Find Joy in Any Job: Lessons from a Top Doctor and a Vagabond

00:00:22
Speaker 1: Welcome to two percent. I'm your host, Michael Easter. I'm currently on vacation celebrating the retirement of a couple close family friends, and so this has me thinking about work, and that is what today's episode is about. First, we're going to talk to doctor mim Ari, who is going to tell us how to find joy in any job, no matter what job you have. Now, we're going to talk to Robin Greenfield. And when he was in his twenties, he wanted to make as much money as possible join the rat race, and then he dropped out and he did something totally opposite. So we'll see what we can learn from him from his experience. And then we will end with our very first ama where I will answer your question. So, with all that said, get ready for another good episode, and I'm going to continue getting back to not working. You may have heard that work is making us all miserable. We work too much and it is driving us up a wall. It is hurting our mental health, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I recently read an essay by doctor mim Ari, who is an associate professor at the University of Chicago and a general internist working in the hospital, and I talked about this concept of being a deeply fulfilled workist, and it provides a path for you to frame whatever job you have through a different lens that will help you get more satisfaction from it, that'll improve your life and make you more fulfilled. So here's doctor Ari. Well, doctor Ari, thanks for coming on the show.

00:01:47
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.

00:01:48
Speaker 1: I got to admit, every time that I talk to a doctor in a podcast setting, I always feel terrible because I'm going, what are they not doing? There's someone in a in a hospital room somewhere who's suffering because I have to harass you with questions.

00:02:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I would say that as a generalist, what I like is the variety of patients I get to see in medicine, and that probably extends to the activities I get to do outside of medicine. So this is fun for me to try something new and different and be a podcast guest.

00:02:16
Speaker 3: Awesome. What does it mean to be a generalist? Like? What is your day to day like in the hospital?

00:02:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mostly practice outpatient internal medicine, so I see adults in a primary care setting. I talk to them about new issues chronic diseases, preventive care, healthcare screenings, immunizations, and that is most of my clinical time. I see my own patients, I supervise our trainees, our students and residents as they see primary care patients. And then I'm also board certified in addiction medicine, so I spend some time taking care of patients who are hospitalized who may also have addiction or substance use disorder.

00:02:56
Speaker 1: It's probably interesting to have such a wide variety of things that you're in are seeing and trading and people you're working with every day.

00:03:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think when I was going through medical school, I thought, you know, maybe there would be one organ or one disease that would really capture my imagination and that's what I would hyper specialize in. But I think over time, what I realized is how much I enjoyed the relationships with patients and being able to sort of help people move through understanding the various diseases they were encountering in the various ways they could optimize their health. And so general internal medicine is a great fit for me because I get to sort of still keep my mind in lots of different places and interact with lots of different types of other healthcare professionals.

00:03:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well that feels like a perfect jumping off point to your piece. So the Atlantic writer Derek Thompson, he writes this article called workism is making Americans miserable, and he basically argued that we're all too tied to work.

00:03:54
Speaker 3: This makes us miserable.

00:03:55
Speaker 1: But he also had this, I think it was a single paragraph, maybe two paragraphs or also said that there are some workers who are really deeply fulfilled and sort of against this trend, which prompted you to do this piece for sensible medicine. And it started as a talk, right, Yeah.

00:04:11
Speaker 2: I was actually really honored to receive an award from our graduating medical students who are being inducted into an honor society that is all about humanism. And the students who are inducted are actually voted on by their peers as sort of like a doctor you would want to have take care of a family member. And as part of that, they give a faculty member an award each year that kind of focuses on those principles of humanism and medicine. So initially I wrote this as a speech that I delivered to those students as they were being inducted into the Honor Society, and I passed it on to a colleague, Adam Seafu, who curates the Sensible Medicine substack, and he asked if I would turn it into a substack piece.

00:05:00
Speaker 1: I thought it was wonderful. I'm a huge fan of Sensible Medicine, by the way, a huge fan of Adam. So when that popped up, I was like, this piece is awesome. I need to talk to this person. And you talked about this idea of being a deeply fulfilled workist, So what did you mean by that to sort of tea us up?

00:05:14
Speaker 2: So, as you mentioned, Derek Thompson writes about sort of the dangers of being too invested in your work, of that being sort of a false idol. But as you mentioned, he has one paragraph that there are some people that seem to be deeply fulfilled by their work. They're deeply dedicated to their work, but they're also they're able to kind of tune out the noise and really connect to what they're doing.

00:05:39
Speaker 1: How do you see that expressing itself in your day to day life at work, but also with some of the colleagues you mentioned who you feel like fall into this category.

00:05:47
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it comes in many flavors. And that's like I think being attuned to that is important because it can come from just like a really lovely interaction with a patient where you say something that you know resonates with them, or they say something back to you that shows, you know, maybe the impact that you've had that you didn't realize you were having. But sometimes it's you know, meeting with a student or I just had lunch, you know, at the table behind me with one of my colleagues and connecting about something.

00:06:20
Speaker 4: Outside of that.

00:06:21
Speaker 2: So I think it's like having that high, Like it's so easy to be distracted by the things that can be hard in medicine, and it's being able to look for the things that will bring you joy or that will get you excited.

00:06:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think it's easy to get caught up in the external motive like validation. I mean in my own work life as an author. You know, everyone in my publishers just asked how many books are you going to sell? It's all about like this number of copies that I sold, and I would get caught up in that and then when I was able to pull back, I was like, what do I actually.

00:07:00
Speaker 3: Like about this job?

00:07:01
Speaker 1: And it's sitting in the office very early and if I can get one perfect sentence a day like that was awesome and that is why I do this job, and it helps me sort of I think reframe, Like, look, whether you sell one book, whether you sell a bajillion books, you had this awesome moment where you had that one sentence that morning, and that sort of made it all worth it.

00:07:24
Speaker 2: And I won't quote the you know, the literature, but right like, you need to hear ten positive things for one negative thing. You know, we like as humans, I think we anchor on those negative emotions or the negative feedback that we're getting, and so I think if you can turn the volume up on the positives, that really probably puts us where we should be, Like, you know, because we were overinflating the negative things and minimizing the positive. If we can find the things where we can we can really amplify the positive, then I think it probably gives a more realistic view of what we do in the impact that we get to make each day.

00:08:04
Speaker 1: That makes me wonder what would the world be like if that ratio were flipped where like we could just hear one positive thing and it would outweigh ten negatives, Like the world would probably be a much better place.

00:08:17
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:08:18
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I know as a parent, like we try to, you know, give ten ten nice things for every negative thing we say, but it is so hard to get that balance right. So the person that you're caring for or supervising or whatever, you know, the situation might be that you really can make people feel good about the work they do. And maybe that comes back to like the internal part, Like I do think it has to be internally and intrinsically motivated, your ability to kind of see the positives in.

00:08:50
Speaker 4: The work that you do.

00:08:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember that. I can't remember the I think his name is. David Graber wrote a book called Bullshit Jobs, and he basically argued that, like, you know, seventy percent of jobs now are complete bullshit and we're all miserable. And then there was this group of researchers who surveyed actual workers, particularly in the jobs that this book deemed were quote unquote bullshit, and it found that wasn't the case. It found that and it found that what determined whether a worker got fulfillment from their job was whether they could find a way that they were helping people. So this could be I think an example in that paper was a janitor at a hospital. This seems like this sort of menial job with the drudgery. They're like, no, I love this job because I see I see myself as helping these patients by making sure things are clean, which improves health outcomes and all these things. And so it's really like, can you find the thread where you're helping others?

00:09:49
Speaker 2: You know, hopefully that like without being an armchairful loss soph for her like really speaks to how important it is for us to feel like we are doing good in the world, and that sort of all of us probably have that urge and that tendency to be kind to others, to help other people, to nurture, to caregive. You know, this concept of being a deeply fulfilled work is can doesn't mean that you have to be sort of at the at the top of the flagpole, like I think you can find that sort of in jobs across the spectrum.

00:10:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then the essay you talked about humanism, What do you mean by that?

00:10:31
Speaker 2: I think about myself like being a human in the room with a patient and bringing kind of who I am outside of that clinic room to that clinic interaction. And I think it means seeing people also, not as someone sitting like on the exam table or in the chair, but who they might be outside of that exam room as well. And if you're able to sort of bring your human self and you're able to see patients as people, I think that is where like that humanistic connection in medicine.

00:11:16
Speaker 4: Happens for us all.

00:11:19
Speaker 2: It's sort of interesting. I now use an AI scribe in my clinic exam room, so essentially I turn the recording on when I start the visit with the patient, and I turn it off when I leave the room, and the AI scribe creates a transcript and summarizes it into a clinical note. And at first I thought the benefit would really be my speed and how quickly I could write a note. But it is so nice to just sit and talk to somebody. And I still have all that knowledge that I had before, and I still have all the things the data that's in the computer, but it's a totally different experience.

00:12:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not having to jot down notes because when you're jotting down notes, you're kind of half paying attention, You're trying to finish that sentence, and you can just have a direct one to one conversation and kind of get real with people. What other ways do you think that AI is going to improve medicine? Because you hear all these things like, oh, it's going to cure cancer in two ears or whatever it is.

00:12:21
Speaker 2: Right now, I can see it as like a tool that enables me to do more in the room with a patient, But I don't have a sense of exactly where it will go, like will it be able to eventually tell me what I should be doing to optimize care?

00:12:38
Speaker 4: Like?

00:12:38
Speaker 2: I still think that the relationships that I've built with patients and how that information is delivered, and the shared decision making that ultimately occurs between myself and the patient will still be there, and I think still make the work exciting and fulfilling.

00:12:57
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:12:57
Speaker 1: And isn't there data that people who have better relationships with their doctors generally have better health outcomes?

00:13:04
Speaker 4: Yeah?

00:13:04
Speaker 2: I think there is. Actually In the piece, I talked about an article that I often show when I'm giving lectures about chronic pain, and essentially, in the article, they asked patients who had chronic pain if their physicians were how empathetic they were. And for the patients who rated their physician is very empathetic, they had better health outcomes and you know, they were able to better manage their chronic pain. And so I think it is absolutely you know, I think it's been shown in the literature, but I think it is also true. I hope that having a strong relationship with my patients will ultimately benefit their health in some way. And I'm sure that's it's hard to pinpoint exactly why, Like I'm sure it's multi factory, but I you know, is it because then when I do make a suggestion, they're more likely to do it?

00:14:07
Speaker 4: Maybe?

00:14:08
Speaker 2: Is it because they know that if they have something they're worried about, they can come to me and I will help them figure it out. There's a lot in primary care where we can't measure the value exactly, and like life years gained, but hopefully those relationships ultimately benefit the patient.

00:14:25
Speaker 1: With your patients, and I mean maybe especially the people who you're working with who have an addiction of some sort. Do you feel like work stress is a thing that comes up often when you talk to your patients absolutely, how does that?

00:14:42
Speaker 3: What do they say? What was that? Like? How does that manifest?

00:14:44
Speaker 2: You know, sometimes it is like retrospective, so you know, someone will say, I was having all these symptoms and we did a evaluation and we didn't really find anything, and they'll say, you know, I think it was my anxiety. I think some people it's like very obvious it's the work that's causing them to have stress or anxiety or physical manifestations or physical symptoms, because you know, they'll they'll tell you like and they'll they'll narrate their day and you can hear you know where those where those sticking points are. You know, they're having pain, but yet they're required to stand for many many hours or not have breaks, or you know, they're in physically demanding jobs that are are very challenging. And sometimes if people tell me they're like stressed or tired or they're just like not feeling so good, and like I'll say, like, just like walk me through a normal day, and when they get to the end, I think sometimes it's really affirming to say, like, you know, I would probably feel really tired too if that was like what I was, you know, trying to manage on a daily basis, and that was how little sleep I was getting, and that was how many people I was responsible for taking care of, and those or the requirements of me at work, like those are kind of I think external circumstances that are making you feel the way that you feel right now.

00:16:09
Speaker 1: I feel like I kind of sum everything up. The takeaway, no matter the job is look for the positives, try and focus on those. Realize that every job is going to have some negatives, some jobs have more than others. And also look for the human element. How can you connect with people every day because I do feel like at the end of the day at all, I mean, especially in healthcare, but in a lot of jobs it all comes down to people. Every career exists because it's helping someone somewhere do something and that's a good thing.

00:16:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's a great summary. And the thing I would add is just the intrinsic motivation part, Like if you're able to pull that from within, it's a lot easier than if you're waiting around for it to come from outside.

00:16:52
Speaker 3: Absolutely well, doctor Auri, thanks so much for coming on the show.

00:16:55
Speaker 2: Thinks this was wonderful.

00:16:56
Speaker 4: It was a wonderful experience.

00:16:58
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.

00:17:00
Speaker 1: So we just heard from doctor Ari about how to be a more deeply fulfilled workest and find more meaning in your work.

00:17:08
Speaker 2: Now.

00:17:08
Speaker 1: The thing about jobs, though, is that we often take them so we can buy stuff, so you can buy a car, so you can buy a house, and then we get this idea, you know what would make me even happier if I had a bigger house and a bigger car, and then we fill it with all sorts of stuff. So the average home today contains more than ten thousand to fifty thousand items, and with that comes a lot of bills and oftentimes debt. And when you get in debt, you often get trapped in a job that you may or may not enjoy. So my next guest is a little against the grain with that trajectory. When he was twenty, he wanted to be a bajillionaire. He wanted to accumulate as much stuff as possible, and then at twenty five he realized, you know what, maybe there's another way to live. His name is Robin Greenfield, and he is on a quest to find as sustainable a life as possible. He is currently undergoing an experiment where he is foraging all of his food. He also did another experiment where he literally gave away everything he owned. And although he's a little extreme, yes he is extreme, he does have lessons about how we can reframe our relationship with stuff and maybe find a little bit of freedom and some sustainability. So let's bring on Robin. Robin, welcome to the show Man.

00:18:27
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me on.

00:18:29
Speaker 1: Michael, and you're recording from Wisconsin, Is that correct.

00:18:32
Speaker 5: Yes, I've just returned from a three month speaking tour in Florida and the southern United States, and I've just returned to my home of Wisconsin.

00:18:41
Speaker 3: I love it awesome.

00:18:42
Speaker 1: So for people who aren't familiar with you, fill us in sort of cliff notes about what you do.

00:18:48
Speaker 5: Well, that's one of the hardest things for me is to try to succinctly describe what I do, because what I am trying to do is question everything about our societal norms and structures, everything that is considered the status quo. But in truth is you know, the reality is that we live in a very extreme society. We have five percent of the world's population in the United States, but we consume twenty five percent of the world's resources. So this, by definition is extreme, and basically what I do is I go to the other end of this extreme to point this out, to bring attention to it, but also just because in order to live a life of harmony, it actually requires to go to a deep extreme. So I've basically dedicated my life to living simply sustainably, trying to do no unnecessary harm to people, to the planet, to the plants and animals, and to use my life as a message to help others.

00:19:52
Speaker 4: On this journey as well.

00:19:53
Speaker 5: I'm not here to convince anyone or there's no haf to's or shoulds, goods or bads. There's no guilt or anything like that. It's just, hey, here's another way from what you see in the mainstream, and if you're into this other way, then I'm here to support you on that journey.

00:20:08
Speaker 1: Since you mentioned extremes, I'm going to make an admission here, which you may I'm going to guess you disapprove of it, but we'll find out. I recently went on a cruise. Now, a cruise is a floating buffet slash shopping mall where everything is excessive. Now, the reason for this is I had some family friends that retired, and so it was like, rally all the troops, We're gonna have a ton of fun. But it did get me thinking, just noticing like all the food that probably gets thrown away, the fact that there's just so much stuff to buy, and then they dump you off of these ports that are basically like outwet malls, and so it made me think of you, what is your reaction to that?

00:20:51
Speaker 5: Well, Okay, first thing is I can't say that I necessarily disapprove of anything, because who am I to get to approve or disappe of things?

00:21:00
Speaker 3: Thank you? Okay, yes, but it's not.

00:21:03
Speaker 5: In alignment with my values in the way that I want to live my life.

00:21:07
Speaker 4: So I used to live.

00:21:08
Speaker 5: A very sort of consumeristic life, and I was very focused on material possessions and financial wealth, and I made a goal of being a millionaire by the time I was thirty, and I was very much on this pursuit. I had a you know, a new car that I spent every Sunday shining. The three bedroom apartment three blocks from the beach was you know, it was a big deal to me. As a Wisconsin boy, I was I was living sort of the dream surfing at the beach. And what happened is I simply started to watch documentaries and read books, you know, the Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan and Food Ink and the Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard, and documentaries like The Zeitgeist, and I just started to realize that my whole life was, to a large degree a lie. I was living this grand hypocrisy, what we call the American dream is actually the world's nightmare for billions of people and millions of species of plants and animals. So now it was time to unlearn so much, to relearn and take control of my life so that I could be living in a much more harmonious way with all the life we share this home with.

00:22:15
Speaker 1: So what were the first things you did? And then the underlying question being why did you feel like you had to tip into like we're going to go at this hard. It wasn't just like, Okay, I'm gonna do a little less. You're like, I'm going to do a lot less.

00:22:27
Speaker 5: It was starting with small things. I looked in my garbage can and I saw all the ways that I was creating trash, the disposable paper towels, for example, no need to buy those just reusable washcloths, you know, cotton rags. I looked at all of the food that was wrapped in plastic packaging and stopped going to Walmart and started to go to the local farmers market. There was a food co op called People's Food co Op, and I started to bring my own reusable containers to the bulk section and fill up my grains, nuts, seeds, oils, spices, all of that. Started to ride my bike more drive the car less, started to compost all the food scraps and everything that I could, started to grow a little bit of food forage, a little bit of food, got rid of all the toxic chemicals I was putting on my body and the fabreeze I was spraying on everything. And so yeah, just step by step, what I had done is I made a list of over one hundred changes that I wanted to make, and I hung that up in my kitchen, which was right by the front door, so I'd see it all the time, my friends would see it, and I just set out on this journey of one step at a time unraveling the web of consumerism and monetization that I was so deeply wrapped into. And as I broke each strand of that web, making new strands to build a new web, a web of living in harmony, simply sustainably, in community, in connection, and in a demonetized way.

00:23:56
Speaker 1: That's the idea of the checklist is really and there's some good psychology behind that. The fact that it's right there for you to view in your kitchen. You're having this constant reminder of what you need to do. It reminds me of this study in surgical wards in hospitals, and you know, errors in that setting can be really, really bad. Now, the issue is that every surgeon thinks that they have it locked down, like they're a surgeon, I'm the smartest person in the room.

00:24:24
Speaker 3: You don't need to tell me what to do.

00:24:26
Speaker 1: When they started doing checklists about what exactly we need to do before, during, and after surgery, the rate of airs went down significantly because there's this list looking at giving them the constant reminder this is what we need to do. But I want to ask you what were the most freeing elements of doing that, but also what were the most pain in the ass elements, Like the point where you're like, oh, why am I doing this?

00:24:49
Speaker 5: What I realized as I continued this is that most things I was doing, I was going against the grain of society, which meant each day was it was work pomplish these basic things. And once you make that change, it's not like the change is set in stone. You have to actually actively continue that change because society is trying to suck you back.

00:25:11
Speaker 4: And the tool that I came up.

00:25:13
Speaker 5: With, and I don't remember where this came from, if someone shared it with me or I just popped into my head, was that every action that I would take, instead of asking consciously or subconsciously, what are people going to think about me? I asked, is this beneficial to the earth, my community, and myself? And that was my new lens of looking at the world. And that was a really helpful way for me, for me to let go and really People ask me what my biggest advice the children would be, but I guess this probably would be my biggest advice to everyone, which is let go of what other people are thinking. That's one of the most freeing things you can possibly do to allow you to really live the life that you truly want to.

00:25:57
Speaker 1: I think everyone sort of intellectually understands that to care less what others think about me. But in sort of the day to day it's not always easy, but it takes action. You have to start doing things that prove to you that like, oh maybe this doesn't matter what these people think. So what did you learn along that path?

00:26:13
Speaker 5: Everything that you want to be successful at requires work. So some people might pursue a musical instrument, or you know, a sport or an intellectual subject. To live sustainably requires practice and diligence in the same way as any of those.

00:26:31
Speaker 4: And so what I would do is.

00:26:34
Speaker 5: I would create these practices that were specifically designed to help me to break free from what people would think. For example, way back at the beginning, I set myself a challenge of one week where I could only eat with my hands, no matter where I was, restaurant, party, and you know, in most of white Western society, to eat with your hands, they're going to think of you as low. So I would do these things where people would think of me as low and just get you to people thinking of me as low. I started the dumpster dive, eating from the garbage, and so just you know, the more and more people that thought less of me, actually, the more helpful that was because it just became something that I became used to in twenty sixteen when I did the month of living like the average person, but having to wear every single piece of trash while living in New York City.

00:27:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, so just for context for people, any trash that you produced, you had this full body suit that had like these big clear sleeves more or less, and you would put that piece of trash in the sleeves and just walk around in this trash suit.

00:27:41
Speaker 3: And of course, slowly the more the longer you live, the more the trash is accumulating.

00:27:45
Speaker 4: But yeah, go on, Yes, perfect explanation.

00:27:48
Speaker 5: And so the average US American creates four and a half pounds of trash per day. If I consume like the average person, that's one hundred and thirty five pounds a month. Anybody know listening to this knows it's hard to walk around with one hundred and thirty five pounds on your body. So I had to wear it everywhere that I went, and so talk about you know, I'm literally walking around the streets covered in garbage. So you got to have some you know, strength to do that, mental strength to do this strength.

00:28:17
Speaker 4: By the way, Yes, so what I did.

00:28:20
Speaker 5: I was really concerned at the beginning of going outside, especially when the suit was kind of empty, because it's not even a good visual at the beginning. So I ended up getting so fortunate to watch the doc the film The Big Short, which is the one about the two thousand and eight two thousand and nine housing market crash where millions of US Americans saw their financial wealth just dissolve and real I was reminded that we're living in this grand delusion, that the majority of us are existing in a grand delusion with almost everything we're doing. And I thought to myself, all right, if I'm walking around on the streets just surrounded by people living in a delusion, then why does it matter what they think about me?

00:29:07
Speaker 4: We're all delusional anyway.

00:29:09
Speaker 1: Can you unpack the delusion part more that the average person lives in? Because I think, if I'm a listener hearing this, I'm like, who's this guy to tell me that I'm living a deluded life. At the same time, I will say, you kind of mentioned that was in my own delusion too, so we'll give you points there.

00:29:25
Speaker 5: The way our societal norms are set up is under the belief that we can create things that are permanent. All of our buildings, all of our structures, are all designed in a way where, yeah, this is just going to last. But the reality is is that we live in a very impermanent society. San Francisco right now, after existing for a very short period of time in seemingly permanent way, is literally sinking and within a couple generations they might crumble to the ground. But we don't acknowledge that. We design our entire structures around that not being true, And the same goes with all of our consumerism. We live on what Carl Sagan calls a pale blue dot, but we act like we live in this infinite place where we can consume, exploit, and extract endlessly, and we pretty much seem to think that this will continue. But the reality is, if you look at it pretty objectively, the most likely scenario is we're going to destroy ourselves through our own delusion of the infiniteness of our resources.

00:30:33
Speaker 1: So tell us about your experiment of non ownership. What prompted that and what did you start to do and what was that like?

00:30:41
Speaker 5: Okay, so if anybody was not yet convinced that I have gone insane, this may be your opportunity to think.

00:30:47
Speaker 3: That, let's go, this is what we need.

00:30:52
Speaker 5: So I well talk about delusion. I think ownership is an illusion. I don't believe we can own the land, and the earth doesn't sign that contract, the plants and animals don't sign that contract, and most of the humans don't sign those contracts.

00:31:06
Speaker 4: When we decide that we own the land, just.

00:31:08
Speaker 5: A couple of people with the most privileged and an access say.

00:31:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, we now are the owners of this.

00:31:16
Speaker 5: So I've been on a long journey of simplifying and downsizing physically, mentally, you know in every way that I can be doing that. And years back I got my life down to one hundred eleven possessions, and then later I got it to forty four possessions. I've always dreamed of this idea of getting to the place of owning absolutely nothing, not a single material possession, not even clothes or a computer or.

00:31:42
Speaker 4: Money or any of that.

00:31:44
Speaker 5: It was last year I walked from Canada to Los Angeles. I simplified my life to everything I owned, fitting in a backpack, I walked six months from Canada La letting go, shedding what no longer served.

00:31:58
Speaker 4: There was still a lot to let go.

00:32:00
Speaker 5: After thirteen years of letting go, I was really doing a lot of letting go of what's in my mind. And what I did is I shared everything I had in my mind that was a secret that I was embarrassed about, anything I was hiding or guarding. And I did that in numerous ways, but ultimately through a nine part video series that is a total of I think six and a half hours, and at the end of that there was literally nothing in my mind that anybody else didn't have access to. So this was a practice of making my own mind creative comments, of trying to the best of my ability to not own my own mind, which is a pretty unique, interesting concept. And I'm just experimenting with this, like it's not like I have a whole lot of, you know, references to go upon with this experiment.

00:32:49
Speaker 4: But then so then, as when I arrived in La.

00:32:53
Speaker 5: January twenty six, twenty twenty five, I arrived in Griffith Park and I had put the word out that I'd be arriving.

00:32:59
Speaker 4: At that time, there was maybe.

00:33:01
Speaker 5: Thirty or forty people waiting there, and part of why they were waiting there is they were going to help me become the human who owns nothing. I gave away all my items to people there. I held up each item and shared, you know, would this be meaningful to you my sleeping bag or the backpack, or my personal hygiene items, whatever, they would be, just one by one by one over a period about a half hour, I got to the point where the last thing to take off was the long underwear that I was wearing on this cold, rainy day in Los Angeles, and I sat naked in Griffith Park, covered with a palm frond, owning absolutely no physical possessions, having downsized almost everything online and even not having the password to any of my digital anything.

00:33:48
Speaker 4: So there was still some.

00:33:50
Speaker 5: You know, digital ownership, which is a whole nother realm that we existed that we have today. But I gave myself this practice where I had no access to any of those either, and then I lived for the next three months in Griffith Park practicing complete non ownership.

00:34:13
Speaker 1: What I think is interesting here too, is that in my own experiences doing things outdoors, I'll give you an example. I was up in the Arctic, in the back country for like more than a month, and we had to pack everything in and so obviously you can only carry so much, right, you have to cull everything any of these like extra do Hickey's, Like, oh, that might be nice, It's like, no, everything has to serve multiple purposes. I personally found that when we would have a problem or a challenge we face, you would go, oh, we need this piece of gear, but we don't have that gear, and so what would happen is that we'd have to get creative with what we had. You have to be like, what if we used this thing that is for this purpose normally, but we could sort of retrofit it to solve this problem. And we were able to. And so for me, it was one of those AHAs, like you know, I probably have a lot of stuff in my house that could be serving multiple purposes. And that sort of influenced me. I would say to buy a little less because it gave me this moment where I was like, Okay, if I have this problem, my mind automatically goes buy this thing to solve it. My mind started to go, well, what do I already have that could probably do the same thing without me purchasing something else.

00:35:26
Speaker 5: Yes, I'm very glad you brought that up. I think this is a perfect moment. To remind people that my message is not for anybody to do just as I do. My message is not for people to live this extreme life just as I do. Hey, if that's what you want to do, I completely support you if you want to radically transform your life and rethink everything. But that's not the point. The point is just what you talked about. It's about critical thinking, it's about problem solving. It's about asking ourselves the question, like am I living the life that I truly want to? Are my actions in alignment with my beliefs. My job is to stimulate those thoughts and stimulate those questions and then start wherever you are. You know, for some people there might be excited about growing food or foraging, or being more involved in the community or living you know, creating less waste, or starting an organization that's going to serve you know, people in living a more sustainable life.

00:36:23
Speaker 4: I would love to mention that on my website.

00:36:25
Speaker 5: I have a list of those hundred changes that I make, and that's at Robin Greenfield dot org slash one hundred. So if people are like I'm looking for some changes, You've got a really helpful resource right there.

00:36:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll link to that in the comments, and you've talked about how happy this whole process makes you, which I think is sort of culturally counterintuitive, because I think there's a sense people feel that once I have that house or that car or that title, I will be happy. I have a theory about one reason that this makes you happy, but I want to hear in your own words, why you think this process makes you happy, and then I'll tell you my theory.

00:37:06
Speaker 5: I think the reason that I am as happy as I am is because I'm living in alignment. So I can wake up and I can look at what I'm doing and I can feel content with it. And for me, the way in which I would be unhappy is knowing that my existence is this grand burden on other people. So the alignment for me is that I'm on this path of living in a way that decreases the harm, the unnecessary harm that's being caused, and my actions are quite in alignment.

00:37:44
Speaker 1: What's your thoughts, I think one of the reasons and you can pressure test this, and like you said, I think it's complex, but I think a lot of the things you do, the goals are relatively simple and clear. For example, in your foraging experience, experiment and growing your own food. And for listeners who don't know, Robin is are you finished with that in the process where you did, where you foraged and grew your own food.

00:38:11
Speaker 3: For a while.

00:38:11
Speaker 4: Right now I'm in a year of just foraging. No gardens.

00:38:14
Speaker 3: Oh, no gardens.

00:38:15
Speaker 5: This year was growing and foraging and that was finished in twenty nineteen.

00:38:19
Speaker 1: Okay, perfect. So with forging food, you have this goal. It's very simple, it's very crisp. You know whether you found food or not, right like, you either got it or you didn't. The goal is extremely clear and not to mention. The second part of this is that the timescale is relatively tight. So you have twelve hours and across the day to try and forage your food. So you have a mission every day where you go, okay, you need to find food and I got twelve hours to do it. At the end of the day, you end the day and you go, I was successful or not, and you just ah, what off? Whereas I think for a lot of people with modern jobs, the goal is not as clear.

00:39:00
Speaker 3: Right.

00:39:01
Speaker 1: It's like you're work in an office. There's this like kind of big, vague goal the company has and you're kind of like in this satellite spot where you can't necessarily see am I moving the dial to this goal? And it's just like vague. Did you ever do the right or wrong thing? I don't know, not to mention, it's like the work never ends. The time scales are you know, your thirty year career, and you never have a clear sense of like did I accomplish the mission? And I think that that sort of uncertainty and that lack of clarity behind what am I doing every day? Are do my actions have an outcome? Am I going to find out soon? I think that results in a sort of malaise and disconnection and a lot of people. The reason that I had been thinking about this is I did a long through hike in southern Utah last spring.

00:39:47
Speaker 3: So it was about forty.

00:39:47
Speaker 1: Five days, and over that hike, it was okay, we're going to try and reach this point today. Along the way, we got to find water. We either found water or we didn't find water. We either made it to our point or we didn't. And the timescale was within a day, and so you end the day and you just go today was a good day. We found water, we made it to our point, or you know what, we didn't hit our goal. We didn't find as much water as we want to. But guess well, we get to go at batt tomorrow again and find out if we can do it tomorrow.

00:40:20
Speaker 3: What are your thoughts on that?

00:40:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's spot on.

00:40:23
Speaker 5: The way that I would put that is like, right now we have these terms like eco anxiety, that so many people are living under these new terms, and so a lot of people have basically placed the weight of the world upon their shoulders. They're trying to save the planet, save humanity, solve climate change, and that's that never ending. There's no accomplishment of a goal. But what I do instead is I work on things that I can have a clear goal for, Like maybe it's to plant two hundred community fruit trees this year, and we know that by planting those two hundred community fruit trees that we are contributing towards the reduction of climate change and that we're improving people's quality of life.

00:41:13
Speaker 4: And we have tangible goals.

00:41:16
Speaker 5: So one of the biggest mistakes that I see in especially young change makers who are very enthusiastic, is they want to they set these huge goals and they base their organizations, their companies, their work around having to accomplish these huge goals before they've even gotten started.

00:41:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that even if you do have a job that has these sort of never ending goals, everything's unclear it happens across thirty years. I think that that at least provides a framework of what can you do in your time when you aren't working to find things that will give you satisfaction. That could be like you're doing You're like, I'm going to reduce my impact. Here's the thing I'm going to do today. Let's figure it out. It could be in why or fitness, where you go, if you want to lose weight, don't go, I want to lose fifty pounds. You go, I'm gonna eat an apple instead of a TwixT bar today, right. And so by like creating these little micro missions, it's like, yeah, it gives you this clear sense of progress and like, aha, I did it. Let's see if I can do it again tomorrow. All right, we're we'll start to close out. I got a couple more questions from your experience of getting rid of all of your things. What were three items that you're like, these are the if I had to pick three things, those are the only three things I could own. What would those three things be?

00:42:35
Speaker 4: A pot?

00:42:37
Speaker 5: Definitely? I use my pot a lot. That's a very beneficial thing. It's very multi purpose drinking, cooking to go, container for food.

00:42:48
Speaker 4: And so on.

00:42:50
Speaker 5: So also vessel for harvesting rain water, trapping fish. Potentially, there's so many things that can be done in the pot. I would say some clothes, you know, and if I could only have one item of clothing, it would probably be like a big, warm wool shawl or something that would cover my whole body. And then, honestly, I'm going to go with my computer right now because my objective is to reach millions and millions of people and create the ripple that I can in the world, and I can do.

00:43:23
Speaker 4: That without the computer. I've experimented.

00:43:27
Speaker 5: I've not owned a computer, i haven't owned a phone for a long time, and I've tried to own no computer, but I found that it really impacted my ability to reach people. So basically I'd rock around with a computer covered in a shawl, carrying a pot.

00:43:44
Speaker 3: Awesome.

00:43:45
Speaker 1: All right, final question for the average person listening to this, where would you tell people to start?

00:43:51
Speaker 4: Okay, so I have about five key pillars.

00:43:55
Speaker 5: First, or this is not first necessarily, but composting everything that can be composted, and then instead of putting it in the garbage, can compost it. You can compost at home or now there's a lot of places that will actually pick up your compost. Use your body to get around, so biking, walking, skateboarding.

00:44:14
Speaker 3: I love this one. I love this one.

00:44:17
Speaker 5: Grow a little bit of food, even if it's just on your balcony and it's you know, some basil and some tomatoes, grow a little bit of food.

00:44:25
Speaker 1: So I think that beyond just the fact that you're getting food and growing at yourself, I think there's a reminder in there that food has to come from somewhere and it's a long process. And I also think it gets you outside doing something physical, which is awesome.

00:44:44
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, And so with that, I'm going to add forage a little bit of food. Just learn one plant that's growing in your area. It could be dandelions, or it could be mulberries or blackberries, and you know, just do a little bit of foraging to the earth. Through foraging and that one note, well, I guess the next thing I'll say is I mentioned growing food. Maybe you don't have any space to grow food, and you can join a community garden. So that ties into my next suggestion, which is break free from the very radically independent way of being and do much more in community. Embrace a much more community way of living. And then the last one I'm going to share is look at all the ways you're spending money, ask if it's really serving you or it's just trapping you in the system, and let go of more and more of demonetized ways of being, which again ties you back to community, because as you start having a money that's less a life less based on money, you have a life that's much more based on relationships and skills. So building your skills, building relationships, this is a true life savings. This is a true retirement fund is relationships and skills.

00:46:02
Speaker 3: I feel like.

00:46:05
Speaker 1: As people start to do the things you just laid out one, they're doing a lot of sort of universal good. But I think what happens too is you're doing a lot of these things are really good for our health. You mentioned moving, you mentioned spending more time with people. There's the implicit fact that you're going to be outside. So these are things that like give people a lot of meaning really associated with long term health and wellbeing.

00:46:27
Speaker 3: And you're also doing this great a good which is awesome.

00:46:30
Speaker 4: I love it, and I'll add to that. Come hang out with me.

00:46:35
Speaker 3: I love that. I'll take you up on that.

00:46:38
Speaker 4: Nice.

00:46:38
Speaker 5: I'm teaching seven foraging schools this year from West Coast to East Coast and Midwest. So I do these weekend long or day long foraging schools where you.

00:46:46
Speaker 4: Can come and learn and be in community.

00:46:49
Speaker 5: And then I'm giving doing plant walks and talks in like thirty states this year, So come out and meet more like minded people. Realize, oh, there are a bunch of people that are into this sort of stuff, and you know, breaks free from that isolation and spend more time in community and coming to my gatherings are a great way to do that.

00:47:07
Speaker 3: I love it. Well, Robin, thanks a lot for coming on the show man. This was fantastic.

00:47:11
Speaker 4: You're very welcome. I enjoyed it. Thanks for asking all these questions.

00:47:15
Speaker 3: All right, welcome back.

00:47:16
Speaker 1: We're going to close out this episode with an Ama Ask Michael Anything, where you can submit any question that you want. First question, and this is a work related question lines up perfectly with today's episode. It came from my friend Wendy Bounds, who is at the Wall Street Journal, what is one thing that has most helped your work life balance. We were on a zoom call when we were doing this, because I recently did an event for the Wall Street Journals Executive Leadership Conference, so she wanted to sort of pick my brain about what are you going to talk about on stage?

00:47:47
Speaker 3: And I thought about it.

00:47:47
Speaker 1: For about two seconds and I knew the answer immediately, and that was taking email off of my phone.

00:47:54
Speaker 3: So here's the thing.

00:47:55
Speaker 1: I think with social media, with news apps, when you go into those a lot, you go, I shouldn't be doing this, this is not good for me. But with email, I would argue that we all check that way more frequently, and it can be just as compulsive and just as neurotic, and for reasons other than really needing to know what's in your inbox. But we often rationalize it. We go, oh, no, it's for work. I can check my email fifty thousand times a day. I noticed that that was happening to me. I was checking email when I would get bored, when I would get anxious, for all these different reasons. So I took it off my phone first day. I will tell you my finger was hovering over to where that email used to be all the time, which again tells me I was checking it for reasons other than really needing to know what was in my inbox. And when I took it off of my phone, what happened was this, I got a lot of my attention back. I was more in the present moment. I could focus more on what was happening around me, whether that was hanging out with my wife Leah, whether that was hanging out with my dogs. And I wasn't as just tied to work all the time. I think that's one of the downside of having work on your phone, is that you always feel like you're at work. Took it off. It benefited me. I will tell you when I gave Wendy that answer, she rolled her eyes. She's like, oh, good for you. After she dropped her resentments against me. She tried it and it also helped her.

00:49:14
Speaker 3: So try it.

00:49:15
Speaker 1: Let us know how I'll helped you. Question two, and this is from Dale in Portland. We don't know which Portland he's in. He asked this, what do you do for recovery from exercise? We live in a world where recovery is really really hyped up. We get recovery scores on our fitness watches, there are a million different things we can buy for recovery. But one of the big problems with all this hubbub over recovery is that there's actually no good definition for what recovery is. So if you look in a lot of exercise textbooks, it's not defined. If you go to the website of the American College of Sports Medicine, which is this big governing body of sports medicine, also not defined. Now, if you really pull back, I think what we're talking about when we talk about recovery, I'm recreating my own definition. Here is basically the ability to do a fitness related activity at the same rate or better after doing another fitness activity. So let's say you lift a weight on Tuesday, and then you go back in the gym and you don't lift as much of the same weight on Wednesday. Suggest you're probably not recovered. If you do the same weight or you do even more, suggest you are recovered. Now that time in between workouts is actually where we improve. This is an important part. So it's not during the workout that we improve. It's in that time after the workout stresses your body and then your body goes, oh, I might need to do this again, so I'm going to build back better. And the building back better happens when you're not working out. So what actually does help you build back better? There was a group at Columbia that looked at this and they found that it is much simpler than all the marketing would like you to believe. Two things were most associated with building back better after a fitness event or a sporting event. One sleeping enough. People who got enough sleep at least seven hours a night, they were better able to perform later on.

00:51:07
Speaker 3: And then two eating enough.

00:51:09
Speaker 1: And that makes sense because if you have stressed your body and it needs to build muscle or whatever it is, it obviously needs some calories to do that. So one sleep enough, two eat enough. And then I will also add a third, which I have found has really helped me, and that is walking. So after you've done especially a strength workout or even a run, if I go out on a walk the next day, it gets my body moving again, kind of builds back my endurance, gets some blood flowing, probably shuttles out some of these sort of damaged things that have happened to my body that makes me feel better. And I've also found after speaking to a lot of experts, a lot of them are recommending walks. Now, all right, next question, and this one came from Julie in San Francisco. She asked, what is something that you would change in your book The Comfort Crisis. So let me note that book came out about five years ago. That book also cites a ton of research. There's hundreds of studies that I cited in that book, and a lot of research has changed in the last five years. So when Julie asked this question, I automatically knew something that I would change, and that was that I had a.

00:52:13
Speaker 3: Section in the book.

00:52:14
Speaker 1: I think it was just a few paragraphs in a larger chapter about fasting and how fasting might be uniquely good for a process called autophagy. Now, atophagy is when your body gets rid of dead and damaged cells. And these dead and damaged cells they are associated with aging, with diseases. So the idea is that if you can stimulate atophagy via fasting, you will be less likely to get diseases. Now here's what's come out in the research over the last five years and how the thinking has shifted them. So we now know that autopogy happens from exercise. We also know that it happens when you lose weight. So yes, fasting does help, but you do not have to go through stints of not eating for sixteen, twenty four, forty eight, whatever amount of hours it is. You can just exercise more, you can lose a little weight and you will get those same benefits. All right, next question, and let me tee this one up. We are going to start what we are lovingly calling the Department of Dipshit Questions. This is the final question of every AMA. We will run one of these, and it is a question that means nothing doesn't improve your life, just makes you think it's just a ridiculous thought experiment. Our first question for this segment is if you could be any celebrities kid, who would you be? Now this question came up between Lee and I we were eating dinner. It popped in my brain and I said, hey, Leah to my wife Leah, So if you could be any celebrities kid, who would you be? And this went with this big back and forth between us. Now, one of our first thoughts was maybe like Mick Jagger's kid, Like that'd be pretty cool. But then we realize there's a problem with that, and that's that Nick Jagger is way too famous. His kids even have paparazzi all over them all the time. You, as his kid, you do something stupid, like you get a dui, you are definitely going to end up on the cover of a newspaper of a tabloid in the UK.

00:54:06
Speaker 3: So we're like, no, don't want all that attention.

00:54:09
Speaker 1: So then we thought, all right, well, maybe you'd want to be like a really good pro athletes kid, like Michael Jordan's kid. That would be cool. You get free shoes for life, you're rich. Great, But then the problem with that is there's too many expectations. Every single person in your life is going to be like, oh, do you play basketball? Oh you should have played basketball, fathered you followed your father's footsteps. It's like, nah, I don't want all that pressure. And then people are going to be disappointed because you're not as good as your father, not to mention he is hyper competitive.

00:54:34
Speaker 3: He would never let you win anything. Too much pressure.

00:54:38
Speaker 1: Then I ended up throwing out what I think is the absolute perfect answer to this. You would want to be Jimmy Buffett's kid. Reason one, you have plenty of money. So when Jimmy Buffett died in twenty twenty three, he was worth a billion dollars because he started the Marguerite Deville Empire. It has concert tours, it has hotels, it has blenders, it has restaurants. This guy raked in tons of money, So you, as his kid, you would never have to worry about money running out.

00:55:11
Speaker 3: That is a good thing.

00:55:12
Speaker 1: Number two, Jimmy Buffett is famous, but he's not like ultra famous. You know, there's not paparazzi who are chasing Jimmy Buffett around town all the time. And therefore, you, of his kid, you wouldn't have to worry about being in the newspapers having all this attention on you.

00:55:28
Speaker 3: You just kind of get left alone.

00:55:29
Speaker 1: And then three, and this is where it becomes absolutely most important. I want you to think about what Jimmy Buffett stands for. This guy stands for being a beach bum, hanging out on the boat or on the beach, having a good time, just living that laid back island lifestyle. So you, as his kid, you have zero expectations for what you need to be in life. You can be the biggest waste of space who just sits on the beach, SIPs some cocktails, does abbs nothing. No one judges you for that. They're not like, look at this Neppo baby just doing nothing. No, what they say is, yeah, that's Jimmy Buffett's kid. He's living the island lifestyle. He is just like Jimmy and we love him for that. You get a duy, they just go, oh, yeah, that's Jimmy's kid, No big deal. In closing, let me say this about our Department of Dipshit Questions. I would love it if you could submit your own dipshit question that you want me to answer. And then number two, if you ever think that you have an answer that can beat mine for a Department of Dipshit questions, please submit it and if you got a winner, I will absolutely read it. I would love to be proven wrong, especially on my Jimmy Buffett answer. Thanks for listening to the episode. We are going to be in your feeds as always twice a week. Do not forget to hit subscribe. The overlords tell me that is very important. And if you have a question for an AMA. Could be a dipshit question, could be any question. Please submit it in the comments or send us an email. As always, have fun, don't die.