The Knowledge Podcast: Kyle Kowalski with David Elikwu

I went on The Knowledge podcast with David Elikwu on March 21, 2023.

“I first came across Kyle’s work on Sloww maybe four or five years ago, and it was actually part of what inspired me to start writing my own newsletter. So, there are now over 10,000 people that subscribe to my newsletter that partly have Kyle to thank for giving me the inspiration in the first place.” —David Elikwu

Listen: Spotify, Apple, on The Knowledge, or here:

Watch (show notes below):

The Knowledge Podcast #56: Slow Living, Asking Questions, Finding Purpose, & More

Show Notes

0:00 — Intro

4:00 — Existential crisis, discovering intentional living, slow living

9:30 — Childhood, growing up creative, design, perfectionism, information/life artist

13:00 — Chicken and egg of personality type, pathless path, good quitting vs bad quitting

20:00 — Asking questions, busyness plus purposelessness, getting to know yourself psychologically

24:30 — Being raised religious, spiritual baggage, spirituality vs religion, coming to terms with authors

32:45 — Education, 5 Whys, meta-crisis, relationship with our minds, Ego Development Theory, purpose, hero’s journey, transformative learning, lottery of birth, the paradox of conditioning and identity

41:30 — Interconnected knowledge network of the mind, Robert Sapolsky and human behavior, the interconnected web reaching from ancestry to today

44:00 — The ikigai meme and mythbusting, synthesizing mind, the Ikigai 2.0 model and process, money as a byproduct

51:00 — Pursuing entrepreneurship, job crafting, entrepreneurial math, FIRE movement, Jacob Lund Fisker (Early Retirement Extreme), cutting expenses by 30%, Vicki Robin (Your Money or Your Life)

1:00:00 — How language impacts your thinking, relationship with time, glorification of busy & busy as a badge of honor, slow living mythbusting, Greg McKeown (Essentialism), busy life vs full life

1:07:00 — Minimalism mythbusting, embracing trade-offs, four burners theory

1:11:30 — Daniel Kahneman on money, The Psychology of Money (Morgan Housel), question everything, be open to anything, life is just happening/unfolding, determinism and unpredictability, listening to life, wu wei, Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu), awareness changes relationships

1:18:00 — Reading as my worst subject growing up, starting lifelong learning with what you are most interested in, interdisciplinary dot connecting, Synthesizer course, quality as a byproduct of quantity, reading, notetaking

1:24:30 — Picking projects as a solopreneur, projects emerging, prioritizing projects based on intrinsic energy and aliveness, how Sloww products emerged naturally

1:29:30 — How I structure my time, timeblocking / timeboxing, planning fallacy, reading multiple books at the same time

1:34:30 — Memetic immune system (Daniel Schmachtenberger), human development theories, fear of disappointing parents, self-worth directly tied to work, developing a new relationship with your mind

You May Also Enjoy: