April Rinne | How to Develop Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change

Srini Rao

 April, welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

April Rinne

Thank you for having me, I'm delighted to be here.

Srini Rao

It is my pleasure to have you here. So I found out about your work by way of your publicist. You told me about your new book, Flux, Eat Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change. And I remember going and reading about your story and I was thinking to myself, this is an absolute hell yes when I started to dig into it. So I wanted to start by asking you, what is one of the most important things that you learned from one or both of your parents that influenced and shaped who you've become and what you ended up doing with your life?

April Rinne

Oh, what a wonderful kickoff question. Let's dive in. Um, so my parents were both educators and, um, my dad was my rock and my champion and like two peas in a pod. We totally got each other. Um, my mom had lots of challenges. It was not easy. So I'm going to focus on, well, they both taught me many, many things about life. But my dad was a cultural geographer.

meaning that he studied the migratory patterns of people and plants and animals. And it was pretty cool. I grew up, um, it wasn't, didn't make a lot of money or anything, but this love of diversity, this love of how people connected with places and built cultures and ideas transported from one way to, from one place to the other. And all of this sense of interconnectedness. And so my dad, one of the things he taught me many things, but one that I hold dear is just the fundamental, um,

integrity, equality, dignity of humans, and that every human has an interesting story to tell, and in particular, that the more different someone was from you, whether it was the language they spoke or how they looked or the food they ate or whatever, the more different someone was from you, that meant the more interesting they were to get to know. And so he would always be like, you know, when I left for school, he'd be like,

Why would you hang out with people who look like you and talk like you and eat like you? And, you know, he's like, those are fine, fine people spend time with them too. But like, you know what that is like. Go find them person who's most different from you and get to know them. And that is something just that not just love of diversity, but a real advocacy of it and a real enthusiasm for it. And that bled directly into everything from my love of travel and globe trotting and exploring.

It's really far-flung ends of the earth to the career decisions I made, to how I seek out to build friendships, community, etc., and more broadly, how I see the world today.

Srini Rao

Hmm. You know, one of the things that we've had happen, I think, as an unfortunate byproduct of the internet over the last, you know, probably four or five years is just rampant confirmation bias where people, you know, read things that confirm their existing beliefs. They surround themselves with people who believe the same things they do, who are just like them. And obviously, this has led to a great deal of division in society, particularly here in the United States.

Why do you think that the perspective that your dad gave you is not more prevalent, and how do we make that more prevalent in society as a whole?

April Rinne

Oh, well, you know what's interesting is that as a kid, I'm five, six, seven years old, and pretty much this is the Kool-Aid I'm drinking every day, right? It's over the breakfast table. It's how we spend our free time. You know, it's this diversity, diversity. Seek out different things and different people. And also that it doesn't have to be halfway around the world, that there are many different kinds of people living all around you every day, right? So I grew up assuming, kind of thinking like...

Well, this is what all kids are taught, right? This just happens to be my version, but this is, you know, I thought what I was experiencing was normal or the norm, the mainstream. And then it really was when I got particularly to college where I realized, wow, I was very, very lucky. This is not the daily diet of most people. And that to me was a real wake up to start thinking exactly along the lines that you're talking about. So...

To answer the question, I think there are a few different ways we could look at this. One is very much what is the environment in which you're raised? What are the values that are instilled? What are the things that you're taught are important? And teaching something like every person has fundamental dignity and integrity and different people are super interesting for different reasons with different life experiences, that's not rocket science to teach, right?

And that doesn't even require that you yourself have experienced it. That just requires emphasizing and talking about and exploring and being open to these ideas and doing so with either your children or young people or older people too. I mean, it's not age specific. It's just that I think when you learn and have that kind of immersion young, it sticks with you. I didn't know anything different and I came to realize just how, you know, both valuable, invaluable, if you will, that kind of upbringing is.

So a piece of it is, I don't want to call it just parenting, because lots of people can be parents. Lots of people can care about young people. Lots of people can nurture and mentor and all of that. It's about what are the choices we make about the conversations we have and the things we prioritize. So there's a piece though that's around that, kind of the connective tissue, if you will, that binds us together as individuals, as cultures, and what are the values and norms that are ingrained within that. Having a value that diversity is our strength.

April Rinne

That can be baked into society or a culture, but it takes, you know, it takes, I don't want to say just effort, it takes a decision to do that. It takes bringing this topic up time and again, day after day, and not just talking about it, going and exploring it, which again, you can do in your own neighborhood. There's not a single place on earth. Certain places are more homogeneous, we could say, but there's diversity of life experience everywhere.

you know, somebody who's healthy, getting to know the reality of somebody who's had chronic illness their whole life. That is a very simple but profound example of seeing diversity. Young and old, different walks of life, different jobs, different, you know, people who have been through hardship and tragedy. That, all of that is all around us in any community you go to. It does take some effort to seek it out. But I think it starts with that, those very basic like, acknowledgements of

what really matters and what kinds of conversations do we want to spark? And do we want to enable others to be able to participate in and facilitate?

Srini Rao

Now, what is the responsibility of political leaders and media creators in transforming this conversation?

April Rinne

Mmm.

If I had the answer to this, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. I would be on, you know, some bus somewhere, sort of doing a campaign around exactly this. This is, I think, one of the questions of our time. What do, well, I think to some degree politicians and media, there's a shared responsibility. It's not unique to one's profession, but then I think there are some responsibilities that are unique.

given the seat you're sitting in or the place you're standing and the power that you have. I would like to think that all politicians and all media creators have a responsibility to bring people closer together rather than polarize them further. I would like to think that we could craft conversations. And again, whether that's a political debate or whether that's an article or an op-ed.

We could craft conversations that are designed to help people understand different perspectives and understand one another's stories and be able to develop a more common understanding that, again, it's the classic, I may not agree with your opinions, but I still can respect you as a person. That's the piece I feel like we're losing. Rather than...

deliberately stoking conversations, debates, and or media content that its sole purpose is to divide, its sole purpose is to attack, its sole purpose is to otherize, if you will, and then demonize that other. So at a very basic level, I would say, you know, it's, it's that. Um, I think, yeah, let me, let me pause there and just say that that's where we begin. Um.

April Rinne

how do we have these conversations that, again, it's, well, the footnote I suppose I would add, and I see this in my research and my writing and my travels and time living in many different cultures over my life, that whole sense of like, on the surface, you don't agree with somebody's story, you don't agree with their opinion, and then you label them as a bad person, right?

I think we're seeing this in the US as well as it is happening most definitely around the world. There's this notion though that like you just make that kind of judgment. And one thing that I find again and again is if you actually have the ability, and this is the hard part, it's becoming less frequent. But if you can have the opportunity to sit down with someone who's very different from you or whose views are very different from you and you can hear their story, you can listen to their story and understand what.

were the breadcrumbs or peeling back the layer of their onion, what were the experiences that led them to believe what they do? When you can do that and hear someone's story, even if you don't agree with where they landed, it is extraordinarily helpful to seeing how they believe what they believe. And it becomes much more, it's more, much more humanizing, if you will. And no one

maybe we'll come back to this, but for example, no one is born into this world, no child is born into the world untrustworthy, not trusting other people. That is something we're taught. When you listen to someone's story about how they learn to mistrust other people, you start to see a bigger piece around. So why is it so difficult for them to trust certain situations or certain, you know, actors today? It's that, and trust is just one example. It's that kind of thing though.

more time being able to listen to one of their stories and that's where I think in particular media plays a role.

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, it's funny because I'm smiling because this is, you know, describing a lot of the philosophy behind why I choose the guest cities. You know, that's why you and we have had everybody from porn stars to presidential candidates as guests on the show. And I remember talking to a porn star. You know, we titled the episode destigmatizing the adult film industry because it was so interesting to hear it from somebody, you know, like the reality versus what we think of, you know, because.

April Rinne

Hmm...

April Rinne

Okay.

Srini Rao

What do we do? We judge somebody for making this choice without understanding their story. But when you dissect the story, it's a totally different experience. I remember my sister listened to the episode and she was like, wow, she was really smart. I'm like, yeah, of course she was. Why would she not be smart just because she's chosen to be an adult film actress? Like, that's a that's a judgment that we place on somebody based on, you know, social narratives.

April Rinne

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

April Rinne

Mm-hmm.

April Rinne

Totally, totally. And I think the example of porn films is a really, really good one. And then you listen to, and there are certain things in life, and here I won't even put porn films in this category, but there are certain things in life, certain experiences. An example that comes up quite a lot these days, I think, is homelessness. And we are very quick to judge people who are homeless or houseless.

or to not see them, we can come back to that too. We sort of ignore, oh, that's bad, and we sort of put it aside. And there's this sense in, you know, a refugee is another example. No one wants to be a refugee. No one opts into this. No one wants to be homeless. No one opts into this. And yet we come up with these stories around something perhaps that they did wrong, or that being homeless,

Srini Rao

Nah.

April Rinne

discounts you in all these other ways. And it makes it, we're completely glossing over a much, a much, I want to say richer, deeper, but much more profound story that if we understand it, we start to see the individuals who have been through great challenge and hardship, not only as some of the strongest people on the planet, um, and having strengths.

that we discount or don't see, but having strengths that those of us who do have a house over our head, we lack. We actually, you know, it's a pity that we don't have more of that kind of grit because of what we take for granted. But you do start to see different professions, different experiences as far more, hmm, it goes beyond holistic. But you begin to see, again, the value and the intelligence.

of every human being.

Srini Rao

Well, I'm speaking of the greatest hardships that people experience in life. I mean, you probably had one that I think anybody listening to this couldn't even fathom. And that was honestly the reason that I wanted to have this conversation. So for our listeners, can you explain to them what it is I'm referring to?

April Rinne

Yeah.

April Rinne

Yeah, of course, of course. It would be my honor to do so. And these days I sort of give the caveat of like, I'm about to drop a hand grenade into the conversation, but I actually, I do so very, very joyfully because it is one of the things that, by far the hardest thing I've ever been through, but by far the single experience that has shaped who I am. And you know, even I would not have written my book without this happening. So.

More than 25 years ago, I will date myself, when I was in college I was 20 and I was studying overseas halfway around the world and I got a phone call right at the end of that year of studies. But basically both of my parents were killed in a car accident and it happened out of the blue when they died. Needless to say my whole life flipped upside down.

It wasn't just how do I rebuild my family, but it was how do I deal with my grief and anxiety, what do I do about my career, all of a sudden I've got to be self-sufficient, how do I take care of myself, like everything just melted. And even when they died, you know, it was my first experience with death. And I sort of jumped into the deep end without a, you know, little, without any water wings.

But when they died, like I had never been to a funeral, none. My grandparents were living, thankfully. I'd never lost a pet, all these different things. So my first funeral was the funeral of both of my parents. And yeah, that changed everything because we can dig into this more, whether it's one's emotional and mental health, whether it's how you think about the future and the decisions you make. In my case, it led to a...

a very sort of rational, irrational fear that I didn't have long to live either and that any one of us could be knocked off tomorrow, which candidly is true. But I began to really live that experience almost at a cellular level. And even though I had good health and lots of energy and I was only 20, I had this very, very existential sense of the fragility of life but also the fact that we're all on borrowed time.

April Rinne

And if that's the case, you know, to quote Mary Oliver, what are you going to do with your one precious life? And that led me to make very, very different decisions about what I wanted to do, how I wanted to show up, what things mattered, et cetera, et cetera. So maybe we can get more into that if you'd like, but that's, that's the experience. Yeah.

Srini Rao

Yeah, totally. There are numerous questions that come from this. One thing that I always wonder is why is it that, you know, it's a tragedy or a major crisis that becomes a catalyst or wake up call for so many people to make drastic changes to their life. So let's start with that.

April Rinne

Yeah, so I'll give, I'm going to jump a little bit ahead straight away because a question I get all the time and particularly around, you know, flux and navigating change and really making big shifts in how we think about change, right? When people are like, does it require tragedy? You know, is it only when you've been through something so bad? And in my case, it was, you know, death, but for a lot of people, I think it's.

really bad illness, it's something that has put your back against the wall and you understand your morbidity. Um, and it's funny because I'm like, no, it absolutely doesn't require going through tragedy. It's actually a lot more fun if you don't, but it requires stretching beyond your comfort zone, even when you don't have to. And that's the part that makes people really kind of.

I don't want to say trip up, but it's like, ooh, but if things are good, why would I do that? And it's like, well then yeah, you're never gonna get to where you wanna be because you're gonna stick to what's safe and familiar. Tragedy or real hardship or challenge, that's what it does to you. It knocks you out of the nest with no choice. It puts your back against the wall and makes you address these things that, otherwise we just kinda don't wanna have to go there. Kinda wanna coast, kinda wanna just let life play out.

Um, so, so I always like to sort of bring it, remind people of that. Tragedy is not, it's not a gating factor, but it can be a huge catalyst because that's what it does. You know, it really makes you wake up and say, this is for real. And, and so much of this, again, maybe we can come back to this if you want. Um, there's just this existential nature, right, of what we're talking about. And.

Srini Rao

Yeah, yeah.

April Rinne

And that sense of any hardship makes you realize, holy crap, I don't have that long in life. What am I going to make of my time? And I think that's time being fundamentally the most finite asset we have. That really has an impact on people. I will also say, bit of a side note, but the way I like to characterize what I went through is that.

I kind of experienced the equivalent of a midlife crisis when I was 20, because the questions that I was asking then, now many years later when I see people going through some variation of a midlife or a third life, quarter life, I don't know, but people struggling at some point later in their careers in particular, they're asking the same kinds of questions. And so it's interesting because as much as...

I don't wish tragedy on anybody and sure there's a piece of me that wishes that my parents hadn't died and of course I miss them but missing them won't bring them back. I continue to have this sense of gratitude for having that kind of crisis, that young, because it gave me that much more future that I could do things differently.

Srini Rao

Mm. Yeah, you know, so this is kind of one of the things that I've always thought about it. But, you know, like I can listen to a story like yours, I can read your book. But I don't think that I will ever understand something like this until I've experienced it. And we had Frank Ostaseski from the Zen Hospice Project here as a guest. And I told him that my greatest fear in life was not being alone, but it was that my parents wouldn't be around to see milestone moments like.

April Rinne

Mm-hmm.

April Rinne

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

you know, getting married, you're having kids, especially now that I'm 43. And this is what he said to me. Take a listen.

Srini Rao

And I knew that I wanted to bring that clip into this conversation because, you know, I wonder, you know, having lost your parents, you know, you mentioned that you were married. How does that transform the experiences of these like huge moments in your life like getting married, like the ones that you probably never imagined your parents wouldn't be around to see?

April Rinne

Yeah, oh my gosh, like my, so right now just listening to that, my heart is like just beaming. It's like bursting out of my rib cage because it's so brilliant, so spot on, and so how I feel about everyone. You know, not just my own experience, but everyone to be listening and absorbing what we just heard. Just like spot on. Um, so.

It's an interesting question because, I mean, when it comes to relationships and things, I can definitely tell you here I am able to, I'm speaking with you, you know, many years later in the immediate aftermath of losing my parents. Oh yeah. It was basically, it was like, everything felt pretty doomed. Everything that I thought my parents might participate gone, right? It was not easy, but there's a parallel process that starts to go on, at least it did for me, which was, okay, my parents aren't here.

But like humanity didn't disappear, other people didn't disappear who care about me. I need to rebuild my family. And so it wasn't, it was no longer my biological parents, but what I like to say is in the years since, none of this was official adoption, but you know, hypothetically in the heart, I have now effectively three sets of adopted parents.

One in particular, that I, you know, that's where I'm expected to spend holidays from time to time now that I'm married and so forth. But like, I had other families step in and say, we have our eye on you. Now, would any of them ever replace my mom and dad? No. Did any of them ever try to? Absolutely not. They had the utmost respect for what I had, you know, that you only have your mom and dad if that's how you grew up, right? But over the years, I have...

built actually a much bigger family of choice than I would have had my parents lived. Now I'm not saying better or worse, I'm just saying it's different, but was I able to get to the point where I felt like I was part of a family again? Absolutely. Now at the same time I will tell you that for many years, I would say a solid decade throughout my 20s, it related to this rational yet irrational belief that I didn't have long to live.

April Rinne

It extended to, and this was quite problematic, but it extended to this rational, irrational belief that the more I loved someone else, the more likely they were gonna die tomorrow. So, needless to say, I was a disaster for dating. I was kind of toxic, right? I mean, you would not have wanted to date me, but also I didn't wanna date anybody because I was afraid of being hurt again. And so, all of these...

paths, or all of these evolutions are running in parallel. What is my relationship to myself? And this speaks directly to what we just heard. And I don't want to sound too morbid here, but I will tell you that for a long time, since my 20s for sure, I have walked myself through my own, not my own death, I don't know how I'm going to die and I hope to live to be triple digits, but I have walked myself kind of to the edge of that cliff and been like...

Alright, okay, so now let's go make the most of today. I have walked myself through, my husband is, he's gonna die at some point. We joke sometimes about who's gonna go first, but that's neither here nor there. I know, if I were to get the news that my husband had passed away, I can tell you what I would do. And maybe I do, maybe I don't do that, but I have this sense of what would I do to hold and support myself.

so that I know I will be fine when that happens. I will be sad, but I will be fine. And what's interesting to me is most people are too afraid of doing that work, so they fear the death. But it's the walking through the fire, and then you don't get sad about it per se. I mean, you'll be sad when it happens. You don't fear it so much. You just realize, yeah, I'm gonna have to walk through that fire, but I have done everything I possibly can to be ready for that moment, which gives me...

Srini Rao

Yeah.

April Rinne

the freedom, if you will, emotionally, to go and live my life fully today. So there are these different paths. So the one was my relationship with myself, and could I love myself? Could I care for myself? Could I see myself still as me despite all of the loss and the challenges that were just, you know, ripping me every which direction each day?

Then there was the path or the journey, my relationship with other people, both a dating or a marriage kind of relationship, but then more broadly, what does family mean? And then the concentric circle beyond that is, what is my role in society at large? And what's interesting is you realize that we all have biological families. A lot of people don't, they're not, they don't grow up with...

a family unit or their biological parents or, you know, parents split or are lost or, you know, family strife, all the rest. Like there's all kinds of stuff that sense of family doesn't exist for a lot of people. And yet we're all still part of this thing called humanity. We all still have a relationship with the broader whole. And if you can find a sense of home and being within that, even if it's not necessarily your biological mother and father.

you can still feel that sense of purpose and connection, and relationship-wise, you can still thrive.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Wow. Well, let's get into the book. Finally, you open the book by saying we're living in a world of influx. The workplace is influx climate is influx organizations are influx careers are influx education learning and schools are influx public health is influx planetary health is influx social cohesion is influx financial markets, whether family life democracy dreams and expectations and you say in a world in flux, we must learn to be comfortable with the reality that around the next corner is more change.

much of which is unexpected beyond our power to choose or both. It's about a shift from struggling with such change to harnessing and developing an eagerness to use it well. And I know that you have what you call the eight superpowers for. Thriving in constant change, because it's true. We are basically in a state of constant change. And I think that, you know, you talk about the fact that certainty is an illusion. I realized this, I think by the time I was 30, that

everything that I ever planned for my life wasn't going to happen. But you open with the very first super power, which is to run slower. And it's kind of ironic, you know, in sort of rapid change, you say when we run to learn slower, the outcomes are better across to health, a stronger connection with our emotions and intuition, the board, wiser decisions, less stress, greater resilience, improved presence, focus and clarity of purpose.

April Rinne

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

paradoxically, slowing down actually gives us more time, which leads to less anxiety. Slowing down enhances our productivity in ways that matter and sends burnout to the dustbin. In reality, there are many kinds of growth that can come only with rest. And it's kind of an odd contrast of this world that is changing at such a rapid pace, and yet the key to thriving in it is to run slower. How do you convince people of that?

when people like me are basically writing articles about optimizing for productivity instead of presence, which I knew you'd talk about. Medium is a website literally every day filled with productivity hacks galore. And the biggest complaint that people have is, oh, I don't have enough time to do all this stuff.

April Rinne

Yep. So I'm just sitting here grinning because I love digging into this sort of thing and how it, not that it rubs people the wrong way, but it's so contrary. Um, so counter, so it's, it's contrary to a lot of what we're taught. It's counterintuitive and yet it is far more fit for a world and a future in flux. But I want to go back and, and I apologize. I have a couple of things I want to fill in here real quick. Um, one is, you know, that list of

X, Y, and Z is in flux, right? Believe it or not, I didn't even write this about the pandemic, right? It's quite funny when you're like, okay, I kind of have to put that out there of, um, you know, I've been writing the book since 2018, really as mostly from my futurist lens, um, also, you know, global perspective and so forth. And also with this human experience, this lived experience with change, where I'm looking at the future going like, there is so much that's changing right now, but also there's more of it ahead. And

Srini Rao

Hehehehe

April Rinne

humans are really not well equipped to deal with this kind of constant, relentless change. That was 2018. Um, then, you know, 2020 hit and people are like, oh my God, the world is in flux. My life is in flux. Right. And so there's this kind of incredible, I could not have asked for a better validation or acceleration for some of these ideas, but I want to put that out there so that people know. Like,

Srini Rao

Hehehehe

April Rinne

Yes, we're all, we are, we can all look at something over the last year and a half, two years, you know, wow, there's really something here, but I want us to keep in mind that there's more of this kind of, you know, I hope there's not another pandemic anytime too soon, and we know there will be, but we don't know when, and hopefully not that bad, but what I want to tease out is that there's more of this kind of uncertainty, unknowns. The only steady state is one of constant change.

We are, that is not the world that a lot of us, including myself, were raised to believe we're going to live in. Right? So just want to kind of, as you listen to this conversation, keep that in mind that this isn't a 2020, 2021 thing. This is a forever moving forward thing. And how do we prepare? How do we develop the mindset and the superpowers to thrive in this kind of change? So.

Before we get to the eight flux superpowers, the one other thing that I talk about quite a bit in the book, but it relates, I kinda like to tee it up as part of the superpowers, is this notion of a flux mindset. And the flux mindset is an ability to see all change, whether it's, you know, quote unquote, good or bad, whether it's expected or unexpected, whether it's something you got to opt into or something you couldn't control. It's the ability to see all of it as an opportunity to learn and to grow and to improve.

But that's, there's a sort of initial step of being able to open this flux mindset, to be able to acknowledge that your relationship to change needs some help. At least it does for a world in flux. Um, and I find that pretty much everybody does in different ways. And then once you have that open, that, that willingness to explore, then you look to harness that flux mindset to unlock and develop the eight flux superpowers, the first one of which is run slower. And so.

Each of the eight flux superpowers is actually counterintuitive in some way. Rubs you the wrong way. You're kind of like, eh. And I gotta say, anyone who wants to write product, you know, pieces about productivity hacks and so on and so forth, you are welcome to do so. You, anybody, right? I have no problem. Feel free. The challenge I'm looking at, and again, going back to some of the existential stuff, I have never met anybody on the planet who on their deathbed says,

Srini Rao

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

April Rinne

If only I'd been more productive. Never. So the running slower is about getting past the, I got to do everything all the time right now and being able to slow down enough to be able to see what really matters and then go do that. And you can be as productive, you'll be productive. It's so much more important to me to be productive about the things that matter than to be productive for its own sake.

Having more meetings in a given day does not make you more productive in a life purpose kind of way, unless those meetings are actually worthwhile. All of this is just so backwards. But here's the piece I want to kind of tee up for us. So it's not just what is changing, right? So much is changing. You rattle off the list. I won't don't need to repeat it. But it is also this pace of change, right? That the way I like to put it is the pace of change has never been as fast as it is today.

And yet it is likely to never again be this slow. So you just kind of let that sink in for a minute and it's kind of exciting and it's kind of terrifying, right? And why it's terrifying is because the narrative that society tells us, I think most people, including myself for most of my life, what was I taught? When the pace of change quickens, I'm supposed to run faster and just keep up. Right? And yet I'm going to venture to say wrong.

If we know already that the pace of change is increasing, and we know that we're already running as fast as we can, I think a lot of people would say they're running faster than they want to. They're really, this is exhaustion and burnout and anxiety, but this is also simply not being able to show up fully for other people. This is not being able to have new fresh ideas because you're exhausted. This is all of that as well. If we're looking at this going, wait a minute, pace of change is increasing and we're supposed to run faster, so you're...

telling me, not you, but society is telling us that however fast you're running today, you need and you should run even faster tomorrow, faster next week, next month, next year, you know, all of this effectively for the rest of your life. And I look at this, both, you know, the futurist in me and the human in me is like, time out, hold on. What kind of life is that, right? It's certainly not the kind of life I wish to live, but even more important, far more important for me and for the book.

April Rinne

I don't think it's a reality in which anyone can truly thrive. I don't think it's a reality in which anyone can actually reach their full potential. So when I say run slower, I, you'll note, I did not say stop. I did not say be lazy. I didn't say any of that. I said run, but do so at a pace that is sustainable for life.

Srini Rao

Hmm. Wow. So the next superpower is to see what's invisible. And you say that each of us is inspired by, you know, by what we see, but in a world of constant change, that principle only gets us so far. How do we move beyond what we can see and find inspiration and what we can't? How do we learn to see differently and make the invisible visible? This is all directly tied to writing your new script. The point is these social orientations fundamentally, fundamentally influence how we see, for example, people who live in collectivist societies tend to prioritize the context of a social situation.

and the big picture when solving problems, they hone in the overarching relationships and interplay of systems beyond any individual's control. But then you go on to talk about privilege, which is what struck me the most about this chapter. You said privilege blinds, it limits the perceptions of what's in their script for people, and it keeps them from seeing the full picture and what's in the wings. Now, what's funny is I had Seth Godin here right after Hero at the practice, and we were talking about privilege.

April Rinne

Okay. Yep.

Srini Rao

And I told him, he said, I think that one of the things that I've become hyper aware of over the better part of the last year or so was that I had a relatively privileged upbringing. I mean, my parents, my dad's a college professor. We weren't dirt poor. I mean, he struggled early in his career, but for the most part, there's no question as to whether I was gonna get a college education, whether I'd always have a roof over my head. And that's the funny thing, like Indian parents, despite what a pain in the ass they can be, the one thing we always know is no matter how old you are, that door is open.

April Rinne

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

always open with food on the table. Seth said this to me, and I wanted to share it with you and see what you thought.

April Rinne

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

So with that in mind, two things. How do we maintain awareness of the fact that many of us have privileged upbringings and expect, accept the reality that not everybody grew up in the same circumstance with us, but also keep it from blinding us and allowing us to capitalize on the opportunities that we have.

April Rinne

Yup. Ha ha ha.

April Rinne

Mm-hmm.

April Rinne

Yep. So I love this and I love what Seth said because Seth actually described the world that I worked in for more than a decade. He described, so Lucy is a microfinance client. I can tell you by her story. Microfinance is small scale lending and savings products for the economically active poor. I built my career on microfinance and I worked with Acumen, know their whole team quite well in Sub-Saharan Africa, across Latin America, the Middle East, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, like...

Most places were emerging frontier developing markets. And this is one of the examples I use for see what's invisible. So traditional bank, just picking up on what Seth was saying, traditional banks would deem Lucy unbankable. They would not see her because, well, now in her case, with her million shillings, she would be deemed.

bankable because she has enough for a savings account. But most of the economically active poor, Lucy before earlier in her career, right? Unbankable, quote unquote, we're not going to lend to you, you're risky. And there's an implicit assumption that somehow you've, you know, in a way, done something wrong to end up poor. No, the economically active poor have done nothing wrong. The challenge they face is that they were born in the wrong place, wrong time, wrong side of the tracks, whatever. And this, and they're in.

an environment that doesn't have, you know, the kind of economic infrastructure that helps a lot of people thrive. So I bring this up because it's like spot on. And once you learn to see that invisible quote unquote invisible talent potential opportunity, you want to invest in it immediately. And so microfinance is basically lending and savings products for people with no collateral.

who would not be seen by traditional banks. But what I love is that microfinance repayment rates are the best repayment rates you're gonna find for any loan, anywhere in the world, 99 plus percent repayment.

Srini Rao

Unlike Donald Trump who borrows billions and doesn't pay it back

April Rinne

So.

So exactly, or a corporate loan, whatever default rates, you name it, because you're lending based on character, you're lending based. And also when you don't have a lot of this, I'm going to come back to privilege because it's all, all over the place here. When you don't have that privilege, so to speak, you can be damn sure you're going to repay this loan and you're going to, you're going to use it. You're going to, you see it also, it becomes, um, more than just the finance.

It's one of those things, character-based lending is just really, really smart. And if you do it in the right way, then microfinance, this is maybe a bit of a side note, but for those people listening who are interested, you know, microfinance began by the first microloan in a modern sense that was made. It's kind of this classic case. One loan of $27 was made to 10 people. So each person got $2.70. This was back in the 70s.

But the condition of the loan is, if any of you cannot repay your portion of the loan, the other nine people are responsible for it. Now, this was a group of village women who, all of whom were, again, very much considered part of the economically active poor, but they made soap, they made brooms, they made, basically they would use this money to get access to raw material so they could sidestep the middlemen and actually earn more profit on the very basic goods they were making.

And so all of a sudden, what do you have? You have these 10 women who are like, we're going to help one another succeed because when we all pay our loans, we all win. And none of them were in a position, for example, if they couldn't make their loan, that they would like dodge town. No, they lived in a village with their families and like all they had was that reputation. So anyway, I bring this back because invisible, this is not just invisible value, this is not just invisible talent.

April Rinne

This is like, wow, we have designed our financial services to not see the reality of a lot of people. This is insane. Because when you can learn to see that, all of a sudden you're unlocking not just poverty alleviation, you're unlocking micro enterprise, you're unlocking livelihoods, you're unlocking the ability for people to then be able to pay for their kids to go to school, pay to have a tap and a toilet in their home. These are things that we, again,

those with privilege take for granted. So coming back to privilege, it's huge. And I do just want to underscore one thing that I've learned. I'll sort of put it out there because I've learned this through interviews and lots of just kind of reflecting and writing and hashing out things is that there are many, many kinds of privilege. And financial privilege is definitely one, right? But that tends to be where we head first.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

April Rinne

I would also argue that being raised in an emotionally stable, loving family is a huge privilege that actually, I would say, pays even greater dividends than financial security over time. There are all kinds of privileges, and so each of us, access to education is a privilege. Access to primary education is a privilege.

April Rinne

It's extraordinary. And when you have that kind of privilege, again, this comes from what my dad and my parents taught me, the sense of if you have that kind of privilege, you have a duty and a responsibility to give back and to help those who don't have that privilege to gain it. So anyway, I just want to tease out, like privilege comes in many different flavors, and we would all do a little bit better to sit down and write a list of the ways in which.

you have been privileged even if you may tend to focus on the ways in which you have not been.

Srini Rao

No. So I don't know why this thought occurred to me the other day. I'd been writing a lot about the creator economy and the fact that it is ripe with inequality, where a handful of creators take the majority of funding on crowdfunding platforms. A handful of authors sell the majority of books. And maybe you can answer this question for me. Is it possible to take this whole idea of microfinance that we've applied to the economically active poor and apply it to the middle class with the same kind of dynamic, where

April Rinne

Mm-hmm

Srini Rao

there's the risk that people optimize for self-interest over the collectives.

April Rinne

Oh, I love this. So, um, I could talk about this all day. And what I love, it's funny. It's not, it's not, microfinance does show up a couple of places in the book, but it's this part of my background, this part of my history that so formed what I do. And yet I don't get to talk about it that often today. So I'm like, this is great. Like we could spend all our time right here. Um, yes, we could, but a couple, a couple of different ways to look at this. Um, one is.

Microfinance does exist in the United States, in developed countries around the world, in some form or fashion. Now it usually shows up as like some kind of access to capital with friendly terms, small business loans. It's not the micro like we think of it, but a flavor of it does. One of the biggest challenges, and this is actually where I spent

bunch of my time in this space, the more, there's a bit of a catch 22, sort of, the more sophisticated a legal and regulatory environment, we could say sophisticated, we could say complex, we could say crazy, layered with all kinds of rules and regulations, the more layers of rules and regulations you have from a policy perspective, the harder it often is to get microfinance to take root. So I mention that because...

There are all kinds of opportunities to bring microfinance to the United States, to other income, income levels, demographics, et cetera. The challenge, one of the biggest challenges we face right now is that the rules and regulations in place won't let it happen. They also make it look, I kid you not, and this is where the work I did in emerging markets was super interesting. But in a lot of places, microfinance on the surface.

Srini Rao

now.

April Rinne

despite knowing 99 plus percent repayment rates, dah, dah. Microfinance on the surface is deemed illegal because the rules on the books say you can only lend to people with collateral. And so to some degree you understand why that rule might have first been put in place of like don't make a loan to somebody if you can't, if they don't have some way to pay it back even if it's seizing their property kind of thing, right? But then you look at it and you go, this rule was not designed for the people we're trying to deliver microfinance to.

Srini Rao

No.

April Rinne

And so one of the things I did was in dozens of countries around the world, I helped draft new legislation that actually saw microfinance for what it is. That it's not collateral based and that they had special provisions. And we, you know, we did all of that. But in a country, let's go back to Lucy, a country like Kenya, at the time this happened, most emerging economies had one banking law, right? It's like one law.

pretty standard, often incorporated from their colonial history, but it worked alright, but wasn't super sophisticated. And so introducing a microfinance law, you could actually streamline and integrate those laws together. You come to somewhere like the US and it's like, oh my god, we have how many thousand laws about finance? We have to change all of those to get microfinance? People just, their eyes start glazing over.

Srini Rao

So I've heard.

April Rinne

But it's not to say that it A, isn't possible, or B, wouldn't work really well. So some of the things, even something like the jobs act, which transformed a lot of ways that we think about microfinance, that in and of itself was an extraordinary policy innovation. Because what it did, it did unlock prior to that, it would be like if you want to participate, if you want to invest.

You can only do so if you have, you know, seven figures and above kind of thing. And people were going, well, that's not reality. So it did, it started, but we need much more in that regard. But is it possible? Totally. Um, is it going to happen? I'm not sure though, just to, you know, kind of mind meld a little bit. I don't know that alone would solve the.

inequality in the creator economy that you're talking about, it would definitely expand access to capital in a productive way, no question. But this tension that we have around a few people taking off with the lion's share of the upside, that's going to require, I think, policy and other innovation beyond just the piece we're talking about here.

Srini Rao

Sorry, say that again April, I had to connect my power to my headphones.

April Rinne

Oh, sorry. That, um... How far? Just the last... That last sentence. Okay. Um... I think that...

Srini Rao

Yeah, you're good. That last sentence.

April Rinne

The policy innovation that we're describing here is one piece of a bigger puzzle, so to speak, additional to tackle the inequality between a few creatives making off with a lion's share of benefits. That's going to require policy and other kinds of innovation that go beyond simply the example of the forum we're talking about here. Yeah.

Srini Rao

them the finance. Yeah, I mean, because I couldn't help but think like, if you were to give aspiring creators $1,000 would get them a hell of a long way because I mean, compared to you know, when I went to college when it took $1,000 just to build a website, $1,000 would get you pretty damn far today if you use it wisely.

April Rinne

Yes.

April Rinne

Yes. So something like that. Absolutely. Now that is, and here, you know, there's a difference between, how would we look at that kind of, keep in mind, you know, microfinance loans, there's still loans that carry interest that are repayable, you know, all of that. So there's also, depending on the crowdfunding platform you're using, um, or, you know, anyone is using, sometimes that is deemed to be debt. Um.

It's usually debt that's forgivable. So you can kind of say, don't expect to be repaid, right? It could also be equity where you're like, you own this until, you know, some future point in time or you own it forever. But when, you know, there might be a payout at some point. So it depends on when we talk about like a thousand dollars, what would that $1,000 look like, because if we treated it just like microfinance, it would be a loan that is due and payable. And so we'd want to make sure that we have the

terms right that that's fair for people etc but then also you know there's this there's this other angle which is more equity we're gonna give you a thousand dollars and you know do we perhaps own a piece of what you're gonna build on the road or do we just treat it more like you know practically speaking like a grant which is doable also and here just one quick example it's quite fun but

I'm guessing, um, so Acumen, Seth talked about them, but there's also the platform Kiva. Um, if you're familiar with Kiva. So if you go back, I was actually Kiva's, I mentioned that I have training as a lawyer and whatnot, I don't practice a lot today, but it's one of the chapters in my book of life. I was actually Kiva's general counsel when they were three months old. And had to figure out, this was, I loved it. It was so much fun what we had to figure out.

Srini Rao

Wow.

April Rinne

But I just want to remind people, so Kiva is a wonderful example. And Kiva works in the US. But their start was in, actually, exactly where Seth was, in East Africa, sub-Saharan Africa. But they now work in every country, I think, except for Iraq and North Korea, if memory serves. Like, they're lending all over the place. But there...

individuals can make loans as small as $25 to entrepreneurs and small farmers, small local farmers and all that sort of stuff around the world. Um, you are technically when, when you sign up to make a Kiva loan, you say it's 25 bucks and it should have a term of two to three years or whatever, you know, whatever you choose opt into. But when that loan comes due, you know, think about it, you've lent 25 bucks to a farmer in Uganda, you're, they're like, okay, you get $25 back. Of course you're thinking, no.

I want to invest this in another farmer. Keep the money going. So what's fascinating is something like 89% of Kiva borrowers, when they make that quote investment, they never expect to see the money back. They just want to keep helping entrepreneurs. So it's that kind of mentality that we want to bring to greater swaths of society as well, which is I want my income, yes it's an investment, but I want it to be actively working for others at all times.

Srini Rao

So in the interest of time, there's two, I think three other areas that I want to cover. Let's talk about this idea of getting lost. Because you say if you never get lost, you never actually find your way and your new script can never fully shine. When we optimize for efficiency, getting lost is the ultimate efficiency, inefficiency, but not only that, in the process we sap creativity out of the picture and send the misguided signal that the path ahead is clear. In reality, it's anything but clear. Indeed, if the goal is truly innovative solutions or fresh thinking, or simply being

resilient than getting lost is essential. And I think that struck me, uh, he's really a new roommate movement. Who was a young kid compared to me. Like he's, I think he's 20, he's about to turn 27. And I remember right when I told my dad, I was like, this kid was in diapers when I was in college, my dad said, he's not still in diapers, so I'm sure he'll be fine. Uh, but it was funny to listen to him, you know, telling us that he's like, man.

I don't have my life figured out. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. And I just couldn't help but laugh because here I am 43 years old and was like, yeah, this is a conversation I have with myself every day.

Here's the text with the timestamps removed:

April Rinne

Hmm

April Rinne

Yeah, totally. Well, and it's interesting. I mean, I'm reminded as we're talking about getting lost that even though the eight flux superpowers, um, they're all self-standing, independent, you can practice them on their own, they do really, they start to bleed into one another as well, um, where as you learn one, you start looking at another one going like, oh yeah, that makes more sense. I see like, and when you bring up the story of the young person, um, so much of our script.

is caught up, you know, I'm guessing that your 27-year-old friend, you know, there's a sense of like, I'm supposed to run faster, supposed to keep up, supposed to be on this hamster wheel or this treadmill or whatever. And I'm supposed to focus and stay on the path and don't get lost. And also, and I'm not going to say this about him, but one of the things I'm finding consistently among younger people is this sense, this very deep sense that even by the time, if they go to university.

By the time they go to university, so in their teen years, they've already adopted and absorbed this sense that they're never going to do or have or earn or most importantly, be enough. And that's another superpower, you know, no, you're enough. Maybe we'll go there, but like all of this is wrapped up into the same kind of hornet's nest.

Because all of it is actually very untrue and yet it's making, and yet it's what we've absorbed and it's making us mostly miserable. So this whole notion of like, I haven't figured it all out. It's like, let's get clear. Like the whole life journey is exactly that. It's a journey and you're going to be learning about it your whole life. And just when you think you've quote unquote, figured it out, something else is going to change in your life or in the world. And you're going to be like, hmm, I have some more learning to do. And that's not.

like a big tragic change necessarily, could be something really good. Where it happens often where, go back and think about it, I'm guessing you fall into this category, I certainly do. Go back to like what you thought mattered most when you were 20. And then what you thought mattered most at 25, and at 30, and at 35, and at 40. And you go back and you go, oh my gosh, if I had actually stuck to, this is absolutely most important at age 20, and then like gotten upset.

Srini Rao Yeah.

April Rinne that it didn't work out that way. You're like, thank goodness it didn't work out that way, right? So I feel like we get caught in a lot of those kinds of conversations with ourselves that aren't really that helpful. And that getting lost is a natural part of learning to get to know yourself better, but also being able to show up more fully for what you were actually meant to do, knowing that what you're supposed to do is also going to continue to change and evolve over time, just as you do as a human being.

Srini Rao Yeah, it's funny because I remember the joke I always said was, you know, I thought I'd have an office where I wear a suit every day. I didn't think that the suit I would wear the most in my life is a wetsuit.

April Rinne Right.

Yeah, nice. That's good. But it's all caught up. So much of this professional stuff is caught up in that as well.

Srini Rao So, w-

Srini Rao Yeah, all right. So let's talk about this whole idea of knowing you're enough. One of the things that you say is in today's consumer-driven world, we're plagued by a stubborn script that proclaims more is better and taunts you for never doing, earning, or achieving enough. This script is old and crusty but remains very much alive. Among its more popular manifestations is that you'll never have enough. So I had a financial advisor here as a guest who had worked with billionaires and we were talking about this concept of enough and this is what she had to say.

Srini Rao So, yeah. Yeah, it is.

April Rinne Can I pause real quick here? Is that, is that Manisha? Who's a dear friend and lives down the street. Anyway.

Srini Rao That's funny. I did not know that. Small world.

April Rinne Yes, no, I'm like, that is her voice and she's, indeed, I don't know if that, if, there you go. Um, and, uh, yeah, we do yoga together.

Srini Rao Wow, that's good of serendipitous that was the script that you because I normally I don't pull clips from other episodes. But with your book, I had so many points of reference that I wanted to bring back. So the thing that I wonder is, we live in this world where we're being fed messages constantly from the world around us about more like what do we do on social media? You know, we see the highlight reels of everybody's lives, you know, like remember, you and I were talking before we officially recorded about, you know,

me getting stressed out about all the authors who've sold more books than I have. So, you know, when you're drowning in this, you know, sea of narratives about more, how do you, you know, develop your own definition of enough and not be, you know, let us stray by other people's yardsticks? Here's the text with the timestamps removed:

April Rinne

Yeah. So I love this because there is actually an exercise that I encourage people to do. It's very, you know, basic. It's easy, easy to undertake. I wouldn't necessarily say that people, you know, it makes people struggle a little bit in a good way. And it's just this notion of like, what is your enoughness? And have you ever thought like, what things in life do you have too much of? What things do you have too little of? And again, no judgment. And it's not about.

better or worse, it's just like, and here to the point, I love how I'm initiated up because I'm always like, it's not just more money, it's more power, more love, more likes, more followers, more clothes, more clicks, like more everything, right?

What do you have too much of? What do you have too little of? I tend to find, and this is very much a US centric view here, but I can extend it. We can talk about what it means globally. You know, a lot of people I think are over indexed on stuff. We have a lot too much, but we're under indexed more broadly on, I could call it humanity, but we're under indexed on things like respect, including self respect, self love, trust, time for sure.

all those sorts of things. And so you look at this and you go, why have we over indexed in the ways we have and why are we so lacking in these other ways? Because having, knowing you're enough is both not too much, but also not too little. And so that balance point between abundance and scarcity. And I think, so both economics and psychology are at play. And one layer that we can easily add in here is just the role of consumerism.

right, and the fact that we live in a hyper-consumer society today. And consumerism itself isn't, I don't want to say it's bad. Do keep in mind though that the original definition of the word to consume means to destroy. So for most of human history, consumption was not something you actively sought out, it was something that killed you. Nevertheless, today we are in this hyper-consumer society, and one of the goals of consumerism is to get us to buy more stuff.

April Rinne How do you get that to happen? You convince people that they are not enough and that the way they become enough is to buy your product or service. And so that when we are bombarded with a gajillion messages from consumer companies saying, you know, and again, a lot of it is very nuanced. It's very subtle, but you look at a lot of the marketing and if you see something that's like, I will be happy when I will be successful when.

That when implies that you're not happy or successful today and that you need more of something to become it versus being able to actually say, hold on, if you were to just tune all that out for a minute, if you know you're enough, you actually realize that you are happy, can be happy if you choose to be right here, right now, there is nothing keeping anybody. And what it's interesting, it's, it's less of a

happiness versus sadness, it's more of an inner contentedness and a kind of inner peace, if you will, that comes from recognizing that you are enough. So knowing you're enough, why oh you are, includes knowing that you are enough, just as you are, without ever doing anything more, and oh by the way, you always have been. That's the key, because then people go, oh my god, why have I gotten myself into this, sort of twisted into this pretzel thinking I will never...

have enough, be enough, whatever, you already are.

Srini Rao Yeah. Wow. Well, I want to finish by talking about two areas in particular that you brought up. The first was portfolio careers. You say that a portfolio career takes inspiration from these different stages. Portfolios can be sequential. One role or vacation at a time are simultaneous. Multiple roles and activities at once. Career portfolios often create professional niches and lifestyles that are more complete, personalized, modern, adaptable, and personally rewarding.

April Rinne Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao than any single role could be. And then you go on to describe the linear path, which is what we've been prescribed by society forever. And you say, along this linear path, individuals become defined by what they do. Your sense of self-worth got wrapped up in what rung of the ladder you occupy. And you know, it's funny, because 20 years ago when I was in college, that was absolutely true. And I remember going to a job interview as the guy who has been fired from every job I've ever had.

And this woman told me she looked at my resume and she said, this was literally before I graduated from college. She said, you've had more jobs in college than you have in my than I have in my entire professional career. Ten, you know, whenever some somewhere like, you know, years later, I was talking to Robert Green about the book mastery. And I remember looking at Robert Green's background and seeing he had something like 37 different jobs before he wrote any of his books. And the

April Rinne It's really...

Srini Rao One thing that always stayed with me from that conversation was he said, no experience in your life should be thought of as wasted. And so what I wonder is how do you redesign an education system to accommodate for this? Which I realized we could do a whole episode about that, which we might have to.

April Rinne We could, and I would be delighted to, and how portfolio careers, career portfolios, people like both of those kinds of orderings. Um, oh my goodness, this bleeds directly, not into the, not into only the future of work and professional identity and career development, but also into the future of learning and education. And you know, it's a, it's a continuum because the narrative, the script that we have right now for many people, again, including sounds like what you and I were taught.

April Rinne

Oh

April Rinne

authenticity. That when you are unmistakable, you're unmistakably you, I think there's this, if you're authentically you, no one can mistake you for somebody else. Nobody can, uh, you know, not see you for who you are. So there's some piece about the individuality and authenticity of how you show up in the world.

Srini Rao

Amazing. This has been one of my favorite conversations I've probably had in 10 years of doing this. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us to share your story, your wisdom, and your insight to lowless knowledge. Where can people find out more about you, your book, your work, and everything else you're up to?

April Rinne

Thank you so much. It has been a joy. You know, my heart is still like bursting out of my rib cage. It's great. So for all things Flux, Book, Superpowers, all of that, head to Fluxmindset.com. For all things social media, I have not discovered anyone else in the world, amazingly, with my name. So AprilRinney on all social media, and also my personal website is AprilRinney.com. We did not talk about it today.

But the main reason people go to my aprilrini.com website at the moment is for my handstands. So that's where you go for that.

Srini Rao

Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.