It was pretty bloodcurdling, I felt it in my bones like, this is difficult now, it's difficult to resist.

There's lots of things in life that we don't want to do. But we know it's for the best, washing the dishes, filling up the car before a long journey, or even getting up at a reasonable time in the morning. Mark's Brother Martin knew there was something he had to do, but didn't have the self discipline to hold himself accountable for. So what did he do? He enticed mark to force him to do it.

We're in some shithole student apartment here that like stinks. It's like rat infested. It's like the worst you can possibly imagine. Like, literally like crack down the middle of the cement brick. I'm on one side of the door in the corridor and my brother is on the other side of that door and he's been in there for about 72 hours. It's starting to really smell in there like of human faeces, like you can hear he's literally like having a mental breakdown in there apart from a desk I think we gave him like a bucket to do his business in a microwave 20 sausage rolls and and like bottler catch up at this point, Martin has been through every stage of like, the cycle of grief and madness. Like this was like an exorcism. It was like it's you know, what would happen is it be like Please, man, please, man. Then when he realised that wasn't working, he'd go straight to like hyper aggression and kicking the door and I'm queue up. It was like, bro, let me out, bro, this is not a joke. Now I need to get out and I'm not feeling well. Then it started to be like, like, pledge. Let me out like screaming asking for other housemates. Like dad, CAD, it was pretty blood curdling. I felt it in my bones like, this is difficult. Now, it's difficult to resist the urge to actually just open this door. It wasn't when he was angry with me. And it wasn't when he was trying to manipulate me that I wanted to let him out. It was when I could just hear him just just like he was just losing his mind. Like at this point, it's like it's gone from the head to the heart. And I'm thinking like, he's just sobbing on the other side of his throat, I've got to lay him out. I remember, like, put my hands in my pocket, like feeling the keys, like finding the right key back to stick it into the lock, that poor fucking master heard the key kind of literally touching the lock. And then I just paused and thought like, no, ultimately, there was one version of him that knew that the best possible thing that could happen is for him to stay in that room. There's a deeper mission here. So literally, I'm sitting like cross legged outside the door and my back to the wall, I'm actually kind of dozing off. And then I just hear like the rustling of a paper, bit of paper come under the door. And it's like, part one, but and literally another bit of paper. And I'm like, he's, he's doing it, he's actually producing in there. And these bits of paper, just start appearing under the door. And I took a bit of time, like I remember going upstairs. Like, I remember eating a bit of toast, and just reading it and being like, this is really, really good. You know, it was amazing, because he was writing about contracting with yourself. And he was literally, at that moment locked in a room under contract with himself enforced by me, because I wouldn't let now. He was literally embodying everything that there is to say about that theory. It was like, wow. And I came down. I said, bro, I think you've done it. I think you've done it. And then I just said, Yeah, I'm opening the door. Now, bro, step back. He was in there for 73 and a half hours. Honestly, I was half expecting him to run at me and give me a massive smack. This will forever haunt me. I just remember him, just beaming like smiling. And just give me the biggest hug and saying, I love you so much. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. He delivered this essay, this dissertation and got a full scholarship

to our office. What an interesting form of accountability. I don't think I've ever heard anything like that in my life. What it will say at university there were rumours about a guy that I kind of knew who'd locked himself in his room self enforced with a pice book and ship bucket. And I think he might have kept himself in there for about a day and a half. But not something that was enforced by a brother or someone else. It was their own free will. This was completely different.

Yeah, it's mental, right? Because it pens everything that I would say I'm a pretty committed liberal, right. Like, you know, I wanted to be a human rights lawyer. I think I understand like liberalism as an idea. I think it's a good idea. But you got to remember that all of liberalism is based on the idea that you don't do anyone any harm, and that's fine, right? But you let other people harm themselves. That's no problem. So you want to order you know, it's 4am you want to order another bottle of vodka. prostitue, bagger Coke, and 150 cigarettes to your house, you can do that effortlessly with two different apps, you know, and some were frictionlessly. Because capitalism and liberalism come together to give you everything you want all the time, as long as you don't hurt anyone. That is a big problem. Actually, if you have a self control issue, which all of us do, we don't like to admit it. Like, what were your frictionlessly able to fuck yourself over. But you're not able to put friction back into the system to stop yourself. In the old days, if you were an alcoholic, you just wouldn't put keep alcohol in the house. Now you can order alcohol, a new breeze five in the morning. So it's like you're always in the casino. In this example.

It's interesting to talk about casino because you're right. I mean, I think about my day to day, I could order anything I want. And I think that's why I probably bought way too much on Amazon. It feels like a bit of a segue. But do you think the world the when there's this sort of drive towards a cashless society. And it's happening? Absolutely. It's happened. I read an article the other day about NatWest, I think who are trying to move away from ATM machines. And if this goes well, then the other banks will will follow suit. So is it this sort of credit system that's going to be in play where if you have a problem, whether it's an addiction, or alcohol, or whatever it might be that the state will kind of come in to say that you're not allowed to do X Y, Zed? Do you think that's the way that things are going? And the liberalism will be attacked?

It's interesting, because I think that liberalism's Achilles heel is that it can't defend us against ourselves. And let's put it more more like, let's be honest, right? In the blue corner, there's you and you're flipping, you know, your comm.com or your headspace app and your gym membership, right. And in the red corner, there's every company in the world, frictionless, you know, commerce, data scientists understanding using algorithms to understand what's you know, literally like they call the algorithm in Amazon is called destiny. Right? So it goes Oh, you bought some scented candles? You might like this barf salt. Yeah, do thanks. Right. So on the on, this is not a fair fight. It's you on your own. Being told, yeah, you'd be the best version yourself. And you're trying to be the best version yourself. And all of the might have every single money making Corporation. I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm a hardcore capitalist, right? Is in the other corner going? Ah, yeah, try

this do this. That was free freemium, did it. It's, it's very difficult.

It's David and Goliath, isn't it? It is. And we are not Goliath. Not. And we're on our own.

Right, because, you know, we've lost that tribal community. I live in Dubai right now. There's a lot of benefits to that. But if I think if I think for one second, there's not a lot of detriments to that I'm not understanding the real equation, right? Because it's those people around you that you know, I'm here on my own, I can do anything I want. You know, I will leave a nightclub tomorrow. And like three prostitutes who come and go, Hi. Right? And now, what what I'm saying is what type of willpower does it take to be the best version of yourself in the modern world, and this is the modern state of nature like, and what's interesting is liberalism was born out of the state of nature that Thomas Hobbes described as like nasty, brutish, and short. What he basically said was the Leviathan, the state has to protect us against each other. So we have to have a system of laws that's enforceable, and ultimately by threat, right, because the reason I don't do most of us don't do a lot of things that we might do is because the police will come knocking on the door. So that's a form of threat. That's how you enforce the law. But there's nothing we can enforce it ourselves. We are literally in a modern state of nature that is hyper aggressive. And there's no and we're like fighting with like one and a half hands tied behind our back.

Yeah, you think about the social dilemma documentary. I don't if you saw that on Netflix A while ago, and you look at the people involved. These are obviously kind of whistleblowers now you know, people who worked for the Facebook's and whatnot, and how they've come out of it and saying actually, what we created we're debt was detrimental to society. But they are the smartest minds in the world. So if you're, you know, if you're from humble beginnings, like you and I, and you know, you say for example, you're not educated, but you've got a decent job, and you get your paycheck in and you're getting all these ads been flown it Yeah. How do you deal with the desk, the self discipline the how do you deal with the desire? I'm actually it's funny. because we're having this conversation now of literally bought a book upon a friend's recommendation a couple days ago called Mindful self discipline. And the irony is, it's a gigantic book about 400 pages. And it made me laugh and think how many people will actually not read this self discipline book, because it's so big, but it talks about desire a lot, and about how you control that desire. How do you manage it on a day to day basis, like you're saying, you're walking around Dubai, and all of these temptations are constantly being you're confronted with these on a day by day, hour by hour basis? How do you deal with that? Because your granddad didn't have to deal with that, like you said, he probably would have had a few issues with certain vices and things. But we're having that thrown at us constantly.

Absolutely. And I think I think my brother and I call this willfulness. So we say like, you know, mindfulness, and that sounds interesting, that book that you mentioned, but like, you know, I was an advisor to headspace. So for example, Andy Polycom and and rich Pierson who started headspace are really good friends of mine. I advised him in the early days, I you know, I literally have had like, meditation tuition from Andy like, he's the guru, right. And that's great. And it's amazing. My other Mike started comm.com, my collecting Smith. But I'm gonna be honest, I don't think you can meditate your way through this problem. I don't think that approach it, we can't given once you admit what the modern state of nature looks like from your news feed, having one in three things being an add to your to the ways in which you're being hyper nudged, not just nudged hyper nudge, like, it's not just a nudge, it's just within the limits of the law. But it's back all the time. Bang. And I work in I've worked with the biggest brands in the world in marketing, I know how to nudge young people. Right. So I've been on the, that's, I've been in those boardrooms like literally segmenting audiences going right? This will be catnip to those. And then you go, okay, so how would you how do we escape this? And I've really thought about it like, well, mindfulness, get us what that gets you through. Now. You need to do something else you need to identify amongst all that desire, which let's call it your wants, right? They're very, very transient. They come and go, I want a burger right now. And then I see a pizza and I'm like, oh, I want a pizza. Instead, I want to, you know, be with this girl. But then there's another girl and it's never ending, right? And so what if you follow wants and desire, you are fucked? Like, that's the definition, I would say it's the modern definition of being illiterate, would be someone who mostly act on what they want.

Yeah, it's this sort of stoic versus epicurean debate, you know, and the Epicurean is like the the YOLO, you only live once sort of idea, let's just enjoy our spoils today. But there's something to be said for being for being stoic. Because I think delaying that gratification has provided me with a lot more satisfaction and pleasure than I could have had just by getting whatever I wanted here and now and having that like, I, I say to myself, You know what, I love Lindt Lindor. Chocolate, I'm just gonna have it, I'm gonna have it once a week, once a week, because it's there's law of diminishing returns as well. If I had that every day, then the satisfaction will will decrease massively.

Me My brother went deep into this. And we started trying to define things as experiential and critical. So you have like critical needs, that if you meet them, your life gets infinitely better. You have experiential needs that if you meet them nothing, we call it then what it's like, okay, great. Now you've had three bars of chocolate, then what was changed? Let's imagine like you, let's imagine you sleep with the girl that you most fancy ended up then what? Farkle? Nothing, nothing changes. You know. So there's the things that change things. That's the critical and then it's the things that don't change anything. And that's experiential and experiential, you can tell because it's, it's basically at the moment, you have an urge for it. But once that urge has been sated, nothing's changed in your life. Like you just eat some chocolate now, or you've just had a good wine or whatever, right? Nothing, nothing about your life has changed, where there's a critical desire a critical need, once you've met one of them, shit has changed. And I would strongly advise anyone listening to this, to really map out what is the critical and honestly write down what the experiential is as well. And the big question with the experiential is great. I imagine I get all of it. And here's my honest opinion, I have never in my entire life and I've tried it had enough of you enough, whatever it is, right? So the thing about experiential is, you know, because it's an, it's a black hole, it needs never satisfied. never satiated, where there's a critical need, once you say, dude, like,

have you got an example of a critical need that you've, you've kind of got insight or you've just achieved recently,

a great example was that, you know, my brother and I were really obsessed with this idea of years ago, starting a business in artificial intelligence, we were just like, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen, we've got to get there, we got to make it happen. We knew fuck all about artificial intelligence, like, you know, nothing as much as anyone listening here. And we said to ourselves, we're going to instead of saying, right, we're going to learn about artificial intelligence, and then start a business, we started a business pitched around the place, we didn't fucking clue what we were doing. But by creating the company, like literally creating the business, and telling everyone we were gonna do this, we, it was, we had skin in the game. It was like, shit, we got to do it now. Right. And then, of course, we had our own contracts between ourselves about how much you had to learn and books you had to read. And that that was, you know, really, really helpful that we we forced each other to upskill. And, but, you know, yeah, and then we sold that company in November last year, you know, quite a lot, right. But that's not the point. The point is that, now we legit are AI experts at a moment when AI is a good thing, right? Now, who cares about that, but it's, it was critical to us at that time to commit to that. And that's the thing, you know, it's like, hate to say it, but like, you know, this is a bit dark. But you know, like, if I'm at the end of my life, and I'm suffering from like, serious dementia, I can be sitting there, my, I love marshmallows, right. And I could be sitting there eating marshmallows all day. But if I've written a living will, when I'm 40, to say that I wouldn't like to continue living, even if you give me a bowl of marshmallows every hour, then the critical of that living will, should override the experiential of me enjoying those marshmallows.

I wanted to ask you about your relationship with your brother, and how that's evolved over time. And how has that changed you as a man by having such a close relationship with Him? And also the accountability that that breeds for the both of you for both Martin and yourself? So how has that day? I said that day, but those three days, three and a half days or whatever, it was 73 hours that you you had him holed up in that room as he was producing this a star stellar Harvard thesis? How has your relationship changed in that time? And how have you changed as a man?

Honestly, I think the thing I'm maybe most fortunate for in the world is, is that there are a few people in my life. And I think I've got good at identifying these people who hold me to the standard that I wish I always held myself to. But I don't of course, because all of us have our you know, that doesn't mean that I'm not also a complete record. And lunatic, I do that as well. But I think that I that would have overtaken everything else if it wasn't for certain people, and my brother number one, and I honestly, my brother, and I've been thinking about this quite Christopher Nolan. But if you imagine future you, you know, it's like, human beings are so selfish, so maximising in the present moment, that we will fuck over everyone, everyone, including, and maybe even possibly, most of all, ourselves in the future. Right. So I think that somebody who loves you critically, is willing to help you. Save lives like see that future you and understand that that future you is putting in need of your help. And that you really do owe future you certain things.

I love this idea around the concept of signing a contract with yourself. It reminded me when I went to the Bruce Lee museum many years ago in Hong Kong, and he does something similar. And it's always stayed in my mind ever since. It made me think that you yourself are the easiest person to fool. You can make up all sorts of reasons and excuses as to why you don't do something. And the thing that lets us off the hook is we could just be thinking these things and no one else will ever know. But at the end of the day, we know, we know deep down, you can hold someone else accountable through a contract and keep them to it. But it's really difficult to do that to yourself. We can all say that we're going to do something, but to actually do it is a whole different thing. For Martin, having a brother like Mark to hold him to account acted as a walking talking reminder that he had to do This thing, which ended up being incredibly powerful, not just for Martin, but for the both of them. This could have easily been Martin stone from a different perspective. How many times in our lives have we said that we're going to achieve a certain goal or stick to a New Year's resolution, but we just gave up after only a few months or even weeks, takes me back to an article I read a few years ago, people who join the gym at the beginning of January, have finished by the middle of January, just after two weeks. I think there's a lot of merit in having a brother who's similar in age that can hold you to account better than anyone else can. Because at the end of the day, your love for each other is unconditional. Mark knew that when he let his brother out of the room, he would still love him, it could have knocked him out for what you did to him. But eventually, he'd still loving. However, if it had been a friend in there that you just effectively traumatised to get this thesis written, he might have been more anxious about losing that friendship. There's always that brotherly element binding, you're both together, you can make friends and you can lose friends. But you'll always have your brother. A lot of people make friends at university. But do they really keep them for life. I left university 15 years ago in 2008, and haven't kept up with anyone since when I hear about the relationship between brothers being really close. And having that real closeness in age, I do feel a slight tinge of envy. It must be such an amazing relationship to have when you're both aligned and you can both push each other on to whatever pursuits you're gunning for just knowing that you'll always have each other's backs. Now, do you think you could have done what Mark did for a brother or a loved one? Do you think you could have locked your brother or loved one in that room for that period of time? What kind of man was Mark from the eight types of men that are out there? To me, he's like a mentor on steroids with a dash of nonconformist and protector. To do such an out there thing to help and guide his brother to fulfil his dreams and ambitions took extreme doses of these. But which type of money you take the man test to find out it takes less than three minutes to complete and you'll learn a lot about who you really are. The link is in the show notes