Sustained happiness follows personally defined impact

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 2:02

   I've got to take a shot. I knew it was going to be uncomfortable. Can you just explain how you think about optimizing for impact or happiness and why? Well, first off, it's incredibly kind of Dara to say that. You know, I think about this. I think happiness is a trailing indicator of impact. And I think you can be, you know, you can feel happiness in small bursts, in small moments, and you can have a lot of variance in your life.

2. 2:33

   So you can choose to have that part, which is the ups, the downs of life, et cetera. So I'm not saying you can have happiness, but I think truly sustained happiness comes from impact. And impact is something that's deeply personal to you. Only you can define what impact means for you. So I think it means different things for different people. But I do think it's a trailing indicator. So the way, you know, I would put it in this case is, you know, what was obvious for me with someone like Adara was he was content.

3. 3:06

   He wasn't happy. And, you know, he had gone through a phase knowing him for a while where he had a lot of ups and downs with Expedia and all that stuff. And he kind of mostly figured it out. And so he was content. And I think that in his case, you know, where he was at his life, it was such an obvious thing that he didn't even realize that he'd just grown content. And so for me, you know, Uber is a very special company.

4. 3:42

   And to even be asked to be the CEO of that and the impact I knew he could have on that company just felt to me like an obvious thing. And so I sort of advised him to, hey, you should go for this. And that's a far greater thing, and that's going to be far, will lead to much more happiness, not just for you, but also for other people. Did somebody do that for you? Did somebody tell you to optimize for impact over happiness, or is this just the way you work?

5. 4:15

   I think I self-motivate myself that way. Okay. To do the hard things. You know, like many other people, I'm quite lazy by nature. I try to take the simple road out often enough. But what I've learned that has given me the greatest joys is overcoming the biggest adversities. And overcoming the biggest adversities usually has been solving a problem of some kind for someone or something that no one else had been able to figure out.

6. 4:49

   And for me, that's my definition of impact. And it's not right there at the moment that I feel that. Actually, in many cases, I feel much longer. But it's when I go back and I reflect on accomplishments or moments of impact, then I feel true happiness. And so I've just grown to kind of like self-motivate myself constantly. And I think this, by the way, kind of comes from like a much deeper thing, right?

7. 5:22

   Like, I came from, like, pretty much what was the project in Sweden, and I was not the normal kid. You know, I was kind of probably a middle-of-the-pack kind of kid, but I certainly stood out. I didn't belong to any social group. There was no social cohesion, et cetera. So, wait, you felt like an outsider even at that age? Oh, yeah. You still today? Yeah. Every moment of my life. Even among other fellow entrepreneurs, I sometimes feel like an outsider.

8. 5:49

   Because like right now, for instance, you and I were in Silicon Valley, but I'm not American. So there's an element of myself where I don't belong to the club. And I've always felt that way. And because I've always felt that way, I've had to, I can't take lessons from other people 100% because some of my story, some of my conditions, some of the ways, the structures, even how to structure a company.

9. 6:16

   You have to structure differently if you're a European company versus an American company. So you have to go back to sort of first principles and kind of find this sort of principled answer to anything and what works for you. And so I've had to kind of self-motivate myself for most of my life. And only, I would say, in the last maybe five years, I've come to realize that, you know, in a way, I may be a better coach than I am a player.

10. 6:43

    And so I've kind of understood more and more that actually that sort of drive, that intensity is actually something that can be taught. It's not entirely innate. And it's about almost letting people know that that's okay. And so much of that comes from those types of conversations. It's about almost reflecting back. It's not about sort of me projecting onto other people what I think they should do.

11. 7:08

    But in listening to Dara, it was just so obvious to me when he kind of explained because, you know, the conversation started with us talking about Uber. And I said, I recommended you to the job. And he said, oh, really? Yeah, I just didn't take the call even. And I was like, well, why not? And he was like, well, I'm really happy about this thing. And I was like listening and I actually just let him keep talking.

12. 7:34

    And the more he spoke, the more obvious it became he was content. He was running on the downshifted down to the easy gear, life was good, it was really easy. But there was an element of him, and you could hear it in his voice, where he's sort of like, okay, well, you know, you've always been running on a higher gear. Do you want to, you know, gear up even more to an extreme level? why aren't you going to go for greatness? Why aren't you going to test yourself? Because if you succeed, this could be huge. And you really don't get many of these chances in your life.

13. 8:11

    And so much of the conversation was really around that. But with another person, I might have given a totally different piece of advice. So I don't think it's a universal truth. But I do think the universal truth is that happiness trails impact. But impact is something that's highly unique. It could be something innate in you. It could be having impact on other people. It could be, you know, having impact by being a great father around your kids. I don't pretend to know that I think that there's one game to play or one universal truth to life. I certainly believe from entrepreneurial types that probably more to myself, more like myself that, you know, This is sort of a, one of those sort of key things is really consider impact.

14. 8:58

    One of the things I admire most about Daniel Ek is his relentless dedication to improving