Why You Shouldn't Be A Slave to a 40 Hour Work Week | My First Million #212

Shaan Puri

And a lion is the exact opposite. A lion sits, rests, watches, and observes. It waits for an opportunity. Then, when an opportunity comes - like the gazelles running across the field - the lion looks up and sprints after the gazelle.

Sam Parr

Okay, we're here. Alright, let me tell you something. Alright, you ready? Yeah, I saw a great tweet that got me thinking a lot, and I've been reading a lot on this topic, so it's a very good coincidence. So, it's this guy named Dan Vassallo. He said, "I'm convinced that working 40 hours a week, 50 weeks per year for 30 to 40 straight years is against our nature. Yet, the most skilled, educated, and highly paid people I know tend to be unable to consider any other path that doesn't involve enduring this artificial lifestyle." Do you, Sean, agree or disagree? Well, actually, let me phrase it differently. Yeah, do you think that working 40 hours, 50 hours a week for 50 years is outlandish? Where do you fall on that?

Shaan Puri

I totally agree with this. I think that the work week concept is **suboptimal**, somewhere between **bogus** and **suboptimal**. But why do I think that? First, there's this assumption that we have linear output. You come in for 8 hours a day, and all 8 hours are going to be roughly equal. Nobody says this, but it's just implied in the way that we work. You're expected to sort of be there for these hours. On top of that, there's the idea that Monday through Friday should be the same. Then you're working 50 weeks out of the year, and that should all be roughly equal. We know that anyone who does non-factory work, non-industrial work—if you're working with your brain, doing knowledge work—this work week doesn't make any sense. If you kind of nerd out about the history of things, like the history of the work week and the industrial revolution, it seems to me (and maybe I could be wrong here) that this idea of the way we work—where you go to a central place, work 8-hour shifts, do that 5 days a week, and continue for 50 weeks out of the year for 30 years of your career—comes from the **industrial age**. It makes sense if you're actually working in a factory because you can pick, pack, and do all these physical tasks with a certain set of output that can be measured. The more hours you're there, the more output you're going to get. However, if you're a programmer, designer, product person, or marketer, you might have one hour where you just get this burst of creativity or insight. That hour could be the whole day's work, and it might take you a whole day to get to that.

Shaan Puri

But that hour was like the most valuable bit. So I think that the way people work today is we still work the schedule of a factory, but we don't work in factories anymore for the most part. So yeah, I totally disagree with... I totally agree with the tweet which disagrees with the work week.

Sam Parr

So, I'm reading a few things. The first thing that I've read recently is this great book called *The Science of Fear*. In it, the author talks about the history of humans a little bit and how we look at fear. What we're afraid of isn't always logical. For example, when September 11th happened in 2001, in the year 2002, fewer people traveled on airplanes because they were fearful; they were afraid to fly. Yet, car wrecks the next year, 2002, went up significantly. So much so that had there been a terrorist attack and a plane went down every single week for a whole year, it actually would have been safer than driving. We are incredibly fearful, and that's just one example. Another example—I'm paraphrasing here, so I might get some numbers wrong—how many people do you think die a year from shark bites?

Shaan Puri

Probably tiny, right? I don't know. Let's call it "die" every year. I think it's like sub-1,000 is my guess.

Sam Parr

So, since the history of us recording this, the stat, which I believe was like 18 out of 80 or something like that, it's around 200 people ever. So, a minuscule lifetime... like lifetime shark bites happen each year, but something like 1 to 4 every year are fatal. Yet, we're incredibly fearful of that. The reason I'm bringing this topic up is that when I was reading this book, he has this great line, and again, I'm paraphrasing, but he says something like, "If you look back at the history of Homo sapiens, the kind of modern human, and if it's a history book of what that is, the life of that history of Homo sapiens, that book will be like 500 pages. Of the hunter-gatherer stage, that will be something like a paragraph." And since the Industrial Age, since, you know, whatever we just call modern—let's just say like the last 1,000 years or so—that's going to be like 1, 2, or 3 sentences, a paragraph, let's say. So, to put... and the reason why this is important is the way that our emotions, the way that we live our life... we look at it like, "Well, you know, for the last 100 years we've been doing this." It's like, "Well, actually, for the last tens of thousands, the last million years, we've done something else." To bridge that to this other book, *Sapiens*... have you read *Sapiens*?

Shaan Puri

no but I feel like I have because everybody references it constantly so I almost feel like I know it but go ahead

Sam Parr

yeah it's like the tech bro tech bro book so I'm paraphrasing again

Shaan Puri

We should explain it's the "tech bro" book because it's like... it's the book that's not about tech that all the tech bros like. It makes you look like you're more worldly because you know about humanity. And like, "Oh yeah, it's not just about tech."

Sam Parr

So, it's not all about tech. Before cities emerged and capitalism, as we know it, came into play, a lot of times we were hunter-gatherers. When the agricultural revolution came about, we were working something like 20 hours a week. We would work to get our food and take care of our family a little bit, but there was a lot of leisure time. I find that to be kind of interesting. When I look at guys like Elon Musk, for the record, I agree with what that tweet said. I do agree that if you are going to build outlandish things, like an Elon Musk type of thing, it does give you a competitive advantage to work really, really hard. Regardless of whether you start anything, you have to work really hard. However, I don't think that you need to do that for that long. I would actually say, and this is a guess—I don't have insight here—that there's a world where you could be an Elon Musk and actually work 40 hours a week right now. I've been thinking a lot, and I'm going to come a little more prepared next time, but the history of the work week is something I find fascinating. I do think it's crazy to dedicate 60, 70 hours a week, or whatever it is, to work. That's considered hard work for like 40 years or 20 years. I think that's wild. I think it's crazy.

Shaan Puri

let let me give you my my couple of frameworks that I picked up along the way first one from tim ferriss so you go read 4 hour workweek and everybody who reads the 4 hour workweek gets what I call the 4 hour fever which which is right after you finish the book actually even even before you finish the book when you're about halfway through you're it's like you're in a fever dream you're reassessing every part of your life you're like oh yes I've seen the light I need to be doing things this way now when I'm I can't I can't see the world the same way again which is why it's such a great book and why it got so so popular was because it had that sort of red pill moment where where you couldn't really go back to to living in the same sort of fog you were living in before and the thing about the 4 hour work week one thing he says is he he points out that you know true wealth is has not has very little to do with money money is an accounting scheme that we use to keep track of wealth and and you know true wealth comes in comes into play of like you have to take into account other factors so who is wealthier a person in new york city making $500,000 a year or a person in bali making a $150,000 a year well the person in new york by traditional measures would be doing you know 4 times better but but of course you know if you if you go live that life that's not the case right because in in new york you have to pay your cost of living is 3 or 4 x your schools you have to pay for private schools or whatever basically your your effective your effective wealth which is basically a combination of how much free time you have and how much like buying power you have is lower than the person in bali who's working you know half the time making 4 times less but but also living in a place where the cost of living is 10 times less or whatever it is and so he called that the new rich tim ferriss called this the new rich he basically is like the new rich are people who have time and the new rich are people who you know they can they're they don't they're not tied to any location they're not tied to any schedule and they have they're working in a way where they're earning just enough to hit their target and their target is some amount of money that covers your life life costs and so they where where basically your you have a freedom number that you come up with where it's like okay once I'm earning this much and then the the effective kind of like compounding of of interest that I make off that money is gonna cover my life burn then I'm financially free and he talked about how like the way that people work today which is like you work your ass off for you know from age 20 to 65 right so for this like 45 year.

Shaan Puri

You work like crazy. You sacrifice time, travel, and health because you're working so hard. Then, basically, once you turn 65, all of a sudden, it's time to retire and go do all the fun things—go travel now as a 65-year-old. He points out that it's way more fun to travel now than it is when you're 65, right? It's more enjoyable to do things in your twenties and thirties and not put off the fun until you're 65. Also, why do we do this? We basically trade the first half of our life, trading time for money, and then in the second half of our life, we try to give back money to get our time back. That doesn't really make too much sense. Once I first heard that, I thought about how there is this lifestyle where you can be remote. You're in Brooklyn right now, or something like that. You're in New York, Manhattan. It doesn't matter where you are; you can do your job. You have more freedom than the average person. You can also work three hours a day instead of eight hours a day. All that matters is what you get done. It's not like a factory where you have to come in to work. I think this is the new rich. The last part of the new rich that he talks about is mini-vacations or mini-retirements. Instead of having one big retirement when you're 65, how do you have little ones—like six-month, one-year, or eighteen-month sabbaticals—that you take in your twenties, thirties, forties, or fifties, rather than just putting it all off until the very end? So, what do you think about that lifestyle?

Sam Parr

So that lifestyle is great, and it's not actually anything new. But we don't really assume that it's new. I was at dinner with this... I think I told you about this guy who had a company in China.

Shaan Puri

yes you did

Sam Parr

So basically, as a recap, there was a guy who I went out to dinner with. He had about 5,000 employees in China. There was this debate at the dinner table about how China is going to kick America's ass. This guy—this isn't me saying this, so don't give me flack—was saying, "I think that that's totally false. A lot of Americans think that, but the truth is that Americans probably work harder." You know, we actually work really, really hard. At our company, we would give three weeks of time off, but most people did not take that entire three weeks off. Most people would take like ten days. That was just my little example, but I actually think that Americans work incredibly hard compared to our peers throughout the world. Maybe not the hardest, but definitely top tier. A lot of the guys I like to read about, for example, Joseph Kennedy, who was J.F.K.'s father, is an example. Prior to him making all of his wealth, he was like the 10th richest person in America at the time. He was incredibly wealthy, and what he would do, even before that, is work really hard for nine months and then chill for three months in Palm Beach, Florida. He wasn't incredibly wealthy when he did this, and this is actually incredibly common. You'd read about Andrew Carnegie taking a trip to Europe. Now, when you take a trip to Europe without a plane, that's a six-month thing. So, this idea of taking time off—it's not like... I mean, I'm citing that so...

Shaan Puri

don't think it's new but I don't think it's common either right so there's some things that could be not new and it's not common now and that's why it's I think interesting now and from my. Of view by the way I think so I lived in china for 2 years I lived in indonesia for a year I lived in a bunch of different places that are like kind of like more third world y and considered to be like like right now I would say the popular popular opinion amongst like you know our peers is that china in china people work a lot harder and they're more like sort of like they're advancing faster they're they're you know us is all tangled up in its own mess and it's also the soft generation and everybody gets a trophy and blah blah blah there's all these complaints about the us and I hope what your friend is saying is true that america's not america does work hard and is not gonna be not gonna get its ass kicked by china but I don't know what I what I saw when I lived there was the average person there works far harder and is much tougher and the like the expectations of your rights and your leisure and your like the coddledness of employees is like night and day like the average employee here lives like a king compared to the average employee in china or indonesia from what I saw which was two things there were a lot of people in china they live in the rural areas and then they come work in cities because that's where the jobs are and so extremely common practice is you literally leave your family you have a kid you leave your family you go work in the city your grand you're a parent so the grandparent raises the kid you send money back every week you live in the city you don't see your family and then you go travel on occasional holidays or weekends back to the countryside to see your family like in the us that would be considered sort of like you know slave labor almost like that's that's not a common pattern in indonesia and china that was such a common pattern amongst the kinda like blue collar class and then in the white collar class they had this sort of like I forgot what they call it 996 it's like 9 am to 9 pm 6 days a week you know like I worked at a tech company the average engineer came in at probably 10 am you know took a nice hour for lunch you know 2 hours later at noon and then you know by 5 they were going to their you know going to the gym or going wherever they were gonna go and they were gone and oh by the way in between you know they got to sit with their triple monitor set up with their bose headphones provided by the office eating you know having cheetos fed to them so it's like I do think that the american worker from what I've seen is a lot more coddled but what I would say is that the average american has a much higher career focus than the average person in other countries I've I lived in in australia I lived there and quality of life was high and people might have worked about the same hours as the us a little bit less but it just wasn't as big of a part of their life was their career in the us I feel like career is like such a big thing in people's lives work is such a big part of your life it's such a big part of your identity your value in society your value as a dating partner you like care about it you're always trying to like move up and in australia people were just way more chill about it and I felt the same in indonesia and in china so even though somebody might work 14 15 hours a day in pretty harsh conditions they weren't like striving to like climb the ladder and that would like climbing the ladder is a big thing in the us I didn't see that in china even for people that worked harder

Sam Parr

Now, I think though, to wrap up this part, when we talk about work, we're basically referring to people who sit at a computer for 8 hours a day. That's what we're defining as work. I'm not saying that when I say this, we're defining work as doing something you don't necessarily want to do in exchange for money. Now, I actually think that you should work incredibly hard. If I define work as something like working out super hard, running errands, or handling family business, you should also do that hard. Yeah, well, you know, you gotta like... I believe that you should have a lot of structure around what you're doing. You should put a lot of effort in and live hard. That's kind of the way I think about it. You should do things with intention. But I don't think that working 50 hours a week for 30 whatever years is reasonable. When I think about it now, I'm like, that is crazy if you only live once. I'm starting to read this book—I just ordered it, but I don't even remember the name. It's about a guy who goes and interviews elderly people, people in hospice who are about to die, and they talk about what they regret and things like that. Just reading the reviews of it has already changed my perspective slightly.

Shaan Puri

That's cool! I like that Naval has a great concept where he basically talks about the idea that most people work like cows when we should really work like lions. I don't know if you've heard this framework, but it's a good one. A cow, if you watch it all day, just stands in the grass, slowly wagging its tail and grazing. It munches on grass with its neck down, which isn't the most dense or nutritious food. A cow just sits there, has four stomachs, and digests grass. Cows graze all day, about 10 hours a day. In contrast, a lion is the exact opposite. A lion sits, rests, watches, and observes. It waits for an opportunity. When the opportunity comes, like when gazelles are running across the field, the lion looks up, sprints after the gazelle—not walking or jogging, but sprinting. It catches the gazelle, feasts on it, which is more nutrient-dense and valuable, then celebrates, relaxes, and rests to get ready for the next sprint. Basically, Naval's...

Shaan Puri

Is work like a lion? If you're a creative person or you want to be wealthy—which is freedom and time—working on stuff you love and creating a lot of value in the world, work like a lion, not like a cow. But if you look at the way the work week is scheduled, it's a cow's work week. The cow's work week is: go sit in this chair, neck down, Monday through Friday, 8 hours a day. Leave for the weekend, come back, and do it again. Do that 50 times in a row—that's the year. You know, congratulations! And if you have a bad week, that's a negative. We don't count the number of amazing weeks; we just count the number of not-bad weeks. So people work like cows. I think that’s a very useful frame of reference. A lot of high achievers are down to sprint, but what they're not down to do is feast, celebrate, relax, rest, and wait for the next big opportunity. They have nervous energy; they're always just trying to do more, more, more, more, more. And when you do more, more, more, more, more, you actually are working like a cow, not like a lion.

Sam Parr

Can we talk about Naval? Do I want to hear... do you have any intel or insights on him? First of all, let's explain who this guy is. But I would like to hear some stories about him because I just read... well, listened to his book. What was it called? *The Naval Almanack*?

Shaan Puri

navalmanac yeah

Sam Parr

It was awesome, but I've never met the guy. I don't really know that many people who know him. Do you have any insights on that at home?

Shaan Puri

I don't... I never met him. I've chatted with him once or twice, just briefly. Very, very, very briefly. Like a Twitter DM and once on Clubhouse. So for all intents and purposes, I don't know the guy. He doesn't know... put it better, he doesn't know me. I feel like I know him pretty well, but he doesn't know me, okay? But I do know some people who know him. I've asked them about...

Sam Parr

the background tell the background of of who this guy is

Shaan Puri

Basically, I'll go back a little bit further. He’s an Indian guy who grows up somewhere in New York. He wasn't wealthy; I think he was raised by a single mother. There wasn't really a glamorous lifestyle for him and his brother growing up. He grows up thinking he wants to be a scientist, but then he decides, "Okay, actually, I'm more interested in the business side of things," or he has more of a knack for business. Early on in the dot-com boom, he creates a site called "Opinions," which is like a website for reviews and opinions on products. I believe it was sort of like Yelp, but more focused on products than on locations. So, "Opinions" actually works, but then some issues arise. I don't know the full backstory, but the important part is that "Opinions" was kind of working, and then, you know, it's not around today, so it didn't fully succeed. He got kind of screwed by his VCs, which left him feeling cheated out of what he was owed. That definitely put a chip on his shoulder.

Sam Parr

But basically, I think what happened is that he left the company or disagreed with his co-founder. The VCs took the side of his co-founder, and they bought back some of his shares or they told him they're worthless, so he sold them for very little. But then eventually, I believe they either went public or they were bought by a company that goes public, and it becomes a financial success for a little while, at least.

Shaan Puri

And he didn't get the win that he would have otherwise been owed. He felt like he was screwed over by his VCs. Then he said, "Well, why was I screwed?" I think the good parties took some accountability for it. They said, "Okay, they may have acted poorly, but I put myself in a position where they could act poorly towards me." This got him very interested in the idea of term sheets and contracts—the deal documents that go into when an investor invests in a company. As a founder, he realized that most investors want you to sign a piece of paper that they claim is "standard." You might think, "Okay, if it's standard, it's standard." But some of this stuff looks kind of scary. You might not know how to push back. They say it's standard, so you think, "Okay, whatever," and you sign the document. You don't really fully understand until things go sideways. As they say, contracts are written for the worst-case scenario, not the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario could be a founder breakup or getting kicked out of the company. What do you owe then? So, he created Venture Hacks. Venture Hacks is basically a demystified version of term sheets. He started writing down, "Hey founders, here's what you need to know about raising money. Here's how the process works. Here's what the terms are that you should know. Here are the messed-up terms you should avoid. Here are the good VCs," and that sort of thing. He just put out a blog with no clear business model. It wasn't necessarily a business he started, but I think it eventually became a book at some point.

Shaan Puri

And he keeps investing in the startup game. The next thing he does is create AngelList, which starts off as a very simple idea: "Oh hey, founders, I helped you figure out the dynamics of raising money and the deal terms." But that doesn't actually help you go get investors. So, why don't we do this? I know 100 angel investors. If you want to raise money, here's a list of angels—AngelList. I'll just send out 3 or 4 good startups every week to this list, and that will help you get funded. It starts off as an email-first product and ends up becoming a full platform and network—basically LinkedIn for the startup community. Now, it's a multibillion-dollar company, valued at least $2 billion or $3 billion. It's the best place to go to list your startup and raise money. If you're an investor, that's what I use for my rolling fund; I use it as the back office to launch a fund. If you're an engineer, you can use it to get a job. It facilitates all the different transactions that need to happen in the startup world, whether it's hiring, raising money, or investing money. AngelList does it all. So, that's the long story short on him. Along the way, he invests as an angel investor in Twitter, Uber, and Postmates, and does extremely well during that time.

Sam Parr

probably a billionaire at this. Yeah

Shaan Puri

I don't think a billionaire... I would say no. But, you know, stupid money for sure, right? Like, you know, 100 million dollars for sure. I think the reason why a lot of people like him is that there are a lot of guys in Silicon Valley who have that story, right? "I created a company." It's definitely exceptional to create a $1,000,000,000 company or to angel invest in Uber, Twitter, and Postmates, and multiple $1,000,000,000 companies at the earliest rounds. That's clearly impressive. But Naval stands apart, not for that. He stands apart because he has an extreme clarity of thought and wisdom that he shares on both Twitter and his podcast, "The Naval Podcast." He's kind of like a philosopher about both life and business, and that's why he's built this cult following.

Sam Parr

And when he started this philosophy shtick, he got mocked. So basically, Naval builds AngelList. It starts becoming quite successful - it actually took a while. I think now it's going to be just the biggest thing ever. I mean, when I see how it works now, I'm a customer. It's going to be huge. He starts this Twitter shtick where he tweets one-line tweets. At the time, it was not very popular. Now everyone does it, but it's like he'll just do a one-sentence tweet.

Shaan Puri

we call them fortune cookie tweets

Sam Parr

Yes, and you know, they're silly, but like, they're useful. People would kind of mock him at first. Now, he went on Joe Rogan, and people start looking at him as this Tony Robbins-esque guru, and he blows up. Regardless of...

Shaan Puri

I think it's the other way around. I think he got on Joe Rogan because people already started to feel that way about him.

Sam Parr

right that's what I mean

Shaan Puri

It... it... the stuff used... you put out one thread particularly that just went nuts, which was called "How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky." If you're going to read one Twitter thread today, go read that one. That was a bit more... I mean, that's like original wisdom or real, you know? There's original content, and the internet already lacks original content. Forget original content; original wisdom is very hard to come by. Anytime I think of something wise, I'll tweet it out, and then somebody will say, "Yeah, you know, that's what Yogi Berra said back in 1940" or something like that. I'm like, "Okay, great! I wasn't trying to rip him off. This is an independent realization I've had by making mistakes in my life." But I find it so hard to really have original wisdom. He genuinely has original wisdom, and of course, many things he says are packaged and repackaged from philosophers that he follows and stuff he tried. But at the end of the day, you know, he's putting together sort of like an original set of philosophy—a set of ideas that come together as a philosophy.

Sam Parr

and he has this fund now that you can join but in order to join it so he charges crazy fees

Shaan Puri

but what are his fees

Sam Parr

You can go on for more. I think if you go to... he's got a syndicate and a rolling fund. You could actually see what they are; you could read them. But they're significantly higher than normal. He recently had a meeting for his syndicate members. I had a friend who went, and he said something like, "I'm no longer going to do B2B software because even though it's like a surefire way to make money, it's just boring to me. Now I'm only going to invest in things like space and these moonshot crazy ideas." What do you see? What are the fees?

Shaan Puri

I'm looking now. I don't see the fees. I think maybe I have to find the documents, but I'd be surprised if it was that crazy. I mean, I think I would bet he takes a higher carry than fee, but that's what it is.

Sam Parr

sorry sorry when I say fee I wasn't meaning management fee I wasn't getting like

Shaan Puri

One is, have you heard his theory on the kind of back-to-the-workweek thing? Let's connect these two ideas. So, he's got this theory on the future of work. Have you heard what he says about this? No? So basically, he says, like, okay, two things. He's like, one, the size of the firm is shrinking. We've seen that, you know, companies—the big companies today are all like tens of thousands of employees. Then you start to see these outliers where it's like, oh, Instagram, when it sold for $1,000,000,000, was at 13 people, right? That was kind of amazing for 13 people. And really, they hired five of them in the last few months. So it really was like eight people created a $1,000,000,000 company. There was a prediction that soon, if not already, a one-person company will create a $1,000,000,000 enterprise value. We're all kind of looking around, waiting for that exact scenario. I think Bitcoin is one of the closest examples, where Satoshi basically created a multi-hundred-billion-dollar thing, and it's like not only one person...

Sam Parr

well it's

Shaan Puri

most likely one person but we don't even know who the person is kind of amazing no company there's no no ceo no no chief marketing officer whatever so he started observing that like the size of the firm is shrinking in general and that people work their best in these like small ragtag teams and so what he what he thinks is the future is what I'll call like the ocean's 11 way of working so ocean's 11 what is it one person george george clooney identifies we're robbing this bank right we're robbing this casino this is this is the next target person 1 basically sends out the bat signal they text out the trusted group of people who all have a unique set of skills and says hey we have our next target they say cool they read the brief the brief basically says here's this casino it has all this money they have these jewels we're gonna go rob the bank here's how we're gonna do it and you're gonna you're gonna be hey you know like asian gymnast guy you're gonna be responsible for going through the laser wires and hey pickpocket guy matt damon you're gonna go pickpocket the the the the the the boss you know and get the key and basically this is how work is gonna work so what he thinks is gonna happen is you're gonna have either independent or small teams of people let's say you and let's say the 4 key people who built the hustle that you could basically get a text message on your phone that gives you the next mission and either you as the leader are coming up with that mission or somebody else puts out the mission out to the universe and says hey we want somebody to build you know the hustle for bitcoin right and you could basically say boom accept I accept the job and then that fans out to the 4 people you trust you guys get together and you do this sprint for like 9 weeks building the foundation there you collect your jackpot of money you split the you split the winnings you get the most and then you know steph gets the next most and trung gets the next most or whatever and then and then you all go your way again until the next mission hits and he basically feels that this is how things are gonna work more like you know mission impossible or ocean's 11 field agents that basically take missions when they want the mission has a set bounty the bounty gets you know you get completed you get you rate and review each other right I review the task giver the brief giver they review me as the as the agent and then we go on our way and we see this with like uber drivers today but it hasn't shifted into like creative knowledge work but that's his that's I'm paraphrasing or I'm kind of extrapolating for what he said but I think that's what he thinks the future looks like what do you think of that

Sam Parr

I think that applies to a lot of things, but not everything. I think that for the people listening to those podcasts, it will apply to a lot of their work. But at the end of the day, I need someone to come pick up my trash every single day or once a week, you know what I mean? I need some type of consistency. I think that Naval and...

Shaan Puri

the robots will be doing that

Sam Parr

maybe but someone's

Shaan Puri

Gotta make street, dude. There's the driver... There is a driver in the thing, but the guy drives up to the house. This huge claw arm comes, grabs my trash can like it's a toy in one of those claw games at the... thing. Dumps the trash into the thing, puts it back down, and... he just keeps driving. The guy doesn't get out. Soon, that guy is not gonna need to be there. It's just gonna be a computer driving that whole thing.

Sam Parr

So there's this fruit stand on the corner of where I'm staying right now. It's run by two guys who work 12-hour shifts. One person does the first 12 hours, then the next person takes over. It's open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's crazy! You can go and buy a pear at 3 AM on this corner. It's wild!

Shaan Puri

and I think

Sam Parr

a lot of new york is like that you know in san francisco everything closes at like 1

Shaan Puri

it never sleeps yeah yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I think that for a lot of stuff, that unfortunately is going to be necessary. Although I don't know if it's necessary, but people are going to continue doing it that way. But what you're talking about for intellectual work, or for work that requires, you know, coding or blogging or something where you can build it once and sell many times... I think that is a great way to do it. Not only do I think it's a great way and effective way to do it, I think it's **significantly more fun**.

Shaan Puri

Well, I've had this realization. My grandfather worked in an explosives factory, basically a bomb factory. So, you know, animation guys, start here: my grandfather worked in an explosives factory. He went to work wearing a hard hat and goggles, operating heavy machinery. That's his day-to-day. Then, his son, who is only about 30 years younger than him, does a job that would seem completely foreign to my grandfather. He would ask, "What do you mean this is work? Where's your hard hat? Where's the factory? Where's the danger? You're not standing 12 or 14 hours a day on the line. What are you doing?" My dad carried a briefcase into an office, went to a cubicle, sat down at a desktop computer, and essentially wrote emails and memos. Then, he would fly on a plane to meet a customer, shake their hand, cut a deal, sign a piece of paper, and carry that piece of paper back with him. Then my dad looks at me and says, "You call this work? What are you doing here?" Now, again, 30 years later, work has undergone another unrecognizable shift. He looks at me and says, "You just sit in front of your laptop on your couch, or you go travel. It doesn't even matter. You can just sit with your little phone and do your whole job." So, I sit with my laptop and talk to other people through video chat. I don't even need to get on the phone. I create content or I'm a programmer. If I think about my daughter, bless her, she's 2 years old right now. When she works, I'm sure it's going to look like something completely unrecognizable and basically resemble leisure to her.

Shaan Puri

Of view, because I'm like, "Dude, back in my day, I had to sit at my laptop and type, type, type, type." And she's going to be like, "Oh yeah, we just use our voice assistants." I'm just like, "I have a drone that follows me around and it's creating content for my channel. I have 1,000 subscribers, and that's my payment. That's my income—my 1,000 subscribers watching me on my drone vlog or whatever the hell." The future is going to look like... it's hard to predict. My grandfather never could have predicted that his son would do what he does. My dad would have never thought that I'd do what I do. That means I'm unlikely to be able to predict what my kids are going to do 30 years from now. That gets me both excited, but also makes me think, "Oh, I need to plan for something a little more radical than what just feels like a bit further progression from where we are today."

Sam Parr

So, I'll give you... this is a little tangent, but... Robert Greene is one of my favorite authors. He's a historian, a little bit, and he wrote about this idea of how our parents always complain about young people. [They say] "They don't understand this or that."

Shaan Puri

hard work yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah, and we'll say the same thing about people younger than us. Some of the earliest writings that we've discovered of language - not just pictures, but words on walls or whatever - it was people complaining about how the kids don't... I swear to God, this is what it was. He gives this wonderful example. He's like, "In fact, this is so common that some of the earliest works we've ever been able to read are about complaining about how they're nervous about the future because the young people don't understand something."

Shaan Puri

Dude, that's so funny. First of all, someone's lying because I've heard the Bitcoin people are all like: > "Oh, you know, the earliest writings on cave walls were just accounting systems. People keeping a ledger, a balance of who owes what." And then I've heard people who are like, if your shtick is storytelling, it's like: > "You know, the earliest things in cave walls are stories passed down from generations. They're telling stories... bedtime stories essentially were written on the walls." And now this guy's saying something else. I actually believe yours... yours seems to be honestly the most believable.

Sam Parr

Talking about the written... like words. You could be talking about numbers, and the other person could be talking about pictures. I'm talking about like words, but hey, I'm just paraphrasing Robert Greene.

Shaan Puri

I'm just gonna use that because no one f***ing knows and so I'm just gonna... whatever. It might... like I'm teaching a writing course right now. "Did you know that the first writing ever actually happened before people ate?" It's like, "What? That can't be right. That doesn't make sense." Yeah, and the first writing was about writing. It's like, "Buy my course."

Sam Parr

I am just saying that and so that's what I wrote about

Shaan Puri

Rubber green, what do you think? I wouldn't be surprised if, basically, my daughter, when she works, never goes into an office. She's using something that's even more lightweight than a phone—it's a watch or a contact lens to see her information. She works with people whose identities she doesn't know, and they don't know hers. It's more like a game. It's like she's, you know, BB 433, and she has a five-star rating. Her rate is, you know, X coins—that's how she earns her money. Basically, she works whenever she wants. Every morning, she can wake up and see a list of available missions to contribute to. I can see that being the future. Even though that sounds like a video game today, I think the jobs of the future will probably look more like games than what we do today.

Sam Parr

So there's this... I forget who said it, but someone once said, "I'll look at what rich Silicon Valley people do in their free time, and that's what a lot of the world will do in 10 years." I think this...

Shaan Puri

Slightly different, Chris Dixon said, "What the nerds in Silicon Valley do on the weekends is what everybody will be doing on their weekdays eventually."

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I think if I remember correctly, he might have been referring to LSD or psychedelic drug use... I think.

Shaan Puri

It's like many hobbies. It's like, "Oh, 3D printing, cryptocurrency..." Whatever the... whatever... like, whatever your engineer friends are doing for fun on Friday, Saturday, outside of their job. That's the thing to bet on. Those are the things that become *things*.

Sam Parr

And I think you could say the same for people who are incredibly wealthy. Let me give you an example. We have this guy on the podcast named Mark... why did you say his last name? Lori? Is it Mark Laurie? He founded this company called Jet.com, bought a basketball team, definitely a billionaire. When we were doing the podcast, it looked a little funny, like the way he was moving his hands. I couldn't exactly tell what was going on. Then afterwards, he told us that he wasn't using his computer. He was basically standing up with his iPhone on a big old tripod. He sent us a picture of it, and I tweeted out about how I actually don't think that a lot of people are going to be using laptops. I think that I've talked to a bunch of people. I think Gary Vaynerchuk's one of them, Jack Dorsey's another one, and Mark Laurie is another one. They run these huge companies and have traded massive amounts of wealth. Mark Laurie said, "I haven't touched a computer in years." Of course, that is something that you pretty much have to be pretty wealthy in order to do, or like a social media influencer or something, like a Jake Paul type of person. But I do think that in 10, 20, 30, 40 years, this idea of having a laptop and a computer... I think it's gonna be that we're not gonna do that. We're going to do it all from some type of much smaller handheld device.

Shaan Puri

I totally agree. Can I tell you a fear story? A random thing that happened to me: I was in my backyard yesterday, or maybe two days ago. We have a pool, and there's this little hill with a bunch of greenery. It's like a little path in the backyard where you can just walk in a circle. My daughter loves to do it, so I'm walking with her. I'm kind of on my phone, and she's walking about two steps ahead of me. Every three steps, she reaches down to pick something up—a flower, a rock, a pebble. It doesn't matter; she just likes to pick stuff up. So, she reaches down to pick up something, and I just hear this hiss. I hear like a "ssss," and I'm like, "I don't really..." and then I hear a rattle. I just hear like a rattle, and I'm like, "Oh no." I grab her and pull her towards me. I look, and right about six inches in front of her is an enormous four-foot rattlesnake. It is staring at her, hissing at her, and its little black tongue is flickering at my daughter. I'm like, "Oh holy shit!" and then she goes, "Oh shit!" and I'm like, "Oh no, she said that!" So, I take her about six feet away, and I'm looking at it. The snake stays still, and I feel a different part of me wake up. I think it's a part of me that you try intentionally to wake up a lot, which is like your survival instinct, your primal instinct. You're like...

Sam Parr

kill or beat kill baby

Shaan Puri

This is real shit. Like, I know you like to tap into that. This is real shit. Whether you're like, "Alright, I'm gonna go box somebody and get hit to see what that feels like," or "I'm gonna do this endurance race to see what it feels like to almost die on this mountain." I don't do all that shit, right? I look for, like, you know, where's the couch? Seeing this tapped into that part of me, and so I'm like, "Oh shit." I'm looking at him, he's looking at me, and I'm like, "Okay, so I get my daughter out of there." But I'm also like, "I need to get rid of the snake. What am I gonna do?" So I call whoever I call—the animal control service, pest control, or whatever. Animal control says, "Oh no, we don't do snakes anymore. We stopped that like, you know, six months ago or something. We only do domestic animals." I'm like, "Okay, shit. Who do I call?" I called the pest control guy. They're all booked up and they're like, "Oh, we can get out to you on Wednesday." I'm like, "Dude, this snake is gonna move around between now and Wednesday. If we can't find him, that just means I can't go in my backyard at all."

Shaan Puri

This is like a 4-foot rattlesnake that is hissing at me right now, and so I know.

Sam Parr

someone with a gun

Shaan Puri

Even if I knew someone with a gun, I wouldn't be like, "Hey, come shoot this snake in the head." It just seems like...

Sam Parr

no that's what I'm like that

Shaan Puri

That's what I'm saying. You aim at their little tiny, you know, head and you shoot it. Yeah, that's insane.

Sam Parr

It's not that hard. I mean, I've got friends that say, "Yeah, when you find a snake, you shoot it."

Shaan Puri

So, okay, that didn't come to mind for me, but I also live in a neighborhood where it's all just like old, rich white people. My neighbors are all like 80, so I'm like, "Okay, this is not gonna go over super well. They're not gonna help me out." So then I call this little museum. I'm like, "Hey, you guys are a museum nearby." They have wildlife exhibits with real animals. I'm like, "You guys want a snake? I got a snake for you. Come pick this up." Right? And they're like, "Actually, there's a guy, this guy Jim, who will do this for you." All the other guys are quoting me like $800, $1,000 to come remove this snake. I'm like, "Dude, you could charge any amount of money to remove a rattlesnake, and it's gonna basically get accepted." So I'm like, "Alright, whatever. This guy Jim can do it. I'm gonna call him right now." They three-way him into the call. He's like, "Hey, oh, you got a rattlesnake?" He gets excited. He's like, "I can get there in 30 minutes. I'm driving out of the city." I'm like, "Okay, how much does this cost?" He's like, "Oh, this is free. I love doing this." So this guy comes over. I just... I don't even know what the...

Shaan Puri

Of the story, this is an amazing thing that happens. So, this guy comes over. He's got this long beard, looks like Dumbledore basically, and he's excited to see the snake. First, he tells me, "Watch the snake. Don't lose the snake." For 30 minutes, I sit there, 10 feet away from the snake, just in the heat. It's 100 degrees outside. I'm just sitting there, facing off with the snake. I don't have my phone, I don't have anything, and I'm just staring at the snake the whole time. If you want to learn to meditate, find a rattlesnake and stare at it for 30 minutes. Unbelievable meditative state. So, the guy shows up. He's got a tiny stick with him, basically like a little tiny claw. He goes up to the snake with no fear, just starts moving stuff out of the way near the snake. He's trying to get a good look at it. He grabs the snake with his thing, almost loses it twice. Then he finally gets it and says, "You got a bucket?" I'm like, "Bro, you should have said this ahead of time! No, I don't have a bucket. Let me go find one. I'll go get an Amazon box." He's holding the snake in midair. It's winding around like crazy, hissing like crazy. We put it in this box and tape it up. He's like, "Can you just hold this tape down?" I'm like, "Bro, you don't understand how big of a pussy I am. I know it's safe, it's in the box, but I don't want to touch the box."

Sam Parr

right I'll stay I mean and that'll kill you right

Shaan Puri

It'll kill you. I was asking, I was like, "Dude, you just went up to it, no fear?" And he's like, "Not the fastest guy." I was like, "You're kind of slow. The snake was moving way faster than you. You weren't afraid?" He's like, "No, I've done this for years. I love snakes. I'm only afraid of, you know, mountain lions or something." I was like, "But they do attack." He's like, "No, they rattle as a defense mechanism. They're trying to get you to go away, right? A predator would not rattle at its prey to scare it away. It's more of a defensive thing." I'm like, "Okay, that makes sense." Anyway, so he takes it away and puts it in his car. Literally, his sister's in the car; she's just been in the car the whole time. I'm like, "Dude, you're out here?" He's like, "Yeah, I was at her house when you called, so I just brought my sister over." The sister's like, "Oh God, does the snake have to come with us?" And he's like, "Yeah, of course." He takes it to some mountain and lets it go. I'm like, "You just do this for fun?" He's like, "I love animals." I'm trying to find small talk with this guy. I don't have anything in common with this person. I'm like, "My wife's a vegan." That's the best I could come up with. He goes, "Oh, I've been a vegan since 1956 or something like that." What? I was like, "Was that even a term then?" He goes, "No, there was no term for vegan, but I just lived that way." I was like, "Wow." I don't know why I'm telling the story; I was just blown away by this guy's authenticity and the quality of this person's beliefs and actions. How congruent they were and how selfless they were. This is like kind of a money-minded podcast; it's all about opportunities and taking advantage of the situation and coming up with schemes. This guy was on the polar opposite. He was like, "I love this thing. I'm passionate about this. I do this for fun. I live this lifestyle, and I live it not for the money or because it's cool, not because it's in vogue." I was just kind of blown away by this guy, and I just needed to share that story.

Sam Parr

have you seen the documentary of

Shaan Puri

shout out to you jim hale

Sam Parr

have you seen the documentary of burt's bees

Shaan Puri

no there's a documentary about it

Sam Parr

It's awesome! It's on Netflix. I don't know if it is anymore, but basically, you know Burt's Bees? You know, the chapstick and shampoo? I think they're...

Shaan Puri

mcdonald's of course

Sam Parr

you know how there's an old guy on it that's burt right

Shaan Puri

no I didn't know that I thought it might be like a kentucky fried chicken situation

Sam Parr

well I was a real guy too you didn't know that the colonel's a real guy

Shaan Puri

I knew he's real but they they made a character right it's like yeah

Sam Parr

So, Bert was like the character, but he's a real guy. He's still alive, I think. If he died, it must have been recently, but he's still around. He was a beekeeper and kind of this mountain man type of guy who lived maybe in New Hampshire or Rhode Island, somewhere up East. He lived in the woods and tended to bees. This entrepreneurial woman met him and was like, "Hey, I'm going to turn your honey or your hive, I'm going to use this beeswax to turn it into chapstick." It turned into one thing, and eventually, she sold it for like $200,000,000. He made very little money, but the company that bought it—maybe Nabisco, one of these huge conglomerates—shipped him around to Japan and Europe as the spokesperson because people just wanted to see who Bert is. In the documentary, they were asking him, "Are you upset?" He goes, "No, I don't want that money. I just want to go to bed when the sun goes down. I want to wake up when the sun comes up, and I just want to do whatever I want in between and not talk to anyone. I'm happy." He's the real character. Are you looking him up now?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'm looking it up. Okay, I have some info here. So, the company started in 1991. Bert owned a third of the company, and Crimby owned the other two-thirds.

Sam Parr

he didn't get paid though

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so, Burt's Bees is now worth over $1,000,000,000, but he only got $4,000,000 when she sold it off for $173,000,000. She gave him $4,000,000 when she sold it for $173,000,000. The company still pays him an undisclosed amount for his likeness and name. But, you know, he sort of missed out on... he would have been owed much more as far as this deal goes. I don't know why it says he owned one-third and then only got $4,000,000 out of the $173,000,000, but whatever. Also, two things: unfortunately, Burt has passed away at 80.

Sam Parr

like recently then

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so that was 2015, so that's pretty recently. And also, this guy looks almost identical to the guy I was describing. So yeah, I'm glad you came up with this guy when I was telling my story because they look very, very similar.

Sam Parr

It's great! Anyway, I don't know where we're going with this, but there is something to be said for these people who are just happy without much. There's also this other show I've been watching on Hulu about these guys who live off the land. There's this guy who wears a rawhide jacket and pants. I've been watching it on Hulu, and he just lives. He lives like a Native American, like in your head, the cowboys and Indians type. They just follow the food and the seasons, and it does seem quite pleasant. So maybe this less than 40-hour work week thing... we're onto something here.

Shaan Puri

Well, there's this quote, which is basically, "I don't know who said this or if anyone said this," but a lot of people want to learn from podcasts like ours. They want success, and success is getting what you want. Then, happiness is wanting what you get. Practice both. Don't just practice getting what you want because that's a never-ending journey. You know, you're on the mountain of more, and you'll never get to the top of that mountain. Getting what you want or wanting what you get is, you know, that's gratitude, right? So, you want to master both of those. If you could really only pick one, it would be wanting what you get more so than getting what you want.

Sam Parr

Or, as Naval says, I believe he says, "Desire is torture" or something like that. **Suffering**... desire is suffering.

Shaan Puri

Buddhist philosophy suggests that when you want something, you're making a contract with yourself to be unhappy until you get it. Which I don't know if I actually believe that... I actually don't believe that. I would say, but it is a kind of a Buddhist principle: *desire is suffering*.

Sam Parr

well maybe we should end there

Shaan Puri

leave them suffering for more alright we're we're out of here