Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal: World Poker Champion on the Science of Decision-Making
Chris Sparks joins Ali Abdaal on Deep Dive to share insights from high-stakes poker, game theory, decision-making, and designing elite performance systems.
Video recording above; resources mentioned, and conversation transcript below.
Topics:
(02:17) What it’s like being a poker pro
(06:00) The Red Queen Effect
(08:18) Psychological advantages and bluffing via self-deception
(20:16) Making sure you’re playing the right games
(25:24) Having a mindset of abundance
(32:27) Applying lessons from poker to peak performance
(50:15) Cultivating empathy
(01:02:14) Creating interfaces for objectivity
(01:18:25) Overcoming perfectionism
(01:25:00) Meta-prioritization: debugging a lack of progress
(01:42:31) Turning obligations into opportunities
(01:47:40) Countering status-quo bias with forcing functions
Conversation Transcript:
Note: transcript slightly edited for clarity.
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Ali Abdaal (00:00): Just a very quick thing before we get started, if you have not yet subscribed to the podcast either on YouTube or your favorite podcast app of choice, then please do it really helps us out a lot.
Chris Sparks (00:08): There is so much to be learned from poker in games in general. So I've tried to transmute poker into my mission of understanding the games that were naturally participating in. And I think that game theory and the system's thinking that's so necessary to success has so many wider applications. Think about decision making you think about human performance, being the person who can show up and perform every day, thinking about understanding yourself understanding your own psychology, I realized through working with other high performers in business and investing that so many of the things that I had developed in myself instrumental music to become one of the best poker players translated to a number of fields as well. So I think of poker as almost my sandbox or my lens for understanding how we can achieve the ambitious things we set out to achieve. How can we find a life of freedom and purpose, it's always been my avenue of understanding.
Ali Abdaal (01:10): Hey, friends, and welcome back to deep dive, the weekly podcast where every week, I have the immense privilege to sit down with authors, entrepreneurs, creators and other inspiring people. And we find out how they got to where they are, and the strategies and tools that we can learn from them to apply to our own lives. Now, this week is very exciting, because I'm speaking to a chap called Chris sparks for the first time in real life. Now Chris is a professional poker player, turned executive coach. And he actually worked with me as my own performance coach for a period of 90 days during one of the early lockdowns. And so Chris taught me a lot about how to maximize my performance, while also being sustainable and working towards the goals that I personally care about, and how to set those goals that I care about in the first place. And so it was super nice meeting him in real life and having this conversation, we talked about a lot of stuff, we talked a lot about what it's like being a professional poker player, and crucially, what we can learn from the world of a professional poker player around decision making, decision making under uncertainty and how to deal with that kind of stuff. We also talked a lot about the frameworks that Chris uses with his clients, which are generally tend to be high flying executives and investors and stuff, and me about like, how to actually make sure you're working on the things that you want to work on how to set goals intentionally, and how to be more productive and working towards them. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Chris box as much as I did. If someone's listening to this, and let's say they're in their 20s, and they don't really like their job, and they're thinking, Oh, playing, playing professional poker sounds like it could be a fun way of making a living. What does that look like? Like if I wanted to start playing professional poker? Like, what would be the steps I would have to go through to become sufficiently Pro to get good at poker? And what's the whole deal with? Is it like a game of chance versus luck versus skill? Like what? Yeah, I'm just gonna throw throw, throw that open to you.
Chris Sparks (02:52): Ali, it's an honor to be here, giving credence to the title deep dive, we were diving in deep right away. I love that. So yeah, what makes a professional poker player is you have just decided to make this your main thing, right? So there are lots of professionals and things who aren't necessarily making a living from it. And people who are doing very well who wouldn't consider themselves professionals. And I was once slightly younger than 21. I started playing when I was 16. So going at it almost two decades, slightly younger than 21 years old thinking, hey, is this something that I should do for a living? And what really pushed me over was I had a moment I wanted to make television commercials for a living, I was going to be working for Ford Motor Company, I had done all the internships in school, all the student organizations moved up to Detroit, all the networking, and what do you know, the economy falls out? So this thing that I've been doing instead of sleep instead of occasionally going to class? What if I did this as a full time gig? And what if I really dedicated myself to it? So I think that's a starting point, when you want it, you want to ask yourself, hey, is this something that I want to do is, are you willing to dedicate yourself to it, there was a point in time where all my friends were poker friends, all my dreams are poker dreams. It's definitely not something that you can just-
Ali Abdaal (04:20): —half ass, so to say. So I couldn't just do it as a side hustle while working full time as a marketing exec or something like that.
Chris Sparks (04:26): No, I just think that things are very competitive these days. And poker is no exception. I mean, there are literally millions of people who have said, Hey, maybe I'll have a go with this poker. And I would say there's probably less than 1000 who've really, really made it. The odds are very much against it because you need to be playing at a certain level in order to make a living and with the amount of money that's at stake. People are incentivized to work very hard. And like many things, technology has really evolved the game. Whereas when I say Started. Eons ago, it was pretty much a trial and error to get better, you played a lot of hands. If you won the hand, you did a little bit more of that. If you lost the hand, you say, Okay, maybe I'm gonna do that a little bit less. As the game has evolved, it's much more about modeling and running simulations. So you see the top players spending, on average about eight hours a day, running simulations of different hands, even before they sit down to play, the idea that the computer as an aide to determine what is what we call the game theory, optimal approach of playing. And the challenge that anyone has coming into it fresh is that the people you will be competing against probably have 1000s of hours on you, perhaps 10s of 1000s of hours of study on you. So not only do you need to catch up, but you need to be working harder in order to try to pass them up because they are going to continue to grow and and to improve a good rule of thumb is that the average player is about twice as good on an annual basis. So you can see there's a sense of this red queen effect, you have to be moving very quickly, to stay at the top. And just like with the Red Queen effect. Sure. So this comes from writer Lewis Carroll. So you know, Alice in Wonderland, the ideas like your things are moving so quickly, that you have to run really quickly just to maintain your place. Okay. All right. So this is like when competitive and everyone's getting better, you have to be improving just to not fall behind. Okay? That it's pokers, a very much a Red Queen pursuing that way. So you can see I'm sort of cautioning the 21 year old to know what you're in for. And you hear this narrative a lot with startup founders, or someone who goes out there and raises an investment fund . If I knew how hard it was going to be, I might not have ever done it. I wonder if you feel the same way about YouTubing. Knowing how much work goes into reaching the top, perhaps you wouldn't have started. So there's certainly a level of naivete that's necessary to get going. But I always asked like, are you willing to put in the work necessary to see if you have what it takes, but something like poker, I would want to commit to six months to a year before you're going to see even like a semblance of a profit, like there's this sense of you're paying tuition, not in a traditional education sense, but by losing money, you will be losing money at first. And it's impossible to play without having real money at stake. All of our decision making changes when there's something at stake. Imagine that we were just playing for data by myself here like Pogs, or like Pokemon cards, something like that we don't place all that much value for we would just be going all in all the time, there's not really all that incentive to have much incentive to play smartly to make good decisions. But all of a sudden, you're putting the equivalent of a car in the middle, or let's say even just a very nice bicycle. All of a sudden people's decision making processes start to change. That's the thing is like poker is a game played with cards, but it's played in the mind, right? It's played with people, and how decision making starts to work once there are real stakes at play. So you don't really know how you are going to perform until you're under that type of pressure of having some real steaks. Yeah.
Ali Abdaal (08:25): Okay. So six to 12 months of study. My understanding based on watching films like “21” and stuff is that and watching the trailer for Daniel some things like masterclass input programming, that's a lot of like, Oh, crap, like, you have to be able to do a lot of calculations in your head and run probabilities. But I guess that gives you the kind of optimal game theory response to a given situation. Presumably, it's not that hard to learn, right? Because there's only a finite number of possibilities, or have I just got that completely wrong, like where what's the skill? Like? Where does the skill come in beyond learning the basic probabilities of a fourth kind, versus a full house, etc?
Chris Sparks (09:02): So great question. I think of the math side as table stakes, as you need to at least be able to estimate the odds in order to have a chance. But there's no advantage there. I think the advantage is all psychological. So understanding other players and most importantly, understanding yourself, there was a real aspect of decision making under pressure here. And it's very hard to talk about at an abstract level if you haven't experienced it, personally. And why the game is so interesting is because people are a blackbox. Poker is a game of imperfect information, right? This isn't chess, where you can just have the perfect move, you can just plug it into your computer and it'll tell you what to do. When you memorize it. You're trying to predict what other people have based on their behavior. So there's an element of deception and certainly an element of self deception that's occurring. So a lot of the mastery of self deception, self deception and both, Hey, I am telling a story with the actions that I'm taking my bedding patterns that I have this type of hand. But really, I'm playing my hand, not as that my hand actually is. But as all the hands that I could have as a set of possibilities, or as a set of hands that I want you to think I have. That's why I say the game is played in your mind. The cards are really only an interface for what's going on.
Ali Abdaal (10:30): So it's kind of like those lying games where if you know, you're the mafia, but you're acting as if you really, really want to believe that you're not because then you will act as if you're a good guy rather than a bad guy. And you're kind of convincing people to think that you're a good guy, even though you actually know you have a bad guy card.
Chris Sparks (10:46): Yeah, I don't think that people are very good actors. Instead of trying to pretend, hey, I have a really big hand you guys should fold, I think it's easier to fool yourself into thinking I have a good hand. So I'm just going to act as if I have a good hand, right? I'm not acting, I'm just doing what I would normally do. But I've sort of overrode that part of my brain and says, I have this hand or that hand—
Ali Abdaal (11:05): —I interrupted you when he was 70. When you were saying the mastery of yeah.
Chris Sparks (11:09): There's a sense of no situation repeating, like you can have, you have limited combinations of cards, but because all the variables change all the time, you're continually adapting to changing situations. And that's why experience is so valuable, because you start to be able to identify the patterns within the noise and see the situation where a lot of beginning players struggle is that they don't understand the absolute strength of the hand versus the relative strength of the hand, that we're getting too technical, sometimes a good hand isn't all that good, and sometimes a good hand is amazing. And a lot of that just comes down to experience and repetition and iteration of understanding the situation that's occurring. And it's something that you can't really read in a book, you have to start to calibrate your intuition in this way. And so—
Ali Abdaal (12:02): —just the math is like, everyone does the math, that's not the hard part, the hard part is actually being able to play the mind game to deceive yourself, and then also to deceive other people. And the people that are good at this area have had 20,000 hours more preparation on this than I have. And therefore if I tried to play poker with them, even with the basic knowledge of math, there's almost no way I'd be able to actually beat them consistently over the long term.
Chris Sparks (12:26): The challenge is that people are constantly adapting, right system strings, we say that poker is a complex adaptive system, that as soon as you figure someone out, they change, right? It's just that people aren't static. So that's where you see expert players are, they're able to adapt faster, they're sort of setting a trap, you think they're playing in a certain way, but they've already presented a counter to that. And that's why I say like the game is continually evolving is, in order to sustain your place at the top, you need to not only be evolving on a session level on a game level, but as a player so that people can't get a real sense for what your tendencies are, because you have no tendencies.
Ali Abdaal (13:07): Nice. Okay, another sort of basic question, what's, what's the deal with online poker versus real life poker these days? If I were thinking of getting into poker, can I just get really good at playing online poker and make loads of money that way? How does that work?
Chris Sparks (13:20): It really depends on skill set. I think that online poker is more statistically based, whereas Live Poker is much more of a social game. So everything goes in cycles. And we see cycles that online poker becomes much more popular 2020 and 2021. Online Poker was much more popular for obvious reasons. So everyone kind of gravitates back towards things that you could do inside on your computer. And I'm primarily known as an online poker player. And a lot of my skill came from deep statistical analysis of myself and other players to reveal correct strategies and a very variety of situations. But the primary advantage of playing online is that you can play multiple games at a time. So I've played a maximum of 30 games at a time I my average is around 12. What this means is that I'm getting a new hand every two seconds, on average. So I'm making decisions every two seconds for hours at a time. And there's this concept that I like that improvement speed is proportional to the tightness of your feedback loops, which is a fancy way of saying that the more decisions that you're making, and the more that you're iterating on decisions are making based off of feedback, you get this work, this didn't work, the faster you improve as a player. So because I was playing so many games and being very systematic about the way that I improved, I improved very, very quickly. And think about it just in pure math terms. If I'm playing 12 games, I'm getting about 600 Hands per hour, but a typical live game at a home or casino, you're getting about 20 to 25 Hands per hour. So this means that playing online, I'm seeing 25 to 30 times as many hands hands. So that means I can win 25 to 30 times as much playing the same stakes, or I can play smaller stakes and have lower variance. Those are these are different factors at play. But online over time because of these tools available that I shared before, has gotten increasingly competitive over time. And because it's a global player pool, you're competing against the best players in the world. So my view on average online has gotten much, much more difficult over time. Now that we've seen host pandemic everyone going outside and going out is that Live Poker in person is having another Renaissance particularly tournament poker. My specialty is a cash game poker tournament poker up. I have won by trying to compete over a prize pool, which is very top heavy jewellery. The prize will go to the top few finishers and a cash game you're putting, you know, actual chips or bricks, cash in the middle. So you're betting what you actually have in front I—
Ali Abdaal (15:51): —imagined changes the psychology of how people take risks and stuff.
Chris Sparks (15:55): Absolutely. And because tournament poker acts as a power law distribution. So it's very top heavy, it really rewards risk taking, or as cash game poker is more of a thing or is like a cash flow business is a little bit more consistent. You're trying to maintain discipline and not get too out of line, that sort of thing. And it's more that I play with the same 50 players every day. So it's much more of a long term. It's an iterated Game and Game theory term. I'm not only thinking about what's the right move to do now. But how does this move set up my opponents, you know, weeks from now, because because I'm playing with him every day, I have many, many opportunities to capitalize on something that I've set them up on, it's a very different approach.
Ali Abdaal (16:40): So it's more like, hey, if I fold right now, then they'll think that I'm the sort of person who falls under these conditions, which means four weeks from now, they'll use that data point to make a decision, which is actually gonna be bad for them.
Chris Sparks (16:51): Exactly. And, and this is, you know, one of the other many definitions of a professional player is that everything has, you know, we call second order effects. So you're you're already thinking about what of these options that I have now, what's the next layer on the game tree, what is going to be my opponent's reaction when I show this hand, what action do I want to take that sets them up for what I want to do later, if you find your opponent has weakness, say they play a particular particular type of hand really poorly, you want to make that situation happen as much as often so you can take maximum advantage of them. That type of thing. There's, there's all these really interesting layers. Just to close out this thought on Live Poker, which has resurrected everyone's playing in person. Again, there's been this really big boom of stream games. So kind of a hybrid of online and live where you play poker in person in a studio setting. And people tune in and watch on YouTube, as some people watching might be familiar with this, that, you know, gaming on stream has become really big. And we have this resurgence of poker celebrities, people who have a character, they play someone on the stream, and people tune in to see what this person is going to do next while they play poker. So Live Poker is much, much more about social dynamics, being someone who understands the room, who understands what people are doing energetically, knows how to pick up when someone's mood has shifted, or knows, hey, this person just got in an argument with their significant other or they look under-slept. Or maybe they're not quite as focused today. There's because of, for example, one of the stream games, you're playing five hours. So you have 100 hands and very, very small sample size to make most of it. So you have to be much, much more tuned to each individual hand and try to extract maximum value. The main difference between live and online is online, I can just play my strategy. I'm seeing 2 million hands in my lifetime, I'm playing for the very long term. And Live Poker like every hand really matters because you don't get many more of them. So there's a lot more signal to drag to draw from. Nice. So I go so many layers deep, as many as we want.
Ali Abdaal (19:00): We are interrupting this episode to bring you the good news from our sponsor, which is short form short form is the world's best service that summarizes books, but it's way more than just book summaries. They have book summaries, yes. And they are by far the best service I've ever used for book summaries. And I've used all of them. Basically, they've got book summaries, but they also have these interactive exercises in between chapter summaries, which are really helpful for engaging more with the ideas in the book. And they also have these little short form note segments, where if the author, for example, Vicki Robbins of your money or your life, if she says something that's particularly controversial, or that another author or source disagrees with short form, we'll usually find that out. And we'll say, Hey, by the way, this thing that she says about the idea of money has been disagreed with by Morgan Housel, about the psychology of money, and they'll link to the book and they'll say here is here are the three reasons why Morgan Housel disagrees with Vicki Robbins. And it's just interesting. It's great because it gives you a level of critical insight into books that mean for me personally, I don't really get otherwise. To me, the two main ways I use short form is firstly, if I'm thinking about reading a book if someone has recommended a book to me, and it happens to be on short form, which it usually is, and I'll often read the summary first and if I like Next, the summary and I think, oh, this would be an interesting book to read, then I'll actually read the book. Or alternatively, if I've read the book sometime in the past, and I want to revisit the lessons from it, then I'll often look at the summary in short form. I am going through my Kindle highlights if it's a thing I highlighted on Kindle, and it's just a great way for me to revisit the ideas in the book, if any of that sounds up your street, then head over to shortform.com forward slash Deep Dive. And that link also in the video description, and the shownotes is going to give you 20% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you so much for sponsoring this episode. One of the things that I like to think about when someone has an interesting career or a side hustle or something is to ask for a complete beginner, how hard would it be to make a couple $100 a month, versus a couple $1,000 a month, versus a couple of 10s of 1000s or 10s of 1000s of dollars a month? And I can kind of think of what that looks like from a YouTube channel perspective. Okay, cool. Let's take average, CPMs and RPM. So let's reverse engineer this. Actually, as a YouTuber, if you're consistent and posting two videos a week for two years, chances are you will find the right niche, probably make at least a few $100 a month, maybe even a few 1000. And then if you really make a lot, then you're getting in the 10s and hundreds of 1000s, which is fairly small numbers, but a lot of people might be like, hey, if I could do two videos a week and make an extra few $100 a month, that would be great. Like that's an extra five shift shift is working as a doctor, for example, in return for making videos. And so the equation that that equation, in terms of monetization on YouTube, means that there are a lot of people going into it thinking, Oh, it's a thing I could do as a side hustle, I could be a part time YouTuber, I might as well do this. What does that look like in the world of online poker life, but like, if I wanted to make pocket money versus real money versus life changing money.
Chris Sparks (21:35): I talked about this in a post I did called play to win, I think the niche argument or the niche framing is really apt here. If you find a good game, you can make unlimited money, right? It's not a fact, skill is not the predominating factor, it's choosing the right place to compete, right. So for example, if you're making videos on this is just like a play off top of my head, like polar bears in Alaska, this is like that, let's pray. That's a pretty small niche. And if you can find, hey, this is really valuable to a small but reliable set of people, you can make a really good living there, the same sort of thing, if you are in Alaska, and you stumble upon, you know, a small town, but it happens to be a few people who've done very well in the polar bear trade and like to play poker, you don't have to be very good, if you're better than these players, right. And so that's the real difference about poker is that it's a relativistic skill. And I think a lot of success in life comes down to playing the right game, playing in the place where you have some sort of advantage. And even if that advantage is you just enjoy doing this more, you have more fun at it. Thus, you'll have an easier time dedicating yourself to it, putting yourself into it. And that's the thing about poker is that the earnings are pretty Unlimited, if you can find a good game. So that's really the critical skill is finding this product market fit. So if you want to earn a little bit, you're probably playing lower stakes. If you want to, if you want to earn a lot, you're playing high stakes. And obviously, the higher that you go, generally the player gets better, right? The larger incentive you have to get good, the more competitive it is. It tends to look like a pyramid because there's very, very few people at the top. But poker is weird, because you also have people who love to play poker, who are extremely successful in other areas of their lives, right? Maybe they sold their company, maybe they have, you know, millions of followers on YouTube, maybe they have, maybe they're a big hedge fund guy. And they love competing against the best. They really love that sense of like I'm learning the most and I'm having the most fun. And so these guys love to play for big stakes, sometimes uncomfortably big stakes, but they're not very good. Yeah. So there's this conception that the higher you go, the harder that it is to play. And that's not always true. Some of the other players might be exceptionally good. There's gonna be other players who are not as good. But the higher up that you get. The key thing is like, can you get into the game? It's like, what do you bring to the table? Like lower stakes, you can always find a game, but beyond a certain point, it's very difficult to get in because it's like musical chairs, right? There's just not enough chairs for everyone.
Ali Abdaal (24:32): Yeah. So okay, so it sounds like if for example, I am, let's say a consultant surgeon at my local hospital, and I know that there is a group of surgeons who like to get together and play poker and they will have private practices and they will make several several 100,000 pounds a year. And I know that they just throw a few 1000 pounds into this sort of poker game, which is pretty high stakes as far as things are concerned for me. I might be thinking Hang on, if I can get into those games, if I can be likable enough. And oh, talk to this person in the break room in the operating theater and be like, Oh, you play poker, I play poker too, I just have to be a little bit better than them. And if they're, you know, consultant surgeons with private practices and full time jobs and families, and I'm not, I can put in just way more time and effort to get better than them. But because I have access to that game, I can now potentially even make a decent chunk of money. Whereas if someone with the same skill is trying to play online, we'll just get completely demolished? Is that fair to say?
Chris Sparks (25:28): That's exactly right. People have gone into med school for less.
Ali Abdaal (25:32): What does it take to get invited to these big, big games.
Chris Sparks (25:35): I think it's just like getting invited to any party or having a good friend circle is being someone who's likable and adds value. So all I can control is, you know, the presence that I bring. So trying to be someone who's positive energy, who, you know, tells good stories, laughs at the right jokes, you know, shows up on time pays out when I lose, it's just someone who likes adding to the atmosphere, right? The same thing is like, Oh, how do I get invited to more parties? Well be someone that people want at your parties? How do I find the love of my life, be the type of person that the love of your life is attracted to? The same sort of thing? So rather than thinking like, oh, how can I find my way in? Again, this is personal. It's like, oh, how do I befriend these people? It's more like, oh, just just be someone who's cool. And you'll find a way?
Ali Abdaal (26:25): Yeah, I guess it's like that thing of, it's a lot easier to just when you have a hand to act as if you have the right hand, rather than to try and finesse your way using specific strategies to act as if you have that right hand. It just becomes the sort of person that gets invited to these sorts of things. And if you have a bit of an alpha in terms of being better at poker than the average person there, chances are you'll make some money.
Chris Sparks (26:46): Yeah, it seems to be this unfortunate fact of life and that the people with the most opportunities are the people who get the most opportunities. That a sense of just not needing it means that people throw it at you. So I'm always trying to operate from this place of abundance, and that I don't need anyone, anything from anyone. And that certainly seems to be a way to attract more abundance into my life.
Ali Abdaal (27:10): Nice. Okay, so it sounds like poker is a lot harder than initially then like, these online course videos that you'll get on YouTube videos be like, Hey, make $1,000 An hour or pay playing poker online. Probably a lot harder than those make it seem.
Chris Sparks (27:25): Yeah, not not to get too meta, but if anyone out there is for it and this goes for anything is trying to make it sound like it's easy. Think about it like, Well, why is this person making this course anyways? Like if it were that easy, why wouldn't they be doing it themselves instead of making a course fail?
Ali Abdaal (27:40): Yeah, that's it. What was your poker career? Like? You said, you kind of got serious about it at the age of 21. What did that look like when were you and your heyday? And then what did you ultimately, I guess, retire from from the online stuff?
Chris Sparks (27:52): Yeah, I'll give the super abbreviated version. I was always a gamer growing up, I was the best in the world. The game called Microsoft answered at a very young age, I started playing this game called gin. So a two player form at rummy achieved a perfectly low rating, or least equivalent Ehlo for gin. So my gin friends online said, Hey, you can play this other card game for money and called poker. So I was sitting in my, you know, my parents living room on our dial up internet, and entering into what are called free roll tournaments. This is when I was 16. Hey, if you finish the top 10 in this tournament of 10,000 players, you went 1000 bucks, which seemed like an infinite amount of money, so many shoes that I could buy. With that $1,000 I entered into college, this guy named Chris moneymaker had won the World Series of Poker. So all of a sudden poker is on TV everywhere. And if you're a collegiate male, like this is what you did for fun on Friday night on third Saturday night and many other nights. So I started playing some of these dorm games with friends. And they said, Oh, you can actually play for real money online and realize, hey, these guys that I'm playing with aren't very good. And they're making money, I could probably do that, too. So I started playing tournaments and then leading cash games during my time in university at Ohio State and got to the point that I was doing very well. I was, you know, kind of at the middling level making a nice living and paid off all my loans, that sort of thing. I mentioned I graduated this, you know, coming up from, you know, middle class household first kid in college, like, oh, okay, obviously, I got a job and I progressed through this average corporate ladder. Luckily, the economy had other plans. And I was forced to like, hey, why don't I do an experiment and treat poker as a full time thing and see what happens. A couple of months later, I was making what my annual salary would have been every month and said, Hey, maybe I should do a little bit more of this poker thing moved out to Los Angeles with some of my closest friends who I only knew online at this point after my 21st birthday, and really dedicated myself to it started teaching a lot of other poker players create a consulting practice later at an investment firm around it. And you know, fast forward 18 months of going full time, I was ranked top 20 in the world. I like to say it was like Deion Sanders at the top of my career when we had an American football reference for all you guys across the pond. We had it called Black Friday where online poker was shut down in the US. So this is my first sort of forced retirement at 23. I decided I wanted to take a break from poker and started traveling backpacking. I actually didn't play a single hand of poker for five years. And there was another poker boom that lured me out, I heard about things that were happening in China. So these are games that were taking place over apps, sort of the equivalent of like a Zynga, you're playing with gold coins, those gold coins are representative of real dollars via an intermediary, kind of like, essentially, no grey area type stuff. But you know, really good games, brands started learning Mandarin so they can get into these games like people will go through all levels, this got me back into poker. And luckily, I stumbled back into a new renaissance within us online poker because I had been shut down. A lot of other the best players had left the US to keep playing, and new sites popped up. And thus I was able to immediately hop back in after five years of not playing essentially being at the top of my game, did really, really well through the pandemic, and then, you know, the last year, so I've been really focusing on playing in person, particularly in the stream games. So I've had multiple retirements. You know, usually I call it more like sabbaticals or take, you know, three to six months off, at one point, you know, to call five years off, but pokers always been there as a background, I think of it as my sandbox for performance to make sure that I'm walking the walk.
Ali Abdaal (31:33): Hope you're enjoying this episode. I'm just giving you a little message from our sponsor, Shopify, which is incredibly exciting, because we've been using Shopify the platform for over a year now to host our online store. And Shopify is just an incredible, super easy to use, fantastic platform for building any kind of online business, you can sell stuff online, you can sell stuff in person, you can sell stuff with almost any payment method in almost any country, it's absolutely sick. And you can get started with Shopify without needing anything like knowing how to code or knowing how to design because their pre-existing designs are absolutely sick. And we are now using Shopify for basically hosting all of our Ecommerce stuff, including our physical products, the essentially stationery line, which I've designed recently, we're using Shopify to host our digital downloads like notion templates, and website themes. And we're also using Shopify as the payment provider for our courses, which then hooks up into our courses platform. So it's just incredible. It's got 1000s and 1000s of integrations. So you can integrate with almost anything imaginable, I genuinely highly recommend signing up to Shopify and at least checking it out, you can head over to shopify.com forward slash Ali Abdaal and get a totally free trial of Shopify. And so you can see whether you like it, and you can kind of build your own store. And you can see what the vibe is. It's just great. And thank you so much Shopify, for sponsoring this episode. Why do you care about poker? Like, it sounds like your view, it sounds like, part of it is you have fun doing it. And another other part of it is you make money doing it. So you're like, might as well? Is there? Is this something beyond that? Is there a wider mission purpose behind this thing? Or is it kind of those two? Those two factors?
Chris Sparks (32:55): Yeah, I can only guess at my motivations, right. I think we all just like to tell stories about ourselves. I think that there's so much to be learned from poker and games in general. So I've tried to transmute poker into my mission of understanding the games that were naturally participating in. And I think that game theory and the system's thinking that's so necessary to success has so many wider applications, think about decision making you think about human performance, being the person who can show up and perform every day, thinking about understanding yourself understanding your own psychology, I realized through working with other high performers in business and investing that so many of the things that I had to develop in myself instrumental music to become one of the best poker players translated to a number of fields as well. So I think of poker as almost my sandbox or my lens for understanding how can we achieve the ambitious things we set out to achieve. How can we, you know, find a life of freedom and purpose? It's always been my avenue of understanding?
Ali Abdaal (34:05): What are some of those skills that you think are sort of cross applicable from poker to other areas of life? I guess I'm kind of thinking that someone watching this or listening to this would be able to kind of Yeah, it would be applicable to them, because I imagine knowing how to count cards is not one of them, but I'm sure there's a whole world of others.
Chris Sparks (34:22): Sure, I'll share one that's probably my favorite lesson from poker. So we have this concept called expected value. And you know, as any gamer knows, you start to abbreviate things in a lot of terms so we're just always Evie to like plus Evie minus eta. So like something has expected value, something doesn't have expected value. So small bit about math, right? You don't need to get advantage from the math, but you have to know it. Expected Value is on average, what is the expected outcome from doing this? So the way to calculate it is for each instance. It's how good it is. multiplied by what percentage that is happening. So you say like flipping a coin, right? 50% chance of heads or just that chance tails evens out? Yeah, but if you say something more like, Alright, I'm going to pay you $2. If it's heads, and you're gonna pay me one dollar if it tails, okay? Two times 50 cent, two times 50% is one, plus one times 50% is 50. So every time we do this, I bet $1 spent to make $1.50. So I'm making 50 cents every time we do it, right. So expand this out, every action that we take has an expected value, you have some form of risk and some form of reward. And so the way that my brain works through just getting punched in the face, so many times in poker, is just like, is the root is the risk worth the reward? Or like all the options available to me? What has the highest expected value? And so that's anything like, okay, what restaurant? Am I going to go? What am I gonna order at that restaurant? Who should I go over and talk to? Should I reach out to this person that I want to talk to and think about? Okay, well, what's the upside of this? What am I putting at risk? What are the other things that I could be doing? Instead, the opportunity cost? And once you start to just wear this idea of expected value, like clothes, you realize that everything is a bet. You talk to people about poker and be like, Oh, well, I don't gamble. It's okay, well, everything you do is to bet your every action that you take, you're saying like this step forward, gets me somewhere. And so you're decomposing all your actions into like, is this a good bet. And that's the way I've sort of seen my life is just, I'm taking all of these tiny, calculated risks that I expect will get me one step closer to where I want to be.
Ali Abdaal (36:42): That's great. This idea of Plessy v. I guess, another thing from this concept is that you're not wedded to the outcome of an individual decision, as long as it was plus Evie, because like, over time, like I'm, I'm just kind of thinking yesterday, we had a call with this marketing agency that's like, wants to do some Tik Tok stuff for us. And I feel like, you know, they're charging quite a lot of money. But in my mind, I feel like it's plus Evie. I feel like a decision like that is a decision, we were just a decision, we should just say yes to because fine, it costs a certain amount of money, but like will probably pay off. And even if it doesn't, like if we had 10 of those other circumstances, it would like, you know, on average, the decision would be a good one to take. And when you said Plessy v, I was like, Oh, yes, that's what I was trying to get to what I was trying to explain to the team as to why I think this is a good idea. Because I think it's very easy for individual decisions to over index on. Oh, but what if this doesn't work? And then that makes you quite risk averse, because the whole bias towards avoiding a loss versus releasing again.
Chris Sparks (37:38): I think it's one step beyond that, of course, risk aversion is true and that we tend to overvalue risk and undervalue gains. And I think generally, in life, the biggest, biggest risks are the risks not taken, because you forego all learning. That goes one step beyond that. I think it's moving beyond thinking and results terms and more thinking and process orientation terms. So let's say that you had this call with a marketing agency, and it was a complete waste of time, it'd be easy to walk away from that and be like, okay, never talking to any more marketing agencies. Again, that was a complete waste, like, Well, did you know that it was going to be a waste of time before you got on that call? Maybe you had, there was no sign and it was still a Plessy v thing to do if it didn't work out, because now you'll learn? Okay, these are all the things we definitely don't want an agency or hear all the reasons why we definitely want to keep this in house, that sort of thing. Or you could take a step back and say, Alright, what were those signs that we could have saw before the call? This could have been a waste of time? Are there any things that we missed or overlooked or overweighted? You realize that in this equation, all of these variables are unknown, right? Life is not flipping a coin, we have to just make guesses and estimates, right, like I'm playing poker, I don't know the exact percentages of everything. But I'm very, very good at making estimates and continually calibrating those estimates over time. So to think about, okay, like, how risky is this, really, everything that we do every encounter, every time we bump up against reality, we learn a little bit more about what those actual probabilities where risk rewards are. And so we get a better sense of like, what risks are worth it and what rewards are worth it over time through this feedback that we're getting? So it's not just oh, this worked out? This didn't work out? What happened? How does that tell me about the assumptions that I came into during this decision? Right, that I was a little let's say, there's going back to this marketing agency call. Was I a little bit too excited about this whole idea of a marketing agency taking over everything? Or it was I like a little bit to underestimate the cost, what up I would have to do involve you taking a step back and say, okay, presuming that this type of situation is going to be recurring. How do we change our approach slightly, so that we make it something that's a little bit more use of our time? I think this is the critical variable to solve for in all of our lives. What do we call self organization that processes automatically improve over time, that every time we do something, it creates a jumping off point, iterating and improving that process every time we do it? So I think that's that's the real that's the real Earning is that the expected value? It's not just floating out there in the world, and we have real control over these variables.
Ali Abdaal (40:06): Yeah, it's like a thing that I've heard Tim Ferriss say a few times, which is that like, when when he was starting his podcast as an experiment, it was like, How do I skew the circumstances in my favor such that even if this thing fails, I will still have learnt a lot from it. And it would be a worthwhile thing to do. Whereas I think, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think I haven't used this concept in my youtuber Academy. But we're in week four of our five week course now, and I'm just thinking, actually, a lot of this applies to the whole starting YouTube channel or not, and going down this niche versus versus that niche, where we're operating with imperfect information. And a lot of the time, a student will ask us, hey, what do you think about this nation? It's like, honestly, I couldn't tell you, I would have to sit down and do a tonne of a tonne of research. And even then I would have very imperfect information. And so we just have to try it and see what happens. But I think about it, and that's like, you know what it is for example, B plus EV to at least try and experiment in that and learn from it and then come back and regroup. might be an interesting way of planning it.
Chris Sparks (41:03): I think you're already doing it. My understanding of what you talked about with YouTube is that you just need to make videos, that reps are their own reward that you learned so much about the experience of like, hey, people responded to this. If it doesn't respond to this automatically by making videos, those videos improve over time, you can't optimize upfront you need to close that loop of feedback. What do you like talking about? What is your audience already? What are they interested in? What do they respond to and what types of videos seem to get the right response? There's no substitute for putting things out there. So I think it's like a race for feedback. And that's why I say this, this, Evie, you have control over it. Because everything that you do you get a little bit more attune to what the odds are, and you can make those decisions a little bit more systematically. Right. And that's why it's like it's more when I'm when I'm when I'm talking about like, Okay, this is a person I want to build a relationship with. I think this comes down to mentors, business partners hiring, the thing I'd like to say is you want to look at the x not the Y is we're not where is this person currently? How successful are they? What have they done, but what is their trajectory? So like, the person who's gonna go on to do amazing things has a high trajectory. And that looks like they have a fast iteration speed, they're learning. And even if they're making mistakes, they learn from those mistakes and keep improving, right, every video they put out as another small tweak, that's, that's better. That's something that I'm always looking for is like not where this person is where they projected them to be a few years down the line, if they keep improving, because that's the thing. It's a hockey stick. The improvement speed goes exponential.
Ali Abdaal (42:42): Hmm, that was one of the biggest factors, we used to hire one of our interns, Sam, who has a YouTube channel, it's not huge. I mean, it's a few 1000 subscribers. So it's like, it's not like, incredibly huge, but it's pretty reasonable. But I think the thing that was most impressive was the fact he's got about 60 or 70 videos in the last year, which means he just making a video to every week that's like popped up, we want the sort of person on our team, who is the sort of person that makes a video every week or two while they're doing that degree. And that is just like a thing that is actually, you know, it's it sounds like somewhat trite on the surface, but is indicative of a deeper sort of the sort of person that this person is is the sort of person that moves fast on things and iterate and put stuff out there without being without being 100 100% Sure What's perfect, which is the sort of person we want on our team.
Chris Sparks (43:23): Yeah, if you want to extend this to productivity, it's like 90% of success is showing up. Like almost everything, annoyingly, it comes down to consistent consistency, showing up putting in the work over and over and the systematic is like every time you do something, okay, what went? Well, let's do a little more of that. But it didn't go so well. Okay, what are we going to try differently next time? What are we learning from that? And you can see the people who are consistent day in and day out start to distance themselves. We always want to approach it as like, Alright, how do I find this like, perfect process, this perfect system? And then like everything is going to be solved? Because like, No, you still got to show up and be consistent. And that's the thing that you know, doesn't sell books of courses is like how do you become the type of person who's showing up? And I think this really comes back to one just like living life with a sense of curiosity. Like, hey, I want to know what happens here. Let's see, let's find out. Let's try it. But also like what is your why what is your mission? What is that thing that's going to cause you to stay consistent to stick it out to pull through when you put something out there and not a single person views it or he puts a post out there and no response? It's all crickets like what's going to allow you to push through to get to that point of breaking through is the sense of mission, a sense of curiosity of like, okay, I didn't experiment, didn't work out. Well. What did I learn from that? What am I gonna try differently next time and just keep putting things out there?
Ali Abdaal (44:51): Yeah, there's a lot of things that's like connecting in my head as you say that one thing that I remember a piece of advice I remember getting when I was in medical school, every One who's trying to go for these jobs and stuff is trying to go off to publications. Because if you get two publications, you get two extra points on your thing, which increases your chances of being in London, because those two points or two points of alpha that no one else has, because it's quite hard to get publications. And so the next question is like, Okay, how do I get these publications, and a couple of senior students said to me, Look, just make friends with all of the doctors you ever meet in the hospital, it would be nice to them, and then ask them, at some point, once you made friends with them, Hey, do you have any projects that I can help you with? And through that, I got my two publication points, it was great. Then younger students would ask me, How do I get these publication points? I'd be like, honestly, just make friends with the doctors and just ask them, Do you have any projects, or any projects I can help with? And this connects to something that happened yesterday. So one of our team members was in the office and said, hey, you know, I want to I'm involved in this aspect of the business. I want to get involved in more aspects of the business. So, how should I do that? And this, I had, like, 10 seconds before I had to go to something else I was like, honestly, just like, be in the office a bit more. And just by virtue of doing that, by virtue of showing up in the room where conversations are happening, where those conversations are not being barred from anyone. But it just so happens that the people that show up here in person, more often will automatically be plugged into more conversations that are happening other than the people that don't. And of course, in an ideal world hybrid team, we'd find a way to make it accessible for everyone who's not even here. But like in the real world. If a conversation is happening, serendipitously, no one's gonna hop on Zoom to update that for eight people who weren't here. But the five people who were here now feel as if they're part of something.
Chris Sparks (46:28): This makes me think of my concept of the most direct path, is when you understand what you're going to accomplish, and what's necessary to get there, you can identify the most direct path to get there. So in your case, recognizing Okay, I want to get this residency. And this requires these two recommendations. I'm getting the terminology wrong, but just to generalize it. All right. So all the other things I can be doing matters so much more, so much less than getting the two recommendations. So what is the most direct path to getting those two recommendations? Okay, who has the power to write those? Why don't I go and talk to them? And there's so many aspects of this. I was talking to a client the other day, he was like, Okay, I have a really big product launch coming up. And I'm coordinating across all these channels, and I'm putting out a bunch of posts and Okay, let's take a step back. Let's say the launch was successful. What happened? Well, it's like these five influencers probably talked about it. Okay, well, have you reached out to those influencers, like, all this other stuff you're doing is great. But if this is the criteria for success, like go directly at it makes if these five influencers are that influential, talk to them directly, that gives them something of value, so that you make sure that you saw for this part of the puzzle. And I think this is really that difference between productivity and performance that we love talking about is productivity. There's a lot of things you can do that will make you feel good at the end of the day. It's like I tried, I did all these things, I did my best sort of thing. But when you take a step back and say, All right, what does success look like? Now doing those things, which are likely to be more ambiguous, maybe harder, a little bit more risky, but most on that direct path? That's how you start to maximize your time and your EV.
Ali Abdaal (48:10): Hmm. Yeah, that's great. I'm just thinking about that in terms of, yeah, just thinking about my team as well, where if someone's like, I want to get more involved with a business where it's like, okay, cool. Like, I mean, just like, make something happen. The most direct path to getting more and more involved with the business is to do a thing that the business needs outside of your current role, and being like, Hey, I've done this thing. And they'll be like, Oh, sick, thank you. Here are some other things that we can do. And suddenly, that person becomes a lot more valuable. And I guess this applies to any job as well. Where Yeah—
Chris Sparks (48:41): Yeah, I think this is a good extension of this whole understanding of the game that you're playing and knowing where the rules can be subverted. So imagine that you're applying for the job. And everyone loves to just go in through the front door and throw the resume on the pile and sit on the interview. But like, take a step back and say, Okay, who is this person hiring? What are they looking for? How can I make myself stand out and make myself the obvious candidate for the role? So instead of answering a bunch of questions, I say, okay, understand, so you understand their business, or you understand their problem really intimately, and make some sort of proposal that, hey, this is how I would solve it and make sure that those are things that you can do to say, hey, like, if you pick me, I will solve this problem for you. That's a lot different than, Oh, I'm going to hire this person to do these things. I'm going to have this person solve this problem for me. But that really, that comes back to again, is empathy and thinking about Alright, here's the way that all the other people are playing the game, and that's great, but it feels really competitive over here. What's the back door that I can get in that no one's thinking about? Because the rules are made up. You don't need to necessarily follow Okay, you go to an interview, like most jobs are filled off offline. So it's like, Alright, how can I go to that person directly and make myself indispensable? And you realized that life is just full of these false velvet ropes that are really just there to keep out the people who want to stay within the rules. Now, I'm not saying just like color all over and make it all up. But like, there's a lot of room to take a step back and be creative and think about what do I bring to it? Yeah.
Ali Abdaal (50:19): I think I think on just this job application topic, there seems to be a lot of, from what I've heard almost a combination of moralizing and expectancy or like, I applied for this job properly. That was therefore the right thing to do. And oh, my God, this company didn't get back to me. Wow, what a bean company, I would not want to work for them anyway, because they clearly don't value their candidates because they didn't reply to them. My thing is, and it's like now having been on the other side of it and being like, we've got like frickin 5000 applicants, and the guy who got hired was the only guy who made a video knowing that we are a frickin video making business. Like, I'm not even going to read the other 1000 Because like, I haven't got time for that. And I know being an employee, I'm like, bloody hell, like, I wish I could, every single person I know he's applying for jobs, I could just be like, hey, just act genuinely try and have empathy for the employer, like get into their heads. Don't think of employer as a dirty capitalist who's just like profiting off the sweat off your back and like exploiting you, etcetera, etcetera, just like genuinely think, if I were running a business, and I had a zillion things to do, how would I make it easy for myself to get hired in this situation?
Chris Sparks (51:24): I mean, you're asking about poker lessons, it's understanding other people better than they understand themselves. But are they understanding their problem better than they can define it? Finding this backdoor. This? This reminds me of like, if we could just play armchair psychologists a bit. I think the challenge that we have in productivity in finding happiness and fulfillment is that so much of our cognitive infrastructure is there to just be able to pat ourselves on the back, like, good job you tried, you know, you applied to 10 jobs. Hey, you didn't hear back, but like they're lost. They don't see you. And thinking about well, all right, perhaps the way that I'm doing things isn't working, doesn't mean that I'm bad. It means that I'm not playing the game. Well, so how can I play this game? Better? Think about playing one of these like, like a Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat back in the day, right. And so they're always like projectiles. And so you'd have to be like this annoying kid. You're playing? It's just like projectile projectile projectile projectile. And the response is always like, oh, that's cheap. You got a punch and kick. That's not the right way to win. Well, is it within the rules of the game? Yes. Okay, then it's not cheap. But we go through life like this, like, oh, there's a right way to play. And it's like, I have to do it this way. It's like, No, you don't like the conventions or just conventions. It's just things that people agree to, but they're not set in stone. Right. There's a lot of room for making the video. Yeah.
Ali Abdaal (52:53): Yeah, I was interviewing a chap called Matthew Dix yesterday. And he was talking about, you know, the idea that, you know, in the world, there are some people who are Rule Breakers and some people who are rule followers. Now, the rule followers feel the sense of like, I must follow the rules. And generally a rule breaker, someone who was once a rule follower, who then broke rule accidentally or on purpose and realized nothing bad happened. And then you get you then you see the matrix, you're like, wait a minute, all rules are basically made up. And unless the state or violence or the police are enforcing them, basically, everything is made up. And therefore you can like, find the most direct path, find the path of least resistance, do the thing. And the benefit of that is that no one else is also then doing the thing, because everyone else is a rule follower.
Chris Sparks (53:33): Yeah, I think this comes up for me a lot when with boundaries. So when we talk about distractions, interruptions, a lot of it is like, Well, I would get so much done, if I didn't have to be in all these meetings, or my boss wouldn't hit me up on Slack or text me all the time. It's like, well, have you talked to them? You know, do they know what's happening, that you would be able to do more deep work and get more things done? If you weren't switching priorities all the time as well? No, like, you know, they were my boss was like, Well, why don't you tell them to have a conversation? And finding Oh, not only were they really supportive of that, that problem no longer because it's only because I had the courage to speak up that a lot of these self perceived, well, I can't do that. It's like, well, what if you did that? What's the worst that could happen? What's the best thing that could happen? And it comes back to right there's, there's an experiment that can be done here to disprove these assumptions that we have about the world that really aren't all that well founded.
Ali Abdaal (54:29): Nice experiments. You're big on the whole thinking and experiments thing, your PDF ebook book experiment without limits. It's great. I've actually referenced it on my other podcast with my brother a couple of times. Yeah, every time we need something to talk about I'm like, You know what, let's just look up Chris's PDF and just go through some how to figure out what to do with your life questions.
Chris Sparks (54:47): I'm the same way
Ali Abdaal (54:50): So what do you think about experiments?
Chris Sparks (54:54): Great so yeah, first the workbook that Ali is referencing experiment without limits with a available for completely free online, you find that forcing function.com/workbook If you prefer the, to write things down, I'm an analogue guy. So I like to have it out on my desk and write things in the book, we put it for at cost on Amazon, you can order it there at any country, the way that I thought about it was, I work with all these just really smart, talented, ambitious people, I want to deconstruct what seems to work for all these peak performers into a step by step guide that people can follow. Because a really big value for me is open sourcing my knowledge. So this is my way of giving back is to put this out there for free, so everyone can benefit. I spent almost a year putting it together. And so I put a lot of effort in my mind, we tried to create the best free productivity resource on the internet. And I, I think we did pretty well with the concept of experiments, why we had it in the title, why it's so near and dear to me, because I think it's getting around this lack of action. I think that so many things in life are solved by taking action. And it's usually deconstructing to like the smallest possible action to get some sort of feedback about what's working, and what's not working. And as you might be able to tell by listening to me, I have had a tendency to over intellectualize things or try to over systematize over plan over design. And my idea of framing as an experiment is, well, what's an hypothesis I have? What's it, guess that, hey, if I do X, Y will happen. If I start putting out YouTube videos, I will start to find my tribe, I will start to have opportunities fall in my lap, whatever it may be. And it's to find a way to test that well, what's the fastest possible path to test this? Alright, creating an experiment around it, and then seeing what happens. So this way, I am able to commit to something, right, I give the experiment full opportunity to work I say like, Alright, I'm going to do this for 30 days, if we're trying to be our 21 year old poker player, I would say six months minimum, because it's gonna take you a while to get good. I commit to this six months, then I say, All right, what are the signs that I'm going to see along the way, this experiment is going on? Well, if I see these signs are going well, that I'm making progress and that my inputs are leading to good outputs, how am I going to double down? How am I going to accelerate on this? And that's what really all of life is, is just pulling all these levers, okay, a little bit, a little bit more of this a little bit less of this? I want to add something I've put in now that's alright. Working out. It's helping me have more energy. Okay, well, what if I worked out a little bit harder? What if I worked out a little bit more often, that sort of thing? Okay, I'm gonna pull this lever a little bit. And the way that I film it as an experiment is I'm constantly collecting data, everything that I'm doing, I'm getting feedback on what's working, and what's not working. And the things that are working, I do more of that. The things that aren't working, I do less of that. Hey, I noticed when I do this, the day's feel fulfilling and happy. All right. Why don't I try doing that a little bit more? Hey, I noticed those days that I didn't go outside, I didn't feel as good. All right, I'm going to try going outside. And, and that's the thing is it takes the pressure off of everything. It's all like, okay, great. I'm gonna do this and see what happens. And how much fun life becomes, when you just have a total sense of curiosity about everything, hey, I push this button. Let's see what does, oh, I'm gonna keep pushing that button. I'm gonna keep pulling this lever. So that's if I could kind of train one mindset into people is to approach things experimentally. To try it. See what happens. If you like the results. Keep doing it.
Ali Abdaal (58:32): So I just had an idea for a video called How to Stop overthinking. And I think thinking and thinking is the best thinking and experiments. Like, I find myself almost doing this by default, but just not intentionally enough. I think, like when we moved into the studio, it was like, You know what, this move to London, this move to build a team in person is a one year long experiment. We're going to try it, we're gonna see what happens. We're kind of going to go all in, I'm gonna go all in on it while we're trying it out. Which is why we're in this expensive fancy studio. It was like, hey, it's a one year experiment, I'm sure we'll learn things along the way. And we've learned so much along the way. And it's been fun. And now it's time for the next experiment, which is probably Alright, cool. Given that I'm gonna stay in London, what does it look like to be in a studio where it's in my house? And like, what if I were to live with my brother and his wife? And that could be fun. Let's try that as an experiment and see what happens. And I was thinking the other day, like, was it I was listening to, like, a random Noah Kagan episode. No, I was really listening to the deep dive interview I did with Noah Kagan, like two years ago. And he said something in that about, hey, you know, I've always liked the idea of living in a van. So I'm just gonna, you know, I've rented a van for three weeks, I'm just going to try it out. And I was like, fuck, I've always liked the idea of living in a van. But I have, I have not taken that next leap to be like, You know what, let me just actually rent a van for a week and see what it's like. I always thought one day when I was five years from now, when I'm in the US, when I've got my visa, I'd like to do a van road trip across the US. But actually, I could just literally rent a van in London and live in it for a week just to see what it's like as an experiment. And then I added that to my list of experiments that I want to run. And I find that for me whenever I feel well, yeah, whenever I'm overthinking about something, just actually telling myself Hey, it's an experiment. Let's preach it, treat it as such, even just that word just immediately takes all the pressure off. It's great.
Chris Sparks (1:00:06): Yeah, the challenge that I used to have was just facing existential angst all the time. It's like, Hey, this is the thing that I'm doing with my life, the thing that I actually want to do, and I found this, alright, okay, I'm going to commit to this for this amount of time. And for that amount of time, I'm just going to give it my best shot, I'm gonna try my best that way, I have no regrets. And at the end of the month, the three months, the six months, I'll say, All right, I can stop doing that and do something completely else if I want. Alright, so how did that go? What aspects did I love about what aspects did I not like so much? What went well? what didn't go well. And from that, I take off all of these days in the middle of like, Hey, is the thing that I'm doing the thing I actually want to do with my life, like, what? Not time for that I'm still running the experiment. So running the experiment. And that's the thing is I've set aside the time to take a step back and say, I can do literally whatever I want with my life, what do I want to do? But I want to be asking that question every single day, I want it to be at its designated time, before and after the experiment. So there's a real power in this commitment, because a challenge or opportunity that we have is that life has unlimited optionality. But if we're just bouncing all these options all the time, we're totally like that, like we sort of look in front of the person right in front of us. We're like turning around, or like, oh, well, I could be talking to that person, I could be talking to that person. So by committing Alright, for the next year, I'm going to prioritize having the studio and see what that's like. And after the year, I can decide whether I want to study or not, that has a lot of power, because that full year you're giving the experiment the full time to run.
Ali Abdaal (1:01:35): Yeah. And you're also freeing up your own mental bandwidth to be constantly revisiting that decision. Like, I'm just thinking, yeah, again, again, to use a YouTuber example, one of our friends when she started her YouTube channel about 18 months ago, her name's Elizabeth, he was like, You know what, I'm gonna commit to this thing. I've watched all these videos, where he says two videos a week, oh, he says one video a week for two years. She was like, I don't think I'm very good. So I was like, Alright, cool. Let's make it two videos a week for four years. And that's gonna be the period of my experiment. And then I'll and then I'm not gonna, I'm like, once I've committed to it, I'm not going to think about it anymore. And just sort of committing to that decision, almost like, you know, I'd venture to say, committing to the decision to marry someone. It's like, cool. I have tied myself up from I've tied myself off, as it were from the optionality that's out there in the market. Great, like now I can fully focus on this person. One thing you mentioned was this bias, this propensity that we have to pat ourselves on the back, I wonder if we can zoom in on that, like, what do you what do you mean by that?
Chris Sparks (1:02:29): It seems to me that it's very tempting to justify our own behavior. And investing, they have this, this saying, eat well, or sleep well, that any improvement that you make to your investing returns, that you make more money generally comes with more stress, or you're making more decisions, you're watching the markets more closely. So there's a real luxury to being hands off to sleeping well. But that luxury comes at the cost as you're you're probably not on it as much, right. And you're not as you're not as on top of things. So that's one of the key trade offs is like, right, you can't be completely passive about anything. So any level of being active is going to bring some level of stress, anxiety, and effort. So a lot of the temptation in psychology, we call this status quo bias is, hey, everything that I'm doing right now is pretty great. I'm just gonna keep on doing that. And I see this a lot when I lead workshops around a quarterly or annual review, where people's goals tend to be, I'm going to do exactly all the things that I was just doing plus 20%. So all those things I was going to do I want to put up 20% more pounds on the bench press. I'm going to write 20% more articles, I'm going to sell 20% more packages. And you know, like, Well, okay, great, like, where's that where all those 20% is gonna come from? Like, what are the things that you're no longer doing is like this, like same but more tendency. And so a better way that I think about doing is like, use another investment analogy. Imagine that you sold all of your investments, and now you're just sitting on a pile of cash, or all of your commitments, all of your job, or classes, all the things you're doing, you're no longer doing, you look at your calendar, and it's completely open for the next year. Okay, what do you do with that time? Is like our bias is to justify the things that we're already doing. Let's okay, I'm just gonna keep on doing more than that. But it's like realizing you could do anything. What do you do with that, I think is a much better place to operate from because naturally, just to you know, sleep well. We tell ourselves Hey, what I'm doing is great. But we get all our identity tied up and like alright, if I'm, if I'm being successful then I am a success, if I'm, if I'm doing really well and I'm a good person, like I'm happy outside of things, versus like, I am separate from what I do. I am not What I do, given that I am separate, what do I choose to do? I think this separation of identity is really important to be able to take an objective look at ourselves and say, what are the things that are doing right that I'm doing right now? What are the things that are happening that I think could be going better? What are some actions that I could take? It doesn't mean that I'm not doing well, I'm doing great. But here's some ways that things are going even better. I think this is a real hack for objectivity. Another way is to imagine that you're giving advice to a friend, and the friend is in the exact situation that you're in. What's the obvious advice that you would tell your friend is very easy to see from the outside? But if you try to give that advice yourself, like, well, I already try that, or I can't do that. It's like, well, what would you tell a friend, there's, there's all of these ways to just be a little bit more objective about what we're doing. And this is big for me, as I'm always trying to correct for my natural bias. Another one that I like a lot is fear as a compass. So if I'm between two options, always do the thing. That's scarier, because naturally, I'm going to shy away from the thing that I'm afraid of. So if I think I should do it, I'm not sure. And it's really scary that I should definitely do it. And all this type of stuff is just coming through this planning, experimentation reflecting process of like, what are the things that I've learned? What am I going to do when I'm facing this type of decision in the future? You know, how do I want to make this decision? As everything goes out into eternity? I'm thinking about what my process is going to be? How can I improve this process for the future?
Ali Abdaal (1:06:37): Yeah, I think I think I fall into the status quo bias quite a lot. One thing you and I were sort of briefly touched on on the walk here was, I did this odyssey plan thing, where it's like, Hey, what's your what does your life look like for the next five years? It was like, Cool. Now throw that up. Start from scratch, like from your, from your current point, what does your life look like for the next five years? Five years from now, if you took a completely different path? And then call, that's fine. Now start again, what does your life look like five years from now, if you took a completely different path again, and if money and status were no longer concerns, and when I did this exercise a few weeks, a couple months ago, and post it in my newsletter, all three options ended up in one way or another, I am creating content on the internet. And now like part of me was like, I saw that and I was like, Is this a sign that this is what I meant to be doing that I've really fundamentally value teaching and stuff. And this is the way I'm doing it? Or more likely, is this just a failure of imagination where I'm so tied up, I've got the blinders. So on with like, I'm a YouTuber with three minutes describing the podcast, I need to create content on the internet, where I'm not even entertaining any possible life. Beyond that, because, again, I think it comes down to I was kind of feeling this about a year ago, about a year ago, I was toying with the idea of doing an MBA in the US or something. And what my brother was saying to me was like, Look, you've got this infinite sort of degree with infinite degrees of options around you. And you're picking the options that seem most legible, which in your current life means either being a YouTuber, or going to university doing a degree or going back to medicine, which are like the only three routes in life that I have ever had experience with? How should I help tackle my status quo bias? In this sense?
Chris Sparks (1:08:18): It's a really difficult question to ask because I think it really gets at things that I can only guess from my observations of you, which is, you know, what, what do you value most in life? I think you're right, and that creating content on the internet being a commonality, could both be a signal that this is a true calling for you. And just a failure, imagination or a fear of doing something that you're unproven in, you know, who knows how it could work out? It's really hard to say. So that's why I'm always asking questions like, you know, what do you like about what you're doing right now? What do you not like so much about your doing? What would you do more? If you could, if you had an extra hour in your day? How would you ask if I find that the best proxy on someone's values is their behavior? So getting at these sorts of hypotheticals like, if you could do anything, what would you do and working from okay, what are the commonalities and the things that you would do without these constraints in place? That's what it is, it's really hard to make universals like, Hey, this is what a good life looks like. Because for me a good life comes back to values like, do you understand what you value? Because these changes shift over time. It's this, like, infinite process of excavation. And once you have a good understanding of that, or at least a provincial understanding of that, is your life a reflection of that or of living in alignment with that? So I know for you that making videos on the internet satisfies a lot of deep values, you know, teaching meaning giving back. It's an engine for personal growth. And the question is always like, great. Like, what does that you know, when you're doing something questions like, what does that bring you? Alright? So for example if someone's like, Alright, what do you want is like, I want a million dollars. Okay? What does a million dollars bring you? What does that unlock? What, what, what can you do with a million dollars that you can't do now? Then you start to get it, okay? Well I can provide for my family, or I can take that class I always wanted or I could have a space to create me or whatever it is. Okay, so now we know what you're going at directly. Let's try to find that most direct path there. So okay, you want to teach people, for example, what are other ways that you could be doing that, then you could satisfy that value. And that gets around this, like, this is the only thing that I could be doing to? Alright, now that I understand what I'm trying to achieve? What are other things that I could do that are presumably towards that? And then you can start to frame an experiment to see you okay, maybe it's a thing that I just really like teaching. So why don't I try teaching another format and see what I like, what I don't like about that? And see it all goes back to try something, see what works, do a little bit more of that? See what doesn't work? I think about this in a productivity sense. It's always like, you know, once I understand what I want to do, what brings me happiness or fulfillment? How can I make that easier to do? How can I make that more of a commonality in my life? The things that get in the way, like, well, you know, watching the latest Netflix is fun, you know, I like films, I think it's really interesting. I think being a culture is very cool. But I could be doing other things instead that I seem to enjoy more than bringing more fulfillment. So how do I make Netflix a little bit harder to access? It's not that Netflix is not as bad, it's just not as good for me. So it's like, see, this ladder is like, what do I value? What are things that I do to seem to satisfy their values? How do I make those things that seem to satisfy those values more accessible in my life, more of a recurring presence.
Ali Abdaal (1:11:54): So many ideas for experiments that I want to run? One hypothesis that I've had about my life is that I think I seem to value a kind of social connection with people like a lot of people do, unsurprisingly. That's like, okay, cool. One hypothesis was that, therefore, living with a flatmate is going to be more fun for me than living alone. But to be honest, I've never really tried the living alone experiment. So I should just run that experiment for a week or two. I mean, I've tried it for a couple of weeks here and there in the pandemic, and like, it was fine. But like, that could be an experiment I try. But another thing I want to do is like, I know, I enjoy hanging out with friends a lot, and I know I enjoy hosting people at my place. But it's a lot of effort to clean afterwards and stuff. And as I'm saying that I'm thinking, Okay, I mean, paper plates solve that problem of beanbag solves that problem. Ordering Pizza, rather than trying to cook, solves that problem, hiring a private chef for a night just to see what happens. And just be like, that might be a fun thing to do invite, like 10 friends over and get a private chef to cook for everyone and clean up afterwards. All of these are experiments that I absolutely could run and should run to be like, hey, this, this will actually make it easier for me to satisfy the value of i enjoy connecting with people and having people over at my place.
Chris Sparks (1:13:03): Yeah, this brings me to the concept of over optimization. I feel like this is something that makes someone else besides me uneasy. There's an assumption that, hey, if I'm going to do something, I need to do it all out, or it's not worth doing at all. So for example, like I love to travel, we're having this conversation because I'm traveling around Europe. And I especially love creating experiences for my friends, I love planning group trips, I love hosting, I love planning events and doing things like that. But because I can have perfectionistic tendencies because like, everything has levels, and I always want to try to raise the bar somehow. I'll create situations where for example, I'm planning a birthday trip right now. It's like, alright, and you just be like, four days, like, packed nonstop, like top of the line experiences. And I feel myself Wow, I'm putting a lot of thought and effort into this, that I could be doing other things and starting to get a little bit worried like, well, what if it doesn't match my expectations and realizing people aren't coming to my Birthday Trip? Because they want the trip of a lifetime? At least I don't think so. Because they want to celebrate by meeting my friends, like having a nice weekend. And I'm realizing Alright, if what I'm doing this for what I'm optimizing for is to bring people together for a nice experience. What are all of these cherries on top that I'm putting like, way too much time and attention into Alright, coming back to alright, what I value most is this sense of connection and bringing people together who should meet and like having like a Michelin star chef cook every meal and like go on these like super logistically complicated excursions like it's a nice to have but it's not a need to have. Right so it's like as you were talking coming back to alright, what am I trying to achieve here? What am I? What am I valuing, what is the most direct path towards just like bringing people together in the room?
Ali Abdaal (1:14:55): So I did a kind of party thing at my place a couple months ago for my birthday. and this was my first time hosting a lot of people in one big room and stuff. And I was quite frazzled about the food situation. And like, there wasn't enough, this wasn't enough that and like, ah, and no one notices all that stuff. Yeah. So like, a friend of mine kind of could see that I was a bit frazzled, and he was like, Okay, I'm gonna say something to you that I know, I also need to hear more often. Take a breath. When you're 85 years old, you're gonna give anything to be back here and enjoy this moment in the present day. And also, no one gives a shit about the food. So just relax, enjoy yourself, people here. They're having a good time. Don't worry about it. And I was like, he's so right. And I was still sort of worrying about the food in the back of my mind. But then I was thinking, because the berries ran out, the yogurt ran out. Who actually cares? Like the point was the people were there. And I think this like, for me as well, I put a lot of like, if I'm doing this, it should be done right? If I'm doing this harder, I don't just want to order pizza hut actually ordered pizza super easy, actually just ordered pizza. If the requirement for me to cook is it going to stop me from hanging out with friends? Screw cooking, just like inviting my pizza, like, get people over in cars, that social connection more.
Chris Sparks (1:16:06): This is a mental reframe that's been really impactful for me, just kind of the way that my brain works is just hyperactive, like hyper aware of opportunities, and opportunities for improvement in particular, like this thing is great. But like, Oh, if I did this, it'd be more streamlined. If I did this, it would change the lighting of it. Oh, like if I position the food in this way. If I put the bar over here, the flow will be better. Like always, like thinking about the next one. Yep. Right. That's like the downside of the process orientation, always thinking about how the process can be better. And take the step back and breathe and enjoy. It's like, oh, like all my friends are here. Let's enjoy this and have fun. We can do a post mortem after the event, but it's turning what can become an obligation into an opportunity. Right? I think about something like a to-do list. When you think a lot, the way that a lot of people treat it to do lists is like this, never ending list of obligations that I have to get through before I can have fun. And it's this morbid thought that we're going to die with a very long to-do lists, because we're gonna keep adding things to it. And if our whole goal is to get through the list until we can be happy and enjoy ourselves like we're in for not so good of a time. So the way I try to always reframe is like, this is not my list of to dues, this is not an obligation that I've thrown upon my shoulders, but all opportunities, these are all things that I don't need to do any of these, but I could do them and maybe things would be going even better. And that's always a frame like, I'm great. I don't need to do anything. But here's some things that I could do. Which one of these do I want to do now? It's very subtle from like, oh, I have to plan this party and I have to send all these invites. Okay, I have to figure out, you know, oh, I have all these dietary restrictions. I have to communicate with a chef. He's like, the planning a party, like having good time to friends easy can be like a to do list to like, Wow, what a great opportunity to bring my friends together to create this element of surprise and serendipity and wonder that we can all be in the shared container and have a good time. It's like, well, like, do I really care that much about the food? Maybe I don't, or maybe it's like, oh, this is a cool opportunity to try to make a new dish or to like, try a new skill. And since that that subtle frame not only makes everything we're doing more fun, but allows you to be more present in the end like harvest the benefits of the things we're doing to
Ali Abdaal (1:18:26): Yeah, one thing I was thinking, as you were describing that there's this tendency that, oh, I'll write this down on my thing, the tendency to overthink about stuff and the perfectionistic tendencies. And I always get this question in all YouTuber Academy live sessions. And the thing I always say is, and I should take my advice on this in other areas of life, which is that, like, it's all well and good, overthinking about your production value, and your lighting and your sound and stuff. But don't let any of that stop you from publishing the video. As long as you're hitting that consistent schedule of whatever you've decided is once a week, twice a week, whatever it might be, as long as you're putting the videos up, overthink all you like, but don't let that stop you from putting the videos out. I think as you know, with my channel and with our team as we've grown the team and as we've had to evolve elaborate processes for doing things. At the times when that has come at the expense of our upload schedule, the channel is slumped and not done very well. At the time. They were like, well, we're fixing the processes, but like the videos does the division, the videos are still coming out, then everything has felt like it's moving way more forward. And as I'm saying this, I'm thinking that like, Okay, if I, I've kind of had a goal for this since January when I did my New Year's goals like, Hey, I'd like to have people over for dinner every week. I have people over no nowhere near as frequently as every week. But if I just set aside Friday nights on my having people over dinner time, and it almost became a thing where it's like, at the very least I need to invite at least one person over on Friday. And then beyond that I can start stacking up oh, let's try the chef. Let's try the pizza. Let's try cooking. Let's try this. But it's all on the fundamental layer of hate. The main point is to just hang out with my friends a bit more.
Chris Sparks (1:19:56): There's this concept in economics called revealed preferences and that what people tell you they believe is much different from what they actually believe or how they act, how they believe. Yeah. And productivity context is if you ask someone, hey, what's important to you? The answer will be very different from how they act, what's important to them? So a very early thing that I do with the clients is I have them share with me their calendar, as forehand I know, like, what their top values are, what they say their goals are, what their priorities are. And I have a very clear side by side to say, Well, hey, like, you said that, like, your biggest goal for the quarter is making this new hire or raising this investment round. But I look at your calendar, and I don't see it anywhere on there. So like, which one is it? Is it not a priority for you? Or is it you're just not prioritizing it. And that's what really, we talked about prioritization. It is like understanding what's most important. And putting that first, right. So it's very easy to pick a goal. For example, I'm going to have friends over every week and just be like, Okay, great. Let's do it. It's going to happen. But then it's like, okay, well, if I want to have friends over every week, like, what does that mean? Well, it means I need to set aside a week, every night, I need to have a plan for that. I needed the invite out far enough in advance for people to come over. And it's like, essentially, like, what do I need to give up in order for this to happen? And a lot of people don't take those extra steps. They're just like, set the goal. And we Okay, well, we'll figure it out along the way. It's like, it's really a priority. What does that mean? What do you have to stop doing in order for that to happen? So that's like, a big thing that I'm always trying to see is like, How can my schedule be more of a reflection of my goals or my priorities? And that's the same thing. The inverse is true. It's like, what am I dedicating time and resources to? That's not my goal. It's not a priority list. Because like when he asked him like, okay, what are you going to stop doing? It's like, well, I have to do all these things. Well, this thing, it's not a goal of yours. Not a top priority. Why are you doing that? Oh, okay. Well, which is true? Is it more important or is it not a fun, very painful exercise that gets everyone to love me very much, if I have everyone list all of their priorities. It's like, you know, a bunch of brainstorming. Okay, what, what are you doing with your health? What are you doing with your career? What are you doing here? Relations, breasts, all those things out? We'll have these I'm like, how many things you got in your list are like 1012 26 is like, awesome. That's so great. You have so many things going on. Okay, I want you to number these in order, like 125 1025 26. Okay, great, um, numbering, Okay, this one's not quite as important. But like, okay, now I know, all right, I'm going to do these, like all these 26 things in them, do them in these orders like, Well, no, I want you to go through the bottom half of your list and cross a line through them. So say you got 10 things on your list. These are your 10 goals for the quarter. Okay, now you have five goals. Every time you try to bring up you made progress on goal six through 10. I'm just gonna cut you off and say, Okay, well, what are you doing towards goals one through five? Like, those are the important ones, right? Because the biggest distractions are working on the things that you can justify later, but are not our top priorities. Right? It's the opportunity cost. So this is something that if you don't correct for is really really insidious, again, thinking about our tendency of justifying everything we're doing is good. The client will show up for a call and like, okay, like what's happened since the last call. And to share a bunch of updates is like, Hey, I talked to this person, oh, this thing happens. Like, oh, I don't see that any of your goals is that that's really interesting. What advice do you have related to these goals? Feel like, oh, well, you know, like, it was really busy. And all these things happen. It's like, okay, so what you're saying is that those things were more of a priority? Well, no, no, no, it's really funny when you have to kind of walk back and justify your behavior. It's like, okay, well, is it a priority? Or is it not a priority? And again, like, zero judgment, maybe you decided along the way, okay, maybe I don't need to have friends over for dinner every week. Or maybe you just haven't treated it as a priority. But this is an opportunity for reflection. And it's like you have this regular feedback, right? The more often that you're checking in closing this loop iterating, the more quickly it can adjust. So let's say you had as part of a weekly review, one of your questions is like, Did I have friends over for dinner this week? And you're like, No, and it gets marked yellow? And next week? Like, did I have friends over dinner every week? And like, no, it's like, ooh, two weeks in a row, that's a read. And that that becomes like a canary in the coal mine is a signal. It's like, alright, well, two weeks in a row, I said I was going to do this thing and didn't do this thing. Clearly, what I'm doing is not working. So first checking in, is this still important? To me? That's always the first question is like, you can always decide later you don't want to do this. I say, well, actually, yes. I do want to have friends over the week. So then it's just like, What is one thing that I'm going to do this week as an experiment that might work to make this happen? So Eric, okay, well, I never sent out invites. So now I'm going to set aside a time on a sense of invites, and we'll set a date and you try it and you see what happens? And that way, even if it's a no in week number three, you're like, alright, I tried it. That didn't work. Is it still important to me? What am I going to try next? And that way you catch it and you iterate more out more often? And that The thing that you said was a priority actually gets treated as a priority.
Ali Abdaal (1:25:03): Yeah. i It's so funny that you say this when he said that line? Is this thing not a priority, or are you just not prioritizing it? There's literally word for word what my editor said to me last week when I actually two weeks ago when I was like, Yeah, so just like, yeah, so how was progress on the book this week? And I was like, Yeah, you know, stuff came up. And she was like, Okay, let's, let's think about this. He was super nice about it. But she was like, you know, it seems that this book is saying it is a priority for you. If it if it's not, then you know, that's a different conversation. And that's fine. We can talk about it. But if it is, it sounds like you're not prioritizing the thing that you say is your number one priority. And I was like, Damn, you're right. And then she was like, okay, what can we try as an experiment this week? Patches work with you? Yeah, I was like, okay, cool. We can try that. Okay. non-negotiable. Three hours in the morning to do the thing we can try. I don't really get worked up at home. So I'll go to the local restaurant to do it. We can try. I will say all right, clocking in on slack in our book, Slack channel. Whenever I'm getting started on the book stuff. We can try it. I'll post screenshots of what I'm working on. So I have accountability. And all those things worked really well. And I've made progress on the books so much in the last like, seven days than I have in like the month before, I guess. Yeah, one question I have is—
Chris Sparks (1:26:13): It's so obvious that it doesn't even feel worth stating but we act as if it's not true if there can only be one top priority. We like to act like there's a bunch of top priorities, but like there's only one top priority. And by definition, if it's your top priority, it's a non negotiable, everything else fits around it. The classic, annoying analogy, if you're filling your jar, like the top priority is the giant boulder that you put into the jar, and then everything else is just sand that sits around it. So for example, I keep using your examples that you keep so generously putting out there, if writing the book is the top priority, it comes first, it means that he gets his own block in the morning. And then other things happen if there's time. But the way that we treat a lot of these things that are called important but not urgent, is that they happen when it's convenient for us when we have time when we're not busy when there's no other things going on. Well, we don't have deadlines. And so I always say to put the important but not urgent, first, the urgent things will always happen. But instead, we were to try to treat it, fill the jar and then stick a boulder in there. So I'm always trying to think about Alright, if this is really most important to me, what does that mean? We come back to values. I have clients who say, for example, that family is my top value. The obvious follow up is okay, if family is most important to your family is your top priority. What does that look like for you means okay? And again, there's no right answer to this. It could be we sit down for dinner every night, it means that like my kids get an hour of undivided attention for but it's like, hey, you know, weekends, I'm completely off no work, whatever it means to them. Okay, this is what it means to have top priority rather than the obvious follow up question is like, what do you need to do for this to be the case, like what gets in the way of being able to sit down for dinner with your family or having the weekends off. And everything comes back to that is like if it's really most important, what else needs to conform around it? What else needs to get out of the way? Because the way that we like to do it is like, well, it really is important to me. But all these other things came up. And it's just life doesn't work like
Ali Abdaal (1:28:22): So we kind of talked about this sort of meandering, you mentioned you how you have clients and stuff, but like I was I was gonna mention this in the intro that I record after the fact that you are a performance coach. And you and I actually work together, you were my performance coach for three months, about 18 months ago, and it was great. But what does a performance coach do? And I guess, how did you become one? And I guess the question, I want to follow up on that as like, if someone in the audience listening to this decides as a 21 year old, I too want to become a performance. What is what is the process of doing this as a side hustle, like like—
Chris Sparks (1:28:53): Oh, man? Well, as far as what a performance coach does, I think you could probably answer this better than I could being on the other side. The way that I try to describe it is I act as a third party objective observer for high performers to accelerate their path towards their goals. So at that, generally, it looks like it is asking lots of annoying questions. Like is this really a priority? Okay, what are you doing towards that? What's the next step? What are you committed to doing this week? Those types of things. So there's a hybrid of, you know, holding someone's feet to the fire to classic accountability type stuff. They're acting as this mirror for what's really important to you and what's really working for you. There's taking some of my systems thinking lens and thinking how alright, this thing you want to be doing regularly? How can we make that more consistent, less effortful for you to get more out of it, these types of things? It really depends upon the clients and their goals. But the commonality that I see is that someone comes out of the process with more clarity on their goals. And what's more important, what's important to them, that feels like the things they're going after, the process is easier, they're getting more the things they'd like to do, you know, more things less time classic, but it's primarily about doing the right thing. So the things that are actually moving the needle are actually a priority to them aligned with their top values. And then just really a sense of how this can be a repeatable process, something that goes on beyond our work together, right. And my typical agreement, I only work with 12 clients at a time, and it's usually in three months. So I always wanted to be like the trainer who gave the whole playbook at the first class. So it's okay, go forth, and do it. And I think a lot of that comes down to some of these principles and mindsets that I've tried to share today, which are really grounded in action. So it all comes back to me for experiments, and we co create an experiment, say, Hey, say this is a top priority for you for the next quarter. What would that look like? convey that in some sort of input goals? Okay, so you're saying, you know, every day you want to spend the first hour of your day meditating, or the first hour of your day writing, or you want to host a party at your place every week? What is it? What are the actions that you need to take in order to make this happen? Let's say you're successful, let's work backwards from that. Let's say that you didn't achieve this, will there be some reasons why you didn't have reasons that you failed? So kind of simulating ahead of time, so we don't have to learn through experience. And then we try it. And as we work together, we try things, we see what works, we double down on that. So I see myself as primarily a guide, where I think a lot of my clients have a pretty good idea of what works. But always the interesting question is, well, you know, this works, why aren't you doing it? And that's where all the really interesting conversations happen.
Ali Abdaal (1:32:01): Yeah, there's a thing I heard one time around about the idea of coaching and executive coaching, because basically, everyone seems to have a coach of some sort. And people who don't have a coach or were like, What the hell does a coach do? Like why the hell do you need a coach. And it's like, in a way, like, the less you pay for a coach, the more tactical the advice or something like that, where it's like, when you're in the sort of, I don't know, I have a tennis coach or something like that. It's like a very specific thing that you're working on. Whereas as you get to the higher and higher levels, I suspect Roger Federer as tennis coach is not really teaching him about forehands and it's a lot about psychology and of the mind and like behavior and emotions and dealing with his own like traumas and it becomes almost like a, I find out anytime I've worked with a coach, it's sort of felt more like what I imagined a therapist would be rather than what I initially imagined to coach would be does that kind of vibe with your experience.
Chris Sparks (1:32:50): Every client is different. I think that mental games are really important. When I think about mental games, it's the psychological mindset preparedness, showing up presents that type of stuff that I think is really important for high performance in any endeavor, I think I think there's always this toeing the line of I think it's very different from therapy. But clearly, people find ways to act out old patterns, mental and otherwise to get in their own way to prevent success. So there's usually an aspect of taking a step back and looking at past behavior and identifying, Hey, what are the patterns that we want to repeat, maybe the patterns that we want to disrupt. But the main differential, again, experience of one that I would have between a therapist and myself is I want everything that we talked about to be quantifiable. And hey, we have set milestones and metrics towards a goal. And my job is to support you, in making the progress towards the thing that you've said is important to you. And I have conversations about if that's important, why it's important, what is the path? What is that roadmap, but at the end of the day, if we ensure the regular steps are being taken towards that we have some raw material to work with. Right? I think when you're thinking about talking to an employee, or just in auditing yourself, is it like, is it that I'm not putting in the effort, like a failure to prioritize as we were saying before, or is that the things that I'm doing aren't working? And there's always those two paths like, well, is this not a priority for you? Okay, you are putting in efforts, but the efforts that you're doing aren't leading you to the specific goal that you want. So let's try something else. Let's see if perhaps we step back, we change the approach, we can have different results. So those are the types of conversations that I have. Again, I think your point about tactical versus more psychological is really apt if you want someone to teach you how to use the notion for example, That's pretty, pretty prescriptive, very step by step. If you want someone again, this is just one example of like, okay, well, why aren't you using your notion system to save your notes? And is this really that? What's what's in the way of you not publishing your book? Or is there something deeper that's going on, and that you're not setting aside the time, or you don't know what to write about all these types of things, that starts to get into things that are much more bespoke. And we're drawing on experience of I mean, having worked with, you know, over 100 clients at this point, you start to see the same patterns occur. So that's kind of the answer to how does one start doing it if you just do it, I think, fortunately, or unfortunately, I just love teaching, so I just can't help doing it. And I'm luckily I found a socially acceptable way to, you know, find this outlet and have a little bit of impact on people, at least they told me so is okay. Well, both. This seems to work. Generally, for most people, you know, wake up, do the most important thing, don't check your email, all that sort of stuff, but also from past experience. And from what you told me, these things seemed to work really well for you. Why don't we go back to doing that? That's like, the coaching cheat code, by the way is like, hey, that time the things were going really well for you. What were you doing? Okay, why don't you try doing that again? Like, we always want to try doing something new. But we certainly already know the thing that's working. So yeah, breaking down this, like, third party, objective observer, third party, I'm outside, I'm not invested. I want your success, but I don't really care how you succeed. Objective, I'm trying to bring some objectivity towards it's like, Hey, this is what you're telling me. This is what I'm seeing. This is what seems to work. And like an observer, hey, that's really interesting. Tell me more about that. Or like, I'm not quite sure. Like you say, this is important to you, but it doesn't look like it's important to you to talk to me about that. That's the role that I try to play. And you know, the world causes executive coaches. So that's what I go with.
Ali Abdaal (1:37:02): Let's say again, we've got our 21 year old in the audience, they're like, I've got a job. I kinda want to make money on the side, becoming a coach sounds like anyone can call themselves a coach these days, why don't why don't I become a life coach? Oh, executive coach, that sounds like basically being a life coach. But you can charge more because it's got the word executive on it, how would you advise said 21 year old we can roleplay it if you'd like or however, however, however, you would kind of advise this person to explore this as a potential side hustle that which could potentially become a full time living further down the line.
Chris Sparks (1:37:31): Yeah, I'm gonna generalize this to starting any business is generally if you're trying to make money from something, right, assuming that your goal to coach is to make money from it. And there can be lots of other tangential goals. But let's say you're trying to create a coaching business or any business, it's, well, what is the feedback that someone has given you is like, Oh, you're really good at doing this? Oh, what if you offer this I bet I would pay you for that. Or like, man, like every I had that conversation with you really sorted me on it, like listening to this type of feedback, or people saying like, you what you are doing here, you're both good at it. And it is useful. This is good feedback to receive. If you're not receiving any of this type of feedback, this is an anti signal that, hey, perhaps this is not something that you shouldn't be doing. I think there's a sense that people who get really good at something, they can't help but doing it, not saying they're naturally good at it, but it's something they're naturally curious about, and they just can't help talking about it and doing it with people. So part of the reason that I think I've been able to become better as a coach, I think you never quite arrive at like, I've figured it all out, is that I'm just very, very curious about people. And I'm very interested in what seems to lead to success and happiness and fulfillment. And this is just a really effective avenue for me to scratch my own itch.
Ali Abdaal (1:38:58): Yeah, yeah, I think it's kind of similar for me in the sense that, from like the age of seven, I have enjoyed explaining stuff to people in my class. And then from the age of like, 13, to 20, I was a private tutor, or teaching people Maths and English, from the age of like, 17, through to 25, I was teaching courses to help kids get into medical school from like, 18 to 24, I was teaching medical students younger than me. And so like, at every stage of my life, I've just found myself drawn to teaching people stuff, whatever that stuff might be. And so the extension of oh, let's teach stuff on YouTube, whereas before in a previous life, I tried YouTube to be a musician. No one's ever told me. I'm good at singing. No one's ever told me. I'm good at playing musical instruments, but I wanted to try it, experiment. Try it out. But as soon as I align myself with the thing that I got, like 15 years of feedback from that, oh, you're actually good at this thing. And you seem to enjoy this thing. Suddenly, things started to click. So I guess you know, at this point, someone might be thinking, Oh, damn, I'd like no one to say I'm good at anything. And I feel like I don't have any skills that are useful to society. What would you say to that person?
Chris Sparks (1:40:00): Well, I assume we're talking to a 21 year old and I mean, it's very easy again, I'm 35 just sit back and say, Man, like, I thought I knew everything, but I didn't know anything, is what a wonderful opportunity to like you have a lifetime of compounding in front of you. What would you like to be good at? You know, I think of this as stepping back to the meta level of, we can decide what to prioritize and decide what we want out of life. What you want to prioritize is like you can, you can pretty much do anything at this point. And the stakes are very low. So if the younger you are thinking about what are the things that benefit from a lifetime of compounding, building an audience is probably one of those building many skills, particularly interpersonal skills, skills of personal organization and management, of capturing and sharing ideas. These are things that tend to build upon themselves. And the good place to start is like, what are the things that you're already really interested in? It's this classic notion that tomorrow's company is today's tinkering around in the garage, like, what's the thing that you can't help but doing, don't worry about Trump, like, oh, it's not a job. It's not something I make a living from. Just keep doing that. And particularly finding ways to share what you're doing with others, like naturally, opportunities will emerge, I tend to think that a lot of opportunities are at the intersections, we worry all the time. It's like, oh, I'm about the same, same as everyone else. But it really is like you are the only person with your unique set of skills and experiences, there is going to come some sort of intersection, like you found like medicine and content creation for me, like games, and investing or games and founding companies that like I can speak to both that very few people can write like, there's lots of people who've played games, lots of people founded companies, very few people who've done at a high level of both. There's so much thinking about, like these intersections that will naturally emerge by just optimizing for what's interesting to you. And I really think it's like, it sounds weird to say, but like taking some of the pressure off is just like, keep doing what you're doing. And if something's working, do a little bit more of that. Yeah, I think
Ali Abdaal (1:42:21): It's this idea that if you're as long as you're taking steps in a direction that is broadly aligned with things that you actually want, then something good will probably happen further down the line.
Chris Sparks (1:42:30): Yeah, it's often said, but I really take it to heart is trusting the process. The main thing to optimize for is continuous improvement.
Ali Abdaal (1:42:39): Nice. So we've got our 21 year old, they've been told, You know what, you know, when I have a conversation with you, I feel quite inspired. I feel like you know, maybe you could become a coach, I've heard people can become coaches, like, what would be the next step that they would take to set up this hypothetical coaching business?
Chris Sparks (1:42:53): I actually want to take a step back on this one, just to, I think it's always very easy to be sitting on our pedestal here. And it's like, well, I've got it all figured out. And you're 21 and you don't know anything. So I would like to share a little bit about where I was at 21. You know, I had some level of, let's call it, cultural success. I was already making money. In poker, I, you know, had extremely good grades like I was, you know, most likely to succeed, change the world, all that sort of stuff, like people like, Oh, this guy is smart. He's going places. But internally, I felt like a total imposter. And so I graduated, I moved up to Detroit, I was sort of on this like hiring leave while I waited for the auto industry in the economy to get their ish together. And I didn't see anyone like I just sat inside for weeks, the only person I would see was the guy who was delivering my pizza and my two liters of soda. My only friends were on the internet, nothing wrong with that. But I certainly was lacking for social interaction really, you know, just unhappy but didn't understand that I was unhappy or understand why. And I was playing this game, but it just felt like an escape for me. And, you know, it's very easy to say that there was like this one moment where I had the proverbial gun to my head and my entire life turned around. But really, it was just like, a set of realizations that like, well, everything that I'm doing is a choice. Like, what if I made other choices I could do? I could do other things and started to realize, well, I'm playing this game of poker. I'm pretty good at it. But what if I was even better at that? What would that look like? Well, you know, falling asleep in the middle of a poker session probably isn't helping me. What if I improve my energy levels? I start sleeping and more regular hours and I actually go into the gym for the first time in my life. And I learned about nutrition that maybe eating a pizza every day, especially when you're lactose intolerant isn't the best thing to be doing. And it's not like I was really, really into nutrition and performance and sleep. It's like, well, I want to be one of the best poker players in the world. Well, what are the other best poker players in the world doing? Okay? Well, if I want this goal, I want to do that too. Like saying, if I want to be a cognitive athlete, I need to be a physical athlete. So treating myself as someone who was important as someone who was doing something important, and everything really started to turn around from that, it's like, well, my energy levels are better, I can start, I start making better decisions, I started making better decisions, my life goes better, oh, I start making more money, I can do more things, I have more opportunities to start creating this positive spiral. And I'm not saying that anyone here is like, not doing it, or like doesn't have it. But it really all just starts with this decision to like, I'm going to try to get a little bit better today, I'm going to try to do something small to move towards my goals. And just every day, I got a little bit closer to Alright, I want to be one of the best poker players in the world. What's that next thing that I have to do? So I could have done anything? I mean, I was like, Oh, what if I don't, I don't think my singing voice is particularly good. But hey, maybe I want to be a Broadway singer. Alright, what does that look like? I probably need to be training my voice, I need to be thinking about performance on a stage, all this type of stuff. But like just having the goal to go after the goal itself isn't that much more important than just a direction to hit? So we're talking about this, this 21 year old self, like, not needing to have it, figure it out, but have a general direction? Like, what's something that's important to you that you want to accomplish? And just be taking regular steps towards it? I think that it seems to me, like success, like what, like you have to be making it, it's just gotten younger and younger. I mean, this is weird from someone who's like, had his career peak at age 23. To say, but like you have all the time in the world. There was this one moment where, you know, I I retired from poker. And I was sitting on a beach in Barcelona saying like, wow, have I just like, had my life peak at age 23? Like, what am I going to do now is like is everything else is going to be downhill from here, and I'm just going to be like one of those child actors just like hoping to, like, you know, celebrate my big moment once again, and realize, oh, like, I have a lifetime do other things. Let's see what those other things look like. So yeah, that's a few of the ways that I've thought about it. And with the benefit of whenever I'm having a conversation like this, in the back of my mind, it's, you know, what are the things that I would have liked my younger self to hear that it's not it ever comes down to like, oh, you should try harder or do more. It's just like, trust the process. And you'll—
Ali Abdaal (1:47:48): —get there. Yeah, that was something I wanted to, I wanted to bring up from something we discussed previously, this idea of so we all have this bias towards the status quo, where let's say, I'm watching Netflix for three hours a night and I'm convincing myself that like, actually, actually, this is a good decision, my life is going fine. Otherwise, I'm good. And actually, the three hours is good for self care, and it makes me happy, etc, etc. Now, some people would say that a lot of time you're wasting three hours of your life, like when you're lying on your deathbed, are you really going to be glad that you spend those three hours, etc, watching Netflix? And then that person might think, okay, fine, maybe I'll only do two hours of Netflix in one hour or something more productive. But that can often look like trying harder, ie doing more or like working harder. And then there's a regret that people also have a flat. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. So it's like how do you think about this balance between I guess almost, and I kind of wrote down here sort of a spectrum amount of Alexa ambition and happiness on two other ends on two ends of the spectrum of like enjoying the and basking in the present moment right now and maybe going falling into the status quo bias. But actually life is pretty good. I feel day to day and pretty happy. Versus I want to be moving forward in a way that my future self will thank me for. And this
Chris Sparks (1:48:53): It is such a complex topic. One example that comes to mind for me, I come back to this concept of the most direct path. I wanted to be funnier, believe it or not, I think I was somewhat successful, you can be the judge of that. But I thought, hey, I want to be funnier. What's the most direct path to becoming funnier is to perform some comedy. Through this forcing function of needing me on stage and making people laugh, presumably, I'll learn a few things about the art of making people laugh. And that will translate to my conversations to my writing to my day to day. Well, there were if I start with this kind of abstract goal of I want to be funnier. There's a lots of different things that I could have justified towards that goal. For example, I want to fire up Netflix and watch every single comedy special on there and see what all these comedians are doing. And like, well, that is a path. But that's a very passive path. It's a very easygoing, convenient path. I bet if I raise the stakes, and I stand on the stage, and like, I'm actually telling those jokes as opposed to watching someone else, tell the jokes and be like, Oh, I could do that better. I bet I would learn faster, right, my feedback loop would be much tighter. And I thought this was going to be funny. And it's crickets. Okay, let's figure that out. So, it comes back to that question of like, yes, like things are going well, but are you on the most direct path towards your goals? This doesn't always mean that you need to do more, or try harder. Sometimes that might be true. But it's more like, well, like, how is watching Netflix using this example, on the path towards your goal, but it's very easy to justify it is like, I'm relaxing, I'm recharging, I'm getting culture, etc. It's like, well, if you weren't watching Netflix, what would you be doing with that time? Instead? These are always just interesting questions to ask, and perhaps the interesting experiments to run, it's like, hey, what if you spent those two hours doing something else? And you see the end of the day? How do you feel about the day? How do you feel differently? Just be curious about that. Because with all of these things, it's not that they're good. It's that they plus EV? Right? Compared to all the other things that you could be doing? Are they the best thing that you could be doing? Think about things like Twitter, which there's classic upsides to using Twitter, but it's very easy to hit these diminishing marginal returns? So it's not saying like, is an extra hour spent on Twitter useful? Is that more useful, more EV? How could you spend that hour otherwise? And this doesn't need to be the like, every time you're like, you know, bad Chris, bad, Ollie, you you, you binge that series, like you're, you're a waste, man, you're a failure? It's better, I watched Netflix. If you know, no regrets. But would I want to make that decision if I was faced with that decision, every time? Because that's the thing that is like these decisions that come out and return it. Every time you sit down with your partner for a long night at Netflix, you make it more likely that the next date night is gonna be another Netflix night? Is that what you want? And I find that stepping out from the like, rather than thinking about this individual decision, like what is the type of decision that I'd like to make, allows me to separate out my identity from it. And I can more think about, hey, well, on average, I like to do something this is personal, I like to do something that's a little bit more active, this could be active learning, and then I'm doing something with my hands, or I'm having some sort of conversation creating an artifact, or it could be actually activity that I'm outside with the sun in my face, and I'm moving my body, for God's sakes, whatever that is, and think, Well, I want to be more active, how can I make it more likely that I'm active in the future, I can make it easier to be active on the same way. So I Well, what gets in the way of being active? Well, man, there's a new Netflix series coming out. And the algorithm is really, really good at serving me up what I could be doing well, what if I had the experiment of a gave away my TV for a week, and I see what happens, or I sign out of my Netflix account, or at least I have to like, remember my password, or I get my password to my partner? And I say, Hey, I'm not allowed to watch Netflix today. Don't give me the password. I can't log in all these different things you can try, not that you have to commit to forever. Let's say hey, let's see what happens. I guess.
Ali Abdaal (1:53:19): It sounds like you know, we were talking about this spectrum between ambition and happiness and stuff. And actually, maybe it kind of strikes me as potentially a bit of a false dichotomy, kind of like when I spoke to another podcast guest, Greg guest grace, Beverly about the fake two sides of the spectrum between productivity and self care. And it's easy to convince ourselves that actually those three hours of watching Netflix or self care, and therefore it's good, and therefore no one can possibly argue with that. Because like, Oh, my God, self care and mental health and etc, etc, etc. And it's easy to convince ourselves that like, oh, I don't want to be one of those people that every day is like, I'm sitting there and hustling on my business for three hours, like Screw that. And it's very easy to fall into this black and white thinking to then justify the lazy life choice of sitting there watching Netflix for three hours. And I guess it sounds like, just about running the experiment. What if it was two hours one day, and you spend that hour doing something else that works towards a goal that you have? If a goal that you have isn't to watch everything in the Netflix catalog? Or to watch every tick that's been made? In the last decade? Yeah, then what is a goal that you have? And could you potentially even try working on that? 15 minutes in that time, because what I find a lot of people saying, you know, people in my team, people on my youtube or Academy, people in the audience that I speak to, I fall into this pattern myself if we claim to have these goals. And yet when it comes to being like, Okay, where am I going to? Where am I going to find the time for this? We set these arbitrary rules like, oh, I need three hours of self care each night. And it's somewhat unfashionable to say in this day and age where it's like God, like I couldn't possibly argue with someone's lived experience of how much self care they need. But I always feel a bit like whenever I find myself making up these arbitrary rules for myself thinking that like, oh, I need the older adult in my life. I need to spend 15 minutes in the spa after every gym session. Why? Really? Probably not. Like if I didn't have it I'd probably survive. Humans have been surviving without us far without Netflix without tick tock for millennia. Like, it's actually not that hard. And I think it's very easy to convince ourselves that that's the case.
Chris Sparks (1:55:13): I think you're hitting on something really valuable is that our language about how we describe our experience can be very revealing. So when you hear phrases like I need, or I should, or I have to, I think it's very revealing about things that we're assuming to be facts that are really just opinions. So it is another way of thinking about this that is the opposite, right? So we're worried about imperfection. So we don't put something out into the world, what that's hiding, is this need to be perfect? What's what's behind that need? What purpose? Is it serving, because there's a real purpose? It's not that any behavior is a good form of self care, a bad form of self care, it's more looking at like, what are what are the assumptions behind this behavior? Is this true? Is it something that I just believed to be true of i have i proven it, I think, where I see a lot of people going astray when it comes to things like recovery, and taking breaks, is that they do things that they can justify as taking a break, but really aren't recharging. It's more of a dissociative, it's more of an unplugging a distraction of getting away. So you know, for me, I've had the benefit over the years of finding there's things that actually recharge me better than passive consumption. So I tried to prioritize pre-commit crate forcing functions around those things. But I'm only one person, I can't say that the things that are my form of self care are everyone's form. I think the only way to do that is to try and again, I'm, I'm a broken record, but like this stuff is just very simple to explain, but hard to apply. You figure out what works, you figure out how to make this more of a recurring thing by making it easier to figure out what gets in the way of the thing that works. How do you make that less likely to happen? So I think that yeah, self care. Taking breaks is so important. Something that I talk about often is that your best ideas don't come to you at your desk, right? You don't just like to stare at the text editor. And Magic Happens a lot of productive happenings like ideas, generation synthesis happens if you're doing something that's completely unrelated to the thing you're doing when you're when you're kicking a ball, when you're taking a walk, when you're sitting in a sauna, when you're eating a delicious bite that maybe you cooked, maybe you're enjoying that a lot of these other experiences in your life that are unrelated, can't be decoupled from the thing that you're trying to do. That's why it's like this thing is productive, that this thing is unproductive, I think is a really unproductive argument. All that I can do is say things like, well, when things are seeming to go well, these are the other things that are happening. My hypothesis must be that these things helped me in some way, I'm going to keep doing that. Or like, well, I noticed that when I skip a workout, or when I watch an entire Netflix series, or when I don't go outside or when I start by checking my email instead of on my top priority, or I don't call my mom, like all these things, that the day doesn't go so well that, you know, perhaps doing these things or not doing these things would be really helpful. And that's why you test them and you find out.
Ali Abdaal (1:58:35): One of the things that I loved about your stuff on the internet. But just before I started working with you, you have this performance assessment thing online, which is like a free quiz thing that I did. And I was a bit skeptical. I was like performance assessment or like, what does this make some like marketing? It's gonna get me into a funnel, etc. And then I did it. I was like, damn, this is actually good. And you've given me your free book, at the end of it, like completely for free. And I looked through, I was like, Okay, I need to pay this guy to become my coach, what is this performance assessment? And how can people take it?
Chris Sparks (1:59:04): The challenge that we always have is I only work with 12 people at a time, but I want to help everyone. So this is a tool that we put a lot of effort into creating the goal of telling us about what you're doing in your life. And we will tell you, here is the best next action you can take to improve your performance. So having the benefit of working with over 100 top performers, you start to identify these recurring elements. I usually put these elements into four main buckets, so it's vision, prioritization, systems and presence. And so we drill down and say vision essentially is like, what do you want out of your life? Are you living a life of alignment? prioritization? You know, do you know what's important to you? Do those things come first? What do you want to do? Easier to do you streamlining things creating processes, presents, are you doing what's necessary internally typically in terms of habits to show up as your best self. And we essentially apply a bottleneck framework to this. Thinking about theory of constraints is like, well, first, if you don't know what's important to you, we'll start by figuring out what's important. You don't worry about all the other stuff, if you're doing the same thing over and over again, and just not make it easier. Okay? This thing that you're doing over and over, like, how do you create a process around that? How do you create something that improves, if you feel like your energy levels are not high enough to do what you want to do? Okay, let's start there, you start to drill down into these four key elements. And it reveals, here's the one thing that if you did, would have an immediate impact on your life, getting work done, you feel more happy and fulfilled at the end of the day, forget all the other stuff. Start there. Because I think that's a really big challenge that we have in the productivity performance space, is that there's just unlimited opportunities for improvement. And the vast majority of them do not move the needle. Why? Because they don't attack the bottleneck. They don't, they aren't the thing that's most holding you back. So that's always the question that I get is like, Hey, Chris, you talk about systems, you talk about attention, focus, energy, time management, and planning, reflection, all these things like, Oh, that's a lot of things like, where do I start? Start by taking a performance assessment, and we'll give you that one thing that you need, that will maximally move you towards your goals. And that's the thing is, once you get that up to a level, say, okay, improve your energy level, all of a sudden, everything will become easier, and you can move on to the next thing. So it's like, that's, that's the key I find to growth is figuring out what's that one thing, that if I changed, everything becomes easier. So that's why we created it.
Ali Abdaal (2:01:39): We'll put a link to that in the video description in the show notes, completely free, free ebook, like, you make enough money from the other things that you don't need to charge people with $10 here and there for PDFs. So like, basically, everyone should try this, because it's because it's actually pretty good. I'm gonna actually do this. I'm just thinking that like, this would actually make for a really interesting YouTube video, I would just sort of think, what would the title of this video be like, I don't know. 24 questions to level up your life or some click Beatty title like that.
Chris Sparks (2:02:03): Yeah, it's so it's 20 questions, and it gets out. All right, here are the things that I've seen every peak performer do who's successful. And I take this quiz myself every quarter to see oh, yeah, like, that thing works really well. Maybe I should start doing that again. Or maybe I should do a little bit more of that. Because I just like everyone else, forget things that seemed to work really well. So this is always a good check in with myself. It's like, these are the things that I know that worked. Like, what are the things that I should come back to.
Ali Abdaal (2:02:33): These 20 questions leveled up my life? Something like that? Yeah, the video. So I've got two videos from this. Number one is how to stop overthinking. We're talking about the idea of plus, Evie, the idea of thinking and experiments, the idea of status quo bias, the idea of fear as a compass, the consistency thing. And then we're doing this other one on 2020 questions to change your life, or whatever the title of the video is gonna be. Chris, thank you so much. This has been absolutely wonderful. Where can people find out more about you?
Chris Sparks (2:02:55): Absolute honor, Ali, I have so much fun talking to you. And I really respect how you go beyond productivity tactics and techniques and thinking about why are we doing the things that we're doing, like how is what we're doing on a day to day basis, getting us to the place we're doing, I really appreciate the work that you're doing, the best place to get a hold of me is through my company forcing function. So forcing function.com We work with 12 investors and executives at a time, especially with a very exciting offering coming up twice a year, we offer a group coaching programme called Team Performance Training, where I walk through my complete system for peak performance. So here's how to set goals. Here's how to create systems, here are the things you need to have to maximize your time, energy, attention, and accelerate your learning. And then we have some really cool, like group coaching exercises to actually implement these things into your life instead of just reading about them. So if interested in that, go to team performance training.com. Another great place to start, as Ali said is our performance assessment, you can find that at forcing function.com/assessment Probably the best place to find me on social media would be Twitter, my handle on all the networks is at sparks remarks. And if you want to email me directly, my email is Chris at my website.
Ali Abdaal (2:04:06): Thank you so much. It's been wonderful. Have a great day. And we'll see you next time. All right. So that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast can be linked down in the video description or in the show notes depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform and do please leave us a review on the iTunes store it really helps other people discover the podcast or if you're watching this in full HD or 4k on YouTube then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode that'd be awesome. If you enjoyed this episode, you might have to check out this episode here as well which