Kevin Kelly on Why Today Is the Best Time to Create
Kevin Kelly changed how I think about deadlines, wealth and progress.
I just sat down with Kevin Kelly.
He co-founded Wired and has spent five decades studying technology, culture, and progress.
In this episode you’ll learn
Why simple deadlines create more original work than chasing perfection
How to stay optimistic using history and long-term thinking, not blind positivity
A practical way to define “enough” money so you own your time
We dive into the details later in the conversation.
We unpack the full story around 28:13 and 39:57.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
00:58 The limitless nature of improvement
03:10 Why deadlines beat perfection for creative work
06:40 Extraordinary claims and how to think in uncertainty
16:24 “There is no them” and reclaiming your agency
23:41 Training realistic optimism with history and long-term thinking
28:13 Why today is the best day in history to start something (full idea here)
33:00 Too many options, cheap dopamine, and choosing a path
35:02 There is no limit on better or new ideas
39:57 Never aiming for a billion and redefining real wealth (this part surprised me)
44:44 Gratitude as a trainable skill, not a cliché
48:23 Your purpose is to discover your purpose
51:39 Mastery as the first stepping stone to a meaningful life
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Here’s the full transcript:
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (00:00.238)
Hi, my name is Kevin Kelly. I’m senior maverick at Wired Magazine, and you should listen to me so that you can become more optimistic. So five years ago, you created a YouTube video called 68 Bits of Unsolicited Life Advice, briefly exploring lessons you’d learned in the 68 years of your life. I picked out a few that I’ve really resonated with and a few that I didn’t quite understand.
and we’d love to explore those further with you, understanding your thinking that may have shifted now that you’re at 73. Perfect. I’m looking forward to it. Before we jump into the ones I like, I figured I’d like to chat about the ones that I’d love clarification on. So the first one was, always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. And because you can’t make it perfect, you make it better and different is much better. What did you mean by this? A less than perfect
product that is shipped is better than a perfect product that is never shipped. So you emphasize on completing things because most houses, most buildings, most books aren’t really completed. They’re just abandoned. And so you need a deadline to assist you in getting things done. And when they are done, they’re not going to be perfect. They’re going to be imperfect.
And that imperfection and that deadline forces you to do it in a way that you weren’t planning to do it. And that detour is often the source of something that makes it different. And difference is the currency of innovation and wealth. Can the deadlines be arbitrary? Or does it really not matter?
It doesn’t matter. They can be self-imposed. They can be...
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (02:06.923)
Part of an external client, could be your health, it could be all kinds of reasons. It doesn’t matter where they come from, as long as you obey them. What’s an example of a deadline that creating an artificial deadline has led to a really positive outcome in your history? A could be something like...
I’m going to write a blog post today. By the end of today, I’ll put a blog post up. It may not be very good. I know it’s not very good. It doesn’t really matter. that’s, so, so I did a daily art every day for a year, 365 days. I did a piece of art. That was a deadline. So, you know, there’s deadlines where,
I’ve self-imposed that I just, I’m going to have this book done by Christmas. I wanted people to have this book in their hands by Christmas and I’ll work back from that. There’s no real reason for that. just that it seems like a good time. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. So the next one was extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed. Now this is a really interesting one for 2025 that
is aging very well. what are some important examples in our current existence in regards to this one and why is this so important? Well, and first of all, to be clear that I was not the first person to say this. I think there’s a little discrepancy about who was. I’ve heard it attributed to Carl Sagan, the astronomer, but he may not have been the first. A lot of these bits of wisdom.
are kind of passed on the things that I heard and often don’t have any real idea of who said it first. Yeah. And that’s okay. Yes, that’s okay. I’m just letting people know that for sure I did not come up with that one. Extraordinary claims. Well, you know, the claim that vaccines create autism is a pretty major claim. that
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (04:33.834)
kind of requires pretty major evidence. There’s this astronomical object, I3, it’s behaving peculiarly. So there’s kind of some claims about it not being an asteroid. Right. Or that it’s in some ways intelligent or product intelligence.
That would require extraordinary evidence to convince myself and to convince a scientist. Yeah, that makes sense. So what are the challenges of accepting things like this on face value without excellent evidence? What are the risks in society? I think people can get hurt, people can die.
You don’t have vaccines. Many innocent people would die. Other, you know, if you happen to believe that this is the UFO, there may not be that much consequences from believing that. So it kind of depends. Yeah, fair enough. What’s the best way to toe the line as somebody coming up in society now, I’m a younger guy.
And it seems as though the media you are communicated to doesn’t always have your best interests at heart and isn’t always telling you the truth. So it’s a fine line between figuring out what’s real and what’s not, and then also allowing extraordinary claims to require extraordinary evidence. How would you approach that given the way that media is shifting and tech is shifting at such a rapid rate?
Well, another way of framing that is to say that, particularly when you’re young, absolutely want to be open to new ideas. lot of unconventional wisdom is wrong.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (06:46.521)
But sometimes unconventional wisdom is true. So you can’t tell, think superficially, often what’s true and what’s not true. This is regardless of AI. This is just this history. And now it’s still very difficult with a new claim to ascertain its truth.
And so we have a system for deciding what we know is true, and that system is called science. Now the thing about science is that it often takes some time.
And for very complicated things, may take a lot of time. So one rule of thumb that I have is for any kind of like a health related or biological claim, you can’t rely on one, two, or even 10 studies. You need a hundred studies to really tell whether you’ve unraveled all the interdependent variables and whatnot. So it’s very difficult.
So we have to be very, you have to be kind of slow to say you know something. But however, we don’t have often that option. We often need to take action before. So we have to take action with the kind of a preliminary kind of probationary attitude that we may need to change our mind later on. And that...
idea that there is this sort of conditional state in the world, many people have a lot of difficulty with. Where you’re saying, well, this is what we think right now, and we are only 80 % sure of it, but we’re going to act, we’re going to go through this and we’re going to collect more evidence as we do it. And we may need to change our mind later on. But this is what the consensus is right now.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (08:54.445)
And so that kind of perpetual vigilance, perpetual retesting, perpetual changing your mind is part of the process, but a lot of people...
Don’t like it that way. want to have, well, science says this and that’s the fact. And you don’t move from that and there’s no challenges. And for lots of things, that’s probably okay. But those not true. you know, we can’t question everything all the time. We are, we have to accept certain things as, as the consensus right now. So, if you’re young, then.
I think it’s worth constantly questioning your assumptions.
But most of the time you should be agreeing with the consensus unless you have extraordinary evidence. Yeah, yeah. There’s a few things I’d love to dig into this a bit further. There’s the idea of the N of 1 study, which has been extremely useful for me when I was let down a lot through health challenges and approaching the world in a slightly more unique way. But then I found my own place that is somewhat unique, but...
works, but it goes against the mainstream consensus a lot of the time. And a lot of the times the mainstream consensus tends to catch up. And I’ve noticed it catching up to the things that I’ve been doing for quite a while. And people don’t like to change their mind very often. It’s very hard to change your mind. And one of the sayings in the book that you were referring to, I don’t know if it’s in the book. mean, maybe in the book, but it may not be in the first 68.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (10:44.392)
the book we’re based on was this idea that you’re only as young as the last time you changed your mind. So you, it’s harder as you get older to change your mind, but you, if you can change your mind as you go along, you can stay young and learning to change your mind is a, is an incredible skill because it means that you have to keep questioning.
what it is you think you believe. that does get older. That does get harder as you get older. It’s a lot of people find it too mentally taxing to have to rethink the foundations of their life over and over again. And it’s easy to just fix to an angle and call it a day. what are some strategies you’ve found
around effectively changing your mind without allowing it to overload you. Yeah. Well, have to, first of all, I would say I’m selective, like where you are.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (12:00.583)
going to open yourself to certain things, not having, again, as you said, you can’t spend all your time questioning every single thing that you believe. I would say, I do think the idea of having peers around you and paying attention to the people that you admire.
are doing and if they’re changing your mind, you want to be surrounded by people who changing their mind that will help you a little bit, either in specifics or just a general pattern. And I think, I haven’t thought about this, but I think there is probably a process which I should, which would be good to kind of figure out or lay out.
what that sequence would be. If you were to think about it just off the top of your head, what do you think your first draft of that would look like? Yeah, I’m doing that right now. I think you’re starting, like in science, the paradigm shift is that it often starts with a hard to explain, weird result. Kind of like, well,
The typical description is, that’s strange. And so I think changing your mind often starts with something like that, where there is one bit of evidence that seems harder to explain with your existing paradigm. So you’re kind of aware. If you come across something that seems like, hmm.
That seems interesting. That does not seem like that completely fits in. It’s a little jagged. And that initial incident can often be a sign that you should spend some time to see if it’s an outlier, to see if it’s.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (14:11.928)
indication of something more there. So that’s often how it happens, is there’s this inciting incident of something that is a little harder to explain. And then there usually is a dissenting literature in most areas. There’ll be dissenting literature of other people. So you begin to connect with other people who have
descent from the orthodoxy. there, then you have to kind of start applying your red flags. You have to kind of...
approach them with the same kind of rigor of both, well, what if it was true and then what if they’re just wrong? And so, you kind of have to go through a process of looking at the data of looking at their arguments of looking at, all those things. then I think then the idea of Darwin’s of, of really trying to then
crash the counter arguments to test them, to straw man and steel man them, you know, going through a process. And so it’s a lot of work. That’s why people don’t do it. Yeah, it’s easy to watch a TikTok and base your view off the back of that. I mean, the other challenges around
the dissenting views forming is... I don’t know if this is true. It seems like it would be relatively true in history. People were burnt at the stake for things that were heretic, but it’s not happening as much now. But the energy is still the same where if there is a dissenting view that isn’t part of the mainstream, it effectively almost gets attempted to be blotted out by the herd. So, it’s hard to know.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (16:24.747)
what dissenting views are actually appropriate and what is noise. It’s also easier to find communities of people who think, believe what you believe. And so that’s in the past, that was very difficult to do. you were growing up in a small town or had some weird idea, there was no way that that would ever travel beyond your own strange brain. But now you could certainly find other people very
quickly, if not instantly, who have a similar idea. that’s, so even though there is a, you know, consensus and overpower, a very large forceful consensus, there’s always been that. And I’m not sure it’s any worse. But in fact, I think because you have so many ways to dissent and find communities of dissent, it may be easier.
Yeah, yeah, that actually makes sense. I like that. On that note, the ability to find your own tribe of people is causing echo chambers of extremes to develop. So one of the other ones was, trust me, there is no them. I’d love for you to elaborate on this in the context of 2025. Yeah. Well, the them.
is kind of the signature of victims. Us against them. Them usually means that they’re more powerful, they’re in control, they’re out to get you, you’re a victim. But there is no them. The closer one gets to what people call the them, the less you realize is there.
All you need to do is go to Washington DC and you realize there are no adults in the room. Everybody’s making it We’re all making it up. That’s one thing I did realize in my, I’m 33 now, I realized in my early to mid twenties that most people were just guessing. And the same thing in big corporations, people running the biggest corporations, they’re making it up. They don’t know.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (18:51.091)
It’s all uncertain and they’re in and above their heads and they haven’t done it before. so that’s the first thing is this idea that there is a, what’s the word I want? A formative, united front of experts or elites.
is not really true. There are elites in the loosest sense of the word, but they aren’t unified into a them. They’re often at arms with each other and the elites don’t necessarily agree. so there is no them to the extent that you allow it. And I would say
Some people, there is a them because they have permitted everything else to govern them. They’re being governed by outside forces rather than being internally motivated. So you can kind of create a them in a certain sense by just surrendering your own agency. Yeah. So you mentioned briefly, as long as you allow it.
There is no them. What is that exactly, man? I think you elaborated on that point a little bit, but it’s probably worth exploring that a little bit further. Well, yeah. So there are generally two kinds of motivations, external and internal. And external is where you’re a student and you’re trying to please the teacher, the principals. And that’s why you do work internally is know you love learning. You’re going to get an A on it because
You want to do your best for yourself versus you’re trying to please people. So to the extent that you become motivated by external factors, then that collectively could become a them. Where you blame your failures on others. If you can’t get a job, it’s they who are not hiring you or refusing to hire you, whatever.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (21:16.138)
so, the more agency you allow yourself to have, I think the less you see others as them. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So, and I think the more, so I recently moved to New York and, I’ve been from a small city in Australia and I’ve been exposed to.
so much of the world in such a short amount of time that really took me back to begin with. But the more I just explore and understand and deep dive into the cultures around me, the more I realize it’s much the same. So that’s been a fascinating thing to explore. Just quickly though, I love doing this podcast. If it’s positively impacted you in some way and you would like to support us, please subscribe. By subscribing, it allows us to build...
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Thank you for your support. And now back to the episode. Another one that you spoke about is over the long term, the future is decided by the optimists. So I think the opposite of those who look at the world as an us versus them and externalize any of their problems are those who look at the world in a positive lens. how do you train yourself to become an optimist? Because a lot of people, and I mean, including myself, you know, we’ve grown up in a scarcity mentality based on
childhood experiences. And then it’s very hard to flip that as much as the external world can give you success, successes and opportunities deep down inside. There is a gnawing feeling that it’s all going to go away and everything is going to be destroyed. So from your experience and the people you’ve seen, maybe train this. How do you? So, I mean, I think
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (23:41.518)
For me, one of the central pillars is acknowledging the reality of progress as a historical reality, a historical fact. So the more history that I read, the more optimistic I become.
If you’re really reading it and looking at the evidence, then progress was real. And then the ingredients of progress are still with us. So we’re probably still on the same path. And that makes it little easier to be optimistic. Learning about how incredibly terrible the past is. Oh my gosh. You know, the Obama, the Obama.
question of, you know, a paradox of like, if you’re sent back in time and you have no control over where, how old, what status, what gender, what race, what level you are, whether you, what, how handicapped you are. and where do you want to be born? You don’t want to be born in the past at all. It’d be horrible for the random person.
And so, so that is one history is one. The second one is a long-term view, even of the future, the longer your horizon, the easier it is to be optimistic. And so do you want to take a long view and realize that most recessions, most depressions, most wars are all temporary. And
In the long term, they can hardly even show up as blips. so, one or two percent good compounded over centuries is incredibly powerful. So the power of compounding, where you compound a little good over time, is really forceful. And that compounding is on the side of optimism.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (25:58.075)
raise your, raise your horizons to become more optimistic. I think people really want everything now though. That’s the challenge. If I were to summarize, think long-term, slow down and be willing to make small... down, but think long-term both into the future and the past. Be...
People talk about how terrible the US politics are. Yes. But compared to what? Compared to the politics of two centuries ago or a century and a half? I mean, we had a US vice president murder another. mean, it was like, there was crazy stuff happening. I mean, really, there are plenty of really horrible things that have happened.
past and you just need to keep those in mind right now. Read the history. mean, it’s like, it’s like just in the US history alone, it’s like there was the US constitution almost didn’t pass because there were all these anti-constitution movements. We think of this constitution as sort of a shining example, but no, this was incredibly controversial. There was just...
It barely passed. that’s not even, there’s no violence. I’m just saying that this was the things that we assume to be present always or not. The recent...
things and the bad stuff, the corruptions have been present all along and we’re kind of often blind to them. And so the more you read history, I think the more clear you become about the progress we’ve actually made. Yeah. Yeah. So would you say that today would be the best day to be born? Yes. Today’s the best day to be born. Well, tomorrow’s even better.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (28:13.449)
Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. OK. So the way I would say, like, not only is it the best time to be born, but today is the best time in the history of the world ever to make something. Yeah. If you want to make something or make something happen, the tools have never been cheaper, more accessible, more democratized than today. And if we look to the future,
What we realize is that today there are no experts in AI. There are no experts in solar, whatever it is, compared to will be in 30 years. So compared to the future, this is also the best time because this is the early into it. We’re still at day one of AI. We’re still at day one of, you know, spatial intelligence. We’re still one day one in all these things.
genetic engineering. And so it’s much better to be here at day one compared to being 30 years. So compared to the past, this is the best day ever to start. Compared to the future, this is the best day ever to start. So this day today is the best day in the history of the world and to do something. So a lot of people say, you know, a lot of my friends
They say, would never want to have kids because I don’t want to bring them into a world like this. I don’t know what to say to them a lot of the times, but it doesn’t feel right. Yeah. Well, I would say what year was, what year do you think it was the best year? then go read about that year. Yeah. Early 2000s, maybe. I don’t know when, when Obama was in.
was the Afghan war, wasn’t it? There was a lot of fear around then. No, what year was the best year? So that is one of my observations is that for people who are older, the best year in the history of the universe was the year that they were 10 years old. Because life, that’s the peak of human existence is when you’re 10. You’re fully aware. Everything’s amazing. You have no responsibilities. And it can only go downhill from there.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (30:35.556)
So it’s always when they’re 10. Yeah. What were you doing when you attend? I was making a nature museum in my basement. And, you know, I was 10 in 1962. Um, it was very parochial. Uh, I was making a nature museum because I found a book at the library about how to make a nature museum. Um, I can’t tell you how
impoverished our libraries were in terms of like available information about how to do things. And there was no internet and there was no AI. was, mean, imagine living in a world where you could get no answers or couldn’t find any information. You couldn’t look anything up. Was it basically, was your success effectively based on luck of the available?
Information around you? was so hard. I didn’t even have an older brother. There was nobody in my neighborhood to kind of guide me. Just trying to figure out how to do things was so challenging. So you needed to find somebody who knew something about what you wanted to do. You could try to go to the library, but that was so unprofitable.
And so most of the things that you wanted to do never got done. like today, but for different reasons. Well, I don’t know. I mean, like anybody wants to do anything today, within five seconds, you could have, you could get the world’s best information on that about how to do it. Start a business, whatever, you know, grow some cells. That was impossible.
That was impossible. I mean, to me, it’s just amazing anything got done because it was so hard to do something. So that’s why schools are so important. That’s why, you know, working in a company was so important because that was where you could actually learn how to do something. There was no idea that you could figure this out on your own. think the difference now is your
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (33:00.626)
It’s paralysis by choice. You’ve got everything at your fingertips. So there’s so many pathways to take and then you don’t take anything and you end up just rotting on social media doing next to nothing. So I’ve got this opinion at the moment that I think the people who will really thrive in the next 20 years are those who can shut off the noise of the cheap dopamine hits around you. Yeah, that’s possible.
I don’t have that problem, so I don’t have any solutions for that. Yeah, fair enough. The next one that I wanted to talk to you about was, and this is one I really didn’t understand, so I’m looking forward to exploring this with you, is there is no limit on better. There is no limit on how much we can do with what we start with. That went completely over my head, and maybe it’s worth
giving some context around what that actually means and then some examples of where this has been successful in life. think there are limits to physical things. There’s limits to growth in that way where you run out of things eventually. But there aren’t limits to improvement. There are...
always, I believe, infinite ways to make something better and
maybe even new capacities. So you may exhaust one dimension of better in something. can’t get, literally can’t get any faster than it was. But the thing about better is that it’s itself is unlimited in terms of the dimensions that we can assign to it. So.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (35:02.322)
I think, I don’t think evolution has a limit where you get to some level of perfection or some maximum in evolution where you just can’t go anymore. There will always be a dimension. will always be some way to make it richer, to make it more amazing to
make something new to have it develop some new territory. So the very structure of life and technology is part of life, it’s an extension of life. The very structure of that is unlimited. Our own brains, the space of possible ideas is so much larger.
than the number of neurons in our brains, and the combinations of them, that there isn’t a limit to new ideas. There is no limit to new ideas. And that’s what betterment is. Betterment, better is as improved ways of doing things. It’s sort of...
It’s general direction of becoming fitter to both the assignment and future assignments, where you grow, you evolve. So there’s no limits on evolution is maybe another way of thinking about it. So basically the idea that a bacteria at some point
in human evolution has now turned into what we have around us in the world. And then who knows where that even goes from here. Right. But it’s not a ladder, it’s a radial. So from bacteria, we have not just us, we have 30 million other species, all that are as evolved as we are. So that betterment.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (37:32.643)
for evolution includes multiple vectors, multiple species, not just one. It’s multi-dimensional. There’s lots of ways to get better. so the giraffe, today’s giraffe and today’s elephant are equally involved as we are. They’re all alternative versions of a better world.
Have you read the book, The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch? I have not yet. Yeah, it’s a book that I read a little while ago after it was recommended by a guy called Naval, if you know Naval. And it really opened my eyes to this fixed-verse growth mentality and the way that the world actually works. And it ties in a lot with what you’re saying.
anyone listening? It’s a tough read. It’s a difficult read, but it definitely opened my eyes to a lot of things. The final point I had here was not actually in your 68 life lessons, but it’s something you previously said adjacent to it, which was never aim for a billion dollars, never aim to make a billion dollars. And again, as a younger guy trying to figure out what my goals are,
A lot of my friends are in a similar boat. What do you think is enough money to genuinely have enough? What should the goal be and how quickly should I go for it? And then I stop. Yeah. No, my advice was try as hard as you can to never have a billion dollars. And that’s because of my experience of being around people with a billion. It’s very debilitating. It’s horrible for your family.
It’s imprisoning. So what about like a hundred million dollars? What about fifty million dollars? Yeah, sure. Fifty million. Go for it. I don’t know what that number is. It’s obviously going to be different for people. did this I did this recent post about the levels of wealth.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (39:57.578)
as you get more zeros, what I’ve observed people do, and what you would call enough really depends, but the levels of wealth or something like, you have enough money so that you don’t pay attention to food prices in the grocery store, you just ignore them, or you’re really wealthy, or then you don’t even pay attention to restaurant prices, and then you kind of graduate.
of your other millions of dollars to always flying business class. It doesn’t matter anymore. then you kind of keep going where things no longer matter. The price of things no longer matter in increasingly levels. I think that’s one way to think about it. But for me, the real wealth, I make a distinction between having kind of riches and wealth and
Rich is just kind of like how much money you have, but wealth is tied up in your time. It’s how much control of your time you have. And that’s where the true wealth is, is that you have control of your time. And that’s what you want to be looking for. You want to have enough money to give you control of your time. And that’s why having like too much money,
can backfire because you get caught up in having to manage your money and manage all that and your time is taken by all these other things. so, and that’s why even there are people who are making a lot of money, but from my perspective, they’re not really in control of time. Other people, the whole apparatus, the whole system is telling them what to do. They’ve got...
They’ve got this and that. They don’t have a minute of their own. And to me, that’s not wealth. That’s riches. And I think the number of dollars that you need to have continued control of your time is a lot smaller than what most people think. I think it’s going to be the, how is that money arranged? It’s not just the total number. It’s
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What is that arrangement of money? Where is it? What’s it doing? What’s your relationship to it? And I know people who I would say are extremely wealthy who probably don’t even have a million dollars in the bank. They may have their house paid off and all that kind of stuff. And then I know people with $30 million in the bank.
they don’t have control of their time. That’s what I would focus on. I would focus on where’s your time. Okay. Wrapping this up, was one that I, there were many that I liked and a few more that I wanted to explore, but one that I really did like and I think is a really important thing to consider throughout life that I’ve given me a lot of value as well is gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
So from your opinion, what are some strategies to build the technique of gratitude and how has it impacted your life? only prayer I pray is the prayers of gratitude. I would say you can start with simple things. People around you making a habit of gratitude, of thanks.
We, in our family, we give gratitude at the beginning of meals. Is that a religious gratitude or is that just a general gratitude? It started as religious, but it’s become more and more gradual. I do it in a way that when other guests are there, everybody can join. Thanksgiving, by the way, coming up, is the gratitude day.
Thanksgiving. Look at that. It’s in the Old Testament as well. So it stemmed from from that idea. Well, what I mean is that it’s another excuse for regular Americans, whether you believe or not, to to practice that. So we our little ritual is at the dinner, which we have extended family, everybody goes around and they say three things that they’re thankful for in the past year. That’s
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gratitude. My daughter plays this, she has a gratitude practice, a daily gratitude ritual. You know, like a journal people have, gratitude journals. And
I think...
I really believe in the kind Tim Ferriss idea that you’re the average of your five closest friends. I think you want to surround yourself with people who are grateful. And that role model and what they do will also help you. So be around people who are gratitude rather than grateful, rather than those who are bitching and complaining the whole time.
We do these walk-in talks and one of the rules is no complaining. You just simply are not allowed to complain. And that’s another.
way of kind of trying to jumpstart some of the gratitude. What are you grateful for? my gosh. Today, what are a couple of things that you’re grateful for to wrap this up? Well, I just finished a book, a new book when I got the copies in. And I am grateful both that the book came out beautiful. You never know. This is the book of photographs, all I took.
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in Asia over 50 years and the little whimsy that I did is I organized them by color. I haven’t seen any other book like this where all these really weird, wonderful esoteric pictures are organized by color. It’s kind of a little whimsy, but it does work. And I’m really grateful. I printed up only a thousand copies for a thousand true fans. I am grateful that I get to share that with people that I had to
time, but I gave myself, I had the time, the privilege of having that time to work on the book because there was no demand for this book. People weren’t saying we need this book. It’s this, this is art, which is cool and useless. And so, this is something cool and useless. And I am grateful that I had the opportunity to.
have the time, both being alive and being healthy, to make a book like this. And so that’s a real privilege and a real, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. Great. I love it. Thank you, Kevin Kelly. Appreciate you coming on. My last simple question for you is why do think we’re here?
What’s got us to… Why do think we’re here on this planet? How did we get here and why did we get here? You have an answer? I’m keen to hear it. Your purpose in life is to discover your purpose in life. It’s very recursive, but I think that’s what it is, is that your job on Earth is to figure out what your job on Earth is. And it’ll take all, most of your life to figure that out.
I’ve been around what society would consider the most successful people on the planet. And they’re still trying to figure it out.
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And the more they are trying to figure out, the more I admire them for that. And so it’s what you’re here to do. it’s not clear, it’s not obvious for most people what it is that they’re better at than others. But I believe every single person alive has a set of talents and abilities and experiences that places them in a way that they
are part of our spectrum, part of our picture, part of our mosaic. And they can share their unique talents with us if we have the right tools and environment for them. And so we have an obligation to try to enable everybody to try and shine. if they are working at trying to figure out what it is, because it’s not obvious to them or to other people what it is, and it takes a lot of
work and trial and trying stuff and doing things to kind of move yourself to occupy that position where you’re doing things that maybe only you can do, that only you enjoy and others don’t enjoy. And that is when you get there.
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There’s a charisma to it. People are attracted to that. It’s easy for you and you’re at ease. And people are drawn to that. And you have something that you’re sharing that is not coming from anywhere else. it’s like...
you’re supporting the world at that point. so that is the purpose is to arrive there. But
It’s the figuring out that is your life. And that’s what your life is about. Your life is to figure out what your life is about. Do you have any good quick pathways of techniques that you’ve liked to figure it out? So I think one of the ways that I’ve kind of come to
to arrive at is rather than trying to follow your bliss, which is really hard when you’re young because you don’t know what your bliss is. I think what you want to do is you want to master something. You want to become expert. You want to become the master of something. It doesn’t really matter what it is. Just something that you are really, really, really good at. Again, doesn’t matter because you’re not going to stay there. That’s just where you begin.
that if you can master something, then that gives you a platform to start your migration as you try and find your way through. But you start with becoming really, really good at something. And don’t worry, because it’s not where you’re going to end. The first stepping stone. I really appreciate your great questions. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you for coming on, man. It was a great pleasure.
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to chat with you, and I appreciate your spirit. So thank Of course. Of course. Thank you again. And where can people find you if they’re interested? my initials, kk.org, O-R-G. And I’ll send you a little link for Shopify for the book if people are interested in my newest whimsy.
Perfect. And if you enjoyed this episode, please go to YouTube, search that one time with Adam Metwally, click subscribe and I’ll see you next week.
