Is There a Trade Off Between Happiness and Achievement?

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life. All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” Albert Einstein

No books today, but a selected list of questions asked by Listeners! Neil and Nat answer one by one detailed questions about topics you had but they never talked about.

We cover a wide range of topics, including:

• What Neil and Nat do to survive
• Routines to get into flow
• Favorite podcast show and why they stopped listening to Tim Ferriss
• The future (and present of work)
• Balancing power and happiness

And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to ask more questions replying the mailing list! (What? You still haven’t signed up for the mailing list?!)

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Daily Rituals by Mason Currey, a book that discuss the crazy schedule creative people have to get into the flow, as well as our episode on Homo Deus by Yuval Harari where we talk about how AI may make humans useless.

 

Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more.

Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show

• Unlimited Brewing [4:22]
• Made You Drink Beer. Coming Soon? [5:14]
• US regulation doesn't allow to sell beer online [5:14]
• Brewmaster’ Reserve, Neil’s beer blog [5:49]
• Neil Soni on Nat Chat [6:40]
• LegalZoom [8:45]
• Maryland Government incorporation website [8:47]
• Incorporate.com [9:51]
• W-2 Form [10:52]
• Nat Chat [11:22]
• Growth Machine [11:47]
• Nat's personal site [12:15]
• Wendy’s Twitter campaign [16:52]
• Deep House Relax playlist [27:56]
• Asana [33:03]
• Evernote [33:12]
• Sam Sheridan [36:42]
• Fat Tony [40:05]
• PwC [52:33]
• Tiago Forte’s Progressive Summarization [55:05]
• Flatgeologist [57:32]
• Slack [1:04:02]
• Vitalik Buteron, founder of Ethereum [1:10:53]
• Nat’s articles on sex [1:14:21]
• Stamena app - Nat’s app [1:14:21]
• Black Mirror [1:38:46]
• Trump-Miller story [1:41:55]

Books mentioned

• Daily Rituals by Mason Currey [28:59] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode)
• Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Taleb [32:21] (Nat’s notes) (book episode)
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [37:58]
• Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennet [38:07] (book episode)
• The Goal [44:29] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode)
• Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter [37:58] (Nat’s notes) (book episode)
• Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [43:20] (book episode)
• Work Clean [44:29] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode)
• Principles [44:33] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode)
• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene [46:30] (Nat’s Notes)
• Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [48:12] (Nat’s notes) (book episode)
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins [57:13]
• Finite and Infinite Games [57:42] (Nat’s Notes) (Made You Think episode)
• 12 Rules for Life by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson [58:06] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode)
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck [58:48] (Nat’s notes)
• Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk [59:22] (Nat’s notes)
• Deep Work by Cal Newport [1:03:01] (Nat’s notes)
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You [1:03:01] (Nat’s notes)
• Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault [1:10:10] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode)
• The Sovereign Individual [1:19:29] (Nat’s notes) (book episode)
• Mastery by Robert Greene [1:28:04] (Nat’s notes) (book episode)

People mentioned

• Albert Einstein [0:00]
• Donald Trump [18:28]
• Elon Musk [18:28] (on this podcast)
• Dan Bilzerian [18:33]
• Adil Majid [19:17] (on this podcast 1, 2, 3)
• Pepper the Poochon [32:54]
• Taylor Pearson [44:20]
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb [48:02] (Antifragile episode) (Skin in the Game episode)
• Flatgeologists – Flat Earth Society [57:32]
• Jeff Bezos [1:11:31]
• Bill Gates [1:11:31]
• Mark Zuckerberg [1:11:31]
• Warren Buffet [1:11:31]
• Randall Eliason [1:42:42]

Show Topics

0:00 – Perfect drinks to enjoy the warm weather.

3:38 – Question #1. Why do you actually do for a living and how you've got there? Neil has a company that helps you build your brand beer, either for events (weddings, parties, conference, etc), venues (chef that wants to pair beers), and already established brands. How Neil bootstrapped his company while trying to have reduce his home brewing costs, and even before having customers. If you ask enough, you can see the Made You Drink beer soon.

“You don't know where things are going to go until you actually start working on them”.

8:20 – Nat helps ecommerce and tech startups appear on the front page of Google and increase traffic from Google through SEO and content. Stats of his company.

1428 – Funny fact, Nat and Neil went to the same university in Pittsburg, and went through the same Startup Accelerator, but never met before. Why Twitter is the catalyst for the best friendships, and why it's so hard to monetize it. Paying twice to build and reach your audience on Facebook. Who controls Twitter and Facebook celebrities' accounts.

19:58 – Question #2. Favorite podcasts.

Mentioned

• Jocko Podcast
• Joe Rogan Experience
• Sam Harris’ Waking Up
• Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History
• Invest Like the Best podcast
• History on Fire
• Unchained
• A16z
• Kevin Rose
• Shane Parrish’s The Knowledge Project
• Rhonda Patrick’s Found my Fitness
• Bill Simmons Podcast
• Skip and Shannon: Undisputed Podcast
• Good Beer Hunting
• Brewers' Journal Podcast

Episodes: Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan’s, Daniele Bolelli from the Drunken Taoist on Joe Rogan’s, Jordan Peterson's Biblical Series, Al Pacino and Kevin Durant on Bill Simmons’.

Recommended Tim Ferriss Episodes: Jamie Foxx, Jocko Willink, The Erotic Playbook of a Top-Earning Sex Worker (NSFW), Naval Ravikant, Peter Thiel, Dom D’Agostino, Kevin Rose, Kelly Starrett, Derek Sivers, Kevin Kelly, Ed Cooke

27:56 – Question #3. Routines to get into flow, specially If you need to write a 2-3000 words blog post. How much coffee Neil needs to get into flow. Neil's realization to keep going until getting a decent piece of work. The playlist to get into the mood. Nat tips: making super easy to start, getting all notifications off, being super clear on what are the next steps, changing context. The template Nat use for writing a massive article, and why he doesn’t starts with the intro. The endure-for-20min-and-then-you-can-quit psychological trick. Being in-interruptible.

28:18 – Question #4. Is doing business an intellectual challenging activity? What if it is not? The overlap of intellectually curious people and entrepreneurs. Early days of a business are very intellectual and exploration, while growth stage is a lot tweaking and optimization. Why intellectual people have the need to compulsively start new companies. Books that coincided with the business stage. How to find motivation to start exploring.

48:23 – Question #5. Advice for college student graduating in 2018? What problems to work on? First thing: think before graduating. Find an internship that has the potential to get you full time, in an area you are interested in. The problem with Ivy League students going to Google, Facebook or big consulting firms. Realize how low risk your life is. Focusing on skills rather than problems. The awareness that you may not know what problems are out there.

55:05 – Question #6. How do you apply the insights from books? Start a podcast and speak with your friends every week :). How Nat takes detailed notes "reading" the book 4 times. Writing as an exercise to build the synopsis with other books' concepts. No need to change the structure of your business. New concepts are useful to see problems from different angles, not overhauling processes.

59:39 – Question #7. How to network online? Tips to connect through the most powerful platforms, Twitter and cold email.

1:02:59 – Question #8. Future of Work: Deep Work vs Shallow Work, solopreneurship, and attention deficit, etc. Trade off between Improved communication and increased interruptibility. The problem with open office workspaces. Trends: remote working, polarization of work between employees and contractors, performance based work environment. Before, power was a function of the organizational structure or buildings, now it's a function of ability or what you do, because it's much easier to show usefulness.

1:13:20 – Single person companies that make over $1 million a year. Personal branding. Having proof of concept on our own site.

1:14:21 – Nat’s proof of concept that you can have 1 person business based on SEO. How Nat arrived to get 8k daily visitors by chance writing sex articles.

1:19:00 – More trends about work: It will be possible for fewer people to do more. The Internet as the effect of compounding of technology. AI is starting to replace White collar jobs. How AI would be able to replace the 90% of the writing work right now.

1:28:04 – Question #9. Is there a trade off between happiness and achievement? Does a gain in power detract from happiness? The Internet gives us the ability to compare us to the whole world, in detriment of the in-group. Opportunity costs of least profitable ventures. The problem with Digital Nomadism. Considering second and third order effects in the happiness-power equation. The intersection between personal achievement and service to the community. What's happiness anyway? Doing sacrifices for achieving joy, as athletes do.

1:43:00 – Sponsors! Get new questions through the email list. Sign up. Find upcoming books, events, and know about new sponsors! A new cool sponsor coming. Hop on Four Sigmatic for their mushroom coffee and other mush wonderful goodness. Suggestion: enjoy an iced mushroom coffee Mocha flavor. Check Kettle & Fire for their delicious grass fed bone broth, one of the only companies that do this. Suggested: the beef for cooking, the chicken for drinking. Perfect Keto for all your ketogenic related needs. A ketogenic diet is high in fat, and your body burns ketones instead of glucose for energy. Some benefits include improved mental functioning, much lower hunger swings, and ancestral body functioning. The supplementary ketones are very useful to pop in and out the diet and speed the process. Definitely try the coffee or the sea salt chocolate. Leave reviews on iTunes. Everything you buy on Amazon through our link supports the show. Bookmark it with an emoji :).

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