Bill Perkins
Appearances
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It was slowly over time. Even when I got to the exchange, I was in this hurry to get rich. And the reason why I was in a hurry, because I had this bias, I had this belief. I was like, yeah, there's rich guys here, but they're old. What can they possibly do with the money? I'm young. I'm 21. I'm ageist. I can't imagine The use of a million dollars when you're 40, right?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Like, what are you gonna do, buy a nicer car to drive your kids around? It just seems like loss on them. They don't get to do fun things. Now, I was wrong about that, But I was right about the utility of money over time. And I also read this book at this time called Your Money or Your Life that kind of transformed my understanding of what money is.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It's a very detailed book that has these exercises that has you look at how you spend your hours from going to work, getting ready for work, the things you spend on work, and really figuring out what your true hourly wage is. After tax, this is what an hour of your time, of your life is worth.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
and then it has you not think of everything in money but in time so instead of going to the movies and say it cost me ten dollars it's like that cost me one hour and 15 minutes of my time to go to this movie to buy this shirt it cost me three hours of my time and so you get this idea that i'm exchanging my life for certain things.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
The experience of buying a shirt, going to the movie, going on a trip. And that hit me hard. And where were you at this point? This is before you went to Houston? Before I went to Houston. That hit me hard. And that's what really turned me into like, I'm going to save. The two things I got out of it is I won a lot of money. And I'm going to become this very frugal person.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
There's this movement called FIRE, which that book is kind of like the Bible, the precursor to the FIRE movement, which is financial independence, retire early. And I was kind of like an early FIRE guy. I'm going to save my way to riches, right? I'm going to save and then retire early. And sorry, did you know what you wanted to do when you retired? I went on to another autopilot.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I went on another version of autopilot. I read a book. I got these concepts out of it. And I was like, this is what I'm going to do. I didn't think about the big picture of everything. But certain concepts were coming to me. I exchange hours of my life for money, and then that money is used for the things I want.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Let's take the abstract of money out of it and look at what hours of my life are being exchanged for. That was a great concept to sink in very viscerally.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Not in a way that you're properly analyzing it, but in more of an intuitive way. Because when you start to think about things in time, it's like, wait a minute, three hours for a shirt? versus going here, having a sandwich and hanging out with my friends or whatever it is, your values start to, you really get in touch with your values because it's not an abstract land.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It's like when you're in a casino and they give you chips, it's one of the greatest things to do is give you chips. It's not money, you're tipping $25, you're throwing, let it all ride because it's so abstracted from money. So it's an abstraction on an abstraction. By removing that abstraction, you get closer to your values.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So when you start thinking about things in terms of hours of your life and you have finite hours, you start to really get closer to your values. You can still be on autopilot, but you're closer. And so things like this were happening. And at that time, at the exchange... Like most people, I had like, what is it all for? Like, what do I want? You know, I'm here to get rich, but why?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
No, I'm generally having it with myself and reading books. But I'm still asking myself, but why? What do I want? And I'm remembering conversations that maybe I've had throughout my life. There was a college football player named Dwight Sistrunk and I was trying to do engineering and we were debating something.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
He's like, listen, you might want to picket fence and a wife and something like that and that life. I don't want that life. I don't want that cookie cutter life. That's fine for you, but that's not my path. I thought about it and I was like, do I really want that? you know, certain things that he said that he didn't want that I was actually working for, you know, thinking that this was my path.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I actually realized, no, I don't want that. I'm pretty hardheaded. It takes a while for these things to seep in.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Yeah, I guess it took a while for it to finally percolate into some sort of action plan. I'm thinking about these things, but they're not resulting in the proper behavior changes yet. I'm still formulating it. You know, everyone says, I want to be rich before I'm 30 or I'm rich before 40. No one's out there saying, I want to be rich before I'm 86.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So intuitively in there, there's something about the utility of money that it's not as valuable to you later on in life.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I think they also see that Warren can't sprint, dunk a basketball, go wakeboarding. There's a lot of other things too in there that enjoyment. And that's what I thought about. And I thought to myself, if for reading this book, I'm spending hours of my life to acquire these experiences. I mean, experiences in the broadest sense, whether it's going on a walk,
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
or being able to choose to go on a walk or go get a sandwich or buy a shirt or whatever. If I'm exchanging hours in my life and I don't go acquire these experiences, I pretty much wasted hours of my life. So that thought hits and it's like, okay, you don't want to leave anything on the table. In the game of life, when I die, you don't want to leave chips on the table, right?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Like you want to use all your resources before you die. inherent in that is that your choices, your experiences, those experiences are what make you you. Those are the things that fulfill you. And everybody's going to be different. And so... Consequently, having more of it and enjoying more of it will lead to a more fulfilling life.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So that if I'm solving for fulfillment, I don't care about the money. I care about the things I want, the experiences I want to have. If I'm trying to solve for that, one of the things you come quickly to is that you need to use all your resources up before you die. The second thing you come to with the fact that your resources, particularly money, are less valuable to you
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
When you're older, then you start to think, well, there must be a curve. Because if you're going to end at zero, is it this kind of rectangle shape that just goes down? Is it a 45 degree angle of sleep? Or is there some sort of curve? And so what I like to do to understand certain things that doesn't always work is think of zero and think of infinity.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
All right, let's run it all the way back to one, one years old. How useful is money? Not that useful to you. Let's run it all the way forward to 96 on your deathbed. How useful is money to you? Not that useful. So clearly there's like some sort of ramp up of utility and then a decline of utility. And I became obsessed. with finding what that curve was. Because I was like, this is it.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
If you're making more money for delayed gratification later in life, you approach infinity. You're actually wasting your time. You should be spending down your assets at a certain point. There's an inflection point where not a number, but a date where your wealth should be going down in order to get the most fulfillment.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
No, but it is a standard problem. If you look at JP Morgan or other wealth managers, one of the biggest problems they have is the accumulation, getting people to spend down their assets. They've been saving, they got their money, they hit retirement, and it's like their net worth is going up into their 70s. When's the party? That's what I always ask. I'm like, you just tell me when the party is.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I have conversations with older people or other people. I'm like, listen, it's okay that you're saving. What are you saving for? And when's the party? I just want to know when you're going to use up all your resources.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
No, they're not great.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It applies in different ways. So what I've come up with this book is there's three variables, your wealth, your health, and your time. And we're taking those three variables and we're solving for net fulfillment. So we're not solving for maximum wealth. We're not solving even for maximum health, maximum time. We're solving for net fulfillment. I'm saying that's your purpose.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
If you're with me, we're solving for net fulfillment. And so one of the things we look is that the total arc of your life, given the resources you have, how do we allocate them? We definitely want to focus on the money. Everybody wants to talk about the money and the resources, but there's decisions that you make even without money.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Whether you go on a walk with your daughters, you play cards with your friends late at night. Do you tuck them in at night or you go hang out with the boys? And so in the book, we talk about the seasons of your life. Certain activities transfer nicely to the next season in your life from 20 to 30 to 30 to 40. And some of them. don't transfer well, they're less enjoyable.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And some of them don't transfer at all. It's impossible. One of the things when the 40-year-old who has $50,000, one of the things I would say is, what's your survival number? Have you calculated that at retirement? Are you surviving retirement or are you in serious negative dire straits?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And once we've calculated that, okay, I need to work and save this much and plus social security, I've had my survival number. Now the rest is for experiences, things I want to do and allocation of my time, how do I allocate it? Is it the cruise at 70? Or is it the ski trip right now? And that's going to be different for every single person. Or is it a shirt or whatever fulfills them?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Or to go play in this chess tournament, pay the entry fee. And for people with zero money, you still have an allocation game to play. You still have your health and your time. You can still decide, hey, I'm going to sit down and watch Friends or I'm going to go hang out at my mom's house and make a meal and spend time with them because I'm only going to see them 20 times before they're gone.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So this type of thinking about allocating your resources at the proper place, getting off autopilot, holds at all wealth levels. It doesn't hold at all health levels because if you have zero health, you have zero. You're done. It's over. But it holds at all wealth levels. So that type of thinking to maximize fulfillment and knowing that you have seasons of your life, that your body decays.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
your attitudes change and they pass, that type of thinking in that I need to get things in the right order and use my resources properly, that's going to help you have a more fulfilling life, whether you have zero money or $100 million. There are many people with zero who are having a way more fulfilling life than Warren Buffett, I would say.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It illustrates the point. I usually say, you know, there's no amount of money you can pay me to do 10 years in Sing Sing. Right. Not at this age, there's no amount of money. You know, I say that to certain people who are just like always delaying gratification. And I'm like, you're kind of in a jail. Like you're basically doing a version of I'm doing time.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Maybe you shouldn't be doing time at this point in your life. And so these are kind of just ways, you know, people absorb information in different ways. You can say it in all kinds of different ways. And then they finally go, aha, I got it. That really spoke to me the way you said it. I try and hit people with different versions of this. You know, one of the things I like to say to people is
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Life is like Tetris. You got to get the order right in order to get the high score of net fulfillment. Let's say you're in heaven.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
In the book, I talk about this thing about time buckets, basically that you take your life in segments, any kind of segment you want, 20 to 25, 35 to 40, 50 to 60. You think about leisure, job, career, what experience you want to have in each of those periods. And as you're doing that, you realize that
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
wait a minute, the going to the clubs and strip clubs and hanging out probably should be before I get married, not after. The reading books to my kids when they're children, this must be in this bucket.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Exactly. Or even when they're 13, 14, they don't even want to know you. That's one of the errors I made. You always do it wrong as a parent. You don't want to spend too much time with them, et cetera. It's like, wait a minute, maybe I should have been doing this activity instead of that activity. kind of the die with zero thinking, right? Optimize your life.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You know, the thought experiment, I says, listen, you're up in heaven. You have the bucket of experiences. These are all the choices you can have. And God says, take as much as you want. You're throwing it in. You're like, I want to have sex 30,000 times. And I want to climb Kilimanjaro. And I want to play hockey. I want to be in a high school team.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And I want to do, you know, and you're just throwing them in everything. I want to meditate and yoga, right? And then God goes, great. I'm going to let you have all those experiences. But there's one trick. You got to get the order right. And what's it saying is, is if you don't get the order right, like if you save certain experiences to the 80 to 86 bucket, you don't get it.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Yeah, if you're like nightclub and road trips with your buddies before you're married and you have two kids or whatever, you don't get that. If you don't go backpacking with your friend and youth hostels, et cetera, when you're 21, when you get the shot, you don't get that experience. Or it's a bastardized, not as fulfilling experience. So you don't get the net fulfillment points.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And so it's kind of tied with zero. What do you want out of your life? Get off autopilot. What do you want out of life? What resources do you have? And how do we optimize? How do we get the most out of it?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Yeah. The majority of my wealth came from predicting the future. And that's generally the future of natural gas prices.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
The best traders I've seen have been pretty stoic about things. They think very robotically about expected outcome and they don't seem to be disturbed about negative outcomes as much as the average person.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
If you place a bet and the payout is one in four, But the odds are 50-50. Half the time, you're going to get four times your money. And half the time, you're just going to lose one times your money. So that's positive expected outcome, right? You're going to make money. This is a great trade. But remember, 75% of the time, you're going to lose in this scenario. No, the payout.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Half the time, you're going to lose. Half the time, you're going to lose. The payout's one in four. So half the time, you're pissed. you're upset and a lot of people can't deal with that. They need four or five or seven positive events emotionally psychologically forever every negative event. In trading, that just doesn't exist.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
If they're right 55%, 60% of the time, they're right. Think about the casino's edge in blackjack. It could be 51. Yeah, 0.07 or 0.09 in blackjack. In craps, it's like 0.03. They're wrong a lot of the time. But ultimately, the law of large numbers, they make a bunch of money. But if your emotional calculus is different,
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
such that you need a greater being right ratio, then you're not going to make it because stress clouds your thinking and your judgment.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Well, the first thing I do is just try and break down like what are they actually afraid of? A lot of times when people say the bad thing is not as bad as they imagine it in their head. And a lot of times, quite frankly, it's really the fear of judgment. more than the actual thing. They find out that they can survive the potential negative financial hit.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
What they can't survive is, oh, my friends, my colleagues, my spouse, my mom, my dad, the shame, I got it wrong, the I told you so's, etc. There's a lot of that fear baked into, disguised as, I can't risk these dollars. I'm like, yeah, you can. That type of thing. Then the other thing is I'm trying to think is, Get them to focus. They always focus on the monetary costs of losing.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
But what about the cost of inaction and the opportunity costs? And by talking about the opportunity costs, I get them to see the asymmetry of the risk. Maybe I have a greater tolerance for risk, but what I do is that I fear, you know, my fear is reversed. I fear missing out on the opportunity costs. I fear not getting the max. A lot of people fear running out of money. I fear wasting my life.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I am more worried about looking back and being like, shit, I wasted my only ride that I had than running out of money.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
If I really love cigarettes, like love them, I'd smoke cigarettes. You know what I mean? If I really love skydiving all the time, I went twice, but it was diminishing returns. I go skydiving. It's what fulfills you. And so I'm a risk reward guy. Is the reward commensurate with the risk? Some people like to ride motorcycles. For me, it's not worth the risk.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Like I have a physical risk tolerance around one in 10,000. If it's more dangerous than one in 10,000, the reward really has to be worth it for me to do it. And so that's the way I think. That helps me in this kind of like counterfactual regret minimization algorithm. So the algorithm of the book, the mental models in the book are right.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You know, when a chess computer plays you, it has a regret minimization algorithm. And what it wants to do is a solving to win. AlphaGo is solving to win the game. In the game of life, what I'm solving for, the regret minimization I'm solving for is net fulfillment. I want the highest score in net fulfillment. I don't want the highest money. I don't even want the highest health.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I'm like, I don't want to run three hours a day to be in the top 0.5%. Top 3% is great enough. I'll give up the tail end of my life. You know what I mean? And time, like how to optimize my time. Everything for me is like what I'm solving for in life, what this book is solving for for you is net fulfillment. It is relentless about net fulfillment.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
If that entails for you, your makeup, like taking those risks, going hella skiing, skydiving, riding motorcycles, then so be it. As long as you're off autopilot and you've thought it through, then that's fine.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I think they had the ability earlier in life and then they get habituated out of it. So we all go into autopilot. We have this default mode network. It helps us survive. It helps us drive without thinking, Oh, I got to turn. You know, when you first line up drive, like it's everything's happening fast. You have to deliberately think about everything you're doing.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Yeah, except I don't want people to be impressed of us as an engineer. We had a saying on the football team, Ds get degrees. Until later, I found out, wait, you can't graduate with a D in engineering. You have to at least get a C. So I barely graduated. I was a super slacker. So I don't want to be like, I'm an engineer, you know? What position did you play? The bench.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And then all of a sudden it goes in default mode network and it's easy. It happens with work. And you're like, I need to work to survive and I need to do this. And you're panicking, whatever. And the next thing you're in the groove and you're just constantly working somewhere along the way with the abstraction of going to work to make money, to survive and get the things we want.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
We forget about the things we want. We just go to work to work to just make more money, to go to work to make more money. And the things we want either get pushed for our head or forgotten about because we're on autopilot. It was a good thing because it makes us good at our jobs. It's like, I can do this job with my eyes closed. I can do this and I'm getting promoted and getting rewarded.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And there are certain things about the jobs that you like, but you're forgetting why you did this thing in the first place. People aren't like, I really wanted to be a plastic salesperson. I really love selling plastics, more and more plastics. and piling up numbers in a bank account.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Those numbers in a bank account were really meant for, I want to hang out with my buddies and I want to go skiing and I want to get married and I want to donate to this charity and I want to do X, Y, and Z, right? But we kind of forget that. And since we forgot about it, we're not even thinking about when the best time it is to happen.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It's just completely like, oh, I'll eventually do it or when I get more. So we're completely out of touch of what we want, what's enough, the concept of enough, what that means for us, and the concept of when.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I've had this, you know, amongst my friends, you know, it's one of the things like people ask the question, why do people do this? And I've had direct conversations with my friends and with a friend, I'm very aggressive with them, attacking their walls they put up. And what I tell them is, is that You have made your work your God. It's who you meet people. You eat around where work is.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You've given up learning how to socialize and meet your neighbors, all the people you know or some kind of work or work related. You haven't exercised those muscles for years, 10, 20, 30 years sometimes that people have Their whole life revolves around work and all the other muscles, I'm using muscles as an example, have atropied. How do you socialize without a job?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
How do you meet people without a job? Where do I go eat without my job? Like I eat obviously somewhere within five miles of this place and people recommend all the things that get recommended, the camaraderie, everything that when people list what they like about work, that used to happen without work. And they've atrophied those muscles.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I played the bench, but I was a defensive back, cornerback at the University of Iowa. But did it pay for school? No, I was actually a walk-on. I was trying to get a scholarship. I had a partial scholarship, which means they just give you some food. I basically broke my leg at the growth plate. was pretty much has been before I ever was.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So when you take that away, they're like, they don't know what to do. They don't know what they want. And their dreams have left them. The ski trip, they haven't thought about that or hang out with their buddies or whatever. All that stuff has left them and they haven't worked those muscles out. And I say, listen, just let's start working on those muscles and building them up.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And you'll have plenty to do. You have plenty to do. You've let autopilot and habit put you in poor health. in these other activities. You're in poor health on how to meet people and socialize outside of work. You're in poor health on where to go eat lunch, except for the places near work or wherever you go. You're in poor health on trips that are not business trips.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You're in poor health about thinking about what fulfill you and discovery, just plain old discovery. Because you don't know what you want, you discover what you want. Nobody comes out of the womb like, I don't like onions and I love chocolate and I want to go to Japan and I love F1. You get exposed to it and you discover what you want. So a lot of life is discovery.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
But these people are at a discovery. They're in the familiar, habituated routine. They are a rat in a wheel that doesn't even need cheese anymore. It just runs in the wheel.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I really push back hard on my friends on this. And like, I can't know, only they can know. The heroin addict is happy. I'm happy on heroin. You have a problem with my heroin. I don't have a problem, right? And that's kind of the argument I push towards them. And I say, listen, really think about what in your job fulfills you. And is that outside in the world and the purpose in that?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
But when you love football, you love the sport, you never want to let go, right? You're not like, oh, I'll just dive into my studies and pick up this hobby. You're kind of like football is life at that age.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And do you have balance? Are you balanced according to what you want in life, in this time period in your life, in the future time period in your life? Now, I can't tell somebody what their balance is, right? That's a very personal thing. But what I really want them to do is be honest, off autopilot, really unplug for a moment and think about it. Okay, I got one life and I have...
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Only this period once, right? I only get to be 50, between 50 and 55. I only get this level of health at this time. Are these the experiences? Is this really how I want to allocate my time at this period? Is this really the maximum? Is this the optimal thing for me to do?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And if they do that and they come up with the same answer, like, hey, no, I want to work at the Wager Factory or I want to work at this fulfilling. I can't argue that. Who am I to tell you how to live your life?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
What I'm here to tell you is how to optimize your life, what thought process and what steps you should go through, things you should be considering in order to get the most fulfillment out of your life. And then if you come to the conclusion that, hey, I'm at the perfect balance of work, right?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And the money's piling up, but I'm going to use it later and I'm going to go on a senior's cruise and that's what it's for, then that's your life. But maybe you might go, you know what? I can dial it back and my daughters are only going to be or my kids are only going to be this age at this time.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Maybe I should take a family trip and unplug and go on safari with them and enjoy my success because that's going to give me a lifetime of memory dividends and discussion points and connections, et cetera. Maybe I'd rather have that time with them now and not have them – And a hospital with me when I'm old and stinking can barely, you know, and seeing me this way.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I want the memories and the time they spend with me doing this and not at the tail end of life. Who knows? I just want people thinking about it. And if you just get off autopilot just a bit and you start thinking about it, you're already optimizing your life. You're already going to have a more fulfilling life.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
till 11, I would- See, I needed a little bit of you and you needed a little bit of me.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Not first in my class, the understatement of the year. I was kind of like...
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
This reminds me of, you know, the college paper had this, my senior year, I opened it up and it had the 50 things you need to do before you graduate. And I just had the biggest regret when I read that list.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
lost didn't know what i was going to do really was pretty much a slacker underachiever at the time and my godfather calls me with one of those like what are you going to do with your life at the point and i knew i didn't want to go into engineering it was kind of this cookie cutter life you know you don't really having kind of entrepreneurial spirit in it you work on like a subsection of a chip here's your career path etc is all kind of laid out for you and that was unattractive to me it kind of seemed like death to me and at the time i saw this movie wall street
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I was just about on my way out. I was like, never going to be able to do this. I'm not going to do this. And some of them were simple, like write an angry letter to newspaper, you know, go skinny dipping at Lake, whatever.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
actually did that after i read that there were a lot of things do this college prank do whatever like things that would be fun didn't necessarily cost you money or whatever but like things to do to have a college experience not necessarily do them all and i was like maybe i did three or four and i was like why was i so on autopilot in my way and think about okay you got four years here good good grades good study but like you want to get this out of it you want to do this out of it you want to have this college experience etc we just kind of like
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
don't really think about things going autopilot so much that we don't think about periods in our life even this year what experiences do i want to have this year with this person, with myself, with my spirituality, with my health, with my travel, my leisure, my job? How am I going to optimize? And how does that fit into the Tetris game of my entire life? Am I doing it right?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Maybe this experience that I'm saying goes here actually goes further out in my life. When I was trying to get the book published, one of the publishers said, I do exactly what you're talking about in the book. I really like hiking. She explained she had an injury. And she likes running, but now she does like hiking. And she really likes concert and music.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And she goes on a vacation with a friend every year. They pick what they're going to go do. And there's this very expensive opera that she wants to go see and et cetera. And she said, what I and our friend decided is that the hiking trips and this mountain, et cetera, we're going to pull these forward.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And the sitting in operas and these type of trips, the sitting in trips, we're going to push forward.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Push into the future. Yeah. So Max and I, it was like, if they get that order wrong, they go all the opera and then they turn around like, holy shit, I can't hike this mountain. And so this fits in every aspect of your life. College, first job, pre-married, married, before kids, kids that are toddlers, not toddlers, that type of thinking is really helpful. And you've been lucky.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Experience has taught you about the seasons with your kids. And I learned the hard way too. I was like, you know, people tell you like, oh, your kids don't want to be with you when you're 13. And you're like, you kind of forget when you were 13. You forget like, oh yeah, I didn't want to be around my parents. And then it really hits you when they're just like,
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Nobody hangs out with their dad that much. Come on.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It's one of those secret millionaire stories. They're all out there. There's a secretary, and then when she died, she had $10 million of Tootsie Roll stock or whatever. And so this woman worked at a law firm, saved her money, lived, by all accounts, a very frugal life. And then when she died, she gave a multimillion dollar gift to education, charitable education.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Everybody was like, that's so charitable and that's such a great thing. And I had a different perspective. My perspective was when you're dead, the money isn't yours. And also that the target for her bequeath after her death
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
would have been much better off receiving the money much earlier, a lower sum much earlier, and that the return on her charitable investment would be greater than any of her investment returns. And so I can't really get into her head to determine if it's charitable. I'm knowingly thinking I'm doing the right thing.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I'm going to save all this money and it's going to grow to a bigger pile and I'm going to give it to a charity. But to me, it appears to be a tip on the way out. The money's got to go somewhere. It was going to go either to the IRS who redistribute the money the way they see fit, usually into wars and stuff, but- I won't go into that subject or hairs or et cetera, but it's going somewhere.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It's not yours. It's gone. So the fact that it just wound up into this educational charity, I didn't see it as charitable as much and as impactful as just giving the money earlier. Life is urgent. Life is now. And I argue that the return on investment in your charitable endeavors is greater than any return in the market you can get.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Right. It's great. John's great. And we've had a lot of conversations about this, about making sure the money actually gets distributed, gets into the purpose, helping causes. But John decided that I've been solving the problem of natural gas long enough. I have more money than I'll ever spend or need, and I really want to dedicate my neurons to solving other problems.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And I was like, oh, that's what I want. I want to be rich. I want to go work in stocks. So when my godfather called me, I go, I want to be a stockbroker or a stock trader. And he goes, I don't know anything about equities, but there's this firm in commodities. Mind you, I didn't know what a commodity was. That's looking for screen clerks. Go check it out.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So he takes an analytical approach, a database-driven approach to solving some of society's ills and solving some problems and trying to get ahead of some of these intractable problems. Which is awesome. And the fact that he's doing so young, I even argue with John, like he did it too late. He's still late. You know what I mean? Because he was on autopilot too, in my opinion, trading.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
What are you working for? I have this conversation with John. He's like, what's the money for? What can't you buy? And to a certain extent, the money became a detriment based on your value system, right?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
If you're like, hey, and I mentioned this book, yeah, I can have Maroon 5 play in my backyard every day, et cetera, but you don't want to ruin your kids by spending the money and consuming it that way. And I'm using the Maroon 5 as an exaggerated example, but there's all kinds of consumption
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
that you don't want to have because you don't want your kids to have that, then the money became a negative. You really work too long for, because you're working for money that you cannot spend, you cannot consume. And you could start giving it away and having an impact on the other things you want to do now.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
What they're doing is effectively giving away. They want to solve problems, database the decisions.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
They're immediately jumping into the problem and let the experiments run the course and they have the time to do it. They're doing it. I can't say enough about the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, about the way they're going in and helping people and solving problems.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
The same laws of physics that govern my body and the utility of money over time for me applies to my kids. Maybe they have a little bit longer lifespan or health span.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Relatives or anybody, anybody. The utility of money to them follows a curve, depending on how healthy they are, et cetera. You can just kind of draw it, right? Like you know better than I. Muscle decay rates for people in shape, not in shape, working out, et cetera. So this curve applies to them.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And so I got an introduction, came up with my resume. This is what you're like, late 80s, early 90s? Like 91. And- Takes my resume, tears it up, walks me around the floor. People yelling and screaming and, you know, they're kind of casual wear and it's like trading places. And I was like, all this energy. And I'm like, wow.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So a lot of people are like, oh, when I die, I'm going to give – I used to have people in my will that are like close to my age. I'm going to give money to them when I die. And I'm like, wait a minute. I'm going to give my money to a 72-year-old. Wouldn't it be better if I gave them less money now? Let them spend it and apply it because the utility of money for them is drastic.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
The day before you die, I cannot pay you anything. I cannot get you to delay gratification. That's what savings is, right? You're delaying gratification. And so there is no gratification the next day. If you Take it from the day before you die, two days before you die to right now, right? There's this curve, this compensation you need for delayed gratification.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
where they'll have the most utility of that money. And so when you're off autopilot and think, yeah, that's what everybody does. They write down a will and when they die, et cetera. Now the will has a purpose. If you die early, you got to distribute the money. But really before you die, if you'd live a normal life, there should be nothing left to give. You should have already given it away.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I've had that. I had a good year and there was people that I would give money to if I had a good year or I'm not going to wait until I'm dead or there are people in my will. And I just went down a list and the maximum tax-free gift you can give per year per person is $15,000. And I had, I think, a 30 to 50 person list of $15,000 to give to people. And this was me reading my own book.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
A lot of people are like, why did you write the book? Well, I wrote it to save my own life. I didn't want to waste my life. I wanted to get the most net fulfillment. And after I wrote the book, mainly I talk about children. But then I thought about, that applies to everybody. If I'm going to do something nice and give something or leave something to somebody, it's now.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
When you're really giving somebody money, right? You're giving them life energy. You're giving them the ability to make choices. you're giving them fulfillment. So waiting till they're 96 on the deathbed, they can't really convert that into fulfillment. You really didn't give them what you wanted to give them.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So when you look at their curve of their life, oh wow, here's the maximum insertion point. And as a matter of fact, wow, $5,000 right now at let's say 33, is like 150,086. It's actually more impactful. There's more going on in life, more choices, things going on.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
The cumulative effect, the fact that when they have that experience, not only do they enjoy that experience at that point, whatever that experience is, They get dividends from that experience. They talk about with their friends. They become more interesting. They recall that and they get enjoyment out of it. It's like, oh, remember that ski trip we went on? We had a great time with the kids.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Yeah, that was great. They get fulfilled from that. So they get memory dividends associated from that experience. Whereas if you give it to a 96, they do it once, they consume it, if they can even do it, and then they die.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
if that guy can be rich, so can I. And so they didn't want to hire me, actually. They were looking to give the job to someone else, another friend of the firm. So I kind of hung out downstairs, waiting every day, calling, can I come up? Can I become a peon here? Can I become a peon? And finally, after three days, they let me become a peon. So what did that job entail?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
The main thing is it's very individual. It's like, what do you want? If you're sitting there like, I just like working and going in and that's all I do. Okay. So I'll be the guy.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
What I do is I was like, okay, what's reality and what's fear, fear-based thinking? So we try and get on that. And one of the things I'd look for is why don't you go traveling with the kids? Well, it's a pain in the ass, whatever.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So what I say is when you die, will you have $30,000? Are you on track to die with $30,000, $50,000? I hope so. Okay. So then would you rather consume that $30,000 now and have this experience with your kids, et cetera, or would you rather have $30,000 left over when you die?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
What if I'm wrong? Then we can sit down and go down the hard numbers. It's like, do you have insurance if you lose your job? What is safe? What do you envision yourself doing in retirement that you can't afford? What bad thing that will happen that we can't buy an insurance policy for? Is it long-term care insurance? If you get that while you're young, it's actually pretty cheap. It's very cheap.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I look at what risks they're having and I look at ways to mitigate them. So a lot of people who are conservative, like, oh, I'm worried about something happening. I'm like, what's the something happening that you're worried about?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It's checking trades and sneaking sandwiches on the floor for traders. It's literally the worst version of the mailroom. But The system in the old days where guys would yell and scream across a pit and write their trades on a pick card and also in their trade book. They'd throw the pick cards into the center. There's a guy with glasses and a giant net. And all these cards would go to him.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
What if this happened? What if I get sick? What if or whatever? We go over like medical insurance. Basically, what happens is people try to act as their own insurance agent. with a client of one.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So they have a client of one. They really don't understand the odds of the bad things happening. And so what they tend to do is put it in this big giant fear bucket of insurance premium, and they just work and save and save and save to think that they have the notional to cover all these bad things happening. And a lot of times I'll point out two things.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I go, one, some of these bad things that you're saving for, you'll never get the notional. Maybe you will or whatever, but most of the people I talk to, do you know it was $25,000 a night for my dad in the hospital? Insurance didn't cover that. It's gone though. It doesn't matter. You know what I mean? He's only got X days. You're not saving.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Some of these things are like, you shouldn't be the insurer. If you're actually afraid of that and that's important to you, you need to buy the insurance policy where they have the lower large numbers and their edge is 6% or 8%. you are gonna be woefully inefficient. And on top of that, you don't even know the odds. Like some of these things are robot alien space insurance.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Wait, you're worried about this? I also like to do a comparison. Okay, here's the risk of this scenario happening and this bad thing happening and it's bad, we'll accept it. And here's the risk of you not doing the thing that you want to do now. Here's the risk of you not doing the trip.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
What does that look like on your deathbed when you know you couldn't have gone on a safari and had this wonderful time with your kids and connected with them and something to talk about forever and expanded your worldview? Was it worth the $30,000? Was it worth the insurance policy that you're trying to... Was it worth you trying to play insurance agent?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And so a lot of these are thematic conversations. They're not like hard number conversations. But you have a model. Yeah, we have a model. But the problem with the model is it's an abstraction. The variables we're talking about are infinite. Yep. And we have to abstract and abstract and abstract. So what the model does, it really tells you the direction...
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And it's very good on the direction, but the magnitude, it may be off. And so for you as a person, it's like, what's your survival number? We have that model. Really think about, okay, just survival. Not, I'm hanging out. Yeah, not thriving, but surviving. What do you need? Then after that, it's all your choices.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And depending on who you are, because there's infinite choices and what those choices will cost and the experiences you want to have in your life, plus the discovery, the 20 to 30% discovery, right? Maybe all your experience is going to 50 bucket. You didn't realize it. And you're actually inadvertently pushing them in the 70 bucket and you're not going to have them.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And so that's kind of what I try and get people to do is like, are you going to have $30,000 trips in your lifetime? And they'll go, yes. When is the optimal time for you to have $30,000 trips? and with whom. If you're never going to have a $30,000 trip, I'm like, okay, let's think of a different type of activity that will get you the same fulfillment or close to it that's not a $30,000 trip.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
They would cash them, put them down the chute, and they would be entered into a computer system. My job was to check the trader's log versus the computer's log. And your name becomes your trader. So if your trader was YNOT or S&M, that was your name. So clerks are running around the floor going, why not? S&M, why not? And then if you're YNOT, you're like, why not here? Ever here?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You're in that thing, well, I'm saving because of just in case. It should be like, guy, you're not the best insurance agent. You're actually the worst insurance agent. You don't know the odds. You can never have the notional and the edge, the premium that you're extracting from yourself. And that edge is your own life. You have to give up hours of your life to have this insurance premium.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
is way, way more than just paying the insurance company. People worry about running out of money. I'm like, get an annuity. You're worried about long-term health and what if I'm sick and I can't move and I need nurses? Get long-term care insurance. It's really cheap when you start early. It's surprisingly cheap. What about this?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
There's an insurance product for a lot of things people are like, quote unquote, saving or worried for, et cetera. Let's mitigate the risk with the professionals. Let's get you living your life.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Oh, right now.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
They got to habituate. Like you take a rat, you get them to run the wheel, you give them the cheese, you give them the running wheel, they do the cheese, and pretty soon you don't even have to give them the cheese. They see the wheel, they just start running. The reward is no longer the goal. It's just to do the thing.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
That is the hardest one to break because they've been brainwashed into thinking that this is what I want to do. And it's one of the hardest things to extract somebody from. And so I have to explain to them, where do you socialize? You know, we just go through it. Where do you eat? Where do you eat lunch? Well, I like the people at work. I like hanging out. I don't want to quit work.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I like hanging out with the people. I'm like, you can quit work and take the people on a trip with you. You can vacation with them. You can still visit them at night and play bingo games. The people don't go away just because you don't show up at work. You can still spend time and you can actually spend more quality time with the people at work if you exercise that muscle.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
But they don't know how to invite people over their house or, hey, we're going to go see the Chris Rock show tonight, which I'm going to go do.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
No, here in Austin tonight. I didn't even know. See, there you go. A new experience you might have. But anyway, they don't know how to do that. It's a very long conversation. You can do this. You can do that. Everything that you're getting out of work, that social benefit, all these little excuses, the mental stimulation.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I'm like, John was like, these real life problems are more mentally stimulating than the natural gas puzzle. I still like the natural gas puzzle, but these are more mentally stimulating, more purposeful, more fulfilling to me.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And so I have to break down brick by brick and show them how they got habituated and how they haven't exercised these other muscles and how they can replace it and realize work is not the unique thing to get the things you're getting out of work. It's actually a bastardization of it. It's minimizing those experience.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You're not actually getting the most quality time with your coworkers in the working environment. You're actually not getting the most mental exercise. That's not necessarily the best mental exercise for you in the work environment. It's just you know nothing else because you've been stuck in this lab running on this type of wheel.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It's really hard because people will be extremely, extremely resistant. Change is painful. You get somebody who hasn't worked out forever and you're like, hey, let's go in the gym. We're going to work out. It's like, oh, God, why am I here? I don't like this. You know what I mean? Just to develop the muscle to do the thing, to play the tennis, the filming thing, it's a process.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I know selling five lots at $54.80, not three lots at $54.80. What do you know? And if you know the same trade, then it's a simple process to correct it in the system. And if you don't, you're like, no, no, I definitely know only three lots. Then you go to the traders immediately and they kind of reconcile it. And that was a system like running around all day checking trades.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You have to show them the reward that life is rich. It's fat. It's wonderful.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
One of the things I took away from the habit books, like Tiny Habits by B.J. Fogg is a great book, is that they're powerful. They're extremely powerful. And so we get habituated in many different ways for good or bad. If you have the snacks in your house and you eat 200 calories a day, in two years, you're like 40 pounds heavier, right? 200 extra calories. How did that happen? How did I forget?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
How did my life pass me by? How did I not go on these trips? How did I not have these experiences? How did I not call my mother? How did I not say I love you to these people, even pick up the phone? Because my habits took over. They took over towards this purpose and it just absorbed my life. And so... Outside the book with my friends, I really talk about the good of habits.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You can form good habits that keep you healthy, but some of the habits, the consequences of some of our habits to be successful and how it takes away from other things. Has that been a struggle for you? Oh, yes. I wrote that book for me. You know, the first life I wanted to save was my own. Put your life mask on first. I am just as guilty as the next person as being on autopilot.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I constantly have to remind myself that I'm going to die, that life isn't forever. This period ends. These seasons with my daughters and these seasons with my startups and all these things. And I have to think about like, what do I want? How do I balance them? What's optimized? And I don't get it exactly right. But I do it better than if I was just completely on autopilot.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And then sometimes I was like, oh shit, I was on autopilot. Why didn't I think about this?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
The first macro thing is the death clock. Right now I have this calendar up and it's 4,000 weeks and you mark off each week. And it's a very visceral representation about life is finite. Not only will you die somewhere around here, but this period is going to end. A lot of times when people go on vacation, knowing that the vacation ends on Friday snaps you up.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You're like, oh shit, I'm going to go here and do this and I'm going to stay out. And we only have a couple of days, so let's do the cafe and let's do X, Y, and Z. And you actually get more out of the trip knowing it's going to end as opposed to living obliviously. And all of a sudden, time to go. Wait, it's time to go.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I forgot to do this or go see the Eiffel Tower or go whatever it is on your trip. And so same thing with life. When you know life is going to end, it becomes more urgent. Even the segment in your life, when you know your early 50s are going to end, you're like, it becomes more urgent. You become more deliberate. You get off autopilot. So that's the first layer.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Each week I check off. Now I've been to Austin and traveling, but when I come back, I see it in my closet. So I walk by it every day. It's a constant reminder. Where'd you get this calendar, by the way? Online. There was like some sort of stoic reflections out there, a memento mori, remember death. I used to have it on my phone and you used to count down backwards. to my estimated death date.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
That app no longer works, but seeing it every time is great. If I get another widget that counts down, I'll have both of them, right? And I used to do it for other things like till Christmas, till your daughter's 14, till the job, the 15-year anniversary. Well, my daughter's going to be 16. She's going to be driving. How am I going to pry experiences out of my daughter?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Because your daughters don't want to know you before she's really gone. She gets a car and she's, see ya, deuces, you know, that type of thing. So that really helps me. It gives me kind of an alarm that wakes me up out of autopilot. And that's the thing I personally use.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Yeah. So back when the World Trade Center was there, this was in for World Trade Center.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
One of the things I wanted to do, and I wish I knew you back then because you could have helped me, is I was like, I want to know about all these frailty curves, like bone density, lung capacity, what activities... become less enjoyable first and then unable to do because that determines a lot of when your network should peak. I estimated it somewhere You're in your 50s. Wow.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And the data kind of shows that. When I went to St. Petersburg and climbed the 200 and I think it was 11 steps to walk around the Bannister, all these tour buses coming to St. Petersburg, Asian, whatever. Not one person over those tour buses that was elderly climbed the 211 steps. So St. Petersburg was a different St. Petersburg for them. They didn't have the same experience. I got more out of St.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Petersburg for them. Now, I'm not saying it wasn't a wonderful trip and a nice trip for them. But they probably pushed St. Petersburg too late in life. And so there's so much hidden data and data out there and reports if you read it. We talked about it earlier, like trying to get people to spend their money down.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And one of the things, answers I give, they say, well, why do you think people are still, their net worth is still going up into 72%? And part of it is asset appreciation and going faster than they can spend it. But the real answer is they can't. They cannot spend it down. Life has passed them by. They no longer have the attitude or aptitude to do this. They can't do it.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You'd be surprised how many people die on those cruise ships trying to swim when they get to St. Thomas. They think their life's going to be like a carnival commercial. And I'm like, that carnival commercial will kill most Americans. They're having heart attacks going down those slides.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Yeah. That's when I decided to turn it on. I always tell people like, hey, I was pretty much a, can I say fuck up? I was pretty much the fuck up of fuck ups for giving what I had before college. But then I decided to turn it on. That poverty, that being a peon and that desire to make it forced me to be like, I'm going to learn every single thing there is about this business.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So particularly for Americans, my book is most successful in Japan, which is strange.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I think one, I believe you'll get value out of this book in the way of thinking, even if you have zero wealth. But Japan has a savings problem. Japan saves, saves, saves, then they die and they give the money to the next generation, then they save, save, save. And I'm just like, well, what generation actually has fun? So I'm really counter to the culture there.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Here, one of the criticisms of the book will be like, well, there's so many people that have zero and trying to make ends meet. I'm like, I get it. They can still get value out of this about getting the Tetris of their life, but maybe a wealth building book or how to make dollars book might be more useful to them at this time in their life. In Japan, it's the opposite.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And also Japanese, they're healthier.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Yes. If you walk around Japan, old people... It's an older country, but they're around, they're moving, they're doing things or having activities, etc. They're enjoying their life. For Americans, looking at the obesity epidemic and the lifestyle of Americans, their ability to consume experiences deteriorates way, way faster and way earlier than, say, the Japanese.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
By nature of the business, even the smallest position can take you out of the game. It's really about taking prudent risk reward and then stopping out when you can. Life is risk. You can get hit by a bus. A meteor can hit you. You can get some sort of crazy infectious disease. You can get a bum deal just going out. But you're not going to live in a bubble. You're going to take calculated risk.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So in trading, we're optimizing for profit. You're going to take risks that in a tail scenario can blow you out. The key is taking prudent risk reward decisions. I don't smoke. The reward's not great enough. I did go skydiving. The first time, the reward was great. The second time, it was half as great. I didn't do it the third time because the risk was the same and the reward wasn't.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
The reward was going down and the risk was still the same. And so this is the same thing in training. We look at everything on a risk-reward basis, the likelihood of dying. If things go awry, can we get out? Have I sized my position? Can I get out? Is the liquidity there? And all these things are going on all the time.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I'll give you a great example of physical risk. Okay. So I have a cartilage disappearing in L3, L4. Bones are hitting each other. So I'm advised against doing impact things. And I was 50 years old in the islands and guys were going to go wakeboarding. I was like, I don't want to go. I don't want to go. I'm going to hang out on the beach. I'm going to loaf. And I thought about it for a second.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I said, I don't have many wakeboarding times left. Like I'm not going wakeboarding at 60. I have this degenerative back thing. It's going to be more dangerous for me, et cetera. If I am to wakeboard.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It is now. It is in this time period. And then I thought, okay, it's in this time period. I'm like, okay, how many times am I going to be in warm water with my buddies where there's a wakeboarding boat ready to go in the next two years? I don't know. This is it. I don't foresee it happening.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I could make a special effort for it, but it's just there in my lap and I don't have something else to do, etc. And I was like, I'm going to go wakeboarding. This is probably the last time I'm going to go wakeboarding. That was the last time I went wakeboarding.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It didn't hurt. I actually jumped the wake too. I made a nice jump at a wake. I said, I'm going to send it. I sent it. It didn't hurt that much. It wasn't like that. But afterwards, there was a little tension in my back, etc., And, you know, stretching and trying to, I was very conscious, like, okay, I got to be careful coming across it. And now I wake surf.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I was reading books at night about trading. about the oil business, about options, about whatever. I was a sponge. And I really turned it on and said, I'm going to be diligent. I'm not going to mess around as much as I possibly can as a 20-year-old, right? And really, really trying to make myself invaluable no matter where I was. So where were you living at the time? What part of the city?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I do the low impact version of the sport, which I absolutely love until, you know, there's some technique to like put cartilage in my back and restrengthen my back. I'm waiting for the technology to catch up. So maybe I'll get my back back. But right now. It's the last time I went wakeboarding. That was the risk was worth the reward. There was no other time.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Now, as I get older, wakeboarding is much more dangerous. And so I've gone to a sport where the speed of the sport, a lot of people think if you're going 10 miles per hour versus 12 miles per hour, it's only two miles per hour difference, but it's a 44% difference in force because force equals MV squared. And so I'm acutely aware of it.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And I'm like, okay, I want to be in something I can get fulfilled where the risk is not as great. I have a 44% reduction in force, which is great, great for me when I fall. So what year was it that you had that incredible birthday? Gosh, I'm pretty sure it's 45, but I've had incredible birthdays since then. But the one in the book is 45.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I had second thoughts, like the events and the things I was planning. Remind me, it was down in the... I went to St. Bart's. I love St. Bart's. It's where I had my honeymoon. It's a great island. I think it's one of the best islands in the Caribbean. Obviously, not everybody can go to St. Boris. And I tell people that become successful, you either get new friends or you scholarship your friends.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Because you want to do experiences. A lot of times, a lot of people want to do shared experiences, right? They want their friends to come. They can't afford to just... pop up and spend thousands of dollars to go to St. Barts or do X, Y, and Z. And it happens in various levels of success, right? Whether it's on a trip to Chicago, like I can't do that. Some people can and can't.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And so as you become successful, one of the experiences you want to have is to be around your friends and have shared experience with your friends. And so I coach people. I say, you have to lose this attachment that they have to pay or they need to pay or whatever. You have to think what's most important to you. Get off autopilot. It's to have shared experiences.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And is it worth it for you to have them around? For me, I've had good friends throughout the years. It's unequivocal, yes. Friends and family. But it gets expensive. You got to run out the hotel rooms, et cetera, and entertainment and plan this thing. But I was like, some of these people, they have their own lives and own complications and conflicts. You won't get the time to do with it.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Some of these people won't be alive. May or may not be alive. You may drift apart.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
this is the time i want to do this and so as i was adding these people in and having my mother down and and all this stuff i had just like a heavenly experience walking on the beach my mom's coming out of her beach house my friends are hanging on the balcony looking down it's beautiful the birds are out etc and hi all the people i love and we're going to do this fun activity we're going to listen to music etc
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
know i imagine that that's what heavens is like you're just having this experience and what i did was i i realized that that's what i was working for i was working to create these experiences these are the things that fulfill me when i was planning it oh there's a lot of guys You know what I mean? Like, what am I going to do? Am I doing the right allocation, right?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Like, you never know if you get it exactly right, right? Nobody gets it perfectly balanced. But this is the right direction.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Did you actually live in Manhattan? When I first got there, I had to live at home with my mom, which was completely cramping my style. And so I started driving a limo at night, the company limo at night to make ends meet. What were you getting paid in that first job? Oh, geez. I think it was sub $16,000 a year. I have to go look. Sub 16. Yeah.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It could be just a party. Most of my life is finding excuses to throw parties. Yeah. We get autopilot waiting for certain events like weddings or funerals or- Or special anniversaries. Special anniversaries or things like that. We autopilot like, oh, that's when we get together.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
We allow autopilot to dictate when we do these things instead of thinking, hey, I really want to hang out with so-and-so, so-and-so, and so-and-so. Let me design a trip or let me- Have a bowling alley or something. It could be low cost. Let me have a picnic, wiffle ball game, talking shit. One of the things I want to do, which I guess the startup cost will be something expensive.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I'm getting some laser tag guns and I put it in my group. I have this group called Cool Awesome People. I'll put you in it if you want to be in it. And I'm like, it's on. I'm going to get laser tag, best ass laser tag things. There's going to be some serious war and everybody's like, yes. You know what I mean? Like I'm creating this experience.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Like, yeah, I'm going to kick some ass on laser tag and shit talk, but I'm also going to connect and have a good time with people. And I could do that. Once I put the initial cost, we could do that all the time. We can have a league. We can do all kinds of things. And it doesn't have to be laser tag. It could be wiffle ball at the park.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You can have a wiffle ball league, low cost, dollar store, pick up a wiffle ball bat. You're creating memories and somebody brings sandwiches and you can do that. And that's getting off autopilot. So I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you really hit the nail on the head about that. It's like design your life. Think about what you want out of it and make it happen.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
We took out the Tijuana Hotel and some of the other one, 80, 100, 80, 100 or something.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
We were there for a week. So I got to spend time. Whoever wanted to spend time with me, they got to spend time with me. Some people have this thing. This is just me. I don't know. This isn't like coaching. Some people, I want their presence. but not saying anything. I know you're okay. I get to see you being happy. Maybe I don't talk to you as much, but I get to enjoy you enjoying yourself.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I think it was like 16, 16,000, but I was getting raises very quickly because I made myself valuable and I would work at night. And I would make more money driving the limo on a daily basis because traders would take me here and they'd be drunk and they'd tip you. And you weren't there necessarily for your current income. You were there for your future income.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
That's one of my favorite things at a party. When I throw a party, they're like, are you having a good time? It's crazy, whatever. I'm like, I'm having the best. I'm watching the best fucking movie of my life right now. I am in an immersive theater of people I love doing the thing they want to do. Now I'm kind of antisocial. I don't like to talk that much to people. I get awkward sometimes.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You know what I mean? Sometimes I grab my wife and I'm like, talk for me, talk for me. We'll go to a party and I'll be like, you got to talk for me, babe. I can't take it. I can talk to a million people. No problems. The stadium or whatever. And sometimes I get awkward. But what I really, really do enjoy and what really fulfills me is watching people I love have a good time.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I get that. I walk around and I just really enjoy people meeting and socializing and connecting. At my wedding, there were friends that didn't know each other and they're like, they're great. You know great people. I'm like, of course I do. You find somebody who's great, love, you keep them close by. I don't care if you dated them or whatever. You keep them close, man.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
People that vibe with you is very important to me. And me seeing them succeed, I'm a person that roots for people to hit the long ball. I'm not a hater. I'm a natural like, I hope you crush it. I hope you become a trillionaire. I hope you whatever it is.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And so seeing people at a party, I like that there were parties and make people have fun and create environments for them, loosen up, enjoy each other, have a good time. And then watching that success and watching them interact is enjoyable for me, even though I might be just sitting there smiling, right? Like not really talking.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It depends. It's not always the same because you got to solve problems. Someone can't get in. The ice maker is broken, whatever. There's that type of things. But yeah, I'd rather watch that movie than go to the movies. I'd rather be in that immersive theater than McKittrick Hotel and Sleep No More in New York, which is an immersive theater. That's the best theater. And even so what?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I only got to have a small conversation, whatever. The feedback there was like, I met this person. We had a great time. It was awesome. Very fulfilling to me. Very fulfilling to me.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
2019.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And so I had another clerk named Jason Ruffo who had a studio in the Upper West Side. And what he did was he put up a wall by the room in the studio. And I eventually got an apartment with him on the Upper West Side, living in like a pizza oven type space. But it was great because I was in New York City, out of my mom's house. I could have girls over.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You know, it's kind of like when you write a formula and it's not like I came up with this formula, this life cycle hypothesis thing, which is basically the book, this counterfactual regret minimization algorithm, and I'm solving for net fulfillment. It's not as if these ideas weren't out there. Like I always say, like anybody could have just thought about it and wrote this book.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It's how I present it so that it hits the widest audience and so that it hits them viscerally so they actually apply it. And so I think about it deeper and deeper layers of it. And sometimes I go deep into the subcategory because I use these variables, wealth, health, and time. What's the maximum level of health I should be? There's tons of health books out there.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I'm not writing a health book, but I'm like, how can I optimize this? How are these two interplay? The time and health. How much time do I really want to spend on a Peloton? How much time do I really want to like regimented eating all the time and being a pain in the ass? How many chocolate chip cookies do I want to eat before I die and just suffer? I have to think about that.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
If dying one year early means living one more year, but I don't get any chocolate chip cookies, I'll take the chocolate chip cookies. I want a fulfilling life. Thinking deeply about these things. That's kind of a cartoon version of it, but I hear other people think about it. I wrote the basic macro formula, but it's very fulfilling to see other people. They've set up spreadsheets.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
This is the optimal way you would die with zero. They've done it better than me, these financial planners. built these spreadsheets and your returns and these are the things you like to do, et cetera. This is great. They've taken the ball and run with it. And I've taken the ball a little bit and run with it a little bit myself.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And the way I'm applying it mainly is more socially, more of these things like at my wedding, I said to somebody, I said, probably no one in this room will see each other more than 50 times. And most of us will probably only see us 20 times in the times of our lives.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
117.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
117. And so that's kind of hit people. They're like, yeah, you're kind of right. I put the over under at the max at like 50 for any pair that's not married. And probably 20. That made me think, I don't want 20. I'm going to throw parties. I've taken throwing parties and social things very seriously because I thought about what fulfills me.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So the last party I had, which you were invited, but you didn't come.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
You were throwing a party that night at F1. I went all out. This is what I'm going to work for, to have these types of experiences. There's other things, right? But this is in the category, in the top of the category. Socializing, seeing my friends happy, having a good time. et cetera. Travel is a big one. Charity is another big one. My kids' money is their money. It's not my money.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
It's in a trust that's already taken care of. They'll get their money turned over when somewhere between 25, 26, and 33, because that's the optimal time for them when they're mentally mature and at physical maturity, not in decline.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
No, no. I want to give them a roadmap. I want to teach them that it's a tool. A lot of people, one of the biggest mistakes they make is assigning some sort of good or bad to money or what it is, etc., It's not money that's good or bad in the Bible. It's the love of money that is good or bad. I use this analogy. You say like money is a tool, much like a hammer and saw and nails and rail guns.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Do hammers and saws build houses? No. You need to know how to use those tools. People build those houses. So you do. Does money make you happy? No. But if you know how to use the tool of money, It can make you happy or it can make you miserable. So some people, you give hammers and saws, they build a house, they build canoes. This is wonderful things. You're like, how the hell did you build this?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Some people give hammers and saws and they're just sitting there to cut their arm off. And so what I'm trying to do is not tell my kids what they should do, but teach them how to use the tools. Once they know how to use the tools, if they decide to build houses or canoes or cut their arms off, that's up to them.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
But I want to make sure that I gave them the instruction manual and got them a little bit proficient on how to use the tools. And that's it. Then my job is done, right? I have so many friends that try and control people from the grave, that use the money as a control mechanism. I'm very big on like, that's my dream. My dreams are my dreams. My dad always tried to get me to be an attorney.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Get the hell out of here. I'm never doing that. But you try and push your dreams onto your kids. I want you to be a doctor. I want you to be this. I want you to be that, whatever. And that's not necessarily what they want to do. They have their own life and it's their adventure. And what I want to do is set them up with the tools to choose their own adventure.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And that pride that goes, well, I live on the Upper West Side. Everybody wants to say they live in New York City. And so as I was getting raises and kind of moving up, I gradually got into that life of, you know, what I call a buppy, black urban professional, you know, buppies and yuppies. And that was, you know, the beginning of my journey. Tell me, was your dad in the picture at this time?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Now, I might not agree with that adventure. I probably won't because I come from a different era and a different culture and all kinds of things. But I will be rest assured and happy that if they're fulfilled, great.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Thanks. That's great feedback. I mean, you don't write books to get rich. You write books to get your point across. And for me, I see it as saving lives. And a lot of people have said this before. What do you mean saving lives, Perkins? You're fucking crazy. What do you mean saving lives? You're not saving lives.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And I'm like, well, listen, when somebody's drowning in the river or Lake Austin, you pull them out, mouth to mouth, and you save their lives. guess what, they're still gonna fucking die. Just not that day, right? So what did you do when you saved their life by pulling them out of the river? You've given them more choices, more experience, more life. So when you read my book,
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And you get off autopilot and you get more choices, more experience, more life. Isn't it the same? At least in my mind it is. And that's what motivates me. And so when you say it had an impact in you and you're going to have a more fulfilling life, it's like, I fucking did it. You know what I mean? I feel very happy. So I appreciate it.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Thanks for having me. It's been great.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So my dad is now older in poor health in Jersey City. So during this time, he'd had multiple strokes. And my dad is kind of like me. He's fairly stubborn, but he was stubborn to the extreme. Doctor says, don't do this. All the things you would tell him not to do and you need to be doing. He's like, ah, to hell with that. You know what I mean? I guess. And so he's in the picture.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
My parents are divorced. He's in Jersey City. Had your parents gone to college? My dad did. So my dad got a scholarship to the University of Iowa. He was a real badass. He had no intentions of going to school. He walked by a football field when he was a kid in high school. He's like, I want to do that. And coach is like, you don't know anything about football.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And he says, it seems like it's about hitting people. I know how to hit people. So they gave him some raggedy uniforms. He comes out for a practice. And in the next practice, he has a brand new uniform. He's all everything, gets recruited to go to University of Iowa to go to college. And so there he is in college in 1959 at the University of Iowa, all badass from Jersey City.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
So he had gone to college. And then my mom went to college. finished college while I think I was like preteen or late teens. But I had the benefit of two college educated parents.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
They saw it later. I'm the kid that didn't take out the garbage. I always say, don't tell your parents your dreams because they'll just piss on them because they've seen you at your worst, at your failures as you're growing. They have this kind of image of you when you were the caterpillar, not the butterfly.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
This is what I want to do. No. You know, they started seeing it. I remember the time when I finally made, I got a raise and I was like, I did the calculation. I'm just like, holy shit, I make more money than my mom. Like I've made it. It was one of the happiest days of my life. I'm like, I'm real. I'm legit. I'm a puppy. Me with my badge. You know, I used to wear around as a badge of honor.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Like I get onto the New York Mercantile Exchange, etc., But they'd see I'm going out or I'm flying here or I'm doing whatever. And it's like, oh, the kid must be doing okay. It wasn't until I got recruited to go to Houston started buying the assets that adults start buying. And I paid my mom back for something that I did when I was a teenager that she didn't know that they're like, okay.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
What was that? When I was younger, I had a stick Toyota that my mom had. It was her car. I was driving it. And my friend Pete Theibel. It's like, I want to drive the car. I want to teach him how to drive the car. I want to drive the car. I'm not supposed to drive the car. So anyway, long story short, he hits a gas instead of a clutch, spins the car out.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
The back of it spins around, hits a telephone pole. Trump pops up. It has this big, giant dent. I'm like, holy shit. What am I going to do? So I tell my mom the story that we went to go get pizza and parked it and a truck must have hit it on the side or bumped it and went on. And that was my lie to my mom about this car that I felt guilty about.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I said, one day I'm going to pay for this car in spades. That happened to my mom. And so one day I gave my mom $40,000 and I was like, mom, remember that time the car had that brown mark on it? We told you it was a truck. Well, this is what really happened. How did she react to that? She started laughing. She goes, I knew something was strange about that.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
The story fit, but there was something strange about that. She just kind of laughed and was thankful that won. It was a great investment having that car beat up, but she just kind of laughed and we just reminisced about it.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
That he did that was kind of bold. You're talking about when Jason took the trip. So Jason... I don't know if our views were very thought out or just wired in, but I was head down. I got to make it. I got to become a trader. I got to have my head down. I'm saving money.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
I'm really, at this point in my life, super diligent, trying to convince my boss to get on the bus program to save money, writing down every single nickel that I bought, et cetera. I'm really focused on my career trajectory. And Jason is like- Does Jason work at the same firm? He works at another firm. If you look at the old pictures, all the phone booths are right next to each other.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
He's like right next to me, even though he's not at the same firm. We're all crowded into one area. And Jason's like, I'm going to go backpacking for you for a couple months. I'm like, what? How are you going to do that? Well, I'm going to borrow money from this guy who was a loan shark. And I'm like, wait, what? You're going to borrow money from this guy?
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
and you're going to go backpacking in Europe. I'm like, this is insane. This is insanity. My head is about to explode. I'm like, you're going to miss out. And what if they hire another screen clerk and your job's not there when you come back? And how are you going to pay this guy back if you don't pay him back? This is not like, oh, penalties and interest. This is like knees and ankles.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And so I just didn't get it. That experience, I wasn't thinking about like Die With Zero and certain experiences belong in a certain period of your life, et cetera. I was just ultimately on this autopilot of trying to be successful and make money at that time in my life. And Jason was like, I'm going backpacking. So he went, I stayed, he came back, had a screen clerking job.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Different firm or same firm? Same firm. Wasn't that much noticeable different. I moved up a little bit, but it wasn't that noticeable different, but he came back richer and He came back with stories and experiences and romance and lifelong friends. In the beginning, I was kind of, oh, wow, maybe I missed out. Maybe I could have jumped in for a week, that type of thing.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
And as time went on, I really, really regretted not joining him on that trip. When it finally came time where like, I'm going to go Europe. I'm going to have this backpacking experience. I was too bougie. I had money. I wasn't going to go stay at youth hostels. I wasn't going to capture these trains. I was going to have an experience, but a different experience.
The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
The type of experience he had was for that time in your life. And the type of experience, even though it was wonderful, it was not as rich as his experience. because the time had passed me by. It's one of my big, big, big regrets in life.