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Nat Eliason29 August 2024

Chasing Success vs True Fulfilment - Nat Eliason

7Frameworks
14Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Productivity7 steps

Daily Reps Before Anything Else

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Strategy6 steps

Finite and Infinite Games

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Mindset5 steps

Known Costs with Unknowable Benefits

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Self-Mastery7 steps

Standing Social Events

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Self-Mastery7 steps

The Shadow Career Test

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Strategy6 steps

Too Early Beats Too Late

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Mindset6 steps

Trust the Negative Gut, Not the Positive Gut

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Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 2

Myth Buster23:00

The people complaining about parenthood online are not a representative sample

Nat argues that the visible discourse about how hard having children is comes disproportionately from people who are fundamentally unhappy for other reasons; those quietly enjoying their kids are not posting. He adds that anyone listening to this kind of conversation is probably an unusually capable potential parent with more financial room than they think, and used to solving hard problems. The sleep and the negotiation of responsibilities are real challenges — and materially easier to absorb in your twenties than in your late thirties or forties.

“the people who are just like happily enjoying time with their kids are probably not posting about it online”

Nat Eliason · 23:30

“parenting's not easy but if you are the type of person who is listening to us talk it will be easier for you than you…”

Nat Eliason · 25:00
Myth Buster58:00

Filling the void: there is no such thing as passive income

Nat argues almost everyone skips the 'filling the void' chapter of The 4-Hour Workweek and then lives it: three to twelve months of travel, classes and hobbies, followed by emptiness and the realisation that meaningful work is core to fulfilment. He goes further on the economics — passive income starts dying the moment you let it go passive, as competitors move in and products and content go stale, so within two years you are back where you started minus the years. The legitimate use is as runway to bootstrap a long-startup-time career or a startup.

“the thing that nobody in the passive income World wants to tell you is that there's really no such thing as passive income because the…”

Nat Eliason · 59:30

“it's fun for like 3 six 12 months you do the traveling you do the you know taking whatever random classes you want playing with…”

Nat Eliason · 58:30

Hot Take· 1

Hot Take51:00

Low cost of living is a bootstrapping tool, not a destination

Asked about leaving the UK for a cheaper country, Nat separates two uses. Cutting costs hard — he lived five months in Buenos Aires and rented a room in San Francisco — is the right move when it is the only way to fund the work you want to do. But once you can afford a major city, moving somewhere cheap is a bad trade: you lose access to interesting people, travel connections, safety, facilities and schooling options. He compares it to optimising for taxes, and says his idea of hell is a region populated entirely by drop-shipping and influencer businesses.

“city I do think that moving to a low cost of living area is kind of a bad choice just because you get so much…”

Nat Eliason · 52:00

“so wonderful tool when you need it to get your stuff off the ground but once you don't I I I kind of see it…”

Nat Eliason · 54:00

Explainer· 1

Explainer36:00

Cooking for friends: the recipe box and the twenty-minute meal

Asked whether cooking beats takeaway for hosting, Nat argues the mental model is the blocker: people imagine a protein, a vegetable, a side and a dessert, when most great host meals are one pan plus rice, bread or tortillas in about twenty minutes. He and his wife keep a physical recipe box of around twenty recipes they know are quick and reliable, which they draw on for weekly shopping and hosting. His practical warning is that getting guests to help with the cooking rarely works unless they are genuinely into it — prep beforehand and finish the pan once they arrive.

“we actually have a a physical recipe box which I I also highly recommend where whenever we find a recipe that we really love we…”

Nat Eliason · 37:00

“you don't need to throw a dinner party it doesn't need to be this huge Affair having an awesome rice bowl with you know a…”

Nat Eliason · 37:30

Story· 4

Story01:30

Hiding in the office corner: how a hated internship became an SEO agency

Nat traces the arc from a college philosophy degree and an internship he hated to blogging, an app, the digital nomad phase, and eventually an SEO agency. He describes finishing a day's work in two hours and spending the rest reading business books on a Kindle app installed on his work computer, then leaving to start a blog and a failed startup. By 2017-2021 he was, in his own assessment, exceptionally good at SEO — good enough that it stopped being interesting.

“I had the Kindle app installed on my work computer which they never minded thankfully and I was just I mean I was mainlining business…”

Nat Eliason · 02:30

“I was kind of tired of doing SEO because I've been doing it since 2014 at that point and it this sounds bad but it…”

Nat Eliason · 04:30
Story08:30

The backpacking trip designed as a forced go/no-go on the relationship

After years of an on-again off-again relationship, Nat and his wife agreed in advance to go backpacking together — hostels, no alone time, stuck together for weeks — with a binding rule: either they break up on the trip or they move in together afterwards. Neither knew which way it would go. A week and a half in, both were certain. The commitments then came rapidly: move in, dog four months later, Austin six months after that, married a year later, first child two years after.

“we don't want to do this Onan aagan nonsense anymore we need to create like a clear go or no go situation”

Nat Eliason · 09:00

“we got back from the trip we moved in together in New York we got a dog for months later we moved to Austin six…”

Nat Eliason · 09:30
Story47:30

$10M in paper crypto gains and why he never took any of it out

Nat set out to make roughly 150-200k to buy himself a year of writing. At the peak he held over $10 million in paper crypto gains — and rather than taking it off the table, he was projecting it to $100 million. He describes rolling over in bed each morning, hitting a button and collecting ten to thirty thousand dollars in liquid gains he could have withdrawn, then reinvesting nearly all of it. Two near-total losses triggered the realisation that he had a newborn and was leaving everything on the table.

“at the peak of the story I have over $10 million in like paper crypto gains”

Nat Eliason · 47:30

“I was literally rolling over in bed every morning hitting a button and getting like 10 20 $30,000 like liquid that I could have pulled…”

Nat Eliason · 48:00
Story1:12:00

Quitting BookTok after 50K on TikTok and 100K on Instagram

With a first draft he thought was bad and a dopamine system wrecked by crypto and Twitter, Nat told himself he was building a BookTok audience to promote the book. Growth was fast — 50K on TikTok in six weeks, 100K on Instagram in two or three months, videos hitting millions of views — and he began planning long YouTube videos and a podcast to monetise it. Over a schedule-constrained Thanksgiving he spent every available hour on YouTube instead of writing, recognised it as the shadow career pattern repeating, and quit outright.

“to like 50k on Tik Tok in six weeks and then 100K on Instagram in two or three months”

Nat Eliason · 1:13:00

“it was just the shadow career all over again it was like the crypto stuff all over again”

Nat Eliason · 1:14:00

Q&A· 2

Q&A17:00

But don't you have to grind your twenties or fall behind on your career?

Ali puts the strongest objection: the twenties are the career-building years and nobody wants to hire someone starting out in their thirties. Nat concedes the concern is real for some tracks — medical school genuinely requires an early start — but reframes it as an intensity choice rather than a binary. Twelve-hour days maximise advancement; eight-to-nine-hour days still progress a career while leaving room to sort out the shorter-fuse parts of life. He reports that committing actually made him more focused, with a shared load at home and a clearer sense of purpose.

“or I can do the eight to nine hour days for now dedicate the rest of that time to finding my partner figuring out that…”

Nat Eliason · 18:00

“I thought this was going to make me less productive and it did give me less time”

Nat Eliason · 18:30
Q&A32:00

Does a big friend group mean shallow friendships?

Ali raises the Dunbar-style worry that seeing many people produces superficial relationships. Nat's view is that the number is constantly in flux — the closest people you text anyway, and friends you mainly see at recurring events every three or six months are genuinely enjoyable, partly because he is barely on Instagram and therefore arrives with real news to exchange. The only limit he has hit was social saturation: dinners every night plus multiple weekend hangouts left no family or alone time, so they capped it at roughly three social nights a week.

“there's nothing wrong with having friends who you mostly talk at these events where you see each other every three or six months and that's…”

Nat Eliason · 32:30

Tool· 1

Tool1:14:30

Prolifics: a writing-session tracker built to replace publishing dopamine

While a sci-fi draft was resting, Nat built an app where writers log writing sessions, follow each other and comment, so long-term work gets a social signal without publishing for the algorithm. He was surprised how much difference it made to working in the dark — a small post saying he wrote today was reward enough to kill the pull toward short-term projects. It is now on the App Store, deliberately kept as a free-time side project rather than a business, and he uses it daily himself.

“it's like if I could at least put a little post up on prolifics saying like hey I wrote today then that was reward enough”

Nat Eliason · 1:15:00

“my my rule with that is it's like only when I have free time side project I I don't want it to turn into a…”

Nat Eliason · 1:15:30

Takeaway· 3

Takeaway07:00

It's never the right time, and it's never an amount of money

The first of Nat's '40 lessons from 30 years' that Ali raises: catching yourself saying there will be a better time later usually means you are scared or unclear, not that the timing is genuinely wrong. Nat's version is that he and his wife kept asking 'if not now, when — what specifically has to change for us to feel ready', and realised they could always invent a reason. Every previous time they overrode the hesitation, it worked out and they were happy with the decision.

“anytime you catch yourself saying oh it'll be a better time later you're probably just scared or unclear on what to do there is never…”

Ali Abdaal · 07:00

“we kind of realized that we would always be able to invent a reason not to get a dog not to move in together not…”

Nat Eliason · 10:00
Takeaway34:00

Everyone is friendly but you have to go first — and reciprocity isn't the deal

Ali shares a personal rule he repeats to himself whenever inviting people feels awkward: everyone is friendly, but you have to go first, because most people are waiting to be invited rather than initiating. Nat adds the necessary second mindset — do not expect the invitations to be reciprocated. Many people simply do not organise things, and treating friendship as quid pro quo makes you bitter about invitations that never come. Every friend group needs an organiser, and it may as well be you.

“everyone is friendly but you have to go first”

Ali Abdaal · 34:00

“every friend group needs somebody to organize things and so it may as well be you”

Nat Eliason · 35:00
Takeaway1:16:30

Aim to fail at something you really want to do

Ali describes wanting his next book to be a lower-pressure, self-published or hybrid project made because he wants to make it, rather than the prestige game he now admits drove the first one. Nat agrees the truer version may well perform better commercially. Ali then relays a line via David Perell: Jerry Seinfeld asking David Letterman for advice on a new film, and Letterman answering that the advice is to fail at doing something you really want to do — reframed as aiming to make the thing you actually want, where everything above failure counts as upside.

“the biggest advice would be fail at doing”

Ali Abdaal · 1:17:00

“for me it's like aim to be not commercially successful by writing a book that you really want to write”

Ali Abdaal · 1:17:30