Podcast Of The Week: Luke Burgis on The Knowledge Project

Luke Burgis was making a lot of money and miserable. We’ve all heard these stories. 

“Successful person finds peace after getting rich and then philosophizing to the rest of us to seemingly prove their own happiness to themselves.” 

Blech. 

But Burgis isn’t doing that. This one hit me. Hard. Burgis isn’t just helping us step back to see the hamster wheels, he’s helping us understand why we’re on them, why others put us on them, and why we put others on them. 

There’s been plenty of silicon valley talk about mimetic desire over the years, but nobody has explained it to me in the way Burgis has, and I can feel it rewiring my brain. This interview is a great starting point to understanding him and his work. 

Ps. When Tony Hsieh died it messed with me. I really struggled with reconciling what was going on there – how did the “Delivering Happiness” guy get so un-happy? Burgis’ framework, and his own direct experience with Hseih, gave me a difficult but very real real peace of mind to help me make more sense of his loss. I really needed that.