 One of the problems that I'm going to talk about in today's show is that I realize we limit when we invite a guest We say you have to give us no more than two or three impressive things about you And then I realize when I look at John's resume, he's got two and three Wikipedia pages Full of stuff that is impressive. For example, he has three honorary PhDs You know, that's just amazing fast company calls him one of the masters of innovation. He's a Ted speaker He's a former president of this D also known as the Lord Island School of Design He's an American technologist and product experience leader with a passion for resilience and renewal And is currently the vice president of design and artificial intelligence at Microsoft job What an amazing Is that but I want to start by talking to you about the fact that people say that your invention of the steam engine Was one of the big inventions of our time in your case It was also steam. Tell us more about that. Well, first of all, really glad to be on your show I'm a big fan of your work. You are truly someone who could think visually and Strategically, so the talent is my passion. So thank you for having me here Steam is a movement that has been attempted to get started in Particularly the United States because stem education is a very powerful idea science technology engineering and math And that kind of excludes art and design and say when I was president of Brown School of Design I spent three years in the US Congress lobbying to add art to stem stem to steam and Back in the day people thought it was a bad idea Some artists felt like what does art have to do with stem? Where as many art school teachers were having a problem because their art school rooms were being converted to Chemistry classrooms and art was leaving the curriculum. So stem to steam put art back in the curriculum build an economic case around it and years later It seems to be everywhere very weird and you're the one responsible 12 is meeting it You know in that space, but it's a great moment I was doing that right now There are many leaders and they've all forgotten me and that's the way it should be I think I'm going to sort of Take you back a couple of years You know to your childhood and talk about what is it like and where you always the person who could do coding and Art what kind of a kid will you talk to me about that? Well, you know, I'm lucky because I grew up in a Household that had no formal education My father dropped out of high school my mother finished high school The most of their life was spent as laborers in that household I learned what hard work is all about really growing up in a part of Seattle. That's known as the international district I never thought I could leave that place, but my parents believe the education could change things And so I think about your career Sort of a mentality the only careers we knew about were gardeners Or restaurant owners and if it wasn't for a customer of ours who came to our tofu store Who worked at Boeing and he was an engineer and he had a nice car? I thought oh, I should become an engineer so I could get a nice car You know what was the reaction of your parents when you said that this is what you wanted to be and leave the tofu factory Oh, well, my parents really didn't want me to work there to grow up stuck there because it's really hard work You like you wake up at 1 a.m. You work to 6 p.m. At night. It's six days a week often seven days a week It's almost as if my dad read the famous Andy Grove book only the paranoid survive So we were working all the time in the summers because there was no school I would work at the tofu store And so I used to love going to school because it was so much easier than working at the tofu factory When you were in school trying to make up your mind about what kind of education you wanted How did you go about doing that because at that point of time people had very little exposure I'm going to presume that about you But maybe had more exposure but people generally had very few career choices at least in India It was limited to the usual things that you could be a doctor you could be an engineer You could be a chartered by a lawyer or you could work for the dog This is pretty much the gamut of opportunities that people would come up with in your case You kind of went into a really one of those alleys which is so incredible What was the decision-making process like? You know if I really wind back to grade school My teacher told my parents that I was good at art and math And then my parents told their friends that I was good at math They didn't say the art part I'm sure that happened in your own lifetime of a cheat I believe But you know it was good at math Maths I was good at math Good at art no good at math And then the customer who was an engineer It wasn't a fancy car mind you It was just a car that wasn't beat up And so I was like oh wow I can have a car that isn't beat up If I'm an engineer I had no idea what it was And I think it plays to your point of how As a child if you aren't exposed to different disciplines You don't even know they exist So I was an engineer all the way through my master's studies Like I was going to go PhD in device physics And then I found this field called design That never heard of And I thought wow what is this field How do I get involved So I did that I discovered the business world I got my MBA I went into the investing world because of it I find that I like to do things that I don't know Because kind of the theme of the careers book Learning is a good thing I love to learn And when you learn You may find a new career because of it I've read that Wired magazine You know described you as John Lider is to design Of what Warren Buffett is to finance That's an incredible comparison point But you went into design When people didn't even know what can design You need to be a career If that's what it was like In my part of the world It was certainly like that I mean you know what is design I mean yeah you need to know how to paint And all that I mean that's fine But nothing more serious than that So I can totally relate if your parents Is good in art and math It's only the math part of it Which is then focused Because that's something which is desirable Art is yeah It's something you do on weekends But nothing serious What made you visualize that as a career How did it even happen Was it your choice Did you meet people who inspired you What was that I think that design as a career path Was already somewhat limited Because before the digital revolution I think design had a kind of role In different products getting made Or communications being made But because the computer is essentially A 24-7 communicating machine I think the desire for design gradually grew And with the mobile revolution Where everybody's carrying a TV screen And basically shining in their own face This idea of the experience If the user experience is not good When you're staring at the phone 20 times a day You're not going to use it So these systems are designed To be very pleasurable Very easy to understand And that's what design is Similar to furniture Furniture in your house If it's uncomfortable to sit in You're not going to sit down So designs always existed in the physical space The digital space is relatively new And it's a career path that many have found Yeah, I kind of sometimes think that Somebody must have had an uncomfortable chair That led them to design the standing desk That's my big discovery today I thought about it Absolutely You said this And that's design, right For all the listeners Feel free to ask John any of those questions And we try and get you the answers But if you haven't read his design and tech reports Which you've been doing I think since 2015 And I actually first became a fan of your work Based on the work that you did in design and tech reports So what is your method of looking at this Huge field called design Finding the trends What does that look like How do you go about doing it First off Abhijit When you told me that you actually know About the design and tech reports I felt very honored Because I'm not sure who looks at them Especially anymore So I was like wow It meant a lot to me And I always wondered if I should keep making those But till I eventually don't get invited back To South by Southwest I'll stop then But so far it's going to be 10 years next year The reason why I do that Is because I like to learn And I like to share And I'm not that good at social media So I'm not constantly pouring things out But once a year I produce a packet of information To share with the world And I'm glad that some people find value from it It's an attempt to explain design And business and technology In this new AI era What has changed since you first started Creating those famous reports You know design and tech And I remember The first year when I read it I was completely blown away Because I kind of thought that wow I mean what a phenomenal way to explain this And I remember doing a sketch note And putting it for all my readers And they said We need to read this And so yes You know a lot of people find a lot of value What do you constitute a trend A lot of people use that very loosely This is a trend What do you think of as First up you know that When you share things online You find people that don't like what you share Maybe you've noticed that Abhijit Oh you're wrong You're wrong John You're wrong Abhijit Like I guess you're kind of right Sometimes I get it wrong I'm not right You know When you identify trends You're basically making a bet And most bets fail Right I think I've been lucky that As you know if you bet a lot You're more likely to bet correctly Whether betting on system based thinking Or inclusive design Or computational design Moving to artificial intelligence Or even remote work I've been lucky to roughly be on trend You know the challenge with AI today Is that it seems like to be the number one And number two And number three And number four trend right now So I guess right now I would try to understand How humans fit into the puzzle Because AI is not truly intelligent In this way people are talking about In the science fiction way It's a different way to write computer programs Is how I feel And how humans responsibly engineer those systems Is really the most interesting design question today And I think at least for a few years What is going to be the fundamental shift In the profession of designing Oh my gosh Like when you gave me those three W's Not the worldwide web But work, worker, workplace In this fabulous book of yours Mine was blown I was like Oh my gosh That made sense to me And you said to me All three are changing at the same time You know the problem would change If a single variable changed Okay Double variable change Triple variable change And all intertwined Wow, what a change And so I feel like AI as you know it Is changing work and the worker And the workplace So I can't think of a better time For people that dig in to ask the question My career was axe What will my career be next? Why? How's it going to change Work, worker, workplace A lot I imagine So if we were to talk about design principles for careers What are some of the two or three things That you would advise people You know a lot of people in the audience Are people who are getting started in their career And there's an equal number of people Who work in some field or the other For decades literally For both these Are there going to be different design principles You would choose Or they're going to be common You had two ends of the curve How would you describe it? Well, you've given me the perfect language Abhijit And I'm so glad your book is public Public congratulations Work Thank you Worker, workplace Are the perfect career principles First off The kind of work we're doing As we know is moving from Direct manipulation To conversational Prompt based things You know even for images as well Circle this and do this More gestural So that work is changing The worker And what title will that person be Is obviously going to change somehow It's going to be much more computationally grounded It's going to require more AI It's a mixture of developer and designer That's going to really stand out I like that phrase dev design So I think of myself more of a As a dev designer type person Who can cross code AI code and actual design And then workplace How the workplace already changed Have leads from remote work And now hybrid work I can imagine that The way we get more creative Gets harder because In a studio environment Or a workplace environment Where everyone's together You can learn from each other Kind of through osmosis But online The best we can do is emoji each other Which is kind of like the signal of We're there But it's different from bumping into people But I'm a little bit old fashioned So I feel that way I tend to completely agree with you on this That if you're looking at creative work Can you work like this online And bounce ideas Possibly yes But the spontaneity Of just bumping into somebody In the corridor and saying Hey John have you read this You know this is what I was thinking of And you draw something And you kind of say No no no I mean I saw this You should look at this That kind of cross-fertilization Is harder because This is a murder Land and structure Yeah and it may not be better I mean it may be Because I'm used to the horse and buggy And the gen Z is used to like the car This electric vehicle I think that I'll always drawn to Wanting to I guess remain relevant I think that every time I settle into something And I realize Maybe I might be good at it I get nervous Because it's that phrase by Ray Kroc When you're green And you're growing Like a green tomato When you're ripe You're ready to rot Like a red tomato It's gonna just rot A green tomato gets to be red So when I feel like I'm a really bright red tomato I get a bit nervous And I choose green What's your method for choosing green My mother is my really I'm lucky to have my mother She's still alive We were just in the hospital the other day And so I was like Oh maybe this is like last time But she came out So she escaped And not escaped that way You know what I mean Well I would have tried to But every time I'm down She always tells me that she believes in me You know I believe in you John And you know my mom doesn't have any context For anything I'm going through But she's always there In that way that only a parent You know a loving parent Some of you don't have loving parents So that's hard So you've missed that I don't I feel sorry for you not having that But those of us who have been privileged To have a parent Who can share this very clear love And belief in you It's always gotten me off the floor And got me back moving If your mom were to ask you John what do you do How do you describe that She just laughs She has this beautiful Hawaiian style laugh Never got a big She would never give you a straight answer John just does something And I think that's fine What I do I think is I like to live at the intersection of Latest technology Latest business opportunity And something about the creativity The design The art in it And I like to live at that intersection You've written a bunch of books So have you Like this book Please check out over here in 3.0 I love this book Thank you You know what I find fascinating about your book Some of them I will admit I don't totally understand I don't You know you've written about design and leadership That's been pretty interesting Talk to me about that Oh well I have the opportunity to Lead a large nonprofit Around school design It changed my life You know if you look at my Wikipedia page It's not all good things Or if you look online about me Some people really dislike me So just the fact that When you choose to lead You need to know you're signing up for failure For always letting a lot of people down Because the leader's job is to Carry all the risks of the institution And to experience it firsthand And I mean No need to sympathize with them They're compensated for that opportunity That responsibility But I ran Rhode Island School design The very year I joined It was the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 I had to oversee the worst layoff in the history Of the 130-year-old institution By the city come after me And all the faculty come after me It was a complex scenario What kept me going was The students were very supportive And the parents were very supportive of me Because they felt that I was hired To make change happen On behalf of the school Things went the right way Steam movement happened We were number one Business insider All good kind of stuff But you know Success has its consequences As you know yourself What is the biggest consequence of success? I think the biggest consequence is You either become overconfident Because you think it's because of you It's often just random things that help you When you're leading at scale It's a lot of luck Hard work and a lot of luck Or the consequence can be It really changes how insecure you are How your confidence lowers Some people can turn that around Some people can't How do you deal with that? When you have confidences Rock bottom One of the things you said is That you have parents Who will give you unconditional love And what happens to you out of that? Your crying helps because you know There's tear ducts in here So it's your eye It's not the grower crying It's designed to cry It's like your arm can move Your eyes will cry So you know crying You know feeling the pain I try not to like dump on other people So bring them down with me I think a lot of solitary crying Feeling that You know finding a way out Exercise work sometimes I choose to find the next challenge To focus my energy on testing myself When you look at design in everyday living I have to see this one little piece About John's home He's got a clock You know like we all have clocks To read the time John has got a mathematical clock Where if it is one clock It'll say something like Two into twelve Minus twenty three If you are not good at math You'll be lost Good luck Where could you bring it? That was the one Which you really stayed with me I think it's the most Unusual thing about your home Is that one among many other things You consider it to be the most Unique art object in your home You know I forgot about the clock How much I love that clock The clock is a mass clock So it is to different levels One through six It's addition, multiplication Division, subtraction Six turns on division And I'll tell you sometimes I'm like What time is it? I look at my watch I'm never going to think that My favorite piece of art in my house Is the forest in the backyard It's able to see part of the green belt The conservation land I feel that's art that can't be constructed Whenever we sit outside Next to the forest That you and me have a jit And this is the first time ever Was out there with a friend like you And it meant a lot to me I'm always going to think about Balcony in our conversation And that you're always also back of course When you look at Getting ideas in your day to day life What is your method? Do you connect a lot of ideas That you let it to you Or do you take one or two ideas Try to connect the dodge Then go to the third Then go, what's your process like? You know as someone who admires execution I don't know how you produce what you produce I find your productive output to be extraordinary Like when you showed me your sketchbook I was embarrassed because I was like Whoa, I have a jeep That brain is running And I see that in all sincerity Because I used to have more time to draw And when you draw You turn on a different part of your brain I think So and I've been just running a lot of code Because on the dev designer side I'm very dev right now And running code is different than visual information But I'm very excited about GPT-4V Which has vision in it I'm hoping now to Fill code a lot Because I have to do a lot of that To stay fit But I want to do more coding and images And more drawing And I think doing so will help me sort of Bring back some of the visual creativity I think I've lost You're an inspiration Oh please The stuff that you code and draw And all it's just incredible You know some of the things that are fascinating And when you come up with those designs And this is for my listeners that you know You should actually look up Simply some of the cover designs Of the books that John has produced They're incredible And you know do you wrote the code to make that happen? Yeah, yeah So I mean in the 90s It was very rare for people to be able to write code And design images So a lot of the works that I've known for In the design world is from that era You design like an absolute vodka ad With sort of many many lines of graphics Design I think from the New York Times magazine A lot of type And I did things back when A certain way of drawing was difficult But over time Computer tools got better And really everything I did in the past You know some kid can close their eyes And do what I did back then In a few seconds Especially with AI now So I think I was just lucky To be at the right place Right time in that era When you look at I remember seeing in your home That absolute vodka bottle Which is called absolute mitre And was that a souvenir That you got or was that I don't know It wasn't something I made for an ad And just kept it It was a time where things like that were difficult Because really in the early days of Photoshop You know it was an image editing tool But I was a kind of a counterculture person In the 90s that was saying It's important to write computer programs Which made me very unpopular But I think that now Especially with the web It's much more common for people to write code Whether it's HTML or CSX Even that is code right I think that's more common today But back then it wasn't as common When you look at creating teams You worked at MIT You worked at RISD And that's the school of design kind of teams Versus teams say in a company like Microsoft You know where you're leading Doing some cutting edge work What's the difference between those teams? But do they run differently? Do they work differently? Having experience in academia Non-profit versus corporate for profit I will say that All very similar Going back to careers Everybody generally speaking Wants to have the next level up in their life They want to level up Or they want to go lateral across And try something else When I build teams I love diversity Because I like different viewpoints And I think that Opinion of how quality is built That I strongly believe is more of a fact Is something that I've carried in every role I've had And that can include different skill diversity Different socioeconomic diversity backgrounds Gender, cultural I think that leads to innovations That come from the different perspectives We're discovering in agents Like AI agents and multi-agent programming The same thing holds Different agents with different basically persona They produce a better result together But it's also that much tougher to manage You know, when you look at all the research About leading diverse teams Everybody says that Yeah, you must have diversity in your team But it's that much harder to manage Yeah, well, I've noticed in a lot of these articles And even like the HBR ones The nice thing about HBR is I'll tell you one thing is good And they'll tell you the same thing is bad So depending upon your SEO You'll get the article that you want to read That's how the world works, right? The thing is that The diverse attains being better Requires a leader, manager To be a good bridge leader And that comes from them understanding The different crafts And so I pride myself that I understand Business people I understand developer people Design people Product manager people I can cover the gamut And really kind of appreciate their craft And what they bring to it And I can help different people Who are different crafts Understand each other I think that's something I do And so the HBR articles Don't talk about the importance of a bridge leader Or for a leader to hire bridge people Is it reasonable to say that The leader must be going forward More and more you lead leaders Who can bridge multiple disciplines Multidisciplinary leadership In some sense it's almost like a leadership 3.0 You sort of bridge three or more ecosystems That's one of your principles In career 3.0 And I was like You know, some people can do that Like if you're a really good violinist Keep playing the violin Don't play the flute I mean, that's a hard thing to do I think that it means that You know, if you lead a team And you're not a good bridge person You've been in the same company Same role for your entire life As long as you're self-aware That you need bridge people on your team I think that's a career 3.0 style approach So maybe you aren't that bridge But are you aware how good a having bridges can be? That's good enough I believe Does it mean that if somebody is not a bridge Because they don't have multiple disciplinary backgrounds Or they don't have the perspective on all of that That they should move into leadership roles Oh, not at all No, I think it's great to have leaders Who are not multidisciplinary You know, because if you had every leader In the whole company multidisciplinary You would lose specialization I mean, a good example would be myself In that I'm not good at anything individually But I'm good at synthesizing across The reason why I felt better with this approach I think I told you this when we were hanging out in my forest So I met this designer sculptor Igarashi Takenobu In my late 20s Who helped me appreciate this idea of having a diverse set of backgrounds He described it as when we get older We're building a kind of like mound of skills And he said there's two ways to do that One way is to be very specialized Another way is to be very broad If you're very specialized You build a very tall narrow mountain That goes high up into the sky If you do a very broad, you have a very high hill That's very shallow But he says over time, decades This hill becomes like a very stable mountain Just like Mount Fuji That's a simple beauty in Japan Whereas if you focus on one narrow skill Your whole life, if something is wrong It can fall over I've always liked this image of mono specialization Versus multi-specialization But that said, people who are a single discipline specialist I have a lot of respect for them What does it take from the point of view of learning styles To be a specialist versus a gentlest? You know, I think that Stanford D-School The design thinking idea of the T-shaped person broad But also deep in one discipline I've always liked that metaphor But the irony is that most universities And even high schools push you to be more specialized What's your major? The major specialization Universities don't create these kind of multi-disciplinary people On the other hand, when universities have a multi-disciplinary program The opposite happens Where you make one kind of basically stew Which is basically a discipline unto itself So I think educational institutions probably cause this Gilemma workplaces tend to say Are you a developer? Are you a designer? Are you a product person? Are you in marketing? Are you a people person? And the sorting hat Like in Harry Potter Makes you paralyzed in your career 1.0 frame of mind In your view, career 2.0 when you are monetizing a side game Monetizing simply because it's proof of your proficiency Not for anything else But it tells you that your work is good enough For somebody to find value in it Is that, did you see it like a bridge? Well, you know, I really liked how you called out that In your principles and career 3.0 If you're an agile thinker And you want to find another shift You can either have a side gig Or you can take a class But it's a way to check Whether you're able to diversify yourself further And I liked the idea of career 3.0 Because as we know If you invest in your future Your financial future depends upon diversification So I like this idea that people of the future Especially in the era of AI When AI is changing work workplace It's probably better to have a diverse portfolio I'm just amazed at the kind of places That you worked in What a phenomenal career path Either you worked in Lucky Not for profits You worked for like Large corporations Small corporations Advertising Design Academics My God I mean, that's incredible Which is what makes you who you are Well, I did it in the wrong order It's to be very clear Most people someday become a professor I started too early And then I escaped from it to the corporate world But I think people do the opposite way I would say never listen to me as an example So Is that a better way to do it That you know be in the corporate world And then go to teach? Is that a good idea? I think so Yeah, oh well But if you're teaching history Or like the language of your country Or whatever Things that don't change I don't think you can find a job In the corporate world for that But for things that change I think corporate world is so much faster Especially the sciences When is art going to go and be extreme In the corporate world? Oh, I'm so glad you asked that question Because I have created an AI That asks me questions every day From things I said in the past A question that always asked me Is when will art be adopted by the corporate world? My answer is always something like I think that art is something from the cultural world And the cultural world is an important world That generates a lot of good economics And the business world is always connected To the cultural world The art world It may not just be direct For artists to accept that As a really great way of working Art working in the business world Is probably healthy Because the business world, as you all know Really cares about ROI And art really has no ROI Art has an ROI that is not monetary often It's an expression of the human condition At a certain time Oftentimes makes other humans wonder And wonderment is a wonderful thing Like anyone who looks at your sketch notes Which are like pieces of art Or your interesting caricatures They're a kind of art that makes you pause and think I think it's in the category of There's the marketoons person You know that person It's like This is like Oh, it's just a cool boil down Or there's an XCKD person Whenever it's like There's all these great people who are using art To communicate complex ideas And they're effecting change Will they be in the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Will they be in a museum? Well, they're in the museum of the internet Which has a pretty big impact In the older times A lot of classical music You know, required patronage So whether it was A wealthy family Or you know, in India There were a lot of these princely states Or would they sort of really say Go produce the art that you want Produce the music that you want And your expenses are taken care of And all of that Do you think that is a model In which art can function Where the science functions better When you have like a convention Thinking that okay You produce this, you get paid So the patron model I think whether it's Patreon or Kickstarter Or Indiegogo On the one hand Or it's advertising supported content people I have so much respect For YouTube creators And TikTok creators The way they come up with Ad revenue generating content The consistency they have Is unreal So I think we have some of that patronage today And those who are in Europe Know very well that There's actual government funding In the United States It's pretty rare That a good thing To be hungry That you know You don't know where your page At points where that produces YouTube I learned one time from Paul Rand So Paul Rand was a designer Who is famous for the IBM logo The UPS logo In the United States There's ABC Broadcasting He did ABC I did Westinghouse Corporation People don't remember anymore probably Well he was a big deal He's the one that launched me On this design path Because I was in a library at MIT I found this book And because I was a computer science guy And I was like What is this book? What is it? It's about design What is that? So I found this book And it changed my career arc And so I went to study design Etc And then I met the One of the most famous designers in Japan He called Tanaka And I was heading back to United States Just to come back home He introduced me to Paul Rand This person I found in the book Because they were best friends So I went to his house And his house is in Connecticut So you know like You go to New York You get a train And this is like in the 1990s There's no Uber or Lyft or whatever So I get a cab And the cab takes me out to the countryside And I'm thinking like Oh, how am I gonna come back? But I had a meeting at 8 a.m. So I arrive at 8 a.m. The door opens And this older gentleman looks at me and says My assistant is sick today And so you must stay the entire day with me And work for free And I said, oh, okay He's a very direct man So I sat down at his computer And I worked on the last pages Of what was gonna be his final book From Lascaux to Brooklyn The Lascaux cave drawings To Brooklyn where he grew up And so around noon I'm getting very hungry And he comes out with a sandwich Luckily And he says to me You know I don't make sandwiches for anyone So I'm very nervous But I'm very hungry So I'm eating the sandwich And he's sitting right there Across from me Looking at me while eating my sandwich And he says Young man I have something very important to tell you And I said What's that? He said Make lots of money And I said What? Make lots of money And he says That's what you think He said He's learned in his 82 years As a famous designer artist Whatever he was He said I've learned over the years That something that I love to do Often doesn't make any money Whereas something that I don't like to do I can make money off of it So he said I make money off of things That I may not love to do To pay for things That I love to do The way I want them He says You found me in that book What was the name of that book? I said Oh It was like soft song design Right Do you remember how it was printed? And I said Yes Five colors Four color was silver Which as you know is very expensive back then He said I paid for the four colors Because the publisher refused to print it Beyond one color And there he said I had the freedom to do it the way I want to do Because I could fund it With things that maybe I didn't want to do You followed that philosophy? I did I really became very aware that This mythical Ikigai circle intersection Whatever I've never been able to find it So I make money with things that you know I maybe I don't love to do all the time To fund things that I really love to do What do you love to do? I love to create things And just think about them You know I think that's the creative instinct I like making things without them Without an objective Because I think I can find new things that way fastest One of the things I always debate about Is that if you start to do What you really enjoy doing And you get paid for it Does it kill the creative profession Creative energy in you Because I've seen You know I've had the privilege of knowing Some of the big cartoonists of India When I look at their work and this They always used to have this Time taking their days to work for magazines And newspapers They would say that It's like 3.30 am by 4 o'clock I have to submit today's cartoon And nothing comes to mind And they are miserable They are pacing Then somebody comes and says Okay 15 minutes more are you done And the person says Yeah yeah I'm about done And he's actually done everything And then he sort of You know this cartoonist That I was talking about You know he got up and said Never ever become a cartoonist Never Because this is what you go through every day And then we step out For a cup of coffee Sister Arun says But it's so much fun When somebody holds a gun to your head And you can produce a cartoon Imagine if somebody got hijacked And this happened And he was laughing his guts off And I thought Okay which one is really new You know pressure creates diamonds Is a physical phenomenon Which I think is a Not a bad example of the creative act I guess I'm saying that When you make things That have no objective I think it feels like you're free To express yourself And in that You can find yourself faster If you're trying to meet an objective That is basically to enable you to survive To put food on the table For yourself and others That's survival Playing and kicking in I think if you're like If that's happening to you Like every second of your life I think you're not having the opportunity To reflect and invent I'll say that in my lifetime I've had different balances Of the ability to reflect a lot And then sort of re-bore pressure I think right now it's like this With the speed of AI It's just spaces Right Different paces of your life You've experienced it yourself I would say Sometimes this Sometimes this If you have too much of one You can't get it right So we have to keep on going back and forth You know go home Go to work Go to art Go to technology Do very focused on business We focused on just like life Sino-sortial Yeah and maybe One thought is that You know in the book I talk about Being on a perpetual escal That as you start to build your skill You know you become slightly better at something As you are at the You feel you're at the peak of You can you're the regulator as you said And at that point of time This is time to actually start Turning yourself into becoming A novice all over again In a different field altogether And you straddle three of them What's the next one Interesting Well that's kind of like I was describing the laws of simplicity My favorite thing I found was A black belt in karate The martial art Doesn't necessarily want to Become more of a black belt Their goal is to wear out that black belt so much After washing it and using it So it becomes a white belt I just love that analogy I'm going to remember this one that That's how you know you made A novice and you retained the My set of one Having become complacent in my own life Too many times And rightfully knocked down When it becomes you complacent I like the idea of that Quote unquote beginner's mindset I think it's just healthy In your life do you believe that You've grown because of circumstances Because of skills Because of people Because of opportunities Wow that's a good question I think I've grown each time It's sort of like The harder you fall The more you have to see If you can get up again Again if you have a certain level of privilege You can do that Someone without privilege When they're down They get knocked down They go further And they can't come back I also know age You know I always thought about Like one day I want to get down And not be able to get back up again What keeps me going is asking myself When will I not be able to get up back up again Let's just see That's probably the tofu factory example That you know That you just really value hard work Is it true that you know Design is more hard work Or it's more inspiration How do you think about it? I feel lucky that I know what hard work is And it's not the work I do every day Like hard work is like Getting close to like losing a finger When you're washing This very industrial service That your father or mother Probably shouldn't let you Sort of do as a child It's like very In a manufacturing environment Which still many children across the world Have to either experience Because of their families Or because I need for it to hold a job That's hard work I just feel blessed that I get to do Really interesting work At different phases of my life And I think thankfulness Is the driver for me But I can find the path to being thankful Everything lights up Like I'm thankful to be here with you now I'm healthy Talk with you So it's a wonderful feeling You know I've been fascinated By your YouTube show About John Locke You're gonna be on our cozy AI kitchen episode Gonna go release soon You talk about this cozy AI kitchen Talk to me about the format How do you come up with that? It's just so fascinating It is a show which talks about The most advanced concepts of AI And it's simple enough For even somebody who knows Nothing about this like me To be able to understand and appreciate And yet it's got a Obviously like a children's TV show Kind of a thing What was the other guy like that? Collaboration is the power, right? So there's Ross and Matt And his team and Deverell Studios Had a few extra hours Of green screen room availability And I guess I've always loved The cooking metaphor for learning And we quickly mocked up a kitchen And I wanted to feel more welcome So cozy AI was born then Really it depends upon the guests I loved how when you were the first In-studio guests ever For cozy AI kitchen And Abhijit's like an incredible actor Just a way to see him in motion But when you put on the AI apron You invented a new thing with me I never had a guest there And we improvised And so really improvisation Is the key to the cozy AI kitchen It's all not scripted or anything like that Which leads me back to careers 3.0 Because I really think that When someone has a broad set of skills They can improvise more easily If they only have a narrow set of skills They really can't improvise that well And maybe in this new era where AI creates a little bit of How are we feel to be imbalanced The only way to be rebalanced ourselves Is to improvise a way to getting back up Or re-centered You've written so many books Do you have a favorite book of yours? Oh my gosh My favorite book is Self-Renewal By John W. Gardner I think I shared the link with you But if you just search with Bing John W. Gardner Self-Renewal PBS John Gardner was the HHS secretary under Lyndon B. Johnson He created the public broadcasting system PBS And it's a short essay about How to live life as someone who leads change And anyone who's at a bad day At work Or at school or whatever If you read it It really kind of fills you up with energy So Self-Renewal By John W. Gardner PBS.org Before I end I just want to say that You know What are some of the places where people can Read up about your work Your books Names of your books Your social handle So you've got that At John Maida On Sweaterland, LinkedIn and everything But where else can they find you And learn more about your thinking? Oh Well you know just being Gucozi AI Kitchen That's a new show It's a pilot It's a really pilot run Maybe six episodes And Apogee is going to be in one of them And I have tried to create a YouTube channel I've always failed But if you watch Those things I have there Maybe I'll add more content to it And give me suggestions And I have another platform as well If you're interested in AI Check out How to Speak Machine It's a book I wrote Spent me six years To explain to anyone How AI works That's next on my reading list Incredible John Is just really fascinating How this show One of the things I've learned is Some of the most fascinating And accomplished people Are the ones who are The most curious Who really live The soul philosophy Or just giving And reaching out And you know You've been one such role model For me And it's something phenomenal Thank you so much For being here Thank you for sharing your wisdom With my listeners And don't be surprised If your show now goes viral Your YouTube And because people are very sort of Make you even more famous Thank you Apogee community Thanks once again And if you have any suggestions With listeners If you feel you want to be part of the show Or you know somebody who Is interesting enough To be part of the show Then drop me a mail And I will talk to you Till then Goodbye