David

49:00 The conversation about how crypto mining creates endless demand for energy is wild (e.g., mining demand used to offset “gas flaring”—excess gas that can’t be stored and must be burned off).

1:57:45: Don’t pay too much attention to specific data sets until you ask yourself what action will you take or what behavior will you change. Until you have a specific goal it’s just noise or distraction and not the best use of your time.

27:55: On prioritizing for reliability over the most gee-wiz solutions: “Once you get fancy, fancy gets broken and I prefer to have the fewest moving parts possible.”

36:15 conversation about whether social media is the biggest status generating machine ever. Interesting story about The Well, an early social media site and the relatively small audience exhibiting many of the same online behaviors we see today.

27:30 once your status is tied to your beliefs it becomes difficult to shed a belief b/c it jeopardizes your status. Ouch!

4:20 a 90-second crash course on three status games: dominance, virtue and success.

Thanks for the reminder at 35:30: “Goals without actions are purely dreams.”

33:30 Winnet’s book rec “The Rules of Wealth” by Richard Templar. Not familiar with that title or the author, but will have to check it out.

Winnet’s comments about fake gurus talking about how successful they are and showing off their home or car as signals of self-proclaimed success reminds me of the Game of Thrones quote: “Any man who must say ‘I am the King,’ is no true king.”

7:25 The scam in a nutshell: “Contrepreneurs telling wantrepreneurs how to be entrepreneurs.” As he says earlier in the pod, we all want shortcuts to success in life and work. I’m certainly not immune to this.

@Sam love that you interviewed Winnet. I’m a big fan of his Contrepreneur vids and work to expose “fake gurus” (I can’t stand those charlatans/scam artists). I laughed out loud when he mentioned the book at 3:48 “The One-Minute Millionaire”.

16:40 interesting conversation about the “Russell conjugation” (tendency to describe own situation more charitably than others) and the power dynamics and general ubiquity of this sort of rhetoric.

29:40 Spot on point @Sam: I find myself in the same trap fo consuming new content rather than pondering and revisiting the quality self help material I’ve already read. There’s definitely something to revisiting and just focusing on a few key lessons vs distracting ourselves in search of something new and shiney.

19:40 Internal triggers as key source of distraction. They consist of uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape from. Examples include boredom, loneliness, fatigue, stress and anxiety. “Time management requires pain management.”

11:10 imagine how amazing our live would be with the power to follow through (I also like his preceding comment about the power of being fully present).

The reminder at 4:30 that we are not powerless and of the importance of our internal locus of control are so simple yet profound. I’ll never tire of hearing reminders about this.

18:15 Nice heuristic for decision-making: If tomorrow is a repeat of yesterday, how would I behave differently or change today?

38:00 Annie: “Try stuff.” Sam: “Anything scary is probably worth doing.” 👏

28:50 love this bit. Getting other perspectives is critical to making better decisions (and learning) but it’s hard to do when others don’t want to engage in good faith. Love that Annie is asking you to engage on this question so she can learn. For me, good faith vs none is the difference between a productive dialogue vs someone only interested in monologuing.

27:40 love the conversation about inside and outside view, the idea that we must reconcile our personal view (inside) alongside external opinions, ideas and diversity of thought beyond our own. You are so right @Sam that reading a book with another person and discussing it reveals so much more than just doing so alone.

27:45 being fully present is one of the greatest gifts and acts of kindness you can offer another person.

17:35 “Your energy is your example [to others].” That is to say that your energy may leave a stronger impression on others than your actual message.

1:50 love the introductory story about the Pygmalion effect. Such a hopeful message (based on real-world research).

45:30 the story of Victor Prather (NASA test pilot) and risk “as what’s left after you think you’ve thought of everything.” — Housel is such a damn good interview.

14:25 the universal condition that success brings a degree of laziness. Most of us get fat, happy, and complacent. The real long term performers (like Buffett) buck that trend.

37:30: @Sam your comments remind of the ideas from early in the book that just having a strategy, let alone a good one, confers some level of competitive advantage by virtue of most companies lack ANY strategy whatsoever. I agree that it’s easy to understand that you might need a strategy, but it’s much harder to do the actual work to come up with a good one and implement it.

Nice episode @Nicolas and @Sam. I love the negative examples of what bad strategy is as well as the range of interesting case studies covered by Rummelt like Crown, Cork and Steel and NVidia. Great book.

This episode makes me think a lot about the Principal-Agent problem. Misaligned incentives, assymetric knowledge/risk, self-interest, curse of knowledge.

Thehustle.co also did a good write up on his story a few years back. That piece is also worth reading.

If you want a feel-good, inspirational story about personal initiative, curiosity, and innovation, check out this story. Richard Montanez could barely read or write when he started as a janitor at Frito Lay. Two decades later he was VP and helped launch a product line now generating billions in revenue.

1:02:10 I like that you describe this pivotal loss of innocence as another irreversible transformational experience—effectively a real-life, negative and ironically human experience that David must endure. Big contrast to the first irreversible experience you describe (and the euphoria David endures in that previous moment). Presumably part of the path to becoming “real”?

42:30 just realized the reason for the robot’s name when you highlighted the theme of reciprocal love. David = beloved. Maybe you mention later in the episode.

@21st_Rewrite this episode was amazing. Really enjoyed the in-depth analysis of story through the lens of the heroe’s journey. Took me a long time to get through the episode because it was so idea-rich/info-dense. Wonder if you’d consider more thorough show notes at some point or podcast chapters (e.g. time stamp where you discuss archetypes, time stamp where you discuss the mentor figures, etc). Also: do you recommend the Myth in Movies book by your guest and what are your recommended websites for reading these screenplays (including the early versions) for free? Thanks!

18:40: Constraints reduce writing friction by removing certain decisions from the process. Examples of writing constraints: medium, platform, topic, length, time spent writing, publication schedule.

16:20: Dickie Bush’s formula for writing fast: under 250 words, under 45 minutes, aim for B+ quality with A+ consistency.