YouSaid · the spoken record

Pico Iyer

lines on the record: 117
first: 2023-07-09
most recent: 2023-07-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Living a slightly monastic life, not far from where that temple was, though with a wife. And so the impulse that took me to Japan was the right one. It was just that I had to grow into it and mature into it. I didn't know enough about the world when I was 29. But when you were talking a minute ago about needing to take care of the practicalities, I was thinking this is why every business around probably takes a collective retreat. And this is why so many businesses, I think more and more, whether it's allowing their employees to work just four days a week or to get 20% of their paid time off just to explore or working from home one way or another, I think corporations are understanding that the more freedom you give to the workers, the better the work that they will produce. And if they're in an office working 20 hours a day, at some point they're going to pass the point of diminishing returns and not produce very much. And so I think that was also.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lucky that when I was in my 20s, I had a lot of energy and I knew what I wanted to do. Then I was able to complete it. And I think that gave me the freedom to try and take the next hurdle because I did want to become a writer and try to live by myself writing books. And I knew that my books were ones that wouldn't sell a huge amount. So I knew I would have to live fairly modestly. And I realized that living away from New York would give me both a chance, a way to live simply, but also a way to write or think a little less conventionally than I might if I were in Mittan. So in some ways it was probably ambition that took me even away from New York to Japan. And when I wanted to be to spend a year in a temple in Japan, when I was 29, it was mostly because I didn't know what a temple in Japan involved. So as I said before, it was a completely wrong-headed kind of romance. But here I am 35 years later.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, maybe part of the lure of throwing it all over was defying my father and showing him and therefore showing myself that I was going to live by different principles from his own. And it's wonderful that you trace all the correspondences we have, which we even further beyond the ones that I knew about. But I think I refer in one of my books to the places where we were educated as institutes of higher skepticism. And I thought Eaton and Oxford were a great training in that, but they left certain areas unexplored, which are exactly the ones that I thought I needed to address. And I thought Eton, for example, trained me wonderfully for getting on in the world, but it didn't train me so much in the realm of the emotions or sort of getting on with other people necessarily. So something in me and maybe you felt the same sensed that I needed to complement or add to my official education. But I think, I mean, I was...”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have to take care of the particulars of the world first, and once we've done that, then we have the luxury of being able to attend to what really sustains us. And I'm sure many of the people in business and investors that you know and that listen to this conversation have figured out exactly that, that being able to find their place in the world gives them the comfort and confidence really to think about what they need deep down.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You've developed in your sort of inner savings account, your inner resources, which you probably developed by being quiet or taking a walk or moving away from the noise of the world a bit. But I don't think in my case, I don't think it ever works to disregard the important facts of life. You know, when I was reading, I was rereading Thoreau actually just yesterday. And I was reminded the very first chapter in Walden is on economy. And it's eight times longer than the chapter on solitude. And I think that's an important message that.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This exciting life in New York City. I might not have been ready to leave it behind. You can't renounce something until you work through it entirely. So I think that was a large part of the process. Where it came from exactly, I couldn't tell you. But you and I went through the same school and the same college. It is a kind of assembly line that's training you extremely well for doing well in the world, but not always for addressing what's going on inside you. And I think maybe at some point, I mean, we may talk about this later, but at some point I noticed that, let's say, one of my parents fell sick and I had to come quickly back and be by my mother's bedside. All the money I'd made, all the books I'd written, all my resume, CV, none of that's really going to help my mother in that situation. None of it's going to help me. The only thing that can come to one's rescue in those circumstances is”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's hard to say where exactly it might have come from. I remember as a little boy, or at least as a student, I would read Thoreau, for example, and I would feel myself pierced. There is a whole way of life and a way of looking at the world and creating values very different from the norm that really called to me. And I remember he says in something like a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can leave alone, that richness ultimately has to do with your internal resources, your inner savings account, as it were. And, you know, I think I love the fact that this podcast has richer before wise were unhappier, because I think you have to take care of making a living before you start thinking about making a life. And as I say, if I hadn't been through the assembly line that led me through”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Restless inside that told me there's something else you could find. And actually, it was in the course of taking trips sometimes for business from New York City that I set foot in Japan. And a sense of recognition was so instant, I thought, if I don't come here, I'll be in exile for life. Something in me will always be unresolved. And so I've got to see what this place has to offer me and why I have the sense of recognition. And then I thought, well, if at the end of my first year in Japan I got disenchanted or disappointed, I could always come back to New York City. But in one's 20s is the time to take that kind of leap and see where it needs one.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly so. And of course, I couldn't have really come to Japan if I hadn't worked through the romance and excitement of that life. Otherwise, I'd be sitting here thinking, what would it be like to live in New York? What would it be like to have all those other things? So I'm really grateful that I fell into this wonderful job and got to experience that life to the full and enjoy every moment of it. And yet, as you say, something inside me felt that that was providing me with some of the things I didn't need and it was keeping me away from the things I really did need. I remember when I lived in New York City, I felt it was very hard to think outside the bounds of New York City. I and my friends were talking about what had just appeared on the front page of the New York Times or what had happened a moment ago, which is always exhilarating. But I couldn't step back far enough to see longer term or what really mattered to me. But you're right. I was probably lucky to have that.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“News, which in three minutes would make me feel absolutely dispirited and hopeless. All these problems around the world, that sadly I couldn't do much to help, or I could look up and out at the beautiful spring sunshine all around and feel absolutely flooded with hope. So I suppose it's partly a matter of just thinking about, I've tried to think what really sustains me in the end and what cuts me up and weakens me. So I found having a lot of space in my life and a lot of time in the day is for me the greatest abundance”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It does make a lot of sense. Of course, it's part of the process of growing older, but I sort of learned about the luxury of absence, I suppose, coming to Japan, which is, as you said, that the culture of the haiku and the brush and ink painting, where really almost everything is left to imagination. So as you probably know, I don't have a car here, which means a thousand things not to have to think about and worry about. I'm lucky enough I've never used the cell phone, which again is not something that I would recommend to people, and most people have to use a cell phone to stay in touch with their family or their jobs, but not having a cell phone means that the day seems to last for about 100 hours. And we don't really have much in the way of media here, though, of course, we could. And that allows me to give myself as much as possible to what I feel really sustains me. I mean, I noticed during the pandemic, and I think probably most of the people listening to this podcast can relate to this in some ways. Every morning when I woke up, I realized either I could turn on the”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the main thing I get is attention. And as you probably know, in the classic Japanese Tatami room, there's nothing there except a scroll and a vase. And because there's nothing there but two things, you bring all your attention to those two things and you find the whole universe in it. And I have Indian DNA, which tends to be the opposite, maximalist. My head is very clattered, my desk could potentially be very cluttered. I think part of the challenge there is that in a crisis or in a moment of need, you can't put your hands on what's really important because there's too much there. Whereas in a room with very few things, you instantly know and cherish and bring all of yourself to what is important and realize that you don't need anything else. I think it might have been from you in a podcast you did or in your book that I heard somebody say that knowledge is about gaining more and more and wisdom is about taking more and more away. And whether it or not it came from you.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Security was freedom. And more important than money Was time. If I was prepared to live relatively simply. And so I'm glad I was having such a good life and such a rich life. I began to think, well, what really is going to”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I left all that for what I thought would be the perfect complement to it, which was a single room in the back streets of Kyoto. I mean, again, you probably know I recklessly decided to leave Time magazine to spend a year in a monastery. In Ky And my high minded idea lasted exactly a week. So the monastery was much too hard work for me and much too much like boarding school. But I then ended up in an even smaller room than a monastic room, no telephone, no toilet, no. Private toilet, know anything really And then I finally made my way up to this. Two room apartment, but the two room apartment I was sharing with my And still am with my Japanese wife, and formerly our two. Small kids. And so it's not something that I recommend to anybody, but I'm glad in retrospect. That I thought In my late 20s, I really long for? And maybe more important.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I was 29 working for the employer that we shared, Time magazine. Really enjoying the life I'd probably always dreamed of as a boy. I've had those really stimulating colleagues and rich and rewarding life that allowed me to fly around World and nice apartment on Park Avenue and 20th. So, in some ways, I detained a lot of what I might have imagined I longed for. And yet there was this restlessness and this feeling, partly because I was enjoying it so much. That I could easily wake up and I would be 70 years old and I'd never explored any options. And because I was in my 20s, I didn't have any dependents and I was prepared to live fairly simply.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, you would be shocked if you saw the part of Japan in which we're living, because it looks like a suburb of Los Angeles. Everything is Western. No shrines, no temples, no beautiful picturesque lanes, and the flat itself is just two rooms. We pay five hundred fifty dollars a month for it. As you say, we've been living here for just over 30 years. It's so small I can't even really open the door to the toilet. I have to work at the little desk that my stepdaughter used to use when she was 8 years old, so it's plastered with pictures of... Brad Kitt and Hello Kitty. So it's an improbable looking place to anybody. And as I say, in a neighborhood where I know very few people and where there are no attractions. But as you know, I was living in midtown, well, living in Manhattan.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm so really happy to get a chance to talk to you, William. I've been looking forward to this since we set this up two months ago. And actually, well, I won't get us off on a sidetrack, but I sort of think my whole life is about thinking about what it is to be rich, wise, unhappy. So I've never been in a podcast where the title so appeals to me.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT