Our Most Impactful Learnings From 2025

Shaan Puri

Most people live their life like this they build a well and they start to pump water and at the end of their lives after a lifetime of pumping they see they are still thirsty they spent their whole life pumping rather than drinking which was the reason they started pumping in the first place what up sam I wanted to do something a little different today end of the year I was doing a little slack clean out and I was looking at I had this one channel for like the best stuff I read this week I call it my content diet channel it's basically what were the vegetables what were my whole foods that I consumed because I consume a lot of junk but this stuff was actually good and I was just kinda browsing through what really stood out or resonated with me and I have a couple I don't know I want and I wanted to know yours because you read a lot more than me and I think we read totally different things so I I'm curious if anything comes to mind for you on that topic

Sam Parr

yes for me it's a lot of books and so like for example the the topic that I got obsessed with this year was presidential assassinations I went deep on the four different presidents who were assassinated and it that interested me but you know I'm a huge history fan and so I could talk to you all about history which which I I can like say some of the most amazing stuff that I learned

Shaan Puri

I feel like we did a whole bit when the trump assassination thing happened on presidential assassination there's some crazy stories right there's like the guy who had a speech in his pocket that like blunted the blow and so he got shot

Sam Parr

and he survived

Shaan Puri

he got roosevelt and he gets shot by his car on his way to a speech doesn't die because the speech is so thick in his pocket gives the speech while bleeding

Sam Parr

yeah that was roosevelt there's only been four presidents that have been successfully assassinated and three of them happened between like 1865 and like nineteen o five and like pretty much up until andrew garfield was assassinated which I think was like around nineteen o four any human any american it was like customary you can just go to the white house and schedule an appointment with the president and the idea here was that they were supposed to be like a man of the people and I think that's ridiculous and the secret service even up till 1963 6465 when jfk was shot it was only like 300 people and so like basically it was nonexistence and so I'm like obsessed with that about how like something became an institution even after four years or sorry four deaths happened and so I've been obsessed with that I've also been obsessed with leadership and the idea of speeches have you ever studied any of the great speeches of american or world history

Shaan Puri

none in particular what what what's you got

Sam Parr

so in particular winston churchill have you ever seen the movie dunkirk you've never seen it right

Shaan Puri

no I haven't

Sam Parr

the idea is like early in the war of england this was when like not the nazi germany had just invaded france and it was like clear that nazi now was nazi germany was officially bad before it was like yeah they're horrible but like they're gonna stay themselves they start evading other countries and people start freaking out they go through france and everyone's like oh my god I can't believe you know imagine today imagine like france getting taken over

Shaan Puri

france yeah

Sam Parr

yeah it's it's just like insane and so england which is nearby they were like oh my gosh now they are coming to us and so they start officially getting in getting to a war and have squirmish in dunkirk where nazi the nazis surround a part of england and they surround like I think it was like 50,000 or even a 100,000 soldiers and basically if those people died the war would have been over and it was a magical moment where hundreds of ships that were just fishermen but also the british navy they raced over and they grabbed these guys off this island and they saved hundreds of thousands of lives whatever whatever but that's not the important part of my story but up until that. England was like fearful they were very fearful they're like this is horrible like they were imagining all the worst things that that was gonna happen winston churchill who was in power was a very fearful fearful person and he was very nervous but then he goes screw it we're not gonna take this we're gonna get after it and he gave this speech and at the end of the speech he does this in like I forget what their I think it's the house of parliament it's like their like physical setting where like everyone's watching him and he was like we're gonna fight in the beaches we're gonna fight in the trenches we're gonna fight in the land and we will never ever give up and he like gave this like amazing speech that basically changed the entire morale of the country we're talking about tens of millions of people and it just like I've always been very fascinated when there's one person who can exert a relatively small amount of energy and get everyone else to change their energy so like have you ever been to a concert I used to love watching these oasis concerts they'll be literally they're famous they they they were famous for helping create like this idea of like a mega concert they would have 250,000 people in the audience and they're relatively high energy band but it's just one or two guys singing into a microphone and they get 250,000 people to like light up and like push that energy back to them and I'm obsessed with what is that one thing that person has and how do they leverage that amount of energy to impact potentially hundreds of thousands or in the case of winston churchill tens of millions of people and so I'm like like trying to figure out like what words does someone have to use and like if you think about winston churchill do you know what he looks like

Shaan Puri

yeah I've been I've seen photos of him

Sam Parr

like he's a a short fat kinda drunkard like he's not like he's not like a good looking guy like he doesn't have like the traditional movie star good looks or anything like that right and so what I've been trying to study is how people do that

Shaan Puri

because you wanna just deliver this at work or what what's the like connect the dots for me

Sam Parr

yeah because I do wanna become a better leader like once your company gets so my company we're only like 25 or 30 people but I'm getting to the. Now where I'm not doing a lot of the work and I am having to not motivate people because all my a good employee is already motivated but in order to make a a good employee a great employee you do need to inspire them

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

and so I've just been trying to figure out how to become a better leader and so I've been studying some of the we're

Shaan Puri

gonna advertise in the banner ads we're gonna advertise in the podcast we're gonna advertise everywhere we will advertise you know what what do you what is the like rally cry that you're trying to trying to get to them what what would be like what would be an example have you done it yet have you tried

Sam Parr

yeah like so so right now ai is everywhere and I just it's making me sick that I am like having to talk to ai all the time and I'm not having a lot of like relationships in real life I'm not having what you call these belly to belly conversations and what I've noticed with hampton is once we got people in room in the room in the same room once a month to have their conversations for the core meeting it literally will change their lives not because we're particularly special but just being in a in a physical setting with people who have been vetted and you know that you have like minded interest interest and you're indoctrinating them into having what do we call the three c's confidentiality candor commitment that will change someone's life and it changes their life just in a small way these are entrepreneurs it's not like the average show so eventually we wanna like figure out how can we do this with everyone else but just this idea that the world is going one way yet everyone is so incredibly lonely and sad what can we do that like solves that even if it's for a small group of people like entrepreneurs

Shaan Puri

did you see churn like go to zero when you went from digital to in person

Sam Parr

it it's crazy like on a bad month it would be like sixties annual churn now it's like eighties and nineties

Shaan Puri

six wait sixties meaning so 40% churn or what do you what do you mean by that

Sam Parr

sixties retention yes

Shaan Puri

so four so 40% would churn every month before

Sam Parr

annual it's annual

Shaan Puri

annual okay of your annual membership okay gotcha and then now it's like jumped up significantly just by making that work

Sam Parr

85 90% like it's not even it's like but but there's all this other work of like being crazy about the vetting process I don't think people realize that thousands of people apply and we let in like four or 5% per month so we do a lot of work but in real life does most of the work the problem is it's a fucking pain in the ass it's really hard to do we gotta find these like moderators in all these cities and train them it's really really hard but not even close like night and day alright I read a ton I would say almost a book a week and the reason I read so much is because my philosophy towards reading is I wanna see what works for the winners that I love and what strategies they use and then I wanna see what mistakes did they all make what were the common flaws that they all had and I just wanna avoid that and so hubspot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in 2025 and I did that so I listed out seven books that made a meaningful difference in my life and I explained what the differences that they had on me or what actions I took because of the book and then also I listed out my very particular ways of reading because I'm pretty strategic about how I read and how I read so much and how I remember what I read and things like that and so I put this together in a very simple guide it's seven books that had a huge impact on my life and you can scan the qr code below if you wanna read it or there's a link you guys know what to do there's a link in the description just go ahead and click it and you'll see the guide that I made so it's the seven books that had a massive change in my life this year so far and then also how I'm able to read so much so check it out below

Shaan Puri

so it sounds like one of the things you're doing is you're tying it to a bigger movement which is at what I think what the great leaders do so you're not saying hey we are trying to win we're trying to grow revenue because people only get so excited by the sort of financial success or metric success of your specific company but when you say look the world is going this way but we gotta fight we gotta fight we I don't want to live in that world I think that world is messed up the world where we just get lonelier sadder we're only talking to ai we're not seeing other people we're just living digitally like this digital overload is going one way I wanna I wanna we're part of the resistance and that sort of we're part of the resistance is generally one thing that like most leaders do they they tie their you know you could play in a football game a high school football game but you'll feel like you're going to war and you're fighting for your brothers and like they took something from you and your family and you could you could make it so important when actually it's a you know division three a high school football regular season game that you'll never remember four weeks from now right but but the leader can elevate the importance of what this means because the meaning it is what it is no no it is what you say it means and so what you tell yourself it means is is what you'll actually what you'll actually feel about it

Sam Parr

and you know I don't when you study when you were in like social studies classes in like fifth and sixth grade they used to talk about these roman emperors and I don't know if you remember this but they would often refer to them as orders

Shaan Puri

yeah orders yeah

Sam Parr

which is kinda I remember thinking like that's funny so this person

Shaan Puri

who's content creators without the without the internet

Sam Parr

like I if I had an order rome was like someone who stands on a rock and like hey everyone here's what we have to do

Shaan Puri

should we rebrand from podcaster to order

Sam Parr

it's kind of a it's kind of like an interesting thing

Shaan Puri

technically that is what we do

Sam Parr

and you ask yourself why on earth would an order someone who could just speak good why would they control like you know the entire world right and I started thinking about that obsessively and I'm like okay well what do the leaders have in common and most of the time it is great speeches and great speaking and I underestimated that for a long time so I've been trying to figure that out

Shaan Puri

well that's been a rabbit hole you've been obsessed with

Sam Parr

I'm shocked that you're not going down that track either I think that you I think you have that I think that you study it as well I don't think you get credit enough for studying that but I'm shocked that that doesn't like fascinate you

Shaan Puri

it it does it's just what season are you in what which rabbit hole do you happen to be in right now that's a good one I've got it earmarked you know like you know it that's a that's of of great interest to me but right now I'm interested in in a couple other areas I wanna give you one you know there's a book that I think a lot of people have heard about probably even read I read it but I had sort of forgotten about this part of it die with zero and die with zero is really like it's just yolo rebranded and so what what is what is it about and I I emailed her this passage I said here's from the book it says death wakes people up and the closer it gets the more awake we become because when the end is near that's when we suddenly start thinking what the hell am I doing why did I wait this long you can't live every day like it's your last if so you wouldn't bother studying or visiting the dentist or doing anything that has delayed gratification but if you delay gratification for too long or indefinitely it's just too late you also can't live life as if it's infinite so we all face the question what's the best way to allocate our life energy before we die and here's the principles so principle one timing matters some experiences can only be enjoyed at certain times you can't water ski when you're 90 and in the book he tells this great story about how his buddy and when he was a investment banker his buddy was like let's go backpacking through europe he's like I'm down he's like awesome it's gonna be a six week trip he's like six weeks how are we gonna get six weeks off he's like well we'll ask but they're probably gonna say no we'll probably have to quit and he's like quit and he looked at his friend like he's being so reckless like wow you're just quitting your job to go backpacking through europe what a reckless thing to do what a irresponsible thing to do I will do the responsible thing and stay in the job and he talks about when his friend came back and he immediately just he he sees the glow sees how he's talking about his time abroad he's like oh shit I made a mistake what I thought was responsible was actually irresponsible because I threw away this time in my twenties where there's only one there's only timing matters there's only one time to go backpacking through europe and sleep in hostels and so he actually talks about when he was 32 or something he finally you know gets his promotion he's been waiting for and he takes he has enough time to take off and he goes and he he goes and does that trip

Sam Parr

bill perkins the author

Shaan Puri

yeah bill perkins goes and does the trip and he's like guess what it's not as fun to go bumming around in hostels when you're 32 33 years old like that was a game to be played when I was you know 20 to 25 and I missed it I missed the window and so timing matters that's the first thing second thing what to worry about we can always make more money in the future but we cannot go back and recapture time so it makes no sense to let life opportunities pass us for the fear of squandering money squandering our lives should be of much greater worry alright the last one money is life energy think of money as the concept of life energy you trade some life energy working to get some amount of money maybe $10 an hour then then when you wanna buy a shirt for $30 you don't think about $30 you you say hell no you want me to go work for three hours for this shirt similarly a higher salary doesn't mean more income on an hourly basis if I'm making 200 k a year but only working twenty hours that's better than making 300 k working forty hours it's like eating a cookie one cookie is one hour on a treadmill is that cookie really worth it

Sam Parr

just imagine if your credit card imagine if your credit card it like starts at a 100 years old and every time you buy something and that goes to nine hundred years you know nine hundred years in six months it's like oh shit that was six months I just paid for that

Shaan Puri

if when you checked out it was like awesome based on your your salary that was you know four and a half days of work so you know would you like to would you like to work a hundred and eight hours right now you know like you know when would you like to schedule that in you know like never mind just keep the blender dude I don't want it you know I'm not interested in this and so I thought there's a lot of good stuff in this book I actually didn't really read the full book because it was kinda like a book should be a blog type of deal but the the core concepts in the first you know let's say 50 to 75 pages I thought were really really good the last one this one for you the vast majority of financial fears are completely irrational there are real financial fears that do exist and then there are irrational or illogical financial fears like rich people who still worry about money even though the math clearly shows they're fine and will always be fine and I think this is also true for a lot of people

Sam Parr

but I hate I hate that advice though because well you didn't you know I'm not gonna criticize the book because I think it maybe it goes into like actual tactics but it's sort of like selling like a young guy like who's struggling to date someone like just be yourself it's like well but my self sucks so can you like maybe instead just teach me how to be a better self so like telling someone not to worry is like telling an alcoholic just like try harder you know so so

Shaan Puri

what is the solution fuck

Sam Parr

I don't know years of therapy I'm not sure exactly but but but I haven't found it no you I have found it it's just get richer like what the

Shaan Puri

no I don't think you found it

Sam Parr

I don't know I think you have to there is a. I have hit a. Where I'm like okay there there's enough for this current lifestyle that's for sure

Shaan Puri

and by the way the the final visual he has is that most people live their life life like this they build a well and they start to pump water and as the well fills they use a cup to scoop out a small amount of water they take a sip and go right back to pumping higher and higher and at the end of their lives after a lifetime of pumping they see they are still thirsty they spent their whole life pumping rather than drinking which was the reason they started pump pumping in the first place

Sam Parr

when I when I see these things a lot of times the takeaway that people have is that I shouldn't work or I shouldn't do something and I think that that's not the takeaway that he implies or what he wants the takeaway to be but that's the takeaway that a lot of people have and I think that that is such a bad idea to like not work I do think that there is something magical about thirty or thirty to fifty hours a week there is something magical where you have to have a thing that you're contributing to with others for a shared mission and so when I see this I don't want people to think young people to think I should get rich and not work I think that's not the goal I think you should have a mission in life that it aligns with yourself but you have to contribute to society otherwise you're just gonna feel empty

Shaan Puri

yeah I think the idea here isn't work or don't work or don't care about money or care about money it's those are sort of false choices it's really the idea of the way most people live their life is I'm speaking to the type of person who's gonna listen to this podcast you're probably an overachiever type probably a little type a you're probably pretty hungry for success you might be slightly impatient right these are I would say common common disorders of the mfm listener group right I know this because I am one and I would say the trick is for most of us we basically work work work or work and then we try to fill in some life around the gaps and the idea I think of what he says and what I picked up from jesse is look you gotta decide what you want to do in life schedule that don't worry the work the work is always there the work will fill in all the cracks around those things but if you just wait till you have large gaps of free time or it's the right time to go do that thing you always wanted to do work just is like a liquid or a gas it just expands to fill the container you give it and so you have to be really conscious of how you let that fill the container like the the analogy I use with jesse is you know you have a jar

Sam Parr

jesse itzler

Shaan Puri

jesse itzler yeah you have a jar and imagine for your year you have you know next to the jar the jar's empty right now but you have sand you have small rocks and big rocks and the sand is gonna be like all your day to day life routines it's gonna be your errands it's gonna be your zoom calls it's gonna be your meetings whatever that's the sand it's stuff that you you do you gotta do you gotta do a lot of it but you're not gonna look back a year from now and remember any of those you know your zoom calls don't go in your sort of your lifelong memories or your photo albums like it's it doesn't make it there right but you gotta do some of them then you have the small rocks which are like you know little little initiatives little efforts and then you have the big rocks the things that you know really matter to you you know taking that family trip or going and visiting your parents even even though you don't have to and maybe you don't have time to do it but hey you're they're getting older and you wanna go visit them or it's learning that new skill or whatever it is launching that project those are your big rocks and if you've put the sand in the jar first and then you say great now I'm gonna fit the big rocks in they don't go in at all but if you put the big rocks in and you say I'm doing these these have this much space they're in here and then you fill as much sand as you can it turns out you can fit the whole you can fit all the things into the container if you do it in the right order the sand will fill in all the cracks and crevices but the big rocks don't work that way so you just have to make sure you sort of figure out what are my big rocks what do I actually really really care about and then how do I put them in the jar first not do the first but even just schedule them first so that my life doesn't just become you know a jar full of sand

Sam Parr

dude that's so funny that's the same analogy that the book the book traction that teaches you how to use e their eos system they use the exact same analogy on why you should like set goals and work hard and all this stuff

Shaan Puri

yeah because it's like a I mean somebody did this to us in like high school or something they did some it's like a magic trick it's like oh try to fit all these in and if you do it in one order it looks like it's physically impossible you put it in the other order it all fits in and you're like oh I didn't need a bigger jar I just needed to put things in the right order

Sam Parr

what else did you read this year that you liked

Shaan Puri

there's this howard marks blog post that I mentioned called selling out is the name of the the title have you read this blog post

Sam Parr

that's a new one was that one of his more recent one

Shaan Puri

no it was in january 2022

Sam Parr

oh that's cool what'd he say

Shaan Puri

and it's a conversation with his son andrew so there's howard marks who came on the pod and was awesome his son andrew is also a great investor and and so they were talking and basically they're like you know the basic idea in investing is buy low sell high okay great but like when when do you actually sell on the high like if you sell like you know when it goes up a little bit you know when it goes up a little more when it do you wait do you hold it forever like how do you actually do this and he's talking to his son about it he's like hey you have this position do you think you should sell and his son is like no and he's like well is there any price that you would sell like certainly there's gotta be some price and his son's like yeah and so they have this sort of back and forth almost like socratic dialogue and he basically says like the the premise of the blog post is he's like there's only two he's like after lots of thought I've realized that there's only two reasons people sell because things are up or because things are down and he's like that sounds a little silly but let me explain and he's like you know you could sell because it's up as in you're taking profits you're maybe afraid that the gains will go away and so you wanna do that but like it certainly doesn't make sense to just sell just because it's up right that would be like you would be selling let's say you own amazon back in 1999 and it's $5 a share and it goes to 9 and you sell like obviously that wouldn't have been a good decision and so like simply saying sell when it's up doesn't make any sense because how far up and and just always that doesn't work and selling when it's down is you know usually a a a a emotional reaction to things panic fear you know sort of disappointment leads people to sell you you the whole market gets pessimistic and so you do too so clearly just selling because it's down isn't a good idea so okay so then when do you sell and basically he talks about the concept of basically it's a it's like an opportunity cost so all investing is about relative selection so you know two things you sort of look at two things one this is all gonna sound very basic but the reality is that myself as an investor and most people as investors don't actually act in accordance with this very simple logic so the first part of the logic is you initially invest in something because you have some thesis well over time you you'll either feel more validated about that thesis or less like you know more information will come out does the reason you bought this thing does that feel more true today or less true today than it did at the time you know so maybe you believe that this would be you know the best thing ever then they release the product and it's not so great so now you know your confidence level should go down when that happens so the first part is like is the primary like principles behind why you invested getting more true or less true the second thing is all investing is relative so putting a $100 in one stock is

Sam Parr

wait sorry but was he saying that that is the what was he saying for. One is that the right way or wrong way that your opinion shouldn't change

Shaan Puri

no no they should change as new information comes out you update your thinking and you say well if the reason I bought the investment is no longer true like then I need to either had have had a new reason to invest or I should not be invested in the thing

Sam Parr

versus just sticking with it because of cognitive bias of like all you

Shaan Puri

you sunk cost fallacy or cognitive bias trying to like convince yourself that like no no no despite all this evidence I still believe you know that it's all wrong the facts are wrong you know and and and sort of going in your you know you're sort of putting blinders onto to reality well the second part of it is it's all about relative selections opportunity costs so if you were not invested in this you would be invested in something else so do you have you know the more conviction in the better prospects investing in something else than you do in this right and so that's the second thing so he's talking about like there there's a third factor which is if you're too concentrated and he's talking about with his son andrew he's like you know you're really concentrated because this thing has gone up you're overweight this one thing he says his son has basically says well that's true but it depends on your goals right now trimming or selling would mean selling something that I have immense comfort in based on my bottoms up assessment of it and moving into something I feel less good about and know less well and to me I would rather own a small a smaller number of things which I feel strongly about because I will only have a few good insights over my lifetime so I have to maximize the value that I have from those and you know this has tended to be true across like you know most people who are active investors is that you only have a few good ideas whether this is you know angel investors who like you know the vast majority of their portfolio comes from you know two three bets that they made out of you know potentially hundreds or it's george soros saying the most the most important thing in investing is position size because you're gonna be wrong a bunch I think his hit rate was estimated to be about 30% correct so 70% wrong and he's like so the key the key is that the 30% correct I need to be correct in a big enough way where it's going to make you know outsized returns and I when I'm wrong I need to be wrong in smaller ways right so position sizing if the game is all about sizing like I don't care if you're right if it's too small and and stanley druckenmiller who's now this legendary investor says that's the number one thing he learned from soros he came in with a great idea and he expected soros to say it's too risky or whatever and he's like well if you're still confident we should be betting 10 times the size like either you're wrong about your thesis or you're wrong about your size you can't be right about both right now because your size is too small on what you're what you're saying you believe in

Sam Parr

the reason I love talking to people like howard marks and I would love to have any of these investors on not because I particularly care about investing I find it mildly interesting but it's whatever it's fine it's but I care more about what they can teach me about how to live a better life because when I hear you like talking about like choosing this with investing I'm like oh I made that mistake with this relationship therefore my flaw is thinking is my my thinking is flawed did you have any takeaways on how this could apply to life other than just through investing money

Shaan Puri

no I was thinking about it more from a money but he believed you to be honest but I mean his solution it's not like he gives you like some formula at the end right he says the bottom line we should base our investments based on our own estimates of the asset's potential so that's the first like you have to think about the asset's potential that's the reason you invest not because it's up or down we should not sell just because it's the position has risen there could be a reason to limit the size or how concentrated you wanna be but there's no scientific way to calculate what that limit should be it's a personal choice and he goes so in the end it comes down like everything else in investing entirely to judgment so it was less about like how do I apply this philosophy to everything it's like damn dude everything you know judgment is the ultimate lever because the just like you're saying with relation who you pick to marry where you choose to live what you choose to invest in where you go with your career like these are all judgment calls that we put very little thought into I would say you know most people are pretty thoughtless about about a lot of those decisions or we put very little effort into becoming better at judgment like if I ask you today how do you become better at judgment and how much time did you spend this year working on that that muscle

Sam Parr

none it's

Shaan Puri

like none consciously right so consciously we're spending no time on probably the most important muscle to us to to our like long term happiness right because your decisions become your destiny so how do you make better decisions

Sam Parr

do do you study that

Shaan Puri

do I study it well I do a couple of things I don't know if I study it but I told you this before I I write down all my decisions so I have this thing called the decision register it's a table and I write down two things when I'm making a decision I write down what it is and why I'm making it and my like confidence level in the decision and then I go back and I assess the decision register and there's two things that come out first I see was I right or wrong on that and then the other thing was what were important decisions that I didn't even realize were important at the time like going on a whim to that conference that felt like a small decision at the time but actually this amazing relationship came out of it and that led to this you know huge outcome for me

Sam Parr

that's a good way to be retroactive explain to me how you said you write down what it is part of solving the problem is defining the problem I buy into that but how can I use your your framework for making a better decision in the future versus just recto act looking back and trying to adjust my

Shaan Puri

so here's here's I I call it the decision survey so here's the actual questions I have in a Google doc so first what is the decision write it in the length of a tweet so I'm deciding to do x right so actually write it down then two check-in on your feelings so what am I feeling right now while I'm making this decision is it extreme fear some fear neutral some greed extreme greed so like why what is my emotional state when I'm making this decision and I know if I'm on either end of the spectrum you know on the far end of the greed spectrum or up in the fear fear spectrum I shouldn't be making the decision it's

Sam Parr

like going to the grocery store hungry

Shaan Puri

exactly then I write this I say what is the one decisive reason to do this blended reasons are bad reasons so learned this from reid hoffman linkedin guy or I think he learned it from peter thiel which is if you wanna go do something you don't say well it'll be good because you know he gives the example of like oh should I go speak at this conference he's like well it'll be good because you know I've never visited canada before and you know I might meet some cool people there and it might be a good reason to work on my speech my public speaking skills and you know it'll be a good time chance to spend time with this person and basically that's what bad decisions sound like you can just blur out the words but that if you hear that tone you're about to make a bad decision

Sam Parr

but but you're saying bad decision meaning a bad outcome or you're deciding on the wrong thing like does bad decision mean I'm saying no when I should say yes or does bad decision mean I I shouldn't even update you

Shaan Puri

judgment process a poor use of the skill of judgment so a better way to make decisions alright the input right making the because the outcome might work out right it's like in poker sometimes you play deuce seven off suit it's a bad decision you shouldn't have made the bet but you got lucky two two sevens came out and you you hit trips okay cool you don't wanna fool let that fool you into thinking well I should always play deuce seven it's my lucky hand right that's what really bad players would do same way where there's people who will fold pocket kings because they got beat once and it's like well no you should always just put your money in with you know with good odds and then let the let things play out based on the probability and over time it'll work in your favor right so you kind of only you can't do what's called resulting where you judge every decision only on the result like you have to be able to judge the decision based on how is the input not the output which is easier in poker because the odds are known than it is in life because the odds are unknown but you just gotta do your best to do it either way so so anyways I try to write the one decisive reason so if I'm gonna go give that talk it's literally because I wanna go spend time with this person and they live in canada and that's why I'll go give that talk that's why I'll take the trip and if that one reason is not enough to do it then there's really no reason to do it so you should have one reason that's strong enough to do the thing and everything else is bonus but you can't count it you gotta and and what I do is I I make my strongest reason for and my strongest reason against and then they joust so it's like I write the single reason I would do it and a single reason I wouldn't do it and I look at those and say who would win this if that's an arm wrestling match who wins which one is stronger

Sam Parr

but what attributes does each of those arguments have like for example it could be like I don't wanna I wanna be around my family versus this one thing could change I could I could make a lot of money because it's a a new customer

Shaan Puri

first it's gotta be honest that's the first thing because I think we're not honest sometimes about why we're doing certain things I think it's gotta be concise so it can't be a spaghetti reason because your brain can't even understand it and then the last is it's gotta figure out you gotta tie it to the value so right now is your top value making more money and getting in great shape or is it spending time with your loved ones right they're all good things but like do you have one that's that's valued more and secondly do you have good substitutes so okay I could do this to spend that time with this person but couldn't I just go hang out with them when they're back right couldn't I couldn't I just call them once a week right is there not like a valid substitute that doesn't have the same cost and if there is a valid substitute you do it okay secondly I write down what are the secondary benefits and then I ask again if I took all the secondary benefits away would I still make the decision these are all related to don't do blended reasons because that's the number one thing that we try to do especially smart people because we love making lists so we make like long lists

Sam Parr

like probably you well a lot of times what people do is they do pros and cons and they go well the the cons list is way longer therefore that's right

Shaan Puri

yeah exactly right or they just don't even make a decision they write a big pros and cons list and just paralyze themselves I don't know it's too complicated right and like that's that's why you don't wanna do that so what triggered the decision what made me wanna do this basically which is usually like a sneaky way of figuring out the fear and greed thing it's like oh because my buddy did this and he got this great thing and now I want it too it's like fomo or something like that seven is what alternatives did I consider which is usually just a test of did you consider any alternatives or you're just trying to do the first thing that you thought of and that's a it's a sign of shallow thinking which results in bad decisions a is it a reversible decision if it's a reversible decision good I don't need to worry about it as much if it's irreversible I should think about it a lot what's the upside if I'm right what's the downside if I'm wrong what follow-up is important to make sure this one decision would be higher chance of being a success so that's kinda like you could almost make a decision a good decision if you do it with enough intensity if you follow-up and follow through and do secondary actions when and how will I know if this is a success and then lastly what do I think is gonna happen so just write down a quick prediction of the future

Sam Parr

did you create this yeah it's pretty good

Shaan Puri

thank you it's a lot of effort like I'll tell you I do this probably one third of the time I should and I would say the average person does it 0% of the time and the reason why is because it's like going to church or something it's like oh man I gotta I gotta I gotta go do this thing I know it's the right thing to do I know I should do this I know it's good for me but it takes a little bit of effort and it's gonna require me to be critical of my own thoughts and it's so much easier to just not check-in on those things

Sam Parr

there's this like I don't know what it's called but a quadrant four four squares you know the graph when it's like high urgency versus low urgency and then highly important and not important and I think the idea is like you wanna spend you have to allocate a certain amount of time to things that are not urgent and are very important

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

but that bucket tends to get no love typically it's unimportant and urgent and important and urgent and because of that you don't make you don't you don't invest enough time that has actually builds the foundation to a lot of things in the future and what's really fascinating is that we're discussing like how do you get good at making decisions which is like one of like the top 10 things on earth you could ever potentially learn right like and yeah I have never actually thought about that I've tried to read charlie munger is like famous for being like an interesting thinker in his when he died recently they wrote an article about him and he like had these funny quotes where he was like you know it was really hard in life because I just knew I was so much better than everyone else and even though I talked a lot I wanted to talk so much more to show how much better I was than everyone else so he's this like really really cocky guy but his like thinking is very good and I have like tried to read poor charlie's almanac like five different times and I just find it incredibly boring but now that that I think about it well you find it boring too

Shaan Puri

yeah almost like I'm like I should love this on paper everything about this I should love it and then you read it and it's like I'm worried about charlie's grandkid do I care about this no no no and it's just a little slow to give me some like I need I don't know I I need some I'm like a kid I need some zingers every few minutes

Sam Parr

it's very textbook it's very textbook

Shaan Puri

well he has like this speech which is like him and a lot of other people really love these like cognitive biases like what I think his he gave this talk once called like the top reasons of human misjudgment right so it's about this exact topic and I've listened to that it's good but I find it pretty hard to memorize like 23 cognitive biases and carry them around in my head all the time and like identify them when they're happening and then like find some root cause and I find a much easier thing is this sort of like socratic method of like well what are you doing I'm doing this what makes you think that that's a good idea do this how will you know if this works it's like I don't know stop asking me questions but like that socratic method to me is like just a much clearer indicator of when I know what I'm doing and it's I'm making a good decision or I'm making a bad decision and it helps me avoid things in the moment the other thing is just time so like don't don't do don't don't try to make a decision in the same you know in in in the same time you're sort of gathering information or don't you know sleep on it or like let three days go by as a cool down?

Shaan Puri

If you can it's like same thing with like any impulse control right you need if you just add a time delay you can avoid a lot of mistakes

Sam Parr

when I was younger in my early twenties and late teens I used to do book reports on all the books that I read and I still occasionally do it but before it was like I'm gonna read this one book this quarter and I'm gonna read the bibliography and like all the cited sources and I'm gonna master this and then I'm gonna write a book report on it and one quarter it was like the 48 laws of power because I was like well if you like learn about like power like then I could see when people are trying to manipulate me and if I wanna get powerful hopefully I can memorize it and I was like but there's 48 of them how on earth am I supposed to memorize all of them and so for the longest time if you googled 48 laws of power summary I had this Google doc that I wrote and I wrote all my thoughts and I wrote and I summarized all 48 laws and I shared the document with people but you know when you share in Google doc you sometimes put like share with link or sorry share link to anyone you forget that that's searchable on Google right and so for the longest time I think it was like three years my Google doc was number one and every time I logged in there would be hundreds of people on this document and it was so funny that it became number one and then what I did was I I put made it so people could comment and so people started commenting on it and they would add like interesting like takeaways and stuff so it was like a crowdsourced thing it was actually really cool but I was obsessed with like how do I memorize this stuff and now that you're talking about this charley almanac thing I'm like I've just said I've tried to read this like tons of times and right now I'm telling myself and everyone else listening that this is important but I have not done it I need to do this this is actually so fascinating and a really interesting interesting thing is I asked myself I like do I wish I would have done this three years ago yes I should probably do it like immediately then because I will be less regretful if I do it in the future and so this is funny that that we're talking about that

Shaan Puri

well naval had this thing about reading that changed kind of the way I think about reading so I I used to approach it similar to you which is like I'm reading to get information I'm really reading to learn something so I was like this book contains stuff and the goal is to get the stuff from the book to be stuff in my head right and that was hard and sometimes I'd be like ah this stuff isn't that great or oh my god how am I gonna memorize all this how am I gonna remember any of this do I remember the stuff I read recently no I don't does this even work and naval put it differently he goes when you read it's like rubbing two sticks together all you're trying to do is create a little bonfire in your brain so he's like you're looking to spark a thought and idea so you read not to get the stuff all the stuff from the book to be all the stuff in your head you're reading to just catalyze some spark some thoughts some some realization some thought process some new idea in your mind and if you look at books as creating that spark in your mind you look at them very very differently and so you don't need to even you often don't even read the whole book and you don't feel any guilt towards that you don't need to remember things from the book the book just needs to be a consistent tool to get you to think more interestingly and think more deeply in the moment itself more deeply in the moment itself and if you just do that habitually you'll just consistently be a good thinker and once I started doing that or once I sort of kinda went into reading with that mindset I enjoyed it a lot more because there was way less pressure there was way less obligation I didn't feel obligated to finish I didn't feel obligated to remember all I feel obligated to do was ask like what thoughts does this spark in my head and when I started paying attention to that like it changed you know how I read

Sam Parr

did you read anything else that you liked this year

Shaan Puri

I read a lot of stuff I mean fiction there's this book called the will of the many highly recommend if you like stuff that's in the kinda like game of thrones harry potter like fantasy sci fi like it's not sci fi it's more fantasy but it's basically this book that's like this kind of it's like mirrors like the roman the the like the roman political structure so like when there was like you know the the the the there's like a hierarchy and so the will of the many was a good book and it's it's a series the second book just came out strength of the few I just crushed that one that was you know I'm I'm into this series right now this is a good series and like for me one of the great joys of life is like getting into one of these like fictional series like whether it's again game of thrones or harry potter or like one of these one of these different ones but they're pretty hard to find they're pretty hard to get into because it's a lot of world building when you do it's like really really rich and so I got

Sam Parr

the jack carr this year you know jack carr

Shaan Puri

he does what mystery novels or what does he do is it like war like tom ryan or whatever

Sam Parr

yeah yeah yeah it's called the terminal list and we actually had him on on my first million

Shaan Puri

the james reese series which starts with the terminal list which is like the best seller

Sam Parr

dude it's crazy so this guy was a we had him on on the pod I didn't want you to come because I wanted to nerd out with him and I was embarrassed as like how much I like love this book because it's one of these things where you read one of these books and you like fall in love with like these fake things and you're like don't wanna like tell anyone else that

Shaan Puri

fake things

Sam Parr

like like have you ever read a book and you're like you're sad that it's over and you're like I have to remind myself that this person isn't real like there's been times where like I've read a fiction book and I'm like googling I like need to see like did other people ever draw this character or was an act did an actor ever play them so I can like you know like get to know them further that's how it was with the with this guy and jack carr what'd

Shaan Puri

you read which books to read

Sam Parr

like seven of them he's got like I think he's got like six or seven of them I've read almost all of them and he's got a he's got a bunch of them he's one of the more prolific guys I don't know how he writes so much but he was a he was

Shaan Puri

came on the podcast what was like is there like the one thing you remember from what he said or did he say anything really insightful

Sam Parr

so listen to this he was a navy seal where he was he was bad he was a bad to the bone dude and he basically started writing these books which was funny because writing is not like a very typical masculine thing writing fiction writing stories but this guy is a I mean he's a masculine dude and he starts writing these like

Shaan Puri

he writes like this like his grip on the pen is

Sam Parr

yeah and like when he's thinking he's like picking his teeth with like a big knife like but he's like a pretty hardcore dude and yet when he talked to us he was very soft he was the politest guy he was so kind and the book series is basically a navy seal who was wronged and he goes to the end of the world in order to wrong the right and it just so happens that he gets into different like adventures you know seven different times seven different books sort of like james bond like how on earth is one guy like constantly saving the world so but it was crazy how soft this guy was yet at the same time he was like very I mean he he definitely has killed a lot of people before and he was like this pretty hardcore dude but he was so gentle and I found it really is that a I feel like is that a weird thing to take away

Shaan Puri

well this it's a thing you do a lot which is like we have someone on and you're almost like a feeler rather than a listener like you you're more into their vibe and their persona always it's always the first thing like which is cool like I I I just it's different than like the way I operate but like I I find that often when I ask you about somebody it's always like the way they were not what they said which is cool and I think actually there's probably a lot of people pick that like that is what we pick up from people is like the unspoken but you are like particularly in tune with that so that's

Sam Parr

it felt that way with john morgan I'm like I don't even remember half the stuff that he said but like he had this cowboy vibe that I was into

Shaan Puri

I'm all vibes

Sam Parr

I am all vibes that's an interesting observation I do I do do that all the time where I won't like what if I don't even remember what him and I talked about I can't remember anything but then you will do these things constantly where you recall these stories and they're very minute like I've been with you and I've heard you retell the story and you'll be like and he set this thing down and he looked at us and he said this thing and I'm like he did I don't even remember that how do you remember that what like I don't I don't think of those details or like we've been with like I've you've told stories of furcon and you'll like retell a story with a detail that I had no idea but I just remember him as like a really nice guy

Shaan Puri

yeah it's it's kinda interesting also to just figure out like what what do you want to observe right like I wonder how intentional you could be about that and be like well how do I like can I change like my little like metal detector here you know what I mean like can I could I actually improve it could I be more intentional about what it is or is it just like that's innate

Sam Parr

it's very hard to change that bullshit

Shaan Puri

about that

Sam Parr

it's sort of like people who say they're bad at names and I'm like no you're not you just don't care so like I'm someone said that to me I was like I'm bad at names and they're like no you just don't care and that bothered me and so I was like okay I care so whenever I meet someone so if someone recognizes me on the street I'll say what's up man what's your name kevin okay kevin where are you from kevin you're from you're from idaho okay kevin from idaho man it was so good to meet you thanks kevin man like I'll like you like repeat it a bunch of times and then you start and you I I'll associate with where he's from and so I will always remember someone's name all because someone made me feel bad and so I I think I should change to like how do I remember like certain details and the way that I think you have to remember those details that you're referring to is you have to remember the story it all has to be the story

Shaan Puri

so eric jorgensen this is another thing I read this year so eric jorgensen he runs scribe and he wrote the navalman act so he wrote a book that compiled like all of naval's wisdom

Sam Parr

dude I think he sold a million copies of that is that true

Shaan Puri

I think he sold a lot more than that

Sam Parr

more than 1,000,000 copies yeah how many books have sold more than 1,000,000

Shaan Puri

he's made he's made a lot of money off that book and it's great because the funny thing is the genre of that book is a in your own words in his own words biography type of book right so he doesn't write himself he compiles what naval said without adding any of his own commentary naval has this philosophy of like you open source your material you let other people sort of fork it remix it and like your ideas spread like what more do you want than your ideas to spread

Sam Parr

this is a win win for everyone

Shaan Puri

yeah right so so he's doing one on elon right now so he sent me like an advanced copy of his elon book and I was excited and I cracked it open and one thing that I like right away is you know smart by eric which is he puts something that you don't already know about elon at at the front just to at least signal to you there's gonna be shit in here that you didn't already know assuming you're like an elon general like fanboy or you know you're you're in the tech bubble already if he was like elon likes to think from first principles I'll be like I know I know I've read all this shit before but he talked about it's a it's elon talking about memory and he's like yeah like when I was a kid I learned how to do these like memory palaces he's like you can remember pretty much anything if you learn that like memory is a skill and there's like a way to do it

Sam Parr

is that like walking through a house

Shaan Puri

yeah like you know like the idea of a memory palace like you like create like a physical three d you know structure in your mind and then you sort of link the the thing to a room or a location a visual object and then you create a little bit of like a story of like walking through from one to the next like so

Sam Parr

like the people who could the people who could memorize like all the cards they're like the king is like a real king and the number seven is a house there's a king in a house he meets a queen so he has a wife the king is

Shaan Puri

a house of seven's lane and on seven's lane his wife the queen she loved diamonds and so she yeah and you do that and that's how you sort of build this thing so it's like elon talking about like memory palaces and I was like this is great I'm I just give me more elon stuff I need I'm happy to get you know an unlimited buffet of like new elon anecdotes and nuggets because like how rare is that right so I thought that was pretty cool and in general his book is really good it's gonna be

Sam Parr

good I can't believe he has sold that many copies on that book that is absolutely insane

Shaan Puri

so one of the topics I was gonna do today is a work smarter not harder topic and eric is an example of this so how do you write a best selling book that sells millions of copies well what if I told you it's none of your ideas and none of your words would that interest you it's like a a way smarter way to write a best seller right so eric doing that there's this incredible interview that came out that there's a clip that came out did you hear it it's akon talking about his music

Sam Parr

no what did he say

Shaan Puri

so akon the rapper he was on a podcast and he gets told the story he's like they're like dude so you you know you had a crazy career you know they were talking about his guinness book of world records that he owns for ringtones and he tells the story he's like yeah man he's like I was recording music and at the time the way we sold music was you would sell your single on itunes and it'd be a dollar 99 for your four minute song he said but then I walk around and I saw everybody had a phone and they all had a like a ringtone they had a song as their thing so I asked them I said hey do you get to pick what that is they're like yeah he goes how much did that cost is it free and then they go no you pay for it $4.99 it's $4.99 a four minute song is $1.99 ten second ringtone is $4.99 he goes and then even better he goes I asked I call my lawyer I said hey check my contract with the record label what's the cut on ringtones and he's like calls him back he's like akon there's nothing about ringtones in here there's no there's nothing about digital anything like there's nothing for ringtones he goes you know say less so he hangs up the phone and he goes I started making music songs that were meant to be ringtones every song I did I would focus on how is this a ringtone and so mr lonely became the number one ringtone in the world and he wrote that song to be a ringtone he's like I would write the song with a ringtone in mind I would record it with a ringtone in mind I would chop it up and make it really easy for these songs to be ringtones and he's like I broke the guinness book of world records I sold 11,000,000 ringtones he goes four ninety nine that's $55,000,000 of gross sales on ringtones and he's like I became the ringtone king and then he's like then the next time they tried to redo my contract they tried to slip in oh and ringtone sales he's like let's take that out right there nope you know that's not going in the contract we're gonna have to renegotiate a separate deal on that and I just thought it was brilliant the a akon ringtone work smarter not harder how do you sell a ten second song for five times the or you know for for for two times the price as a four minute song

Sam Parr

I so remember like being 14 and hearing girls that had that on there I'm gonna put that on my as my ringtone now is that I don't even

Shaan Puri

you do ringtones does that still work

Sam Parr

yeah yeah yeah yeah because I had a

Shaan Puri

nobody has a ringtone now

Sam Parr

no I did if you called my it was a remixed version of the nokia one and it actually had beats it started off like a normal like du feel like if

Shaan Puri

I was the music industry the number one thing I would try to do is bring ringtones back

Sam Parr

well do you know what I here's let me tell you what I what I'm bringing back in my house we I bought a dvd player and an activity because I don't let my kids watch tv but I'm letting them like on on september on saturday when we're like over like if it's just me watching two kids and I'm overwhelmed I'm like I need like something but I don't wanna turn youtube on because I don't like the ads and stuff and so I've got a dvd player and we go to there's a thrift store down the street from my house and there's dvds and I will find the dvd and it's incredibly fun to like put the dvd in there and there's this new toy have you seen this toy called you you don't know what

Shaan Puri

you're talking about it's the little red thing right that plays music that plays music

Sam Parr

yeah what's that called like the yuck box or yum like it starts with a y it they kill it it's called

Shaan Puri

tony's

Sam Parr

what is it there's two of them there's one that starts with a y as well so there's is it oh okay is it and the it's called tony's is it like the box and you put like a disc in it

Shaan Puri

you put it's a it's a box and then you put a character on top like a record and then it just starts to play songs but actually you buy it and then it doesn't connect to your wi fi because you don't have a two two g connection you only have five g that's that's my story about with the tony's

Sam Parr

it doesn't connect it doesn't connect

Shaan Puri

you gotta have two g you gotta have less g's

Sam Parr

I don't I don't I have too many g's like I I mean yeah I don't even have like five g I've got one above that I think but they like it's an incredible toy like I'm playing with this and so we're actually I'm actually on the hunt for a a boom box I wanna buy a boom box where you just put the cd in and a cassette tape and click play it's so fun we've had so much fun in my house like doing some of this stuff

Shaan Puri

tony's these guys crush by the way they do like like hundreds of millions so tony's let's see is this the right thing yeah €510,000,000 last twelve months €510,000,000 on this kid's boombox isn't that insane

Sam Parr

tony's the other one is yoto that's the one I got y o t o have you seen yoto no it's like the same thing I don't know how they're different but I just remember one time I typed in yodo and it said like yodo versus tony's

Shaan Puri

127,000,000 in revenue are you joking me what what's going on

Sam Parr

crazy right it's it's an incredible toy

Shaan Puri

this is ridiculous just makes me mad

Sam Parr

why it it's pretty brilliant

Shaan Puri

yeah that's what makes you mad that the brilliance was not mine

Sam Parr

dude I followed this guy on instagram now who started poppy I don't know how he came on my feed but I saw him and I I thought it was me he looks just like me but he's better looking have you seen what he looks like

Shaan Puri

I found him it was me hold on poppy the drink

Sam Parr

yep poppy founder the man it's a husband and wife look him up

Shaan Puri

let's see so you thought this was you

Sam Parr

no click a video go to his instagram guy yes trust me go to his instagram right now I'm telling you look at the videos I was like am I really a billionaire cbg guy or what I said wanna do a video together we look alike and he said could be funny let's do it

Shaan Puri

he's got a podcast better podcasting probably I don't know if

Sam Parr

he has a podcast but he just like does instagram shit you know

Shaan Puri

when you're mad this guy's just taking everything you

Sam Parr

work for

Shaan Puri

yeah there can only be one

Sam Parr

and I was shocked at just like do you know that papi sold for like 2 or $3,000,000 and it started out as a probiotic soda the wor that sounds like the worst idea ever

Shaan Puri

he lives in austin oh my god this guy is he's you

Sam Parr

yeah if he wants to trade spots we could we could talk he just crushed it on that and it's like the ultimate hack when you start a company with your wife and it works and you both get all of the equity

Shaan Puri

yeah that's crazy

Sam Parr

is that it is that the pod alright

Shaan Puri

that's it

Sam Parr

that's it that's the pod