John R. Miles

So what do you think are the keys for someone actually figuring out what their utility function is?

It's interesting, Corinne.

I was having a discussion with Jamil Zaki and we were talking about our worth and it went along the lines of this whole personal utility function that oftentimes we don't even realize that our worth

in some ways is being erased from us because I use it in this example.

We were talking about that what we're living today is really a market of mattering, a mattering market.

And what Jamil and I were really discussing is

When people optimize for what society rewards rather than what actually makes them happy, it's like an increment at a time of your self-worth that's erased.

And when he and I were first talking about it, it was like the light bulb went off for me because that self-worth gets optimized all the time in things we do that we don't even realize we're doing.

And I realized this when I was in my late 30s, early 40s, because I was like, I keep coming into work.

And one, I'm an introvert and an extrovert type of world.

But two, I felt like I was optimizing so much of who I was.

to be productive at work and to show up in a way that would maximize my effectiveness in that work environment.

But the more I started to look at it, it was almost like I was putting a mask on every day, hiding who I was underneath it and what was actually making me happy.

Do you think that's a gap a lot of people are dealing with?

Corinne, I want to park this whole idea of personal utility for a second, and I promise I'm going to come back to it.

I want to go back to the concept of deals.

I, a couple months ago, was speaking with Alex Emus, and we were talking about his book that he co-authored with Nobel laureate Richard Thaler.

And we were talking about this in terms of

Deals that we think about in economic terms where you're overpaying for things and that's what causes the winner's curse.

I was hoping that you could talk about deals and how they impact our jobs, our relationships and our major life decisions and what makes a good deal versus one that is unsustainable.