Morgan Housel: Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday [Music] life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine my guest today is Morgan howel Morgan howel is a partner at the collaborative fund and an expert in private wealth generation and management he is also the author of The spectacularly bestselling book the psychology of money and today we talk about the psychology of money we talk about how money can change your psychology we talk about how most people tend to lie at the

extremes of either saving too much money or spending too much money and we talk about how most people get it completely wrong when it comes to framing in our minds what money is what it's real value is in its ability to generate happiness within us and no I am not going to tell you and Morgan is not going to tell you that Beyond a certain dollar amount you don't increase your happiness because as we all know money cannot buy happiness but it can buffer stress we acknowledge that from the outset and then Morgan goes on

to explain that really what we're seeking when we talk about seeking wealth or money is freedom freedom is really about independence and that if we are constantly in pursuit of wealth well then we are not truly free or independent so today's discussion is as much about being happy being free feeling independent feeling free of stress as it is about this thing that we call money so in other words Morgan explains not just how to generate and manage money monetary wealth he explains that but he also explains how to organize your life in and around this

thing that we call career the pursuit of wealth and happiness and I can think of few topics as important as today's topic I read Morgan's book the psychology of money and I loved it I also love today's discussion because I'm certain that after it's done you will realize that you've probably been thinking about wealth and money incorrectly in a number of ways and you've probably been pursuing it incorrectly in a number of ways but by asking yourself certain probe questions that Morgan raises today and answering those questions you can arrive in a place where your

relationship to money and your pursuit of it really clearly matches your particular goals before we begin I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford it is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast our first sponsor is wealthfront I've been using wealthfront for nearly a decade as my high yield cash account and I absolutely love it personally I'm

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it was a condition of being allowed to stay in school but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health now there are essentially three things that great therapy provides first of all it provides good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about any and all issues you want to second of all it can can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance and third expert therapy can provide useful insights with better help they make it very easy for you to find an expert therapist

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for having me happy to be here I'm excited that you have a new book coming out next year about the art of spending money is that right that's right you got it today I want to talk about how to think about money what is it how do we frame it within our historical context meaning our personal historical context because I think we all and each think about money a little bit differently and then talk about what is the best use or in some cases uh not use of of money this is a topic that you

know could go in any number of different directions but my goal here is that people will get a better understanding of what money is why they work for it and really how to make it a true asset to their lives as opposed to something that um is forever Out Of Reach in terms of amount or what they expect it to bring them great looking forward to it great so um your book starts off with this notion that U people are not crazy it's in fact the the title of the chapter does that mean that people

are rational about money oh I think it's very different what I meant by no one is crazy is that it is so easy for people to look around at society and how people are spending their money and saving their money and investing their money and say why why the hell would anybody do that why would you waste your money on this why would you hoard your money like that and actually think if you peel back the onion layer of what's going on in those people's lives no one is really that crazy with how they spend

their money or save their money it makes sense to them in that moment my brother-in-law is a social worker he works with very disadvantaged kids kids who are abused at home who don't have homes and a lot of those kids not surprisingly uh do very poorly at school they misbehave they get in fights they don't go to school and it is so common for those kids that the teacher will look at those kids and say why why are you acting like this why don't you do the right thing it's so obvious and he says there's

a there's a phrase in social work all Behavior makes sense with enough information that if you look at what those kids are dealing with in life it would all make sense to you why they are misbehaving at school and I think that's a powerful idea for a lot of things in life that all Behavior makes sense with enough information and you can really apply it to money too that you could easily tie how I spend my money today and save my money today based off of the experience that I've had in life how I was

raised where I was raised how old I am the generation I was born into all things that are outside of my control and it is very common to look at people who are spending a ton of money well that there's a story behind that they're spending a ton of money because they want some you know for a lot of them they want some sort of attention they're trying to get people's attention maybe some times they're trying to cover up a hole maybe they actually are really enjoying it people who are hoarding a lot of money

there's a story there too they EXP erence something that's causing them to do that and I think this is really important for two reasons one it forces you to realize that there is not one right way to manage money to save it to spend it you got to figure out what works for you and what works for me might not work for you there's not one answer and it's not like math like in math 2 plus 2 equals 4 for everybody and in money it's like you got to figure it out for yourself it's almost

like your taste in food or your taste in music like just find out what you like and do that the other thing is I think you become less cynical about other people's decisions and you don't spend all your day saying look at that idiot spending their money in a stupid way no it's just you got to figure it out for yourself and I think you become happier when you're a little less cynical about how other people are doing it for most people including myself the whole notion of money and safety are very closely linked you

know do we have enough resources to take care of ourselves plus a bit extra one hopes I guess I would include in taking care of oneself um buffering one's anxiety about not having enough money that's part of the psychological care um and also taking care of others that we might be responsible for or simply want to take care of that's very closely linked to Notions of how much and what type of education to get right I mean I think everyone presumably at some point um goes through the uh mental gymnastics of is it worth it

to get an advanced degree What majors should I focus on is that are there any jobs there when I went to school to be a neuroscientist a cardiologist a friend of our family said why would you go into Neuroscience there no jobs in that um there were plenty of jobs in neuroscience and still are I wouldn't say that most of them are high-paying jobs so you know we know that higher education doesn't always scale with higher income as we grow up and move into the world you know we're thinking about how to integrate all these

different things what we want to do because it's interesting versus what will make us money in your experience and observation and in writing your book is there some sort of path to to cut through these different considerations I mean when we talk about money and wealth you know what should we really take into consideration is there some sort of checklist I mean it becomes a pretty vast space um I believe that you get the best work out of yourself uh in terms of going after things you're really interested in yeah but you know there may

not be money in um things that are highly interesting to somebody I asked Daniel conoman a very similar question about 10 years ago conoman is a a world-renowned psychologist won the Nobel prize in economics passed away a year or two ago and uh he said the trait that you need to do well with money over time no matter who you are is a well-calibrated sense of your future regret what are you going to end up regretting in the past I think at the highest level that's how you should base all of your financial decisions is

will I regret spending this or not spending this will I regret making or not making this investment now much easier said than done I think most people do not fully understand their own sense of regret what they're likely to look back and say I wish I had not have done this the other thing is that it changes over the course of your life I'll give you a perfect example I'm a big saver have been for my entire adult life um what if if heaven forbid if I were on my deathbed tomorrow would I regret the

vacations I didn't take the cars I didn't buy the answer right now is absolutely not I would feel so good knowing that my wife and kids are going to be okay so I would take so much pleasure in knowing that I did not spend that I saved it for their protection will I still feel that way if I'm 80 years old then maybe I will look back and say I should have lived a little bit more I should have given my money away while I could have seen it being given away so it changes throughout

the course of your life but I think if you're always thinking through the lens of what am I going to regret it's never about uh YOLO or about like oh you know you know safe you know safe today so so you can have it for tomorrow it's I think that's too too simple to think about it you have to know what you're going to regret in the the future and look back and back to everyone's different what I will regret might be very different from what you will regret very interesting story from Jeff Bezos he

talked about when he started Amazon back in I think it was 1994 the reason he started it and he knew that there was very little chance it was going to work uh when he first started it but he said if I do not try this I will regret it and if I try it and it fails I won't regret that that's an amazing story that talks about his entrepreneurial Spirit the other thing when I first heard that story is bless him thinking that I do not have that personality if I devoted my entire life and

my family's money and my parents money to a startup and it failed I I I might regret that I admire and I'm grateful for the people who do not have that Vision as he does made the world better but everyone's sense of regrets going to be a little bit different and sometimes this sense of what one is likely to regret if we have access to it at all because it sounds like we're not very good at anticipating this as Conan pointed out um uh most people lack a well- calibrated sense of future regret that's going

to change over time so it's Dynamic and here we're talking about investing in twoyear or fouryear degrees we're talking about investing in a one's time that is in uh a particular profession and I think we come up with all these explanations uh post Hawk about well you know I went to that uh company I went into that line of work I spent 10 years there or the the startup failed but I learned a valuable lesson that then you know uh really supported me in a future Endeavor and so we rationalize our poor choices from the

past in ways that allow us to you know connect the dots to sort of steal from the the famous Steve Steve Jobs speech um and yet all of this really says that we are very poor at placing our current experience and our past experience into any kind of future projection of ourselves you talk a little bit about this in your book and this really um you know sunk in for me in a major way that we don't really know or anticipate how we are likely to change as we get older right so there's a thing

in Psychology call the end of History illusion which means that you are very aware of how much you've changed in the last 20 years you are maybe smarter wiser you have your beliefs about things in life have evolved uh and that's true for most people but most people if you if you actually dig into it they think if you say who we who will you be in 20 years from now they think they'll roughly be the same person they are today there's always this belief that I've have grown so much in the past but I'm

done growing because you it's hard to project how you're going to be different in the future a lot of that is if I tell myself 20 years from now I'll have very different beliefs about politics whatever it might be what I'm effectively admitting is what I believe today is wrong and you don't want to believe that everyone wants to wake up and look in the mirror and say what I believe today is the right thing it's just like a self-justification of your own beliefs to makes it easier to go about the day what I believe

right now is the right thing and maybe you have a little bit of Doubt around the edges but most of it is what I believe is true so you don't want to believe that you're going to adjust and adapt those beliefs over time so it becomes difficult to take a truly long-term View and make a decision today that is going to be something that you're not going to regret in the future as I've always framed this I think the only antidote to this of trying to get around this problem is avoiding the extreme ends of

financial planning and a lot of people are on the extreme ends like on one end you have the fire movement these people who save 90% of their income and they want to retire at 28 kind of that kind of thing and on the other hand you have like the YOLO crypto traders who are like doesn't matter like just throw it all down and let's see what happens those extreme ends are you are most likely to regret at some point in the future and the crypto look I think a lot of those people are young and

they have time to make up for their mistakes I did a lot of really dumb things with my money in my teens and 20s but I think a lot of them um that's where they are most likely to look back you know it's it's it's one thing to lose a lot of money in your 20s and say ah it doesn't really matter but then when you're 48 and trying to put your kids through college that's when you're going to look back and be like I wish I wouldn't I wish I hadn't done something like that

so those extreme ends are like have the highest odds of future regret in order to as I described it before carve a path through this for people I'm wondering if people generally fall into either one or the other category of as you described with Bezos you know not wanting to regret not having done something okay so I think of that in sort of pseudo neurobiological terms as being drawn toward the possible uh dopaminergic or other rewards of having succeeded really that's what he's envisioning presumably is um the pain of having not having given himself the

opportunity to succeed yeah okay that's uh one way to put it and then the other path would be just avoiding the pain of loss and there are a lot of studies I think conmen did some of them in fact that people work a lot harder to avoid the pain of loss than to gain something but in thinking about the people I know of across various wealth scales and different ages it seems that some people are just more motivated to try new things because they like doing new things they like the sense of reward that can

come from doing those things and so it really is painful for them to stay in the same place financially or otherwise other people they like the sure thing they like reliability and you can see this in a lot of domains of their life I mean I don't want to extrapolate this to all aspects of their life but you know some people like dogs that you know entire breed would uh you know is known for rarely ever having bitten somebody other people like to raise K coros and while I'm sure there's some really nice loving can

coros out there they occasionally bite it when they bite it serious so you know are we really talking about a propensity for risk versus safety and do you think that people fall into more or less two camps on that I think it's it's it's true that some people would go nuts if they took the safe path and even if they're doing it in the name of like I don't want to regret this but they need some sort of variability in their life they need to go out and do things the other element is we don't

know the paths that we didn't take and I'll give you a personal example of this uh 20 years ago I was enrolled in Pepperdine uh but I didn't go I was enrolled and just at the last second I transferred so I never actually attended but I was all enrolled and of course I think what would my life have been if I had gone there because the school that I transferred to I met my wife started my career there and it's easy for me to say God I'm so glad I did not go there cuz my

life would not what it is today but the truth is maybe it would have been fine may it would have been better you you you you never know the paths that you didn't take where they're going to end up so back to con's point a well calibrated sense of your future regret but nobody knows the past that they didn't take and where those would go so it it just makes it very difficult to have any idea of of which which path you should be on uh in that end so I I think just avoiding those

two camps of the extreme ends of it but again as I said earlier I think that is actually more than half of people are on some sort of extreme end of spending way more than they can or saving way more than they need to there's there's a fat tail distribution in how people manage their money and so that's quite a few people and I think that's why I think it's one of the reasons why we live in a society that is richer than it's ever been by far not just at the top but at the

median level the average family is richer than they've ever been but because we manage it in such Extreme Ways is it making people happier are we happier today than we were 40 years ago or 100 years ago that there's not a ton of evidence for because managing it in way that's actually going to make you happier and reduce your regret and live a more meaningful life is much harder than earning it and accumulating it over time when I was growing up you would see a mixture of newer cars including some very nice cars as well

as a lot of older kind of beaten up cars driving around nowadays of course this varies by area it's actually rare to see really old beat up cars you see some really nice old cars that have been restored but that's a different thing all together and I assume this is because of credit that people can now buy things on credit how has the ability to purchase things on credit change the way that we think about money generally I know people who have tremendous credit card debt and I think are now at the point where they

figure that they're never going to pay it off yeah they're just going to probably not live long enough to pay it off and they're sort of comfortable with that which is kind of scary to see and some of them aren't even particularly Big Spenders they just acred this debt early enough and they seem to get out from the trap of that I know other people who you know like myself pay off my credit card bill every month I'm like you know I hate the whatever it is 18 plus% interest even if I'm one day late

I'm like you know and and at the same time I'm not somebody who likes to purchase many things I'm not a things guy I you know I own you know one or two watches one truck like I'm just not a things guy but I certainly have my own psychological relationship with money that after talking to you today I'm sure I'm going to realize is not optimized either right so it's easy to point fingers at people in these different groups but going back to this issue of credit yeah how has the ability to own and use

things that we don't really truly own basically to exceed our income level in terms of the number and type of luxuries that we can enjoy change the way that people think about money and use money because today's discussion in your book we're talking about money as if it's something that we have but credit basically is living outside your means by definition I think the knee-jerk response would be oh it helps you pull your consumption forward so you can have more toys that you would not have had in a different era and actually think for a

lot of people it's the opposite that there are a lot of people that have holes in their life challenges in their life and a very easy answer if you if you're not happy with your life and you have a hole you're trying to fill is well if I had more money this problem would go away and in previous generations previous decades you could not just go out and have a ton of more money you you earned your money from your paycheck that was what you had today it makes it easier to try to fill that

hole in your life with money and so you can keep on getting more and more and more and for a lot of people they will wake up and say oh if only I had that car my life would be better and they go buy that car and they still feel the same so it's like ah you know what if I had that car and that watch then I'd feel better they get the watch they feel the same ah you know what's missing the house I got to go get that fancy house it's a continuous spiral

and since you can Finance all of that it makes it easier and easier to go on that spiral Will Smith SM made this incredible realization I loved from his biography he said when he was uh poor and depressed he had hope cuz he could tell himself one day I'm going to have money and all these problems will go away and then when he was rich and depressed he was still depressed and he lost all of his hope because he he had more money than he could ever spend so he could not tell himself if only

I had more money these problems would go away and so for a lot of people the availability of credit is giving them I think a false sense of hope that's keeping them on this on this hamster wheel of if only I had this bigger house this nicer car all these problems that I wake up with every morning would go away and it keeps you on that path which I think if you actually don't have access to that much money you're more likely to wake up and say what is this hole I need to fix it

in a different way it's Health it's relationships its purpose whatever it might be rather than trying to put a bandid of credit over it so interesting I sometimes think about the phrase money can't buy happiness and my immediate impulse is to respond with well somebody with a lot of money probably said that not because I think money can buy happiness but money can buffer stress I have friends who've had children recently who have night nurses they're looking a lot more rested than the ones that don't because they can't afford them uh and on and on

if you have a medical issue right I mean there's this whole world within hospitals that uh we won't talk about in this episode but there's this whole world about wealth and how one is actually even treated as a person in a hospital mhm there's a lot of knowledge behind the scenes about people's income level when they come into a hospital people are going to go wide-eyed when they hear this they'll get shuttled to different rooms different conditions that allow them to sleep better recover Better Health outcomes depend on this I mean and on and on

so money can't buy happiness but it certainly can buffer stress and it can drive outcomes so how should we frame that especially if we are on the um or in the pursuit of acquiring More Money More wealth because lot of people are money absolutely can buy happiness it's often though an indirect path and what I mean by that is will a big fancy house make you happier and the answer is probably yes but the reason it might is because it'll make it more it'll make it easier to host friends and family and that's what's actually

making you happy it's those those extra connections with those people does going on a nice vacation make you happy an expensive vacation yes because you're going to form memories with your kids with your spouse with your friends while you're there that's what's making you happy so you can't say that money doesn't make people it does it obviously does the other thing that's important is what really makes people happy in their core is some sense of purpose there's a great quote from the movie Boiler Room where he says people who say money doesn't buy happiness don't

have any I think that I think there's a lot of Truth to that that people who become richer say of course I was happier now than I was when I was poor of course I would never want to go back there but often what's happening is the reason that you are happier when you were rich is because the reason you got rich is because you found some sort of purpose you built a business you were successful in your career career and that gave you a good sense of purpose and identity and where you see the

opposite of that are lottery winners who become rich but not because they made a good investment not because they built a business not because they're successful and their peers like them and whatnot they just got lucky and those are the people so many studies that winning the lottery will not make you happy it might for a very short period of time but over time it doesn't because you didn't get any added purpose you can't wake up in the morning and say I built this business I did it I you know I'm so successful I got

my PhD I did there's none of that you just got lucky and so that's not going to bring you much happiness so money does make you happier I think it can for everybody if you learn how to spend it in your personality and whatnot uh spending a lot of it spending a ton of money can make you happier I think I think there's almost no limit to it but it's different for everybody and it's often a roundabout way I think a lot about this when if I go on an expensive vacation with my kids let's

say that's a that's a 10 that's a 10 out of 10 in terms of just happiness memories and whatnot but actually what was making me happy was spending uninterrupted time with my kids so staying home and playing Legos on the living room floor with them that might be like an eight and a half because because that's what's making me happy you just have to figure out like the actual purpose I think a good formula for a pretty good life at the simplest level is Independence plus purpose you need to have a purpose that is bigger

than yourself that you are chasing family religion work whatever it might be different for everybody you need and you need to have the independence to make sure you can do it on your own terms rather than chasing somebody else's goal that's at the highest level of psychological well-being Independence and purpose and money is not one of those things but you can easily see how money can help those things money brings you Independence it can allow you to find your purpose in a bigger way you're not chasing you're not you're not at your boss's whim you

can do whatever you want you're independent so using money as a tool can make you happier spending money can make you happier but it's not the thing that is making you happier it's just a tool to do other things and acquire other things that are actually making you happy I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor ag1 by now many of you have heard me say that if I could take Just One supplement that supplement would be ag1 the reason for that is ag1 is the highest quality and most complete of the

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time with them playing Legos at home my graduate adviser sadly passed away very young of cancer she was 50 and I knew her kids really when they were in the womb CU she was pregnant with the first one and I attended the memorial service there and um it was an incredible thing because people gave up gave their speeches and um and her kids got up and by then they were I think you know about 8 and 11 or so and I'm sure they had a great many thoughts and feelings that they didn't share but the

one thing that really stood out is they appreciated how much unstructured time their mom had spent with them it wasn't this like big event or something it was all the unstructured time that she had spent with them and that was very inherent to the kind of person she was and so that really stuck with me and God willing you live a very long time but I think for anyone listening to this and because of the statement that conman made where that we are not well calibrated to sense a future regret you know that unstructured time

is perhaps one of the most valuable things that we can give our relationships both the people we engage in them with and ourselves and it's I don't think it's I don't think it's disgusted enough there's a a gerontologist named Carl pmer who wrote a book great book called 30 lessons for living and what he did is he interviewed about a 100 centenarians and he just said tell me about your life what what you know what what advice do you have for the rest of us and there's a section of his book about money and he

says of the of the thousand people there a thousand people he interviewed of the 10,000 centenarians he interviewed not a single one of them looking back at their lives said I wish I earned more money not one but virtually every one of them said I wish I spent more time with my kids I wish I was nicer to people I wish I spent more time with my friends my family that was Universal but earn more money was not in there whatsoever that stuck with me mhm and as you point out however earning money allows for

the opportunity to spend time with kids and loved ones of all kinds it can but I think there are a lot of people for whom it's the opposite if you are a partner at a law firm you're earning a ton of money congratulations great you proba have a big house and a nice car you're also probably working 100 hours a week and the things that might fill your soul it's different for everybody this is not Universal but what might actually make you happy spending time with your friends your family exercising sleeping late uh is not

available to you so that's why it's Independence plus purpose and I think there are a lot of people who make millions of dollars per year and have no Independence whatsoever they're completely tied to their boss's whims to their work to their employer they might love it I'm not saying you shouldn't do that but they have no Independence at all I think there are billionaires who have no Independence because they are so tied to doing things whether they like it or not and that's I think a lot of people go crazy in that situation because they're

like I'm making $5 million a year but it's not making me any happier it's like yeah what what would make you happier is independence and you are pushing ping yourself away from that you were probably more independent when you were 15 and had no money than you are at 40 making millions of dollars a year so then in an Ideal World which of course doesn't exist one would find a vocation or a Pursuit that they found really meaningful would work really really hard would make enough money to then I guess retire and spend unstructured time

with the people you love and then simply stop working in this model that clearly is an artificial model that I'm creating here um because it seems like after a certain point provided you earned that money through an effort that you felt was meaningful um presumably with people you enjoy or even if it wasn't you found it meaningful you make that money then it seems that it's all about human interactions at that point yeah and what's what's true is that that that scenario that that you know dream scenario might be true for 1% of the people

that they can earn enough money to retire young and then pursue whatever they want there's an entrepreneur named Felix Dennis who wrote A book many years ago called how to get rich and there's a quote in that book he says he was at the time maybe in his 70s and worth about a billion dollars something like that and he said if I knew what I knew now and I could do life over again I would make as much money as I could retire at age 35 and plant trees and write poetry and he's like looking

back that's that's what I should have done is do but let's leave aside that of course not everybody can do that what he do he kept working he kept working even though he didn't need more money absolutely this is interesting because people who do achieve a high degree of wealth at a young age seem to keep going and we could make all sorts of assumptions about why it is that they do that expectations that they uh from others um that their ego uh literally their sense of self in some way or perhaps entirely is um

is tied to the sense that they're still in Pursuit um that it's somehow a failure to opt out at that point yeah um I mean we can speculate all day but um what this guy Felix said really Rings true it seems like once people reach number and it for everyone it's going to be different it's not going to be a billion dollars for everybody once they have enough resources for themselves and the people they need to take care of maybe a bit more as a buffer it makes no sense to continue on that path well

I think there are a lot of people I think you're one of them and I'm one of them who enjoy what they do and if you and I got to a point where we're completely financially independent all the money we'll need for the rest of our life I would still be a writer you would still do your research because we enjoy it absolutely it's not just right and I think if actually if you are the kind of person who says once I hit my number I'm done you probably don't love your work at all almost

by definition you don't uh I think what's dangerous though is when the money itself is part of your identity I like being a writer I like the process of writing but if I were to say I have to keep writing books because I need to make more money I just I have to have a higher net worth particularly if I'm past the point of taking care of my family then at that point I think money is actually like a liability it's a financial asset and a psychological liability it's taking control over what you're doing in

life if you're saying I have to have more of it I mean if there's anything in life where you're like I I have to have more and even when I get more my satiation point goes higher and higher what is that it's an addiction and that's it's controlling you at that point so there are a lot of people for whom money is a financial asset and a psychological liability and I think that's actually true for some of the richest people in society that the more like it it grows exponentially over time the Richer you become

the more addicted to having more grows on you in the backdrop of everything we've talked about thus far is the biology of dope reward um dopamine of course being a molecule that people associate with reward but it's really about the pursuit of reward it's about more it's about and it's it's no coincidence that dopamine is involved in generating movement in the body this is why people with Parkinson's who are depleted in dopamine can't generate movement and it's also involved in generating cognitive movement and pursuit paying attention to things there is this idea uh that I've

been pushing for a few years now that kind of throws its arms around a big literature on dopamine that says that addiction is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure but your definition is actually much better I realize addiction is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure and or safety or a sense of safety yeah right because here we're not talking about making more money to enjoy things more we're talking about making more money to avoid the sense that pain is coming or that we are vulnerable and for a

lot of people that pain is a social pain that they not going to climb high enough on the social ladder that their peers are earning more than them that their neighbors have a bigger house whatever it might be that's the pain that they're trying to avoid and that is a game that cannot be won because gratefully thankfully there are a lot of very wealthy people in this world and no matter how much money you're making there's already some there's always somebody out there who's earning more living better and has bigger house and a nicer car

that's always the case so if you are on that path of I need to earn more to climb that ladder so I can have more than the next guy mean that's that's a game that you cannot win and I I think that game of comparison too also grows the wealthier you are that you are the billionaires are more likely to compare themselves to other billionaires than the minimum wage worker is to compare themselves to somebody making $10 an hour or whatever it's you are more likely to compare your lifestyle the Richer you become and since

that comparison to other people is what gives you a feeling of inadequacy there's this irony it's hard to wrap your head around it and come to terms with it but some of the most money insecure people you'll ever meet are the richest people you'll ever meet people who live in a 15,000 ft Mansion yeah but he's got a 17,000 ft Mansion things that Ordinary People would never consider that just consumes their life and again that's the point where money is like the psychological debt it's psychological liability it's controlling their it it becomes an integral part

of their identity they wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and they see uh a person who makes money that's their identity who are you I'm a person who makes money and that's when like your process of chasing it just becomes like a detriment to your happiness over time you're not using it as a tool to live a better life you're using it as a yard stick to measure yourself against others by I fundamentally believe that all forms of addiction all forms of addiction are fundamentally a fear of death their way of

shrinking our uh aperture on time perception so that we're in pursuit of something and for people that can place their addiction within work it has this feedback of being quote unquote functional as opposed to dysfunctional this is also true for people that are continually uh seeking Awards within their profession I mean there these professions Academia included but other professions where people are constantly pinning Awards on one another and it gives this illusion of progress when in fact there's a whole world of things happening now these people often have quite healthy families and relationships so they're

not mutually exclusive but you know I think I know a few billionaires not not many but I know some that are very happy they tend to be the people that are still working and in pursuit of new things Avid learners but perhaps by virtue of the work that I do which is focused on science but also Health you know the modern billionaires that I'm aware of seem to be very focused on not just making money but also trying to secure their place on the planet for a very long time not through Legacy although I think

many of them like to provide for the next Generations in their family surely not So Much by putting their names on the sides of buildings anymore this used to be the way it was done but rather trying to secure their health status because the one thing that money can buy sort of is better health care right but money can't buy you more years of your life except by virtue of the things that you are willing to not do and do behaviorally yeah you still have to exercise you still have to get your sleep you have

to avoid certain things um and so the modern billionaires often are talking about what they're doing for their health as opposed to their yacht their car Etc this has now become the kind of metric for comparison blood profiles become a sort of point of bragging for people it's pretty interesting uh especially given that you just look back about 50 or even 100 years and and further back and the more wealthy people were the less physical labor they were doing now they're doing more physical labor to try and live longer so what are your thoughts on

the on the relationship between physical health and and money I mean obviously there's a there's a sweet spot there but um there's no pill that people can purchase to live longer right I I I view it in the negative sense of the people who work to get money so hard that it takes a physical toll on their body and that is so incredibly common and that's another form of debt that you can very easy you can easily measure your net worth and your income you could put a number on it very clean to measure how

do you me it's much harder to measure your health and it's I think it's easier for people to say yes I'm Only Sleeping 5 hours a night and I'm I'm getting I'm I'm on my third divorce and I'm overweight but I'm making a lot of money this year because one is very easy to measure and the others are are much harder your happiness your health what not it's harder to measure that and I I I do think too that if you are very wealthy particularly the very very wealthy you get so accustomed towards I can

snap my fingers and literally get anything a golf stream jet a mansion whatever I I I can get it right now but health is like this last elusive thing that's going to that by and large you cannot purchase and I think that drives a lot of people crazy and that's why if you can have anything in the world by snapping your fingers and getting it then you eventually move towards what's the thing that you don't have and that's immortality and I think that's there's a long history of that going back to the Robert Barons uh

John de Rockefeller was obsessed with it Andrew Carnegie was obsessed with it if you can have everything material in the world you're still going to have desire and ordinary people can sit around and dream and say one day I'm going to have the Mansion we're not even a mansion one day I'm going to have a house of my own I'm going to have a car I'm going to send my kids to college everybody wants to dream so if all that is a given you have all the money you could ever spend you still want a

dream so what do you dream about you dream about immortality and so I think that's that's been the case for a very long period of time what's interesting too is that there was a uh there was a historian who looked back at the British purage he got a lot of data on how long people lived in uh in various points of the UK economy and what he found was until about I think it was 1750 the richest members of the UK had among the shortest lives the poorest people were some of them who are living

longest and he dug into it like how could this be the richest people die the fastest and what he found is the richest people were the only ones who could afford all the quack medicines and the Sham doctors who were just poisoning them they were poison ends to back in the day when we knew nothing about medicine so I think the idea of of I want a better life and I should be able to buy that like there's a long history of that backfiring on people as well yeah there's a lot of excitement right now

about stem cells and treatments that currently are not available in the United States that are are available out of country and um I get asked about these a lot most of them don't have FDA approval yet um some of them probably never will have FDA approval uh we'll probably talk about stem cells another time do you think you see this though where the wealthiest people are spending money on treatments that you either know or not going to work or are a very questionable yeah work all the time and and that might backfire on you that

might make you less healthy oh absolutely I mean I'll just point out I don't have anything against stem cell therapies I think they hold great potential um but there is a true story about a stem cell Clinic down in Florida prior to the FDA um you know bringing the gavel down on them of injecting stem cells into the eyes of wealthy people who could afford the treatment um these people had certain markers for uh macular degeneration and other things that can cause blindness and guess what happened to these people they all went blind right so

that brought the gel down on stem cell therapy generally in this country a lot of people are getting infusions of stem cells and related things um out of country they're coming back and they're walking and talking so um and they're calling me and they're asking what what my thoughts are and I have a lot of thoughts I mean I think that the the basics of longevity are clear right I mean you want to avoid you know head trauma and environmental toxins those things are real and and um if you have certain mutations like braa mutations

you know you need to be more careful about cancer and avoid smoking all the stuff right alcohol turns out to be pro pro cancerous and things of that sort but then it's you know it's physical activity it's nutrition it's social connection it's sleep it's sunlight it's you know it's all the things that I've talked about in this podcast and that other people talk about as well but yes very wealthy people are looking for that edge uh to live longer and it is true that when you start to layer in all the basics of dos and

don'ts all all the behaviors and then you start to augment that with a few extra things you get the sense of more Vigor that sort of suggests they may live longer but you we we still don't know right we still don't know with the exception of exercise that we absolutely know can enrich mitochondrial density give people more energy and vigor Etc um you know most most of this is still a big question mark see I I could see uh a very wealthy person using their money if you are very sick and you have a rare

cancer to throw the kitchen sink at it every excellent those those those million dollar therapies or what not absolutely I think it's a different animal if you are already pretty healthy to say I'm going to throw my money at trying to be become immortal or close to it whatever it might be that's that's that's a different thing uh I totally agree and and I think what we're talking about here is as you said it fairly quickly but I think I want to highlight it um because I think it's really important that even people who have

billions of dollars still have a sense of of Yearning For for something that's missing yeah or that they don't have and in some cases that's the sustaining factor to their well-being you say it's also good to be in Pursuit right maybe that's with dopamine too right we we always want more it's it's the pursuit of more and if you're wealthy enough to have everything you still have a a part of your brain it's like yeah but I want more I want more I want more and if you've exhausted the physical part of the world that

material part of the world and let's leave aside the billionaires even the average ordinary American family that owns a modest house owns a car that functions well owns nice clothes will send their kids to a state school by a lot of historical definitions they have everything they have everything you would ever need but you're always yearning for more it's always is this pursuit of well what else don't I have and I think nothing you what you want more than anything in life is what you want and cannot have that's what you're going to chase with

all of your effort is a thing that you want and cannot have I think that that that's where health comes in for a lot of these people as long as you think that there's a possibility you could get it the uh the dopamine circuit loves you want what you feel is just out of your reach but might be possible to achieve I mean this is why people throw so much money away gambling but maybe with social media it makes it seem so that there are virtually anything is within your reach because it used to be

before social media that your view of the world was mostly your neighbors and your co-workers and your siblings and now everybody's view of the world is a curated highlight real of the most extreme events in the world so if you are a 15-year-old scrolling through in Instagram then what is within your reach what looks within your reach is a Ferrari and a private jet and a mansion in a way that didn't exist when you and I were kids and I think it it makes the aspiration level that much harder and real examples of people who

went from nothing to immensely popular or wealthy Etc I mean gosh I would say about once a month somebody walks right up to me and says just watch Someday I'm gonna have the top podcast in the world on blank and they they're trying to seed this thing that they've seen on social media which are examples of people you know kind of it used to be called rags to riches but you know they parallels in different universes but there's a famous musician I think his name is Ed Sheeran who there's still a video of him early

on saying like he knew he was going to make it if you watch the Conor McGregor documentary it's amazing I think it's called notorious on Netflix even if people aren't into to MMA they should they should at least watch the first part he was videotaping himself very early on and he made this prediction that he was going to be a world champion and then he ends up being a world champion right um this is great anecdote that Kanye West used to practice his Grammy speech when he was walking to the train because he couldn't afford

the car like when he was an absolute nobody he was practicing his Grammy acceptance speech of just like absolute ambition of where you're going yeah and I don't know if this anecdote is true but there's the the anote that I heard that you know Matt Damon and um uh Ben Affleck practicing their Academy Awards AC acceptance speech on the school in the schoolyard when they were kids and then they gave their speech and they were you know laughing about that I grew up skateboarding so the when I first got into it the the Tony Hawks

and the Mike mcgills and Steve cavaleros these were the names at the time where like these these luminaries right the gap between us and Them was so huge by time I was a junior in high school my best friend at the time Paul zuanic sent in a videotape of himself to a company called planet Earth he got sponsored next thing you know we're in the shop watching him skateboard and within a year or two he had his own PR model yeah so you I think social media gives us not just the sense of what's out

there but it gives us very Salient examples of people that went from completely unknown to extremely known just this last year there's the uh you know the so Haw Tu a girl you know it's interviewed outside a bar something like she now has a very popular podcast she has sponsors she's known literally became one of the most famous people in the country right and and has a financial stream now of of income to through her podcast and so this raises the the the sort of idea and people's minds or the the possibility however remote that

if somebody puts a camera in front of you by virtue of one thing that you say you could suddenly be a inter internationally known person and potentially go from quote unquote rags to riches and if you look at the studies when you ask teenagers what is your uh preferred career what do you want to be when you grow up it used to be astronaut used to be doctor used to be entrepreneur now it's influencer by far is what people want to be it seems like the quickest path to fame and wealth and for a lot

of people it is my sister-in-law is a kindergarten teacher she has a girl in her class who has over a million followers on YouTube as a kindergartener like that that that didn't exist when you and I were kids or it was so rare but now like like enough people know stories like that if there are a few of them enough people know stories to give you the sense of hope of like well if they could do it I could do it too well I'll tell everyone out there that um if you think that uh Fame

is what you want um Fame restricts your freedom it does not increase your freedom there's a great quote from Nal where he says what you want to be is Rich and Anonymous that's the sweet spot that you want to be the opposite you are poor and famous uh and that's that's the hardest spot to be in but if you can be rich and anonymous because I think there's a a a really important concept with money that I call social debt which is when the money that you have influences it changes how other people think of

you and even may maybe how you think about yourself and you can measure your asset it's not it's not actually debt like it's not like debt you repay the bank but is very much a debt in terms of it is an anchor on your happiness that you have to repay and fame is the ultimate social debt and for a lot of people their social debt of Fame is more than the money that they made from whatever made them famous to begin with and there's this anecdote from Tiger Woods where he said he loves scuba diving

because when he's 100 feet under the ocean is the only time in the world where people aren't taking pictures of him and asking things of him and gawking at him like that's that sucks that's not that you have a lot of sympathy for somebody like that but it does suck like you can measure his net worth very quickly what's your net worth just show me the number how do you measure the liability of feeling like you have no privacy unless you are scuba diving that's a that's a hard thing and at various levels a lot

of people have that even if you are uh earn a modest income and all a sudden your friends your family start saying hey I could you know I heard you got a raise I could I could use a little bit myself that's a social debt they want you to pay at dinner and whatnot and of course maybe you're happy to do that you're happy to share it but let's not pretend that there's not a little bit of social debt and liability that comes with every added amount of income that you have I mean so much

of social media is just by definition in terms of the the number of followers being displayed Etc a number of likes and comments being displayed is is designed to set up these metrics of comparison yeah the smartest minds of the generation work at Facebook and Instagram and Twitter to figure out how to give you fomo how to generate a little bit more dopamine and they're very good at it I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors function I recently became a function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to

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again that's function health.com huberman to get early access to function one thing that um I wish somebody would do maybe it's been done is you mentioned earlier this uh not typical but I guess semic commmon thing of an article will come out and say you know that the five things that um people say on their deathbed or that they and they look back and they mentioned that they wish they'd spent less time at work they wish they' spent more time with their kids or more time in nature perhaps has anyone ever just asked people directly

um what were the things that they are most proud of or the things that they really feel brought them tremendous meaning then and as they're passing away uh because it's it's it's related but it's kind of the inverse of the same question yeah Warren Buffett brought this up one time he said a good way to think about life is uh it's it's it's kind of grim but he said write what you want your obituary to say and then work backwards to live up to it and in that situation if you were to write like what

do you want your obituary to say most people would say oh I I hope it says Morgan was a good father he was a good husband he helped his community he was admired by his co-workers that's what I wanted to say and for a lot of people it's different for everyone but it' be something like that and why Buffett said it was important is because nobody who's writing their preferred obituary would say uh would uh include the size of their house how many horsepower their their car had how nice their clothes were because everybody knows

it doesn't matter and it's like uh forget who made this idea there's a thing between resume virtues and eulogy virtues yeah that was uh David Brook David Brooks said that thank you resumé virtues are you know how much money you make uh your degrees everything eulogy virtues is he was a great father he was a great friend he helped his community he was funny and I think most people really aspire to have eulogy virtues but they spend all their day chasing resume virtues resume virtues can be great I want a good education I want a

good income but what you're really trying to chase is to use those things to gain more resume virtues at the end of the day so I think if you think about it through that lens a lot of these things become clear and that's why like I said going on a great vacation with my kids if that's a 10 what's really fun about that is is spending time with them when I'm detached from work I'm not checking my phone every seven seconds I'm just spending hours with my kids giving them my full attention that's what made

me happy The View was great on the beach cool but that's what made me happy and I can do that at home can I and so that's that's the difference between like going to Maui is a resume virtue spending time with your kids is a eulogy virtue why is it do you think that even though we've proud all heard by now that you know compounding interest is great right you put in let's say a small or a moderate amount of money into even just a savings account that's acur couple percent you know varies year by

year and with the economy of course or into the markets that over time if you quote unquote set it and forget it just kind of like put it there and walk away that you're likely to make x% over time and you can look at the plot you can you can look at that line upward and to the right it almost always is Jagged line drifting upward to the right and even just scroll over and see okay at age whatever I'm gonna have X number of dollars and that value is often very high relative to where

one's current wealth is even if they're a student or they have very little put away we we all hear this we can see it you can run the models it's almost trivial and yet people don't do that even if they have the income to save is it that hard for us to project our emotional state and the sorts of things that we integrate in terms of life meaning and value into the future that most people just don't do that and why do you think that is I mean I'm not asking you to play neurobiologist here

I mean I think we both agree that that uh time perception is is a complicated thing um but you would think that people would just sort of get it but we're not rational most people aren't rational in that way they don't save they don't invest and they don't compound interest and so they end up with a lot less money than they could have and a lot more regret yeah I think there's two ways to think about this one is uh my Michael batnick phrased it this way he said if I ask you what is 8

plus 8 plus 8 plus 8 you figure that out in 5 seconds that's an easy one if I said what is 8 time 8 time 8 time 8 time 8 even if you're a math nerd that's it's it's too hard you can't figure it out we're not wired for exponential thinking we just can't do it and therefore a lot of even if you show you the numbers Hey invest a small amount retire with a million dollars I think it's so counterintuitive that most people see that like H okay that doesn't doesn't really seem right doesn't

really pass the sniff test how big the numbers can get how quick quickly the numbers can get big the other thing is if you tell a young person hey you have 50 years in front of you to invest that's great times on your side when you're when you're 70 years old you're going to have $10 million 50 years from now might as well be 10,000 years from now you're talking about people who are who don't know what they're going to eat for dinner tonight and you're talking about like hey let's let's talk about the year

2077 like it's so far out of there even if that's the right way to think about it it's it's a tough way to think about it and time perception you mentioned is so difficult for people if I said you're G to get punched in the face in 10 seconds like that's a fear and you're like oh I don't but if I said someone's gonna punch you in the face 50 years from now you're like I'll deal with it when I get there it's so easy to put out of sight out of mind and so and

the other thing is Warren Buffett talked about this a lot he said uh actually it was Charlie Monger who said this he said when teaching Finance to young people people either understand it instantly or never it's like some people are just wired to get it and some people aren't and that's always been the case M often said all the time he said the iron rule of math is only 1% of people can end in the top 1% and that's why for a lot of people yes you should save and invest for 50 years let's not

pretend that that is easy or that everybody is psychologically able to do it some people are wired differently of course that's the case as they are with health and intelligence and lots of other things so I do think there's a thing for financial education of getting people to understand what is possible but I don't think we'll ever live in a world where everyone gets it and does it I I don't think that world has never existed and I think will never exist because it's not math it's not a spreadsheet it's behavior and and we now

live in a world where we understand the dangers of smoking and highly processed foods and whatever it might be but even if we know it people still do it because it's behavioral it's not intelligence so showing people the numbers and getting them to do it is night and day do you know how they got people to stop smoking in particular young people it wasn't by scaring them about their health turns out the most effective campaign to get especially young people to stop smoking was to hijack the inherent rebellion of Youth and to display ads of

wealthy older people in rooms full of smoke so became us as the youth rebelling against them the older generation that are trying to take our money it had nothing to do with health I love that and it absolutely worked yeah and uh I have friends that work on this sort of thing in the context of Public Health as it relates to all sorts of Public Health initiatives and the effective way to change human behavior as it relates to health is to incen Aesthetics to incentivize fear uh or to hijack fear of dying but even fear

of dying is not sufficient uh as compared to um hijacking these uh cross generational uh let's just call them frictions um that exist so I found that to be interesting used a math example of 8 plus 8 plus 8 plus 8 versus 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 and you said that the human brain is not capable of exponential thinking or most people's brains are not capable of exponential thinking I think um you either intentionally or inadvertently hit on something really important I don't know that the dopamine reward system which is the fundamental currency

of pursuit and reward across all time scales it's kind of wild right one neuromodulator and there are other things involved that modulate that modulator but one neuromodulator is involved in reward Pursuit across all time scales whether we're playing a let's say we're both competitive enough to play a game of chess or Checkers dopamine is motivating the pursuit for the win or a four-year degree or an eight-year degree or why you would want maybe your kids to win a soccer game like now you're like a third personing dopamine right it's across all time scales all scenarios

it's incredible and across many species so it makes me wonder and I'll have to ask some of my colleagues that uh work on these dopamine reward schedules uh for a living whether or not the dopamine reward system actually can do exponential math it might not be able to do exponential math it might be that the pursuit of water the pursuit of mates the pursuit of food the pursuit of shelter which is what these dopamine circuits evolved under the constraints of whether or not they even capable of doing exponential thinking or if it's like the marshmallow

test which got misconstrued in many ways but it's like yeah would would you rather have one right now or two in the future it's I think for a lot of people it's it's just like there there are some people for whom like they're wired so differently for this so you hear stories about like the old the the old very wealthy people the old billionaires of when they were 20 years old they would not get a haircut because they knew that $3 haircut would compound into $100 by the time they're older they were just so Wired

from birth to understand this and to have a very long perception of time to do it by definition that's the Rarity most people are not like that and I I don't know if they should be either I don't know if you should be the kind of person in your entire life who is always saving for a future and and never en what you have too like that could lead to a lot of regret as well and there are those people so let's parse the marshmallow test the marshmallow test I think initially done at Stanford um

I think it was at Bing nursery school or something like that or maybe somewhere at Stanford if I'm wrong someone will correct me in the comments of course for those that don't know is you they brought these really cute kids into rooms and they put the marshmallow in front of them and they told them they could eat it now or they could wait and they could get two marshmallows later and then they videotaped them and the the videos are absolutely delightful of the kids you know distracting themselves or having the marshmallows talk or taking a

little piece of the marshmallows I mean it reveals as much variation on human self-constraint behavior as you could possibly imagine and they're really interesting as you know I would like to know whether the children that were able to wait and therefore get two marshmallows were trying to resist the temptation or whether or not they were being pulled forward by the anticipation of two marshmallows my understanding and maybe this is this is not complete but my understanding at least part of it was neither of those two things the kids who did the best and resisted it

were the ones who distracted themselves they weren't even thinking about the marshmallow they would sing a song they would start playing with their shoes they'd play with another kid and the ones who could not resist are the ones who just sat there staring at the one marshmallow that was tempting them that's too hard to resist almost everybody will resist that it was like the environment that they put themselves in but they weren't thinking into the future about how great it would be to have two marshmallows I don't think so I think they were they were

so because their kids are so distracted they have the memory of a goldfish they they they wanted they wanted to just do something they'd sing a song they'd play with their shoes they play with their friends and then by Dent of doing that all of a sudden they had waited long enough to get the two marshmallows I think that was at least part of it and I think there's true for a lot of people too take about think about the stock market where uh so much temptation to always watch it and see what it's doing

because we have CNBC and there's the ticker and the lights are green and red and whatnot for a lot of people it's impossible to watch that or even worse in Robin Hood you get a push notification on your phone that's too hard to resist but you know what you see very good investing Behavior where people do a really good job is when you invest automatically every paycheck into your 401k and you forgot your password because that environment is is against Temptation there's there's nothing to do you forgot your password but if you're just bombarding yourself

with stimulus of what to do most people cannot resist that my way of dealing with social media I would say compulsion not addiction is I now um one could take an old phone um I actually got a phone specifically for social media so I have Instagram and X on that phone I don't even recall the number of that phone I airdrop things onto it if I want to post and I I do what uh Rogan calls post and ghost yeah so you post and then it goes into a box because otherwise I'm just absolutely Blown

Away by how much time can be sucked away all of it um you tell yourself I'm going to just look at social media for a moment and then you're pulled down some rabbit hole it's just incredible the way they've designed these algorithms to to get you right and of course I like social I teach on social media this conversation will probably be you know fragments of it will be on social media but um I think that people don't realize how compulsion inducing the dopamine circuitry is yeah and once you start getting pulled down it you're

you're a different organism altogether and uh you know it's not a coincidence that the people who have the largest social media accounts spend very little time on social media this if you spend too much you just it just get overwhelming well you're spending time doing things like commenting and liking and and there's a liability to some of that but there's a reward to it too an immediate reward what you're not doing is going and doing the thing that you bring to social media that brings you more followers and and Views yeah so I always think

of social media as uh the last point in a funnel where I go do things in real life like research papers talk to people um learn and then organize that learning into a format that I think people can benefit from and then put it on social media but that's the the end point yeah and so if I stay too long there um then I'm not getting more material it's almost like if if I were a farmer um you know this is like you know once the crops ship you know I'm not going to stand there

just like looking at the road as the as the truck goes by yeah you got to get back and plant more seeds and plow the field I mean I mean so I like to think about these things in these very basic terms because I feel that the dopamine circuitry has it hasn't evolved right right but we have new new technology that have hijacked it to some extent Jerry Seinfeld said one of the reason he quit his show in the 1990s was because what made it so good and so funny is that he and Larry David

would go like sit in a deli and watch people order and make a joke that's where they got their content from was observing the world but they got so busy and so famous that they couldn't do that anymore and he knew that it was going to come at the detriment of the show that it wasn't like the ultimate reward of like how big was the season how many people watch the show how much money do we make what made them great was going out and living and doing their thing and once it came at the

expense of that it it didn't work anymore well this raises a really key point for people uh including myself which is in an ideal world one can make a living that is sufficient for their needs doing something that you truly enjoy doing or I would say to be realistic where 75% of the activities are pleasurable yeah maybe 15% are kind of of neutral and then the remainder there's some punishing features there are punishing features in every profession yes Jeff said if you can enjoy half that's pretty good okay all right so I'm I'm a little

more um stringent with my with my yeah more of an optimist than Bezos hey I don't but then again he's Bezos um yeah where I mean you want to be able to enjoy your work not all aspects of it are are going to be pleasurable but ideally that's the case because what we're talking about here is effort that precedes dopamine yeah and I'm a big believer that dopamine that is not preceded by effort is very dangerous it's not just things that are addictive but by way of example methamphetamine cocaine dramatically and quickly Spike dopamine levels

with no effort put in with no effort put in and then of course we know from the beautiful work of my colleague anmy and others that then the the dopamine profile is that then the higher the peak and the faster the rise to Peak then the more drop below Baseline and the more time it takes to return to Baseline and typically what people do is when they're below Baseline in terms of their dopamine that's when they start hitting the Hammer with whatever Behavior or substance and all it does is drive that Baseline further and further

and further down maybe that's a good analogy for the lottery winner who gets a lot of money a lot of dopamine in this example but didn't put anything into it you didn't build a business you didn't work at your career you just got lucky so it doesn't feel as good there's no effort put into to like base it against compare it against what you were talking about before which is time that's unstructured with your kids playing Legos it's almost it sounds effortless it's not like you're like oh I got to go play with my is

Legos I'm sure that you're like yes like this is fun this is this is the good stuff as they say and so there are forms of reward it seems that are not preceded by effort although you had to raise those kids and your wife had to give birth to those kids and it's work but but in terms of what's happening in in that limited time frame it's just so seamless right it's just sheer pleasure and yet that kind of pleasure is enriching is this has me very perplexed as a biologist I I I still don't

know the underlying mechanisms but clearly we have multiple paths to pleasure but I think we have only one path for motivation and that's dopamine but I think there are multiple forms of pleasure and I'm certain that dopamine that is high levels of dopamine that are not preceded by effort are not just bad they are downright dangerous I feel like so much of it too with parenting m is a slightly different topic but it's the things that you're not trying to have fun with that build the biggest memories and for me it's when I travel with

my son he's nine so we go on a lot of trips now what's fun is not the event we're going to whether it's skiing or a football game that's not the best part of the trip the best part of the trip is flying with him renting a car with him going out to dinner with him that's where you get all the memories it's like it's a process of doing it that's going to you're really enjoying that's going to build all the memories not NE not necessarily the the final destination where you're going yeah I I

just want to hover on that for a second because I can think of numerous examples in my life where the best parts of a relationship were like a drive home with someone where like you know I'm asleep for part of the time they're asleep for part of the time and you get back and like like you really you feel like you really did something there's something bonding about about traveling with people yeah even in the absence of external input like you're you're just uh what is that it must be something fundamental some fundamental circuit about

about journeying with with other members of our species going through a challenge with someone going going through a journey of like we we did this together we went through it together I think there's so much of that if you go on go on a long hike with somebody at the top like you want to hug each other like we just did that together and it's not it's not even about being at the top it's like the journey you did with each other so cliche but I think it's true for a lot of things and what's

that movie with Emil Hirsch where he um it's a true story uh about the guy that goes out into the Alaskan Wilderness and lives on that bus and um sadly he passes away there I just spoiled it for you um but he has I think it's called into the wild into the wild where he's um obsessed with this notion of bonding with nature but then in his journal a real Journal of a guy that really died out there um he gets to the realization that the the the fundamental uh pursuit in life is to experience

things with other people other people absolutely yeah and this is why solitary confinement is such a a torture the extreme end of it brutal right brutal on the other end of the spectrum there's Freedom so let's talk about Freedom yeah it means different things to different people but certainly one does not want to be enslaved by anything including their own pursuit of work so they I think at least two forms of anti-freedom one would be the type that exists within our head we have to continue on this track because I'm afraid of failure or I'm

in pursuit of something and we are actually enslaved in a way that we uh s create for ourselves in in the act of pursuit the other is the job where you know it's providing resources but we really don't need to be there and yet people don't hop off the train yeah you know they could they could escape the the dreaded boss or the dreaded circumstance you know I remember a time when all I wanted was a window at work that opened for fresh air that's all I wanted I like all these other things I just

I just wanted a window that opened I even tried to find one of these like little saws to but then the maintenance people or or the the whatever the facilities people told me I'd get in trouble um we we yearn for Freedom we hate we hate enslavement right for all the obvious reasons in your observation what is the best way to frame this need for freedom and I I have to imagine that people listening are at various points along their their careers um what have you observed here in yourself and with other people you talk

to wealthy not wealthy what is freedom how do how do we get real freedom I think there's there's this anecdote that I love which was from uh Franklin Roosevelt when he was a kid I think he was like five years old he complained to his mother one day he said my entire life is rules and schedules and I hate it so mom said okay Frankie tomorrow you can do whatever you want do the day is yours anything you want and his mom Sarah Roosevelt wrote in her diary that night he said that day that he

could do anything he went back to his normal schedule he did everything on schedule like he was supposed to do but he was much happier because nobody was telling him to do it and I think that's what's true for a lot of people Freedom does not mean you do nothing it doesn't necessarily mean you retire it doesn't mean you quit working I want to be free and independent which means I want to wake up every morning and say I can do whatever the hell I want today even of most mornings what I want to do

is work and be productive and put myself to use so I think a lot of people misconstrue Freedom as I'm going to I'm going to ride off into the sunset and do nothing now it's like no I think people have an inherent drive to want to be productive and social and do things but there's a big difference between your boss telling you to do it and doing it on your own terms when I was a a junior in college like a lot of young men I wanted to be an investment banker that's what it looked

like power and Prestige so I got this Investment Banking internship and it was absolutely miserable uh they had this saying that I is so funny in hindsight they said if you don't come to work on Saturday don't bother coming back on Sunday like just the culture of it was work as work 100 hours a week just just go nuts with it and I hated I hated every single second and I had to leave but it wasn't because I was not into hard work I think I was absolutely willing to to work hard I just didn't

want anyone to tell me to do it and so when I became um you know not necessarily financially independent but I could have a job it was it was more entrepreneurial it was like oh I will work very hard and sometimes I might work as hard as an investment banker I might work 80 hours a week but it's on my terms and I think everyone is way more willing to do that than they are to be told what to do I think that is an inherent human driver and if you can use your money for

Independence to where you can wake up and say I have the financial flexibility to work where I want live where I want retire when I want take a different job move to a different department even if it's going to pay less that giving yourself Independence and autonomy I think for most people is what's going to drive that's that's that's the highest tool that you can use with money and what's important about that is where do you get independence with money it's the things you don't spend money on it's the car you didn't buy it's the

house you didn't buy and most people will view that as like idle money you're saving up money it's just sitting in the bank doing nothing no no no it's giving you Independence and once you view is like every dollar that you don't spend is money that you are actually spending on Independence it's not Idol it's giving you a it's giving you marginal more Independence than you had the day before then I think that's that to me that's why I save money I'm not saving money because I'm a I'm a pessimist I think it's all going

to come collapsing down I'm saving money because I want to be independent because that's what I think is going to give me the most fulfillment the most happiness and that's where the savings comes from wow I think this is a super important concept how should the person who is let's just say early midcareer who likes what they're doing but thinks that this is probably not the thing for them I hear about this all the time like it's this like yeah like it's it's good but it's a ton of work it's unclear how it's going to

turn out but they feel like they're already on the conveyor belt yeah there's always this question of do you do you stay in Investment Banking another year to make a bunch of money and then you get out so that you then have the freedom to pursue something where you have more freedom um you know people are always playing this kind of mental math and I don't think there's a a clear answer unless of course you're lucky enough that like you fall in love with science I mean I did not become a neuroscientist to make money

and Lord knows I didn't I mean I made some I made a living but I if people what I was making as a tenured 45-year-old professor at a one of the Premier universities in the world where the salaries are relatively high they would be shocked right just shocked at post tax income is quite Low by Bay Area standards right but did you feel like you had Independence you could teach what you want say what you want there was a level of Independence absolutely oh and I loved it and and um you know and I still

teach there and you know it's one of these things where I wouldn't trade it for anything I also in terms of intellectual stimulation um in terms of being able to look to my left or look to my right and and realize that most of the people at Stanford students included are just phenomenal like their level of intellect their Drive their excitement for what they're doing me no one ends up there by accident right so that was and remains extremely exciting yeah um but I think a lot of people unless they they they find a profession

that they really love or there's some feature of that profession that that keeps them you know looped in in a way that that feels satisfying yeah the people Etc most people are kind of thinking like all right how do I work to make a living and then you know like what what's the exit ramp people think a lot about exit ramps and sometimes it's a dollar amount but also it's the idea that maybe you know go work on their real love which might be like gardening they want to you hear about these these sort of

hobby interests right I'll go I'll write poetry or I'll you know go you know Ceramics or something like that um the things that they truly enjoy doing H how how should people optimize along those musts versus want to versus sort of aspirational goals two things come to mind here one is like if if most people understand inherently the dangers of Communism or something if the government's telling you what to do when to do it what to say that's a bad thing that's going to erode Society but a lot of those people work at a at

a job where their boss tells them what time to come in what to wear what to say how to act what not it's so they they they really understand it fundamentally at one level but they're actually doing some version now companies have to manage their employees what not it's it's not a a a a knock against that but I think what's really true for Independence and people when they if they eventually move on to writing poetry and playing in their Garden whatever it might be is that you eventually is that you leave on your own

terms that whatever your exit from your career was was because you wanted to do it on your own terms so the thing in Psychology called the peak end rule where uh to simplify it minimalize it a lot of how you remember any Endeavor that you did in life a career a vacation whatever it is is how you felt to the very end and for a lot of people if you have a great career you enjoyed your career you helped people you made money your colleagues appreciated you but then you got fired or your boss came

to you and said you're too old to keep doing this that's bad that's a that's you'll never recover from that and you compare that to the people who quit on their own terms they said look I'm proud of my career but that's enough I'm going to I'm going to take a step back and pass a baton to another generation those are the people who even if they didn't really enjoy their career that much will look back at it fondly because it gets back to freedom and autonomy and control do you leave on your own terms

or are you forced out on somebody else's schedule and so I think Maxim wherever you go in life whatever you're doing even if you're not an entrepreneur maximizing for Independence and autonomy and doing it on your own terms on your own calendar is absolutely vital in anything you're doing I mean Mo most people are not necessarily particularly as they get older are not necessarily scared of death they're scared of a death not on their own terms that that's going to sneak up on them where they're not going to have a chance to say goodbye so

I think that's a good analogy for a lot of these things we're we're we're we're not scared of the ultimate outcome we're scared of not being able to do it on our own terms I once heard Ray doio say something along the lines of you know the first third of your life has spent trying to um learn how to function in the world then there's a kind of middle third where you are acquiring resources to be able to take care of yourself and people close to you and then in the final third of your life

you want to take your knowledge take what you've gleaned in terms of Financial and other types of wealth because of course there are other types of wealth and put back you know for subsequent Generations it a beautiful model if you think about it I heard it phrased as when you get older you either become an elder or elderly you get to choose which one do you want to be an elder and help other people or elderly you're just going to disintegrate over time you got to choose which one uh nowadays we have both the benefit

and the problem of people living longer and maintaining Vigor longer and therefore working longer this is certainly true in Academia people don't like to retire yeah they really do not like to retire and I don't think it's just so they can make more money I think it's so they can stay intellectually active people get into science typically because they like learning uh or academics generally they have a campus office where they go to and you know it makes them feel socially connected so you can understand all the reasons why these people in their late 60s

70s and even 80s sometimes even 90s continue to continue to go to work it's rare for these older generations of people that stay in various professions to continue to um glean resources but it happens I mean I how old is Buffett um 993 maybe yeah he's still investing yeah oh yeah full time okay and I'm presumably he's going to use that money for what either philanthropy or generational wealth within his family is that the plan he's already given away I think about 100 billion okay and the plan is to give away the vast majority I

think he announced recently that he was going to leave each of his kids a billion dollars for philanthropy not for their personal use but for philanthropy and the rest is all is all given away oh yeah the the children of the ultra Rich that inherit all their wealth uh I don't know what the numbers are are there I I know a great number of them squander it yes but I also know a few examples of some that really make good on that those in those uh incredible assets that they inherited and are you know very

um thoughtful hardworking people it does happen there couple families I think of all the big Rober Baron families of 150 years ago the Rockefellers probably did it the best the Rockefellers still have a lot of wealth the Vanderbilts by far did it the worst they just squandered it in a couple generations and this is fairly well known now but it's pretty interesting the first Vanderbilt Heir who did not get a trust fund for whom all the money was was dried up the first person who didn't get any money was Anderson Cooper of CNN his mother

Gloria Vanderbilt was the last Vanderbilt who got a big trust fund and Cooper I think not coincidentally is the most successful and probably the happiest Vanderbilt Heir in 150 years and he's talked about this he was like I was the first person in my family who had to make a name for himself the fact that his last name is not Vanderbilt it's Cooper and didn't get any money he was like I I had to go out and find my own way and find my own identity whereas all of his ancestors their identity was you're rich

from birth that's your identity you don't need to go out and make a name for yourself you don't need to work hard you don't need to create anything all you need to do is sit here and spend your money and it made them miserable and Cooper was the first person look this is this is very anecdotal not saying this how it's going to work for everyone but the first person who had to make a name for himself and work for himself was the one who was the most successful and probably the happiest super important concept

again uh in incredibly important I think because people often will think that they because they were born into families that didn't have a lot of money that somehow um they were given the short end of the stick and in some sense they were right I mean it's one thing to grow up in a in a world with assets and another world where you don't have assets um but we don't often hear about the the downside it's hard to have sympathy for a Vanderbilt Heir who inherited $400 million on their 18th birthday sympathy for that right

right well the show succession right you know it's all about the the horrible uh interpersonal dynamics of people that have a lot of wealth because it's never enough and they they self-destruct essentially I think the situation is you don't have sympathy for them but you should also realize that if you were in their shoes you would probably self-destruct as well it's very difficult to do once in a while you see someone who is completely motivated irrespective of money you know Mark Zuckerberg was offered a billion dollars cash for Facebook when I think he was 22

and he said no I don't want it I'm going to keep going that's a ridiculously rare personality and I think you know most people if I inherited a billion dollars on my 18th birthday I probably would have no motivation but if musk did if Elon Musk did wouldn't slow them down whatsoever uh Jeff Bezos did Mark Zuckerberg did those are very rare people who have motivation that is so detached from money I wonder if it's the excesses of wealth that um destroy people or if it's the fact that the excesses take them away from the

pursuit of what delivered the wealth in the first place for a lot of those people it's the pursuit of solving the problem that's that's doing it and I've I have a good friend Patrick oasi who phrased it this way I'm going to paraphrase him but he said if you had to describe the me the mindset of those very successful entrepreneurs it's not driven it's not motivated it's tortured that they wake up every morning tortured by the problems that they're not fixing and the the opportunities that they have not yet uh uh found and there's a

famous Elon Musk interview I think it was on Lex Friedman where he was like you think you want to be me the richest man in the world but you don't and he was like it's a storm up here it's a mess up here I think that's true for a lot of people my friend David SRA is a great podcast founder love such a good guy one of the best guys in the world I've ever met but he say of of all the 350 Founders that he's profiled uh only one of them has he actually said

I I would want that guy's life it was Ed Thorp but put that aside of the other 349 I think you read their biography and can say I'm so glad that they existed by most most of the time they did a lot of good in the world they created products that make us better off and never in a million years what I want his life it seems miserable because most of the time the the simple answer is their financial and Career Success came the reason they're so successful is because they devoted every waking second of

their entire life to this one problem this one Endeavor and that came at the expense of their family life of their health of their mental health their physical health and if you get a full view of their it's easy to look at musk and say oh richest man in the world that would wouldn't that be fun yeah but it came because he's had this life a singular Devotion to well in his case two or three different companies um and I think if you take that full picture it's less glamorous than it would than it would

seem and it's too tempting in life to have Envy of someone and say oh well I want their money and I want their career and their relationship or their humor like you're picking little bits and pieces from their life but it's not how it works you got to take the full package and when you look at the full package of those people who you might envy if you actually take like a complete view of their life maybe some of them you would say no that is a great life like Ed Thorp but I I think

for a lot of them if you got the full view you would look at it and say oh that's actually a lot different than I thought I frame this one way if you look at this is FL flagrantly anecdotal but among the 10 richest men in the world there are a cumulative 15 divorces among them so it's very easy particularly for young people to say oh that's like I'm jealous of that person I envy that person I want to be that person but I think for a lot of them if you actually got a full

view of their life it's not nearly as good as you would think I think people like Elon Musk people like Mark Zuckerberg um they represent these you know incredibly extreme examples that obviously um most people can't even including me can't fathom what a day in their life must be like you know I met Zuck he was on this this podcast and um it seems that he really enjoys doing what he's doing um but I think for me and for most people it's just like so far out of the stratosphere of of of understanding similar to

the the amount of wealth that they've acquired it just sort of like what do you even do with all of that and people go well I'd figure it out yeah I'm sure you would but you know it's it's just it's so astronomically outside the scale of one's normal kind of dopamine reward schedules that you it's hard to imagine and what are you going to do buy a buy a plane as big as a state you know you know so um but there's a place in between struggling to quote unquote make it and being at that

EX at that extreme where people hit that sweet spot and I think a lot of your work is really aimed at at least Shining Light on the possibility of a sweet spot yeah where you're doing something that you find meaningful U making sufficient income that your anxiety is buffered um you have meaningful relationships in and out of work and you've essentially built quotequote good right I mean I think uh I heard nval say something recently where he said you know you want resources in along the dimensions I just mentioned a healthy Fit Body a calm

mind and a home full of love yeah I think it's pretty awesome list right there and it's a lot of work though right and with just to you know check off even one of those four boxes a lot of work right I think because money is so tangible of counting it is so easy and so tangible that even if people know that they're going to put an inordinate amount of effort towards making more money at the expense of their relationships their health their children their friends their family it comes at the expense because if I

were to say you know how do I increase my income by 10% it's like I can wrap my head around that I can give you a number of what that would be and how I might be able to do it but if I said how do I get my kids to love me 10% more like ah I don't I have no idea how to measure that or how to even pursue it so even if I want that because it's hard it's not tangible it's much easier to ignore and just pursue the thing that you can

count which is money do you have a dog I do golden retriever I was going to say you want them to love you 10% more get them a puppy but but it sounds like you already did that I'm just I'm only half kidding um I would say that you know dogs are not only unconditional love but uh they have the ability to to give on a on a you know daily basis multiple times per day in a way I mean they give love as as readily as they receive love it's just it's just like this

perfect reciprocal Loop right and they're constantly in the moment they're just living right there this is great cartoon a lot of people have probably seen it it's uh a a guy and a dog sitting on a lake and the guy's thought bubble coming out of his head is he's thinking about money he's thinking about work he think's thinking about stocks the dog's thought bubble is a picture of them sitting on the lake they're just he's the dog's just right in the moment just enjoying what he's doing right there I think that's like that's my jealousy

of when of of my dog when I look at her 24 hours a day everyone will as a dog will recognize this they're just in the moment they just enjoy what they're doing whatever they're doing and everyone including me is either uh worrying thinking about the past or dreaming about the future I love that what's your dog's name if I may Lucy golden retrievers are an amazing breed because they also are universally loving yeah that they they love the person that you know they their owner the most uh but they also love people that stop

and meet them on the street not all dogs are like that the worst guard dogs in the world you can break into your house a golden retriever will just come up and wag its tail and like yeah I love it um let's talk about this social comparison thing um I'm trying to make this practical for people that are both partnered and not partnered seems to me that a lot of what I've observed in terms of people who are on the on the conveyor belt work work work work work have a picture in their mind of

kind of where that's all going when enough is enough and when they plan to hop off or stay on or how late to stay in large part based on yeah their upbringing yeah kind of who they are are but also the messages that they're getting from typically the one other person that has the greatest degree of input right like you could create a picture where the spouse in either direction is saying like we need more right right that changes the picture completely right um where the spouse just says like I would just like to see

you more I don't need any more stuff yeah I just want to see you more we want to see you more these are the sorts of atome dynamics that I think drive a lot of decisions about career not just what careers to pursue but how long to stay in whether or not you try and make partner in a firm whether or not your social media account needs X number more followers or not I think to me this is as important as the social comparison of of your peers at work or online the messages that we

receive by the people closest to us about what to be afraid of what the needs are and I don't know that people have really parsed how to you know how to resolve all that um but I'm guessing you probably have some thoughts about this well I think it's it's the balance between it is so difficult because for a lot of people who have families and are working very hard at the core if you said why are you working so hard well to make more money why why do you want more money to take care of

my family like it's for very good intentions but it's coming at the expense of time with your family and whatnot so a lot of things it's not that you're making a terrible decision you're you're doing what you think is right and then if you said well how much is enough to take care of your family by and large it's a game of comparison the way that people live 100 years ago that what is a good life 100 years ago is an completely inadequate life today not even 100 years ago you back to go back to

our parents generation and say in the 1950s there is a Nostalgia for the 1950s of oh life was so good then and so great and the white picket fence and the dog and the stay-at home mom like it was it was a good picture but what was the definition of a good life back then uh a good middle class life was an 800t house with one bathroom for four people and camping for your annual vacation you would describe life that most people would say that's inadequate today that's not my definition of a good life today

so that is Shifting all the time and therefore you're out you're you're saying like well how much money do you need to be happy the truth is I need more money than than the next family than the next person it's this continuous chain and I think a lot of that is just Evolution it's a competition for resources and it doesn't matter how much money you have what matters is that you have more money than the next person that's the that's the sad Truth for a lot of this and therefore you can easily imagine a world

in which my grand kids are earning on average way more money than we are today and have way better resources Better Health better Technologies and they're no happier for it and they don't feel any more relieved for it they don't feel like they can scale back and work less for it because they're going to be competing with other people that have all those things John maer kan's a great Economist very famously predicted a world where people would be working 20 hours a week because technology was going to make it so we didn't need to work

and that's not how it works whatsoever we are working less than we did back when everybody was a farmer but not nearly as as as as little as we could be if we still had the expectations of a 1950s family living in an 800t house if we had those expectations people could be working way less but it's all a competition between other people so even if 100 years from now a middle class families living in a 5,000 foot house with a spaceship in their backyard if that becomes the norm you don't take you don't appreciate

it any of it I mean if you took someone 100 years ago if you took John Rockefeller the richest man in the world 100 years ago and brought brought him to today and showed him a middle class family in America he would say what is this thing Advil you take a pill that makes your headache go away what he you have sunscreen you just rub this on the face you don't get sunburnt he would his jaw would be on the floor but nobody appreciates that today like he would because it's just common place you your

your definition of a good life is I expect to have that so it's always going to be the case that the reason we're working hard is to take care of our family and what we feel like is an adequate amount is a growing level over time I should also say that that is by and large a great thing the reason Society progresses is because most people wake up in the morning feeling a little bit inadequate whatever I have today is not enough and I need to go work harder to get more that's why we have

good technology and economic growth over time so at the macro level it's a great thing that's what pushes Society forward and better medical Technologies all better Technologies but the individual level it creates this hamster wheel of a constant feeling of inadequacy that we try to compensate for by working harder and working harder even when it comes at the expense of things that should be more dear to us like our friends and family and health and with social media we now have access to Millions if not billions of comparison points whereas just 30 years ago even

20 years ago we only had access to local comparison points like the people in your neighborhood drove certain types of cars now online you can see people that you went to high school with that have certain lives and their vacations that are spectacular relative to the ones that you know one typically has I'd like to to talk about this notion of social comparison as as a function of place um we can touch on some major cities we were doing this before we started recording it's kind of fun to do like in the Bay Area in

Silicon Valley area where I grew up um it seems like there's a a High um there's a high value placed on the people who manage to do things that Wick out to the entire world the building of companies or technologies that go everywhere it's not just because of Facebook and Instagram it's um also because of Biotech it's because of all sorts of things um apple right I mean there's a whole history of that um what would you say for like New York City what like what is the dominant message that's being pumped into the psyche

of New Yorkers um and by the way I love New York City but it'd be fun to play this game a little bit as an example and then we'll then Wick it out to to people regardless of where they live in the world this is one of those things where what is so good and beneficial for society is what makes indiv miserable so I think what is the message here in Los Angeles or in New York or or any other big city San Francisco the message is waking up in the morning and feeling inadequate because

you are surrounded by people who at least look like they're doing better than you and you say I have to I have to chase that person I have to get what they have that is great for society that's where we get new technologies new Innovations and growth at the individual level it's very difficult I grew up out in the woods in Lake Tahoe and in that region uh if you are a dentist let's say you are on top of the world you are the richest guy in town everybody looked up to you you had the

nicest house the nicest car if you are a family dentist here in Los Angeles you don't stick out whatsoever you might you might feel like you are so far behind because you're surrounded by legitimate billionaires and so I think it's interesting to ask is a dentist happier in Lake Tahoe or here I think it's probably in Lake Tahoe because your comparison group is so much less especially back in the pre-social media days the states that are statistically the happiest in the United States it's not it's not for cities it's not Los Angeles it's not New

York tends to be in the midwest where wonderful places whatnot but less competitive than the grind of the big cities and so but that's where you know if at the individual where are you happiest it's where you have less comparison but for society what is better it's when you have a huge competition for getting ahead so I don't know I I don't know where I come down on that of like where I would want to be of course I want to be happy as an individual but I want to live in a in a society

that is moving ahead and the reason it's moving ahead is because most people wake up feeling inadequate you GRE up in Tahoe yeah um I love Lake Tahoe but can I ask you did you grow up being competitive or thinking about um how well people skied or snowboarded yes absolutely it was also I lived in Tahoe pre pre- Tech money it's very different now because so much Bay Area Tech money just flooded into it it's its own little Hampton now but back in the day it was like I felt like when I grew up normal

people drove old pickup trucks and rich people drove new pickup trucks that was the difference between rich and poor and both in a city like Los Angeles New York and in a social media World especially it's normal people drive Honda Civics and rich people have private jets like the the stratification between them is is just blown so far out of proportion I see this with my nine-year-old son who like a lot of kids watches Mr Beast who I think is great I think he's an awesome awesome guy but it's completely warped my son's sense of

money because Mr Beast will be like oh keep your hand on the table and the and the last person with their hand wins a million dollars it's like if if if that's your sense of money it's complet warped and and skewed and so look I it's it's it's a tough way to live and I think the more of that angst that people have of I'm inadequate I need to get ahead the better Society is going to be the more technology we're going to have great example of this is what decades were the most technologically Innovative

by far it's not even close it was 1930s the Great Depression and the 1940s World War II when Society was on fire that's when every business every scientist every entrepreneur woke up every morning and said I need to figure this out right now today immediately during the Great Depression if you were a business owner it was if I don't figure out a way to become more efficient I'm bankrupt tomorrow so that was the birth of a lot of the assembly lines it was the birth of the grocery store the birth of the laundromat every business

got more more uh uh just better at at at what they do and the ones that didn't went out of business immediately World War II was if we don't figure out new technologies uh we're we're we're going to lose everything Hitler's going to control the planet so that was nuclear energy radar jets go on down the list of things that we benefit from today happen because of that social angst that we had back then and so I think there's so much evidence that Society progresses when things are a little bit on fire not too much

on fire because then you just get overwhelmed with it but if you have a little bit of angst of I need to wake up I I need to do this and when society's become fat and happy and decadent or when companies do this companies that just are minting money and there's no pressure on it they have more money than they know to do with that's the downfall of a lot of companies Sears IBM Intel Boeing who are either not around or are shells of their former S I think you can tie a lot of that

to the success that they had in the past when there was no pressure to innovate and get and get ahead it was just a culture of we have so much lying around here that we can do anything that we want I I I had a guy tell me one time who said every business should have a little bit of debt uh because it keeps you in check keeps your Ambitions in line of waking up and being like no I have to succeed this year because we have debt to pay off and when you have too

much freedom and a little bit too much autonomy you have a higher chance of just letting it slip away what made you great when you are young and poor and broke and hungry uh slips away when the wealthier you become tell me what you think of this mental exercise as you're describing this to me I'm thinking about um how at different stages of my career first academic science and I still teach but I'm shut down my animal lab still involved in some human research but mainly focused on the podcast the these days um I can

look to different things around me that were the the force is pulling on me I like to think in terms of carrot and stick you know for those that don't know what that is because we have a lot of listeners from outside the US carrot you know carrot is the thing you're working towards the the enticing thing the reward stick is the is the punishment carrot and stick because frankly that's how the brain works carrot and stick right um and a lot of what we're talking about today is carrot and sticks of different different sizes

different types etc for every stage of my career graduate student postto professor before tenure Professor after getting tenure it's kind of interesting concept people think of it as job for life but it's really academic freedom and you're still on the fundraising treadmill or even as a podcaster you know like what the force was inside me and not trying to make this about me I just kind of I know that there are different people that I'm trying to satisfy and of course satisfy my own curiosity and intellect but there there are forces there's the I'm part

of a group I'm part of a team here I can't let them down so it doesn't matter how well I slept last night I happened to sleep pretty well last night but doesn't matter I got to show up right got to suit up and show up as they say do you think it's worthwhile for people to stop wherever they are in their life Arc and just think about like where are these these forces pulling us the carrots and the sticks because I think there in lies a lot of information um are you working for an

expectation that you need to fulfill because you did it before I sometimes think about professional athletes they sometimes have a shorter professional life than in other careers because just physical capabilities give away but you know like what drives them I often want to know like what pulls them like where do they feel obligated you know not just you know what the drive is but where do they feel obligated where do they feel like kind of pulled is it to the general public is it their parents is it their Bank account is it the fear that

they're going to have to retire at some point do you ever think about this kind of stuff I think a lot of it is tied to your identity of just who do you see in the mirror when you wake up every morning and if your identity is I'm a professional athlete if your identity is I'm a podcaster I am a rich person whatever it might be then that's that's what's pulling you it's that source of your identity so this gets back to the Paul Graham idea of keep your identity small I think he met it

in meant it mainly in the context of politics of politics can just poison your identity and it it it really affects your thinking but keeping your identi small for a lot of things I think is a great point of view the more you look in the mirror and say I am a blank doesn't matter what that is I'm a professor I'm an author whatever it is it's hard to give that up because it's part of your identity I saw this with my own with my own dad who was a he was a doctor and he

retired and he went back to work a year later because I think at least part of it was when he looked in the mirror he had to say I am a doctor that was his identity and when he retired he couldn't say that anymore and it drove him crazy I think that's true for a lot of people now that could be great for him it was great and I think for me my identity I think my core identity is I'm a father I'm a husband I hope to be a friend but then maybe it's I'm

an author and if I had to give that up it might might sting a little bit it's not maybe the core of my identity but it's right there and I think for a lot of people if you're successful core to their identity is I'm a person who makes a lot of money I'm a person who makes X dollars per year and they're unable to give that up and that's that again I think if we're talking about money that's when money becomes a liability is when it's ingrained in your identity and it's controlling you you're not

using it as a tool it's using you as its little marionette doll to control you every day and I I think that's that's when a lot of people go astray with their happiness with money is when it starts controlling them because it's so core to who they see in the mirror every day yeah that's like that cartoon of the person standing with a little cage in front of their face like they're they're giving up Freedom by virtue of some mental construct right I wonder if um perhaps even better than uh Paul's idea of shrinking one's

ident to make it operational and make it verb based because it's one thing to say I'm going to not use my professional title of podcast or Professor author doctor but if one gets to the verb function that drove the pursuit of things in the first place I enjoy doing this I'm a curious person like like you know I have the I seem to mention him all the time and I'm just going to do it because it's my podcast um Rick rubin's a close friend and I feel so lucky for that friendship of course I love

love the music he's produced but that's not why I love the friendship I happen to just really think Rick's a great guy but because he's so verb and action-based it's about almost everything Rick talks about in terms of creativity and productivity is about discarding with titles and concepts of who you were before and just being in the verb state of wherever you happen to be at that point in your life and creating offerings yeah and he actually likes to remove the concept of an audience he actually talks about this is your offering to God and

the the audience may or may not like it but that in his words are the way is the way to frame it because otherwise you end up trying to satisfy people absolutely and then you're no longer in the process of of of exploring your curiosity or creativity so yeah I've decided at this moment and I'll make it I'll put it on record that I'm not going to think of myself as a podcaster I mean I did a lot of things I did you know pursued skateboarding pursued you tropical fish tanks pursued you know uh science

and and research scien teaching which you know and then this public education and podcasting I fully expect that in 5 to 10 years I'll be doing something completely different but it'll still be attached to the verb state that drove every single one of those professions yeah or every every single one of those Pursuits because as Rick's taught me it's the energy that you need to continue to tap into that is self-rewarding the feelings of delight of friction and then release when you solve a problem it's not really about the profession or the title or even

the the resources that come from that but that in fact the greatest resources in particular Financial Resources coming from identifying the verb state of being in pursuit of something that's truly unique to you yeah and that changes over time I'm always amazed at these examples like the Warren buffets and these people have been investing their whole life you pointed this out in your book that one of the the uh fundamental things about Buffett being so successful is that he's had a lot of time investing since he was 11 and he's 93 right it doesn't seem

like he needs another venue it seems like he's got dialed that's his venue if he were if you were a golfer he'd be golfing at 93 yeah he's he's doing it because he loves to do it I think I think it's for me as a writer what's always been the case wonder if this and I think this might might might really apply to your own career I've always written for an audience of one which is myself I just want to write things that I think are interesting I want to write stories that I find appealing

I want to write it in a style that I would enjoy reading and I don't I don't care that much about the audience who might read it of course I I want them to read it and maybe buy the books and enjoy it but I'm writing for myself and I think you always do your best work when you do that if you're writing or producing a podcast for an audience of one which is you and so um I think if you're doing it otherwise it's performative and and people do much worse work they're much less

creative they're much less enjoyable when it's when it's performative when you start off by asking what does the audience want to hear or see do that but that's what most people do and even what does every writing 101 teacher teach their students know your audience I don't I don't think it's good it's good advice because know your audience very quickly becomes Pander to your audience not just as writers but in any form of work that you do pandering to your boss pandering to your quarterly metrics whatever that might be you're always going to do your

best work if you have the independence and the autonomy to have an audience of one which is yourself Brian chesky of Airbnb talks about this he's like don't build a product that a thousand people like build a product that 100 people love or that one person you love and use it that's when you're going to do always do your best work you're not trying to manage a product or a book or a podcast towards some Metric or goal you're doing it cuz you love doing it much easier said than done for a lot of careers

because if you're working for a company you you do have metrics you have to follow you do have formulas and policies you have to follow so it's not that everyone can do this but it's it's unavoidable that you're always going to do your best work when it's yours and you're doing it for yourself not because you're trying to reach some Metric I guess the phrase you know be a lifer I used to think that meant if you were a musician stay a musician if you're in finance stay in finance but I think now I'm going

to revise that to one wants to be a life for at tapping into the energy of pursuing things that are really meaningful to them in that moment yeah in that phase of life because it's so different I mean when I was a kid I was obsessed with fish tanks and tropical birds and then skateboarding punk rock music and it changed I mean the venue changed but we don't really change as in in terms of identity very much right these professions and the these bank accounts and we don't actually we're not fundamentally Changed by them it's

it's really a bunch of verb States that that drive all this and I actually hope that in 20 years I'm doing something different that I'm not writing about the same topic so maybe I maybe I hope I'm still writing and thinking and reading and learning but if you're always doing the same thing I think someone like Buffett is an incredibly uh Oddball Rare Bird who's been doing the same thing for 80 years and loves it like I I want to grow and adapt and evolve in in what I'm doing but if something becomes core to

your identity then it's hard to release that and let go you feel like you have to keep doing it even when it's not that fun anymore and you're not getting the the the dopamine Rush of trying something new you're attached something you keep being a lawyer whatever it might be because that's your identity even when you don't like it anymore think about Michael Jordan playing baseball which he did for a little while he wanted to play professional baseball yeah so he gave himself the shot I think it's awesome even though it didn't turn out as

well as it basketball turned out for him it just because it it just reflected his inherently competitive you know high performance nature to keep doing something or bzo so I keep bringing up but you build the biggest most successful company in the world Amazon what what do you do in your retirement you start a rocket company kind of thing it's like you you like maybe he did I I don't know this I don't want to put words in his mouth but maybe he did get a little bit bored with Amazon and it was he needed

to do something else but he's not going to retire he's not going to play golf he's not going to sit on his boat he's going to go build another company always have to be doing something even if it's growing and adapting you're working on a new book and uh I eagerly anticipate the release of that new book when's it coming out September 2025 okay so we got a little while to wait um are you willing to share a few things that you're thinking about or that um you know we might to see in that book

yeah I think there there are pieces of the book that you and I have talked about today uh but the book is called the art of spending money and I I make a point of the book is not called the science of spending money because spending money is not a science it's not something where you can say here's the formula that works for everybody it's an art and what is an art it is different for everybody it's subjective it's often contradictory and that's I think that's what way to spend money should be so at no

point in the book do I say here's how you should spend your money because I don't think anybody can accurately do that for a broad audience it's a look at the psychology of Envy of keeping up with the Joneses of social aspiration of identity that we've been talking about managing money and kids of being jealous of other people of wanting to get attention for yourself it's a look at the psychology of that without offering any firm concrete advice which I would say a lot of people don't like that a lot of people are like well

just tell me what to do but I I try to make a point in the beginning same with my first book psychology and money of I can't tell you what to do because I don't know you and what's what's right for you is going to be maybe not right for me you have to figure it out for yourself but I can tell you what's probably going through your head as you're going on that journey I can tell you about the psychological pitfalls and challenges and advice uh of that is that is psychological it's not what

you should do but here's how most people and why most people fall for envy and why if you understand the mechanics of Envy how silly it can be that's that's what the book dives into in a lot of ways what sounds like you're describing is um kind of identifying the sources of self- Seduction yeah where we we by virtue of social media or just by virtue of Being Human We compare what we have to see if it really is what it is uh you would think that we would be pretty good as a species at

just experiencing things kind of like the dog sitting next to the lake given that we can understand that we have this propensity to you know compare and um to regret things of past but not be able to anticipate future regret you'd think we be we would be better at that but clearly we're not well this I guess this gets back to basic Evolution Evolution doesn't care if you're happy it cares that you reproduce and you grow over time that's that's what it's maximizing for it doesn't really care whether you have a good time during the

process make more of yourself and take care of the young and then you're dispensable keep going Lis K says more of me that's that's what we're trying to do and and and whether you're happy or not doesn't doesn't really play into the situation and actually might reward the person who is gaining a ton of resources even if they're miserable in the process who's making a ton of money in the process even if they wake up miserable every morning they're gaining a lot of resources that might increase their their Fitness over time happiness doesn't play much

of a role do you think birth rates are going down because um people feel that they have to use more of what they earn for themselves or that it's harder to establish a relationship to money and resources that makes them feel capable of taking care of others I think it's it's so complex it doesn't lead to simple answers but I think there is a lot of evidence that what happens why societies all over the world this has always been the case have fewer kids when they become wealthier is because their expectations for those kids go

up so if you're living in a in a poor Society poor economy or during a poor era you could have 10 kids because you knew all 10 of those kids or at least the ones who survived were going to become Farmers that's what they were going to do and uh that was that was their only hope that was all they could do and you didn't need to provide a lot of resources for them if I give them basic food and shelter and clothes that's all they need to become a farmer and I think if you

fast forward to today's economy the expectations are so much so much higher where you want your kid to become a PhD to become an astronaut to become a hedge fund whatever it might be and there because of that you need to provide so much more resources for that kid I need to Foster their growth and development from the time that they are infants and provide them tutors and after school activities and maybe send them to private school and definitely send them to a college which is going to cost a fortune because the expect ations for

what you need to provide are so much higher you feel like you can only provide that to maybe one maybe two kids which would have been a a couple Generations ago three or four kids and a couple Generations before that 10 kids there's also a very Grim statistic about it used to why do people used to have 10 kids because six of them died before they were five and so if you needed those hands on the farm you needed to have a lot of kids to make sure you had a lot of teenagers who could

help you one day and so I think we're blessed to now live in a world where thankfully the infant mortality rate is collapsed so much that we don't need to play that Lottery game that we used to what are you teaching your kids about money and it what age should uh we start to do that and for those listening who don't have kids um I suppose it's never too late to learn I think one one of the points I always make that I've learned the hard way parenting is I I I don't think you need

to sit your kids down and teach them about money because they're paying attention whether you know it or not kids are so incredibly good at learning they're better learn they're better at learning than adult are particularly for things like language and whatnot but you don't need to say sit your kids down and say this is how much we spend and this is what we value and this is why I say they're paying attention they're figuring it out every time they hear you say I can't afford this every time we're at the store and they say

oh look this is on sale let's get two of these they're making a mental note of everything every time they hear you bicker about work every time they hear you talk about a raise even if it's just in the Next Room they're piecing it all together and I don't think they even know it but they're so good at learning that they're building a mental model and so even if never sit your kids down and teach them by the time certainly that they're teenagers they know a lot about money and maybe some of those things are

are good maybe some is bad but they're paying attention and so I think the only thing you can do as a kid or as a parent I should say is to lead by example because we talked about this earlier the propensity to Rebel as as a kid as a teenager you talked about the smoking ads where they just wanted to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing I think particularly for teenagers which I don't have yet um but if you sit them down and say this is what you should do you should always

do this you should never do that their propensity to Rebel is enormous so I think I I should think it can backfire if you try to teach them I think the best you can do the only thing you can do is lead by example with people one thing that a lot of not just very wealthy people but moderately wealthy people will say is and ask is how do I teach my kids about money without spoiling them how do I use my money to help my kids without spoiling them that's that's a big topic for a

lot of people even if you're like a a middle- class family how do I you know leave a small inheritance or help my kids should I buy them a new car or should I help them through College I think a big thing that is is easy to overlook uh is two things you might think as a parent that you are teaching your kid grit and independence by withholding resources from them and you're doing it very well-intentioned you need to earn your I earn my money and this is mine you got to go figure out your

own I think it is very easy to overlook that you are not teaching your kid Independence and grit you're teaching them to resent you and I I have a good friend Chris Davis who told the story now he's an extreme example Chris Davis's grandfather Shelby Davis who was a billionaire investor one of the greatest investors of all time and Chris tells a story that uh when he was a kid and his grandfather took him skiing his grandfather would say if you want me to buy you a lift ticket you need to hike up the hill

first and ski down hike to the top and if you do that then I'll buy you a lift ticket and Chris said the lesson that they learned from that was not grit and Independence and hard work the lesson they learned from it was Grandpa's kind of a jerk sometimes and it's I think that's an extreme example but you see that a lot with with kids one like very practical takeaway from this is that I think as a parent you have to live the same lifestyle as your kids it's very difficult to say Mom and Dad

fly first class but you're back in coach does anyone actually do that oh absolutely and maybe that's maybe that's still a very extreme example but what the you think as a parent that the kid is learning is oh if I work as hard as Mom and Dad one day I'll be sitting up there and they don't the lesson they learn is Mom and Dad are think that they are superior to us or Mom and Dad are superior to me I'm inferior to them I think this is why you see a lot of very wealthy kids

who are just psychologically broken because I I think you have well-meaning parents who are like look we're very wealthy but you're not you got to earn your way and all the kid hears throughout their life is I'm inferior I'm inferior I'm inferior I'm inferior and by the time they they become adults that's it's so ingrained into who they are that they can't take a step forward they can't advocate for themselves and so look that's that's what the very wealthy deal with but I think that's that's what I think a lot about with kids the other

thing that every parent with more than one kid will uh understand and recognize this my two kids are could not be more different their personalities their goals uh even with the same parents living under the same roof they are roof they are a million miles apart and so had if you say had like what what are you teaching your kids like I I I don't know who they're going to be when they grow up I don't know what their goals or their aspirations are going to be so is it right for me to tell my

daughter like oh here's how you can save and become super wealthy over time what if she doesn't want to live that life what if she does have more of a YOLO personality of like oh I just want to go travel the world I don't I have no aspirations to become super wealthy and retire early uh so you have to let them them figure it out for themselves and realize that what might be right for you and what may have been right for the era in which you and I grew up in might not be right

for them it might not fit the era that they grew up in I like this saying um none of us know what it's like to be you know picking age 13 years old in 2024 we think we do because we were 13 years old at one point your earlier descriptions of uh depriving kids of the first class ticket um putting them in coach and and the the parents flying In First Class it it makes me realize that we like to think that those sorts of things will drive integration of the lesson but each one of

your examples pointed to the fact that kids are integrating based on the emotion they experience at the time they're not thinking about the larger lesson they're thinking about in there in their moment they're think I'm hiking up this hill and this sucks and they're not piecing together things over time I'm like okay I'm doing this and he's trying to teach me a lesson right there it's really uh they're very attached to their immediate feelings right and maybe it would be different in Chris Davis's example if the grandpa hiked up the hill with them because then

the lesson you're taking is like oh we're going to do this together and and that is teaching the value of hard work I'm going to do it with you I'm going to suffer with you so leading by example rather than by humiliation I think is the way to do it with kids when I was a kid um my dad used to walk me to this point along our street where then he would split off to go to work he so a scientist he would go to his laboratory and I'd go off to to kindergarten in

first grade and I remember one day asking him what he did for a living and uh he's a physicist and uh and he said well I'm a physicist and I said what's that and he explained a little bit about what it was and I'll never forget we still talk about this he and I I'll never forget um I said do you like it and he said well you know that feeling the night before your birthday I said yeah and he said I feel like that every day and then I think he also said and I'm

still a little bit murky on this one I need to touch base with him about this sometime again soon was he said yeah you don't always get presence it doesn't always work out but the feeling that you might or that you're likely going to or there's a possibility that just feels so good and I think I must have internalized that lesson because what I like is work yeah I don't think I'm addicted to work although someone in my life have accused me of that um and I'm willing to be open to that possibility but it

wasn't even really about Discovery it was about the possibility of discovery and so I I think in in terms of teaching to kids and teaching to peers and you know teaching among humans getting people in to think about the verb states that really motivate them from the best place seems to be the kind of General theme throughout today's discussion and in your book somewhat I'm not trying to summarize to to too fine a point here but if I may it seems like get and what Rick Rubin has said about you know he has this like

just Supernatural track record at bringing out the best creat ative elements in people from different genres of music it seems to be about tapping into these verb states of like what is the thing that brings out your best as opposed to thinking about the rewards that come from that yeah but it's hard right we we see those numbers we see those the followers the dollars Etc we see the metrics of comparison it's tough it's it's it's there's a work to this that is not obvious I think it'll always be like that we're never going to

live in a world where people uh don't compare themselves to others we're never going to live in a world where people don't feel in adequate to others who have more than them but back to kids I think this is a a great Pace to place TI this together if you ask most parents what do you want for your kids most parents will say I just want them to be happy I just hope I I hope they're happy one day and then if you said well do you hope that your children are rich and successful parents

might say like yeah but mainly just happy like I I just want them to be happy regardless of what they're doing if they're a kindergarten teacher I want them to be happy and I think um the parents themselves say that because they haven't done that themselves because the parents themselves have chased money over happiness and they see the downside of it and I that's that's very common and that's why they say I I I hope my kid does this because I haven't done a good job of that myself because the Temptation is to do that

is to pursue something that's not going to make you is going to make you richer but not necessarily happier now that's not an argument against money or working hard which I want to do I want to work hard and make money and have more money of course but I think you there's such a stark difference between using money as a tool to make yourself happier versus as a yard stick to compare yourself against others by and so much in the modern world is is the latter we're not using money to make ourselves happier or Freer

or more independent or to sleep better or to spend more time with the people we enjoy we use money to measure ourselves against other people it's just do I have more than you is my car faster than yours my house bigger than yours and all of that is completely separated from what we actually want like for our kids and ultimately for ourselves which is can I use this to become happier and live a better life what a wild concept but it seems just spoton so we need to think about money a little differently or a

lot differently if we are to get the most satisfaction from our work and from resources it requires a lot of looking in the mirror into saying like who am I and what do I want I think that's the biggest thing particularly when we started this conversation by saying everybody is different what's right for me is not right for you inherent in that is that you have to understand yourself and a lot of people a lot of financial damage is done when people have a financial plan that is right for another person but it's wrong for

them and that's dangerous because it's the right financial plan maybe for a lot of other people so it makes sense it's rational it makes sense on paper on the spreadsheet looks good but it doesn't fit your personality that's when a lot of damage is done so I think to do better with money you need to spend a lot of time thinking about who you are and your family and your goals and your aspirations realizing that all those things will change and adapt over time so what was right for you 10 years ago might not be

right today and you know in a way that might seem selfish like tuning out the rest of the world tuning out other people and co-workers and and neighbors and whatnot and being just saying how can I use this as a tool to become happier to live a little bit better life like what's the purpose of money if it's not that I love it well Morgan thank you so much for doing the work that you do it's an incredibly unique perspective on this thing that we all have to deal with grapple with and and uh hopefully

can develop a a symbiotic relationship with money and it's clear from talking to you today and also from reading your book that you know there's a a strong central cord of benevolence in all of this I I don't know if that was your intent it seems to just come through in who you are um but when I read your book and as we talked today it's just so clear like that you want the best for people uh so I think that's an important thing to highlight because there are a lot of people out there telling

people how to make money uh what to do or not to do with their money but you're telling us how to live more meaningful lives which is uh something just order of magnitude more important so for that and the work that you've done and that you're doing I'm eagerly anticipating your book next September uh and for coming here today to educate us thank you ever so much this has been so much fun thank you Andrew thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Morgan housle to learn more about Morgan's work and to find links

to his two superb books the psychology of money and same as ever please see the links in the show note captions if you're learning from Andor enjoying this podcast please subscribe to our YouTube channel that's a terrific zero cost way to support us in addition please follow the podcast on both Spotify and apple and on both Spotify and apple you can leave us up to a five-star review please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode that's the best way to support this podcast if you have questions or comments about the

podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the huberman Lab podcast please put those in the comment section on YouTube I do read all the comments for those of you that haven't heard I have a new book coming out it's my very first book it's entitled protocols an operating manual for the human body this is a book that I've been working on for more than 5 years and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience and it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to Stress Control protocols

related to focus and motivation and of course I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included the book is now available by pre-sale at protocols book.com there you can find links to various vendors you can pick the one that you like best again the book is called protocols an operating manual for the human body if you're not already following me on social media I am hubman lab on all social media platforms so that's Instagram X formerly known as Twitter threads Facebook and Linkedin and on all those platforms I discuss science and science related

tools some of which overlaps with the content of the hubman Lab podcast but much of which is distinct from the content on the hubman Lab podcast again that's huberman lab on all social media platforms if you haven't already subscribe to our neural network newsletter our neural network newsletter is a zeroc cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as protocols in the form of brief 1 to three page PDFs those 1 to three page PDFs cover things like deliberate heat exposure deliberate cold exposure we have a foundational Fitness protocol we also have protocols for

optimizing your sleep dopamine and much more again all available completely zero cost simply go to huberman lab.com go to the menu tab scroll down to newsletter and provide your email we do not share your email with anybody thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Morgan howel and last but certainly not least thank you for your interest in science [Music]