#719: Walk & Talk with Greg McKeown — How to Find Your Purpose and Master Essentialism in 2024

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slash Tim. This is their best offer to date and it will not last long. So take a look with Helix Better Sleep starts now. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. He's set out. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. And this episode I'm very excited to announce is an experimental format. As per usual, I will be deconstructing in some fashion world-class performers to tease out the

habits routines, frameworks, etc. that you can use in your own lives. And my guess today is a

guess to his very relevant for me personally right now, Greg McEwan. And he is relevant because he is easily one of my favorite thinkers on all things related to effectiveness, efficiency, and at the end of the day, quality of life, and keeping your priority or priorities top of mind so that you are laser focused to do what really matters, the high leverage things, which are sometimes the small things done with relentless focus that deliver incredibly, incredibly important outcomes.

So let's get to it. This is a walk-in talk with Greg McEwan. And overall, it is about how to find your purpose and master essentialism in 2024 or in the new year if you're listening to this later. And the walk-in talk format is something I wanted to experiment with because let's face it, most of us sit too much. And if we consider sitting the new smoking on some level with its health implications, and I want to give credit to Kelly Starrett, who is also a multiple-time podcast

guest for, I believe, coining that expression, we should get out and walk more. Part of what makes us human, part of what enabled our brains to become, these incredible machines they have become, so powered on less electricity than a light bulb, by the way, is walking the fact that we parameters the fact that we walk historically much of the day. And I wanted to also contend with some back issues that I have that are exacerbated by extended sitting, and many

different health issues are correlated to extended sitting. So this is a direct oppositional approach to perhaps the YouTube Build TV show approach, which is this audio only. And when I'm recording this, I am out walking. I have a high fidelity headset on, and Greg is doing the same. We are doing something good for our bodies while we are having a fun and productive conversation.

And my suggestion to everyone listening is if you can, do a walk-in listen. There's no reason for you to be parked in front of a laptop watching a video contributing to your own physical demise hour by hour. If you can be out walking around listening to this, also doing something good for your body and therefore for your entire life. So get out, try a walk-in listen while we walk and talk. You can be part of the conversation, and that's enough preamble on the format. But I

really feel strongly that this is something I'm going to do more of. I love to doing it. And my hope is that you will join us in walking more. It is the cure all for so many things. Greg McEwen, who is he? You can find him on Twitter at Gregory McEwen, spelled MCKEOWN. Greg is the author of Two New York Times Best Sellers, Megabass Sellers. Essentialism, the disciplined pursuit of less, which is a book I've read many times. And then I have reread my Kindle highlights probably

15, 20 times. And his second book, Effortless Subtitle, make it easier to do what matters most. Together, they've sold more than two million copies in 37 languages. He's also a speaker, host of the Greg McEwen podcast, and founder of the Essentialism Academy with students from 96 countries. More than 175,000 people have also signed up to his one-minute Wednesday newsletter. He is currently doing a doctorate at the University of Cambridge. And he is, as I mentioned,

easily one of my favorite thinkers on many, many, many, many different areas. And he is intensely practical. Originally from London, England, Greg and his wife Anna are parents to four children. You can find everything Greg at Greg McEwen.com and with a further ado. Please enjoy, hopefully, while you're in motion, this wide-ranging conversation with Greg McEwen. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you. Are you feeling good about the New Year? How are you feeling about this year?

I'm feeling great about the New Year. I'm feeling really outstanding about the New Year, actually, and my realization on New Year's Eve as I was doing in inventory was that despite my predilection to self-flage late and always look for the black lining on the beautiful cloud, that 2023 was a great year. I did a lot of things right. I did a lot of things that were uncomfortable, and overall feel really good about it. So my overall feeling is, do more of that. Keep going,

which is unusual as a realization or maybe just a framing for New Year's Eve. So I feel really good about 2024. And of course, the hex that kicked this whole experimental walk-and-talk podcast off. People have no context. In case we use this, I am walking around with multiple forms of audio recording attached to my head and my hips. And I am really appreciating the combination of locomotions and conversation. And you had sent me a text which was very simple, at least

at face value, which is what is your top goal of 2024? And I thought to myself, that's a damn good question. And I would like to hear your answer, at least explore it with you. And here we are. So how are you feeling about 2024? The way I've been thinking about it myself is just what is the number one highest priority for the year. So normally, I'm not even thinking about it necessarily like a goal because that itself can be constraining. Could you say that wording one more time? Just so I make

sure it sticks in. What is the number one highest priority for the year? That's not very different than where I worded it when I tasted you. But it just means a little different than just, okay, well, you've got all these existing goals. What's the next book? How do you get the podcast to the next level? Like it's saying, look, bigger picture than that. Step back, look at your whole life from the broadest possible perspective and get connected to that. Like something like, okay,

what do you understand the purpose of life to be? And therefore, what is missing right now? You know, if you got to the end of your life and you didn't do something differently this year, what might you regret? Just a couple of months ago, I dropped off my daughter, Eve, who you and I have talked about before. She was the one that got really sick. And we dropped her off. She is healthy again. She is well again. She's really done well. And I was dropping her off for a mission.

So she's gone to Brazil for a year and a half. And I thought dropping off would just be like this really happy thing because I felt happy about it. And she did and the whole family did. It's just this great thing. And she's going to my now switches in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest, which she also loves. I know where that is. It's all good. She's learning Portuguese, but she just like everything was working good about it. But about 10 minutes before

I drop her off, I just have this awful feeling. Just not not like, oh, this is bad. This is wrong. But I suddenly just feel grief and and strong emotions. And I can see I can sort of see her whole life to this moment flashing before my eyes. And I have I don't know something the language I've given to the experience was something like a micro essentialist judgment day or something like that. Like, what is that mean? Well, it means like, did you miss it? Did you miss her life? Were you there

for it? Like a ghost of Christmas past type? Yeah, yeah. Just like a Christmas Carol type experience in micro version of it. Because it's done. You know, like there's of course, of course, there's a role to be played in her life, you know, forever. But that phase is done. And so like, whatever I feel in this moment, that's it. I the moment has gone. And I'm just now reflecting on it. And in that moment, I did sort of come to this awakening of like, no, I was, I was there for it

more than I wasn't. We traveled together. We did things together. We've made all these memories, our relationship and that the safe safely attached. But I also learned in that moment, like, goodness, this life is so pathetic. Short. And I learned also in that moment, it's not divided between one X two X three X activities, you know, on an important scale. It's like one X 10 X 1000 X. And this was in a thousand X relationship. And did I live it like that was reality? That is

reality. But did I understand that in the moment? I mean, that's fairly dramatic way to answer your question. But it's like, that's the perspective that I was reflecting on as I was thinking about. Okay, therefore, it's all of those perspectives are the true perspective that approximates reality. How do I think about where to put my time and energy for 20 24 when there's so many good things you could be doing and so many things that will act upon me, good things that

will act upon me that would consume the whole year easily. You know, what's what's missing? What do I need to do differently? And an answer did come to me. But that's some of how I've been thinking about it. So it sounds like from hearing you correctly, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that the way you're thinking about 20 24 was informed by this realization slash reinforcement that as we think about different priorities, different relationships, they're not incrementally different,

right? They are in many cases sort of exponentially different where you have like a one X as you put it, I think kind of one X or two X versus like a hundred X thousand X, right? In terms of importance. So you have that farewell with your daughter sending off to Manaus, right? I've always wanted to visit, but that's a separate story. So where do you go from there? Right? Because people have these realizations. Maybe they go, I have no idea. They go on a rafting trip with

friends. They think themselves, oh my god, this was so nourishing. I deepen my relationships with three of my most cherished friends. And I need to do more of this. But then it like sand through the fingers slips away as they reenter their daily lives. And that's kind of it. Things get busy, things get crowded out. So what do you do or what did you do or what are you doing after you have

that realization? Let me answer this in this conceptual way for people, right? Like why have all sorts of limitations that make focus challenging, that make prioritization challenging, that make relationships challenging? And all of us have our own mix of literally DNA can predispose us to various weaknesses. And so the key for me seems to have been I have to build, I mean the word gets

overused, I build a system that's equal to that challenge. And so I have like a paper brand of I built and designed myself and keep adapting all the time as soon as I learn, oh, that's kind of a weakness for me. I build something in and oh, that's a tendency where I make trade-offs that not pleased with later. I build something in so that it act on me. And this really is the whole idea of effortless, right? Like effortless execution is I don't want to trust my weaknesses.

I want to build a system that means my weaknesses become something like irrelevant. That's what I'm trying to build. So one of those things like I mean literally physically my, I take it with me everywhere. My personalized plan I take everywhere, literally everywhere I go, I will have it. And so in it, I have the key relationships of my life, right? And that for me is very simple. That's my wife Anna. That's our four children. They are the thousand exes in my life.

And then there is a select group of friends. And then there's a much broader group of people that I also am building relationships and making sure I'm checking in on the really matters to me. If I fail in those relationships, then probably everything's probably okay. But but if I fail in my relationship with the thousand exes, it's like, no, nothing's okay.

You're like, with my wife Anna, like let me use that as an example. If I mean it's an old saying, but it's like if things are bad in your marriage, it doesn't matter how good anything else is, nothing's good. And if everything's good in your marriage, like it doesn't matter how bad everything else is, everything is, everything is good. It's like this is so disproportionately

important. And so I don't think I can separate my answer to your question without saying, yeah, it's actually the establishment and building of this family that means there is a permanent system in place to help me remember what matters and who matters. When do you revisit that? In other words, if you're carrying this with you everywhere and it seems like, and again, I'll just I'll add in my thoughts and then you can refine as we go. But it seems like unlike a

lot of folks, and this would include me who probably start with what should I do? Right? What should my priorities be? Seems like you are starting with Koo. And if you have this constant reminder, which acts as a system, I'm wondering how you use that system, right? Because I think about my phone, I have 1,379,000, make that up notes on my phone. And I'm like, oh, I this is so important. I'm definitely going to come back and read this. And 99% of the time, I never look at it again.

So how do you use this list of people? The way that my binder works, like the first section is all about direction. Sort of let's say essential intent for my whole life. Like what really, really matters? It's as succinct as possible. It's a few pages in total. That's always the place to begin, right? Because I want to come back and get centered in what I have come to learn is closest approximation to the purpose of it all. And I literally have to come back to it,

right? Like you've heard the metaphor before, but you know, the idea of a flight is off track 90% of the time, like an airplane literally only gets to where it's supposed to get to at the time, it's supposed to get there because it readjusts constantly along the way. And I feel like that myself. Like for example, I don't think that I'm better at being an essentialist than anybody else. I think if there's any advantage I've had in that journey, it's that I just really admit

I'm a non-essentialist easily. And so it's this idea like there's only two kinds of people in the world. There are people who are lost and there are people who know they are lost. It's like I know how easy it is to get lost. Never heard that. That's good. I'm looking at definitely I will look properly at those few pages once a week, right? Like every Sunday morning, I will look through that. I will read through it all in the long schedule. That's in your calendar. Yes. Sunday morning.

That's right. And but then at other times through the week, if I feel that sensation, I know people feel this, you know, that just sort of feels a bit crazy. It's feeling just a bit frenetic and friendly. Like what? I just texted Anna yesterday like, Matt, in the morning, I'm like, Matt, I just feel so lost. And I don't mean for the last six months. I mean for the last half hour, I mean, what is I don't feel so lost right now. Okay, that's right. That's the signal.

Go back, get centered. Take a moment. What really is the intent? What matters in your life? Okay, now from that, you know, and then you start designing your day. And I have some thoughts specifically about that. But you know, you're asking the year process, I guess you're asking my system. So that's once a week. Okay. So for per day, let's get to that. So I've come to call this the one, two, three method. I do not do it every day. Man, I wish I was doing it every day. But I do it

more often than I don't do it. And it's simply this. And it has to be written down for me in paper and pen, like not in technology, free of technology. And I try now more often than not to have this power half an hour, right? Like where I don't go to text an email or apps or my phone for the first 30 minutes. And I do that. I haven't been doing great at that recently. But I still do that more often than I don't. And so in that, then instead of doing that, I'm in my planner.

And I'm literally writing, I watched the essential for today. It's the one most essential today, most important person, most important action for that person. Number two is I write two things that are essential, but urgent. That's like, you know, it could be all sorts of things. And you know, whatever's got a deadline on it, finish this writing assignment by this deadline, it could be finished these financial things for, you know, retirement documentation stuff. But

I don't really want to get to, but I know it's important. And there's a deadline. And then the third thing is three things that are maintenance items, right? So that's just, I mean, that's anything that if I don't do it, it's not important today. But if I don't do it, it will make life a lot harder later. It's like an effortless strategy. And so that's the one, two, three method, right? One essential two things that essential, urgent three maintenance items. Would you mind Greg giving

me just some concrete examples so we can visualize what this looks like? They don't have to be real. I mean, they could be hypothetical. But just to give an example of what a one, two, three might look like. I'll just sort of talk through, as I talked through yesterday. So yesterday I was in California, in LA, or an event as doing a keynote. I had my oldest daughter grace with me. So the, when I was, takes an analyte, oh man, I'm just kind of feeling a bit lost after I expressed that,

I was like, okay, get focused. What is the essential for today? The number one thing, oh, it's grace is here's my relationship with grace. I need to make sure that we connect today that we're not just with each other all day. Like I tried to travel with one of my children at 80% of the time for keynotes. And so that's built into the system, but you still have to be present and connected. And so that was the priority. The two things that are essential and urgent, right? Like one of them,

the keynote, right? That's coming up. And I don't really know how to phone it in on a keynote. And I certainly fear phoning it in because it's like such an opportunity missed. The thing is coming, like that, that moment will arrive and you're going to be on stage and it was for 500 people. It's the non-trivial event and all the senior leaders of the organization. And that was one of the key urgent tasks. And then the next urgent task was to do it. Some family members who are,

I won't get into the precise details of it, but there's some health challenges involved. So I've sort of taken it upon myself to say, okay, how could I maybe kind of be a little bit of a coach, which is not really the natural relationship I have with them. But I'm risking it because I think it really matters. And they seem to have responded really positively. And so I wanted to keep that going. That would be the next thing. And then of course, maintenance items from there. Maintenance items

literally included. It was a Florida, a couple of days before California. So like literally, I have to unpack everything, put everything back in its place, make sure that that's just in order so that you don't get behind on those things. I needed to respond to a key email about a contract that we've been in negotiation with over the last couple of months. That would be an item of maintenance. So when you're talking about the few pages that you would review on Sunday mornings, what would be

an example of something from those few pages? Because I feel like this would be very helpful for me in the sense that I feel like I am pretty good at staying on task. I'm pretty good at keeping the important things in mind and majoring in the major things. However, there are certainly times when and weeks when I get a little lost and end up doing a lot of minor things. And at the end of the week, couldn't really point to what I've achieved. What might be some examples from those few pages

if you don't mind, Sherry? I have two pages at the beginning that I don't share anywhere, but it's very carefully worded. The highest expression of what I think the fullest manifestation of my life can be. It's not goals. It's beyond that. It's like who you can be, what your most important relationships can look like and its sacred. That's how I feel about that. That's all the most important centering part of it. Because, literally, if you don't get clear on that,

nothing else matters in the system. If you execute superbly on things that end up not being what your life needed to be about, then it doesn't matter. Efficiently doing what should not be done at all, of course, is like to form a madness. It's you're speedily going the wrong direction. So from that, I've identified, let's say, five or six roles in a goal that goes with each of those roles. And so my worldview includes the idea that I'm a child of God, that you're a child of God.

So one of the most unbelievable things to me, one of the benefits of my church membership, is that every person who wants one is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. I've left it a saying, it's can have a specific blessing that somebody gives you personally to you that nobody else ever gets to read. And it's like we literally think about it, not metaphorically, like it's like

literal scripture for you. And no two are the same. I've only ever read mine, and as the childrens and my grandfather who died, and grandmother who died because you can read and once they've passed away. And my grandfather gave it to me, he was a patriarch. Every thousand people is makes up what's called a stake, and every stake has a stake patriarch. And the only thing they do is give these patriarchal blessings, that the only blessings that are recorded.

And this is like, whenever I think about what it is, I'm just like, my goodness, Charles, would you go about thinking about life without this document? Because this is like precise and specific revelatory insight into who you are, who you were before you came, who you are here, what's it possible, what relationships are going to matter, what weaknesses to think about. And it's like this is the centering document. So a version of this, when Steven

Cavie's talking about, hey, we need to create a mission state for your life and company. And so he's describing, let's say, something like a watered down version of what he's actually using every day. I see. I see. I see. So this was adapted sort of a secular version of the

blessing effectively. Yeah. And if you want the kind of language he used for this, so we think of life after this as having not heaven and hell, but like a series of heavens, let's say, or something like a different kingdoms, a celestial kingdom, a terrestrial celestial, like described sun moon and stars. And so he sent me once. He said, look, I think about my work professionally as a terrestrial mission. It's like I'm trying to bring a certain amount of light, like the light

of the moon. But there's this whole other light that's way brighter. How long is your blessing? Is it two pages long or is it like two to three pages? Ah, wow. Okay. So it really gets, really covers a lot. Yes. And it's a different range. I mean, some people could be as short as a half a page. But I remember me seeing somebody that had one that was eight and nine pages. And it really doesn't matter because what it is is a portal. What I just described,

what a portal, all reading, every book is potentially a portal, right? It takes you there at an time and place. And that's what makes, you know, a picture, especially so powerful. You suddenly experience this whole other world. But I really think that that's a way of thinking about scripture that isn't obvious to most people, even people that sometimes are like reading

scripture all the time. It's not words. It just opens up the possibility. So like I've read, let's say I've read my page, real birds and like, I don't know, like say, let's say it's 500 times or something. It's probably more. But two weeks ago when I read it, suddenly a phrase, a way that it's phrase suddenly opened up to me and I was like, oh my goodness, I bet that means that.

And it's like it doesn't matter. The words are just the vehicle. And it's as soon as I'm ready to like understand something more that suddenly the particular word is, however, that sounds, I don't know how it was. It was gross. Nobody else has to believe or think or see it the way I do. But like it's a fact, that is an experiential fact that that is what happens over these years. I got it when I was 13. So whatever I've had it for, you know, more than 30 years. And even now I'm like,

oh, that's what it means. And this is what I need to do differently. My like, oh, that's where my weakness lies. And that's how I need to improve. And so this is a very sentry tool to guide all of life and it kind of being, I think, yeah, that's difference between that and trying to read 200 self-help books or all in some sense regurged taking the same set of potentially terrestrial ideas. It's like this document to me helps. It's like better than me. It's better than my sport.

I'm trying to figure out a higher set of thinking that one me and you know, it's self-transparent rather than self-actualization. It's not me setting a goal for me and I'm going to achieve it. It's oh man, I'm going the wrong direction. This is what I'm supposed to do. And the whole idea, for example, the biblical term repent. It was translates from a Greek word that doesn't really mean what people think of when they hear the word repent. What it means it comes from that's an oya. It means

it's the life, yourself, life's God, everything through new eyes. And it's that idea of new eyes and new breath and seeing that it's that newness of sight. That is what the goal is, right? And so the repentance isn't about shame. It's about let go of the old thinking so that there's something new and better and it's higher. We've talked about before the idea of light and it's lighter and lighter until eventually you're some perfect then the future. But it's like more light produces more light.

And as long as we're following that light, it gives us more and more. And bringing this back to you for a second, it's like I see you doing this in your life. I see it. You know when it's happening because you feel more light and you know when it's not happening, just like I do because I'm like, yeah, I feel myself that I'm being pulled into the not the way from the good into what I want to. I have a goal now when I'm doing keynotes. It's probably not the most I've known. But I like,

I really wanted to work out how it's getting standing evations. I hadn't been my journey. I hadn't been my story. I'd get great feedback. It really well, but not standing evations. And I'm like, later, what do you do in it? And so like I feel like I should know how to do that now and and so that just happens. And then the event, yes, it was really distinctly different because they had everyone read the books ahead of time. So for the first time, it never happened before.

I walk out on the stage and that I think every standing evasion at the beginning and I've seen it happen to others, but it never happened to me before ever. And I thought, you know, like in that moment, I think with a really just the whole conversation was enriching and good and like I was doing the right thing and it made difference to people and all of that. But imagine if you just are living in that breathing that in every day, you could look attractive your way so easily.

And there's a risk of that, right? There's a risk of that for me. There's a risk of that for you. There's a risk of that for anyone in a certain consumed with what we've got. I could put bro culture. That's what I would call it. Where we're just consumed with a certain set of ideas and a certain set of what winning looks like. Well, just consumed by group think, right? Or sort of group trend, right? Or whatever the success disorder happens to be. Maybe that's going viral on

TikTok. Whatever the hell, the shifting sands of supposed favor and adulation appear to be. Right. Well, and you just named it, right? Like the shifting sands. Like in my life, I'm like in the in the last, I don't know if it is shortest five years in the last 10 years, I feel like what success means has changed in some ways and not in a good way. Like in a shallower way and in in Oh, you mean in general in the world? Yeah, I think so. I look at and I go,

I go, yeah, I don't I don't even want these things that are being being talked about. You think when says, you know, I never heard of they didn't. They weren't influenced as eight years ago. And now and this, this is what to do in life. And this is how to be. And I'm like, it just feels like a bad 1980s motivational speaker or something like that, right? And I'm like, I think I can get really lost if I pursued all of this shifting sands as you describe it.

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Let me come back to the blessing in the two pages if you don't mind because I'm really grateful that you brought this up and it resonates very deeply for me because I actually use different types of poetry for this, but the pages change which has some upside I would imagine, but also some downsides, some downsides. But if you're looking at say as I might, the poetry of Hafez or other,

they're generally mystics. They don't need to be from the Islamic traditions. They could be from any tradition, but they resonate a lot with my lived and felt experience for multitude of reasons. So I will slip to a random page and that is the page, right? That is the page that I use as the mirror. So to speak or the lens through which I look at my life for whatever I'm contemplating, the goals, the troubles, whatever might be. And it's incredibly helpful as a way to

grease the skids to get unstuck, right? Because if you're in a pattern of thinking that has not solved whatever puzzle you're trying to solve, then oftentimes more thinking of the same kind is not going to do a hell of a lot. So having this type of jolt of novelty slash unexpected, in my case, words is very helpful, but I do see the benefit of something more comprehensive and more

consistent. So maybe the life mission is one approach I will say, and this isn't something I've talked about, that I've been single as you may or may not know for the last year or plus maybe a year in three months or something like that. And I wrote down what I was looking for. I also asked my ex who I'm still very close with if she could write down what she thinks I need so that I could

provide it to say potential matchmaker or people who might want to help. And what I found was that description of what I need certainly applies to a partner, but it applies to a lot more than a partner. So I found myself reading that quite consistently. And it applies to much more than, I mean, just isn't an appropriate word, but just the partner piece. It applies to so many other aspects. So indirectly by accident on some level, I've ended up also with some document

that I read on a regular basis. One of the not just popular now, but popular forever questions is okay, you know, like how do I meet the right person? You know, what would I want in that person? And some questions you lose just by trying to answer them. Okay, so yeah, please say more. Because it's a wrong question. And so you can get, you know, people can spend years and years on a question like that. So let's say a

basic question is maybe not surprising. It's like how can I be the right person? Who do I need to be? And then that means that at some point you attract people like you. And so your probability of meeting somebody that actually is right person for you increases. But that seemed like what's happened to you, like you say almost without design. But it's like, oh, actually that list looks a lot like what I need to be and how I need to orient myself in the world. So what the patriarchal blessing

is to me is the highest possible ideal that I can have. And so I think that that's the question for everybody. It's like given all the tools we have, all the insights we've ever heard, all the best and highest wisdom that we have come across thus far, what's that highest ideal? And to focus on it and to have mechanisms where you come back to that more often than not more days than you

don't. So that that becomes the guiding force of your life. And so I think that it probably is some process right now where you say let's take the poetry of the best list. And I'm going to try and write down like these are the things that it's not what I want. It's what is the highest truth I've ever come across. Even if it's really inconvenient for me. What's the

closest thing I can articulate as to the purpose of my life? And I do think that really without doing that when we don't do that, I don't know man, I don't even know what I'm doing when I don't do that. It's like I can respond to a lot of emails. I can travel a lot. I can, I mean, I'm going to look back to 2023. I think I did a lot of things and I just need to be really grateful for all those things. But sometimes I'm like, did you do what really?

That's the most in the whole year. Did you? And I don't want that to be true for 2024. What comes to mind for me also actually I even thought about this in a while, but it was from a conversation I had on the podcast with General Stanley McFrystal. And I'm going to paraphrase here, but said something along the lines and I've heard this elsewhere since, but the purpose of life

is to find the purpose of life, something along those lines. And the reason that that came to mind is I would imagine just digitalizing myself here that if you have something like the patriarchal blessing or four or five pieces of poetry, so wild geese by Mary Oliver would probably be in, in my short list as an example, if you have a handful of things that you have decided, even for a year, even for just say the next year, are going to be effectively your personal

mission statement, something like that. directional documents. Yeah, your directional documents. Just having that directional document, I would imagine gives you a certain piece of mind or ability to exhale that makes it less likely that you're going to chase as many shiny objects and get as easily distracted as you would otherwise. Does that make sense? Like just the act of gathering that and having that, I see having an impact on your state and also your behavior,

above and beyond what it does when you check it each week. Does that make any sense? Does that make it? Yeah, of course. Yeah, because as the, like you're lost in the woods, do you have a compass or not? Like even if you haven't figured out how to get where you're going, like do you have a compass or not? And if you have a compass, you're going to feel a hell of a lot better, even if you don't

use that. Well, so like literally, I guess this is actually true that if you, there's like a, you said research about this that people were given the task to walk in a straight line. And they, they found that if they were in a wilderness where there was no point that they could look to, they literally walked in circles. They didn't know they were doing that. And so the only way to actually go forward is to pick something on the horizon. There's the mountain. There's a thing I'm going to

that and then you could walk in a straight line. And so that's no strange because that means that there's nothing inside of us that knows exactly where to go physically. I mean, that's true for me when I'm driving out there. And that's for absolutely sure. So I think that it's beyond a goal. It's, what's the direction? What's it all about? I'm going to fix on that for a while. And you know, I'm going to strive to live that. We're going to see how that goes and whether that reveals another

higher insight. You know, so if wild east is your poem of today, maybe in five years, there's a new poem that you go, that's a higher truth for me. I'm going to hold onto that and walk towards that and see how it goes. So yeah, I mean, this could all sound ethyral to people, right? When they say, oh, yeah, but I just got to get on with the actions of today. But man, the risk of skimping this part of the process is you just go in circles for years and years. There's a big difference. I

read this a while ago. There's a big difference between 20 years of experience and the same year live 20 times that you don't learn the lessons because you just go in circles and you're just rushing and and actually not getting closer to what the purpose of life really is. I have a question for you, Greg, which is self-serving as a lot of my questions are I suppose, but I'm the person, the person who is right. That's my, that's my, that's my, that's my, that's my,

that's my pitch. So I imagine you've been exposed to thousands of thousands of people, not just through essentialism and your other books, but also through the church and your various communities. And what I'm very curious to know is when you think about the people who come to mind as secular, but who are good at in some fashion doing what you're describing, they could be, what do they have in common as the question, or it could just be if you think of one or two of

these people, how do they approach this? The word that comes to mind, I'm worried it might sound, I don't know, almost trivial because it's like, oh yeah, we know that word, but it's like, it's truth. It's like willingness to speak the truth, meaning not that they or any of us have some monopoly on the truth. Obviously, we don't. Obviously, truth is beyond us and our expression needs to be as close to what we understand the truth to be as possible. Otherwise, it can't be

corrected. We can't engage in proper communication with other people. I have a few thoughts about this. One, I think that telling the truth is like, whatever the consequence is for telling the truth in the immediate moment, it is the path to your best possible future that speaking the truth and listening to other people, as soon as you start speaking the truth, you start having truthful conversations with people. If you can do that in what I would describe as the spirit of truth,

which is different than just saying what you think is true, I think this. Then it's like, you're trying to say the truth, but in a spirit of truth, it's like, am I doing this in the right spirit? Am I just doing this to win the conversation? It's like, there's a, I'm doing it. Could you, I understand, winning the conversation as a description, but what would the antonym of that be? In other words, saying it in the spirit of truth, what does that look like or feel like?

It means that the intent of the conversation is to discover together what is really true, not to make your point to win and so on, right? Like so the intent of the conversation changes. And so let's describe the absolute ideal of this. The ideal of this is, I am trying to speak

the truth by the spirit of truth. That is, as soon as I've spoken it, I'm open to being wrong, and I'm open to not just being wrong, but I'm open to learning because like, then you say something back to me and you go, well, this is, well, this is how I see this and hopefully me being true makes it easier for the person I'm talking to to be truthful. And so then they share something

and I go, my goodness, I have not thought about that way. That makes me think of this. And so it's, you are trying to say what you think is true, but now let's see if we can expand the parameters of truth that we together can have previously. Like there's more truth that's going to come out in this conversation. I think that's what the spirit of truth looks like. Then the ideal, of course, is that when the other person speaks, now I want to make this safe so they can speak the truth to

me, whatever that is, even if I don't really, you don't want to hear it. So I don't have to listen with the spirit of truth. And so that becomes the symbiotic communication. And I would say that most people have experienced it occasionally rarely, but they have experienced it because when you get into this kind of communication, time sort of evaporates and we're not worried so much about ourselves

anymore how we're coming across who we're not judging them. And so when it's just, you know, it's back to poor people communicates like, and I think what I'm describing now, I've taken me a long time to understand this, so to articulate this, but I think this is the one true way of communication. It was Anna Karenina, you know, opened the brilliant line, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. And happy families are happy in one way. There's like a single way of doing it right and

it's thousand ways of doing it wrong. And I think that's communication too. And I didn't know that until fairly recently, but I think that's right that every other form when we're trying to speak to impress or when we're trying to weasel out of responsibility, right? Like I've done that in my own family. Oh, well, no, I meant to do it this way. Or I tried that way, you know, defensive. This isn't communication. I don't know what it is. I don't have a word for it, but it's anti-communication.

I think speaking with truth, the spirit of truth, listening and the spirit of truth, that magic happens then in that. You make each other better, you addify each other, you understand each other, you can sort of rejoice in it. I mean, I have to assume that you have had moments like, well, many moments of in podcast conversations when they're at their best, it's like it's beyond any agenda. And so the people that I'm thinking of in my mind have the courage to speak the truth.

And that's non-trivial. And in my own life, I have to get better at it and having the courage to do it, whatever the consequence seems to be in the moment. And then immediately open myself up to what they're going to say because you'll surely bring a response from somebody else and have the

risk it, the real vulnerability. Is there anything else that comes to mind if you had to add something else to the answer of the question of what you see in some of the secular examples to seem to really be able to travel the road less traveled in the way that we've been discussing it. Anything else come to mind? It doesn't have to be specific to any type of patriarchal blessing like document or compass per se. But just someone who is in general good at

operating kind of top down if that makes sense. As opposed to like here are the thousand things that I could do in a reactive sense. And then let me try to pick a handful of those as my priorities. People who are very good at operating kind of top down. It's hard for me to get out of the thread that I'm on about this because because what I'm learning is that I mean we've talked already about this idea of sort of the highest aspiration you're looking towards something bigger

than you self-transcending. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is wrong. It's wrong. Like Maslow said it was wrong and nobody updated the documentation. Oh I can't wait. This is new to me. All right. So before he died, before Maslow died, he wrote a final book in which he updated his model and just no one, I don't know why I don't know what was going on precisely, but it just got ignored. And some reason that model just is in every single psychology book that's ever been written

and it's everywhere, everywhere. The highest need is self-actualization. And he changed that before he died to self-transcendence. But that's the highest ideal. And my goodness, that's a big difference. Right here. Yeah. They're not even not even similar species. No, then really not. They really are different in kind. Self-actualization is like what I was

briefly describing before is bro culture. And maybe that's not a precise terminology, but it named something for me of like, yes, just about you, Greg McEwan looking like he wants to look really like he wants to feel getting what he likes to get. You know, it's just more for me. Yeah, I mean it's an individual achievement. Yes. Relatives. It's an achievement ethic. And the day to shows that achievement ethic as a value has increased in society over the last few

decades significantly more than any of the other, let's say the other virtues. And of course, I think achievement is a virtue that the desire to achieve, but it's of course just one of many. And so, self-transcendence is kind of what we're talking about. And it certainly leads me down this path of yes, it is about the relationship. It really, really is about that. Because if you have a model of self-actualization and then you try to be in a relationship, well, it's not going

to work. That's a summary point. It is not going to work because that's not what a relationship is. And by the way, like this is big in my mind and one could argue that the biggest insight that's that's come about in psychology and in psychotherapy over the last 50 years is this growing understanding of what a relationship is, what love is, and particularly the idea of safe attachment and the attachment theory. And so at risk of riffing too long on this subject, let me just...

I got nowhere to go, man. And actually, Greg, just so we don't lose track of one thing, for people who may not be familiar with the term self-transcendence, if you could just define that at some point, could be brief, just so people have an idea. And self-actualization, I think people probably can infer but self-transcendence. Okay, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go for the attachment. I'll bring it back to self-transcendence. Okay, one could ask a question like,

what is a relationship? What is love? What makes a healthy, strong, resilient, successful relationship over decades? What does that look like? And to really non-trivial question, especially when one considers what for something like 50 years we have been actually taught. And the data now is increasingly showing that that is wrong. So that really matters. But like, what we've been taught, first of all, like go back with me, move how people thought about

raising children in like, you know, let's say 1910, 1920 like this. In England, right, the center of the world probably still in terms of economic power and political power and so on. And like, what would the perspective of that relationship? And John Baalbeck, he's in an upper-class home, in a gentleman's home. He's allowed to come and eat at the family dinner when he turns 11 or 12 just for dessert. Prior to that, he's not even allowed to

eat dessert in his own family. And the reason is because there's this idea that, you know, children should be seen and not heard that if you were to show emotional connection with your child and are overly loving, you're going to raise nambi-pambi kids and they're not going to be stronger in the world. And so in that perspective, the reason it's so non-trivial is that that

defined policy and behavior in the broadest possible sense. So for example, if your child needed go to hospital, like I mean, like a two-year-old, three-year-old, you are going to drop your child off at the door. You will see them. If you see them, you'll see them once a week for one hour. And all of the nursing staff in the hospital will treat them also in this same regimented way, non-emotional, non-connected way. In fact, Baalbeck, who is shipped off to boarding

school. And so again, he's separated from his family of origin and connection and he's not safely attached to them. He didn't have that language yet, but that was it. I mean, eventually he goes on this journey. He creates this documentary. It's something like, I don't remember the name precise, it's like a two-year-old goes to hospital. It might be a three-year-old goes to hospital.

It's something like this. And he videos the experience of this child and the separation anxiety that they experience and how terrifying it is for them to suddenly be in this hospital unwell, you know, don't know anybody and so on. And they create this video. That video was almost banned. He was almost kicked out of the whatever the agency was that was managing psychological institutions in the UK. He only thought kicked out of it for having this theory that eventually he

caused the theory of attachment. But over time, I don't know, there are thousands that he's have been done since on his work and over time his insights have been really strongly plorted and it's grown and so now we have attachment theory. What that means is that especially in years one to three, whenever level of attachment we have with our mother, with our father,

it finds us in really significant ways for the rest of our lives. And if we were insecurely attached, then it also makes it extremely hard for us to have deep and proper relationships with people all through our lives. It's like massively influenced by those early years. Now, that's phase one, but phase two, he died before he ever got to see this, but another set of researchers picked up the baton and started looking into whether the attachment theory that everyone thought applied

only to these infants could also be true with adult relationships. And the answer to that question is a resounding yes. And that every argument, every fight that adults have with each other, and in intimate relationships, especially, let's say, every fight is about the same blasted thing. And what it's about is described by a different professor as like a primal pry or a primal scream or something. I don't remember the term now, but what that primal desire is,

do you really see me? Do you really know me? Do you really? Are you really going to be there for me if I'm desperate enough? And that's what it's always about. That's the heart. That's every other argument is about the same thing. Would you really see me? Can I be securely attached to you? Are you securely attached to me? And so, okay, now, contrast that with self-actualization.

With a whole argument of self-actualization, if you think self-actualization is the higher it needs in life, and then you get into a relationship, you start creating this kind of language in the psychological industry, you start saying, if you need the other person too much,

you're codependent. You create language rennet, you say, well, that's just enmeshment. You're struggling with what you need is to be independently happy, independently secure, independently invulnerable, independently strong, and then together, then you're going to create this great dynamic relationship. I can think of people, I don't really want to say it, even though everybody knows these people are global icons, who are in a relationship that looks about its toxic as a

relationship, and possibly look in which they describe that they're in. They say we're in this bad marriage, we're in this terrible weather, we're going to stick it out because that's what love is. It's like you go make yourself happy, and you go make yourself happy, and then we'll be happy together. It's a global manifestation. I feel so bad for the couple of people involved by it, but it's like this manifestation of a bad paradigm that we have been taught. What you

want is exactly the opposite of that. It's like, no, we need effective dependence, where we actually feel deeply connected, deeply seen, emotionally safe, attached. That's what we're really going for. And so bringing this now back to the question of self transcendence. Self transcendence means multiple things, so I don't want to oversimplify it. It certainly means

giving yourself to something bigger than yourself. It certainly means that transcending yourself trying to live for something beyond us, and it includes, definitely includes in his definition, being able to be unified with other people in deep relationships. And so that's not the whole sense that he meant by that term, but it certainly included in it. And that is to say, you can't have self transcendence if you haven't learned how to, like they go together. You have to be

quite developed in order to be able to deeply connect with others. You have to be very vulnerable, because my goodness, you have to cry out as it were to say, I feel so unsafe right now in this conversation. I have to speak truth about this. And I'd rather say, oh, you just don't like me. Are you just like this? Instead of the vulnerability, the truth of this is how I feel. This is what's going on. Now let me listen to you. Let's fight this out, but let's have as our intent, we're going to

actually deeply connect with the other person. I see an overlap between these two terms. Let me hop in with a couple of thoughts that are popping to mind and then a couple of questions. So the first is that if we end up publishing this for people who are listening, I would imagine what you're describing on some level as its core has truth, right? So you can be truthful and communicate

your needs and so on without trauma performing or using performative vulnerability, right? Which I think has become very fashionable, especially in places like Austin where you meet somebody, you're two minutes into meeting them at a party and they've already told you about their worst childhood

trauma and are just offloading these horrible things as a means of theater almost. It's just become like a portlandia of here are the bad things that have happened to me and let me be vulnerable, but I feel like what you're describing is very different in the sense that there's a core of truth to it and you can still be independently strong in a million different ways and effective in a

million different ways while still doing that. I'm just trying to say that to myself as much to anyone else, like it doesn't have to be this overly sort of bemoaned drawn out, protracted confession of weakness or something like that. It can have a component of vulnerability certainly, but there's also a core of strength in my mind because it requires a certain core of strength to be consistently

truthful and to solicit truth that is not easy on. Is truth not performance? Yeah, exactly. And then the question that I wanted to ask is thinking about, say, attachment and self-transcendence and relationships and so on, what order do we put these in for people who are listening or for myself, right? Although I think I've actually made tremendous progress on most of these fronts in the last

handful of years, but how would you suggest someone to process? In other words, if they're thinking, all right, well, self-transcendence is the top of the ladder by Dr. Maslow in his final writings. I'm up for that. That makes sense to me. And they want healthy interdependent relationships. And they recognize that the sort of Gordon Gecko slash go-go-go, achiever culture in the US while it produces a lot of GDP and other things, doesn't always

actually very rarely produces stable well-being in most people. And the question then comes up, which is, in what order do I tackle these things? Should I read a book on attachment theory and do that first? And then maybe look at Maslow's stuff and then look at something else from a brass tax perspective. If somebody's like, yeah, you know what, you're right. If I look at myself truthfully, you know, honestly, I have deficits in these areas and I want to try to make the leap. Like,

I want to work on these things. How would you suggest someone do that? Maybe you can give me your two cents. There is a book. Let me look at the cover really quickly. I think it's just called attached. Yeah, the new science of adult attachments, etc, etc, which has, I guess, two magnets in the form of a heart on the cover. Pretty good cover. I'll give it credit. The new science of adult attachment, how it can help you find and keep love by Amir Lavigne MD and Rachel S. F. Heller MA.

Okay. 19,437 reviews, 4.7 star average. I have not read it. So I can't speak to this, but I know a number of friends have read this and found it helpful. But I'm speculating here. So what would you say? Well, I can start with myself in just being as supposed truthful about how I'm seeing it. But the answer to the question, what's my one priority for 2024? It is to help my wife Anna and I to feel safely attached, deeply connected. And I would say there's a lot more right with our relationship

of marriage than there is wrong with it. And actually, I, you know, like, I think there's a lot of goodness in it, right? You know, we married 23 years, we were four children, we worked together, we're communicating in all sorts of ways. And I think successfully, but I now understand this additional gear. And I think, yeah, that's the difference. And so one of the books that was

recommended to me is book called Hold Me Tight by Dr. Sue Johnson. And I think I would say that she's done maybe more than anyone else to bring this adult attachment theory, things she calls EMT to the therapeutic process. And so I think that's a pretty great place to start is to read what she's written. She has a process, a series of conversations. I want to also suggest Sue Johnson. She's actually been on the podcast and was beyond impressive exceeded every possible

expectation I could have had. So I'm glad that you're mentioning her. I think that's the place, but I think that is an answer to that question. The only thing I'm concerned about as I try and answer that is to what degree am I reading my autobiography into other people's lives? You know, like, I mean, I'm sort of coming at this with the, there are a thousand X relationships. That is, if there's a purpose to life, it's that. I'm using a quote, and I want to tell you where that's

from in a second. But, you know, it's a therefore, my most important relationship is Anna. And therefore, as I'm understanding what really creates these disproportionately great relationships is this attachment. Like, there's a, there's a logic that gets me here. But of course, somebody else is coming in at their lives. It's a different to mine and different. There's the restarting point. They have different ending points. I want to be careful about that. But

I don't think what we've talked about today is the kind of thing that people regret. You know, like, if you pursued this, you're not going to use the deathbed test. You're not going to be like, my goodness, I can't believe it. I can't believe that I really figured out the most important relationships. And I really invested in them seriously. And I got attached to them and, you know, struggled with them and improved them. Like, you're not going to regret that journey. It seems to me.

No, no, definitely not. What was the quote? Was that, you know, the quote? Yeah, this is something, man. So, okay, so I'm writing new book, doing new research, doing a doctorate at the University of Cambridge inadvertently. And so what I've learned is something like, like this, it's, we live in the loneliest era on record. More surface interactions is not going to help at all. So we have to learn to connect deeply with vital few people and that that is sort of the work of life. Okay, so that's

part of what I've come towards. I've been doing all this research and this thinking. So I posted something about that in these subjects on social media and one of the people, one of my friends that follows this said, you know what? This is something I just read. It's right on that theme. So that's how I got connected to it. I think it's Eric Newton, I think is his name. And Eric, you can took to Twitter. Eric, you took to X and he wrote up a story of what's happened in his life recently,

which is heartbreaking, but also life changing. And he says he starts off basically saying, look, this is, I've wrestled with whether I should share publicly something that's so private. It's a bit tacky to do that, but still really glad that he did it. Okay, so I just pulled it up. I'm just gonna read a few little bits from it. He said, I lost my wife to cancer last month. I'd daughter lost her mother. I'm hesitated sharing any of this, but there is something I want to record,

fair warning. This is mostly about love. I'm devastated. A whole has opened where I thought my identity lived. Adortra is doing the same in her toddler way, asking questions, slowly understanding what's happened, grieving in stages. We had a delightful life together, full of intense highs and lows. But two elements that were vastly more important towards than any of this are extraordinary little

daughter and the quality of the time we all spent together. Aubrey and I fell in love early and fast, but we fell more in love during the time she was convalescing than I thought was possible. Basing death every day allowed us to set aside the silly things and focus on what matters. The privilege of knowing and loving her so deeply outpaces every other experience I've had is

the one thing that matters. Okay, I've considered whether to share any of this, obviously it's tacky to make personal tragedy into a public spectacle, but I wanted to capture something that I've learned. Okay, I'm skipping here. She says this. We had an epic love affair and yet we reached a depth of intimacy while Aubrey was on her deathbed that we'd never had access to before. That depth of love wasn't available to us any earlier, whatever reason, but it is available.

I want to make it available to everyone by reminding you it exists. Aubrey shifted into a deeper love about six weeks before she died. During her time in the hospital, her one regret was that she hadn't spent more time deepening relationships with the people she cared about. She said, the only thing that matters at all is the quality of the relationships with the people we love, focus on that. I know it sounds trite in a tweet, but I can guarantee you with absolute certainty

that when you're dying and you will die, these are the only things you will care about. Aubrey realized this deeply in the most fundamental way because she was running out of time, so she put it into action. It was mostly instinct at first, but by the end, her deeper way of loving had become very conscious and intentional. Her change was palpable. She softened and opened. She began to be with those around her in a kind of total surrender. We all felt that she was experiencing us without

a filter somehow. We were seen and loved. It was beautiful. It was overpowering. It was humbling beyond measure. As she did all this, those around her began to learn how to do it as well. I learned being loved that completely is overwhelming in the best way. It's probably all any of us ever crave. I've tried to carry that love forward ever since. Loving that deeply is a practice. It's like anything. Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it's very hard, but it's always worthwhile.

The key to this kind of love is necessarily different for everyone. I only know one way. Complete surrender to the inevitable death of yourself and those you love. I'm not writing this to proselytize any given path. I simply want to say out loud that it is possible to love with a depth. I used to think was fiction. Progressively deepening love is the goal and end in and of itself if there is a point. It's that. That's incredible. I'm just sitting with that for a minute.

What a gift to write that down for people also to absorb. Well, to read. I reached out to him. He's already responded. We're just going to schedule a time and try and get more of that story and the details of it because I think that deserves to be told. When I read that, that sort of is reinforcing and crystallizing of all these other themes I've been describing. It's like, yeah, he just said it. He said it out of his suffering,

produced that level of clarity. If I don't understand that and then I make my goal list. If I don't understand that and then I just go to email. If I don't understand that and I just react and just do what I think of the people think is cool or good. I shouldn't use this example. I don't know why I'm using this example. I love skiing and so do you. But we're like, oh, if I'm just going skiing because other people think it's cool to go skiing. If I'm traveling

because other people, I think other people think it's cool to travel. I could spend my whole life doing that and really just miss it all. Miss this. Miss what errant. They did. Quick. Maybe mundane recommendation. Get off social media for a while, folks. Or ask yourself before you post or actually let's rewind before you do something. If you could never tell anyone about it outside of maybe your family or closest friends via a phone call. If you could not post it.

If you could not put this on social media or in a newsletter or on a blog or pick your channel with YouTube, would you still do this? And if the answer is no, don't do it. As an exercise, you can always go back to the heroin feed of fake social reinforcement on social media. That's always available. But at least as an exercise, ask yourself that question. I've done that. And part of the reason I have no social apps on my phone and that's been largely true for two

or three years now. If you don't have, as you mentioned, like if you don't have these sort of foundational directional documents or tools, given the tools at hand, given the information deluge that is only going to accelerate exponentially with AI and disinformation and so on, that is going to this year, 2024. It is going to at least 10 acts, probably 100 acts. I mean, it is going to multiply so unbelievable. If you do not have these guardrails and these

sort of operating principles in place, you are going to lose. What you'll lose is personal, like you are going to lose, whatever, then they could apply in a lot of different domains. But the technology has you completely diagrammed and defeated before you ever step into these domains. It's like billions upon billions of dollars of data science and research and so on,

that is gone into ensuring that your willpower will not be sufficient. Particularly if it doesn't have a trained fixed point in the distance to come back to the being lost in the wilderness analogy, as my job interview some of the top performers in the world, hundreds of them,

and the change that I have seen for those people in that subset who are already, I think most people would agree in the top 1% of 1% in terms of worldly achievement, the dramatic candy cap that I have seen, the dramatic reduction in productivity that I've seen among those people who have succumbed to the siren song of social media specifically is jaw dropping. It is truly unbelievable. Just in the last 12 months what I've observed, it really seems to be going parabolic. So in any case,

I'm going to stop giving my center of a woman speech. I like that speech and I think first of all that's right. It's assisting. I don't even love the term matrix for various reasons, but it's still helpful too. But the matrix is so consuming and it's so much bigger than me, and it's so much, in that sense, more powerful now. It's not if I'm conscious of it and can step out of it and can make it all of this AI and all of it perhaps makes a good servant, but it's

certainly makes a poor master. And if I'm not conscious that it is either already my master or is trying to be, then it's already over. If I'm like, oh, it's fine, it's easy. It's like, okay, well then I already lost the game, the battle. If you don't realize you're in a game, you've already lost the game. But let me ask you, when you're talking about the priority, your priority, top

priority, the one priority. And I'm going to make mistakes with the wording, but it was along the lines of fostering and cultivating secure attachment with your wife, if I remember correctly, for a lot of people who may be listening, certainly for me also. And I think about that. I'm like, yes, yes, and yes. And also, typically if I had a primary goal, let's just say I'll pull out something that's less lower to the ground in a sense that makes it easier to use as an example.

Write a screenplay. Let's say I want to write a screenplay this year. That's one of my top goals. Okay, great. Then I can work backwards from that and say, okay, well, what are the sort of antecedents? How long do those take? Who do I need to interact with? How should I block this out in the calendar? And then I can execute something resembling a blueprint, right, or a Gantt chart or something like that. With your top priority, how do you ensure that you're taking

meaningful action related to that top priority? I know exactly what you're saying. This is the advantage of a concrete goal is that a concrete goal almost immediately presents the plan or elements of a plan that almost immediately start to arrive. Okay, well, if we're doing this, we would have to do A, B and C and so on. And that's one of the reason goals are so powerful and and so scary too, because if you get your mindset on the wrong goal, then you'll be consumed with it

and maybe going in the wrong direction. Okay, so how do you do it? If the goal is a relationship, it's really different, isn't it? Because it's not about achieving checkpoints and the very nature of the relationship is that it's symbiotic. But I think that the way I've been thinking about this is like this. It's I like this intent, the language that I've chosen, because it's something that it's a metric in and of itself. And so it's an immediately testable metric. Do I feel that right

now? Does Anna feel that right now? And then of course, you could go from that to each of my children. Do we feel it right now? And if we don't, let's talk about that, because now we're having the real conversation. Is that feeling one of calmness, lack of fear that you're not withholding? What are the characteristics of feeling that yes? We attached. Yes. Right. Yeah, I'll give you a word to remind and it may be I maybe by the end of the year, I'll have better, more precise ways of

describing these things. But yes, I think it's really safe, not just sort of safe, really safe. I'm safe to say what I really think. It's safe enough to hear what you really think and not take it personally. So that there's just based somewhere in the world to be able to express all of that that we don't express in any other situation. It's a little bit like this idea that you want your

one. Like, remember somebody as I call it just describing this, they said, if your children are acting out at home, but not at school, like they're doing well at school, but not at home, you know, the teachers are like, oh, they're so great here and you go, geez, they're not so great with us. It's actually just exactly what you want, because they're safe to be at act out at home so that we have to be everywhere else. Didn't see that coming. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

And so it's a similar way I think in a safely attached relationship is like, you can act out a bit because you need somewhere to be able to do that. You can say all your fears. You can say all the nonsense. So I think that's sort of a test of it. If you want to build beyond there, like I think it's, and this is, this is I would say the biggest test for me is, can I create enough time

every day for that so that it's not just a bit here and a bit there? You know, like normally happens, in fact, because just in the same way as if you leave exercise and you leave your relationships as just like, well, we'll just let that happen. However, it does. Then you end up with bad relationships and ill health. And that's what normally happens. I mean, that's like when I ask people what's essential that they're under investing in those are like basically the two most frequent answers.

It's not exercising, not eating well in my relationships. So, you know, my most important relationships are struggling in some way. So it's how do I create like, let's say one to two hours per day, not watching TV, not together, not doing things, not even just talking about, hey, what happened today, what's going on and updates and there's loads of that, but enough time, uninterrupted time, so you actually get to get to the other object. Because whenever I do that,

whenever we do that, it works. I mean, the difference is conversation. It's, you know, conversation starts at a pit, right? It's trivial. It's present. It's like, okay, this has happened in the news that injects going to work right now and he just got back and I just, it's updates. And then as you go down, it becomes more vulnerable, but it also becomes more essential. And so, you have to have enough time to have those conversations. So that's, that's the thing that I'm like,

and I have to really be willing to make the trade off for distinction. And this is a question because I've developed this, as I'm sure some listeners have this acute allergic reaction to the word processing. You've heard this word. I'm sure used when it's, let's talk about all of the difficult emotional things. I would imagine what you're referring to is some version of what people might call quality time where you're getting past just the triage of updates, right? For

instance, a friend of mine, he's been on the podcast quite a few times. Seth Godin has found that preparing meals he had cooked for his family as his kids were growing up a lot. And his kids would help with some of the prep where they just stand around the kitchen island. And that's when the kids would volunteer a lot, right? And it was in that type of setting. So they were doing something or he was doing something, but it kind of provided a safe container for all of that to

happen. But it wasn't like sitting down in two chairs opposite each other, plumbing the depths of like deep emotions as a conversation, if that makes sense. So I'm wondering when you say making the time, like what forms that time takes? It's quantity and quality. It really is actually making a sacrifice, making the trade off. So examples, yes, yes, the way you're saying, Seth Godin example, I think is included. Okay. So, so with my children and with Anna, when I travel,

I will take somebody with me. And so that just provides a lot of potential for, you know, ripping it to service area. Exactly. And then suddenly, kind of spontaneous, I mean, conversations are like that. There's a random and then there's method in the madness too that suddenly something more sensitive comes up. And now you're talking about that real subject.

And so I think it is there is a structural piece too. For me, with Anna, it's okay. The date night actually structurally insisting it happened once or even maybe you get to twice a week and you you're sort of forcing the space to exist, possible conversation and it can be all sorts of things. But it's a structural piece. And I think that that's non-tribule. Space never happens.

In the life. No, never. Seth, you know, if I go back into like 18, 20 kind of time frame, like so pre-industrial revolution, and I'm not trying to romanticize it, I think that must have been so hard to live then. I cannot even imagine surviving was so, so, so hard. You mean, you don't want your five-year-old being a chimney sweep? Yes. I mean, I mean, honestly, go right in that budge. What they did have an advantage over us is that the sun went down and there wasn't

electricity. And so you could not escape the people in your life in the way we can. It wasn't default. It was defaulted in favor of your, your facing each other. There's not a phone to face. You've got a few books, maybe. Probably have the Bible. If you have a book and then you have a few other books and you're going to read from those books and you're going to talk about them because once the sun is down, that's what you have. That was a forcing punishment that we've just

completely lost. I talked to somebody one time. Here's what I was doing. I was working on a TV show based on essentialism. We're trying to create the pitch that bread. And we'd selected these people and we were talking to it. She's very professional together, woman, and maybe even non-emotional, even envy, interaction in the conversation, the coaching session we were having this be coaching session. And then quite unexpectedly, completely, unexpectedly for her, she burst into tears.

Just right in the middle of the conversation, it just tries to do, but it shot her. It does not do emotion like. And it was because she was reflecting on her relationship with her husband, I think, and how basically that that relationship had become both in the bed on their phones. And that had become so consuming, not an exception, but the rule of the relationship. And it was like, goodness, there's no connection. It's just,

it's so different than what you had in 1820. There's no phone, there's no technology, there's no, it's not there that that whole system was gone. So anyway, I do think that never exists now. You have to create basin. And so that's the structural element, I would say, me is that I travel with my children and I've started saying, okay, like once or quarter we go ourselves and it's not tough. Hey, we're going on a little vacation. It's like we are trying to go deliberately,

left for, really we're here to talk. Let's talk beyond the things we get to normally. And then we got miles to go, but we just got back from the last one. And it was something that wasn't amazing. It was an amazing trip, but it was so helpful. And so we scheduled the next one. And it wasn't three minutes later, it's probably about six months later that we'll go to that

specific location again as it worked so well. And so it's, you know, I think it's, it's the daily they scheduling, it's the the wheat structure, the monthly structure, quarterly structure, right? And all of these things, I think, once you start exploring them, you're like, okay, well, that's what you would do with other goals as well, but, but it's not done. You're not trying to get done as you are with other goals, right? Checking it off the list project is complete. This relationship

is not, is not a means to an end relationship is the end, it is the end in and of itself. And, you know, that's how I think it. So, if you mentioned to you the 1820, and I just wanted to say that, I have spent a lot of time in South America and Africa and some very rural locations. And I've then gone back and visited these places after cell phones and very slight broadband penetration. And then post broadband, I've been able to see what has happened. So those places have

resembled in probably more ways than not the 1820s you described, right? Tight social bonds, in part because that is the entertainment they have, right? And very little electricity. So also life tends to slow down. People are communal at night, they wake up, they go to the farm very often. And then as things are introduced, for instance, I went to two different villages in northern Ethiopia. And chatting with one of the interpreters who was helping this group. And he was mentioning that one

town was really unhappy. And the other town was very happy because I was commenting how I found Ethiopian people in general to be very upbeat and to smile easily and so on. And I asked him why that one village was unhappy. And he said, well, they got satellite television introduced and now they see the Kardashians in reality TV and they know how much they're missing. Literally, that's what he said.

And not in those exact words, but more or less that. And then if I look at, for instance, some of these places in South America as another example that I've visited, which now have, say, Starlink and other means of readily accessible, easily accessible 24, 7 broadband. They are suffering from all of the same distractions and issues now, the fracturing of social bonds, the isolation, not to the extent

that you see in a city like New York City, of course, but you're seeing the same phenomenon. And so much like sometimes people have heard the expression, you know, it's the economy is stupid. And on some level, like it's the tools stupid, like you don't assume you are fundamentally flawed. There's always a lot of self work to do and the project is never finished. But also, let's look at the Occam's razor contribution here to a lot of these issues and so much

malaise and sense of discontent, which is the tools. So like turn off the tools or at least ration the tools and see what happens. And then I would say just to kind of bring this full circle that this conversation has been super, super helpful for me. It's given me a lot to think about. Also, I'm still thinking about the patriarchal blessing and what my version of that could be, something that I revisit on a regular basis. So I'm actually fortunate that I'm spending time

right now with a friend of mine. My only male friend who is incredibly well versed with poetry, or at least younger male friend. So his, I can, I can visit his lot mental library to see what he

matches for me. So I'm thinking about that. And then also once again about systems and structure for not just busy CEOs, but for almost anyone who is barraged with the sensory overload and uninvited inputs and stimuli that anyone listening to this is without structure, without putting things in the calendar without a plan, the most important things are not going to take care of themselves. You're not just automatically going to have time and a program for self-care for the

gym for your most important relationships. It's not going to happen accidentally or at least the odds are against it. So the better plan is to plan. That's it right then is how do you stack the decks in your favor because that currently stacked against you. And I'm not making a plug. I'm just expressing the reason I did it, right? The reason I wrote effortless after essentials is because I would like you have to build a system that makes it the default that you'll do the essentials

and not do the non-essentials. And I already said that in essentials, actually, but it was like it didn't get people didn't hear it. They just heard, oh yeah, you got to do the essentials of those non-essentials. And then I hear the feedback over the years and years, well, I've no hard to do. And it's like, it's like, yeah, you're undoing it because you figured out what's essentially figured out what's non-essential. But then you didn't maybe realize the system is so

built to make the non-essential easy immediately your fingertip addictive and so on. So now you go, how do I? It's not easy to build the system, but you build a system that makes the execution easier than it would look like it'd be. So on that, strongly recommend that everybody read effortless. I'm going to reread it. And I will also say that there's a corollary to what you just said that I've found helpful. And that is one way to make the default

easier is to make not doing the default harder slash painful. Exactly. You want to make the non-essential hard to do precisely. So in my case, for 2024, and I've done this for a few years now, but looking at my top relationships, right? I don't have my own nuclear family right now. I mean, now I don't have progenies. I'll try to say. So I'm looking largely at my at my yes, yes. So I'm

looking at my family, my mom and my immediate family, my parents and so on siblings. Then I'm looking at my closest friends and I'm blocking out time in the calendar, getting commitments for, say, trips or people coming to visit, et cetera. Making it happen and putting in, in my case, right? Let's just say these are trips. Sunk costs so that it is actually painful for me to undo the thing that I know is good for me. Does that make sense? And I might write a blog post on this because it's been

on my mind for six months now. I've been talking to friends about it. It's just like choosing the right sunk costs like sunk cost and sunk fallacy can steer you in the wrong direction, but you could actually use it to steer you in the right direction. And so that's that's something that I've thought a hell of a lot about. No, I like that so much because you're right. You know, I generally

talk about it in the in the worst sense. But if you were going to design humans for for success, you probably would want it to be true that the thing you've committed to, you want to stay committed to, right? Like you probably would want to design where people tend to continue to do the thing that they've been doing cause they have invested so much in it. In a way, it's like when they change

divorce law in the UK originally, of course, it was intended in a certain way. And I think it was maybe even well intended, I would say, because you don't want people to be desperately stuck and certainly you don't want anyone ever to be in an abusive relationship. And then they just cannot get out because the laws are so strict. So there's obviously scenarios in which that helps. But the disadvantage is that it incentivized this kind of like no fault of ours is like, hey, I'm just,

I'm not going out now. And because self actualization is the priority, it's always, always easy to think that's going to lead to great to happiness, even though the data suggests that people that the divorce like five years later, the majority wish they weren't and they hadn't and that they could go back and change it. But it's obviously too late now. And so it's just interesting to think about what you're saying about like, yes, committing doing things where you go, I know it's the right thing.

How can I commit in a way that I will be following through even when I feel like getting out, feel like I would would would rather not do this thing now. It's like, no, you do want to be locked in. Yeah, for sure, man. Well, Greg, this has been so much fun. It's nice to hear your voice. And working people find you if we end up publishing this and we'll talk about it. You know, there is a single thing. It took me, it took us way longer than I thought it was going to

take to build this is totally free. It's like literally takes people 10 seconds to sign up for it. It is where to start with essentialism and with effortless. And it's you go to Greg McEwan.com. It's right there on the homepage. It's a 30 day email program. You get a whole workbook that goes with it completely free. He's in 10 seconds to sign up and it answers that question. Where do you start? How do you how do you spell your name, dear sir? Oh, yeah, that's fair enough.

g-r-e-g Greg McEwan is MCK E O W N. So g-r-e-g MCK E O W N dot com right there on the homepage. People can sign up and they'll get an email every few days. They can also just get the workbook printed up work through 10 lessons carefully curated, combining the best all of that published written work. Beautiful. And I'm going to dig back into your writing as well. That's that's on my to-do list. And successful experiment. I enjoy doing this. I appreciate you being

game to mess around with it. No, I love it. I think it's I think it's a really smart move for you to do it. You got so podcast right. I mean, I have a podcast too. I know like it hits you. It comes at you so fast as you content. You're always in trying to create content, you know, about and it's nice. If you can walk and just build it into your natural routine. Well, this is actually an example of trying to do the thing that is unlikely to happen by itself or on its own.

And that is I've realized a lot of my constraining physical issues, right? My principal physical ailment that affected my last year was this framinal stenosis at all 4L5. Just some lower back issues. I mean, there's no just to it. It's been kind of cataclysmic in its implications for my sleep and for many other things. However, what I've concluded I'm on the mend, but what I've concluded is it's directly the pain is directly correlated to sitting time. So the more I sit, the more it

hurts and more consistently it hurts, the longer it hurts. And I looked at the the driving forces or the different converging trends related to say podcasting, several of which lead to the creation of basically fixed television studios, right? Most podcasters, if they're aiming to be highly competitive and to feed growth are building studios, legitimately building what would be recognized as television studios. And that is antithetical to my reasons for starting the podcast.

Number one, right? So the the characteristics, including mobility sort of ease and ease of lightweight production. Those are the opposite of what is happening and what I on some levels feel driven to do because I am competitive. So I have to be aware of that. It doesn't always serve me. It can serve me, but it doesn't always serve me. And so I asked myself this question. I asked myself a lot. I should probably ask myself more often, frankly, which is what if I did the opposite? Not just

what if I did 20% less, not doing TV studio light, but what if I actually did the opposite? So the opposite, what would the opposite look like? Well, instead of sitting in a fixed location, I would be moving. And I would double down on lightweight so that my production would actually become more lightweight, not more heavyweight. And let me test that for a month and sprinkle it in and

see what happens, right? Because I can always go back to the other. But from the perspective of trying to think for myself and not succumb to group think and also just external pressure, but also trying to not just avoid pain, but produce wellness in my life. This is an experiment worth running. So I've thought on this now. Number one is, and I'm not trying to be commercial in saying this, you are describing an effortless strategy, right? Like it's inverting it, saying

it's like literally it's like judge, judge, stand, you do the opposite. When you literally think, there is seriously this idea that Batsett is harder. So therefore, okay, we, oh, well, look at all these people. Look at what they're all doing. Oh, I have to have the studio. My needs to be better than that. The studio in coolness here. We have to have all the, it's like, well,

that's one strategy. And maybe that is, but that maybe that's the way. But what if, what is there an effortless way to do this that actually supports what I really want in my life? I love the children. I love you're going in the other direction. And the other thing is, do you have a walking desk yet? So I do have a walking desk. And I really want to be outside and or around people. Yeah. So I'm messing with that. But yes, I do have a walking desk.

I love my walking desk. I'm on it right now. This whole conversation I've been doing it. That way we could have good audio on my side, but I'm still going. I don't want to work unless I'm walking now. I literally just think it's so much better for my mind. Of course, it's especially for your body, but it's just I feel healthy. And mentally when I'm doing this, kudos. Yeah. What fun, man. It's a really nice, dear voice. And this has been also very personally helpful for

me to think about the upcoming year. So I really do. I really do appreciate it. Tim, it's been a genuine pleasure. Really? Well, all thanks to your proct of outreach. So yeah. Final four on that is like, when I want you to feel, forget like all the self, they just sound like attachment stuff. But like, when I want you to feel about me, really is like

this, like I just feel a sense of like, I want to be there. Just Tim for Tim. This is spawned in this fun thing and having this conversation in a way that's that's helpful to your podcast. And also, of course, it's helpful to me. I'm sure in various subjects and various ways, right? Reach for your ideas. Like I get that this is spawned into this. But like, I want you to feel

that amongst your group, right? You've got your group of people and your people that Greg is like one of these people in your world who's not looking for something from you, but is concerned about you. And that's really for real, for real for me. Like, that's my intent. And that's what I want you to think. The day you feel the worst, you need text me. I want you to be able to feel safe on that day to go. Greg, I'm here. This is the worst. Yeah, thanks, man. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I take

that to heart. So thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Again, soon, man. Take care. Bye-bye. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is five bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribed to my free newsletter,

my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles, I'm reading, books, I'm reading, albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on. They get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of

podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field. And then I test them. And then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash friday. Type that into your browser tim.blog slash friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you

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