On one visit to SF, Myke and I were heading to Golden Gate Park to meet up with Li-Ming, Sasha, and his girls. My 2 kids, Myke, and I wandered around for a little bit trying to find the main playground. I started to pull out my phone to look up the location, and Myke sees me and says, “Jenny! Put down your phone! Let’s explore! We can figure it out ourselves, we don’t need a phone to tell us everything.” This was not the first time Myke was exasperated by my default to use my phone when something was unknown. He would shake his head all the time when I pulled out my phone. Telling me to discuss the topic with others, use my imagination, or be ok with not knowing the full answer (depending on the situation).
So, now my most vivid memory of Myke’s annoyance at humanity’s loss of critical thinking via smart phone use, is walking around a 1,000 acre park with a 3 year old and a 1 year old, and Myke. It took us over 30 min to find our friends (we had been only about 75 yards away at the beginning of our journey) – and we talked. We talked about his investments and investing strategy, the importance of early retirement and what he would give up to have that time to enjoy life work-free, and how it was important for my kids to see me being reliant on my intuition to find the playground vs relying on a phone (no joke! ha!!).
In the end, he was right, we figured it out, we had a great conversation, and we got to spend some time together without our spouses, which was a rare, but special, occasion.