Goofing Off On Purpose - Kevin Kelly on owning his time, staying optimistic about the future, raising children, and his new book Excellent Advice for Living | The Pathless Path Podcast

[00:59] Paul: Welcome to The Pathless Path. I'm Paul Millerd, and in this podcast, we examine the invisible scripts that run our lives and dare to imagine new stories for work and life. Today I have the honor of talking with Kevin Kelly. I'm really excited for this conversation. He has been a wanderer of his own pathless path. He just put out a new book, or I think you're going to be publishing it soon.

It's called Excellent Advice for Living, based off an amazing couple of blog posts you've done on sort of maxims for living a fulfilling life. I don't think I can do a proper introduction, but you've done many things. You're a traveler, you're a wanderer, you're a curious human, and I think just looking to live a full life, which is inspiring for me. Welcome to the podcast, Kevin.

[01:52] Kevin Kelly: Well, thank you, Paul. I really appreciate your inviting me and the chance to share with your audience and fans.

[01:59] Paul: So I arrived in Taiwan in 2018 and my mind exploded. Um, you wrote, I arrived in Taiwan in 1972 and your mind exploded. I love— like, I'm just so fascinated. I've seen a number of different people people's journey start in Taiwan and want to know a little bit more about that experience for you.

[02:26] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, one of the biggest differences is that the journey from northern New Jersey in 1972 to Taiwan was so vastly wider than the journey today because, um, okay, I was in high school, or I was just out of high school, I'd never eaten Chinese food. Wow. Never held chopsticks. Didn't know any Chinese people. Had never been out of New England. I mean, it was just the parochialness of life then was, it was really hard to grasp.

And I try to tell my kids about how impoverished we were in terms of information. And, you know, like there was bookstores had a couple bestseller books and that was it. And there was, You know, library, it was just really, really closed in that way. So going to Taiwan, it was like going to another planet. And then later on in my travels to Asia, it was like going back in time. It was like in a time machine.

That's how drastic it was. So, so yeah, so the Taiwan in 1972 was undergoing rapid industrialization, which was another thing. Not only was I witnessing this sort of ancient way, But before my very eyes, they were building, you know, the cities of the future. And that was also just blowing my mind. But the major lesson I got was in Asian countries in particular, they have a very different sense of privacy, which means that basically everything is kind of public. They do stuff out in the open.

They had these kind of garage shops and they would do stuff and there was literally not a single inhibition for me just to walk in anywhere and just watch what they're doing, or, you know, be there, including people's homes. Um, and so, and so it was an open university. And I basically, dropping out of college, that was my university where I got to see where and how things were made, literally, because they were making stuff. For, uh, the rest of the world. And also just in terms of just like how the world operated, what was going on. Um, and then there was the whole weird differences in how things were done, which is another whole thing.

So my head exploded in my 5 different dimensions.

[04:58] Paul: Yeah, so a month after I arrived in Taiwan, I met my wife on Tinder. And she— she's Taiwanese, grew up in Taichung and had just— I— we connected over— she had read a book she discovered on the Tim Ferriss podcast, which is like just so wild in terms of like how technology— that's why I was so fascinated to hear a little bit more about your experiences because her parents were around at that time. And I've heard stories of like they would make badminton rackets in their homes to increase production and all these things and how that shapes the culture we're going to raise our children with as well too. It's hard to bring that past alive, I think, for many people.

[05:51] Kevin Kelly: It is. I have photographs which I took then. I was photographing and I did spend a good amount of time in Taichung as well because my friend who invited me there originally— how I wound up there was I had a high school friend who went to study Chinese at Donghai Dashui. And so I was there to visit him. And otherwise I would never have thought of going there. I didn't know that you could even go there or what.

So I do have some fond memories of that. And as you might know, My wife is also Taiwanese.

[06:29] Paul: Oh, I did not know.

[06:30] Kevin Kelly: Yes, yes.

[06:31] Paul: So I did not recognize the last name as Taiwanese.

[06:36] Kevin Kelly: Um, well, her parents are from China, so she's part of the Wai-Shing group. Yeah, exactly. And so, um, um, so, uh, but I did not meet her there. I met her a year, you know, much later when I was in Athens, Georgia, and she was a graduate student here. So, um, So I still have relatives in Taiwan right now and have gone back and have seen that amazing transformation. And I think travel is so, so important for young people that I think that we should subsidize it.

And by we, I mean every country in the world, if at all possible, should subsidize the travel of their young because I think there's very little we could do, for one, for their own development as intense as some travel outside the country, and as for world peace and general, you know, betterment. You know, I think it's no coincidence that the Mormons prosper, and I think it's in part because they said most of the guys— it's a male thing, but they still, they send their guys there for 2 years, and that is like That is just world-changing for them.

[07:56] Paul: Do you think more people should be dropping out of school after a year?

[08:00] Kevin Kelly: Well, so when I was in— after high school, there was no gap year. There was no internship. There was only grade 13. And if there had been gap years or internships, I probably would've gone through it. I just needed a break. I just could not sit in the classroom for another 4 years.

And that was what it was. It was big classrooms. It's like, I need to make something. I need to do something. I need to whatever. And so I think a gap year or 2 or an internship would have really transformed that.

So when our kids— I have 3 kids and My wife is Taiwanese, so she's very much in the mode of the Chinese.

[08:52] Paul: Yep.

[08:53] Kevin Kelly: Get the education. You know, she's not a tiger mom, but she's definitely, she herself, you know, has multiple degrees and went on this path. And so that was one of the few areas where we had disagreement. And I told the kids, kind of whispering to them, you do not have to go to college. But here's the deal is, if you have a project that you wanna, that you wanna work on, whether it's travel, whatever, you have a project, you can map it out. Let us know and we'll, we'll support you instead of going to college.

But you have to have something else. If you can't think of anything else to do, then you have to go to college. And the 3 of them chose to go to college. So that's fine. But they had the option to do something on their own. But the prospect of doing something on their own was much more laborious than just going to college.

So they went to college. For me, it was—

[09:53] Paul: Well, you sort of wandered a bit, right? You were, you were taking photos and I've, I've listened a little bit about your story and you were, you were sending them back, right? And, well, trying to get them published.

[10:06] Kevin Kelly: No, I was sending them back to be put in the freezer. In my mom's freezers.

[10:10] Paul: Right.

[10:10] Kevin Kelly: Until I came back to get a job to earn enough money to pay for them to be developed. I mean, I had no money. My parents did not give me money for this. This was all my own money, and I was on my own in that sense. So, but they, you know, I think I was, I was on, I, I did wander around. I, I did photography workshop, which I paid for and all this other kind of stuff.

And I was kind of trying to figure out what to do. And I didn't have a, any path ahead of me other than, I was kind of hippie-ish. I took the Whole Earth Catalog advice, which was to kind of invent your own life. And I was very influenced by Henry David Thoreau. He was my favorite author in high school. His little house he built on the Walden.

I later went on to build a house from scratch, cutting down the trees, working with a friend. And I did a lot of those things to kind of do-it-yourself stuff. And that's sort of where I headed. And I was totally resigned when I was in my early 20s to be poor all my life, but to have total control of my time. And I didn't realize that until much later that that is a form of wealth. And I talk about that in this book, is that, you know, having total control of your time is what wealth gives you, but you can also get there without money.

And so I was wealthy without even knowing it.

[11:46] Paul: Did you— do you sense— like, I'm curious how you've seen people gravitate towards paths. I think since you dropped out of school and traveled, the '70s were this time when there was this embrace of unconventional living, but it seems like we veered in the other directions. My parents are old. Younger boomers who were born in the late '50s, early '60s. And like, to them it was like, you must follow a path. What happened?

Like, why, why have we lost this? And I sense we're discovering it a little again. It could just be seasonality, but do you think this gravitation towards picking paths so young is kind of against getting lost?

[12:31] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, my parents were very much the same generation. And my mom was very, um, uneasy and uncomfortable, a little disappointed in my dropping out, primarily because I was the— I was oldest of 5 kids, and, um, she was concerned about my influence on the other kids. She said, you can probably handle this, but I'm not sure the others can. So following, and my dad worked for a big Fortune 500 company and stuff. And so I think the '70s was a rebellion against that. And you're right, I offered my kids that kind of option, but they took the other route.

I don't see much evidence that we're taking that except maybe in the kind of creator economy where there is a difference. And this is significant is that when I was growing up, I remember my dad had a friend who was doing a startup. And I remember that the way people treated that was startup was code word for I'm unemployed.

[13:49] Paul: That's my path now, creator.

[13:52] Kevin Kelly: Right. A startup was unemployed. And when people were saying, it was like, oh, when you told people you were doing startup, there was like pity. It was like, oh, I'm sorry to hear that. You know, it was like, there was no worship, adoration of startup at all. It was like, poor you, because, you know, like now a lot of them fail and failure was considered not good.

It wasn't a badge of honor. And so what has changed is this idea of startup as being the preferred mode of what you wanna do, that if you're really cool, you do a startup. And that has changed. And so there might be kind of a rush into careerism, but it is a different kind of careerism. Thing that you're signing up for. It's not— no one is rushing to work for GM, you know, or whatever.

I'm really cool, I work for Procter Gamble, right? No, it's like, no, I work for a startup in San Francisco. That's what it is. And so I think maybe some of that kind of— what's the word I want— your own path is maybe been taken up by the cool factor of startups. Yeah.

[15:12] Paul: So I started my career in 2007 at GE and that was like, oh, you've made it. Right. And that place was not great even then. And yeah, so this is like what I explore. I quit my job in 2017. I've been writing about our relationship to work and I put out this book called The Pathless Path about how people are imagining these new paths.

I think one trap with the startup path is that people trade one script for another that is like big tech startup and you sort of get lost in that as well. But I am seeing this very, like, I've been trying to coin it the great contemplation, not the great resignation. All these solopreneurs who are sort of starting with life and then designing work around it. It seems pretty interesting. I could be self-selecting into like people and the people I have on this podcast, but I am pretty optimistic, but you never know.

[16:18] Kevin Kelly: And the idea is that you design your lifestyle first and then you fit your work around your lifestyle?

[16:27] Paul: So, I think the thing that has interested me is in America, we've gone so deep into seeing everyone literally as a worker. Right. You were a worker and then your life is downstream of that. Right. So you pick a job, you pick a location, and then you design your life around that.

[16:49] Kevin Kelly: It's usually the first question we ask somebody is, what do you do?

[16:54] Paul: So it's— and the trap of following the startup entrepreneurial path is assuming that money will definitely come with that. Right. So I think I've been inspired by people like David Whyte and just thinking about it more as this conversation with the world. And you might find things that fire your soul up, but that doesn't mean you'll get paid for it, but it might be so powerful and an experience. I think writing is this for me. It might be so meaningful and deeply truthful that you might be willing to literally sacrifice everything.

To keep it going. And so you said this thing at the beginning of our convo, which was, um, where is this? Um, when you're on the right path, you're not late, right? And so I think like what I've experienced, I don't, I don't have any goals. There's nowhere to go. I'm here.

[17:59] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, right.

[18:00] Paul: It's such a It's so hard to explain, but I don't know, maybe you can bring it alive even more.

[18:05] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, yeah. No, I, I, I, I, I think you're, you're right that maybe this is sort of the next evolution in the, you know, perfecting work, which is that, um, people are working for other things, right? Or I mean, not the only, not the only dimension that we either acknowledge or account for is money, but that we have other dimensions that we account with. And I think we're seeing some of that in this resistance to go back to the office that, I mean, this is like serious stuff where like Google is saying, we're gonna fire you if you don't come back. And they're saying, fire me. You know, but there's so many that they can't, they're saying, well, you know, it's so—

[18:54] Paul: People like their kids and wanna be around them.

[18:56] Kevin Kelly: Well, yeah, yes. So this idea that, you know, yeah, we can make a version version of this where we have this a little bit more autonomy in our time. And so I think we might see a little shift there with that. And maybe there is some way again to account for this. It's not just a general hand waving, but there is a sense of which, you know, like, you know, your time and how you have control of your time is something, is one of the things that you are paid with, so to speak, in the same sense, or that it's kind of like like options, share options or whatever. In addition to that, we have X amount of time that you have your control, which means that you're at home.

I mean, it's not like you're not working, but we have some choice in there. So that may be one of the better consequences of COVID is this shift in maybe another dimension that is accounted for in work. But I think you're right that there is something brewing in people's overall dissatisfaction with the kind of current relationship or maybe centrality of work. And, you know, I think that was a lot of the attraction to the Web 3.0, the DAOs, which never made sense to me because the people doing it had never lived in a commune. All you have to do is live in a commune for, or even a co-op for a little bit to realize that it ain't the code, it's the human relations that are the real stickler. So, but nonetheless, I think the impulse and the motivation came out of trying to grapple with different ways to organize ourselves as we work together.

And I think we're still in the cups in the dawn of having new collaborative tools, tools for collaboration. That need to be invented that would honor or empower these other dimensions of our lives besides productivity and besides money. And the other thing too is, I think this is true, although I don't have much data for it, but I think this is my observation of being around Silicon Valley, is that there are a lot of people who become successful with money at a young age. And that gives them permission at a young age to start asking these other questions. So they're kind of privileged in that sense to be able to ask a question early in their life about what is meaningful? Why am I doing this?

What should I do next? A lot of them do go on to start things and to have other jobs. And when they're doing it, because they don't need to do it for money, they are focusing on these other qualities. And I think that's important. I think, I think that's another little cog in this machine that's moving it in a certain direction, which is that you have people who are, who are still going to work. It's like, why are you working?

You don't need the money. Well, I have the, there's some other reasons why. And what are those reasons? And can we account for them? Can we reckon them and can we widen who they touch?

[22:17] Paul: Yeah. You, you wrote taking a break is a sign of strength. And I love this one because it's what I experienced. Like, my whole world opened up once I became lost and wandered to Taiwan. Right. And this is against the pathiness of life.

[22:36] Kevin Kelly: Right, right, right, right.

[22:38] Paul: I mean, they were writing about this in The Organization Man in the 1960s. It's like you don't graduate from college, you transfer to a company.

[22:47] Kevin Kelly: Right.

[22:47] Paul: Yeah.

[22:48] Kevin Kelly: Well, this is true in Japan.

[22:50] Paul: I mean, Japan is very extreme still.

[22:54] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. If you want to see the other side of that, even today, the salaryman, it's just—

[22:58] Paul: Taiwan's pretty serious too.

[23:00] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Taiwan has influenced Japan.

[23:02] Paul: It's looser, but—

[23:03] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, You know, going back to travel and the value of travel is that, like, there's another bit of advice about your rest ethic. So I'm a huge believer in sabbaticals, Sabbaths, vacations, goofing off as instrumental and essential for later productivity if you just want to think in those terms. Obviously, for themselves, they have value, but they also happened to be one of the most productive things you can do. And there was a book called Time Off, and they coined the term, which I have stolen, which is that, you know, a good work ethic has to be counterbalanced by a great rest ethic.

You have to have— I love that. You have to be able to rest well and goof off. And that was my son who went to bilingual schools. So they went to a Chinese American school in San Francisco. They had the classes once in English and once in Chinese. And they went on to a very demanding high school, Lick, where they had college prep and shop.

They went on to college and did everything well and everything. And so at the end of college, I said, don't go into a career. Don't get a job. Goof off. You haven't goofed off in your entire life, right? I mean, you're like, your entire life you've been striving and trying to get good grades.

And it's like, you need to spend some time just goofing off, doing nothing. So he decided to, he had a fine arts degree. He decided to give himself, he wanted to think about going to graduate school. I said, no, no, no, no, no. So he's just going to travel. No, he said, give yourself your own degree.

So he made a course where for a year he made art every day and then wrote a thesis and sent it to his professors, published it, printed it, and then awarded himself an MFA.

[25:12] Paul: I love that.

[25:13] Kevin Kelly: And I said, yeah, that's what you want to do. You want to do something like that. And So, so yeah, I'm firmly in, in the belief that, uh, the value of goofing off and creative waste, sometimes we call it, um, where you are throwing things away. That's why the young people invent most of the new things, is because they spend 50 hours wasted time playing a video game. You can't make a good video game unless you spend time playing video games. And so This idea of goofing off, taking vacations, playing, fooling around is essential.

[25:55] Paul: You rode your bike across the US in 1979. I downloaded this book called Bicycle Haiku. You start off, silver fog belches, the way to heaven is barred. Do you remember what that meant.

[26:13] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. So, um, I began my bicycle trip in San Francisco and rode to New York City the long way around, riding up to Idaho and then back down to Arkansas and then back up to Indiana, visiting my brothers and sisters. Um, so I began in San Francisco, which I'd never been to. I'd actually never been on the bike fully loaded. I bought a bike and fully loaded it with, you know, the gear to go camping along the way. And the San Francisco Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, um, it's fogged in and it was kind of barring my way into the hinterland.

Um, so I wrote a haiku and a sketch every day of the trip, and I kept a little notebook which I reproduced, which is the Bicycle Haiku Book that Paul is mentioning. Um, I actually later rode across the U.S. from north to south when my son was 17. So my son and my nephew about the same age, the 3 of us rode from Vancouver down to Mexico and it was fabulous. It was a great father-son bonding thing. It was really, we camped along the way and riding a bicycle is the best way to see America.

It's the right speed. Walking, you just never get anywhere. Car, but on a bicycle you can cover the ground. And you can see it and you're close to the ground and you can stop along the way and you're a hero to everybody you meet. So I highly recommend bike touring in America. And we had a great time.

Again, they grew up in, you know, San Francisco is the little bubble. They got to see the real country. Eureka, California. You know, it's sort of an eye-opener for them. So I highly recommend it for anybody who has older kids is go on a bike tour together.

[28:09] Paul: That's awesome. Do you remember what the vibe or the energy was of the country as you rode through in 1979, if you could even describe it like that?

[28:18] Kevin Kelly: So I did the bicycle, one, to visit my brothers and sisters, two, because I had this religious conversion in Jerusalem and this was This was my answer to do what I would do if I had 6 months to live. So I had 6 months to live and that was what I decided to do. And the third thing is I'd never seen the US. I'd traveled a lot in Asia, but I'd never seen the US. And this was my first time in the West. And I was shocked by things which we no longer find shocking, by the kind of anti-government sentiment of the people that I met.

It was like I had no clue that that was a thing. And this is, you know, this is in '79. So it was probably mild compared to what it became. But there was this like rebellious spirit from a lot of people who were living out there because they wanted to get away from the government. And they weren't happy about the government. And in fact, you know, the government owns most of the public land.

I mean, there's a lot of public land that it owns. And so they're dealing with them. But that was, that was, that was a real surprise to me that I had no clue whatsoever about. Um, and I was riding through the flyover heartland the entire time. So I got, I got it all the time. Um, and yeah, that was a surprise.

[29:43] Paul: What's the next chapter of your life look like at this point? It seems like you've done so many things.

[29:49] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I want to become a YouTube star.

[29:54] Paul: This is going on YouTube. This is the start of the journey.

[29:58] Kevin Kelly: Um, no, I'm, I'm, um, I'm, I'm a maker. I've been born maker. I've been making all my lives. I built a model railway when I was 10. I built a nature museum when I was 12 in my basement. I did a chemistry lab and science lab.

I'm making things right now, and I've been recording them. I've been making a few, posting a few videos, but I have dozens, if not 30 or 40 more to post. And, uh, I don't care so much about— I'm not— I don't care about monetization. I don't even care about views that much. I just want to contribute. Like, I, I posted daily art, not on YouTube, but on Instagram and Twitter, and the art was for me.

Every, every day I made something, I was trying to surprise myself. That was my goal. It's like, I'm gonna sit down, I have no idea what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna try and surprise myself. The goal, the, the stuff is for me, but I will share it. And that sharing is kind of holding me accountable.

It's like, yeah, I got to do it today. It helps me kind of do it every day because I have to, I'm doing it every day. That's what it is. So that sharing on YouTube is my way of sharing and helping other people make stuff. It's not necessarily to, you know, to make money. It's that YouTube is the central— video is a central cultural commons that we have right now.

It's not movies, it's not books, it's not even the social medias. It's videos, it's movies, streaming, YouTube. That is where, and that's where the audience is. I'm, you know, I do a weekly podcast, I do a weekly newsletter. We have a daily blog for 20 years. All these other things.

The only, the only place where there's a growing audience is YouTube. And so I wanna be there. I, I, I, I, I spend most of my free time watching YouTube video and I think it's wholly underappreciated. I think it's vastly more influential on culture in accelerating the speed of learning in disseminating ideas than anything we've come before. And people don't really recognize the degree to which this is It's an accelerant of our culture, and that's where I want to be.

[32:17] Paul: That's amazing. It's— when I think of YouTube, I think of learning. It's like my first thought of where to go to find something, right? And it's, it's such a powerful tool. I totally agree. It's underappreciated.

And I also think there's this power too of like, especially accessing people in your generation, there's not enough people in your generation sharing ideas, I believe.

[32:43] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, yeah.

[32:44] Paul: Like, I think this is one of— one challenge of this, like, pathiness of life is there's no off-ramp to the industrial corporate career.

[32:53] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[32:54] Paul: But there's a lot of wisdom, um, in people that could be shared.

[32:58] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. So, you know, I've been using— trying as much as possible to use and play around with ChatGPT, and the, the problem was— not the problem, but the So far, the inadequacy is that it can't access YouTube. So, I can actually summarize. But Google, who owns YouTube, they should be able to access the interior. So, what I wanted to know is like, you know, find me the best YouTube video on X that explains X and just tell me, right, take it to it. Because their search is good, but not that good.

And I, or summarize, you know, the best YouTube video on this or show me the clips, whatever it is. So, I think there's a huge, huge opportunity, breakthrough for having access to the interior, not just the titles, but the interior content of the YouTube. So, right now, when you're searching YouTube, you're searching basically like the titles. You're not really searching the transcripts.

[33:56] Paul: Right.

[33:57] Kevin Kelly: And you actually don't want to search the transcript. You want to have AI actually look at the scene and tell you the scene and know that and be able to search the scenes. That is going to be mind-blowing.

[34:10] Paul: I was watching a Charlie Rose interview you did in 1994 about one of your early books, and a couple things stood out. One cool thing was you were calling it the net, right? It wasn't the internet yet. It was kind of the net. But you also so clearly understood where things were headed in terms of you were saying It's not about computers anymore. It's about communications and connecting people.

Are you surprised it sort of took as long as it did for those things to really become central? Like probably 2010s with mobile phones that communications was ubiquitous.

[34:55] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, I think I have learned to try to be a little bit more patient. I saw VR for the first time with Jaron Lanier in '80, '87, '86. And I thought, oh my gosh, you know, this is going to happen. This is going to be 10 years from now. There'll be this amazing thing. Well, it's been 30 years, 40.

I don't know. It's just been incredibly long. And we still, actually, the VR that we have today is not that much better than what Jaron had. It's just that it's a million dollars or a million times cheaper.

[35:28] Paul: Right.

[35:29] Kevin Kelly: Okay. Because he had, these were multimillion dollar setups to do this. And now we can do it with a phone. So, So yes, I have been surprised about how slow things have taken, um, and I try— that's something I'm trying to teach myself, is to expect it to happen slower in the short term. Um, and you know, I can make a list of things that I have been wrong about or surprised about. I, yeah, I mean, I, I did not expect cell phones to penetrate the degree.

So that probably happened faster than I was expecting to. I mean, not that they happened, but that they penetrated to like where the street sweepers of India, the people living in cardboard boxes, would have a cell phone. I did not see that coming. So, so that— so, but mostly I think things have happened slower than than I thought.

[36:31] Paul: Do you spend a lot of time contemplating the future of technology still?

[36:36] Kevin Kelly: I do. Um, I'm working on a project called, I call Protopia, which was my term for this idea of a flawed but slightly better future. And I've been, um, I have a hundred, I call it a hundred-year project. So I'm doing a set of scenarios for, for a hundred years of high tech. That is a desirable future. So it's, it's what is the scenarios of places that I would like to live in, in 100 years?

And it's very difficult to imagine a world of ubiquitous AI, ubiquitous surveillance and monitoring, tracking, ubiquitous genetic engineering that we wanna live in. Right. And so that's, so yeah, that's what I'm working on. It's not a book, going back to the YouTube conversation. It's not a book. It's— I don't know what it is.

Maybe it's video. Maybe it's a world actually composed with the aid of AI. I'm not really sure what it is, but it's an articulated scenario, a world-built scenario.

[37:44] Paul: I love that. I think channeling optimism in today's world is such a huge challenge. For people. It's so easy to come up with a dystopia, right? That's— and coming up with anti-storylines, this thing is bad, super easy, right? How have you channeled optimism in your life, and have you lost track of that at any points too?

[38:09] Kevin Kelly: Well, I, I think I am genetically predisposed. I mean, I'm a sunny person, I've always been, but I have actually worked at becoming even more optimistic than I am naturally. And because I believe that it's more important than ever to be as optimistic as you possibly can. So I'm optimistic, but I have become as optimistic as I possibly can. And that has come from mostly by reading history. I think the more I read about history, the more visible our own progress has become.

And it's not guaranteed that past You know, that past gains will happen in the future. It's not guaranteed that that progress will continue into the future, but it is statistically probable. Okay. Because if, again, if you read history, the problems that people have had in the past always seemed insurmountable, always seemed to be superlative, always seemed to be the most and inescapable. So the fact that we have problems with that is saying nothing because that's always been the state. So statistically, so, so there's a, a chance greater than zero that it could all stop.

The progress could stop right now. But statistically, given history and science, it's very unlikely. It's much more likely that it will continue. And so if it continues, then what does that look like? So my optimism comes from primarily from history and primarily from the future kids in the future because I, this is my little rant is, and I think it's actually some advice in the book to be optimistic. It's not to, you don't have to ignore the problems or ignore the fact that we have bigger problems than before.

It's just that our ability to solve problems increases even faster. And so I get optimistic from hanging out in Silicon Valley and seeing the energy and the degree of passion and intelligence and dedication to fixing things or making new things that I'm convinced that yes, our powers to solve problems is actually increasing faster.

[40:18] Paul: Yeah. You wrote, "Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist, you don't have to ignore the multitude of problems we create. You just have to imagine how much our ability to solve problems improves." Right. That's channeling David Deutsch. I haven't read David Deutsch, so—

[40:38] Kevin Kelly: I know who he is, but I just haven't read him.

[40:40] Paul: Yeah. His whole thing is about imagining, like, what makes humans stand apart is that we can come up with better and better explanations for how the world works. And sort of that is the fundamental unit that we should be optimistic and be thinking about the future. You wrote, you, or I read this in your Wikipedia entry. It could be, could be wrong, but, uh, you said you wish there were things wrong about the Wikipedia, but go ahead. You said you wish— it said you wished you had more kids.

[41:11] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[41:12] Paul: And I'm about to become a father, uh, having a daughter in the next 2 weeks. Oh, I'm very excited about this. Um, so gonna need some tips on, uh, raising American-Taiwanese, uh, children.

[41:25] Kevin Kelly: Oh yeah.

[41:25] Paul: Ha—

[41:26] Kevin Kelly: Happas. We— and they're called Happas in San Francisco. And, um, at our high school, at the kids' high school, I think 1/4 to 1/3 of the kids were hapa. And all the ones who weren't hapa wanted to be hapa. There was a hapa club and all—

[41:43] Paul: What does hapa stand for?

[41:45] Kevin Kelly: It's Hawaiian for like half and half.

[41:47] Paul: Oh, oh, oh, I like that.

[41:50] Kevin Kelly: And so they had the hapa club and everybody wanted to be part of the hapa club, even if they were kind of like not hapa for sure. So yeah, so, so, um, the hybrid vigor, um, I would say, so my first piece of advice, which I was reluctant to, to, to put into the book because it's very, very specific, but for someone like you, I would say have as many kids as you possibly can. You will never, ever, ever, ever regret it. And, um, other people I've known who have adopted have also, also agreed that it's like Yeah, there's literally, like, if you're trying to do the Jeff Bezos things of minimizing your regrets, have as many kids as you possibly can. So, yeah, we tried and weren't successful. We were getting older.

And so, yeah, we started kind of late. I was 35 already when I got married. so that would be the one thing. And in terms of, and also I have, so, so I came from kind of, Christian circles. So I have, my best friend has, 9 kids. His sister has 9.

Um, I have tons of friends that have 5 or more. And what they all say is that after 3, it doesn't matter. The, the, the, the, the amount of chaos and craziness and whatever, it peaks at 3. After 3, the older kids can take up some of the slack of entertaining and watching the kids. And so it doesn't, it's not like linear or exponential in terms of the chaos. It maxes at 3.

So like the 4th, 5th, or whatever doesn't really change the load, the cognitive load. Which I thought was interesting. So, yeah, if we were, we would start a little early. My wife worked full-time. She's still working right now. She's went into work today.

She's still working. So we were juggling full-time working parents with 3 kids. And so that was, we had help. We, my wife, through the Chinese newspaper, put some ad in for help. We found one lady from Hong Kong the first time and one from Taiwan the second time who picked up the kids at school and, and did cooking in the afternoon. And that was the thing made it all possible.

[44:34] Paul: What's your favorite Taiwanese dish?

[44:37] Kevin Kelly: It's really funny because just last weekend we went to have some stinky tofu. That's not tofu. Yeah, tofu is not my favorite, but I'm just letting you know that I do eat it.

[44:50] Paul: Um, you're legit. It's not my favorite either. It doesn't bother me.

[44:53] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, you're right, it doesn't bother me, but it's like I don't crave it. But my wife was craving it. Okay, all right.

[44:58] Paul: Um, that's the same.

[45:01] Kevin Kelly: Um, my favorite, I have to say, I'm still partial to, um, in the morning, right? Oh, like, um, the breakfast, the, the dojang. Oh yeah, the salty soy milk with the yochao, which is the, the, um, fried donut stick, and then the sao bing, which is the, the breaded, um, pink, the breaded envelope. So that is still for me like the ultimate treat, um, some Fresh douzhong, salad bean youtiao. It's, um, yeah.

[45:40] Paul: You're making me miss Taiwan. Taiwanese breakfast.

[45:44] Kevin Kelly: We can get it here in San Francisco. We can get it in San Francisco. True.

[45:47] Paul: I'm in Austin though.

[45:49] Kevin Kelly: Okay.

[45:50] Paul: Um, the, the Taiwanese food is not great in Austin.

[45:54] Kevin Kelly: Yeah.

[45:54] Paul: Opportunity for growth.

[45:56] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Well, we have Din Tai Fung here in, um, oh, nice. In, uh, well, in San Jose. Yeah. So you can get, yeah, you can get it.

[46:09] Paul: Amazing. What, what else do you want people to know about the book or other projects you're working on now?

[46:16] Kevin Kelly: Well, the book is, is a little small, little paperback that I think would make an ideal gift for people. And that's how I wrote it with this idea that I took these little memorable things that you hope you can put into a head and have, I wouldn't say memorize, but recall them like a proverb that they would come up when you needed them. And there aren't that many of them. There's 450, a few on a page. And the idea is that you would kind of unpack them and make them yours. So don't worry how or where you begin.

As long as you keep moving, your success will arrive far from where you start. So this is one of the things I tell young people is it doesn't kind of matter where you start because you're not going to end up there. And you just want to start, you want to master something and then go from there rather than kind of trying to figure out where you're going to be. That's The Pathless Path, I guess. So, and then, you know, the Your passions, I'm reading from the book, your passions should fit you exactly, but your purpose in life should exceed you. You want to work on something that's much bigger than yourself.

[47:33] Paul: I love that.

[47:34] Kevin Kelly: So that's sort of, everyone's time is finite and shrinking. So the highest leverage that you can get with your money is actually to buy someone else's time. So, you know, hire and outsource when you can. This is 100% something I wished I'd known when I was younger. I was a kind of a whole earth do-it-yourselfer, and I really thought that you kind of had to do things yourself. Man, I just wished that I had known that the highest leverage is to hire people to outsource things.

And like when the internet was starting, there was a guy, Mitch Kapor, who started Lotus 1-2-3, who didn't program at all. He hired programmers and became, you know, this instant billionaire. It was like, that never occurred to me that you could do is we just hire the programmers to do your thing. And he understood that. And so it just, it's taken me a long time. And now we try to outsource everything.

I use Upwork. It used to be Elance and oDesk, Upwork. And we find freelancers to hire out. So every, you know, I have a full-time assistant and we always, I always say, Can we specify this enough to outsource it? Do we know enough about this to actually hire it out? Because that's how we leverage the time, because that is the scarce resource that we have is time.

Anyway, I'm just reading stuff from the book.

[48:58] Paul: I love it. Uh, I really appreciate just your own courage to follow a weird path. Uh, it's really inspiring for people like me looking for models of how to, uh, make sense of things. So My shout out to you would be to say I hope you keep going on your own path and thank you for your time today.

[49:23] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, I appreciate your questions and your interest and I wish you the best success on your Pathless Path, which is I think a very profound way to state it and a mission. So I think here's the last bit of advice, um, which I'm going to read because I put it— it's like, your goal in life is to be able to say on the day before you die that you fully become yourself. So I hope that you fully become yourself.

[49:56] Paul: I love that. Such a good, good way to close. Thank you, Kevin.

[49:59] Kevin Kelly: Yep. Bye.