Be less busy

[00:00:00] I'm reading a good book right now that I read when I was out of town called The Sovereign Artist.

[00:00:06] And I think Meditations of Lifestyle Design.

[00:00:09] I think that's what is under the title.

[00:00:12] And it's only taking about an hour to read, maybe a little less.

[00:00:15] But I feel like everyone should check it out.

[00:00:19] If you're like me and like a lot of us who are always trying to over-optimize everything

[00:00:24] and always trying to be more productive to get an edge by doing that extra work.

[00:00:32] And a lot of times I think this is pervasive of our whole culture too.

[00:00:35] It's just on that dopamine cycle of doing one thing, doing another thing, reading, exercising,

[00:00:44] eating healthy, but doing very little scheduled leisure time where you literally do nothing.

[00:00:50] And it talks a lot about how in ancient cultures, a lot of the successful folks would be spending

[00:00:57] most of their time doing leisure.

[00:00:59] And the word comfort has a Latin term or something, I forgot exactly, but basically means to prepare

[00:01:07] for war or something better.

[00:01:10] The word fort, the second part of it.

[00:01:12] And he was just making a point that real creativity only comes when there's tons of silence and leisure

[00:01:19] and actually boredom and a form of slavery that you can impose on yourself is to be busy all the time.

[00:01:26] So that's the biggest takeaway and the message of this podcast.

[00:01:29] And my takeaway of the book is, is that being busy all the time is not a good thing.

[00:01:34] Rushing from one thing to the other, rushing to your kids' events, rushing around the house,

[00:01:40] rushing to get more work done because it's kind of a cowardly way out or it's lazy.

[00:01:46] So when you're always rushing, it means that you haven't thought deeply and strategically enough

[00:01:52] about what you're doing in your workflow to limit the fact that you have to work really hard

[00:01:57] and run around all day in order to get things done or to be a better version of yourself.

[00:02:02] When if you have thought harder about it, you would be able to work less and get more done,

[00:02:07] more powerful forms of creativity would take over and your life would be more flow-based

[00:02:12] instead of action-based.

[00:02:14] And I'm not sitting here pretending like I have this all figured out because I certainly don't.

[00:02:19] And I suffer from this a lot.

[00:02:20] And I'm sure a lot of people listening do too.

[00:02:23] So it's not like I had this mastered.

[00:02:26] But I really do believe it's the way forward.

[00:02:28] It's, there's a lot of, it doesn't mean you're not working really hard either.

[00:02:33] And I've talked about, my podcasts are always, they're basically all the same, right?

[00:02:36] Everything, maybe the topics change from time to time, but it's the same things over and over and over again for a reason

[00:02:42] because it's the stuff that works and stuff that brings more fulfillment and success.

[00:02:47] And this is another one of those topics where you, you basically can grind and grind and work really hard

[00:02:55] and inch by inch get better.

[00:02:56] Or you can have bursts of inspiration where you're working tirelessly, but it feels like play, doesn't feel like work.

[00:03:03] You can get tons accomplished.

[00:03:04] And that usually comes out of curiosity, which usually comes out of boredom,

[00:03:08] which often comes when you're not doing well for a long time.

[00:03:11] And you kind of get beaten down to a state of surrender.

[00:03:14] And when you're at a state of surrender, you're like, whatever, I don't give a shit.

[00:03:18] I'm done.

[00:03:19] I don't care.

[00:03:20] I'm sick of beating myself up.

[00:03:21] I'm sick of doing this.

[00:03:22] This could be for anything, not just trading.

[00:03:25] And then what happens is you start to get curious.

[00:03:28] Things start to come into your experience and you notice things that you normally weren't doing or paying attention to.

[00:03:33] And then slowly the curiosity takes over.

[00:03:37] And all of a sudden you're in a flow state where you're doing work just for the sake of doing the work.

[00:03:42] And you're not worried about the productivity of it.

[00:03:44] You're not trying to be, you know, 1% better every day.

[00:03:49] I'm not saying that there's something wrong with being 1% better every day either.

[00:03:52] I mean, I think all of that can be true.

[00:03:54] You can be 1% better every day.

[00:03:56] There's different ways to do it, though.

[00:03:58] It's not linear like that.

[00:04:00] Everyone wants it to be comfortable.

[00:04:01] Like, I'm going to buy the stock and it's going to go up and pull back no more than 30%, 20% and keep going up.

[00:04:06] Some stocks do that.

[00:04:08] But as we see now, markets go up too much and then they come down really fast too much.

[00:04:14] And that's the way of things.

[00:04:16] And it's only going to be more the way of things with computers and technology and the way people trade with programming things.

[00:04:22] And it's faster moving.

[00:04:24] Everybody gets stuck faster, all that stuff.

[00:04:28] So that's a side point, though.

[00:04:30] But back to the book, he talked about just basically scheduling leisure time, scheduling time to just be bored and get good at wasting time.

[00:04:39] How about that?

[00:04:40] Total opposite of what we've been taught or what we think we need to know.

[00:04:43] Get good at wasting time.

[00:04:45] Get good at doing nothing.

[00:04:46] If you're like me and you're wired to always get better and always work and you literally have a chip in your brain, you feel like, where you're just always pushing forward.

[00:04:54] If you're like that, you actually benefit from doing less and trying to be bored and allowing the procrastination to take over, which is counterintuitive versus a lot of the things we've heard.

[00:05:10] I had a coach I hired for a long time who was really good, who worked with a lot of successful people, entrepreneurs and stuff.

[00:05:16] Maybe a few other traders.

[00:05:17] I'm not sure.

[00:05:18] And we talked about some of the really high achievers, really high achievers, people making like millions, tens of millions, billions, like not people who are.

[00:05:28] And those people operate mostly from a state of flow where others are helping them.

[00:05:33] They're delegating.

[00:05:35] Most of the work is play.

[00:05:37] There's lots of time off and lots of inspiration.

[00:05:39] And I know that's not the role model we see when we look at people.

[00:05:44] It seems like all they do is work.

[00:05:46] And that's one way to do it.

[00:05:47] But it's not necessarily the way that makes you fulfilled in other areas of your life.

[00:05:52] I'm listening to Warren Buffett's book, Snowball, right now.

[00:05:56] And I mean, even Warren Buffett's amazing.

[00:05:58] And all the things that he had in his life that had gone well in terms of investing and trading.

[00:06:04] Well, not trading.

[00:06:05] He hates trading.

[00:06:05] But you know what I mean.

[00:06:07] Analyzing the company, feeling like he's in love with his work.

[00:06:10] And there's a reason he's alive in his mid-90s, eating like total shit, Pepsi and chips or whatever, because he's got so much spiritual energy from doing the work he loves every day.

[00:06:20] And it keeps him going.

[00:06:22] And one of the things, though, about him is the rest of his life wasn't always great.

[00:06:27] I mean, his family life seemed fragmented and distracted.

[00:06:31] And I'm not trying to pick up a guy.

[00:06:32] It's Warren Buffett, right?

[00:06:33] But the point is that, like, when you're all in on one thing, sometimes the other things can suck.

[00:06:39] It could be health or there's always something that someone's struggling with.

[00:06:43] Finances, relationship, whatever.

[00:06:45] And I think this approach can harmonize those things together a lot more than the other approach.

[00:06:51] And the more normal approach that everyone's taught, kind of in America especially.

[00:06:55] What do you do for a living?

[00:06:56] Where do you work when you meet somebody?

[00:06:58] Other countries, not so much like that all the time.

[00:07:00] And there's a lot of good with that, too.

[00:07:02] I mean, I'm like that a lot, too.

[00:07:05] So I'm trying to be better.

[00:07:07] How do I go to a higher level and feel more open, more flow?

[00:07:10] I think this is the way.

[00:07:12] Embrace.

[00:07:13] What does it mean?

[00:07:13] Like, what's the way?

[00:07:15] Embrace busyness.

[00:07:16] Embrace procrastination.

[00:07:17] When you're not a procrastinator and when you're always busy, I'm sorry, embrace the opposite of busyness.

[00:07:22] Busyness being a form of slavery you're imposing on yourself, as the book said.

[00:07:26] Embracing, like, I don't know, just getting away and doing nothing.

[00:07:30] It's hard.

[00:07:32] You want to, what's going on?

[00:07:34] Check the market like 50 times during the day to see what your stocks are doing or whatever else parallel there is to that.

[00:07:41] And I feel like there's, everyone's had moments of real curiosity and flow where it just comes naturally.

[00:07:47] And you get so much done.

[00:07:49] It's like you sit at your desk all day.

[00:07:51] There's no great work being done.

[00:07:53] It's just like you're just grinding through things.

[00:07:55] And sometimes you have to grind through things totally.

[00:07:56] You have to do your taxes.

[00:07:58] There's things you have to do.

[00:08:01] But I still think there's a better way through it.

[00:08:03] And everyone probably recognizes that in their own life at some point.

[00:08:07] Back to the Warren Buffett book really quick, just to not to jump around too much, but to bring up one of the things about him that I thought made him so successful that I don't know if other people picked up on or was emphasized in the book enough, but was that he compartmentalized very well.

[00:08:24] He had a mom he really didn't like, like a pain in the ass mom, and she was always just bugging him and just wasn't fun to be around.

[00:08:34] So he wanted to limit his time with her.

[00:08:36] So he learned to kind of quickly put things he didn't like behind him and just delegate them off and then quickly refocus on the future and on what he was interested in.

[00:08:44] So he saved all of his energy all the time for his investing in things that he loved.

[00:08:48] And I think I know that I've had trouble with this in my life, gotten a lot better.

[00:08:52] But dwelling on things or letting things interrupt your path of your real kind of desire of where you want to go in your life because of things that happened that are bothering you.

[00:09:03] And I just feel like he got that gunk out of his life so quick.

[00:09:06] And that was just an amazing quality.

[00:09:08] I think we can all do that, too.

[00:09:10] And I think that that's very true with trading also when you miss trades or things don't go your way or, I don't know, you draw down, you make a mistake and you give back too much money.

[00:09:18] And then you're kind of just on your own case.

[00:09:20] And how Roger Federer talks about this, too, the tennis player, about how he really took off when he decided that that was useless.

[00:09:28] Like, that's not a high-level trait.

[00:09:30] We think that, oh, if I beat myself up, I'm more accountable.

[00:09:33] I care about my results, so I'm going to punish myself.

[00:09:36] Actually, that's not a successful person's outlook.

[00:09:40] But I had that a lot of my life because that's what I was taught.

[00:09:43] And that's what you learned.

[00:09:44] That's what you're mirrored by other people.

[00:09:45] But those guys, Roger Federer specifically and some others that I was reading about, really took off when they stopped that crap.

[00:09:54] When they had that patience and that self-love or that self-acceptance is when things really took off, like that gentle touch.

[00:10:02] Because you're already a hard-driving person.

[00:10:04] You're already doing everything you can.

[00:10:05] So beating yourself over the head when you make a mistake doesn't mean you're not paying attention to the mistake.

[00:10:10] It doesn't mean you're not fixing it.

[00:10:11] It's just like you already know.

[00:10:12] You don't need to go any further.

[00:10:14] So I thought Warren Buffett was a good example of that as well.

[00:10:19] A little different than Federer, but similar in how they handle some of those things.

[00:10:23] But yeah, that kind of just got me thinking about how can I take my own life now and do more of this?

[00:10:31] Like how can I be less busy, less in a rush, maybe be okay with the procrastination when it happens?

[00:10:37] And understand like are you over-optimizing all the time?

[00:10:40] Are you trying to make little things better and spending tons of time getting really stressed out and worked up doing little studies about improving something really small that really doesn't matter that much versus the bigger picture?

[00:10:52] Which it's funny.

[00:10:53] Do you ever notice that when you try to trade and you don't care and you just are happy to be there and enjoying yourself that things come to you over time?

[00:11:01] But when you're trying to do something, it doesn't work.

[00:11:03] And that's this whole talk and the whole book I think was trying to capture that in life.

[00:11:08] But it's the same thing with trading.

[00:11:10] It has such a good overlay with all this stuff.

[00:11:14] Anyways, yeah, I'm going to be thinking about this.

[00:11:15] Hopefully everybody else can pick something out of it.