#149： Taking Action in an Uncertain and Hack-Focused World With Kyle Eschenroeder
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, we discuss the idea that in modern life, we ve deluded ourselves into thinking that we have more control over a lot of our lives than we actually do, and how to thrive in uncertainty.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
all right mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so if
00:00:18.260
you've been reading the site for a while you've probably seen some content written by a guy named
00:00:22.060
kyle eschenroeder he's a business owner owns a company called startup bros where he and his
00:00:26.660
partner train individuals how to start their own online business but besides being an entrepreneur
00:00:31.940
kyle reads deeply and he thinks deeply about a lot of important topics on how to live the good
00:00:38.940
life the two pieces of content that he's written for the art of manliness that have resonated with
00:00:42.800
a lot of readers was the first one is about the myths of taking action it's about the excuses we
00:00:48.180
give or tell ourselves that prevent us from taking action we know we need to take and the other one
00:00:52.680
was on how to thrive in uncertainty it's taking on this idea that in modern life we've deluded
00:00:59.480
ourselves into thinking that we have more control over a lot our lives than we think we do we have
00:01:04.380
this um there's an app for that mentality right with a click of a button you can solve any problem
00:01:08.940
the reality is there are some things in life that we just have no control over and the trick is is
00:01:14.480
figuring out how to create a life that not only can survive that uncertainty but can thrive in it
00:01:20.500
and that's what that article talks about and i brought kyle on to the podcast i want to discuss
00:01:25.180
these topics in detail and get uh really deep into it so that's what we're going to do today
00:01:29.720
really great conversation i think you're gonna like it so without further ado kyle eshenroeder
00:01:35.640
kyle eshenroeder welcome to the show thanks for having me brett i'm uh looking forward to it
00:01:48.520
so you've contributed some articles on our site that uh have really impacted a lot of people we
00:01:53.720
get emails about them all the time um but before and we're going to talk about some of the themes
00:01:57.920
you've written about in these articles i'd like to really have this discussion with you but before
00:02:01.720
we do let's talk about your background because it's really interesting and pretty unconventional
00:02:05.840
can you tell us how you became this uh philosopher entrepreneur guy that you are oh man i uh i've always
00:02:12.960
read deeply i think um i i started day trading under a mentor in high school um and in order to do that
00:02:22.040
you you've it's very emotionally trying uh so getting into uh meditation and philosophy is kind of uh
00:02:31.000
a natural progression for anybody who who does that um i went to i went to college and uh
00:02:38.960
uh continued to trade and uh started to dabble in startups i got involved with uh groveshark.com early
00:02:47.240
on um and and really was excited by the potential in value creation that you can uh the that uh a
00:02:58.320
startup can have um and so it it seemed to me one of the best ideas you know these ideas that i was
00:03:05.840
studying um as an extension of trading um you could really have a bigger effect in the real world
00:03:13.160
through uh startups so that's that's where the uh kind of entrepreneurial part came in um and really
00:03:22.080
you know early on it was more self-development uh uh focused stuff and uh you know self-help stuff
00:03:29.780
um and i think you know if you read enough of that you start to uh question question their premises
00:03:36.980
um and realize that they haven't really you know and i say they broadly but uh uh you need to look at
00:03:46.960
you know maybe why you're doing something or what's at the core of this um what need is this fulfilling
00:03:51.740
um and that is kind of where you you get down into uh more i guess intense philosophies
00:03:58.720
so is that what got you into researching and studying studying and writing about philosophy
00:04:02.900
just trying to find some balance to the uncertainty that you find in startup culture and day trading is
00:04:08.260
that what it was yeah i think uh i think it's a great uh balancer but also a driver you know um
00:04:14.720
if you're just going to be an entrepreneur and that's the only thing you're focused on you're still
00:04:20.740
you'll still create value um but you you don't have as solid of a foundation or perspective
00:04:27.600
on what you're building um the society that you're building it in uh and how you can kind of
00:04:34.240
do the most good all right so you can read these personal development books right a lot of people
00:04:38.960
do i do they're they're often very practical and there's always the bullet point list of things you
00:04:43.920
can do right now to apply to your own life or to your own business um but how does studying things
00:04:50.640
like the uncertainty principle or nietzsche or sinica how has that made you a better businessman
00:04:57.360
in your day-to-day i'm talking practical brass tax level so i think um i think these things give you
00:05:06.240
a great um grounding in dealing with people um and in dealing with struggle gaining perspective so
00:05:15.880
uh so so so you know honestly honestly brett you know there's there's a lot of uh entrepreneurs
00:05:24.680
who don't read a lot who don't have a strong foundation in nietzsche um who are much uh much
00:05:30.040
better uh entrepreneurs than than me you know i i think of um i think of steve jobs i think of john
00:05:37.080
rockefeller um these guys are famous for for reading very little i mean carnegie barely read um and and so
00:05:45.240
um i think the the difference that the it depends on what you're doing so in the businesses um that
00:05:53.640
i've been involved in i deal with people a lot um and for me it's very important to have an
00:06:00.600
understanding of where i'm headed so um you know uh every day i can i can you know communicate to
00:06:08.760
people more directly kind of the vision um and how we sit as a company um in in the community in our
00:06:16.600
society today the good that we're doing um maybe more fully than somebody who hasn't read as widely
00:06:23.000
but um i i do hesitate to say that you know as far as uh an entrepreneur creating um uh roi i don't
00:06:33.640
know i don't know that it has a direct impact yeah let's talk about that because i i love how you as a
00:06:38.600
a businessman you're you're thinking of the bigger picture oftentimes there's this cult of the
00:06:43.960
startup and internet businesses where it's just about making enough money for yourself so you can
00:06:49.640
live the dream travel be location independent right oh yeah my question is how do you get past
00:06:56.280
that where you there's this filter bubble bubble where everyone's just talking about okay here's
00:07:00.440
what it here's what's about me here's what i can do for me how do you see startup cultures
00:07:05.560
and businesses taking on a bigger approach and actually having an effect on the community around
00:07:10.920
them that's that's really interesting um that's a that's a really interesting question i think um
00:07:17.160
it it may be a natural cycle um and and i'm that's kind of what i'm hoping on is that this kind of
00:07:25.640
obsession with location independent entrepreneur um is almost wearing itself out exhausting itself
00:07:32.440
because there's so many people who have accomplished that now who are you know they're empty they don't
00:07:38.520
they realize that this is not the best way they realize it's not as easy as you know four hours a
00:07:44.120
week it takes full-time commitment um that you you take on massive responsibilities um and and also
00:07:51.320
you know once once you hit a certain um level you you realize that their only way that you can be
00:07:58.120
fulfilled is by helping other people truly um not not in a um the kind of empty way that that many of
00:08:08.680
these businesses uh go about it um and honestly brett i mean if you look you look around at the the
00:08:15.320
businesses that sustain themselves very few of those kind of you know get a business up and running so i
00:08:21.880
can create passive income and then forget about it and go you know live uh live my life in i don't
00:08:27.560
know hawaii or whatever um they they i've i've watched a lot of them this whole kind of um group of
00:08:34.120
people just put you know you throw stuff up and uh and fizzle out immediately the only people that have
00:08:41.640
staying power to be true entrepreneurs are um ones that do want to create something um that's bigger than
00:08:50.360
just them um and yeah as much as we want to talk about it as much as entrepreneurship can be broken
00:08:57.080
down into steps or you know made made you know systematized um it it's always hard business is
00:09:05.080
is one of the most abstract things you can do it's extremely difficult to to create something lasting um
00:09:11.640
and and uh yeah unless unless people have that kind of drive um to do something bigger than themselves
00:09:17.400
it's not going to last and so um i guess my my answer to you is it i think it's taking care of
00:09:23.480
itself nice sort of like natural selection yes yeah exactly exactly that brought up an interesting
00:09:29.320
point one of the things i find about people who are into entrepreneurship and startups they love
00:09:35.080
starting things and they get really excited about starting new projects and i have some acquaintance
00:09:40.280
who call themselves serial entrepreneurs you know they're all because they're always starting
00:09:43.560
something new and it's always exciting to start something new but if you're that type of person
00:09:47.320
who loves to start things how do you make the transition to okay i started something it's gaining
00:09:52.760
momentum it's got some teeth how do you transition to managing and maintaining that business for the
00:09:58.760
long haul yeah and so that's um that's where you have kind of two options and this happens at
00:10:04.280
at every level from people starting you know um blogs to people starting multi you know
00:10:10.280
companies that end up being valued at billions of dollars um there there there there comes a point
00:10:15.800
when you decide to become a manager or to leave the business um so this you know once you develop a
00:10:24.840
business this has happened with uh startup bros um the company that i started with uh my friend will
00:10:31.160
um it has gotten to the point after a couple years that it's taken on a life of itself its own we're no
00:10:36.520
longer a startup um we're now managers we're now managing growth we're now feeding this um separate
00:10:44.600
thing that has its own life now um and and there's less freedom in it uh there there's you know there
00:10:52.840
it's um it's a completely different mode um and so you have to either decide whether you want to switch
00:10:59.480
modes whether you want to become um a manager and and deal with the grind or if you want to go
00:11:06.440
look for you know the next startup opportunity um and like i like i said you know a lot of startups
00:11:13.000
in silicon valley investors pressure these um these startup uh ceos um at a certain point to to uh
00:11:22.520
you know either they they need to leave or get trained in you know serious uh management um and and uh
00:11:30.440
it's not a transition everybody can or wants to make yeah maybe this is just me i feel like with this
00:11:35.400
whole startup culture where startups are really sexy it's fun you get the the nerf guns at lunch
00:11:40.600
and you get food catering i feel like management part right gets de-emphasized people who their
00:11:48.120
talent is telling people how to do things efficiently and getting things done and maintaining the the
00:11:53.000
momentum that a startup person has started they're sort of like the the unsexy dork at the dance who
00:11:57.960
hides in the corner but those people have incredible value yes yeah and i think um you're pointing out
00:12:04.600
something that i i like to call the sexy tax um that you pay if you want to do if you want to do the
00:12:11.480
thing that's being celebrated by culture you have to deal with um uh generally decreased returns um and
00:12:20.120
increased competition um and so you know there's there's you know a startup culture it only celebrates
00:12:27.880
like a very few young billionaires or uh you know or then on the other side it celebrates these like
00:12:35.160
teenagers that are all starting businesses um and and i've actually i've been involved in these startup
00:12:41.320
shows um and and there's you know we actually get approached by these television studios these
00:12:48.920
production houses that are trying to launch startup um real you know the real world what are they called
00:12:56.360
uh you know the real world of startups basically um and and everyone fails because the uh the
00:13:05.480
highlights are like you said it's the very beginning it's the initial exciting ideas um and then it's
00:13:11.640
like the ipo or um when you sell the facebook or google um but everything in between is is just agony
00:13:19.080
it's just sitting at a computer typing programming desperately trying to sell your services
00:13:24.040
um it's boring and it's uh like you said it's just it's not exciting um and so so when people kind of
00:13:31.400
have this hollywood idea of what it is to be a startup entrepreneur they um they act on these kind of
00:13:38.440
abstract ideas that they have of what uh an entrepreneur should be instead of actually focusing on
00:13:46.120
what does my business need from me today how do i build this thing into something real how do i provide
00:13:51.960
value um and those are kind of the boring questions that that nobody's going to make a a show um on but
00:13:59.640
those are the things that actually grow businesses yeah i i've encountered this paradox or this problem
00:14:05.640
in my own life so in my backyard i have some land so i decided to build a trail through it it was really
00:14:10.600
really fun blazing the trail i have this awesome machete that i was cutting through all the weeds
00:14:16.360
the thistles and the thorns and it was great to see my progress then winter came and i didn't go out
00:14:22.360
there then i came back in the middle of the spring and it was all overgrown and i was like crap i've got
00:14:29.160
to maintain this thing now and maintaining it is not not fun at all right and that's what you have to
00:14:35.400
do for decades it takes what a year to to build the thing and that's exciting you get to see progress
00:14:40.280
and then the rest is just fighting off decay entropy yeah yeah yeah and this just isn't something that
00:14:45.880
applies to business but also applies to someone uh with their personal development you know it's
00:14:51.000
always fun to start a new goal oh yeah i'm going to go to the gym i'm going to start journal writing
00:14:56.200
i'm going to be awesome then you get into the grind and you've got to keep doing it and right and that's
00:15:02.280
where the payoff the payoffs only come after after that grind after that uh getting through that super
00:15:09.080
boring plateau where you get to the next uh you know peak or whatever yeah let's talk about one
00:15:14.600
of the articles you wrote for us last year uh today we still get emails and letters about it it was
00:15:20.440
10 overlooked truths about taking action and a lot of people talk about taking action on the web
00:15:27.320
deeds not words carpe diem take action blah blah blah they write that on their facebook profile yeah
00:15:34.040
yeah exactly but people still have a hard time taking action on their intentions their goals their
00:15:38.760
dreams i mean why is that why is it so hard i mean you feel really motivated at the beginning
00:15:44.280
of the day but taking that motivation actually turning it into action is is really hard for folks
00:15:49.640
yeah and that's i mean that is that's the tough question that um that i i can't really answer and
00:15:56.200
i don't think um anybody really can or maybe even should so i mean there's there's an infinite
00:16:03.400
amount of of good reasons probably you know not to good rationalizations um one of the most
00:16:10.120
interesting ones i came across recently came from uh mark manson and he said uh he calls it the manson
00:16:16.440
principle that we don't do things um that threaten our personal identity even if they even if it would
00:16:23.720
you know make us better um and so we just we kind of have this uh homeostasis um choose a term from
00:16:31.320
ludwig sundstrom that uh that sticks us where we're at there's this there's an infinite amount
00:16:36.680
of forces hitting us from different directions um and so i think my suggestion um and and kind of
00:16:45.080
what the article is attempting to do um is to trick us out of you know pointing out these reasons
00:16:53.320
um and and and and tricking ourselves um and tricking ourselves to take action anyway so um you know
00:17:01.640
i i i you you um you know freudian or what are they psycho psychoanalysts have had a um a pretty
00:17:09.480
terrible success rate um and fixing people because they're so obsessed with you know finding these these
00:17:15.400
hidden causes um and and and a lot of times it might be more helpful just to uh you know forget
00:17:23.240
about them not worry about them um and so that's where i i kind of think we should try to trick
00:17:28.600
ourselves into taking action um even though it feels like there might be reasons not to so what
00:17:34.600
are some myths that people have about action yes yeah and i think i think um one of the most
00:17:40.680
interesting ones to notice um is that people believe um things like motivation passion purpose courage
00:17:49.640
um you know reasons justifications or even planning always must precede action um when in fact all these
00:17:58.520
things more naturally um follow uh action and and once you can kind of it's a difficult it's very very
00:18:07.080
difficult to believe because we're so wired to um believe the opposite but once we can wrap our heads
00:18:13.240
around that um and once we prove that to ourselves it becomes extremely easy to um take these those
00:18:20.760
actions that we know we should yeah yeah you see that again and again on the internet everyone is
00:18:25.000
always talking about you've got to follow your passion find your passion you know people even put
00:18:29.240
up the memes on their facebook profile or tumblr or you know they got their top totem animal where it
00:18:35.320
says i'm i'm the gym beast i'm going to be awesome then they don't do anything they don't go to the gym
00:18:41.480
right right yeah and i i uh i know if you've not noticed this it tends to be the most out of shape
00:18:50.440
people who know the most about fitness who know the most about exactly what exercises to do to get x
00:18:57.160
results um they they tend to have this extreme book knowledge um but then just forgot that that kind of
00:19:04.360
vital that vital part that means you know go to the gym right go to the gym and get started yeah so you
00:19:11.000
see this not just in business but uh with their personal development people have these goals
00:19:15.400
and they feel like if i want to lose weight i've got to get motivated and once i get motivated and i
00:19:19.960
feel like it then maybe it's going to be a breeze but that's not how it works right and and you know
00:19:25.000
i need to get motivated uh and i need the perfect plan you know once i have have just this this perfect
00:19:31.240
plan um and the perfect outfit um and the perfect gym partner or whatever then i'll do it but uh but
00:19:39.000
it it never happens you know and um and any of those people who get if they have a friend that's
00:19:44.920
good enough to drag them to the gym for you know a week consistently those people are motivated they
00:19:50.920
now all the all those abstract barriers to entry have been deleted and they uh they understand that
00:19:57.800
it just means going to the gym and sweating yeah stephen king is a great example of just doing it
00:20:02.920
i mean you don't have to be motivated you you don't have to have the perfect everything he just wrote
00:20:07.400
when he wrote carrie uh he was living in a really small house and he would just write on the kitchen
00:20:12.280
table in the corner while his wife was banging pots and pans in the kitchen and it didn't matter
00:20:17.240
he wrote the book and a lot of people think well if i'm going to start a business or write this blog
00:20:21.480
post i need to do my ritual and here's my little thing that i got to have and it's got to be perfectly
00:20:26.440
set up and i have to have my headphones and my background music and my binaural beats and then
00:20:30.920
the motivation and the inspiration will just come
00:20:35.800
yeah yeah that is yeah and it's it's just so ridiculous um and you know i think one of the
00:20:42.120
things that that tricks us into this is like this this endless uh supply of clickbait that says this
00:20:49.880
will maximize your productivity and this will maximize your productivity and if you you know if
00:20:54.520
you're going to be a writer you need your walls painted this color um and and really when you
00:20:59.560
look at anybody like i have this book called daily rituals it's like a couple hundred people that are
00:21:05.000
you know these artists and and just high achievers and in many different creative areas uh and every one
00:21:11.880
of them have different rituals and they were all developed over time as people found out their own
00:21:18.760
personal needs um and and so you know you know every every writer who is uh it will will tell you that
00:21:27.720
you don't sit down and just know exactly what you're going to say you sit down and you try really hard to
00:21:34.200
say something it usually comes out terribly then you have to go back and edit it you know it's it's uh
00:21:39.880
it's very messy it's very messy um so yeah you know they they people we're so hungry for answers
00:21:48.600
people feed us answers and then we're you know uh then we we paralyze ourselves when we can't
00:21:55.080
kind of uh you know set up this perfect instance um when and when in reality it's equivalent of going
00:22:01.800
to the gym and sweating just sitting down writing garbage until something golden comes out right so
00:22:06.760
there's also this big emphasis on goals and i'm a big fan of setting goals for myself but how can
00:22:11.560
goals get in the way of taking action yeah and so i i do you know before we get into that i want to uh
00:22:19.320
i want to say that goals work really well for a lot of people i know a lot of people who have
00:22:24.040
a lot of success with goals um for me they haven't done uh they they didn't work as well um and i think
00:22:31.640
they a lot of people get stuck with goals um because they rely on a kind of fantasy future
00:22:40.040
um and and deny the present moment um so so you know every day you go to the gym and you're um still
00:22:50.840
chubby you're failing you know um because your goal is to be ripped or to be you know x pounds so every
00:22:59.320
day that you go it's it's not motivating to know that you're behind schedule um and then when you do
00:23:05.960
hit that goal when you do get ripped let's say um you have to immediately set a new goal that you're
00:23:13.080
then failing at and start to achieve that one so say maybe it's bulking you know um and in the gym
00:23:19.640
so so it's always just kind of you're set up for disappointment and failure um and so a uh a fix for
00:23:27.880
this was uh actually suggested by the author of dilbert the dilbert comics douglas adams or not
00:23:34.680
douglas adams i'm sorry scott adams um but yeah he he suggests setting up a system so if you want to
00:23:43.080
if you're you know you have this general aim to get ripped instead of saying i'm going to have four
00:23:48.120
percent body fat by the end of two months you say i'm going to go to the gym for one hour every day
00:23:56.280
um you know four days a week so you set up a system and every time you implement that system you're
00:24:01.400
succeeding um and so you you spend the whole time that you're on the right track winning um and like
00:24:09.080
we're talking about action before that then shocks you into um appreciating the actions being taken
00:24:16.520
instead of just the results obsessing on this kind of um abstract outcomes of uh of uh
00:24:24.200
uh actions taken now so process oriented as opposed to results oriented right right right now one thing
00:24:32.280
you mentioned planning is that planning can get in the way of taking action but doesn't shouldn't it
00:24:37.080
play some role in your business or in your personal life and what role does planning and deep reflection
00:24:42.360
fit into this ideal of action right and uh yeah but i'm yeah i'm glad you brought this up because
00:24:47.480
that's one thing that um the article really didn't deal with um and that it's it's it's
00:24:53.640
difficult to uh to talk about uh when you want to balance two ideas sure so so um the goal of the
00:25:02.520
article was you know there's 10 overlooked truths about taking action um and so the reason i wanted to
00:25:09.800
really dig into helping uh helping us understand what action is so that we can put it into a
00:25:17.400
more healthy context um and then a lot of people kind of mistook that as i should always be taking
00:25:24.600
action thinking is terrible planning ahead terrible um when obviously that's that's just not the case
00:25:31.720
so um my my suggestion is to um you know it there's no there's no one size fits all so so you know if
00:25:42.920
you're planning out a you know a trip to mars if you're elon musk team planning out a trip to mars you
00:25:50.600
need every detail exactly right because there's going to be very little improvisation you can do
00:25:56.200
um from earth to to help that mission out you know what i mean um but uh on the other end is we're just
00:26:04.840
talking about the gym going to the gym you don't need any plan to get in a better shape than you are
00:26:11.560
today so so yes um you know reading a fitness book might be helpful um and and creating a plan might
00:26:20.280
help you um stay consistent but going today doing that thing now is going to um kind of invigorate
00:26:29.720
the plan that you do create um and give you better context for it um so the business version of this is
00:26:37.400
the lean startup methodology and this is especially true of software companies um not companies with
00:26:43.800
you know complex supply chains and and require huge investment up front but you basically like you create
00:26:50.840
an mvp which is a minimum viable product what is the smallest thing that we can create to test this
00:26:58.600
assumption that we're making about our business um and then so you you plan minimally and then you take
00:27:05.640
action um and then that allows you to um take advantage of both sides of the coin so you get all the
00:27:14.920
advantages of taking action like like watching new opportunities emerge watching um you know
00:27:22.520
unforeseen problems pop up um without as large of an initial investment um but at the same time you have
00:27:31.080
you have uh you have this minimal plan that is driving you in the right direction so it depends
00:27:37.240
on the context right yes yes and i would say you know and for all of us in our individual lives it's
00:27:43.000
always less than you think it's always um you know less you you need to less read less books than you think
00:27:49.640
you need to read less blogs and you think um when when you're risking very little you need very little
00:27:55.720
planning got you now one reason that a lot of people don't take action and you wrote about
00:27:59.800
this is uncertainty they're surrounded by uncertainty they don't want to make that investment in the
00:28:05.560
business because they don't know if it'll be a success or you know who knows how the economy will
00:28:10.280
change with our ever-changing modern world things are just speeding up because of technology things are
00:28:16.280
unstable and always changing so how should we manage our life and career in the face of such uncertainty
00:28:22.200
yeah i think um one thing that is extremely helpful to do um initially um and this just helps
00:28:29.160
you emotionally deal with uh uncertainty is to differentiate between um the uncertainty that
00:28:36.600
you feel versus the uncertainty that actually exists so you don't have to feel uncertain about a
00:28:42.680
situation just because that situation isn't a hundred percent likely to happen um so so once
00:28:49.640
you differentiate between those two things um it makes everything else a little bit easier um and
00:28:57.160
brett yeah i know i know you're a fan of stoicism um and the stoics recommend um one really
00:29:05.240
interesting tool for for dealing with uncertainty um and that is the triad of control so as you go
00:29:13.160
through life you can separate situations or events into three parts um they're either in your control
00:29:21.240
out of your control or partly in your control so something that's in your control is the effort
00:29:27.800
you put into something um something that's outside of your control um would be you know is your business
00:29:34.520
going to is the company you work for going to stay in business um and then a mix would be like um you
00:29:41.720
getting the job or getting into that school or um having success with this business because you can put in
00:29:48.120
everything um and that kind of tips the odds in your favor but um but it may it may not absolutely
00:29:56.520
get you there so once you've separated things out like that you can then um totally focus on um and and
00:30:05.880
do your best to tie your emotions to things that are in your control so um and that goes back to the
00:30:13.240
systems um if you tie your emotional life to completing your system successfully that day
00:30:21.800
then you are uh you're more likely to have the uh the grit that uh that that's needed to uh get
00:30:29.400
through possible failures and and stuff like that so besides the emotional resilience i think that's
00:30:35.320
really important in the face of uncertainty but how do you what do you do about it on an operational
00:30:39.720
level or tactical level i guess what what can you do to manage the uncertainty so you're not on the
00:30:45.560
bad end of it you know so you can adapt absolutely yeah and so um you you wrote a great post on this
00:30:52.760
too um based on taleb the beyond sissy resilience i believe um and and there's there's two big ways
00:31:00.760
um that you can expose yourself to the upside that is you don't know what's going to happen but you're
00:31:07.080
setting yourself up to take advantage of something crazy happening because you know that that in the
00:31:13.480
future there are going to be um kind of wild shifts especially now um that's increasing with
00:31:20.440
the increasing rate of technology like you mentioned so um the first way to do that is to increase your
00:31:26.920
optionality um so so that means give yourself more options to select from so when the time comes you can
00:31:35.560
make the best most advantageous choice um examples of this would be uh having savings in the bank um
00:31:43.720
so you know if a business opportunity comes or investment opportunity comes you maybe you can jump on
00:31:48.280
that um uh going to parties that you might not want to go to um just because you are then exposed to
00:31:57.000
interesting people who might be able to affect your life in a positive way um learning new skills that
00:32:03.080
could be useful in the future um and then also just uh i hate i really don't like talking about
00:32:10.680
perspectives but but shifting your perspective to um be open to the uh opportunities that come up um
00:32:20.040
that increases your optionalities like crazy because if you're just focused on you know what what you
00:32:26.360
believe to be um worthwhile today you're going to be blind to you know um what might be the next big
00:32:33.800
thing or or this wave that you're sitting on that you don't even realize it so um just shifting your
00:32:38.840
perspective to noticing um new options um and then another way that that we can take advantage of this
00:32:47.240
uncertainty instead of kind of uh having it bear down on us is making small bets or or making small
00:32:55.320
experiments um so an example of this is like the mvp that we we talked about this is how startups
00:33:02.440
take advantage of this uncertainty um investors know for in general they don't know what startup
00:33:10.280
is going to be the next facebook the next google um and so they have to um invest in many different
00:33:16.440
businesses um and they like to see a business that that does believe that they know what's right
00:33:22.040
what uh what the future looks like but then they also want to be able to see that a business can
00:33:27.960
pivot so if if their business model is disproven they should be able to create something new create
00:33:34.920
something um that based on what they learned from their failure will then uh uh help them win so um and
00:33:44.440
then you know in our in our everyday life kind of you know in you know if you're looking for a
00:33:49.160
girlfriend making small bets is is talking to multiple girls at the same time um you know for
00:33:56.360
for our blog at startup bros um when we decide what what kind of program that we want to put together
00:34:02.600
next the training program um we use blog posts to gauge the demand for that type of project so we make
00:34:10.600
small bets to know what we should double down on right going back to optionality i think a lot of
00:34:15.960
people particularly young people misinterpret this as keeping your options open and what ends up
00:34:21.000
happening is that they don't make a decision they have all these different choices and they don't
00:34:25.880
actually take one because there's they still want the options available for them at some time when
00:34:31.480
something doesn't doesn't pan out they want to maximize their choice yeah so how do you balance how do
00:34:38.360
you maintain optionality while still getting going in life and making decisions and making progress
00:34:44.440
oh that's a that's a good question um i i think that it's um that it's appreciating that the world is
00:34:54.040
not totally uncertain um and so it's not like the goal of life isn't optionality it's not just about
00:35:02.360
having options open um because the things that you decide on that's where there's depth so optionality
00:35:08.040
is kind of your your width um but but there's it's important to have uh depth so so that's i i think that
00:35:17.080
that that kind of model might be helpful um or or yeah that's that's how that's how i think about it um but it
00:35:27.080
is it's it's it's it's difficult to um to measure i think um necessity um forces people into that depth
00:35:36.200
you know it so you see you know you talk about young people um it's young people that aren't forced into
00:35:42.680
um having to create something now um and uh they they they're kind of honestly they're trying to um
00:35:52.200
um hack their way to this this this place of um of like you said not deciding of of not committing
00:36:03.080
um and so yeah optionality is not commitment um i don't know if that's helpful but that's a that's
00:36:08.120
the best i got got you all right so speaking of hacking the most recent article you wrote for us was
00:36:13.640
called stop hacking your life and it went after the whole hacking culture and we're not talking about
00:36:18.520
computer hacking we're talking about life hacks and i feel like that's one of those things that's
00:36:23.320
eating itself and it's slowly going away to a certain extent but you make the case that there
00:36:27.960
are two approaches to life hacking uh what are they and how can one of them be detrimental to our
00:36:33.640
development yeah i think um i think you're absolutely right about it it eating itself up um but
00:36:40.760
so i think there's there's two there's two kind of relationships or postures that we have towards
00:36:46.520
hacking um so you're either hacking you know in order to achieve uh an aim or to to to get a certain
00:36:55.880
outcome um and so that means you're you know when you go to look up the best way to to uh to tie a
00:37:02.840
tie you do that when you need to tie a tie um you have an awesome video on that by the way thank you
00:37:08.840
sir yeah and so it it focuses you on things that you're going to use now they're specific to your
00:37:15.320
situation you're optimizing for a specific outcome um and then the kind of unhealthy posture is hacking
00:37:22.600
for hacking's sake which is kind of this perverse meta hacking um and and it's where hacking becomes
00:37:30.120
the primary instead of the result that the hacking was supposed to get you um so so you know an example
00:37:38.040
of this is you know um scrolling through life hacker just collecting articles on things that you
00:37:46.360
probably don't do you don't need to do but they're like they just blast you with this click bait of
00:37:51.880
here's the answer to this question that you didn't know you had until just now here's like a hundred ways
00:37:56.840
that you'll never use to uh to live a happier better life um it ends up just like you said frustrating the
00:38:04.280
the user um and then they realize that the uh their life actually doesn't get better because they're
00:38:11.240
not um the the goal is optimization itself and when you optimize for um i like to look at it as a
00:38:19.320
multiplier um so so when you optimize for something it's it multiplies on that number but when you optimize
00:38:27.880
for um no reason or for life in general which is impossible you're optimizing for zero um and and
00:38:35.480
that is uh totally frustrating and ineffective yeah have you read any uh gk chesterton oof i've i've
00:38:43.160
read one uh one piece and it was i believe it was one of your uh manvotionals manvotionals yeah yeah
00:38:52.840
so he's this fierce critic of nietzsche his critiques are fascinating they're really well written he's a
00:38:57.800
great writer super funny and in one of his chapters in his book orthodoxy he's a he's a christian writer
00:39:03.960
uh in orthodoxy goes all over the place but in this one part he talks about when cultures or
00:39:09.400
organizations start focusing on efficiencies it means they run out of big ideas that's yeah that's a
00:39:16.280
that's really interesting yeah i think that's what happens particularly with business they just focus
00:39:21.160
on optimizing we've got to optimize our website so we can get more subscribers we're going to increase
00:39:25.640
our opt-in rate by 0.4 percent right i'm like what's your big idea i mean what else are you doing
00:39:31.800
i mean at that point you don't really have one they're just trying to squeeze out as much as they
00:39:35.960
can from this thing and they've they've already done and there's nothing wrong i mean there's nothing
00:39:40.680
wrong with that i guess but at the end the same time it distracts you from the bigger picture
00:39:45.400
um of trying to create something better and bigger than you had before yeah and i think um
00:39:50.920
one one kind of illustration of what you just mentioned is uh demand media which was basically
00:39:57.480
it's just like media company created by i believe the founders of myspace and it was all based on
00:40:04.120
creating content uh uh based on big data so they just you know would would measure you know what is
00:40:11.480
trending at all today yada yada and then they create just very quickly very crappily create some piece of
00:40:19.080
content that uh maps on to something that uh some big data system suggested and uh and it and it just
00:40:28.040
is terrible nobody wants to read it because there's no soul there's uh there's nothing there um so yeah
00:40:33.640
i i i believe in that wholeheartedly um that's a that's a tough balance because you know there there's
00:40:39.640
information that you do want to use like you do want to make sure that you maximize conversions
00:40:44.520
um but only to the point that you're not giving up um what's truly valuable and uh yeah and brett i
00:40:53.160
gotta i gotta say you uh one reason i love art of mailiness so much is because uh you more than
00:40:59.960
maybe anybody else in this i don't know quote unquote industry has uh uh refused these kind of
00:41:07.480
perverse incentives and uh kept kept data in its place well i appreciate that and honestly the
00:41:14.760
reason i don't really pay much attention to it because it bores me to tears right yeah hacking
00:41:19.320
your life how can it hurt you in the long run if that's all that you're focusing on and optimizing
00:41:23.560
your life i mean it brings you short-term benefits for sure but in the long run are there detrimental
00:41:28.120
effects yeah and they're they're very uh insidious i would say because like you said because you get
00:41:34.360
benefits up front and it feels like oh my god i'm optimizing my life which means i'm optimizing
00:41:39.640
literally everything i do so this is this could never be a a waste of time um when when it's it's
00:41:48.920
not only just a waste of time um it's it's it puts you in a bad posture towards life um and so in the
00:41:58.360
article i'll go through very quickly but there's um kind of there's there's six ways that it it kind
00:42:05.880
of perverts your um perspective um and that is one that it assumes that effort is failure because um
00:42:15.000
hacking is always trying to find the easiest way out um so it its aim is at whatever means less less uh
00:42:24.360
effort um and then it it forces you into bad decisions because it overvalues hype and undervalues
00:42:33.160
the old and effective um so so anybody who uh who pays attention to fitness i don't know i honestly
00:42:41.960
don't know how people still read new books that come out about nutrition because it seems like every
00:42:48.120
six months there they negate what they said the time before um and 99 of us know very specific
00:42:56.840
things that we could do to make ourselves more healthy you know be it going and exercising or
00:43:01.960
eating some more greens or eating less ice cream or like stop smoking it doesn't matter how much organic
00:43:07.640
stuff you eat if you're still smoking cigarettes so um uh charlie munger warren buffett's partner in
00:43:14.360
investing has this idea he says take a simple idea and take it seriously um and i think that would get
00:43:20.840
us past a lot of hype um another thing it puts us in the posture of aimless optimization so like i said
00:43:28.280
you know when you optimize for zero you uh still left with zero um the hacking posture it makes us
00:43:35.560
constantly worried that we're using too much time so we have this anxiety about literally like if
00:43:42.280
something takes an hour we feel like it should have taken 20 minutes or something like if we knew
00:43:46.760
just the right way to do it um we could have done it faster or we you know so and that's what stops
00:43:52.120
people from starting businesses is they they keep deluding themselves because people keep promising
00:43:58.120
them ways that you know a painless way a turnkey system to start a business um if there was truly a
00:44:03.800
turnkey system then that didn't require any personal effort um that company would just be a manufacturer of
00:44:11.720
that type of company um it also makes you dependent on perfect circumstances you mentioned stephen king
00:44:19.480
if you're you know if you're trying to hack your life find the uh you know optimal uh environment to
00:44:25.080
write in you'll never start writing um and then finally it favors irrational rationality um and actually
00:44:35.000
you know you came off of this uh you you just wrote a great piece on nietzsche and uh you you mentioned
00:44:40.840
this in that piece and i thought that was super interesting that he feared when he said god is
00:44:45.800
dead um he he he his true fear was that our sense of meaning was going to be destroyed because um of this
00:44:56.600
new obsession with science taking kind of god's place in a way um and and it absolutely has you know
00:45:04.360
you know there's uh you know depression is uh more prevalent than ever because it's just you know we
00:45:10.040
we think that everything falls into rationality we think that everything is explained by the material
00:45:15.400
world um when it absolutely can't be we need something um so the the antidote to this is to you know
00:45:23.480
dose yourself with uh rational irrationality um and and joseph campbell who's famous for the hero's journey
00:45:32.920
um he he even said that you know um uh i'm sorry uh rational irrationality is essentially the key to
00:45:43.560
becoming the modern hero the modern hero is someone who can create meaning by caring for something um
00:45:52.200
more than it rationally or reasonably should be cared about um so i know i blew through those but those are
00:45:59.240
those are all ways that uh this kind of hacking posture can uh can really mess us up that's awesome
00:46:07.080
awesome stuff so there seems to be an underlying theme in all your writing and thinking what do you think
00:46:13.160
it is oh man and so you you mentioned this you made me do some uh soul searching um yeah and and
00:46:21.320
honestly i'm probably the least qualified person to uh answer this question but um my my best idea is
00:46:31.080
um i'm i'm kind of trying to continue the project of uh of self-trust or shocking ourselves into uh
00:46:40.120
self-trust self-trust i like that now you mentioned one of my favorite guys charlie munger he's really big
00:46:46.840
on this idea of developing mental models in order to thrive and take action and i love his idea because
00:46:52.200
mental models models are just different ways of looking at the world a mental model is a legal
00:46:56.760
mental it can be a legal mental model an economics mental model biology can be a mental model and you
00:47:02.120
can take these different things and approach them to any problem in life and find insights right
00:47:06.840
yeah absolutely are there topics or areas of studies or disciplines that you think folks should
00:47:11.560
focus on in order to build these mental models to help them be more effective managers thrivers
00:47:16.840
in the uncertain yeah that's um you you mentioned a couple of them i mean i think you know the big
00:47:22.040
standards that that uh munger mentions are you know physics biology psychology um engineering and
00:47:29.640
history you know bill gates and mark zuckerberg will tell you that um programming is the essential
00:47:36.840
model um and and you know i like i like to use philosophy a lot as well as you know biology
00:47:43.720
um and economics specifically um but but i think you know the my my recommendation to people is to
00:47:51.800
respect your interests so you know if that if that underlying theme is is self-trust then i say
00:47:58.120
you know trust your interests to provide you with some of these powerful models um at least to start you
00:48:05.080
know so so you see athletes and either even like big sports fans that use sports metaphors to get them
00:48:11.880
through life um to to make management decisions um like big gamers that i know they they gamify
00:48:19.560
everything in their life and they make it so much easier and enjoyable just by uh kind of um imagining
00:48:27.160
it as some kind of rpg or something um but then you know even even fiction books or or movies that that
00:48:34.920
people relate to i think i think these stories provide really really great foundational mental
00:48:41.000
models um and just you know how how to be in the world um so yeah that's that's my uh advice is is is
00:48:49.480
is self-trust last question i'm always impressed whenever you submit articles to us because you're
00:48:56.440
always quoting and sourcing thinkers like sinica nietzsche munger i mean all sorts of people
00:49:01.880
uh it's all over the place and so obviously you're you're well read how do you read so much and how
00:49:08.280
do you how do you keep track of what you've read so i read a lot of books because i think everybody
00:49:15.720
reads a lot but i just prioritize books over um social media feeds um clickbait and then like bad tv i i
00:49:24.520
refuse to watch tv show unless it's like you know true detective or game of thrones basically um and and
00:49:31.240
that opens up an amazing amount of time like everybody reads so many books a year worth of
00:49:36.920
uh words just in really bad clickbait um and i only read what i'm interested in so it makes it very easy
00:49:44.840
trusting those interests and following them um makes it so so it uh it's fun to pick up the book and it's
00:49:51.240
not something i have to you know use willpower to do um and then i think you asked about tracking sorry
00:49:58.280
yeah how do you keep track of all that stuff dude yeah um i i really don't um i highlight all the
00:50:07.160
books or or you know uh have a type of highlighting system um and then books that i really really care
00:50:13.240
about i uh i put into evernote i type up all my notes um but that that's very few so so generally when
00:50:21.080
i'm writing um i just kind of remember the gist of some passage and in a book and i have to go find
00:50:28.360
the book and open pages um it's just sift through to try to find it and so it's huge huge waste of
00:50:34.280
time yeah that's how we do it around here too oh really that makes me feel a little bit better
00:50:38.200
because there's some people with such big systems yeah yeah yeah i'm completely inefficient but
00:50:43.160
whatever i think that's okay yeah the ones that the important ones pop up right it allows it to
00:50:48.680
stew with all the other stuff in your brain yes yeah i think i think that makes it even more uh
00:50:54.760
organic and so you get the the best quotes at the best time well kyle this has been a fascinating
00:50:59.880
discussion where can people learn more about your work sure um startupbros.com and um if especially
00:51:06.600
if they're interested in everything that we've been talking today probably just googling art of
00:51:11.080
manliness kyle uh we'll get them the the three articles that we really dug into today fantastic well
00:51:17.720
kyle eschenroder thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thanks for it like i say
00:51:21.800
with kyle eschenroder he's the co-founder and co-owner of the company startup bros where they
00:51:25.480
train individuals how to start their own online business for more information about his work you
00:51:29.640
can find that at startupbros.com well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast
00:51:37.560
for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at
00:51:40.760
art of manliness.com and if you enjoy this podcast i'd really appreciate it if you give us a review on
00:51:44.600
itunes tell your friends about us uh thank you for all your support and until next time this is