Getting Meta with Getting Meta

I, V, M. It's like a very sad version of K-Man Island's main companies for shelter, like, actually I might K-Man Island. We should read them, simplify to Mother, because it's both their scene unseen, it's both their original thing, and now it's both this one. And who knows, if we ever have a fan meetup or something, and some people end up meeting each other, who knows who will be both.

So someone listening to this in December 2021, will be like, why is check saying all three of my podcasts, whatever the other seven? Oh, nice, thank you. You're totally done too much too much, yeah. You're doing too much.

Right, right, right, right, back to Oka's getting meta. So Chuck, do you want to tell us why you decided to invest more time of your life into another podcast altogether as well? So can you tell us the origin of the origin of getting meta simplified? Getting meta simplified, so yeah.

This feels like eventually one of those complicated holding company names will be created at the end of this. I know there's thanks to it, I think, getting it is very different from simply fact, in the sense we don't make as many bad jokes over there. So ever since I started freelancing, I have been thinking about questions like this a lot, like philosophical questions like what do I want out of life and things like that. We just have an agent and then we start doing that in any case.

And I was also hugely inspired by some of my favorite interview shows, the Tim Ferriss Show being one of them. And I thought like, I'd be really nice if there was an Indian version of this, right? I mean, there are other great interview shows, like Amith, where I'm a senior, obviously being one of them, but it tends to be able to subject matter rather than the person themselves. So I'm going to be interesting to speak to somebody like Amith, for instance, not about public policy assets, but about how he goes about his day and things like that.

And for me, the takeaway was supposed to be somebody from another field should be able to take lessons from somebody in another field. That's basically how I approach it. Because for me, that was what the Tim Ferriss Show was. For those who don't know, Tim Ferriss is an American author and a serial experimenter on himself.

He's a guy who will take only one time to supplement for a month and he has to use his monitor, his progress and see how this affected his mood, health everything, that kind of a self-hacker kind of person. And for me, some of the most, some of the best episodes are some of the lessons that I took away from his show, from people who I've never heard of or from fields that I personally have no interest in. I found myself listening about the individual stories more than somebody's thoughts on a particular space which I thought was fascinating. So yeah, that's honestly what it was.

I always wanted to do a one-on-one interview show. It's been one of my dreams for a long time. And I think it's just a matter of a lot of things that's present in themselves at the right time. And I said, okay, let's just go and do this and see what happens.

So while it is a productivity show, the first interview was on Christmas Day in 2020, as the Fed episode finally came out six months later, so much for it being a productivity show. Very broad, very deep, very deep, that is what the show is. So productivity and the model is actually something like that. The one point that you mentioned about, when you were saying that, okay, trying to understand rather than the subject matter, understanding the person.

Now, that's why I was, when you come up with productivity, is it more about, it's definitely not about the subject matter, but is it more about the person or is it more about the process? Yeah, it's actually the process, right? It innovates about the process, because at the end of the day, that's what you want from you. I want to know how, I mean, things, for example.

But I think the more important thing is, and forgive me for getting met here as well, I think a lot of the advice that we tend to see, there are some caveats that aren't given as a disclaimer, for instance. And okay, what I mean by that is, many times, for example, a medium I see articles like how I made $100,000 in a month or something like that. And those tips, even of themselves, sound good. There are so many things along with that, right?

What if my goal is not to make $100,000 a month? Or what are the other, what if I do, I have a full-time job and I won't be able to devote the amount of time that you did for this? So it's like a lot of the advice that I have seen, like this tends to be prescriptive rather than, the idea is not really about the result, but asking yourself very, very fundamental questions, like what do you want out of life first and then figure out what you want to do? So that way, understanding Amit's process, for example, the first episode of getting met here was with Amit Vadvar who was very helpful in terms of getting the whole thing up and helping in some sense to structure that showed that first episode itself.

You know, he placed, okay, for me, this is what was important, which is why I went and did it in this particular way. Does that make sense for a set of random answer? Random answer? No, it is great, very insightful.

You're also, I'm sort of connecting this back to an episode, Tony did, like on Richard Feist's book and all about it is Man Search for Meaning. So all of us have different meanings in our lives. And it's a little more complex than just saying, like encapsulating in one word, they're all complex people. And that's what drives all of us.

And oftentimes, because it's complex, you do, you have a major focus in life, a major meaning in life, and you have a minor meaning, which will probably be at cross-pusses purposes to the major one. Yeah. And it leads you to do a lot of things that you hate about yourself. Yeah.

And you end up admiring people who've got that sorted out. Yeah. And so many things that I've actually realized, I do never like a true advertising planner. I actually didn't apply to CK square, didn't answer CK's question, I'm just ended up saying a lot of things along the way.

So I think, I do think that's the escape. Don't, don't cut up that, you're going to say. No, if I may give a slightly philosophical answer to what CK's just ask is why I decided to stop the show. Honestly, it was because I wish that I had heard some of the advice when I was like, say, 2018, 2020, or changing jobs or something like that.

It wasn't about two, three, four, five things about it. It's about, you know, okay, ask yourself this. What is like, what is most important? I think there are very few profound moments that I have been through, but I still remember one of the many clearly.

This was like late 20s or something, you know, slogging us off in a company, just trying to do a maximum amount of work, make maximum amount of money, you know, all that sort of thing. And I remember reading an article one day where some young guy at Big Indian e-commerce company got promoted to head of marketing role or something like that. And one of those, oh, this prestigious young talent has now been promoted. This is a very young person.

Some early 20s guys got promoted to head of marketing, some super fancy work. So while the article really congratulated me, my gut reaction was, oh, this is going to be such a nightmare for you. And that's what I mean. Okay.

So very clearly, I see which direction I want to take in life. And then from then, it's been, you know, kind of like, when I started freelancing, for example, I was very clear that this is, I'm not in it for the money comes and good. And thankfully, it's not in, it's been decent financially. But for me, the most important thing is I should be able to shut my laptop at my computer, and I 678 and not worry or stress about work after that.

And it's worked out pretty well. And when I say that to other people, right, what kind of figuring out whether they should get into freelance, you know, like, oh, I wish I had that amount of clarity. I said, wasn't really that amount of clarity? And, you know, I think it's just about, I think one thing that has come out, right, just finished all the 10 interviews for getting met.

And while there are completely different people, different spaces, I think one thing that has come out very shortly is happiness later in life, really depends on asking yourself the right questions when you're in your 20s and early 30s. That's something that's come out very clearly to set yourself on whichever path you're going on. Yeah, that is, I suppose the most philosophical thing I get about the show, that essentially is given me 10 of the best conversations I have ever had in my life. So I think to be honest though, the audience for the show may not necessarily be young people, right?

It's mostly going to be people like us as well. Well, I mean, the myth that you grow up with is that grownups are fully sorted and they want to do in life, but actually it's the opposite, right? And advice in general is wasted on young people in the essence, right? In fact, I doubt you, yeah, in fact, just adding to that, I'd argue almost like when the potential right way to approach like would be to just try things when you are younger and start making like harder productivity decisions and more at least last part of our generation would be better off if we just did random things for most of our 20s.

And then start making decisions of what did you. Exactly. Exactly. If there's one thing I would change about how 20s, when people roommates had one point, I'd just do more random things together.

Or just do more random things, explore more things and just join the dots, you know, sort of really. In fact, it's so funny, like just taking one area which we talked about quite a bit, like music, right? I remember both of us, I mean, you were quite a bit of that and I was also quite a bit in my own space. We were more of snobs in our 20s about, oh, we need to do things in 60s, we need to listen to certain music, certain things are terrible, certain things are not, certain things are amazing and they should be done.

More of snobs and now we are more open-minded to what it looks like, more accepting to larger things. So I'd say that whole process needs to be flipped out in some way because it's probably, it's a complex process but it's also part of how you are expected to be because you think you're becoming an adult, now you're set in your ways and then as you get older, you realize, oh, I should be open to more experiences when you are expected to be more, even more set in your ways. I was actually an interesting paradox. Yeah.

And I want to, like one of the things that Tony said, which is like Tony or nothing, just said right now, it's about getting to that sorted life or something. And that what I want to talk about, I think my personal favorite episode of the entire series was the interview editor for many, close friend of ours, which is Mohan Krishnamurti. I actually spoke to Mohan and he was one of the first people that I had in mind for the show because let's say all of us have interacted with Moh as friends and I think at some level, all of us have envied or admired him for the life that he's managed to build for himself, not in terms of professional or financial success, but just in terms of if I can be that happy at the age of 50, 55 or whatever age Mohan allages himself to be at the moment, I didn't even consider ourselves a success, even if he didn't have that fancy house, even if he didn't have a big job in Australia, in university, just that level of, you know, happiness that he has in his life. So when I spoke to him, I'm telling you that, I was beaming for the entire week after that, after I did that, it was a concrete for it to come, and I think I should have it to be number five or six on this.

But that's the other thing that I wanted to, I didn't just want to speak to with all due respect to Mohan, I just didn't want to speak to social media celebrities. I didn't want to speak to people like, they're put Mohan otherwise tell a story like this, for example, so I was very keen to do that and I'm very, very glad that I did, that was really, really good episode. And that's the thing, I think every one of the episodes that I did, I think they'll be relatable in some sense. None of these guys really started off with a huge advantage in life in any case, it's just a matter of, yeah, this is a number of privileges I suppose to all of them and that should be acknowledged.

But apart from that, it's not like, you know, they got any favours done or something, I think they were all of them were just hustlers, they, all of them made mistakes, all of them made happy accidents and they learned from them and made the most of the technique that I think is the critical. Yeah, I think, I mean, one point that I wanted to sort of bring up was obviously, I mean, for some context around Mohan, he's actually the Poohi, chancellor at one of the Australian universities and we met him when he was, you know, in his late 40s, 50s because he would invite us over young 20 year olds and teachers, new board games, and he had a huge collection. So for someone of that, you know, Stitcher, who was able to interact with us was amazing and he did it very, very wholeheartedly, right? I think the only rule he had was no wine glasses on the and that actually leads to a very interesting question because yes, there is a productivity requires a certain hustle, but it also requires like a whole bunch of ancillary emotional capabilities, where you need like, so for example, something like the one thing that really endured Mohan to us and his part of his personality in a major way, and I'm assuming a part of his productivity is his humility and his lack of like what do you call his traditional Indian pride it's also something that I really admire in someone like Nari Naswale, where there is like, okay, I'm talking to a human being, I'm not talking to someone who's 20 years younger than me.

You're not talking to demographic, you're talking to demographic, I'm talking to a person and I respect them based on their ideas, that's all right, that's all right, that's all right, but did you in the course of your interviews find any unique interesting emotional qualities that you found with people that aided their productivity? Emotional quality, that's a tough question to answer because I think to some extent, all the, everybody did something aided by some sort of emotion, some drive, some desire, like for example, Amit was naturally curious as a result of which he, the second episode which he talked yesterday, as of the time of this recording with Roan Joshi, a lot of his own routines and processes were set in place to counter anxiety, for example, so I'm not sure if that falls under the ambit of emotion process, but it's interesting that you spoke about Mohan in the growing terms that you did because when I told post this to him and you will hear it in that episode, he was extremely like, yeah, but each server purpose for me, I needed to be connected back with India, so in some sense, yes, we were a functional part of his life to fulfill something, but you know, I think many other answers was the ultimate. Yeah, yeah, you know, yes, but I think more than emotional criticism, and this is a cop-out answer because I can't think of an exact situation for what he just asked for, I think, across interviews, I think a certain sense of purpose for what everyone's doing, like the example I spoke about is Mohan, he invited over, not because, okay, let's open up the house to everybody and anyone who wants to come in, but because he wanted to stay counted or what if he wanted to understand the youth of the country more, and he wanted to do that and to get them from 10 play board games. Somebody said, you know, Mohan would set his exercise routines, which seems very admirable on the surface, but for him, it was a way to battle anxiety and to have a certain routine in his life so that he wouldn't be so worried all the time.

So I think there's a certain sense of purpose, if I may use that word for every action that he brings, not as random, I think the company coming from there, honestly, is whatever you're doing, like completely relaxing and chilling, or whether you're doing a professional project, understand what you're going to get out of it, like there are multiple things that you will get out of it. If you have a shitty project at work, for example, you might learn how to end up managing your team better, for instance, which you will then play up in a later interview. So I like to look at things that way, and right now what producers are telling us that a great way to be productive is to take a break between progress segments. So we should respect that as because he is producing getting better as well.

We need to do so much so that, by the way, if you think making three podcasts is a head economy, it's really not asked for, how it feels to be producing these three, he has to double listen everything, man. And I'm not even at the... Yeah, exactly. You know that feeling when you finish a movie and you just need to talk about it, that desperate need to discuss why Kalhuna Ho hits different.

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Serving it up with Sanya, watch and listen on YouTube and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Welcome back to Cine5. We are getting meta with Chuck on Cine5 as Cine5. But Chuck, one question that I want to ask you is productivity, you know, has certain capitalist hustle culture, conversations.

And I think your show is more than just about productivity. I put it based on, I forget which book it was, it's basically that you are talking to people who found the way to do what they like doing for the most amount of their life. And it's not like, so if you take a look at episode one and episode two, right? Amitwarma spoke of one of the best ways to do it is to visualize yourself as experts in writing.

I am a polymath who does these things and therefore your habits automatically follow. Or Rohind said how he once he got into the entire thing of producing so many shows or creating so many things, he just wanted to stop and take a break. So it's not necessarily about productivity but more about finding happiness in things you do. And that can come from making pretty podcast or walking away from a podcast as, you know, at some, at one point you did with Sibiite as well.

So, yeah, interestingly, he's interested in that because I don't think getting meta would have happened if it weren't for that little break that I took from this show. So, Myel's latest has this beautiful quote that sometimes the silence between the most few plays has important lessons. I think that is profound. I'm not sure why I said that.

I think if you say any Myel's latest quote like that, it just feels profound. No, I'll be honest, you're right. It's really not a productivity show in the classical sense of things. I just feel that there is no word that encompasses without sounding pretentious.

Like, I don't want to say, he was getting meta, my new show on how to do better. That just makes me, that just somehow reminds me of the same company as with Paltrow and living and things like that. So, say productivity and it still has an aspect of Silicon Valley and clump house and cool things like that. If I feel like if it's like, if I had called it something and just because it's like something that I have been thinking about a lot like where to sort of put this, like the day I remember how to do my producer for getting meta and of course, if I was actually okay, where to be classified as it's obviously not comedy is it business, is it storytelling?

Like, where does it fall in? I think at the end we just decided to put it in business or something because I guess that's not a clean classification but if I were to step back for a minute, I would say it is and I know as pretentious as a sound, it's a show which I guess tries to help you live better. Yeah, so now you're inheriting so many traits of movement like the hair and the hair and the hair and the hair and the hair and the hair. Actually, Tony, when you went to find some of them, no, that you made a big house with Power 4.

So anyway, the point that Tony made and it's actually quite interesting because I recently just was reading up. So, one of my favorite games is game called Civilization. It's a strategy game where you basically set up the civilization from the Dark Ages to the modern society and there was a beautiful critique. It was almost like for a game review, it was actually a very, very well written critique and critique was generally saying that the way to win the game is to progress to modern future and you have multiple weekly conditions like you read the science victory or culture victory or some sort but there is the thing was all those victories required any civil and you had civilizations across the world.

So, you had the Gandhi leading the Indian civilization, you had some Native American chief leading and Native American civilization but all of them at the end of the day would have to develop like densely packed cities and like nukes and all that stuff to finally in the end of the day win the whole. So, the critique was more about stop defining success as becoming 21st century America. And that's where I think a productivity conversation goes as well. I think the world productivity itself has corrupted so much where you think productivity is all about getting more than a shot.

It's about capitalist hustle. Like how I make the most money and how do I cram the most I can in 24 hours versus how do I kind of like or do you think the Bhutanese version of what success is looks like? For them, it's like the gross happiness index. How happy people are.

How much can you like count the mind and like get in search with the sense of self or protect society, protect the environment in any which way. So, it's actually a really interesting question. In fact, just questioning productivity itself becomes a point. So, when I put them, I was saying that, and as you were saying that I realized that the happiest people I know are people not necessarily who like me want to stop work at six but people who have a very well-defined idea of what success and happiness means for them.

For some people it will be money. So, for them, it's always going to be a chase right and nothing else really is a matter of the way you need to work till 3 a.m. For somebody else, it might be reaching a high designation. For somebody else, it might just be the hustle culture itself.

Some people are just motivated by that. I know some people are advertising, some very smart people are advertising, who approach advertising in a very cat and mouth sort of way. Can I outsmart them? I did every under the pressure.

Great for them, if that's what makes them happy, then great for them. And that's what I realized. Like a lot of the prescriptive advice, which is, oh, you should shut your work at six feet. But many people are not practically able to do that.

And that's not what they're going to do. So, yeah, you're right. Actually, if there was one way to encapsulate what you said, stick it into two words, let me know that will be the new genre of redefining success or something like that. No, I have one more angle on this about the most confused people or the saddest case are people whose metrics are defined by other people.

Yeah. And they don't realize that. And they're chasing a chimera. They're not really able to reach it.

And by the time they actually figure out, oftentimes, they've lost a lot, like in terms of family health or whatever, because they were choosing the wrong metric. And hopefully, because you have such a diverse range of guests, people who listen to this, you know, will probably be sensitized that there are more than one right answer to what is success. For some people, it might be doing nothing. And as you said, for some people, the entire, you know, the adrenaline, that, you know, the constant tension, the fear that you might be sacked any moment or that might be fun.

I mean, no one can define for someone else. Yeah, very well said. I mean, I also took us two 20 episodes to use the word chimera finally in on that. I think an other thing which is sort of like halfway between what we get said and what nothing just said is also about getting the most consciously getting into experiences to get the most out of them or something of that sort of that kind of makes sense.

This I think was perfectly encapsulated my interview with former simplified multi-time guest, who's a memorial by the way, because Scott from nowhere was also simplified creation. Let us not forget it. If you were not for us having a certain career on here twice and then pushing him to do the show, he would post her. So we would not happen.

Yeah, we are I give a good head. I was going to say upwards, but we have different references, I suppose. But yeah, so like, what's so for instance, I am a big fan of his show post from nowhere. And at the very end of the show, I told him like I know you started it off as a show to help people travel better, but I think it's a show to help people live better because of it.

Yeah, I know because what happens is like while it started off as a travel podcast and that like slow down, see this whatever he what he's managed to do beautifully. And this is why I wanted him on the show because he has that perspective. He's like he is very good at transposing a message from travel to life itself. Like one of the kids, if you remember he said this on our show as well on slow travel, just stand in front of a building and don't take a photograph instead, just sketch it or something like that.

That'll help you observe the details and all that. And that can actually very easily be extended to any part of life itself. And he's recognized that and he's brought to start bringing that out in the show. Very often in our life, we just need to slow down to look at the fine, you know, he's very good at that sort of thing.

Plus, of course, he has a background in market research and combining both those things together. I think he's one of the most observant people I know. So just made sense adding him on. So that's the thing I think when she gets said that one of the things I was thinking of is any experience that you go through, I think there are multiple things that you can take away from it.

When you read an article, for instance, you of course get the knowledge of that article itself. But what else do you get out of it? Like, have you like, has this told you anything else about the publication that is coming from? Have you learned something new about the style in which it's being written, that the article is being written, there are there are multiple takeaways that you can help from any experience, etc.

And then I think I'm excited best. It's all about just gathering the maximum number of dots that you can and somehow trying to find linkages between them. That could be the form, it's the content is being delivered, that could be the content itself, that could be how you react to that content. I mean, so many, so many, so many various things.

Like when I read like a rock review, for instance, of an album, sometimes I take writing lessons away from the way the thing has been structured. So yeah, I think it's about looking at things in multiple sort of ways. So coffee philosophy. Yeah, so I think one of the things that we need to touch upon is how you are like, one example of a person who does things he likes and does a lot of them.

And I want to touch upon two points if it can get made up with you in that sense. One is that you are, before we get into that, let's do a quick two minute segment about what all Chuck actually does. So Chuck has three podcasts, newsletter, two newsletters, one newsletter, one for now, one for now, one for me, I'll say, a value of life. Yeah, one newsletter, one major fear of getting lynched, one, and add a freelance job along with any other project.

Marking course. Okay, so here's the thing, I think you guys are overstating what is one of the shows right now, the origin of things is on the break. So my idea is to do either the origin of things or getting met at any one point right now that this is over, I probably started writing this out. So I'll do it again.

Simplified, honestly, is a week come out with each of us comes out with one episode a month. So it's like really all that much work. Yeah, it's mostly working. And everything else that you mentioned is actually my job.

So it is a digital marketing course or stuff I do for clients or whatever. That is my job. That is kind of like what I do. But what we were trying to encapsulate is that you do a lot of things.

Tony, Tony, you can do that. Yeah, I mean, I think that is never a finite set, right? It's what Chuck is doing at this point tomorrow. It's like, is it a airport?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the sort of dichotomy that I wanted to bring out was one, you are fiercely independent, right? And you will walk out of anything if you're not enjoying it, whether that's a conversation or something that you're doing or even a job, even a conventional job, right? But on the other side, having known you for, I don't know, one and a half decades, what you're really good at is collaborating with very different people to produce new things, right?

So how do those two things play out, right? One is you do fiercely independent things on your own and do them fabulously, but also you collaborate with people. And I mean, if it were not for fear of our life, the third slip would still have been going right. So I mean, you do it for a longish period with many different people, whether it's with Bertie, whether it's with Trisha, whether it's with me, what's at one point?

Oh, I'll do that. I have to bring that. And it all started with you, of course, Tony, with what used to be the first time. I'm not getting that.

That's a murky past somewhere on the years again, for so was that we hope never gets resurface. Yeah, good job not plugging it. But what was the question? The question was, which works best for you?

And how do you manage to do that? Like one is you are independent person, but also you love to collaborate. So I think the two, I mean, again, copper, I think both are completely different things to me. I can't prefer one over the other.

Like getting better gives me a certain level of, you know, hey, okay, this is my daily completely, all the other things actually more than that, because it's just completely me, I think that show literally has nobody else's voice on it for 50 episodes. And that's a certain thing I enjoyed. That being said, simplified is completely different from a totally different point of view, because you know, this to me is to completely different kind of quizzing. Something I will say, however, is I have found that for myself, some sort of external, what do you call it?

What is not validation, but external accountability is it really helps. Like, original thing, for instance, there are people who will harang the me if I don't put out an episode in a week. So there is just the fact that it's public facing and not like a random blog or something like that, which, you know, I might never bother to, which is why my medium has been lying under even though there are five drafts of ideas in the simplified same thing, every month I know I need to come out of something or the other. The third slip was a perfect example of this 200 weeks.

I don't know how we managed, but I am pretty sure that both neither of us would have been individually as productive. If it weren't for each other, like we need to like, okay, let's just do this damn thing this weekend and somehow we don't get it done with. I think I'm very good at forcing pressure on myself because there are people who are watching the newsletter that I started last year, I deliberately made it paid because that would force me to, like, if I don't have a draft by Monday morning, I'm like, there are people who have paid for this 300 bucks a year, so it's really not about the amount of money, but there are people who have paid for this and they are within their lives to say, hey, I paid, why is my industry not in my inbox at 8am? So I think that level of push, I realized that works for me, for somebody else, it may not, but collaboration versus individual, I think they bring two completely different things to the table.

If you want to push me and ask, which one, I would prefer, I would say collaboration because I think there is something magical when two completely different perspectives sort of like come together. And one thing I'm very keen on, and I've been guilty of going to solve my collaborations, I've been to very like my people till now at the man that we have, here is a great representation of that there are a few other ideas that I want to take forward a little later. So I may not be as irreverent as simplified as I do have some plans, for example, but if you have common grounded music and it's likely to be in that, but it's fascinating because he doesn't come from the traditional background that we guys come from, for example. So it's interesting to do stuff, but yeah, hopefully in the future there'll be a few more things like a professional or a personal.

So yeah, let's see what happens there. Collaboration I think is a damn collative. I wish I could do, I wish I'd done more of that in 20s. I wish I'd just gone out and done random things with people.

Actually, the accountability part is massively there, and why probably like college men's work and once you're out of college, they fall out all the time. Whatever you can collaborate with on the internet is things that last. In my own experience, like the crossword journey that I was on, it was all because I managed to collaborate with, we know that that point. So I think that's one easy way for people who want to do more things to find a way to do it is to find someone a sporting partner who will keep going and that.

One of the things that many people don't realize early enough in life is that for one kind of joy, it's very important to have a challenge, or sort of you know, you have to have a challenge, you need to really put an effort and it's a different dimension. There's one way of getting joy out of getting a good massage or a good meal or whatever or a good drink, but that's different. And once you realize that putting effort in something is rewarding, it's addictive, man, you have to keep doing it. It's interesting to say that because so many authors, not something necessarily they said on getting met, but so many of the interviews are about many authors have, they cranked out their books, not necessarily because of a passionate curiosity, but because they were saying they're lying on their heads from the publisher, that's when they managed it.

My favorite is this guy named Honoré de Balzac. Honoré de Balzac was a 19th century French novelist who was an inventor at Gamblar and you know, womanizer and you do all the credit hours would be knocking on his doors and you know back in the day, if you didn't pay your debts, you're throwing into prison. So there'd be police and all outside and you'd be finishing in manuscripts and you'd be like, I think the advance, whatever I'm saying, these people are. And after all, I think again.

It's too late to have him on the show. And also there's the whole thing about how Harper wrote the killer mocking book because someone basically said, take a year off, I'll cover your expenses. Let's see if you can write a book. Now I'm looking at it.

So breaking news is I've actually started writing my book. I wrote 17 pages and it's something to publish, but it's a beginning. So what I have decided to do is every single day, regardless, I will write a minimum of 200 words, that is my target. And so far it's pretty awful.

I didn't like whatever I wrote, but I'm sure it'll sort of settle down, find your own voice and something like that. Yeah, that's what I think a lot of this is just getting started, honestly. I think it has so many ideas in their head. So here's the thing, I've been trying to observe culture and content, the creator economy as they say.

And I think a lot of the successful examples that we come across are just people who are persevered and just dumb things. I mean, it's just beautifully in that conversation, where he gives an example of a YouTuber who persevered for six months and he had just about 500 or 1000 subscribers and then it went crazy overnight. So you need to enjoy what you're doing and not like, oh, I'm going to start a YouTube channel. I have to like, when do I start re-reaching the money?

That's a motivation then? Yeah, it's all this. So this is something that I, one of my favorite things in my inbox every morning is the set code in newsletter. And in that, I think one of the one thing that he sent in one email, which I've actually literally saved as a keep note, I've been right to the top of my thing is, it's just super simple.

It's a start small start now. This is much better than start later. One advantage is you don't have to start perfect, you merely have to start. And that's so important.

Yeah, and on that starting note, right? I think a lot of the reason why if you get stuck and what Chuck you've managed to do is people want something that's a completely original idea and it has to be the best thing when you start. Whether it's, I mean, with a lot of things that you do, you find templates that actually work well, but then the individuality and your uniqueness shines through as you go into it. And it's usually around a year, Mark, when you find the sweet spot.

Fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. People react to it in different ways. I mean, you're completely like the temperature inside this micros away.

I've got it inspired the original things. And yeah, I think when you go back and look at episode one of whatever you do, I'm not right. That is the case. Yeah, I think usually like completely embarrassed by it, but you should be able to see the sort of evolution that it's happened.

Yeah, I think the one good thing that Mark Zuckerberg has ever said was if you're waiting to ship a perfect product, then it's already too late. I think there's a lot of wisdom in the writing stuff. You have to make mistakes. I don't simplify it as a lot of mistakes.

For example, I think we're best not discussed that right now. And I think you just need to get started and just just just do stuff. I mean, as long as you enjoy doing getting something out of it, I think you should be good with any content. And also echoing what Tony said in some way, where it's also not about, yes, it's about starting, but it's also not obsessing about being entirely original.

Yeah, like being obsessed with being like, oh, this is the brand new idea that I'm starting again, referring to simplified. Like when you guys were starting out before even joined in Tony and I like when I looked at it, I was like, Oh, this is and at that time, the biggest simplified around was John Oliver's content. Sure. Like, Oh, this is like an Indian version of John Oliver.

I mean, it's a good idea. It's cool. It's Chuck and Teri doing it, but it's not like the original. And it turned out to be something and in fact, funny enough, over a period of time, in the Indian space, the way we do our content, I don't think there is any other show that takes this space.

And I think, I mean, if you think about it again, like using the Zuckerberg example, again, Facebook wasn't, I mean, there was awkward well before that, all the functions of that, but Facebook was the one that really took off. So it's not about start again, one thing is about starting small, just starting and the other one is about not bothering about if you have an idea that you feel cool and you feel you can just start it. And that's very cool. It's a great piece of advice to understand.

And I'm speaking the one quote that you said by said, good, it's another thing that I realized. And as you age, these little lines start meaning more and more, maybe not 20, you know, like a guy, inspirational quote, like, I have a cool dialogue. But now is like, yesterday, I was in a separate episode of Disney Today, I forgot who the author was. That's the thing, like the conversation.

So I'm grossing that I forgot to interview. He said an incredible line. And this is like a, he's like a journalist. And he said this magnificent line, when you're a journalist, as between you're writing long pieces, you need to figure out as an author, where you are in the story, like, are you trying to answer a question?

Do you have a point of view? And that's what you're trying to answer? Are you an external observer trying to make sense of the whole thing? Are you an insider?

And I thought that one line was so profound, it was like, you know, it just sets things in context. And I think there's a thing like, I think we are living in an age like now where there's so much happening, people are looking for not for prescriptive advice, but they are reaching a point where they're like, okay, it's more about tailoring this advice to me. Like, what is the sort of thing that goes with a great reference for this, actually, is again, another person that I'm with, had spoken about is a guy called James Clear, who's written a book called Atomic Habits, starting to become, I've been seeing it being referenced in many, many places. And I subscribed to his first day newsletter, which is just a few quotes that just make you snuffling.

That's interesting. Like, you know, just again, all about habits and all that compound interest. I think we all had respect for compound interest with respect to what it can do for your ETF. I mean, first of April is genuinely like one of the happiest days of the year for me, but with respect to habits, connections and all that, I think it's amazing.

Like, don't eat if I make it a little emotional, that connection that you and I made, one of our decades back on a Charlie community, this media and bio that it is sponsored. One of the original, I mean, first stories in that book is about the British cycling team, right? And I think he calls it aggregation of marginal gains, which is basically, you know, things that we've seen over the course of running either it's, you know, 200 episodes of simplified or 200 editions of a newsletter or any of those things. And you automatically get there.

I think it's more about getting started and visualizing that you are going to be the, you know, difference in this format and then getting started. And referencing one of our previous episodes, which we recorded just now, the whole thing about TSMC is also, it's about that completely not about the glamorous product. Like, they are not the intel and creating that change or whatever, but it's about consistency and standardization and creating products that keep the process moving. You're the un-glamorous, but you are actually...

That is so beautiful, Sique, because I actually wanted to say this in that last episode, but didn't have the time to. TSMC's success is because what they go for is a 10% incremental improvement year on year. While Intel is breaking their heads, trying to get 50% improvement, which is never comes as a result of a change in the old terms today compared to week. Now, fantastic.

I think that's very well put. And one final advice, like from my side, I would have anyone who's listening to this, like maybe a little intimidated or something. I think have a, have a good perspective on what your abilities, your achievements and all that are. I would go to the extent of saying secretly think about what is the data that you can give at the moment.

Like, I think with all you modesty, I think Tony and I would be well placed to say, creating 200 episodes of the third-slip and any of us doing this, we can actually say, okay, what it takes for them? I mean, the lessons may not be all that perform, but it's something that we can actually talk about. And I think everybody, as me through some experience of the other, like somebody might have been through a personal tragedy and learned something out of it, somebody might have, you know, it might just be like, what I learned shifting 10 cities in five years, something that's even out of your control, but you've taken something out of that. So yeah, think about what that is start building from there.

And I think, yeah. So, yeah, one thing that I think you mentioned when you got into freelancing, and I think that was really good clarity for a lot of us, was that, you know, it's not enough that there is a you hate corporate life. So I want to do finance, I mean, I want to do freelance, but there needs to be a pool as well, right? So not just a push, but a pool also.

So I think again, it goes back to finding that purpose of why you want to do a certain thing and figuring out a way for it rather than seeing running away from something is probably not what you should, it's not why you should be doing what you're doing. It's amazing how you say it that way Tony, it makes it look like I had a plan or something and it's a sound like a look, but to be honest, I think a lot of this so called productivity that I tend to be associated with because I'm actually ironically damnitizing because my thinking is if I get into another job for instance, because I want to leave this job, then I'm doing that interview, I need to justify. So might as well just speak to easy option, which is so I do something that you won't. So I always think of it in terms of my take away my take away because I have, I saw Chuck and I were in an auto heading back from simplified recording when he told me that he was planning to put his job and my first reaction was a mild horror.

I'm like, why are you doing that? And he didn't have any answer at all. He said, I don't know, but I'm just planning to do that. So, yeah, I mean, you didn't have a strong answer.

You didn't have a strong answer. You just said, I'm not happy. I'm not happy. I want to be doing something else.

I'll figure things out. And you laid out what you were planning to do freelancing. There's that and the other. But what came through, what did come through was that there was a little clarity.

And for me, no, it is life. So the fact that you don't have clarity should take, should stop you from looking or taking decisions. Yeah, I mean, you almost never have clarity in life. So, you know, that's a big thing.

Thank you. I think I'm not giving you the feel. I find that inspirational. Yeah, because we can just write so you don't have clarity and do things.

That's why it's just what you're saying. It's a foolish. Yeah, that's life. No, so I mean, basically, I think that in a way, I can speak to this is that once you become a parent and you know that there is absolutely no qualification that is required to be a parent.

You know, we are able to bring up children, hopefully without too much damage. And you basically have to figure everything out on the go. There is a manual to this. It doesn't matter what any other person has done.

Your baby is going to be unique and annoyingly has a lot of you in it. And therefore, you have to go. That's beautifully put. I think this is this sense that you need to be an expert in a particular field before you're qualified to talk about it or work in it or something.

I often find that many times. It's the people who are the furthest removed from that who are the best perspective or something I will controversially call the Harshavo Glee. I mean, he was not a cricketer, but he's probably India's most well known voice in terms of cricket or whatever. So 100% on board with that.

If you are an expert, then you're just going to do what everybody else has been doing. And I'd like to think that some of the ideas that I proposed to freelance lines was which have worked out best for us is because it comes from an external perspective and not somebody who's deep enters or something. So thank you for that. I feel very uplifted at the end of this episode.

It's so funny. It's so funny. So coming back to getting meta on that. And one thing I observed with the first couple of episodes already releasing is that it is already generating profundities, not just profundities, but much under those profundities.

So Chuck, since you have already recorded all the episodes, would you want to share a profundity? We're going to end this episode on a profundity from getting meta. So any profundity that you would like to share from the getting meta episode that you're in? Okay, so that was a tough question.

I had to actually read through some notes. But actually, what I want to say, which is a perfect to end, I guess, it's not a quote that was formally said during the episode itself. It's something that the interviewee actually made 10 years back. And this was Krishna Shokadai who I've already said, because he's been able to balance a very, very, very demanding corporate job along with all the creative person that he has.

And he had this very beautiful line, which I actually had on my Facebook favorite quotes for the longest period of time, which is I worked very hard for my free time. And I thought there was so much that I encapsulated so much that it inspired me a lot. I'll be honest, like when I went through my only freelance life and I'll be before I quit a job, I obviously can refuge in that one particular line. If you're working too hard, then you don't need, you know, then that extra freelance and all that is probably not worth it.

So we had a nice long discussion on that as well. And because you're optimizing now for free time, it affects how you look at work, how you approach all the other things, the new projects that you take up and all that. So yeah, I think that's the one profound line that I would take away from all these. I hope that's a side factor.

Very well, profound Chuck. And also, in keeping with the spirit of everybody, I very much appreciate you not answering the question directly at all. So on that note, I'll just advertise. So on that note, I'll read it.

Yeah. So yeah, so it was a terrific episode. And yeah, so stay safe, stay meta and stay simple.