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10% Happier with Dan Harris
How To Stop an Anxiety Spiral, The Best Protections Against Financial Ruin, and a Workaholic's Guide to Productivity (and Self-Care) | Andrew Ross Sorkin
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This is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody. How we doing today? We've got an unusual guest given the nature of this podcast. I'm talking to my friend Andrew Ross Sorkin, who's one of the best known and most well respected financial journalists in the world. I wanted to have Andrew on because he recently wrote a book about the stock market crash of 1929. The book says a lot about human nature when it comes to one of the most reliable sources of suffering for myself and many other people, and that is money. So in this conversation you're going to hear us talk about how to manage your anxiety when it comes to money, how not to make emotional money decisions, how not to lose your head and fall prey to fads and fomo, et cetera. We also take a deep dive into Andrew's own productivity hacks, given that he is genuinely one of the busiest people in all of media. And just so you know, one of those hacks is meditation. So we'll hear about his meditation practice. A little bit more about Andrew Ross Sorgen before we jump in here. He writes for the New York Times where he's the founder and editor at large of Dealbook, an online daily financial report. He's also the co anchor of Squawkbox on cnbc and he's written two bestsellers, Too Big to Fail and his latest, which is called 1929 Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation. Quick reminder to sign up for my new app. It's called 10% with Dan Harris. You can get it if you go to danharris.com there's a free 14 day trial if you want to try it before you buy it. We got a lot of stuff going on there. We do weekly live video meditation and Q and A sessions. We also have a growing library of meditations from some of the greatest teachers on earth. Sign up danharris.com, join the party. We'll get started with Andrew Ross Sorkin right after this. I mentioned this a few weeks ago on the show, but I'm going to repeat it here. As an insomniac, it is very important for me to have a nightly routine, a wind down routine. And there's a new aspect of my nightly wind down routine that has really lodged itself into the rundown every evening and that is moisturizing my face. One of my friends was making fun of me and saying I needed to moisturize more. And as it turns out, right around that time we got a new advertiser on the show osea and they make all sorts of creams and lotions and they sent me some and I've been using OSEA every night on my face as I'm winding down. It's kind of soothing, it smells good and my face feels better. I don't know if it looks better, but it definitely feels better. I'll tell you about some of their products. Osea's Dream Night Serum and Dream Night Cream are clinically tested formulas powered by bioretinol and designed to reduce the visible effects of stress on skin. While you sleep, give your skin a rest and say goodnight to dryness, dullness, wrinkles and lack of firmness. Osea's newest Dream Bioretinol Body Serum is a full body restorative treatment that visibly de stresses the skin with a holistic blend of bioretinol, red seaweed, magnesium and lavender. This overnight firming treatment is an essential, efficient step in any bedtime routine that delivers real transformation for body and well being, promoting a restful night while visibly firming and improving skin elasticity. Give your skin a rest with clean, clinically tested skin care from osea. And right now we've got a special discount just for our listeners. Get 10% off your First Order site wide with the code HAPPIER. And@oseamalibu.com have you been waiting for the perfect time to upgrade your tech? Good news. The wait is over. Dell Tech Day's annual sales event is here and Dell is celebrating their best customers with fantastic deals on the latest PCs like the Dell 14 plus with Intel Core Ultra processors. They've also got incredible perks like Dell Rewards, fast free shipping, premium support, price match guarantee and more. And while you're upgrading your PC, you may as well go all out because they're also offering huge deals on their premium suite of monitors and accessories. You know what that means. That's right. You can get a whole new setup with amazing savings. Clearly this is a sale you do not want to miss. Visit Dell.com deals that's Dell.com deals. Andrew Ross Sorkin, welcome to the show.
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Thanks for having me. It's great to see you.
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It's nice to see you and I appreciate you making time to do this. Of course there are a lot of questions that your new book raises that I think will be of interest to the audience. But before I ask you those questions, can you just describe 1929, what you were aiming for, why you got interested in this project, and what you were aiming to do.
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So the history of this book is. I wrote a book called Too Big to Fail after the crisis in 2008. And people used to ask me all the time how that related to this thing that happened in 1929, because I think we all know that something terrible happened in 1929. But the truth is I didn't really have any good answers for most people because I didn't know that much about it. And I became sort of obsessed with trying to understand that whole period of time and what that crash was like. But more importantly, I was, I don't know, I became obsessed with the people during that period. And for some reason there have been a whole lot of great books that were written about that period, but they weren't those sort of character driven narratives that I always loved. You know, the sort of den of thieves style, you know, barbarians at the gate in the room, tick tock, you know, Bob Woodward were back in 1929. What would have, what would have you seen inside the Oval Office? What would you see inside the banker's office? Like what, what were they saying to each other? And so that's the journey I've been on for the last call it eight years to try to uncover all sorts of memos and notes and diaries and letters and all sorts of things so that you could actually feel it, so you could feel what these people felt as all this was happening. And I think that when you get underneath the whole story, it sort of changes, at least changed my sense of what was happening during that period, which was obviously this euphoric, almost FOMO driven period where everybody in the country desperately wanted to buy stocks. They all were obsessed with it. People were loaning extraordinary amounts of money. That was sort of the background of all this. And there's all sorts of new fangle. Technology was automobiles or, you know, radio. And people wanted to buy into that future. And that sort of was super exciting. But then, you know, got to be, as you can imagine, a little bit too much.
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So one of the points you make in the book is that, you know, your, your insights are very much ultimately about human nature. And so I'm going to just read something you wrote and maybe on the back end of that you can free associate.
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Sure.
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Ultimately, the story of 1929 is not about rates or regulation, nor about the cleverness of short sellers or the failures of bankers. It's about something far more enduring, human nature. No matter how many warnings are issued or how many laws are written, people will find new ways to believe that the good times can last forever. They will dress up hope as certainty. And in that collective fever, humanity will again and again lose its head. The enduring lesson is not that booms can be prevented or that busts can be fully averted. It is that we need to remember how easily we forget. The antidote to irrational exuberance is not regulation by itself, nor skepticism, but humility. The humility to know that no system is foolproof, no market fully rational, and no generation exempt. The greater the height of our certainty, the longer and harder we fall.
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So that is underneath the story of 1929, the story maybe, of course, our life, which is, you know, I think a lot of people think about booms and busts and what we're all doing, and they think, oh, if we had more regulation, would that do it? Or is this about economic systems or cycles? Is it about Washington policy? What is it? And I think when I finished the book, I thought to myself, it's not any of those things. It's us. It's how we behave as people. It's. It is that FOMO that drives us and sometimes by the way, drives us forward. You know, I think oftentimes we think FOMO bad or speculation bad. I think there's an element which maybe there's an aspect or an element that's actually important to drive us forward. You just don't want it to get too out of hand. But I do think underneath it is this idea that we all get a little too confident, we all get a little too cocky. We don't question ourselves the way we should. We're always very quick to question everybody else, but oftentimes not ourselves. And that the only way to protect yourself ultimately from an economic perspective, I think, is, is having that sense of humility and also to some degree being able to have the discipline in your own life to say, okay, I don't know if this is good, I don't know if this is bad. I don't, you know, to be asking, to be constantly curious. And I think, by the way, those who are constantly curious do end up usually on the winning side of all of this, or at least the better side of all this.
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Do you have any thoughts about how we can just to step back for a second. One of the reasons I really wanted to have you on is that money can be one of the most ruthlessly efficient sources of human suffering. I think it can also be a source of, of happiness too. But what your work reveals about how neurotic and unreasonable and self deceiving and, and greedy and all the other human frailties and foibles that can emerge around money. It's really important what you're, what you're pointing to here and, and you're pointing to humility as one corrective. Do you have any thoughts? I mean, you're covering the ups and downs of the markets every day. How can we generate that humility in the face of these huge sloshy waves of irrational exuberance that roll over our culture in the face of new technologies?
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So I've always been struck by Warren Buffett because he's obviously had a remarkable career. He's been an amazing investor, and he's never really gotten wrapped up in the thing of the moment. Somehow he's managed to have this sort of detachment from the very idea of fomo. You know, he likes to say he live, he lives in Omaha in his, in the home that he bought, was it 50 plus years ago, as a way of almost forcing that detachment. And I think money is, you said it. Money is a hard topic for a lot of people. It's hard for a topic for people to even talk about. I know a lot of families don't talk about money, but I think one of the things so interesting about a Warren Buffett like character is he doesn't get down about missing something. He says to himself, I don't know a lot about technology, so I'm not buying Nvidia. I'm not buying. He didn't buy a lot of the tech companies in the dot com boom. Now he will tell you he missed stuff he probably should have bought Amazon, probably should have bought this stuff. But he didn't. He didn't buy into Bitcoin when everybody was telling him he had to do it. He sort of had specific principles with which he approached all of this and said, this is the stuff I understand. This is the stuff I don't understand. You know, the market is, you know, historically up 10%. Oh, I'll sell then if the market's down 10%. His view was like, I'll buy then. It wasn't an emotional decision for him. If stocks go down, he often gets talk about emotion. He often would get excited if, if even if his own stocks are falling, he'd get excited because you know what he'd say, it's now on sale. I can buy it for cheaper if I actually like it. If I like it. Because I think it's going to be a thing for the long term. So I just think there's. And by the way, I think it's very hard to have that emotional detachment. I Know, personally, for myself, I'm not allowed to buy individual stocks or things like that. Mutual funds is sort of where the Sorkin family lives because of the conflict rules that I live under as a journalist. But I can tell you, and you know, I never bought bitcoin or anything like that because of these rules, but I have the FOMO all the time. And I think to myself, I, by the way, have been protected in some ways by these rules because I think to myself, oh goodness, I remember meeting people when bitcoin was under a thousand dollars a coin. And I remember saying, oh, should have, could have bought some. And I should have. And I think about that all the time like everybody else does, I think. And the question is, can you hold yourself back? And I don't know what kind of discipline that requires, but I do think it just, it probably requires sort of, you know, overtly thinking about it like that.
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One of the pieces of advice I received early in my life as a grownup, and I'd be curious to see what you think of this because this is kind of straight ahead conventional wisdom, but I've lived by it wisely or unwisely, I don't know, you'll tell me. I don't buy individual stocks. I don't even follow the market that closely. A little bit, but not that closely. I just put my money. I, you know, having a financial advisor and put my money in some mutual funds try to consistently save and not think about it much. What do you say to that?
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I think you're doing it right. Warren Buffet would tell you you're doing it right. That is the mantra he tells his family. Buy the S and P index, close your eyes, keep putting money in, and hopefully you'll wake up in 30 or 40 years from now and you'll have a nice nest egg. That, that is a much more both economically successful approach and I'd imagine, a successful emotional approach because the, you know, the ups and downs of this. Look, I cover people and deal with people who are living this moment to moment. They're buying stocks, they're selling stocks, they're shorting stocks, they're doing it is a very hard, emotional business. It almost is an emotional business. That's what the business is. I know people who can't sleep at night because they're waking up trying to figure out what's going to happen. Oh, my goodness. And the responsibility that they feel for all of that.
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Speaking of not sleeping at night, there is one thing about your work, specifically in 1929 that makes me anxious that I would like to hear your thoughts on. Yep, I'll start with this question, and I'll maybe get to the sharp end of the pointy end of the stick in a second. But you just spent eight years marinating in the most famous stock market crash. Do you think we're in a bubble now headed toward another crash?
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So I do think we're in another bubble now, and I think we will invariably at some point, have another crash. But I don't think that the crash has to be as deep or severe as what happened in the Great Depression. I think that one of the great misunderstandings of that period, in fact, is that somehow there was a crash in October of 1929, and all of a sudden we had a Great Depression. And that's not really true. What really happened was we had a crash, and that was sort of the first domino, but there were a series of dominoes after that domino that were really policy choices, mostly in Washington by the President, by Congress, by the Federal Reserve, that ultimately led to the Great Depression. It wasn't preordained just because we had a crash, that this had to happen. And I do like to believe that we've learned a lot of lessons from that period, including, and I think we saw it in terms of how policymakers can react to a crash in 2008 during the pandemic and other times. So that the severity of a crash or a crisis is not exacerbated, is not made worse. So, yes, I think at some point this will happen, but it doesn't have to end in 25% unemployment, which is what happened in 1932. And I don't think. And now I'm talking against my own book, because here we are talking about crashes. The truth is that most people who invest in the stock market, assuming that they can hold on or hold their investment and that they haven't used borrowed money to do it 10, 20, 30 years later, they will do better. Even with the crisis and the crashes mapped into all of that, it actually has paid much better to be an optimist than to be a skeptic. And here I am as a journalist. I'm the professional Cassandra in the room. But the winners have been the ones not that have sat it out because they've been worried something bad's going to happen tomorrow. The winners have been people who have been optimists, actually.
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Okay, so this is the. The follow up that I was kind of teeing you up for when I see you in my social media feed or when I'm Reading the Times, talking about the fact that we're likely in a bubble and bubbles tend to burst, that produces for me a lot of anticipatory anxiety. And, you know, I. My phantasmagoric mental movie making capacity that we all have know, flashes forward to. We're gonna. We're gonna have a crash. Customers won't be able to afford my meditation app anymore. And then I'll be in a situation where I have fewer customers and a smaller savings to fall back on, blah, blah, blah. Ends up with me living under a bridge. You know, just type of that this is. Runs in my veins, that kind of pension for fear.
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I got the same fear, by the way.
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Yeah, well, I mean, I'm. Now I'm digressing. Your grandfather witnessed a suicide after the crash and then never bought a stock again. And around that same time, my great grandfather became a crook, lost the family fortune, put his head in the oven in the kitchen and killed himself. And my grandmother found him. And so I think for both of us, that conditioning is still in our nervous system. Okay, so having said that, I'm just curious what you recommend about living our lives knowing the bubble could burst at any moment.
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Look, I think the real thing that I've learned working on this book and reporting on this world as long as I have now is that the danger is in debt. Which is to say if you are borrowing money to invest. Borrowing money, I hate to say it, just sometimes you have to borrow money to start a company. It's the borrowed money that is the challenge for the most part. And so if you can try to avoid having debt or a lot of debt, I think you can oftentimes sort of get through to the other side. And if you get to the other side, the world's a lot better. The people who get caught in these downdrafts are people who have decided to take on typically remarkable risk. I don't think, Dan, you've taken on remarkable risk in this podcast, and I don't think you'll end up under a bridge.
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But I.
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But I get it. I get the feeling, and I think that the trick, I don't know if it's a trick, but, you know, back in 1929, people were going to brokerage houses and, you know, they'd put down a dollar, the broker would lend you $10. The good news is, by the way, that hardly even happens today. It almost can't happen today, really. So that's another sort of good thing. To some degree, though, there are people who are involved in Crypto and other things where people are leveraging themselves up and doing all sorts of wildness. So I think you just have to be careful. And you just have to say to yourself, if I'm, you know, if for some reason I would be out of work for six months or 12 months, can I survive? And if I can't, you might decide I want to save some and don't want to, you know, risk whatever I have, either in the stock market or crypto or doing all sorts of other things that people do. And by the way, the truth is, most Americans don't even. I mean, the sad reality is here we're talking about investing and the like. You know, 60% of Americans are invested one way or the other in the stock market. That means 40% really are not because they can't afford to be.
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Well, I want to ask about the, the 40% and even some of the, the remaining 60%. When you say, you know, look, one way to protect yourself is not to take on too much debt. I think there are a lot of people listening to this podcast who have mortgages, who have student loans, who maybe, you know, have to run up their credit card bills because things are dicey in their lives. So what about those folks? And I would include. I have a mortgage myself. So.
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So I have a mortgage, too. I think the. I think what I'm trying to say is, look, there are going to be times where you're going to invariably have to take on some debt, in some cases, depending on your own circumstances, to live. And so I'm not suggesting you can't have any debt. I think the question is, is it, quote, serviceable? And so if you said to yourself, meaning, can you pay the monthly payments? And if for some reason something bad happens, if the stock market were to go down, for example, you know, do you, do you need that money? Is that cash that you needed? Are. There are people who are invested in the stock market and then they sell every month and they use that money to live. That, to me, is a little scary. But by the way, like, if you're a retiree, for example, and you're saying to yourself, you know what, I may need this money in five or ten years. Well, then you should have a portion of it to the side. You shouldn't be necessarily fully invested. So I think it's, it's a little bit just thinking, thinking about the math of your life. I mean, I'm, by the way, I don't know if you do this. I budget things. I'm very much I sit around, I look at all my credit card bills and say to myself, okay, how much can I spend next year? How much can I spend per month? And, you know, there's certain things we're not going to do.
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Yeah.
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This month or that month or whatever it is. Have a running joke in our family. Sometimes I will announce that things have gone overboard, meaning there's been too much spending. And I, I, I sort of suggest to everybody we have to have a month of austerity. That's, and of course, everyone sort of gives me a hard time about that. But I, but I also, look, I, I, I grew up in a family that values frugality. Yeah, I will say that. And I don't want to say cheapness because there were certain things that, you know, I think my family, we, we like, would splurge on a vacation. That was something that was important to us. But we would never like a car. A car would just get you from one place to the other. Like never a fancy car ever, ever, ever. And so, but there are families, obviously, who I think may not have the means to buy or to lease a certain car or whatever it is, and they decide that that's what they want and so they go do that. I think you have to think about.
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Some of that stuff just to say, my family, we do detailed budgeting too, my wife and I, and then also with my business, my CEO and I do, and our head of operations, we do a lot of detailed budgeting. I find it oddly soothing to have a real sense of how much money we have coming in, going out, and then make decisions based on reality as opposed to like a miasmatic fog of unknowing and dread.
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Well, so it's so interesting. So I'm exactly like you are. But then I do know people. I actually have a friend who I'm thinking about, I will not out them on your broadcast who really just does not want to know. Like, doesn't want to know how much things cost, doesn't want to know. They have taken on a little bit of debt to me. It's like, I think they're living on with blinders on. They think that it's sort of a much more relaxing way to, to live. They also sort of have a view that everything sort of comes out in the wash and everything's going to be okay. I'm a little bit more neurotic than that, bro.
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Yes, me too. On the frugality thing, we have another, we have a mutual friend who I'm not going to name because he hasn't given me permission to say this, but he has a little email that goes out regularly that you may be on too. And he used a term, this friend, recreational frugality, where he, he, he makes it a game to see, you know, can he avoid overspending. And I found that really interesting.
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I, I think I know exactly the person you're talking about and I think I, I've read that same newsletter. I like that. But look, I, I've always, for whatever reason, it's like a value in our family, maybe for my parents, maybe for my grandparents, that, you know, frugality was, there was something very noble about saving money if you could avoid the loan, if you could avoid credit. So. But I also recognize a, that I'm, I feel super lucky that I didn't have to take on, I mean, I still have a mortgage and things like that, but that I wasn't taking on extraordinary debt. And you're right, there's a lot of people who've had to, whether it's student loans or mortgages or even just credit card debt just to feed the family. So it's complicated. I wish I had a better answer.
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Yeah, it's complicated. And you and I have been both been very lucky. And I do believe that there are many things we're talking about here that can be helpful no matter what your economic circumstances are, including what I'm about to ask you. Coming up, Andrew Ross Sorkin talks about some practical tools to stop mental spiraling. The mantra that he likes, which I happen to like a lot as well. Would it help his meditation practice, productivity hacks and life routines, calendar blocking versus to do lists and much more. Now that we're firmly entrenched in a new year, you may want to get more firmly entrenched in your at home routines. And doing that can be aided and abandoned embedded by elevating your at home decor, elevating your space. Which brings me to our sponsor today, Wayfair. From bedding and mattresses to storage solutions for every room in the house, Wayfair is your one stop shop. Refresh your living room with accent pillows, mirrors and faux plants for way less. They've also got stuff for your kids room, they've got kitchen essentials, stuff for your home study. My wife bought a bunch of stuff for her home study that I know she's really happy with. And I can tell you as an outsider to her study that it looks really good. Going on the site, which I have done many times, is a delight. They've got a wide array of options and it's all laid out in a really pleasing way. It's easy to find exactly what's right for you. So get organized, refreshed and back on track this new year. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's the W A y dash F A I r dot com Wayfair Every style Every home. Right before I recorded this ad, I was in my closet looking around for what I was going to wear tomorrow. I've got family lunch and I was a little disappointed to see that my favorite pair of pants, literally my favorite pair of pants for two years. Now they're unavailable. I think they're still in the laundry. You know who makes those pants? Quince. Quince has the everyday essentials that I love. Quality that lasts. Organic cotton sweaters, Polos for every occasion. Lighter jackets that keep you warm in the changing season. The list goes on. Quint's works directly with top factories and cuts out the middleman. So you're not paying for brand markup, just quality clothing. Everything is built to hold up to daily wear and still look good season after season. Hence the fact that my black pants from Quints are still my favorite pair of pants after all these years. I've also got a bunch of sweaters from them and socks and underwear. I got a lot of Quint's stuff. I like their stuff a lot. Here's the other thing. They only partner with factories that meet rigorous standards for both craftsmanship and ethical productions. Refresh your wardrobe with quince. Go to quint.com happier for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com/happier free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.comhappier. So there's basic personal finance hygiene that we've been talking about, but then there's also kind of how do you manage your mind in the face of all of this? I was asking you before, how do we not fall into, you know, paralytic anticipatory anxiety? And there is a phrase that you like that I also like. And in preparing for this podcast, I was really excited to see that you also quote, as I do very frequently, this under heralded little watched I think Tom Hanks movie that came out many years ago called Bridge of Spies.
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A
Yes.
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In which Tom Hanks plays a neurotic attorney and has a very interesting but calm client. Do you want to pick up the story from there?
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Oh goodness this is a quote that I. I can't believe you found this. I think about this multiple times a day. So in this movie, the spy in Bridge of Spies, you'd think should be more anxious, more nervous. And Tom Hanks can't understand why he is not. And he looks at him and effectively asks him, why aren't you more, you know, worried? Why are you more anxious about all this? And the spy looks back at him and says, would it help? It's almost like a mantra for me, which is that anytime I get into one of these moments where I don't want to say that I'm spiraling, but where I. I'm really sort of, like, going through all the permutations and maybe overdoing it, and I'm anxious about something that's happened or I'm trying to think through this or that, and it's sort of overtaking me. I try in the moment to step back and I literally look at. I can, like, see the frame on the movie, and I say to myself, would it help? And by the way, sometimes it actually would help. Sometimes. Actually sort of thinking through the various permutations of whatever you're, you know, trying to wrestle with can be helpful. But then oftentimes, at least for me, I realize I could turn this over in my head a hundred times and it's not going to change the outcome at all. And so asking myself that question in this moment, would it help to keep. To keep going on this mental journey? I know you're a big meditator. I don't know if it's a form of meditation, but it's. It's something that, as I said, I do ask myself it several times a day. I have it. My desk at home has a little sign that says, would it help?
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B
I love that so much. And I love that moment from the movie. And I, too, think about it all the time. To answer your question, it is at least a cousin of meditation because it's a mindfulness bell. It wakes you up and pulls you out of ancient neuroses and storylines, habitual thought patterns, spirals or something shallower than a spiral reconnects you to your wiser parts. And, yeah, I have found it incredibly helpful that there. There can be a. An objective problem. You. You're having to run up credit card debt because you simply need it to feed the family, and you recognize that it could have really dangerous consequences down the road for your financial health, your credit rating, all that stuff. There could be an objective problem like that. But will being frantic While understandable, will it actually help? It's a very clarifying question.
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I'm so glad you brought it up. You know, you're the second person who's ever brought this up with me. I was just thinking, many years ago, I'd seen it in the movie and then thought a lot about it, and that's. And I literally had this thing made for my desk. And then I was on a hike, as it happens, with a friend of my wife's who's a psychiatrist. And I was explaining that sometimes I have this neurosis, sort of, I can spiral. And she said to me, have you ever seen the movie Bridge of Spies? So it sounds like there's a nice little group of people who seem to be aware of this moment in the movie.
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B
You mentioned meditation. When my first book came out many years ago, you were super supportive. You brought me on cnbc, not the most hospitable place to meditation, I would imagine, and helped me promote the book. I remember one of your co anchors on Squawk Box was very, very skeptical, borderline hostile. I can't remember that gentleman's name. Anyway, it was very kind thing for you to do. And you did it in part not only because we were friendly, but also because you have an interest in meditation. And so I'm just curious, like, where are you with that now?
- [34:36]
A
So when I saw you then, I was pretty deep on a TM meditation schedule, and I was pretty consistent. I would say 20 minutes twice a day, and I. I did. And this went on for many, many years. And then I sort of found myself slowing down a little bit, maybe doing it once a day, you know, for 20 minutes. I find myself now sort of going in cycles with it and probably right now off the cycle. I used to tell. I think actually you and I used to have this conversation if you could meditate or you could sleep or you could go to the gym, which would be more valuable? I'm in the morning TV business, so sleep is sort of high on my list. I know there's some people who believe that 20 minutes of meditation is somehow more valuable than sleep. I have not gotten there yet for that. I do find now that I've been doing it for so long, though, that I don't need as long a period to sort of get to that place. I don't know how to articulate it or describe it, but I feel like when I'm doing TM and I'm, you know, saying my mantra to myself, that I think in the old days it would often take of the 20 minutes. It could take five to 10 minutes before I'd sort of like fall into this sort of. It's almost like going down into some. I can't explain it inside it. I mean, you really. It's like a feeling. And then over time, as I was doing more and more of it, you know, within a minute or two minutes, I could get there. I feel like now, for some reason, because I've done it so long, I can get there pretty quickly. But obviously the more I do it and even the more frequently I do it, I can get there even more quickly. So I don't know. This goes back to like an efficiency, productivity situation about. About getting it done. Yeah.
- [36:34]
B
So tm, just for people who don't know what it is, is Transcendental Meditation, which is essentially va, an ancient form of meditation often known as Vedic meditation. That was literally trademarked by a guy named Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was quite famous because he was the meditation teacher for the Beatles. He's no longer with us. But TM has been around for many decades, and before that, Vedic meditation has been around for many millennia. And it's different from the type of meditation I do, which is a mindfulness, which is Buddhist, as opposed to Vedic or Hindu. In Buddhist meditation, there is really no getting there, at least for, you know, unless. Unless the there you're referring to is Nirvana, which is very, very, very rare in tm. Yes. As I understand it, and I'm not an expert in this practice, is there is a little bit more of a kind of peaceful, submerged place where you are transcending the everyday egoic mind. Does that track with how you understand it?
- [37:38]
A
Yeah, it's. You know, when I was saying I. I don't know if people. People who are listening won't be able to see my hand. It's sort of like a motion you sort of get to this. This place that's sort of like down under a little bit. Now. I'm sure people think I'm a quack saying this.
- [37:51]
B
Not this audience, bro. I mean, this is. This audience is very primed.
- [37:55]
A
It's almost a combination of where your. Your brain stops thinking to some degree, not always completely, but of all of the sort of things that are happening around you or what you have to do next or what you sort of. Somehow you're able to transcend that, I think, to some degree. And I find for me, not that it's. It's almost physical. I don't know if you can. I'm going to really. I don't know if I'm embarrassing myself saying this. Sometimes if you keep, close your eyes and there's light in the room, you sort of see this sort of black orange or something, at least to me, I don't know why that is, but I've always found that somehow once I've quote unquote transcended or whatever, hopefully a couple minutes into this, it really is almost a blackness for some period of time. And there's like a stillness. And by the way, sometimes the stillness doesn't last and sometimes it's a busy day and you're all, you know, you walk, you come into it sort of in the would it help mode because there's a lot of things happening. It doesn't work or it doesn't, you know. So I don't want to say to everyone that's, you know, it's the thing to do. It's, it's worked for me. But it is a, it did take a, a lot of commitment early on, and I'm sure I'm probably not doing it right now. In terms of the commitment, I'm sure people who are true practitioners would, would say, Andrew is skipping out here.
- [39:18]
B
Well, I can't judge your TM practice because it's not a practice that I understand perfectly at all. I can say that you're definitely not embarrassing yourself. I really love the way you described it. And I think just in ter back to your TM practice. Bob Roth is probably the best known current teacher in this practice who's been on this show.
- [39:38]
A
I was his student. That's how I learned.
- [39:40]
B
Okay, so Bob, who's a very likable guy, I think one of his common expressions is even in a shallow dive, you still get wet, right? So you can have a bumpy, a seemingly bumpy TM session and you're still deriving benefit. And so I guess that kind of leads me to my question for you, which is, do you notice benefit in your life? You are extraordinarily busy. You host a morning show, you run Dealbook on the New York Times. So you're writing all day, you write books. Once a year, you do the Dealbook conference, which as we're recording, has just wrapped up, which makes a ton of news every year. So you would just, you have a. I'm sure you do speaking gigs. You just have a lot of shit going on. And I'm wondering, does this practice help you in your life? Not to mention the fact that you have a wife and children?
- [40:37]
A
I think I'm still doing it because it does, it sort of settles me in a way. And it's not just that settles me like afterwards in that, you know, five or ten minute period, which I think it does. But I think that it's given me some kind of. It's not a superpower, but some kind of ability to also calm myself in other moments without actually doing the tm. So sometimes if I actually have to go on a stage and speak and I'm a little anxious or nervous and I'm sort of sitting backstage for that one minute when I'm by myself, I'm not doing tm, but I can sort of get to this place and I think I can. I think I'm. I. That place is now familiar to me because of tm and so sort of a combination of breathing and just sort of trying to think that, that it's, it's for me, super helpful. I mean, I just feel like I'm on the run all the time in a way that's probably not healthy. And so this is one thing I do that I think helps with that to some extent. I'm probably, I could be so much better, I'm sure, if I did a hundred other things, but this is just one of them.
- [41:54]
B
Let's talk a little bit about your productivity routines and how you run your day. I mean, you are, for me and I think for many other people, really aspirational figure, not only because of the success you've achieved, but your impact on culture. And this requires, as you just said, like kind of on the run all day. I'd be curious to hear a little bit more about how you get it all done. I've read, thanks to the excellent prep that was prepared for me by Eleanor, our producer. I've read that you don't keep to do lists. So how do you get it done if you don't keep to do lists?
- [42:30]
A
Well, let me say one thing, which is I'm involved in a lot of things, but I also have a lot of help in everything I do. I have either partners or colleagues or whatever, and I, I have to give them credit. When you read Dealbook every morning, I am actively writing and part of that, but I also have, you know, a group of people who work on that with me every day. Similarly, at Squawkbox, there's a team, I had a researcher when I was working on, on the book. So I do try to, you know, I couldn't, couldn't get all this done if I didn't have some, some help. But when it comes to, to do lists or just like actually how I do it, I have to put everything on a calendar, literally. So if I was gonna call you, dan, tomorrow at 9:00am to me, I might even write like this would happen. Actually, after this thing, after our podcast today, I might make a note to myself to, if I didn't send you a text message, say, hey, thanks or whatever. But if I wanted to call you, I might actually write 9am to 9:15, call Dan Harris tomorrow morning. Now, I haven't scheduled a meeting with you, but it's on my calendar. I know it's going to take 15 minutes. Now if at 9 you don't pick up your phone, which might happen, I will then move that just down the day to some other time that I have 15 minutes. If I have 15 minutes to do it. But I think they call it time blocking. But I'm constantly putting everything on the calendar because everything I know takes time. And if I don't put it down that way, it either doesn't get done or I haven't really estimated properly sort of how much I can actually do. I think oftentimes, at least for me, if I don't have it on the calendar, I overestimate what's possible. Meaning I think to myself, oh, I can do a hundred things today, and then I only get two or three things done, invariably. And so I'm, I sort of, I use timers, by the way, big on timers. So if I have to write something, I could be the greatest procrastinator in the world. If I didn't have the timer, I would go off and run around the Internet and look up things and doom. Scroll on Instagram and all of those things. I have. Oh, I, I have blockers on all of my, all of the apps, you know, that sort of force you to override them, which I do unfortunately too, because it's a little too easy to override them. There are some apps you can get, which I've used, that you can't override, or they make it super hard to override. But that's, that's sort of how I do it. So if I, if I know that I have to write something for tomorrow's dealbook, I might say I have an hour. I have to do it in the hour. I have to make it work in the hour or 45 minutes or 2 hours or whatever it is. And similarly, I don't know what my colleagues think. I'm always trying to make meetings shorter because I know that there's a Lot of wasted time. Now the bad news about this whole scheme and system that I'm running is that there's complete loss of serendipity and it's terrible. It's like truly terrible. I can get a lot done and I can be very productive. And that's true. But I often feel that I'm missing the spark of something else, of, of just kibitzing in the corner about whatever. I just, I oftentimes go through periods where I'm just not doing that at the moment. I'm. Now that the book is finished, I'm. I have a little bit more time to kibitz and procrastinate and doom scroll and all that. But I, I was sort of almost like overly disciplined, you know, not the best way. By the way, my calendar says sleep on it. Literally, it's blocked out.
- [46:19]
B
And are you able to. When you get a calendar reminder that says sleep, are you able to like carry yourself away from whatever you're doing and put yourself to bed?
- [46:28]
A
I mean, for the most part, yes. Again, I don't know if I'm supposed to admit this or not. During the weekday because I have to try to go to sleep at a decent hour. I take usually one to three milligrams of melatonin. I know that's not like a super severe drug or anything, but I. Without it, I would stay up till midnight and then I'd be a mess the next day. Even though I sensibly should be a morning person, I host a morning TV show. Left to my own devices, I would probably be more like a college kid and stay up till one or two in the morning and sleep as late as possible.
- [47:05]
B
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- [48:33]
C
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- [48:54]
B
I mentioned this a few weeks ago on the show, but I'm going to repeat it here. As an insomniac it is very important for me to have a nightly routine, a wind down routine, and there's a new aspect of my nightly wind down routine that has really lodged itself into the rundown every evening and that is moisturizing my face. One of my friends was making fun of me and saying I needed to moisturize more and as it turns out right around that time we got a new advertiser on the show, osea and they make all sorts of creams and lotions and they sent me some and I've been using Osea every night on my face as I'm winding down. It's kind of soothing, it smells good and my face feels better. I don't know if it looks better, but definitely feels better better. I'll tell you about some of their products. Osea's Dream Night Serum and Dream Night Cream are clinically tested formulas powered by bioretinol and designed to reduce the visible effects of stress on skin. While you sleep, give your skin a rest and say goodnight to dryness, dullness, wrinkles and lack of firmness. Osea's newest Dream Bioretinol Body Serum is a full body restorative treatment that visibly de stresses the skin with a holistic blend of bioretinol, red seaweed, magnesium and lavender. This overnight firming treatment is an essential, efficient Step in any bedtime routine that delivers real transformation for body and well being. Promoting a restful night while visibly firming and improving skin elasticity. Give your skin a rest with clean clinically tested skin care from osea. And right now we've got a special discount just for our listeners. Get 10% off your First Order site with the code happier@oseamalibu.com. On the serendipity thing, you know, I got myself in a little bit of trouble 8, 10 years ago where I was super optimizer guy, you know, at that time I was hosting two broadcasts on ABC News, plus a podcast, plus a meditation app, plus speaking gigs, plus writing books, plus plus I had a kid, plus I have a wife, just on and on, plus, plus, plus and I was so regimented and I was also, you know, I had a very, I committed to do lots of meditation every day that, you know, I was working in an office, ABC and also had an office for the meditation app. And I cut the serendipity out of my life so thoroughly that it really hurt my relationships.
- [51:23]
A
So I agree with you. And I actually work, I'm now actually in this moment sort of working on that a little bit because I know that there was, I'd say the last six months I was in a super regimented place. And so but I try to do it like in cycles. I don't know if that works because I am in this sort of like super productive, trying to be super productive. So I sort of go through these cycles where I sort of am like super heads down. And that's not good for relationships. It's not good for anything except maybe getting all this stuff done. But then on, on the end of it, on either end of it, I then feel like I then do the opposite. I almost like try to like over invest in the relationships hoping that I then get dispensation when I go back in my hole.
- [52:09]
B
Personally, I don't think there's any such thing as overinvesting in relationships and I've come to believe that. And, and maybe this is just the vestigial optimizer in me. I can imagine that doing the over investing or just investing in the relationships will get you dispensation for when you have to go back in the hole.
- [52:30]
A
For the most part I feel like it has worked for me. But I'm also, you know, I always want to do better. I am aware that, you know, it's terrible to go through these periods, at least in my mind. People you love, people you care about, Will ask you to go to lunch or dinner or whatever, do something. And for a period of time, I remember, especially when I was trying to finish this book, I was constantly writing back. I'm so sorry. I wish I could. I'm knee deep in this project or knee deep in this book. I just. I'm just unable. And it's just. It was like, you know, I hate saying no. I hate that feeling. I don't know if you hate that feeling. I do think when you tell somebody you're like, knee deep in something, they're like, oh, okay, I get it. But I also think it's, you know, I wish I wasn't in that place sometimes.
- [53:17]
B
Well, you actually just brought me one place I was hoping to go. As we head toward the final minutes of our time together. In the aforementioned excellent prep provided to me by the aforementioned excellent Eleanor Vasily, who's the producer of this episode, she pointed out that one of your productivity moves is the polite no. And now this is not necessarily for social things or, you know, things that may come up for. With people you love, but people when you're in a position as you are. And I think this is true for, for many of us, even if we're not Andrew Ross Orkin, we're being asked to do things that are actually not core to our priorities. And so you've learned to issue a polite no. Worth saying a little bit more about that.
- [54:04]
A
Yeah. So I actually have stolen a line. The line is from Vince Gilligan, who wrote Breaking Bad. I had sent him, I know him and we're friends. And I had sent him an email about something once and he wrote back within about two seconds. I hope a quick no is almost as good as a yes. And it was.
- [54:29]
B
That's good.
- [54:30]
A
It was almost as good as a yes. And so what I have learned is if the answer is going to be no or if it isn't something that I can prioritize to get back to people, like, immediately, the no that hurts the other person and the no that hurts you. Because at least for me, it snowballs in my head. Can I make it work? Oh, I haven't told them no. Now they probably think I'm trying. I'm really thinking, if you can quickly come back and say, this isn't gonna. I just can't do it. The dates don't work or the thing. And not even explanation always. I think oftentimes we feel when we're saying no to people, we have to have an explanation to say, oh, we're doing something. With our family, or we're over here, we're blah, blah, blah. I just think if you can quickly return the email or the text or, or call them back and say, I wish I could do it, but I can't, that's fine. I think to me, the thing that kills people and kills yourself is sort of the spiraling on it. That may be your own problem. It might be the person who's waiting on you to say yes or no. And when you let that drag out, that's just like the worst.
- [55:42]
B
I love that. So I always end the show with two questions. One is, was there something you were hoping that we would get to that we haven't, or anything else on your mind that you were hoping to express?
- [55:54]
A
You know, I've. I feel like I've watched your journey over the years, and I've always been impressed by actually how much you've been willing to share with people about your own story. By the way, this is not something that I, I came on the show to talk about, but I wanted to actually talk to you if I could, just about where the. Know, if it's courage. Maybe it's courage to sort of share certain things with people about yourself. I mean, I feel like I've shared a little bit about myself, but I never know how much you're supposed to share. You know, is there a moment where. Not that it becomes embarrassing, I guess I used even that word earlier, but, you know, especially when you're in the news business, I don't think of myself. It's sort of crazy to think of yourself as like a public figure or whatever. And I think people think that you're supposed to share. People want to know you, but then you. Are you supposed to. Anyway, I'm so curious how you've always thought about that.
- [56:52]
B
I appreciate you asking it. And I did notice a couple times when you were revealing, like, really benign things, you hesitated like melatonin is. Is not at all.
- [57:01]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a weird thing because I, I, you know, as a journalist, I don't know if you felt this way. I feel like we're. We're supposed to almost be, like, detached. So detached and so sort of straight. Look, I grew up. I started the New York Times at 18 years old. And so it's sort of like, no, no. And maybe it's a mental problem that I have. That's why I've. As I said, I've admired you and how you've done this for so long.
- [57:26]
B
Well, I appreciate that. And, you know, you And I came up in the same system I, you know, was you. You started the Times as a. As an intern and at 18, and then very quickly started writing for them, even as you were in college. And I started a little bit later in television news at 21. But we've come up through the system where the ethos very much is you're not the story. I think that's outmoded to a certain extent. You don't want to. I think it's a fine line to walk. You don't want to be inserting yourself into every story. And we are in an era where people are much more open and honest and confessional. And even at the New York Times, like Ezra Klein has come on the show a couple times and really will talk about aspects of his life in ways that I think are really effective. And here's how I think about how to draw the line. Is what you're revealing useful to the audience? And there's a broad. There's a lot of range in there and a lot of ways to interpret useful. So when I wrote my first book in 2014, I was freaking out about talking about my cocaine habits and how it led to a panic attack and all of that stuff. It was not actually. That was early for that kind of disclosure. What I learned in the aftermath was nobody really gave a shit. They really just cared about whether I had something useful for them, which in this case I did because I was only telling the cocaine stories because it led me to meditation, which is useful for you. And so for you, given the importance of sleep for all of us, I think mentioning melatonin is really helpful. But I would go even further. I would go even further. We didn't talk about it much in this conversation, but you have talked about your grandfather, his witnessing of a suicide. These are useful nuggets if you're over sharing. And again, this is more art than science. But if you're just turning everything back to yourself and not listening to other people and serving up personal information that is of no real value, then yes, that's a problem. But I do think disclosure, especially from people who are, whether you like it or not, public figures, is super helpful because it normalizes things that many of us feel shame about.
- [59:51]
A
Thank you. See, I got. Now I got my question answered.
- [59:57]
B
Okay, let me ask my final question, which is not much of a question. It's more of a request. Can you please just remind everybody of the name of your book? The new one. Any prior books, your show on cnbc, your work on the New York Times. Can you just plug everything you do just so for people who want more from you?
- [60:12]
A
Oh goodness, I love this question. This is a great question. So the new book is called 1929. It's out now. I wrote a book called Too Big to Fail. It's also still available. It was written back in 2009. I host a show on CNBC called squawk box from 6 to 9 in the morning. I pop on with my good friends on morning Joe on MSNBC, typically between 9 and 10 in the morning. And I started something called DealBook at the New York Times, which is a newsletter about the intersection of business and policy. You can get it for free. You can Google that online, just type in dealbook or you can go to nytimes.com dealbook and we do a summit that you can see on YouTube right now if you search for that. And we do it live at Lincoln center every year in November.
- [61:04]
B
Dear Listener, we will put links to all of those in the show Notes. Dear you, Andrew Ross Orkin, thank you very much for doing this. I'm very proud of the fact that we're going to get you out on time so that your calendar will not be violated.
- [61:16]
A
Thank you so much. This is a lot of fun.
- [61:22]
B
Big thanks to Andrew Ross Sorkin. Loved having him on. Don't forget to check out my new app 10% with Dan Harris. You can sign up over@danharris.com there's a free trial. Lots of cool stuff going on over there, including our weekly live meditation and Q and a sessions. Dan harris.com finally, thank you very much to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.