the book as wonder.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: You know, I always joke, I teach at Stanford, and I'm not allowed to make stuff up because I can't just. It's a research school, so you gotta have research. There's a ton of research now on awe and wonder.
Dan Siegel's got a thing called the Mindsight Institute. He's a professor, and he studies consciousness and society of wonder. There's a couple books on awe now, and we know that, you know, like, the human brain has got some. And we're wired for some intrinsic motivations, things you would do without any, you know, any external benefit. Nobody's going to pay you more or praise you more. You just do them because. Because that's the way humans are wired. And curiosity is one of those things. And so in the first book, curiosity is the big mindset of a designer being curious about how to make something different or better. And in this book, we're saying, well, curiosity plus mystery. Like, I don't know why that sunset's so beautiful, but I really love it. I don't know why this. When this one song comes on, I get really teary, but I do, because music can impact me that way. These moments of mystery, which you don't even have to try to explain, you just know they're true. So curiosity plus mystery equals wonder. So you take curiosity up a notch to not just, ooh, what's going on? This is so interesting to like, oh, my God, this is so beautiful or so amazing.
And when you have those experiences, you're actually in a transcendent state. You're in a state where your time stands still and you're just having the experience. And they're memorable, and they're. Because of that, they're meaningful.
[00:08:44] Speaker C: Reminds me of when I first walked into the St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, and I'm looking at Bernini's statue, Maria in Ecstasy, and I'm like, oh, wow, I'll turn into a Catholic seeing that.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Gone back three times now, but the first time I saw the David, you know, they have it staged so as you walk around the corner, it's down at the end of his long hall and big giant statue. And I mean, if. And I'm not a religious person, but that's as close as I would come to conversion. And it turns out there's little seats on the side that fold out of the wall for the nuns to sit in while they're praying. And if the Nuns aren't there. You can sit there. And I sit there, you know, hours sketching the David because, you know, and he did that when he was, like, 25, 26. That's not fair.
Who has that much talent? You can see it like a tourist.
Yeah, it's the transaction. Checked off. The David checked off. You know, the Vatican checked off the Sistine Chapel. Got it done.
You can look at it with great curiosity. How the hell did he carve this giant thing out of stone? And it looks. And I know it's marble, but it looks like it's alive.
And then you can just wonder at the joy of human. The human creativity, the human spirit, the ability to capture beauty.
And that lasts for, you know, for hundreds of years.
It will be beautiful in the age of AI and we've all downloaded ourselves into, you know, our computers or whatever.
The David will still be beautiful.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: This idea. We could listen to Mozart's Requiem while sitting in front of the David and drawing him. That would be a nice combination.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:17] Speaker C: And I want.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: I want the full orchestra.
[00:10:19] Speaker C: Oh, okay. Okay.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: And. And. And chorus. I don't want to be listening to it on headphones. I want, you know, in that room. It would sound great, wouldn't it?
[00:10:26] Speaker C: Oh, my God.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:28] Speaker C: So I have some listeners who struggle with their purpose. And you have this thing called the work view and the life view.
Um, and I. I have a feeling maybe the reason they're struggling is that they're. Maybe those things don't match in their lives.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Often that's true. One of the things we talk about is coherence, like, is who you are.
What's the story you tell yourself, how you grew up, you know, my story was, you know, work hard, get good grades, go to a good school, you know, everything will be fine.
Not really, but that was the story. I decided some parts of that didn't really work. But who you are, what you do, what is the thing you do for prep productivity in the world. Work.
You may be of, you know, whatever you did, your philanthropy may be your job. Your. Your. Your foundation may be your job. Your corporations that you own may be your job. And then what do you believe? This with the big picture, you know, what's the. Is there a God? Is there. How do you organize your. Your big, you know, your Teos, as they would say. So when those all fit together nicely, If I found these things lying on the ground and I picked up these little essays about who you are, what you do, and what you believe, when I think they came from the Same person, then they're coherent, they make sense together. And the research on this says that when that makes sense, you will experience the things you do in your life as being more meaningful because they fit into the big picture. They fit into your idea of what work is for and. And they fit your identity. But a lot of people don't, you know, they. They. Because of simple rewards, systems of reward and punishment.
I was a good student. I got good grades, so I went to a good college. I got good grades, so I went to graduate school. I became a lawyer because my dad's a lawyer. My. Everybody's a lawyer, doctor, whatever. And now I'm a lawyer. And I'm in. I'm very successful because I'm smart and I work really hard. And then I find myself.
This was a real situation. I was doing a workshop in New York and find myself talking to a woman who's like, yeah, I did all those things. Went to Stanford, went to Yale. I'm in the biggest law firm. I was the youngest woman partner. I'm the first woman on the management team. I run the whole damn firm. $6 million salary, $20 million bonus, big house in Manhattan, house in Long island, kids in private schools, and I hate my life.
What happened? And she said, I don't know. I did the hardest thing. And I. And I always won, and I always got the gold ring. And then I. There was always another gold ring. And I'm kind of 45, and the kids are getting, you know, could be teenagers soon, and I'm not feeling like they really need me. And I'm not really feeling like I was home that much, because all the other things, and I got all the rewards, and clearly I have the resources.
I just don't like where I ended up. And psychologists have a term for this. She's a drifter.
She drifted into. She didn't put her agency behind her career or her choices. She let systems of reward and punishment rewards. Hey, got into the hardest school to get into. Hey, got into the hardest law school to get into. Hey, got the best grades, top of my class.
All the rewards and punishments of, you know, of feeling like a failure, feeling like she was an imposter, drove the behaviors that created the situation that she's in now. The per group, she or any person in that situation has to deal with a sort of, you know, existential fact that none of this means anything.
It was external systems of reward, external systems of punishment. They weren't the things she wanted to do do. She never asked herself what she wanted to do. Now, the good news is you can start anywhere. You, you know, if I'm like, awesome, well, you got a lot of resources.
Bank 2 years salaries, quit your job, let's do some odysseys.
And for her, but for her, that was like, no, no, no, you don't understand. If I did that, I'd have to, I'd have to accept that my whole life was a fraud. And I said, no, you don't have to. You don't, don't be so cruel to yourself.
Don't do that kind of violence to yourself. Your whole life was a series of accomplishments. They just weren't for the right reasons.
And now as you get clearer, as you start to see the second mountain, let's look at the positives. You got a lot of resources. You don't have to have a Lifestyle that takes $2 million a year to run. You could downsize that, Sell the place on Long island, downsize the house, get the kids out of the private schools, get rid of the Teslas. You know, I mean, you, you know, I, I work with people who are, are barely making it by some, some of my, you know, coaching folks and some of my students, by the way, people think Stanford students are rich. 70% of Stanford students aren't financial aid. 20% of the students pay nothing.
And my students are on a full, full scholarship. Like, full scholarship. We pay everything. We pay the tuition, we pay the room and board, everything. We, books, materials, everything. You know what they're doing.
They got a full time job while they're at school because they're sending money home to mom and dad.
[00:15:41] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: So those kids who have nothing, nothing to fall back on, they don't have a lot of resources. They're just hustling to get themselves, you know, to the next stage of social mobility. Get the next stage and then pull their family with them.
They can do this.
And they, they have, you know, the grit to, to, to persevere and figure out a way forward.
So I'm, I'm often surprised that they're, they're more resourceful than people who have everything, lots of things, and, and they feel stuck. They start stuck in their wealth. They're stuck in a position.
The other thing is, she said, but, but, but I'm on the, you know, I'm on the board at the, I do the Met gala. I do this, I do this. If I, if I stop. What if I stopped, who would I be?
[00:16:29] Speaker C: Ah. And the identity crisis.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: And I said, well, you would be Janice, this really amazing woman who's Coming to this new conclusion about what she wants to do in her life. Wouldn't that be enough?
And I could kind of tell for her it was. I'm not sure.
I kind of like all the attention.
[00:16:47] Speaker C: Did you get her out of that paradox?
[00:16:49] Speaker A: It was a show. It was a show workshop. Actually burst into tears. First rule of life design.
We don't should on anybody. I'm not telling you what you should do. You should do. You should do whatever feels available to you right now. And right now, what it feels available to you is it's just a crushing burden. And it started to get so big you can't handle it anymore. That might be working through some stuff with psychologists who can help you understand why these behaviors of being successful really did serve you at one point. And now you just. They don't. They don't serve you anymore. And then, you know, once you got a sort of a healthy sense of identity, then the life science stuff can kick in and go. But I said, well, this is just a quick, quick overview. Go get yourself another glass of wine.
The next exercise is way more fun.
But I think she left, actually, the workshop. But. But, I mean, she's. She's just an example of, you know, the kind of people that you're. You're working with all the time and the kind of people that. That do have resources.
And.
And often you've talked about it. There's a sense of either imposter syndrome or guilt. You know, I didn't make this money. Somebody else made this money, or I made a lot of money, but I don't know. I don't know what it's for. I mean, I've bought everything I need, and I've got everything I want, and I've had all these. I bought all the experiences. And frankly, it's just not.
It's not. It's not turning my crank anymore. Like, what happened? I thought I could just keep. You know, if I just had more, it would be better. And then 35, 40 years of positive psychology, studying the effects of money and happiness, studying the effects of achievement and happiness, there's no correlation.
[00:18:30] Speaker C: Well, I think you. You probably planted a seed in that woman's mind, you know, it might.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: You know, I hope so.
[00:18:35] Speaker C: Yeah. Change doesn't happen overnight. And maybe five or 10 years, she's gonna go, you know what? That session with Bill, you know what I think I'm gonna do? What? You know, like, I think I'm gonna get rid of the Teslas.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: And it's like, no, don't don't crash and burn your life. You don't need to do that. Like, you can start prototyping. You can start taking little, tiny experimental steps. What do you want to prototype? What would it be like? You know, what would it be like if I wasn't doing this and I just decided to be on these boards and to help, you know, the Met raise money for their. For opera, because I believe in opera. What would it be like if I just stopped doing something and I could prototype a little version of that? Um, I think a lot. I just read a study where they put people in MRI who have, like, a really hard problem. Like, they have a difficult problem.
Not an addiction or something, but a difficult problem they're working with. Marriage. Something. Something. Something's hard and it's not working. And then put them in the scanner, they look at their brain activity, and then they propose a new solution in a. In a new direction. And it turns out the fear response to the new idea is way bigger than the fear response to the. The problem you've. You're working on. And so this is why people don't change, right? I. I know this sucks.
[00:19:49] Speaker C: The devil, you know, is better than the devil.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I know it sucks, but at least I. It's my problem.
And changing, it's really scary.
So break it down. Break it down into small steps, small prototypes, you know, little experiments, little. We call it sneaking up on your future. Go talk to somebody who. Who made a transition, some similar to the one you're thinking of. See how that felt for them. How long did it take them to, you know, to drop into a new groove? Nobody changes themselves overnight, typically, unless it's the classic, you know, addiction, crash and burn. You got to get the very, very, very bottom. You gotta have. You gotta have the heart attack before you start exercising and eat right, you know, you gotta have your, you know, your relationships fall apart before you finally start to introspect and go, gee, in every one of these relationships that fell apart, the only common denominator is me.
Maybe I need to work on me. Not. It's not, you know, they were all bad partners, probably, but. Probably you don't pick so well. So it's still you, right? I mean, like, yeah.
[00:20:54] Speaker C: Or your boundaries were crummy or.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. It does take. Sometimes it takes a crisis to overcome that fear. But I'm all for, like, hey, when you're feeling good about yourself, let's. Let's invest in making. Making the changes that you want to make because you have energy. You have A, you know, you have a strong identity, you kind of know yourself well.
So let's, let's, let's start the design process, which is empathy. First.
Who am I? What do I need? That's my, you know, work life, compass.
I, I don't have to know where I'm going, just have to know I'm on the right track. Right. I got my compass, it's telling me this is north. I want to go north. So empathy for myself, empathy for the world. Just because I want to do something doesn't mean the world's going to accept this. I need to, I need to connect myself to the world and then start the process of building little prototypes and seeing what works. Don't you hope that what happens is no matter what you thought the future was, I'm going to do this and do this and maybe I'll pivot to that. When you start this process, don't you hope you're going to find something even cooler that you didn't know was out there?
Because you're sitting back here all surrounded by your fears and your constraints and everything and why don't you take a couple little steps, you start little baby steps, start trying things in the world and you meet somebody and they say, oh, you know, Diana, somebody like you, you know what you ought to do? You ought to be a journalist.
You know, and then I'm a journalist and that, that door opens or, or something else happens.
[00:22:19] Speaker C: Well, yeah, podcast wasn't existing.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, you should do a podcast. You should do podcasts.
[00:22:24] Speaker C: So we told me not to do the podcast, remember? You said it'd be a lot of work.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: It's a lot of work. Well, I mean, I'll put it this way.
Anybody can do a podcast. Yeah, doing a very popular podcast that has millions and millions of, you know, being, being Mel Robbins is a lot of work.
[00:22:40] Speaker C: Yes, yes.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: Take a little step and see what happens. And then, and, and, and my experience in my own life and other people's lives that I've watched or helped coach along is they find something that was even more interesting than the thing they thought they were looking for.
Because when you put yourself in the world, radical collaboration, curiosity, get out in the world, biased action, you meet people and, and, and possibilities you didn't even know existed show up. You know, when I took a full time job at Stanford, I've been teaching a long time, but I took a full time job at Stanford in 2006 and about a 50% pay cut, never been happier. It's great, you know, I don't.
[00:23:16] Speaker C: I don't.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: I don't work for money. I was running the. The undergraduate and graduate design program. This. This idea of designing your life was completely. Never occurred to me. Dave Evans and I had a meeting at lunch one time. He had been doing a class over at Berkeley. It was sort of similar. And he said, what about doing something?
We piloted, it grew, it expanded, you know, became this thing. Now it's an international thing, and 600 schools are teaching the class and stuff, but. But David Kelly calls it the success disaster. David Kelly's. I founded D School, and Ido is my boss. And he's like, you're supposed to be doing this other thing. And then you started this little other thing, which you told me was just going to be one class, and now it's like six classes, and, you know, it's all over the world and three books and blah, blah, blah. I was like, you were supposed to. This wasn't your job. And I said, I know. I didn't. I didn't expect it. So I had no idea that we'd do this. I'd never. My entire life, never thought about writing a book. I like Hemingway, and I had fantasies of, you know, living in Paris and writing great American novel, but I was never seriously thinking about writing a book.
Everything. And I, you know, I didn't know anything about coaches. I wasn't, you know, the coaching. The coaching thing sort of came up because coaches found this useful, and we wanted to serve that. So none of the stuff that I'm doing now was. Was on any of my odysseys 20 years ago.
[00:24:34] Speaker C: Speaking of, like, big questions like, where should I live and how do I find work? You know, that means something. These are big questions. And in your book, which is this wonderful book here, you have this wonderful tool. Like, how would I, for example, how would I find a place to live? And then one answer might be, make a list of what you're looking for in a place. Well, how would I make a list of all the places? Right.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We call it the reframing ladder, right? So you pick a question like, you know, how do I find the right place to live? And then you say, well, if you found the right place to live, what would you get? Well, I'd get a comfortable home and a great community. Okay, how might I find a great community? And then you brainstorm on that for a while and you say, okay, and if you found a great community, what would you get? You'd get, well, I wouldn't be lonely and I would have people who would share my, my ideas about, you know, family and, and friendship. Okay, what would you get if you, if you were in a group of people who shared your ideas about family and friendship? So each time you move up the ladder, you, you get a different. You, you get a different perspective because you're kind of going up a level of abstraction. And now what I do in class, because we, I've used that, that tool for years and years, but it's a little tricky and it's hard to kind of do if you don't have somebody to help you do it. Now I do it with an AI. Just ask an AI.
Here's the prompt. Using the framework from the book how to live a meaningful life and designing your life by Burnett and Evans gave me five reframes for this question. How might I find a great place to live?
[00:26:10] Speaker C: Which AI model does that best?
[00:26:12] Speaker A: By the way, CLAD does great because it'll actually create a little graphic of the ideas.
Chat works. You know, they, they all work. They're all roughly the same. What's surprising is that all of them are. They give you surprisingly good reframes that are really nuanced around feelings and emotions.
And then they tell you what the reframe.
What the, what the fundamental shift is. It's going like, we're, we're going from location to community, we're going from location to connection or something like that. And it'll give you another way to state the question, what we're trying to do when we're reframing, which is a real power tool in design.
The classic is someone says, design a new coffee cup, Bill, and you go, you know, Diana, it's not about the coffee cup. It's about the coffee experience.
So we're going to design, you know, the whole way that coffee shows up in your life. Which, by the way, is exactly what Howard Schultz did when he designed Starbucks because he was in Italy and he was seeing how coffee was this experience. You walk in a shop, the espresso machine's hissing, everybody's chatting at the counter. It's a social thing. That was the insight that created Starbucks. But it's the classic reframes of going from one idea to another. It's just the idea of if this new question gives you more opportunities for prototyping or trying things, it's a better question. You know, most people are really good at problem solving, and it feels good to do problem solving. So they jump right into the problem and it's the wrong problem, and it won't get em anywhere but boy can they solve it. It's like, you know, the last vacation was good, but it wasn't enough. So we're gonna, we're gonna have more, let's have a bigger vacation. The safari was cool, but we didn't do the glamping tents. Let's do the glamping tents. That's even cooler.
[00:28:02] Speaker C: Well, I think the biggest question for people and my clients have is where to live that's tax efficient. Where can they live close to family in a place that's healthy and safe and. But I think the tax thing is a huge element in their decision making.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: When we're talking about life design, we're talking about the, you know, social, emotional, physical expression of how your light shows up in the world. World. Pay damn taxes.
We need to run the schools and stuff. Pay your taxes. Quit worrying about how, what fraction of your immense wealth will go to. Keeping society running would be my. Now I'm shooting on people and I pay them taxes and live and just write that office. The cost of being part of the Commonwealth. The taxes on wealthy people in America have never been lower.
They used to be five times this in the 30s and 40s. And guess what? We still had wealthy people and they still had lots of money and they still passed on money to the next generation.
You know, capital always accumulates faster than wages once you have lots of money.
I mean, unless you do foolish things, your ability to accumulate more capital will always outpace everybody else. Thomas Pigardy, the French economist, wrote a big book on this. And it's, but it's, it's well known. So I mean if, you know, if, if that's, that's a more of a practical concern. So if you have a practical concern, you've got your tax advisors and they're telling you what to do and you want to follow that advice, that's okay. I don't have an opinion on that. But what I don't understand is living someplace you don't want to live with, with people you don't like so that you can save a, a percentage of the taxes that you're going to have to pay.
So I have friends who like, you know, we're moving to Nevada because we have to pay, you know, California state taxes in Nevada. And I go, well, great. Do you know anybody in Nevada? Nope. Have any friends in. No, I don't have any friends in Nevada. Do you like Nevada? I mean, where are you going to live? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Nevada it's just like, where are you going to live? What's your, what's the social, you know, like, we're social animals. We need to have friends, we need to have community. Who are you going to live with while you're saving all this money in your, from taxes?
So I would, you know, get good advice from people who understand the financial aspects of managing wealth and then, but never let the money decide who you get to hang out with or where you raise your children.
When I was at Apple, I had an opportunity to go to Dell. Dell was, was raiding Apple, stealing all the designers from Apple who had made the power book so successful, the first laptops, and they were all going down to Dell. My boss went there and they offered me a big job and I was like, you know, Austin's cool, but I don't want to raise my kids in Texas.
Just didn't want to raise my kids in Texas. I wanted to be in California where they would learn about, you know, multiculturalism and all that stuff.
And everybody who went to Delta became millionaires. My boss became a millionaire, built a million dollar sailboat, sells around the world now.
And I'm like, I don't care.
My kids are raised in there and they're the kinds of humans I wanted them to be. And so I'm super happy and I don't, I don't need a sailboat.
[00:31:37] Speaker C: Yeah, well, you, you optimized for happiness, humanness, Dave.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: And I will say if you get the human part right, you can't go, you know, it doesn't matter. The rest, the, the rest is all details. Manage the humanness of your experience, which is, which is, you know, deeply relational. Right. Because we, we are, we are relationship animals and should be values based on or meaning based.
But to do that you have to kind of know yourself. And I think again, talking about, you know, folks who have a lot of resources, there's a lot of mental overhead. Right? Well, you know this, there's a lot of mental overhead in having lots of resources and managing resources and, and being a good steward of those resources and things. And it's easy to be over. I'm sure it's easy to be overwhelmed. I mean, I'm not in that situation, but it would be easy to be overwhelmed and it would be easy to focus on the money and not what it means or not what it's for.
You know, there's a thing in psychology called loss avoidance. The classic experiment is you have two groups of people and you say, okay, everybody, you can only spend 20 bucks a week at Starbucks, go and see what happens. And for some people, it's like you can only spend 20 bucks. Keep a budget, Diana. Don't spend more than 20 bucks. And the other group, you give them a $20 Starbucks gift certificate.
It turns out lost avoidance. Like, I just bought a latte, now I'm down to $16.
Oh, I just bought a double latte with, you know, extra something. Now I'm down to $12.
And as the number gets smaller and smaller, your ability to rise, ration the experience increases, whereas, oh, I got a latte. Oh, I got a grandy latte. Oh, I bought two lattes from my friends and now I'm at $35. Oh, well, I guess I didn't hit the budget.
So I think this idea of loss avoidance, losing capital is so much more powerful and more frightening. And you know, it's, it, what's the expression? The first generation makes it, the second generation scales it and the third generation loses it. You don't want to be that person. Right. But again, that's why you have resources and all these advisors and smart people who can help you, you know, keep, keep you on track.
It still has to be, what's it for.
[00:33:56] Speaker C: The experts I've been interviewing are saying that it's not taxes that takes away your capital, it's the fights, the intergenerational fights, members that actually deplete capital. And to let the dog's tail wag the dog is not a very smart idea.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: But I mean again, you people, people do it because it serves them.
There is, I'm sure, some short term dopamine hit for going, look at me, I've got so much money, houses, something, something, the virtue signaling and the social signaling, particularly now with social media and everything else.
But I mean, but the wealthy have lived in that bubble long before social media because that's what all the tabloids wrote about. That's what all the content gossip columnist wrote about. That's what the people who reviewed the Met gala and Diana's beautiful dress, you know, were doing back in the 20s, you know, to establish this, this class. And then the whole idea that there was a register of people and you know, daughters could come out to society. We've been managing this kind of rewards and punishment system in, in the social classes for that ever.
[00:35:05] Speaker C: After the French Revolution, there was a correction in the way that people behaved. There was a series of books I used to read as a kid, the Comtesse de la Segur in French. And there was a lot of philanthropy in those Books and I did some research and those were written right after the revolution. And there was a behavior change after the French Revolution. People became more human and they were more into spending time with their neighbors.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: And, and it took cutting off the heads of many, many wealthy people, you know, and literally a revolution. That's the heart attack, right, that caused the people to look at and say, how did society get so out of whack, the delta between the wealthiest and the poorest to get so extreme that we lost our humanity?
Both sides, you know, the poor people and the wealthy people all lost their humanity. The right solutions for society zone decide.
And we're not. It's not us versus them, us all together to decide what does it take to run the common wealth? What does it take to run a place where we all believe we are bought into the system and that the system isn't just working for some of us to the disadvantage of others, but that, you know, this is, this is our stuff is very personal. Like, how can you design a life? How can you, how can you have find more meaning?
I think, you know, my, my theory of change is it's if, if, if everybody woke up and decided that this was the important thing, society itself would change. So I'm just working one on one, one student at a time, one classroom at a time, one university at a time, one workshop at a time. Dave and I were talking about this. There's nothing in our books that are new per se. We're working out off of some of the best positive psychology research, some of the best design research, but not everybody knows it. So when we're bringing it to light and saying, hey, this is, this is an important way to think about this stuff, but it's also kind of stuff you sort of knew was true anyway. You just didn't have a word for it or you didn't have a framework for it. So mostly when I run into people who say I liked your book, I'll say, why? And they'll say, because. Because, you know, I always, I. I always was good at thinking about things differently, but I didn't know that was called reframing. And I didn't know it was that you could do it this way and this way and this way. I didn't know you could prototype stuff. I've always tried stuff. I've always been curious.
So I think we just help people name the thing they already kind of knew was true or, or at least give them permission to believe it's true. Because sometimes, you know, like the, the person I was mentioning before the wealthy lawyer are other people I've met who, who, you know, have significant, significant resources.
They know they're on the wrong track. They know it. They know it in their gut. And, you know, they'll take a vacation. At the end of the vacation, they'll look at their partner and say, we gotta get off this hamster wheel.
[00:37:55] Speaker C: It's just not working well, because maybe they only saw the first version of Maslow's pyramids, you know, where they just got to self actualization and they didn't get to the self transcendence.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And, and by the way, and even there, when Maslow rewrote that in his notes, it's still wrong. Transcendence can occur at any level. It's not hierarchical. People. There are people, you know, in Rehashi camps in Syria that are transcending at this very moment, you know, reporting their life into something higher than themselves and experiencing the joy and the wonder of being, you know, being a sentient being who can hear the. And can hear the truth.
[00:38:35] Speaker C: To me, the best example of self transcendence, I mean, it's, it's, it's being in service of something higher than myself. But that's the collective doing something of service for a collective and being part
[00:38:47] Speaker A: of a community that you care about, that you want to see, you know, you want to see the individuals in that community realize whatever their, their hopes and dreams are. That's what we talked about as a formative community. Like you can get together and have fun together. It's a bowling league. You get together to get something done, like the Parent Teachers association or the, you know, the fundraising drive for, for the marathon. But to get together in a formative community is to get together to, you know, hear each other's story and find out what's the question you're working on now. And then let's support each other in becoming the best version of ourselves. Working towards that question, like, how do I become a better this? Or how do I become a something else?
So, and, and, and again, you, you can't hear yourself by yourself. So you need a community to check in with on this journey and have people ask you honest questions.
Because we all get, you know, we all get off track. I get off track. What's interesting about writing these books is the. More when we do everything we say, we trust everything we do in the books, we have done ourselves, Dave and I have done ourselves. We've prototyped it hundreds of times with students.
So it's, it's, you know, it's kind of got a of lot, little bit of prototype and test built in, but it's also, you know, like, the more you do this, the more you transform yourself. So in some ways, I think writing these books is like a healing process for me, a growing process.
And I'm finding myself much more in flow and much more finding communities to let other people shine that isn't about me.
[00:40:18] Speaker C: I love the whole flow example of that graph you have with challenge.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So the original. Yeah. CzechSam Michele Czech Samahalyi was the original guy who wrote the flow books back in the 90s and stuff. And his thing was like, when that. When you're the challenge of the task and your skill chess match, you're in that flow zone. And if the challenge is too much, then you're frustrated, and if the challenge isn't enough, you're bored. But when it's right in that zone. But also, we also believe that now you can open that zone up and say, but anything can be flow. It doesn't. It doesn't have to be a superhuman challenge. Or. Or it can be. We use the chopping onions example. We use, you know, other examples. The whole. The whole point of the this book is it's not as hard as everybody makes it out to be. You don't need to develop a medit. You don't need nine months to develop a meditation practice. Cool. If you can do it, go for it, but that's not necessary. You don't need to sit on a. Under a bodhi tree for 40 days and starve yourself. Meaning's right here.
You don't need to pack more in. You can get more out of what's right here right now and really enjoy this thing. Because, you know, the. Everything is in the past is in the past. Everything in the future is the future. And this thing right in the middle, this tiny little thing in the random skull now. And that now is actually infinite. And it's an infinite time and it's an infinite space, and it's where you will experience, you know, the meaning and meaning and transcendence and meaning and love and meaning and purpose.
[00:41:44] Speaker C: So this is very cool for people who have resources they can design their lives in. In ways that could incorporate the lessons in this book.
[00:41:54] Speaker A: Yes. And they're pretty easy lessons. And the one thing we call it, the process to production trap.
It's like, okay, I've got a meditation practice, and that really grounds me and centers me, and I feel good about my day when I start.
Awesome.
Okay. I think I need to hack my meditation process and make it more effective. And I'm going to add 20 minutes and then, you know, and then I'm going to blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, you just turned it into a to do list item. You just turned it into a transaction. Now my meditation's a transaction. Check. Did the meditation. Check. Did the vegan, you know, cleanse check. Did the, you know, the, whatever the, the sound bathing, sound bathing thing with the, with the gongs. It's like. No, no, no, no, no, you missed my point.
You just turned a process into a product.
The process of meditation, the process of centering, the process of sound bathing, whatever it is, that's a process. It's not a product. You can't productize it. When you turn it into a to do list item, you aren't present during the event. You're just trying to. What's the, what's the point of a to do list?
Check it off. Done.
That's not the way it goes. That's not the way. That's not, that's not the way this stuff goes. Don't turn it into a to do list item. Just do it for the joy of. And the, and the peacefulness of doing it.
[00:43:15] Speaker C: So when people are designing a meaningful life, those elements are wonder, community, flow. I feel like I'm missing one. Coherence.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: Coherence. Yeah. You know, make sure that, you know that the things you're doing are on. On your, on. You know, the compass is pointing north and you're going north. And if you get a little off track, that's fine. But, but your self awareness will go, wait a minute, this doesn't feel right.
I think, you know, no, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to take this job just because it's more money. It doesn't feel like it's my thing. I'm going to stay where I'm going.
So, yeah, try to live coherently.
Experience periods of wonder.
Find a community of people that want to support you on this journey and who you want to.
You're giving to them your time and attention and your affirmation of their journey is another way of transcending your ego. You have to be in a community in order to give away away your ego.
[00:44:20] Speaker C: Yeah. So bopping around the world doesn't really support that.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: I could imagine a formative community of people who, you know, are just flying around in jets, their own jets all the time. I just don't know how it would work or what would Prevent it from becoming superficial because I don't know, I have never designed in that community. I mean, I know some billionaires, some of my students are billionaires.
I don't know. I've got, I've got a good clustering of. Went to school with my, my wife is the founder of a very, very successful company. I think I looked him up. He's worth 7 billion.
But we've had, you know, we had him and the family over for coffee or for, for dinner. And we go back, we've gone to the, you know, there's a place called the Oasis, which is a, actually the Dutch goose, which is a crappy little burger place behind the campus that everybody goes to.
And he's the same guy. He was, oh, he was the same guy he was when he was in school. And he was kind of goofy and he, and he partied too much.
The only difference is there's two guys in an SUV security out in, in the, in the driveway because he has to travel with security because of the threats to him and his family.
That's kind of sucks.
So I, I, I guess the story, the moral of the story is money doesn't have to change anything, you know, changes. You know, yes, he does have a jet, and yes, he does have a family fund, you know, family office. And yes, they are sponsoring research in, in areas that he thinks is important. But that's his, that's, he's, he's able to do that, but his, his personality, the guy he is, isn't any different.
[00:45:59] Speaker C: Well, I remember when I didn't like the idea of the word philanthropist for myself, and you challenged that, you, that belief that being a philanthropist was a word I should maybe hide.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: Well, you know, you can look around the world of philanthropy, and some people that I really, really admire, Ms. Bezos is rocking it with $51 billion.
I think she has $51 billion. MacKenzie Bezos, she gave away $5 billion, and now she has $60 billion.
Literally. She can't give it away fast enough.
But people are doing good work because they have the resources to do that. That's, that's, that's noble. That's important.
And by the way, the US Is the most philanthropic society on the planet. So we can talk about greed and we talk about the stuff, but we are the most philanthropic. And, and, and by the way, people who live below the national income average give a higher percentage of their money to charity than people who live above it.
It's not the same dollar amount, but as a percentage of their income. They give more.
[00:47:07] Speaker C: Collectively, that can be a lot.
[00:47:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Collectively, that can be a lot, yeah.
[00:47:11] Speaker C: Well, thank you. Well, that's a very transcendent idea.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: Do good work with whatever's available.
[00:47:16] Speaker C: I was going to ask you, like, you know, if somebody in my audience is sitting in a big empty house, you know, and they're feeling a little hollow, like, what's the one thing you tell them? Do good work. Is that it?
[00:47:26] Speaker A: Sure. Long term is, you know, let's, let's get your, let's get the, you know, the, let's get the compass going. Let's get your coherence working. But if I were to say, what can you prototype today?
Go find somebody to talk to and, and don't just talk about the weather. And so, you know, maybe you don't have, you don't feel like you have close friends, but radical collaboration happens in the world. Your journey is going to happen by you getting stimulated by a conversation with somebody. So go, go, you know, have a coffee with somebody and ask them a question that you wouldn't normally ask them. Like, you know, sometimes I feel lonely.
Even with all the stuff I've got, sometimes I feel lonely. How do you feel?
And maybe they'll tell you, oh, I love that.
[00:48:09] Speaker C: I have one final question for you. What do you wish people would ask you more about your work?
[00:48:14] Speaker A: One thing people do ask me is they say, well, you know, yeah, but you're working with Stanford students and they're really smart. They come from, you know, elite families, They've got lots of networks. This won't work if you're, if you're not, you know, wealthy or well educated. And we have lots of research from other schools that are, you know, 80% minorities, 80% first gen students, 20% work below the poverty line or live below the poverty line. So we have plenty of evidence that this is the, this is this sort of idea of designing your way into the future of your life. Works to bet no matter what.
So the question I wish people wouldn't ask me is, well, this is just for elite people, isn't it? Because it's not a question that would, nobody's asked yet, isn't, how do you know this works? It's like, and sometimes this comes up like, why are you doing this? In addition to, I'm a human centered designer and people have these problems and we looked at the problems, we thought we could address them. It's like, I got really crappy advice when I was 18 and 19 and 20. And so they're 18, 19 and 20 were big years for me because it's when I discovered.
Well, it's when I, when I, you know, walked away from my Christian upbringing. It's where I was looking for a model of how do you actually live a life. I was reading everything from Nietzsche to, to Sartre, from, you know, Thomas A, kindness to Alan Watts. And nobody. And all the grown ups, I'd have to say, let me down.
Nobody, nobody gave me advice. They told me what to. They gave me advice, they told me what to do. But that wasn't what I was asking for. I was asking for somebody to help me figure out what I was trying to figure out.
And so fundamentally, that's why I do this, is hoping that maybe you can intercept somebody somewhere along in their life where they're actually asking those same questions and you could at least give them a little nudge in a direction that's useful.
[00:50:18] Speaker C: Wow. You became the person you would have liked to have had when you were in that age. Eight.
[00:50:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:24] Speaker C: 20.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And I get to be the. I get to sit in office hours with hundreds of students and kind of try to be that guy.
You know, they. They come. The students nowadays. I don't understand any of the social stuff they're dealing with. I don't really don't understand. I don't. I don't know the music they're listening to. I don't know anything anymore. I feel like an old man. I'll play a lot of music in class just to keep the thing going. A student came up to me a couple years ago and he said, you know, really enjoy that you play music in class, but could you pick something from this century?
I'm playing Bob Dylan, you know, and then Jackson Brown and the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones. And they're like, yeah, those bands are from like the 60s. Anyway, thanks for the conversation. It was a lot of fun.
[00:51:08] Speaker C: You're welcome, Bill. I really loved working with you and you're an amazing coach. Everybody, we need to buy this book. And all the exercises in it are just fantastic. And thank you so much for being here.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: If this episode landed for you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss what's coming. But here's the real thing. I want you to know if you're carrying something you can't talk about, if you have every resource except someone who actually understands what wealth costs. I work one on one with people like you navigating exactly that. You can reach me at Diana O E h r l I.com thanks for listening.
