The Peter Attia Drive
Optimizing life for maximum fulfillment | Bill Perkins (#237 rebroadcast)
Mon, 25 Nov 2024
View the Show Notes Page for This Episode Become a Member to Receive Exclusive Content Sign Up to Receive Peter’s Weekly Newsletter Bill Perkins is one of the world’s most successful hedge fund managers and entrepreneurs, and the author of the bestseller, Die With Zero. In this episode, Bill unpacks the Die With Zero philosophy which challenges conventional thinking related to the balance between health, wealth, and time—the three variables important for fulfillment. Bill makes the case that we should strive for maximum net fulfillment rather than net worth (or even health). He argues that we need to optimize our life to have memorable experiences before it’s too late and that most people are over-saving and under-living. Bill also explains how one can apply the principles in Die With Zero to break out of “autopilot” and optimize their life to achieve maximum net fulfillment. We discuss: Bill’s upbringing, background, and first job on Wall Street [2:45]; A missed experience and feeling of regret that shaped Bill’s thinking [13:45]; Thinking in terms of time, and the relationship between money, time, and health [16:30]; Solving for net fulfillment and allocating your time based on the seasons of life [26:45]; How Bill thinks about risk, opportunity costs, and the difference between fear and risk tolerance [35:00]; Optimizing for fulfillment, finding purpose outside of work, and more [41:15]; Thinking about the order of experiences you want to have based on seasons of life [49:30]; Bill’s unique perspective on philanthropy and a more impactful way to give money away [54:15]; Applying the principles in ‘Die With Zero’ to maximize fulfillment [1:03:30]; How to break out of living life on autopilot [1:13:45]; When should your net worth peak? [1:17:30]; Taking calculated risks [1:21:00]; Bill shares a lesson from his incredible birthday [1:24:45]; How Bill’s philosophy has evolved since writing Die With Zero [1:33:30]; and More. Connect With Peter on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube
Chapter 1: What is the main philosophy behind 'Die With Zero'?
The idea that- It's also, just to double click on that, Bill, it's also visceral when you start to think of the difference between using money for activities or trips versus things. So I buy a shirt and this shirt basically works out to three hours of what I make per hour. So this is a $3 shirt, I mean a three hour shirt. Yeah. Conversely, I take my daughter out overnight.
We do like a daddy-daughter date night, go out to dinner, stay at a nice hotel, have a fancy breakfast the next day. That's five hours of my time in terms of work. But do you see those sort of differently at the time? That one of those is like an experience and one of them is a thing?
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.
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.
Right. Imagine that you have $25 chips. You figure out your hourly after-tax all-in wage is $25 an hour. Every time you flick a chip, it's like I gave an hour of my life. Boom, boom, boom.
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?
Are you having that discussion with other, either people who are your peers who are presumably on the same treadmill or the people who are already rich, but still presumably killing themselves, trading their health for wealth?
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.
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.
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Chapter 2: How can we allocate resources for maximum fulfillment?
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...
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?
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
I think that that's probably the part of the book that most kind of resonates with someone like me, which is, especially when it comes to kids. And I have, I guess the, maybe it's an advantage, maybe it's a disadvantage, but my kids are sort of separated in age by a bit of a gap, right? So my daughter's 14 and then the boys are five and eight.
In other words, I now know what it's like to have a teenager. I now understand all the things that you kind of give up when your kid's a teenager. Our daughter's an amazing kid, but the reality of it is like she doesn't really want to be around me. No, they don't want to know you when they become teenagers. I didn't want to know my parents when I was a teenager.
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