Malcolm Ocean on Rationality, Goals, Self-Awareness & Motivation as a Self-Employed Entrepreneur
· 1 min read
Malcolm ocean is a fellow wanderer of the pathless path and as is such - is hard to describe. He runs a software company, Complice which helps people turn big goals into day-to-day actions. More broadly from my vantage point, Malcolm appears to be one of the most deeply curious humans alive about how we make things happen at the individual and group levels.
Follow Malcolm:
- Website
- Twitter @Malcolm_Ocean
- Complice (bonus free week)
Watch & Listen
- 0:00 – Intro
- 0:37 – Introduction
- 1:30 – Malcolm’s first goal
- 2:44 – Setting a goal for yourself, not the others
- 7:34 – Finding internal motivation
- 9:05 – Learning how to choose
- 11:09 – Malcolm on being self-employed
- 15:04 – Malcolm’s role models - a family of entrepreneurs
- 16:33 – Why Malcolm’s dad didn’t understand his business model
- 17:54 – Generational shift in the perception of work
- 19:29 – Malcolm’s vision of Utopia
- 24:22 – Paul on finding out what he really wants
- 26:09 – The nature of incentives
- 28:20 – Relation between minor and big goals
- 32:19 – Paul on the hidden assumptions about what we want
- 33:46 – Superficial and deep problem-solving
- 36:19 – Towardsness & Awayness - Malcolm’s approach to politics
- 40:14 – Aiming at intuition
- 41:14 – Scaling up from the individual to the group level - not a compromise
- 52:39 – Paul on the complexity of human needs and how it’s not recognized in traditional workspaces
- 55:27 – “I win you lose” vs finding win-wins
- 1:00:18 – Doing good work vs getting in sync with the group
- 1:02:36 – Participating in an attitude
- 1:05:18 – Making an appointment with your saner self
- 1:09:29 – Why do people give good advice to others but struggle to help themselves
- 1:11:35 – Starting small and trying stuff
- 1:12:47 – Thoroughness. Why Malcolm sometimes is perfectionistic and sometimes isn’t
- 1:15:33 – Hiking with friends as a case study for group decision-making
- 1:18:21 – Malcolm’s broader aims - the puzzle of the general group flow
- 1:21:38 – Sports and capitalism
- 1:27:12 – The hardest things are often also the most rewarding
- 1:28:06 – Rapid fire questions with Malcolm
