Come with me on an exploration of self-discovery. On this podcast, we decipher what really matters

and unravel all of the chaos and complexity of day-to-day living in order to learn how

to build an essential life. I have often advocated that what matters most lasts longest.

In other words, that you have to be thinking really long-term if you want to even decipher

the essential few from the trivial many. But more often than not recently, I have found

that I feel like I'm just reacting and responding to the last thing on my calendar, the last

thing that I'm doing, and that there isn't enough time for really thinking about the

longer-term strategy and how it all fits together. And I don't think I'm alone in this.

I'm confident that you experienced this as well, that in a Zoom-eat-sleep repeat world,

that it's just too easy to get pulled into the minutia of this moment. And so for this

reason, I have invited my friend Dory Clark, who has done so many great things, including

being one of the world's 50s most influential management thinkers. She teaches all over

the place. She's in universities all the time, and she's written a new book, which I was

in love with from the moment I saw its cover, The Long Game, How to Be a Long-Term Thinker

in a Short-Term World. Dory Clark, welcome to the What's Essential Podcast.

Greg, I'm so glad to be here. Thank you so much.

Before we get into how this research and writing can help us immediately to do what it says

on the cover, would you mind sharing a little more about, let's call it, a readers-digest

version of your life from birth till this moment?

I can absolutely digest it for you. So I grew up in a small town in North Carolina. It

was basically a gulf resort, kind of a retirement resort. So a little bit of a weird

place for a kid to grow up, but there it was a place that was tiny enough that it really

...