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Back to What Makes Great Leaders & How to Live an Extraordinary Life | Dr. Jared Diamond, with Jared Diamond.

Do Bezos and Zuckerberg Have a Life Philosophy?

Jared Diamond says he is not aware of Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg having a philosophy of life beyond their business. The business leader he admires as a person is the Patagonia leader he knows. For the Patagonia leader, as with John Wooden, Patagonia is a model for life, and he has a philosophy of life. Steve Jobs had a philosophy of life as regards business.

Jared Diamond has had several lengthy conversations with Bill Gates and likes him. People who met Bill Gates under other circumstances hold different views. Jared Diamond met Elon Musk once and met Jeff Bezos once, and he does not know many leaders in the business world. The Patagonia leader emphasized time off for his staff and Patagonia being sustainable. He had the opportunity to acquire more cotton and produce more product, and he chose not to acquire more cotton because he did not want to overdevelop cotton agriculture. He is or was a full person. He did the first ascent of the most difficult face in Yosemite and was a top rank mountaineer. Jared Diamond knows him and wrote the preface for his autobiography. After Steve Jobs had been fired the first time, he was brought back to Apple a second time. Instead of Apple producing a hundred products, Steve Jobs said Apple should produce four. The products should look nice, they should be attractive, and they should be easy to handle. Jared Diamond sets them against the remote he and his wife use to watch the World Soccer Cup on TV. The remote has 47 buttons, and they had to call up their sons each time to learn how to operate it.

Grokipedia·Jared Diamond·Jeff Bezos

Transcript

What Makes Great Leaders & How to Live an Extraordinary Life | Dr. Jared Diamond ·

Huberman Lab

More from this episode

  1. How Did Hitler Shape Jared Diamond's Life?Jared Diamond says his life and his wife's life were formed under the shadow of Hitler.
  2. Why Did Jared Diamond Save a Student From Expulsion?Jared Diamond talked his department into keeping his second graduate student after the student did poorly on an exam.
  3. Why Do Powerful Leaders Almost Never Step Down?Jared Diamond looked at 22 outstanding political leaders from World War II onward and found that only two stepped down voluntarily.
  4. Why Has Jared Diamond Made Lists Since Age Three?Jared Diamond has made lists ever since age three.
  5. Why Did a Medical Dean Fund New Guinea Birds?Jared Diamond says the longest serving medical school dean in the United States gave him five thousand dollars every year to keep studying New Guinea birds…
  6. What Kept Jared Diamond in Miserable New Guinea?Jared Diamond says life in New Guinea is physically miserable most of the time, and still fascinating enough to stay.
  7. Why Does Jared Diamond Find Birds Easiest to Study?Jared Diamond says birds inform ornithologists about everything. Birds are the easiest of all animals to observe and to understand.
  8. How Do Vervet Monkey Grunts Act Like Words?Jared Diamond says vervet monkey grunts function as words. Each grunt names a different danger, and the other monkeys answer with a matching move.
  9. Why Did Jared Diamond Allow One Student's Own Project?Jared Diamond negotiated with his graduate students and postdocs so each project interested both him and the student.
  10. Why Did Jared Diamond Start Counting Time at 89?Jared Diamond says a sharp sense of time left has not always been part of his life. Turning 80 was not a shock.
  11. Why Does Firing a Coach Usually Improve the Next Season?Jared Diamond says coaches get fired after a losing season, and CEOs get fired when a company has a poor year and low returns.
  12. What Career Rule Does Jared Diamond Live by?Jared Diamond says perhaps the main advice is to make sure you do something you enjoy, because that is what most people do not do.

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