WEBVTT

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So tonight I’m gonna tell you
about an invention of mine

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that saved my second marriage,

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and also has increased the quality
of my life by at least 10x.

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And for all of the partners
in the crowd,

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and all of the people in the crowd
who have partners,

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I encourage you to 
embrace this invention.

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(Laughter)

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We all work very hard.

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These are some of our TechStars friends
from this year’s graduating class

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after three or four all-nighters.

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We also live hard.

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For those of you that are climbers, this is
one of the rocks in Eldorado Canyon.

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And we all enjoy this kind of thing
in the beautiful Boulder that we live in.

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We are much much too connected.

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I did a tweet about at 9 o’clock 
from my house in Homer, Alaska,

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a couple of weeks ago,
saying I need a picture

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of somebody who’s got too many
electronic devices in their world.

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And I got twenty back
within about fifteen minutes.

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Life is really complicated.

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We spend all of this time dealing with all of this 
crazy shit that none of us really understands,

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or maybe we think we understand it
but we don’t really understand it.

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And it’s moving faster 
and faster all the time.

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We already heard this once tonight

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when we were learning about
how to do social media better.

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But relationships are hard.

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I married my high school girlfriend
when I was 21.

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(Laughter)

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Now, I was legally old enough to drink,

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but I should not have been legally 
old enough to get married.

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On my honeymoon, three days in,
I realized that I had made a mistake.

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About a year afterwords I was 
that dude in the middle. (Laughter)

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I should've been the dude on the left,
but I was the dude in the middle.

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Relationships are hard.

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I failed once. I got divorced
a couple years later.

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[Welcome to Fail, Population: You] 
(Laughter)

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In 2001,

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I almost failed again.

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For those of you that have been 
involved in technology companies

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in and around the internet bubble,

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you know what the pace of things
were like in 1999, 2000, 2001.

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I was embroiled in 
the midst of all of that,

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and on a trip to some friends 
over the weekend

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in Rhode Island, I met Amy in Boston

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after I was in New York and 
she flew to Boston to meet me,

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and I rent -- had a driver drive us both 
down to the Rhode Island,

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which is all of an hour and a half, 
so why I had a driver drive us, I've no idea.

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I spent entire time in the car
on the phone.

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We got to our friends' house at
about 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

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I proceeded to spend the next 
couple of hours on the phone

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as she hang out with our two friends.

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We went out to dinner.

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At dinner, we were having 
a nice dinner,

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and about 30 minutes into 
dinner I get a phone call,

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and I come back to dinner
in time for dessert.

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And at the end of that we go 
back to our friends' house.

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No, I did not get laid that night.

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That was not on the agenda. 
(Laughter)

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Amy turned to me as we got into bed,
and she said "I’m done."

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And I said to her, "Yeah, men, this was 
a tough week and tired. Just a lot of work."

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And she said, "No no no. I’m done.

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You are not a very good roommate."

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And I realized that I was almost there.

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So, being a nerd and an engineer,

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I decided to apply some 
engineering thinking to this.

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And I said to Amy, "Look, I’m not done
and you are not really done."

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She wasn't mad, but she wasn’t really done.

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This is, you know, 2001.

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I said, "Let’s just talk this weekend
and come up with something.

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Will you do me a favor? 
Just give me some rules."

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That’s what I really need.
I just need a bunch of rules.

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I’m gonna talk to you 
about one of them,

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which is something we do, which we call
"one week per quarter off the grid."

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Since 2001 almost 40 times,

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once a quarter, Amy and I go 
off the grid and totally disconnect.

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We go to the airport on Saturday morning,
I hand her my telephone.

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She turns it off.

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She often tries to drop it in between
where you board the plane.

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She puts it in her pocket.

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We go, we sit down,
I get it back the following Saturday.

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No phone. No email. No schedule.

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The only person on the planet who knows
how to find me is my assistant Kelly.

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And she tries never 
to find me that week.

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During this -- Hang on one second.

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(Laughter)

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"Hey, sweetie!" 
(Laughter)

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"No I’m talking to those people at 
that TED thing I was doing." (Laughter)

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"I’ll be home in a bit. Not too long.
I love you. Yeah, OK."

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(Whistles) (Applause)

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That’s the telephone version
of golden retriever eyes.

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Once we all have faced time running
it'll be a little different.

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These are my dogs looking at Amy

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while I'm taking a picture of them.

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For all of you out there that are men,

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remember this picture. 
(Laughter)

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This is what your spouse 
or partner wants.

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(Laughter) (Applause) (Cheers)

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I sleep a lot.

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I wear a thing on my head when I sleep
so I know how much I sleep.

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I got a 137. (Laughter)

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It's about 12 and a half hours of sleep

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one day on vacation.

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I read a lot.

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If you look at my Shelfari list, you'll see that 
I don’t just read serious business books.

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I read all kinds of different things.

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And I encourage all of you when you 
go on your week off the grid to do that.

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I exercise. 
(Laughter)

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One can have goals, right? 
(Laughter)

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I relax a lot.

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We spend a lot of the time
that week together.

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We don’t do adventure vacations.

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We just spend time together.

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And that leads to
a lot of adult entertainment.

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[CENSORED] 
(Laughter)

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Now, I fail at this
about once every eight times.

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And this is important.

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I like the notion of mastering failure.

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You have to embrace the fact that
we're human, and we will fail, and that’s OK.

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And because of this algorithm,

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Amy and I have agreed that it's OK
for me to fail once every eight times.

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There's no damage asociated with that.

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And in fact, what it does is 
it makes the next seven times,


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until I'm ready to fail again,
that much better.

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So recognize that this algorithm has
some failure in it and that’s OK.

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But when it works, 
it's priceless.

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And I find that over
the last ten years or so,

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the one week a quarter
that I take off and totally disconnect,

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allows me to do all the other things
that I do, with intensity that I do,

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the other 11 weeks a quarter.

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I've had numerous people 
over the years tell me,

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"Oh, I can’t do that."

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"That’s so hard", whatever,
and it’s just bullshit.

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It’s totally doable.

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And it’ll change your life.
I encourage everybody in this room

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to try it and see how it feels.


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Thanks and good night! 
(Applause)