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The Long View
Sahil Bloom: ‘Curiosity Is the Fountain of Youth’
00:53:51
The author of The Five Types of Wealth shares practical strategies for improving time management and the importance of maintaining a growth mindset for life.
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- [00:01]
Sahil Blum
At Jackson, we've created a digital retirement planning experience with you in mind. Visit Jackson.com to explore our easy to understand resources and user friendly tools that are designed to enable financial professionals and clients to plan a path to financial freedom. Jackson is short for Jackson Financial, Inc. Jackson National Life Insurance Company, Lansing, Michigan and Jackson National Life Insurance Company of New York, Purchase, New York.
- [00:27]
Disclosure Voice
Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.
- [00:33]
Christine Benz
Hi and welcome to the Longview. I'm Christine Benz, Director of Personal Finance and Retirement Planning for Morningstar. Our guest on the podcast today is Sahil Blum. He's the author of a new book called the Five Types of Wealth and he also writes a newsletter called the Curiosity Chronicle. He's the founder and Managing partner of SRB holdings and SRB Ventures. Before embarking on a career as a content creator, Sahil was a vice president at a private equity fund. He double majored in economics and sociology at Stanford University and he also received his master's in public policy there. Sahil, welcome to the Longview.
- [01:11]
Sahil Blum
Thank you so much for having me.
- [01:13]
Christine Benz
Well, we're thrilled to have you here. We want to talk about your book, which has just launched and we're excited to discuss that further, but we wanted to provide a little bit more background on you so maybe you can share a little bit about your journey. It sounds like you were working in private at Equity, but found yourself more engaged with content creation and thinking that you wanted to make a pivot. Can you talk about kind of making that switch?
- [01:39]
Sahil Blum
Yeah, absolutely. So I finished up in School in 2014. I was a baseball player at Stanford, played there for four years. And when I got done, I took a job at a private equity fund that had just recently got formed. It was a spin out from another firm and had raised its first and then just starting the second fund and I joined right then. I was one of the first group of analysts that ever got hired there and really had an incredible experience, especially over the first three or four years. I mean, anyone that has worked a career in finance knows like the the golden early years of learning in those career tracks are really incredible. Just how fast you have to come up the learning curve, how much you're working, you know, being in the trenches with other people. And I really experienced that. I had had a great group of colleagues, was learning a ton, you know, and the journey was a really good one, I would say, for the first four or five years. And my own experience was I found that my priority set had started to grow rather narrow around my Pursuit of building financial wealth and making money. And as I got further and further into the career, I felt like that focus had gotten more and more narrow and I had started to lose sight of a lot of other, what I would say are more important things in my life, which I'm sure we'll get into in this conversation. But it was really that feeling which coincided with the onset of COVID and the lockdowns, that sparked me to start writing. And so I was in March of 2020, you know, everything got locked down. I was still working, you know, my kind of 80 plus hour a week job. Things were going well at that job, and suddenly I was stuck at home. I wasn't commuting every single day. I wasn't, you know, traveling two, three week to different portfolio companies or to different prospective companies that we were looking to invest in. And there was a lot that was happening in the world of business and finance that was very confusing, if you recall at that time. And so I started just writing. Originally it was on Twitter, and then it expanded into a newsletter. And what I found was I was just so pulled by the energy of getting to share and curate ideas and spread them. And so that sort of sparked me on this journey to creating and sharing a whole lot more.
- [03:54]
Christine Benz
Yeah, that was my first encounter with your work, I think, was on Twitter. Now X I saw some of your posts. Can you talk about those early posts that seem to resonate with others, some of the ones that stand out in your mind?
- [04:07]
Sahil Blum
Yeah, absolutely. So I mentioned it was a time when things were pretty confusing in the world in particular. We were in this point in time where the entire economy in the US was shut down, no one was working, unemployment was at all time highs, and yet the stock market was ripping and doing really, really well. And, you know, I played baseball. I mentioned that a lot of my former teammates were texting me, asking what was going on. I was kind of like their resident finance friend who they figured would have the answers. And so what I noticed was like, there was a lot of gaps in information for normal everyday people who wanted to understand more about what was happening, wanted to participate in what was happening, but weren't getting the information in a way that felt digestible and accessible. And so what I figured was that I could be that I could solve that problem and I could, you know, sort of digest all of the inputs of all of the crazy things that were happening and sort of turn them into very accessible sort of storytelling versions and lean into storytelling to explain these complex things that were happening. And so one of the first things was this piece that I wrote that was really talking about like the Fed put, you know, the whole idea of the Fed being kind of a buyer of last resort in the markets and explaining how that was leading to inflation and asset prices. And that was kind of the first piece that I actually put out, which was in May of 2020. And it sparked a whole bunch of sharing and growth that started this entire journey.
- [05:37]
Christine Benz
So your posts though, increasingly veered into areas that weren't squarely financial, more things about life and kind of how to optimize life, how to live better. What was your first post that was away from financial matters that, that you found really resonated with people?
- [05:55]
Sahil Blum
Yeah, it was sort of a slow process. There wasn't just like one day when I woke up and decided that I realized early on that if I was going to be successful really in anything in life, but when it came to writing and content creation, for sure it was going to need to be something that I could do for a long period of time. And the only way you could do something for a long period of time is if you truly care about the things that you're doing. And I like money, I like markets, I like finance, but I really like thinking about life. I really like thinking about human experience and wrestling with bigger questions. And so I wanted to write about that. And so the sort of like bridging of the gap between business and finance and getting more towards writing about life and bigger picture questions was starting to think more about like mental models or frameworks sort of in between, like mental models that apply to business and finance, but also apply to your life. So I started writing about things like, you know, razors like Occam's razor and other ways of thinking about the world. And that started to kind of expand my, like my spheres of influence, if you will, that allowed me to expand beyond the bounds of just traditional business finance, you know, tech world, and start reaching sort of everybody.
- [07:06]
Christine Benz
So let's talk about the razors which you talk about in the book. And people may be familiar with Occam's razor, but maybe you can talk about why you think it's helpful for each of us to have what you call a razor that we refer to as kind of a touch point as we proceed throughout our lives.
- [07:25]
Sahil Blum
Yeah, so the whole idea, for those aren't familiar with the term a razor is a rule of thumb. It's a decision making heuristic, something that simplifies decisions. It comes from the world of philosophy where the idea was that you could actually shave away potential explanations or assumptions and use the razor to, you know, help make faster, better decisions. So Occam's razor is probably the most famous razor. It's the idea that the simplest possible explanation is often the best one. Simple is beautiful. And in the book I share this idea of a life raiser basically having a single point of focus, a single decision making heuristic to rule them all, if you will. Something that allows you to kind of cut through the noise, cut through the chaos that inevitably ensues in your life and allows you to make good, grounded decisions. And the way that I frame it in the book is you want a single statement that implies your ideal identity that is sort of ripple creating in your life. So I'll give you an example. My life raiser is the statement, I will coach my son's sports teams. And when I say it is identity defining, what I mean is that's not really just about coaching my son's sports teams, you know, coaching his little league team. My son is two and a half by the way now, so he doesn't have sports teams yet. It is about what the type of person who coaches his son's sports teams, what that means to me. That means that I am the type of father and husband that my son and wife are proud to be around and to spend time around. It means I'm the type of community member that gives. It means I prioritize acts of service to others. It means that I always prioritize my integrity and my character above making money or financial opportunities. So it means certain things to me about my identity. So when I have different decision points in my life, when a new financial opportunity comes up, when some chaos ensues, I can ask, what does the type of person who coaches his son's sports teams do in this situation? And that gives me a level of clarity because I know what that type of person does and I can act in line with that in those decisions when they do come up.
- [09:39]
Christine Benz
So do you think that will be your life raiser for, I mean, certainly I would guess through your son's formative years. But do we change these things as we evolve and as kind of our life responsibilities and interests evolve?
- [09:52]
Sahil Blum
Absolutely. One of the ideas and just broader concepts that I raise in the book is this idea that your life has seasons. And what you prioritize or focus on during any one season can and should change. I mean, you will have seasons of foundation building, seasons of growth, seasons of destruction, seasons of divorce, seasons of grief. You Know, seasons of sailing off into the sunset and retirement. All of these different seasons have different things that you are going to prioritize and focus on. And the important point is that you just have a true north throughout all of that. You have an idea of like, what is the future that I'm trying to build towards? And then the decisions along the way and the life raiser during any one of those seasons may change, but you, you know, the general direction that you are trying to march.
- [10:44]
Christine Benz
So you wrote early in the book about kind of a catalyzing moment for you was when a friend suggested that you might only see your parents 15 more times. Can you talk about that? It sounds like that was pivotal for you in terms of making some changes in your life and also influenced some of the things that you wanted to work on.
- [11:05]
Sahil Blum
Yeah, look, this comes down to the fact that time is your most precious asset. It is the only thing that you can never get back. And yet every single day we take actions and we do things that disregard the immense, incalculable value of that asset. I mean, I ask people all the time, especially young people, would you trade lives with Warren Buffett? He's worth $130 billion. He has access to anyone in the world. He can fly around wherever he wants. He reads and learns for a living. But you wouldn't trade lives with him simply because he is 95 years old and there's no way that you would trade the amount of time he has left for the amount of time you do, even for any amount of money. And so that is a really important shift that we all need to make to recognize that time really is the most important asset. And we need to act in line with that in how we pursue life. And so that moment, for me, the recognition of that came in a rather shocking way, which was what you referenced a conversation with an old friend in May of 2021. I had gotten together with him for drinks. And at the time in my life, I was in a. A rather dark place in a lot of ways. On the surface, everything was really going well. I mean, I was making more money every year. I was kind of getting promoted. You know, on the surface, I was kind of winning the game. I was like, successful, quote, unquote. But internally, a lot of things were suffering. I had allowed my health to deteriorate. I was drinking way too much. You know, I was stuck at home. So there was a feeling of loneliness. I wasn't seeing my parents ever. We lived 3,000 miles away. My relationship with my sister had really suffered. There were all of these things that were really deteriorating in my life. And when I sat down with that friend, he asked how I was doing. And I said that it had started to get tough being as far away from my parents as I was growing up, very close to them. And they were getting older and starting to see chinks in the armor, in their health and in their vitality. And he asked, how often do you see them? I said, about once a year. And he asked, how old are they? I said, mid-60s. And he just looked at me and said, okay, so you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die. And I just remember feeling like I had been punched in the gut. The idea that the amount of time you have left with the people that you love most in this world is so finite, so quantifiable, so countable, that you can place it on a few hands was just jarring to me. And it sparked an enormous chain reaction. The next morning, I told my wife that I thought we needed to make a change. And within 45 days, I had left my job, we had left our house on the west coast and gotten a house on the east coast to live closer to our parents. And the most powerful message in that is that number 15 is now in the hundreds. We see our parents multiple times a month. They're a huge part of their grandchildren's lives. And we did that. We literally created time through the actions that we took. So these finite countable numbers are, are actually more within our control than we ever appreciate. But we have to take the actions to respect that finite nature of time in order to change them.
- [14:34]
Christine Benz
Yeah, I was so impressed by that. I sometimes feel like people underrate that value of living close to our loved ones. I mean, it seems so obvious, but I think in our culture, where we are very mobile, we think that it doesn't really matter where we live. But I love that you and your wife recognize the value of physically being close to those people who you wanted to keep in your life on a daily or weekly basis.
- [14:59]
Sahil Blum
Yeah. I mean, there is scientific evidence that the strength of your relationships is the single most important predictor of your health and happiness in life. The Harvard Study of Adult Development was this incredible study conducted over 85 plus years, 2000 plus participants that they followed the lives of. And they found that the single greatest predictor of your physical health at age 80 was your relationship satisfaction at age 50. It was more important than your cholesterol, than your blood pressure, than your alcohol, smoking habits. It was how you felt about your relationships, the people you surrounded yourself with have that impact on your life. And yet we don't take that into account. We spend all of this time and energy thinking about our financial investments, and we ignore our relationship investments, which tend to pay the greatest dividends. Investing in your relationships on a daily basis compounds positively in your life in the exact same way that financial investments do. But we need to have that mindset shift. And so making these changes, taking these actions, even if they're tiny, you don't have to move across the country like we did. But you can take the two seconds to send the text to the person to let them know you're thinking about them. You can take the time to make sure you schedule that date with the friend that you don't see enough anymore. You can do the annual trip with the old friends and be the catalyst for actually having that come together so that it doesn't fall by the wayside again. No single change has ever had a greater impact on our quality of life than moving across the country to live within driving distance of our parents. No single change. And I firmly believe that no job will ever pay you enough to be far away from people you love.
- [16:41]
Christine Benz
Yeah, you have a section book about how people move for like lower taxes or really kind of craven reasons like that. And you're pretty harsh on that idea. Before we go any further, I just want to make sure we enumerate the five types of wealth that you cover in the book. So financial wealth is obviously there. Time wealth is one, which we've talked about. And I want to go back to social wealth is another. Let's talk about the other two.
- [17:05]
Sahil Blum
Yeah, so mental wealth and physical wealth are the other two. Mental wealth is a few things. I mean, really, it's this idea of being grounded in your purpose and your own hero's journey. And that is a journey of growth. It's a journey of curiosity. And it's a journey that has the space to allow yourself to wrestle with the bigger questions in life. I mean, a lot of people will ask about where the role of spirituality comes in in all of these topics. And I often say that, you know, I think that spirituality really comes down to both community, so that's social wealth and having space in your life to connect with something on a higher level, you know, to ask those big picture questions, to wrestle with them, to sit with them. And so few of actually take the time to create that space. We live in a world of constant stimulus and response. You have all of the questions coming in and then you have immediate responses going out and allowing yourself that space where you can just sit, where you can just think, where you can connect with that higher order purpose or that higher order belief is so important and so vital for building a wealthy life.
- [18:13]
Christine Benz
I couldn't help but notice how much technology seems to be undermining wealth in all of these areas. You caution against technology overuse and excess screen time throughout the book, but do you have any general thoughts about how we can make technology work better for us and stop working against us and undermining our wealth in all of these areas?
- [18:35]
Sahil Blum
I think that technology can be an incredible tool, but like most, when used in excess, it becomes a big negative. You know, like in moderation it's fantastic, but when overused, it becomes a negative. My general bias towards technology is that we need to go back to the basics of human connection and in real life, textured human connection across all of these different areas. And, you know, using technology when it is sort of serving you and creating energy in your life is a big positive. But then turning to it to fill the voids and to fill those moments of space turns into a big negative. I mean, in social wealth in particular, obviously there's some shocking facts that have been coming out over recent years. I just recently saw that teenagers in the United states are spending 70% less time in person with their friends than they were two decades ago. That is a terrifying reality for the future if it doesn't change with mental wealth. We fill every single moment of space that we might have with scrolling on social media and with our phones. And you think about that fact, and it is rather scary. I mean, think about the fact that when you go to the bathroom, you bring your phone with you because you're afraid to be bored for 30 seconds or for a minute or for however long. And we need to change that. We need to allow ourselves to have that space because there's so much positive energy that comes from just allowing yourself that space in your daily life.
- [20:05]
Christine Benz
I'm curious as a parent, how you think you will allow your son to engage with technology and sort of what limits you'll put up to help keep him from being as immersed in technology as so many kids are today.
- [20:19]
Sahil Blum
I think that the key limiter, as both my wife and I see it, is technology used for education and sort of value creation versus technology used for promoting idleness. Look, I think that social media, when used for educating yourself, is an incredible tool. I mean, there are people out there sharing incredibly valuable information on social media, on YouTube, on the Internet. Where we have access at our fingertips to some of the world's foremost experts on any topic that we could possibly imagine. But when it turns into the sort of idle scrolling of entertainment rather than entertaining yourself in the real world and in the active world, I think that it starts to skew into dangerous territory. And so I would probably use that as a guiding principle with my son. Obviously. Easier said than done. And, you know, he's two and a half, so we haven't had to contend with the pressures, you know, the social pressures of school and all your friends having phones or video games or all your friends watching certain shows and you having limits. And so I'm also cognizant of the fact that it's hard for me to say some of these things before we actually encounter them.
- [21:26]
Christine Benz
Yeah. We had Daniel Crosby on our podcast a few months ago, and he described social comparisons, many of which are coming from social media, as the thief of joy. That this is one of the reasons that people are feeling so badly about themselves, that they're comparing themselves to people not just. Just in their neighborhood, but in the world at large. Can you talk about that, the dimension of social media and how that is undermining our wealth in so many of these areas?
- [21:54]
Sahil Blum
Yeah. So in each section of the book, in each type of wealth, I sort of have these pillars, as it were, that I lay out for that type of wealth, in particular, the pillars that kind of contribute to that type of wealth. And in the social wealth section, I have this idea of earned status, meaning status that you have to earn through actions rather than status that can be bought. We live in a culture and society where many people seek to acquire status through the accumulation of, you know, lifestyle status points. Right? The fancy watch, the car, the mansion, you know, on the right street, the club membership, the, you know, private jet, the yacht, whatever, all of those things. And social media has made the pursuit of bot status even more rewarding from a dopamine standpoint, because not only is it the people that actually see you driving the car, but it's also the people who you post the car, and a whole bunch of people see it there. And so it is even more rewarding in terms of the dopamine that you can get from doing those things, which means, as a result, more people do it. And so more and more you see people chasing this bot status, this idea of, like, going out and acquiring these things. And what I share in the book is that unfortunately, bot status is very flimsy. It is very fleeting. And as C.S. lewis refers to it there is always an inner ring, there is always another layer. So you get into the club VIP entrance, but then you realize there's a velvet rope area and you immediately want to get there. And then once you get in the velvet rope area, you realize there's a back room that you really want to get to. And so it doesn't actually provide or confer the lasting respect and admiration that you desire. When we think about status, what we're looking for is that feeling, that feeling of respect and admiration from people that we care about. The only way to acquire that is through things that are earned. It's through actually building something that requires effort. And so the test that I offer in the book is what I call the bot status test. It's the idea of asking yourself, before you buy something, ask yourself, would I actually buy this thing if I wasn't allowed to tell anyone that I got it? Would I go buy this watch if I wasn't allowed to post about it on social media? Or if no one ever knew that I had it? It was purely for my own enjoyment and edification because I love watch engineering or I just love having these watches, they make me feel really good. Would I still buy it? And if you ask yourself that question more regularly, you start to develop an awareness of the fact that you are taking so many actions on a daily and weekly basis purely for the purpose of impressing others versus trying to build things that will confer upon you that same respect and admiration. And it really changes the way that you interact with the world when you start to realize that. At Jackson, we've created a digital retirement planning experience with you in mind. Visit Jackson.com to explore our easy to understand resources and user friendly tools that are designed to enable financial professionals and clients to plan a path to financial freedom. Jackson is short for Jackson Financial Incorporated, Jackson National Life Insurance Co. Lansing, Michigan and Jackson National Life Insurance Co. Of New York Purchase, New York.
- [25:17]
Christine Benz
So what's an example of earned status? Something that I could do to earn status.
- [25:23]
Sahil Blum
Building a business is a good example from the financial world. You will receive much more status points and people will really respect and admire. When you have built something of meaning, when you've built something of value, a real company that takes years and years of effort and energy and focus to go and create versus trying to get that same status by paying for a private jet flight or renting a fancy car to post about it on social media. I think the best example of earned status is being physically fit. It is a way bigger status flex to be physically very, very fit than it is to have a fancy watch. There was this meme, I don't know if you saw this on social media recently. Some young man posted saying that every young person should buy a Rolex and they should go into. He said they should go into debt if they can't afford it because it confers upon you this belief that you are very impressive. And I think it's. I mean, it was hilarious and it obviously went very viral because people were making fun of it. But it's a funny thought to think that buying a Rolex is enough for people to think you're impressive. And what I replied to it and said that I think that having a fit physique is actually a much better status flex because it means that you actually had to do something. Like, Elon Musk cannot get a fit physique faster than you or I. He might be able to hire trainers, he might be able to pay for a personal chef, but he can't make them do the work for him. And so when you are playing games where the richest person in the world cannot acquire that thing any faster than you can, those are the right games to play. You know, the richest person in the world cannot build a meaningful relationship with a loved one faster than you can. It doesn't matter if they have all the money in the world. Actually, it might actually harm their ability to do that in certain cases. And so those are the games that you want to play. Those are the things that are going to provide them more meaningful value over the long term.
- [27:17]
Christine Benz
So I want to drill into each of these types of wealth, and I probably want to spend the most time on time wealth, because as I went through the exercise where you rate yourself, I found, not surprisingly to me, that I am time impoverished. So I want to talk about how to do better with time wealth, how to use my time better. But first I want to talk about how there's this proliferation of tools to help me manage my time, but yet it seems like they're not really helping. Maybe you can talk about why time management is so hard.
- [27:50]
Sahil Blum
Yeah, we. I think there's a cultural default setting here which really harms us. And that cultural default setting is one that tells us that if we are not busy, we are failing. We live in a world, and I think the US in particular, Western culture in particular, is one that tells you that unless you are doing more and more and more and more and more and saying yes and yes and yes and yes and yes, you are underachieving, you are not Ambitious. You are not performing at the level that you should. And what happens is you take on more and more and more, but you actually get less and less of the meaningful work done. The most successful people in the world, in any endeavor, whether this is investing or business or sports or whatever it is, actually do less but better. Right? That was the whole idea of Greg McKeon's essentialism. Less but better. But we live in a world that values busyness. We live in a world that values, you know, movement over progress. And so I think that learning to reframe that in your own mind gives you the freedom to actually say no to more things, which then frees you up to think about where you should be deploying your time and energy for the maximum potential return.
- [29:04]
Christine Benz
So I wanted to ask about saying no, because I've seen that over and over. I need to get better about saying no and I'm terrible about it. Why is saying no so hard? And I suppose it depends on the person, but maybe you can discuss why we struggle with this.
- [29:18]
Sahil Blum
Yeah, I struggle with this mightily. And the biggest reason that I see both with myself and with others is if you self define as a nice person, you say yes to everything. And it literally is an identity problem because you identify as nice. You think that you are being not nice if you say no to things. And so as a result, you say yes when the social commitments come up, when your colleagues ask you to do something, when friends are asking you for something, when a family member is asking you for things, whoever it is, if you self identify as nice, you are prone to saying yes to everything. Because when you are nice, everyone wants you to do things. And you don't create the boundaries around yourself to protect yourself in your own time. That is a really important thing to get past. And I think the separation is like between nice and kind. You know, when you're being nice, you say yes to everything. You don't create any boundaries. When you're being kind, you're actually being kind to yourself. And you are making sure that you create the boundaries so that you can focus on the things and the people that really matter. I say this to my wife all the time when, when I started focusing more on creating time, wealth, and on really being more ruthless in how I prioritized what I spent time on. One of the things that I had to stop doing so much of was these like phone call or zoom sort of get to know you chit chats or like brain pickings where people message you and say, oh, I want to Pick your brain, right? You know, a lot of the people listening out there are probably, you know, doing well in their career, in life. And a lot of people reach out to you on LinkedIn or email or whatever saying, hey, I want to pick your brain. Can we do a 30 minute phone call, Zoom chat, coffee. And I just started blanket saying no to all of those. And what I said was, I will do things in person and I'll have sort of a designated time and I'll meet you in the city or whatever, but I'm not doing any of the phone calls or zooms anymore. And when I told my wife that I was doing that, she said, you know, don't be a jerk. That was kind of her response. And what I said to her was, it's actually a really important change because every single time I say yes to one of those, I am saying no to you and Roman, our son. And that reframed it entirely in her mind. It's this idea that every time you say yes to something new, you are saying no to something else. And so if you are saying yes to something, something silly or something low value, and it means saying no to the thing that really matters, like time with my wife and son, that is a terrible decision. I should not have said yes to that thing. Because your energy and your time is fixed. You're not creating new time. The unit of time or energy that you just took to put into this commitment is just a unit that gets taken away from something that really matters to you. So you have to define those things that really matter, those handful of priorities, the handful of commitments that are truly impactful both in your personal and professional lives. And then from that it becomes much easier to decide what you are going to say no to to protect those things that really do count.
- [32:17]
Christine Benz
So I wanted to ask, as I was kind of taking stock of the things that take a lot of time. For me, I feel like I have some things that fall more in the category of oblig. I haven't actively prioritized them, but I have people who depend on me to do certain things for them. And so, like, how does that fit in? Because some of those things take an awful lot of time, but I haven't actively prioritized them. How do I, how do I feel better about the fact that those are sort of ongoing obligations for me?
- [32:45]
Sahil Blum
Yeah, I think there are a lot of commitments like that, you know, in particular, I think family commitments, you know, taking care of elder relatives, you know, siblings, children, any of those commitments that are, you know, they're ongoing. I think of those as being much more connected to, you know, some feeling of like a higher order purpose, as kind of a provider or protector or someone that takes care of your people. Like, it's sort of part of one of the missions that you're on in life is to like be the family member that I need to be. And I think taking pride in those things is great. I would never advocate for someone saying like, oh, hey, elder relative, you know, I'm starting to say no to things, so now I'm not taking care of you. Right. Those end up being fixed commitments that we just need to find a way to create space for. But it means that we need to be even slightly more ruthless in how we think about cutting other areas that free us up then. And look, I think the challenge for a lot of people, and for myself on this journey as well, is we often want to blame our time or energy, when in reality it is our desire. We make time and we create energy for the things we really want to do. You know, if you have a 6am flight to go on, a vacation you're excited about, you will get up at 3am and go and make that flight and you'll be excited doing it. But when it comes to building the life you want, building the business that you want, working out, taking care of your people, doing the things that are going to create value in your life, we point to time or we point to energy for our inability to do it, when in reality it's a desire problem. We need to want the thing enough. And so I think there's a little bit of giving yourself grace and then there's a lot of holding ourselves to the fire when it comes to making these changes in our life, when it comes to creating space for the things that we really care about, that we're really trying to build.
- [34:44]
Christine Benz
So you discussed the value of time blocking in terms of time management, that we should try to cluster certain types of activities in an effort to reduce the mental switching among different types of tasks. Can you discuss that and maybe share some examples of how that would work in practice?
- [35:01]
Sahil Blum
Yeah. I'm a big believer in using your calendar to manage your life. I think that if there is one fast way to improve your life, it is to create more structure in your days in how you're approaching coaching your days. And one of the ideas that I offer in the book is this idea that there are four types of professional time and you need to create space for all four of these types. They are management time that would be things like emailing, sort of meetings, basic processing. It's frankly what most of us spend the vast majority of our professional time on. There is creation time, which is when you're actually building things and creating things. You know, whether you're writing, whether you're coding, whether you're creating presentations, whatever it is actually sort of actively creating things. There is consumption time, which is when you are filling the bucket, as it were. That's when you were reading, when you're consuming things, when you're listening to things, when you're hearing things, all of the kind of ideas that come in upstream in your life. And then there is ideation time, which is the time when you actually give yourself space to think, to actually contemplate and think about some of the bigger picture questions in your professional life. Most of us, when you actually go and look at your calendar, if you were to color code things on your calendar for a week according to what type of time they are, I would guess 80% of your time is going to be management time and about 20% is going to be creation time. And there's basically no time in there for consumption, and there's basically no time in there for ideation. All of us can benefit from reducing the amount of time on management things by shortening the windows and being really focused in how we approach them. Increasing the amount of ideation and consumption time, like actually having discrete blocks of time when you're going to think, when you're going to consume and read and learn, and then increasing a little bit the time for creation when you're actually going to be creating things. The most effective strategy for unlocking that is to leverage what's called Parkinson's Law, which says that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. So if you give yourself, you know, six hours to do your email inbox, it'll take you six hours. If you tell yourself you have an hour to do it, you'll somehow get it done in an hour. We just sort of allow work to expand if we have more time for it. So with management time in particular, give yourself focused, discrete blocks when you are going to do those management activities and you will get them done much faster and more efficiently than you thought. That unlocks that quite literally creates time that can be redeployed into these other types of time that can be redeployed into actually thinking about some of the bigger picture things, consuming and learning new information to creating new things. And that is a really powerful unlock for a lot of life.
- [38:02]
Christine Benz
So you discussed that ideation time and the shower idea is the great metaphor for how that works. But do you have any other strategies about how to make better use of ideation time, how to make sure that we do come up with some new thoughts about things?
- [38:21]
Sahil Blum
Yeah, I have a practice that I share in the book in the Mental well wealth guide section. So at the end of each type of wealth section, there's a guide for actually building that type of wealth in your life. And in the mental wealth guide, there is one in particular that I call the Think Day, which is an adaptation of Bill Gates Think Week that he used to do or that maybe he still does, where he would take a week and go off the grid and just read and learn and think. None of us, I don't think, have time to do a full week doing that, but we can carve out a day, once a quarter or once a month to take four hours, take a few hours and ask ourselves some of the bigger picture questions. And so the Think Day Guide item in the book has a series of question prompts that you can ask yourself on those days and sort of journal on, think on, write about. That will sort of force you to think in the more 10,000 foot view about your life, about your professional pursuits, and allow you to unlock some of these things that you've previously and been blocked around.
- [39:22]
Christine Benz
So sticking with mental wealth, you are a huge evangelist for curiosity and you share an example in the book of an older couple who, you know, who has managed to maintain high levels of curiosity and internmental wealth. Maybe you can talk about what they're doing. Right. And also just why you are such a big believer in trying to maintain curiosity throughout our lives.
- [39:47]
Sahil Blum
Yeah, curiosity is the fountain of youth. Now there's actually substantive science around this, that curiosity keeps you young, it reduces all cause mortality, it keeps you healthy. And anyone that has young children sees this in real time. We see that curiosity is how children pursue life. It's how they go down different rabbit holes, how they learn about the world. But unfortunately, as we get older, that curiosity is sort of squeezed out of us. And a big reason that I see for it being squeezed out of us is we simply don't have the space in our day to day lives to pursue our curiosity. We jump from thing to thing, constant stimulus and response, and we get caught in this loop where we no longer have any space to actually pursue those things that we feel, the curiosity being sparked around. If you can create those little bits of space in your daily life, whether it's the five minute break in between meetings, whether it's the Think Day that I mentioned, whether it's the 15 minute walk, when you're not listening to a podcast or an audiobook, Those little pockets of space are what allow you to think on and read and learn about the things that are sparking your interest in life. And the amount of life that that gives you, the amount of joy that that brings you, and the amount of interesting opportunities that it creates will blow you away when you actually start to do it and embrace it. And you know that older couple that you mentioned that I talk about in the book? They are remarkable. Hank Bihar is now 99. He'll be 100, actually, at the time when this is released. His wife Phyllis is going on 90. She just took up two painting classes and she's learning painting. Right? There's no utility to that. She's not monetizing painting. We live in this culture where every single hobby or passion has to be monetized. Otherwise it's a waste pursuing things just for the sake of pursuing them. The word is atelic, like done without a purpose. It's a lack. Latin root word is really amazing. And there's so much life that you can find in doing that.
- [41:47]
Christine Benz
Having a sense of purpose is another component of mental wealth, and you discuss it at length in the book. You emphasize that this purpose doesn't have to coincide with our careers. For some of us it might, but for others it might not. Can you talk about that?
- [42:02]
Sahil Blum
Yeah. I think that one of the worst lies you've been told is that your purpose has to be your work. I think it is a very Western phenomenon that you've been told that. And it is a big challenge that people run into because it convinces you that if you don't love your job, that you are doing something wrong, that you need to leave, that you need to find purpose in your work. And that's just not true. You can have a purpose and frankly probably should have a purpose that is separate from work. But what you do need to do is connect to your purpose when you are at work. Because you are going to spend a lot of hours working in your life and connecting to your purpose. Allowing it to be connected to whatever the work is that you are doing is really helpful in driving energy on a day to day basis. I'll give you an example. Someone that I spoke to during my research for the book is a man who works at a factory. He, you know, works on an assembly line, basically putting together widgets, doesn't like his job, you know, works hours you know, doing sort of a basic manual task. It's not like he enjoys doing that. But his purpose, as he defines it, is to be the father that he never had to his children, to provide for his sons. And by connecting to that purpose when he goes to work, he's able to say, while he's at work, I am doing this in service of my higher order purpose of being the father that I didn't feel I had. And every single day when he shows up, he's able to get energy from that because at work he's connecting to something that is more meaningful to him. We can all do that. We can all connect to our purpose while we are at work. If you are in your 20s or early 30s and you hate your job, but your purpose is to build a foundation for the rest of your life from a network, from a financial foundation, from a learning and experience foundation standpoint, you can do that at a job that you don't like, and that's okay. You will get energy during your job job by knowing that you are connecting to that higher order purpose. And so separating that and recognizing that shift is a really healthy change to make in your life. The other thing to know about purpose, which is important to say, comes from ancient Hindu culture, the Bhagavad Gita, where they talk about this idea of Dharma and the idea of your. Your sacred duty. It's like the idea of purpose. And the important line there is that your Dharma does not have to be grand or impressive, it simply has to be yours. So your purpose does not have to be grand or impressive sounding to anyone else. It just has to be your own. It just has to be unique and real to you. And as long as that is the case, you are on the right path, you are walking your path.
- [44:50]
Christine Benz
You talk in the book about the value of maintaining a growth mindset rather than a fixed one. I thought that was such an interesting section. And. And I'm hoping you can talk about the difference and what those two mindsets mean.
- [45:03]
Sahil Blum
Yeah. Dr. Carol Dweck was the researcher who formulated this idea in the first place and had done all of this incredible research and released an international, world renowned, bestselling book, Mindset, which was basically the idea that a fixed mindset says that you are incapable of change. A growth mindset is the belief that you are capable of change and being dynamic and you are constantly and always changing. And the separation between those two and the difference in how it manifests in your life is immense. People with a fixed mindset who do not believe they are capable of change view the entire world through that fixed lens. They don't believe they are able to take actions that will create positive outcomes. They end up being victims of whatever situations befall them. People with growth mindsets believe they are capable of change in everything and anything that they do. And that allows them to navigate the uncertainties and the chaos of life adeptly. And it allows them to strafe and be dynamic as those waves come. They can ride whatever waves come into their life with the knowledge that they are capable of shifting and changing to those circumstances. They are much more focused on preparation and being able to navigate the chaos than they are on planning and being able to perfectly plan for whatever the journey is going to look like.
- [46:21]
Christine Benz
So I wanted to spend a few minutes on social wealth. You mentioned that Harvard study that really points to the fact that who we love, who loves us, it's everything in terms of our life satisfaction and happiness. But I'm wondering if you can discuss the three types of social wealth that you discuss in the book that we all need to thrive.
- [46:41]
Sahil Blum
So in social wealth, the three pillars that I talk about are depth. That is the sort of depth of connection to a few very close relationships, your like, core circle of people, your real ones, then breath, which is the broader circles, the looser relationships, the broader communities that you're connected to, something bigger than yourself. And then earned status, which we previously spoke about a bit, which is the idea of, of building and acquiring status that you have to earn that cannot be bought. And the combination of those three things builds a life of extraordinary social wealth. And the important point with social wealth is what I mentioned earlier briefly, which is you need to invest in it on a daily basis. It needs to be something that you think about in the same way you think about financial investments. You can actually put. Put energy towards it daily and see it compound and see it pay returns in your entire life.
- [47:43]
Christine Benz
You talk about this idea with our partners having what you call a life dinner as a tangible way to connect with our spouses. Can you talk about how that works? I feel like this is something I want to put into practice, but maybe talk about how you use this concept.
- [47:57]
Sahil Blum
Yeah, so after my son was born in 2022, I came across this study that said that 80% of married couples say that their relationship got worse in the year after their child was born. And that scared the hell out of me. You know, the idea that this incredibly happy event could actually be a negative for your relationship. But it makes sense logically because what happens is for the first time in your relationship, you are no longer each other's primary focus. You have this new entity that has come into your world that commands both of your attention and you lose sight of each other. And so at that same time, I was looking for ways that my wife and I could make sure that we were part of the 20%, part of the, you know, the group that saw the relationship get better. And I came across this idea from an investor named Brad Feld, who talked about this concept of a life dinner. And basically we took it and ran with it to create a monthly dinner, a sort of fixed date night, if you will, when the purpose is to talk about and think about some of the bigger picture things in our lives and to basically each have an opportunity to talk about both frustrations and also excitements, also goals and opportunities and things that we're looking forward to and have some of the hard conversations and some of the positive conversations, but make sure that there is a real structure to it and that you're really fixed in that it is a commitment that you are going to do on a monthly basis and it allows you the space to engage in those conversations that often fall by the wayside if you don't create space for them. So we have found it to be an incredible, incredible practice. And honestly, it's one that I recommend to anyone and everyone. I've gotten my parents doing it, now I've got my sister and my brother in law doing it. It has really been something that's taken hold in our family that people have seen a lot of value from.
- [49:43]
Christine Benz
So this is a financial podcast, so I want to spend a few moments on financial wealth. You make the point that defining enough is really difficult for us. We have this tendency to move the goalposts on ourself. What we thought was enough to doesn't seem like enough when we get there. So maybe you can talk about some strategies for defining enough, because that seems like a key aspect of financial wellness.
- [50:07]
Sahil Blum
Yeah. The idea of enough needs to be a clear picture in your mind. And the reason I say that, and the reason I have a whole set of exercises around it in the book is because it's very easy to move the goal posts. When the goal posts are sort of vague in your mind. It's very easy to arrive at the thing that you previously wanted and have it no longer be exciting or interesting to you. And I think about that and reflect on that all the time in my own life that how often are the things that you prayed for, the things that you now complain about how many things do you have today that you quite literally prayed for several years ago and now you find yourself complaining about those very things. The house that you dreamed of becomes the house that you complain requires too much maintenance. The car that you always wanted becomes the car that you want to upgrade. The engagement ring that you lusted over becomes the engagement ring that you need to upgrade to keep up with the Joneses. There are so many things in our life that we allow to naturally see this subconscious inflation around and the only way to fight that is to make it conscious. So, so force the version and the vision of what your enough life looks like into the top of your mind. Because then as you get close to it, while you will still naturally, you know it's human biological want to pursue more, it will have to be a conscious, rational upward shift rather than a subconscious irrational one. And that makes a big difference because then you can kind of come into more control over it. It becomes something that you can actually think about, that you can have an awareness around. And that' awareness at the end of the day is everything.
- [51:54]
Christine Benz
Well, this has been such an inspiring conversation. Thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to be with us.
- [52:01]
Sahil Blum
Oh, thank you so much. I'm so inspired by all of your work and the things that you've put out into the world. So I just appreciate the opportunity to connect.
- [52:08]
Christine Benz
Thank you so much and congratulations on the book.
- [52:11]
Sahil Blum
Thank you.
- [52:17]
Christine Benz
Thank you for joining us on the Longview. If you could please take a moment to subscribe to and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can follow me on social media, hristinebenz on X or hristinebenz on LinkedIn. George Cassidy is our engineer for the podcast and Carrie Gretchik produces the show Notes each week. Finally, we'd love to get your feedback. If you have a comment or a guest idea, please email us@thelongvieworningstar.com until next time. Thanks for joining us.
- [52:56]
Disclosure Voice
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