June 30, 2025 • 44 mins
In this episode of CISO Tradecraft, host G Mark Hardy speaks with gamification pioneer Yu-Kai Chou about his new book, '10,000 Hours of Play: Unlock Your Real Life Legendary Success.' Explore key concepts such as aligning your passions, skills, and goals through six essential steps: choosing your game, knowing your attributes, selecting your role, enhancing your skills, building alliances, and achieving your quest. Discover how gamification can lead to personal and professional success. Tune in for an insightful conversation that could change the way you approach your career and life.
Yu-Kai Chou - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yukaichou/
Actionable Gamification Book - https://a.co/d/isv7K0W
10,000 Hours of Play Book - https://a.co/d/3L88jTs
Transcripts: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gPxWVeS8QYNsgGpXt3EDQy5zGcCYH7hL
Chapters
- 00:00 Introduction: The Power of Play
- 00:34 Meet Yu-Kai Chou: Gamification Pioneer
- 04:16 Understanding the Octalysis Framework
- 07:34 10,000 Hours of Play: A New Perspective
- 09:24 Choosing Your Game: Discovering Your Life's Mission
- 16:49 Knowing Your Attributes: Identifying Your Strengths
- 22:14 Selecting Your Role: Layers of Your Role Sphere
- 23:12 Aspiration and Identity: Defining Who You Want to Be
- 24:46 Occupation and Specialization: Aligning Your Roles
- 26:48 The Importance of Direction and Continuous Growth
- 28:05 The Concept of Ikigai and Skill Enhancement
- 30:38 Creating a Skill Triangle and Role Models
- 31:39 Gamification in Cybersecurity and Beyond
- 32:50 The Role of Determination and Passion
- 37:50 Building Alliances for Success
- 41:27 Recap and Final Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, how much time do you devote to play?
What if you devoted 10,000 hours to play?
Do you really think that could make adifference in your life and your career?
I got a gentleman who's gonnashow you exactly how that works.
Stay tuned.
(00:24):
Hello, and welcome to anotherepisode of CISO Tradecraft.
My name is G Mark Hardy.
This is the podcast to provide you withthe information, knowledge, and wisdom to
be a more effective cybersecurity leader.
On today's show, we'regonna talk to Yu-Kai Chao.
He's our special guest.
He has a book called 10,000 Hours of Play.
Unlock Your Real Life, legendary Success,and we're gonna dive into that book today.
(00:45):
So if you'd like to learn how touse these concepts, stick around.
This is gonna be good.
So first of all.
What I wanna talk about is the conceptthat I'd like you to stick in your mind.
You are not years awayfrom everything you want.
You don't have to wait tillyour gray beard like this to
finally achieve something.
You are actually skillsaway from what you want.
(01:07):
Interesting sort of idea.
So what we're gonna find then is thatthere's a lot of things you can do
if you take the time to learn them.
Whether it's a great spouse,we want to be able to do that.
You have to have good communicationskills so you can succeed.
If you wanna be a great programmer, youneed skills to teach you how to program,
to go ahead and structure your thinking.
Now, just because you wanna playbasketball like Michael Jordan doesn't
(01:30):
mean you're suddenly become a proplayer because there's a lot that can
go into your life is, which you can.
Be successful at andget the desired outcome.
So that's why I'm hoping that Yu-KaiChou is gonna be able to give you some
clarity on that and how to use theseconcepts to make your life better.
Yu-Kai Chou, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for having me here.
So you can tell our listen listeners alittle bit about yourself because you
(01:52):
have a pretty fantastic, course thatyou got to where you are right now
and you still got a lot of ways to go.
Yeah.
I'm seen as a pioneer in the world ofgamification and behavioral design.
I actually started in 2003,so 22 years ago now, and back
then was a very lonely passion.
People didn't understand or believe in it.
(02:13):
They thought I was trying to create moreexcuses to play games, but I, believed in
the value of applying game design to makeimportant things more fun and enjoyable.
So I stuck to it and I was very luckyand blessed where over the years it
became something more and more companiescared about organizations, governments.
So they looked around and I. Was theonly person doing it for that long,
(02:33):
or one of the very few at least.
And so I, I just finished mysecond book, 10,000 hours of play.
I wrote my first book, actionableGamification, about 2015 and sold
over a hundred thousand copies.
it was, it was referenced by 3,600PhD thesis academic journals.
(02:53):
And it was rated the number onegamification group in the world.
Three out of four years.
One year I was number two, andthen later they made me a judge.
Unfortunately, I'm disqualifiedto being a guru and my design
work, towards my clients like,Tesla, Google, Microsoft, ideo.
and Wal, Walgreens, a lot of, companiesacross different industries, has
(03:18):
reached over 1.5 billion users.
So it's a good impact to have.
Trying to get more, we'll talk aboutthat later, about my life game.
What is the purpose of that?
Yeah, so regularly teach some ofmy work, my framework at Harvard,
Stanford, Yale, Oxford, and justvery passionate about what I'm doing.
And then there's like randomother things like being knighted
(03:39):
by, Korean royalty, society ofOf our arts in London and helping
Ukraine rebuild with, gamification.
There's a lot of random things andvr, ai, metaverse, blockchain, that's
(03:59):
the bundle of my life journey so far.
I.
Wow, and you still got a ways to go.
So congratulations on allthose amazing accomplishments.
I think for a lot of people,just achieving one of them
might be the highlight.
Of somebody's career, but yetyou've had a chance to continue
to contribute over time and time.
Now, you'd mentioned your first bookand you'd sold over a hundred thousand
copies on actionable gamification.
(04:22):
Now in that you introduce somethingcalled the Octalysis framework.
Do we, I, oh, we don't wanna gotoo far into it 'cause we really
wanna talk about your second book.
Can you tell us a little bitabout what that is and how that
helps structure people thinking?
So it introduces the frameworkthat I'm so far most known for.
Again, the Octalysis framework,and it sounds like a foreign word,
but it's a combination betweenthe word octagon and analysis.
(04:44):
So it breaks down all human motivationinto these eight core drives.
And so everything we do is basedon one or more of these eight core
drives, which means that if there'snone of these aqua drives there.
There's zero motivation,no behavior happens.
So things like core drive, one,epic meaning, and calling, you're
doing something for something biggerthan yourself or, core drive seven,
unpredictability and curiosity.
(05:05):
It's like the gambling core drive,like not knowing what's happened,
what's gonna happen constantly gets youobsessed or core drive's like scarcity
and impatience because it's so hard toget, you suddenly have desire to get it.
So these 8 core drivesmotivate all our behavior.
And what's unique about the Octalysisframework is based on where that
core drive is on the octagon.
(05:25):
It has different naturesand consequences to it.
So we have top first bottom, where wecall them white hat core drive-throughs,
black hat core drives, where the topones make people feel more in control.
They feel powerful, they feel good,but there's no sense of urgency
because they feel fully in controland they just procrastinate.
So it's used for more long-term designs,whereas the black hat core drives.
(05:48):
Since they're tied to our survivalinstincts, they make us feel more urgent,
more obsessed, sometimes addicted.
but in the long run, if that's the onlymotivation, then people could feel,
demoralized because they feel like they'renot in control of their own behavior.
And then we have.
Something being the left side ofthe octagon, which we call them left
brain core drives, as opposed to,right side, right brain core drives.
(06:12):
Which doesn't necessarily meanit's geographically left vs right?
But it symbolically represents ourlogical brain versus our emotional brain.
And what's actionable there isthat the left brain core drives
deal with extrinsic motivation.
Things you do for reward, apurpose or a goal, but you don't
necessarily enjoy the activity itself.
So once you obtain the reward, hityour goals, you get used to the reward,
it becomes stale, you stop doing it.
(06:32):
Whereas the rate brain core drivesdeal with intrinsic motivation.
You do it because you enjoy doing it.
You would even pay money to experience it.
And even if you lose all yourprogress the next day, you would
still do it today because that'show you measure quality of life.
You know how much time youspend on things you enjoy doing.
So the Octalysis framework is well knownand well applied because of not only.
(06:52):
predicts and also helps createengender motivation and behavior.
It also, sees the consequence nature ofit is a long term, is a short term, is an
intrinsic and extrinsic, and that is why,it stands strong in our industry today.
Interesting.
Yeah.
There's a, for the, context foreverybody go out and get the book.
By the way, if you're not familiarwith it, but I'm just gonna
(07:13):
mention it without diving into it.
The eight elements, the Octalysisframework, epic meaning accomplishment,
empowerment, ownership, social influence,scarcity, unpredictability, and avoidance.
Does sound a little bit like Dr.Robert Cialdini when he looks at
some of the forms of persuasion.
but we're not gonna go ahead andwar game the two against each other.
(07:34):
But what I'd like to do though isget a little bit more into your
newest book on 10,000 hours of play.
Now, Malcolm Gladwell has talked aboutsaying, Hey, it takes 10,000 hours of
practice to really master something.
Okay?
As a pilot, I gotta tell you.
I'm a long way away from 10,000 hoursof flying, but there are people who
have that and they're absolute mastersat their craft and things such as that.
(07:56):
But can you tell me a little bit moreabout why you thought that 10,000 hours of
play represented a thesis that you wantedto go ahead and build out a, book on.
Yeah, I think it's because 10,000 hourshas been a proverbial kind of meaning of
dedicating a lot of hours in your life toa certain craft, to a certain activity.
Now, whether it's actually 10,000 hoursthat there, that's a lot of debate, right?
(08:21):
But, and how that study came about is alegit, I don't think that really matters.
What matters is that it symbolizesthe dedication you put into something.
And so the book title takes that and says.
if you turn your life into agame, it wouldn't be 10,000
hours of blood, sweat, and tears.
It'll actually be 10,000 hoursof enjoyment, having fun,
(08:45):
being happy and feeling free.
And at the end of that 10,000hours of fun and play, you're
successful in what you do.
You're happy, you're healthy, youhave a good relationship because
everything is part of that game you'replaying and the game you're mastering.
Interesting.
Now you've got six key steps that youinclude in that book to align your
passions, your skills, and your goals intoreally what's would be a winning formula.
(09:09):
Choose your game, know yourattributes, select your role, enhance
your skills, build your alliances,and then achieve your quest.
Now, these are really cool, and I'dlike to dive into each one of these
in a little bit more detail if we can.
So let's start at the beginningabout choosing your game.
How does that tie into reallydiscovering your life's mission?
(09:31):
Yeah.
I think the most important thingto turn your life into a game is
to know what is the game worthplaying for your life, right?
Because I have seen and coached alot of people who are very successful
in what they're doing, and peoplesee that and they respect the
success, but they feel empty inside.
They feel hollow because they realize.
(09:53):
They're not playing theirgame in life at all.
They don't care about, they'renot passionate about this.
They're just doing what theirparents wanted them to do or their
circumstances wanted 'em to do.
And I think it's very important todefine what is the game in your life
that even if you don't accomplish yourfinal goals by spending your lifetime
playing, it is worthwhile, it'senjoyable, it's a life worth living.
(10:17):
And that's why I step one out ofthe six is really understanding.
What is meaningful to you?
What should you tryto, to do in your life?
And what's important is this isbefore you consider your talents,
your attributes and whatnot.
This is simply about your passion.
And so the, your talents come second step.
(10:39):
So for instance, I believe that ifyou are passionate about, music.
But let's say you only have thetalents of being a janitor, right?
I believe you would be happier if youwere a janitor for a music company
than let's say a truck company, right?
And of course, there's a lot ofpeople passionate about trucks, and
in that case, it'll be the reverse.
They'd be happier being a janitor fora truck company than music company.
(11:02):
So you still have to think about.
What am I passionate about?
What do you want to contribute to?
Where do you wanna play in?
And then once you define that, then youcan think about what are your talents?
So how do you actuallybe a player in that game?
What is your role?
And perform well in it.
So I think it's really important tohave, if you will, some realistic.
(11:23):
Expectations you want choosing your game.
So let's say like Kevin Hart, he's acomedian, but he is like five foot five.
So if he were saying, Hey, Iwanna go up and I wanna be an NBA
player, I want to go ahead and bethe next Michael Jordan, or Shaq.
probably it's gonna be verydifficult because you might not
be starting with the raw materialsthat you need to be successful.
Not that you can't do well in theNBA if you're five five, but there's
(11:45):
a couple players who've done that.
But in general, it's reallyfinding who you are and if he
realizes, hey, being a comedian.
Which he's naturally talented at, that'sgonna unlock that mission for him, and
then he is gonna be able to focus on that.
So when somebody is looking atthat, how do you help people
discover, focus, and discoverwhere to find their life's mission?
(12:07):
Yeah, so for Kevin Hart.
I think it's, like you said, it'svery hard for him to be an NBA
star, but he could still choosetwo paths that are related to that.
He could say, I'mpassionate about basketball.
I want to contribute A famous contributorto the basketball, which he could probably
be a good basketball host, right?
(12:28):
And he can be a commentator,he can be an analyst.
So using his talents when he, especiallyif you know your game early, that's
why it's important to go into this.
The earlier you know, your game, thebetter he can position for it, right?
If he starts to do that early, I'msure lots of people will watch someone
like Kevin Hart do commentary, right?
So we can do that.
The other way is to say yes, no.
(12:49):
I like the basketball world, but.
I wanna play basketball.
My passion is basketball, right?
like you identified.
This is a very hard game to play.
This is choosing a gameon insane difficulty.
And sometimes it's okay, I neverget to be in a pro player at the
NBA, but I get to still play in somekind of semi-professional league.
(13:09):
Some people, they go to another countryand they play in the pro basketball there.
If that is the game you truly, wantto play, there are strategies to
work out a path to still do it.
Be assuming that is what youwanted to do to be happy.
If Kevin Hart really hates beinga comedian, I think he actually
likes it, but if he really hates it.
(13:30):
Again, my point is, no matterhow successful you are, you're
still not gonna enjoy your life.
It's still not 10,000 hours ofplay, 10,000 hours of agony.
And I'm not gonna point names out,some people who are really very famous,
accomplished comedians, they are depressedand sometimes they, and their lives
are a little earlier than they should.
(13:52):
so I think that's very important,whereas the, height is an attribute,
which is step two, and then thebasketball player itself is step three,
which is choose your role in the game.
And so the way back to your ownquestion, the way to help people
find their game, of course there's.
Multitude of ways, but weusually like to see what people
(14:15):
naturally, get attracted to.
so some people are lucky, when they'rein third grade, they're like, yeah,
I always knew I wanted to be anastronaut, or I always wanna do this.
or I saw a role model.
A lot of time it's seen a role model, likewhether it's fictional or nonfictional.
They see a movie and they're like.
Wow, that inspires me so much.
I want to be like that person.
(14:36):
and sometime it's not literal,oh, I see William Wallace and
Braveheart sacrifice for his country.
It doesn't mean your game isto pick up an axe and charge
and into, to, into the enemy.
It actually means that, hey, I wantto find a way to sacrifice my game
is sacrificing myself for a biggercause, maybe my country, but maybe
a worth, a cause worth dying for.
(14:57):
Or for me, when I was young, I watchedArmageddon in the movie and some people
say it's a good movie, some people don't.
But what really inspired me wasat the beginning they, needed to.
Find, oil drillers to go to a, asteroid,to blow, to drill holes and blow it up.
Okay?
It's a really ridiculous story,but there was a scene where the
White House was like, yeah, weasked every expert out there and
(15:20):
everyone pointed to the same name.
That guy, he is the expertamong all the experts.
So we flew our helicopters toget this one expert that all the
experts said is the true master.
And that really inspired me when I wasyoung, I was like, oh, I wish I could be.
That true master expert of expert.
So that is a way to, to think aboutwhat your game would be, right?
(15:40):
What inspires you, what rolemodels fictional nonfictional.
also it's important to think, okay,what would I actually do with my life
if I didn't have to worry about money?
Because money is just fuel, okay?
It gets you to another place,and I really believe that.
Your destination shouldnot be fuel, right?
Because if you're getting fuel just toget more fuel, just to get more fuel,
(16:02):
then you're just going in circles.
It's actually a depressing life.
You have to have a clear visionabout if I had all the fuel in
the world, where would I go?
What would I wanna do?
And I think if you think enoughabout these things, and of course
the book describes many differentmethods to find what your game is,
but I think you'll get closer andcloser to what your true game is.
And by living your life according to yourgame, you will find, fulfillment in it.
(16:27):
Wow.
I guess I mind watching Titanic andsaying I'd wait until I'm 104 years old
before people seek me out, is probablya little bit, too long of a horizon.
And of course you ask a 3-year-old,what do you wanna be when you grow up?
I wanna be a giraffe.
So somewhere along those extremes, youfind our mission is you've given us a look
ahead between choosing your game, knowingyour attributes, and selecting your role.
(16:49):
so let's talk aboutknowing your attributes.
Even with what you described,okay, Titanic, what is, why
do you want to be sought out?
Then it's okay, maybe you actually wantpeople to remember you or to seek you out
what you know that's important for you.
In the kid example, as silly asit sounds like, all right, what?
What attracts you about a giraffe?
Do you like to be above everyone, right?
(17:09):
Or do you like it that there's no onethat could actually threaten You you
can find these silly things or big andsmall, and you can start deriving like,
what do you actually care about in life?
And then puts your life closer to that.
Yeah, maybe that's why Iended up at six foot five, not
quite tall enough to be NBA.
I actually didn't have theweight under the boards.
I was skinny kid in college, but Iended up going into volleyball instead.
(17:31):
I found I, I could do alittle bit better with that.
Anyway, if you go back to theconcept about knowing what you
want to be when you grow up, I.
Whether it's a giraffe, whetherit's gonna be able to be a resource
to somebody else, et cetera.
Can you talk a little bit moreabout knowing your attributes?
Is this something thatyou discover on your own?
you ask friends, you sit around,you take a standardized test.
(17:52):
What's a really good indicatorfor mastering your unique
strengths and talents?
Then knowing them.
Yeah, so at most games,when you start the game.
You get to choose a role, whether that'slike a assassin or a warrior, or a healer.
And then once you choose the role,it'll give you the attributes and stats.
oh, your strength is better, stronger thanyour intelligence, and you have vitality.
(18:15):
Unfortunately, that's not the real world.
The real world.
You don't get to really pick that.
you get to discover what attributesyou already have, and then based
on that, you choose your role.
So that's why step two is again,identifying and knowing your
attributes, which are your talents.
And I think there are, again,many different ways to knowing
your attributes and talents.
(18:36):
And, most people,
when they get exposed to many things,they suddenly have that moment.
Not most people, some people, some,I guess the luckier people, they
have this moment where it's hey.
I thought, this is really easy.
Why are, why are people struggling?
And they recognize, oh, wow,I, I have a talent here, right?
I, I'm gifted in this and identifythat because what's difficult is.
(19:01):
the strengths people have come soeasy for them that they think everyone
does it very easily and they have tocompare it to their colleagues or their
classmates and whatnot to identify it.
Now, some things are easily comparable.
oh musical skills you're performing.
People can observe it.
school subjects, English, math,there's a great, but there's
(19:22):
so many things out there.
like how much perseverance you have,how well you're adapting to things.
Those things, you're not really, you don'treally know how much empathy you have.
These are all attributes.
By the way.
Attributes are different to skills.
That's step four.
Attributes are more things you are bornwith or you develop over a long time.
Whereas skills are thingsyou can take a class on.
(19:45):
You could, you could go through a trainingcamp, read a book, and acquire so.
Being very tall, like youdescribed, is an attribute, right?
Running fast and an attribute, andthen playing basketball is a skill.
So you, obviously want to haveyour attributes empower the right
skills, not contradict the skillsor, the skills rendered irrelevant.
So if you're an accountant, it usuallydoesn't matter how tall you are, right?
(20:10):
so your app, so these are attributes and.
What we recommend is first having lotsof life experience, trying a lot of
different things and that's when youget to say, oh, this comes easy for me.
That comes easy for me.
This is really hard for me.
And like you said, I think everythingyou described is, very accurate.
Ask people around you a lot.
My experience and people I talkto, when you ask people around say,
(20:31):
Hey, what do you think I'm good at?
What do you think I'm bad atmost of 'em, they could very
quickly come up with an answer.
'cause they already know.
They just don't talk about it.
And that's gonna giveyou a lot of insights.
Then there's a lot ofvarious tests out there.
a lot of people like to bring up theStrength Finders 2.0, which I think got
renamed to Clifton Strengths, I believe.
(20:52):
but it's important to recognize onething, which a lot of those tests
I. They test for personality, notnecessarily talents or strengths.
Some of them will say, you'rean outgoing person, right?
And that might connect to attributes.
in terms of being, being,
brave and, talking to people.
(21:14):
It could be very proactive, but itdoesn't necessarily like how you
like to do things is not necessarilywhat you're good at, per se.
So it's good to think about whatthose are and create what we call a,
talent triangle, which is, what areyou probably the best at compared to
anyone else or compared to everythingelse you're, you have and what are the
two or three really, good things andthen what are the rest of that you're
(21:37):
pretty good at, but not the best at?
And you form what we callthis, talent triangle.
Then the top five, we call it the ringstrengths, and you really want to align
your life, the, your environment and all.
And your role based on yourtop five, ring strengths.
Wow.
So it sounds like a nice frameworkfor us to go ahead and take
a look at what we're doing.
(21:58):
So we've chosen our gameand we know our attributes.
And my thought is when you're talkingabout attributes and then skills, that
the skills and the practice and thingscan help you focus those attributes.
If I'm tall and I say, Hey, Ilike basketball, I need a lot
of practice to go ahead and takeadvantage of that attribute.
But ultimately you have a thirdthing, which you'd mention and
(22:18):
that's selecting your role.
And in your book you hada quote, I wanna share it.
With our listeners, most of the timepeople think of their roles as their
occupation, accountant, softwareengineer, professor, researcher,
writer, artist, or full-time parent.
That's because their occupation isthe value we contribute to society and
those around us, and it is thereforeeasily observed and recognizable.
(22:40):
But there are more layers to our rolesthat interplay with our occupation.
I call the layers our role sphere,which you'd mentioned, and they're like
layers of an onion that surround a more.
Fundamental composition.
So can you go into this topica little bit more for those who
haven't really read your book?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So again, there are four layers of aperson's role, sphere, your aspiration
role, who you want to become, youridentity role, who you believe you are.
(23:03):
Occupational role, which, what sustainsyour lifestyle or the or what the,
what's the value you contribute toothers around you and specialization
role, what you become good at.
And these all could be different, eventhough it is best if those are aligned.
So aspiration role, right?
What do you want to become?
And sometimes people have debatedwith me, identity of who you believe
(23:25):
you are should be the first layer.
But I really think who you wantto be, become your aspirations.
Define you more than anything else,and you could debate about that.
But if a person walks around and theysaid, okay, my goal, I'm working my
hardest, I want to become the presidentof the United States one day, and
every day I'm at taking action on that.
(23:47):
I don't really care if this personis an accountant or a musician or
what, are the introvert, extroverted?
I remember them as the guy who's realworking towards becoming a president.
I've actually met a, I've met someone,when I met a random person who's
in eighth grade and she just is,I want to go to Harvard one day.
That's her aspiration, and I'veonly met her for an hour and I
(24:10):
left, and I always remember heras the girl wanted go to Harvard.
Everything else was not as important.
So I really think our dreams andaspiration, who we want to become, who,
where we want to go defines us more.
But then you have the identity role,which is who we believe you are.
And those are some values, somecultural, Hey, I, I'm gonna
be a person, or I am a person.
(24:31):
Who would never betray a friend,or I'm always gonna work the
hardest, or, you know this again,anyone, everyone's different.
So it's Hey, I'm a person who would alwaysbetray a friend to get benefits from it.
I don't know.
But it's really who you believe youare, and that's part of your role
in, in the game you're playing.
I. And then it's what people arefamiliar with occupation role.
And I say that's the valuecreate for those around you.
(24:53):
So maybe it makes income, maybeit doesn't, but if you have a
volunteer role, you are, you havea family role, doesn't matter.
That's what, that's the way youcontribute value to people around you.
And then the specialization role, whichis what you actually become good at.
And that not al, that always,connects to the occupational role,
which obviously it's good if it does.
(25:13):
So if there is.
A accounting expert, right?
He's accountant.
but he's to say he's a mediocreaccountant, but he really loves to play
the guitar and he plays it really well.
He plays magic gathering.
And for the sake of thispodcast, let's say he's really
into cyber security, right?
Thinking about how to protect hishome, and he helps his friend set up
(25:34):
and he even helps office set that up.
His specialization role is actuallynot aligned with his occupation role.
So the way to play this game would be,how can we align this and how can we even
connect some of your specializations?
Like what I just said, he likes musicand cybersecurity, so he could possibly
create a youtube channel that makescybersecurity more interesting by
(25:54):
teaching principles through music, right?
And so there's a variety ofthings you can do or he can hosts
magic the gathering, events.
For cybersecurity, professionals.
So they come and they play magicgathering, but then they also mingle
on the best cybersecurity role.
So there's many ways to combineyour specialties and turn
that into an occupation role.
(26:14):
And so again, this is the way we thinkabout how to do our 10,000 hours of play.
Yeah.
And if he is a, comedian, DonMcMillan that I like, and he
started out as an engineer and hesaid, Hey, I really like comedy.
So he does all of his comedywith PowerPoint and if you think
that's impossible, go look him up.
You'll find out here's somebody who'seffectively gone ahead and merged that.
(26:35):
Because as you said, you start out withyour aspiration, which you wanna become.
Who you believe you are, youridentity, the occupations, puts
you into some sort of role thatyou're contributing to society.
And then ultimately a specialization,something, you're gonna dive down that.
So how do people know ifthey're on the right track?
How do we make sure that we're not goingin four different directions and our
life is a constant exploration wherewe're eventually gonna figure out what
(26:57):
we want, but we never, ever get there.
I think it's important toalways be striving towards
something, having a direction.
I think it's okay if you keepchanging directions, right?
It's oh, I thought I wanted that.
I worked towards it.
I accumulate skills in it.
I made allies there.
I did Quest there.
whoa, Actually.
(27:18):
I think I am.
I care more about another game orhey, I think I'm actually not as
talent as I thought in this may.
I realize I'm telling something else.
I think that's okay becauseat least your entire life.
You have a direction and you'replaying the game, you're doing,
you're living life passionately.
I think that's way better thanjust not knowing where you wanna go
and just drifting to all sorts ofplaces and discover Hey, I'm here.
(27:39):
I don't even know why I'm here,but, and, hoping that you like it.
So I think follow the steps, and youdon't have to even go in the order if
you, because people have sometimes stepone, three, and six worked out, and
the others, they're still, undefined.
But I think by doing it, youdon't have to really worry like.
If you're not on the right track,by spending time on it, you actually
(28:00):
are playing and you are focusingyour life and making things better.
Interesting.
So it almost sounds like a Japaneseconcept of Ikigai, where you have,
it's kinda like a Venn diagram,something you love, something the
world needs, something you get paidfor and something you're good at.
And if you can do all four of thesethings at the same time, that's
your, Ikigai your true happiness.
And if you miss one of them, you mightget paid for something that you don't
(28:23):
love or you might have a hobby thatyou love but doesn't make any money.
Things like that's, okay.
But at the end of the day, it'dbe nice if you could go ahead
and align all of those things.
But in your model, on the fourth step,enhancing your skills, how do you see
people going from, being, let's saysomebody who's an also ran or in the
game to becoming, if you will, a mainplayer and now your skill sets are to
(28:47):
the point where you might be, reallyrocking it instead of just getting by.
Yeah, so once we know our role.
Then we go to step four, bythe way, steps one, two, three.
We call it Know Yourself.
And step four five is likewe call Grow Yourself.
Okay?
So the first three areabout more self-assessment.
(29:07):
The next three are about taking action.
So once you know your role, then you gottafigure out what are the skills you have
to acquire to be the strongest characterof that role on your server, right?
Which is Earth, our existence and theway that I like to do it, first of all,
I think it's important to think about.
Should you specialize in one skill or be ajack of all trades, and we feel like it's
(29:30):
best to, if you see that as a spectrum,it's good to be somewhere closer to the
middle, but towards the specialization.
So you want to specializein a few synergetic skills.
So if you're just special in oneskill, then you know, who knows?
Maybe that skill is obsoleteand then you're gone.
And if you special, if you're ajack of all trades, no one remembers
(29:53):
you doing well on anything.
And so that's not very helpful.
But if you could, have a fewdifferent things you do really well
and you merge them together, thenyou become an expert in that thing.
It's just like for me.
I merge gamification andbusiness together, right?
And so I'm not the bestgame designer in the world.
I'm not the best business person inthe world, but when I combine those
(30:14):
two together, I form a expertise ingamification design, and I could be one
of the best people in the world on it.
I ran, I mentioned some random exampleabout the, music player who plays magic
gathering know cybersecurity, right?
That's also trying to create a fewsynergetic, and yet that one is more
creative, how to make that synergetic.
(30:35):
But it's important to say, how dowe connect these things together?
And then once we have that, wecreate what we call a skill triangle,
which is same, principle right now.
What are your top skills?
What are your secondary skills,tertiary skills and whatnot.
So it's a triangle there, but, andthat's your current skill triangle.
And then you have a target skill triangle,which is where you should become, like
(30:57):
what are the skills you should havewhen you've reached the highest level?
And, to figure that out.
Sometimes you do look, again, you goback and look at role models, right?
You look at, oh, if I want tobe a tech entrepreneur, Steve
Jobs, what are his top skills?
he's very persuasive.
He has ux UI design, he has,product management skills.
He has marketing skills, right?
And so you look at your skill triangle,look at where you should be, and
(31:20):
you're like, wait, I should be,this should be my number one skill,
but right now it's my number seven.
So I need to find books, find courses,listen to podcasts to get myself to
level up, to get that to number one.
And this should be number three.
It's not even on my current triangle.
I don't, I, don't knowanything about this.
And if you look at, forinstance, cybersecurity, right?
(31:42):
this is why I'm starting to get a bunch ofprojects in the cybersecurity world too.
Lots of fun because.
They start to realize that cybersecurityis not just a technical problem, it's not
just creating the best lock in the world.
It's a human behavior problem.
Because it doesn't matter if youhave the best lock in the world
when the owner just opens the doorfor the thieves and go in, right?
(32:05):
So people get tricked andthey let the thieves come in.
So that's why they're like,wow, we need gamification.
We need to make it enjoyableand fun for people to learn how
to, apply good cybersecurity.
Also, They need to, not just learnabout it, but they need to practice it.
They need to do it, and there'ssome gameplay learning and whatnot.
(32:25):
So my, so even being cybersecurity expert,knowing the technical side is important,
but knowing the behavioral design, thegame cation stuff is a useful skill.
And you wanna be persuasive.
You wanna be able to do, onlinepersonal branding, right?
People should know that you're theexpert so they can bring you in.
So you wanna bring all these synergizedskills together to form a role that
(32:47):
can be successful in your game.
Wow.
And you'd mentioned 10,000 hours of play,but just be careful about this because
although you said it doesn't have to beexactly 10,000, it's a metaphor for it.
But then you get people that, let'ssay, Hey, I wanna go to the gym.
I want to really get,Rocking solid and whatever.
there's some people that probably puttheir 10 hours out, 10,000 hours in
(33:09):
the gym and they don't look very good.
Why?
Those are the ones thatare on their phone.
They're talking, they're watching the tv,they're doing the treadmill like this.
They're not even breaking a sweat.
But the ones who accomplishsomething are those who really
dedicate themselves to the mission.
They're there, they're working hard,they're gonna be sore, and they know it.
But that's okay.
(33:29):
You welcome it.
And they go back and you staywith the program and you keep
at it, and you keep at it.
And that's how you're gonna do it.
That determination, the stick toit, this and this, and I think by
having this framework that you'veoffered, gives us that reassurance.
Because everybody, when you startsomething new, you start out
and your expectations are high.
Your morale is high, but reality is,your skillset's not all that high.
(33:52):
That's why you're doing something new.
after a while you get to the sort of thetrough of disillusionment, which says,
this is a lot harder than I thought.
And the first couple weeks at the gym,wow, I've gone 50, 80, 90, a hundred,
10, 110, a hundred, 110, I'm Cap.
I'm not.
And it's really hard to keep goingpast that point, but it requires
that commitment to get past that.
(34:14):
For example, is it what'smaking the difference here?
How does when somebody hits thatnatural, either psychological barrier,
hey, this is harder than I thought, ortheir performance barrier, where you're
going to get some rapid improvement,but then you are going to plateau
almost naturally and you're not gonnasee that rapid progress as before.
(34:35):
What keeps you going to keep going?
Yeah, so there's a fewangles to look at That.
One is that most people who are goingto the gym is really not their game.
They're not playing, they'regrinding, which is why they're just,
I. They're just sitting there andthey're playing another game, right?
They're playing anothergame on their phone.
it means that they just know they shoulddo it, but they don't actually like
(34:59):
doing, or they don't want to do it.
It's not really part of their true drive.
And I would still say 10,000 hoursof lackluster casual play at the gym.
Still better than people whodon't go to the gym at all.
If you're on a treadmill, on,on your phone for 10,000 hours,
you're gonna be better in shapethan people who are sitting on
the couch for 10,000 hours, right?
(35:21):
but obviously the people who areplaying the game hardcore, they're
playing the game seriously becausethey're passionate about it.
And they see it as a game.
And there's multiple ways to gamify yourworkout or your learning your skill.
that's another part ofthe job by job that I do.
you can make it enjoyable and you canhave the mindset of seeing it as a game.
Those are the people whoare truly successful.
(35:42):
I, I work from like 9:00 AM to two,probably two to 3:00 AM every single day.
Okay.
'cause I work with all three time zones.
Yeah.
America, Europe, and Asia.
And.
People think that's crazy,but I don't think I'm working.
I think I'm playing my favorite game everyday, and I don't like to go on vacation.
It's like, why?
Why?
Why should I go to the beach whenI'm playing my favorite game?
(36:05):
And so if I'm competing with someone whoevery hour is agony, is disciplined, is
grinding, I'm gonna win automatically.
Because sooner or laterthey're gonna burn out.
And I'm just starting.
I'm just having, I'm just excited.
I'm having fun.
So when you position what you'redoing as a game and you gamify
that, you no longer need discipline.
You don't need disciplineto play your favorite game.
You need discipline to stopplaying your favorite game, right?
(36:26):
And so, that's, number one.
Number two, there is thisconcept with attributes, right?
Step two, which is attributessometimes when you choose something
that you don't have attributes.
And no matter how hard you try,you just can't break through.
Just like you mentioned again, where ifyou're not tall enough, your attributes
limit how successful you can be in this,basketball career, basketball skill.
(36:49):
And so some people, theyaren't empathetic enough.
They just, can't see other,the, feelings of other people.
They can't feel it.
they don't care at all.
So they're gonna be relatively limitedas a coach, because a coach oftentimes
needs to build rapport, needs tobe, em, needs to build empathy.
Sometimes they can learn some skills tomake up for it, but it's just harder.
(37:11):
You have to work harder than other people.
so that's a, second component to it.
And then the third is just.
we talked about Quest design, whichis step six, and those are giving
you win states to keep you motivated.
designing, your minor quest, majorquest, and, your task to see what are the
(37:32):
ways to keep things fun and enjoyable.
because you said, oh, progress, and youget stuck, but if you're gamifying your
quest very well and your activities,you tend to get, get that extra push
to, to get to the next, next phase.
Got it.
So you'd mentioned stepsix, achieving Your Quest.
So let's do five and six, building youralliances and achieving your quests.
(37:54):
First of all, why build an alliance?
we've talked about knowing yourself.
I think about when I trained for runningmy marathons, I've run marine marathons,
and I did all my training alone.
I didn't have an alliance,although I did have a book.
Now I have people said, there'sno way you can train alone.
I didn't know you couldn't doit, so I. That's what I did.
But I would think if that, if I hada support group and someone else has
said, Hey, come on, it's raining, butcome on, I'm gonna meet you at zero six.
(38:18):
Oh G mark, let's go.
You're like, yeah, okay, fine.
You drag yourself out and do it.
What's the advantage ofbuilding your alliances then?
How does that help youultimately achieve your quest?
Yeah, so your allies are often peopleplaying the same game as you, but
a lot of times they have differentattributes and roles and skills,
so they're complimentary to you.
And you gave an example about, hey, justworking out, you possibly can do it by
(38:42):
yourself, but as you also mentioned,having a support group would be useful.
But even, but a lot of other more complexgames, like if you want success in life.
Usually you need people around youto help you with their success.
some people are starting their owncompanies and one one's a more marketing
sales role, one's a more engineeringrole, even if they're both business roles
(39:03):
because it's a business related company.
Like one is more extroverted,they're good at sales and other,
is more organized, good at theoperations and accounting, whatnot.
It's still important to have these roles.
You also need to, youalso need to have allies.
In terms of your potentialcustomers, allies that are, watching
your podcast show, et cetera.
(39:24):
and so in the case of a workout, I thinkyou could be successful on your own, but
all else being equal, if you had a goodcoach, you would be more successful.
and maybe if it's a, if it's a very,world-class coach, than you'd be way more
successful than you without that coach.
And if you had a friendgroup who goes regularly.
Then no, again, you won'tneed discipline to go anymore
(39:45):
because it's a natural thing.
It's what they say.
your, closest five friendsdetermine who you are, right?
There's difference that you're theaverage of the five, whatnot, but
you're, if all your friends are doingit, then you just have this natural,
momentum to go do these things.
And so in my book I talk about evensomeone like Leonardo da Vinci.
even though he had massive attributes,massive talents and massive skills,
(40:09):
things he did at the time wasn't evendiscovered independent by humans.
Like four to 304 years, 400 yearslater, like he had writings about
physics and gravity attraction200 years before Isaac Newton did.
And he invented the helicopter,he did all that stuff, but he
didn't know how to build allies.
And
so before he was 40, hewas considered a loser.
(40:31):
He couldn't surround himself with ateam that could make him successful.
So he was always distracted.
There was like a, I think a five yearperiod where he was a freelancer and he
only got three projects and he couldn'tfinish any of them and he was depressed.
And only when after his 40 he learned,okay, I need to build relationships.
I need to, go.
Become acquainted with the, Duke of Milanand also his court and learn from them.
(40:55):
And then he started getting project,he surrounded himself with, people that
could help him focus, get things done.
And then later on he also applied theseskills when, the King of France invaded
and his whole place was dismantled.
He's eventually not were his way to,to sit next to the King of France.
and he was honored in his later his life.
So even someone like Leonard daVinci, he needs to build alliances.
(41:17):
So I think most people.
If you build lines in your lifethat's related to your game and
your role and your skills, youwould be way more successful.
Yeah.
So let's do a recap here and thenget some last thoughts from you.
So we've talked about siximportant steps to unlock your
real life legendary success.
Number one, you choose your game.
(41:38):
You really wanna discoveryour life's mission.
Number two is to know your attributes.
These are the things that you comenaturally to, like being tall or whatever.
They're master those uniquestrengths and skills.
Then number three, select your role.
Define your identity, yourideal role in your journey.
Number four, enhance yourskills so you can develop the
(41:59):
expertise that's necessary.
To accomplish your goals.
Number five, build your allianceslike we've been talking about.
Surround yourself with the rightpeople, and those alliances
aren't necessarily mentors.
They could be people who could help youachieve because they have complimentary
skillset to what you are looking for.
And then number six, of course,achieve your Quest design.
These actions that lead.
(42:20):
To ultimate success.
So final thoughts in terms ofways that people can get there.
I think you've laid it out very nicely.
Obviously we're gonnarefer people to your book.
I'm gonna go ahead and putthe link in our show notes.
but any last commentshere before we wrap up?
Yeah, I think it's, interesting thathaving the alignment all six step is,
the most important because there arebooks out there that just talk about
(42:43):
how to find your passion in your life.
And there are books out there thatsay, how do you do networking?
And how, and there's tons of booksabout how to acquire certain skills.
But what we saw in ourstudies in the book is that.
Only when you have all six of these stepsaligned, would you have legendary success?
we look, every successful person we saw,we looked at in, in today's world or
(43:05):
history, like Steve Jobs, like Gandhi,like Da Vinci, we looked at Oprah,
we looked at Elon Musk, all of them.
When they only have five of the sixsteps, they were not as successful.
But when they had the six steps allaligned, suddenly their life took off.
So that's why it's important to knowthat your role should be connected
(43:26):
to your attribute and your game.
Your skills should be connectedto your role and your attributes.
Your allies should be based on your gameand your role, and your quest should
be based on improving your skills andbuilding chemistry with your allies
and getting close to your game, right?
All these things need to come together.
So I think that's the most uniquething about the book, unique
(43:47):
Value, besides the fact that.
It's a lot of fun to read and a lotof fun to apply because, we're not
trying to, make people go throughagony and achieving success through
to, through depression, right?
We want people to achieve successand joy and fun, and that's why I
think the, book is a cool thing.
Check out.
(44:08):
It is.
thank you very much.
I do appreciate your time.
This has been an awesome show.
For those who are stuck through theend, as I say, we'll put the link to
the book, 10,000 hours of play, unlockYour Real Life, legendary Success.
Yu-Kai Chou.
Thank you very much for being partof our show today at CISO Tradecraft.
For our listeners, thank youfor being part of our audience.
If you're not already followingus on LinkedIn, please do so
(44:29):
and if you're following us onour podcast channels, great.
If you can give us a thumbs up ora five star whatever evaluation.
Not 'cause we're grade grubbing,but it helps other people find
us 'cause we get improved in thesearch engines and otherwise.
Wishing you the best of luck inyour career for becoming a CISO or
improving your cybersecurity skillset.
Until next time, this isyour host, G Mark Hardy.
(44:52):
Stay safe out there.
Hey, how much time do you devote to play?
What if you devoted 10,000 hours to play?
Do you really think that could make adifference in your life and your career?
I got a gentleman who's gonnashow you exactly how that works.
Stay tuned.
(00:24):
Hello, and welcome to anotherepisode of CISO Tradecraft.
My name is G Mark Hardy.
This is the podcast to provide you withthe information, knowledge, and wisdom to
be a more effective cybersecurity leader.
On today's show, we'regonna talk to Yu-Kai Chao.
He's our special guest.
He has a book called 10,000 Hours of Play.
Unlock Your Real Life, legendary Success,and we're gonna dive into that book today.
(00:45):
So if you'd like to learn how touse these concepts, stick around.
This is gonna be good.
So first of all.
What I wanna talk about is the conceptthat I'd like you to stick in your mind.
You are not years awayfrom everything you want.
You don't have to wait tillyour gray beard like this to
finally achieve something.
You are actually skillsaway from what you want.
(01:07):
Interesting sort of idea.
So what we're gonna find then is thatthere's a lot of things you can do
if you take the time to learn them.
Whether it's a great spouse,we want to be able to do that.
You have to have good communicationskills so you can succeed.
If you wanna be a great programmer, youneed skills to teach you how to program,
to go ahead and structure your thinking.
Now, just because you wanna playbasketball like Michael Jordan doesn't
(01:30):
mean you're suddenly become a proplayer because there's a lot that can
go into your life is, which you can.
Be successful at andget the desired outcome.
So that's why I'm hoping that Yu-KaiChou is gonna be able to give you some
clarity on that and how to use theseconcepts to make your life better.
Yu-Kai Chou, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for having me here.
So you can tell our listen listeners alittle bit about yourself because you
(01:52):
have a pretty fantastic, course thatyou got to where you are right now
and you still got a lot of ways to go.
Yeah.
I'm seen as a pioneer in the world ofgamification and behavioral design.
I actually started in 2003,so 22 years ago now, and back
then was a very lonely passion.
People didn't understand or believe in it.
(02:13):
They thought I was trying to create moreexcuses to play games, but I, believed in
the value of applying game design to makeimportant things more fun and enjoyable.
So I stuck to it and I was very luckyand blessed where over the years it
became something more and more companiescared about organizations, governments.
So they looked around and I. Was theonly person doing it for that long,
(02:33):
or one of the very few at least.
And so I, I just finished mysecond book, 10,000 hours of play.
I wrote my first book, actionableGamification, about 2015 and sold
over a hundred thousand copies.
it was, it was referenced by 3,600PhD thesis academic journals.
(02:53):
And it was rated the number onegamification group in the world.
Three out of four years.
One year I was number two, andthen later they made me a judge.
Unfortunately, I'm disqualifiedto being a guru and my design
work, towards my clients like,Tesla, Google, Microsoft, ideo.
and Wal, Walgreens, a lot of, companiesacross different industries, has
(03:18):
reached over 1.5 billion users.
So it's a good impact to have.
Trying to get more, we'll talk aboutthat later, about my life game.
What is the purpose of that?
Yeah, so regularly teach some ofmy work, my framework at Harvard,
Stanford, Yale, Oxford, and justvery passionate about what I'm doing.
And then there's like randomother things like being knighted
(03:39):
by, Korean royalty, society ofOf our arts in London and helping
Ukraine rebuild with, gamification.
There's a lot of random things andvr, ai, metaverse, blockchain, that's
(03:59):
the bundle of my life journey so far.
I.
Wow, and you still got a ways to go.
So congratulations on allthose amazing accomplishments.
I think for a lot of people,just achieving one of them
might be the highlight.
Of somebody's career, but yetyou've had a chance to continue
to contribute over time and time.
Now, you'd mentioned your first bookand you'd sold over a hundred thousand
copies on actionable gamification.
(04:22):
Now in that you introduce somethingcalled the Octalysis framework.
Do we, I, oh, we don't wanna gotoo far into it 'cause we really
wanna talk about your second book.
Can you tell us a little bitabout what that is and how that
helps structure people thinking?
So it introduces the frameworkthat I'm so far most known for.
Again, the Octalysis framework,and it sounds like a foreign word,
but it's a combination betweenthe word octagon and analysis.
(04:44):
So it breaks down all human motivationinto these eight core drives.
And so everything we do is basedon one or more of these eight core
drives, which means that if there'snone of these aqua drives there.
There's zero motivation,no behavior happens.
So things like core drive, one,epic meaning, and calling, you're
doing something for something biggerthan yourself or, core drive seven,
unpredictability and curiosity.
(05:05):
It's like the gambling core drive,like not knowing what's happened,
what's gonna happen constantly gets youobsessed or core drive's like scarcity
and impatience because it's so hard toget, you suddenly have desire to get it.
So these 8 core drivesmotivate all our behavior.
And what's unique about the Octalysisframework is based on where that
core drive is on the octagon.
(05:25):
It has different naturesand consequences to it.
So we have top first bottom, where wecall them white hat core drive-throughs,
black hat core drives, where the topones make people feel more in control.
They feel powerful, they feel good,but there's no sense of urgency
because they feel fully in controland they just procrastinate.
So it's used for more long-term designs,whereas the black hat core drives.
(05:48):
Since they're tied to our survivalinstincts, they make us feel more urgent,
more obsessed, sometimes addicted.
but in the long run, if that's the onlymotivation, then people could feel,
demoralized because they feel like they'renot in control of their own behavior.
And then we have.
Something being the left side ofthe octagon, which we call them left
brain core drives, as opposed to,right side, right brain core drives.
(06:12):
Which doesn't necessarily meanit's geographically left vs right?
But it symbolically represents ourlogical brain versus our emotional brain.
And what's actionable there isthat the left brain core drives
deal with extrinsic motivation.
Things you do for reward, apurpose or a goal, but you don't
necessarily enjoy the activity itself.
So once you obtain the reward, hityour goals, you get used to the reward,
it becomes stale, you stop doing it.
(06:32):
Whereas the rate brain core drivesdeal with intrinsic motivation.
You do it because you enjoy doing it.
You would even pay money to experience it.
And even if you lose all yourprogress the next day, you would
still do it today because that'show you measure quality of life.
You know how much time youspend on things you enjoy doing.
So the Octalysis framework is well knownand well applied because of not only.
(06:52):
predicts and also helps createengender motivation and behavior.
It also, sees the consequence nature ofit is a long term, is a short term, is an
intrinsic and extrinsic, and that is why,it stands strong in our industry today.
Interesting.
Yeah.
There's a, for the, context foreverybody go out and get the book.
By the way, if you're not familiarwith it, but I'm just gonna
(07:13):
mention it without diving into it.
The eight elements, the Octalysisframework, epic meaning accomplishment,
empowerment, ownership, social influence,scarcity, unpredictability, and avoidance.
Does sound a little bit like Dr.Robert Cialdini when he looks at
some of the forms of persuasion.
but we're not gonna go ahead andwar game the two against each other.
(07:34):
But what I'd like to do though isget a little bit more into your
newest book on 10,000 hours of play.
Now, Malcolm Gladwell has talked aboutsaying, Hey, it takes 10,000 hours of
practice to really master something.
Okay?
As a pilot, I gotta tell you.
I'm a long way away from 10,000 hoursof flying, but there are people who
have that and they're absolute mastersat their craft and things such as that.
(07:56):
But can you tell me a little bit moreabout why you thought that 10,000 hours of
play represented a thesis that you wantedto go ahead and build out a, book on.
Yeah, I think it's because 10,000 hourshas been a proverbial kind of meaning of
dedicating a lot of hours in your life toa certain craft, to a certain activity.
Now, whether it's actually 10,000 hoursthat there, that's a lot of debate, right?
(08:21):
But, and how that study came about is alegit, I don't think that really matters.
What matters is that it symbolizesthe dedication you put into something.
And so the book title takes that and says.
if you turn your life into agame, it wouldn't be 10,000
hours of blood, sweat, and tears.
It'll actually be 10,000 hoursof enjoyment, having fun,
(08:45):
being happy and feeling free.
And at the end of that 10,000hours of fun and play, you're
successful in what you do.
You're happy, you're healthy, youhave a good relationship because
everything is part of that game you'replaying and the game you're mastering.
Interesting.
Now you've got six key steps that youinclude in that book to align your
passions, your skills, and your goals intoreally what's would be a winning formula.
(09:09):
Choose your game, know yourattributes, select your role, enhance
your skills, build your alliances,and then achieve your quest.
Now, these are really cool, and I'dlike to dive into each one of these
in a little bit more detail if we can.
So let's start at the beginningabout choosing your game.
How does that tie into reallydiscovering your life's mission?
(09:31):
Yeah.
I think the most important thingto turn your life into a game is
to know what is the game worthplaying for your life, right?
Because I have seen and coached alot of people who are very successful
in what they're doing, and peoplesee that and they respect the
success, but they feel empty inside.
They feel hollow because they realize.
(09:53):
They're not playing theirgame in life at all.
They don't care about, they'renot passionate about this.
They're just doing what theirparents wanted them to do or their
circumstances wanted 'em to do.
And I think it's very important todefine what is the game in your life
that even if you don't accomplish yourfinal goals by spending your lifetime
playing, it is worthwhile, it'senjoyable, it's a life worth living.
(10:17):
And that's why I step one out ofthe six is really understanding.
What is meaningful to you?
What should you tryto, to do in your life?
And what's important is this isbefore you consider your talents,
your attributes and whatnot.
This is simply about your passion.
And so the, your talents come second step.
(10:39):
So for instance, I believe that ifyou are passionate about, music.
But let's say you only have thetalents of being a janitor, right?
I believe you would be happier if youwere a janitor for a music company
than let's say a truck company, right?
And of course, there's a lot ofpeople passionate about trucks, and
in that case, it'll be the reverse.
They'd be happier being a janitor fora truck company than music company.
(11:02):
So you still have to think about.
What am I passionate about?
What do you want to contribute to?
Where do you wanna play in?
And then once you define that, then youcan think about what are your talents?
So how do you actuallybe a player in that game?
What is your role?
And perform well in it.
So I think it's really important tohave, if you will, some realistic.
(11:23):
Expectations you want choosing your game.
So let's say like Kevin Hart, he's acomedian, but he is like five foot five.
So if he were saying, Hey, Iwanna go up and I wanna be an NBA
player, I want to go ahead and bethe next Michael Jordan, or Shaq.
probably it's gonna be verydifficult because you might not
be starting with the raw materialsthat you need to be successful.
Not that you can't do well in theNBA if you're five five, but there's
(11:45):
a couple players who've done that.
But in general, it's reallyfinding who you are and if he
realizes, hey, being a comedian.
Which he's naturally talented at, that'sgonna unlock that mission for him, and
then he is gonna be able to focus on that.
So when somebody is looking atthat, how do you help people
discover, focus, and discoverwhere to find their life's mission?
(12:07):
Yeah, so for Kevin Hart.
I think it's, like you said, it'svery hard for him to be an NBA
star, but he could still choosetwo paths that are related to that.
He could say, I'mpassionate about basketball.
I want to contribute A famous contributorto the basketball, which he could probably
be a good basketball host, right?
(12:28):
And he can be a commentator,he can be an analyst.
So using his talents when he, especiallyif you know your game early, that's
why it's important to go into this.
The earlier you know, your game, thebetter he can position for it, right?
If he starts to do that early, I'msure lots of people will watch someone
like Kevin Hart do commentary, right?
So we can do that.
The other way is to say yes, no.
(12:49):
I like the basketball world, but.
I wanna play basketball.
My passion is basketball, right?
like you identified.
This is a very hard game to play.
This is choosing a gameon insane difficulty.
And sometimes it's okay, I neverget to be in a pro player at the
NBA, but I get to still play in somekind of semi-professional league.
(13:09):
Some people, they go to another countryand they play in the pro basketball there.
If that is the game you truly, wantto play, there are strategies to
work out a path to still do it.
Be assuming that is what youwanted to do to be happy.
If Kevin Hart really hates beinga comedian, I think he actually
likes it, but if he really hates it.
(13:30):
Again, my point is, no matterhow successful you are, you're
still not gonna enjoy your life.
It's still not 10,000 hours ofplay, 10,000 hours of agony.
And I'm not gonna point names out,some people who are really very famous,
accomplished comedians, they are depressedand sometimes they, and their lives
are a little earlier than they should.
(13:52):
so I think that's very important,whereas the, height is an attribute,
which is step two, and then thebasketball player itself is step three,
which is choose your role in the game.
And so the way back to your ownquestion, the way to help people
find their game, of course there's.
Multitude of ways, but weusually like to see what people
(14:15):
naturally, get attracted to.
so some people are lucky, when they'rein third grade, they're like, yeah,
I always knew I wanted to be anastronaut, or I always wanna do this.
or I saw a role model.
A lot of time it's seen a role model, likewhether it's fictional or nonfictional.
They see a movie and they're like.
Wow, that inspires me so much.
I want to be like that person.
(14:36):
and sometime it's not literal,oh, I see William Wallace and
Braveheart sacrifice for his country.
It doesn't mean your game isto pick up an axe and charge
and into, to, into the enemy.
It actually means that, hey, I wantto find a way to sacrifice my game
is sacrificing myself for a biggercause, maybe my country, but maybe
a worth, a cause worth dying for.
(14:57):
Or for me, when I was young, I watchedArmageddon in the movie and some people
say it's a good movie, some people don't.
But what really inspired me wasat the beginning they, needed to.
Find, oil drillers to go to a, asteroid,to blow, to drill holes and blow it up.
Okay?
It's a really ridiculous story,but there was a scene where the
White House was like, yeah, weasked every expert out there and
(15:20):
everyone pointed to the same name.
That guy, he is the expertamong all the experts.
So we flew our helicopters toget this one expert that all the
experts said is the true master.
And that really inspired me when I wasyoung, I was like, oh, I wish I could be.
That true master expert of expert.
So that is a way to, to think aboutwhat your game would be, right?
(15:40):
What inspires you, what rolemodels fictional nonfictional.
also it's important to think, okay,what would I actually do with my life
if I didn't have to worry about money?
Because money is just fuel, okay?
It gets you to another place,and I really believe that.
Your destination shouldnot be fuel, right?
Because if you're getting fuel just toget more fuel, just to get more fuel,
(16:02):
then you're just going in circles.
It's actually a depressing life.
You have to have a clear visionabout if I had all the fuel in
the world, where would I go?
What would I wanna do?
And I think if you think enoughabout these things, and of course
the book describes many differentmethods to find what your game is,
but I think you'll get closer andcloser to what your true game is.
And by living your life according to yourgame, you will find, fulfillment in it.
(16:27):
Wow.
I guess I mind watching Titanic andsaying I'd wait until I'm 104 years old
before people seek me out, is probablya little bit, too long of a horizon.
And of course you ask a 3-year-old,what do you wanna be when you grow up?
I wanna be a giraffe.
So somewhere along those extremes, youfind our mission is you've given us a look
ahead between choosing your game, knowingyour attributes, and selecting your role.
(16:49):
so let's talk aboutknowing your attributes.
Even with what you described,okay, Titanic, what is, why
do you want to be sought out?
Then it's okay, maybe you actually wantpeople to remember you or to seek you out
what you know that's important for you.
In the kid example, as silly asit sounds like, all right, what?
What attracts you about a giraffe?
Do you like to be above everyone, right?
(17:09):
Or do you like it that there's no onethat could actually threaten You you
can find these silly things or big andsmall, and you can start deriving like,
what do you actually care about in life?
And then puts your life closer to that.
Yeah, maybe that's why Iended up at six foot five, not
quite tall enough to be NBA.
I actually didn't have theweight under the boards.
I was skinny kid in college, but Iended up going into volleyball instead.
(17:31):
I found I, I could do alittle bit better with that.
Anyway, if you go back to theconcept about knowing what you
want to be when you grow up, I.
Whether it's a giraffe, whetherit's gonna be able to be a resource
to somebody else, et cetera.
Can you talk a little bit moreabout knowing your attributes?
Is this something thatyou discover on your own?
you ask friends, you sit around,you take a standardized test.
(17:52):
What's a really good indicatorfor mastering your unique
strengths and talents?
Then knowing them.
Yeah, so at most games,when you start the game.
You get to choose a role, whether that'slike a assassin or a warrior, or a healer.
And then once you choose the role,it'll give you the attributes and stats.
oh, your strength is better, stronger thanyour intelligence, and you have vitality.
(18:15):
Unfortunately, that's not the real world.
The real world.
You don't get to really pick that.
you get to discover what attributesyou already have, and then based
on that, you choose your role.
So that's why step two is again,identifying and knowing your
attributes, which are your talents.
And I think there are, again,many different ways to knowing
your attributes and talents.
(18:36):
And, most people,
when they get exposed to many things,they suddenly have that moment.
Not most people, some people, some,I guess the luckier people, they
have this moment where it's hey.
I thought, this is really easy.
Why are, why are people struggling?
And they recognize, oh, wow,I, I have a talent here, right?
I, I'm gifted in this and identifythat because what's difficult is.
(19:01):
the strengths people have come soeasy for them that they think everyone
does it very easily and they have tocompare it to their colleagues or their
classmates and whatnot to identify it.
Now, some things are easily comparable.
oh musical skills you're performing.
People can observe it.
school subjects, English, math,there's a great, but there's
(19:22):
so many things out there.
like how much perseverance you have,how well you're adapting to things.
Those things, you're not really, you don'treally know how much empathy you have.
These are all attributes.
By the way.
Attributes are different to skills.
That's step four.
Attributes are more things you are bornwith or you develop over a long time.
Whereas skills are thingsyou can take a class on.
(19:45):
You could, you could go through a trainingcamp, read a book, and acquire so.
Being very tall, like youdescribed, is an attribute, right?
Running fast and an attribute, andthen playing basketball is a skill.
So you, obviously want to haveyour attributes empower the right
skills, not contradict the skillsor, the skills rendered irrelevant.
So if you're an accountant, it usuallydoesn't matter how tall you are, right?
(20:10):
so your app, so these are attributes and.
What we recommend is first having lotsof life experience, trying a lot of
different things and that's when youget to say, oh, this comes easy for me.
That comes easy for me.
This is really hard for me.
And like you said, I think everythingyou described is, very accurate.
Ask people around you a lot.
My experience and people I talkto, when you ask people around say,
(20:31):
Hey, what do you think I'm good at?
What do you think I'm bad atmost of 'em, they could very
quickly come up with an answer.
'cause they already know.
They just don't talk about it.
And that's gonna giveyou a lot of insights.
Then there's a lot ofvarious tests out there.
a lot of people like to bring up theStrength Finders 2.0, which I think got
renamed to Clifton Strengths, I believe.
(20:52):
but it's important to recognize onething, which a lot of those tests
I. They test for personality, notnecessarily talents or strengths.
Some of them will say, you'rean outgoing person, right?
And that might connect to attributes.
in terms of being, being,
brave and, talking to people.
(21:14):
It could be very proactive, but itdoesn't necessarily like how you
like to do things is not necessarilywhat you're good at, per se.
So it's good to think about whatthose are and create what we call a,
talent triangle, which is, what areyou probably the best at compared to
anyone else or compared to everythingelse you're, you have and what are the
two or three really, good things andthen what are the rest of that you're
(21:37):
pretty good at, but not the best at?
And you form what we callthis, talent triangle.
Then the top five, we call it the ringstrengths, and you really want to align
your life, the, your environment and all.
And your role based on yourtop five, ring strengths.
Wow.
So it sounds like a nice frameworkfor us to go ahead and take
a look at what we're doing.
(21:58):
So we've chosen our gameand we know our attributes.
And my thought is when you're talkingabout attributes and then skills, that
the skills and the practice and thingscan help you focus those attributes.
If I'm tall and I say, Hey, Ilike basketball, I need a lot
of practice to go ahead and takeadvantage of that attribute.
But ultimately you have a thirdthing, which you'd mention and
(22:18):
that's selecting your role.
And in your book you hada quote, I wanna share it.
With our listeners, most of the timepeople think of their roles as their
occupation, accountant, softwareengineer, professor, researcher,
writer, artist, or full-time parent.
That's because their occupation isthe value we contribute to society and
those around us, and it is thereforeeasily observed and recognizable.
(22:40):
But there are more layers to our rolesthat interplay with our occupation.
I call the layers our role sphere,which you'd mentioned, and they're like
layers of an onion that surround a more.
Fundamental composition.
So can you go into this topica little bit more for those who
haven't really read your book?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So again, there are four layers of aperson's role, sphere, your aspiration
role, who you want to become, youridentity role, who you believe you are.
(23:03):
Occupational role, which, what sustainsyour lifestyle or the or what the,
what's the value you contribute toothers around you and specialization
role, what you become good at.
And these all could be different, eventhough it is best if those are aligned.
So aspiration role, right?
What do you want to become?
And sometimes people have debatedwith me, identity of who you believe
(23:25):
you are should be the first layer.
But I really think who you wantto be, become your aspirations.
Define you more than anything else,and you could debate about that.
But if a person walks around and theysaid, okay, my goal, I'm working my
hardest, I want to become the presidentof the United States one day, and
every day I'm at taking action on that.
(23:47):
I don't really care if this personis an accountant or a musician or
what, are the introvert, extroverted?
I remember them as the guy who's realworking towards becoming a president.
I've actually met a, I've met someone,when I met a random person who's
in eighth grade and she just is,I want to go to Harvard one day.
That's her aspiration, and I'veonly met her for an hour and I
(24:10):
left, and I always remember heras the girl wanted go to Harvard.
Everything else was not as important.
So I really think our dreams andaspiration, who we want to become, who,
where we want to go defines us more.
But then you have the identity role,which is who we believe you are.
And those are some values, somecultural, Hey, I, I'm gonna
be a person, or I am a person.
(24:31):
Who would never betray a friend,or I'm always gonna work the
hardest, or, you know this again,anyone, everyone's different.
So it's Hey, I'm a person who would alwaysbetray a friend to get benefits from it.
I don't know.
But it's really who you believe youare, and that's part of your role
in, in the game you're playing.
I. And then it's what people arefamiliar with occupation role.
And I say that's the valuecreate for those around you.
(24:53):
So maybe it makes income, maybeit doesn't, but if you have a
volunteer role, you are, you havea family role, doesn't matter.
That's what, that's the way youcontribute value to people around you.
And then the specialization role, whichis what you actually become good at.
And that not al, that always,connects to the occupational role,
which obviously it's good if it does.
(25:13):
So if there is.
A accounting expert, right?
He's accountant.
but he's to say he's a mediocreaccountant, but he really loves to play
the guitar and he plays it really well.
He plays magic gathering.
And for the sake of thispodcast, let's say he's really
into cyber security, right?
Thinking about how to protect hishome, and he helps his friend set up
(25:34):
and he even helps office set that up.
His specialization role is actuallynot aligned with his occupation role.
So the way to play this game would be,how can we align this and how can we even
connect some of your specializations?
Like what I just said, he likes musicand cybersecurity, so he could possibly
create a youtube channel that makescybersecurity more interesting by
(25:54):
teaching principles through music, right?
And so there's a variety ofthings you can do or he can hosts
magic the gathering, events.
For cybersecurity, professionals.
So they come and they play magicgathering, but then they also mingle
on the best cybersecurity role.
So there's many ways to combineyour specialties and turn
that into an occupation role.
(26:14):
And so again, this is the way we thinkabout how to do our 10,000 hours of play.
Yeah.
And if he is a, comedian, DonMcMillan that I like, and he
started out as an engineer and hesaid, Hey, I really like comedy.
So he does all of his comedywith PowerPoint and if you think
that's impossible, go look him up.
You'll find out here's somebody who'seffectively gone ahead and merged that.
(26:35):
Because as you said, you start out withyour aspiration, which you wanna become.
Who you believe you are, youridentity, the occupations, puts
you into some sort of role thatyou're contributing to society.
And then ultimately a specialization,something, you're gonna dive down that.
So how do people know ifthey're on the right track?
How do we make sure that we're not goingin four different directions and our
life is a constant exploration wherewe're eventually gonna figure out what
(26:57):
we want, but we never, ever get there.
I think it's important toalways be striving towards
something, having a direction.
I think it's okay if you keepchanging directions, right?
It's oh, I thought I wanted that.
I worked towards it.
I accumulate skills in it.
I made allies there.
I did Quest there.
whoa, Actually.
(27:18):
I think I am.
I care more about another game orhey, I think I'm actually not as
talent as I thought in this may.
I realize I'm telling something else.
I think that's okay becauseat least your entire life.
You have a direction and you'replaying the game, you're doing,
you're living life passionately.
I think that's way better thanjust not knowing where you wanna go
and just drifting to all sorts ofplaces and discover Hey, I'm here.
(27:39):
I don't even know why I'm here,but, and, hoping that you like it.
So I think follow the steps, and youdon't have to even go in the order if
you, because people have sometimes stepone, three, and six worked out, and
the others, they're still, undefined.
But I think by doing it, youdon't have to really worry like.
If you're not on the right track,by spending time on it, you actually
(28:00):
are playing and you are focusingyour life and making things better.
Interesting.
So it almost sounds like a Japaneseconcept of Ikigai, where you have,
it's kinda like a Venn diagram,something you love, something the
world needs, something you get paidfor and something you're good at.
And if you can do all four of thesethings at the same time, that's
your, Ikigai your true happiness.
And if you miss one of them, you mightget paid for something that you don't
(28:23):
love or you might have a hobby thatyou love but doesn't make any money.
Things like that's, okay.
But at the end of the day, it'dbe nice if you could go ahead
and align all of those things.
But in your model, on the fourth step,enhancing your skills, how do you see
people going from, being, let's saysomebody who's an also ran or in the
game to becoming, if you will, a mainplayer and now your skill sets are to
(28:47):
the point where you might be, reallyrocking it instead of just getting by.
Yeah, so once we know our role.
Then we go to step four, bythe way, steps one, two, three.
We call it Know Yourself.
And step four five is likewe call Grow Yourself.
Okay?
So the first three areabout more self-assessment.
(29:07):
The next three are about taking action.
So once you know your role, then you gottafigure out what are the skills you have
to acquire to be the strongest characterof that role on your server, right?
Which is Earth, our existence and theway that I like to do it, first of all,
I think it's important to think about.
Should you specialize in one skill or be ajack of all trades, and we feel like it's
(29:30):
best to, if you see that as a spectrum,it's good to be somewhere closer to the
middle, but towards the specialization.
So you want to specializein a few synergetic skills.
So if you're just special in oneskill, then you know, who knows?
Maybe that skill is obsoleteand then you're gone.
And if you special, if you're ajack of all trades, no one remembers
(29:53):
you doing well on anything.
And so that's not very helpful.
But if you could, have a fewdifferent things you do really well
and you merge them together, thenyou become an expert in that thing.
It's just like for me.
I merge gamification andbusiness together, right?
And so I'm not the bestgame designer in the world.
I'm not the best business person inthe world, but when I combine those
(30:14):
two together, I form a expertise ingamification design, and I could be one
of the best people in the world on it.
I ran, I mentioned some random exampleabout the, music player who plays magic
gathering know cybersecurity, right?
That's also trying to create a fewsynergetic, and yet that one is more
creative, how to make that synergetic.
(30:35):
But it's important to say, how dowe connect these things together?
And then once we have that, wecreate what we call a skill triangle,
which is same, principle right now.
What are your top skills?
What are your secondary skills,tertiary skills and whatnot.
So it's a triangle there, but, andthat's your current skill triangle.
And then you have a target skill triangle,which is where you should become, like
(30:57):
what are the skills you should havewhen you've reached the highest level?
And, to figure that out.
Sometimes you do look, again, you goback and look at role models, right?
You look at, oh, if I want tobe a tech entrepreneur, Steve
Jobs, what are his top skills?
he's very persuasive.
He has ux UI design, he has,product management skills.
He has marketing skills, right?
And so you look at your skill triangle,look at where you should be, and
(31:20):
you're like, wait, I should be,this should be my number one skill,
but right now it's my number seven.
So I need to find books, find courses,listen to podcasts to get myself to
level up, to get that to number one.
And this should be number three.
It's not even on my current triangle.
I don't, I, don't knowanything about this.
And if you look at, forinstance, cybersecurity, right?
(31:42):
this is why I'm starting to get a bunch ofprojects in the cybersecurity world too.
Lots of fun because.
They start to realize that cybersecurityis not just a technical problem, it's not
just creating the best lock in the world.
It's a human behavior problem.
Because it doesn't matter if youhave the best lock in the world
when the owner just opens the doorfor the thieves and go in, right?
(32:05):
So people get tricked andthey let the thieves come in.
So that's why they're like,wow, we need gamification.
We need to make it enjoyableand fun for people to learn how
to, apply good cybersecurity.
Also, They need to, not just learnabout it, but they need to practice it.
They need to do it, and there'ssome gameplay learning and whatnot.
(32:25):
So my, so even being cybersecurity expert,knowing the technical side is important,
but knowing the behavioral design, thegame cation stuff is a useful skill.
And you wanna be persuasive.
You wanna be able to do, onlinepersonal branding, right?
People should know that you're theexpert so they can bring you in.
So you wanna bring all these synergizedskills together to form a role that
(32:47):
can be successful in your game.
Wow.
And you'd mentioned 10,000 hours of play,but just be careful about this because
although you said it doesn't have to beexactly 10,000, it's a metaphor for it.
But then you get people that, let'ssay, Hey, I wanna go to the gym.
I want to really get,Rocking solid and whatever.
there's some people that probably puttheir 10 hours out, 10,000 hours in
(33:09):
the gym and they don't look very good.
Why?
Those are the ones thatare on their phone.
They're talking, they're watching the tv,they're doing the treadmill like this.
They're not even breaking a sweat.
But the ones who accomplishsomething are those who really
dedicate themselves to the mission.
They're there, they're working hard,they're gonna be sore, and they know it.
But that's okay.
(33:29):
You welcome it.
And they go back and you staywith the program and you keep
at it, and you keep at it.
And that's how you're gonna do it.
That determination, the stick toit, this and this, and I think by
having this framework that you'veoffered, gives us that reassurance.
Because everybody, when you startsomething new, you start out
and your expectations are high.
Your morale is high, but reality is,your skillset's not all that high.
(33:52):
That's why you're doing something new.
after a while you get to the sort of thetrough of disillusionment, which says,
this is a lot harder than I thought.
And the first couple weeks at the gym,wow, I've gone 50, 80, 90, a hundred,
10, 110, a hundred, 110, I'm Cap.
I'm not.
And it's really hard to keep goingpast that point, but it requires
that commitment to get past that.
(34:14):
For example, is it what'smaking the difference here?
How does when somebody hits thatnatural, either psychological barrier,
hey, this is harder than I thought, ortheir performance barrier, where you're
going to get some rapid improvement,but then you are going to plateau
almost naturally and you're not gonnasee that rapid progress as before.
(34:35):
What keeps you going to keep going?
Yeah, so there's a fewangles to look at That.
One is that most people who are goingto the gym is really not their game.
They're not playing, they'regrinding, which is why they're just,
I. They're just sitting there andthey're playing another game, right?
They're playing anothergame on their phone.
it means that they just know they shoulddo it, but they don't actually like
(34:59):
doing, or they don't want to do it.
It's not really part of their true drive.
And I would still say 10,000 hoursof lackluster casual play at the gym.
Still better than people whodon't go to the gym at all.
If you're on a treadmill, on,on your phone for 10,000 hours,
you're gonna be better in shapethan people who are sitting on
the couch for 10,000 hours, right?
(35:21):
but obviously the people who areplaying the game hardcore, they're
playing the game seriously becausethey're passionate about it.
And they see it as a game.
And there's multiple ways to gamify yourworkout or your learning your skill.
that's another part ofthe job by job that I do.
you can make it enjoyable and you canhave the mindset of seeing it as a game.
Those are the people whoare truly successful.
(35:42):
I, I work from like 9:00 AM to two,probably two to 3:00 AM every single day.
Okay.
'cause I work with all three time zones.
Yeah.
America, Europe, and Asia.
And.
People think that's crazy,but I don't think I'm working.
I think I'm playing my favorite game everyday, and I don't like to go on vacation.
It's like, why?
Why?
Why should I go to the beach whenI'm playing my favorite game?
(36:05):
And so if I'm competing with someone whoevery hour is agony, is disciplined, is
grinding, I'm gonna win automatically.
Because sooner or laterthey're gonna burn out.
And I'm just starting.
I'm just having, I'm just excited.
I'm having fun.
So when you position what you'redoing as a game and you gamify
that, you no longer need discipline.
You don't need disciplineto play your favorite game.
You need discipline to stopplaying your favorite game, right?
(36:26):
And so, that's, number one.
Number two, there is thisconcept with attributes, right?
Step two, which is attributessometimes when you choose something
that you don't have attributes.
And no matter how hard you try,you just can't break through.
Just like you mentioned again, where ifyou're not tall enough, your attributes
limit how successful you can be in this,basketball career, basketball skill.
(36:49):
And so some people, theyaren't empathetic enough.
They just, can't see other,the, feelings of other people.
They can't feel it.
they don't care at all.
So they're gonna be relatively limitedas a coach, because a coach oftentimes
needs to build rapport, needs tobe, em, needs to build empathy.
Sometimes they can learn some skills tomake up for it, but it's just harder.
(37:11):
You have to work harder than other people.
so that's a, second component to it.
And then the third is just.
we talked about Quest design, whichis step six, and those are giving
you win states to keep you motivated.
designing, your minor quest, majorquest, and, your task to see what are the
(37:32):
ways to keep things fun and enjoyable.
because you said, oh, progress, and youget stuck, but if you're gamifying your
quest very well and your activities,you tend to get, get that extra push
to, to get to the next, next phase.
Got it.
So you'd mentioned stepsix, achieving Your Quest.
So let's do five and six, building youralliances and achieving your quests.
(37:54):
First of all, why build an alliance?
we've talked about knowing yourself.
I think about when I trained for runningmy marathons, I've run marine marathons,
and I did all my training alone.
I didn't have an alliance,although I did have a book.
Now I have people said, there'sno way you can train alone.
I didn't know you couldn't doit, so I. That's what I did.
But I would think if that, if I hada support group and someone else has
said, Hey, come on, it's raining, butcome on, I'm gonna meet you at zero six.
(38:18):
Oh G mark, let's go.
You're like, yeah, okay, fine.
You drag yourself out and do it.
What's the advantage ofbuilding your alliances then?
How does that help youultimately achieve your quest?
Yeah, so your allies are often peopleplaying the same game as you, but
a lot of times they have differentattributes and roles and skills,
so they're complimentary to you.
And you gave an example about, hey, justworking out, you possibly can do it by
(38:42):
yourself, but as you also mentioned,having a support group would be useful.
But even, but a lot of other more complexgames, like if you want success in life.
Usually you need people around youto help you with their success.
some people are starting their owncompanies and one one's a more marketing
sales role, one's a more engineeringrole, even if they're both business roles
(39:03):
because it's a business related company.
Like one is more extroverted,they're good at sales and other,
is more organized, good at theoperations and accounting, whatnot.
It's still important to have these roles.
You also need to, youalso need to have allies.
In terms of your potentialcustomers, allies that are, watching
your podcast show, et cetera.
(39:24):
and so in the case of a workout, I thinkyou could be successful on your own, but
all else being equal, if you had a goodcoach, you would be more successful.
and maybe if it's a, if it's a very,world-class coach, than you'd be way more
successful than you without that coach.
And if you had a friendgroup who goes regularly.
Then no, again, you won'tneed discipline to go anymore
(39:45):
because it's a natural thing.
It's what they say.
your, closest five friendsdetermine who you are, right?
There's difference that you're theaverage of the five, whatnot, but
you're, if all your friends are doingit, then you just have this natural,
momentum to go do these things.
And so in my book I talk about evensomeone like Leonardo da Vinci.
even though he had massive attributes,massive talents and massive skills,
(40:09):
things he did at the time wasn't evendiscovered independent by humans.
Like four to 304 years, 400 yearslater, like he had writings about
physics and gravity attraction200 years before Isaac Newton did.
And he invented the helicopter,he did all that stuff, but he
didn't know how to build allies.
And
so before he was 40, hewas considered a loser.
(40:31):
He couldn't surround himself with ateam that could make him successful.
So he was always distracted.
There was like a, I think a five yearperiod where he was a freelancer and he
only got three projects and he couldn'tfinish any of them and he was depressed.
And only when after his 40 he learned,okay, I need to build relationships.
I need to, go.
Become acquainted with the, Duke of Milanand also his court and learn from them.
(40:55):
And then he started getting project,he surrounded himself with, people that
could help him focus, get things done.
And then later on he also applied theseskills when, the King of France invaded
and his whole place was dismantled.
He's eventually not were his way to,to sit next to the King of France.
and he was honored in his later his life.
So even someone like Leonard daVinci, he needs to build alliances.
(41:17):
So I think most people.
If you build lines in your lifethat's related to your game and
your role and your skills, youwould be way more successful.
Yeah.
So let's do a recap here and thenget some last thoughts from you.
So we've talked about siximportant steps to unlock your
real life legendary success.
Number one, you choose your game.
(41:38):
You really wanna discoveryour life's mission.
Number two is to know your attributes.
These are the things that you comenaturally to, like being tall or whatever.
They're master those uniquestrengths and skills.
Then number three, select your role.
Define your identity, yourideal role in your journey.
Number four, enhance yourskills so you can develop the
(41:59):
expertise that's necessary.
To accomplish your goals.
Number five, build your allianceslike we've been talking about.
Surround yourself with the rightpeople, and those alliances
aren't necessarily mentors.
They could be people who could help youachieve because they have complimentary
skillset to what you are looking for.
And then number six, of course,achieve your Quest design.
These actions that lead.
(42:20):
To ultimate success.
So final thoughts in terms ofways that people can get there.
I think you've laid it out very nicely.
Obviously we're gonnarefer people to your book.
I'm gonna go ahead and putthe link in our show notes.
but any last commentshere before we wrap up?
Yeah, I think it's, interesting thathaving the alignment all six step is,
the most important because there arebooks out there that just talk about
(42:43):
how to find your passion in your life.
And there are books out there thatsay, how do you do networking?
And how, and there's tons of booksabout how to acquire certain skills.
But what we saw in ourstudies in the book is that.
Only when you have all six of these stepsaligned, would you have legendary success?
we look, every successful person we saw,we looked at in, in today's world or
(43:05):
history, like Steve Jobs, like Gandhi,like Da Vinci, we looked at Oprah,
we looked at Elon Musk, all of them.
When they only have five of the sixsteps, they were not as successful.
But when they had the six steps allaligned, suddenly their life took off.
So that's why it's important to knowthat your role should be connected
(43:26):
to your attribute and your game.
Your skills should be connectedto your role and your attributes.
Your allies should be based on your gameand your role, and your quest should
be based on improving your skills andbuilding chemistry with your allies
and getting close to your game, right?
All these things need to come together.
So I think that's the most uniquething about the book, unique
(43:47):
Value, besides the fact that.
It's a lot of fun to read and a lotof fun to apply because, we're not
trying to, make people go throughagony and achieving success through
to, through depression, right?
We want people to achieve successand joy and fun, and that's why I
think the, book is a cool thing.
Check out.
(44:08):
It is.
thank you very much.
I do appreciate your time.
This has been an awesome show.
For those who are stuck through theend, as I say, we'll put the link to
the book, 10,000 hours of play, unlockYour Real Life, legendary Success.
Yu-Kai Chou.
Thank you very much for being partof our show today at CISO Tradecraft.
For our listeners, thank youfor being part of our audience.
If you're not already followingus on LinkedIn, please do so
(44:29):
and if you're following us onour podcast channels, great.
If you can give us a thumbs up ora five star whatever evaluation.
Not 'cause we're grade grubbing,but it helps other people find
us 'cause we get improved in thesearch engines and otherwise.
Wishing you the best of luck inyour career for becoming a CISO or
improving your cybersecurity skillset.
Until next time, this isyour host, G Mark Hardy.
(44:52):
Stay safe out there.
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