Bill Perkins
speaker
1,205 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 5 Jun
Bill Perkins’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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...
Showing 1041–1060 of 1,205 · page 53 of 61
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