Rohan Rajiv on learning through 3500+ daily blog posts

[01:00] Paul: Welcome to The Boundless Podcast. I'm Paul Millerd and I created this podcast because I'm passionate about making sense of the future of work and having conversations with the innovators, creators, and thought leaders who are carving their path in today's fast-changing world. You can check out the podcast and more on boundlesspod.com. Today I talked with Rohan Rajiv, who is a former colleague of mine and has written for over the last 10 years one blog post every day about something he's learned. I've always been fascinated with his writing. I've learned a ton from him.

I think you will too. We talk about a number of things. We talk about his blogging habits, his writing, the unexpected, pretty cool things that have happened because of the writing. And we talk about experiments, when to start, when to quit them, side gigs, side hustles. We also dive deeper into some of the more macro questions of what is work and how do we think about this, uh, given technology. And also end with his views on becoming a parent and what he's learned with that.

It was a fun conversation. I hope you enjoy it. And as always, appreciate any support. If you have any comments, email me. If you want to support the podcast, check it out on the Patreon link in the show notes and enjoy the pod. Rohan, welcome to the podcast.

[02:35] Rohan Rajiv: Hey, thanks. It's great to be here.

[02:38] Paul: So I'm excited to talk to you today. So we were coworkers. At one point in our past lives. And we were sitting at a retreat. I think this is in Switzerland. We were working for a Swiss company and you leaned over to me and asked— this is the only time anyone's ever asked me this.

Most people just solicit newsletter signups via email now. But you asked me if you could send me a daily email of something you learn every day, which of course piqued my interest. But Can you tell me a little bit about what is that all about and when did it start?

[03:14] Rohan Rajiv: Great, so it's funny, I started with, so I was at a presentation workshop yesterday and we were talking about weak words. And I'm gonna do my best and use this conversation as a way to hopefully do better about not starting sentences with weak words. And with that fresh resolve, A Learning A Day was an idea that was conceived in 2008. It was born out of extreme insecurity and unhappiness. I was working in a small startup. We were building Singapore's largest student job portal, and as a side project, I started this video a program where I would take a question for the week and ask a bunch of students for their opinions and then put that into a video, and I called it Expression Happens.

And there were just a bunch of classmates who found it funny and decided that they would mock me, and they did so on Facebook. And this was really hard for me to take. That sucks. I remember sort of going underground for a month or so and realizing that I thought of myself as a very confident, somebody who, as a very confident person who enjoyed taking risks, who was comfortable with failure. And I felt that that incident clearly brought out the worst in me. And so there must be something that I'm missing about myself.

And I figured that maybe if I had become this very insecure and just unhappy person over these years and hadn't realized it, maybe the way to change that was to share a learning in public. Look at failures that are happening in my life and talk about them. So one day maybe I'd begin to look at them as learning. And I clearly wasn't capable of doing it then. And then second, I didn't have the discipline to do anything every day. So I figured why not try and give myself this crazy goal of doing that every day and then seeing what happens.

So that's how I started writing. And that was 10 years ago and it has completely changed my life.

[05:32] Paul: That's a big statement. So what was the first post about?

[05:40] Rohan Rajiv: The first post was, was, "Hello, I'd like to be doing this every day." But it had a PS and a PPS if I remember this right. The PS was clearly try or something. You know, I was basically making excuses for myself. I said, "Hey, I want to do this every day, but I don't think I'm really capable. And I'm gonna make excuses, but I'm gonna try anyway." So it was this very weird— and then I think it truly reflected my mental, my belief system at that point. I really didn't believe I could do it.

[06:15] Paul: Yeah, it must be fascinating to just go back and look at some of those early posts. You might like half cringe but half kind of be fascinated on your journey.

[06:25] Rohan Rajiv: Regularly cringe, yes.

[06:28] Paul: So what, when was, so how long were you doing it when you realized, okay, this might be actually something that's going to last?

[06:39] Rohan Rajiv: What's funny is, as much as I didn't believe in my ability to do it, I had hope that it would last. And there was one particular story that I got as a forward. This was email, you know, the glory days of email forwards, right? And there was one email forward that really stayed with me. It was this, I think, fictional story of this family that was driving up a mountain and then they reached this valley and all they saw was a gorgeous valley of flowers. And they really wanted to understand how did this valley of flowers in the middle of nowhere come to be.

So they parked the car, walked toward what seemed like a gate, and there was a board that says, "Answers to the questions I know you're asking." And it said, "Planted one every day for 1,000 years." for 30 years or something like that. And it was one of those moments when they realized just the power of doing things every day and the power of looking back at a valley of flowers. And the reason that story stuck with me, especially in the early days of doing this blog, is I thought, "Wow, wouldn't this be cool? Wouldn't it be cool 20 years from now to look back and see this valley of flowers?" And I think there was that— that image has still stayed with me and that image is something I think of every— I think every blog anniversary I think back to that image and say, ah, you know, I'm working my way toward that valley of flowers.

[08:04] Paul: [Speaker] That's fascinating. And we're also in an interesting time. I realized this early on with Facebook. It kind of just made sense to me that this company would become enormously powerful because it was basically that. And people don't share as much on there anymore, but you're putting all your photos on there. And then I kind of realized like 50 years from now, I'm still going to want to have that because you're going to want to look back and like see all all these random things you did.

So what has your relationship been to kind of the internet and as you've seen that evolve over the years? I mean, blogging has changed so much. I think like that daily blogging, the smaller bite-sized post was more common when you started. Now, people are focusing more on like kind of the output, the clicks. The kind of wow factor, more polished posts of Medium, and you're still doing kind of the same type of posting?

[09:05] Rohan Rajiv: Yeah, that's a great question. I think over time the journey has been primarily one of self-discovery, right? And yeah, I think through this process of writing Every day I've learned a ton about myself and this interesting combination of who I am and who I want to be, right? Because it's in that tension that we exist from day to day. And I think what has been interesting here has been this, I guess, realization and acceptance that I'm a writing kind of guy, right? And I see this when people talk about social media, and I think there are many ways to engage with social media.

There are folks who are very comfortable engaging with photos. There are folks who are very comfortable engaging with video. I'm not one of those. There are folks who are great with podcasts, right? I just, I've tried a couple of these and I've realized that it's just not me. I think I am me in my truest form when I'm writing.

And so that's the type of media. And then there's another question on frequency. And I think there are people who are just phenomenal bloggers who blog once a week or once a month and come up with these incredible posts. Some of them have made it a living. Wait But Why is a great example of this, right? And I realized that's not me either, right?

I think it depends on why you do it. And I think that flows into stuff like frequency. There are a whole bunch of people who do this for their living. That's also not me, right? For me, this is a way for me to learn and for me to incorporate those lessons in my life and my career. And I see this as a wonderful, wonderful project that I can engage in without ever worrying about how many people click on it, how much money do I make off it, which I don't.

And so there's something very liberating about getting to do art, right? Art in the sense of like just doing something that connects both with you and hopefully with somebody out there.

[11:24] Paul: I love that. That resonates so much too. I find myself as a writer as well, and I tend to write long articles about things, like go really deep and lose myself for a couple months writing something. And people will tell me, "You need to write shorter chunk-sized posts so that people can make it shareable." It's just like, that's not what I'm trying to do here. Similarly with podcasts, I love having conversations and it was through conversations with people that people would say, "Well, you should experiment with doing this." The reason I keep doing it is because it's fun. Not because I'm aiming for some output.

And then people also will say, "Well, you need to be on YouTube." It's just like, I hate video. I just don't like it. It doesn't feel natural. But do you think there's kind of an identity thing there though? I mean, you've kind of identified yourself as a blogger doing these daily posts. How do you balance that versus challenging yourself and kind of learning new things?

[12:34] Rohan Rajiv: That's a great question, and again, it goes back to purpose. Yeah, right. What is the purpose of all of this, right? I think, I think what's— where it gets challenging is when you, when you, when you start with a purpose or you have a purpose in mind, and when you find yourself gravitating to other purposes for extraneous reasons, right? There's always, there's always something that's hot in the moment, right? And you can always jump on on that and do that.

And that's okay. It works for some people. But I think it comes down to why, right? I think of this piece of— this valley of flowers, per se, if I had to use that analogy, as my meditation. It's my daily 15 to 20 minutes where I pause, think about what's happened and what is happening and what I'm thinking about and what I'm learning and where I'm failing. And then condense that into something that hopefully makes sense more often than not.

[13:33] Paul: And if other people find it valuable, that's a plus.

[13:36] Rohan Rajiv: That's amazing. I mean, I would— I do want other people to find it valuable. That's why it's a blog and not a diary, right?

[13:42] Paul: Right.

[13:43] Rohan Rajiv: So I would like another person to find it valuable. But at the end of the day, the primary purpose is still for me to get better and for me to be a better human being. And I'd love for others to be on the journey But I also understand if it doesn't work. I also understand if they don't want to join the journey today because maybe they'll join 10 years later and I'll still be around and most likely I'll be better.

[14:08] Paul: Do you expect this is going to run the course of your life at this point? I mean, you're 10 years in.

[14:14] Rohan Rajiv: That's a great question. I've not thought that far. I think when I hit 10 years, I began thinking of the next decade. And I think that's where I'm at. I don't know. I think it's gained so much momentum that it will be hard to stop.

So if it does stop, then it'll require something pretty massive.

[14:39] Paul: What are some of those unexpected things that have emerged because of this daily practice? Either connections with people— I know I've found through some of my writing and a lot of what keeps me writing is you tend to meet people in real life and form friendships. And then once you have that loop going, it's kind of crazy. It doesn't stop.

[15:02] Rohan Rajiv: That's a great question. I think we have to split this into two spheres, right? For how it's impacted me and how it's impacted me with other people. And maybe we'll talk about the second because that's kind of what you were referencing, and then come to the first. It's been wonderful. I've met a lot of people through this.

It's been amazing. I mean, not every reader sticks around for a very long time. Some of them are following or being a part of the journey for 2 years when they need it, and then they move on to doing other things. But during those 2 years, I hear from them, I get to know them via email. Occasionally have a conversation or two, and it's very special. I've met some very interesting people through this, and I think it's one of those where I feel it's a very special relationship because obviously they don't know me and my past all that well, but they do know me in a very pure form because writing is thinking and they know how I think.

And so I feel often these folks know me at a much deeper level than so many people who kind of interact with me on a daily basis.

[16:13] Paul: Do any people or experiences jump out specifically?

[16:19] Rohan Rajiv: A couple of them, maybe. One was, I remember I was, I had this post where I just said, hey, I'm willing to help anybody with resume review. I was just in one of those places, I was feeling very grateful and I offered it out. And I was in London back then actually working for our old Swiss employer. And I had this wonderful blog reader who had started this multi-million dollar business and sold it. And she was looking for a next gig in a nonprofit.

And she just hadn't done a resume before and wanted to meet. So she just We just exchanged emails, she came home, we met, we hung out. And it just felt so surreal and random, right? She had no idea who I was, and I had no idea who she was, yet we felt completely comfortable to meet at my place and just kind of go through her resume for a few hours and then say goodbye. And we haven't really stayed in touch. I mean, there's probably been one or two email exchanges since, but it was one of those very serendipitous meetings.

There have been a bunch of them, which— but they always have this sort of a nature. And I've had just some wonderful, wonderful relationships with people who I've known through this blog.

[17:41] Paul: So you've tried a lot of different experiments. I was looking at your site. I counted 12. There's probably more. I'm sure there's many more micro experiments. How do you think about starting an experiment?

[17:56] Rohan Rajiv: So it depends on the question almost back to you is what is, at what scale do you term something as an experiment, right? Because I feel constantly running them, but yes.

[18:06] Paul: So you started something a couple years ago, Notes by Ada.

[18:10] Rohan Rajiv: Yeah.

[18:10] Paul: And more longer form posts going pretty deep on different tech issues. So where did that come from and how are you thinking about that project now?

[18:23] Rohan Rajiv: Great question. So experiments, I feel, always arise out of some hypothesis, right? And that's a kind of— it's a very scientific method. And I feel that's what this blog is about. It's about a lot of personal hypotheses on, say, things I believe I should change. And then I try it and I test it and I share the results typically on the blog and then come back and run the next one.

So some of these side project experiments also arise out of that, right? I felt I enjoyed thinking about tech. That said, I didn't feel I wrote enough about it. And writing to me is the purest form of learning because it forces me to synthesize, it forces me to develop mental models. And I wanted to do that and do so regularly. I didn't want to be caught in my day-to-day job because I think as much as I love my job, my company, I like thinking about technology as a whole and where things are going and our responsibility toward doing it well.

And so that's why it started. So it started as a— I decided to do it weekly. I realized it was way too much work to do weekly. And I had a— our first baby was 6 months, so I was losing 3, 4 hours on a weekend. So then I've kind of changed the frequency. I try to do one really long-form post once a month.

And that enables me to have some semblance of balance between all of this writing and learning and connecting with the family.

[19:55] Paul: And when do you think about shutting down something? I know at one point you were doing book reviews. Are you still doing that?

[20:05] Rohan Rajiv: I still do them. I do them probably once in 6 months. I just take half a day and just— plowed through what's happening. I've shut down a whole bunch of my— most of my projects, as you can imagine. If you counted 12, 11 of them have shut down because there's nothing beyond Notes by Ada. I feel this is one— I feel this— again, it's going back to the hypothesis, right?

There's a hypothesis, you test it, often you have fun with it for a very long time, but then there comes a time when you either realize that the hypothesis is no longer true or you've fallen out of love. And if you have, at that point, I think it's time to shut it down. And again, this is the beauty of getting to do art for free because you have your livelihood, right? And it takes away the pressure from the art. And I think when that happens, I think you can really lean into trying to learn and trying to have fun with it.

[20:58] Paul: Yeah, there was an article in the New York Times a few months ago talking about how having a day job can be kind of a spur to being creative. And if you go back to people like Einstein, I think he was working at a patent office and basically doing all his work on the side, which was his creative work and all sorts of random ideas.

[21:23] Rohan Rajiv: Yeah, and his is a pretty instructive story. Yeah, totally. And I think there's tons of examples. There's a lot of great people. Great examples about this and I just think it's easy to shut things down when you realize that, you know, A, I'm not learning or B, I'm not having fun. Then you don't take it personally as well, right?

[21:47] Paul: So I work with a lot of people that are trying to think about shifting either to self-employment, thinking about how can I experiment with side gigs, how can I become an entrepreneur. And I often give them the advice of just find something to do and then find the smallest piece of work you can do to actually do that. What advice would you give to somebody that just is trying to get started? Because I think people get overwhelmed, like you were saying at the beginning, about kind of that end product of like, what, what is the goal rather than how do I just get started and do something?

[22:28] Rohan Rajiv: I think the key, the principle behind all of this is to view life as part scientist and part experimenter. Right, so part scientist and part learner. And so I think just looking at this as a big science experiment in itself is very helpful, but it can be a little daunting. So I just think of it as like, how can you design a simple experiment and then figure out what you want to learn from it. Right, so to me it is as simple as that. To me it is as simple as, hey, I want to, let's say you want to start something new, which is I want to, I don't know, learn cooking.

Right? I don't need to commit to being a Michelin star chef in 3 years. Right? It can just be, hey, I'm going to take 3 cooking classes over the next 3 weeks. Commit to something really small, and then I'm going to stop on week 4, reflect, and see if I want to continue. I think if we can— I mean, obviously there's a lot that has been said about breaking things down, but I feel like there are 2 principles when it comes to doing this stuff.

One is to view everything as an experiment and make sure that you are constantly testing some hypothesis and learning from it. And then two, also remembering that It's not like you can make a commitment today and that's going to keep you going for 10 years. We commit and we recommit and we recommit and we recommit. So as long as you have a recommit point that is a few weeks from now, I think it's a lot easier to then look at every decision as, okay, as a step towards the next decision.

[24:02] Paul: Do you recommit every year on your learning for a day? Do you go through any formal process of doing that?

[24:09] Rohan Rajiv: I don't anymore, but I used to. I think from time to time. And there have been times when I just, ah, man, this is hard. Because I go through spells, and every year I go through at least a couple of spells when there's just a 3-week period when I just feel stuck. I feel there are no posts coming in. Every day it's a struggle, it's a grind.

The flip side of that is that having gone through that every year, I also know to expect it. And I also know that I get past it, and then ideas will flow as well. So I've learned to take it in my stride, but I think it also takes a few of those experiences before you feel comfortable with being stuck.

[24:49] Paul: And when do you do your daily posts?

[24:53] Rohan Rajiv: On weekdays, first thing in the morning.

[24:55] Paul: Yeah.

[24:56] Rohan Rajiv: On weekends, when baby sleeps.

[24:59] Paul: And what was today's post?

[25:02] Rohan Rajiv: Today's post was about the jerk threshold.

[25:06] Paul: Jerk Threshold.

[25:07] Rohan Rajiv: The Jerk Threshold. Oh wow. Yeah, so let me talk through that. What I wrote about was this idea that we are all capable of being jerks.

[25:20] Paul: Right, totally agree.

[25:23] Rohan Rajiv: Given the right conditions, we cross the threshold from being whoever we are to being a jerk. And now we do this in different forms. The psychology behind this is that we either move towards people, against people, or away from people. And the idea is that all our great strengths when overused just become very annoying and counterproductive. And I think then the obvious two questions are one, what are these triggers? And two, how can we catch ourselves?

And while some triggers are easy, right? A lot of us become jerks when we are hungry. Some of us jerks when we are sleepy, right? And those are the easy ones to catch relatively. The harder ones to catch are when some relationships just get into a pattern where we just begin to see the worst of each other. And I think there isn't any failsafe way to catch it.

Of course, one simple, the simple prescription solution should be We should just develop a continual high state of self-awareness, which is not easy. So I'd say I almost think the easiest or the best way to proceed is to accept and truly accept the fact that we can all be jerks from time to time. And I think being aware of that makes it a lot easier to catch it when we actually do.

[26:45] Paul: People underestimate this too in organizations, the amount that the system will kind of guide you in different ways. And in two ways. One, I think almost capping some of your strengths or the things you want to be.

[27:00] Rohan Rajiv: Yep.

[27:00] Paul: And then moving you in ways which bring out some of your worst characteristics. So I can reflect back on environments and I mean, I'm not going to call out these companies, but there's one company that I think made me a better person. And then there's another company that made me a worse person. And if you can kind of step out and see, okay, what are the dynamics that actually cause this, rather than just either enduring it or kind of just blaming yourself, it can be pretty powerful.

[27:34] Rohan Rajiv: At the end of the day, the root, the principle underneath all of this is awareness.

[27:38] Paul: Yeah.

[27:39] Rohan Rajiv: And part of what helps awareness is an acceptance of who we are, what we are capable of, both in good ways and bad ways.

[27:50] Paul: So you're working at a platform now. I'm not going to ask you too much about that, but I'd love to just pick your brain about platform, social media in general, and where things are headed. I've been doing a lot of thinking just about what does it mean when you have companies like GitHub selling for $15 billion? but there's very minimal employees. $10 million per employee.

[28:21] Rohan Rajiv: I think 8, no, 7.5, 8. Okay. But, but yeah, yeah. Some, some massive amount.

[28:26] Paul: It's some crazy amount and you don't need that many employees to create enormous amounts of wealth. And we're also seeing trends like, middle-class jobs disappearing, more low-wage labor increasing. You're in the Valley. What does this all mean for kind of the future of platforms, how we think about wealth, how we think about supporting people? Big question, but I know you have thoughts on this.

[28:54] Rohan Rajiv: Yeah, really big question. Really, really big question. So I think— I'm trying to think of a simple way to answer this, and there isn't a simple way. So I'll just talk through the frame with which I approach this, right? There's on the one side, there's how wealth gets created, right? And there's on the other side as to how wealth gets distributed, right?

And so what we are finding and what we have definitely seen is that labor as Labor used to be hugely correlated to wealth 100 years ago, right? That relationship is broken. And WhatsApp sold for $19 billion with 22 people, I think, like 30, 30 people. Yeah, something, something ridiculous, right? So you— and, and then they, and they created that wealth in 4 years or, or, or, or, or even lesser, right? So So you realize that that relationship is broken.

So what this means is that it is possible for a very small group of people to accrue and capture a massive amount of value. Now I think that has a couple of consequences. The first consequence is that it means that there is more and more potential for a large group of people to be left behind. Right. And, and I think the second consequence is that we know that when there's imbalance, there's such imbalances— such, such imbalances, uh, cause trouble when they're unaddressed in the long run. So I feel like that's another consequence, right?

And I think we should talk a little bit about the distribution of wealth too, in that the share of public wealth in most countries has been declining. Most of it is accruing to private wealth.

[31:04] Paul: Right.

[31:04] Rohan Rajiv: And you've all— we've all seen various ways of various graphs that have shown us that inequality has gone up. And I would— my sense is this is a role for the government. And this is kind of where it gets tricky, right? Because this is politics and your views on all of this. But I sense that we've seen this from time to time where when governments take a step back from playing an active role in redistributing wealth, and typically their biggest way to do so is taxes. And most of the developed countries today, America as well, had very strong progressive tax systems, right?

In the '60s and '70s, you were, you know, as your wealth went up, your taxes also went up a huge amount. This has changed, and I think there's a consequence to these changes in that more wealth gets retained by the rich. And given we're taking away stuff like estate taxes and things like that, this wealth can be easily passed on, which means privilege kind of moves from generation to generation, making social mobility tougher.

[32:14] Paul: Right.

[32:14] Rohan Rajiv: So I just think that the trends aren't great. I mean, I'm trying to keep this as factual as possible. So where things are going isn't great. And I think it does make me worry as to at least about where things would be 10 years from now or 20 years from now.

[32:32] Paul: I think some of those topics are just outside my expertise too. So I'm not going to offer too much solution. But what I've been thinking about a lot about is that other element you said, which is kind of the disconnect between labor and wealth, right? And it also means you just don't need as many people to work for a company to create that wealth, which means people are going to have to create their own paths, right? I think we've moved— if you ever read any of Seth Godin's stuff, he says we're looking for organizations to give us an offer, right? But the reality is we need to create our own opportunities and own, express our own creativity, often a lot more or much more like you've done over the years, a lot of small experiments.

Do you think there will be more paths for people to do the kind of things you're doing on the side now, which are supported by a full-time job? But perhaps there are more— I don't know what it looks like. It could be the gift economy. It could be different ways platforms pay people. But do you think there'll be more ways for people to do that? Those kind of things on the side?

And it could be universal basic income, but—

[33:46] Rohan Rajiv: Yeah, it's a great question. It's such a hard question, right?

[33:50] Paul: It is too. And when you introduce money, it takes away, like you were saying, the gift of art.

[33:56] Rohan Rajiv: Yeah, exactly. I think it's such a tough question. I don't know where this will go. Obviously, I mean, there are people much smarter than me who are trying to figure it out, but I think a couple of thoughts. So the first thought is we've always, as technology has progressed, even in the past, there has been this break in the correlation between labor and value, right? So farming is an oft-cited and good example in that it took a lot of people to produce very little previously, and now it takes very few people to produce a lot, right?

And technology has played a big role. So one argument we could make is that, hey, this is just happening to many of the mainstream occupations now, and we are just going to find other things to do, right? And that is the techno-optimist kind of approach to all of this, is that we are going to create new jobs just like we created yoga instructors and Zumba masters, stuff that didn't exist 100 years ago. I think the counterpoint to that is, hey, all that's good, but that also came at a cost. All these revolutions were pretty difficult times, right? And resulted in a lot of societal unrest.

So the question is, are we going to go through that? And not sure, possibly. But I think the biggest challenge we're going to face is disentangling— so much of our self-worth is wrapped in what we do. Because what we do generates money, and that in turn enables us to have a life, right? And this idea of this sort of honest day of work is something that's ingrained into culture. So I think separating that is going to be hard, and that's where all of the criticism around universal basic income comes, because it takes away this honest day of work, and it's a handout in many people's eyes.

I don't know, it's challenging. These are tough, tough problems. And I don't know if there's gonna be, I feel our ability as human beings to react, to prepare proactively for big problems is not something, is not a well-developed skill. It's not a developed skill at all. So in that sense, like I'm not super optimistic we'll figure it out until we have to.

[36:15] Paul: [Speaker] I think you hit on a really key point there, which is how we think about work, right? Our mindset and idea of what work is. It's been fascinating even working on my own over the past year. I've had several people say to me, "Well, when are you going to get a real job?" It's like, "Hey, I actually am doing some work over here." But the way we define and think about work is such a narrow conception. Perhaps we shouldn't even call it work, right?

[36:48] Rohan Rajiv: Maybe. I don't know, maybe.

[36:51] Paul: Maybe you can dance with some of these ideas in future posts or daily blog posts.

[36:57] Rohan Rajiv: I do write about them, actually, Notes by Ada. I think I've written a bunch about these because I think a lot about artificial intelligence and where that is taking us. But they're such interesting, tough problems, and I think it's also a luxury, right? It's a privilege. To be able to think of these things because there are a lot of people who are seeing real consequences of this without being able to respond. And they're looking at leaders and politicians to solve the problem, but it's not— these are not easy problems.

And there's often a negative correlation between people who are equipped to solve them and people who get elected, right? So there's— it's challenging.

[37:42] Paul: So we'll table that. I don't think we're gonna solve it on this call. And let's shift to a project you are actively working on. You put this on your blog as the mother of all projects, which is parenting.

[37:59] Rohan Rajiv: How—

[37:59] Paul: what have you learned through that? I imagine so much, and I can only imagine it's been a profound experience for you.

[38:09] Rohan Rajiv: Probably my top learning is this appreciation of how much life is a team sport. I think I had heard of these terms like it takes a village to raise a kid and all of that and all that. It's one thing knowing that and it's another thing truly understanding it. And I think For me, the amount of support we've had from our parents, which we're just incredibly grateful for. And just, I think, learning from my wife on how to be a parent and seeing her sort of take lead and run with it, and has been just an incredibly humbling experience. I'd say that is probably— that's the biggest lesson.

I mean, I keep telling my wife is that I feel like we are truly married now. I mean, not to say that we weren't before, but I think there's a level of appreciation that I did not have for her, at least not at this incredible level. I think there are so many times when I'm regularly mind-blown by all the things that she's thought about and done. So, I'd say that's one. I think the second thing is every time or most times I find myself irritated I come to terms with just my own lack of flexibility and openness to something different. So it's just a collision of my plans and my expectations and then them not working out.

And I felt that especially in the first few months when we'd be like, okay, we're gonna go do this and this and then boom, right? The whole thing explodes. And I think it has helped me become so much more flexible. Mentally to completely different plans or things not working out in ways that I could not have fully imagined. I'd say that's two. I'd say the third thing is, you know, it's easy to be engaged for short periods of time.

I think I have a lot of respect for people who are engaged with small kids for long, long hours, right? I think this idea that staying at home is actually much harder than going to the office is something that is completely true. Yeah. It is much harder. I've done it and I tell you that going to work is a piece of cake in comparison. And I think it also speaks to how hard it is to truly give ourselves to another human being.

You know, we all have our own desires and interests and things we want to get done. And this is something incredibly powerful in doing it and doing it for the right reasons. Because you can also do it from a very selfish place of wanting to make somebody be like you or, you know, pass on your ideas and stuff. But I think if you can truly be a parent in the sense of seeking to be like them. And this is an incredible passage by Khalil Gibran, a Lebanese-American poet. And he likens this whole thing to, you're the bows from which your kids' living arrows are sent forth.

And so, and the idea is that, and he talks about sort of the, power, or God, or however you want to think about it. And he says, "The archer marks his path upon the infinite and sends these arrows forth. But even as he loves the arrows that fly, so he loves the bow that is stable." I think it's just an incredibly powerful sentiment.

[41:58] Paul: I love it. That seems like an amazing place to end. Rohan, thank you so much. Where can people stay up to date and get access to all your knowledge bombs every day?