(2022-03-12) Ferriss Mullenweg Crafting Life Missions

The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Tim Ferriss and Matt Mullenweg in Antarctica: Exploring Personal Fears, Bucket Lists, Facing Grief, Crafting Life Missions (Purpose), and Tim’s Best Penguin Impressions (#578). If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are living now?

I’d write more.

It brings up for me what’s the legacy? How do I pass on the things I care about? Democratizing publishing in the web to the generations that are going to carry the torch. And how much of what motivates me towards that lifelong mission around open source is — I don’t know if I’ve written about particularly well or articulated well that in a way that might inspire others. WordPress is open source, has tens of thousands of contributors. So there are a good number of people involved, but I feel for open source to truly win, we need millions of contributors.

I think that’s really, because that’s my life mission. It really is. And so if my life was ending, I think how do I get that mission, keep that mission going?

deciding that’s not going to be how I leave an impact on the world. And so I decided to not have kids. Made that a very explicit communication and everything like that because WordPress and this other work I’m doing, I want to be the thing that I leave. And I don’t feel there’s anything particularly good about my genetics that needs to be passed on or that I would be a world-unique parent. But I do think I’m one of the people in the world that does have a chance to shape the future of the web. And so I just want to focus all of my energy into that.