Turn Every Situation to Your Advantage | Martin Lindstrom (Replay)

Summary

Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Episode Title: Turn Every Situation to Your Advantage | Martin Lindstrom (Replay)
Guest: Martin Lindstrom
Date: August 7, 2024

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Episode Overview

In this replay episode, Tom Bilyeu welcomes Martin Lindstrom—renowned brand consultant, best-selling author, and keen observer of human behavior—to a discussion centered on using disruption as a catalyst for personal and professional growth. Leafing through Lindstrom’s latest book, "The Ministry of Common Sense," the two explore why common sense is in decline, how technology is eroding empathy, and actionable methods to adapt and thrive in an ever-changing, complex world. The conversation is rich with practical insights for both individuals and organizations navigating post-pandemic realities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to Martin Lindstrom & Disruption

• [01:00] Tom admires Martin’s unique ability to spot opportunities in chaos and asks him to describe himself.
  • Martin: “I'm a very curious person, always challenging things around myself. I see small details most people don't see and I see huge opportunity in them all the time. Once I fall in love with one of those small details, I run like hell until it becomes real.”
• [02:04] Martin’s work as a consultant and author revolves around studying real people and consumer behaviors to reveal hidden opportunities.

2. Disruption as Opportunity

• [02:43] Martin reframes crisis (like COVID-19) as moments ripe for new needs and innovations.
  • Shares a story about pet behavior in Australia during the pandemic, identifying "small data"—tiny behavioral shifts that indicate larger trends.
  • Martin: “The more we are out of balance, it represents an opportunity for a new brand, new product or need.”
  • Notable stat: “Pet sales have increased by 350% over the last six months.”
• [04:35] Disruption is a wakeup call to change; those who refuse to adapt miss the message.

3. Embracing Empathy to Uncover Value

• [05:14] Empathy is increasingly rare but crucial for spotting unseen opportunities.
  • Martin: “Empathy...is going to be, in my opinion, a huge word over the next many years.”
  • Quote: “Empathy levels in the United States have dropped 50% over the last decade.” [05:24]
• [06:20] Martin describes immersive empathy exercises:
  • Lived a week as a blind person to recalibrate his senses.
  • Dressed as a woman in Saudi Arabia to experience suppression firsthand.
  • Martin: “We become blind when we see the world from one point of view...if you can see it through another’s eyes, you immediately see a gap—an opportunity.” [07:36]

4. Personal Branding and Focusing Your Energy

• [08:16] Lindstrom recommends finding one word that defines what you stand for, then aligning your actions accordingly.
  • Use feedback from others to fine-tune this word.
  • Martin: “The best way of finding that word is easy: ask others and see what they feel you stand for.” [09:56]

5. Bridging the Gap Between Self-Image and Reality

• [10:56] When there’s a disconnect between self-perception and public perception, Martin suggests incremental behavioral changes broken into small steps.
  • Shared personal story of regaining lost creativity by mapping his daily routines, identifying creative peaks and troughs, and making deliberate changes (e.g., stopping night YouTube sessions, embracing “water moments” while swimming).

6. The Role of Boredom and Technology in Creativity

• Cutting out the phone and making room for boredom supports creativity.
  • Martin: “Boredom is the foundation for creativity.” [13:53]
  • Eliminating constant phone use reclaimed meaningful, reflective downtime.

7. Reinventing Yourself After Job Loss

• [16:50] Martin introduces the concept of three bank accounts:
  1. Salary
  2. Learning
  3. Brand
  • Quote: “First advice is before you even lose your job, that is to build your brand.” [17:13]
  • The importance of not relying solely on employer branding.
  • In the future, millions may become freelancers who must differentiate themselves.
  • Use unique skill combinations to pivot careers, e.g., combining expertise in sex therapy and stress to become a breathing/relaxation expert.

8. The Decline of Empathy and Rise of Depression

• [23:51] The emotional toll of isolation: loss of touch, purpose, and authentic relationships.
  • Studies with mice and observations in Japanese senior homes show tactile stimulation affects well-being and longevity.
  • Quote: “The more you are in tactile connection with others, the more you thrive.” [23:58]
  • Transformation changes our perception of time; novelty slows it, monotony accelerates it (grandmother analogy).
  • Warning about “chicken cage syndrome”—the anxiety and resistance to rejoining society after prolonged isolation.

9. Practical Actions for Well-Being During Isolation

• [31:08] Use your hands (crafts, puzzles, LEGO) to keep tactile senses alive.
• [32:00] Create a list of dreams and emotional milestones; focus on the legacy of emotional footprints, not just monetary accomplishments.
  • Quote: “What are the emotional footsteps you want to create behind yourself?” [34:06]
• Giving to others—even when you feel you have little—provides perspective and a path out of distress.

10. Common Sense in Organizations & Bureaucracy

• [36:46] The “Ministry of Common Sense” began as a workplace movement to remove bureaucratic stupidity.
• Absurd pandemic policies (e.g., lavatory access on planes) as examples of lost sense.
• Quote: “There was a direct correlation between the number of stupidities and the number of pain people felt inside the organization.” [37:10]

11. Why Common Sense Is Vanishing

• [40:57] Common sense = Common + Sense. Loss of shared perspective (common) and empathy (sense) fragments society and organizations.
• Botox and the loss of facial microexpressions as a metaphor for dwindling human connection.
  • Martin: “Empathy is fading out of our lives...what made us so strong, we are destroying right now.” [44:06]

12. Solutions for Rebuilding Empathy and Common Sense

• [46:11] Conduct a personal audit: what should/shouldn't you be spending time on?
  • Four-quadrant analysis: Should/Shouldn't & Do/Don’t—eliminate wasted time, focus on fulfilling activities.
• [49:43] Phone addiction: Try a four-hour digital detox. Announce your goal to increase accountability.
  • The story of a child asking, “Who do you love more, me or the phone?” [52:05]
  • Our memories and emotions are now “stored in the cloud,” causing us to be less present and more dependent on validation via technology.
  • Martin: “If I can prove your creativity levels are going down, your mood is directly correlated with time on the phone…maybe it’s time for a detox.” [51:25]

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Memorable Quotes

• Martin Lindstrom [07:36]: “We become blind when we see the world from one point of view...if you're able to see it through another person's eyes, you will immediately see that gap, which is representing an opportunity for a new brand, a new service or a new product.”
• Martin Lindstrom [13:53]: “Boredom is the foundation for creativity, because it allows you to reflect and connect dots you normally wouldn't do.”
• Martin Lindstrom [23:58]: “The more you are in tactile connection with others, the more you thrive.”
• Martin Lindstrom [34:06]: “What are the emotional footsteps you want to create behind yourself?”
• Martin Lindstrom [51:25]: “If I can prove that your creativity levels are going down, I can prove that your mood is directly correlated with the amount of time you spend on the phone…maybe it’s time for a detox.”
• Tom Bilyeu [35:37]: “You may not have anybody that wants you, but there are people that need you.”

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Important Timestamps

• 01:00 – Martin’s introduction and approach to work
• 02:43 – Disruption as opportunity and the “small data” philosophy
• 05:14 – Empathy: its decline and importance for insight
• 06:20 – Lindstrom’s radical empathy-building exercises
• 08:16 – The one-word branding technique
• 13:53 – The creative power of boredom and technology’s role
• 16:50 – The three bank accounts: salary, learning, and brand
• 23:51 – Loss of touch, purpose, and authentic relationships during the pandemic
• 31:08 – Practical steps for restoring well-being (use your hands, give to others)
• 36:46 – Bureaucratic stupidity and the Ministry of Common Sense
• 40:57 – The erosion of common sense and empathy in society
• 46:11 – Personal audit for common sense: eliminate, improve, keep
• 49:43 – Digital detox and living a more present life

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Resources & How to Connect With Martin Lindstrom

• Website: martinlindstrom.com
• LinkedIn: Lindstrom Company
• Twitter & Facebook: Martin Lindstrom
• Books: Search “Martin Lindstrom” on Amazon for a range of his work including “The Ministry of Common Sense”

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Takeaway

Martin Lindstrom makes a compelling case that disruption isn’t just hardship—it’s a call to observe more, empathize better, claim your unique value, and take back common sense in both work and life. Empathy, self-awareness, creative boredom, and building a personal brand are essential ingredients to not just survive but thrive in tumultuous times. And, as Tom reflects, it’s the emotional footprints you leave that truly matter.

Transcript

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[Tom Bilyeu]

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. I am here with somebody I find utterly fascinating. His name is Martin Lindstrom. Martin, welcome to the show.

[Martin Lindstrom]

Thank you. And thank you for inviting me.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Dude, thank you for coming on. I am really fascinated with how you think. I think there's two big things we're going to talk about today, and that is obviously the core topic of your new book, Ministry of Common Sense. We're going to talk about common sense, but the, the thing that I didn't see coming that I want to start with is how insightful you are around disruption and how people can leverage that. But before you tell us that, give us like a quick snapshot. You are so hard to encapsulate. I'm curious to see how you explain yourself.

[Martin Lindstrom]

I explain myself as a very curious person, which are always challenging things around myself. I'm very observant and that means I see small details most people don't see and I see huge opportunity in them all the time. And once I fall in love with one of those small details, I run like hell until it become real.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And right now it seems like your primary focus focus is twofold. You're obviously a best selling author multiple times over, but you're also a very active consultant for some of the biggest companies on the planet. So just to give people a little bit of context in terms of how much time you spend in people's homes watching consumer behavior sort of in the wild, which I find really interesting, and then taking those observations and writing about them. So, okay, back to disruption. I think many people will see it as a catastrophic moment. It'd be very easy to contextualize what we're all going through now here at the end of 2020 as catastrophic but in that disruption, you see opportunity. How?

[Martin Lindstrom]

Absolutely I see opportunities everywhere. I mean, I'll explain a story. I was in Sydney, in Australia during the pandemic, and one day I noticed this old lady, she approached a stranger's dog and started to pet. And I never really thought about that before, but it's very rare you see that happening. Guess what? Two days later, exactly the same happened. And I realized that is what I call a small data, a piece of small data. So here's a theory, Tom. Theory is very simple. We all out of balances. And the more we are out of balance, it represents an opportunity for a new brand new product or a new need. And what we know today is that those out of balances you see in how people behave. And of course, the reason why I noticed a lot of people were starting to pet their dogs or whatever it was, was because we had a really strong need for a tactile sensation. And guess what? What has happened over the last six months has really been the entire planet buying more pets. Pet sales has increased with 350% over the last six months, which gives you an indication of what's going on. So the, the whole COVID 19 on one hand, of course, is a disaster for a lot of people, and I feel so bad for them. But it also a huge opportunity to see new opportunity, see new business opportunities, see new ways of living. So I do actually see this as a wake up call. And I just spoke with one of my clients the other day, the president from Lowe's. I said to him, so what's your view about this? And he said, listen, those people who do not get it, those people which did not change because of COVID 19, they simply did not get the message. The message is you have to change right now. And that's exactly my view. This is the wake up call for you and I to change the way we behave and what we do.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Right, but how do we do that? And that's, that is the thing. I think so many people listening to this are in sort of a state of panic. They're closing down. They're not able to see those opportunities. And your mind strikes me as you're. You're in a ridiculously small handful of people I've ever encountered in my life. And I do not put myself in that, that camp who are really quickly able to see a unique path through something that other people don't see. So if we all embrace, okay, we have to change, the world just changed too quickly for us to ignore. How do we like in whatever sort of given industry we're in, how do we find those new opportunities?

[Martin Lindstrom]

When it comes back to the word empathy, which is going to be, in my opinion, a huge word over the next many years, empathy is the ability to put yourself in the shoes of another person and feel what that other person is feeling. Now, increasingly now society, we're losing empathy. In fact, a recent study is showing that empathy levels in the United states has dropped 50% over the last decade alone. Some of the reasons is, among others, that we are so obsessed with looking at ourselves in that little stamp sized photo on the screen. We're doing these Twitter messages and we express everything we have in our heart in hundred plus characters. It really is deep information we're talking about here. And of course that means we become much more shallow and the world is centered around us. So the first thing you should do is to put yourself in the shoes of others and start to see the world from their point of view. And let me give you two examples of that. One of the things I've done is, for example, to be blind for a week. I literally turned blind and I started to team up with blind people.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Just walk around with a blindfold.

[Martin Lindstrom]

I did, yeah, for a week. And to see the world through a blind person's eyes. Not because I wanted to be a smartass here, but because I wanted to understand how that changes the way we smell, the way we hear, the way we taste and the way we touch. Because what we know today in all sorts of studies is if you suppress one of your senses, you actually increase the strength of the other senses. Another thing I did just recently was when Saudi Arabia, I worked a lot with Saudi Arabia to push the right for women driving. As you know, it's a crazy kingdom. Women has not been allowed to drive until two years ago. And it's something I've been pushing extraordinary hard for. So one of the things I did was to dress up as a woman, wear a burger and actually behave like a woman for three or four days to understand how women are suppressed in the local community and what holds them back, back from getting a driver license, because that's a huge problem. They're now allowed to drive, but they don't know, submit for a driver license. So by feeling that pressure, walking through a supermarket and seeing the stairs from other people really gave me a strong sense of what's going on. So here's my advice. We become blind when we see the world from one point of view. It's in German, called culture. Brilliant. Which is culture Glasses and we basically just see things through our own lens and that means we don't see opportunities. But if you're able to see it through another person's eyes, you will immediately see that gap, which is representing an opportunity for a new brand, a new service or a new product. Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And how do you think about it for somebody who is just a normal person? They don't own their own company, they're going to work every day. They don't control whether the innovation happens in the company. How do they deal with that?

[Martin Lindstrom]

Well, it's exactly the same methodology. You need to ask yourself, how does the world see you? What are you actually standing for? What, what is. What is the things you want to be well known for? A good way of doing that, in my opinion, is really to. To use a methodology I've used for many years. If I take, if I go into the corporate world and I take a word, I take a car brand, for example. Let's take a car brand which for one word, the word is safety, let's say, then I'm pretty sure most people will say Volvo. If I take the word search, people will say Google. If I say Tom, what would the word be? I could say Martin, what is the word? And one of the things I think people quite often are losing is the ability to focus on what you really want to stand for. And why is that so useful? It's useful because it helps you not just to say yes, but most importantly to say no. And in this world, which is so competitive, where it's so difficult to stand out from the crowd, it's so difficult also to find out what should I do next? Where should I focus my energy, both my internal energy, but my external energy? You need to have a guiding light. And my recommendation to many people is to say, find one word you want to be navigated by and then build a space around that which are confirming or reaffirming that focus. And once you do that, do you know what, it becomes a wonderful exercise because then you know, when you're doing a certain action, that's actually not what I should do. That's not what I want to stand for. You know, we constantly feel guilty, but if that word give you permission to do what you actually love doing, then you don't feel guilty. But if that word does not give you permission, there is a reason why. And then you have to make up your, your, your life for a second, right? So that is a good way of doing it. And the best way of finding that word is, Is easy. To ask others and to see what do they feel you stand for. And you would be surprised to learn that what you stand for and what other people feel you stand for quite often is not aligned.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's really interesting. What do you say to people then? Who. And by the way, I know you have a whole thing about the word interesting, and I promise you, I use it differently than most Americans. I actually am interested.

[Martin Lindstrom]

You might be. What.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What do you say to people who are like, distressed by yo, I thought my word was this. This is how I thought people were perceiving me. And I'm actually being perceived in why way. And it may not even be negative, but just the gap between how they see themselves and how people perceive them is. They don't like that. Is there a process?

[Martin Lindstrom]

Well, the first of all, it's not their fault, it's your fault. And I mean, obviously either you had to come to terms with what you stand for, else you have to change it. There's only two options, right? No, I feel Ford, he said back then when he was producing his cars, he said, nothing is difficult as long as you break it down to small steps. It may be you can't change everything every day to a dramatic shift in your focus, but maybe you could take small steps which can help you to adopt your new behavioral change in your life. So from my point of view, and I'm sure you're aware of this, I felt for a while that I was losing my creativity. I defined creativity as the ability to combine two ordinary things in a new way. And I slowly felt it was slipping away. And that's one of my key focus points. So I started to map down my day from the very morning to the very evening and try to create a curve to understand where am I most creative and where I'm least creative. And I was so shocked when I started to look at those curves over basically four months because I realized my low points were at 10 o' clock in the night. And I thought I would be most creative then. So I started to look at my behavioral patterns and guess what? That was where I was watching YouTube videos. So I immediately killed that and changed my behavior. And the second thing I did was I realized, where am I most creative? Well, that was when I was out swimming. I call that the water moment. And I think we all have a water moment. It's a time in our life during the day where we're more creative than other times. And those moments are super precious. Here's the issue, as you and I are stuck behind Zoom or Microsoft Teams or whatever. We give after to a linear way of thinking and the linear thinking is basically killing our creativity because there's no way we can be creative in a linear environment where we spoon fed within information all the time. So what I learned was when I'm swimming in a pool, I actually become more creative. It's almost like a meditation. And I literally would have a pad in the end of the pool and write my next book in the pool. And of course everyone looking at me thought I was completely nuts, okay? But it helped me to spark my creativity. And then I learned, my gosh, I'm still not creative enough. And that's where I got rid of the phone. So three years ago I skipped my phone altogether. And it was a wonderful experience and I actually wanted to do it only for one year, but I still don't have a phone. And that has helped me to be extraordinarily creative in moments of time where I normally wouldn't be creative. I think, as you know, boredom is the foundation for creativity because it allows you to reflect and connect dots you normally wouldn't do. As soon as you, this is our world today. I mean, as soon as you sit in a car, as soon as you sit in a lounge, as soon as you wait in a restaurant and your guest is not showing up, the first thing you do is to grab your phone and do something with the phone, anything, so you don't look like a complete loser, right? And so we put this shield up in front of ourselves and because we do that, we don't see details, right? We don't meet people anymore, we never get bored. And what I learned was I was never bored. I would squeeze every two minutes out of my day into the phone where I will hammer away on messages like a jackhammer. And I mean, in the end of the day I would feel fulfilled because I've emptied my outbox right now. It's kind of this, almost like a game. And I will feel equally empty and then I will get another 250 emails back with people replying back to me. And that was really not common sense. I think, long story short is through the process of getting through the phone, through the process of mapping down my day, through the process of swimming, I managed to recover what I lost. And I had a word, I was working again. So it's a very, you could say calculated way to save myself from just being seduced by all the wonders of technology which is around us today, which on one hand is wonderful and on the other hand is Killing all creativity.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Now that I love. When something can be boiled down to a process, I get very excited. I like that a lot. Do you have advice for people that have lost their job? You know, a lot of people are saying, hey, start that business you've always wanted to try. And I think that'll work for some people. But do you have like, is there. It's a moment of tremendous disruption that usually comes with emotional distress. Do you have a process for people navigating that and sort of bringing the emotional distress into a usable position?

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[Martin Lindstrom]

Absolutely. But I want to put this in perspective, Tom, if that's okay. So I fundamentally believe we have three bank accounts. You have the bank account where you receive your salary, you have the bank account where you learn and you have the bank account where you build your brand. A lot of people are seduced and somewhat fooled by believing when you receive money on your first bank account, the job is done. In my opinion, it's just a way to getting by. If you do not save money up in your brand account, you are as vulnerable as every day. Because increasingly the idea of a fixed job or a lifetime job, forget about it. And if you do not save money in the learning bank, you will be stalled. You will be fixed into an environment and a way of thinking where you can't adopt to other changes around you. So the first advice is before you even lose your job, that is to build your brand. And what you will notice is, and I have a good friend, he works at Google and back then in the days I helped him to get a job at Google and it was very interesting because when he finally got his job, he said he Never had so many friends before in his life. They all wanted to be friends with him and really thought it was because of him. And I said to him, you're a wonderful person, everyone loves you, but the reality is you have a logo on your business card. And the day that logo is gone, you're no one unless you build your brand. And I think a lot of people are fooled by whatever company they work with and think that is their brand is not. So the first advice is to build your own personal brand. That comes back to the one word you and I talked about, even for

[Tom Bilyeu]

people that don't want to be on Instagram or YouTube or Facebook.

[Martin Lindstrom]

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because it's a little bit like a lifetime insurance now. I mean, most people have an insurance for the health, right? But what is your insurance that you actually can pay for that health? Well, that is your brand. I mean, if you're fired, what is the next step for you to survive in the space which is so incredibly competitive and which right now. Think about this. This is so interesting. I don't believe that the idea of a cooperation will exist in the future. I'll tell you why. Because corporations is a gathering of a lot of people. And people work at that company for two reasons. They either work there because they earn a lot of money with credibility, or they do it because it's an amazing culture. There's a lot of other reasons, but that could be two of them. Well, where did the culture go as we all stuck behind a screen? It's kind of gone, right? So now it's only money. And because people are being fired left, right and center, that is even not firm, right? So I think what's happening is that right now the entire world is going through a global synchronization which are teaching them how to be independent of their corporate jobs. Because if I communicate with you, dear employer, or if I have five employers, doesn't really matter. It's still a link right in the end of the day. So I think what we are going to see right now is millions of freelancers which really have realized, I don't want to have a job, I want to have multiple jobs. And when that happens, everyone will start to say, how do I get business? And then you realize, I need a brand. So I think, long story short, yes, you need to have your own personal brand, no matter who you are. It doesn't mean you have to have your own television show or podcast or anything, but it means that you're building your network in a very strategic way. So if you kicked out here, you have someone there, or you only today, you may only have one egg in the basket, but you have three eggs. Right? So answering the first part of your question, first build your brand now, if you're losing your job now, in my opinion, go the opposite way. I think the answer is not to necessarily desperately try to get into the industry where you came from. It actually may be this is your wake up call to redefine what you want to do and have a new chapter written in your book rather than just flicking a page. That's the first start, I guess. But my advice to everyone is to say, find out what is your core skill and what is the one thing you want to combine it with, which no one has done before. Okay, so I'll give you an example of a girl in New York City which were very frequently on television at today's show. And she was a sex expert, expert in how to have better sex, which is a very special niche. And it was very difficult for her to migrate out of that space, you know, once you stand to that. And she was a wonderful person, really clever. She couldn't handle it. I said to her, so what is your expertise? Well, her expertise is of course, to understand human beings. Yes. And stress. Right. Yeah. And then I said, briefing is another aspect. Why don't we take that psychology and briefing. Because stress is part of briefing and if you don't breathe properly, you actually are out of the game. And guess what? She became one of the largest breathing experts in the world, handling stress. So she migrated from one position to another by combining two things in a new way. And that's really my, my, my advice and the way you do that is to ask others for advice. You're too close to the forest to see the tree. Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Taking that idea of what's something else that I could do, that makes me a more unique commodity, you know, at a time of great disruption. And this is something I'm always trying to get people to understand. So there's this quote from Kobe Bryant that I moves me to my core, which is booze. Don't block dunks. Meaning you can get so good at something, people can't stop you from doing it even if they wanted to. If you're just able to bring that much value to something, you're going to be able to score. And you know, when I think about a time of such difficulty and disruption, right now, what you're talking about is the way through. You have to get so good at something unique that people care about that you're able to market yourself, you know, paying into those other bank accounts that you're talking about. My obsession is getting people to understand the importance of transferring potential into actual skill set, which is something I don't think nearly enough people do. And I want to talk about some of the things that are causing some of these mechanisms to break in society. You've mentioned empathy, you mentioned technology. And now, speaking of bringing two things together, you talk very eloquently about how technology is disrupting empathy. I'm just curious, like, what do you think is going to be the result of what's happening now where Covid is making people paranoid to touch, to come into contact? How do we begin to sort of heal that distance that's coming between us so that people can create this new path forward?

[Martin Lindstrom]

I, first of all, sadly think that what's happening right now, the biggest victim of what's happening because of COVID 19, is not going to be the thousands and thousands of people dying from obtaining this disease. I think it's going to be from depression. And here's the reason why. An experiment was conducted with mice. They were put into two different control groups. The first group were touched, headed every second hour by the scientists, and the second was not tossed at all. And after around two weeks, the second pair of mice, basically half of them were dead. And what we learned from the experiment is really that the more you are in a tactile connection with others, the more you thrive. Remember, the biggest organ on our body is the sense of touch. We were. I was involved in elderly senior people in Japan, where I was asked by the Japanese government to help turn around a very sad trend in Japan, which were the life expectancy going down, and they've had the highest life expectancy in the world. But what we realized again, by me being a senior person suddenly living in senior homes in Japan, to understand how it is to be 98 years old, what I learned was, surprisingly, that they were never touching anyone. And that was because all the people they knew were dead. So in the best Japanese style, of course, they came up with a robot, Japanese robot dressed as a seal, where the seniors could actually pet and touch the robot. And as I'm not sure if that's horrifying or intriguing as this sound, it literally increased the life expectancy and people's happiness level. Because you want to touch. Coming back to the conversation we've had previously. So that is the first insight I want to share because I do think that three things are missing during the pandemic. The first one is a stimulation of our tactile sensation. The second thing is a lack of purpose. Why am I here? What am I doing? What is my future going to look like? And I think it's incredibly important for people to realize that you, through your life, have to adopt transformations into the way you live. Let me explain that for a second. This is a fascinating theory, Tom. I think you will love it. What I've learned is that transformations can change your perception of time and make you live longer. And I'm not kidding. So I learned that when I worked with Swiss International Airlines, which is a major European airline company. And as I was a cabin crew member on the plane, you know, my role is to be different roles here. I sort of learned how disturbed all the cabin crew members were by the fact that they never received information from the ground. So I said, how often do you guys receive information? Well, once a month at best. Then I went down on ground and I worked in cabin. I worked at the headquarters, and I asked them, how often do you send information up in the cloud? And they said, every week. Said, must be kidding. They're saying every month. And I realized that perception is changing, pending on how many transformations you go through. Now, if you have a lot of transformations going on in your life, I am coming to a new country, new city, whatever it is, time goes slower. If you have no transformations in your life, time goes faster. And that's the reason why, if you were to visit your grandmother, if she's still around, you will notice that even though she sits in the same chair day in and day out, she's saying to you, tom, my God, Tom is going fast. And you are laughing, and you think it's kind of weird because it goes really slow when you look at it. All right, so this is the theory of transformation. The reason why people, when they've been stuck behind the screens, are losing their sense of purpose. One of the reasons why is suddenly you feel, my God, time is flying and I lost a whole month now. And you kind of almost get a midlife crisis in a mini format going on here. And then, of course, you ask yourself, what am I going to do with my life when it goes so fast? So this is the second thing, the loss of. Of purpose. And I think the third thing is that we are social creature creatures. And I think a lot of people have realized that they. They don't have friends. You have a lot of likes, you have a lot of followers, you have a lot of superficial conversations online, but are they really your friends? I Think they've stimulated you, as were they your friends. But in reality, it never got deep inside. Those three factors have been completely emptied. So when you go out in the real world now, after COVID 19, hopefully is over soon, you will not is you'll have to go on a detox. You cannot just jump out of this. And the best way for me to illustrate that is, what do they have to detox from? They have to detox from the fact that they've been sitting inside a prison at home, stuck behind their doors. And let me tell you a story about that. It's about chickens. I'm sure you're familiar with my chicken story here, right? But an experiment was done with chickens. They're put inside the cage, stuck into the cage for half a year, and one day they were laid out in the beautiful green grass and the sun was shining and the birds were singing, and the chickens went straight out and after 30 seconds, straight back in again. And I call that the chicken cage syndrome. And we will experience the chicken cage syndrome in a big way. People will be hesitant to move out. People will feel, I don't. I'm not comfortable about going back. I feel scared, I feel anxiety, I feel fear. And we have seen that phenomenon happening with astronauts when they come from long journeys and they're coming back on ground, even though they're talking about how much they want to go into nature, they want to see the nature, they want to hear the birds, all this stuff. The first thing they do is to go back on the couch and lie there for three months and not leaving the home. And that is the biggest risk we have right now, that people will not be able to have enough personal drive to get out of the routine, which is so comfortable and so lazy that they cannot get back on the wheel again.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Right, yeah. That is your insight into depression being the real thing that people need to be worried about is something that I grow increasingly concerned about. How do we. Right now, it's still a question mark as to when we'll really be able to go back out. Exacerbated by the chicken cage effect. How can people right now do something to feel? I mean, I suppose touch is out unless we have a robot seal lying around or you have a pet. At the beginning of this, I was encouraging people, look, if you don't have anybody around, you do a zoom call, read a book. Anything that makes you feel connected to someone or something else. Is there an answer to touch? Like, is there something that we can do to sort of fake that?

[Martin Lindstrom]

Well, no, as you may be aware of, I'm a huge fan of lego. I think use your hands. We have lost connections with our hands. I worked for LEGO the first time. As you know, I got a job at LEGO when I was 12, but. But later on in my career at Lego, we started to investigate what the consequences are of the virtual world on kids and their behavior. And in the beginning, I did an experiment where I asked kids to basically circle it or circle a pen between your fingers, like what I'm showing the viewers right now. And kids could do it with ease. After four years, as the digital environment took over their lives, that dropped it straight away. So what we noticed was that their ability to gesticulate or the motor skills started to disappear. The best thing you could do is to maintain that. That's like a muscle. It's like a muscle with anything else. The more you do it, the better you become at it. So I would definitely work on craftsmanship, get that back. Use your hands with nature, with soil, with plants, with wood, with puzzle bricks, no, anything woods can stimulate that. That will definitely be my first step. The second thing I probably would do is to create a list of dreams. Now, I have a philosophy, which is crazy. It may be it's very similar to yours, I could imagine. My philosophy is if I one day go over the road and there's a car coming and hitting straight into me and I'm flying up in the air and I have supposedly two seconds to rewind my whole life backwards. I want to end my last sentence by saying, I did everything I wanted to do. Now, I was super lucky that 6 years ago I was able to say that. But in my drive to get to that point, I really created milestones in my life. And my milestones were not necessarily rational stuff like, this is the amount of money I want to earn. As Tom Peters once said, no one has written, I earned $5.2 million and is written on my thumbstone. Right. I think what you have to ask yourself is what are the emotional footsteps you want to create behind yourself?

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[Martin Lindstrom]

And by that I mean, if you are thinking about clues, you can leave. I'll tell you what one of my mentors are. I always want to do one good thing for a person every day. And I literally do that. And that has given me a lot of great fulfillment in life. I don't necessarily expect people to give me stuff. I actually expect to give things to people. And then maybe it comes back, maybe it doesn't. It's not like this quid pro type of setup which we've increasingly seen happening in the western world. And do you know what I've learned through this, Tom? And I'm pretty sure you're exactly the same. The more you give, the more you get. It's just very strange. Both knowledge wise, but also experience wise. And you meet new people, you connect with people in different ways you've never done before. So as you are stuck behind that screen, try to go out and help others. And do you know what will happen as you help others? Even though you have almost nothing yourself, that fulfillment you get there will give you the fuel to get out of the mess you are in. Because suddenly you will see your life in a perspective. And it's quite often that lack of perspective which makes you feel sorry for yourself. You feel you're lost, you feel you can't get back on track. But when you see other people in a very miserable situation as well, it for some strange reason gives you the self esteem you need to get out of where you are. Right?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. I wish I could remember who said this, but it goes right along those lines. Let's say you're in a dark place, you've got nobody because of what's going on, or just in general, you've got nobody in your life. And the person said, look, you may not have anybody that wants you, but there are people that need you. And I thought, whoa, that's so powerful. Where if you are feeling lost, abandoned, that you know, for whatever reason, your life is full of heartbreak, the fact that there are people out there that need your help is really pretty extraordinary for an animal that is such a social creature, I find that really, really interesting. Speaking of being social creatures, your new book, the Ministry of Common Sense. What on earth? I think people are going to really resonate with the book. You talk primarily in a work context. So basically, hey everybody, I bet you can agree that as us humans come together and put more and more rules, common sense kind of goes out the window. What prompted you to write the book and what does a return to common sense look like?

[Martin Lindstrom]

I have Seen so many people would absolutely hate going to work. One of the most frequent phrases I've heard in the elevator is, how are you doing? I'm surviving. And then saying it like this, and it's a stand up phrase. I mean, imagine this, that every day. That is your view of life. And as I started to investigate into companies and the way they deal with employees and deal with politics and bureaucracy and red tape, I realized this is a global pandemic. Global pandemic is bureaucracy. It is lack of common sense. It's stupidity is going on. So this is a true story. I actually were doing a workshop with one of the larger banks around. And at 2 o' clock in the morning was one of these late workshops. This morning this girl comes up to me and she says, martin, I hate working here, I'm resigning. And I said, you can't do that on my watch. I will be fired too. She said. I said, let's sit down and let's have a chat about this. So we had a chat and she said, there's no common sense here. I said, so why don't we do something about it? She said, well, why don't we start up the Ministry of Common Sense? And we literally did that. And the Ministry of Common Sense was designed to remove or vacuum clean one stupidity at a time away from the organization. Now, within the first year, the vacuum cleaned 2,000 stupidities out of this bank. But what was really striking about all this stuff was there was a direct correlation between the numbers of stupidities and the number of pain people felt inside the organization. So what I realized was we need to bring common sense back. So I decided to write the book because really there is no common sense in this world. Let me give you an example. The other day I was sitting on a plane flying, and even before we took off, this person is saying, welcome on board on this flight bound for Zurich. I will regret to inform you guys that all cabin service has been completely suspended on the entire flight because of COVID 19. And he said, and by the way, you're not allowed to use the lavatories in front at all. It's reserved for the cabin crew. You are only allowed to use the lavatories in the back. Now let me just be clear. There's 172 passengers on board on this flight. And there's one lavatory in the back. So everyone has to pass by 32 rows or 34 rows or whatever it is where they end up in a long line waiting for the lavatory while they smell these this beautiful freshly brewed toilet smell mixed up with a faint smell of corona. I mean, this is, in my opinion, the ultimate stupidity. And not only that, on the same flight we had these track and trace forms just in case you have COVID 19. And don't get me wrong, I believe in COVID 19. That's not that. But what I don't believe in is this form. We had to fill it out. And the first question on the form is, have you been in close proximity to anyone within the last 24 hours? And the only thing you have to do is just to look to your right because there's a passenger sitting there. And the second thing is, if you want to fill out the form, well, guess what? You need to have a pen. People don't have pens anymore. So the stewardess is now lending one pen to the entire plane so we can all fill out the form. And the second question is, have you touched anything anyone has touched over the last two hours? That is. That's the essence, if you. Of nonsense. So I decided to write this book because I do feel the world has turned completely stupid and we need to save ourselves from insanity. So that's the reason why, really, I started this process. Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So how, how is it that we seem to move inextricably towards lacking common sense? Like if, if all of us as individuals can look at it and go, this is so stupid, how is it that it becomes the norm?

[Martin Lindstrom]

Well, remember, there's two words making the word common sense. There's common and there's sense. Common means we're seeing the world from the same point of view. Sense is something you attach to it in the end. So the common part comes back to what we talked about earlier, which is empathy. Because common sense and empathy are directly correlated. If I, I see the world the same way as you do, common sense become common, right? But if I am seeing the world completely differently. And we've seen that with the election as a good example last year, where during the election round, what happened was that you had such a fragmented picture of voters, views of the reality that there was no common sense suddenly just collapsed in front of our eyes. And that is also happening in companies, it's happening in our private lives because this fragmentation is so big. So common sense is directly linked with empathy. And as you know, empathy is disappearing. And one of the scary things of why it's disappearing is because of Botox. I mean, it's something I discovered when I started to do the research study, that we all send micro expressions to each other. Kind of indirectly saying what the situation is. And I'm sure you tried it when you walk into a room and you're saying, my God, that's a bad feeling in here. Well, is that because the smell was bad? No, it's because you can see those mini clues now. Once you take Botox as an example and we've seen experiments done with mothers using Botox and literally the connection between the mother and the baby is actually this. It's disconnecting. And babies can't relate to the mothers. And these are several clinical studies conducted on this topic. Now, as that happens in our society really, really fast.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Sorry to interrupt you, but can you tell the story about what happens when you instruct the mother not to make any expression while she's holding her child? This is so interesting.

[Martin Lindstrom]

It is, it is really horrifying to look at and all of you guys, you can look it up online straight away. But literally there are several experiments where mothers are sitting like a stone with a stone face and within 30 seconds the baby will scream and get a tantrum and can simply not connect with the mother because there is no micro expressions. This is our secret tool. And this is what's so fascinating, but also very frightening that you have to remember the reason why we as human beings are around and are the most powerful of all species. Kind of sadly, but we are right. The reason why is because we evolved our brains and had a third layer to our brain which is enabling us to have empathy. Why? Because that helped us to put ourselves in the shoes of that polar bear or whatever it is and see the world from their point of view and counter the attack before it happened. This is the reason why we are adopting to situations within the same generation or the next generation through our DNA. A polar bear will take 15 generations before it adopts to an environmental situation. Now guess what? Empathy is fading out of our lives now. So what made us so strong? We are destroying right now because we're so centered around seeing the world from our own personal point of view. So this is the reason why common sense is disappearing in organizations, in our private life, in our just in our existence. And, and that's the reason why I felt this is time to raise this as a debate and have a conversation around it. Because if no one is doing it, I'm petrified of that. We get down a track where AI and where algorithms are running this show and we are catering for what that want rather than that's catering for what we want. And it's already happening now. You can See that with the election, you can see that if you are, as me, a writer, you had to write the article using certain words or else SEO will not pick it up. I mean, it's ridiculous how we adopt to technology and not the opposite way. So. And that's where we lose. That's where we lose common sense. Because suddenly technology is not catering for what's common sense, it's catering for what is easiest for the programmer to do. Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right, so let's start walking through then, some of the solutions. So you've talked about them a little bit. So we've obviously got legitimate walk a mile in their shoes, which you have done, and I would say is probably a little impractical as scale. Amazing for you and what you do. But going to, you know, Saudi Arabia and actually wearing a burka and walking around and seeing how people are being treated is powerful. But, you know, not everybody's going to be able to do that. You got rid of your phone. So the way that we put that shield up, like you said, and engross ourselves in technology so we could break that addiction, what are some other things that we can do to not let empathy disappear?

[Martin Lindstrom]

Well, I think the first thing, from a personal point of view, you need to ask yourself an important question, which is, which part of your job would you like to kill or eliminate? What are the most frustrating things you have in your life which you want to get rid of? That's the first thing. And once you write up that list, you should almost create a spreadsheet. Right? And on the spreadsheet, you will have two factors. One is shouldn't and one is don't. And on the top, you have should and do. I'm sharing it for your viewers right now so they can see the model. Very simple.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So we've got like a four. For anybody on the podcast, we've got a four quadrant thing here that's sort of breaking down the things that he just laid out.

[Martin Lindstrom]

Exactly. So the first trick you do is you start to see the world from outside in, and you ask yourself, what shouldn't I do? Or what, what don't I do? And these are things where you write down, you say, do you know what? That's a waste of time. One of the things, as you know, I realized was I was spending one and a half hour on YouTube every night. It became kind of a ritual for me. And I realized that's a waste of time. I was not even learning anything. Had I learned something, it would have been different. Right. So that was don't right. And I had a lot of other stupid habits I wrote down there. So that's the first thing you do. The second thing, this is more.

[Tom Bilyeu]

This is less about fighting the deterioration of empathy and more about just making sure that you don't have a lack of common sense in your own life. That's how it sounds. Am I misleading?

[Martin Lindstrom]

Yes, that's right. Yes, that's the first thing you do. Once you do that, you then ask, okay, what things am I doing right now which I want to improve, which can be better? And the last thing you say to yourself is, which things would I like to keep which are good? Once you map those things down, what you're going to realize now is if you are unlucky, that at least 60% of what you are placing on that chart is in the bottom. It is what I shouldn't do or what I don't do. It's what I call park and eliminate things, which is something I do, which is painful. And that's why you had to turn that around and say to yourself, gosh, this is really a lot of waste of time. So the first thing you can ask yourself is, why am I watching all these YouTube videos? What's the reason why? Okay? And the answer would be, for me, this is my replacement of a smoking break or of a coffee break, right? So what is going on there? I'm saying, well, I kind of want my mind to wander away. And then I'm saying, okay, is that really the best solution to this or should I find something else? And what I found was literally that I had just as an enjoyable moment when I was jumping into the pool, okay? So I basically just killed it. And I did it exactly the same time in the night I went to the pool. And that actually stopped me from falling into the YouTube hole. And guess what? I've created ideas during that period and I actually are exercising at the same time. So what I'm asking you to do is to do a due diligence of your own life and find out how many stupidities you're doing, and then to turn that around to things you want to improve. And once you want to string things, and this is actually helping you to get your life back on track and in my opinion, is bringing back common sense. Because it's not common sense that I sit in front of a screen seven hours a day for work, and then I go home, and guess what? I'm looking at YouTube now for two hours on top of it. That's not common sense. If you ask Me, right?

[Tom Bilyeu]

So do you have a prescription for people? You live a very extreme life. So you're on a plane in a normal year, you're on a plane 300 days out of the year. You're living in other people's homes to watch their behavior. Looking at that small data, like you said, don't have a phone, I imagine you do more than just limit your YouTube time. So are there, is there like a set of instructions that you have for people? Do this, think like this. Let's hear it. What's that leads to the ideal life?

[Martin Lindstrom]

I think first of all, all of us has become so addicted to the phone that we believe we can't live without it. I can give you a very simple information here. You can live without it and you're not going to die. But you probably can't do what I did because it's not easy. So here's what I would recommend you to do. I would recommend you to say, if I live without the phone just for four hours on Sunday, can I do that? And you take four hours out of your day and you spend time with something else. What you will notice is that you will have withdrawals. You want to have the fix of the phone. It would be horrifying and you have a lot of anxiety going on. But after some time, you actually can live without that for four hours. Now here's the next trick. The next trick is now you're going to communicate to the world three things you're going to communicate to the world. What you're going to change more with that phone from now on. Two, for how long time you're going to do it. And three, what you're going to celebrate once you have achieved that goal. And the trick is to say to everyone, you can. Do you know why? Because then they will keep you accountable for it. So then you're saying, do you know what? Weekends off, phones off. That's it. Why should you say that? You may say to yourself, well, I'm really happy for my phone. Well, I need to ask you a question then. The question is, if I can prove that your creativity levels are going down, I can prove that your mood is directly correlated with the amount of time you spend on the phone. And by the way, if you have children, that they will learn from you, which is to be glued on the phone as well. That means they will watch half of their life through a screen rather than through reality. Is that that bit sad? In fact, I met an author the other day. He wrote a book about the phone usage and he said to me, when I asked him, why did you write the book? He said, do you know what? My daughter came up to me, she was six years old, and she said, dad, who do you love the most, me or the phone? And that is for me, an essential insight about our addiction to the phone. Right now I can't tell you the number of times I've seen wonderful people experiencing the most amazing things on planet earth. And the only thing they do is to film it, because that's more important to see through the screen than actually experience it and be present. And here's the consequence of that. The consequence of that is, and I'm on a roll now, so stop me, Tom, if it's too much. But the consequence of that is that we are never present. The issue is that we are storing our emotions in a cloud. And the best example of that is one of my employees which recently had his girlfriend at a dinner and she went to the bathroom, she disappeared for 20 minutes, came back, and then she flicked through the phone and he by coincidence saw some of the photos on the phone and realized she shot 65 selfies at the toilet. And he said to her, why? And she said, because I know in five minutes you're going to break up with me and I want to preserve the last time we had together. So what's happening now is I'm staring. That's the reason why we take selfies. We store emotions through selfies. So when people are depressed, they go through to the selfies and they look at the photo where they're good looking, they store them in the cloud. Our entire photo album is stored in a cloud where people now are submitting wills so if their husband is dying, their whole life will not disappear in a cloud. I mean, do you really want to live a life where. I'll give you another example. A recent study are showing that we do not have memory encoding anymore. That means if I ask you a question, this is using fmri. If I ask you a question, Tom, the first thing the brain is doing now is not to search for the answer. Do you know what it does? It goes straight to an answer which is called Google. I'm not kidding. It literally says, I'm going to search for this. So what I'm encouraging people to say is to detox from the phone. It is to have these small milestones of life without it. And then you will notice that your memory encoding will come back, you will be more present, you'll be more creative and actually you will get a stronger sense of purpose in your life.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Martin, that is. That's amazing. Where can people engage with you? Not that now. I want to encourage people to go into the cloud to find you. But your books are incredible. I can already tell people that. But where should they go if they want to hear more of this?

[Martin Lindstrom]

Listen, just go to my social channels. Martinlinstrom.com is my URL. You can find me on LinkedIn. It's called Lindstrom Company. You can find me on Twitter, that's Martin Lindstrom. Or on Facebook, book. Again, that's Martin Lindstrom. And of course, you just go on Amazon and type in my name. And there, hopefully, you will find a book which you think is aligned with your way of thinking.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I love it, man. Guys, you will be richly rewarded for looking him up, reading the books. They are incredible. They are fun to read. Tremendous insights. In fact, Martin, one thing I'm going to take away from this that I didn't see coming and I don't remember ever coming across before, is your idea of emotional force. Footprints. What are the emotional footprints you want to leave behind? That really hit me, man. I dig that a lot. Guys, you will find that and a whole lot more when you dive into him. And speaking of emotional footprints and other amazing things, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care.