Dr Jason Fox | complex AF

Dr.: Wait a minute!

Tommy: Crossface! The Daily Talk Show, a conversation sometimes worth recording with Josh Janson and Tommy Jackett.

Josh: Episode 101, everyone. It's The Daily Talk Show. I'm Jo— do we have to intro ourselves anymore?

Tommy: We paid some guy to say our names for us.

Josh: His name's Bob, by the way.

Tommy: Shout out to Bob.

Josh: From New York, New York City.

Tommy: We should say the name of our guest today.

Josh: Dr. Jason Fox.

Dr.: Hello. Hey.

Josh: Good day. That's such a Jason, Dr. Jason Fox thing. How often do you have the doctor in front? Like, when is it?

Dr.: It started 'cause all the URLs for jasonfox.com were taken, but Dr. Jason Fox was available and it was soon before completing my PhD. So, I was like, oh yeah, I can claim that.

Tommy: So, I mean, I could put Dr. Tommy Jackett, Totally, right?

Josh: But then they have to do the doctorate.

Tommy: Yeah, so you've done the hard work. You've got a—

Dr.: It's a doctorate of philosophy, but specifically I research motivation and behaviour change.

Josh: Did I make up the other day, I was throwing out the other day, I was like, yeah, I think Jason, Dr. Jason Fox is an organisational psychologist. I actually said Jason Fox. You did.

Dr.: Jason.

Tommy: Is that true?

Josh: I made that up.

Dr.: Look, this is all part of the game. These are all just funny titles and masks that we wear and stuff. So I can be whatever gets me past the gatekeepers and into where I need to be. Organizational psychology, motivation design, behavioural scientist, whatever mask I need to wear to kind of get me to the right place.

Josh: You're like a TED Talk, like the quintessential TED Talk title.

Dr.: Oh, oh yes, how so?

Josh: Well, in the sense, well, when I think about TED Talks, I think about like, literally those names are the ones that I tend to watch the most. It's like behavioral, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got to use the words.

Dr.: And neuro is a popular one too as a suffix, neuro-whatever. The science of, people love that, the science of, even though it's rarely actually the science of, like there's more scientism, this kind of obsessive love and ideological coveting of science as this kind of thing to worship as opposed to looking at the real science, which is often quite boring and quite slow and mundane.

Tommy: I was watching some videos because you and Josh have worked together.

Dr.: Oh shit, oh hang on, what? No, not of me on YouTube.

Tommy: Of you on YouTube. I watched your TED Talk. Oh, mate, I loved it.

Dr.: Oh, that's great. But this is a real angst. This is why I'm working with Josh at the moment. So Josh and I are doing some filming at the moment. Far out, people see this, like, videos of me from 6 years ago and that forms their opinion of me in this current day.

Tommy: I thought you were nailing it then. You are really good at drawing. Oh yeah, I saw you drawing on a whiteboard.

Dr.: I did a whiteboard once about 9 years old.

Tommy: But sort of what stuck out to me was the stuff around motivation and your sort of, I guess, view and thoughts around motivation. I wrote it down here. You said most of us try to motivate others from the inside out. And so can you explore that?

Dr.: I really like that.

Josh: It's also funny. There's also something really funny. I feel like having worked with Jason a bunch, it's the equivalent of Jason going back to your third break at Shepparton and being like, mate, you said this thing in Shep. So I'm curious to hear, I'm curious to hear, I'm curious to hear I'd love to hear as well how much the, like, talking to that point, what you were thinking then and whether it's actually—

Dr.: Well, it's actually, I mean, there's a high-level conversation that's quite fascinating here around the kind of fracturing of people's identity nowadays. The fact that we're so hyper-connected and we have all sorts of digital avatars and representations of ourselves in different platforms and things like that. So yeah, there's a sense of who I am on YouTube as well as Twitter as well as Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn. I'm hopeless across all of them, which is why people, which is why I'm haunted by my past.

Tommy: These fossils of my past keep resurfacing But in fairness, that was like 2013, the video I'm talking about. Yeah, right. And a lot of it was really relevant to my world right now.

Dr.: Thanks. I try to be relevant. So here's the thing with motivation. There is so much fluff, folklore, fist-pumping, rah-rah, and all sorts of—

Tommy: So you love Tony Robbins?

Dr.: I think he's maturing. I think he's getting better. I think he's getting a level of sophistication, but he's also an example of someone who is incredibly overworked. And one of the risks that happens in this industry is people start to optimise too much, you know. You build a program, it kind of works, you can sell stuff, it starts to develop reputation, and so you just end up iterating the same thing instead of actually taking a step back and asking, actually, is this still relevant and true? Is this still useful? Is this still actually the most apt expression it could be?

Tommy: So you find a bit of success in going, shit, let's do a bit more of this, let's add to that.

Dr.: And yeah, and then it can potentially get you so insular that you, you don't even question, is this moving us closer to future relevance? Like, is this actually— so, like, motivation, that's so many outdated folklores, but it's comforting to folks, like, to be told that you can achieve anything, you just need to believe, you just need to have the right attitude, an attitude of gratitude, cheque up from the neck up, and all that stuff. It kind of goes against what we know from science and what we know from actually just getting people a little bit more curious, a little bit more critical thinking, a little bit more experimental, instead of seeking these one-size-fits-all universal truths. And so that's the perspective I try to bring.

Josh: Is it about creating a mind shift? And is that what they're trying to do? And is there, do you think there's better ways of doing that?

Dr.: Well, I think, I mean, all the ways are potentially good, but there are some less than helpful approaches. I think that what the motivational speaking industry has done historically is kind of first sell you the idea that there's something wrong or something that you're missing or something that's broken inside you, then kind of present this kind of mystical solution, the secrets, the hidden operating system upgrade that you absolutely, you know, you know, you need—

Tommy: I bought that DVD. Totally.

Dr.: Well, yeah, first you buy the DVD, then you go to the immersion thing, and then you go to this deeper thing, then you go to some offsite, and then you're talking about franchise options and so on. It just like, it becomes—

Josh: Before you know it, you have a Boost Juice.

Dr.: Totally. But so, I mean, I just think that, I think that the world covets these, they kind of, they look at these like folks on the pedestal and think, oh wow, they've got it all figured out, when most of us are just making it up as we go. We're all kind of trying to do the best that we can. And you know, there aren't any perfect solutions, but there's an approach that we can start to integrate that, you know, involves mindset shifts and so forth, which is complex AF. And then—

Josh: The title of our podcast, Complex AF.

Dr.: I like it. Well, yeah, 'cause then you start getting into notions of boundaries of self and like, where are, you know, all that stuff. And then there's also systemic things. Like you look at a lot of, of online things. So how I got into this is I was doing my PhD research in motivation science. I was lecturing at different universities. I saw high school kids getting talked to by motivational speakers and told to, you know, you need to know exactly where you want to be in 10 years' time, what car you'll drive, what job you'll have. And it struck me as less than helpful for these kids that are already under heaps of pressure. And at the same time, I was playing World of Warcraft, which is a multiplayer online role-playing game which has incredibly sophisticated psychological design. And so I thought, ah, what happens if we combine what works there with the real world and can we take a different approach to motivation? That was my first book ages ago and then so on and so on. And now I'm off doing all sorts of other things.

Josh: So you're, the current book, "How to Lead a Quest." Yeah, man. But you're pretty close to, are you close to releasing a new book or what's the, is that like?

Dr.: Oh, right, so "How to Lead a Quest" came out a little while ago, like a year and a bit ago. I'm in the process of writing a book at the moment. But this time I'm kind of being cagey as to when I involve third parties and publishers, 'cause there's kind of like a crunch that comes on once you've got contracts signed and so forth. And I'm trying to just let this thing emerge. So I'm procrastinationating.

Tommy: Is that a creative decision? 'Cause you think you'll get the best out of it?

Dr.: Totally, yeah. It's the third album. It's the weird one. It's the thing that, I can now afford to be a little bit foolish in my world 'cause I've got enough momentum and reputation list and so forth that if it really fucks up, then I'll be okay. We'll survive this.

Josh: When it comes to books, are you of the school of like, you know, there's a lot of people in the motivational game where it's like, okay, you buy a— Was that you, Tommy?

Tommy: That was me, sorry.

Josh: It's my wife.

Dr.: So real.

Josh: It's always the laptop, isn't it? I know, I get you. If you didn't hear, Tommy's laptop just buzzed. There seems to be like a world where it's like, okay, you buy— you create a book and then that book is going to be what you use to speak, and then you're going to have it like on the table in the back.

Dr.: Totally.

Josh: Is, is that actually where you started the journey of writing?

Dr.: Yeah, kind of. So, I mean, I had a— I mean, I had a little self-published book, How to Enjoy Exams, back when I was helping students and so forth. And then I wrote a little kind of giveaway book and so forth. That's more of a better version of a business card. And then, and then The Game Changer, my first book, was super awesome work with Wiley, my publisher. That you don't actually make much from the book itself, like the royalties are pretty slim, like $1.50 or something, something along those lines per $30 book. Or maybe it's $2, I don't know, nothing really to get terribly excited about, but it unlocks opportunity for you. It kind of— so in that regard, books serve, it's almost like a ping to the market, like a little sonar ping to remind you, oh hey, you know, Here I am and I have these perspectives maybe that could be useful in your mix. And people pick up the book and they read it and think, "Oh, this could work," and so forth. And then I work with organizations. The book that I'm writing at the moment, I'm not sure if I want it to be simply just a ping. I think I kind of want it to be the type that is esoteric and obscure, but in 6 years' time, people will be picking up and reading it and thinking, "This is actually pretty good." Actually, I'd like for it to be much more commercially effective than that, but, but that's not my primary objective.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Josh and I talk a lot about goals and, and, um, I guess motivation, all these themes in our everyday life. And I think about myself as far as goal setting, and I don't really set goals. I become obsessed with something, like this show, 100 episodes. We didn't have the goal of 100, we just had the goal of get started.

Dr.: Yeah.

Tommy: And actually enjoy what we're doing.

Dr.: Yeah.

Tommy: And I feel like that pay has paid off for us. Am I not serving myself well by that approach?

Dr.: No, it's so, so good. And it reflects what you guys were talking about with Hamish yesterday with, um, the sense of trajectory. This, like, it's more about direction rather than destination. It's, um, there's this wonderful, uh, thing, um, have you ever seen Tim Minchin's valedictory speech?

Josh: They kind of did this thing and I've seen a lot of valedictory speeches, so probably, but I don't know the name.

Tommy: Featuring up there in that gown, I've seen snippets of it.

Dr.: Something like that. But he's just reminding folks, it doesn't matter if you don't know exactly what you want to do in your life, what your dream is and so forth, just be kind of micro-ambitious. And I think there's a sense of like—

Josh: Micro-ambitious.

Dr.: Yeah, yeah. It's, I mean, fancy words for like, if you've got a hunch, if this feels right and stuff, pursue that. But then do these check-ins. Is this kind of moving closer? I think having a fuzzy goal is okay. That allows you kind of room to meander and stumble and explore tangential pathways. What doesn't work so well is the old industrial kind of having a really ultra-specific SMART goal, which is measurable, achievable, realistic, time-based. That's fine for formulaic work and predictable outcomes or with predictable outcomes or if you're trying to do something in the Olympic Games, which is really stable environments where you're looking to shave microseconds off your time. Goal setting is fantastic there, but in something complex like life or like a project that's unfolding and emerging and, you know, it's okay to keep them fuzzy.

Tommy: Yeah, well, that's the creative endeavors. I, in one of those videos I was watching, I mean, you might not even think this anymore, but it was around the— I, I saw you talking about money and the creative. So the driver of money, so the, the project requires, you know, cash to be injected and the creativity then has to come. And so that's causing some kind of of friction, or do you think they live together? Like, what do you think the best outcome is? Do you think you can put dollars towards it? So is there pressure there? Then, you know, are you getting your full creative capabilities out of those?

Dr.: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the simple thing when it comes to money and stuff like that, look, money is an incredible motivator. Um, when you do drop stacks of cash into a thing, it will narrow people's focus. So what you'll often get is people will achieve the thing that you're trying to do because of the reward. But if you have a scenario where you, you know, you have kids, um, you want them to kind of do housework, and you've got one family that's paying their kids pocket money to do the housework, and another house where people are doing the housework because they want to contribute to being part of the family. When the pocket money disappears in the first example, it's very likely that the behaviour of cleaning up the house will disappear as well. Um, and so Josh hasn't cleaned his house.

Josh: Well, Dan Ariely talks about it a lot, um, with that, uh, that idea that there's the the social contract versus, you know, just a financial one. And that we can, like, it's counterintuitive, but this idea that I know that when I've had contractors, I would pay them really well and then I would sometimes be disappointed. And then I would have moments where I didn't pay them as much and I got a better result. And then so it's—

Dr.: So the idea ultimately is just try to remove extrinsic rewards from the equation as early as possible. Pay people well or whatever, but don't have it be the thing. Like it's a hygiene factor. If people feel like, cool, my base salary basic needs are being met, you know, I'm feeling comfortable here, it's out of the equation. We can then look at the inherent motivation to do something really great and wonderful.

Tommy: Well, social contracts, it's almost what we spoke about with Hamish yesterday. He was talking about his contract with the radio station to then do what he needs to do. But then people on their own social media accounts have a social contract with their followers to be coming in with that post at 7 AM tomorrow morning. Yeah, people will get pissed off. And so that pressure is pretty high for people. What's your experience with dealing with that space?

Dr.: I deal with all social media really poorly. Like I have— there are folks in my profession and so forth that seem to believe that simply posting a photo of themselves with their own quote next to it and a link to their website is the strategy. And the frustrating thing is it seems to work. You then have the— Josh introduced me to this new term a couple of weeks ago, a circle jerk.

Josh: Oh yeah, which Jason had the best— I said that you and I had sort of a circle jerk moment and he said, so like a line jerk.

Tommy: Line jerk?

Dr.: What's a line jerk? It's just a single line.

Josh: A single line of jerk.

Dr.: It's more of a spectrum, I think.

Tommy: I prefer the circle.

Josh: You need 3 for a circle. It's more of a triangular jerk.

Dr.: When does it actually become a circle jerk? That's a good question.

Josh: It takes a whole industry to be a circle jerk.

Dr.: Totally, because then you look closely at circles, it's all just different angles, right? And then we're getting into pi, like who is like, as in 3.14 and so on.

Tommy: I just have this vision of a bunch of people jerking in a circle right now.

Josh: Well, this is where the Does It Talk to Sirens thing.

Dr.: I mean, what a symbol of peace that would be all around the world. All around the world. How long would that take? It'd be pretty long. It would, it would, you need to get land bridges or something.

Josh: Yeah, it would serve a lot of good in the world, you think?

Dr.: I think so, yeah.

Josh: But impossible to, I mean, if the North Korea, if that whole summit happens anything could totally come out of that.

Tommy: Yeah, you are talking in front of big groups of people. What kind of people are they? Oh well, I mean, I mean, you know, the Daily Talk Show's audience is vast, but you've got a specific kind of niche.

Dr.: I, I talk with all sorts of industries and stuff. So I'm flying to Brisbane tonight, I'm speaking with a bunch of principals tomorrow. I was working with some hospital folk before, I was working with lawyers, software developers, um banks, all sorts. So the industry, I'm agnostic to whatever profession, but the general audience that I tend to work well with is sceptical audiences that feel like they've seen it all before. Um, I seem to be the refreshing counterpoint to those folk who can't stand the extroverted fist-pumping rah-rah motivational speakers. And that kind of happens because I meet them with a high degree of scepticism and, you know, help them to think a little bit more critically about motivation behaviour and to kind of view things like culture, innovation, leadership, authenticity, all those things from a high level of complexity instead of dumbing it down for the masses.

Josh: How do you be a sceptic and remain positive in the world?

Dr.: Oh, I'm glad you asked this. It's so good.

Josh: It's so—

Dr.: because I was like so bitter for so many years, and I actually did quite well out of just picking, picking apart other motivational speakers. But then —then it's like—

Josh: You're like the motivational troll. Yeah, kind of, kind of. Like you're the wizard now and you were once the troll.

Dr.: I was like a bit of a pirate back then. But there's this thing, there's this amazing book that I read called The Listening Society recently. It was written by— well, it's from Switzerland. Metamodernism is this concept that I'm flirting with obsessively right now. What is it? Metamodernism. It's beyond postmodernism. So if I just— can I indulge? Yeah, yeah, please.

Josh: And go into as much detail as possible because Tommy and I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Tommy: Great, great. So, and simplify it.

Josh: Okay, so what— so, so you said postmodernism. Let's just start, let's rein it back to modernism.

Dr.: This is to serve the meta question here of how do you stay and remain optimistic whilst sceptical as well. So modernism, um, it's much of how our society's worldviews are formed at the moment. Uh, and Australia is a very modern country. We view science, we venerate science, progress. We're very rational, we believe in the individual, and so forth. Postmodernism is less popular. So we're looking sociologically now. You've got these pockets of folks that say, yeah, cool, science is great, it's the best thing that we have, there's nothing better, but it's also pretty flawed. I mean, it just seems to be a bunch of white dudes winning awards for this stuff, and it seems to perpetuate these existing patterns of thought. It's not really encompassing all voices. There's a lot of minorities that— whose perspectives aren't necessarily expressed through the modern meta-narratives that we have and things. When was modernism—

Josh: like, what is it, a time period?

Dr.: Like, yeah, there's like industrial lines, but it's also kind of linked to the development of different societies and stuff. So if you look at some countries, uh, haven't quite embraced modernism yet, so it's very pre-modernism. What's like Dubai?

Josh: What would Dubai be? It's—

Dr.: that's complex, right? Because you have such, um— it's all complex everywhere, but you have there's going to be pockets and stuff like that. But if you look at, you know, countryside of some different countries, it's much more driven by religion, faith, and so forth. The science hasn't really kind of encroached upon worldviews as much. And this is not to say things are better or wrong, it's just reflective of different stages of development. So in stable societies like what we got here in Melbourne, you're going to have pockets of postmodernism where people realise that, oh yeah, actually there's kind of a better way here. And, you know, they look at motivational speakers and think, well, that's kind of cool, and I'm sure that works for you, but possibly there's some other experiences where your, your secret to success doesn't actually apply. The trouble with postmodernism though is it's just endless critique. It doesn't seem to offer anything. You're kind of ironic and clever and distant, whereas the modernist focus— so sincere, you know. You look at a lot of— in my personal experience, I'll see some North American motivational speakers or public speakers, and they start off so sincere. I remember I was at this— I was doing this thing in Washington, and there was a guy at saying, you know, when I first applied to work here, I was rejected. But you know what I did is I took that rejection letter and I got it laminated and I put it up on my wall, and every single day I looked at that. And you know, next year I applied, I got rejected again, but I keep looking at that rejection letter. Eventually— Sensitizing, by the way. But you know, it's like, this is so simplistic.

Josh: Isn't that like the Donald Trump realm that we're in? Like, he's a dude who like looks at his press every single day. Yeah, that's totally headline. We talked—

Dr.: what's interesting though is, um, I mean, there's some different theories around here, but Donald Trump's able to play with a very populist notion, like appealing to the masses and so forth. And I think a lot— I think pretty much everyone thinks he's an idiot, but some people love to kind of just follow him to see how he's going to fuck with the system a little bit, see what it's going to like, because there's an unpredictable nature.

Tommy: So that basic motivation of put the thing up on the wall and look at it every day is a part of the postmodernism.

Dr.: That would be modernism. Postmodernism is going to be the person having an espresso, you know, with a skivvy and so forth, reading some Penguin Classics.

Josh: You're literally describing Lawrence who's behind us right now, including the skivvy. It's great. Well, it was the postmodernism guy. We need a photo of Lawrence for our Insta storey after. We've got one of him wearing your glasses, Josh. Maybe Maybe that was my rebrand. Maybe I was going from modernism to postmodernism.

Dr.: Could be, yeah, yeah.

Tommy: Who's someone that we can put a picture in our mind, other than Lawrence, of someone who just fits the postmodernism bill that's preaching that postmodernism?

Dr.: I don't know if it's something to be preached so much because the thing is with postmodernism is that you kind of realise that nothing's actually true. Everything's broken. Everything's a bit of a lie. We only ever hold these fractured, incomplete pieces of reality and so forth. And so they're not really venturing forth much, but you might see some comedians that are incredibly sharp and on point and so forth. So what's it to the right?

Tommy: Yeah, they're right-leaning. Is that— is that fair to say? No, no, no, sorry, the opposite: left-leaning.

Dr.: No, not at all either. Well, actually more left-leaning. Yeah.

Josh: Um, because I wonder, like fake news, in some regards that could be seen as this postmodern idea which is like, ah, it's not true! But it's being used in sort of a way to create confusion.

Dr.: Well, we're getting into the space of metamodernism now. Right, we naturally transcend it. Yeah. So you talked about left and right beforehand. Metamodernism is kind of tangential to that. The, this, the distinctions between left and right and all sorts of distinctions start to—

Josh: so tangential, you did like a thing with your hand. Does that mean it sits perpendicular?

Dr.: Yeah, yeah, yes, perpendicular. We went from trans—

Josh: trans— yeah, this is good. But this is the thing, normally when Jason's talking, I take it all in and by the end I understand, but I'm trying to put my hat on.

Dr.: Great, okay, cool. So what I mean is that right angles and so forth. So instead of going on on one side of the spectrum. So you can kind of start to relate to all sorts of different worldviews. The thing I'm excited about with metamodernism, what it means in terms of how can you be skeptical, smart, and intelligent and still have sincere beliefs and have this kind of naivety and optimism, it comes through this kind of reconciliation or this ascension of paradox. You look at these two different things like irony and sincerity and you're both at once. You have this ironic distancing where you can make fun of yourself and be aware of like the meta, like you can, self-comment and so forth, and at the same time hold some sincere beliefs. It's like saying like, look, I don't believe in love, it's simply a bunch of neurological chemicals that's developed as our species has evolved and so forth. But I love my wife.

Tommy: And I got a dog and that thing. It's an oxymoron. Is that what an oxymoron is?

Dr.: Yeah, totally. Paradox. It's paradox, oxymoron, juxtaposition, it's hybridity, It's not very romantic though, is it?

Josh: Like I think there's moments I remember of saying to Bree where it's like, yeah, I feel like in the relationship it started off where it's like, you know, you're the only one for me type of thing. But then there's this like sort of this other part, which is like, I want to be with you, I love you so much, but we're both choosing to be. There are like heaps of people. The reality is there's like heaps of people that we could be with.

Dr.: Oh, they're banging at your door.

Tommy: You're a massive, that's a massive buzzkill to any woman who's listening.

Josh: No, but do you get what I meant? Like, so there's the—

Dr.: Totally, but it's both things. There's this notion of both/and rather than either/or. It's kind of cool, we both know this is kind of some sort of, we can break it down, we can look at the neurological pathways and so forth. And there's also still the mythology, there's still the actual romance. It's like pragmatism and romanticism both combined.

Josh: So it's almost understanding, 'cause I was even talking to Chaim about this the other day, which was like, there's a time which you say, like say for instance having kids or being in a long-term relationship or whatever, where you're like, I'm choosing this path and there's almost an element of being, I don't know if dogmatic's the right word, but it's like being sure in, yes, there's lots of options, there's heaps of different solutions, it's like going into business or something like that, it's like saying, You know what, like there's 100 different ways of doing it, but I'm actually committing to this and it's going to mean taking other options off the table.

Dr.: That's right, and so this is kind of cool too. How does commitment work? Because in a kind of an older way of looking things, harkening back to the industrial kind of motivational speaker kind of modernism thing, it's very much, you know, this is it, black and white. This is, you know, straight path. Whereas nowadays, we can actually commit to stuff, but we hold it as a stance. And we commit to it wholeheartedly until we actually realize, oh, this isn't actually serving us so well. And maybe we do— to use a terrible word, I'm only terrible because it's been overused by consultants— but we kind of pivot, we kind of reassess, we, you know. And this is— it's much more of a dance then. It's much more of this kind of oscillation between different extremes that kind of moves us closer to this sense of simultaneity where we can be both things at once and neither of I like what you said about the quote, "You're so open-minded your brain falls out." Yeah.

Tommy: And that's where it's like you're pushing yourself in one way, you know, "Oh, it's all about monogamous relationships." And then next minute the person's in open relationships and is preaching that. And so it's like, at what point—

Dr.: Well, it's possibly not the next minute. It's possibly like through conversations, through explorations, through the complexity of life, helping to shape and influence how we are. For some folks, it might be reaching a certain point of maturity in their relationship where they realise that I feel so secure and stuff like that, and I don't actually— we don't actually see this as being a threat to what we have. And for others, it might not be. It's like, what it does is it helps us to go beyond the monolithic, you know, this is right, this is wrong, and everything's black and white view, and actually start to see the world more complexly and appreciate there's all sorts of different perspectives in the mix. And it doesn't necessarily mean they're right and wrong, they're just different.

Josh: And that's why goals are hard, I guess, because the goal that you set 10 years ago, uh, you're— you've had 10 years of a journey which is then informed. So it makes sense to sort of be open to moving around or sort of—

Dr.: well, and it's interesting when people attach identity to goals. So there, there's this notion of goldacity, um, which came about because a bunch of folks climbing Mount Everest had this goal to reach the peak by May 6th or some sort of specific because for the past couple of times they did it, they reached the peak on exactly May 6th and they're there on Mount Everest and they have this goal to get there. The conditions do not look right whatsoever, but they had this goal, they got to be up there, they've said too many, and then they ended up dying, you know? Yeah, it's like, joke's on them.

Josh: Yeah, right, it's just like us, it's just like us for episode 200, which is like, but no, it's interesting.

Dr.: Yeah, it's that Sandra Saleh.

Josh: Yes. Sally, if you're listening, yeah, make it happen, babe.

Dr.: I'm actually— I will— I'm speaking at an event with her. Is it tomorrow or next week or something like that? So join me.

Josh: Yeah, perfect.

Dr.: She's mentioned the day I'm on a session that she's going to be interviewing, so I will see it if I can drop it in.

Tommy: Just put it— at least I was on the Daily Talk Show the other day, Sandra.

Josh: And, um, exactly. Oh, she's, she's, uh, interacting on Twitter in the sense she's—

Dr.: she doesn't want to peek too early. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we've still got another 99 episodes to get through.

Josh: I know, but you don't want to Yeah, you want to sort of— we've got 101, 104.

Tommy: So we've got that. Jamie's back on 631.

Josh: 104, the annoying thing was he said that if we mentioned it that he wouldn't be—

Tommy: oh, he's not happy.

Dr.: 104 is like 2 times 52, 52 weeks in a year, 52 cards in a deck of cards, 2 people, 2 decks of cards. This is amazing.

Tommy: I like where you're bringing it. I'm starting to understand why you guys get along because you, you, you're both complex thinkers. And Josh Dr. Jason Fox said to me after a conversation he had with you that there's—

Josh: He was a basic bitch, basically. Yeah, yeah, basically he said, Tommy, Dr.

Tommy: Jason Fox told me that there's different levels of thinking and there's complex thinking and I'm kind of up here and you're kind of—

Dr.: I did do that pretty much exactly right, yeah.

Josh: I definitely didn't do the up and down, they were more sort of on parallel with each other going across. Can you explain what that actually, what is that?

Dr.: Well, okay, well, this is one of the things there's no way of— you sound like a prick with it. And there's no avoiding it.

Tommy: Just don't say where you are on the scale.

Dr.: Well, this is a thing. Because this is a thing that many folks rail against. Because it brings back this notion of hierarchy when it comes to people's ability to operate at levels of high complexity and abstraction. Doesn't mean good or bad. No. In fact, you look at someone like me, I'm probably utterly confusing to most folks. My ability to make decisions swiftly and to actually do things practically is negligible at best. When it comes to all sorts of intelligences like my sense of balance, direction, the social nuances and emotional attunement and all sorts of like skills, it's like all sorts of things I'm quite rubbish at. Complexity is something that I'm lucky in that my research pathway and so forth is kind of, and several life experiences so forth has lent me ability to possibly see things more complexly. This could be a delusion though. It could be that I'm actually just I'm just kidding myself and it's a useful delusion. It's not here. So what's the theory on it?

Josh: So there's actually a theory.

Dr.: Okay, so the theory is that just as you have childhood development, so you've got your 15-month-old kid, what was your name? He's Bodhi. Bodhi, okay, cool. So you'll see the development of Bodhi. You'll see he's learning 30 words now at the moment, roughly 30 words. You'll see him then start to— He's got a mullet as well.

Tommy: He's got a mullet, okay, cool.

Josh: But we're very much— Okay, cool.

Tommy: Daycare workers say he's quite advanced and so we're grabbing at that and going with it. Okay, cool. But he's advanced.—

Dr.: There's a notion, right, of being advanced. And this is actually reflective of empirical research pioneered by a guy called Michael Commons in the 1980s. You look at childhood development, you can see like, cool, learning words and then stringing sentences together and then understanding distantly connected concepts and so forth. You'll see the kind of development. And the thing is, we don't suddenly just stop developing once we're in school. This kind of develops not through education necessarily, but through the process of going through life. And then for some folks, thanks to— and it's hard to say what factors— it might be through their education pathway, it might through the life— be life experiences. They might travel widely, they might go live with different families in different cultures, they might have some traumatic events, their parents might separate, and they start to see things from two very different perspectives. Whatever it is, it contributes to this notion of them being able to see the world a little bit more complexly, which is where they become perhaps a little less black and white. They see more gray, they see more nuance, more shades of color. Another way to think of it is empathy. I'd say empathy is a factor. We're talking much more cognitive here. So I think that some folks would have an intuitive empathy, like a connection. Now this is in territory that's beyond my, um, my savvy. Um, I really love the School of Life, when, um, the School of Life, um, wonderful website and stuff like that, lots of really good emotional intelligence stuff there. But it's definitely a factor. I think when you can see things more complexly, you possibly have the ability to relate or at least to suspend what your thoughts of right and wrong are so you can see it through another lens and realize, oh, okay, really, it's not, it's not really as complex as that. A way to think about it is kind of like a whiskey tasting.

Tommy: Now Josh has probably never been to one, uh, but we'll do one, Josh.

Dr.: Yeah, I love it. See, I've never— I was never taught whiskey, so I thought whiskey, this is shit, this is like, it burns, I don't know what people are talking about.

Josh: How I feel about most alcohol, like, um, beer. You could give me a VB or All tastes the same. Yeah, it all tastes— it doesn't.

Tommy: But yeah, I get it. I was there, I was 4 at that stage when I thought—

Dr.: I loved it, but I wouldn't drink VB. What you'd be able to get through is, especially with whiskey, when you pause, when you take time, when you kind of notice the nuances, when you do it, you kind of, you nose it, you kind of sense there's this sweetness. Some people are like, oh, that's sweet. But What type of sweetness? Is it honey sweetness, treacle sweetness, toffee sweetness? Is it molasses? Is it maple? Is it like, is it burnt caramel?

Josh: And the only way you know that is by having tried all those things. Is that the idea?

Dr.: I just bumped the microphone, sorry. Oh, that's fine. That's all good. Yeah, well, I think it's partly that. I think that I'm talking like we're going olfactory here rather than cognitive, but there's a— What was that word that you just used? Olfactory, like when you smell things, smell and— How do you spell it?

Josh: I'm hearing olfactory. Olfactory.

Dr.: Is that what you were saying?

Josh: I wish I did. O-L-F-A-C-T-O-R-Y. Can we just pause that? Tommy, with his arrogance, he's like, mate, he's saying fucking olfactory.

Tommy: He said, you know, when you walk in a factory and you sniff—

Dr.: this is great. This probably happens all the time for me. Say the word again. O-L-F-A-C-T-O-R-Y. Olfactory. The olfactory. Yeah, the old factory.

Josh: It's like a hipster factory.

Tommy: Derek is actually up in an olfactory right now, right?

Dr.: One of our listeners It's pretty cool, olfactory, when smells trigger memories because it bypasses a certain pathway in your brain. And so this is why you have a particular smell and you're like, oh wow, where am I? Where have I, you know, that's pretty special.

Tommy: Denkarab footy field.

Dr.: Yeah, there you go.

Tommy: You know, year 7, just lathering up. Actually brings back a memory. No, lathering, yeah, I was right. Actually, it triggers a memory, the smell of Denkarab for me, my brother's mate, got so much put on his back, his back went white. And so there was so much and it was just burning him.

Josh: Anyway, it actually reminds me of the other day, Bree said, "Oh, I can smell like the smell of hot chips at a swimming pool." Yeah, it's like vinegar and salt and chlorine.

Dr.: Yeah, it's an interesting mix.

Josh: We weren't near a swimming pool, so I don't know what the deal was.

Dr.: So that's what ol' factory. Well, it's, yeah. I like it, I like it, ol' factory. The main point that I'm making, the main point, or think about designers, right? Like you're looking at like, someone might think, oh, well, I don't like that pink. And they're like, it's not pink, it's fuchsia. And now it's like, or it's like more like—

Josh: Get fucked, it's pink.

Dr.: Totally right. Different scales, different spectrums. And so there is a scale when it comes to complexity and abstraction. And some folks are better at staying in the space of ambiguity, abstraction, complexity. And we all have a complexity bias. So for me, some of the messages touted by some folks, I feel is, you know, in a conference setting is incredibly simplistic and naive and incomplete, but it resonates really well with the audience. And other folks, I'm like, shit, I have no idea what this academic is saying. Like, I'm lost and I'm confused. This feels counterintuitive. I feel dumb. But I'm kind of personally quite excited about this too because I got things to think about. Um, so we just— we all have a complexity bias. And, um, and so that's essentially the model.

Josh: And because I feel like when you when we're talking like this, there's a filter which is the young version, which is like, oh man, they're being wankers. Like, this is just— oh yeah. So what is your wanker bias in the sense of how do you, like, when, what is the filtering when someone is being complex and it's, and it's—

Dr.: great question—

Josh: versus just being a bit of a wanker? Oh, I love it, I love it.

Dr.: Um, the irony of, um, you know, people calling out pretentiousness is that act in and of itself is pretentious, because a pretentious, you know, look at the pretentious layer with their wine tastings and so forth and using all their fancy words and so forth is an act in and of itself of pretentiousness. So when you kind of accept that there's no avoiding wankery, if you just assume that wankery is the default, there's just various expressions of wankery. We're going back to circlejerk soon. But for me, my kind of— I don't really think so much of wankery. I kind of— I like it when it becomes self-aware. I think when there's an absence of self-awareness, when people aren't mocking themselves in the process of doing it, if they don't have that blend of irony and sincerity, when they're sincerely, you know, you see startup pitches and they're talking about, you know, some Bluetooth-enabled, I don't know, washing machine or something like that.

Josh: I'd buy that.

Dr.: And, you know, they're talking all sincere and stuff like that, talking about the, you know, it's kind of like I think, oh, that's a bit wankery and stuff like that. But if they're doing that with that kind of tongue-in-cheek smirk, that's suddenly okay.

Tommy: Yeah, I've immersed myself in the wankery at a wine tasting and I can tell you I can tell you right now, when I thrown out that overthinking, this is wankery, and immersed myself in the world of this person, I've actually quite enjoyed it.

Dr.: Totally. I mean, you look for different things. Getting back to whiskey, my territory, whiskey tasting notes are so honest and real. There's one I remember on a bottle, it was actually saying like Band-Aids, wet cardboard, gym shoes. It's just hellishly real about the kind kind of the whiffs and wafts that you'll get.

Josh: Is this like, uh, hipster? Like, you know, hipsters? I mean, you would have been— you would have been touted a hipster with— to describe Jason, you've got a luscious beard, solid beards, a hat that I nearly sort of incorporated similar one into my rebrand.

Dr.: I think a beret would go well with you at the moment.

Josh: Yeah, but the— it just doesn't sort of sit— it sort of flattens my head out. But anyway, it doesn't show off your Harry Potter scar.

Dr.: Exactly.

Josh: What's What is that? What's that hat called? Is it a beret?

Dr.: It's a flat cap, I think.

Josh: A flat cap. And you wear vests and stuff like that too?

Dr.: Basically, I wear the vest because I didn't have time to iron my shirt. And I wear the cap because my hair might be getting a bit unruly at the moment.

Tommy: And it all works. And Josh put that jumper on because it's the only one he has now. That's very true.

Josh: But it's Merino wool. Let's call it what it is. But so hipster stuff, do you push back on it? Do you like it? I love it.

Dr.: I love it so much. Of course, with hipsterism, there's a bullshit factor.

Josh: Because the fact that you like that hipster thing? Because I remember I said, I think I'm a bit of a hipster, and someone said, no, you're not, because real hipsters never say that they're hipsters.

Dr.: Well, yeah, so people are obsessed with definitions— what's real, what's not. It's very postmodern and so forth. Let's— or is that metamodernism? Let's, um, dig— um, postmodern is more deconstructing and kind of working out in different labels for different things. Um, and what would metamodernism— reconstructing is taking all the disparate bits and kind of creating something.

Josh: What would be an example of metamodernism in in that context?

Dr.: In that context, it's, I'd like to say, are you guys familiar with Russell Brand? Yes. Yeah, he's very metamodern. His kind of ability to kind of, it's hard to kind of define and he's able to kind of appreciate and empathise and be curious about a multiplicity of perspectives. He's all over the shop, but still succinct and contained. I love hackers, hipsters, and hippies. There is this emergence of this, and this is something I got from that book, The Listening Society. I love these guys, but this, this, this rise of the triple H, and each of them, it makes sense as to why we're getting this in society. So hipsters, for example, they're helping us make meaning in this post-digital world, this hyper-connected thing where everything's touchscreens and displays, and we have everything that's all connected and that, they're helping to resurge vinyl, to do like, you know, in Scandinavia when I worked there, apparently the hipsters there are into smoking their own sausages and so forth. And they're doing this kind of, they're kind of rekindling this stuff. And it's bringing meaning back, like slow things, like disconnecting from stuff. Hippies are bringing back enchantment into our world. Like we've been so disillusioned, disenchantment where everything's fucked and fake and bullshit and stuff like that. But they're kind of rekindling magic and they're not doing it with like old, you know, crystal shop, you know. It's kind of using modern science but in this way to help us be healthier and happier, sleep better and eat better, and so forth. And, and hackers are finding novel, better ways to deal with some of the more complex challenges of society. You know, you don't look to governments anymore to solve transnational, you know, global challenges like climate change and so forth. You look to the really ingenious hackers that, like, you know what, we can use technology in this way and do this better than anyone else has.

Tommy: Mark Zuckerberg Um, Ned Kelly, the only hipster. I look at Ned Kelly, he's like— I saw a photo of him.

Josh: I don't know anything about Ned Kelly other than the whole—

Tommy: he was a crook, but he looked— he was an ultimate hipster. Yeah, I mean, your set, your style is what I'd see is like a bit old-fashioned.

Josh: If you're wondering why it's so tinny, he's got like a tin mask on, like the acoustic Futuristics are sort of— but you're talking about there is, um, juxtaposition, right?

Dr.: So, um, I like this stuff, I think it's cool and so forth, but also I tend to speak and work in very future-focused, um, spaces. Yeah, but the kind of— to bring in the nostalgia into the future-based conversation is, is kind of good. It's like a juxtaposition. It's sceptical but ideological. It's kind of nostalgic but futuristic.

Josh: It's like, it's all What about the idea that all of this stuff has been done before? Like everything, like we're just like repeating history and that sort of like eye rolling of the, like— It's great. What's your view on that?

Dr.: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of this whole, the blend of like the deep pessimism, skepticism, and almost like nihilism, which means everything's meaningless, this kind of thing, it's all bullshit. Like people have talked about this before, who am I to do this anyway? Who are we to do this? Like, this is what the fuck are we doing anyway? Combined with, yeah, well, let's do it anyway. Like, let's see what we can do. And let's like, let's kind of recombine these elements in this expression and kind of say things that have been said before, but perhaps from this angle or in this way at this particular point in time. And it's that confluence of the fact that we're all influenced by all the experiences that we have, the conversations, the connections and so forth. And so forth. I realise I'm doing a lot of gestures with one hand you can't pick up on radio, but this all influences and shapes who we are. So yeah, nothing's really original because it's kind of formed based upon our interactions. We co-create each other and so forth. And that's kind of cool and that's fine. You know, life is inherently meaningless, but we can also make incredibly rich and magical meaning out of the broken meaninglessness of life.

Josh: Do you think too many people try and claim that they've got new ideas?

Dr.: Ah, yeah, and this comes back to a certain level of complexity. I think that if we look at something, notions of creativity through different layers of complexity, at the simpler level you might think of people that are looking for their eureka moment where they have this spark and like, I've got it and I've got this original idea and I go need to go get it patented and so forth. I've got this perfect idea and then— It's Josh every week.

Tommy: It's very true. It's very true.

Dr.: And then others are more like, like if we wanna stimulate more creativity, it's less about trying to find these eureka moments and more about, "All right. What's the systems that we have in place? How can we cultivate, you know, approach this more systemically and so forth?" And others start to say, "Okay. Well, ideas and thinking are more just the emergent phenomena of the complex interactions of different thoughts and peoples and so forth." And so, any expression of an idea isn't really truly yours. It's kind of some sort of of— there's a notion of— there is a notion of memetic drift. Memes being ideas, you know, you spread memes on the internet and so forth. But ideas emerge and then they kind of drift, and as they pass through different cultures, they take on different flavours and so forth. And they might just have emerged from you, from you combining different disparate conversations and experiences you've had. And then it seems unique because you haven't actually personally experienced this anymore. The more knowing nature realises that actually what the chances are pretty high that maybe someone else has thought similarly. There's a notion called "senius," which is collective intelligence, is where you have like people having the same ideas but in very different parts of the world, completely apparently disconnected. So you start to realize, okay, cool, well maybe it's— So what is that?

Josh: Is that some sort of like magic sort of shit going on? Like what is that actually? What's that theory?

Dr.: Okay, well magic's an interesting one, right? So at certain levels of complexity, people believe in actual magic. It's look at that, it's magic. I think a more healthy definition of magic is things that exist in an order of complexity higher than our ability to comprehend. So if you look at like, I don't actually know how the smartphone works and things like that. It looks like, seems to be like magic. I literally do not know how it works. I'm sure I can find out. And there are people who know that it's not actual magic, but it seems to be like magic. And there are things that happen in our world that could just be confirmation bias. It could just be a whole heap of narrative or logical fallacies that we're falling prey to. It could be something of a higher order of complexity that we just don't really know yet. We can call it magic as a placeholder for the fact that we actually just haven't done the work yet.

Josh: What about religion? Is that what some people— do some people replace those sort of ideas with faith?

Dr.: I think, I think, wow, okay, a lovely territory that we're in. I, I, religion's an interesting one. You can have some incredibly intelligent, complex thinkers that still hold on to the mythology of religious belief. And it probably served them in some way. And they can make peace with the fact that there is conflicting bits of it and they can exist as good people in the world and that's totally fine. I think that— I mean, mythology is one of these persistent things. There's always going to be something there. I think that— but what— there's this thing called syntheism that's emerged, which is theism, which is religion, and atheism combined.

Josh: So this is like the episode where if we were to have show notes, it would probably be— yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr.: So say the word again. What's— syntheism. Syntheism. Not that I'm a syntheist, but, um, yeah, but what we're talking about though is this. For those that are listening and have a hunch and have their finger on the pulse, there's this emergent, emerging kind of sense of reconstruction in the world. We're going beyond this bitter everything is broken, everything's fucked, like look at climate change, look at overpopulation, refugee crisis, look at the corruption in politics and all that stuff. When you put it like that, it's fucking, there's a lot going on, yeah. Yeah, totally right, but we're getting a little bit beyond that and we're realizing, oh wow, we all kind of have agency here. The distances between us, I mean, Josh is gonna be away soon, but we haven't seen this collapse of distances where it doesn't matter that Josh is gonna be on the other side of the planet. Like you guys are still gonna be deeply connected, all listeners are gonna be connected, And so we're in this really new territory together, and that means that we can actually each individually in our small way potentially have a big collective impact. And this is something to get excited about. Yeah, so you think that—

Josh: that because I have moments of like, I'm only one person, there's, uh, I don't think that there's a huge amount— like, I see the complexity in everything that's going on, and I'm like, okay, the world seems so fucked that I have— I'm paralysed by it. I'm like, okay, well, is me stopping to eat meat or replacing my coffee cup with a Keep Cup— like, is that tokenistic? Yeah. Or is that actually going to make real change? And I worry that it's, uh, it, um, it feels tokenistic. Yeah, yeah, me too.

Dr.: Um, my undergraduate was environmental science, so I studied all this stuff. I remember one unit I did, Global Environmental Issues, that was was like week 1, overpopulation, week 2, soil pollution, week 3, heavy metals, week 4, atmospheric pollution, week 5, and so on. And then week 13, hope. It was this like kind of tokenistic hope thing put on. And at that stage, turning off your lights, doing your recycling, and so forth, bringing your own bag rather than plastic bags, that was all the rage back then. It seemed incredibly small, tokenistic things. But I think the thing is, we kind of— you kind of— you do accept, yeah, the world's complex, we're only small, all insignificant bits amongst the world, but we can kind of play some sort of role. And it might be not that we always— we might not always adhere or subscribe to all the right behaviors. It's pretty onerous and complex and difficult for us to do anyway. But if we see this as an infinite game which we all kind of have a bit of a role to play, uh, we don't know what the outcome will be, but we're in this to, you know, adventure together, to kind of slightly reference the chat we've had with game-ish. And, and approaching life as this kind of infinite game where the point is to continue to play together, it's not to win so that other people lose, but this collective sense we're all in it together brings about a sense of, yeah, cool, it's, I, it's complex, it's big and stuff. Individually I can't change anything, but we can still, we can still do something.

Josh: Isn't that— it's sort of like religion in some regards. It's this idea that, uh, this is going— doing these things will give me these virtues which will allow for internal growth, whether the actual destination is true or not. The process of me thinking about what I'm buying and what I'm doing is actually more beneficial than—

Dr.: yeah, yeah, I think so. Possibly, yeah. And, and, or possibly not. There's this kind of thing of like, maybe, maybe, like, it's meaning, right? We're all making meaning, you know, we're making it mean whatever we want. But if you look at things like, say, you know, we're in a fairly progressive city here in Melbourne. You look at the number of vegetarian and vegan restaurants about the place, it's becoming more popular. People are kind of becoming a little bit more empathetic to the way that animals are treated and so forth. There's still a lot of room that we can go. I'm on my way towards vegetarianism, but you know, I still have meat occasionally. But you look at these queues and these signs and so forth, you look at like the supermarkets ditching plastic bags and stuff like that, and it may have felt felt insignificant back then, but you know, we don't know the future we're going to, but you can look back and in hindsight you can actually see some pretty good indicators of meaningful progress.

Tommy: I heard a woman speaking on singularity. Yeah, what's your, what's your thoughts on that? Basically I'm asking, can you explain it?

Dr.: Because, um, singularity in terms of artificial intelligence?

Tommy: Well, it was around that future of work, and, and it was around actually, it was around the The belief of nothing matters, there's no meaning to our existence.

Dr.: Interesting. So there's many, many perspectives here, probably beyond the scope of this podcast. It's incredibly exciting. There's a— there's— so singularity can mean different things. It can be when artificial intelligence wakes up and kind of has this unified consciousness. It could be this sense that human consciousness reaches a point of singularity where we realise that we are, to quote Bill Hicks, the comedian, that we are all simply, that all matter is simply energy at a slow vibration. There's no such thing as death. Life is only a dream and we're the imaginations of ourselves.

Josh: Did you say he's a comedian? Was that one of his jokes? 'Cause that was a shit joke.

Dr.: Well, he ends it with, here's Tom with the weather. Today a young man on acid realised that we are all matter condensed to a slow vibration. I just trimmed those bits off. It was in a Tool album that I listened to. So Singularity, it's— I don't know what context she was coming from.

Tommy: It was pushing towards a movement of young kids that are starting to see this world as nothing that matters.

Dr.: Fascinating. Okay, cool. I don't know, it's more—

Tommy: have you heard of this?

Dr.: You see what I did there? Because I'm so used to like being on panels and stuff, I just launch in like I'm trying to think what the fuck does it mean as I'm speaking.

Tommy: So if you could help me actually remember what the fuck I heard.

Dr.: So good. But I mean, the kids kind of— it is interesting if you think about kids these days, they're on their phones so much, kids these days and so forth, but their social ecology is very much weighted to technology. They don't see technology as something separate to them. It's inherently enmeshed in their experience of living now, which is something we've never had before. They're also looking at how brains are changing and how kids use technology technology. We're also starting to ask questions about companies that use dark patterns to create addictive behaviors. So, things like infinite scroll and other things that trick you into staying on sites longer.

Josh: Facebook got in trouble for that sort of stuff, didn't they?

Dr.: There's all sorts of— Doing like experiments. It makes sense though. It's their business model. You just got to think about these things. And so, hence why I like hipsters because they're opting out of some of these things. And so, people are, "Oh, you're too cool for Facebook," and so forth. It's like, actually, we're just beginning to realise that it's not actually making us that happy and there's possibly more meaningful ways that we can connect with each other. But for kids and stuff growing up like this, where their social network, the fabric, is very much built into technology, I, yeah, I don't know what that's going to mean in terms of how things emerge. It could be beautiful, it could be ugly.

Tommy: Oh, you see the way my son reacts to a phone, seeing it, it's amazing. He can already see the button, pressing it off. It blows my mind.

Dr.: He turns it off?

Tommy: Well, he, yeah, so he can hang up on you. He sees a big red button on the screen, hangs up on you. Menu, but he knows how to open it. Yeah, yeah, not like it's put in my password, but just press the screen to get it activated. Yeah.

Dr.: And then you look at, you know, kids in the education system at the moment with teachers doing the very best that they can, but like the world, and like the world that they're getting exposed to is accelerating so much, and they're getting exposed to all sorts of information and stuff in there. And what's missing perhaps is that critical thinking, that digital literacy and so forth, but it's just going to have to emerge because the people in the roles of teaching it didn't grow up with this stuff. And so there's all sorts of complex experiences that kids are having these days that we have no idea about.

Josh: What have you opted out of that the rest of the general public are doing at the moment?

Dr.: I have opted out of urgency regarding email. So I have an autoresponder at the moment that I've declared this is the year of wizard for me. I choose one word every year and partly there's a quote, a wizard is never late. And I want I want to play with my relationship to time. I would often, um, you know, I'd see emails there, I've got to get back to this email and so forth, and I'd let it turn into some anxious thing. Whereas now my autoresponder just manages expectations and just says, look, I'm super slow. If it's urgent, get in touch with my partner Kim. Kim's on point with emails, but, you know, in a lovely balanced way, batches and so forth. Um, I'm like, I'm not obsessive about social media. I've pretty much become I've pretty much ghosted Facebook at the moment. Like, I pop in every now and then just to see what's happening. Haven't got quite to the point of deleting it, but I came very close.

Josh: Just like, has it given you what you expected? I remember there was a, a guy named Paul who works at The Verge who did a whole 12-month experiment. I remember reading about that where he went offline, and it turns out like he he was just as depressed as he was before, and he just like transitioned from those pacifiers to other ones.

Dr.: Um, there's a book I read called Deep Work recently by Cal Newport, Focus, Success in a Distracted World. And what I found was really helpful for me there is just being conscious of internet blocks. So he has this line around, um, most people take breaks from distraction to do focused work. So you have these weekend retreats where they go away and they kind of— there's no snacks and stuff, and I can just get focused and so forth. He says the norm should be focused work or deep work, and we take breaks to distraction. So you're doing the deep stuff, and then you kind of— when you want a break, then you go to distraction instead of into it, rather than having— instead of distraction being the norm. And so for me, trying— and I slip so many times— but trying to be just conscious of not checking my phone before, you know, ideally before noon in the day, and just not looking at it, like, is huge when I'm able to do that. But it's also so easy for my phone alarm to go off and I'm scrolling on Instagram and blah blah blah and so forth. But it's gotten better.

Josh: The hard thing is, I think it's the psychology of, uh, say, going on holidays. I remember making the decision of, uh, the difference between, say, Bree and my approach when I was an employee, where I'd be like, I wouldn't cheque my email at all, and then I would come back to whatever was there, whereas Bree's strategy was because if I deal with it now, it's then off my plate for when we come back. Which one do you think is— Who wins? Yeah, which one do you think, you know, if someone's planning a 4-week trip and they're going away, is the weight of— and the same, I guess, in your scenario, which is like, is the weight of knowing that you're going to arrive to your phone at 12 o'clock with a lot of unread things Is, is that a, um, is that enough of a downside not to take on that approach?

Dr.: Oh my gosh, I mean, I, I have a mate, um, Will Dable is his name. He's, he's a really cool guy, um, from the digital agency and stuff. Yeah, he has this thing where he goes on holidays, his autoresponder is, um, I'm on holidays now and won't be back until blah, your email has been deleted, uh, if it's important get back in touch with me after then, or something like that. It's more nicely worded, but the idea of the emails completed. So you don't have this fear of like, oh shit, what am I coming back to? So you can genuinely have a good holiday. That's the ideal. But we're also talking about privilege here. Like, some people, it's just not feasible to be able to do that.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah. Well, it's— I mean, if you work for somebody, it's the person that you work for that's going to be their expectation, their problem. But if you're your own boss, it's, you know, we're needing to—

Josh: I feel that with like voicemail. Like, I just wanted— I need to turn off my voicemail because people have I've got like 6 unlisted voicemails. It gives you anxiety. Yeah, well, it's just like, I know that I've got it there and I'm like, ah, like they, people end up reaching me another way anyway. So they'll leave a voicemail and then they'll email me.

Tommy: What's the classic one of getting to someone's voicemail and they say, if you need me, send me a message. Yeah. So you see my fucking call come through, but yeah, you're not gonna answer.

Josh: It's almost like hacking these systems where it's like, okay, they were designed for one way. Yeah, but how do we, how did we make them work for us rather than just take this? And I guess that's the thing of instant messaging. We've created this idea that it is instant. Yeah, and Slack I think is like royally fucking people at the moment within businesses because there's this thing of like, oh, it's flexible, it's amazing, but you're constantly at 11 o'clock if someone writes a Slack, you have to respond.

Tommy: I had a light bulb moment moment when one of my clients said to me, um, he, he kind of just gave me some unsolicited feedback, which was really lovely. He said a couple of things, reasons why I like working with you. I won't mention the other stuff, but he said, you get—

Josh: what was it? I mean, that it was—

Tommy: yeah, you're amazing, your videos are great. No, but he said, you get back to me really quickly. And I was like, yeah, I didn't even feel like I wanted— I didn't even think that I responded to him really quickly. But then I was like, fuck, I've set that expectation of getting back to him really quickly. So I hadn't observed my own behaviour like that before.

Josh: And that plays into people pleasing too, right? Because I know that it, I've had clients where they've had that expectation and it's all good when they're the only client on, but then you get a couple more and then all of a sudden you're the asshole that took 4 hours to respond when they're used to 15 minutes. 4 weeks in my case.

Tommy: I think, you know, you've got your autoresponder. I experienced this with somebody where the autoresponse came back that was something of similar, I cheque my emails at once a day.

Dr.: Oh, they can be so prickish though, the auto. I try to make mine nice and warm and eccentric, but yeah.

Tommy: But then every time they'd respond to me within 30 minutes and that autoresponder was always coming back to me. So it's like, I think there needs to be some consistency.

Josh: They're almost like they're using it as a filter. To say, 'cause I almost read it as I'm getting your email, I know that I'm terrible at writing back to the shit that I don't care about as much, so I'm going to place that there so then I can prioritize, it gives, it allows them to save face while creating a prioritisation system. Would you say, is that how you do it?

Dr.: That's kind of what I, like, you know, the subject lines are Wizards Never Late, I call it an auto magic reply and I talk about, you know, I'm trying to work on a new book at the moment and I'm often flying between different countries and clients and so forth. And if it's really urgent, get in touch with Kim and so forth. Otherwise, I'll get back to you when I can. And it's kind of like, well, if it's really important, they'll get to Kim and so forth. If they didn't get to Kim, it's probably not important and so forth. I've liberated myself of the, what used to be quite a crippling anxious burden of, ah shit, this person has emailed. 'Cause then it puts your focus back on like the work you guys are doing now. This is one-to-many, whereas all email exchanges are like one-to-one. And it's like you can blow a lot of time just doing one-to-one activities that takes you away from your one-to-many activities.

Tommy: Maybe we should do an episode just talking to all the emails that we've got.

Josh: Well, the interesting thing is on that point, like that was a decision that Tommy and I made, which was hi@thedailytalkshow.com is about people reaching out to us and we'll respond through voice, through the podcast. Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. Responding to them directly. 'Cause for one, it's not scalable doing it the other way. And two, it's like we wanna celebrate it, we wanna create content for the show, and this is what it's about. Our email is this right now, is this conversation. And when people respond, they won't necessarily get a response from us. And I think an auto response explaining this would be good. But them knowing that, hey, listen to the show because we talk about this stuff.

Dr.: And I know you're getting swamped. It was what, 10, 10, 10? It blew up. Hey, it blew up.

Josh: Yeah, sometimes people email, A lot, but it's, yeah, it's a real challenge. It's early, it's early days.

Tommy: Well, you need to, just reminding me, we got some mail.

Josh: Oh yeah, it's the second time we've ever gotten mail. It's pretty exciting. Yeah, thank you to Trevor. Trevor, who funnily enough, he was on a, was a guest on our show and he's in San Jose at the moment. He was listening to the listening to the podcast whilst in San Jose, because he's doing all the coverage for WWDC and all that sort of thing. He does all the, uh, all of the tech stuff, trying to work at WWDC, Worldwide Developers Conference. It's so— Apple announces a heap of things, so he'll be— you'll see Trev on the TV a bunch being like, this is what Apple's announced. So, uh, thanks Trev for the mail. He put, uh, 16 $1 stamps for express post. Dedication. I haven't done— I haven't sent a package in so long. I just— it's— I find it really, um, it's challenging.

Tommy: But we're expecting people to send it to PO Box.

Josh: I literally have a Foxtel box that we got— had from our old place. Yeah. Which brings up a whole nother thing of why I even bother with that. Trying to cancel was outrageous. Like, they asked me, I told them, hey, not coming back for a while. They said, do you have a friend that would want, that you could, it became some sort of Ponzi scheme. But they, yeah, they, you have to send back the box. Funnily enough, you can keep the remote, which.

Tommy: I wouldn't want your remote anyway, bro.

Dr.: Do you guys remember like the cartoon shows like Aggro's Cartoon Connection? Oh man. Aggro, yeah. And you'd be able to draw a picture and send it to Lockbag in Crows Nest or whatever. And you know, it used to be.

Tommy: It is crazy what people on YouTube YouTube gets sent these days. Like, it is the same thing as the aggro back in the day. It's— YouTube is just getting sent shitloads of stuff by kids. Yeah.

Dr.: And you guys want to be mentioned. Yeah.

Tommy: And we're happy to take everything you've got.

Josh: Well, there's something nice about the physicality of like actually getting— yeah, things, right? And that's what— now that we've got our new hashtag rebrand of the show as well, I want to get like, uh, patches made of our logo and stuff, like, so people could actually go nice on your vest. Yeah, I saw the logo.

Dr.: Did you have established like EST? Yeah, bloody did, 2018.

Tommy: You know, that was a commitment for the future.

Josh: Yeah, that was a thing of like, it's not impressive.

Dr.: Well, you didn't opt for Roman numerals.

Tommy: I've actually laughed at businesses that have put the established on their thing. Look, 2016, but you got to start somewhere. Yeah, there's—

Josh: I think that we play in this area of irony and sort of, you know, we were talking about the intro before as well, um, but yeah, I think that maybe sometimes it gets missed, but sometimes you don't even know. It's like when you're being a bit of a parody of yourself. Yeah. And then you— so good. But, uh, Jason Fox, thank you for being on the show. Thanks, dude. We want to, we want to have friends of the show, so I think it would be great to have you back on just to talk every time Tommy and I have a situation where we need to get meta-modern. Yeah. Um, is that what you're doing? Is that— is this what you are now? Like, are you—

Dr.: I feel uncomfortable with that. There are folks better at that than I am. I'm just gonna try why I keep doing what I do. Yeah, sure. And see, just get some more YouTube videos happening with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that people have some new stuff to look at.

Tommy: Well, I'm in the 2013 one, so I've got a bit of catching up to do. They're great, man. That's great.

Josh: Thanks for coming on. Daily Talk Show, everyone. Please do send us emails. We won't turn on an autoresponder, and I'll get back to all of them. hi@thedailytalkshow.com.

Tommy: Josh's anxiety levels just went up.