Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Kevin Kelly
[00:00:00] S1: Well, one thing we do in our family and I highly recommend it is having meals together with no screens. And I make sure I pay attention to their definition of success. Their definition of a successful life, the people they most respect are those that are able to have every single meal with their children until their children leave. So they have breakfast and they have lunch and they have dinner together as a family. Lunch is the real ringer for most people because their kids are in school and they come back to the house for lunch. So that's something that is very, very profound, is having family dinners. We say grace before meals. We have Thanksgiving rituals where we do the gratitude rounds and things. There's a lot. There's actually a good book called The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Feiler, that's really good on this, looking at the research that has been done on understanding the family identity. So one of the things I say is that you want to be able to have your kids be able to say, our family does this or doesn't do this. This idea of a family identity is something else that you cultivate of like saying, "Our family does this," or, "Our family doesn't do this. This is what our family does." That's fine with them. There's all kinds of things. We didn't have TV with our kids growing up in the house at all. Our family doesn't do TV. You're free to watch TV at your friend's house as much as you want, but we, our family doesn't do TV. And it's like, okay, that's fine. That's good. I understand that. That's part of my identity. And so you can do that.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: What about in a marriage specifically? So setting aside the parent-child relationship, obviously, that's critical, but just purely at the level of spouses, in the same general vein, exercises, rituals, whatever, anything that you have done or would recommend people think about?
· Kevin Kelly
[00:00:00] S1: Yes. I'm not very good -- I think you need to talk to Esther Perel in this couple's therapy -- actually, there was one thing in the book that I think came from Esther, which is the rule of three in conversation. And that's particularly valuable in a marriage, which is that when someone that you love or intimate with is telling you something in a very intense way, you want to be listening. And then when they're done, wait until they're done, and you say, is there more? And there's usually more. And then they go over it. Second round, you listen all the way through. And this is active listening, meaning that you are engaged. You are not just a recording machine. You're probing. You're encouraging. And then you wait until there's a third round of, is there more? And what's interesting about that is that because it's active listening, is that the other person needs the listener to help them say it. They almost can't say it without that active listening. And so you are able to arrive at understandings and truths and honesty that neither one could get to by themselves. And that ability to take the rule of three and say, "Is there more? Is there more? Is there more?" is very, very powerful. And oftentimes that explanation and going through that process to the third level is hugely benefit to the person talking because they needed that person to get it out of them and often is enough to actualize change.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Kevin Kelly
[00:00:00] S0: Speaking of three, my third most powerful takeaway from the book was this notion of the three gates, this idea of asking yourself three questions before you say something. Can you give us that incredibly cool and useful idea? [00:00:00] S1: I think I said it was a live person who said it. It was actually Rumi, the Afghan poet Rumi, which is that before you say something about someone else, particularly, is you want to ask yourself, is it true? Is it... [00:00:00] S0: Necessary, I think. [00:00:00] S1: Kind? [00:00:00] S0: Yes, true, necessary, and kind, right? [00:00:00] S1: Right. So if it's of those three, then you can say it. And there's a lot in the book about the virtues of kindness, that kindness is not a weakness but a sign of strength. And you can't really be too kind. If you have a choice between being right or kind, you'll be kind. And I have another bit of advice for people, which I have had the experience lately, which is attend as many funerals as you can particularly when you're young and listen to what they say about the departed. And the shock to me was that nobody was talking about the achievements, how many patents they had, how many companies they started, how much money they had, none of that. They were talking about what kind of person they were, how they made people feel, whether they were kind. It's like, wow, that's really powerful. That's what matters. [00:00:00] S0: Do you think that humans are naturally kind?
· Kevin Kelly
[00:00:00] S1: I do. There's a great book called Humankind that changed my mind that brought the evidence showing that our received wisdom, the thing we're taught in school, so to speak, that humans are naturally selfish and that when -- all things being equal, particularly if it gets tough, people will retreat to being completely selfish and self-interested and mean. And I think the evidence is the opposite, in my own experience is opposite, that people generally are kind, you can generally trust strangers, that all things being equal, people want to help each other. And that bias runs through my book, which is that the universe is generally abundant, that's the bias of the universe, that there's this other weird paradox at the foundation of the universe of the human condition anyway, which is that the more you give, the more you get, that the most selfish thing you can do is to be generous. The more you give, the more you get, if that's true for everybody, then where does it come from, right? I mean it's like if you give away and you're getting more and everybody does that, the arithmetic doesn't add up. And that's the paradox. So the paradox is that the most selfish thing you can do is to be generous, and so much flows from that, that by giving away, you're increasing your own happiness. And that's the other little bit of advice, giving away 10% of what you take in may seem like you've just reduced your purchasing power by 10%. But every person who does this will tell you that the happiness and the satisfaction and your life's well-being will increase by tenfold. That 10%, you don't even notice. So yes, so I think people naturally want to be kind given all things. And what we want to do is to make that as easy as possible.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Kevin Kelly
[00:00:00] S0: I have a background in philosophy, and so I can't help myself but focus on your advice that's very big and grandiose and about life and work. But the book is also full of very tiny bits of advice and very tactical bits of advice. Are there any few that stand out to you as like your favorites that make you chuckle or make you happy? [00:00:00] S1: There are some very, very practical ones that I was very happy to include because again, I was writing this for my kids originally, which is that if you lose track of something in your household or your workshop or your garage and you finally find it, don't put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first look for it. I repeat that to myself all the time when I'm putting things back, okay, put it back where I first look for it. That's a piece of advice. And another one was I picked up from an editor 30 years ago at Whole Earth. She told me this, and it's been true, which is that if you get invited to do something 6 months from now, ask yourself if you would do it if it was tomorrow morning. And very few events will pass that muster. And so I use that to say no. I'm just imagining, okay, would I get up tomorrow morning to fly whatever it is or to go into that or meet whatever it is? And if it isn't a resounding yes, then it's a no. [00:00:00] S0: I love your rule of seven in research, too, that if you just keep pushing for seven levels, you will ultimately hit bedrock, like it's hard to go deeper than seven levels.