Jim Collins — A Rare Interview with a Reclusive Polymath (#361)

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Well, hello, boys and girls is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show.

Where does my job each episode to deconstruct tease out the habits and routines best practices life lessons and sew on from world-class performers from many many different disciplines.

My guess today is Jim Collins and this is a rare treat because Jim very very seldom.

Does any Media or interviews whatsoever? I have wanted to speak with him for more than a decade.

In fact, and it was worth the way this conversation over delivered on every level I can imagine and I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

So who is Jim Collins this mysterious reclusive Mastermind polymath.

Jim Collins is a student and teacher of what makes great companies tick and a Socratic advisor will get better idea of what that means particularly in the beginning of the interview where he wants to ask me questions.

So I we do get to Jim story, but he wants to and wanted to even before we start recording ask me a few questions.

So let me get back to the bayou.

He is student and teacher what makes great companies tick and that is an understatement.

You really has it dealt it to the data and a Socratic advisor to leaders in the business and social sectors.

He's authored or co-authored 8 books that have together sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.

That's a lot of books including good to great good to great in the social sectors built to last how the Mighty Fall great by choice and his newest work turning the flywheel which gets into all sorts of details about the self-perpetuating some ways models behind Amazon Vanguard and so on fascinating concept and very practical examples driven by a Relentless curiosity, which you will get front-row seats for gym began his research and teaching career on the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he received the distinguished teaching award in 1992 and 1995.

Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado in 2017 Forbes left.

The gym is one of the 100 greatest living business minds, and we talked about not just what makes good companies great.

We get into that a bit, but really were digging into Jim and himself.

We talked about how he tracks time.

He breaks up his day his sleep optimization.

His stories related to Peter Drucker Richard just amazing and so on and so forth.

He's also as I might have already inferred multifaceted multi-talented, he's an avid rock climber is one example and has completed single day of sense of El Capitan and half dome in Yosemite Valley, and if you don't know what that means just take my word for it.

It's very impressive.

You can find more about gym at gym, and now without further Ado, please enjoy and I certainly enjoyed it.

Please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with none other than Jim Collins.

Jim welcome to the show.

I'm really happy to be here and I'm hoping that you wouldn't mind if I start by exercising a bit of my own curiosity just to to ask you some questions to begin our conversation.

I would love to jump into it.

Anyway that you would like so I'm I'm game for questions.

So I'm dying to ask.

What did you do your Princeton senior thesis on my senior thesis which took some extra time to complete was on the the phonetic and Symantec acquisition of Chinese characters by native English speakers.

And is looking at language acquisition but specifically what most people in the west would consider ideograms and there are a few different layers of meaning contacts for each character that when might acquire so the pieces was about the different approaches the pros and cons of various methods for acquiring these characters.

And what is language acquisition that says it's a two major.

I've never quite heard of that.

I'd be curious what it's Essences to within the East Asian studies Department that you had to pick a primary language and I I chose Japanese because I had spent a year in high school in Japan going to a Japanese school as an exchange student, but I ended up taking primarily Chinese classes because my my Japanese level was already decent Lehigh and within the context of that department language acquisition would be focusing on And this is really good pizza.

It's a very good question because the way that I look at language is really acquiring.

Concepts and a almost an operating system for thinking that is associated with a different culture and that would generally in Visalia language like Chinese and most languages start with the phonemes The Sounds themselves and in the case of something total like Mandarin, you're actually going to be doing a lot of training.

It's almost like going to the gym and lifting weights because to produce a sound like or a word like yes you which is maybe or if you want to ask with a retroflex of tongue.

Not sure how much does she like what is that thing you you really need to develop muscular sure that you have not developed before is a native English speaker.

And then after you've developed the basic the basics phonetics and pronunciation verbally, you would move into the writing and for some scripts in the writing tells you a lot about the think Of a given culture and I think of culture is a collection of shared beliefs and habits because some are surely phonetic like we have our romanized alphabet and then others have multiple layers like Chinese rate of a character that's composed of radicals Each of which has a particular connotation in terms of tribute meaning and that the etymology of all of that is those with all comprise ingredients in the recipe that is language acquisition and forgive me for asking a follow-up question on that.

I'm just I'm curious just as you've clearly come from Book of Love of language, but also a study of language.

How much do you think the language in which were operating mathematics or Whether it be Japanese or Chinese or English either constraint or or enhances the concepts that we develop.

I would say almost completely.

I think the he I can't remember who is Vic & Stein or as I said that he was at the limits of my language are the limits of our world or something to that to to that fact.

I really feel like language and thinking are inseparable and therefore part of the appeal to me in acquiring other languages studying other languages.

Even if I only use them temporarily like I did when I visited turkey or Greece these places I still studied language is very intense because it gives you in my experience a different lens through which to process the world and to absorb stimuli and to react to things differently.

So it's in my experience that you can you can you can very often tell a lot about someone by Not just the language they speak with a particular dialect within that language of a choose so that can apply to English and the bigger the nuances or predilection.

Someone has in their own safety grammar vernacular even any given family but it can also apply to coding and then with encoding you have different coding languages and they tend to reflect in many instances different personalities a different value systems different priorities.

That's how I would bet concinite.

I'm in no expert on big concern.

I had a quarter in college, which the main focus of the work of his morning in was in big can Stein and I remember the professor saying to me when was Marvel's about Big Ben Stein is he said something along the lines of he lays out very clinically what we can meaningfully talk about And then the professor hasn't of course, then there's the great punch line, which is said most of what's really important.

We can't talk about.

So how did the mystical so very very interesting about then thought about this when I wrestle with Concept design wrestling in in my own research and one of the first questions asked people often ask me.

How do you how do you develop a concept of how do you decide to come it something that would allow you to say yo articulate something you're seeing through the lens of say the level 5 hierarchy or The Preserve the core stimulate progress Tuality or whatever the first question I always ask myself is what's the conceptual vessel? Right because it did to get a concept there's different kinds of Concepts, right? You've got dialectics.

You've got hierarchies you have stages you have equations you have categories, right? And one of the first most important things to do is to say well if you're looking What's what's the best kind of conceptual vessel? And then from there you developed the concept of world of writing.

And as I was looking about your background Tim I noted if I read it right that you had crossed paths with one of our great non-fiction writers John McPhee.

Is that right? That is correct.

I was very very lucky and got to take a classical literature a fact which was a seminar that makes the used to teach.

I don't know if he still teaches it but I did have a chance to spend some time with the incredible McPhee just before we launched into our our broad conversation.

I I what what was like have a class from McPhee? I mean I have never met McPhee, but I've been a Huge almost student of how he writes course my love the most recent work.

I think it's called rap number for where he describes to all of us who struggle with words this the struggle of writing but he's got those great books from years ago a sense of where you are about Bill Bradley and he has that the archdruid book and he has the control of nature which recently with all of the fires and so forth happening in California actually went back to read to to kind of remind myself and how McPhee was writing about these things before and such a way of being able to use words to really exercises curiosity and see things and then put them in these marvelous forms.

And if you could like learn from him how to write so as a proxy for that, what would you feel as those of us who write we all know how hard writing is right? Nobody would ever say writing.

What do you what did you take from from McPhee being able to really learn directly from him? I never get tired of talking about McPhee.

Although I worry about invoking his name in a sense because I feel like I'm such a shameful repetitive writer full of all sorts of fluff compared to his type Rose lying about the difference between almost the right word.

And the right word is the difference between a lightning bug and a lightning bolt.

Right? So I'd sit with with the with the opposite of preface that I in no way compare myself to McPhee or claimed to have had all of his magic rub up on me.

The class was was absolutely This is this is me looking for the right word looking for the lightning and not the lightning bug.

I don't use this expression much, but it was really paradigm-shifting for me.

And in many respects when it came to writing and thinking and I'll mention a few things before I directly answer your question.

Number one is I've carried my notes from that class with me everywhere meaning it every place.

I have lived since I took the class which would have been in the problem 98 or 99.

So I've been carrying these notes for 20 years now, so that should tell you about how high a value them.

The second is.

I remember very clearly and I when we had our first round of feedback on some initial writing task that we have been assigned.

Maybe it was we had three at the three to five page writing assignments each week and we would have a seminar with all the students together and then we would have one-on-one sessions with McPhee and I remember the first time he handed out in class the Red Lions versions of our assignments.

So the the the the printouts with his red ink on them and in almost every case, he he he let into it by saying I just want you to know before I hand these back that you are all good writers.

So I don't want you to take this take this the wrong way or something like that and there was more red ink on the page that black ink and overtime.

He was it was it was remarkable how how quickly you could hone your observation to identify.

Superfluous words to identify the fat on the sentences that you're putting on the page and what ended up happening I should say that to the micro level in the macro level and we can come back to this and I do have questions about your conceptual vessel, earlier.

It was structure.

It was it was thinking about structure visually that really changed the game for me with respect to all types of writing.

And if those people who do like the edge into the weeds, I think that draft number for gives plenty of examples of how intricately he thinks about structure and he did a number of interviews with the Paris review on non-fiction writing but you're also really worth reading but my grades in every other class went up and yes, it's multifactorial.

They're all sorts of other things that could have contributed, but the The the correlation between starting that class and all of my other grades improving at all of my other classes was really uncanny and I think that is very specifically because it was it was tightening up my thinking and it was forcing me to on a weekly basis justify the use of specific words and McPhee is a real stickler for the right word.

And if you use something that is vague that seems like a lazy backup option that you tend to default to a lot he will spot that very very quickly and it was wonderful wonderful class and he is a very entertaining teachers while it's not Like having a clinical autopsy done of your work each week.

Although he is also very dispassionate and certainly not trying to just make you feel good with his feedback.

But he over the years has ended off the very entertaining style.

I remember at one point.

He was ripping on the various ways.

That one can convey.

He said or she said she brought up the very real example, if you will see her.

She ejaculated maybe just went on this roof about how unnecessary that was and I got a good chuckle out of the students, of course because there was a lot of heavy lifting to come 20 minutes later when we were going to actually jump into some type of tasks.

So it's a long answer but McPhee is along with a handful of other people.

I can point to very specifically one of the people who has had the biggest impact on my writing but more importantly on Mike thinking and how I think about structured thought and I want to say one thing about Vic and shine really quickly before I forget that is many of our son too many but a surprising number of the people I respect for Clear thinking have an affinity for Lincoln Stein Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn would be another example of that and I think that's worth mentioning just because I think philosophy there certain categories are labels of the fields of study that sometimes gets pushed to the Wayside is Impractical and I I think the study of language and the concepts that language represent is extremely extremely valuable and it's got a one step above Consciousness if we're looking at Like the foundational layers upon which everything else is built.

So let me ask a question if I may and my curiosity it is wonderful that we have a chance to begin with questions, but questions working both directions for sure and I I have five.

I have I have so many questions but I'm going to try to know I'm going to try to I'm going to try to prioritize them a bit but the the conceptual vessel term that you used our freezers to say, could you give an example of choosing the right conceptual vessel? So so Pat back when we were working on the research for what became good to great little bit of a story of what was happening what it when we went into the good to Great research and everything we do is up is a research-based to it.

I had really given the research team the instruction that I didn't really want to have a leadership answer and that the reason for that is because I was always skeptical especially from the bill to last research which should come before of placing too much emphasis on having a single leader number one if you're going to build some Truly enduring as to transcend the leader.

They all go away.

They all die.

You can't have a system based on a single leader in the second is if that company was successful.

It must have been a great leader.

And then if it's not successful you say they weren't a great leader after all and you're just in a big circle, you're not learning.

So I said to the research team, I don't want to study.

I want to have a leadership answer and my research team which is usually composed of some what I would say.

Hi Lee and Reverend smart people who just work really hard and they love to challenge me and we had these need so what we call our I can kind of research Symposium because Curious George was our is our kind of our mascot light of curiosity and we would have Tim posiums and and and so we went we would we would be talking about the research and one day the research team.

So what's up, and they said we're going to tell you today that you're wrong That's Amore.

What about and they said about this and I leadership bias that you have each of us were responsible for studying the good to Great Charlie.

The inflection of these companies that were average that that made that leap in and we seen the leader.

I have played a huge role and to ignore that it's a 10 by saying well ask a question.

Remember your high school algebra the same variable in the numerator as the denominator of the variable goes away.

And so as a relevant differentiator and so I went to the Whiteboard and I put a little L line up there for the numerator and the denominator.

I put good to Great companies in the numerator and comparison companies in the denominator now research methods.

So our research is always based on a method that I developed with a great mentor of mine and one of the themes by the way, I think that's going to come up in our conversation is it what I see is the credible role that krulik write the lack of the right people that intersect your life plays in The Journey and I had great who luck.

In a research Mentor name Jerry porras at Stanford when we were doing built to last together in Jerry push us to develop this method where he said luck if you study successful companies or company's that achieve certain things, but you only studied the successes to find they all have buildings.

What does that mean? Having buildings will make you do what we have to have is comparison sad and we've developed this.

Is this Historical Method where you study the entire history of two evenly-matched companies at the start of the journey that are in the same place same time same resources same potential and then one breaks out to a totally different level than the other and holds it long enough that you can have confidence in it.

And the other that was a virtually identical twin at that time does not in at the birth of any industry.

For example, you have an explosion of new entrants.

So all that early semiconductor companies and are you going to find us a twin pair of companies that are virtually the same? What are becomes Intel in the other one doesn't right till why that's why I said you always have to ask what's really different compared to what it's a adds huge amount to the work adjust the magnitude of work you have to do to do the comparison because it basically more than doubles everything you do, but that's how you see in the course you find all the comparisons also have buildings.

So buildings can be the answer.

So I went to the Whiteboard and I said, okay so we have good to Great companies had these remarkable people that led them to the transition.

What's up with the comparison companies? And started taking to the west and sound so sure not the comparison companies had some remarkable leaders and some of them were even really extraordinary leader.

Who is Bill Decker Road in Stanley Gault at Rubbermaid.

I mean, he's a really really good leaders.

And so I wrote leadership in the numerator and the denominator.

I said guess what the variable drops out we have it and both it doesn't really matter is a variable that was go back to work and do something useful and and the team about Smart & young people they closed ranks on me and they said he knew you would do that to us.

So we came prepared and and this is when the team this is the value of having a great research team saw something that then led to this notion of what eventually became the level 5 idea and the conceptual vessel for it.

So the team said Jim you're right.

Both sets of companies the good to great in the comparisons at the critical moment in time had leaders and there's no evidence that the leaders were any less exceptional in terms of their peer leadership ability.

But there's something different.

About to go to grade papers.

They're Cut From a Different Cloth.

It's not about their personality many of them were shy and reserved and soft-spoken never drew attention to themselves wasn't about that.

There's something different about them and that became interesting and essentially what happened then was the question was what's the difference between these leaders? It wasn't leadership cuz they were both leaders who did leadership there was something different about the leaders that there was the signature of their humility and then they're fierce will on behalf of something that's not about them.

They were able to subsume their ego into the company and that blend of humility and we'll is what stood out that was different from the comparisons.

So that was interesting.

And I would have under my porch.

And I started thinking okay.

Is this just an idea? They're just humble leaders.

No, that's not quite it.

There's something about this Duality.

Is it the dialectic didn't seem to be quite right.

I started playing around with different things.

Like I had this flash that went through my mind of its a higher key.

And it's a pyramid of capabilities and you kind of climb up the tire keeps it was sort of almost like a Maslow's hierarchy except it was of leadership and that there was a lower levels to it.

This is a hierarchy of level level one would be individual capabilities.

And so that would be at the base of the pyramid and then you go from Individual capabilities to level two.

Would you get really good at playing well with others right good team skills and then level 3 you would learn how to manage and by the way is Miss.

I'd never denigrate great management.

Anybody who's had a poor manager knows how awful that is to work for one and how great it is to work for a great manager and then above level 3 becomes a level 4 and you go from managing to learning to lead.

And then there was a higher level.

And that hire level was the level 5 and a level 5 while you could be a leader as a level 4 to be a level 5 leader you had to go to the next level of the hierarchy and add in this ambition for something bigger than yourself.

With humility and would well and that when you stand back and you looked at that you could look at it and say the right way to convey.

This idea is as a hierarchy that you grow through as distinct from some other way.

I had to kind of find the the the way of capturing and then the critical thing is it's not leading.

It's are you a five or a four? And here's the start of the overall pyramid somebody who wrote for the great leaders that I've gotten to know is Wendy Kopp the founder of shirts for America, right Merica.

I Wendy Cobra rotors on what became Teach for America, but if you look at Wendy Kopp If you would ask the question it, where is she on that while she goes she went through all the levels and but she's not just a leader.

She has that extra Dimension where she's got that genuine personal humility and an absolutely ferocious resolve for the overall cause that is not about her.

And if anybody that's met Wendy or seen her you would never think this is about Wendy are you would never think but if you ever doubted her resolve right here, there's that image of her sitting there trying to get her first funding for Teach for America where her images I put glue stick on the bottom of my pants and I would not leave the chair until I got a $25,000 check, just sheer will and will for ultimately the kids and what how the kids lives could be changed and yet genuine humility.

And so she went to the top of the hierarchy and so when I stand back I look at it and say that's the right conceptual vessel for this journey of what we Had seen the other other Concepts question was genuine humility.

How do you identify genuine humility? What are the characteristics and how do you separated from false humility or what someone presents as you know that you're wondering how you how you how it how we did that from the research date correct? Not surprisingly with a question of curiosity, right? It always has to be something.

I just really curious enough to go through the years of suffering to get some insights and then you translate that into the research method the the comparison method the Historical Method and so forth.

Can you collect vast amount of information? So in the good and the key is you're not looking for anything in particular you're looking for patterns of difference? Why did once that accompanies what was different about them versus the others as you walked through time and and or what kinds of decisions they made and soap with always going to that different question.

And and so what we began to notice, is that the the good of great leaders.

What's fascinating that number one you can you can do with called event analysis so you can do something like say let's call it event the number of times and speeches you use the vertical pronoun versus you don't.

over the course of a career and if that's something you can count right so you can look at it and say let's take the good to Great CEOs and let's take the comparison CEOs and look at every letter they get hold on.

Let's look at every speech they ever gave every interview they ever gave right when you got mountains and mountains of information now, let's go through and literally count.

How many times they tend to take credit themselves? How many times they give the credit to others how many times they don't use the vertical pronoun? I how many times they they do not have somebody read level 5 they can try to pretend to be level 5.

I'll never forget an email when somebody send me an email.

It says help and I open it up and says he's level 5.

What do we do have a read the chapter? That's the thing of looking over the course of history or career? How many times did they allow themselves to be on the cover of the magazine? How many times when when when they're in discussions about things that did not go? Well, you can look at window and mirror events things did that did not go well.

Well one approach is when something does not go.

Well you can point out the window and subtly or not so subtly a tribute the reason it didn't go.

Well the factors outside yourself the economy or somebody let you down or partner didn't come through or whatever.

It happens to be but somehow it's not you.

Or there's the window approach which is your kind of natural.

Tendency is all that might be true.

It doesn't change the fact that I'm responsible and I'm on this and this is the mistake I made and so on and so forth and you can look and I can't its comparative.

What did the comparison CEOs do you can count a lot of events of some version of pointing out the window.

What are the good to Great CEOs do a lot of versions of pointing in the mirror and say you begin to add all this up right over the course of decades cuz we look sometimes over 50-60 years.

In some CEOs were in harness for multiple decades that then and Ed since they're all publicly traded companies people often ask.

Why do you only study publicly traded companies? My answer is cuz that's where the date right because they all have to report the same way.

They all have any reports.

They all have our earnings calls.

They all have all these things over time that you can then use as data sets.

I'm never I'm not really a business author.

I just happened to have used companies as the method to study human systems because there's great data and internet for the day and if you do that and we have six thousand years of combined corporate history in the research database pretty soon.

You can start counting a lot of things and then you can begin to say there's a substantial amount of quantitative evidence that adds up to a greater level of humility in these than the ups and that's how you get there.

May I ask you a question about counting? All right.

So I we we have a number of books we could talk about it.

We are going to talk about some of them but built to last has a subtitle successful habits of visionary companies.

I'm very fascinated by what might be the successful habits of Jim Collins.

And this is a question my accounting course of doing some of the homework for this conversation.

I come across different ways that you seem to measure your time and your days and I'd love to explore that for just a little bit to the first was I read that you had and this may have evolved or Changed by this point but a stopwatch with three timers in your pocket can you and that it was interred indicative of creative teaching and other could you could you explain That habit please for people who wash our mother about and then how it's evolved into something a little simpler and a little more powerful than what I do with it every single day.

So I don't want to pretend that I'm normal.

Okay, so is not normal behavior, but this is what I was 36 years old.

I made the decision and we can come back to this later.

If you want to talk about big bats and doing scary things such as betting our career betting Our Lives Joanne and I are on our Trail path.

Let me just kind of step back in Spanish are the origins of this and I learned how to do my research there.

That's where Jerry and I did built to last.

But I had a another Mentor who encouraged me to think about whether I wanted to do a self-directed path or not.

I used to say to my students and small business.

I always had to my students.

Why don't you go do something on your own for all your creative energies for somebody else's thing to think about that and I would say if you're really interested in business.

You don't have to go to work for IBM to be in business.

You can do your own.

So my students this is the wonderful thing about great students.

They hold you to account right? They said well, what are you doing this entrepreneurial? This doesn't look like a very entrepreneurial thing teaching these classes and being urine.

I had this idea and don't have to be at IBM to be in business.

Why do I have to be at a university to be a professor? So I said to Joanne I said, you know, I think I have this idea.

I'd like to be a self-employed Professor to in down way on chair and to Grant myself.

So I Joanne we've done these things together through life.

She went along with the idea was to try to pursue Millie big questions.

That wouldn't be constrained by things.

You can do it only a year.

And the first big bad on that was the research and built to last and it was coming out and I said, let's just get everything.

Let's let's go and so we launched this huge bat that everything on that book.

Didn't know if it would work.

We're down to less than $10,000.

We were actually really scared.

We call it our Thelma and Louise moment.

We were on site and put it was a huge.

It was a huge battle.

We didn't know if it would work but I was very clear about one thing.

I did not want to have a half-life of quality in the work.

And it's one of the wonderful things about working on built to last with Jerry back at Stanford.

No one knew who I was no one called No One paid any attention super six years of working on that research project.

I could just go into the cave.

And work and work and work.

And that kind of deep work we have to go deep into the day too deep into the research deep into that thinking the long cycles of reflection.

That's how you get the ideas.

And that's how you do good stuff.

I was worried that what would happen is if I went from being invisible to being visible? I bet if I was fortunate enough to have a success that I might wake up in five or six or seven years and have not gone back to the Wellspring of the Deep Quiet Solitude of work.

And and then your second book is half as good.

Right and then the next book after that is only half as good again.

I wanted the quality to always get better as I thought.

Well, you know, what's interesting is a professor at a university as a place that really encourages that because it sort of designed why you didn't spend your life in that tranquility.

And so I went to some kind of steps and I said how do the people in The Academy that you most respecting yourself spend their time.

I got a consistent answer 50-30-20 50% of your time in New intellectual creative work 30% of your time in teaching and 20% of your time and other stuff that just has to get done serving on committees feel whatever happens to me that you have to do as I thought that sounds good.

I'm just going to start doing that.

So I started as I was heading out on the the Thelma Louise Lee counting my hours every day and I would tell how many hours in a day were created new intellectual and that the goal was that had to be above 50% then how many hours would be in teaching and how many hours would be in other stop liking somebody got a balance the QuickBooks, right? And so I started counting and that's where the trouble stopwatch came I found this one.

We go back and forth and at the end of the day I would have the total.

Later, I came to the realization that what really mattered was the first bucket on the creative work.

And so I eventually simplified there's a concept in Great by choice called the 20 mile March.

And so I I kind of had a 20 mile March.

I just didn't know that that concept yet and the idea of being something you just do really consistently overtime that imposes a very high level of discipline that accumulates to results and so I simplified it and I just simply said can I just simply count the number of hours I get out of bed and then hold myself to an account.

So at the end of every single day I open a spreadsheet and that spreadsheet has three cells on a line of and that's for the day.

The first thing is just a simple accounting of what happened that day.

Where did my time go? What did I do? What the dips at Aurora? Can you would love this is the stuff? I love the what what might a description for the day look like is it three sentences for census? What what my tits look like pens on very best days don't have much in it at all.

They are got up early to hours of really great creative work breakfast with Joanne 5 hours creative work workout nap 3 hours of creative work enjoy dinner with Joanne dead.

I mean are full of lots of other chop anything since so what I tend to do is to try to capture a bit.

What happened with sleep? What happened with the the main tasks of the day if there were some really interesting conversations that happened or something that hit in those all those there markers so that I can always go back and share with you how I use that was in a minute because I actually do these correlations with all of that up.

And then the second cell is the number of creative hours.

I got that day now, there's no rule about how many you get in a day.

Sometimes there is zero and sometimes they think they can be 9 or 10, which would be a huge number and but then it calculates back over the last which I don't think I've missed for well over thirty years on I hope to hit a lot longer now.

Is every single 365 days cycle every single one every single day if you calculate back the last 365 days the total number of creative hours must exceed 1000 no matter what.

It doesn't matter.

If you're sick.

It doesn't matter.

If if if there's other stuff you'd like a thousand creative hours a year as a minimum Base Line.

They can be above that.

That's fine.

But never once that can't be a single day in any 365 day cycle January to January to July 22, July 22, September 9th of September 9th doesn't matter.

Always have to be about a thousand creative hours and you watch it and I put on the Whiteboard here at the lab the 3-month peso you take the last 3 months multiplied times for the 6-month pays and then the current 365 and that is way too kind of monitor.

If I start seeing that those numbers start to go down your oil change my behavior and sometimes I have the Big Bopper and sometimes I don't and the idea is if you stay with that eventually you're going to have work now.

There's a third cell that I put in there that most people don't know as much about cuz people know about the hours thing somewhat but I am All of us have what help Dark Times difficult times all of us have good times.

Right but he was an interesting thing I noticed which is said if you're kind of going through a funk colors your whole life and you tend to think your whole life is a funk cuz you're looking to that went.

And so I thought well, but actually I feel like my life is really pretty good.

But when you're in that other place, it's not it doesn't feel that way.

Right.

That's what I started to do was I started creating a code which is + 2 + 1 0 - 1 - 2 and the other thing I put in to do it every day in real time.

You can't like 5 days later look back and say how did I feel that day? And then what this is a totally subjective how quality was the date that what was it? What a plus two is a super positive day.

This is emotionally speaking exactly a plus two is a chest a great day.

Doesn't mean it wasn't that there might not been a really difficult.

It might have been a day of a really hard rock climb.

It might have been a day of really hard writing but it felt really good.

Right it might have been a day of an intense conversation, but we're only meaningful with a friend or something is a plus 2 plus 1 is another positive day Zero is a negative minus two of those are bad pic.

Right and you put it in before you go to bed because if you try to remember if I would ask you to him right now 17 days ago or even five days ago to give the score you going to be distorted by how you're feeling today for sure.

If you ask people if they ate two days ago, they're going to be off by 40% 50% calories for sure exactly.

So I write it down and now I start to have a got the creative hours March which has its kind of discipline and service of creativity.

And I and I and its Relentless try to just stay.

I constantly it if you never get a break from it, you can take breaks, but you can never get a break from the thousandth floor, but that other has proved to be incredibly useful for me and you can say over the last five years what's going on? Yeah, exactly an over the last five years what's going on in the minus 2 days.

And now as I navigate is kind of like the Simplex method in operations research where you find Optimal by never really knowing that optimal is ahead of time you do it by as soon as I've endured of steps of the next best step.

Could you explain what that was one more time? And Stop your mathematics computer science statistics and operations research and then operations research.

There's a method developed by got him George dancing.

I'll call the Simplex method and essentially the idea is that if you're really trying to find the optimal answer to a multivariate problem where there's lots of lots of variables, even the biggest computers couldn't basically do a giant spreadsheet and sort they're just too many permutations and what he showed was under certain conditions.

All you have to do is find the local Optimum.

Like what's the best next step and then you reset and then what's the next best step and that he showed that under certain conditions that is mathematically guaranteed to navigate you to the optimal endpoint and that was the Simplex method as I understand.

It was 34 years ago when I was in the class that so I've always had that idea mine.

So you kind of navigate step by step.

That's why I think about it as a navigating life.

I want more of the things that create the + 2's and less of the things that create the -2, but the difference is the tell me is I know what they are and I can start you know, it's not that simple more of this less of that then wore this less about what are some of the the patterns that you found before for either the do more, more the do less, for yourself.

So when I look at those patterns, I would say on the plus twos there are almost two contradictory components and not contradictory, but they're just really different flavors one is The Solitude of really hard work and sometimes but one of my favorite days will be I get up.

I never leave the house.

And I basically get to just lose myself in the research or in the writing or in the making sense of things.

It's a very incredible Simplicity of the day as I as I as I am 61 now and I think about what comes next and I intend to keep creating.

I want to stay in some Persian that marks for a really long time.

My my role models have all done that but I think about life as having three.

Three things at least I think a really important one of them is increasing Simplicity just Shear Simplicity to is time and Flow State and flow States not easy and the third is this time of people I love and and and so when I look at the at those plus two, they have a lot of the a lot of the days would be days by Simplicity.

Not much happened.

There are very few moving parts.

But a lot of deep hard work and Flow State by might have been writing or doing a concept or or creating something or we just your lost in the war or rock climbing probably exactly is arduous, but you're lost it those are great.

The other though for me is the time with people I love and the other dimension while I wouldn't describe myself as a highly social type person.

I love the Solitude of the hard work.

The other side is there the people in my life and there are many I've great friends really great friends mini decade friends friends back to third grade 7th grade all my college roommates in my personal Band of Brothers.

I have friends and a my wife remarry 38 years engage 4 days after our first date first date.

When you have those days where you're living present and engage with people you really love those are plus two days the case of climbing.

It might be that I went out climbing with one of my best friends and I don't even necessarily remember the climb.

It was with a friend.

I'm so my plus two days are either very Solitude or very connected but connected to people that have these long and during really really wonderful relationships in life.

And those make plus twos.

I love it you at some point in life need to meet my friend Josh waitzkin who you and he have very similar eristics.

He was the basis for the book in the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer.

So his first life was in chess, but I won't take us too far off track, but at some point I think you guys would really really get along.

Okay, let me dive into a couple of clarifying questions if I may because this is this is this is so juicy.

I can't I can't I don't want to just move on to the next thing about creating spreadsheets.

I was going to say if this writing thing doesn't work out for you.

You should treat a spreadsheet company.

You have a journaling company available to create so this is a word that means different things to different people.

What are the main activities or what are some of the activities that are squarely in the the creative bucket for you in the reason I'm asking is I'm thinking of how I spend my own time and you have a TMI Vive.

I suspect much smaller team, but for instance if you are working on a book that requires interviews would spending time scheduling those interviews count is creative or what's worse there a cut off even if it's in service of a larger crate of project we have admin and then you have critics are for you.

What counts towards the hours marked creative? So so you've hit upon exactly where the gray zone is on this and in general in order to begin.

I have to go back to what's the overall objective the overall objective is that overtime there's quality work and so I can't start calling things creative that in the end wouldn't lead to some kind of creative output.

Am I always end up in a drawer because it just doesn't make it to the world, but you have to just keep working and I think it was like being an artist in his studio.

And so while are getting the paint brushes ready to paint.

Part of the creative.

I would say yes, but I would say that organizing the tools and and Andy maybe even ordering paint by because it's indirect service to the creation of what album Italy might be in a canvas whether the World season or not.

I Define creative as any activity that has a reasonably direct link to the creation of something that is new and potentially replicable orderable.

Please expand on that.

So so for example, if if we have in this conversation, right, there's already elements that will count as somewhat crazy cuz this Steven you start thinking about if an idea pops into my head and that leads to supporting some other no concept or piece of work and I'm working a lot of time to is there's a seed of an inside that's lurking.

The back of your brain and then to the process of conversation or in the process of trying to articulate something or in some other mechanism.

It gets Jarred out of your brain and it bounced on the table and I need to put that in the bag and not forget it write and write and so and sometimes that happens.

I'll give you an example of how something that turns out to be a kind of creative moment.

I wasn't anticipating as a credible but I was meeting with a can't say who it is, but it was a very towering super charismatic Super Genius founder who is sort of tattoo his world the way say Walt Disney might have been to his truly a once-in-a-generation.

But I like this this person never really started thinking about the systems that would allow him to build a company that can really ultimately go beyond beyond him and there were challenges with that.

And so we're kind of trying to figure out how do I how do I get through to this? And then or the other people on the team who didn't really want to step up into certain roles and whole bunch of other stuff set the stage for making a built-to-last company in and all the sudden in the middle of the conversation.

Remember? I just I just turned and looked at him I said, here's the problem.

You sir are a genius.

That was just start.

There's the problem and and what you have is a thousand helpers.

Now so long as you're still in Vegas.

Until what is all these helpers want to help you being a genius with a thousand helpers that's going to work really well until either a Sunday.

You're not a genius or be your gone and which case this company just Hollows out.

There's nothing left.

There is no company.

All this is is a genius with a thousand helpers in a sort of the vessel called the company and something came out of my head bounced on the table.

I had never used that phrase before.

And I immediately made a note on my notepad and it went back going to be looking for the great.

There's a section when I'm trying to describe the comparison CEOs and contrast of the good graces.

Yeah, I was where I talked about the genius with a thousand helpers and I can't Rass how the level 5 leaders come out of his that's the last thing they'd want to be right and the how they'd want to build a culture and a company and ultimately be the architect of a great system versus being the genius of the Thousand helpers and there's a flowchart in there that's hard to describe the difference.

I got the count that conversation as creative even though when I went into it, I didn't know that that would happen.

So I wouldn't have counted it.

Normally there's other times.

We're sure I was doing some research on K-12 education recently and the process of really deciding who I wanted to interview that would count.

That's like assembling the paint brushes.

Balancing the QuickBooks account because I have to do that until or I Mom.

I don't know there are things we just sort of Chloe fall outside of it and I try to be a hard counter so that I stay on the March.

This is super helpful.

And it also made me think about how if someone were to and I know I was thinking about this earlier as well how the 50% creative 30% teaching 20% other end in in some respects have a well we will get through this and maybe maybe it's maybe it's not a flywheel exactly.

But the but the Deep D creativity can leads into teaching the teaching and then can lead back into the creativity because it forces you in some respects or at least catalyzes you to express things in ways that you might not otherwise and also points out things that are unclear Lee formed if you then try to convey them to somebody else today, and I I love to prepare for a conversation by What would my chat about but then it's not a script.

It's like a it's like a it's like having a different places.

You can have it a football game like what might happen in the game and then that's conversation together with a girl really good friend.

I usually write down three things.

I'd love to chat about today we may or may not get to them and and so I actually took a kind of writing it down if we come back to that later.

I'd be happy to yeah, we will be we will absolutely come back to that and I have a path of there.

So you mentioned a while back actually before I just have to check this box or it's going to bug me sleep tracking seemed against sleep.

How do you note or modify or have you modified your sleep? Can you talk to us about If I think most people would agree it's important.

But how have you monitored and modified your sleep.

Normal? Okay, that's precisely why is that we spend so much time thinking about time management and I'm not really even though I describe this County and see if I'm not really a time.

Like I don't know how kind of phone I have to organize my time a certain way or whatever as long as I stay there as I can get there within which now I can have a ton of Freedom, right? So I'm not overly regiment that I'm just disciplining.

There's a big difference and I am Until when I was I was thinking what wait a minute.

Why don't we put as much thought into the rest of your day? It is it's just ignoring it.

So what are the things I did was without to my knowledge having a sleep issue.

I and my insurance wouldn't pay for this or anything.

I just was curious.

There's a Sleep Center at I think it's the National Jewish hospital here in in Denver.

They have a sleep lab where they'll do sleep tests and stuff.

And I just said hey, can I come and get sleep testing? And so I went down there and just scheduled myself in and spent the night and have them put the electrodes on and I kind of feel like I'm my own rap and like my own lab rat why I always studying myself somehow right and and I used to have a little book called The Bug book where I'm the bug and I'm studying the bug called Jim.

That's how I figured out where I was going to go in life.

And so anyway, so I went down to the sleep lab and I said I'm going to study to study sleep is too strong of a word.

I'm going to be a student of the science of sleep.

And so cuz it's a third of my life why don't understand it.

So I got the sleep test and I found out I didn't have any real seriously pathologies.

I've learned about the different aspects of sleep.

And what the big takeaway I got about sleep was we tend to think of this idea of your 7 hours a day or eight hours a day and what I learned from this little journey.

And again, I want to underscore it's not like I'm a sleep expert or anything or I just trying to figure it out for myself as it's actually the number of hours that you get over say a 10 day cycle.

So if you go up and do a big climb like when Tom and I did our climbing El Cap together and do it in a day means 24 hours you're going to be awake for 36 hours is hope you're basically like all I couldn't do it without sleep, but you're never going to do it.

You can perform at really high levels with zero sleep over today.

You wouldn't want to do it over 10 days though.

And so the the what what I started thinking was what really matters is that The amount of quality sleep I get over say attend a cycle so early on after all this I actually started counting and I would count naps and I would count to just try to keep it get very much like the 20 mile March of the creative hours.

As long as I was staying above 70 over a 10 day cycle.

However, I got there.

That was fun.

I've since found that what really I probably still hit that number but having counted it for about a decade meant that I ingrained the patterns of how to come at it.

And what I've learned is I guess three two or three things specifically about about the Sleep process for me.

This is just personal one.

The 20-minute rule if you wake up in the middle of the night and you check the time first law is also by the way fun to see if you can guess what time it is, right, but then check the time and then and then if you're not back to sleep in 20 minutes get up and go and then I love and I'll sometimes go Lose Myself and again back to the simple work, whatever.

There's something really quiet and get up at 3 or 4 in the morning and just you're just there with the creative stuff you're doing that's a great talk.

Sometimes she wake up at 3.

Sometimes you wake up at 7.

The second is for me.

I'm really really lucky.

I have the genetic ability to nap in any situation.

I took a nap.

I woke up 8 minutes before our conversation today for me.

My My Little Secret extra capability that I just was born with was I can nap pretty much anywhere under any conditions and I Can Dream.

Can you give me 12 minutes all-terrain 55 minutes? I'll dream and I can wake up and boom be fine.

It's just genetic but naps are my sort of saving the day.

They give me the sense of like whatever happens.

I'll be fine cuz I could always close my eyes.

When do you choose to not why I have two favorite times of napping three favorite.

That one is airplanes are great for napping so you never I never eat anything on a plane or do any of that.

I'm either try to do something creative or sleep and I have I really have a sleeping kit which includes is Bose noise cancelling headphones and I covers and a donut pillow that the headphone can go in so that you actually like really like kind of creating a micro environment.

So you can sleep on an airplane or wherever you happen to be the second place if I'm not traveling which I try not to do too much anymore after names are great for a nap because you have a really good morning and then you just and then you get us that wonderful afternoon glow of a creative time.

Sometimes if you took a nap from say 2 to 3 or 3 to 4, and then you have that marvelous like 4 to 7 in the evening and it somehow coincides with the end of the day that can be in the morning.

Am I but my favorite absolute sleeping pattern is also enjoying still River bike rides across the country and she's gone for six or seven weeks doing it all fall into a pattern warm.

A lot of days.

I'll go to bed at 11 and get up at 3.

I'll roll out of bed and then I'll I'll do the Creative work stuff usually creative or preparing teaching from say 3 till 7.

You don't need anything.

You don't drink anything.

You don't have a cup of coffee just go roll right in.

And then you go back to sleep from 7 or 8 until 10 or 11.

And if you've ever been under general anesthetic that second sleep is like generalaire set.

I mean you blink and it and it just said that deep dark Fang and all the sudden 3 hours are gone and then I get a second morning.

Good mornings are the best I get a second morning when I get up and then you have breakfast and then you get this really great energetic a that for me is a perfect sleep day.

Wow.

I have these things.

I'm dying to get to but then you keep bringing up interesting things which I fly but no no I squarely blame you for that.

But I'm glad you're doing it the bug book you mentioned in passing.

What is the bug but could you please elaborate on the buck buck? And I I certainly was one of them have a What kind of thing we struggle in our twenties to get clarity about how to deploy ourselves in the world and what kind of finish high school or college or graduate school when it was kind of structure and you don't really have to think about it.

It's like oh I got to I got to figure out how to do these math problems or whatever and it doesn't really like that and then all the sudden hit life and life is much more ambiguous.

And so you're trying to navigate through it.

So I I like a lot of people was was kind of feel figure out how best to apply myself in my twenties add multiple things that help me do that.

But one of them we just introduced the concept.

Okay, and then I'll tie it into the bug book cuz it's how I challenged young people to think about it for the concept in good to Great called the Hedgehog concept and the idea of the Hedgehog concept is is to sort of simplify down without a Cutting companies we found that when they really focus on one or a few really big things and made very disciplined decisions overtime those would accumulate and begin to build some real results and eventually what would become the flywheel effect which will chat about a little bit later and the Hedgehog concept is the intersection of three circles for a company.

It's doing what you're deeply passionate about because if you're not passionate about it, you can't endure long enough to really really do something exceptional to its mate II circle is what you can be the best in the world at and if you can't be the best in the world at it leave it to others.

So for example, that doesn't mean being big right you could have a truly great local restaurants never going to be big but it's the absolute best in the world at a particular thing that it doesn't it's specific immunity right that and a large company could come in and be better than them at that right? That's three Hedgehog.

So it's not pick and then the third is that you have an economic engine and you know how it works.

And so if you have the intersection of those three are energy is going to go into thinks that we're passionate about and we can be the best of the world that and the driver economic engine.

You're in your hedgehog.

Now, there's a personal analogy to the Hedgehog.

And this gets back to the bug book.

I'm not a big believer in certain thinking of traditional careers.

I'm a big believer in thinking of finding your hedgehog and then really building flywheel momentum with that overtime and so is it the personal version of the Hedgehog is again doing Circle one what you're passionate about and love to do the kinds of stuff that when you do what you say.

I sure hope I can no longer cuz I have the second Circle isn't best in the world because if you said what I can't be the best orthopedic surgeon, I won't do it.

Well, then we'd only have one right that's not good.

So so what you are encoded for and what you want coded for is different than what you're good at.

So when I went to college, I thought I was going to be a mathematician because I was one of those kids that was good at math.

That's why I majored math Sciences.

But then I met at Stanford the people who are genetically encoded for math.

There were not me.

I was good at math.

They were in coded for math.

It's like being an athlete where you thought you were a good athlete till you met the incredible natural gifted athlete you realize I could never see to spin to the basket like he did.

Or I could never see to put the ball.

They're running down the field playing soccer the way she did.

I just wouldn't have seen it was a gift.

That's the encoding for as distinct.

Just what you're good at it is you have an economic engine and you can there and you can fund your goals or objectives of things.

You're trying to get done when you're all three of those are passionate about it.

I'm in coded for it and I have an economic engine in it.

Now you're in your hedgehog now when you're in your 20s.

There's all these sort of paint-by-numbers kits appro