Success: achieving it, the moving goalposts of it, the feeling of it, in a trait, the way we tell ourselves stories of it and, of course, what is it. This discussion deeply jumps into a topic where Divya and Kahran have spent a lot of time, and bring views from their previously divergent, and now, arguably converging views. We’ll be diving deeper into success this season, and bring this focus to all our interviews, as well as our discussions (and interrogations of each other!)
Success is confounding because the closer you get to it, the more the definition shifts. The goalpost doesn't just move — it changes shape entirely.
Hi, I'm Divya. Hi, I'm Kahran. And this is... Thinking. I'm thinking.
Hello, and welcome to Season 6 of the Thinking on Thinking. This season, we're going to be talking about success, what it means, how you achieve it, and how you fall down on the way. We're excited for some interviews and great conversations, and we hope you enjoy today,
where we start with the question of what is success? Once you start thinking about it, and once you sort of fill your entire list with these things, of course it's going to feel broad. In the sense that whenever you dive deep into something, the fractal nature of knowledge within that domain opens up for your brain.
And then suddenly it is quote-unquote equally broad. Like I'm sure if you ask Gaurab about the properties of some particular type of polymers, he would be like, yeah, that's a very broad topic. You can't ask me a question from that broad of a topic. You need to be more specific.
Yeah, like when I talked to him about his work and he's been working on some new kinds of compounds, it's very difficult for him to explain to me what these things are. It's easier for him to explain how they are made or what kind of processes are used, because he's like the applications haven't been fully known yet, right? They're showing these kinds of traits that might be interesting in these particular
circumstances for these things. But there's so many qualifiers involved to explain it. No, I hear you on that. But no, I feel just feel like it's a big thing to be biting off to. I feel like we could do a whole season on what is success.
I mean, we could do two seasons also. We could do three seasons also if we continued to retain interest in it, right? I feel like a lot of times brain has this like very interesting thing it does where it just thinks, oh, I want to think about it like this. And then it like just fixes on those lines, right?
Have you noticed that like, you know, if you have something to do at 4pm, but your previous thing ended at 3.15 for 45 minutes, you can't really do much because your brain is now stuck at 4pm. I don't know if this happens to you, but my brain is just like, now we wait. We do nothing, but we wait.
I think this is why I found motion so helpful when I was using it. Not helpful enough to keep paying for it. But motion was this thing that would take your task list and it would automatically schedule it onto your calendar. So whenever you completed something, right, it would just add the next thing.
So it was always something that you could be doing that it based on however much time you said it would take and how big of slots it could cut it into. So if you said there was a 45 minute task that you were willing to take 15 minute slots of, it would try and slot a 15 minute slot for that task whenever you had an open 15 minutes on your calendar.
And I was like, I can do this myself. But then since then I haven't been doing it myself. So there may be some use to that $30 a month goodness. It was $30 a month. That's why I canceled it.
I was just like, what the hell? Like you have to work properly all the time. That the fact that it was a little bit buggy was just like, I was just like screw this, you know, I'm not going to like. Yeah, yeah.
No. Yeah, I think I last in two months after the free trial. One of those months I thought I had canceled. And then I got another bell. I was like, can it?
Well, I thought it might be interesting just as like kind of a way of starting this episode and the season to talk a little bit about like why we thought we were excited about it. And I know for me it kind of came out of the conversation I had at the end of last season, right, with Lena and really just getting a chance to talk to her about like how her feelings of success had really changed.
And made me realize that for me that really happened as well, right? Like the success I was looking for as a teenager and then, you know, into my 20s and then later into my 20s, I think it had always been this shifting thing. And now as I'm trying to kind of think about what I'm looking to achieve in the next year, it's been an interesting thing because there's like, oh, this might again, I feel my definition
of success has changed. So it was interesting kind of hearing the way Lena thought about that and how she really felt the kind of being a mother and having had these pivotal moments in her life. I think in the way she said it almost felt like she would take a step back and in the process, realize she'd almost upgraded the way she was thinking about it altogether.
And it kind of felt like she was at the next level beyond me a little bit, which we did talk about a little bit. How do you define success right now? And like, you know, maybe what was the definition in the past that you feel like you evolved from?
Like that was the question that came to my mind when you were just talking about this. I think in the past, I tended to have more singular definitions of success. So I would kind of have something that I was focused on and I would look at achieving that as being successful. And I think the reason I'm qualifying it like that is because I think I've evolved to having
a more nuanced view where I feel that there's something I might be chasing for different parts of myself. So something I might be chasing for fulfillment artistically, there might be something I'm chasing for fulfillment in business, there might be something I'm chasing for fulfillment personally.
And then my last category I think right now is something I'm chasing for fulfillment more spiritually. And I think that having that view also lets you choose how you're prioritizing a little more and then also be a little more honest with yourself about how you're prioritizing. Because I think when you have a more singular view, it's like, well, okay, you know, sometimes
you don't just want to be focused on your business success, but then it feels like, well, are you still chasing success in some way? Well, maybe you need to have a definition for what you're trying to do with your personal time or your relaxation or whatever. So I would say that's how I think I've evolved.
One small thing is I think I'm going to try and finish a book of poetry this year. So I think by the end of next year. This year as in like 12 months or this year as in two months? Well, originally I was thinking 12 months, but then I actually saw a competition that is really pretty cool that is in two months.
And I do, I have written more than enough poetry. That's kind of a question I'm revising. And I think whenever I sit down to compile, I think you are a very volume poet in general. Also, I think like once you start writing, you are able to like write quite well and quite easily and like it just flows out of you.
Yeah. The first day I was back in New York, I actually went for a walk in Central Park and I think I wrote like four distinct poems. I was just like, oh, hi. But I think for me, there's a whole, right?
There's sometimes I'm writing about a scene. There's sometimes I'm writing about a feeling. And there's sometimes I'm like writing because like something is not going away, you know, which is kind of like a feeling, but it's also like a nagging thought. So this is like totally unrelated to success, but that made me think of one thing.
Have you read the zine that I made? The title pages let it hurt you and it's like a very emotional zine. No, I don't think I have. And dear listeners, we must ask them to put it on our website. Yes.
Yeah, I don't know about the website part because like the person who wrote the words in it, she and I had like a bit of a falling out of sorts. So I'm not sure like, you know, how comfortable I feel with like putting her work because it is some part of her work as well. Right?
Of course. Yeah. Like putting it out there. But like it was just basically like there were questions, almost one line questions. I would say they're very tumblr aesthetic, you know, so they're like a little bit emo,
a little bit angsty. I had made these sort of full page sketch illustrations of sorts to go with it. I'll show you them to you later. And I had like a idea for a similar zine. Recently I was scrolling through my keep notes and this idea was from back in like 2020 or
something. And it just has the title, but like the moment I read the title, like I know what I was talking about and the title is just don't open feelings inside. Like, you know, that fragile don't open or that kind of a thing. Oh, I see.
We can make something like that. I'll just leave it with you and you can think about it. It's like I was on my flight back to Bangalore. I was like thinking about it like yesterday and I was just like, hmm, what can I make with this?
And like, you know, what can I do with it? Like no idea was hitting, right? Yeah. So I'll show you what I did previously for the zine and like, you know, you can see if like this is park something for you.
If it doesn't, then that's also okay. So what part of what I was saying reminded you of the zine? Because you were talking about poetry and you were talking about like, you know, just going and inspiration striking you and you were, you made four different poems together. Yeah.
As in like in the same sort of temporal zone, you made four different points. Okay. I was just curious whether, because I feel like the way I'm thinking about success now, right? Like I think one of the main things I do want to achieve in the next year is to kind of grow
as a poet, right? And so I think as I'm thinking about how I'm prioritizing my time, as I realize now, I like, I need some amount of different kinds of time, right? So I need some amount of exposure, but I also need some amount of like contemplative time, which is I think what, you know, going out and being able to go for a walk and being
able to just kind of be is I think as important to me as kind of having the exposure to new materials that I'm reading or conversations that I'm having or works that I'm engaging with. So yeah. So then I was kind of curious, right?
So for me, I feel like kind of happy that I'm being able to kind of carve out time in that way. Even if I forget sometimes that like, oh, you know, what did I do on Friday? Well, I did nothing. I went for a walk.
It's like, no, wait, but do you feel like residents with that? Do you feel like you're having a definition of success somewhere that was or it was more just like kind of like caught your attention because of the framing? So I feel like I've had an instinctive sense of what I need success to be for the longest time.
Like, I don't think even when I was younger, I was defining success through financial metrics or like, you know, through other sort of like measurable things. I think even a super young me knew that like being able to always afford my own time would be a strong measure of success for me. Right?
So like, I think I start feeling stifled and like I'm not doing well in life when it starts feeling like I can't do the things that I want to do. And it's just that like, you know, now I've started getting more and more of an articulation of that. It's very interesting though that like maybe in the last year or two, some components of
materialistic success have started adding on to, okay, but it would be good to have this also. And it would be good to have this also because this is also leverage and that is also leverage. But it's just like, I don't know, even when I was seeing my friends do really well in their career, I used to feel like, but you guys have zero percent of your time for yourself.
And like that feels very harsh. Like that would not make you feel good about yourself. So I feel I understand you on this and I would even say that I feel you've shared some of these thoughts before on the podcast. Right?
Like I think about how you measure just whether you're pleased with kind of the choices you've made. While I was listening to you, I realized something that I think what I was trying to say is I realized success for me is being in a growth state. And so I'm curious about whether that is a notion that because I feel in some part I
think I've learned that from you. I hundred percent relate to it. I actually wouldn't have articulated it like that, but I hundred percent relate to it. Yeah. I would be able to have the space to continuously sort of like explore and satisfy my curiosity
because I also feel like a lot of the growth or rather the drive for growth comes from that. So today, a friend shared something, running a business as a personal growth strategy, masquerading as wealth accumulation. And I found that to be so both interesting and kind of slightly tragic because it is
true. I think to entrepreneurs, they are like, oh, I grew so much and I learned so much about people and about myself and about like what the world needs and what I care about and my values. Like they do say all of those things.
And it's just sad that like you have to justify it by saying, no, but I'm growing and I'm making money and like that's why it matters. You know, but like it's just interesting. Well, do you think, I don't want to nitpick, but do you think that they deliberately said running a business and not starting a business?
Because I would wonder a little bit, right? Because I think starting a business is not necessarily going to deliver you money. It might, right? But I do think oftentimes running a business, right? It can deliver you money, especially if you come into a business and it's still, so I
do wonder about that a little bit because I feel like when you're running a business, there's this conception that like the person at top is not a nice person. So I wonder if there's a little bit of that that they're like trying to justify. I don't know. I'm just speculating wildly here.
Interesting. I think like I haven't seen the video. I would see it at the end of the day or something. Maybe it is that, but maybe I feel like maybe it is just thinking about or at least like the thing that I took from it was that like, you know, there is this drive in people to
grow sometimes in the world that we live in. It's very hard to justify that drive. But like, you know, making money is a very reasonable reason to go and do things, even if they seem risky. It's easier to say that like, oh, but the upside is so big.
So you want to do it. I wonder how much of an intersection there is between people who feel that they are in growth places or an often in a growth mindset and people who feel they are successful. Tell us about why you are interested in doing this season about success. I think that like success is such a perpetually interesting thing.
Maybe it comes partially from the fact that what you said, right, like space for growth and like, I think I've always just like been very growth oriented and I think it comes from childhood and I think it comes from like seeing people around me emulate that behavior. Like I still get complex seeing my mom be the way she is. And I'm like, how are you at 60 like this?
Okay, fine. I can't like really, you know, just sit on my ass and do nothing. But I guess like because I am surrounded by a lot of people who are also very success oriented, but like everybody has a different path to it and everybody has a different perspective to it.
I just felt like this would be a concept that I would really love to explore. And then I also think that like both of us have, I would say, interesting experiences with success and successful people. So I just feel like exploring it together would also be interesting. And that's why I wanted to do the season.
So I think why I made that comment that I felt that Lena was it more evolved than me was because I think she in the way she talked about success, it felt like she had gotten to a place where she was really looking at the broad strokes of her life and seeing, you know, what is this that I am achieving in over years, right? And really kind of taking this five, 10 year, you know, decades long kind of view.
And I think today that's harder for me to feel successful in moments when I'm looking at the outcomes being achieved over longer periods. Right. Like I could see how one could get there where you would reach a point where you're like, you know, this is these things I'm working on.
And when I'm getting these momentary setbacks, you know, they don't make me feel like I'm not like I'm a failure or something. And that's, you know, an even kind of an interesting thing to maybe come back to is, is the opposite of success failure. Or is it lack of success?
I don't know. Right. And then the interesting thing I think I'm starting to realize is that for me right now, there's certain work I want to do. And it's very unusual for me because that's never been something I've really been driven
by before. Right. Like I've been driven by saying that there are certain problems I want to work on or there are certain people I want to work with. But really not saying that there are certain outcomes I'm excited about seeing existent.
And that's kind of an interesting place. Like, right. Like I know that I want to publish some of my work in a certain way and have ideas about how it should look. Right.
That is very particular to how I want it to feel and be experienced. And I was even thinking about some of the work that I really feel excited about Joyce doing. And I realized that I think the places where we can see an intersection between the like real world and technology are just really exciting to me.
Right. And as I was thinking about what kind of projects am I really excited about, I think having more of those projects done and just being able to know that I'm building and deepening those skills would be a really exciting place. Right.
That would really make me feel like I'm achieving and growing in a way that I'm excited about. Now, does that mean one is successful? No, but that is also you're saying for future. I'm just saying like it's present current successful. Well, and that's what I'm saying.
So I think a lot of it. So I wrote a poem once about English has no imperfect. And I feel like this is one of those moments where you're really running into the lack of an imperfect tense in English. Because an imperfect tense would be able to suggest that there is something that is happening
or in a state that may continue into the future and we don't really know. Right. So I think when you look at success and I think the way I felt like you were asking just now, I think then it starts to be more of a descriptor that you apply to periods. Right.
Where you're like, oh, you know, I was I look at that period as being a very successful period in my life. Or, you know, the work I did there made me feel very successful. To success is such a loaded term, right? Because it's like a part of you knows that you could say that you're successful in some
ways, but the temptation to guard that term is so high that like you can you want to lock it temporarily or you want to lock it in the future. Like, I don't think that it is untrue for me also. The moment if somebody asks me that question, I would also feel like running away from the question.
I would also be like, but there is this that I could do and there's that or that I want to do and there is that that I could have done and maybe that one piece was fine. Right. Like that piece felt successful of my life or like that one effort felt successful. Like, I don't know if it is easy to say that one is successful or one isn't, especially
in the social context and the societal context that we live in. Well, I think from a social and societal context, it's actually easier to judge, right? Because there is a kind of a cultural definition of success. Where you started from a few minutes ago, I think was really hitting the nail on the head, right?
Which is that you are able to choose how you spend your time, right? Like you have been able to create the agency that you want. And I think most cultures, like a lot of successes looked at it's your ability to create agency and be able to control your own time. Is it?
I think that like in most cultural norms, I would feel on the success metrics because at whatever age I am at, I am partnerless, childless being a woman. I do not own a house or a car. I do not have significant like, you know, long term job in anything or like, you know, any sort of big company to my name or any big like, you know, wealth asset to my name.
Yeah, but you're well respected in your field. You have skills that are in demand, right? You're able to kind of charge the pay rates that you aspire to and you do aspire to. I would say you have the financial cushion and the capability to earn to know that you're able to sustain the lifestyle that you have.
I mean, what is the success? The other things are just trappings, right? Like, so that is so interesting, right? Because and maybe it is because I just came from home and it's very interesting. So like I went with my sister and her partner and her partner is doing a startup, so many
who was on our last episode. As we all know, a VC funded startup. And then also, at home is Jodhpur, just in case books work. Go on. Later on, my sister and my mom were joking that like, you know, if anybody ever made
a joke about the fact that like, you know, oh, Swami Deep is a founder, it's not like he gets paid a lot and it's Charu who would be paying for things. It's not true, but like we do joke about it, right? Like if that was a joke that was made, people would be horrified and mortified. Like how can a woman be paying for the household while the man doesn't?
Like what kind of situation she's in, except that like in our eyes, Swami Deep is successful. He's doing something that he wants to do that he is uniquely suited to. And there is like a higher chance of higher reward, right? But like just the perspective, I don't know, like maybe it is because like I'm just like freshly coming from that space.
No, I think there's a lot of truth to that. I mean, I remember one of my cousin's wives converted to Southern Baptist a few years ago and we had a conversation and she was telling me about how in, I can't remember she used the word success, but it was something very close. But like in a successful family structure as prescribed by that religion, right, that
the man is supposed to be the one who leads the family to God. And something that she was navigating is like, obviously that wasn't happening in their relationship, that she was being the one that was going to bring God to the rest of her family. And it was just interesting, right?
That there was kind of a definition being given from this religion of like, this is what success is. Yeah. I don't know. I think sometimes, yeah, like, you know, we realize that the cultural definition we've grown up with is wrong.
And then we're looking for other definitions. I do feel like a lot of what my life was earlier, I think someone once said, you know, it feels like you're a seeker, right? I think part of that was like seeking a definition of success that you feel comfortable with. Do you feel closer to that definition now?
Yeah. I think what I was telling you a few minutes ago, right, of kind of being in a growth place, right, being in a place where I can grow in the ways that I want to. And I've kind of been able to take that from unknown unknown to starting to be more of a known unknown, right?
And that takes a lot of things, you know, it takes a lot of both like just collecting information in a lot of directions. So you don't know what is going to be useful. And then starting to actually parse and figure out, okay, you know, these are the parts that are exciting to me.
And then also kind of figuring out how you do it in a way that feels easy enough, right? That you're not going to get burned out and you are going to be able to kind of sustain if that your goal is to kind of sustain being in that growth kind of place. It is so interesting because like one of the things that I have, I think, learned from you is how to have like a lightness about joy in life.
Like while I think I always prioritized freedom and like a very aggressively prioritized freedom, I think I still was very guarded about it. So what happened would be like, you know, if you like it was a very teenager approach to freedom. And I think like just being around you has made me go back even earlier and I have more
of like a childlike approach to freedom. There is like, oh, you're doing things because like it seems very fun and interesting. So you're just going to go and do that. Earlier, it was more that like, you know, I had to make that space for myself and like in a guided pathway, I could do it.
But like I couldn't do it all the time. But I just think that like even when I first met you, I was just like, oh, this person really knows what's up. They really know that life is about like, you know, finding happiness. Like one of her like super early conversations, you were like, no, I, you know, it's hard,
but like one just has to choose that if I can choose the thoughts in my head, then I should choose to be happy. And I was just like, yes, oh my God, that is amazing. I do remember that. I don't know if I ever told you this, but I think I must have been like eight or so.
And I saw a kid's production of Peter Pan. And I remember distinctly thinking it ends with this notion, right, that like everyone has to grow up and you stop believing in magic and like you become an adult and that's it. And I just remember thinking I was like, absolutely not. Right.
Like I was like, who says? I think that was always one of the wishes that I had, but I don't think until I met you, I learned how to properly execute it. I think you have to have a lot of things in order to be able to do it. Right.
Like you have to have the determination to say that this is what I want to choose these kinds of mindsets and figure out like, how do I keep evolving my thinking to kind of get to a place where I can kind of shrug off certain kinds of things and I can kind of be cognizant of what is scarring and all of that. But then I think also, you know, it's helpful to have surmountable challenges that let you
build the tools and the resilience to be able to be in that place. Right. Like if I had, you know, lost my parent when I was young, it may have been very difficult for me because that's a very difficult challenge to surmount at a point where you don't have the tools evolved.
Right. Whereas I think I kind of had growing challenges along the way, which that kind of kept encouraging us to get new tools. It's also one of those things where like, you know, what kind of things did you see around you and did you see people prioritizing their own joy?
Right. Like I grew up seeing people prioritize their own growth and their own learning. So like it becomes very second nature for me to like constantly do that. That's interesting. That reminds me a little bit about how one of my, my friends' lives actually, and I
were having a conversation years ago and she was telling me about how she always thought like the story she told herself was that she wasn't very smart and she didn't do well academically and she had other skills, right? But academics were not. And then she was diagnosed ADHD some years later in life.
She may have been in her final years of college or even in law school and then found she did do really well academically, right? A lot of it had been a struggle with focus and it was just so interesting kind of hearing from her how much she felt like she may have made different choices in life if she had not thought about herself as not being smart.
And it was just very interesting to me to hear because I think, you know, I overheard my parents talking about how I was like, I had a like a genius IQ as a second grader, right? So I always had that understanding. And so I've made choices with that understanding.
So then I was like, oh, you know, I should, I should be able to do that, right? You should be able to do anything when you're really smart, right? At least that was the story I told myself. So it's just interesting because I do think it plays into this notion we've been talking about, right?
Which is how the stories you tell yourself make you feel successful or make you raise or lower your standards of what success is, especially when you start to evolve away from that cultural notion of saying, you know, I'm going to be judged by what everyone else says their success, their metric of success. I'm going to just apply it for myself.
I mean, that's where we all start, you know, I think it's also one of those things where you could also have gone down the path of like trying fewer things because now you have to protect the self image of like, oh, I'm really smart. So I can't fail at things and I can't try things, right?
But like you went the other way and I wonder like, what were the factors and like, as we are talking about this stuff, I'm just thinking about how I wonder how much of success is just like building the right foundation, right for you. Whatever that means, like how much of success is just building the right foundations. There's a very new thing that I'm sort of like, you know, still articulating.
It's like your ability to take misery from the world is some fixed amount. Something massive happens, you're going to like, you know, take, let's say X amount of misery, something small happens, you'll probably take X minus 10% misery, but it's not going to be like drastically different. And same is like people's ability to give you pain.
Like, for example, in India, you hear a lot about people's parents giving them pain for the partner they are choosing. And honestly, I don't think it matters what is the gender, the race, the like, you know, caste of your partner, your parents will give you misery based on their willingness to poke in this situation and give you misery.
And you will feel the pain based on how much you feel pain about this. Like even between two siblings, you might see one who like internalizes a lot of that misery and one who doesn't. And the one who doesn't parents will stop giving them pain because they're like, okay, she's not going to take it or he's not going to take it.
Right. But like, I feel like a lot of this sort of resilience towards sort of prioritizing the right foundations also plays well with knowing, okay, this is how much misery I'm willing to take. And then you get a good sense of, okay, I am actually willing to take this much
pain for the things that I want. Are you saying in terms of capacity? Like you understand your own. Yeah, I'm saying in terms of capacity. Yeah.
Yeah. I see. So then once you have a sense of your capacity, you know, I can take on this challenge. Yeah.
And then you're not just like, you know, you're not just a reactor to life around you and you're actually like actively looking for things. Right. So for example, for you trying out something new, you know, what your sort of capacity for the challenges that come with the new thing are.
Right. And like in the game that we are building together, I can very clearly see so much rigorous sort of back and forth. And still you're just able to be like, okay, I sure will take feedback. This is a new thing.
And like just maintaining that attitude. And that's much more you, right? Like that is what you are sort of like personality or whatever one might say. Right. Like that's just what you're bringing to it.
And I just wonder how much like success just becomes contingent upon these factors that like foundationally were built when you were much younger. That's interesting. I think that that might be one we should come back to because something we talked about in episode later in the season was the excuses that people tell themselves
about why they aren't getting success. And I definitely think that the one is that people, right, that these past choices have precluded me from being successful. So I don't know. I do agree that there is foundational things.
I just, I don't necessarily know if. No, I hear you. I think you're onto something because I was just thinking about like running it in my head. It takes a child about three to five years to learn a language at a okay
speaking and like, you know, cognitive capacity. Adults don't want to spend that time. And so language learning becomes hard. But a child is like constantly barraged with information that they don't understand and they keep waiting through it.
And sure, there's positive feedback when the first time they say mama and first time they say data, but like, it's not positive feedback all the time. Sometimes they also hear shut up, stop annoying me. Why are you speaking so loudly? Right?
Like you hear, like as a child, they would hear all of that also, but like, they still just like speak for five years. And like my trial lingual or bilingual kids learn that many languages in that time, but like adults don't spend that kind of time. So I think that like, there is something to what you are saying that there is
maybe foundational skills, but it's also that like, it is a story that you tell yourself that like, I can't do this anymore. So like, you just can't do it. If you decide that you can't do it anymore, then you can't do it anymore. Interesting.
I was also thinking about, I've been hiking with my parents and some of their friends who are all in their sixties or seventies. And how there comes a point when you retire, where you have to redefine success for yourself. And for some people, it feels like they don't, you know, and they kind of just
end up waiting for things to happen to them. And I think there is a kind of challenge in doing that. Can I think in some ways it depends on what your foundation was, right? And sometimes if your foundation was a certain thing, it's can be very hard because your foundation of what success is doesn't allow for non-material
gains as part of your success matrix. And so you really have to redefine your foundations. But I think it's possible. So in our notes, you have written this like really interesting thing, which is like success is a product of work minus joy.
Tell me more about that. Well, I think I flipped it around also because I, because if it was work minus joy, I think you would end up negative a lot. I would hope, right? Like that you're getting more joy than you were putting in work.
But I think that like most of the times that's not true. I think like the Peter Pan story that you told, that happens a lot. Okay. Maybe what I wrote was actually quite prescient, but I didn't realize it at first. Let me explain.
So yeah, but if you think about success as a product of work minus joy, and I think really it should be a summation because product kind of implies multiplication. But anyway, I think that a lot of people do do that, right? Which is like, okay, they take, what are they getting out of their work? And then they remove the things that they feel like are joyful, right?
They're saying that those are things that don't matter. The parts of my work that give me pleasure outside of the actual work itself are things that should not be brought into my calculus of whether or not I feel successful. So like having great coworkers or something wouldn't be part of someone's calculus of whether or not they're successful at work.
Right? Yeah. So I think it is an interesting notion. I feel like what I was mentioning earlier on that I think that there's kind of these evolving notions of success.
I think to me that feels like one that you start to evolve to, but then you start to evolve away from eventually, right? So initially maybe you really just are judging success of what you've heard. And then you start to judge success and saying, okay, you know, what is the products of my work?
And then still, you know, you may have these kind of notions you're carrying with you and saying that products that bring me too much happiness are not supposed to be part of work. I think personally that's something I struggled with a lot where I felt like if for something to be real work, it should be hard and not necessarily fun.
And really kind of unpacking that it took a long time and really realized that there was some foundational beliefs I had there that I had to take a step back from. So yeah, I'd like to believe that you can evolve past that though. Right. And so maybe then you start to get to other definitions of success.
Right. Where I think I am today, it feels like being in a mindset or being in a certain ability to kind of grow in the ways that I want to feels like what my definition of success is today. But, you know, when I talked to like Lena, she was saying that like for her,
knowing that she's having an impact in shaping people that will be responsible for the future is part of how she knows that she is successful. And I feel like that's a whole other like that's just a longer view than what I'm able to bring to the table today. Do you feel like these are linear definitions?
Like the way you defined it was this happens, then this happens, then this would happen. I think you do start to evolve between them over time. And I don't know whether it's like, you know, like a Mavlov's heart. It's Mavlov who has a hierarchy.
Maslow. Maslow. So I don't know if it's like a Maslow's hierarchy kind of situation, right? Where it's like, oh, you're trying to chase fulfillment at the end of it. Maybe you kind of go between them.
But I do feel like there's these different seemingly kind of like interlinked, but relatively different definitions of success, depending on where you are in life and how much you've internalized and how much you are looking at external parameters or success as well. I guess all of the therapy and reading I've done has made me really feel that
like external barometers for success are something you really can be helped by evolving away from. Because it's very hard to kind of feel good about yourself when your barometers for success are external. Although we can discuss this at some other point, but like recently I was reading
about this model of motivation where like, you know, between extrinsic motivators and intrinsic motivators are two other motivators. And like those are the ones that tend to have like more reliable medium term growth. So like in the super long term, only intrinsic motivators will motivate you and like, you know, you wouldn't feel contentment until they are active.
And in the short term, you wouldn't feel dopamine unless extrinsic motivators are active. But like, you know, these middle ones are like, I think it is still relatively new research and stuff. We did some of this for that project we did a couple of months ago in the beginning of the year where we were helping the company model the types of
rewards they wanted to do based on what frequency they were trying to get the action to be taken. And then yeah, splitting them based on the external versus intrinsic motivation scales. Yeah, except that like, I don't even think my model had those other two pieces.
Oh, I see. Yeah, like the ones in between intrinsic and extrinsic because I've just read about it recently, right? Like, so I only knew the older theory, which is like maybe until 2010 or so. So not that old, like 14 years ago, like, you know, which is at the edges.
And then like, you know, what lies in between one was externalized motivators and one was something else. I don't remember. But yeah, like basically both of them are somewhere about like seeing relationship between your values and the impact that you're having with the
actions you are taking. But kind of breaking up what success feels like, right? And so kind of saying that there's a values kind of component, but there also are these kind of components that are separate. Yeah.
That's interesting. But I'm really looking forward to this season. Yeah. And you know, I've also started to get some introductions of people we could talk to. Like, Lena actually was suggesting one of her friends might be interesting as
he's done a real career change. I think I may have mentioned to you. I'd invited him to our Diwali party, but he couldn't make it. Did I tell you there was 40 people here for the Diwali party? It was insane.
Would you say that was a success of party? Thank you for thinking with us. Visit Thinking on Thinking on the Web at joyus.studio to get show notes, past episodes and transcripts. Before you go, can you do me one small favor?
Go online right now and share the episode with one person who you think would love it until next time. Bye.