... lack of productivity to write out the whole word productivity. That shows how efficient Doge is, so we can only be thankful for that type of high, hard-hitting efficiency. Sorry to interrupt, Clay. Go ahead.

No, that's incredible. Brief summary of this is that Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (laughs), 'cause that's more efficient, uh, have been championing how much they work. They have reported to be working 120-hour weeks. For those doing some quick math, that is a little over 17 hours a day. I know I can speak for myself and say I'm skeptical of that number. I assume you guys (laughs) are too. Uh, but Musk is talking about why that makes them better, more effective than other bureaucracies. He has this quote in there where he says, "It's like the opposing team just leaves the field for two days. Working the weekend is a super power." And basically the upshot, Baker, the writer, says that, you know, he turns this into an argument of how we've elevated billionaires to be superheroes in America, and we've valorized work. And I think we probably agree that billionaires should not be (laughs) elevated to the role of superheroes in society. Maybe shouldn't also be government employees. But the other part of the, the question is sort of interesting, I think what we're here to discuss today. Like, is it a bad thing to valorize work, and like, is hard work a bad thing? You know, I, I know these, this is something that you think a lot about, Cal, and we think a lot about. Like, how do we be productive in a way that allows us to be great and excellent, but doesn't get in the way of all the other things we wanna do in our life, right? So I think that's the question we're trying to answer, most simply stated is, is hard work a bad thing? So I'll kick it over to you, Brad, 'cause I n- I feel like you were the one who sent this article and had the strongest reaction to it, but, um, yeah, excited to hear what you think.

All right, I have two follow-ups. The first is complexity versus simplicity, or, uh, complicating things versus making them simple. Uh, you see this-... all the time in, um, any kind of sport performance where there's this real temptation to have like a super complicated program for what you're gonna do at the gym or for your running, and you have to have all these protocols and routines and you have to track everything. And the reason for that is because you can hide behind complexity. So if something's not going well, "Well, it must be my complicated routine," or, "It must be protocol six out of seven, so I'm gonna change it up." And when you make something really complicated and complex, you get to talk about it all the time. So you can go to cocktail parties and you can post on social media about all that you're doing and all the studying and methodology behind your program. But simplicity, which is you show up and you do the workout, like you can't hide behind that. You either do the workout or you don't. And every single great coach will tell you that getting better at any sport or developing any physical capacity, it's just simple. Like find the system you wanna stress, stress it, recover, and rinse and repeat. You don't need fancy protocols, you don't need complexity, it is simple. So I just love how you come to the same conclusion in your own little corner of the universe, and I think that's probably like a, a fairly universal truth, that sometimes things are complex. I mean, this is Oskam's razor, right? Like razor, the simplest thing is generally the, the actual thing. My second point that I wanna make that I think is important is there are gonna be some people listening, and I'm curious what you think, Cal and Clay, before I offer my take, that are saying, "A lot of what you guys are saying makes sense, but like Elon Musk is pretty great. I mean, he's built all these companies. Starlink is an insane technology. Tesla completely overhauled how we think about vehicular transportation in America. SpaceX is like on some accounts doing better than NASA, or at least has performed better than NASA. And yes, he got all these government grants and all this government money to do these things, but still, like he was the head of these companies. So who are you guys that have written a couple books, that have this podcast to say that Elon Musk isn't great?" So let's hear, let's hear what you guys have to say about that. Again, I have my own answer, but let's hit, let's hit this head-on.

(laughs) I think it's a great point, and it's one I thought, I, you know, I was thinking about as we were texting about this. But I think the thing that people are celebrating him for are not the things that are actually have made him great to the extent that he's great, right? Like b- business success, he's obviously very smart as a businessman, but I don't think people are celebrating him because of business decisions he's made. I think they're celebrating him 'cause he shows up on stage (laughs) wearing a ridiculous outfit and a gold chain and sunglasses and r- and busts out a chainsaw. Um, and I think that gets at a larger problem of like w- we are maybe judging the winners and losers of this game by the wrong metrics, right? Like the fact that you can have pseudo-productivity over productivity suggests that like there's a way to shadow perform your job versus actually doing your job. And we are off there celebrating people for the ways in which they perform rather than the actual work. I don't know if that makes sense, but like as we're talking about this, I'm thinking about someone who's like a teacher, right? Like I c- I can't imagine a teacher has a really a form of pseudo-productivity, 'cause either you're like educating the kids or you, you aren't.