![[1-Jason_Liu.jpg]] *Dialectic Episode 1: Jason Liu - The Freedom in Being Nobody - is available on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Z2P5ZcuDSBbSaWfNFQjvE?si=828fa7f3d18a49df) and [YouTube](https://youtu.be/99ZVWKRH2Lk?si=lBH2WJtCy6XPi_gM).* <iframe style="border-radius:12px" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/3Z2P5ZcuDSBbSaWfNFQjvE?utm_source=generator" width="100%" height="152" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy"></iframe> <iframe allow="autoplay *; encrypted-media *; fullscreen *; clipboard-write" frameborder="0" height="175" style="width:100%;max-width:660px;overflow:hidden;border-radius:10px;" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1-jason-liu-the-freedom-in-being-nobody/id1780282402?i=1000677291498"></iframe> # Description Jason Liu ([Website](https://jxnl.co/), [X](https://x.com/jxnlco), [Github](https://github.com/jxnl), [Newsletter](https://subscribe.jxnl.co/)) is a technologist, consultant, teacher, and friend. He spent the first part of his career as a machine learning engineer, mostly at Stitchfix, only to run into a wall: a hand injury that prevented him from being able to write any software for over a year. Fortunately, he's not so one-dimensional, and spent time reclaiming somatic experience in learning to free-dive, train Jiu-Jitsu, and return to the pottery practice he developed in art school, all while reckoning with big questions of ambition, purpose, and self-fulfillment. Since then, he's built a consulting practice helping modern AI companies better implement RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), avoid system design mistakes, hire elite talent, and build for an LLM-centric world. He maintains a large structured output library called [Instructor](https://useinstructor.com/) with about 1m downloads per month, [writes prolifically](https://jxnl.co/writing/) (which he does entirely via voice input with LLM editing, as we discuss), tweets semi-manically (he's grown to 30K followers on X with the simplest strategy I've ever heard anyone articulate—tweeting 30K times), and teaches courses on [RAG](https://maven.com/applied-llms/rag-playbook) and [online consulting](https://maven.com/indie-consulting/ai-consultant-accelerator). Finally, my man can *yap.* He was a perfect first guest because he has no shortage of ideas but comes at nearly everything with a beginner's mindset. # Timestamps - (0:00): Intro to Dialectic - (2:55): Brick laying vs. capital allocating - (6:04): Acid Story: Trying so hard to be a somebody - (9:20): Planning, judgement, elasticity, and abundance - (11:28): Ambition and Trusting your future self - (14:20): Fear; Confidence is the memory of success - (18:46): Compounding psychology of risk taking - (21:30): Do you get what you deserve? - (22:32): Playing life on hard mode - (27:22): Agency, Taking Accountability, and becoming essential - (35:58): Consulting and Independent Contracting - (39:52): Ambition and “Manhattan Project” Appeal - (42:30): What are you motivated by? - (44:36): Challenge runs and side quests - (46:39): How to be prolific - (53:46): Mastery, complex games, and creative fingerprints - (57:47): Programming, animation, and style vs. cohesion - (1:07:56): Jason only writes with his voice--with some LLM help - (1:12:47): Flooding the airwaves with content - (1:14:10): Twitter growth: simple math - (1:19:49): Using the “sawdust” - (1:23:30): ELI5 RAG (Retrieval augmented generation) - (1:27:39): A final rant against couches # Links - [Losing My Hands](https://jxnl.co/writing/2024/04/29/losing-my-hands/) by Jason - [Advice to Young People, The Lies I Tell Myself](https://jxnl.co/writing/2024/06/01/advice-to-young-people/) by Jason - [A Critique on Couches](https://github.com/jxnl/blog/blob/e9476e15822d10d4b8c49bc74d2ea01dc300d704/docs/writing/posts/couchs.md) by Jason - [Things you're allowed to do](https://milan.cvitkovic.net/writing/things_youre_allowed_to_do/) by Milan Cvitkovic - [Duolingo founder Luis Von Ahn on engagement vs. education](https://x.com/blakeir/status/1854562355046166552) # Transcript ## [00:00:00] Intro to Dialectic **Jackson:** Hey, I'm Jackson Dahl, and I'm excited to share episode one of a new interview podcast. Dialectic. I'll have conversations with the sharpest, most creative and original people I know or want to know, and it will be wide ranging, probably covering the stuff I care about most. Ideas, ambition, tech, startups, business, art, culture, philosophy, taste, but also it will really be about people. There's an idea from Kevin Kelly I love, which is that the goal of life should be to have become yourself by the time you're on your deathbed. Put another way. You shouldn't aim to be the best, but to be the only. I called the show Dialectic because it's fun to say, and because if I've been told I'm good at anything, it's sparring with people about their ideas, pushing them to click down one level deeper. I hope this show will feel like watching a great tennis rally, seeing some sparks fly, but ultimately trying to get closer to truth, to lessons, to wisdom, and to really, again, what makes people tick. I think this is going to be a tough balance to strike with an interview show. but as the show progresses, I really hope to push my guests in creative ways. Episode 1 is with Jason Liu. He's a technologist, machine learning and AI expert, consultant, teacher, and among other things, a guy who can talk. He spent the early part of his career as a software engineer, primarily in machine learning and AI , at a company called stitch fix. And then he ran into this weird wall where he had a hand injury that prevented him from being able to write code. And it caused him to go off on a number of side quests from jujitsu and free diving and pottery to kind of like reckoning with his ambition in his career. If he couldn't do what he had been doing. Done for his entire career. And then he came back around on technology and, used a number of new solutions in the form of LLMs for coding and things like cursor, but also writing purely with his voice and finding clever ways to monetize what was in his brain. In short, he's helping companies navigate the world where LLMs are dominating everything in software. He spent the last year building a large consulting practice, helping modern AI companies think about all kinds of things from hiring to system implementation to more specific things like rag or retrieval, augmented generation. He also created Instructor, which is a large library with almost a million downloads a month. and as I mentioned, this man can talk, he writes, he can tweet, he knows how to do volume. And so I'm so excited for you to get to listen to him. Talk about a whole bunch of things. Most importantly, and, and I think you'll see this as much as Jason is quite opinionated, he just has a beginner's mindset and he has sort of a, a willingness and a humility to approach everything from, to use a cliche idea first principles, in a way that I find really energizing, and helpful. So I think you'll learn a lot. I definitely did, and I hope you enjoy the conversation.\ ## [00:02:55] Brick laying vs. capital allocating so with that, we'll jump into it with Jason talking about sharing lessons from his consulting business with his email subscribers and specifically how getting paid 700 an hour and 30, 000 in a month for doing interviews was actually him getting screwed. Here's Jason. **Jason:** There's one company, they're paying me like 700 an hour to do a job interview. And I was like, oh my sick. All I gotta do is like, can you tell me more of the make Do you think I'm winning or losing? **Jackson:** In what dimension? **Jason:** So over like three months, like **Jackson:** You're losing, relatively. **Jason:** Yeah, because the recruiter made 160, 0. Because the recruiter takes 20 percent of first year salary. Okay. When the, the head of AI joins, the question he asks first How long has Jason been around and how long will Jason be around? Because I think I saw him on a podcast. And it's really nice that like, , Someone with so much like domain expertise is on the project. You know, like the roadmap he presented me was like, **Jackson:** so you're why he got hired? **Jason:** I'm not going to say that, but it felt like it, right? They get all, they get this for four engineers and his head of AI. Five months later, they raised a series B. So like I make 30, the recruiter makes one 50, the founders up a couple million. And like, even the head of AI is equity just went up and I was the most exploited person in the room. **Jackson:** Is there, is the meta lesson here that, like, this is how, like, this is how, um, the most effective people in the game of capitalism play? **Jason:** Yeah. So now my understanding is all the questions I have to ask. Has to point to what is the biggest outcome possible, right? Like what I said was I'll lay your bricks. And I, what I said is like, I'm a really good **Jackson:** right, right, right. right. **Jason:** The recruiter is like, I'll find you a great team. Right. And then the developer is like, what is it going to cost you if people move in six months late, what is it going to cost you if you can't get this done before the winter comes? It's going to cost you millions of dollars, right, And so I understand this other, this other developer might **Jackson:** be Whereas most people are like, oh man, my bricklaying rate is not **Jason:** yeah, right. The hardest work, the person working the hardest at a, at a hotel is a person like changing the sheets. But a capital allocator is just like, okay, where do I park a hundred million dollars anyways. So that's kind of like, so I tell all these lessons over like a couple of weeks and I was like, Oh, these people are so committed. And you don't need, like, that many **Jackson:** I it's **Jason:** think it's both, right? It's like, okay, well, if this is, like, how real this person wants **Jackson:** to be. **Jason:** Like, I don't know. Like, maybe they want to ask more personal questions. Maybe they want to understand what the journey was. Like, I'm also very real. Like I left tech after 10 years and I started consulting. It wasn't like I graduated and I wanted to make some like fast **Jackson:** right? There's a, ## [00:06:04] Acid Story : Trying so hard to be a somebody **Jason:** but can I, can I tell the acid Okay. Cause this is the thing. This is the thing I think post asset. Uh, I hope you have this feeling too. Okay. So I'm on acid. I'm like in Oregon, I'm looking at a lake. I'm like thinking about my responsibilities as like in my family and to my partner at the time. And I, like my vision goes to white and I see God. and God just says, uh, Jason, you're trying so hard to be a somebody. Let me give you the feeling of being a nobody. And for like some moment I get the feeling of like nobody Ness and the world was like super light and like everything was pleasant. And I was like, Oh my God. Like there's just like, I dunno how to describe it, but like, just imagine this idea of like being a nobody is like so much more liberating and it lets you do anything that you want and like play with everything. It's **Jackson:** It's, I'm trying shit. When you say being nobody, uh, being a nobody, are you describing, um, being someone insignificant or are you describing not being some anything or not being someone, **Jason:** not being anything in relation to other. People like, I think being a somebody, at least in the Confucian sense, there's like the roles you play. Like, are you a, you must be a good son, a good teacher, a good student, a good husband, a good brother. right. And it's like, okay, take that all away. Oh, there's no like commitment to anything. There's no quest. right? It's like you talk about like, there is a me shaped hole in the world. But now I think of it as like, if you're in a river and there's a little divot, The water will just kind of like rush in and like you make the u shaped hole. Right? It wasn't like the hole was there and the water flows in. It's like this little swell is what creates the bigger like reservoir. And yeah, after the trip I was like, oh, like, yeah, I shouldn't try to be anybody. Let me just like fuck around. **Jackson:** how do you relate that to, um, meaning and purpose? **Jason:** It's just created along the way. **Jackson:** Is it observed in hindsight or are you, do you, are you running a purpose and meaning algorithm upfront around intention and how you evaluate what you choose to do? Or are you sort of just realizing the meaning when you look back? **Jason:** It's definitely looking back, right? Because it's like, I, because everything I'm doing is like through first principles, right? It's like, oh, like I, I'm so overworked. I gotta go hire people. Or hiring is hard. Like you definitely can probably make more progress with better advisors upfront. But then it's like, there's so many myths on like what you should and shouldn't do. Like, I don't know what the trade offs are. Like, everyone says in the VC world you should have like a co founder. **Jackson:** a co **Jason:** But everyone I know is going through like co founder breakups. Right? Everyone's, people are like, oh, you should have like married like the girl at 26 and now my friends are getting divorced. And I was like, okay, we're actually, I'm just lighter. But if you go to the water analogy, it's like, the water doesn't see the crack and like, want to open it up. There's there. Right. But when you, just, when you fill in the crack, like, you can still like, split the mountain. I don't know how to describe it ## [00:09:20] Planning, judgement, elasticity, and abundance **Jackson:** You're like a highly agentic person who doesn't seem to plan much at all? I I think that's inside of a lot of this. **Jason:** Yeah. **Jackson:** Do you plan at all? **Jason:** I have, okay, so I think there's a time to plan, and I think most people plan too much. I have rarely planned more and like, had a better outcome. You know, but I don't, I don't, I don't build bridges or airplanes. **Jackson:** There's like a contextual gradient What about judgement? Do you think you have good judgement? **Jason:** I think, I think more about elasticity. I wanna believe that I, I have like so much abundance. If I make the wrong hire or make the mistake, it'll still be fine. **Jackson:** Yeah, yeah, **Jason:** Yeah. It's like, 'cause there is, there is a judgment of like, oh, should I have lent this person money? And like, will they pay me back on time? Da da da. But really I think it's just like, I wanna live a life that's so abundant that like if, if you, if I give it and you like. Bounce. It's like, oh, okay, well I made a mistake. Continue going down the path. Like I think the goal is, for me, it's like I wanna have better judgment, but like overthinking judgment is still much easier than just like, okay, here's the money. Like if you give it back, this is sick. But if you don't like, I will be okay. ' cause I want to be. **Jackson:** So you're resilient, but are you, do you think you're limiting what you, your potential, and this goes back to being somebody maybe, but are you limiting your potential? Yeah. Because you are, like, is, is there a possibility space that you're not accessing because you're not, um, for lack of a better term, planning? **Jason:** Yeah, but I also think, like in the advice article I wrote, there's like a, like a great person is not a good person. ## [00:11:28] Ambition and Trusting your future self **Jason:** And I don't even know if being more ambitious. will make my life better. And I had hurt my hands earlier, like in my twenties from being an ambitious person. So, like, I don't even know if I don't, like, if I go fill the space of ambition, like I'm still taking from something else and like, I don't know if it's always worth **Jackson:** So ambition and sort of, um, longterm planning are parallel track, but there's plenty of ambitious people, let's say, who are like, don't really have a vision and aren't really planning, but they're just sort of like vibrating really aggressively. There are also people who are not ambitious, but who have like well thought out structured plans for eg, making sure their family situation ends up working out or whatever. Are, do you not think of those as being correlated? **Jason:** don't think it's served me much. I actually got a coach like last week with like a really great breakthrough, but literally the week before. I was like, man, like I should make sure I have like six months of salary saved up for every single employee. If the business does not go well, I want to, um, make sure I have like enough severance, like everyone taken care of. But then if I want to move to New York, then I have to, Right? I was super anxious and I just had this conversation. I don't even remember what the conversation was about, but at the end I was like, I will just figure it out. Everything's okay. Cause I also, the future version of me will only be more capable. smarter And it'll just be easier for that person too So so so worrying about the future is almost not trusting of my future self But I have no evidence that I make worse decisions over time and I have no evidence that Like I can't figure things out So i've made that connection and now i'm just much less anxious. **Jackson:** I think also for many of us, at least for myself, um, thinking thoughtfully about the future, um, or planning even. is rarely decoupled from anxiousness and worrying about it. And those don't necessarily need to be the case. But I think for most of us, like the reason probably like less planning is helpful is that all the planning is always coming with that, like anxious, um, which prevents to your point, like being more of a live player resiliency, these things. When was the acid trip? **Jason:** Like two years ago. Three years **Jackson:** ago. I don't think it's lodged. just think, I remind myself that **Jason:** I don't think it's lodged. I just think, I remind myself that the feeling of nobody is also like equally as great as feeling like, you're somebody. ## [00:14:20] Fear; Confidence is the memory of success **Jackson:** somebody. Hmm. You've, you've written a lot about, like, um, confidence and fear. Obviously there's some connection here, but I'm curious how you've like managed to move through and you've also across like a whole bunch of different domains pre and post the hand injury, like jujitsu, um, ceramics, all the recent stuff work wise, like is the anchoring around moving through fear, how, how tied is it to this? Like, oh, I don't need to necessarily be somebody or are there other, other ways you kind of like. Are, are you acting despite fear? Are you moving through fear anyway? Like what, what, maybe, maybe the better version of the question is like, what is the relationship to fear now? **Jason:** I don't know if I have fear. I know I'm very anxious, but I also know it's, it's usually not very productive. It's like, I'm not someone that like forgets my passport at the airport. So I don't need to be anxious about the flight or anything. But I mean, the line I think about is like, confidence is the memory of success. And I think I'm finally old enough to just have succeeded enough times at the things I've tried that the next time I try something, there's just not much doubt. I don't know how it would be possible to do that when you were 15. **Jackson:** Well, **Jason:** Well, I just learned Jiu Jitsu and I got my ass beat for like six months and then one day I got better and then, you know, someone else came in the gym and they were a little bit heavier than me, but they hadn't trained and I beat them and I was like, Oh, this is learning something. I've learned something. And, and then you, and then all your friends beat you up and you're like, fuck, like I'm not, I wasn't good at all. Like that was luck. Then you go to another gym, a different gym that they haven't seen all your tricks. Yeah. You're like, Oh, I'm learning again, right? Same with pottery. It's like you do stuff, it's bad, it gets better. You develop language to like figure out how you want to express yourself and your taste and you just see yourself get better constantly. I don't think that's like on accident.. I think I, I, I try very hard to be better at things. But at this point, the next thing I do, I just know that that's going to happen. Like, I've never not been able to just, like, Go past, like, through the wall. **Jackson:** And now, at this point, you have enough of a, you have enough of a memory built **Jason:** Yeah. But it wasn't like, uh, you know, Like, you just grow up with this, like, Level of confidence. It was just like, oh, well, at this point, like, why would I, like, I have no proof. That I'm gonna be like a loser anymore. **Jackson:** and you think you're smarter because you can come **Jason:** and you think you're smarter because you can come up with all the edge cases. **Jackson:** cases. **Jason:** Right? And it's like, I don't know if it works that Because you don't actually know what you're gonna do then. And maybe now, like, the memory of success is like, Oh, wow, like, future Jason's gonna figure it out, Because they'll have more information than current Jason, so. Let me just solve current Jason problems, And then future Jason can solve future Jason problems. Like, why am I saving up so much money for future Jason? Do **Jackson:** Future Jason **Jason:** is, like, a bum? Who, **Jackson:** Who like, **Jason:** got lucky once and could never do it again? Yeah. Yeah. like, when I started the business, I I just put, I just started a new bank account and I was like, great, I'm just gonna like live in my mom's house for like two months and lemme just like do it again. And now this bank account in one year has as much money as I had saved up all of my **Jackson:** 20s. Oh, man. **Jason:** Oh, interesting. **Jackson:** You got to be a beginner again. Which almost maybe adds a lightness to it. **Jason:** Yeah, but it's like, yeah, because you have the safety net of like, okay, I can do these, do these things, but also because I think I don't have many mentors. You do so many things from first principles that everything you do, you just deeply believe in. There's very little like, oh man, well, like they told me to watch out for this and they told me to watch out for that. ## [00:18:46] Compounding psychology of risk taking **Jason:** I just had to like do this thing, very scared, see the result and be like, okay, well, like, for example, I had scaled down my consulting revenue to do the course. I scaled down my revenue. So I was like doubling every month for five months. And then I scaled down 80 percent of that income to do the course. And again, I was like, man, like, was it a mistake to cancel all those contracts to make this bet? Like, what if they're going to think I'm a scammer on the internet? Oh my God. Like. It took me five months to get here. And I just threw it all away to record like YouTube videos. Like, Oh my God, what did I do? Then you do the course. And in that one month, you made more money than all the five months combined. Like, okay, now I truly understand the importance of taking big bets and big swings. And like, at this point, I haven't like really failed in a dramatic way. And maybe that's a perspective thing of. When it doesn't work out, I don't really see it as a failure. I can't even tell at this point, but it's like, Oh yeah, like I need to be taking bigger bets. Cause that was like clearly actually a medium sized bet. **Jackson:** Hmm. **Jason:** even understand. **Jackson:** window is moving. **Jason:** Right. And now it's like, I'm willing to take bets using revenue that I have not made yet. Whereas before it's like, I will never have a month with negative cashflow. I can't do that. That's like too scary. What if it like continues to slip? And now it's like, oh, I'm gonna start this newsletter. Let me go hire a writer and a designer. Let me set this up. And then I'll go, like, sell the thing. **Jason:** Yeah. And you have the confidence now of like, oh, like, the money will come. So I'm much more willing to invest money now to just make my life Whereas before it's like, I want to be paid. I want to pay everyone else on success. But then I give them like 30%. And now it's like, oh, I'm willing to pay you 10, 000 this month to help me out because I know that the ROI is still going to be worth it. And that was, the fact that no one told you that and you just believe it, I think is very, very refreshing. **Jackson:** The entire through line of this too is one of, and I suspect this would generalize to many kind of elite performers, is that in, in some true sense, I think if I, if I told you like, I'm actually resetting you to zero. In whatever, money, but also other things. The, at least the vibe you're projecting is one of like an excitement to get to like, like play the game again. like, or at the very least a lack of a preciousness of like, I'm on my pile and like, I can't possibly get, come down from this like local maximum. ## [00:21:30] Do you get what you deserve? **Jason:** Yeah. But this is the funny thing that I told my friend this like, I want to be rich the same way I want a six pack. It's like, it's just gonna be what I deserved And like, I don't deserve a six pack right now. I'm just not working out Right. But like, you get what Right? Do Do **Jackson:** you think that's true? **Jason:** No.I **Jackson:** I **Jason:** But I think you, like the advice article I wrote, it's like, uh, lies. I tell advice for young people lies. I tell myself **Jackson:** I **Jason:** I feel like most people miss this part, but it's like you have to just believe it because then what, like, maybe I'm acknowledging that the world is like much more difficult and like scary and like more sinister. But if you don't believe those lies that like Confidence is the memory of success... Or that pessimists are losers..., Or like great people might not be good people The world just like feels harder. **Jackson:** And you have little to stand on. It sort of collapses. There's, like, a fuzziness to **Jason:** There's ## [00:22:32] Playing life on hard mode **Jason:** Yeah and you're kind of playing life... Okay, I'm gonna make a really silly segue, which is, uh, have you ever played Elden Ring? **Jackson:** Ring? **Jason:** But people really yell at you for playing the game a certain way. Okay. Right? It's like, oh, like, you used magic, like, you shouldn't do that. Right. And it's like, no, no, no, you're just, if you choose not to do those things, you're just playing a harder version of the game. Right? Like, other people beat, like, if, the person who complains about you using magic, there's a guy who's beating the game without rolling. Right, Because the lie is like, oh, the only way to play this game is with just a big sword and you just gotta hit things and dodge. And if you can't do that, you're not, you have no skill. If you are a pessimist, you are just playing your life as a challenge run. For no reason. **Jackson:** Coded and maybe even something beyond that. Hmm. Are, are you, do you think you're putting any boundaries like that in, into your life now? Right now? Yeah. I think this is kind of growing up a little bit is like redu taking more and more of those things **Jason:** Yeah like growing up... I grew up super poor. I remember, like I had the conversation last week I beat the first three pokemons I ever played Without using a potion. Cause I was just like saving up In case, **Jackson:** I need them, right? And **Jason:** in case I need them. Right. And I was like, Oh, I see. I'm just fucking, that's just like poor behavior. Right. And it was like the first time I ever made a financial bet was like last two, like this last quarter when I was like, Oh, let me go hire a writer to build out the thing before I sell it. Cause I don't, there is no in case, then the next step is you make money. **Jackson:** Right. **Jason:** Like that's yeah, you're supposed to hire a writer to promote the thing and build the advertisements and then you just run the advertisements and then more money will appear. **Jackson:** Yeah, everybody else is sitting around being like, what if I need potions? **Jason:** Yeah. And I was like, Oh, actually, like I should just use the potions. And, and because as you play the game, you make money. And if you, If you don't die so much, you actually lose less of the experience. And then you're like, Oh, I'm, I'm trying to just figure out like, what are the random rules I've set for myself that's making my life a challenge run and just like not do that. Right. Like I'm fine. Like at the age of 30, I like use my first potion. It is incredible. Like, **Jackson:** Oh, man. That cuts deep, man. I think that hits for a lot of **Jason:** It's like, yeah, it's like, I'm like super cheap on flights for no reason. I hired an EA. Now, now it's like, I don't even know how much the flights cost. My life is just better, But it's like, well, I do this for business. So it's all going to, it all adds up to being a net positive. Right. It's like I hired a writer so I don't have to like be on a computer all day. **Jackson:** There's an essay I like. And the title of it just called things you're allowed to do. And this. It's possibility space of potions where it's like, Oh, if you want to learn something, there's like PhD students, you could pay like 30 an hour to personally tutor you **Jason:** and like, **Jackson:** you can just do it. **Jason:** Yeah, like even with the courses, it's like, oh man, like, I'm, like, I don't wanna be seen as a scammer. **Jackson:** seen **Jason:** on these courses. And then I bought a book for 300 calling me like how to price effectively. I read that book. I made like six lines of changes in my, uh, in my website. And within three months I closed a contract for 110, 000 all paid up front over like a 300 book. And I was like, Oh, the book was free. **Jackson:** Yeah. but everybody else is like, I, uh, 300 **Jason:** right? Like there's a, the other mindset is like a TikTok I watch was like, it's like this fucking dude's, like, he comes with bags. Like, what if I told you this bag is $500? Would you buy this bag? And it's like the, his message was like, if you have like a much more like, like the poor mentality is like, why does, like how fuck you, like I'm not buying a 300 bag. But the abundance mentality is like, oh, what's in the bag? **Jackson:** bag. So **Jason:** So the other thing now I'm always asking is like, okay, what's in the bag? We talk about price afterwards, but like what's actually in the bag? **Jackson:** Do you think ## [00:27:22] Agency, Taking Accountability, and becoming essential **Jackson:** how there's a, there's a sort of meta point that I'm quite interested in, which is like, is, is, can you teach agency? Can you move people sort of up the agency curve? Have you taught, either personal, like friends in your life or clients or in your, in your courses, like, do you relate at all to the idea of teaching agency? That that's, that's in some ways kind of what you're talking about, or, and if so, like. Have you found any effective ways of like helping people to see the water on this type of stuff to use their potions? **Jason:** I think so. I mean, part of the consulting course is like, the last section is on proposals. And the message I have how much you're able to charge is a function of how well you can describe what they truly want. And be responsible for it. Like, if I lay bricks for a builder Six months from now, they are not celebrating the bricklay What are they celebrating? Oh, it got built on time Or, you know, there were no Or better yet, Exactly Right. so now it becomes **Jackson:** is **Jason:** Exactly, exactly Well, how can you figure out on what spectrum you're comfortably able to sit in, and then demonstrate proof that you can actually deliver on those objectives. And the better you do that, the better you understand that problem, and the more you can demonstrate accountability for that final outcome, the more you can ask for. Right. And not only that, maybe this is the tie with agency is, the more you do that, the less you are a commodity. Because now my services include, like, I will invite you to dinner, That's not like an hourly rate that one bills. **Jackson:** Yep. **Jason:** But if I know your goal is to raise a series B, what you can include in your offer as like a person with high agency is very different than I will write you some code. The vessel might be code. But now it becomes, Oh, I'll build you the product and then work with your users to figure out what needs to improve. I could train your team to build this themselves or also hire for you. I can also help you understand how this product becomes a product that collects data, then help you like navigate that roadmap on your pitch deck and explain this to investors. And I can introduce you to investors and I can introduce you to my friends who can give you feedback. As long as you know what they actually want. Right. And I think anytime I've hired somebody, if they asked me, what was at stake? Why did I need to hire somebody now? They would have, and they truly demonstrate that they could do that. I would be personally willing to pay way more, but instead I'm kind of gluing people together and I'm gluing tasks together because it's not quite there yet. But now if they could do that, I'm probably getting, Days of my life back per week, and how much do I value that is like a, is like a percentage of my whole life, Right. **Jackson:** Do you see yourself as sort of, um, intentionally building any amount of leverage? So much of what you, that, that answer in some ways is just like giving other people leverage. **Jason:** I don't think I'm good at that **Jackson:** Interesting. Huh? I, I see some of that, but I'm, I'm say more. **Jason:** I just know I'm not that good. Like, I think in the, in the extremes, I still sometimes think, Oh man, like I should have done this myself. **Jackson:** myself. **Jason:** And if that's the case, I don't even think it's their fault, right? It's probably because I did not explain the what or the when or the how or the why, and I need to take that role seriously because you're so used to being the ex like the execution. right? But what that means is really, it's just like a bricklayer yelling at a brick layer. nobody's winning and nobody's impressed. **Jackson:** many levels down, **Jason:** right? You know, it's like, oh, I'm just like yelling at someone for like, doing the dishes poorly. It's like, no, no, but like, how's the family, right? Like, that's And so, I don't think I figured it out yet. **Jackson:** You've hired some people recently on the notable leverage. What does that felt like, **Jason:** Still hard. I It's like, I wish they could tell me what I want. Right. **Jackson:** Aren't you in the business of telling people what they want? **Jason:** and Because I know what they want. **Jackson:** Yeah. Oh, really? which is why I feel very good about asking for like, like more of the result. Uh, so you, you're, you, would, you, would you say that you are, it's not that you're so good at telling people what they should want, it's actually that you're on some level, like empathetic to what they really want or need and good at identifying that. Yeah, **Jason:** it's specifically in the, I am building machine learning products that need to collect data to, you know, create this, I did a flywheel like that part. I've just been doing that for five years. So if you've been doing that for less than five, I feel pretty good that I can just tell you where the bodies are. But am I good at marketing and newsletters? No. So am I like between hiring employee and paying, um, Like 700 an hour for a coach, I would almost rather hire the coach or the agency. Right. And it's like, this is actually out of my, like, skill range. In which case I need to find someone who's like better at me than that. That's like the CEO needing to fire, hire like a VP. **Jackson:** You mentioned not having mentors. Yeah. Isn't that kind **Jason:** Probably both. **Jackson:** Okay. do you view mentors as something different than the kind of coaching scenario you just described? **Jason:** No, I just, I, but again, like after, like after selling a course, I was like, damn, like I'm, I'm actually helping people. I wonder who could help me. Like, um, Like, it's not a flex to have no mentors. I think that's also like a challenge. That's also like a silly challenge run, you know? It's like, oh, I beat, I beat, **Jackson:** I beat the game of it. like, **Jason:** Like, I beat the game with like no equipment. Right? And it's like, okay, but why? **Jackson:** Man that generalizes so devastatingly. **Jason:** Yeah. It's like, I don't want to ask for help. **Jackson:** Maybe this is just what therapy is. Honestly, **Jason:** oh, you, you wanna ask for help? You're gonna beat the entire game without you doing any side quests. **Jackson:** Have there been any under level, have there been any areas where you've, maybe this coaching example is one, but any recent, um, areas where you've asked for help in a way that like was a little glass shattering, or you finally realized you should have been asking for help **Jason:** I think it's like every time I've asked for help Yeah. why **Jackson:** you perpetually asking for help? **Jason:** I'm working on it. Yeah. **Jackson:** Yeah. **Jason:** Yeah, Yeah. like, like, like the, so the coach I hired is like, just like a life coach. And the first call was like, dude, I feel anxious all the time. I feel like I have to just keep working harder. And like, the moment I stop, I'll be homeless. And then afterwards, I'm just like, no, life will always be easier for me because I've built, like, I've, I've set myself up already. Like it only gets easier. **Jackson:** and I don't have to be someone, **Jason:** Right. But it's like for a thousand dollars, you can change your mind. That's, that's great. You know what And the next day I lost a client and I go, Oh, okay. I guess I'll tell Tom I'm available. And then I, and then I got like, Got it. Came, came back. **Jackson:** the variance is way lower. **Jason:** Yeah. And I was like, Oh, like this client turned great. I can email two people, see if one, if one of them is interested. And then they were, and they're like, great, nothing changed. Like, it turns out even the, the Jason four days in the future could have handled it. And I was like stressed out for a week with like a headache. And then it turns out Jason can just like send an email. I'd get another client. Why? Cause I've built my life. **Jackson:** Right. ## [00:35:58] Consulting and Independent Contracting **Jackson:** Yeah. Do you think, um, do you think more people should be consulting or fewer? **Jason:** a young **Jackson:** What's a young person? **Jason:** Okay. It's What I do is tell you all the mistakes I've made. **Jackson:** Hmm. Right. It's a very much a product of experience. **Jason:** I don't have that many frameworks. Like, I just have, like, three or four frameworks that I have applied. You know, I don't have, like, this, like, 30 page SOP of, like, this is how you fire somebody, this is how you hire somebody. But just along my vertical, I'm just very specialized. **Jackson:** And you're also doing less, um, producing these days than you maybe used to be. It may be an important definition in the kind of contract work or **Jason:** yeah, yeah. **Jackson:** You're teaching more than you're producing. **Jason:** Yeah. In that same sense, I think it, I don't know if even, like, should people be consulting is the question. I think one thing that could be more interesting, should more people be independent contractors? **Jackson:** That's a much better version of the same question. **Jason:** And I kind of think the answer is yes. Like, I'm going back to Waterloo, like, like, six, if I'm going back to Waterloo and I gave a talk, What success would look like is two years down the road. Someone says, Oh my God, Jason, I went to your talk and I've just started like a solo business of like me and like three people and we'll make like a million dollars a year because that risk is feels very low now. I don't know how many people I could give a talk to and they say, Oh my God, Jason, uh, I raised venture capital now. I run like a hundred million dollar company even. I think that's like very, very hard still. **Jackson:** Arguably getting harder. **Jason:** Yeah. yeah, yeah. So I think with AI, I just think there's going to be so many more like individual small businesses making a couple million a year and having like a fairly calm **Jackson:** Yeah. being independent, but specifically like building your own product or, or, or, and I guess obviously you could be entrepreneurial in a service sense, but I'm, I'm kind of drawing it producing something of your own versus servicing somebody independently. Um, whether that being in the kind of like agency type work or just being an independent, talented person, um, who isn't a full time employee, **Jason:** Yeah. **Jackson:** is it worth drawing that distinction? And is your point about AI, does it apply to both of those things? **Jason:** I think so, right? It's like, it's like if I became the next McKinsey, the problem I'm actually solving is just recruiting. I don't know if I want to solve that problem, right? I think Hormozy has an example of, uh, different service industries are solving different problems. If you are doing personal training, right? Everyone wants to be a personal trainer. So your problem is marketing, getting customer, getting, like getting funnels. But if you hire cleaners, then your problem is just hiring because no one wants to clean their house. I think in the services industry, it's like, it's also kind of the same thing of like, what are the kind of problems you want to solve? And I think if the problem you want to solve is just scaling your own knowledge work as an independent person in like 2024. There's like no better time. I think so many people can be having like a great lifestyle. **Jackson:** you ## [00:39:52] Ambition, &quot;Manhattan Project&quot; Appeal **Jason:** If you want to do like the big mission and we'll solve the problems for like seven years in a row, like I've done that, which is why it's like more fun for me to be independent because I just get to have taco Tuesday with my friends. **Jackson:** Is that the only thing you miss, about working in a big company? Is that the only real appeal? Have **Jason:** You have more resources to make longer term bets. I think. If I didn't have the hand injury, I would probably still try to go into, like, an anthropic and open AI because you want to be part of, like, the Manhattan Project of this time. now that I don't think that's in the cards for me, at least in the next couple years, it's like, well, I guess I, I guess I'm just supposed to enjoy my life. Which is, like, not the worst. Not the worst thing. Yeah, yeah. **Jackson:** If you could Well, maybe worth just Talking about like, hand injury wise, you can code now, but at a less, less volume and less speed than you used to be able to, or just they're diminishing returns and eventually you, it hurts. **Jason:** Yeah. I think, I think if we got in a heated argument, I texted you really fast for like 20 minutes, my hands were hurt, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, I can't text that much. It hasn't really affected my eating or anything like that, but. Like, even when I write, it's all speech to text. **Jackson:** What about writing code? You're just not writing very much code. Cursor. **Jason:** But the cursor input is speech to text. **Jackson:** Wow. **Jason:** select code and I talk **Jackson:** Um, if I told you you could have a meaningful level of impact at a Manhattan Project type company, um, without writing code, um, maybe it's teaching, maybe it's managing, something like that. Like, would that be appealing? **Jason:** At this current point? I, I think the bigger question is like, what is the problem I'm solving? It's like, if I'm managing, am I, am I solving the bureaucracy problem? Is that the problem I want to solve? is **Jackson:** Well, that's a pessimistic way of looking at managing. Or cynical. **Jason:** but it's also **Jackson:** realistic yeah, yeah. yeah. But the other version of the picture would be like, you do a lot of teaching in your current work. You're clearly decent at it. Um, And a great manager is somebody who just teaches and uplifts and enables really talented people. It's like a, like a, **Jason:** sure. Yeah. Yeah. Phil **Jackson:** Jackson is a great coach. **Jason:** Mm-Hmm. Yeah. I think if the prom is interesting, I would be interested, which is like. A shitty answer, but that's kind of like yeah ## [00:42:30] What are you motivated by? **Jackson:** What are you motivated by? **Jason:** I want to figure out how to live a good life Yeah, that's like a weird answer but I think that's it Like it would be great to sort of be in my 40s and like talk to my kids. This is like Yeah, I lived a great life. Let me tell you **Jackson:** in your forties **Jason:** How to like look at the world **Jackson:** Hmm. There's some teaching inside of that too. **Jason:** of that, too. Do **Jackson:** Do you think you were motivated by the same thing five years ago? **Jason:** No, I think 5 years ago it was like legacy, and leaving impact on the world and.. **Jackson:** Do you think you will be motivated by what you are now in five years or maybe in 10 years? **Jason:** 10 years? **Jackson:** Mm. Which I think is possible. Right. Well, then there's maybe a distinction here, which is being motivated to live a good life for yourself and being motivated to figure out what living a good life means. Which I think you were saying the second thing. **Jason:** Yeah. Like I, I think success would really be. I think success would really be like my kids going like, yeah, I did the thing dad thing. And like, I think he's right. Yeah. **Jackson:** That, that, I think that, uh, pattern matches against the rest of the conversation. **Jason:** generational impact type thing. **Jackson:** Yeah, Yeah. yeah, yeah, And, and maybe that, maybe that's some grand thing, and maybe it rolls down to like a couple of tidbits of like, use the potions and **Jason:** Oh, yes! Don't **Jackson:** be, be, be, be, you don't have to be someone, **Jason:** Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like. It's like, beat the game, and then do the challenge runs, and the challenge runs are really fucking cool. ## [00:44:36] Challenge runs and side quests **Jackson:** Are there any challenge runs that are interesting to you? Yeah, It doesn't have to be in **Jason:** I mean, in business, it's just like, yeah, I just like, put all my money into my savings, I started a bank account, and I was Wow, it took me eight months to save up as much money as I did in, like, seven years. **Jackson:** Hmm. Yeah. It's cool. but **Jason:** also **Jackson:** that's illustrative of the ways that the, maybe the goalpost might move. **Jason:** Right. But, but that's also just like, oh wow. Like, you know, uh, that's kind of like a, like you beat the, was that, what's that speed run one that's like any percentage **Jackson:** Yeah, yeah. **Jason:** Right. Oh, that's cool. Like, I'm, I'm not doing the, like start in VC and make a billion dollar challenge run. Like, I think that's, Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. But, Like one thing I would love to do in some part of my life is make like a hundred thousand dollars, like selling art. Right. That's more, I guess, I guess that's more of like a side quest and a challenge. I don't really know, but like I have some of these like fun missions along, along the way, but they're not all like business related because it's like, again, it's like being rich and having the six pack to me is like the same goal. If I do a couple of things and like live this lifestyle, you just like get the six pack. know what I mean? **Jackson:** I **Jason:** If I just develop my skills in marketing and like, learn a little bit about like, you know, like sales and positioning. Yeah, you get a business. Right? It's like pretty cool. And you can like, and once you figure out this like business thing, what you realize is just, Like there's so much value that out there to capture the, and all you have to do to like make more money is to present something that the world wants. And it's like, so obvious now. So, okay, great. If I ever need money, I just have to like, **Jackson:** yeah. **Jason:** offer the world something. ## [00:46:39] How to be prolific **Jackson:** Well, on, on the note of maybe other things or non-business things, you've, I think you, I see you as someone who's pretty proli prolific, uh, or at least done a whole bunch of different things. And yet you also are at least fairly focused, um, and consolidated in some sense. Like, do you think that most people swing to one end of that spectrum? Do you, is that something you're intentionally thinking about? Is it, comes easy to you? How have you managed... **Jason:** I don't know if I have focus. I spend 10 hours a week on Tiktok. **Jackson:** My Ok, that's focused. **Jason:** S crazy. If I value, if I value myself at the hourly rate that I bill, **Jackson:** That content better be pretty good. **Jason:** It's crazy. Um, I don't know if I'm actually that focused. I think, I think the thing that is my superpower is sort of connecting the dots across many unfocused things, right? It's like, It's like, I have like two newsletters. I'm doing the consulting thing and also selling courses. And now I'm doing like jiu jitsu and pottery. It feels very unfocused. Right. And. **Jackson:** but most people don't have time for any of the things they want to do, and you somehow have time for all of these things, and you're doing 'em in a competent enough way that implies some level of focus. Maybe you're context switching a decent amount, **Jason:** Yes. you're maximizing that time. Okay. So here's an analogy that I had in my like fourth year. Of like my math degree where I somehow laid it out where I was taking five courses. But to me, each one, I believe was the same math problem. So I'm just doing like, I'm just doing like eigenvalues in like five different ways. Right. And then it just doesn't feel like five things really. **Jackson:** Mmm. **Jason:** Right. It's almost like asking, like, if you went to an athlete like, how do you do so many sports? Like I see you play golf and then also basketball and run track. I'm like, well, I'm just an athlete. like, like the boundary of the sport does not feel like the right boundary. And clearly some of the inputs work across domain. Yeah. So it's, it's like, it's not actually. So like, yeah, in math, there's this notion of like effective degrees of **Jackson:** It's **Jason:** like there's degrees of freedom, but if you, some of them are limited, it's like, actually you can express everything in fewer degrees, right? And it's like, well, like when I was taking that course, it really felt like I was taking like two and a half courses. Like it wasn't five courses. And so I think of when I, when I do other things like, well, to you, it looks like I'm doing like **Jackson:** Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, **Jason:** but like, what am I really doing? I'm trying to figure out what people want. And it turns out in any kind of business, that's like the only thing. And then I'm also developing the skill of like writing an offer. So I'm only doing two things. I'm doing like lead generation and then writing offers. **Jackson:** about including, um, some of these more personal discipline things? Or creative things? I, I don't, maybe you think, is jujitsu and pottery, for example, the same problem? I **Jason:** I think the principles are the same, which is just don't, just don't try fancy shit. Yeah, like if you want to be effective, just stop trying fancy shit. Like just **Jackson:** Simplify. **Jason:** Yeah, like just stop watching YouTube and just like do it. And then try to forget as much as possible. And then everything you remember is Extremely effective. **Jackson:** There's a guy named visa con on **Jason:** Twitter Yes. **Jackson:** know, he's got the whole thing about like, just draw the owl and like, just draw a hundred owls. Yeah. **Jason:** Yeah. I just, I feel like so many things I learned when I was younger. I was like, oh man, like, on YouTube I saw this, lemme try this thing. And then you, you lose so much. I'm **Jackson:** then you lose. We're looking Maybe. **Jason:** Maybe. Yeah. ## [00:50:52] **Jason:** But it's, it's like in Juujitsu, it's like, how do I get better at Juujitsu? It's like time on the mat. Right? Like every black belt has the same answer time on the mat. And then every beginner has like their own answer. **Jackson:** their own answer. **Jason:** I definitely good at, I'm good at the things I enjoy. **Jackson:** Like, **Jason:** Like if I've gotten, like, I've definitely nearly like failed courses. I just like, don't respect them. **Jackson:** like, don't respect them. I don't, **Jason:** have proof that I could like push through anything. **Jackson:** But the, so there's, there's clearly something there, which is that, um, you chose jiujitsu and not x like the, the, the, the critical input to time on the mat is liking to be on the mat. It's, it's the Novak Djokovich. I like to hit the tennis ball. How do you, how do you, how do you decide what to, I don't know, there's 20, 20 year olds or 30 year olds named Jackson trying to figure out what they should, what they, what they're great at or what they should do. And some, maybe you just happened on jujitsu and it like was, was right. But how do you decide what to try to get good at? If maybe the question isn't how do you get good at things? It's how do you decide what to get good at? Is that fair? Maybe, maybe I'm missing the point still. **Jason:** Hmm. I don't even know. I just feel like I just enjoy knowing I can be good at things. **Jackson:** Hmm. **Jason:** So it's, it's like the meta skill is like the, the true reward. **Jackson:** Have you tried stuff that you were like, not, not for me, or have coding, juujitsu free diving and pottery **Jason:** Maybe it's cope, but I just see it as like, I feel like I am unwilling to make the sacrifices to be good at this thing, **Jackson:** so I'm not gonna try, but the stuff I am willing to try. Great. guess I guess **Jason:** that's just an exchange rate for time. **Jackson:** Yeah, no, I, I actually think there's, there's a lot, there's, and there's some draw, there's some energy. I, one of my, one of my sort of working definitions of, of sort of like how you get to taste is like, yeah, I think it costs Rick Rubin less energy to like listen to the incremental amount of music than the rest of us. Yeah. And so like, it's just like he can just listen to more music and so like, he's gonna have better taste. **Jason:** he's more fit **Jackson:** it's, there's another version of this, which is like, what's the thing that sort of like Naval's version is like, what, what feels like play to you? It feels like work. But the one I like even more is like, um, what's the thing that sort of seems hard for everyone else that doesn't seem that hard for you? Maybe that's an over simplification, but there was something that drew you to the mat. And a lot of people look at jujitsu and they're like, hell no. Like, oh my gosh. I **Jason:** I mean, I think that drew me. ## [00:53:46] Mastery, complex games, and creative fingerprints **Jason:** Okay I think that what draws me to many things is seeing that more knowledge is like an incredibly powerful like force multiplier. yeah, I think it's like, okay, the outcome is force times leverage, right? And there is like a whole range of things that you can do. But there are certain things that you can be thousands of times better at. Like nobody is deadlifting like even 10x. more than the average person. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Like, the average person does like maybe 130, and the best person does like 1000, so, okay, so like, world record maybe is like 10x. But **Jackson:** like 10, 000. **Jason:** Yeah, like, between the, between the average runner and the fastest runner, I don't know what that number Right. But I think there are other activities where that, that lever is like thousands, you know. Do you like No, but I definitely think they're more than 10 times better than think they could, I think they're probably, I think they're like probably thousands of times better than me, right? But, yeah, so maybe a part of it is like those games are more interesting because those games are games where like determination and force and effort compound more. Dramatically periods of time. I say they're **Jackson:** dramatically. On some dimension, like more possibility space, um, is kind of a good proxy for creativity. **Jason:** Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. I would say so. I would say so. **Jackson:** Have you ever heard of a guy named Josh Waitzkin? **Jason:** I, I love his **Jackson:** Yeah. you've you've very, very Josh **Jason:** making the unconscious conscious. Yeah. **Jackson:** And when his whole thing is like, sort of learning is, is self expression. like **Jason:** it truly is **Jackson:** through, you can play chess musically, you can play chess mathematically. **Jason:** Yeah. And I think like, you know, you get to a point where you can kind of tell who's who just by the work that they do. And it's al that moment is always like super fun. Like at least I want to get to that level Where I can like listen to some, like, I would love to get to a point where when I listen to music, I can like understand the person. I **Jackson:** I think **Jason:** barely do that in Jiu Jitsu. Like if I roll with somebody, I feel like I know them better. **Jackson:** yeah, **Jason:** but I'm not there with music. It just sounds good. I don't have the language yet. **Jackson:** This is cool. **Jason:** I can read code and be like, Oh, this person's a little nervous and doesn't think he's doing the right thing. He's left some options in how this is supposed **Jackson:** see the person in there. **Jason:** Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause I'm just like, oh yeah, like I I guess weird. But yeah, I feel like I can tell if code is like not as confident, right. As it has like committed to a decision that is like harder to step back out of. Right. But like my personality, I want to build the dumbest thing possible. Like I want to make it super simple, very easy to like uninstall because I'm confident that you're not going to do it anyways. Right. **Jackson:** It's funny. There's um, my, my, my intuition would be that most people there, there are a lot of domains in software engineering being one of them that at least people without sophistication in them would assume are highly utilitarian. And sort of like, um, there's a very correct way to write a certain type of code, there's a correct way to do the job. And obviously intuitively, I think more people get that they're in purely creative domains, there isn't a crack white pottery. And then competition is this really beautiful, interesting marriage of those two where like chess, maybe some people think there's a correct way. I think a great chess player would say, Oh, actually no there. And so, but the funny thing is I think actually almost every domain is much more like pottery **Jason:** than **Jackson:** is like. Um, math. And even math is, as a, **Jason:** yeah, many different. ## [00:57:47] Programming, animation, and style vs. cohesion **Jason:** Okay. So here's the analogy I think I talked about when I, when we talk about the subject, which is I mostly hate programmers. because They, they try to express themselves too much. Right, like I think too many programmers act like painters and not like animators. **Jackson:** Ah. **Jason:** Like you cannot just show up in an animation studio and like do your thing. Everyone draws Homer Simpson like Homer Simpson. Like if you add like an extra line in his head, you're doing it wrong. Right. And like animation, there's like levels of mentorship and review and like key framing. And the people who do the key frames are different than the people who do the transitions. And some of that work is like overseed and all this stuff like that is, that is a production. But I think most of software engineering feels like. Everyone gets to pick their own medium And everyone gets to pick their own frame and their own colors and their own style. And I I think it's I don't think it's good **Jackson:** The irony is that you're, you're almost saying that, um, And, and maybe the point would be to be clear in both animation and in software, a really experienced person is gonna see the fingerprints anyway. **Jason:** but **Jackson:** but also some degree to which you should fall in line with the style or the design language or the **Jason:** form. Yeah. And like if you think about animation, you know, there are kinds of scenes that certain animators excel at. You know, like in anime there's like, oh, if you see. really good hand-to-hand combat, there's a couple of like big guys for that. **Jackson:** Mmm. **Jason:** Oh, these are the ones that are exceptionally good at like dynamic hand to hand combat with like wild camera angles and they come in and they supervise the orchestration. Or it's like, you know, Gundams, lasers shooting out, like rocks exploding into like a million pieces. But there's, like, styles. But for the most part, like, everyone kind of knows that there needs to be some kind of cohesion. I feel like in a lot of software, there is no cohesion. Everyone wants to do it their way because there's this like Demonstration of intelligence. I think that annoys me Well and there's some... there some degree.. **Jackson:** The person who should express the most style, in theory, should be the per the master. I I was watching the studio, um, the um, uh, Miyazaki documentary recently on, um, making the Boy and the Heron. Have you seen this? It's amazing. Really, really great. Um, and it it they ended up bringing in the Neon Genesis guy to animate on Boy and the Heron because Miyazaki's aging. And it's this, like, beautiful version of what you're describe describing in the positive direction, which is like, The Neon Genesis guy is a master **Jason:** Yeah. **Jackson:** showing up at the foot of the master of masters and is like, I'm going to fall in line. **Jason:** Yes. **Jackson:** we don't have a lot of that culture in not just software engineering, but almost **Jason:** anything. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, yeah. Maybe it's not even animation, maybe it's just like Actually no, I think even like Cinderella probably has like. The, you know, fall in line, you're an animator, you, this is the role you play, **Jackson:** yeah, **Jason:** but Yeah, I feel like a lot of the code I see is just very wonky because of that, like, personality that **Jackson:** Well this is broadly... there's a meta point here around probably like western culture and eastern culture. One of the clear divides the good thing about western culture is that we have way more creativity we have way more styles, but at some point you maybe rotate past the point of, there's a reason , mastery, and training, and apprenticeship, and honing a craft over a really long period of time. Do you think we're losing that entirely? In, in, at least maybe the software domain? **Jason:** I don't, I don't think it's, I don't know how often that's actually here. Right. ## [01:01:57] **Jason:** It's like everyone's talking about like the death of the junior developer and like, I don't wanna hire junior people. 'cause why? 'cause the senior people don't want to mentor, **Jackson:** they **Jason:** they want to just do their job. But they, and they don't think that mentorship is part of that job. Right, because if you're cracked you're like a 14 year old like we're just coding since forever and then you're like, well Why did you need the mentor? but I think now because more people are entering the field is just like yeah, very little interest in mentoring like I Like the way I coach my developer Ivan I like feel bad sometimes because I'm just like very like, I'm, I don't know how to mentor someone in code. I only know how to do it in like in pottery and like, you know, jujitsu. **Jackson:** Oh, interesting. Maybe there's something about code that makes it a little less apprentice-y **Jason:** I think it is equally apprentice y, but it's just like, the style is different. I'm just like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna write this code. You're gonna watch me write it. And I'm just gonna delete the code and you gotta **Jackson:** you better read I feel like an asshole, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's not even, even, even simply the notion of like, there's a whole bunch of senior developers at Facebook and there's a whole bunch of junior developers that is not like, welcome to the sushi shop. Like I am the master. You are the apprentice to clean. entire structural dynamic of that is less intimate. so it'd be interesting to, to imagine maybe it's just product of intimacy and one to one paring. And obviously there's some of that in these bigger companies, but. **Jason:** that in these bigger companies, but. like, I'm like trying it, right? okay, like I wrote the code. I want you to like add all the comments and then add like paragraph descriptions, explaining what's going on. And I want you to, I want to read it. And I want to figure out whether or not your summary of the code is actually correct. Like, I want to know that you understand and you can read. Right. Like if, even if you think about the idea of copying, **Jackson:** right. **Jason:** Okay. I think because code is so easy to copy, no one's actually copying. Like, we're just like, Oh, here's an instrument. Go play music. Go listen to music and then play music. But no one's like doing covers. **Jackson:** Totally. Totally. And by the way, you hear great musicians, John, there's a John Mayer quote I love about this, he's like, I tried to sound like so and so, and it ended up sounding like me. Yeah. **Jason:** Yeah. **Jackson:** the Grateful Dead is another, and, That is the beautiful kind of formation of style. It's like the Virgil Abloh 3% idea. **Jason:** Yeah. **Jackson:** related. It's related. **Jason:** But here's the thing, in code, no one's copy. Like no one's copying for a study. Everyone's like, oh, Jason built it. I'm gonna build it differently. Everyone **Jackson:** build it differently because if you build **Jason:** differently. You're smart, **Jackson:** Huh. That's a good explanation. **Jason:** But in piano, if you could play Mozart, you're a genius. **Jackson:** Do you think um How do you think... do you put much consideration into style? **Jason:** In code? **Jackson:** Personal style, um, in terms of clothing, in terms of your work, in terms of your creativity. Does style happen passively, or are you in, are you considerate about it? Style feels like an interesting cousin of taste, which is part of, taste has been discussed a lot lately. **Jason:** Yeah, I mean, I think clothing is also different Than like many other types of clothing. Styles because clothing is also about like external perception of you. yeah, it's like, what symbols am I choosing to use to rep, like to express myself is how I think about Style **Jackson:** But let's go back to the maybe outside of clothing example, style in code I **Jason:** like, Oh, I want to do it this way and that way. And like they're, they're like choosing **Jackson:** to,But I'll give you a different example: personal design language. In pottery, um, having sort of like a model of reality or a model of practice or model of form. Um, I make, when I do bowls, I do like a turned out lip or these types of things. Maybe, maybe I'm conflating multiple ideas here. Um, but it seems that most talented creatives, especially as they move up the mastery curve, implicitly or explicitly express style. I **Jason:** I feel like I'm just like, I don't even know how to give an answer because what I don't even think of pottery with like a style. Yeah. It's just like my hands just create like a certain shape and like the style is just like, my **Jackson:** body **Jason:** is like effective at making. **Jackson:** Well, it's, it goes back to the, maybe the very beginning of our conversation, which is like the purpose in **Jason:** Yeah, like the depth of the cup is just determined by like the shape of my hand. You know what I mean? **Jackson:** So you view, you view, uh, the P you see the poetics of code, but you view pottery as is purely wrote. **Jason:** Well, like both Jiu Jitsu and pottery is like, Oh, everything is just downstream of like my body. You know, like if I reduce everything, I am just doing whatever is my body is good at. You know what I mean? I dunno how describe it. It's like if you have a paintbrush, like the market makes is the mark a paintbrush makes like Maybe this is like, this is too like East Asian. Woo. But it's like, yeah, **Jackson:** like the, **Jason:** the pencil style is just the pencil. And like if you draw with pencils, like it, obviously there's like a different expression of like who's holding the pencil, but like there's no person, like I'm the pencil. I'm not even like the you ## [01:07:56] Jason only writes with his voice--with some LLM help **Jackson:** Do you think you have style in your writing? **Jason:** My writing is just me talking. **Jackson:** Like just are writing and talking the same thing **Jason:** for me, yes. **Jason:** Because I can't write. **Jackson:** So you primarily, you write a ton, both co. You don't write a ton of code, but you write it, you write some code and you write a ton of words. Yeah. ## [01:08:12] **Jackson:** You also do a lot of talking and you use dictation to some degree. And then also to some degree transcription via LLM **Jason:** Yeah. **Jackson:** or even transmutation via LLM to write., um. you write much before the recent advent of LLMs? Okay. **Jason:** Because I, before then, I was just the technical person and to like, I don't wanna waste my time like writing all the shit because I got, I got work to do. **Jackson:** But you talked. Um, do you edit much? **Jason:** No. **Jackson:** So your, your, your experience of writing is almost one of like, telling another person what to do with clay. That's an extreme degree, uh, obviously it's not that I there's transmutation or being translated. **Jason:** My blogs are monologues. **Jackson:** monologues into dictation, um, with chatgpt or something like that, editing it? are **Jason:** Yeah, basically just like add some headers. **Jackson:** and how close to what was dictated do you think the end result is **Jason:** Uh, my favorite work is the least touched up. Because it should just, like, even my text messages are speech to text, right? Because everything I say, I don't really say off the cuff. It's almost like I've told this to enough people that, that when I deliver it, **Jackson:** it's coming out of the cache. **Jason:** go. Yeah. It's. **Jackson:** Do you, um, what, what's the description you give, uh, what's like the, the, um, Not just a prompt, or, prompt and or is there any instructions? **Jason:** Uh, use my words, add some headers, remove filler words. **Jackson:** Do not change the meaning of any of **Jason:** it. I try, yeah, yeah. I get, I get like quite **Jackson:** Have you experimented at all with trying to push it in the other direction? **Jason:** it Gets to like, hey howdy, like, **Jackson:** you think in 3 years, you’ll want it to do more with your words? assuming its 200 iq and not 90, 100 iq. Iq. **Jason:** In which case, I would rather just have the LLM interview me and write its own content. **Jackson:** Really! Ok, different question, would you want to have a great copywriter, er, copyeditor? **Jason:** It depends on what the objective is. Is it to sell?? Because if it's to sell, like, I don't need to exist. **Jackson:** But if its to say what you believe, you want it to be as authentic as possible **Jason:** Yeah, even if it's like me talking about my feelings, I would never want that to be modified in any way, unless the LM was interviewing me in a way that drew more out of me. one would argue if I had an idea that I think this is true and I want more people to believe this, then there's some objective of like, persuasion. I would want the language model to augment my persuasion because that's what, like, that's me getting, that's me asking for help. **Jackson:** Right. Right. right, Do you think you've written about writing on the internet? Um, I think a lot of people view writing as like some kind of meaningful hurdle, uh, for, for any subset of reasons. do you think that the, like talking into the LLM is a path that more people should try? I maybe broader question would be like, how did, how do you writing it? You can write it on the internet to sell. You can write it on the internet to shout out a bat signal. You can write on the internet to think. A lot of people aren't doing it. You've written that more people should write more. **Jason:** Mm-Hmm. .....Where **Jackson:** you think the gap is in this? **Jason:** I mean, for me, writing is almost just improv because all I do is I just say it once. Like I don't really edit that much. So like between idea and blog posts to being published on my website, it's about 40 minutes. **Jackson:** That's amazing. **Jason:** Um. and, like, it's really like my writing is like very aggressive. It's like if I get outta the house, oh, I wanna talk about like this idea. I'll just like, record a loom video on my phone, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, copy, transcript, paste with my prompt And I'll just like email it to myself and then when I get home, I'll just post it. **Jackson:** What percentage of those do you publish? The times you sort of do some version **Jason:** Probably everything.. **Jackson:** Oh my gosh.. But there's something that's not adding up here, which is to say either. You're just like a generational spoken orator. ## [01:12:47] Flooding the airwaves with content **Jackson:** Most of us have too high of a bar. ## [01:12:50] **Jason:** Most, I think is the, for sure the bar. I am a nobody. If I, if if 4,000 people read my article on average, nobody knows me. **Jackson:** say more. **Jason:** like it just doesn't, just doesn't matter. **Jackson:** We were, before we turned on the podcast, we were talking a little bit about the sort of modern media climate. The optimal strategy is just to flood. Most of us are very concerned. Trump, Rogan, these guys, they just talk a ton. was that intuitive? And this goes, this gets into that succeeding on Twitter stuff too. **Jason:** It's just mat time. **Jackson:** It's just mat time. But this time it has an audience. **Jason:** When I fight somebody I have an audience: the person I'm fighting. **Jackson:** Uh, you know what? There's something inside of this that I, at least I'm realizing for myself, which is that if I knew, um, that five people were gonna read my posts, yeah. I would publish way more. **Jason:** Five people's a dinner. **Jackson:** There's some poss like there's some theoretical possibility of it being out there forever for, to your point, no one's reading it, but like, I'm getting caught up in the. **Jason:** Yeah, because you, you, you think you're somebody and you, you point you're think you're somebody. And I'm a nobody. Like I am a liberated by the nobody. That's amazing. ## [01:14:10] Twitter growth: simple math **Jason:** I have a hun for **Jackson:** Same thing. **Jason:** I, I tweet 45 times a day. He's **Jackson:** on Twitter different than writing long form? You tweet 45. That's crazy. **Jason:** Check my stats. **Jackson:** I probably tweeted **Jason:** I start 45 times this year. I started, I really committed to Twitter. I had 400, I had like 200 tweets and 400 followers. January of 2023. **Jackson:** How many now? **Jason:** at like, 28. Thousand. tweets? 22. 1.7 **Jackson:** Why? Geez, **Jason:** It's just 1. 7. **Jackson:** Is writing for long form and writing for Twitter different and obviously some degree, but H how is it different? **Jason:** I think it's the same, it's just more words. **Jackson:** It is the same. Hmm. That doesn't seem intuitive to me. I, so I'll give you an example. I find myself ending up writing a number of the essays. Publish or don't publish **Jason:** a good, I think you also, like, write quality though, you know, like, I think the difference is I, most of my writing is, like, me just, like, getting beat up by somebody at the gym or, like, beating up a beginner. Most of my writing is, like, I, put, I, I, **Jackson:** plenty of quality. So **Jason:** But it's, but it's because I, like, beat someone at the gym that day. **Jackson:** and a lot of days you get beat up, but **Jason:** didn't get those. Yeah. Yeah. Why? Because it didn't surface. right. **Jackson:** right. If I, If I, texted **Jason:** you, ev, I don't even, I was surprised I wrote 55 things. . Right. I was like, what the fuck? Like, like seven of them are like, overlapping concepts. Like, I should have just written one good one. But if I **Jackson:** but you were, you were getting, uh, there's a creative idea I love a lot, which is you have to get like the gunk out **Jason:** first, Yeah. Every artist has 10, 000 bad **Jackson:** Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. like **Jason:** Picasso just got them out when he was like 12. Um, yeah, it's like, it's just, you just like, don't matter. Like all the good stuff. Like if it was actually good, it would, it would get pumped up. **Jackson:** That's the rare thing about the modern world. That's the one. Like as much as people complain about it, the stuff's kind of meritocratic. What, what, why didn't, um, even if they are kind of similar, what have you learned about what makes a good tweet? It's not just random. **Jason:** Oh, man. I mean, I can, I can go through like course material. I mean, so the first thing I, I think the next course no, no, it's, it's in the consulting course. Okay. Yeah, it's the consulting course is first be famous, step two, uh, **Jackson:** profit **Jason:** no. **Jackson:** no. Step **Jason:** two is like, change your mind about pricing. Okay. **Jackson:** Okay. **Jason:** And then step three is like, give them permission to pay you more money. But be famous is basically like, are you familiar with like the AIDA copywriting framework, attention, information, desire, action. **Jackson:** Intention, information, desire, action. **Jason:** Right. So like one idea I have, it's like, if I'm on Twitter just for attention, you're like, you're like sick, **Jackson:** A lot of people are. **Jason:** know? It's like, yeah, but you can also like, date girls for attention and validation. You can like go on dating apps. Like there's no difference. Right. But if you want to actually like convince someone to something or drive an action, I think ADA is like just a beautiful formula. So attention, information, desire, action. So the attention just says like have a strong hook that makes them stop scrolling. information is interest is just, you know, you, you present them the information that you're supposed to get. after they stop scrolling. **Jackson:** Something interesting. **Jason:** yeah, and then desire, you just create desire with the information you give them. in order for them to take an action. **Jackson:** And in the action in this case. **Jason:** whatever you are asking for. A follow, a like, a retweet **Jackson:** What percentage of your tweets do you have a call to action on? **Jason:** Well now it's like everything because I have an auto responder. **Jackson:** Wow so you're basically treating every tweet as a potential billboard if it hits. automatic That has a rollout underneath that **Jason:** And like, it's like based on category, Like, it's a **Jackson:** good **Jason:** machine. Like I have the assembly line now, but, um, but it's just like, well, before it's like, oh, know, do this in less lines, like in five lines of code. That's, that's, that's attention, right? It's like, oh, I built the system to do this. So you don't have to do that. **Jackson:** The first two kinda come as a..., attention and information is sort of like, you're really trying to give people the information that's actually interesting, but a lot of times that isn't self evident, and so the attention is like a clever way to make that shine. **Jason:** Right and the attention should foreshadow the value of having read the information and the reward for taking action. So if my tweet was, this weekend I went with my friends in New York City, and we had fried chicken and man this fried chicken was really good... you've lost me. Another thing I think about when writing a tweet is the TAM of the hook. So this weekend I, if that was the first couple of words, what's the TAM of that, **Jackson:** Low. Your boys. **Jason:** Right. It's like, yeah, like unless you're famous, like unless like, you know **Jackson:** Yeah **Jason:** But if I just said best chicken in New York **Jackson:** Boom, **Jason:** Right. What's the tan between I had the best chicken in the New York versus if you want the best chicken in New York **Jackson:** Yeah, **Jason:** Much bigger, but then man I had the best chicken in New York This weekend I went with my friends. We didn't know where to go and this place opened up late. We went and it was amazing. If you're in the city, you should definitely check this out. That's AIDA. But this is very different than like, oh, I went with my friends this weekend and we didn't know. They've already, you've already lost them. ## [01:19:49] Using the &quot;sawdust&quot; **Jackson:** Where do you get ideas? It's a hard, it's maybe the wrong question, but **Jason:** it's the sawdust. It's like my consulting. Like I'm actually just answering people's questions all the time, like every single **Jackson:** have an engine built into your daily, day to day. **Jason:** I work at the lump, like I work. **Jackson:** Yeah, ideas don't come from sitting around thinking about ideas. Ideas come from, like, bashing your head into things. Yeah, yeah. **Jason:** always like, even that I have, I have, uh, systematized. I have LLMs constantly mining my latest call transcripts for tweets **Jackson:** No way. Yeah. Just give us the super basic how that works. Thanks. **Jason:** I, so I use like a, I use a meeting notes **Jackson:** Yep. app **Jason:** and one of the prompts I have automated is like, uh, find notable things I've said and like Summarize it in like, **Jackson:** you need like a friend wearable that's just going around all day every day and just printing tweets. **Jason:** Exactly. exactly. And then I also have another one that writes proposals for blog outlines for me. So every meeting, so every meeting? I get like **Jackson:** three What, **Jason:** tweet ideas, **Jackson:** What recording tool do you use? **Jason:** circle back, circle back, **Jackson:** Okay. So it's auto transcribing. Feeding that into an LLM, you've got scripts running. **Jason:** Yeah, and it sends me like a Slack message of like, here's three tweets that could **Jackson:** Imagine if they gave Donald Trump this. **Jason:** that be incredible. **Jackson:** We'd all be done for. **Jason:** Yes, I have a whole, I have a Slack channel called content mine. And it's just like, you had a meeting with this VP. He asked two questions and you said something that, where he laughed. And guess what? That tweet hits. That's actually **Jackson:** pretty good? Like, it works? That seems, in terms of the things LLMs **Jason:** It's like 3 tweets a day. That's like 10% **Jackson:** Really? **Jason:** Like 10%. I mean, I have like **Jackson:** And your bar... back to the earlier point your bar for a tweet is not that high. **Jason:** Yeah. The average tweet gets a thousand readers. A good tweet gets like 200,000. Like it doesn't matter. A **Jackson:** thousand readers... how many likes? Or you don't care. You're just pure engagement. **Jason:** Yeah. I mean, Yeah, I would say so. Like the thing I really care about now is like newsletter growth. So it's like 30 a day for like two newsletters. **Jackson:** It's amazing. **Jason:** That's amazing. But. **Jackson:** Um, **Jason:** It's all the sawdust, right? It's like, **Jackson:** can you, uh, just for the listeners, like explain the sawdust very, very concretely. **Jason:** think, I don't know who had this idea, but basically, like, I think they, like, some lumber yard was like, hired some consultants to figure out how to make the lumber yard more productive and more, like, capital effective. And, like, the ultimate conclusion was we should somehow monetize the sawdust that comes out of these saws. And that created like another billion dollar industry of like particle boards and like mulch and then like firewood and all that kind of stuff, right? And that was like, just, just a sawdust. It's just the stuff that is the byproduct of the core business. And my core business now is actually consulting and working with big companies that have real problems and talking to their engineers and I'm asking me questions. **Jackson:** which is amazing Engine for all this stuff. Exactly. **Jason:** Right. And so it's like. Like I've answered the same and it's great because I answer the same four questions from four different VPs. I write a blog post and the seventh VP comes in and they just said, you just wrote about something six months ago that I've been struggling with it for two months. And I go, great, let me go pull out from my repository of like 50 blog posts and just inundate you with all the answers to questions you're probably going to have. And they're going to go, okay, well. I just started noticing this today. And you wrote about this six months ago. Like, how can we work with you? **Jackson:** no, no, brainer. Okay, I have a couple more things we need to wrap up. ## [01:23:30] ELI5 RAG (Retrieval augmented generation) **Jackson:** Number one, um, I need the ELI5 on RAG. **Jason:** Okay. Okay. Okay. **Jackson:** the dummies, not including me. **Jason:** Prompt engineering is like..., doing, For **Jackson:** context, this is one of your courses. You had a big course on RAG. **Jason:** yeah, but rag stands for retrieval augmented generation. Right. And so if anyone has used something like ChatGPT, if you paste in a blog post, you can start talking to ChatGPT about the blog post. Right. That's almost like, you know, giving ChatGPT a cheat sheet that it can reference. But you might not be able to copy paste, like, a textbook. So then the question is, can you figure out where the answer to your questions might lie in this textbook? Okay. So this is more like, you know, having an open book test, Right. So now the question is, can we, you talk to an AI and can the AI figure out what to look for and how to read what it sees, right? You could do this by trying to find like relevant books and putting the context, relevant chapters, relevant pages. All you're trying to do is just sort of give the AI enough information so you can answer your, your question correctly. But the mistake is people are all sort of worried about the LLM answering the question, and no one's really been focused on how to do the search very well, right? Turns out like if you ripped out the table of contents and the page numbers, an open book test is way, way harder. But you put some post it notes to help you and organize things is way better. If you Had summaries of these textbooks be way better if you gave them the whole library, it's actually not easier too. Right. And so much of the importance of solving this problem ends up becoming a search problem. Rather than just sort of like, the questions and the answers you're, you're writing down **Jackson:** What's the upper bound on the type of thing you do RAG on? Meaning, like, based on that explanation alone, if I knew kind of nothing else, you could sort of intuit that that's, like, what LLMs do about, with all the information? **Jason:** Yeah. **Jackson:** Obviously, that doesn't make sense. Like, what is the sort of boundary of A textbook, a whole encyclopedia, all of Wikipedia. **Jason:** So a lot of it is two things, right? One, when you're done training these models, you train them at some time stamp. so all news that happened afterwards is hard to recover. Right? So, that's one thing. If a sports game happened today, chatgpd can't know the answer unless it is able to search something. The second thing is chatgpd will know everything that's on the internet, but there's just a lot of stuff that's not on the internet. Right? So can I ask a questions about my diary? No. But if I gave it the ability to read my diary, then yes. Right? And then lastly, know, just as a matter of trust, I want it to cite things. I want to be able to read the thing it's citing. And so if I give it the page and it gives me an answer, I can ask, okay, where did you read this? Where on the page? Show me. And can I verify that **Jackson:** Adding fidelity to like the hallucination problem. **Jason:** Exactly. Exactly. So there's a, there's a couple of reasons why you might want to do a rag. And a lot of companies, you know, if you're a giant company with tons of Slack messages and documentation and, and paperwork and contracts, You have to do something that allows LLM to search because you can't put it all into memory. **Jackson:** How is this different from embedding? **Jason:** So embedding is just a way of searching, right? So, you could be searching things by reading the chapter headers of a book and then putting everything right? But what if the chapter is, you know, Animals in the jungle, right? But then you ask like animals in the forest, if you just compared the words, like maybe you, you don't have a match, but maybe you wanted the In which case the embeddings give you a way of sort of matching things a little bit more softly, ## [01:27:39] A final rant against couches **Jackson:** I see, I see, I see. Okay. Um, my last, um, uh, question slash prompt is, um, you inspired in me and it prompted a number of fun conversations, both with us and with people I know. Um, how do you feel about couches? **Jason:** I think couches are evil. I think they're obstructions to intimacy in any household. I think, you know, sitting on couches are like, make you sedentary. You like sit too long. You get tight. You know, I have so many thoughts about couches, But, I guess another thing that I really hate about couches is that I'm, I'm looking at your living room now. I'm not gonna just like attack you, but. lay. I think when you, when you cr create a couch, you kind of force an orientation of how people sit. So you limit the possible views you can have of your own home, right? And so if you, if you live in like a regular, like living room, if you have a couch, it's just guaranteed to be pointed at a TV and as ours and it's it's it's completely just monopolized how we do attention. Right? And I just find that, like, **Jackson:** our space is less flexible as a result. It's less multipurpose. **Jason:** Yeah, like, I feel like if we sat on a couch, If we sat on the couch and tried to have a conversation, We would immediately be at the opposite ends of the couch, Because if we did not sit at the ends of the couch, He'd be like, why the fuck **Jackson:** you? So it's like the urinal problem. **Jason:** Yeah, he'd be like, why are you so close to me? **Jackson:** Yeah. **Jason:** But then it's like the couch is designed to face the TV, but now we're trying to talk to each other, so we're all kind of just like leaning crooked with our, **Jackson:** awkwardly. Yeah. know? Okay. So what's, what are, if not couches are, um, even if they have problems, they're fairly ubiquitous. And what are the alternatives? **Jason:** I feel like another thing that I don't like about the couch is that it makes the floor like a sacred space. It's like if, if people sit on the couch and you sit on the floor, There's like hierarchies and shit that I don't really like. **Jackson:** you have to deal You know? **Jason:** So most of my living rooms for the past like seven years is just the floor with like bean bags and cushions and you can move the bean bags around. It's never like crazy. You can put the bean bags in in the, uh, know, closet and just sit on the floor. You know, if there's five people or 10 people in the space, You can all like, just like, sit on the ground and like, in a circle and nothing, nothing's weird because there actually is no TV or something forcing the view and your **Jackson:** Is the root of this just the backrest? Is the western obsession with the backrest? As someone who kind of has like back and posture issues, this is my biggest. **Jason:** don't think it's the backrest, but I want to hear the story. **Jackson:** like, I, I think like, for example, floor, I have floor pillows here. Most people find floor pillows to not be that comfortable in part because they don't like have the, they're not used to sitting in them. **Jason:** don't, they don't have the strength, **Jackson:** Literally, I don't think they necessarily have the core strength, but also there's just like, whereas I think if you had a bunch of really plush bean bags or even like, um, lawn chair style chairs, it might be more comfortable for people. **Jason:** So there was a study that was like for, for the elderly, uh, how well you can get off the ground. So if you were to like, go supine. How quickly could you get off the ground? And it was like a very high predictor of just like deaths of falls. And like, like, it's like a predictor of your lifespan after you're 50. Right. And it's because people just don't, aren't used to like being close to the ground and like even carrying their own body weight on their hands and like sitting. Is something that's like uncomfortable for them. That they have to be enveloped in foam in order to sort of be able to **Jackson:** carry their own weight. And then big ca it's, it's all big couch. **Jason:** I think it's big chair, really.. **Jackson:** Big chair? I don't I don't even **Jason:** like the chair. **Jackson:** Wow. But you, uh, do you put the couch as worse than the chair? My intuition is that the couch is worse than the chair, mostly around size... rigidity, and the sort of facing each other problem. Problem. **Jason:** Yeah, I think so because I have chairs in my home, but the way I place chairs in my home is mostly to curate multiple views. **Jackson:** Which the couch limits.; **Jason:** yeah. Like if like there is a chair, I ask my friends to sit in to read if I am like entertaining them in the kitchen. **Jackson:** Right. **Jason:** Because they have a view of like. the music from behind, but I'm in the kitchen talking **Jackson:** the flow, Right, **Jason:** right. But there's a different chair. I ask my friends to sit in when I work so you don't see me **Jackson:** It's considered, there's intention here.. **Jason:** And it's like, oh, I'm gonna do this like thing that is like, I'm not stressful, but just like separating. But I can like exclude myself from the view of that. **Jackson:** I have a second hypothesis, which is I think more so even in the posture in the backrest. I think to your earlier point, it might be the television. I think it's downstream of the television because when the television's there, the best way to watch a television is a couch against a wall **Jason:** that's facing **Jackson:** television. And so when you, when you put the television in, you then put the couch in and the rest of the room is just dealing with these things. The other main thing, When you take away the couch, everyone says, Oh, it's less comfortable to sit and watch the TV. **Jason:** Right. Because what I really want to be doing is just, you know, staying in one place, not talking to each other, staring at a screen. **Jackson:** maybe the, maybe the, um, the path to a couchless, tatami mat, kind of wonderful society is is one where we all have like vision pros or, or something lighter. We have, we have glasses and any wall or space. right, Like that could be the solution. I hate, I hate to, or we could just be less addicted to screens, but that's not gonna happen any time **Jason:** soon. Yeah. I'd rather just be looking at each other. **Jackson:** It's a Beautiful. thought to send us off with. Thank you. This was wonderful. **Jason:** super fun. man. **Jackson:** have anything you want to, uh, aside from the 25 things you're automatically selling on your Twitter feed and newsletters and courses, what, what is the thing you, you want to sell most? **Jason:** most? I'm not gonna sell anything. I just want to say, you know, I feel like the thing I've been working with my coach this week was just that the open mouth is the one that gets fed **Jackson:** Wow... fed. **Jason:** you gotta just, you know, ask. Ask, the world for what you want. **Jackson:** And the speaking mouth is the one that gets heard. I think that's another lesson. **Jason:** yes. The work does not speak for itself. **Jackson:** I think a lot of people need to hear that. I read this all the last thing I'll say is I read this amazing, my friend Blake should, this amazing, um, uh, interview with the Duolingo founder. If you see this, **Jason:** the engagement. **Jackson:** yes. And it's like, the question is, do you prefer engagement or education? It could, when, when there is a trade off and he's like, no question, it's engagement, 1000 percent of the time you can't teach an empty seat, **Jason:** Yes. **Jackson:** the work doesn't speak for itself. Jason, my friend, this was great. See you soon.