Nigel Latta – retire to something, not from something

foreign [Music] good morning and welcome to the MonDay call I'm Stefan Clark Chief client officer at NZ funds retirement can be the start of a new fulfilling chapter we have time to do the things that are important to us but to make the most of it we need to prepare ourselves psychologically and financially Nigel letter recently joined NZ funds for a road show across New Zealand exploring this topic as a clinical psychologist author and documentary maker Nigel has been helping kiwis navigate life's big questions for over two decades today we will be discussing how best to prepare yourself for your golden years and the barriers that humans put up that hold them back we'll also be covering goal setting and the benefits of getting help in order to achieve those goals as well as tips for managing the increasingly noisy and chaotic World in which we live welcome Nigel it's really great to have you here I'm expecting this session to be a um a lively and hopefully light-hearted discussion on what is actually a serious topic so um yeah yeah great to have you here yeah thanks Tiffany yeah hello hello okay hey let's kick off with um I know you've got a new TV show that's just come out yeah tell us tell us about that and what you've been working on and why it excites you uh yeah well kind of that that yes in fact just an hour ago I was doing the voiceover for the last episode so that's and that's kind of that's that's us now it's kind of it's finally all done which is good um yeah now it was really interesting show uh about scams and scammers and how prevalent they are um and how Vigilant and careful we need to be and um do you know what it's like what are things that one of the big things is and I'm not saying this just just because I'm talking to you Stefan but I would never invest money unless I could actually sit down with an actual human in an actual place I think new zealanders have lost millions and millions of dollars through just through online investment so we we uh we talked to one of them this guy Simon David you know and you've just got a Google term deposits New Zealand and you find these websites you log in or you send them your email details and this guy gives you a call and he sounds very convincing but he's a total scammer um so yeah big thing about that is um this you just it's weird as the world's getting more sort of AI and technology and blah blah blah um brick and tile and actual humans that you actually know from an actual place that you've actually been to um that stuff has just become more and more and more important okay and Simon did you um did you have it you do you spoke to Simon did you how did that go yeah ah super well um he he was he was very convincing he's I mean he's either he's either probably worked in the in the banking sector or he's he's just been doing quite a lot of homework because he sounds very accomplished and he sounds very swish um and it's a very sophisticated setup one of the people that we spoke to who lost 100 Grand to this guy um there's even a website but you can log in and it will show you a fake dashboard of your money and the rates of what's going on he's very good he wasn't offering you know 70 interest he was offering maybe a couple of points above kind of what most people are offering at the moment so like it was enough to be good but not too much so that you went hang on there's something wrong he got snippy as we pushed him to for verification details about his uh you know about who he was and where and where he worked and stuff uh and that's when you know that's when it was It was kind of crystal clear that this guy's not legit because no bank is ever going to get snippy with you because you're trying to verify that they are who they are so yeah uh all-round bad guy he's probably taken millions of dollars from people here and um did you Did you sort of uh Express how you felt about it yeah he kind of hung up towards the end of it and because as we started he hung up so he rang back and I left a message and I basically said look Simon I don't know how you get out of bed in the morning and do the stuff that you do I don't see how you can feel good about yourself I'm sure your mum would feel really terrible if she knew what you're doing unless your mum's a scammer in which case she's probably super proud but somewhere in your long lineage of mums there's got to be a mum that would be disappointed in you all and if you want to get a different job instead of stealing people's stuff give me a ring and I'll talk through some different careers for you but so far he hasn't done that oh Simon okay hey um Simon isn't why we're here uh we're talking about goals and retirement and purpose and life and the stuff that um you spend a lot of time thinking about and uh and I thought maybe we should uh given it's I guess a topic that has been traversed in the past by a wide range of people um maybe you could take us through sort of the you know where we're at and making sense of life and goals and purposes and um and how you start thinking about that yeah well it's a strange thing right we are um we are kind of future directed creatures um and and researchers kind of showing that more and more and more but one of the things that we're not kind of good at is um kind of taking that long-term view we're not kind of good of at stopping and thinking about those kind of hardest human Horizons because we get sort of for a couple of reasons one I think a lot of people just find that stuff is like um and it often it feels too difficult um and we're kind of not used to thinking and planning that far ahead so what we don't we all kind of act as if we're going to live forever you know not to get Grim about it but we're not you know and so we all have a certain amount of time that we get to be here you know most of it about 17 point something billion years we weren't here for we get this little little bit in the middle most of the rest of it we're not going to see that either and so it is I think really important to be um kind of conscious about how your spending your time and and what you're doing here and um most of us we do that old thing we act like it's this infinite resource so we waste it on stuff that isn't important to us um and I kind of tend not to do that now I did this I I um I'm quite careful about not doing stuff out of a sense of obligation I always kind of say to people like don't ever do anything for me out of a sense of obligation if you don't want to do it just don't do it you know but so I'm much better at um kind of not doing those things and I used to do that thing that people would do which is you meet people that go we should you know have a coffee and talk about this thing and I used to you know yeah yeah we should now I'm just kind of moderate say look I'm probably not going to do that and your Project's great and like you're like a super nice guy but I'm just you know I'm busy doing stuff and and when I'm not busy doing stuff I just want to Speed it with you know kind of people in my family and doing do that kind of stuff so so I steer away from obligations and I I'm kind of I I think it's it's important to be more intentional about kind of how you're spending your time and where you're going and I'm going to take it from from all of that and the fact that you're here with me now that you really want to be here and that um that makes me feel good yeah so yeah yeah well we were hanging out on the road you know we're like we were you know it's we got this thing on we got this thing going okay so um philosophers have um thought about this a little bit yeah take us take us you know what are they thinking and um does that is it helpful um for us in terms of what we are thinking now yeah so the interesting thing is like we those big kind of questions about why are we here and where are we going like lots of smart people have spent a lot of time thinking about that and so we don't have to kind of go and reinvent the wheel and you know it kind of goes all the way back to I mean lots of cultures have thought about the purpose and meaning and why we're here but you know the Greeks had their thing uh and then you know the the stoics and stoicism is kind of big again now and it's I think it's bigger game now because um star system is a really good kind of approach to a world which seems quite chaotic and uncertain um because kind of one of the central tenets of stoicism is this idea that almost everything in our that happens to us we can't control but the things that we can control are our thoughts or feelings interactions and so stoicism is about just being more intentional and what we do with that kind of stuff um so the the the stomach stuff I think is making a bit of a comeback but there's been you know other stuff too the you know the existentialists they were just like ah there's no should we just doing stuff there's never a kind of point to it but that's fine and then the nihilist came along and they were like ah it's terrible it's just a big empty nothing and it's grim and I'd like the absurdist the French who basically said ah it's all absurd which is and you could just see French philosophers doing that just sitting in some cafes and we're drinking coffee and talking about the absurdity of life and then we sort of we shifted out of it could have philosophy and psychology have a lot in common because it's a lot about trials and who we are and how we do stuff and so I think lots of those philosophical ideas are really useful but that kind of led into the more kind of you know kind of research pragmatic stuff of the modern world um and we now kind of have a different understanding of kind of who we are and the stuff that motivates us so we used to think that we were fundamentally kind of creatures of our past in the sense that um you know we build our future out of the past which is sort of true but not completely true and now we know is that um we're basically always thinking and projecting kind of forward into the future so you know just just as one example memories we've tended to think of memories in the past as just being something that goes into a filing cabinet in your brain so you something happens you put in a filing cabinet and uh for whatever reason you know when you need it you pull this memory back out and here's this thing that happened and now I'm gonna think about what that means and go forward and it turns out that's not what we do what we do is memories come in your brain basically splits it up into different bits of the kind of what we're and when stuff um and uh then when you need it it sort of it goes and it takes those separate components and it puts them together but it doesn't put them together perfectly right so we all know that memories aren't perfect um and uh so it uses that kind of part it sort of metabolizes that past experience to try to figure out what to do next and so that's when you know you you're talking to someone and they swear something happened that it didn't and so you know I met a woman at a motel once checking me in who was convinced we went to a spring box game together it's like no we didn't because I've never been to rugby game in my life like I know that for a fact um but she was absolutely convinced that it happened uh and that maybe your memory was wrong well you know I have Wonder that's like maybe I have been going to Spring work going for years and just not knowing maybe that explains those large blank periods of my life you know it's like oh you sort of wake up and you what happened but I know it's green and black and yeah I don't know so there's all that kind of all of that sort of this idea that we're kind of we're pushed um out of a past we're not really drawn into a future thinking is always future focused emotions aren't just a reaction to what's happening to us now emotions are way to kind of propel us forward into future decisions and so if you take a um if you damage a part of a person's brain where emotions are formed people those people find it almost impossible to make a decision and so even though we kind of think we make rational decisions we sort of do but emotions are part of that thing and so um you know people who are suffer from anxiety and depression one of the things that happen it's not so much about the past stuff that people need to sort out it's that for lots of different reasons their brain is is making predictions about the future that are quite Grim or that are quite anxiety provoking so it's about trying to change the predictions that your brain is making so we are always thinking about what to do next that's why we can react to stuff so quickly it's why um sometimes you can just be doing nothing and you have this you think oh it's you have an idea about how to solve a problem and um that's because kind of when we're doing nothing these strange parts of their brains just hum in the background they start to power up and it's things about memory and self and purpose and meaning and all those sorts of things um and that's why I just kind of out of the blue sometimes you could come up with uh an idea going no I could do that I could do that thing it's because brains are brains are like chat gbt they're always trying to predict what the next thing is and so uh all the time our brains are taking on information and it's it's aware of the context that it's in it's taking past experience and it's not recalling it perfectly but it's kind of breaking it down into bits and finding out if there are any bits in that that are useful to help us figure out what to do next and so after the absurdists the things have moved on and people are by my understanding is there's kind of a new school of thinking about understanding how we respond to the past and use that to the Future you can take us through how that fits in yeah so so about um I mean for for a long time what psychologists did is we basically looked at misery and to help people when right you're miserable let's let's look at the misery of that and so uh people study misery things like anxiety and depression and those things and dug around on it and found out lots of different ways to describe it um and which is fine and we learned some things um but then this guy Martin Seligman who he kind of first became uh kind of famous I guess because he came up with this idea of learned helplessness this idea that um you know if we have no control over the things that happen to us we become depressed but when he became head of the American Psychological Association he um he kind of had this idea he thought you know what I've been studying misery for a long time and it's not it's not really getting us anyway and let's let's study happiness and everybody thought that he was mad they just thought what are you talking about that's a fluffy nonsensical thing to study um but he went no no it's a good idea it's like rather looking at what goes wrong let's let's look at people where things are going wrong like what are the things that people do that make life um kind of better and easier and so out of that came positive psychology which lots of people have heard about um and and Seligman is now you know one of the most heavily financed researchers in the world um and it's been a whole lot of stuff that is really useful in terms of um you know the stuff that makes us kind of happy on a day-to-day basis so not not sort of happy in that bright and Buzzy sort of artificially happy way but happy in that sort of deeper sense of kind of contentment um and well-being and so and even kind of seligments thinking has changed a little bit because now what they're thinking is um they are looking at this basic thing of how humans make predictions about the future and how basically everything that we do is um about metabolizing experience and metaboliting the moment and generating a genuine a thing going forward and so kind of what we know is that um it how we kind of the plans and strategies and Visions all that kind of stuff that works because if if you start thinking about that stuff then you're navigating towards that not that annoying stupid way that that silly book The Secret you know the secret and basically if you want a Lamborghini you've just got to ask the universe and like if you ask it really hard the Universe goes yeah you can have a Lamborghini and if you don't have one it's because you just didn't ask um like that's all nonsense um but the reason that people came up with strategies and plans is that orientates your thinking in a certain way so we tend to you know we tend to go where we look and so if you are struggling with anxiety and depression and you're making predictions about the future that are um kind of driven by driven buying zone division then the future is grim and that's why people kind of feel bad and so it is about being more purposeful about the staff that we're navigating towards um and you know then and on top of that there's the fact that actually we're not very good at analyzing data and thinking about stuff like we think that we are but again there are there's a psychologist who spent their entire careers just proving that humans are not very good at analyzing data and we're not very good at making some of those decisions and so um what we tend to do is we make decisions which aren't based on the data and the evidence we make decisions that are based on kind of fears and biases and all those sorts of things um and so you know if you look at what happens when people are making financial decisions about the future if you Orient people to the Future and then ask them to make a financial decision between high and low risk and they'll take the low risk and what seems to happen is even though we're generally optimistic about a future once we start thinking about making financial decisions about the future we start to see possible threats of Morris and those sorts of things and so people tend to go for the lower risk um the lower risk strategies and that's that's fine but actually if you're a young person just starting out um then you've got a whole lot of time to be thinking about managing risk over time and so you can be it kind of adopting a higher risk um strategy which is the you know the the income versus Grace of my my son is just starting at work and he's um he's in a kiwisaver scheme and I said to him which one he went ah I went no it I mean but what is it I think it's the safe one I mean all right you mean like the you mean like the the the income like the income one though he said yeah the one without the not the sheer mag not that jaggedy up and down one he said I don't like that one at all and so I said well yeah okay fine but the the safe one that's that's great but like it doesn't do not up and down but it's a very flat line so you're 23 when you go to 65 you're going to be here the other one even though it does a little bit of JD up and down stuff um it ends up in a quite a different place to this one but it's it's just hard for him to wrap his head around the fact that um you know those kind of mathematical Concepts like you know the average it's just hard for people to write their heads around that stuff and so he kind of feels more like this the best bit for homers to say in the safe plan even though when he's 65 it's going to make a huge difference to him and and people do this stuff all the time we we like the little up bits of the graph we don't like the little downwards of the graph and so um that's where I think it's it's it's difficult it's difficult for humans to make really good decisions based on the data because uh even though we think we're good at that stuff we're just not at all we need help well I guess what you're heading on is exactly the world in which NZ funds and the financial advisors we work with exist and and helping clients understand um you know uh what the right level of risk is for them we had to find the right balance and over what time frame and what levels they have to pull to achieve their goals and so there's a whole bunch of really interesting um questions that kind of come from that to make take the make the most of uh someone's you know assets to get them to their goal and also to make sure they stay the course along the way and there's a lot of psychology in there but there was but there was something in there that I thought was really really interesting you talked about orientating yourself to a goal um and what does it mean to you because for me and I'm just speaking personally for a moment you know if I don't have a goal I don't really know where I'm going at all so you know goal sitting and um even if you can't Define it precisely uh certain it's like a magnet it pulls you towards that what Paul's I hope it falls me towards here yeah so how do you how do you think about that and is it the same for you and is it the same for other people yes I've always kind of taken the approach I want to drive the bus right I don't want to be kind of a passenger in this let the world decide stuff for me and so there's a lot of things that are completely out of my control but there are some things that are within my control and so um I've always been kind of thinking about kind of where am I now and where do I want to be kind of further on down and how do I do stuff to make to make that happen um and so it's the interesting thing about goals um and this again commit of kind of segment of the research that those guys have done it's it goes around and having a vision for the future is an interesting thing because the small catches in there and so if you if if your goal is like I don't know I want a super yacht right that should go on a puge yacht and I want to pack it down on the Harbor there and I never want to go on the sea I just want to sit on the back and read a book and have people walk past and go man that's a nice yacht so if that's your goal that's fine but if all that you do is that you just imagine that goal right you sit on your couch um that's a little bit of a trap so you have to do more than just think about where you're going because if you just think about where you're going what your brain does it gets enough of a hit of the good chemicals just from imagining head but it doesn't want to kind of get up and do anything else it feels like oh yep that was a good day did some imagining of the yacht a nice sunny day I know that the upholstery is going to look like all that kind of stuff and you don't actually start doing stuff to work towards it so there are kind of there are some things that you need to do over and above just I want that um you have to do some kind of specific things around it so that you're more likely to get there but the first thing is to have a plan and and what we know across all kinds of spheres you know financially and in terms of physical health um pretty much everything if you have a plan you tend to be better off further on down the track than people who don't have a plan because if you don't have a plan you just go oh things will happen and things will happen like that's the nature of it stuff stuff absolutely 100 is gonna happen um it's just that it's less likely to be the things that you kind of want to have happen and you're less likely to end up at that particular place that you want to go because you know you don't have those little those little steps along the way and we all kind of know this but it's one of those things that people go yeah I know that okay but so what is your plan you know and and when you think about this kind of stuff it's about what is your plan for life and and what is it that you want to do because I mean fundamentally money is about um it's about kind of freedom and opportunities and those sorts of things and so essentially kind of how people spend their money really reflects people's values and the things that are important to them and I remember years ago we made a um a few years ago we made a show and we talked about money personalities and so different people want different things some people want security like that's the thing they value the most and that makes them feel good and so what they do is they make a plan and they uh and they and they kind of build their build their wealth build their lives so they have kind of security for other people money represents kind of freedom and opportunities for some other people it's about um you know the social stuff and being able to kind of connect more with people but what you do with your money kind of reflects your values but what we have to do I think is to have a plan and just to be aware of how much time do I have what are the things that are important to me in my life and what is my plan for getting to those things why do you think it is that people are so they find it so difficult to put into concrete terms um what is important to them and then build a plan from there I I well I think because for we've got these Stone Age Brands and for a long time the plan was pretty simple just try not to get eaten trying to have a you know trying to have kids because by about like the late teens early 20s something's eating you so the the notion that we would live for decades um and that we would have decades um after we retire um that's a very new thing and so our brains aren't naturally kind of fired up for doing that um we do find it quite hard to thinking about that kind of stuff and there's been really interesting things about you know when you you get people to put an old age filter on themselves um that they then then people go Ah that's yeah this is gonna happen we did this once for um a doco on retirement and so um I I spin about it's still online you can find it there's a Nigel the old guy um three hours getting money believe it or not I know I know um one of my partners she thought that was an actual picture and you went man what happened to that guy like is he all right you've got to moisturize today or something yeah yeah but you know like that's confronting right I looked at you look at that stuff and you go oh wow okay that's a thing so even though I was thinking ahead about it it does you've got to have those little moments of just stepping back and looking what's important to me what am I doing and we all know it we just don't often do it because it's like I'll do that later I'll do that next week yeah um the other thing is they're busy and you're busy being busy and yeah it feels like the world is getting busier um with a lot of stuff going on and so and some of the you know so how do you you know it is a noisier world than it was or at least I feel like it's a noisier and Messier world than it was maybe a decade ago is that just perception or is that reality in your mind and um are you how do you think people who are trying to you know plan for their Futures should cut through all of that noise and focus on what's important to them well in some ways I mean in some ways the world is quicker but in other ways it doesn't like the sun still comes up and it still goes down and we have about you know it goes around the Sun you know the the moon goes around the earth goes around the Moon as many times it does but but I think that what's happened particularly in the last few years is that you know because as we've come out of covert and the pandemic and all that kind of stuff everybody's kind of nervous systems have had a thoroughly good ratcheting out through all of that stuff um and we've kind of come out into a series of events it just seems like a Relentless kind of series of events that people are dealing with um and it does feel like there's a lot more pressure on people and so yeah I did lots of the staff you go around the place talking to lots of different people on lots of different Industries everyone is struggling with the staff people feel more burdened feel more stressed they're kind of busier trying to make ends meet trying to get stuff done um you know all within this great hovering uncertainty you know if you live in Auckland if it rained it just used to be rain and now it rains and you get rain stress and so I think there was a whole bunch of stuff that is um that are making people feel kind of more pressured um you know just in the last few months you've got AI starts rolling out through the world and it's probably the single biggest thing that I can think of for quite some time um that have made people think you know here's a thing this could be I don't know what this means um and so I think there's a lot there's a lot happening that people kind of have to get their heads around um and it is difficult to kind of make time in the middle of all of that for that um important but not urgent stuff you know that Stephen Covey is because it's good stuff right it's like this is important but it's not urgent and so because we're humans we just focus on the Urgent stuff and we don't put time aside to think it's really good to have time literally to do nothing like just to steer off I don't know into the trees or the clouds or whatever um and just Coast I literally have left jobs because I just got so busy doing things I didn't have time just to sit and Ponder and let your mind kind of roam and and those are the moments when you kind of tend to have those kind of bigger ideas it's that breakthrough stuff I was talking about before so so you kind of have to prioritize um just pondering kind of the meaning of life from time to time because that's where you stop thinking about emails and phone calls and this and that and the other and you and you step back and you go you know I need to I need to actually think about what I'm doing you know like I'm I'm 56. so it that happens and you go okay you know like I get I know there's a there's a everyone has a time and I I need to be you know even more clearer and even more intentional about what I'm doing with my time churches and um support and help from other people to you know financially um on the one hand you've got Financial advice of course but in other domains as well Fitness and so forth how do you think about them and the value they can deliver to orientate people towards achieving things yeah I well I think that I think there's a lot of in the world juniors there's a lot of people doing coaching stuff and some of it is just annoying you know it's of little worth at all but the value of a good coach the value of a good Mentor is enormous right no one does anything by themselves everything is a kind of a team-based Pursuit and so having a team of people that you are talking about the stuff that's important to you and goal sitting and see if all of that stuff is really important um you know it's it's one of the things I've seen again and again and again and again throughout kind of my life but also the the you know organizations that you work with all that kind of stuff when you have a good team of people things just go better and so the value I think of a of a skilled and experienced advisor is that they can really help you to focus and stay on the path you know you don't want fluffy stuff you want people with a degree of expertise and you want people with knowledge um and you want people who are going to you know kind of challenge you and push you around your thinking kind of hold you to the stuff that's important for you and so um I I have always found that um some skilled advisor or a skilled coach you just you just kind of need that stuff like I've kind of or I always have people in my life who play that role um and in lots of different spheres you know whether that be um in the kind of personal stuff or kind of business staff or project stuff you just that stuff is just invaluable you you've mentioned time and the importance of it um and being cognizant of it a few times uh and you also mentioned that you've turned 56 and when we were um on the road uh one of my favorite discussion points was you exploring what that meant for your future and how much time you had available for the things you wanted to do yeah do you want to take us through um where you got to yeah the process you went through because for me that was uh particularly eye-opening experience yeah like a few years ago after the talk on time management which literally is the most boring thing to talk about ever and I don't know anything about time management because I'm terrible at it basically what I do is I muck about until the thing um is so close that I get a physical feeling of fear that I may not be able to complete it in a certain amount of time so I don't know if I don't work Under Pressure because I only work Under Pressure so you know I seem like an odd choice to talk about time management and so I thought okay and I said that to them I said no come along anyway so I thought okay so then I thought all right how much time have I got I thought because if we're talking about time we should think about time as a finite resource and so I sat down one night with a little Excel spreadsheet and I googled the average lifespan um of a of a New Zealand male and went right I put that in and I think it was about 80 point something years at that point um and it was a couple of years ago but at that point I had something like 30 I don't know 30 years left to get there which I think that's pretty good yeah it's okay like three decades there's a lot of stuff but then I thought I but like I can't just do whatever like there are some things I have to do so I started taking off time like um you know kind of eating uh sleeping cleaning the house um you're looking for your like I actually calculated how much time I spent each week looking for my phone which was a lot I calculated how much time I spent trying to connect up the Wi-Fi because you know the kids girl the wife always not working he restarted the router okay so I expected about 30 seconds all that kind of stuff and by the time you take out kind of cleaning and shopping and all that kind of stuff um I got down to about I don't know about two years left and I thought that's pretty good and then I thought I haven't taken out work huh so then I took out work and it was like minus one point something years like and I thought that can't be right um and so then I thought well actually that's an amusing little thing but at one level it's actually true and the only when I and I actually genuinely looked at that little spreadsheet of things I was spending time on um and the only thing that I thought I could claw Back Time on was basically just bollocks and obligation stuff the stuff that you do that you don't care about that's not important to either you do a sense of obligation so that that was the thing that kind of really sharpened me up on thinking about um how you you know doing things because I want to do them versus I just feel like I should um and at the end of that I got left with something like 17 weeks between kind of that point and when I died to do whatever I want and it's not ever you know it's not ever a 17-week block because you know that's that's 17 weeks is spread out through all of those other phones but it did make me think that there is a um yeah like there is a finite there's a number and we all have one um and we act like it's not going down but it is all the time and so we need to think about kind of where we are in our in our little spreadsheet um on the stuff that we're doing and what's important to us and so I do think it's important um you know to be to be really clear about that and to not do stuff out of a sense of obligation and I mean we all have to do some stuff out of a sense of obligation like you can't you can't just do whatever you want whenever you want but there are some things that you go yeah I'm not gonna do that I'm just not gonna do it because it's not important to me so I'm like I know I'm gonna spend that on things that are important to me which is like time with my partner time with my kids all those sorts of things so you're not buying The Lawns anymore I take it like the outside I don't like the outside I I mean it's fine it's out there now it wow like it seems good I actually I if I'd love to live in an apartment because we basically do we I mean we we live in a house and there's a garden we never go out and it likes a guy comes to eat Moses and the dogs go out there but I don't know what's going on that's nice I got nothing against it I just don't want to have to waste time on it and I know that for some people gardening and mowing the lawn is stuff that they enjoy right they like it it brings them joy that it's great and that's that's good like I'm not saying my version of what's good once you do that but I think you do need to think about what other things that are important to me so for me you know spending hours from the in the in the make economically more sense for me to spend time on the garden I guess um but then there are other things I could do with my time that I think are going to maybe better for me personally and pay off better in terms of the time that I'm investing in the output they get of it not not lying alone all the hedges yeah um a lot of people waste a lot of time on social media and um and I I I've I mean I've heard you speak um you have some views about the benefits to the Society of social media um how where are you at and you're thinking there is none yeah none I mean I don't it's just it's a silly thing I am it's I think there's a there's I mean there's a couple of things really often what we do is we use it as an opportunity to present our best lives to people uh and the other is just super annoying people that just show this amazing doctored view of their life which is completely false basically I think the kind of the role of families the more someone has to work to show how amazing their life is on social media probably the more stuff they have going on Jermaine it's like I would I would like to spend a year I'm just taking pictures of the average boring everyday crap of life you know the the fact that you know I'm working I've just gone up to the house to make a coffee and here's the empty milk bottle that someone put back in the fridge and now I have to go to the thing and get milk or you're a prominent individual in New Zealand you could do this and at least have some people following you for a period yeah no I mean I know I couldn't but again I'm just like it's an idea that I'm just I kind of almost don't care about it's like I like the idea of it but not I have to actually do it because when it comes to I think yeah like why why am I even doing that like it is how is it a good use use of this minute of my life that I'm never going to get back to post the stuff I I kind of use Instagram a bit and mostly I use it when I'm if I go traveling my son I put pictures on there and I always feel a bit weird about it too but it's the one place I found that actually for me I could go back and find those photos rather than other stuff um but I remember years ago a couple years ago getting into this Twitter off with Simon Bridges about something I don't know and it went on for about two or three days um and then my partner just said what are you doing I went oh yeah I've become that idiot on Twitter just yelling backwards and forwards with someone else like what a pointless waste of time that is so um I just kind of don't do any of that stuff and another thing you should think about people always but oh happy birthday happy 21st my darling son um that's all a scammer needs that they've got your kid's name they've got the date of birth they've got some information from their Facebook profile and there's a whole bunch of stuff they can go up and do so think very carefully um about how much information you put up on social media okay um a lot of people use social media to kind of as you said project their kind of their perfect self yeah but it also does a bit of harm yeah um uh how do you kind of how do you pull people away from that or is it you know or when when you're in you know trying to orientate things towards I guess pursuing something that's of broader meaning I think it is again it's about it's about you know like at different times we all look at that stuff but it is about from time to time stopping thing like how much how much time is this really worth uh my time you when you're on that you get into those Facebook and someone goes and you go you're going backwards and forwards nothing nothing good comes from that no I I I'm not sure if it's ever happened that anyway yeah that's a really rational and good point and I'm going to change my world view on the basis of that we basically just kind of yell stuff backwards Awards like it's a great way to communicate um with you know in those smaller groups of whether it's your family stuff it's a great way to do that stuff and share phone all that kind of stuff it's the it's the really public stuff it's the you know people who spend their lives trying to be influencers on Instagram and get you're not influencing kind of anyone do I mean it's like it's ultimately I think a lot of that stuff is just Hollow and empty um and unimportant I mean I think the closest I've come is kind of LinkedIn which is which is much more like social media for grown-ups and people are respectful and they say interesting things um but most of the rest of it is just a nonsense it's just people bragging about their kids and no one wants to see you brag about your kids no one ever wants to read anyone else's bragging about your kids you just don't no one wants to people are going oh yeah that's amazing that little Jimmy got first in the trumpet comes like little Jimmy's grandma wants to know even his aunts and uncles they probably don't want to know but Grandma's and granddads they certainly do the rest will they don't care so there's people that are constantly putting this and make here's my amazing family um it's it's just it's not useful and it doesn't help anyone and and I I also think you have to be really careful about the stuff you're putting up about your kids because you're making decisions about putting their pictures and their stuff up there on the internet um and that's not great I've always been really careful about doing all of that because um I just figure that's a decision for them to make later in life I don't want to I don't want to put that stuff out there for them okay back um back to retirement and thinking about how we prepare ourselves so we've canvassed I guess we've talked about the importance of time and time management and thinking about you know working out what it is that's uh of of value to each individually the importance of you know putting a plan in place and getting help around you and um whether it's an advisor or some other person who's able to guide you and support you and um you know sticking to your plan or staying a course or whatever it happens to be um and then and then there's uh this kind of challenge along the way which we all come up against as sort of a resilience question and staying that course and you mentioned earlier that people you know there's rain anxiety as I think it's called or um when you think about you know resilience generally it's called hot word at the moment but what what do you think about that when it comes to putting in place something for the future and you know building from there in and overcoming the setbacks as as as they come yeah I mean it means the basic stuff about you know you try to be as good as you can and sleep and all those things and exercise but I hate it when people say well we should just exercise more because I just think yeah I'm probably not gonna um for me it's about doing so like for me personally I just do some really simple stuff um and uh I kind of borrow one of the big things of staticism which is just kind of focusing on the things that you can control um and that would probably be like if I had one go-to strategy that I use the most in my life that's my kind of single go-to thing and so at that point when everything goes wrong or when everything feels completely overwhelming um or you're just kind of going down the googler it's it's fine to go down the gurgler and you just have to do that a little bit and it's like we all have feelings and that's okay um but at some point you kind of you have to think okay now what am I going to do you know things have gone wrong or this terrible thing is happening what am I going to do and so you have to think about something you're gonna think about something you're going to do something um what the stocks are about is just focusing on the things that you can control and the stuff that you can control your thoughts your feelings and your actions and so often when stuff happens and it feels like you just do our Lions I you have your moment you go okay what's the stuff I can control right now well I don't know what to do about this big Mis that's just happened I'm gonna just put this down for a second I'm just gonna have a breath I'm going to go and make myself a coffee I'm gonna sit at the back for a couple of minutes and then I'm gonna go back into this thing I'm I'm just going to do this one email or this is too hard right now I'm just going to focus on doing this thing so I have a sense of achievement one of the you know one of the things that we do know kind of makes people happy um Solomon talks about this thing called Perma so it's about feeling positive emotions um and so that's things like you know kind of gratitude um and kind of love those sorts of things so being grateful for the things in our life um the the E of puma is about engagement so doing things that kind of Flow State doing things that you enjoy um that are as obviously for relationships because they're really important to us so spending time with people that we care about and having those kind of relationships um and the the the Emma's meaning having meaning and purpose in life and a is that sense of achievement so it's you know positive positive uh positive emotions seems to be kind of Engagement and flow relationships meaning and achievement and so it's when things will get too much it's about just pausing taking a breath and thinking okay all right one of the things that I can control okay I can't control any of that I can control what I'm breathing when I'm thinking what I'm doing I can I can control how I am with the people around me um in this moment I can um I can I can control my actions and how I talk to people I can control that kind of stuff and when you do that what you're doing is you're just focusing your resources on things that actually you can make a meaningful difference in the recession that's not something that I can do anything about I could watch the read all sorts of economists talking about what that may or may not mean it's not going to there's nothing I can do about it and I'm not saying you don't be informed about the world at all but there's a difference between being informed about the world and knowing what's going on and just losing yourself in a great murky pool of all of that stuff and so I kind of don't do that um when bad stuff like I you know I have an awareness of what's happening in the world but I don't dwell on it and swim about in it I haven't watched the news for years because I've never watched the news and felt better about the world um so yeah I tend to think right what can I actually control and I need to focus on that and it's one of those really simple ideas that we all know it's a simple idea focus on the things that you can control lots of um companies kind of talk about that in terms of their health we do things and all that kind of stuff but it takes attention to take practice to do it it's easy to just get pulled off into things and just kind of react to it and get dragged along and feel down about stuff it does take intentional practice to go okay I'm just going to step back a little bit thanks that plan that I had it seems to have all fallen over I'm gonna take a little breath and think about what to do next and sometimes it's nothing right sometimes the plan is right you just need to let the world correct itself and other times um it is you need to take steps the the um I mean it's on the one hand it's sort of a bit cheesy and and I can't but acknowledge that but on the other hand I really like it because um it sets out a bit of a framework and um and you can use it to you know when you're thinking about something that you know something a setback that you're trying to overcome but you can also flip it over and use it to think about what you want to achieve what when am I you know uh uh what are the things that make me um in in flow as you said what are the relationships that are important to me and if you learn how to articulate all of those bits around those elements it can you know help in the context of say retirement planning even you can go well these are the things that I want to spend more time doing rather than avoiding yeah and for me it's what it's about is I'm kind of an evidence-based guy right because if I if I'm going to do something I want to know that that if I do the stuff it'll actually make a meaningful difference and what I like about development stuff is there's 20 30 years of there's a ton of research behind their staff it's not just some dude on YouTube goes yeah you should do this thing it's not a some Instagram influencer saying hey you should just do this um it comes out of a really large body of Empirical research and it's not like if you just do those things it's this instant fix and everything's amazing but if you do those things on a consistent basis you are more likely to feel content and happier in your life and yes there's all sorts of stressful things that are going on and could go wrong but if you can't do any of those things then what you can do is you can think about in the moment when things are terrible okay well positive emotions can I have right now I can feel grateful about the fact that uh you know I have uh about my partner and my kids in those relationships I can feel grateful that I get to do this kind of stuff um like there are things there are there are always moments where you can pause when you think what can I actually do and for me I I just want to do the stuff that someone's figured out works if it's just your it's just what you think like fun but just tell me that it's just your idea that's fine and if it seems right I might try but I'm far more interested in in the celebrant stuff because it's like oh well that like he's looked at it with a lot of people now I know that if I do this I know that if I if every night um I sit down and I think uh and if this is a like if people are kind of in that um just beginning to struggle with mental health stuff this won't help you if you're like really struggling with us but if you're on that initial stages of just starting to not feel great if if if each night you think okay what are three things that I can feel grateful for at the end of tomorrow you just think about those things um then if you do that over a about three to four weeks um then there is a measurable change in people's well-being so this stuff actually it's simple and it works and and that's why I kind of like it too it's like it's a framework and there are simple things that you can do and do you you employ these in your life yeah so like I don't kind of like I've certainly um with kids and stuff I've talked about the Gratitude stuff and I what I try I don't kind of do it on that stretch we're like oh now I must sit down and do these three things because like I'm just not gonna do that but I do I do try to spend time thinking about stuff that I should be grateful for in my life particularly when it feels all starting to feel bad I think well hang on let's just pause a little bit what are some things in your life you actually can feel grateful about because brains are tricky things and they do go where you lock and if you look for what's wrong and the things are terrible and how life is awful you'll find those things and if you look for um the other things if you look for what have I got that I can be grateful for um then it's better and I have to say I've spoken to a lot of people over my life and and the people who are more content are people who um are grateful for stuff and they're by no means the wealthiest people they're people who are grateful for relationships uh and the things that they're kind of doing in their life and it's not necessarily about the material stuff it's about um yeah gratitude for people and relationships and achievements and those sorts of things how do you think about think about humans capacity to think of you know to work in the different time frames so the long term we find in our domain long-term decision making is significantly harder than you know what's immediately in front of you yeah why is that and you know how how do we overcome that I think it really is because we're still using Stone Age brains like we are using a brain that's about 200 000 years old it's it's and it hasn't changed pretty much I mean at least in a hundred thousand years it hasn't changed we are certainly using the same brain the people who you know lived in caves you know 50 60 70 000 years ago 100 that's it's the same thing so we've taken this blob it's a pretty amazing blob um and we have we've just used it really well like we've honed it um and we've practiced it and we've worked out ways to pass that learning on down and so we are using a really really old brain to try and get to grips with really complicated things like really complicated things and we still have all sorts of biases we have a bias built on our brains to see faces so that's why if you look at a kid's drawing of a house window window door kind of looks like a face sometimes you'll get Cloud you think oh it's a little bit like a face and that's because for most of human history if you looked at something and there was a possibility there was a face in there somewhere the face was coming to eat you like it was a thing in the jungle was going to LEAP out an intro so it made sense to go face run so we even have we have these really basic kind of biases built in um so when we're asking our brains to do really sophisticated really complex things like plan for retirement think about what will be happening 30 years from now think about interest rates and graphs and Returns on investment all that kind of stuff these are really abstract and complicated things um and so that's why I think that stuff is quite difficult and and no matter what we all might like to think about ourselves like brains we just we just want to avoid friction stuff it's difficult we're just less likely to do it and things that's that are easy we're more likely to do that stuff and that's again Stone Age brains friction means your brain has to work that consumes energy and we're kind of programmed to try and save energy so that's why we make assumptions and all that kind of stuff because it just saves energy um so it does take intention and focus and energy to sit down and think okay what is the long-term picture where am I going what's important to me and how am I going to get there and you could do that next week anyway but what happens is we just keep going next week and next week and next week and next week or we make a plan and we don't revisit it and we don't think about it um it is it is really about when just not made to think long term we don't do it naturally and so we do need to be um intentional about it and we do need to kind of have a plan and revisit and that is where I think coaching and advisors can be really useful because they can be a way to sort of hold you to a path or ask those questions um because they're outside of you that's that's the that's the best thing about them a degree of objectivity and also I guess I mean obviously I'm more familiar with the financial space but um a lot of energy and research has gone into ensuring the right questions are asked and the information is processed in the right way to overcome those biases yeah and um you know in markets for example there's a whole range of biases that everyone's alive to that they exist whether you can actually overcome them as a human as a whole different challenge but um and you know we've at NZ funds we've written about it quite a few times about how how we try as how we try to overcome that and your job and my job is the same thing right and so it's what it's about is you your job is to help people with something in their lives and to think about what to do and and the approach is the same you want to do that based on some evidence and you want to do that in a way that's ethical and you want to do that in a way that follows principles where the principles are cleared to people um so that you can actually make a meaningful difference in people's lives and so fundamentally you know kind of what I did in the clinical stuff and what you all do it's the same it's it's exactly the same thing yeah which is a beautiful moment to end our call on Nigel um thank you so much for your time it's been lots of fun the road trip was heaps of fun too um so on behalf of everyone Advanced funds and um and everyone who participate in those sessions uh you know thank you for joining us and um all the best it was it was good fun it was it was jolly good fun cool okay thank you [Music] this has been the Monday call brought to you by NZ funds [Music] New Zealand funds management limited is the issuer of the NZ funds kiwisaver scheme the NZ funds manage superannuation service the NZ funds advise Portfolio Service the NZ funds wealth Builder and NZ funds are Income generator [Music] a product disclosure statement for each is available at nzfunds.co.nz [Music] as performance is not necessarily an indicator of future returns [Music]