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Xander Picot
Interview Paper
Sinclair LBST2101
How to Live the Good Life
When I first asked my uncle, Michael Neal, for an interview he was hesitant because he
told me he did not think he would know much about the subject. Since he travels a lot and he
lives in San Francisco, he suggested the best way to interview him would be to email him the
questions. So I did and his responses made it seem like he knows more about the subject than he
thought.
My uncle was born on July 29, 1961 in Arcadia, Florida. He is the oldest of five children,
including my mother. My grandparents, his and my mothers parents, both passed away when I
was young, so he and my other aunts and uncles have been even closer since they passed. For
college, he went to the University of Florida for undergraduate school and Duke University
Business School for graduate studies. Currently he lives in San Francisco and is the CEO of a
major software company which he has to travel the world for. Currently, he is married with two
children, one of whom is in college as well. He mentions having his kids a few times in the
answers to the questions.
I asked eight questions, all of which were from one of the two sample interviews that
were on Moodle since I thought those questions were great. To three of the questions, he gave
relatively long answers. The first question in the email I asked him was what is a good life? his
response was: to me, a good life is one you can look back on from your deathbed and have no

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regrets. So if thats true, then the obvious question is: what do I do in my life such that I dont
end up with regrets later?. To me there are two equally important components to this: (1) have a
purpose. Whether that is raising great children or curing cancer, or growing vegetables, I believe
we all need a mission when we swing our feet out of bed in the morning. And if that purpose
happens to somehow helps others, all the better, and (2) dont squander opportunities. View your
life like a stock trader views his job: opportunities are presented all the time, and they dont last
long, so you need to seize them. Whether it is a new friendship, a new job, or a new company
youve been thinking about starting, just start it. Taking risks is rewarding all by itself, even if
youre not successful, and who knows, it might actually work. So to summarize, a good life for
me is defined by being able to look back without regrets, and to do that you need to have a
purpose, and not waste opportunities.
The next question that I asked was how is happiness defined and understood? This
question he gave the longest answer to, and that was: Wow - thats a hard one. I believe that the
way were wired (meaning how we evolved to behave), we are most content when we have no
threats, and when we view ourselves as useful. First lets take Threats. If you can imagine our
ancestors on the plains of Africa a million years ago, survival meant avoiding threats (e.g. hungry
lions, or starvation) on a daily basis, and those who did survive were the successful ones at
avoiding those threats (at least they were successful to the point of reproducing) (isnt that a cool
idea, that every SINGLE one of your millions of ancestors was successful at this surviving to
the point of reproduction). So to complete the argument, it was likely that those who drew the
most satisfaction, or happiness, from successfully avoiding these threats, were the very best at
avoiding themso evolution formed a race of humans that are happiest when theyre safe.
Sounds obvious when you say it, but theres a reason very few of us are daredevils who like

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jumping off of mountains when a wing-suite on... Now lets talk about being useful. The
evolutionary argument works well here too: it was those who drew the most satisfaction, or
happiness, from being useful to their peers on the plains of Africa that presumably WERE the
most useful, and that usefulness translated to higher likelihood of survival for the group. From
survival came more offspring who shared their characteristics. For example, if a particular
ancestor was particularly good at making fires, and enjoyed being the helpful one in the clan who
always made the fire, the clan was better off because of him or her, and had a higher probability
of creating more offspring. And this persons offspring would most likely have inherited that
characteristic to be helpful.
After this question, the one I asked next was what are some problems we as humans must
address? He answered by explain the biggest problem he thought is occurring at the moment. His
answer was: There is one big one that trumps the others, I think: we are approaching a world
population that within the next 50 years will be as big as the world can support, and will start
shrinking after that, because so many of the earths natural resources will be exhausted or ruined.
Were at 7.1 Billion people now, and this maximum population (called the "Malthusian Tipping
Point) is generally thought to be between 9B and 10B. So the problem is how to feed all these
people in a sustainable way, so that 10,000 years from now the human race still exists, and the
planet still exists in a form that resembles our current one. Something like 99% of all the plant
and animal species that have ever existed are now extinct, so actually beating these odds and
surviving as a race would be the surprising outcome, so it is a huge problem to address.
The next question I asked him was about his best and worst experiences. He said that
having my two cousins were his best experience by far. For the worst experience, he said he
could not think of one because he thinks humans have a survival mechanism that makes us forget

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the bad things that happen. To be honest, I thought he was going to say the worst moment was
losing both of his parents. The next question I asked was what regrets, if any, he has. He gave a
pretty simple answer, one that I expected. It was Yes, I have lots of small ones, like things I set
out to get done on a given day but never completed. I have a few larger ones, like decisions I
made with one of my companies that I realized later should have gone the other way. But I tend
not to dwell on these because it really isnt useful. I tend to agree with the last thing he said
because it only makes people more worried and upset to worry about regrets.
The last two questions I asked him I thought he gave the best answers to. The first of the
two questions is you where you thought you would be? He gave a different answer to what I
thought he would. His answer was No, not at all. I have never had a grand plan, and have tried
generally to just work on stuff I enjoy. I havent always been successful at this of course, but its
been my objective. I thought his answer was going to be the opposite as that. He has been the
owner of three different companies, including the one he currently owns, so I thought he was
going to say he is for the most part.
Finally, the last question I asked is what is one event you could go back to and why? This
is the question that I thought he was going to tie into the fourth question. He said he would go
back to when he had his mother and her parents (my great grandparents) in the same room so he
could ask them simple questions about their lives. He also said he would video tape the
conversation so he could use their answers to look back at situations on his life, since now that
theyre gone there is no easy way to get an answer. The last thing he said was you need to talk
to people BEFORE they die, with emphasis on before.

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After asking him these questions and connecting them to what we have learned in class as
well as reading The Happiness Hypothesis, I realized that it seems like my uncle has read the
book because some of the answers he gave made it sound like he was going off ideas from that
book. This touched on the good and bad aspects of life and Haidts conclusion at the end of the
book. My uncle is very happy with where he is right now and I am honored to look up to him as
one of my many role models.

WORD COUNT: 1,489

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My mom is going to visit my uncle in a few weeks so she will bring him my note. Also I thanked
him in the email and through text.