Episode 231: Ozan Varol: How to Stop Overthinking and Start Quitting

Hi, guys, it's Tony Robbins.

You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

Today on the podcast, we have Ozan Varro.

He initially wrote Think Like a Rocket Scientist, and you've been on, he's actually been on the podcast before, but he was such a wonderful guest that he's back on with his new book called Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary.

And you are extraordinary.

So I'm so happy to have you on the podcast.

Thank you.

So glad to be back and to meet you in person.

I know.

The first time, like we were, we were doing this virtually, and I had computer problems back then too, or social media problems.

And I always am like, you're a rocket scientist.

You can figure this out.

So excuse me, because now I have the same situation.

So I'm now using my computer here for my questions.

But for those of you who don't know Ozan, like I said, he did write that book called Think Like a Rocket Scientist.

But he is pretty remarkable.

He is a rocket scientist.

He's a lawyer.

He's a law professor, a speaker, basically an author, obviously.

And are you writing these books yourself?

Or do you have?

I'm writing them myself.

Yeah.

I love, I mean, and I want to say this, and I said this before we even started rolling, was I really enjoyed this.

I've enjoyed both of your books.

That's why, of course, you're back here.

But I really love this one because, you know, given the fact that you are a rocket scientist, you would think that sometimes people like that would write above, you know, kind of like so, so complex that it's like hard to kind of really understand the nuggets that they're trying to, you know, to

distill.

And I found the book so enjoyable.

I loved the way, I love how your brain works, and I love like the messages.

And I really thought you did a great job.

So thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

No, and I'm serious.

I like, I really, like I said, I really, really enjoyed it.

So let's start with the beginning.

When you say escape conformity, ignite creativity, what

how would you describe

what you write about?

I know that you, like,

what category would you say that this would fall under?

Is it kind of, because you're very much about like escaping the status quo, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So escaping conformity is a big part of it.

And I'll actually begin with the title, which is Awaken Your Genius.

And the title, it was a real struggle to get it right.

And I picked it because I love the origin of the word genius.

So genius, most people use it to mean like most talented or most intelligent or the smartest person, right?

But genius, there's this quote that opens the book from Falonius Monk.

He says, genius is the person most like themselves.

And genius in the Latin origin of the word refers to the spirit present at birth in each and every person.

And so each of us, we're like Aladdin and we have a genius, a genie within each of us waiting to be awakened.

And it's not just the most talented or the smartest individual.

Everyone has a genius within them, a unique contribution that they can make to the world.

And the book is about how to awaken that.

And then the escape conformity bit comes into play because so much of us, so many of us don't do that, right?

We're constantly looking externally for answers.

We're copying and pasting what other people are doing.

We're assuming that answers are not within, that other people know more than we do.

So there is this external search for answers, which then results in conformity.

That's why I love the book, because I wholeheartedly agree with so much of what you write about.

And it's true.

Like, I believe that we do have like, we become like lazy in our thinking, right?

We are so used to googling things and cutting and pasting things that we hear in the zeitgeist that we have gotten so used to it that we don't even remember how to think for ourselves.

And you talk about that, like that's like a through line with the book, right?

If people don't recognize that, how do people recognize that?

How do we kind of like stop doing that?

Because it's become so part of our DNA.

Sure, yeah.

And it starts at such an early age with the education system because the whole education system is based on the fact that answers have been figured out by people far smarter than you.

And your only responsibility is to memorize those answers and then spit them back out on a standardized test.

Right.

And you talk about that with the education system, like uneducate yourself.

Yeah.

Exactly.

To unlearn all of these bad habits that we pick up of assuming that, you know, life is a series of right or wrong answers that have been determined by someone far smarter than you.

you and all you need to do is just memorize them so then people graduate and come out of the education system thinking that all answers are in a book somewhere or on google and so unlearning that habit begins by just returning to the ability to think for yourself and thinking for yourself one of the simplest things you can do and i give a number of practices in in the book but this is this is one of them i call it putting yourself on airplane mode and i have a story where that phrase originated so normally when i'm on an airplane you know, I'd like follow the same ritual.

I pull out my laptop, I like start working right away.

And then when it's time for takeoff, I like begrudgingly put the laptop away and then slide the bag underneath the seat and then twiddle my thumbs until we reach 10,000 feet.

And that comforting like double chime ding dings signifies that it's like safe for me to pull out the bag again and like pull out my laptop and go back to being productive.

I was on a flight maybe four or five years ago and a voice within me said, don't do that like leave your laptop where it is and i honor that voice and i spent four hours doing nothing but looking out the window i just like looked out the window i ordered some crappy airplane wine and i just looked out the window and as i stepped into the void something really weird happened all of these ideas started to come like ideas for books, ideas for keynotes, solutions to problems that have been bugging me for

months.

The more I listened, the more ideas came.

And that's amazing.

And that, and if you think of it in your life too, moments like that, so when you ask most people, where do you get your best ideas, people will say, it's in the shower.

Like when you're showering, that's where your best ideas come from.

And if you think about it, it makes sense.

It's like one of the few periods of your day when you're actually free of distractions and notifications and no one's coming at you and you're just there with your thoughts.

Imagine the types of ideas you might be able to generate if you replicate those shower-like conditions throughout the day.

So it doesn't have to be like what I did, which is like stare out the window for four hours.

But if you can replicate those conditions where you allow yourself to do nothing but think.

So don't listen to an audio book, go for a walk, sit and stare at the ceiling.

It's incredible what happens.

And the science is clear.

When you look out the window or when you just let your mind wander, your subconscious is hard at work.

It's making new associations, it's consolidating ideas, it's generating new things that weren't there before.

But if you're moving from notification to notification, email to email, meeting to meeting, you just don't have time to think.

And if you don't have time to think, then you're not going to be able to come up with insights from within.

You're always going to look externally.

It's interesting because I think that when people think, when they're busy doing like inane things, it makes them feel productive, but it's actually the opposite, right?

Exactly.

And those four hours spent out the window, spent staring out the window were the most productive four hours I had spent in recent memory.

I think most people, as you said, don't do it because it seems like nothing is happening.

Like when you're answering emails, you're seeing visible progress towards inbox zero.

But when you're just thinking, it seems like nothing is happening.

But again, your mind is hard at work.

And if you don't give yourself space to think, then you won't be able to generate good ideas.

You notice, and also I like, you talk a lot about this in the book, but like even the fact that like it's been kind of like touted, like, oh, you're a multitasker, you get all this stuff stuff done but that's i have to like i'm guilty of this and like i do that and yet like what happens in my opinion is then you do nothing well nothing you don't retain anything you're just like doing a lot of shit but you're doing everything badly or you're not really present right yeah and like it's become part of our our culture where like do more do more do more that's like the the through line of life right especially with all this overwhelming amount of like that that's like the message what do you say to that like how can we stop like how do we unwind what we've been already taught already that's considered to be like what we are that what that's how we think we're successful that's how we think that we're productive right like sure yeah no I think this pedal to the metal mentality is the enemy of original thought when you're multitasking when you're trying to do when you're trying to do email when you're also on a zoom call you're not concentrating on either thing and you're operating at a fraction of what you're actually capable of and i think just knowing that, like humans are terrible multitaskers.

Yeah.

We're just not good at multitasking, period.

And no one is good at it.

Nobody is.

Nobody's good at multitasking.

That's step number one.

Okay.

Just to realize that.

And number two, also realizing that if you give your full attention to something, it's sort of like when people meet a famous person, some will say, you know, they made me feel like I was the only person in the room.

Like I felt like when their attention was on me, I was the only person in the room.

They were special.

Exactly.

treating everything you do with that kind of laser focused attention and being very intentional about it like i'm going to answer this email and that's the only thing i'm doing yeah i'm going to give myself time to think and that's the only thing i'm doing people tend to say time or money is the most scarce resource yeah i wouldn't like that's so built into the zeitgeist but i think the most scarce resource is your attention because you can only pay attention to one thing at a time and there's a reason why we call it paying attention.

You should treat it like your money.

It's actually more important than your money because it's a limited resource.

And, you know, all of these social media companies have figured out what an incredibly valuable resource it is, which is why they're in the attention getting and attention selling business.

And so if you are not making the decision on what you're paying attention to, Someone else is making that decision on your behalf and they are not going to choose necessarily what's in your best interest.

And so I think it's really important to just step back and be intentional about whatever it is we're going to do next.

You know, do I want to answer this email?

Do I want to try to multitask and then

do a half-assed thing in both of the things that I'm trying to do?

So what is your take on social media then?

Because like you said, it's about you're basically they're taking your attention away to sell you something or put you somewhere and they're they're cause they're making the decision, not you.

And now we're all on this hamster wheel, right?

And it's not getting any better.

It's It's getting worse.

So, what, how do we kind of refrain from that?

And you're like, it's very, like, my, my thing is, you make such great points, but, and then not but, but like,

then what, right?

Because we don't have the willpower or the discipline a lot of times to pull, pull it back because we're so down that rabbit hole.

Yeah, absolutely.

There's a study I cite in the book about people tend to eat fewer chocolates if each chocolate is wrapped in tinfoil.

I love that thing, the wrapped chocolate versus the unwrapped chocolate.

Can you talk about that?

Yeah, yeah.

So people tend to, if you put people into two groups, one group gets just a bucket of chocolates.

There is no barrier between chocolate and mouth.

The other group gets chocolates individually wrapped in tinfoil.

And the second group ends up eating a lot less chocolate because you're sort of forced to pause and consider what you're doing because you have to unwrap.

And people tend to gamble less when you put money in envelopes.

So you have to like open the envelope before you can take the money out.

So that brief moment of pause forces people to reflect on what they're going to do next now you don't have to wrap your smartphone in tinfoil although that would probably help it would help it would help but the goal is just to be intentional about what you're going to do next look we pick up our phone and if you're like most people your phone is probably within arm's reach right now we pick it up we pick it up impulsively right you're not even thinking about what you're going to do next there is no tinfoil the goal should be to create a type of tinfoil.

And when you pick up your phone and you can even have something on your phone screen saying like, is this the best thing I could be doing right now?

Or like, do you want to do this?

And then intentionally choosing what you're going to do.

Personally, I don't love all or nothing approaches.

quit social media completely, which I don't think is sustainable or even desirable because

once the diet ends, people tend to relapse.

I think it's just being intentional about choosing to do what you're going to do next and asking yourself, is this the best thing I could be doing?

And then two,

this made a huge difference for me.

We often pick up our phone or go to our favorite source of distraction to fulfill some unmet need.

So like there's something driving that.

It could be boredom.

It could be I'm looking for novelty.

It could be this or that.

But identifying that unmet need and then asking yourself, Did I just fulfill that need?

Like, did I, by picking up my phone and looking through Twitter, actually fulfill this need that I have for novelty or for distraction?

And the answer for me is almost always no.

I love this.

I have this written down actually, because I liked it so much.

You put here Twitter, it makes you neurotic.

Facebook, you feel like you're in middle school again, right?

And then, like, Instagram, you feel less than, which when I read that, I was like, oh my God, like he, he, like, he sees me, you know what I mean?

Like, it's so true.

And I think that everybody says that and feels that.

Yeah.

Yet, intellectually, we all know that.

And yet, we still do it over and over again.

Yeah.

So, if you're listening to this podcast, pause the conversation now.

Go look at your favorite source of distraction for 10 minutes and then check yourself.

Like, check to see how you're actually feeling.

If you're like most people, you're probably feeling this like low-level buzz of stress and anxiety that wasn't there before.

And the more you can be attuned to those signals, and the more you can realize that these services, the way we're using them at least, actually making us feel crappier than when we look through them, then the less likely that you'll be able to, or you'll be willing to go to them for distraction.

That's just at least been the case for me.

No, I think everyone could agree.

So let me just go back a second here because what I find, like, how did you become this person, right?

Because you, like you say, uneducate yourself is like the first thing you say in the book, right?

Is that okay?

And yet, like, you're a rocket scientist, like education, academia, I would say that you probably like crushed in that world right

and you know this is you're kind of like the anti-guy to be saying some of these things like how did you become this person like what was your origin story yeah and it you know it's embarrassing actually

I graduated first in my law school class.

And when people say that, when they introduce me, like I got the highest GPA in my law school student.

Where did you go to law school?

Went to the University of Iowa.

Oh, okay.

Well, at least you didn't go to Harvard.

I'm joking.

Still a top 20 law school.

Yeah, I just joking.

And I broke the, you know, the historical record for it.

And when people say that when I'm on stage, I'm embarrassed.

I'm embarrassed because

it says that I am really good at conforming.

Like people who do really well in school are really good conformists because the teacher will say, you need to go do this, they go do that.

You need to go read this book, I go read that book.

Like I was really good at following instructions and I was really good at figuring out what my teachers wanted and giving exactly that to them.

So it was actually this way of operating in the world, conformity, that led me to succeed in school.

And then looking back on that experience, again, it wasn't that I'd be the best lawyer that my law school would produce.

I quit law after two years.

It was just that I was really good at following rules.

And as I started to write and self-reflect, what was once a point of pride became this thing of like, oh my God, that means I'm just a really good conformist and I've lived my whole life this way.

And then that started a, this is years and years of self-reflection, journaling, thinking through what drives me, what ideas I have and what not, that I came to that realization of

the fact that I was a conformist for so much of my life.

And much of my writing is actually self-help.

Like I write to help myself, to reconnect with who I am and show my true colors to the world.

It's interesting because, like I said, like it would be the opposite.

Like, you are that person.

I mean, you obviously are still that person, but then what made you write a book about anti-conforming, like, not conforming and

all the other things that you talk about, right?

Like, what was the you because you saw that you were doing it, but it was working for you.

So, what made you decide to write a book about not for people not to be doing these things?

Sure.

And I think does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

And I don't think I am that person anymore.

I mean, I'm the same body, but I have very little in common with the version of me that existed 10 years ago.

Really?

Yeah.

And I think people forget how much, how much we change.

And then we stick to the decisions that, like, if you're 40 years old, you stick to the decisions that the 30-year-old version of you made, even though you've got little in common with that person.

If you have any doubts about that, by the way, go check out the social media posts you posted 10 years ago.

Totally change.

And when you're done cringing over what you decided to share with the world, come back and ask yourself, like, why should I still follow this path that I've been following simply because

this version of me that existed 10 years ago picked this path that I'm on.

And so for me, it was this lifelong journey of continuously reimagining myself, right?

So I started out in rocket science and then did that for four years, worked on the operations team for the Mars Exploration Rovers mission, went to law school.

practiced law for two years, then became a law professor and did that for 10 years.

And I thought I'd be a law professor for the rest of my life.

And then probably five years ago, I realized that that life was no longer for me.

I loved the career.

I loved teaching, but I had gotten tired of teaching the same classes year after year, you know, attending the same types of committee meetings and answering the same types of questions.

And this career that I once loved had just become too comfortable.

I had stopped learning and growing.

And there's a section in the book where I talk about how I had this epiphany.

And I had tenure.

So tenure means a guaranteed job and guaranteed paycheck for life.

And tenure professors don't quit their jobs.

I had this epiphany.

I always thought academia was my safety net, but then I realized that it was actually a straitjacket.

It had like morphed into a straitjacket and was now confining me and holding me back.

And as long as I stayed in academia, I wouldn't be able to write the types of books that I wanted to write and give the types of keynotes I wanted to give.

And so I had to overcome my own ego to be able to let that go because I had professor in front of my name for 10 years.

And to be able to say, I'm going to give that up and I'm going to start this and become a complete beginner again, right?

Leave all of that behind, all the titles and accolades and start over.

It's so scary, yet it's so liberating.

because you start over from scratch and you're writing on a blank slate and you could do anything you want.

You could write a book as I did about rocket science and then the book you're holding in your hands.

Awaken Your Genius is really the culmination of that that lifelong journey.

My last book was, again, thinking like a rocket scientist.

And it's funny, even the writing approach was so different.

Like I had the title picked, I had the whole structure laid out.

Everything was set from the get-go.

And the book did really well.

And when writing this book, I tried to do the same thing.

Like I looked back, I'm like, okay, what made the last book successful?

I'm going to take the formula, the same formula, and apply it to this book.

And for the first time in my life, I got writer's walk.

Like words just stopped flowing.

It just wasn't happening.

So then I scrapped my outline, all the plans I had for the book, and I said, okay, like we're just going to start over from scratch with no intention, no idea of what this thing is going to look like.

And I'm going to build the individual puzzle pieces first and then see what they add up to.

So I let all expectations go, all structure go, and just leaned into what was coming up on a day-to-day basis.

And I just started writing.

And then words started to flow again.

And then over time, different themes emerged that I could connect to to put together this coherent idea with, you know, five different parts.

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Well, what I like what you said, first of all, you said a bunch of things, but one of the things that you say that you said you actually talk about this is like this,

this quitting mentality, right?

We don't want to quit.

I mean, sometimes we don't quit because we're so stuck in our ways, but you're saying that sometimes quitting is the best thing to let go of so you can move on to the next thing.

Well, number one, could you just, can you talk about the quitting part?

Because,

well, just talk about that first and then I'll ask you my second question.

Sure, my question.

Okay, so going back to this personal experience I had the last time with quitting, which is quitting this, the safety net of academia.

I mentioned I was afraid.

Yeah, I was also afraid of a number of different things.

I was afraid of losing my safety net.

I was afraid of missing life as a professor.

I was afraid of, honestly, this is probably my biggest fear.

I was afraid that I could, I may not make it.

Right.

The unknown is what you're afraid of.

Exactly, totally.

But then I realized quitting is an act of love like there is birth and death when do you know when it's right and also with persistence right you said sometimes persistence is not sure yeah and like look some people quit too soon i think it's a totally personal decision but i think when you if you're feeling like you've stopped learning and growing if you're feeling uncomfortable about where you are in life It's time to do some self-reflection.

And so for me, the signals had been there for a while and I ignored them.

that signal of complacency, the signal of not this again, right?

That sinking feeling of standing before a classroom, which was so exciting in the first like six or seven years.

And then I would get up there and I wouldn't feel as excited anymore.

And I would actually sink.

And the more you pay attention to your body, by the way, the more easily you're able to pick up these signals.

What it was a sensation of sinking, of crashing down.

And it kept happening.

And I was like, okay, I need to pay attention to this.

And the more I listened, the more the messages came being like, look, this was amazing while it lasted, but it's not right for you anymore.

There's this quote in the book from Joseph Campbell.

He says something like, life lives on lives.

The earth must be broken to bring forth new life.

So if the seed doesn't die, there is no plant.

If wheat doesn't die, there is no bread.

Life lives on lives.

So our old selves become compost for our new selves.

Our old truths become seeds for new revelations.

Our old paths become lighthouses for new destinations.

And so I think a lot of people are reluctant to quit because they feel like quitting means wasting what they did before.

But I think it's actually quite the opposite.

Quitting means remembering the past and bringing your past to your future as fuel, as like fertilizer for the next thing.

And that's what I did.

So as I was in this place in my life where I felt like this was no longer for me.

I looked back in my past and thought about how I I can pick up these core components from my past to be able to use them as fuel for my future.

So like rocket science gave me the ability for critical thinking and formed the subject matter for my last book.

You know, a decade of teaching gave me the ability to speak before audiences and captivate people.

A decade of writing gave me the ability to storytell.

So I picked up these core components and then combined them to create what became my first non-academic book, Think Like a Rocket Scientist.

And then with the success of that, I felt comfortable leaving academia and writing the next one.

Yeah.

And then you say here also, but the, hold on, I gotta pull it up here, but the determined, like I said, the persistence.

And, you know, again, we're conditioned.

And I talk about like being, if you're persistent, if you're dedicated, if da-da-da-da, like things will happen for you.

Like you're saying sometimes that's not what you should be doing, right?

Like, so don't persist something that's broken.

Don't persist in that you don't want to be doing, basically, is your point, right?

So, and you're saying that you need to have a piece of self-reflection in that because some people always will take the path of least resistance.

Not always, a lot of times,

right?

And where do people find the courage?

Because people are really afraid at the end of the day for failure, for rejection, for the unknown.

Right.

Right.

Yep.

And you find the courage, I think, in your own life.

You look back, if you're listening to this, look back on your life.

And think about the most momentous moments of your life, the things that really moved the needle and really made a difference.

Chances are that they did not happen in moments of certainty.

Chances are that those moments were not carefully scripted and planned.

Chances are they happened precisely because you leaped into the unknown and you did something that pushed yourself outside of your comfort zone that you didn't feel like you, like you didn't know what was going to happen and you did the thing anyway.

Yeah.

And magic unfolded as a result.

Well, you have to send like this analogy.

You've got great analogies in the book in general.

I love a lot of of them, like the wrapping of the chocolate.

And you talk about like how something can serve you well at one point of your life and then not serve you well later.

Like the raft.

Yes.

Like, yeah, the raft can help you on the boat, but like if you're walking through the forest, that raft is really kind of like, it's actually a...

a hindrance to survival, right?

And I think that's why I'm why I'm bringing up these analogies is that because it's so true, right?

Because we get so stuck in how something helped us in one spot or part of our life that we hold on to it so tightly yet when it can actually be such a hindrance in another area that we've kind of, you know, if we've, when we grow, right?

Like we have to sometimes leave that stuff behind to keep on moving, to keep on growing, but we're, we hate to get rid of stuff.

Like we can always add, but we hate to subtract.

Yeah.

Yep, exactly.

And like looking back on my life, the best things happen because of subtraction, not addition.

Right.

I'm more prouder of the things that I'm prouder of the things that I stopped doing as opposed to the things that I have done because it takes more courage to stop.

And just to bring that parable, the raft, full circle for those who are not familiar with the story,

it's this Buddhist parable of this man who builds a raft to cross this raging river.

And then he gets to the other side.

He's proud of himself.

He picks up the raft.

He walks into the forest.

And then the raft starts like snagging against the trees and getting in the way of his forward progress.

But he refuses to let go of the raft.

He says, I built this thing.

Like this saved my life.

Why would I let it go?

But to survive today, he has to let go of what saved his life yesterday.

And that's true for so much of what we do in life and in business.

And I see this in businesses too.

Like the things that were really successful 10 years ago, five years ago are now getting in their way, but they can't let it go.

They can't let it go.

Because it worked in the past.

It's so interesting that you say that because there's a few businesses that were

crushing it like 10 years ago based on something.

And they're now like flailing and dying because they had that same mentality of like what's what they succeeded with then doesn't work now.

So they're not, they're unable to keep up with like how things are moving in the times, right?

Yeah.

But it's like a mentality, right?

Like it's about how even if you're cognizant of it, how do you let it go?

I guess this is where I keep on coming back to, right?

It's like, okay, it's one thing to have that knowledge about the raft or about that business or whatever it is, or like, but what can we do to help ourselves get past that hurdle so we can actually get rid of the raft or like let that business idea like, you know, kind of evolve into what it has to?

Yeah.

Yep.

I talk about a number of strategies in the book.

I'll share one of them.

This simple question you can ask yourself, which is such a powerful one.

Why am I doing this?

That's it.

Why am I doing this?

Like go through an entire day and look at your day.

and intentionally ask yourself, why am I doing this?

Why am I checking email first thing in the morning?

Why am I doing X, Y, and Z, right?

And the answer for so much of what we do on a daily basis is because I've always done it this way.

Like we've always done it this way, or others around me are doing this, so I'm going to copy and paste what they're doing, but there is no intentionality behind it.

We're operating on autopilot.

And that simple question, why am I doing this?

Is a really powerful one.

And it can snap you out of autopilot.

So I mentioned like checking email first thing in the morning.

That's something that I discovered with, as an answer to that question, question, why am I doing this?

I would check my email first thing in the morning for years.

And then I would always start the day feeling depleted, right?

Because I'm like answering emails, which means you're basically tackling other people's problems, things that other people put on your plate.

And you start your day on defense.

Versus being intentional and asking, what do I actually want to do today?

Like, what is important to me versus what's important to whoever decided to email me today?

And the answer came because of that simple question, which is, why am I doing this?

And the answer was because I've always checked email first thing in the morning.

Right.

That's, that was the only reason.

So then I stopped and I, it was, and then I did an experiment.

So my change for me always begins with an experiment.

I don't make, I usually don't make drastic changes right away because, and this is true for most people, it can be really jarring.

So I said, okay, I'm going to make an, I'm going to do an experiment.

I'm going to experiment with not checking email until noon for a week just to see what happens.

Because usually change registers as a potential threat.

Uncertainty registers as a threat because what's uncertain, what's unknown could kill you.

And so to reduce that fear, you can just say, look, we're just going to run an experiment.

If it doesn't work, we'll go back to the way that things were.

But if it does work, then you can start doing that going forward.

And did it for a week.

Absolutely nothing bad happened.

And then now that's how I operate.

I don't check email before noon most days.

And whenever I violate that rule, it's always to my detriment.

Really?

Yeah.

I love that.

Because I think that's a good idea that you said to experiment before you go, like until you, instead of like burning the house down, you know, just start with like a small experiment to see if it works.

Exactly.

And then you can kind of move from there.

Yeah.

The cut and pasting thing about how we like live life, it, like I said, it really resonated.

And

you even mentioned this example, by the way, in your book, which is why I'm like, oh my God, is the meditation thing, right?

Because everyone, it's like this universal thing, like, oh, meditation quiets the mind, meditation.

So like, you know, whenever I have people on the podcast and I ask them, like, what do you do to kind of, what's your, what are your daily habits?

Nine out of 10 times I hear meditation, right?

Out in the ethos, it's always about like, meditate, meditate, meditate.

I cannot meditate to save my life.

I've tried a bazillion times.

I think about it, it just gives me anxiety every time I have to sit there.

And people are like, have you tried this type of meditation?

Have you tried that type of meditation?

I'm like, none of them work.

And like, you actually point that out.

Like, it's this conformity idea that like everyone, there's like this, because it's out there, people should all have to conform to meditation.

But there's a lot of research even backing the fact that even that's not, I want you to talk about it, but to me, that's a perfect example of what we do as a society like today.

Yeah, I love that example.

And there's this obsession with people's routines and particularly morning routines.

And as you said, meditation is almost always a part of every successful person's morning routine.

And I think it's bullshit personally.

I'm calling bullshit because

I don't believe that every single person, nine out of ten people, like they can actually sit there in an arm for like nine, ten, twenty minutes.

Like, and I don't think everyone can like it.

It's impossible.

Yeah, totally.

And then I think it makes you feel bad too.

Like, if you're like, oh, all these people around me are doing this, it seems to work for them.

And that it makes you feel shitty because it doesn't work for you.

It causes anxiety.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I look at those stories.

I'm like, wait a minute.

So before 9 a.m., you meditated, you went for a run, you did a cold plunge, you warmed up some milk from your pet goat in your backyard, and then you meditated and all of these things.

And I look at that and I'm like,

no one.

Like, don't people have, don't people have a lie?

Like, I mean, kids, I mean, I don't know.

Like, I think if I can get two, like, if I can keep a couple good habits of the day in the morning that work for me, great.

But like, to your point, it's like, how do people have time for a three-hour morning routine?

right exactly and i think there's so much pressure then to do that on people and it also leads to this false belief that if i just copy and paste someone's morning routine if i do what this famous person is going to do that i'm going to have the same results like if i use the same pen that stephen king is using

I'm going to write as good of a, you know, I'm going to become a successful novelist.

I'm exaggerating, of course, but the point being is that I think it gives this false impression that if you just copy and paste somebody else's routine, that that you're going to be successful and so meditation to go back to that is is a good example so i cite a study in the book i don't remember the specific numbers but a good portion of people who meditate actually have adverse effects from meditation which is not talked about and i have an email list so i shared this research with them before the book came out Just letting people know, and the point of the post was like, not everything is universally good.

Even meditation is not universally good.

It's not the universal right for everyone.

And this sort of like black, white, yes, no, right, wrong thinking leads to a lot of problems.

That sort of categorical thinking that leaves no room for nuance to say, yes, but, or this is good for some people, but it's not good for others.

Seems to me like a really simple point.

I got more hate mail for that post than anything else I've received in recent memory, which is sort of ironic, right?

Like the most ardent practitioners

of meditation, the most ardent practitioners of meditation were so upset that I was sharing the results of a peer-reviewed research study showing that a good number of people were experiencing adverse effects from meditation.

And to simply introduce nuance into categorical thinking, to complicate what was before a simplified categorical thing, ruffled so many feathers.

So unzen.

And it's, again, especially ironic that these people are ardent meditation.

The priority is amazing on this one, I think.

What do you think about that?

What does that tell you about where we are in life right now?

Yeah.

God forbid you have an opinion.

Right.

And it's these people are the ones who are like down your throat about it.

Exactly.

And so this idea, and meditation teaches you to be loosely attached, right, to your opinions and beliefs.

And people are holding them so firmly that meditation is good for everybody.

I think it shows that human beings,

we are.

in many ways wired to think in categories to say this fits into this category this fits into that category.

This is the right answer, and this is the wrong answer.

And this is a standard Hollywood story, right?

You know, the hero defeats the villain, and everyone lives happily ever after.

And it works because it appeals to this human nature of, it's so much easier to say, college is essential or college is useless, or to say, like, Elon Musk is a hero or Elon Musk is a villain, versus adopting a level of thinking that blurs it to you, to be in this gray zone in between, to say, like, here's this part that supports the use of meditation in some people.

And here's this other argument that says that meditation isn't the

right thing for everybody.

And rejecting that type of categorical thinking and like realizing that beauty exists in diversity.

And that includes diversity of thought.

And that includes...

multi-dimensional thinking that rejects these simplistic categories that in an attempt to simplify things paints a totally distorted picture of reality.

Beyond.

I mean, and then why do people's brains work where it's like it's too confusing for them to think in that way?

Like, I think again, not to refer back to my notes, but I'm going to because there's so many things here that I wrote down because I liked it so much.

And now, of course, I can't find it.

But what was that thing you said about, yeah, and big, we don't like to have ambiguity around certain things, right?

It's much easier for our brains to kind of understand these like buckets, right?

It's, it's true, like, even with, you know, my life too.

Like, people think because I was in fitness, I'm a fitness person.

God forbid, you can get into a different bucket, you know?

Like people cannot, they cannot cross like pollinate.

But what is, I mean, I know you're not a psychologist, but you play one on TV sometimes, but you are a rocket scientist.

What is it about our brains that we cannot have that, we don't have that ability to do that?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I think.

I think we do have the ability to do that.

I just think it's easier as the path of least resistance to just settle on simplistic categories.

And I'm sure there's, and I don't know this, but there's probably an evolutionary advantage to this, to be able to say, you know, these sorts of things fall into the threat bucket and these do not versus constantly evaluating everything as you go through life, right?

And so that can be really inefficient.

So that's probably why.

why we are not accustomed to doing it, but then we take it to an extreme, which is to put everything into these buckets.

And so as you said like people put me into the rocket scientist bucket and assume assume assume a certain set of like things or belief systems follow from that and then they're always shocked when they hear I don't adhere to all of those belief systems and I'm a complicated multi-dimensional individual who

does a lot of things that don't fit into that mold.

And I think that's what makes people interesting.

What makes, okay, so tell me one thing about you that doesn't fit into the mold of rocket science.

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Speaking of morning routines, this is actually something that I do.

It is a a habit.

I journal about my dreams every morning.

Not something that most rocket scientists do.

I get up in the morning and I journal about what I dream.

Do you remember what you dream?

Yeah.

I think

I would say most nights I remember what I dreamed about.

And I get up in the morning and I journal about the symbols that came up in my dreams and what they signify for me.

Because I tend to think that dreams are messages from your own depths, from your own subconscious.

And so your subconscious communicates to you in your dreams.

And I've found dreams to be really powerful ways of uncovering your own depths.

And so, the practice of journaling about them in the morning.

So, like this person showed up or this symbol showed up in my dream.

What does that actually mean for my life right now?

Actually, tell one of the stories in the book.

I had this dream where I saw this equation.

And this, by the way, is unusual.

I don't normally dream about math.

But this equation came up.

It was 0.8 times 0.2 equals 0.16.

So 0.8 times 0.2 equals 0.16.

It's middle school math.

It certainly makes sense for the scientist and me.

But in the dream, I was so confused.

I kept thinking, how can the multiplication of two numbers, the final product, be less?

than either number so 0.16 is less than both 0.8 and 0.2 how could that be i was so confused in the dream so i woke up in the morning and I like wrote this equation down on my notebook and I kept staring at it and then thinking through what it could mean.

And then the answer hit me.

I was like, oh my God.

Going back to this multitasking thing we talked about before.

When we operate at a fraction of our capacity, like when we give, instead of a full one, we give a 0.8 or 0.2 to something.

the output suffers significantly.

Like it becomes so much less than what we actually put in.

And then that became like the opening story to one of the chapters in the book.

And I now have a post-it note on my computer with that equation.

It says 0.2 times 0.8 equals 0.16 as a constant reminder that like if I'm if I try to multitask, if I'm not giving my full 1.0, 100% attention to something, my output is going to suffer as a result.

What I still can't understand is how can you remember your dreams that vividly every like every night where you can write in your journal about them?

I can never remember anything.

And maybe this could be like one of these things where people should be able to maybe can harness.

Could you harness that?

I know you're not a dream specialist either, but I think so.

For me, I had a hard time too, but I started by journaling about one thing I remembered.

It wasn't a full story.

It could be like an image.

And I would journal about the image.

And then the dream started to get more vivid.

and stronger.

Like the more I journaled, it's sort of like

no.

To use a fitness analogy, it's like...

Why?

Because I told you I was in fitness for a second.

Exactly.

No, I told you.

Use a different analogy just for that reason alone.

See, you're one of these people.

You need to be compartmentalized.

Yeah.

Well, you know, went and roam, I guess.

No, like with every rep, the muscle gets stronger.

Yeah, I know.

So the more you do it, the stronger it gets.

And it's true for every practice I talk about in the book, like that question I mentioned, why am I doing this?

It's really hard to ask that and to identify that at first.

But look, once you get into the habit of asking yourself that on a regular basis, then the answers become a lot easier to identify.

And sometimes you don't even have to ask the question anymore.

It'll just come to you.

Right.

Dreams are like that too, in my experience at least.

The more I journal about them, the more vivid they get.

That's interesting because when you walked in here, you said that thing about

the woman that you dream about and you had like, you remember like every detail about that stuff.

Yeah.

And I'm getting it tattooed tomorrow.

I know.

That's why I was like, the fact that like when you said that, obviously I didn't, I have, that kind of just blew me away.

Can we talk about resilience and overthinking?

Because I think those are two biggies that, you know, I talk about a lot in my book.

So I'm very curious what other people think about it.

Let's go with overthinking first, right?

What's your take on how we can stop this

thing?

And how do we get over overthinking and not get into this whole analysis paralysis, which is what basically happens.

Yeah.

And it stops us from doing anything.

I'm going to go back to something we talked about before, and then I'll tell you a story about overthinking.

So going back to experimentation, experimenting beats overthinking.

Like you can make all the pros and cons lists you want, but you don't know if something is going to work until you actually try it.

As a former rocket scientist, I am so,

so prone to overthinking things, to make all the pros and cons lists.

Is this going to work?

Is this not going to work?

I had, this was back in 2016.

I had like just started writing online.

I was still in academia and I was thinking about, okay, launching a blog and started to write online to see if I would get some resonance with non-academic audiences.

And I wrote this article.

The title was like, facts don't change minds.

And here's why.

I wrote it because I have this newsletter that goes out every Thursday.

It's 100% true, by the way.

Yeah.

I looked at it and I was like, God, this sucks.

Like, this sucks.

This seems so obvious to me.

I don't know if this is going to resonate with people.

I don't know if it's going to work.

So I went into that overthinking mode.

And then I'm like, okay, I need to send out the newsletter tomorrow.

So I'm just going to, I'm just going to put it out there and see what happens.

Put it out there.

A few hours after the post went out, I got an email from my web designer.

No, actually, no, no, no.

Before, before that, I got an email from an editor at the Next Big Idea Club.

And he said, this is a really good piece.

We want to cross like post it to our website.

I was like, okay, like weird.

I didn't think it was that great, but sure, let's do it.

So they put it up there.

And then a few days later, my web designer emailed me and she's like, something is happening.

Like, look at your website stats.

And it was like this hockey, hockey stick-shaped curve, this exponential.

The article had gone viral.

It became Next Big Ideas Club, like most popular article of all time.

It's been shared on social media hundreds of thousands of times.

And I was this close to overthinking it and not putting it out there.

So I think back to that moment.

I'm like, okay.

You no one knows what's going to work and what's not going to work until you actually try it.

So you can overthink it.

You can make all the pros and cons lists, all the spreadsheets that you want, but you don't know what's going to work until you try.

So I always think back to that story.

So experimenting is really important because you're reducing the threshold to get started.

You're not saying this is a permanent change.

And you're just saying, I'm just going to give it a shot and just see what happens.

And as long as you leave the door unlocked, you can always come back inside.

If you don't like the experiment, the results that they that produced, you can come back inside.

Right.

But how do we stop ourselves?

We just act, basically, is what you're saying.

Yeah, just when you find yourself overthinking, just remind yourself that, like,

you don't know what you don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you don't know what's going to work and what's not going to work until

you actually try it.

Yeah, I agree.

And then how about resilience?

Because resilience is another thing you speak about in the book.

Yeah.

What would you say about how could we become more resilient?

And how do we become more resilient?

Did I stomp you?

No, you didn't stop me.

I wanted to pause for a moment to see what angle I want to take on that question.

I think I want to go back to what I talked about with respect to meditation, which is that some people need to be more resilient and some people need to persist more.

Some people need more grip.

Others need less of it.

And it totally depends on who you are.

It's interesting you say that because in the book, right, like those are all points, but you're saying nothing is an absolute, nothing is a universal.

So some people, you're saying

if you are one of these people, stop resisting.

It's not like an umbrella for everybody.

Yeah.

And I think that actually supports the point, which is that it's not universal.

I think some people need to go to college.

Others shouldn't.

Some people should start a podcast.

Others shouldn't.

Right, right.

Some people need to take more risks.

Others are already taking too many risks.

Like some people need to work more.

Others are already flirting with burnout.

And I think it's the same with grit and persistence too.

It's like some people need, because you quit too early, some people, you need to just stay with it for longer, but others are repeatedly doing the same thing that's not working and

they don't need more persistence and grit.

I think it totally depends on your

individual situation.

And so with resilience, you're saying some people need to learn how to be more resilient and some don't.

What would you say is your definition of resilience?

That's a good question.

Someone who's able to fall and get right back up.

Someone who can like take rejection, who is not a little, who is not a flower.

Like they can like, they can take a beating and still get up and

keep it moving, keep on going, not letting everything that goes wrong be that one thing that like is constantly letting them stay down.

Yep.

Yeah.

I do.

So I love that definition.

And I think it's, that's super important.

And the perspective I talk about that in the book is about like rejection, particularly from other people.

Rejection of your ideas, rejection of your job application, rejection of something you created and it didn't get the results that you wanted.

We are so conditioned, and part of the reason why people can't get up when they fall is because we are so conditioned to look externally for approval.

We want to be chosen by the people who were chosen before us.

We want to be picked.

We want to be patted on the back.

We want someone, a teacher, right?

A parent to say, good job, like you did great.

And the moment that approval is withheld or worse, the moment is replaced with, you didn't do great.

Your idea isn't good.

You fall and then you can't get back up.

And I think I struggle with this personally.

And whenever I do,

I go back to this idea that I talk about in the book, which is looking internally for approval.

Instead of looking externally, and so here's a problem with looking externally for approval.

That approval can be denied at any time.

It can be withheld at any time.

It's like relying on, and it doesn't burn clean.

It's like relying on fossil fuels for energy.

It can be withheld at any time.

It's really expensive.

It's bad for the environment.

Internal approval, internal energy burns clean.

And it's entirely renewable.

You always have an infinite source of approval within.

And you can always come back to that.

And you can always check in with yourself.

Like, am I with this?

So this book, right?

I spent two years writing it.

I don't know how it's going to land in the world.

And so when that voice keeps creeping in of like, how is the world going to react?

What are the powers that be, what are they going to say about the book?

And then I get into the spiral of looking externally.

I always come back and say, was this the book that I wanted to write?

And the answer is absolutely yes.

Did I delight myself and enjoy 90% of the process?

Absolutely.

Did I tell the stories that I wanted to to tell?

Yes.

And I come back to those.

I'm like, am I proud of the work that I created?

Absolutely.

Those answers for me are the most important ones.

Because the moment I stopped doing that, which is what I had done at the very beginning, right?

Which is to like replicate a formula for success that worked before.

And whenever I look externally, I also stop being original, right?

I sort of try to cater to what people are going to want.

And the magic is just, it just flows out of my writing.

So I just come back to that internal source of approval, which I think is so important to go back to your question of resiliency.

Most people are able to get back up.

They get back up because they don't take rejection personally.

They look within for approval and they know that with each fall comes learning, right?

So even if you fall, even if someone rejected you, even if you didn't get what you wanted, you'll learn something from that.

And the ground is going to teach you, give you so many more lessons than overthinking ever can.

And the goal should be to just learn those lessons and then apply them to the next thing.

Right.

So so far, what I really get is that like in order to awaken your genius, you need to leave room for yourself to think.

That's the first part, right?

Thinking is a big one.

And

also, I want to ask you, is that how we, it says here, unlock the wisdom within.

How do we unlock the wisdom within?

By letting ourselves think, by not conforming, by like not Googling everything to find the answers?

Is that through line?

That's certainly part of it.

And quitting and not persisting when things are like having self-reflection to know when to stop.

Okay.

And then what would you say was the best piece of advice, with the worst piece of advice that everyone's commonly talking about?

I saw that as a question.

What's the worst piece of advice?

The worst piece of advice that I personally got.

was five years ago, one of my mentors told me, don't start a podcast.

He said, I was was thinking about starting a podcast and he said, don't do it.

He's like, everyone and their cousin is starting a podcast.

Don't do it.

So I listened to his advice.

I didn't start a podcast.

I recorded these conversations with people and then I launched a written interview series.

So

I would record the conversations and I would edit them down and then publish them on my website.

This might sound straightforward.

It wasn't.

It will like take me hours of work to take because people speak very differently from how you actually write.

And so it would take me hours to edit these things down.

And it was only after like the 15th interview that I stopped and launched a podcast, which lasted for about two years and it was great.

You don't do it anymore?

I don't do it anymore.

No.

Like it served this purpose.

It was awesome.

I got to interview the people I wanted to interview.

And then just like with academia, like I started to get bored.

I'm like, okay,

this is great.

I loved it.

And I'm going to quit while things are still good.

And you did 15 episodes?

No, that was the interview, the written interview.

Oh, okay.

So I ended up doing a lot more over the course of two years.

But that was one of the worst pieces of advice.

And by the way, the person who told me don't start a podcast later started one of his own.

Oh, really?

Yeah, which is sort of ironic.

Life is full of irony, isn't it?

Yeah.

So I think, like, so the worst piece of advice is, I think, that type of advice, which is to tell somebody else exactly what to do and what not to do.

Because you're relying solely on your worldview.

Right, right.

Solely on your own experience.

And you are an N of one.

You are only a single data point

about your disturbingly confident advice about what this other person should or should not do.

So I think when we give advice, we have to situate it in our personal context and say like, this is what I tried.

This is what worked for me.

What do you think?

Like, what do you the best kind of advice illuminates paths?

It doesn't tell the other person exactly what path they should take.

And I think as the advice receiver, it's important to test advice and not blindly follow it.

Well, I think also a lot of times people are giving advice based on their own myopic life, right?

So you're using, you're like using someone else's life experience to dictate what you're going to do with your life, which I think you got to be very weary of who you're taking advice from, right?

Exactly.

It goes back to what we were talking about earlier.

What works for one person is not going to work for the other.

So just because even if this person had started a podcast and it didn't work for them, it doesn't mean that it's a bad idea.

And also doesn't mean that it won't work for you.

Right.

Right?

Because you bring a whole other list of things to the game.

Okay.

What is here?

It sucks.

You talk about a brain addict.

And you, what is a brain addict?

Well, first of all, let's start with that.

And then you choose what goes into your brain by the signal-to-noise ratio.

What does this mean?

So, brain addict, it's

from Sherlock Holmes.

He sort of refers to this thing up here as the brain addict.

And he uses- Sherlock Holmes, the investment.

Yeah.

Yep.

And he refers to it as the brain addict because, just like a physical addict, you have a limited amount of space.

And everything that's in there is there at the expense of something else.

So if your brain attic is cluttered with junk, you're not going to have any room for original thoughts, original ideas from within to emerge because you've loaded it with junk, as most of us do, with like social media, news, and everything else.

And so I talk about the signal to noise ratio in terms of consuming.

in terms of deciding what goes into your brain attic.

And this goes to some of what we talked about before too, like being very intentional about, does this belong in my brain?

Do I really want to ingest this, you know, bucket of MMs for breakfast every morning by like scrolling through Instagram for an hour after I wake up?

Because that is essentially what you're doing is you're, you're loading your brain attic with junk.

And when you're paying attention to junk, your life becomes junk.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so paying attention to the signal-to-noise ratio, meaning what actually is valuable enough for it to deserve space in my brain.

And so I mentioned news.

I'll give news as an example, right?

News, in my view, has become a form of entertainment.

Like it's become this, because media is so much of it is driven by click-throughs and subscriptions and whatnot.

And so there's a race to the bottom and there's a race to get as many clicks as possible, which means all these sensationalist headlines and all of this drama and conflict come into the forefront.

And you open the news and you think like the world is going to hell in a handbasket, right?

right totally yeah and the same news breaks in like predictable ways and predictable cycles over and over and over again and so for me news is a really low signal to noise ratio it's mostly noise and it's become this form of essentially entertainment and so i would much rather read a book than read the news And again, this is a personal decision that everyone gets to make on their own.

Of course.

Right.

And but I think it needs to be, it needs to be reiterated.

But for me, books have a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than news.

And I'd much rather read about something after the dust has settled versus like being caught up in the frenzy and the drama and the conflict that characterizes so much of the 24-7 news cycle.

Right.

No, so I think that's 100% true.

So what is your day like?

Give me like a day in the life.

Like, what do you do?

You wake up at what time?

Usually 8 o'clock.

8, 8 30.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And what's your, like, I know you don't check your emails until noon.

Yeah.

Okay.

So what is your morning routine, even even though you say, you know what I mean?

Like, what is your day?

Like, give me like the day in the life of you

to awaken your genius, even though you are a genius.

And that's not just, you know, that's kind of, it's a universal

knowledge.

I think I've become a lot more attuned to the cycles of my own body.

So instead of forcing myself to do the same thing every morning.

There are certain things that I do do every morning, which I'm going to get to in just a second.

But just to preface this by saying, I don't have a strict thing that I do every day.

I used to.

I used to be very disciplined and very structured.

And like the raft that started to get in the way in many ways, I would force myself to do things even when I didn't feel like them and even when it wasn't the right time to do them.

And those starting to get in the way.

Like I would force myself to write every morning.

And when I force myself to write, the stuff that comes out is crap usually.

And so I'll become a lot more attuned to like, if the waves aren't there, I'm not going to go out with a surfboard.

I'm going to wait for the waves to come.

So with that said, I think the three things that I do reliably in like the first two hours of my day are spend time with my wife and our two dogs, make coffee.

Like coffee is I have this like process ritual I follow with like grinding the beans and all of that.

It's like strangely meditative.

And then journal.

And journaling is something I do almost every morning.

It's not just dream journaling.

but it's also just like what is bugging me?

What's causing anxiety?

What's stressing me out?

What am I thinking about?

What are the ideas that keep nagging me?

Because over time, and one of the other things I do is in this program I use, which is called Roam Research, to journal, I have this thing set up where I can read the journal entries and I do this every morning from a month ago, three months ago, six months ago, and a year ago.

And I take a really quick look at them to see like what I was struggling with and what I was thinking about.

Because over time, you're able to identify those patterns if you have a written record of them.

And so that becomes a really helpful way for me to be like, okay, like, what is the thing that keeps bugging me?

And I need to do something to resolve that.

Or what is this idea that keeps presenting itself, which the book sort of came from that was like an idea just kept presenting itself.

And I wanted to write a book about.

original thinking and non-conformity and finding who you are and finding yourself.

And that was something that I was struggling with personally.

And journaling every morning and reviewing those journal entries over time make it obvious that like, that's the next thing for me.

Right.

Cause you can see a pattern of what happens.

Exactly.

You can connect the dots over time in a way that you may not be able to otherwise.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Is there anything else I did not cover that you want to talk about?

I don't think so.

I think this is a great, really diverse interview.

Okay, because I mean,

I just opened the page.

I saw this a few times.

Stop calling your office an office.

What is that?

Can you tell me what that is?

And then I will definitely let you out of here soon.

Sure.

So stop calling your office an office.

It goes back to one of these ideas we talked about, which is like doing things simply because that's what you've done before.

So I have this room.

I had this room at our house that I would call the office, right?

It was my office.

And I would go into my office to do some work.

And I would call it an office just because that's what you call the room in your house where work happens.

But I would dread going into this room.

Because of the name, right?

Because for me, office is like where good ideas go to die.

And office is like, it reminds me of like mind-numbing water cooler conversations and like fluorescent lights and like just the type of environment where creativity does not exist.

Yeah, where creativity dies.

Yeah, where creativity dies, exactly, where good ideas go to die.

And so instead of calling my office an office, I started calling it an idea lab or like, that's what I normally call it is like an idea lab.

I'm going to go into my like idea cave.

Oh, I love it.

And that like that creates delight in me in a way that the an office never did.

Right.

And you can do this with so many things.

Not just, and this is just, again, going back to being intentional about everything you're doing, including the name that you give things, like, don't call it a status meeting.

Status meeting is, again, another place where good ideas go to die.

It's this like routine thing that who likes going to a status meeting?

What do you call it then?

Call it like a, you know, an idea incubator or like a collaboration cave or something that's going to like delight people to show up in the way that you want them to show up right so if you want people to come to the status meeting and generate ideas don't call it a status meeting call it an idea incubator like something that's going to and pick pick something personal that's going to delight you and the people who show up there a friend of mine who used to work at

It was called Google X.

It's now just called X.

It's Alphabet's Moonshot Factory.

And like normally this person's name, her name is Obi Felton, she's no longer there.

But her title would be like director of operations.

Instead, her title was

getting moonshots ready for contact with the real world.

Like that was her,

like the, or the person responsible for getting moonshots ready for contact with the real world, right?

That's such a playful title.

It's not, you're not just director of operations.

Right.

It's also ho-hum.

Like, it gives it some like, that's true.

I feel like more people are doing that now, but I think it's so smart to do that, right?

Because otherwise, it's just like, it's so easy to be like, you're right.

Like, I'm going to the office.

It sounds so like dreadful.

Right.

Exactly.

And like, don't call it a to-do list.

Yeah.

To-do.

When I hear to-do lists, I want to run as fast as possible.

Call it like a design list or something that's going to get you to show up and

ignite something beyond just like a dreadful chore that you have to do.

Exactly.

No, that's amazing.

So, okay, so tell us where we can find the book, where we can find you.

Give us all your details.

Sure.

So Awaken Your Genius is available wherever books are sold.

But if you go to getgeniusbook.com, you'll be able to find all of the sale links there.

And then if you'd like to keep in touch with me, I'm not active on social media.

The best way to do that is through my email list.

I have an email that goes out every Thursday to over 45,000 people and it shares one big idea that you can read in three minutes or less.

And you can sign up for that by heading over to my website, which is myfirstnameandlastname.com.

So ozanvarol.com, O-Z-A-N, V-As and Victor A-R-O-L.com.

And this is new, but you can also to sign up for it, text my first name, Ozan to 55444.

So if you just text Ozan, O-Z-A-N to 55444, you'll be able to sign up for my email list.

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

And I guess you do practice what you preach because you're not very active on social media.

And that was obviously by design.

For sure.

Right.

For sure.

Because you don't want to feel less than or talk about middle school and get neurotic via Twitter.

Yeah, exactly.

Good.

That's amazing.

How often do you say you go on there anyway?

Like once every, what, month?

I probably check Instagram just to see what some friends are up to once every two days or so.

But it's not more than five minutes.

And if you look on there, I rarely ever post anything.

Yeah.

Very smart.

I think that's the smartest thing that you've said all day.

Thanks.

Yeah, that's amazing from a rocket scientist.

Thank you.

It's been awesome.

Thank you for coming on the podcast.

Of course, thank you so much, Jennifer.

Absolutely.

It's a pleasure.

Bye.