I don't know where I got this from. So it could be It's something I stole from a book. This idea, that frustration is expectation, misaligned with reality. And so I was meditating on that idea quite a bit, like what that actually means. Like your frustration comes from a missile lineman with what's what's real and what you should expect. So I came up with this framework of like how happiness can be attained, which I think is also a way of saying, How do you reduce stress in your life on I think that it could be attained in one of three ways. If you believe that frustration is expectation misaligned with reality on, I believe that the three ways are one accepting that misalignment and just understanding that that's a thing that you that there is this misalignment between what your expectation is and what the reality is. The second is changing your expectation. So saying, Hey, you know,

maybe I am thinking things on dhe, imagining something as it can't really be. Our shouldn't really be or isn't on. The third is actually changing reality, you know, which I think is potentially challenging. But I think it's, you know, it's It's also possible

that my name is Stuart Allsop and this is my podcast. Crazy wisdom were interview creative people about how they work with and manage the stress that is inherent in creative work. Whatever realized over the past 10 years of my research is that anybody who is creating something of value that is significantly different from what has come before is considered crazy. Most of us have a fear and anger and fear of going crazy s. So what I'm saying is grab onto that fear, realize that it's there and just go with it because the problems we're going to be facing over the next 20 years require crazy people in order to solve them. Today I sat down with Julian Weisser, head of growth at Verte Health, a company that has figured out how to reverse Type two diabetes with dietary change and, uh, mental and emotional support through video conferencing. We had a really interesting talk about a lot of different things. We get right into what is reality, right? In the beginning of the talk, we cover a whole range of topics including diet, social justice,

yoga, meditation, whole bunch of different things. Julian is incredibly well spoken and has a lot of valuable wisdom to say, particularly about how to work intelligently and effectively with the feelings of frustration and noticing when your expectations of a situation mismatch with what the reality of the situation is. Ah, and what I really like is he offered a way of actually looking at reality and maybe a way that you can change reality. That reality may not be as fixed as we think. Eso I highly recommend you listen to this whole thing was a lot of valuable wisdom all the way up until the end of it. And if you do enjoy it, please find us on iTunes by searching for crazy wisdom and hit the subscribe button. Thank you so much for being listeners. And I hope you have a great day.

Hey, I'm Julian on What do you do? Join? Uh, well, I do number of things during the day. I do growth at a company called Verte Health, which is the first clinically proven way Thio reverse Type two diabetes without medication and without surgery

on. So that's Ah, sounds like there's a lot of stress wrapped up in there. What is kind of your definition of stress?

Well, it's interesting I, instead of going to take this a little bit differently instead of talking about my definition of stress, I think what causes stress? And I think stress is caused by frustration on dhe. Different levels of frustration can turn into things like anger. They in turn into things like sorrow. But I think stresses kind of a byproduct of other emotions. On stress is kind of like this overarching umbrella going over anger, going over anguish, that sort of thing.

And I was recently talking to Chris Sod Andi. He talked about the difference between what he viewed as stress and anxiety so he would have anxiety attacks. But he thought of stress Is something different then name anxiety. But I would put it under this. I would put anxiety as under this general framework of stress kind of remorse of thing.

Yeah, I wonder when you're thinking about anxiety. Seems like there's probably some biological component to it, which is different than other Well, I guess there's probably a biological component to anger and thio anguish as well, but I think that there's There's definitely something to be said that the anxiety is more of a medical condition, then say anger being common human emoji exactly. I guess anxiety has very injuries as well. So depending on how you feel and depending on what that level of anxiety is, I guess it could fall within that sphere of stress where I could be completely outside of it if it Zzyzx major dominating force.

One of the interesting thing my meditation teacher tells talks to me about is way talk about is that stresses anything that mind creates basically, So anything on top of reality, as we see it with the mind places on top of reality, or any time we look at reality and it doesn't match our expectations of what reality should, then we create stress. Basically,

that's actually really funny. So I did write this down. This is something that I've been sort of meditating a lot recently. I don't know where I got this from, so it could be it's something I stole from a book. This idea that frustration is expectation, misaligned with reality. And so I was meditating on that idea quite a bit. Like what? That actually means like your frustration comes from a missile lineman with what's what's real and what you should expect. So I came up with this framework of like how happiness can be attained, which I think is also a way of saying, How do you reduce stress in your life on I think that it could be attained in one of three ways. If you believe that frustration is expectation misaligned with reality on, I believe that the three ways are one accepting that misalignment and just understanding that that's a thing that you that there is this misalignment between what your expectation is and what the reality is. The second is changing your expectation. Eso saying Hey,

you know, maybe I am thinking things on dhe, imagining something as it I can't really be our shouldn't really be or isn't on. The third is actually changing reality, you know, which I think is potentially challenging. But I think it's, you know, it's it's also possible s so if you if you if you want Thio address happiness from that framework of frustration being expectations Mr Misaligned with reality, I think you need to do one of those three things I'd be really curious if you or anybody who listens to this has any additional thoughts about how you can attain happiness. If that if that definition of frustration is true, we don't

know if it's true. I really like the last one, which is change reality. And that's something that a lot of people, particularly out of therapists, will tell you that it's not possible. But we've seen our reality changed massively over the last 10 years, like our ability to communicate with other people is massively changed, things that would have been considered magic now exists and just wait another 10 years like what you gotta do and get 10 like like reality has changed in reality is constantly in the process of changing. And then you got things like virtual reality augmented reality, which are also people creating new realities that are but there. But then there's also the sense of like it can't be fulfilling auras, auras, happy inducing? Or does it just like the same thing that Facebook was doing and social media is doing? Is that making us less unhappy with these new kind of I don't know what you

know? Yeah, I mean, it's It's interesting because what is reality really think this is like a big deep that we could jump into that I probably wouldn't be able to climb out of successfully, But effectively, reality is changing. As you're saying, we don't do things air developing that we can all agree are really to a degree that you know, a consensus of people believe something to be true. And therefore it is like I would say that that's the closest thing that I have to reality is that, Ah, large amount of people acknowledge something is as fact. Um, you know, you have also people who tend to bend reality to their well, these air sort of the Mavericks in the business world to effectively, you know, they've actually I think it's like Steve Jobs has been known for having like a reality distortion fuel where either he believes something so strongly that he convinces other people for it to be true and actually wills it into the world. Or he just pretends that he believes and, you know also gets the same result.

And I think what you're talking about is a consensus reality. So it's the reality that's agreed upon by most human beings. I don't necessarily think that is reality. I think there's a deeper layer of reality, which is just kind of what is going on right now. What around us, where the sounds around us are feeling everybody and the sensation of thoughts appearing as they are in this moment. I think that that's a very subjective individual experience. Uh, but then there is the sense of objective reality as well that that I think it would be unwise to ignore on Uh, yeah, and I just went down deep down in that way

to go from It's interesting. I think, that the average person and, you know, I consider myself very average, Um, we have experiences that maybe don't necessarily reflect with sort of the general populace on. It means that we run into a situation where what we believe to be true or what we experience may not actually be. What's riel Thio sort of consensus? I don't know. It's something that I think a lot about. And when I when I talked about changing reality, I was kind of saying that, you know, if you're expecting something to be the way it is like you shouldn't change. You should go and work towards changing it. So your expectations or so,

for instance, if you think that something is not right with the world, right and you're frustrated about it. But the reality is what what you're what you're frustrated about is you know, it's the reality of the situation. If you actually go out there and change what the world, what's going on in the world that for in your mind, the better? Let's say, then you're no longer to be frustrated, right? Because your expectation is now Matt, this is something no, with regard to social justice issues, for instance, right,

there are a lot of people who are frustrated about certain things that are going on in the world, and they go out there and they're trying to change reality right there, trying to change the way people think about things the way people view things the way people interacted each other on dhe. That's I think that's that example of changing reality, which I believe is more of the consensus reality in the sense that you need to get a certain amount of people to believe something to be true. For this expectation to be met in for the frustration go.

This is always an interesting question is whether that is a historical process that humans have very little control over. And it's just a trend, or whether humans do actually control that that kind of or can influence that product into particular

way. Yeah, so it's interesting. I read a book recently called Skin in the Game by Toe Lab, and he talks about this idea called the minority rule, which is essentially that in order to make change happen. So in order to change reality, you need to have a small amount of people who will not sort of change their way or really want something to happen a certain way. And then a majority of people who say, like, I don't really care Um, I could have it either way, but that means that the people who are very headstrong about having it a certain way are actually going to win out, even though they have much less power in terms of numbers. But in terms of determination, they're able to sort of push through kind of the masses who don't necessarily have an opinion one way or the other, and they're kind of like I could take it or leave it. So maybe there's something around that when you're thinking about historical contacts. Certainly this has been the case with life, religions and things like

that, huh? But then, in highly bipartisan are highly contentious Joel issues than that that becomes almost impossible to make any change because there's two large groups that both have a lot of power.

Yeah, I would. I would say that the best way to make change and that is to either try and find a way to build consensus or try and find an issue that your side cares about. But the other side can kind of take it or leave it and then go go with that go. It's sort of the minority rule strategy,

and that goes into the second point, Which is that expectations kind of changing your expectations to fit reality. What was the 1st 1?

Uh, except Mr Missile lineman change expectation for change reality?

How do you accept misalignment when you when you face a frustrating?

Yeah, this is This is funny. There was a book that someone tweeted out recently. Very short book called the manual. Andi I forget which stoic philosopher was based off of. But I bought it on Amazon. I believe it was Jason freed from. He's one of the guys who talks a lot about how you should be doing remote work and how sort of the standard startup path is kind of not all that all it's cracked up to be a really provocative guy on Twitter. Never met him in person be Sounds fascinating. Anyways, he he talked. He pulled this screenshot up and essentially said, When you go out someplace or when you go and have an ad taken action, you really should try and be aware of what you know what to expect. Right? What will you find? Like,

I think that the example is going to you like a like a public swimming pool. It's like, Well, there will be kids making loud noises and there might be people who are stealing things from the locker room and like, you know, you will not be sort of taken back aback by this. If you actually go in with the expectation that this is the way things are, and I think that that's that it's funny that he tweeted. This was yesterday. It's funny that this came out because it definitely aligns with his accepting misalignment. Or I guess that might be actually the changing expectation. Accepting misalignment is more that you wore. You will fall into a situation where sometimes what you think is is wrong, right? It's not. It's not what the reality is.

And like, ultimately, unless you're going thio, unless you're going to change your expectations all the time, which is hard to do, especially if it's something that you don't encounter all the time. Like I'll give you an example of something that is infrequent. You know, if I'm going on a boat trip somewhere, if I'm getting on a cruise and something happens and it really frustrates me, well, do I really need to, like, think too hard about like, Oh, I should really consider changing my expectations.

You're probably not. I'm not gonna go on a cruise like I've never even gone on one. But like the idea is like. That is such an infrequent occurrence. But another thing that's a frequent occurrence where I'm continually frustrated. I should probably change my expectation unless I think that it's worth it for me to change reality or if I can change the reality. So example of this world's a frequent frustration that I'm working thio Change is actually do the bikeshare program in San Francisco. The Ford go bikes. And essentially, they're the people who aren't in San Francisco there, these docks, where you can effectively check out a bike on, go for a bike ride and use it as a computing tool on, then plug it into another dock at your destination. Unfortunately, this doesn't always work.

And as you know, as you plan, sometimes the bikes are not available. Sometimes their new docks to actually drop off your bike in the deaths destination. And usually I end up getting very frustrated about this on, and it's a recurring thing. So what I need to do is I need Thio. Either changed my expectation of it where I need to change the reality of the situation, which means, like I either need thio, take a different, different motive transportation, where I need to try and figure out a way to work with four go bike like change their allegation of bikes or I need Thio. If I'm junior expectations should be like this sucks a lot of time, So that's really how I view that.

And that's funny because that's basically been thinking about this for last three days because I just got started on jump bikes. But because where I live in the upper hated at the top of the hill and everybody takes the bike who has normal schedule, they all go down to do the Soma. Then they all the bikes were gone by the time it's like 9 a.m. On so from 9 a.m. till about 4 p.m. Can't use drunk bikes, but then, after that point, I can use drop bike, sunny this anywhere in the city and jump bikes are electric bikes where you just take them. You put it a pin code, take them and drop them off anywhere else in the city. So there's no fixed station which go backs had. So then I downloaded go bikes and as the backup option. And so to get here I was wanted to take jump bikes, but there were no jump bikes around me, so I had to skateboard to the fore, go bites to go pick up an electric bike and then drive it all the way down a soma on. So,

yeah, you didn't give me too frustrated, But I'm always thinking about it cause I'm always like I always like to plan in advance, always like to make sure that I get there on time and being dependent on these new forms of transportation is really interesting. But that's just a random story like that going on. What are some other things that you wrote down there?

Totally. Well, I mean effectively just pulled a bunch of stuff that I've been thinking about tweeting about that. I don't necessarily go beyond, you know, 280 characters. What? I'm actually what I'm actually thinking about this. Like, I just try and condense it down to a very simple idea. One thing that came to mind as we were talking about what we know, what we should talk about with regard to stress in the creative process was this idea of constraints. It's something that I mentioned recently on Twitter and essentially the idea being that we've seen that companies that are extremely well funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding paradoxically, actually fail higher rates. You think that well, they have so much money they could, you know,

get away with making a lot more mistakes. The reality is that when a lot of companies start to get that money, they actually make bigger mistakes on also 10 and also yeah, and also tends to make bigger bats step. Have longer time horizons to actually determine if they were successful on dhe. People just spend frivolously. I mean, there are companies that you don't have a clear path to being a sustainable business. You were getting like four different types of coconut. Wonder from their team like craziness with Yeah, I mean, it's it's rough, but so effectively, I was thinking about that. Like how They're two types of constraints in businesses. They're both really tied together,

but it's like people conference and its capital constraints. And obviously, without capital, you can't have people. But, uh, you know, I forget who said this, but somebody said something along the lines of, you know, if you're growing fast, you should always feel like you don't have enough people to handle Handle that, the tasks that you need to get done and it's actually a really good thing. It might have been somebody like Paul Graham and that really resonated with me and what I what I got from it was the idea of constraints being super important and acting is a forcing function towards prioritization and resource allocation. Because if you have, if you don't have enough people,

Thio accomplish what you're trying to get done and it's not some absurd degree, is you? There is such a thing is like starvation right and not having enough capital or enough people at all like you're really actually truly struggling on. It's like a death throe type situation. But if you if you literally are without enough people to get something done and you're feel like you're struggling to get things done, well, that actually allows you to say, Hey, if I can't get everything done, what are the most important things to get done? And that's a thing. I'm playing around with his idea of people. It's really hard to do. It's hard to do less with more, you know, like the expression that I like doing more with less. I think that it's extremely challenging to do last thing like really focus when you have more resource is because once you have those, resource is things start to get, like, really crazy really

fast. And that kind of ties into the way that we were all developed as in evolution as we were under systems with hi hi constraints basically that we were not. We're not able to kind of deviate from from these high constraints. For example, food. We've been talking a lot about the loaf, high fat, low carb diets and stuff like that. And that is essentially we need to now place restrictions on themselves in in this modern world where there's just everything we could possibly want. And that's really interesting, because now the most successful people, we're probably going to be the ones who can place constraints on themselves and follow through with those. And that probably had a lot to do with upbringing, with kind of where you born and everything like that, who you're born, what what society you're born in, what kind of culture and blue kind of way

live in a world of abundance and outside of some very, very real issues, it's almost like we have constrict. Constraint is a privilege like in constraining on DDE. Ultimately, you have a lot of issues where it's like OK, phone addiction or digital addiction is going to be a huge problem if it isn't already out. Argue it already is a problem being addicted to screens and two things like social media that I think some of these things will correct. Naturally, I think that, like sort of the base liar, of being addicted to a screen and being addicted to notifications is something that will be needing that, uh, to be addressed. I think that, for instance, things like Facebook or Instagram by correct for themselves,

like people might just opt out if they start to realize that it's caustic to them. You're already seeing a two degree with that. Yeah, and apples done that, that that essentially allows you to see your usage, which I think it's super helpful. They're one of the few companies that isn't actually motivated by you being on their AB constantly or using their device constantly compared to, say, Facebook or Google, where your eyeball you like, really matters. So I think that they have an important role to play here. Ultimately, though, when you look at it. It's like consumption of digital media consumption of food. You have a lot of people who I feel like almost the people who have less are the people who were consuming more on. But I don't have any data that I could actually point to right here to back this up, pretty confident that it exists.

And if anybody knows that, please send it

to us. Yeah, I'm sure I'm sure it exists. But effectively, the idea that people who have less money probably spend more time on their phone and on their computer not doing work on that people also probably even more calories the last money that they have, or at least less healthy food.

And this becomes then a huge problem. Uh, once we have really immersive levels of entertainment, like virtual reality and augmented reality, you're soon gonna become, because then this pull that dopamine pull there isn't with Facebook, But the dopamine pole becomes so just base and like overwhelming that you know many people who are really practiced this idea of constraint. Or that's why stoicism. I think it's becoming too popular's, but it and and Eastern traditions of meditation are becoming popular is because these are proven ways to deal with and not even deal with work with and desire fear all of these things that have been with humans for a really long time, and that kind of propel us into these emotionally unstable states. So I think I think this is gonna become an issue. Uh, yeah. I don't know what you think.

Yeah, I'm curious to year sort of your take on where things were going with regard to meditation in the mainstream. I see it is a thing that you know as somebody who is living on the coast and who has a lot of circles that are related to tech, you know, fairly educated, fairly white. Most of the people I know who work in Tak are men on that needs to change. And we need more representation and more diversity in tak. But you know what? I look at this. I see most of the people that I know we're getting into meditation are not necessarily the people who need it the most, Like, you know, I certainly feel like I benefit from it. But I don't necessarily think I'm the person who needs it. The most. I feel like meditation and sort of getting away from the stuff that's,

like, distracting and especially just getting away from the things that are bad for you, like meditation. Essentially crowds out time in your day, even if it's just 15 minutes when you're not looking at your phone and when you're not doing something that's terrible for your body, I'm just curious to hear, like what your take is on with regard to No. Do we see that there is any of these things that I would say we're being adopted by people who were fairly well to dio Is that Is there any chance of lack of mainstream?

Yes, I do. And actually, I think that there is a problem in that as well. There's an issue that both among So now people are starting to use meditation as a technique for work enhancement or a productivity granite. This is actually a subtle yet similar issue that meditators have been faced for a long time, which is essentially the quest for power. Andi, It's been something that's been thousands of years. They call them cities in India, which is special powers, basically, and these are things that happen if you meditate for long enough, I'm talking about 1 to 2 hours a day for seven years. Could happen quicker with some people cannot happen it all for some other people. Really strange shit starts to happen. You get access to what other people would call a magical powers on DSO.

Productivity's like that. A lot of people are now entering this, particularly among elite. Going into meditation with this idea. That's actually how I got into. It was a bit, and then you slowly find out that these mean nothing. It's not important that the thing that I found most important is living my life in a way that benefits the others around me, being a source for kind of overflowing abundance for those for those people around me. And that's just my idea of where meditation is what effect, if what meditation is done for me and what I hope meditation could do for other people. Uh, kind of this gets difficult to talk about meditation at some point, because the actual experience of meditation, what we're looking for is not something that can be transmitted verbally. Although if you were working with meditation,

teacher that meditation teacher can transmit it through words. But the experience he feels not, is not something that could be could be accurate described now. Now we have the question of meditation coming into the general population, and this is one of the biggest issues is that even with the wealthy people, the most important thing you can do is have is a one on one interaction with somebody. Just teach your meditation to give you the experience. Otherwise, everything you're getting this is by us through your own filters of perception. You never really kind of jump to that next level, which is which is necessary. T progress in meditation And so for, Eso said. One of my teachers talks aboutthe kind of content. We could creator that kind of teaching weaken do. Once we've kind of gone into this world of sharing these meditation practices,

there's transactional, which is content podcasts, films, video stuff like that. Things were it's one too many connection, and then there's a transformational, which is one of one that's the most important is the transformational if you want. If you really want to change your life for the better, you're gonna have to work with the teacher. It's gonna be hard on dhe on. I see this being a problem for the mainstream is because it's basically it's now becoming mainstream in the elite. And then I do think that it will become mainstream. But that's the idea of meditation. It's this idea of this material powers that I'm going to get from this from this thing, and I see some problems. I think colts are gonna start happening.

I think I think it's gonna be really weird. Eyes, particularly San Francisco. It could get really weird on Dhe. Yeah, so I see a lot of problems. But then there's a lot of benefits as well, because because the introduces more people to the practice, if a lot more people are meditating, we're gonna live in a much more calm kind of I don't know, loving, rational way, because meditation helps us connect with both the rational and the emotional. Yeah, what do

you think? Yeah, it's It's interesting. I just talking about how we can have a calmer world or a world where people less stressed or less angry. I think that framework around frustration that misalignment. I think that's really important and honored. Oh, maybe meditation has some part of that of acceptance. Um, I know part of me just wonders. Like if one of the biggest challenges around stress is work on. Also, just like basically being ableto survive a lot of them drives. I think that a lot of people meditation and things like yoga, which I think are actually extremely important. I don't really have much experience with the organ myself. I do understand that there's an incredible amount of value there.

Those things seem kind of like nice tabs, even though I think they're really actually a central. But when you have this challenge of like being able to afford rent and being able to afford to provide for your family, like one, sleep like and not work multiple jobs, all of those things become very challenging. And it kind of makes like people talking about mindful desk or yoga or things like that kind of fuels like a nice tohave, or like something that, like only wealthy people, couldn't d'oh! And that brings me to the question of like, you know, should should everyone work, which is a conversation that have been having with a lot of people. I'm not even going towards like the conversation. You're about late,

universal, basic basic income like I think that's a completely different conversation. The first question before you start to think about solution, which is universal basic income is, was one potential solution. The question is, should be believe in work and, like is a lack of work. Is a lack of work stressful on Lee because there is a lack of incompetence? Or is it stressful? Or if people had didn't have to worry about income, would a lack of work be a stressful thing? I think that the answer is probably not. But on Lee s, you replace work with something meeting for in your life that's purposeful. That and I just spoke with Amazing a woman this morning who's worked in hiring for many years.

She's been a chief of staff for a very notable company, and she was telling me, I believe she said it was. Eleanor Roosevelt had this quote that people need to have. I need to have meaning or need to have. Did you say it was something along the lines of People need to be feel like they're doing something but it doesn't. There wasn't anything about work, Right? Work is sort of a way of showing that you're doing something which, by the way, eyes another topic that I've been thinking a lot about this idea of output versus activity. You could be doing a lot of things, but what do you actually causing to happen? You know, if you're doing a lot of things like maybe technically you're doing the work and you're getting paid. But is it actually is the output doing anything meaningful or having a meaningful impact on the world having meaningful impact on the community? And I think that if you start to decouple work from impact or from output Andi, it's dead. You're contributing Thio your community in some way. I don't think you need to necessarily work in the traditional sense of doing some task for income.

This is what I've been thinking a lot about pretty. The last couple days is how when I'm what I'm experienced dress when I've experienced in frustration, I have all these things that I want to get done that are work related for me. They're also happen to be fun, but time to what I want to do eventually for money, one of one of which is this podcast, which and so like thinking. OK, do the website. Gotta get all the content for the Web site. Gotta create the create, you know, reach out to a lot of people market and stuff like that on. Then I find myself all day researching like the ketogenic diet like like not doing the things I want to dio but then doing this other thing, which in that moment is kind of fun, and it's kind of like it's, but it doesn't feel like work or something,

but it is technically work I'm reading, and I'm thinking about stuff I don't know. And so there's a book a long time ago about games and how what games do basically is get people to work for free by providing incentives. Dopamine hits stuff like that, which then Facebook, read this book on dhe, always vigorous, read this book and then built their systems to also do that provide that same type of work for free. So every time you're posting on Facebook, you're working for Facebook like your I do it all the time and creating, you know creative block post basically for Facebook, which brings me no revenue. Which brings Facebook a lot of time. A lot of eyeballs on their things on. So I'm essentially doing work for Facebook for free. I mean,

there's an exchange element because what? I'm good. I'm getting access to things through Facebook that I wouldn't normally get. Events A ll these different stuff, connections, business stuff and all these different things. Now, the element that it is interesting that I've seen over the evolvement Facebook platform over the last three years is now that they're starting to make money, they've turned into a large business. They know where their money is coming from. They basically I can't find any back into this. But I know what's happening is that they throttled their Facebook posts. Basically, if you don't, If they analyze that you're post has a business element to it, Sir,

Example. You're posting Theo your podcast episode. Anything that links outside of Facebook, they will throttle that post. Uh, and then what do you Do you believe that? Or do

you I don't know. I what I What I do know is this is something that I've heard before I don't know if it's true. It seems like it could be it. It was, in some ways being Facebook's best. Interesting. I know that people will say the same thing about LinkedIn. Actually, if you post something toe linked in you on your post a link in your status update, which I don't know, very many people actually do this. But apparently it's very useful for certain types of objectives. They will degrade the amount of people to see if there's an external link on the trick. To get around that is post like a photo and post some text and then say something like Lincoln, the comments and then you post a link is the first comment s o. Then it tricks. The theoretically attracts it again. I don't necessarily know if that's 100% true. It seems like it could be on dhe. Enough people have said it that it could just be either why a widely accepted false falsehood or it could be something that's true. I don't think it necessarily hurts to use that method for a posting on like

so take it back to the constraints and, like what? What kind of constraints have you been thinking about this? Have you been able to apply this in your life?

Yeah. I mean, I try to not give myself very much time to accomplish anything. I give myself time to accomplish something. It just ends up being a terrible situation. And, you know, this is a very common thing, like Parkinson's law. The idea that the amount of time that you allocate toward something will essentially our world, Yeah, effectively. Like the amount of the amount of work and the amount of time it takes you to accomplish something will expand to fill the time that you give it right the time that you a lot it. So if I say okay, I'm going to give myself five hours to write something. We'll probably take me five hours, maybe exactly five hours.

But if I say, you know, I just really need to buckle down and write this thing in like, 20 minutes, I might be able to get there or if it really is a five hour type project, it's probably better to say, like, what can I do in 20 minutes? Spans of time on. And there's a whole bunch of different things around this. I believe it's called the Pomodoro Technique, which is effectively taking certain allocated segments and doing your cadence of 20 minute blocks and then having these like short breaks. I think it's like two and 1/2 minutes or five minutes. You can set the amount of time that you work in the amount of time that you break and sort of what the interval looks like. But the idea of being allocate a very strict amount of time, and then every time your mind sort of goes offer,

you realize that you've lost your attention, you can hone back and say, Well, it's just for another 15 minutes or just for another 30 minutes. If you do that, I think that allows you to retain focus. I think that the idea of constraints, though, directly leads to reduce stress. It might lead to a sort of good stress in the sense that, like oh, shoot, I only have 15 minutes. I'd better buckle down and do this, which is a better stress than kind of this low level stress that let's say you have 1/4 to do something, you know,

three months. Well, okay, if I have three months to do something. I sure as heck better be breaking it down and figuring out you know what? I'm gonna d'oh this week. Thio want to do next week to accomplish this goal at the end of the month and trying to like break it down into his small of peace is possible so that I can really, just, like, narrowly focus in on getting that done on. And that reduces stress versus having this like larger, broader, more ambiguous goal that's has a longer time arising.

So I'd like to talk more about what you're kind of creating. What are you guys trying to do with beyond deck?

So yeah, so I'm deck. It's beyond dec dot co. Essentially, this is a thing that's been going on for quite some time. Eric Thornburg, my friend. He's was one of the first employees that product under. I believe he was the first employee of product on. Currently, he's at a fund that he started called Village Global. It's a really interesting fund dedicated to providing tons of resource is two founders on dhe, treating it more like an accelerator than your typical fund, but they're backed by some of the best best founders and operators in the world. It's it's truly remarkable team that they've assembled. But on deck started when Eric was leaving product Hunt and figure out what he wants to do next. And he started putting together these informal dinners of people who were also considering what they wanted to do next.

What has evolved into effectively a global community of people who are looking to start a join something now and this community is really incredible. It's kind of a thing that's grown organically and, you know, we're just trying to nurture that and provide. Resource is it's global. It's globally at this point. We are in nine cities. I believe I can name them all off the top of my head without forgetting a few. But when I can tell you is most recently this Last month, September we launched in beauty past, redid our launch dinner and be the best, and we did one in Vienna s. So it's not just sort of like the typical places that you think for start ups, we are in L. A. You know,

we're in New York or in Tel Aviv, we're in London. London's amazing one of the one of the best ones for us right now, so we're in all of the standard places. But what we really want to do is you want to take one of the best elements of Silicon Valley, which is this idea of a spirit of service to others. Know we want to take that and have that be sort of the main cultural export via on deck. And what that is is there's something really great about this area of the country, and I think it's to a large degree transferred over Thio. Other tech hubs in the United States of somebody could email somebody, and as long as they're not trying to be transactional, and it's not just about like, Hey, can you be a customer or can you invest in my company or something like that? And it's just like a very earnest like Hey, love to talk to you about X,

y or Z and I really admire your work. There's this level of people will definitely respond and take the time, and that there's that spirit of service and trying to help others be successful. You don't really see that in any other in any other industry. And it's certainly a thing that really started here on that's you. Go on the other tack Cubs

sets way Just that reminds me, and it's been in my mind for a long time, but it hasn't really kind of come into the profession recently. Is that basically I want to do a separate podcast series where I try to get down to in the 19 sixties in the 19 seventies. What happened here in this area that created the constraints and the kind of ability for this area to become so powerful, powerful, economically innovation, wives and stuff like that. And I have a theory that it has a lot to do with the fact that this is also the head of the countercultural movement, which also was part of the meditation New Age spiritual movement as well. All that happened here in San Francisco and then so can value just to this out. So there's I'm really interested to see how influential these meditation practices, because what you just said, the spirit of service is a key ingredient in any spiritual practices that you you the quickest way to happiness. The quickest way to truth. The quickest way to any of it is to serve others, and that is the that seeped into the start.

That's a really interesting way of putting it. I mean, that's something that I would be very interested in as well. I know that you know the connection between music, the connection between our in technology and science eyes, something that started out very organically and naturally. Part of what people criticize about the tax scene in San Francisco is that maybe people don't necessarily appreciate that sort of the way that the taxi and started. I think it's something that is not appreciated or not as well understood as it could be. And there are very luckily, people who are in San Francisco who started a lot of these things who were involved in a lot of these early days of startups in technology in the Bay Area, and they're still contributing and still doing a lot of good things. I mean, something I recommend to everyone is that they go to see talks with Long now, which is Ah, institution dedicated to long term thinking. Started by Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly, Stewart ran the whole Earth catalog,

which I would describe as the L. O. Bean catalog meets like some cool zine meets some like, like, really, really good Amazon or good reads reviews effectively, they curated all this great information about knowledge and how to acquire knowledge with regard to everything from building your own home Thio Understanding what you're looking at when you look up at the stars to, you know, things like Camping and Wilder to survive for the Internet is before the Internet. So is the whole Earth catalog was, like, literally a magazine, and then Kevin Kelly was the other one who started the long Now he's the founder of Wire magazine. So in my mind, those were the two most important publications. Holders catalyze more from a counterculture perspective and wired more from like a technology perspective.

But those two really crossed a lot of paths, and that intermingling, I think, is what's particularly powerful. I know that Steve Jobs cited Stewart Brand is one of his biggest influences, and Stewart Brand was a member of Like The Merry Pranksters, with Ken Easy and all of That s O. And then, of course you can easy you know he was very involved with music scene, and the Grateful Dead got started by playing at Kentucky's parties. So you have this whole thing where it's like it's drugs and his technology and its science and its music and its like, sort of that whole era around expression and love. All of those things really came together, and I think that there was a lot more mischievous nous around technology back down to it was definitely more renegade than is now on. It wasn't the smart thing to Dio like it was actually kind of like a logical thing to do back then and now I think it's kind of become like a really viable, career like option for people and you see,

like essentially like educational programs coming out like Lambda School that are focused on making it to the people who don't necessarily have opportunity to end the traditional sense but have, you know, intelligence and, you know, they should be able to be making $80,000.200,000 dollars or Maura year a developer, but they're stuck at Wal Mart because of circumstances largely outside of their control. Up until this point, I mean with cripple things like crippling student debt. You can't really go on, get re educated as a 40 year old 35 year old who has two kids and a mortgage to pay on, you know, in the Midwest, in some part of the Middle West, that's really hard to dio, and it's really hard to get by with the salary that you're already making your kind of locked into that life S o creating alternative on ramps. I think it's really important for this new economy.

That's really interesting. I wanted to back up a little bit. We got about yet 10 minutes left. But, uh, when you set about long now in itself a place where people in San Francisco can go and find interesting conversations and kind of this is happening all over the city like this is the most interesting thing about San Francisco is that you can find like it's a bookie, me and kind of like just revolution here, it seems like, and not only things that are financially motivated. A lot of it isn't financially motivated. A lot of it's about self help, self growth, so you can go to the center in San Francisco and find workshops on any anything you want on Goto the Red Victorian and find really science based things. And this is all this is something that's kind of typically San Francisco now, but it's also entering the other places. So I started to see it in Bali, for example,

because so many people from San Francisco go to Bali on so they're now spreading it to there. And then one of my friends is remaining and she's never been here. I don't think. But I met her in Romania, part of start community in Romania. She went to Bali, picked up the stuff that's been going on in San Francisco. Now she's brought it back to Romania, and so and then a little bit of a tapping in Latin America. And it's kind of being spread by this digital nomad Cryptocurrency kind of groups as well. What are your thoughts on where that could go on? Like

I think that it's, I think it's great. I think that in some ways some cultural artifact, some ways of living, can't really be transferred except through inter personal interactions like in person. I think it's really hard to really convey what life is like for people who are living in San Francisco, doing things that I would say a little bit more edgy than maybe your standard, your standard person who's working, like, you know, as an engineer if you will not say anything negative about a hole. But you know, ultimately, there are a lot of people here doing all sorts of crazy things. You know, if they're if they're trying to start a like a really crazy creative business that you think is just like nuts but has like a huge opportunity to impact the world in a positive way, like we obviously want to hear from you it on deck.

My email is Julian J. U L i n at b on dec dot com. But anyways, you know, we really want to have more crazy people like honestly, like there are a lot of crazy people out on deck, and I think that that's what we want to try and optimize for. We want to try and make it so that there are people who have, like, really nuts ideas. All of the ideas that you hear about that really successful now kind of sounded a bit crazy, at least from like a business perspective. But I think that they're ones that either they're wildly ambitious or they don't sound like a business at all. If you follow either of those frameworks is like creating something that I was like, Okay, like this.

Maybe, like some people pay money to stand somebody's floor or something like Okay, that's like Maybe it's like a very modest business, but it doesn't seem like a huge deal. You have that side of it where you have stuff which is like that seems like impossible words, like reversing diabetes of 100 million people by 2025. Like those sorts of things like either end of that spectrum could be crazy in their own right. These were like, Oh, these kooky guys like trying to get people to crash on their floor. And it's like these crazy people who think that they can, like, change something that reverse something that people think is irreversible, right? Either end of that spectrum is really interesting debate

and that's that's the whole point of what I'm trying to do with The show is basically that from where we stand right now, It's pretty hard to separate. The people are actually crazy and people who are going to change this world because both of them look crazy on Dhe like, you can only tell that 100 years. So I'm basically interviewing anybody who is crazy.

I mean, it's it's really important that we encourage that and that we don't make tacking to like only this thing that, like you have to go to school. For that you have to like clearly you need to have some level of education around, how to build and how a lot of this stuff you can learn on the go. I don't think that you could be a great sales person without a lot of training, a lot of practice. But you've seen time and again that people who are engineers can can work through it and struggle through it. And with some training, they could become great sales. People are at least functional salespeople until the point where they are successful enough that they could hire a sales team or a sales person to really lead the charge there for their company. But I mean, I'd love frivolous things like I love things that aren't necessarily businesses. I think that those spark a lot of conversations. I will say that. You know, we have a lot of crazy conversations with people,

it on deck, where it's like these people were so early on. They have unnecessarily honed in on what their business is going to be right there. They might have not left the job. Might not have told people at their current job that they're leaving. So they're very much in an exploratory phase where they're like, You know, I'm really interested in X, y or Z. I'm just gonna talk through it now and maybe my ideas were crazy. Maybe they're not feasible. But the difference between something that's like that sounds crazy but actually isn't like it's very hard to actually parts through that. And the only way you know, if you try in some ways

and you just get familiar with this whole process is being in this edge world of craziness just like really

weird ship. Totally. I think that honestly, like my degree of crazy that I experience on a daily basis, is not It's not nearly enough playing. I'm seeking more craziness, So please, I hope more crazy people. Maybe listen to this podcast or something and and message May How

can people find you on Twitter?

Uh, well, my twitter is just my first name in my last name, which is at J u l. I am w E i S S E r. And my email is just Julian at beyond dot co Either of those things work? Yeah. You know, I'm happy. Thio Happy to help. Like I always have time for founders is the thing that I I really try and take really seriously, Always having time to talk through things And, you know, maybe it won't seem like thing for me, but all these try And if it seems like somebody's coming to the right place while frying replied every male and try to try to help people out, However

I can That's really amazing. And I want to see specifically because came So what prepared with these notes? What? What is one book that you've read in the last month? That's kind of really changed your perspective

on things. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um well, I can just I can send you a link that has the books that I've read this year. There's this book that I'm in the process of reading that is actually the most challenging book that I've read this year, even though it's the most simply worded. It's called finite and infinite games and is about how people look at the world and how people of their lives. And it touches on everything from patriotism and war to competition, which patriotism and war forms of competition, but on creativity and the difference between society and culture, things like that. It sze a giant wormhole, and I'd recommend, honestly, a bunch of people getting around the microphone and discussing what they've read in that book because is one of the most interesting books I've read in the last few years. I would also say that it's one that I read a couple of pages off, and then I sit back and I need Thio give myself a day or two before I pick it up again to internalize it. And then I usually read those pages again and then read another four pages before moving on

and reminding the beginning of infinity. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a book I've been reading

that school. I've heard somebody recommend another one of George's books. Really? That's the one. Yeah. And she said that that completely changed her life. Like the way she views the world. Andi, I don't ready for

the beginning of infinities. Almost like working a minute meditation teacher. It's pretty powerful stuff. Thank you so much for being on the show tomorrow.