Don Quixote-ing, Reverence for the Flaws, the Spark of Lifelong Learning, and Innovation

In this episode, we delve into a thought-provoking conversation, embracing the concept of 'Don Quixote-ing' against conventional currents, finding the sacred in the mundane, and the importance of nurturing 'time release capsules' of inspiration. They challenge the notion of success, urging us to consider the 'claustrophobia of standardized paths' and to recognize the beauty of our 'crooked lines' and 'eccentricities.' You are invited to confront the societal 'dusty corners' that often go unnoticed, encouraging a shift towards a culture that values genuine curiosity and the persistence to explore what truly moves us. This episode is not just a call to action but a reminder to cherish the quirks that make us unique, to 'surrender to what wants to use us,' and to foster environments where asking, 'What are you interested in?' ignites the spark of lifelong learning and innovation.

You can find a.m. on Instagram and TikTok at @absurdwisdom. We are produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE (@dae.community on Instagram and online at mydae.org).

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors.

You can contact us at daepresents@mydae.org.

Transcript

a.m.: 1:45

I got asked to do the keynote for there's a, as a conference the judicial branch of the of the state. So it's every judicial, it's like 4500 or 5000, workers, every judicial branch and all the senior executives and they're doing a thing and I'm doing the keynote and I was asked to talk about wellness in the workplace and the, and the title of the thing I gave them was wellness is a practice, not a pill. And, and the conversation is going to be that that Y'all keep fucking this up like you do everything else, you know for 40 years.

Ben: 2:16

That'll be well received. Yeah

a.m.: 2:17

Proud track record of getting invited to a lot of interesting speaking events Once. Well, if you keep getting back to new ones, you're doing something right at least. Listen, the intention is not to, the intention is to provoke, it's not to genuinely upset anybody, but, but outside of provocation, I don't know how you're going to shake loose some of this stuff. And move it to somewhere meaningful as opposed to breaking it just for the sake of breaking it. Right. That, you know, that's no fun. But, but, but, but the, you know, the, the, the point of the thing will be something around Give me a lot of time to give me an hour for a keynote. That's a lot. You can actually convey something. Yeah. Yeah. It's I'm like, I get a little excited about it. So cool. Okay. We can actually do something here. For 40 years, for as long as I can remember this kind of conversation about employee engagement, employee satisfaction, employee health, employee wellness, all flavors of the same thing. We've been working on this for decades, you know, since the nineties, this became a sort of way to focus an organization. People are more disengaged, more burned out more, et cetera, than they've ever been. It's, you can just chart the, you know, the, the, the, the, the arc of this thing and it keeps just, you know because it's like the iron thing, right? If you're iron deficient, supplements along the way, pill versions, interventions along the way, will only Mask the symptoms. And meanwhile, the underlying problem will get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And this is the issue around kind of wellness, health, engagement, all this in the workplace is, is usually through good intentions. You know, people bring in a speaker, an intervention, a consultant or whatever, and it's a pill and you can't fix these things.

Ben: 3:47

I I'm really, I'm really curious about how the types of conversations we have here translate in a With some sense of like feeling genuine about the information you're conveying to that particular audience, because you could, you could just have a conversation in tone. That's what we're doing here. And it wouldn't really land with that audience. You can also have a conversation that's effectively pandering to, okay, here, here is the structures that you know, here's the language you're used to. But how, how do you actually stand in that room and try to reach people? And it may be a fraction of the people in the room to something that we discussed, you know, last episode, not everybody's going to kind of have the receptors up and it may not sink in, but you've got to have a sense of if there's, you know what you said, 4, 500 people, something like that 500 really hear you and act on it if they're managers or executives. I think just at a high enough level, the trickle down effect of that is, is actually massive. You know, that's an opportunity to really affect change. So you know, how do you, how do you seize hold of that?

a.m.: 4:54

And I don't know how many are actually going to be at this event. So the great Patrice O'Neill, standup comedian one of my absolute all time favorites. He died I have some bad with time, like sometime over the last decade died young. He once said in a, episode Paul Provenza's green room. I'm a big stand up comedy. I don't think that's an area we've tapped into. We've talked film, we've talked music, we've talked stand up comedy.

Ben: 5:15

I'm happy to go there. So we might get in trouble for some of the source material, but I'm all in.

a.m.: 5:20

Patrice O'Neil will, I mean, I think Elephant in the Room is one of the greatest hours ever put on film, and it will piss a lot of you off who are listening. Like, it just, and, and it's, it's dated, and some of the, you know, but, He's tapping it in some anyway, he once said so that's a good standup, like a show where everybody is laughing. I am not happy with said a good standup set. If 50 percent of the audience should be offended and hate you and 50 percent should be like, holy shit, this is like Now you can get silly with that, right? You can get, you can do the, you know, whatever, old dated reference. The Andrew Dice Clay, or, you know. Right now, what's, who's this, this idiot kid who's Matt Somebody listening is going to be like, Oh yeah Anyway, this young guy is a comedian. Matt Rife. You know, just another, just a bro. You know, just a bro. He's funny. He's got some funny stuff, but just a bro. And he's doing some bro shit. Like whatever. So it's not offended. Like just, just, just, you know, saying disrespectful, dumb things. But, but you're provoking a established way of looking at things. In a way that forces the person to see the artifice, not in a way that makes fun of it, that demeans it, that right, but that forces you to step outside and look at like Carlin did this amazingly and Richard Pryor did this amazingly and write a bunch of people. So and I tell my grad students this, I was like, you know I am speaking to maybe 5 percent of you. And I'm hoping the rest of you enjoy the ride. I'm transparent about it. My, and I'm very clear. When we used to have practice, you know, like I'd be responsible. You know what? You should be working with us. Here's the list of, you know, here's three people that really are going to help you. Like I don't help. You did not, you know, back in the day, you did not hire me if you wanted to help. That wasn't me. Tell clients you, you, you are not going to get out of this alive. And that was not a joke. That was not a, it sounds like a joke early on, but literally you will not get out of this life. Your sense of who you are will not survive this. If we're successful in having you become an innovator, an artist and whatever you, for me, it's an artist, whatever you have, you are not going to come out of this with your sense of who you are alive. You're going to love who's there. I have no clue what it's going to be, but you will not quite say, right. So in, in, in, in, you know, what's, what's gotten cultivated over time through just practice is doing over and over again, getting it wrong, being offensive, unintentionally being too safe, unintentionally too, right. And what's evolved is, is, is a certain approach to these things where you assess, you know, what is the reality they live in? And what are the hypocrisies? And okay, so what's the reality you live in? What is it they're asking for? And now what are the hypocrisies inherent when you bring those two things together? Right? On the innovation side, it was always like, you know, it's a joke that almost every call and all the business is inbound, right? And the calls, I could distill down to one sentence. We really need to get better at innovation. We hear you have a process for that, right? That was an encapsulation of the hypocrisy where this is the world they're living in, where things have to be predictable and they have to be able to tell investors and shareholders and whoever that in 12 months time, exactly this will happen. And then the request is help me do things that are impossible to know in advance, right? So the hypocrisy there becomes obvious over time. And then it becomes in crafting the intervention, the speech, the whatever is how do you speak within that reality to that topic in language that has them feel the hypocrisy in ever increasing ways to the point of which they started laughing at themselves about it. And then beyond that, get uncomfortable about it. And then beyond that, get angry at you a little bit. For revealing so much of the hypocrisy, but you're not revealing it. They're revealing it by what you're, you know. And in that process you lose some of them who are so entrenched with how the thing has to be, right? And that's okay. You're not my audience. But they'll be the, you know, 5, percent, whatever it is, who are like, okay, I got it. If we actually want this, It's not that this is bad, right? So for the organizational side innovation, it's not the kind of predictable outcome in 12 months is bad. It's just, if I want this industry scale innovation, I have to figure out ways to let this thing go even temporarily. Like if you want to parachute, be with like reliable people, have the parachute packed appropriately, but at some fucking point you have to be willing to let go of the ground. You have to do the completely idiotic thing of letting go of predictability of something stable under your feet. It is unavoidable that you must let that go. And so that's what I'm trying to do in these kind of speaking events is to speak not outside of their world. I want to like really understand their world, speak within that world. Because if I, if I speak outside their world and point to the hypocrisy, it's easy to dismiss. Oh, you don't get us. You don't look all of that, right? Oh yeah, I'm sure that's true over in tech where you worked. Yeah, of course. All that nonsense, right? So I want to really understand that language, their reality and speak within that reality. And then I want to bring their request in, in a, in a way that, you know, kind of starts to in, in iterations within the hour, point out the hypocrisy of what they're asking.

Ben: 10:18

I'm curious whether you make the assumption that your audience is willing to work for it because there's, there's a difference between busyness, which I think aligns well with process. and work, which aligns well with discovery volatility, that kind of bottoming out of the floor moment. And it has more to do with when to time that moment, when you're ready to take that leap and, and less to do with kind of predictably following a path that will lead you to that moment. when you're ready for it. It's, it's about remaining, creating that openness. I think we've talked a lot about this, but the the idea that something can happen at any time. You don't know when it's gonna happen, you don't know when you're gonna be ready, but when you are, it sure as hell gonna happen. And, and that to me aligns more with my internal definition of working for something.

a.m.: 11:18

I wouldn't have been able to say this earlier in my life and career because I would never would have occurred to me, but just I learned it through, you know, serendipitous you know, event. I find that as much of my stuff historically is time release capsules as it is in the moment intervention. Like I can think of one person I think of that actually both of, you know but I won't say the name. Who was a grad student and in the program was one of those grad students. It was like in the back of the room, like, yeah. Okay. Sure. Yeah. I just know like wasn't fighting. It wasn't, it was just like bullshit. I don't know how this relates to, you know, organizational development. And you know, one off in the world, did great things, showed up, Always showed up in class, registered for the classes. And so showed up, did the work, did all that, right? So it wasn't like, you know, left, graduated, went out into the world. Six and a half years later comes knocking on the door, basically saying, okay, Not, not, not, not what this person said, but basically it's like, okay, first off, fuck you for the fact that I'm calling you back, right? Jokingly, right? And all right, some of that stuff you're talking about. I've been inside for half a decade now. Can we talk and I've had clients like that and I've had, right. So some of it I realized is just, just I don't want to dilute the potency of my formula, I don't mean formula in the calculus, but like my formulation of my, you know, of my message of my provocation of my invitation really is the best way to say it. And so what I'm looking for is nah, I'm, I'm not, I don't want to gauge off of how much they're ready to work. I'm going to assume there's somebody in the audience that's ready to work. One person. And in fact, not just ready to work has already, what I'm actually, what I know is already somebody at work and they are drowning. They are, they are Don Quixote ing. They are, they lack the language. They lack the framework. They lack like all of that, but intuitively they're already working. Inside of organizations, man, one of the cheats that we had is there were people already that were innovating in their heads and trying desperately to innovate in their work. And all you had to do is help disintermediate process and, and, and prediction and like, you know, all these kinds of artifices, right? And then it would look like we had some massive intervention and we did in terms of impact, but we weren't adding anything. We're just removing stuff, right? So in, in that audience of, of, you know, in that thinking event, like however many people that are. I don't, I don't need everybody to be ready for work. In fact, I I'd be shocked if they were, I think one, you know what I mean?

Ben: 13:39

I like that. I like that inside to outside distinction that you mentioned, kind of back to back thoughts there, because that to me is, is pretty important. I think there are a lot of people who are willing to do the work or interested in, Understanding what that is, but they're standing outside, you know, they're outside the building with picket signs. Yeah, and there's like a limited amount Of change that you can actually affect by doing this is my rationale for selling out by the way It's how I sleep at night, but I think being inside is really actually important. You got to have people inside who are cognizant of How the system works, the language that the system uses, and then to be able to share those tools with people who have a little bit of a different perspective and to begin to kind of infect the system in a way. And you know, to some extent, what you're doing, whether you're a speaker, whether you're an educator with your students here is you're kind of creating these like sleeper cells that you're sending into the system to wake up one day, activate. And then infect everything around them, but with this energy that actually is going to do some combination of, of planting seeds that grow and being this fire that just spreads across whatever it is that they're, they're in. And, you know, those in equal or maybe even unpredictable measures, it seems like, The, the way that we actually, you always are asking, how do we do this at scale? How do we do this at scale? That to me is how we do this at scale.

a.m.: 15:13

Mel, and I used to talk about this, Mel Toomey, my, my former partner on the MAOL and actually this was his insight that, that, that, you know I loved and it made for a century. In a chemical reaction, a catalyst, right? Like, what is a catalyst? Like, it's a third chemical, or it's heat, or it's, right? But, but what happens to the catalyst after the chemical reaction? It disappears. It doesn't exist. And so this is what I love about advisory work is you're behind the curtain. There's no possibility of you hanging out like the design of the thing. Part of the challenge we have, like, like, people mistakenly sometimes think when they talk about this stuff, or don't like if I'm out, like, you know, I get eat out a lot and I go to a bar like to hang out and I probably show up like introverted, like quiet, like reserved, right? I'm like, I'm not, right? I just don't have the bug of look at me, look at me, look at me. I can't. And then professionally, I can't find a movement that had. that either had or had put upon it a face that didn't ultimately result in corruption and decay. I can find evidence of movements that had no face that did some interesting things, but even down to religions, you put a face on it and it becomes easy to forget what people actually said and just start rooting for the brand. So political movements, social movements, etc. The work is about catalyzing and then doing what a catalyst does afterwards, which is disappearing. You should be useless after the, you know, the chemical reaction has happened. And if you are still useful, you didn't catalyze anything, you indoctrinated.

Ben: 16:42

Oh, that's a great analogy. The idea of sort of being consumed in the process, you know, is maybe not the person is consumed, but some amount of energy that was going towards that thing is expended and dissipates and then needs to be regenerated and gathered for whatever comes next. And to a certain extent, you're not actually the same person because you've now had that experience. And you're really, you're kind of collecting the molecules from scratch almost. I mean that, that sort of speaks to the experience of doing anything serially in a way. If you have some conviction of, hey, this is worth doing twice, or you're crazy enough to do it twice, whether you're serial entrepreneur, or you know, having multiple children, or whatever it is that you're engaging in this, this process over and over again, you do kind of, Collect all of those ingredients and, you know, as a, let's say, I'm to use the term consultant, I guess, very, very broadly, but anyone who's participating in helping other people go through a particular journey, right? You're, you're taking a piece of yourself and you're actually expending it. You know, the, the concept is you're, you're truly giving of whatever resources you've gathered, And you're trying to see those vaporize. You're trying to be that catalyst. And if you're holding anything back, then there's a sense of, well, like maybe you're not genuinely invested in that process. I'm actually kind of curious if you've ever had a moment where you felt like you were going down this path and realized, you know, it's not worth expending the fuel, you know? And I think that's a, that's a moment that is, it's like a dangerous moment, right? Because you're, you're moving backwards. You know, a lot of we talk about keep going, charge, charge into the future, make mistakes. But every once in a while you get the signal of like, this is a mistake. I'm going to stop the mistake. What, what's, what's your litmus test for that? So,

a.m.: 18:43

I'd first have to flip how you're talking about. So fuel implies that there's a finite quantity of something I have that I'm going to burn when I'm actually doing my work versus administrative work or, you know, where I do burn fuel, you know, that is like and then these days burning way too much fuel on operational administrative stuff. And that's got to get fixed. But When I'm doing what I think is my work, and when we're doing what I think is our work here I am not depleting anything. I'm sourcing something. And that, I don't know what the bottom of that well is. I've never been able to come close to seeing it. And so, but then what I use instead of depletion is sacredness. You see, I have a finite amount of fuel for operational administrative, and I do want to reserve that because I'm going to run out, and I want to use it judiciously. When I'm doing my work, I'm sourcing whatever the catalyzing agent is, and I think it's sacred. Not in a religious kind of, you know, whatever, but, but I'll stick with sacred. It and my determining factor, it becomes not, it is the person I'm working with good enough, getting it enough. Making enough progress is do they have reverence for their journey? And if they have reverence for their journey, we can hang out for a decade and they'll still get more ca, you know, catalyst poured on them, as it were. I can think of one, a person's popping in mind right now who I just learned is having an exit. from an enterprise that is like 15 years of struggle and then it looks like they've made it right and You know this person would joke about themselves that I actually might be listening i'm pretty I haven't talked to him in like a year, but i'm likely positive he listens Who joke about himself about what a remedial student he was and what a remedial this and like, you know And he was slow going but But that sum of bitch had reverence for himself and the journey he was on the whole time. And so, cool, unlimited access. A lot of folks have a casual relationship with their own development and their own possibility and their own potential. They allow a lot of psychological stuff to get in the way. Psychological stuff is real and should be tended to empathetically and legitimately, right? But they kind of use it as an excuse. We had somebody, I just really, I'm, I'm still not done processing it. We had, you know, we started hiring folks. I thought that we were upscaling a certain part of our thing and folks who had real kind of commitment to kids. And one of them was exited some time ago just kind of uncovering more and more that they weren't doing shit. All the talk in their lives about kids and equality and this and that, it's just posturing. Like, they would tell you they believe it. People around them might tell you they believe it. But they weren't willing to do the work. There was no actual reverence for what they were up to. It was an idea. And a thing they could rail against. Right? The other side of it. I got no patience for that man. Like I'm an asshole on it. If I'm not careful, I'm an overt asshole to people who engage like that way. This case fortunately didn't come up until long after the person was gone. And so there's no, you know, didn't have to say I don't want to deal with this person anymore. But out in the world, I have to really check myself on folks who have a, a you know, who, who, who posture, who pretend on things that are very human. I can get sort of, you know, bullshit avenging angel energy. You know what I mean? Like I can, I can become that guy. And I, I've, I've really learned to kind of check out of those scenarios. So it doesn't, but but, but that's my answer. The question is I don't gauge or is the person getting it? Are they. You know, whatever, what's their progress? What i'm looking at is how are they engaging? Do they have a sense of again reverence for an understanding of what their journey is?

Ben: 22:11

I I love that description It feels like something goes hand in hand with that If you have reverence for something you have an a certain amount of persistence Meaning that you believe in his worthiness And so you're going to stick with it and you're going to stick with it in moments when it appears to you You To be not fruitful, not delivering on its promise. And there's this weird kind of ethos now of like the fail fast piece, especially in my corner of the universe of startups. It's like raise a bunch of money, not working. Okay. Digit next thing, you know, go do it again. And that to me lacks reverence. It lacks respect for the idea, respect for the process, respect for the notion failing in various ways is an important part of that journey. And so knowing when to have persistence is enormously important to be able to expose yourself to things that are downright nasty and unpleasant. And to go through that and say, this is a moment where we can walk away and to choose not to, and to choose to incorporate that into the next step that you take. That's having reverence for the process, for the idea, for the commitment and separating that from just abusing yourself or others. And to, to being able to draw that line is, is enormously important. And so genuine reverence, a thousand percent commitment to something that's not causing growth. That's, that's something you have to weed out. And, and that's near impossible to really dial in on unless you have an internal sense of what growth feels like. There's this like intuitive thing where you go, Oh, you know what? Like this. This is on paper. This is awful, but why do I feel so good? Why do I feel like I'm waking up and there's something here that's being enriched by that process? If that's tricky, but it exists.

a.m.: 24:16

I want to really underscore it I don't think it needs to be but I just was biased on stuff like this when I say reverence It's not reverence for my work That actually is a massive red flag to me. That's actually worse than if you're not serious.

Ben: 24:29

We're all here to worship at the altar.

a.m.: 24:30

That's a shit like that. People listen, particularly now where we are in the world, they're looking for who's got the answer, right? And, and, and so that I'm like, but I've always been like, that one's a big red flag caution. Because that's somebody who's not only not serious, they're actually looking, it's even more, they're looking to do even less of their work. They want to, yeah. I'll take, I'll put him on the spot because he's not here. But Kyley, like I'm fairly certain Kyley respects me, but he's not here because of my work. Like he, you know, I mentor him, I whatever, you know, like that. But he is so like, he is in for life on his work. He has a legitimate reverence for what it is. He's, Kind of, kind of can see about his impact with kids and therefore the world, right? That's kind of what it looks like, right? Is this, you know, staying in the ecosystem, accepting the provocations but it's not about that. That's about serving the vision that he has for his masterpiece. All right, his work of art in the world, his innovation, his expression, his whatever, right? And to go back to the speaking thing what I find Ben Is there actually a lot of people like that out there? And they just it's it's it's like there's shit tons of sodium out there. There's shit tons of chloride out there They just ain't ever had the proper catalyzing experience to turn them into salt. You know what I mean? But there's a lot of that untapped out there. And I think there may be a lot of that untapped out there among young people. And that could be wishful thinking on my part. I don't know. Where, where you don't have to pull folks. You know, they are, they are, they, without realizing it, they've been, they've been waiting for the, for the, for the framework or the, whatever it is, I don't know, right? So, again, in, in a group of 100 or 1, 000 or 5, 000, I just need 10 out of 5, 000, 1 out of 100. But I find that probably 10 out of 100 and 1, 000 out of 5, 000 that Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but who will allow themselves to be catalyzed. And again, not take a single word of what I said, because that's problematic actually. But we'll use it as a spark for the chemical reaction. That is their work.

Ben: 26:36

It's interesting. When you see that and when you see the remnants of that, and I, I was thinking about this earlier'cause I was spelunking in someone's code and it was

a.m.: 26:47

you said spelunking, I immediately, oh. Like I, I, my one fear in life is claustrophobia. Like you close face, I'm like, oh my God. Spelunking, I you want do the code? Okay.

Ben: 26:54

No, I think actually that's the feeling I want you to have when you're looking through. This is anybody who's, who's worked as an engineer and knows the feeling of going into a code base. That's not your own. And that was primarily designed by one other person and it has the contours of the shape of their brain and you get to sort of experience like what it must be like to think like that person and sort of like walking into a house that like looks fine on the outside. And then you go in and it's like this Alice in Wonderland, you know, shrinking hallways, unlit rooms, and you're kind of, you're peeking around corners to understand like what, how, how do things work in this world? Is there gravity? Are the doors locked? What type of handles are there? How do these rooms even connect? Are they all connected or none of them connected? Do I need to break down a wall to be able to get upstairs? Are there stairs? It really is this feeling. And for me, when I'm going through this, there's this Visualization of some type of physical space that exists. And as I'm going through this, it was, it was couldn't have been more different than the way my brain works. You know, it felt foreign. It felt alien. alienating, almost, to be in this space. And I had been mentally like almost a little critical of this kind of corner of our universe because it didn't conform to a lot of my strict expectations about how we engineer things, right? How we build things and standardize them. And so, yeah, this is like the last, the last dusty corner that I've kind of investigated in some of what we've built. And it took hours. I was, I was doing this on the train and just late at night and I realized halfway through this is parts of this are inspired, genuinely inspired. And I wouldn't have expected a single person to have been capable of doing anything even remotely like this. And this isn't a person that I knew well and had lots of personal conversations with, but you know, a casual work relationship and suddenly I felt like I was getting to know them and I, I almost, I almost reached out and sent them a message to say, like, we haven't chatted in a couple of years, but I want you to know that this thing that you did is incredible. And I am actually moved by. coming to understand it and Initially, I went in with the the intent to make all sorts of changes and modifications and I came out I just took everything that I had changed over the course of four hours Selected all of it and discarded it and said the way that it was is great because I can't I came to understand it and You know that That's a moment where you're really acknowledging someone else's journey, someone else's process. And in, you know, people, a lot of times software is about standardization and moving to the lowest common denominator in a way. Can everybody read it? Can everybody understand it? But allowing room for these pockets of eccentricity and brilliance and just being struck with something truly, like, innovative and creative. And just letting it be, you know, it's okay every once in a while if it's not perfect by some exterior measure. Because now that's, that's like this permanent imprint of this person that's going to live on in this way. And I actually hope that other people get to discover that person's brain in the same way that I got to walk through it.

a.m.: 30:36

There, I forget who originally said it, but you know, there are no straight lines in nature. And, and, and there's no right way to be a human being, but there are inauthentic ways, right? And there's no, you know right ways to do work. And that there's narrow slices of narrow, but critical slices of work that do benefit from a machine orientation and not a human orientation, right? Like you know, the person calibrating the Railroad tracks, you know, doing the quality checks. Yes, bring minimal humanity to that and bring bring a lot of machine precision to it. You know, do it the right way. Sure, but it's so narrow. The number of things that benefit from that. And by the way, all of those things we again back to the enough conversation from last time. We have machines that increasingly do those things, you know, and do better than us and won't get bored by them and all that. But but what makes humans into make life interesting? Every living thing interesting is not its perfections. It's flaws. It's it's crooked lines. It's it's eccentricities. It's it's, you know, if if the fucking sunrise were absolutely identical every single day, like it were a film, would you care? You know, it's just the question for a human being, though, becomes. Do you have, for me, it becomes, do you have reverence for your eccentricities? Do you have reverence for your flaws? Do you have reverence for your crooked lines to the degree to which you're willing to bring them into play and make something that only you can make? And if you're not cool, I got some names of people you can work with. You know? And if you are and you don't know what to do, great. And if you are and you don't have skills, great. And if you are and you've been told forever that you're incompetent and in fact have a long list of failures, great. Come on in. That's what the school is. That's all it is. Do you have reverence for yourself? Are you willing to cultivate that? Everything else we'll figure out. A week, a month, a year, three years. We'll figure it out.

Ben: 32:30

How do you keep track of graduates?

a.m.: 32:32

You know, it's great. They keep track of us. Now we at a practical level, we have, you know, we use power school and we have different schools set up in there. So for any credential granting program, certificate granting is in school called FULLdae play with our name a lot, DAE any of the kind of two week, six week, you know, sort of more intro programs or immersion programs are in a school called PARTIALdae and then students who leave a FULLdae program and aren't gonna engage with us but aren't also graduating from high school yet, they go into a school called RESTdae. So they're not, they haven't left us. They're in rest day and they'll still occasionally hear from us students who finish. As a program and are truly done in terms of the formal thing we can offer or graduated high school. Whatever they go into NEXTdae. And in power school allows you to assign years, you know, year one year two of a program year three of usually it's, you know, K through 12. You've got 12 different like if it's school system happens to have all of them in one system, some small towns, maybe whatever. For FULLdae, it's up to four years. You can be in full day up to four years. The assumption being you come in your freshman year of high school and you're with us for all the four years of high school, right? So the max you can do in FULLdae is four years. NEXTdae, the thing you go to after you graduate, there's a cap on as well. It's 99 years. You're in because that's the max the power school will allow. And, and, and, you know, most of our kids probably won't live that long. Although with technology, who knows, right? So in essence, the idea is you're in for life. And this comes from my practice with Tuesday Tea. You know, that group, it's just like, it's just a lifetime community. And so the ones who are like, you know, overusing the terms, right? The ones who allowed themselves to be truly catalyzed, the ones who have kind of reverence for the journey, they keep coming back. Like we got two of them you'll see today if you're, if you're here a little later, that they're, they're in college now. But they come here in the afternoon to study for their finals. They don't go home. They don't go to their college. They come here to study for their finals. We didn't chase them down. They asked, right? At a practical level, in, in, when they're in next day, they're in that database, they'll get like a quarterly newsletter from us, but it's not it's stuff that's aligned with the culture they got when they were here. Right? June 6th. We're doing a quote unquote alumni event. And so folks who, you know, are kind of in NEXTdae come in in person together. Same thing. It's in the context of our culture. That thing is not about any formal. It's what you've been working on. Tell us now. And then we're gonna tell you what we've been working on, like Kay and Mo and like, you know, there's no hierarchy. We're all doing work, right? What are we working on? What do you know? Yeah, and then hanging out and playing ping pong and eating and The same thing they did when they were here for a year or two years or three years, right? And so that's you know, so to answer your question how we keep, you know, structurally operationally they're in the school called next day They get a quarterly news newsletter, you know making air quotes, from us, but they hear from us quarterly And we invite them in person formally once a year But in reality, the ones who were sort of dug in they just show up. They just, they understood when they were here that this is not a place I come to for a transaction. This is one of my homes. And so they just keep coming back. They just show up.

Ben: 35:34

I'm always tempted to do something fairly taboo when I'm here, which is just peek over at somebody's computer while they're working. And you're not really supposed to do that. This is a little bit of an invasion of privacy. But there's always this sense of everyone who's just present is doing something, and I'm curious about it. Because it's, there's like, there's an environment where, what are you doing? Well, something you're interested in. And if you're interested in it, then I'm interested. In most environments, it's not a given that anyone's doing anything that they themselves are interested in. And so that's, this is what is magical, you know, you really want to say like, ah, give me some of that. What are you doing?

a.m.: 36:14

That, that, that line, just how you phrased that, you know, I know you got a gig, but that like immediately qualifies you for, for, for, to be an educator, at least as an entry of conversation, which is, what are you interested in? If you're interested, I'm interested. That, that, that's You know, it's not the only thing, but that's a, you know, that's a part of being an educator here. It's not about my curriculum. It's again that back that thing of cool. You got reverence for your journey. I'm immediately interested in. I'm gonna look for ways to kind of provoke you, push you, catalyze you,

Ben: 36:39

right? I mean, this partially selfish, right? Like this is someone asked me what's in it for you? And it was, it was actually in the context of like the, this micro grants program I was working with and they, I was seeking advice from some folks who had worked in nonprofits before and they smartly asked him, why are you doing this? What's in it for you? I said, well, I just want someone who's interested in something and trying to pursue it, to talk to me about it. And, and that feels in any conversation, you have to convince people that you're To talk to you about the thing that they're interested in normally they they'll avoid it at all costs They'll be embarrassed by it. You know, it reminds me of this Famous kids book. It's like what would you do with an idea? I think it's the title and at first there's this sense of you're embarrassed about your idea, you know

a.m.: 37:31

Dr. Joan Ball's ears just perked up

Ben: 37:33

Please no, I like it And oftentimes it's like, they just won't tell you, it's like, no, I don't, I don't mean what you're thinking of that you think that I might relate to. I want something that you acknowledge could be completely foreign to me, that I have no context for, I might not understand, I might think is weird, but I want to know what you care about. And if we can do that, if we can start there, then at least we're talking about something that's genuine and you can educate me, you know, I want to be educated, but that's, it involves like this phenomenal amount of arm twisting and you know, it's I don't know why that that's, that's trained out of us. That is actually rude to talk about something that you're passionate about.

a.m.: 38:19

Yeah.

Ben: 38:20

And so you can create an environment where that's the opening line. It's like, hey, here's, you know what I love? Microphones. I want you to talk to me about how microphones are made for as long as you want to do that. And I'm going to come away and I'm probably going to go talk to somebody else about microphones because now, now you've, you've, I'm on board, right? You've pulled me into your world. And that's that's how you learn, right? We don't do that. I don't know why.

a.m.: 38:45

That. That's the kids first month here. You know, I think we've talked about this. It's just and it's it's I don't know. Depressing. Heartbreaking. How many kids like don't know what to do with that question because, you know, at the ripe old age of 15, so few people have asked them like honestly, you know, and they felt kind of safe enough to kind of explore and like, I don't know, what, what, what, what should I be? I mean, she's in a job, right? I mean, she's in a job. That's what I'm wondering. I mean, she's in college. But that's, that's kind of where the education team's initially focused with kids is just a variety of things to kind of help explore. What is it? Microphones. Cool. Now, are you willing to be serious about microphones? Are you, again, reverence. We don't use the word reverence with kids, but are you willing to have reverence around your passion for microphones? Cool. Great. You're gonna do, you know, IOT relative to microphones. That's great. Can't wait to see what you come up with. Yeah.

Ben: 39:31

Yeah, I mean, if you start there, at least everything Whether it succeeds or fails or flops or continues or whatever it is, is going to be a genuine extension of something that you're actually feeling. You're thinking it's consuming you and it becomes generative. yeah, just getting over that hump. It's so crazy. It's so crazy that we don't, we don't actually communicate in

a.m.: 39:55

Well, again, my other, you know, kind of saw I like to sharpen in all conversations is we live in an economy. We don't live in a culture. And so the whole orientation is, is there utilitarian value? And can you articulate utilitarian and economic value? And if there is an economic value in a microphone, or if you can't articulate how you're going to make money. And be a big deal in the world of microphones. Shut the fuck up. Like that's indirectly the message we send to kids and to adults, right? Until you can tell me how this is going to have utilitarian value. You're just wasting time, wasting my time and yours. You're like, yeah, yeah, you play with that on the side. I got it. But what are you doing? Right. And so that's, that's why people are afraid to talk about their thing because it is most often the case, the most interesting things that people create. Out of the gate, they have no clue what value it is. Like if you're writing a novel with the idea that it's going to sell X million copies, you may sell X million copies, but you're going to generate trash. You know what I mean? You're going to generate trash. It's like films, albums, all this stuff, right? Sure. You're going to sell a million albums. You're going to sell whatever it is. And it's almost like guaranteed to be trash. It's not got any lasting value. And you're going to move on to your next thing. All, almost all interesting stuff. The person up front has no clue what the utilitarian or economic value is, but they're fucking committed, you know? And then at the end of it, it's like, Oh shit, look at this amazing, beautiful thing.

Ben: 41:22

I feel like we don't always have a call to action at the end of these conversations, but I would just, this is my call to action to anyone listening. Like. Go talk to somebody about the thing you're actually interested in. See what happens.

a.m.: 41:34

So yes to that. And, and, you know, my, my, my sort of, I'm, I'm the what I was hoping to do next week is Zen Mountain Monastery, which I used to go to annually and haven't been able to since the the pandemic. Since DAE, damn it. Next week is a week long silent meditation and I was hoping to kind of hop into that. It's, it's beautiful, but, but I, I tend to go to the, you know, to, to that side of the thing. So yes, go talk to somebody. Absolutely. Yes. And then I would add to that, you know, take the fucking thing seriously. Stop treating it like a, like a triviality. You know what I mean? Have reverence for it. Actually do the work,

Ben: 42:08

Yeah. It's easier to dismiss it because if you dismissive of your own idea, then somehow, I don't know, it hurts less if you don't do the work, it hurts less if someone criticizes it. Instead of having to feel that and move through it, move past it, reconcile that. You just go, eh, it wasn't important anyways. Right. So it's you're taking on a cognitive and emotional load. But you know what? That's necessary. It's necessary to do things that are actually gratifying. And, you know, it's not just in a selfish way, but for others too. If you're going to connect with people, you have to be able to take that risk. So,

a.m.: 42:47

and we have a, maybe this is, you know, picked us up in next season. But I'm big on surrender. Surrender is another dirty word in this culture, because you think it means giving up. But, but, but I think part of this journey was reverence, and I think surrender is part of it. Like, are you willing to surrender to this thing? Like, I am a educator. That's become like, you know, that was in my face at an early part in my life, right? It's not what I would have chosen, you know, like I'd be riding around the country on a motorcycle or a drop top. I'd be like on a beach somewhere. I'd be selling surfboards. I'd be like, I am like, like, I like to hang out. I like, if I followed like what, you know, but it just became obvious fairly or that this is what there was to surrender to and life's been amazing. So it's not like a, like a burden. But you give yourself to a thing that wants to use you in a productive way, not productive in terms of outcomes, economic value, but like actually having your life feel like, Oh yeah, yeah, my time. Like I, I used my time on the planet, you know, I didn't just pass. As Mary Oliver says, I don't want to die having just visited. You feel, I don't feel like I visited, you know what I mean? That I followed my inclinations. I may well have felt like I visited. I would have had a great fucking time. I know I'd have a good time. But I, I, I I have no regrets around starting this. So I think there's this thing of just whatever it is. I'm a trivial, dumb, whatever it feels like. If you keep pulling you have reverence for it, surrender to it, get serious about it. And then you just need one. Find one person you could talk to about it. Who isn't going to try to help you or fix you or guide you. But it was just going to be like, Oh, that's interesting. Tell me more. You just need one. And if you don't happen to come to DAE, you got plenty.

Ben: 44:27

You know, there's a conversational art to just digging up an anecdote that's like a soundbite that is your relevance to somebody else's thing versus like giving of yourself in like furthering of like, Hey, say more about that because I'm here for it and this is why, and there's like the finding that is Because we're all untrained in the art of like, really participating