The Knot

It seems so to silly to even say it, all problems can be solved. But it's true, all problems can be solved. If they can't be solved, they're not problems, they're situations, and we simply have to live with them. But if it's a problem, we can solve it. And if we feel stuck, it could be because we're in a knot. Hey, it's Seth. And this is a Kimbo. I'm back with the second of two podcasts for 2026. This time, celebrating my new book, the knot. You can find the details at sets.blog/the knot that's spelled THE K N O T. Here is an hour-long rant plus Q and A that I did with the folks at purple.space. purple.space is a community online, a couple thousand people, no hype, no hustle, simply supporting each other in the journey to do important work. Every month or so, I show up and do a Q and A. There's also workshops and a lot of peer-to-peer support. This time, we're talking about my new book, the knot and the idea of getting unstuck. Then my online workshop about the book, the knot, I talk about Gilligan's Island and why the professor is stuck on the island, the metaphor is real. We might not know how to make a radio or a nuclear reactor, but we do know how to get unstuck. It's simply about naming the baggage, dropping the baggage, and shipping the work. It's not easy to do, but if it's important enough, problems can be solved. Here's the Q and A. Thanks for listening. I hope you're doing well. Okay, problems are all around us. They're everywhere we look, and that's a good thing, because problems can be solved all of them. The only way we can possibly create value for others is by solving problems. The work is to look for problems and to solve them. The work is to realize that situations are not problems. Situations have to be lived with. Once we can determine with clarity, we have to give up control, because if we can announce that situation can't do anything about it. If it's a problem, we have no choice, but to either live with it or to solve it. I want to share just a couple of starter stories to help put this into context, and then I want to lean and engage with each of you and talk through some of the questions that might come to mind, knowing that virtually nobody on this call has read the book yet, but many of you have taken the course. The first thing about problems, we get stuck in problems, because we make them perfect, because we polish them. The ones that don't make a stuck are gone. We solve the problem of learning how to walk a long time ago, it's not a problem anymore. The problems that remain in front of us, remain in front of us because we carry around a lot of baggage, and we like having that baggage be invisible. We don't want to name it, because if we name it, we have to confront it, and then we can drop it. Dropping the baggage is about understanding that two things that are directly opposite cannot coexist and also cause the problem to be solved. When the world changes, problems get in our way because we are carrying around this baggage, and there are so many varieties of it, I'm just going to highlight a couple. Some costs, a new way to think about some costs is this. You saved up for nine months, you upgraded. You got the first class suite, the fanatiest seat on the plane to fly from here to Brussels. Warm nuts, attentive service, you land in Brussels. What do you do now, do you stay on the plane, do you stay on the plane because you paid a lot of money for that seat, or now that you're in Brussels, do you get off the plane? Because all the things that got you here that cost a lot of time or money or risk existed to get you to today, and you don't have to stay on the plane because the purpose of the plane wasn't to stay on the plane forever, the purpose of the plane was to get the Brussels. And so every day we get to make a new decision, a new decision based on new information, and we get to make choices. But to do that, we have to refuse sometimes the gifts from our former self. Thanks for that airplane ride, but I'm done with it now. I'm going to go do the next thing. So these entanglements, we can see them, we can challenge each other to see them for us. And then we can make better decisions. And the second part of it, as I wrap up my rant, is purpose. Not the purpose you're born with because I don't think you are born with a purpose. But the choices that we make, the choices that we make exist to help us move forward. OK, so what is the change you're seeking to make? What exactly is the purpose of this ad, this job, this memo, this meeting? Can we say the purpose out loud? Because it has multiple purposes that conflict with one another, we're going to get stuck. And so what I'm trying to challenge people to do with this work on the not is to understand we have agency. It's not necessarily fair. Most people get the short end of most sticks. The system might be organized against us. But when we see the system and name the components, then we have a chance to make a change happen. OK, last story, because I've been piling up stories because I'm starting to present this. I want to talk about organized sports, particularly in the United States. In the United States, youth sports seem to be organized to solve the problem of we don't have enough trophies. And so we spend billions and billions of dollars starting when kids are four years old, often creating trauma or brain injury and lots of skirmishes. We push kids to get trained. We have rankings. We have regionals. We have state finals. We have all stars. If you're not that good in ninth grade, you don't get to play on the soccer team. You get to warm the bench and set up the pylons before the game. This system that we built that culminates in the fact that Alabama has its own private jet for moving the staff of the football program around leads to a participation rate among 10 year olds in the United States of 50% in organized youth sport. Now let's think about a small country. I don't know. Norway. Norway saw this problem and in traditional Norwegian fashion, they came up with a solution for it. The name of which is Barnett threats the best, the stem of flaseless lean and anybody who knows Norwegian can correct me, but basically what it means is you get what you measure. And there are rules in place in Norway that change the system until you're 12 years old. No rankings are permitted, there's no publicity about who wins and who loses. There are no traveling teams. The entire purpose of the program is to increase joy and participation. While the participation rate in youth sports in Norway isn't 50%, it's 90%. And you can look at that and say, well, it's sure, but there's no excellence. There's no high performers. So Exhibit A is Johannes Haas dot Claybell, who is the greatest cross country skier who ever lived. His country with 5 million people in it won more medals as a percentage of population at the Italian Olympics than any country in a very long time. So the point is you have to begin by seeing the problem, naming the problem, understanding what you're trying to accomplish. The purpose of youth sports in the United States, if you measure what they do, is to raise the status of parents. That's what it's actually for. Because if you look at the interventions, that's what it's doing. And what they did in Norway was they looked at a system and said, we're going to give up the status its granted appearance and instead focus on a different thing. Name the baggage, drop the baggage, do the work. Next minute, Rand, new record over to you, Rob. Amazing. This was beautiful said. I think what he said in the chat is a good place to start. Hate, I'm spotlighting you and then we'll go to Ken and Jessica. Other guys, please guide your questions in the chat so we can come to you. Hey, he's good to see you digitally. Hi. I wasn't a question. It was just a line from the book that stuck out for me. which is the aspirational self is not a goal, it's a trap. comparing yourself to a fantasy. And in the last few years, I've started differentiating for myself, like, oh, this is something that ideal heat would do, but real heat's not going to do that. Right. And like, I got rid of my sewing machine, because real heat's not going to sew. Ideal heat would make all kinds of things. Real heat's not going to. Yeah. Exactly. That was like, it just struck out to me. Yeah. Beautiful. And, you know, Rohan's blog post today had a great riff in it, which is never adopt a worldwide metric for yourself. You're never going to be the best, the single best in the world at anything. So aspirational self, aspiring to do something that's easily seen worldwide, is probably setting yourself up for a trap. Instead, feel how to compare yourself to the best possible version of who you are seeking to become. Given the baggage that you want to drop, as opposed to making Mark Zuckerberg happy, because there's no reason to do that. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Again, I'm spotlighting you. Just give me a second. Here you go. Here you go. All right. Hey, Seth. Thanks so much for taking my, my question. A pleasure. I saw it earlier today. If that's when you want to ask or ask, which ever. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks. So yeah. So yeah, I'm stuck between two career paths, high paying business systems analysts that aligns with my tech and business skills, or a lower paying certified peer support specialist role that maybe that is, you know, could be seen as more personally fulfilling. And so I want to, you know, preserve my time and injury for the the side projects, entrepreneurial projects I want to work on. So I'm trying to figure out like how should I decide between maximum income and pursuing meaningful work and creating the freedom to build something on my own. Yeah. Well, naming the question is 80% of it, right? And it's very tempting to want work to be three things or four things or five things. But when it's time to make a decision, there is one main thing that we have to answer, which is what is work for. This job is not your life. This job is 50 hours a week of your life. What is it for? And there are lots of viable answers. But when you say it has to be for this and but, but, but that too, it's easy to get stuck. All right. So what are you willing to give up in exchange to get the other thing? And nobody can answer the specifics of it, but you, and it's always going to be a matter of degree. Like most people would take a job that gives them a stomach ache if they got paid $2 million a month and they could only had to do it for four weeks, right? That there's gradations here, trade-offs here, which is our priority, knowing that we can't get tomorrow over again. And so there isn't a right answer, but we need to be able to say out loud, is work to give me peace of mind, is work to give me status in my family or with my neighbors, is work a way for me to change the world. Those are totally different things. And if you have a job that does all of those things, that's fantastic, but there are very few jobs that do all those things. So does any of that resonate with you? You don't have to share with us, but. Yeah, no, yeah, that's great. I think trying to decide what my actual goal is to get to whether I'd go with the career or the first career with other one, trying to feel like what the reasoning is behind that and what I'm trying to, like if it is, you know, like he said, status or, you know, so for me, it would, for the, you know, the business analyst role, it's really, it pays much more than the other role, and I do need, you know, the money. While at the same time, you know, it's like the other one would be more personally fulfilling. So yeah, so there's things I need to struggle and try to balance out. But I want to help you decode this. What if you took half of the increase in salary, half of it, and spent it on support for your household, spent it so that there was no chores for you to do, spent it so that so many other things in your life were cleared up so that you actually were on the hook to do entrepreneurial things on Saturdays and Sundays so that you're actually on the hook to do philanthropy work and organizing the local community group on Thursday afternoon, right? If you committed to that, now the comparison between the two jobs is a little different, right? Because now the two jobs both pay the same, but one job comes with housekeeping services, time freed up to spend with the Boy Scouts, this, this, this, and a health club, and the other one is a job that at least from the outside feels like it's more fulfilling. Right? So what I'm pushing people to do is to really dig deep into why there's a stuck here, because the stuck is a choice. It's a choice because the baggage is hard to let go of. Anyway, think about that and post on the boards because I'm sure there are people here who want to chime in. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I just want to say can like your presence, the calmness and the confidence that has evolved like I am seeing you grow. It's beautiful. Like keep going. It's amazing. Thank you. I appreciate it. That's the round. Thanks. Yeah. All right. Jessica, you're up next time. What lighting you? There you go. There you go. Thank you. Hi, Jessica. Hi, Seth. First of all, I wanted to share my gratitude about this sprint. It really helped. It's really helped me. So I'm currently stuck at the organizing, the others, and potentially I do think it is also the theory of change. So there are two questions here. So the first question is that so I wrote a book. What is school for a manifesto? A manifesto for parents. And so I was very clear that my audience is parents. What I've also seen along the way with this work is that I also gained attraction with this school. Some of the school in the system that invite us back to teach other school for this school year. And also what I experienced is that I gained attraction with the newspaper at the Seattle Times. The reporter has been following my school enrollment article about my school enrollment for the past three years. That's great. If I can just push you to let's try to get it more concise so we can get into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I also noticed the superintendent to our new superintendent want to focus on students. So my question is that does the other organizing the others, does the others, the others, limited to the parents, which my book was intended to? Or what is the what is the helpful way for me to look at you know the attractions and also who are delighted when they heard my thoughts. So this is a great work you're doing and a great question. Let's think about purpose again. The purpose of the work is not to reach apparent. The purpose of the work is to help change the system. Yes. And so you know if we think about the bike bus which is a great example of organizing the others and now it's in hundreds of cities around the world. If we look at a similar movement that has saved the lives of hundreds of kids in Amsterdam, it's very similar. Which is how do you find local coordinators that want to do their version of something that makes the change happen? And the change is not get a lot of coordinators. The change is kids feel safe riding their bikes to school. So when you can keep coming back to the purpose, we no longer need to worry about yesterday's tactics. We instead think about what is the arc that is going to get us from where we are to where we seek to go. And it almost always involves engaging with people who are enrolled in the journey, engaging with people who voluntarily want to come along. So if you have a choice between arguing with a parent who doesn't want to do what you're doing or dancing with a superintendent who does, it's pretty clear where you should be focusing that energy. And then what we're looking for is traction. The traction of how does it lead to this happening more tomorrow? How do I turn somebody from someone who read this into someone who's organizing? Because when they can then find the next person and the next person, then it begins to spread. So you're on your way, but just keep coming back to the purpose. Why did the book exist in the first place? If you can think about why you did it, then you have the arc for what you seek to do next. Thank you so much. Thanks Jessica. Thank you Jessica. Next up is Carlos. Hey Carlos. Spotlight. Here you go. Hello. Hi. Thank you for the book. It makes me feel like that I'm keep a lot of times. I'm curious about, you know, why did you write it? And how does it connect with the previous changes that you're trying to make with your work? I think all of us know someone in our lives, including ourselves, including that person we see in the mirror, who feels stuck. And we're living in a revolution right now, the biggest revolution of our lives. In so many areas, and I just kept hearing from people who felt stuck. I think optimism is a tool. It's not a forecast for how the tomorrow is going to be. It's a choice about how we're going to approach problems. And if we believe we have agency and we can lean into problems and solve them, I'm in favor of trying to support that work. So it rhymes with my work on marketing and strategy, because both of those things are about making a change happen. In this case, after my conversation with no robins, I realized I could boil it down, simplify it, and put it into the hands of anybody who has a problem they want to solve. So thank you. I hope it helps. Thank you, Carlos from Carlos will go to Carlo, Carlo and spotlighting you. Is there someone named Carl on the phone because if we could keep working our way down, right? Thank you. Thanks, sir. Thanks, Seth. Can I come into this kind of sideways? Forgive me, Seth. I do have a question. It's okay. Your microphone. Go for it. The context is, I love what you say, I think, in the intro to the not about most of us working on hard things that can't be fixed and nothing changing. And I'm transitioning as well into trying to do more and more work with companies in that dreaded field called transformation of which I think 80% of so-called transformation programs fail. Certainly aware the big boys get involved and I'm, I guess my question is how to get your take on how brave to be leaning into the idea that there is an acknowledgement that things may not transform that things we want things to change and there is work to do to try and facilitate that, I don't like the word facilitate, to try and stimulate that. Yeah. And my way in is scaring me. And it kind of goes around the idea of bringing curiosity and craftsmanship. And I've been playing around with, because it amused me with the idea of a mission statement, which I've never liked, to bring curiosity and craftsmanship to every builder and leader in the world. And then playing around with Nike's lovely mission statement about if you've got a body or an athlete, the brackets being if you work with human beings, you're already both of those things. And my gut instinct is definitely to come in with that. I do have a corporate background and lots of Scottish and so on. But something's scaring me and I'd love your take on whether or not to walk straight into the fear or to be a little bit more cautious. Well, let's get that to that in two seconds. First, curiosity and craftsmanship are beautiful words and they're delightful pairing. I think that almost everybody aspires to those two things. So in and of themselves, you start on the right foot, which is it feels rewarding and flattering to be offered more curiosity and more craftsmanship. But I'm going to go back a couple of steps. Why do most transformation programs fail in big companies? And the reason is because they want them to fail. They named it a transformation program and then they set it up so that it would fail. And I tell the story of Netflix and Netflix transformed a couple times. But in their last transformation, they understood that moving away from DVDs towards streaming was essential. That was the way someone was going to put them out of business. If they stayed in the DVD business, someone else built the streaming service, they were going to go to business. So they put together a team to do the transformation, but the difference between that transformation and almost every other one is no one from the DVD division was invited to attend not one person, not the head of DVDs was not allowed in any of the meetings. This was critical because as soon as you invite those people into the room, now they bring their baggage with them and their baggage is very clear, which is they saw safety and control and they had it. And now you're offering to take it away from them. So everything they do is going to be to undermine what you're trying to do so they can have safety and control. And so when we show up and say I'm going to offer you curiosity and craftsmanship, what you're really saying is I'm going to offer you more status. Because status is one of the two things that people want at work, they're freedom from fear for sure, I don't want to get fired, but they want affiliation, they want to fit in and they want status, they want to move up. And so when we show up at Kodak, which invented the digital camera and then ignored it and went bankrupt, if we shown up at Kodak to the top 1000 people and said, I'm offering you a way to get what feels like a promotion and status. Many people would have signed on for that, but instead it was, this is risky, this is scary and there's going to be this gap you have to get through where your status is going to go away down first. And the number of people want to sign up for that is low. So the baggage is very clear, baggage at work is super easy to identify because anytime a company gets stuck, it's because they're holding on the baggage. Beautiful, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think they're lucky that you're showing up with the bravery you have. And the last thing I would say is, because you're doing one client at a time, you got nothing to lose. Go in full board, if it doesn't work, then next time do it different. Go, go, go. Thanks, Carla. Thank you, Carlo. Next up is the church. Good morning. Good to see you. Hi, Seth. I haven't read the book yet. Haven't taken a class. Just listening. And so my question is, I don't know if you're familiar with what used to be called the Ben Franklin balance sheet, but, you know, on one side of the page, she put all the pros and one side, all the cons. See how long the list is maybe. And I'm just visualizing that and I'm wondering if the not is a piece of the not is about putting on one side of the page, those check marks that you can put for making the decision one way. How many check marks do you get for, you know, addressing your neurosis, your, your, I'm not enough, your, you know, those superficial things versus how many check marks do you get on the side of the page for authentic values that you can clearly see when you're coming from being enough. Is that part of the unraveling process or am I making that up? No, I mean, you're, you're, you're totally on the right track and, you know, Ben Franklin, what a guy. I, I guess what I'm getting at is when I wrote a book about quitting, it was the first book that was published by a major publisher about just looking at the idea of quitting and should you even consider quitting. I said it, it opened the door for all sorts of things to happen with people exploring what that would mean. That's what I'm trying to say here. I'm saying we invent these external forces that we say are keeping a stock, we invent the. idea that we are victimized by a system, even though some people are victimized by that system and other people in the same situation apparently aren't. So there are definitely unfair unjust systems. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is this feeling of stuck. Once we can say there is baggage holding me here, let me examine the knot. Let me see where the rope is tied and what it's tied around. Now tools like Franklin's P&L are totally appropriate. But I just want to help people say honestly to themselves, this is a choice. A friend of mine said to me, I don't like lying to the circle of people. Well then start by saying you do like lying to them more than you like telling them the truth. Because you've chosen to lie to them instead of telling them the truth. And the consequences of telling them the truth would make you uncomfortable. That's understood. But you've made the choice to lie to the circle of people. And what I want to help people understand is if a problem is important enough to us, we can find the baggage, name the baggage, drop the baggage, organize the others and create the conditions for forward motion. And we have more tools to do that today than ever before. And we need a shared vocabulary. And so yeah, I think you nailed it with this one of many tools. And I'm hopeful from conversations like we've been having in the last half hour that people are starting to understand not that the world is perfect, but that they might have more agency than they want to acknowledge. I look forward to reading it. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Richard. Next up is Amaya. And like most spotlight her first. And she has been leading consistently and generously in purple leading a group. So I just want to thank you for that. Amaya, please go ahead and ask a question. I could see you. So I was listening to the prompt about doing one thing at a time and many things over time today. Yeah. And I'm wondering how do you organize that in a daily basis, for example, if you want to write a book and maybe look for a job. And you want to do that like every day. Right. But yeah, that you do that. So you don't mix everything that you work. Yeah. Okay. So this is a perfect example. Thank you for sharing it. I want to write a book, but I also need to look for a job. So I started writing the book and as soon as I hit a part in the book, it's uncomfortable. I said, you know what? I need to do it. I need to go look for a job. And then I start going to look for a job. And as soon as I bump into rejection or something that feels uncomfortable, I say, no, I got to write my book and go back and forth and back and forth. And it's the backing and the fourth thing that make us stuck. If instead we say from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. the only thing I am allowed to do is write this book as a professional. And when it gets hard, I have to do it more. Your book is going to be done within three months. One hour a day for three months. Your book is going to be done. If we say I'm committing to engaging with eight people in this professional community every single day, either on a phone call, a meeting or sending them something, the more uncomfortable it makes me the more likely it is that I'm going to find myself in a circle of people where my job is going to get found. But when we do many things, at the same time, we're doing nothing particularly well because as soon as the baggage arises, we just run and go do the other thing instead. And we're so busy traveling, we don't get anything done. Okay, so it would be like being specific about time blocking and just making it. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be time. It can be activities, how many things, how many words did I write today or how many people did I, you know, do something connecting for whatever. But we can be task oriented, time oriented. The whole point is we're not traveling in our head. We are fully present when we are working on whatever we're working on. Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Amaya. Bob, I am spotlighting you. Bob's camera is also not sure if he would be sorry. Okay, let me ask his question myself. He's asking, how do I not keep up with my children's mother and just be the father I want to be? I'm not sure I want to dive into a question like that with so little information. Again, what I would like to do is, hi, Bob. I think his network is off. We can discuss this on purpose then. We'll discuss on purpose. I think again, what I want to remind people of is there are situations all around us. And I am not saying that they are fair. I am not saying that there are things that we should applaud or want more of. But if you are in a situation, you have to acknowledge that there's a situation that you can't change. And then what are you going to do? And that is so freeing because it helps us realize that jousting against a situation which was fruitless was keeping us from working on the work we actually could do. And so the whole thesis falls apart. If I don't acknowledge there are situations, there are situations. And then Mel Robbins phrase, let them. If this is going on, if your sister-in-law is having a destination wedding and you hate destination weddings and you hate your sister-in-law, but you have to go no matter what. Okay, it's a situation. You can't change any of those things. Now what are you going to do? And one thing I realized as I was working through the workshop is like situations are not necessarily a bad thing. Like in our head, it's like, you know, when we are trying to solve a problem, like we need to solve something. But once we say, okay, this is a situation like it's, it can be a good thing and that can be a situation as well. So next up, set two people that I think you would love to chat with Eva. I did a comment in the chat I'm adding her. And Enrico is here in purple and she was very generous too. And she's fantastic. Yeah, awesome. Okay, so first, Eva, new glasses, you look fantastic. And new hair. I could have done it. Yeah, that looks great too, but I couldn't tell because it was all, yeah. And Enrico, I haven't seen you in a long time. It's great to see you. I said, I, Enrico, hi community. Oh, I didn't actually know I was going to come on, but I have a conversation. I just made a comment because I have a conversation that has been unfolding. What's occurring to me is really how you define the problem. And that's so important because, and I'm not even talking about how you define the problem versus a situation. I'm saying, let's agree. There's a problem. But then again, it kind of goes back to your matrix framework that she uses. And when you talk about how we are again, how we are defining the problem. Do you know that when I'm talking about with the matrix? And I love it. Yeah, it can be expensive or it can be cheap, or we can say that it's rich or poor, I don't know, whatever. So, yeah, that's all that was occurring to me. And it's just, I'm just rethinking several things at the same time and playing with how I'm defining it. That's what's coming up. No, it's, you know, one of the years and years ago, when I took over the summer camp that I used to run, one of the problems was six times a year, there was visiting day. And the parents would come. And we'd have homesickness for the next five days. It was just miserable. The logistics were miserable. It disrupted everything. So there was all this discussion. How do we make visiting day better? How do we figure out how to get the kids ready for visiting day? How do we use the tiny leverage we have over parents to get them to behave better on visiting day? How do we inspect packages so they're not bringing, some parents are bringing contraband into camp that brings bugs and causes. And then we said, oh, you know what the real problem is? Visiting day is the problem. So we just canceled it. All right. As soon as you named what the problem actually is, the problem got way easier to solve. Naming the problem properly makes a big difference. Yeah. I think also, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was thinking also the, after naming it, the choice, like the agency is just hitting me right in the face. Like you now that is named, I think you said, oh, so. It is what it is now what and so let's be able to take agency and ownership to decide and commit and then follow through with the commitment. I think that is the hard part, the sticky part, but where also we can see a difference happening. So thank you for the work. I'm excited to get into it more. Well it's for you. You do the work every day. You're terrific. Both of you. Thank you both. Thank you both. Enrica wrote something in the chat that I think can be a tagline for the book given what is what now. So succinctly put. So beautiful. Yeah, all right. We have Kato and James Kato. I'm spotlighting you. Give me a second. Eva and Enrica just give me a second. Cool. Thank you everybody. These questions are so energizing. I really appreciate you showing up here. Go Kato. Hi Kato. Hi, mine was more just a comment about as I'm hearing this and while I'm just checking if I'm right is that the action of moving in between these pulls. I'm imagining there's a string on us and every time it loops. And then and then as it pulls more that's so it gets tangled and then comes this thing and this idea that the vacillating eventually unchecked the vacillating will become a snare at some point. Does that seem like that's that is a big part of it and also it takes a lot of time and when we're busy vacillating we're not happy. And so back to the one thing at a time many things over time. It's not easy being a working parent. If you're a working parent and you insist on doing a job where the only way to do the job is to be on the clock a lot and you're spending your days at that job feeling bad that you're not at home. You're not doing the job very well. You're not doing the home thing very well and you're not very happy. So we have to make a choice and the choices do I want a job that has these requirements and what comes with that and then every minute I'm not at the job I'm prepared to be totally on duty as a parent. That's one path and that works great. Or do I want a different job for the next 10 years in my family's life where I have way more flexibility but less status maybe less pay but in return I have four more hours a day at home. That's the choice. But if instead we insist that all the time we're at home it's okay to be at work and all the time we're at work it's okay to imagine we're at home. We're not going to make anything good happen going forward and so we feel like we're stuck in a problem when actually what we're dealing with is the consequences of a choice that created a situation. Thank you for that. Thanks. In the fascinating action I'm gonna keep be mindful of oh am I creating a tangle here what is this about? So yeah perfect. Thank you Keito. Keats has an epiphany so I think I would love to have him talk about it very well is that something you use if you have a peanut allergy? Keito, surprise they do spotlight it. I was making it I was making an happy pen reference. I heard you had an epiphany. Oh oh no the console the conversation is just making me it's a reminder that switching our like what we respond to from pain like I'm really good at responding once something is painful enough I'm like all right I better do it I better make that call I better get that repairman in because the water is up to my knees now and switching to receiving signals of is this meaningful is this important is this going to move me further ahead? I think holding on to that idea is what's been helping me over the last few years move forward obviously yeah and so it's just everyone's questions and your responses and people's comments are just helping me remind myself I don't have to wait for the pain I can choose I can have agency where I can when I can and it's more often than I think and as Bob helped us remember or just let them right just let them and we do us so exactly so I wanted that's really important and I want to bring it into something that's life or death which is the work Paul Farmer did in Haiti with tuberculosis and Tracy Kitter's book about it is well worth a lead and he did things that no doctor thought was normal so one of the things with trying to prevent drug resistant tuberculosis from in fact in a community is you got to make sure your patients take their medicine every single day and in Haiti that might mean a patient walking for four hours to come to the clinic to get their medicine and Paul made a rule which he followed which is in any physician in his clinic that had a patient who didn't show up the doctor had to go to their house and bring them the medication so Tracy walks with him four hours each way to give medication to one person this doesn't match the protocols for how a doctor should be efficient what the doctor with the medical community says yeah you know if patients don't do what they're gonna do it's on them and what Paul said is if I create this unreasonable standard my doctors will work extraordinarily hard to make sure they never have to go on those four hour walks they will do all sorts of things like say to patients if you come in for your medicine there's free food here for you and it's not the patient's fault that they don't have access to food and there's nothing wrong with us supplying the patient with an incentive to do what's going to help them in the long run by letting go of the institutional baggage of how a doctor is supposed to engage with a patient and letting go of the status of doctors don't go walking four hours each way for one patient that's not efficient then they get back to the purpose of the work and the purpose of you know having plumbing that doesn't leak is so that your house is stable and waiting until it's an emergency doesn't match why you said you wanted to have good plumbing right you were reacting in the case of Haiti and partners in health what farmer was doing was modeling it is possible to go to one of the poorest countries in the world and create a TB regimen in fact he succeeded where it was less on a percentage basis than the city of Boston in terms of patients who developed drug-resistant TB it was possible it was simply inconvenient but by demonstrating it was possible he opened the door to the WHO and other organizations changing the regimes that they brought to TB because once we see it's possible now we're on the hook and we got to go ahead and solve the problem because we said it was important in the first place thanks Keith thank you we'll do one more question set and then we'll start wrapping up hands has a question I'm spotlighting hands yeah thank you can you be well yes beautifully okay I'm I'm very sure many of you know the technique and I've read about it in several books and only when I tried it out I found out that in some cases I ask yeah about why is this a problem why is this a problem and I don't have it all on where to stop I could go on forever I wonder how you experienced that and what did you do that because sometimes I feel lost like I could there is no root cause you can like I said can move on forever I'm sorry so when you're you're saying why am I stuck or you saying why is the world like this yeah I mean why is it a problem that that parents visit us why is the visited problem yeah that's because you know and then you keep going and you finally arrive somewhere intuitively but sometimes we don't I that happened to me so where do I stop well right right so I think you I think what you stop is where your stated purpose lies and if it's not clear or your stated purpose isn't really your stated purpose you need to change it so the stated purpose at camp hour one was to create a constructive generative culture for the campers camp is for the campers it is not for the counselors it is not for the parents we serve the counselors if it helps the campers we serve the parents if it helps the campers we everything we're doing is to do that not to make a profit not to right so it's very clear what the purpose is so now you only have to ask why about visiting day three times before you say oh well we have to cancel visiting day and And if your stated purpose is something that a committee came up with, now you have a problem. So Johnson and Johnson is a big medical company in the United States and they are very proud of their mission statement. So proud that they have engraved it on giant granite blocks outside of their headquarters. My friend Simon told me about this. And it's all about helping patients and whatever. Except this is the same company that got in trouble for putting asbestos into baby powder because they cut corners to make profits. So that's really their purpose. And they are willing to serve patients as long as it helps to make profits. So we have to keep coming back to what is the thing that you've decided you're trying to solve. - Thank you. - I think sets connection dropped. I'll remove you from spotlight hands. - All right, while set rejoins, I am spotlighting myself. Yeah, I wanted to. - I'm sorry, I disappeared. I'm back. - I'm sorry, I'm back. Let me spotlight you. Hey, you go. - I don't know how I offended the people at Zoom, but I just forgot. - Okay. Hello. - All right, are you continuing with answering hands? - No, I've exhausted my rant. I'm ready for the next and at some point we're gonna use up people's time, but I could do this all day. I'm very happy. - All right, I wanted to take some time to talk about notchats. And like, let me just set the stage for you. You know, there are people in our world near us, friends and family who are stuck and there are people in purple who can help us, you know, work through a problem. Most, like my assertions is most problems need attention and love and care. You just need a patient human being to sit with you and for you to talk it out loud and set your generous, we created this notchat tool. And so like, if you can share a bit about that or how we can leverage it in the community that we have, that would be great. - Okay, I haven't launched it to the world yet. Am I coming through 'cause my phone is still weird. - Yes, yes. - You can see me, okay. So we're launching it to the public in two weeks, but you get to go first. It's at thenotchats. And when you get there, it works great on phones. You and the person you're coaching both see on your phone, one thing. And the coach can go through step by step and have a conversation with you and you see the prompts on your phone. It's a miracle. I don't know how it works, but I made it work. Anyway, it leads to a conversation of 5, 10, 15 minutes. Similar to what we've been talking about here, but much more focused. And what I'm hoping will happen is that first, you'll find someone inside purple to have a notchat with. And then you will pay it forward by doing this one person at a time or groups of three either in purple or in the real world to have these conversations. It only takes a few minutes, but it helps us drill down layer after layer. What's the problem? Where's the baggage? Where's my agency? What am I gonna do now? So it's thenotchats. Doesn't collect any information about you. Doesn't try to sell you anything. It's super simple and should work on your phone. - Yeah, and logistically, if you are interested in starting a notchat, just post on purple tag the not-group say, I want to do a notchat, and a lot of people will raise their hand to join you on Zoom or wherever to do it. So do that. This has been lovely set. Let's be as we wrap up, I just want to thank everyone. The way everyone has interacted on the boards throughout these weeks and being vulnerable, like putting real issues upfront, which takes a lot of courage and working with the not-bought, which kind of sometimes, it's a bot, after all. But what I'm seeing is like it takes a lot of courage to put something out front for other people to command, for a bot to command, and to open up a not, and a lot of people have so generously participated in the notch sprint. And today it's been just wonderful, like the way the questions have come up. And I think each of the questions was not just about the person who was asking, like everyone had something pop up in their head, and they were like, thank you for asking this question. I wanted to ask that myself. So a lot of gratitude for everyone. This is such a pleasure and a privilege to be a part of this community. I said, closing it from you as we wrap up the session today. - I'm just so grateful. I'm grateful to you, Rob, and I'm grateful to the energy and magic and heart of people. Some people on this cloud been working with for 10 or 20 years now and seeing these faces and your progress in the way you're helping other people with their progress. It's just thrilling. That's why you write a book. That's why you show up in a community. I couldn't do this without all of you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. We'll see you on the boards. Keep asking your questions. Keep helping each other. See you, bye. - Thank you, sir. - Thank you, everybody.