um this old client of mine he was about
85 when he came to see me and he was a
financier in a kind of a mathematical
genius he made these little pendants out
of a mathematical symbol for the most
beautiful mathematical equation that was
ever written he made them out of gold
and he would hand those out and and he
hid studies psychology as a young man
and he introduced me to this concept
that I didn’t know about called the
Pareto distribution which see I’d been
taught as a psychologist that most human
characteristics were normally
distributed right so most people were
average and some people were extreme
that that’s a priori our normal
distribution intelligence is like that
and height there’s more people of
average height than very tall or very
short and weight is like that and lots
of things are normally distributed and
psychologists tend to assume that
everything is but it isn’t creative
products are distributed in a Pareto
distribution and that’s a whole
different thing and it’s really
important to know this it’s another
fundamental fact the knowledge of which
can sort of transform the way you
conceptualize let’s say the political
landscape so here’s an example of the
Pareto distribution huh you know there’s
a rule of thumb that if you run a
company that 20 percent of your
employees do 80% of the work or the 20
percent of your customers are
responsible for 80% of your sales or the
20% of them are responsible for 80% of
the customer service calls same thing
but that’s not exactly the rule the rule
is worse than that the rule is in a
given domain the square root of the
number of people operating in that
domain do half the productive work so
you think well you have ten employees
three of them do half the work it’s like
yeah okay what if you have a hundred
employees then ten of them do half the
work what if you have a thousand
employees then it’s thirty and if it’s
10,000 employees then it’s a hundred and
this actually turns out to be a rather
ironclad rule it it applies across very
very many situations it applies for
example to the mass of stars and the
size of cities so you can see how
universal it is as a law and it’s it’s
something like those that have more get
more and those that have less get less
that’s the Matthieu principle right to
those who have everything more will be
given from those who have nothing
everything will be taken away and the
economists sometimes call that the
Mathieu principle and so what what that
lays out is a wolf world that’s rife
with inequality so you know you you hear
this idea that I think it’s the 85
richest people in the world have more
money than the bottom 2 billion that’s a
purrito distribution phenomena and you
might say to hell with capitalism for
producing that it’s like sorry you got
your diagnosis wrong it’s a natural law
it’s no no matter what society you study
you get a purrito distribution of wealth
you get a preeto distribution of number
of records recorded you get a pre doe
distribution of number of songs written
or goals scored like any creative
product has that characteristic and it’s
partly because as you start to become
successful let’s say people offer you
more and more opportunities and as you
start to fail people move away from you
and you plummet and so okay so that’s
rough so what it is what it means is
that there is always a landscape of
inequality and I’m not saying that we
shouldn’t do anything about it
although I am saying that we don’t know
what to do about it that’s the thing you
know because you can modify the
perennial distribution of wealth let’s
say but if you but we don’t know how to
do it without maybe disrupting the
system so completely that it collapses
which is what happened in the Soviet
Union for example and in Mao’s China
they were trying at least in principle
to adjust inequality but the Cure was
far worse than the disease and the the
truth of the matter is we actually don’t
know technically how much inequality
there has to be to generate wealth we
can guess and you could say well there
should be less and you might say well
there should be more if you’re left-wing
you’d say less and if there if you’re
right we need to say well we’ll just let
the inequality flourish but we do know
that it’s inevitable and we also know
that we don’t know how to regulate it so
there is inequality what that means is
there’s always gonna be people around
that are better at something than you
are and the and that’s a that’s a
problem because you can get jealous and
you can get bitter and you can get
resentful and worse you can get hopeless
you know because you look like look like
I have this is friend of mine he told me
something so funny he was he was
decrying his his lack of success in the
world and he compared himself to his
roommate and he said you know his
roommate has called
roommate was doing much better than he
was and his bloody roommate was Elon
Musk it’s like oh you’re not doing as
well as Elon Musk well it’s I mean you
can see me it would take it rather
personally because they were roommates
and everything it wasn’t like he was
doing badly like he wasn’t doing pretty
damn well it’s like I’m not as good as
Elon Musk it’s like yeah well you and
like 7 billion other people you know but
but I thought it was instructive because
well yes you have to be careful who you
compare yourself to now you can’t just
not compare yourself to others to
successful people right because then you
don’t have anything they a map and one
of the things I learned from you this
was a cool thing I’m gonna make a real
lateral move here young thought the book
of Revelation was appended to the Bible
because the Christ in the Gospels was
too merciful he was too nice a guy now
he’s an ideal right and young said wait
a second an ideal is always a judge
that’s the thing about an ideal because
you’re not as good as your ideal so your
ideal as a judge and revelation has
Christ coming back as a judge and that
was Young’s explanation at the level of
the collective unconscious for the
pasting of that remarkably strange and
terrible book onto the end of the of the
of the Bible so well anyways my point is
is an ideal is it you need an ideal
because you have nothing to aim at but
an ideal as a judge and you always fall
short of the ideal so how the hell can
you have the benefits of having an ideal
without having the crushing blow that
goes along with having the judge that
always regards you as insufficient so I
was trying to work that out in the
chapter and this is something I’ve had
to work out a lot as a clinical
psychologist it’s like well let’s say
you need a goal but we don’t want to eat
let your distance from the goal crush
you so you got to set up a goal and then
you go to make the goal break the goal
down into parts so that you can move
towards it you have a fairly high
likelihood of doing it so that’s a bit
bit of practical I wouldn’t say advice
it’s it’s because it’s better than
advice it’s it’s some practical
knowledge about how to go about
achieving an aim set a high aim but
differentiate it down so you know what
the next step is and then make the next
step difficult enough so you have to
push yourself past where you are but
but also provide yourself with a
reasonable probability of success it’s
also what you do with children right you
you want to push them because they need
to grow up and be more than they are
right but you don’t want to crush them
with constant failure so what you do is
aim high and make the goal procs
difficult but proximal so anyways so
that’s one one one one way of looking at
it but then the next thing is you know
I’ve had clients many clients in their
30s who are trying to this is more true
with women I would say a lot of women
who were very high achieving and who
established their career goals at 30 and
then want a differentiator differentiate
out their life they want to have a
husband they want to have a family
they’re trying to figure out how to do
that and one of the things I’ve noticed
that around 30 you really have to stop
comparing yourself in some ways to other
people and the reason for that is that
the particular it is of your life or so
idiosyncratic that there isn’t anyone
really all that much like you you know
because the details of your life
happened to matter and so maybe you
compare yourself to some rock star or
something like that and you know the
person is rich and famous and glamorous
and all that but you know they’re
alcoholic and they use too much cocaine
and they’ve had three divorces and it’s
like how the hell do you make sense out
of that is that someone that you should
judge yourself harshly against or not
the answer is you don’t know because you
don’t know all the details of their
lives and who do you know that you can
compare yourself to that’s easy you
yesterday so here’s a good goal it’s
something like well aim high and I
really mean that it’s like and we’ll
talk about that a little bit to aim high
but use as your control yourself it’s
like so your goal is to make today some
tiny increment better than yesterday and
you can use better you can define better
yourself this doesn’t have to be some
imposition of external morality you know
you know where you’re weak and
insufficient where you could improve
thank okay well this is what I’m like
yesterday if I did this little thing
things would be just an increment better
and well that’s a great thing because
you get the ball rolling and incremental
improvement is unstoppable you can
actually implement it and it starts to
generate purrito distribution like
consequences it starts to compound and
I’ve seen that happen in people’s lives
over
all people writing all the time and tell
me that they’re doing that but I’ve seen
that happen in people’s lives
continually they make a goal a goal that
the goal should be how could I conceive
of my life so that if I had that life it
would clearly be worth living so I
wouldn’t have to be bitter resentful
deceitful arrogant and vengeful like
that’s sort of the bottom line right
because that’s what endless failure does
to you it’s not good and and and that’s
what life without purpose and the goal
does to you as well because life is very
hard so you think okay well I need to
adopt a mode of being that would justify
my suffering and you can ask yourself
that questions what would make this
worthwhile need a quote Nietzsche I
think in that chapter he said he who has
a why can bear almost any how
that’s a lovely line man I mean it’s a
lovely line and it’s really worth
thinking about so you think well how do
I manage all this misery and suffering
and futility it’s like well I need to
figure out what I would have to do in
order to make that clearly worthwhile
and so then you have your goal and then
you think well I need to move towards
that incrementally because I’m kind of
useless and can only do so much and
maybe not even that and but all I have
to do is be a little bit better than my
my miserable self yesterday and that’ll
propel you forward very rapidly and and
you can succeed at it which is also
really lovely because why not send
yourself up for success you know because
otherwise you droop around like a
number-10 lobster and you know that’s
just not good you get all pinchy when
that happens and it’s not a good thing so that was that was Chapter four
85 when he came to see me and he was a
financier in a kind of a mathematical
genius he made these little pendants out
of a mathematical symbol for the most
beautiful mathematical equation that was
ever written he made them out of gold
and he would hand those out and and he
hid studies psychology as a young man
and he introduced me to this concept
that I didn’t know about called the
Pareto distribution which see I’d been
taught as a psychologist that most human
characteristics were normally
distributed right so most people were
average and some people were extreme
that that’s a priori our normal
distribution intelligence is like that
and height there’s more people of
average height than very tall or very
short and weight is like that and lots
of things are normally distributed and
psychologists tend to assume that
everything is but it isn’t creative
products are distributed in a Pareto
distribution and that’s a whole
different thing and it’s really
important to know this it’s another
fundamental fact the knowledge of which
can sort of transform the way you
conceptualize let’s say the political
landscape so here’s an example of the
Pareto distribution huh you know there’s
a rule of thumb that if you run a
company that 20 percent of your
employees do 80% of the work or the 20
percent of your customers are
responsible for 80% of your sales or the
20% of them are responsible for 80% of
the customer service calls same thing
but that’s not exactly the rule the rule
is worse than that the rule is in a
given domain the square root of the
number of people operating in that
domain do half the productive work so
you think well you have ten employees
three of them do half the work it’s like
yeah okay what if you have a hundred
employees then ten of them do half the
work what if you have a thousand
employees then it’s thirty and if it’s
10,000 employees then it’s a hundred and
this actually turns out to be a rather
ironclad rule it it applies across very
very many situations it applies for
example to the mass of stars and the
size of cities so you can see how
universal it is as a law and it’s it’s
something like those that have more get
more and those that have less get less
that’s the Matthieu principle right to
those who have everything more will be
given from those who have nothing
everything will be taken away and the
economists sometimes call that the
Mathieu principle and so what what that
lays out is a wolf world that’s rife
with inequality so you know you you hear
this idea that I think it’s the 85
richest people in the world have more
money than the bottom 2 billion that’s a
purrito distribution phenomena and you
might say to hell with capitalism for
producing that it’s like sorry you got
your diagnosis wrong it’s a natural law
it’s no no matter what society you study
you get a purrito distribution of wealth
you get a preeto distribution of number
of records recorded you get a pre doe
distribution of number of songs written
or goals scored like any creative
product has that characteristic and it’s
partly because as you start to become
successful let’s say people offer you
more and more opportunities and as you
start to fail people move away from you
and you plummet and so okay so that’s
rough so what it is what it means is
that there is always a landscape of
inequality and I’m not saying that we
shouldn’t do anything about it
although I am saying that we don’t know
what to do about it that’s the thing you
know because you can modify the
perennial distribution of wealth let’s
say but if you but we don’t know how to
do it without maybe disrupting the
system so completely that it collapses
which is what happened in the Soviet
Union for example and in Mao’s China
they were trying at least in principle
to adjust inequality but the Cure was
far worse than the disease and the the
truth of the matter is we actually don’t
know technically how much inequality
there has to be to generate wealth we
can guess and you could say well there
should be less and you might say well
there should be more if you’re left-wing
you’d say less and if there if you’re
right we need to say well we’ll just let
the inequality flourish but we do know
that it’s inevitable and we also know
that we don’t know how to regulate it so
there is inequality what that means is
there’s always gonna be people around
that are better at something than you
are and the and that’s a that’s a
problem because you can get jealous and
you can get bitter and you can get
resentful and worse you can get hopeless
you know because you look like look like
I have this is friend of mine he told me
something so funny he was he was
decrying his his lack of success in the
world and he compared himself to his
roommate and he said you know his
roommate has called
roommate was doing much better than he
was and his bloody roommate was Elon
Musk it’s like oh you’re not doing as
well as Elon Musk well it’s I mean you
can see me it would take it rather
personally because they were roommates
and everything it wasn’t like he was
doing badly like he wasn’t doing pretty
damn well it’s like I’m not as good as
Elon Musk it’s like yeah well you and
like 7 billion other people you know but
but I thought it was instructive because
well yes you have to be careful who you
compare yourself to now you can’t just
not compare yourself to others to
successful people right because then you
don’t have anything they a map and one
of the things I learned from you this
was a cool thing I’m gonna make a real
lateral move here young thought the book
of Revelation was appended to the Bible
because the Christ in the Gospels was
too merciful he was too nice a guy now
he’s an ideal right and young said wait
a second an ideal is always a judge
that’s the thing about an ideal because
you’re not as good as your ideal so your
ideal as a judge and revelation has
Christ coming back as a judge and that
was Young’s explanation at the level of
the collective unconscious for the
pasting of that remarkably strange and
terrible book onto the end of the of the
of the Bible so well anyways my point is
is an ideal is it you need an ideal
because you have nothing to aim at but
an ideal as a judge and you always fall
short of the ideal so how the hell can
you have the benefits of having an ideal
without having the crushing blow that
goes along with having the judge that
always regards you as insufficient so I
was trying to work that out in the
chapter and this is something I’ve had
to work out a lot as a clinical
psychologist it’s like well let’s say
you need a goal but we don’t want to eat
let your distance from the goal crush
you so you got to set up a goal and then
you go to make the goal break the goal
down into parts so that you can move
towards it you have a fairly high
likelihood of doing it so that’s a bit
bit of practical I wouldn’t say advice
it’s it’s because it’s better than
advice it’s it’s some practical
knowledge about how to go about
achieving an aim set a high aim but
differentiate it down so you know what
the next step is and then make the next
step difficult enough so you have to
push yourself past where you are but
but also provide yourself with a
reasonable probability of success it’s
also what you do with children right you
you want to push them because they need
to grow up and be more than they are
right but you don’t want to crush them
with constant failure so what you do is
aim high and make the goal procs
difficult but proximal so anyways so
that’s one one one one way of looking at
it but then the next thing is you know
I’ve had clients many clients in their
30s who are trying to this is more true
with women I would say a lot of women
who were very high achieving and who
established their career goals at 30 and
then want a differentiator differentiate
out their life they want to have a
husband they want to have a family
they’re trying to figure out how to do
that and one of the things I’ve noticed
that around 30 you really have to stop
comparing yourself in some ways to other
people and the reason for that is that
the particular it is of your life or so
idiosyncratic that there isn’t anyone
really all that much like you you know
because the details of your life
happened to matter and so maybe you
compare yourself to some rock star or
something like that and you know the
person is rich and famous and glamorous
and all that but you know they’re
alcoholic and they use too much cocaine
and they’ve had three divorces and it’s
like how the hell do you make sense out
of that is that someone that you should
judge yourself harshly against or not
the answer is you don’t know because you
don’t know all the details of their
lives and who do you know that you can
compare yourself to that’s easy you
yesterday so here’s a good goal it’s
something like well aim high and I
really mean that it’s like and we’ll
talk about that a little bit to aim high
but use as your control yourself it’s
like so your goal is to make today some
tiny increment better than yesterday and
you can use better you can define better
yourself this doesn’t have to be some
imposition of external morality you know
you know where you’re weak and
insufficient where you could improve
thank okay well this is what I’m like
yesterday if I did this little thing
things would be just an increment better
and well that’s a great thing because
you get the ball rolling and incremental
improvement is unstoppable you can
actually implement it and it starts to
generate purrito distribution like
consequences it starts to compound and
I’ve seen that happen in people’s lives
over
all people writing all the time and tell
me that they’re doing that but I’ve seen
that happen in people’s lives
continually they make a goal a goal that
the goal should be how could I conceive
of my life so that if I had that life it
would clearly be worth living so I
wouldn’t have to be bitter resentful
deceitful arrogant and vengeful like
that’s sort of the bottom line right
because that’s what endless failure does
to you it’s not good and and and that’s
what life without purpose and the goal
does to you as well because life is very
hard so you think okay well I need to
adopt a mode of being that would justify
my suffering and you can ask yourself
that questions what would make this
worthwhile need a quote Nietzsche I
think in that chapter he said he who has
a why can bear almost any how
that’s a lovely line man I mean it’s a
lovely line and it’s really worth
thinking about so you think well how do
I manage all this misery and suffering
and futility it’s like well I need to
figure out what I would have to do in
order to make that clearly worthwhile
and so then you have your goal and then
you think well I need to move towards
that incrementally because I’m kind of
useless and can only do so much and
maybe not even that and but all I have
to do is be a little bit better than my
my miserable self yesterday and that’ll
propel you forward very rapidly and and
you can succeed at it which is also
really lovely because why not send
yourself up for success you know because
otherwise you droop around like a
number-10 lobster and you know that’s
just not good you get all pinchy when
that happens and it’s not a good thing so that was that was Chapter four
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