- Hey, everybody, how's
it goin', I'm Chase.
Welcome to another episode
of The Chase Jarvis LIVE Show
here on CreativeLive.
You all know this show.
This is where I sit down
with amazing humans,
and I do everything I can
to unpack their very important brains
with the goal of helping
you live your dreams
in career, in hobby, and in life.
My guest today is a numerous,
multi New York Time best-selling author,
long time contributor to
Esquire, to The New York Times,
The Washington Post,
and many other things.
And we're here to talk
about his new project
called Thanks A Thousand.
My guest is the one and only, A.J. Jacobs.
(energetic rock music)
♪ Ho ♪
(audience applauds and cheers)
- They love you.
- Well, I won't say thanks a thousand,
'cause it's a little too on the nose.
(Chase laughs)
But thank you.
I'm a big fan of the
show and of your work,
so I'm honored to be here.
- A.J., thank you.
And I, a fan of you.
The time where I was completely,
I was aware of your work for a long time,
but the time where I was
completely floored by your work
was at the World Domination Summit,
which is--
- I love that.
- Yeah, it's a--
- That's a great conference.
- It's an amazing conference
thrown by our mutual
friend, Chris Guillebeau.
Chris has also a guest on the
show before, amazing human.
So of course, you are
extremely prolific as a writer,
numerous New York Times Best Sellers.
I was completely blown away
by your presence on stage as a speaker.
You had the audience, and that
was like a 50-minute talk,
or something like that.
(A.J. laughs)
And you had, I was like crying, laughing.
- Oh, well that's so--
- Sitting on the front
of my chair.
And you got a raving
stand-up, what is that called?
Standing ovation.
- Ah, yeah, well--
- With like 5,000 people.
- Well, I'll tell you,
yeah, I went into writing
because I'm not very good
at public presentations.
- And that tells you how
good of a writer he is then.
(both laughing)
- Well, what happened
was I had to become good.
And yeah, I basically forced myself
to do speaking at any opportunity.
And I just, I don't think
I'm smooth or the best,
but I got a lot better.
And part of the big turn was
that I started to enjoy it.
I faked enjoying it for so
long that I actually became...
And I now, I like it better than writing.
I would rather give a
speech than sit alone.
'Cause sitting alone in a
room is tough, you know?
- For sure.
- That's why,
is look back at all
these writers in history,
and a lot of them are depressed,
and I don't think it's a coincidence.
You're in a room alone, and it's not easy.
So I've come around, I've made a 180.
And now I hate writing,
and I love speaking.
(Chase laughs)
So I'm in the wrong business.
I don't know what to do.
- Then you're in the right place today.
- Okay, good, yes.
- We're gonna talk here,
and you're familiar with the show.
So I have a little narrative
arc that I wanna follow,
but please, if there's
anything you wanna share,
because you're hilarious,
brilliant, and just grab the mic,
and we can run in any
direction that you want to.
- Excellent.
- But we will start out, if we can,
with I think it was one of the things
that you covered in your talk,
which is one of the first writings
that I really delved into.
I was, just a small backstory,
I'm in New York with you right now,
and on Sunday, it's Tuesday right now.
And on Sunday, I was
sitting at our family cabin
on Camano Island an hour north of Seattle,
looked over to the books,
we share this cabin with my parents,
I looked over in the bookshelf,
and there's only like 12 or 15 books,
a lot of just stuff that my mother
and father would just pull
off the checkout stand
just to read while they're at the cabin.
And a couple of just classics.
And I looked right dead
center in the middle
is a Year of Living Biblically.
- An honor to be one of 12 or 15,
that's big.
(Chase laughs)
- And my parents, we were
overlapping with them,
'cause we were on our
way here to New York,
and my parents were comin' up
to stay. And I was like, "Who?
"Wait, how do you guys have this book?"
- Oh, that was theirs, not yours?
- That was theirs, not mine.
- Oh, even better.
- And I was like, "Wait."
And my dad just chimes in, he's like,
"Oh, my God, hilarious."
(A.J. laughs)
And so that's my entree
into Year Living Biblically.
You opened with some really funny lines
at the World Domination Summit.
But the short version is you tried to live
in accordance with the Bible literally.
- As literally as possible.
Exactly.
- For a year.
Now, I'm more of a secular human.
I think you come from a secular family,
so this was not a like--
- Right.
- You were getting deep into your faith.
This was like, I'm gonna
try and do this thing.
- Well, it was exactly like you said.
I grew up with no religion.
I was, as I say in the book,
I'm Jewish in the same way
the Olive Garden is Italian.
(Chase laughs)
No offense to the Olive Garden.
But I had a kid, and I wanted to know
is there anything I'm missing?
Why does 1/2 the world
believe in religion?
So I'm gonna try,
and I'm gonna become the
ultimate fundamentalist,
and see what's the good, how
it affects my life in good way,
and how it affects my
life in a not so good way.
And so I did.
I followed all the rules,
and not just the famous ones.
I did the famous ones
like the Ten Commandments,
love your neighbor.
But I also wanted to try the ones
that don't get a lot of attention.
The Bible says you cannot shave
the corners of your beard.
I didn't know where the corners were,
so I just let the whole thing grow,
and I looked like Ted Kaczynski there.
(both laughing)
The Bible says that you
should stone adulterers,
so I figured I should
at least try, and I was.
I was able to stone one adulterer
(Chase laughs)
using very small stones like pebbles.
(Chase laughs)
So I didn't hurt him too much.
But the idea was, yeah, test it all out
without picking and choosing,
and see what works and what doesn't.
- Takeaway?
- Well, there were a lot of takeaways.
(Chase laughs)
I'd say one takeaway was don't
follow the Bible literally.
(both laughing)
- You had to wear certain
clothes, too, right?
- Oh, yeah.
- Threads made of--
- Yeah, no mixed fiber, so like
poly-cotton blends are out.
They are an abominate, God
hates poly-cotton blends.
- (laughs) So you couldn't wear the shirt
that you're wearing today.
Of course not.
- That's true.
This is I think poly.
- It's a blend.
- But it's nice.
So yeah, not living by,
so yeah, don't follow the Bible literal.
Don't say that homosexuality is a sin
just because the Bible has a
passage that might say that.
But on the good side,
there were a lot of
positive takeaways as well.
One of them is gratitude,
which I won't talk about now.
- Yup.
- But another was what we
were just talking about,
how the whole fake it till you make it,
fake it till you feel it was
really baked into the Bible.
'Cause I would, I had
to try to not to covet,
or lie, or gossip.
And I live in New York City
and work as a journalist.
(Chase laughs)
So that's like,
that's like 70%.
- Don't work, yeah.
- Yeah, don't work. (laughs)
- Only do 30% of your
job for the next year.
- Oh.
But the way I did it was I pretended to,
I acted as if I were a
better person than I was.
So I would force myself to
visit a friend in the hospital,
even though I hated going.
But your brain sees, you trick your brain.
You see you're in a
hospital visiting a friend,
oh, I must be kind of compassionate.
And you eventually become a
little more compassionate.
I'm still an incredibly selfish person
like I think most people
are, (laughs) but I'm better.
I'm 40% better than I was.
And it's partly because of that,
of the following these rules,
forcing yourself to be a good person
even when you don't feel it.
- What,
I mean, just as a project,
you're a successful writer.
You've had many New
York Times Best Sellers.
What compelled you to put
yourself on that journey?
We have mutual friends
and people who've been on
the show who are sort of,
they consider themselves
lab rats or experimenters,
and they're trying the new diet fad,
or experimenting with hallucinogenics,
but you decide to give
up a year of your life,
and walk around in cotton,
and only work 30% of your job.
(A.J. laughs)
How did you decide?
- Well, I do love, like
our mutual friends,
I love the self-experimentation.
- Yeah.
- I really think
it's the best way to improve yourself.
And I feel I need a lot of improvement.
So I've done various parts of my life.
I try to be the healthiest person alive.
I try to ingest all the
information in the world
by reading the Encyclopaedia
Britannica from A to Z
when it still existed.
And this was sort of an area
of my life that I had no,
I was just completely ignorant.
There's a lot of people who
say write what you know,
which I think is good in a sense,
but I didn't know anything.
So I'm like, if I'm
gonna write what I know,
I'm going to have to live it.
And I think that's part of it.
I did not grow up,
it was a blessing and a curse.
I had a pretty uneventful childhood.
My parents were not spies,
or carnies,
(Chase laughs)
or drug addicts.
They were just nice, middle
class people who I love,
but if I were gonna write that as a book,
that would not, that would
sell like four copies.
(Chase chuckles)
So
I try to put myself in
extraordinary situations,
and see what I learn, and
then write about that.
- So let's reference the
two things you just noted.
One, life as a know-it-all.
- Right, that was one of my first books.
- Which is the reading the encyclopedias.
- I read from A to Z,
from aak, which is the first word,
a type of ancient Korean music,
all the way to Zywiec,
which is Z-Y-W-I-E-C,
which is a, not to ruin,
don't want spoilers,
but it's a town in Poland.
(Chase laughs)
And I tried to learn everything I could.
And it was fascinating.
It was hard, especially for my family,
'cause my wife started penalizing me $1
for every irrelevant fact
I inserted into her space.
(both laughing)
- And then your advance
at the end of it all
was in her pocket, right?
- There you go, exactly.
(Chase laughs)
She made a lot of money, I did not.
But again, there were,
aside from the crazy,
the weird knowledge I learned
like opossums have 13 nipples,
that kind of thing,
which unfortunately is
still stuck in my brain,
one of the big takeaways was
again a sense of gratitude,
because when you read
about all of history,
you see that the good
ole days were not good.
- Yeah.
- So this sense of nostalgia,
this make America great again,
the past was not a nice place.
- Yeah.
- And
Steven Pinker wrote a
wonderful book about it.
I don't know if you've seen that one.
- Yeah, I haven't, but--
- Enlightenment Now.
- Think Pinker's work is amazing.
- I'm a big fan.
- Yeah.
- But yeah, the idea is
lives were incredibly short,
and it was dangerous.
It was smelly.
Imagine manure literally piled up
to your shoulders on the sides of streets.
And it was racist,
homophobic, the whole thing.
When I get depressed, which happens,
a good amount of time, I try
to fight it with my mindset.
And one of my mantras is
surgery without anesthesia.
Until 100 years ago, that's
what you would have to do,
surgery without anesthesia.
And I've had surgery a couple of times,
and it's not pleasant.
But imagine it without anesthesia.
(Chase laughs)
And it's like, yes, we
have a lot of challenges,
and let's attack them, and
let's try to solve problems,
but let's not just say, oh,
we should go back to the past
and life has gone downhill.
No, we should be optimistic.
We should realize we have
solved some amazing problems
as a species.
- Yeah.
And just I think for one layer of context
that I'll throw in there
to I guess chime in
is I think it's the safest,
orders of magnitude safer even 50 years,
orders of magnitude more safe
than it was even 50 years ago.
And there's way less violent crime now.
But it's the reporting of
violent crime that's up 11,000%,
or something like that.
- Exactly.
And when you go on social media,
you just see bad news all day long.
You used to be able to live your life
and then read about how
horrible the world is
at the end of the day.
- Yeah, right.
- Now it's like all day long.
So I actually do try not to,
I try to ingest my news
at the end of the day,
so I can get depressed and fall asleep.
(both laughing)
But don't let it ruin your
day, because it's very warped.
You could do every day,
I was just listening
to some scientist say,
"Every day, the main headline
in The New York Times
"could've been 30,000 people yesterday
"were lifted out of extreme poverty."
Because the progress we've made
in fighting extreme poverty
is just one of the most underreported
and amazing things in the world.
So yeah, the media, even
though I'm a part of it,
I'm very skeptical of.
- I think that's a really
interesting dynamic.
I got a plan to go a
slightly different direction,
but I think it's good
to put a pin in that,
which is just a reminder that all
of the news that you read is,
there's a machine behind it
not too different from the
military industrial complex.
It's the ad complex.
Ryan Holiday has written
a lot about it.
- Yes.
- That sensational news is what
gets clicked on and viewed,
so there's an extreme increase in that.
It's just that's not reality.
Just to be clear--
- Yeah, exactly.
- It's the safest,
most joyful, and flourishing
time in human history.
Doesn't feel like it sometimes.
But that's, I think, what is
so intriguing about your work
is you've got this sort
of contrarian viewpoint,
and you do it with grace, and humor,
which is gonna segue me
into your current book here.
- Well, thanks.
- Which is Thanks A Thousand.
I'm gonna give a short blurb,
then you can fill in the blanks
and tell me where I blew it.
- Sure.
- I've got a bunch of dog ears here,
things I'd like to talk to you about.
But in short, this is
a book about gratitude,
where A.J. chases the thread
of everyone who has had a hand
in producing his morning coffee.
And
you were challenged by one
of your children, I think,
to thank all these people.
You were saying thanks at the table.
I think the book said something like,
the table, you're like,
"Oh, thanks for the person
who gets my morning coffee."
And your kid said something like,
"Dad, they can't hear you."
- Yeah, that was it.
(Chase laughs)
Well, exactly.
Just to elaborate on that,
I knew that gratitude
is incredibly important,
especially in these stressful times.
- Yup.
- And it's good for your health,
it's good for your sleep,
it's good for your motivation to work
and to change the world.
And so I learned partly in the Bible
to say these prayers of thanksgiving.
But I'm an agnostic.
So saying prayers to thanksgiving to God
is a little weird for me.
So instead I would say before a meal,
I would do thanks to the
guy who grew the tomatoes,
and the guy who drove the truck,
or the woman who sold
it to me at the store.
And my son as you said, he's 11,
he's like, "You know,
dad, they can't hear you.
"So if you really wanna commit,
"you should go and thank them in person."
I was like, "That's a good idea.
"That's my next book.
(Chase laughs)
"Thank you, I owe you 10% or whatever."
So that's what I did.
I went and I tried to thank
the hundreds of people
that go into making my cup of coffee
that I totally take for granted.
So not just the farmer who grew the beans,
I did go there and thank them,
but the person who designed
the coffee cup lid,
and I couldn't believe the thought
and passion that went into that,
the people who did the logo,
the guy who drove the truck,
the guy who painted the
lines in the highway,
so the truck didn't get in an accident.
And you realize there are
thousands of people there.
And there are hundreds of
things that go right every day
that we totally take for granted,
and we focus on the three
or four that go wrong,
and that can be a debilitating
way to go through life
and really hurt your
productivity and just your mood.
- Allow me to read for just a second.
- Oh, thank you.
- Dear Mr. Darren Woods,
comma, CEO of Exxon.
(A.J. laughs)
Thank you for providing the
gasoline that fuels the trucks
that gets my coffee to me.
I knew, sorry, I know you and
your employees work very hard.
I love coffee.
I hope to drink it for a long time.
I hope that climate change caused
by our world's overreliance
on fossil fuels
doesn't ravage the planet
and make impossible to have
coffee farms in the future.
I hope we embrace alternative energies
more aggressively than we are doing now.
Anyways, to reiterate,
thank you for helping me get my coffee.
It is delicious.
(both laughing)
- That was, yeah, as I say,
that's the most passive-aggressive
thank you note in history.
(Chase laughs)
And that came about because I realized
there are all these hardworking people,
but not all of the corporations
who help you get your food to
your table, or your T-shirt,
they're not always looking
out for the good of the world.
They're looking out for their--
- Profits and shareholders.
- Their profits, right.
So my idea was I still wanna thank them,
'cause they did help make my coffee.
But maybe while thanking them,
do a little dig,
(Chase laughs)
and say, can we move in
a different direction,
so that a little more
looking to the future?
- I read that knowing that there would be
a nice explication around it,
but I think the point
of thanking 1,000 people
who provide your coffee,
and you actually cite them.
- I do.
- By name
in the back of the book.
- I have a list
of 1,000 people, yeah.
- And so this is the kind of
book, joy, humor, creativity,
art that, A.J., I think you do better
than anyone who's writing today,
which is just this beautiful alchemy.
It feels to me a lot like life.
It's confusing, and abstract,
and anytime you look very closely,
it's something you can either be
wildly excited or deeply upset.
And what you've reminded
here is that through it all,
gratitude is probably.
You talk about the health benefits
at the beginning.
- Right.
- But why,
again, sort of like,
there are people at home
watching and listening saying,
of all of the things for A.J.
to write about, why this?
Is it a personal journey?
Is it a journey to help
culture be more thankful?
What's your end goal?
- I think that both.
I think that I was in an
incredibly stressful place,
like much of the country,
not happy with what's
happening in politics.
And so,
but I realized that's not
productive just to stew,
and to
ruminate,
and let me try to flip the script,
as you said before the show.
Flip the script and realize
that you can make a difference,
and you can, this is essentially a way to
sort of a guide to happiness.
How to live a more grateful life.
And I really do believe happiness,
I mean gratitude is one
of the secret ingredients.
There is a Benedictine monk
with a phrase that I love.
He says, "Happiness does
not lead to gratitude.
"Gratitude leads to happiness."
And I love that.
So my idea was by
actually going out there,
forcing myself to thank 1,000 people,
it would change my attitude
in life, which it did.
And it was a little weird,
'cause I would cold-call these
people or I would show up.
Some of them were like,
what are you trying to sell?
- Yeah.
- Is this a pyramid scheme?
But some of them, I
remember calling the woman
who provided the pest control
for the warehouse where
my coffee is stored.
And I called her up and I said,
"This may sound a little weird,
"but I wanna thank you
"for keeping the bugs out of my coffee."
And she's like, "That does sound weird."
(both laughing)
But she also said,
"No one ever thanks us,
and you made my day."
And that made my day.
And so I think that a large part of it
is just realizing, as you
said right before the show,
"We only go around once."
Instead of stewing, and being negative,
and not getting anything accomplished
except for complaining, this
is a way to access that.
And also, some people are worried
that gratitude will lead to complacency.
If everyone's so grateful,
then they won't wanna change anything.
But the studies showed just the opposite.
The more grateful you are, the
more you wanna help others.
And I saw this on a very
little, small scale,
realizing how much goes into my water,
which 98% of coffee is water.
Realizing how much goes
in made me so grateful
that I can turn on a tap and get water,
so I got involved--
- Unlike more than a billion people
on the planet who don't have access
to water, yeah.
- Exactly.
Like your guest--
- Scott Harrison.
- Scott Harrison.
So yeah, getting involved in a charity
that helps provide water.
And yeah, I know a lot of your
listeners are entrepreneurs,
so it's like, also I'm an
entrepreneur as a writer.
I'm basically a solo business.
So the idea of being
grateful to my customers
is incredibly motivating.
And as part of this,
I'm actually going to
write 1,000 thank you notes
to my readers by hand.
So I may,
there's the risk of, what's it called,
carpal tunnel syndrome?
(Chase laughs)
- By hand.
- But I feel that these
people have put some time in,
and it's such a one-way.
- How will you find
the people? So this is
like when the book drops,
they're gonna buy the book,
and then you're going to find
1,000 people who purchase.
- Yeah,
if you go to my website,
ajjacobs.com/thanks,
and just fill out a form with your name,
and your address, physical address,
and anything you wanna say.
Like if you want me to comment
on that you're graduating college,
or you love the Chicago Bears,
or whatever,
(Chase laughs)
I'm gonna actually write
a thank you note to you.
'Cause it's such a one-way,
a lot of times, it's such a
one-way thing being an author.
I wanna thank people.
It's such a gift that people have bought,
or borrow, I don't need them
to buy, and read the book.
- That is an incredible
approach to the project.
By hand?
1,000, 1,000.
- That is it, by hand.
- I write, not every week,
but some weeks I try and write 10
postcards--
- Ooh.
- To CreativeLive customers
who've, I choose them at random.
- That's a great idea.
- Or they were chosen for me.
And it's just a great
way for me to stay close
to the people that we make
classes and content for.
- Have you gotten feedback from that?
- Yeah, a lot of photographs
on Instagram of the--
- Oh, that's so nice.
- And it's nice
to establish a dialogue with someone who's
sometimes 1,000 miles away,
or whatever.
- Right.
Well, I read, there's a book
called Appreciation Marketing,
which is all about how gratitude,
you should be grateful to your customers.
And they have all these examples
of like Mary Kay from Mary Kay
Cosmetics did what you did,
three thank you notes a day to people.
There's another book by the
founder of a department store,
I think it's Kohl's.
It's called Hug Your Customers,
which I actually don't recommend
in this post
(Chase laughs)
Harvey Weinstein world.
- Yeah.
- Hug 'em metaphorically.
- Yeah.
- But I approve of the general idea.
You gotta appreciate your customers.
And I think that appreciation,
when it's expressed, just
is great for business.
- I also get to, every once in a while,
we'll sit down with our
student support team,
and respond to support tickets.
And it's just so insightful
that when people are frustrated,
they're frustrated not because,
well, you can't always tell
why they're frustrated.
But that how
the smallest thing, saying I'm sorry.
- Mm, right.
- If your experience
didn't go well.
We should've done a better job.
Just the smallest
generous act toward them--
- Yeah.
- Can sometimes completely
flip the interaction.
- That's interesting.
- Just literally saying, I'm so sorry.
- Right.
And you do that with email?
- Yeah, there's a,
a back end to support tickets
if someone has a problem
with CreativeLive or whatever.
- Right.
- So I think it's a good
way, A, to stay humble,
B, to stay close to customers,
and C, to be able to actually help people.
- Right.
- Because a lot of times,
someone's complaints are
really a cry for help.
I know that's how it
is when I'm frustrated,
or upset, or angry, I'm likely
to yell at another driver
sitting here in Manhattan
if they're not behaving
like I think they should behave.
That's really not me.
(A.J. laughs) It has
nothing to do with them.
- Yeah.
That's interest.
I have a friend who she's
a journalist and writer.
And trolls on the internet
are a very tricky thing.
So I'm not saying this
will work every time.
But she says when she gets
people trashing her on Twitter,
that she'll often just
write them a direct message,
or even heart, like the comment.
And she's been able to
turn around a lot of troll.
If you just directly
reach out to them and say,
I'm sorry you feel that
way, they get, not everyone.
I'm sure there's,
(both laughing)
there's some trolls.
- There are trolls
who are thicker than that, I'm sure.
- Yeah, exactly.
- So
gratitude, the practicality,
the health benefits.
Is there anything else you'd like to say
about your personal journey
on the road to gratitude?
- Well, I would say one
thing that has really helped
is this idea of savoring.
And I did, which is tied into gratitude,
one of the books I did a few years ago
was called Drop Dead Healthy
where I try to be the
healthiest person alive.
And one of the people I
interviewed was this guy who was,
he believes in calorie restriction.
You know that where you
eat the minimum amount
and you live a long time.
And I have my issues with that.
Yeah, you may live a long
time, but it's gonna be
like why live if you can't
have an occasional pancake?
(Chase laughs)
But he had me do this exercise
called savoring meditation
where we took a blueberry
and put it in our mouth,
and literally spent 15 minutes
tasting the texture, and the sweetness,
and the acidity, and it was bananas.
It was a crazy,
you don't wanna do 15
minutes on a blueberry.
(Chase laughs)
I was like, the whole
time I was like, (groans).
Let me get some Yodels.
I want, this is driving me crazy.
But that said, I do
love the idea behind it,
that we do just wolf down our food,
and we wolf down experiences.
And taking a moment to stretch out,
I don't recommend 15
minutes, but five seconds,
letting your coffee sit on your tongue,
letting your food sit on your tongue,
and just thinking about
it, and savoring it,
and collecting these moments.
And it occurs to me, it's
actually kind of like photography,
because often I try to see my life
as like I'm a curator of great moments,
and focusing on those.
'Cause otherwise, your life whizzes by,
and you're not focused on anything.
And this idea of savoring
and collecting moments
almost like you're a
photographer without a cam.
You don't need a camera
to be a photographer,
but really just focus on a moment.
- The spirit, the connection,
that moment, and the people,
do you store those up here then?
- I do.
I've actually started a file
just in the last six months,
which I love, which I call One Thing.
And anytime I read book,
I have a conversation,
I go somewhere, I try to
take one thing that I learned
or that was wonderful about
it, and write that down.
And I occasionally go back and
look at my file of one thing,
because if I don't do that,
I don't remember anything.
So one thing is much better than zero.
I'm never gonna remember seven things
from a great book I read, but
the one thing is beautiful.
- All right, this is, I
think, a fantastic transition
from the sort of
ethereal, conceptual realm
of your work in general,
Thanks A Thousand as the book.
Because I'd like to now get
into this very practical.
- Oh, yeah.
- That is a very
practical exercise, right?
You have a file, and you
write down one thing.
I wanna know what are some of your habits
around this kinda stuff.
Because that's, for the folks at home
watching, listening.
- Sure.
- We all want actionable stuff.
- Yeah.
- That we can not just
like oh, my gosh, A.J.
Jacobs is so fun, and funny,
and I can't believe he
submitted an entire year of his life
to live in threads that
were only from one fiber,
and he didn't shave the corners
of his beard, that's awesome.
(A.J. laughs)
But let's go practical.
- Yeah, I've got a bunch.
I mean, first of all,
let me just start with a
quick practical gratitude one,
which is just making sure
when something goes right,
when you're in a line that
moves quickly at the drug store,
make a mental note of that.
Because we are so amped
to remember the times
when the line was an hour and 1/2 long,
'cause that's what
sticks, negatives stick.
So really try to fight that
bias, and remember every time.
Every time you go to an airport
and the gate is right there
as opposed to having to walk four miles
past the yogurt shops.
So that I do.
For one thing I find very
helpful is as a writer,
I'm basically, my lifeblood is ideas,
and I think entrepreneurs in general.
So I will allot,
someone used the phrase,
it's a little cheesy,
make a appointment with
your creative side.
So really just but slotting
out 15 minutes a day
from three to 3:15, I'm gonna
turn off all electronics,
and just brainstorm.
Realizing that 95% of
your ideas are gonna suck,
'cause that's the way it works.
Picasso had 95% of his ideas suck.
But that's what I try to do.
I brainstorm,
and maybe I'll have a
topic like new book ideas.
Maybe it'll be like
brainstorm about gratitude.
Maybe it'll just be random like
take a snowman, and
what can I do with that?
How can I?
I could make a snowwoman.
I could make a snow transgender person.
I could replace the pipe with a vape.
(Chase laughs)
You can do...
And just that act, James Altucher talks,
and I talk about this a lot, the act of--
- Play?
- Playing and being creative,
the brain really is a muscle.
I believe that analogy is correct.
And so just having that muscle be strong,
that helps you solve problems
in any part of your life.
You got a flat tire, and
you'll be better able to solve.
You have a problem at business,
you'll be able to solve.
So that's one thing I love to do.
Another actionable thing is something
that you reminded me of before the show.
You were telling me about
how as a young athlete,
you were taught about visualization.
- Yeah.
- And I was not an athlete,
but I once interviewed George
Clooney for Esquire magazine.
- Wow.
- Who was a delight.
But one of his tips to me,
which I always remember,
he was a college baseball player,
and when he got up to the
plate, he would say to himself,
he wouldn't say, am I
gonna hit a home run?
He wouldn't say, I'm
going to hit a home run.
He would say, I'm gonna hit a home run
over the left field fence.
He would be very specific,
and have this delusional optimism.
Because I do believe delusional optimism
is an incredibly powerful tool.
And I've used it so many times,
this pretending you have
confidence whether or not you do.
When I was writing my book about health,
I would wake up in the
morning filled with despair,
because it's such a big topic,
and when am I ever--
- Overwhelmed.
- I'm overwhelmed.
But I would force myself to
have this delusional optimism,
and I would call the publisher and say,
"All right, so when the book comes out
"and we have the big publishing party,
"let's serve kale martinis.
"Let's have healthy drinks."
And by doing that, that
action of delusional optimism,
again, caught my brain up,
and made me more optimistic,
and able to actually finish.
So yeah, I'm with you on
this idea of visualization.
And just, delusional
optimism has its limit.
You gotta be careful, 'cause
you don't wanna be like,
delusional optimism, I think,
if you've never been in politics
and know nothing about it,
but decide you could be a great president,
that has caused some problems
(Chase laughs)
as we can see.
- Nice.
- But if you use it for good,
if you use it for good, and you
use it for your own business
and making yourself a better person,
it's such a powerful tool.
- So you've got 15 minutes of creativity.
You've got a gratitude
practice of small moments,
day-to-day when you're thinking
when the line move fast.
- Right.
- Give me a couple other
habits that you feel like
in your wildly creative world
have helped you be happier,
healthier, and better what
you wanna do with life.
- Well, one,
one would be writer's
block, which I suffer from,
as does everyone.
And it's in the same line.
Often, I'll just force
myself to start typing,
and it could be about any.
I know that those first 20 minutes
of writing are gonna be crap.
And I could write about any,
I could write about
the pigeons on my ledge
and how their heads are bopping.
But just the action of moving
my fingers gives me momentum,
and eventually, I start writing something
that's semi-coherent.
So I would say, yeah,
just dive in knowing,
being aware that the first 20 minutes,
or half an hour, an hour may be terrible.
When my health book,
one of the things I found
incredibly powerful was this idea,
a Yale professor came up with it,
this idea of egonomics
that we have two selves.
We've got the present
self and the future self.
And the present self wants to sit
on the couch and eat Cheetos.
The future self wants to be alive.
The future self wants that
present self to act in a way
that will keep 'em around.
- Yeah, make the future
healthy, yeah.
- Possible, yeah.
- Possible, yeah.
Possible at first, and then maybe great
as a secondary characteristic.
- Exactly.
- Got it.
- So this guy's done studies to show
that the more you think
about your future self,
the better decisions
you make in the present.
So I actually took this
as literally as I could,
and I don't recommend you have to do this.
But I took a photo of myself,
and there are a couple of apps online
where you can age the photo.
So I aged myself to a 78-year-old.
And I put it up above my desk.
So I've got the 80-year-old
me looking down on me
and saying, when I want to
read TMZ and not do any,
instead of going for a
walk or onto my treadmill,
that, I look up, and I try to
treat that older version of me
like I would treat a
family member or a friend.
I wanna have respect for him.
- Yeah.
- And that really does motivate
me to act in a better way.
And one of the things I
did for the health book
was I wrote it while
walking on a treadmill.
So I still, that is one
of the things I've kept
from the health book.
- Wow.
- I still
write on a treadmill.
- How did I not know that?
Is that a feature that you
advertised about the book?
- I have talked about it.
- Wow, wow.
- I also get motivated.
This works for some
people, but not for others.
The peer pressure, and the
idea of potential humiliation.
(Chase laughs)
So if I don't get
10,000 steps a day,
and I have all these friends who I--
- Accountability buddies?
- Accountability buddies, I
do think those work for me,
not for everyone.
- What's the specifics?
How do you actually employ that tactic?
- Well, for a while--
- You track it
in the walking app?
- I actually have moved
on to just the iPhone app,
which I love.
- Yup, yup, yup.
- But for a while I was using Fitbit,
and they have an online
community where you can.
So I would have writer
friends who would mock me
if I didn't get to 10,000,
and then I would do the same to them.
And yeah, fear of humiliation
can be a very good motivator.
(Chase laughs)
I am a big fan.
And yeah, it doesn't have to be walking.
Could be anything, losing
weight, getting the proposal out.
Well, this one is,
I actually have a big
project I wanna do next,
but it is taking me longer than I want.
So I have done the breaking
down into very small parts,
mini goals.
- Okay.
- The mini goals, 'cause I
really believe in mini goals--
- Is it a project that you can't speak of?
- No, I can tell.
- Okay.
- I just wanna do something
about truth and fake news,
and how we can rescue it.
But I haven't figured it out exactly.
So my mini goals are every
day I'm gonna come up
with 10 ideas of how to attack this.
By a month from now, I'm gonna
have written five pages a day
for seven days, and have 30.
So even if it's,
I sometimes do such mini goals
that they seem ridiculous,
like I am going to get out of this chair.
I don't have to go on my treadmill,
but my goal is to get out of this chair.
And once you get out of the chair,
you're like, well, I'm out of the chair.
I might as well--
- That wasn't such a big deal.
- Walk toward the treadmill.
I don't have to go on it.
I can walk toward.
I find that mini goals are a
very effective way to tackle,
'cause you just can't,
when I think of writing a book,
I'm just overwhelmed still.
I think of it, I try to think of it,
I'm not gonna write a book.
I'm gonna write 15 essays,
and then weave them together.
And that's much less intimidating.
- So shifting gears.
You're cousins with Oprah.
(A.J. laughs)
And with Bill Clinton.
So how is that--
- And with you.
- Yes. (laughs)
- Well, that was my previous book
before this Thanks A Thousand
was I got a crazy email four
years ago from a guy who said,
you don't know me, but
I'm your 12th cousin.
And I thought as most people would
that he was gonna ask me
to wire $10,000 to Nigeria.
(Chase laughs)
But it turned out he was legitimate.
And he's part of this fascinating group
of scientists and researchers
who are trying to build
the World Family Tree,
like actually connect everyone on Earth.
- Which is an amazing mission.
- It's a crazy mission.
And I got swept away with it.
And it's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,
but for everyone on Earth.
We are all related, and you
can find out with DNA testing.
You can also find out
with these sort of massive,
online family trees
that are like the
Wikipedia of family trees.
Like with Obama, Obama
is my fifth great aunt's
husband's brother's wife's
seventh great nephew.
That is the actual line.
And I love that.
And I reached out to him,
invited him to Thanksgiving.
Haven't heard back.
(Chase laughs)
But the idea of this project was to show
in this time of tribalism
and us versus them
that it is kinda ridiculous.
We really are so closely related,
share over 99.5% of our DNA.
And we are literally a family.
And the studies have shown
that when you really see this concretely,
it does affect your,
they did a study on
Palestinians and Israelis,
and when they told them how
closely they were related,
they treated each other
with more kindness.
And I don't think it's the panacea.
I have sons, and I see how they wrestle,
and it's not pretty.
So (laughs) family
doesn't always get along.
But the studies show
that family gets along
better than total strangers.
- So your mission with the book
was to show that we're all,
we should employ kindness
because we're all family.
- Right.
And the hope was we would
become just a little bit kinder.
But I will say,
since I know a lot of your
audience is entrepreneurs,
it was also incredibly practically useful,
because it's like LinkedIn on steroids.
(Chase laughs)
Because I would,
like I wanted to get
publicity for this book,
so I would look up a reporter
at The New York Times,
or a producer at the Today Show,
and I would figure out how we're related.
And I would email them and say,
this may sound a little
weird, but I'm your cousin,
and I have a new book coming out.
Here's how we're cousins.
You're my 12th cousin three times removed.
And 20% of the time, they were like,
all right, let's get a restraining
order against this guy.
(both laughing)
But it was surprisingly effective,
because they were like, oh,
this is a weird connection.
Any connection, any connection as humans,
we're just such, so wired to respond.
- We're social animals.
- We're social animal.
- We'd literally,
a child left alone without
contact will not survive.
- There you go.
- We're wired for this.
And when you're,
the concept of being able
to be connected in any way,
think that's part of what,
we're in people's ears right now,
because they wanna hear
stories about other people
whose lives are enough like
theirs that they can relate,
and enough different that they can aspire.
- Right.
- Think this is
a very simple human thing.
And by acknowledging it,
it's sort of like a catapult.
That's why for me,
lifelong learning is such
a important part of this.
And one of the ways that I
learn is through podcasts,
or CreativeLive, or reading,
or consuming the work
that you put out say,
or any other guest.
Give me some specific examples.
I think the promotion of
your book is really funny.
So were there any that actually,
did you land on the
Today Show because of--
- Oh, yeah, I was on,
I was on Good Morning America,
so not the Today Show.
But I also, for the book,
I wanted to interview some
sort of famous families.
And so I reached out to George H.W. Bush.
It's the elder Bush, 'cause
I figured he's a patriarch
of this famous American family.
I'm a Democrat, but still,
he's an interesting guy.
And his chief of staff,
he still chiefs of staffs
that, "The president's not
doing any interviews now."
And I said, "Totally understand,
"but just so he knows, we are cousins.
"We are seventh cousins
three times removed
"through this and this."
And she's like, "Huh, well, let me check
"and see what he says about that."
And she actually, it worked.
I couldn't believe it.
It was so crazy.
And I flew down to Houston,
and I got to talk to him.
And he had some wonderful wisdom,
as did his late wife, about family.
And just to add on what the wisdom,
one of the best things
that I still think about
is that in a relationship
that with your spouse,
or with friends, but mostly
with your spouse or partner,
you should try to put in 75%,
'cause you always underestimate
what the other person is putting in,
and overestimate what you're putting in.
So
account for that error,
account for that bias,
and put in 75%.
I don't do that, but I
try to put in like 55%.
(both laughing)
And hope for the best.
- A little bit more.
- But I think she's right.
We totally don't realize what others do,
which is part of the whole
point of Thanks A Thousand.
We just take for granted
all these hundreds
of things that other people do.
- On a daily basis to
make our lives possible,
to make us be able to get
from Midtown to Downtown,
for us to be able to
do anything.
There's a whole huge chain of people.
- Right.
- More weird examples
from the family tree.
What was the name of the project again?
- That was called, the book
is called, It's All Relative.
- That's right.
- And for the project, I
actually threw a family reunion
called The Global Family Reunion.
And I got 4,000 people
in New York to come,
and we had the craziest collection.
We had rabbis, and priests,
and ministers, and atheists on stage.
Sister Sledge came and sang We Are Family,
which was crazy.
(Chase laughs)
And I will tell you,
you had mentioned we first met
at the World Domination
Summit in Portland.
- Yep.
- And I spoke about this project there.
And the people there were so amazing,
because they got on board as volunteers.
There's nothing in it for them.
They just like the idea and the vision.
So I would,
I guess one of the takeaways
of that, thinking about it,
is if you speak with passion
and you're not, I did
not make money on that.
I lost a little money
on throwing the reunion,
but I just wanted the idea to happen.
So I think they sensed I wasn't in it
as a money-making thing.
And they got behind it,
and they put so much work
into throwing like 30,
no, 50 local reunions
all around the world,
like in New Zealand, and in Mexico.
And I think that is a profound lesson.
Like this idea of Wikipedia,
when I first heard about it, I'm like,
well, why the hell would
anyone do work for free?
But if you have a mission that you think
that this is gonna make the world better,
people will work for free.
Money is not the only reason
that motivates people,
especially now, they want
this greater purpose.
So that was extraordinary.
I'm very thankful to World
Domination Summit for that.
- Speaking of greater
purpose, what's yours?
- Well, I think, I try to say,
I think I was incredibly selfish
for the first 35, 40 years of my life.
And now I'm 50, and I'm
trying to make up for it.
So (laughs) I am trying
to everything I do,
I try to decide, I think
about it has four quadrants.
How will this affect my current happiness?
How will it affect my future happiness?
That's two quadrants.
Then how will it affect the world's,
my family and the world's happiness,
and the family and the
world's future happiness?
So that's part of the
reason why I'm motivated
to do something about fake news and truth
is I'm not sure it's gonna be the book
that makes the most money.
I think I can find the more
baldly commercial thing,
but I really,
I'm very involved in something
called effective altruism,
which is a fascinating
movement which is about how
to do the most good--
- You even talk about that
in the book, too.
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
I give 'em a plug.
- Yeah, yeah.
- How to do the most good
with, if you have $1,000,
where should you put
it to do the most good?
So that's it.
And the paradoxes--
- No, talk about that for a second.
- Oh, okay, sure, would love to.
But just paradoxically, so it
doesn't sound like I'm Gandhi,
the paradox is
(Chase laughs)
I am much happier helping other people.
When I was focused on my
own happiness exclusively,
I was miserable.
And I think I've been stressed
and miserable for most of my life.
But when I flip the script,
and was like, you know what,
I'm gonna try to help other people,
that made me so much happier
'cause it was such a
weight off my shoulders.
I'm like, you know what?
I don't have to focus
exclusively on my happiness.
And if I'm unhappy for
a while, that's fine,
as long as I've got this greater purpose.
So it's weird that being less selfish
is actually a good strategy
for being happier yourself.
And it's a nice coincidence.
It didn't have to be that way,
but that's the way our minds work.
They talk about this glow you
get from helping other people.
But yeah.
- Give a plug for--
- Effective altruism, I'm a big fan.
They are--
- What is it, first of all?
- It's basically if Spock from Star Trek
and Mother Teresa got together,
which I know is unlikely
(laughs) for many reasons.
But if they had a baby, that
would be effective altruism.
It's sort of how can we be
as rationally compassionate as we can.
And it's actually quite
big in Silicon Valley.
It's got a wide range.
It does appeal to sort of
an Asperger's personality sometimes.
'Cause these guys who make
millions and millions of dollars,
and they're like, and what
am I gonna do with it?
And they're like, must do good.
Must do good in most
efficient, rational fashion.
So (laughs) and I kinda
feel that way, too.
But yeah, so
instead of just giving
willy-nilly to charities,
how can you find the ones
that on a dollar basis
have the highest return.
And GiveWell is a wonderful organization
that finds the best charities
that save the most lives like
the Against Malaria Foundation,
which provides nets for people in Africa,
and on a per dollar basis,
the amount of lives they save.
- Impact, yeah.
- And I also like that they're thinking
about the far future,
'cause it's not just us.
We should be thinking about
our 14th great grandkids.
So they're obsessed with
things like global climate.
And weirdly, they are,
and I still don't know
how to process this,
but the threat of AI is
something that concerns them.
And these people are, most of
'em are a lot smarter than me,
so I know that I should be concerned.
I still can't get excited about it,
but I just throw it out there
that they think we should
really be concerned
about robots taking over the world.
- And then you support them and that cause
by giving money through GiveWell?
- Yeah, you could do GiveWell.
But also just going to meetups
and spreading the word.
Yeah, effectivealtruism.com.
- So you've talked about going to meetups,
you've talked about
writing thank you letters
to people who buy your books,
you've talked about putting your family
and the world's happiness on the same--
- Trying to.
- Yeah, yeah.
Try to, yeah, yeah.
- I don't, but I try.
- But is this based in
practicality, or radical optimism?
What powers you?
You talked about your first
35 years were selfish,
and now you're trying to give back.
But go out a little deeper than that.
This starts to feel like a life mission.
There's a really clear thread here.
What's driving it?
- Well, I would say,
I think, it's a good question.
I would say it's partly just the idea
of realizing that
focusing only on yourself
is not a path to happiness.
And that being part of a community,
we're wired as humans to
be part of a community.
And I always saw myself as this solo,
not, I'm just
radical individualist.
- Like a lone wolf.
Yeah.
- Yeah, a lone wolf.
But lone wolves are not very happy.
So that's what motivated it.
And yeah, and not to be
cliche, but I have kids,
and I wanna be around to see
them and do their first--
- Well, you're anything, but cliche.
(A.J. laughs)
You don't have to say that.
- Well, thank you, thanks.
- So I have a hypothesis.
I talk about it in a fair number of shows,
but I think it's important.
And it's called the other 50%.
- Mm.
- And don't know
if you're familiar with this idea of mine,
but I'll give you a little breakdown.
- Yeah.
- So it goes like this.
Most people in the world think that
as creators or entrepreneurs,
that the work that we
do stands for itself.
You put it out there in the world,
and if it's good, you find success,
and if it's not good,
it doesn't find success.
There's a very clear pattern
of people in the show
and in the world if you know
anything about sort of how,
by and large how creating
consistent, good results,
that's not the case, right?
You have to let people know.
You have to write to the morning show
and tell them that you're
their seventh cousin
and could you help get me
on the show kind of thing.
You have to promote your work.
So then if you buy into
the fact that, okay,
it's not just work that succeeds
on the merit of the work.
It's work plus outreach,
or creating and I'll say sharing it.
- Yeah.
- Making sure that the work
gets out there.
And then when I realized that
looking at my own experiences
that even if you share it,
and you don't have any
friends or a community,
it really falls flat,
because the concept is
still in place where
then the virtuous work succeeds
because total strangers will
pick it up and elevate it,
which is really not how
the world works, right?
- Right.
- 'Cause how many times
do you go looking for stuff
that you have no connection to
that when you find it, you tell everybody?
- Yeah.
- It's not a very popular experience
that doesn't match my
empirical experience.
So my philosophy goes like this,
that making great work and
work that's fulfilling to you
and sharing it is only 1/2 of
the work that you have to do
to make the things that you
create and build successful.
And the other 1/2, as in 50%,
again so we're at like 25% the work.
- Right.
- 25% sharing that work,
which is a big hurdle for a lot of people.
And then this other entire 50% block
is actually building community.
- I love that.
- I call it the other 50%.
And tell me, I'm looking,
and throw rocks at this,
'cause you're good at
throwing rocks at stuff.
(A.J. laughs)
You are nice at finding these sort of,
the counterculture
angle, the counter angle,
counter example to a lot
of things in pop culture.
Do you believe this?
You've talked a lot
about percentages here.
- Yeah.
- Like 40% of this
is 25% of that.
(A.J. laughs)
How am I doing
on this philosophy?
- I buy it, I buy it.
I don't know.
I can't speak to the percentages,
but the general idea, absolutely.
And I think one of the big
changes in my career was,
you talk about creating
the work is only 25%,
and I hated the marketing part,
'cause I'm like, no, I'm a writer.
I'm not gonna try to get out
there, build a community,
and tell people about my work.
That's not my job.
What I did was I reframed
it as a creative act.
Seeing the marketing as a creative act
is incredibly powerful.
So when I wrote the book about the Bible,
instead of being annoyed
that I had to try to pitch it
to all these magazines or radio shows,
I'm like how can I most
creatively get the word out?
So the Bible talks about sex.
So what about an article about sex advice
from the Bible for Glamour magazine?
And that's what I did.
And there's music, talk
about music in the Bible,
so I wrote about that for a music website,
and splitting it up.
And that was so fun just
thinking of ways to do it.
And I once interviewed the
artist Christo and his wife.
Christo, do you know?
- I had dinner right
next to him not too far.
There's a little sushi joint
down in the Lower East Side.
- Oh, yeah.
- And I sat right next to him
and his wife.
- No way.
- Yeah, this is last
time I was here, yeah.
- Oh, that's fun.
- And for those who don't know,
he's a, I would call him
like installation artist.
- Yeah.
- He installed perhaps
most famously the silk,
gosh, what were they?
Just a big fabric
installation in Central Park.
- Yeah, yeah, he had 10,
they called it The Gates.
- The Gates, that's right.
- 10,000 gates
that were sort of like orange poles
with flowing orange
fabric hanging from 'em.
He wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin,
the building, with cloth.
So he does all these wacky
things that are beautiful,
and they're so fun to look at.
But that one you mentioned,
the one in Central Park,
it took him literally 24 years
from the conception to
when it actually came out.
And I was like,
"How did you have the
persistence to keep going?"
And he said the key was
that he saw the bureaucracy
as part of his creative process.
So doing the red tape was
actually part of his art.
And going to the government
and saying, can I get a permit?
How will this affect the wildlife?
Doing all that nitty-gritty
stuff instead of it's like,
God, this is a pain in
the ass, I'm an artist,
re-envision it as this is
part of my creative process,
and let's try to have fun with it and try.
So yeah, reframing the dullest
stuff that's seemingly dull,
'cause once you dive in,
nothing is really that dull.
Bureaucracy is actually quite interesting
once you get into it.
So I love that.
I love that, and I try to
take that into my own life.
- So I'm going to attempt to reduce
a lot of the different concepts
that I've been talking about to one thing,
just for purposes of discussion here.
I don't wanna oversimplify
them, 'cause that's dangerous.
But ultimately, what you're talking about
in a lot of these things,
whether it's gratitude,
or happiness, or how you get yourself
to get out of the chair and get to work,
or typing on a blank page
blows down to mindset.
- Oh, yeah.
- So are all of these hacks that you have
for getting in the right mindset?
And if so, are there others
that you haven't talked about?
Or are there ones if I reframe
the sort of the problem
as a question of are you, do
you have the right mindset,
does that make you think
about something different
that you do on a daily basis?
How do you get yourself
in the right mindset
to do the work that you
wanna do as a creator
and entrepreneur?
- Well, it's a great question.
And I think part of the secret
for me is what we talked about
is acting your way into a new mindset.
And there's a great quote,
I wish I came up with it.
The founder of Habitat for
Humanity came up with it.
And he said, "It's easier to act your way
"into a new way of thinking
"than to think your way
into a new way of acting."
So if it were for Christo,
just forcing yourself to
engage with the city government
and say this is actually interesting,
and the longer you do it, the
more you can become convinced.
So as an entrepreneur,
as I mentioned, I always
just focused on the art,
but I forced myself to say,
I'm gonna try to turn this marketing
and the business side into a creative act.
And that's when if you do
it for a couple of weeks,
that's when the mindset will catch up.
But I think you're absolutely right.
It's all about perspective.
It's not just glass
1/2 full and 1/2 empty.
You can see the glass as 1/2 empty,
and evaporating, and filled with bacteria.
Or you could see it as 1/2 full,
and just marvel at the fact
that you could turn on a tap
and get drinkable water,
which did not happen for
99% of human history,
and still is not available
to billions of people.
So it goes beyond just
1/2 full and 1/2 empty.
It's like a radical, it's
all about perspective.
- Radical perspective change.
- Right, radical perspective changes.
- So what's next for you?
You're constantly creating.
I love, I don't know how many books.
How many books did you write, six?
- Yeah, about six.
- Six.
- I mean, it depends.
Some of 'em are like little books.
But yeah, six real books.
- So obviously, I'm
talking about this like,
it hasn't even come out yet.
It's due out in November.
This was just an
absolutely delightful read,
Thanks A Thousand.
And if you need more
gratitude in your life,
I'd recommend it to anyone.
But what's next?
So you gotta promote this book, of course,
and you've--
- Right.
- What is your hack for
promoting this book?
Is it the writing 1,000
thank yous?
- Writing 1,000 notes
is a big one.
- Yeah.
- And also--
- Will you write them to
just people who buy the book?
Will you write them to journalists?
- Anyone who goes on the
website ajjacobs.com/thanks
and gives me their info, I will write it.
And I'm actually, I haven't
started marketing it yet,
but I'm planning to do a little bit
of the hack with marketing it,
like you and I approach
a reporter or a producer.
I'll be like, thank you for writing this,
for writing articles,
and for being a journalist
in this time when we need journal.
Thanks to the lumberjacks
who made the paper,
so that you could print it.
Thanks to your parents for having you.
And we'll see how that
goes, that engages people.
I have been approached to
turn this into a podcast,
so I may do that.
And not coffee, choose some other item,
maybe it's one item per
episode, and thank people.
- Wow.
- As I said, I wanna do
something about truth,
'cause I think it's endangered.
But yeah, I am...
As long as people keep reading
me, I will keep writing.
'Cause as I said, I
don't love the writing,
but I love the ideas, meeting people,
researching, and talking about it.
- Well, you also, if
you don't love writing,
you're also an incredible speaker.
And there's a little bit of
a partnership here with TED.
- Right, the TED Talk.
I sum this up in a TED
Talk that will come out
the same day the book is published.
So November 13th.
- Got it.
And you have a couple of other TED Talks.
- I do, I did one about what we discussed,
The Year of Living Biblically.
I did another one on the
family, we're all one family.
And yeah, I love 'em.
As you know, they don't pay anything.
And so stressful, 'cause I'm
used to looking at notes,
and just trying to speak for
18 minutes with no notes,
so stressful.
(Chase laughs)
But
they are incredibly effective.
And I watch 'em and listen
to 'em all the time myself.
- If there was some advice
that you could give.
There is so much advice
embedded in everything
that you've just said,
but I wanna shift gears for a second
and see if you can do us the favor
of giving concrete advice,
which I've heard you
dodge this question a lot.
- (laughs) Did I?
- So I'm trying to pin you down
a little bit.
- Sure.
- Again, there are people out
there who are trying to decide
if it's time to shift gears
and chase their dreams.
Or people who are chasing their dreams
and are struggling like we all are
to make the things come true--
- Right.
- In the world that we wanna see.
Lay it out there, just some raw advice.
- One phrase that I came up with
that sort of resonates with me, at least,
is strategic chutzpah.
Chutzpah, like just
(Chase laughs)
being bold.
And I remember when I
read the encyclopedia,
there was so many examples of it.
People did not become
successful sitting on the couch.
You had to go out there
and face massive rejection.
The poet, Langston Hughes,
he was a busboy at a
hotel in Washington D.C.
And he saw this famous
poet gonna have breakfast,
and he took, Langston
Hughes took his poems,
and put 'em on the plate with
the waffle, and it worked.
It won't always work.
It probably won't work most of the time,
but you gotta put yourself out there.
A few years ago, I had a
guy who went to my college,
and he just wrote me out of the blue
this very funny, engaging email
about how he wanted to be a writer.
And I was working
on The Year of Living
Biblically at the time.
And the Bible, actually,
in the Old Testament,
says that slavery is okay,
which obviously is problematic.
I did not (laughs) know
how to deal with that.
But I thought, an intern is like,
that's the closest I could come.
So I offered him an internship,
and he could be my biblical
slave, and he was fantastic.
He just did research.
He baked biblical bread for me.
And he went on to write a
wonderful, he's written two books,
and he's now a New York
Times columnist, Kevin Roose.
But he had the strategic chutzpah
to write me a very engaging
letter, not a form letter,
a specific letter where he
complimented what he liked
about my work, and was
self-deprecating and funny.
And if he had just gone
through the regular channels,
like the alumni office, I
don't think I would've ever,
it wouldn't have risen
to my consciousness.
So he practiced strategic chutzpah,
and it really worked out for him.
So that's what I recommend.
There's a fine line between
strategic chutzpah and stalking,
so you gotta be careful.
But you really do have to just make,
when I spoke to our mutual
friend, Tim Ferriss,
he started out by going to conferences,
and approaching people and
saying, "I love what you do.
"Can I just take you to
coffee for 10 minutes
"and ask you about it?"
And he was genuinely
interested in what they do.
And after a while they would
say, "So what do you do?"
And that's when he was
able to pitch himself.
So that kinda thing, strategic chutzpah.
- Strategic chutzpah.
- Yeah, you don't wanna just--
- Chutzpah everywhere. (laughs)
- Chutzpah everywhere.
Just focus in on who you think
is closest to what you wanna do.
- Beautiful.
Thank you so much for being a guest
on the show.
- Oh, I loved it.
- I could sit with you for hours.
I don't know if you noticed,
but I handcuffed you to the chair.
(A.J. laughs)
And we're gonna be here
for another 90 minutes.
No, just a huge debt of gratitude.
Thank you for putting out the art
into the world that you put out.
I wanna acknowledge the
impact that you've had
on millions of people, on me personally.
And I know that what we just talked about
will stir the hearts and minds
of our watchers and listeners.
- Well, right back at ya.
You, I love listening to
and or watching your show,
'cause it's like inspiration in a bottle.
It's lovely.
- Thanks, bud.
- Thanks.
- Appreciate you.
All right, signing off.
Super happy to have
A.J. on the show again.
Thanks A Thousand among his other
five marvelous books,
(lighthearted pop music)
check it out.
And thanks for tuning in.
See you again, probably.
(music drowns out speech)
