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David Epstein

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
4261 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

It's like you end up lifting the same weights the same number of times every day, which means you may not get worse, but you're also not going to get better.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

I have that problem in spades.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

I mean, I have a very... A psychologist I was interviewing once told me that I have a... What he called a flat associative hierarchy, which means that I see lots of disparate ideas as kind of connected.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

It's easy for me to connect them.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

And that can be nice because I maybe find things that aren't obvious to other people.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

But it also means that I can be incredibly prone to doing what you're describing, which is going down these rabbit holes of things that I think are interesting.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

And they're really...

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

Not that well connected in a way that will make sense to other people.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

And so I really need structure to kind of prevent myself from writing books that are just all over the place.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I actually don't think it's healthy for, as Jonathan Haidt told me in one of the interviews in the book, it's not healthy for anyone to have everything everywhere all the time.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

Um, and a lot of us, even if we're not rich are kind of in a situation like that in, in the digital world now.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

Um, and so I think when it comes to businesses, there are a bunch of, you know, there are examples in the book where people are just sloppy, like when they, when they have too much, right.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

It leads to sloppiness.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

It leads to not feeling like you need to define these boundaries.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

And I think one of the things, um,

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

This gets at one of the things that I hope, maybe the mindset shift that I hope the book engenders, which is from seeing limits as only bad to seeing them as opportunities to clarify priorities and launch productive exploration.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

And I think when people have too much, like to Bill Gurley's more startups die of indigestion than starvation quote,

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

you're not forced to be resourceful and you're not forced to clarify priorities.

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

And so you don't, and I actually don't think that's a good thing for people, right?

Two Percent with Michael Easter
Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints

It's like you, I don't think it's good for work and I don't think it's good for having meaning in your life to kind of always have your options infinitely open.