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This episode is brought to you by 80,000 hours you have roughly 80,000 hours in your career. That's 40 hours a week, 50 weeks, a year for 40 years, they add up and are one of your biggest opportunities if not the biggest opportunity to make a positive impact on the world. In other words, you want to make the best use of your 80,000 hours until we wrap up this show called life. Where should you start? Where should you focus? It can be really hard and quite frankly.
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at this altitude. I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking the miles with living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
Hello boys and girls. Welcome
to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is. Usually my job to sit down with world-class performers, while different types to tease out
habits, routines favorite
books, and so on that, you can apply and test in your own
lives. This time we have a slightly different format and I am the
guest as some of, you know, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of
the four hour work week, which was first published on April 24, 2007 hard to believe.
I signed 424 copies of the
book. Get it April.
424 is thousands of you threw your hat in the ring to win a signed copy. I wanted to do something special for all of the entrants who did not get a book or all of them in total. So I invited those folks to a private YouTube Q&A and we covered a ton of topics. This episode is the recording of that session. I answered many questions on a variety of topics, including startup Investments ifs therapy. My views on wealth money c.s.,
Lewis lower back pain, solitary time and its challenges lessons from one of my favorite people. Kevin Kelly books. I'm currently reading.
Reading
maintaining relationships Japan, travel tips from whom to take advice and how to evaluate that advice self-awareness Behavior change. My current alcohol consumption or lack thereof, although that has quite a bit of volatility and
much much more. So I have
certainly more questions about things in life than I do answers. But I took a stab at quite a few things. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.
Red light loud and clear. Jared cab Val. Frank
Penelope. I'm getting the right Alex, Nick. All right, everybody. How
many people do we have here 101? I think that means we have
enough people to get started with this thing. That's actually a good number. So
I am clicking record on my
first backup, which is a sure. MV 88 plugged into an
iPhone with the
sure motive recording. Then I have my second
backup on QuickTime audio and then
IMA primary this ATR 2100, or actually a newer version from Audio-Technica, USB. All in all, I mean, this is three forms of back up, just to give you an idea of how cheap this podcasting game can be,
this is probably
120 bucks, maybe $200 worth of gear total. And then we
YouTube for free. Thanks YouTube. Thanks Google and I'm excited to dive
in. So we will go back and forth between live questions. We have 135 people, 138 this will probably continue to
grow and some questions that were submitted before hand. So I will go
back and forth between those and just to give
folks a few minutes to pop in because it's 3:01 p.m. start time of
three actually.
Yeah I'm going to reverse the order and
see if I can answer a few
things in the chat so please fire away feel free to drop in some questions and I will answer handful of those and then we'll jump to the free submitted and we will continue along those
lines. By reek, I think you said, one is none. That's a reference
to. The two is one. And one is none.
So, if you have to have something
We'll lose one and you will have one remaining. If you only have one, you'll end up with none. And that is from my friends. In the military feels weird to hear. Tim in one time, speed Florian. I
know. May I haunt your dreams, just a little bit
less after this. Hello from Ireland, Connor, great
strong. Irish name, nice to meet you. And let's
continue down with the questions and then I
will
Edit this to make it sound
pristine for my team
will. Hello from Quito. Yes. Patricia. Let's see.
Do I still invest in startups? I very rarely this is from Bogdan, invest in stars, but I do occasionally invest in startups at the moment. It is mostly going to be climate Solutions slash Tech
related or
web 3. Although I've really dialed back on that to reallocate to more of the climate Solutions and
Generation agriculture things along those
lines.
I haven't done a live chat a long time,
so it'll take me a minute to get accustomed to
navigating chat box. It's been a long time. All right.
This is from Chris. I produced tedx Chicago for the past four years. I've often wondered if you'd consider doing Tim talks Live Events with you. Interviewing, folks, you'd like to talk to thoughts reaction.
So, Chris, actually, just prior to covid, this would have been
Q4 of 2019. So end of 2019, and then potentially January of
Only 20 hours and discussions with multiple venues in Austin, to do a live
podcast series, that would be something similar to the series that you
might see on say Netflix with
some of the Late Night show hosts and I
consider doing that. I'm still considering doing it. It's really just a question of logistics time and Life Energy which we may come back to so that is still on
On the table
and TVD Jewel.
Have I considered moving out of the u.s. recently
things seem to be getting rid of the crazy if so, where is interesting to you? Well, my
general feeling is choosing the option, then presents or provides the most options. So it's likely something that would provide access to a larger geography whether it's in the EU or Commonwealth or something like that. But I'm not currently planning on moving
because I
think
Wherever you go, there are going to be problems. And I think the problems are going to get more and more complex, and more, and more serious in many places including in the EU.
So rather than
jump kind of out of the frying pan and into the fire. I'm also going to focus on trying to improve things here in
the US.
And I was born here, I didn't choose to be born here. I am very
grateful and
fortunate in a million ways to have been born a native English speaker in the United States, and it's afforded me a lot of opportunities. So I
feel
some
karmic obligation to try to help here as well. So no immediate plans to
jump John
as someone who seems to be thoughtful about risk. Mitigation, are there any steps you're taking to prepare for a society that seems to grow more and more contentious all the time? Yes, I am planning on reducing my internet footprint in certain respects and probably disengaging from the most polarized platforms. And those platforms will
I
And
continue to skew towards more extremes and
certainly this point I have no kids. Once I have kids, I expect I'll become much more monk-like
in my predispositions and we'll
care, even more about privacy. And now, some of my friends very smart, people
would say privacy is dead that ship has sailed. You should just accept the Privacy is dead but it is still up to you what you broadcast and what you share publicly and
that does have an impact.
Impact on not only your life but the lives of those
around you and I
think this is particularly important to consider when you're say kids, do not opt in
if they're not of an age where they can give
consent, I kind of like to assume that they haven't given consent. That's my current feeling. Maybe I'll change my mind. Once I'm flooded with hormones and decide I want to plaster everything with photographs of my kids, who knows. But I think that is going to be my orientation. And I think having a
And B, whether that's a professional Plan
B, a geographic Plan, B income Plan B never hurts.
That's how I think about these things but understand that I come prepackaged pre-programmed
with some degree of
paranoia and hyper-vigilance. So I tend
to skew that direction, I would say,
let me answer one more than I'm going to jump to some of the
questions that were submitted and I will
Begin with believe, this
is a company name so I'm going to skip it, but I
will answer the question and that is, can you share an
interview? That was the most impactful for you personally?
And I get this question a lot and my general answer is all of the
podcast episodes of personal to me in some way. They usually
are a result of me,
having some type of question problem or goal or desire that I can't quite figure out or would like help figuring out. And so I invited guests at different points in my
life.
Any given interview could be the most
impactful, but one that I refer people to a lot that
had a big impact on me is with BJ Miller and I'll let you look it up. But BJ Miller at
the time he may do more. Now was a hospice care physician, who was a triple amputee due to an electrical accident when he was in college, actually? And I had some familiarity with, the story has helped more than 1,000. He's probably helped thousands of people to die at this point.
Make that transition, so to speak, which kind of alludes to a number of other questions I received
today and I highly suggest that if you haven't heard, it is at
least five years old
and there's a lot to it. And if you listen to it two or three
times, you will learn something new or notice something new each time and there's a good amount of overlap
actually, in one respect with an ed cook interview that I did,
this sort of cosmic insignificance therapy, which is actually
the name of a
book.
Excerpt, that also reinforces this point from
40,000
said, four thousand weeks 40,000 hours. I always get mixed up. Somebody can probably correct me, but I believe the book is 4000 weeks. I can never remember the number. That's one of the issues with the title but Oliver, Berkman is the author. And if you look up Cosmic insignificance therapy on teamed up log, you will find
it. All right? I said I was going to do one more, I'll do a few more
Carlos Manuel. Hey, Tim, would you consider doing new version of tribal mentors?
Your access to really awesome. People keeps growing. Yes. I've actually been considering doing a new
version, a new volume of
tribal mentors or tools of Titans. And I was thinking about that this morning literally, because I was lamenting last night at a
dinner with a friend
who is also a podcast guess because he
asked me, are you going to write another
volume of Tri mentors or tool Titans? Because he and this
is a very high-performing guy, God lat
Out of both of the books. And I personally would like a reason to not so much reach out to new people but even more. So to review, say, the
last 100 or 200 episodes of the podcast to glean, what I may have forgotten to highlight, what I may
have failed to implement and so on and so forth, the motivation would very much Echo what is
written in the introduction or the
Preface to tools of Titans. It would be for me personally and the Assumption
there being that if I do it for
myself that readers these some
readers will find it,
interesting. Okay, let me
jump into some of these questions that are the selected questions which came in as being pre-submitted, we've got between 400 and
500 people now on the line.
So let me jump into that and then I promise I'll come back
and we'll
Will answer some more live questions. So, the first, pre-submitted question
is from Ariana and I'm going to read this not necessarily because I have a great answer but just because it may open the
door and provide a tool to people
who are listening and I'm going to look into
this. So here is the question.
I am an ifs therapist and for those people who don't know what that means ifs is internal family systems. I don't love the naming of
System. But the results are really undeniable at least in a lot of friends. And also, for myself
personally. And I interviewed Richard, Schwartz, who is the founder / creator of ifs? Although Parts work is
existed in different capacities and been used in various modalities for some time.
Coming back to the question. I'm an ifs therapist and I've had a couple of folks find me specifically from looking up ifs. After hearing you talk about
it, I'm super curious. Have you ever explored the
side of ifs that helps folks, explore inherited, trauma /, energy ifs, refers to this line of inquiry, as exploring quote Legacy
burdens. And quote, the way you talk about your depressive and angry Parts makes me wonder if any of the energy that those
parts carry feels inherited. And I guess I'd love to hear your Riff on that. So I'm not going to riff.
For too long on this but I will say that absolutely both of those to
specifically feel inherited and
I am going to look into
Legacy burdens and may chat again with Richard Dick about
that and perhaps I'll do a round two on the podcast to explore that specifically or at least do a session with an ifs therapist looking into
that. So that is my very short and sweet answer it.
Is really a non-answers. Just say that
is an interesting point that you raise. I will look into that. So thank you, Arianna. Next question, up is from Sam, and his question is, did you get any happier when you got rich? What do you think a healthy view of money
is so I'll take this as a an
opportunity to give a Shameless plug
to a friend of mine, actually, ramit Sethi, and as he thi and his
podcast, which I think is just
Rich. It may have a different name, but if you just find ramit Sethi and his
podcast each episode and I've listened to a ton of them, he has generally a
couple on and they talked about their
money issues,
their money priorities. What it means to live a rich life and what you realize very quickly
is that people have neuroses or stories at the very least, around money that both
help and hurt.
Them, no matter how much money they have. So he can talk to a couple where they barely have enough money to scrape by, and their hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, or he can
talk to a couple
that's worth 10 million dollars. And is still comparison shopping for
strawberries and at the very least it
normalizes some of the unanswered questions and maybe unrealistic expectations, that people
have around
money to answer your question directly.
I would say that it's hard for me. First
of all, it's a point to a line after
which I felt
Rich if that makes any sense
whatsoever and that if for the time being and I'm borrowing this
from someone else, I think it was a podcast guess but the value or cost of something being the amount of Life Energy you exchange for it
so you give to it or get from it in the sort of pro and con positive and negative.
Signs of things. And
what I've noticed for a lot of my friends is that past a certain
point well that actually turns into a energy-consuming
facet of their lives and this is not to complain because certainly I feel and I am extremely fortunate for a million reasons but I have observed people who while they are on the hunt while they are on the journey to become rich and I'm putting that in
It's on my mind because I think the goal posts tend to move
for people and it is and can be a very nebulous goal. But implicit
in that is very often the assumption that once I have this money, once I am rich once I've won that game,
most of my problems or
many of my problems will be
solved and on
Maslow's hierarchy if we're talking about shelter food
for right. So rent or mortgage
Etc, that type of
Thing. It can be true, but the psychological psycho emotional issues. Tend to not just not get fixed but
sometimes get exaggerated. So by that, I
mean power alcohol. Money tend to magnify whatever is there. It's also true with psychedelics for a lot of
people and
if you have say paranoia or you're worried about people ripping you
off fill in the
blank, it could be any number of things, if you feel insecure in ways, they
And see all of those levers. I just mentioned, including
money tend to
amplify those things. If someone's generous, they're going to be super generous if someone's a stingy asshole, there going to be a super stingy asshole
and so on and so forth. And what I found is that people can be very happy and very often are very
upbeat when they can hold in their mind, the
belief that once they cross the finish line, these problems will be fixed. Once they have the
The money more
often than not, they realize that's not the case, and it can
actually result in different
types of, and maybe more intractable types of depression or malaise because then it's like, well, wait a second for 20 years, 30 years, I've assumed this would
solve the problem. It didn't, now, what? And on, top of that,
I would say, once you have Team, once you have more stuff, let's say, somebody buys a second
house,
Etc. All of that consumes Life Energy on some level.
And you can
create systems and so on. But it does create a
bandwidth drain.
And for instance, if you have a bunch of
money, people are going to ask you for that money constantly in some form or another and you will feel compelled. Most people will,
to think about investing a lot and generating that initial wealth and being really good at investing or two entirely
different sports. So you may be very well suited
to the former and very
ill suited to the ladder. So, again, coming back,
Back to your direct question.
Did I get any happier when I got rich? I would say that. Having a certain degree of relief, especially when thinking about caring for
aging parents, when thinking about being able to help family members being able to help family members
and close friends during something like covid for instance, especially in the beginning, when there was a lot of uncertainty and having some Capital made a difference in terms of having optionality in moving people around. And so on
all of those things I would
Say give me a greater peace of mind and a certain degree of Stillness. But on the
other side of the Ledger, there's a lot of
shit that eats energy. What do I think a healthy view
of money is I would suggest that you actually listen to my podcast episode with Morgan, housel house2 L on the psychology of money. This was a hugely popular episode and I thought it would be reasonably popular, but it ended up
getting a lot of
Of
spread via word of mouth and becoming Mega popular. So, I'd suggest listening to that. That would also say I don't have all the answers because I fit in the category of someone who thought money would fix tons, and tons, and tons of things
and be able to Exhale and go maybe lay on a beach and rub
cocoa. Butter on my belly, and read novels, and be perfectly content to do that for months and months of the year, turns out, not to be the case. Also, if you're accustomed
to driving in 6th Gear on the Autobahn and you've
done that for,
20 30 years getting used to like, driving through a school district and stopping at red lights and so on it. 20 miles an hour, is not automatically easy to do. You think it would be? But
if you're used to park or
mostly 6 gear getting used to the gears in between,
at least for me personally has been very challenging so I'm still working on it
and I think this is a fascinating fascinating questions so I may not have given
much Clarity but that
is my current state of play with these questions.
Matthew correcting the title 4000
weeks, the book that I mentioned earlier. Oliver Berkman,
great book, more highlights in that book and psychology of money, actually by Morgan housel
than probably, any books in recent memory for me. Alright, next question, is Chris from Annapolis. Tim you've mentioned
before the podcast, guests have final say over content in their interview, and they can cut out any parts that they aren't comfortable with his there ever. Been any interview where the guests or you?
It wasn't up to standard and was never published in the podcast. The answer is, yes, that has happened. It has not happened
recently, but I would say, in total
of the 600-plus episodes that
we have recorded, there are maybe 6 to 10 that have not been published, and it is true that I give every
guest Final Cut, which is also what Inside the Actors Studio.
Did certainly with James
Lipton and it's not
That uncommon a
policy, given
the format of the podcast and the intention which is much closer to say how I built this with gyros. Then it is to hard ball or something like that, where I'm looking to pin people in a corner and get them with gotchas and have some type of controversy and that's the main hook I use for my audience. That's not the intention. So I find it very easy to offer people Final
Cut. However I will say there are conversations.
Asians occasionally, and first of all, I'd
say, fewer than 3% of guests ever, take advantage of that. And the intention is to say, rather than
self-censoring in the interview, this is
true with writing as well. You don't have your Genesis engine, your creative engine and you're editing engine running at the same time. It's just
not a great way to put out. Great
work. I don't think and the you know you have not that you want to model Hemingway and all things but the kind of right drunk.
Edit sober approach applies to podcasting. So what I tell
people, before we start recording and I say quite a few
things before we start recording, but one of them
is just go all out. Come out, raw, share the details, tell the stories, and we can always cut them later, but don't self-censor assume. We've had two glasses of wine. Eh, we're decent friends and
that's the kind of conversation. We're having just the
two of us and then we can always
cut things out later.
And that's generally the
phrasing. However,
if there is a section and this is only happened once or twice where they say, you know, I'd really like to remove this, but I think the section is
important. My general response of there will be. I'm happy to cut this, but what
that's going to mean, is the interview itself. Cannot stand on its own two
legs, and I can't publish the interview. So if you
don't want that component of the
interview to be included, we just have to shelve the interview and
that has yet to result in an interview being
shelved. So those are some of my thoughts and approaches
on Final Cut and how that applies to podcasts. There are many
ways to do this. So there are plenty of folks who don't do that with
guests, but
I have been too often in the interviewee seat. I mean I've been interviewed hundreds probably thousands of
times and I'm just operating using the Golden Rule here
treat others as you would like to be treated. So I will also ask people
We start
recording in case you're interested. I'll say a number of things first. It's not
live. So if you want to go to the bathroom, get water.
Pause and ask me a question. If you want to
stop something because it's not coming out the way you want and restart your answer. You can do all of those things and we can make it sound better in posts it on worry about it. And I will also ask
them what would make
this a home? Run, three months from now, when you look back, what would make you thrilled that you took the time to do this interview and for most folks who I
Have on the podcast. When I asked that question, they say, wow, I've never been asked that before, and they very often have good answers. So it helps to inform the conversation and makes them more
comfortable. It
tells them, hopefully, that I am an ally and then
enemy that I've been in their seat before, and it just makes the entire process more pleasant and more fruitful. Again, if we think about the
Write drunk, edit, sober type of approach to audio. I find it super
helpful.
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All right. Next one. Brian. I have rarely come across c.s. Lewis.
Fans are admirers outside of Christian circles.
What makes him compelling to you, including
your praise of the movie, the most
reluctant convert. All right, so I will answer this c.s., Lewis, I first
discovered as a writer so I did not discover him as a Christian and then moved to his writing. I simply found his prose in his
writing spectacular and
I enjoyed the craftsmanship and the Brilliance and I
still do that goes into his writing and I do think he's
also
crossed demographic and mainstream in the sense that he wrote The Chronicles of
Narnia, which may very well be an allegory for Christianity and
and Central figures and beliefs in Christianity. However, The Chronicles of Narnia, I was looking this up
before doing this, Q&A has sold more than
100 million copies.
He's in 47 languages at least based on Wikipedia. So it has crossed over into mainstream but I find him compelling because of his writing and also thinking the most reluctant convert. I don't recall how I first found that it was probably because I was looking for documentaries about c.s. Lewis and this
particular film is
fact based or
nonfiction history based
but it is acted and it started off as I understand as a one-man show on Broadway.
Broadway, or Off-Broadway, but
as theater and the main
older actor who plays c.s.
Lewis narrating, his own life is so good. I mean, the
acting is so, so incredibly good that I recommended it but it is not for
religious reasons that I recommended c.s. Lewis and I will look up actually one book again, it's going to sound strange,
perhaps, but
that I found
Tastic that has very strong, religious implications and overtones but the screwtape
letters by c.s. Lewis, I absolutely loved, I read it more than
20 years ago. So I may be missing something that doesn't jibe with current political correctness or something else and if so, sorry about that. But those are the reasons for which I find c.s.
Lewis really, really, really interesting.
And I should say the same time that I read the screwtape letters. I was reading Bertrand
Russell and
You know, why I am not a
Christian and all these other books. So, my interests relate to the pros and thinking of these people and is not driven first
and foremost by belief system, at least, not one that I'm aware of.
There's always the question of awareness in which
beliefs, I've come to on my own and
which I have simply inherited from my family or environment or upbringing or
otherwise. Okay, let's jump into the live
questions and I will,
Grab some more from the chat. All right, from Michelle. Hi from Sunny Scotland.
That's not something you read every day and I do love Scotland but it hasn't always been sunny when I've been there. I
do love you cou with Scottish cows are
amazing. How do you get things done when you're having a bad day? I will
say this because I hope it makes people feel better when I'm
having a really shitty day. It's very common that I don't
get.
Much done or
don't get anything done, I get to the end
of my day and I've been busy maybe and can't remember a single thing. I could not write down more
than one, perhaps things that I got
accomplish, that were meaningful in. Anyway, hopefully that makes you feel better, but
if I am trying to hedge that, in some way, I
would say exercise and blue light.
So using some type of light exposure with a portable device. I've used the Philips go light, I believe
it's called before.
Which you can get on Amazon or just about anywhere else, but light exposure and exercise for sure would be the prerequisite or kind of
boot up sequence that I would use cold exposure. Oddly enough. You wouldn't think that
cold exposure would be a real Archimedes lever here, but it does affect dopamine release.
There's a lot of literature to support this,
and for me
at least has anti-depressive effects that last a
A while it is not 10 or 20 minutes, there is some durability to it and I find all these
things very, very helpful. You know
what, I'm just in this and then the in the mode of confession today so let me give another one Adam. I know your meditation practice is somewhat fluid. How does it look today? It's
so fluid, in fact that I have completely
fallen off the wagon and have not been meditating for the
last at least month
and I've excused that
I've rationalized why that's okay in many different ways. And at dinner last night was told in no uncertain terms, it's not okay? And those are all excuses. So I intend to get back on the wagon. The way. I'll most likely do, that is using the waking up app with Sam Harris. And going through his very early
initial
program, which I think is somewhere between 10 and 30
days. And then I will also layer in TM.
So Transcendental Meditation,
Ation putting aside some of the kooky stuff that's associated with TM. It's really just a mantra based
repetition practice, I find the Simplicity of that to be very helpful for getting back into the habit and then we'll go from there. I do find Lock Kelly quite interesting and
have been consuming some of his lectures, which were quite
short and that would be my approach to getting back on the horse. All right, let's see what else we have here.
Okay, here's a question. Do you think ivy league, graduate schools worth the cost? It's so dependent on personal details. Whether you're taking on debt, Etc, I will say
that my view of higher education and graduate degrees in general, is
that
It depends a
lot on the caliber and name recognition of the school and also what that
does to your professional opportunities.
So if you're going to go to business school doesn't make sense to go to the hundred and seventy fourth, best
business school in the
US. For a lot of people, the answer will be. No, if you get into Harvard Business School and you're in
accounting or consulting or banking,
May that open up opportunities and also give you a
nice to year.
Vacation of sorts where you can play
beer pong while coming back to a higher position after graduation, quite possibly. And in some cases, you can actually in quite a few cases those types of career tracks will pay
for your further education. So there are instances where can make sense, but I'm focusing on
specifically the question of graduate schools. I think for undergrad, the calculus is a little different and you're
going into say, a liberal arts education. Even if you're focusing in a technical major
and having a
brand name of an Ivy League school, that is globally, recognized has lifelong benefits.
So, if that
can be achieved and paid for without becoming an indentured servant for the next 10 to
20 years, I think it's it's worth considering. All right, let's look at a few more.
All right, here's a
question. Thank you for the copy of the line. Trackers guide. What lesson would you hope a loved one of yours would get from it? Well, if I consider
myself to be in the group
of my loved ones, which I don't always feel to be the case, I would say there's a line in there from
tracker rheneas Michelle angle, which is, I don't know where
I'm going, but I know exactly how to get
there, okay? Which refers to losing the
track, not knowing where the animal eventually will be
And but understanding the
process by which
you can get to that animal and trusting in the process, even when you lose the track, which is inevitably
part of tracking.
As I've spent more time looking at it, I think that is one of the lines. I would come back to and when the lessons I would come back to over and over again. How do I handle overly political people, family friends. I don't have overly political friends. I break up with them. I'm not kidding. Generally, people
family.
Get very good at redirection to other
topics or I just request that we not talk about
politics, nothing's going to be solved,
it's generally not always but generally just salty old dudes, bitching and moaning and I consider myself at this point of salty old dude. So let's be honest,
but I just
don't see anything productive. If someone is
not actively in the arena
dealing with that and trying to solve the problems that they are detailing. Sometimes in excruciating, high volume.
Then I just don't have any interest in hearing it, so that's the short answer to that other than John McPhee. Are there any essayists? You recommend checking out? I would say SAS. I mean Ralph Waldo Emerson comes to mind but you may or may not consider him an essayist. Also, John Muir comes to
mind. I mean, I have been
reading a lot about the history of Yosemite and also the
History of the national park system in the u.s. so I have been reading a lot of writing from people who might be described as
transcendentalists or naturalist. So those are a few that come to mind. It's
question from Michelle. Have you read works by
Rudolf Steiner thoughts on
his body of work? I haven't but I am interested. So that name has come up a lot in the last few months for reasons that are not totally clear. So I intend on investigating
that this is a question from wine.
I'll just a
Vine. Are you going to publish your fiction book in the real world? So I'm not currently working on a fiction book. There are a number of questions about fiction and actually here's a question from David,
what is an unfinished project you have that you still care about and
would like to finish at some point? Is there
anything? I we, in other words, the
audience can do to help.
So I am in the process of thinking about creating fictional worlds
and also but
separately writing a
screenplay and you know,
For what the audience can do. I don't really have an ask at this point in time. I would say just check it out when I share
something. And if anyone is
interested in my first published piece of
fiction, which deliberately I've only made available in one
format. You can go to Tim dot blog, / nft, I wrote a short story, not a big money maker by any stretch of the imagination. All the funds, go to my Foundation which is a non-profit and supports research
like the
Darius novel treatments for say major
depressive disorder and so, on PTSD, that saisei Foundation is focused on. But you can go to Tim da blog /, n ft and take a look at that and you can zoom in and read. It's a little challenging to read. But I formatted it tried to format it in such a way that you can do it pretty
easily. Let me see what else what's the best purchase I've made over two hundred
fifty dollars in the last three years. I was expecting that to be under the most recent purchase that I've been enjoying.
Doing quite a lot is something called the so right PSO hyphen. R ite for.
So as release it's a very simple piece
of plastic. They have great margins on this thing and you can see it certainly on Amazon and on their website, they have some good how to videos on their website. And that came up because I was trying to find a way
to unlock my lower back, which can cause a lot of sleep disruption for me. And I noticed that with
same
Therapy or good soft tissue workers. If they were
technical enough to really do a nice job of releasing, my
iliacus that I could sleep really well for, at least one or two
nights, but I don't always have access to
such people
and wanted to find a way to do it myself and this device is what popped up. I think it cost somewhere between 50 and 80 dollars. So that
is under $250 over
$250.
I'll just think about that. I'll meditate on that. I might come back, I
don't buy a lot of stuff, I get
sent a lot of stuff that I just end up giving away, so I'm generally in Purge mode and not acquisition mode.
All right, here's a question, what would you recommend reading listening to
to learn about Japanese.
Martial arts culture,
I would recommend reading the historical novel
Musashi, mus a shi. It is
long and
It is amazing. So one of my favorite novels It is believed the best-selling novel and Japanese history. So it was initially published in Japanese Musashi. And if you would just like to hear a I believe for our conversation about this, I was on Jocko willing spot cast. I think it was for episode number 100 but it could have been a different
number where
he and I because he's also an affray if you don't know Jocko willing retired Navy SEAL Commander
has an illustrious career
Record
and a fascinating character all around. He had his first long-form, public interview on my
podcast and we talk in depth about this novel and some of the details with him. So I would say
Musashi is probably the first that comes to
mind. Question. I always get one of these something like
this. Did you lose your razor? You hippie? No. But since I
can't grow hair here, I like to grow what
Jason Statham calls, The Upside-Down face. So I get the hair on the
bottom. So if you rotate
It kind of look like a hair
intact. Upside-down head. So I just experiment with the facial hair and frankly, I'm too lazy to shave every day. Question from
Anand, if you had to recommend only one book, which one
would it be right now? Today I would recommend awareness by Anthony De Mello. I think it talks about some foundational self-awareness
issues
that are the Bedrock of functional or dysfunctional life. So that's probably the first one that I would bring
up.
Mornay, what
123 skills has made, acquiring more skills, easier
or irrelevant? Okay, I mention
three. Number one is acquiring relationships with polymaths who have mastered multiple things because if they have mastered multiple, very disparate disciplines for
instance, Josh waitzkin in the
case of Chess. And then later Tai Chi and Brazilian jiu-jitsu
and foil boarding
who is at a very high level with
Of
those or in the case of a friend who saved. Very good musician. Also a very good
writer. Ideally, I like to look for people who have mastered a, let's call it a mental discipline and a physical discipline,
then
I can generally get advice or introductions from
them or principles that will help me with acquiring any skill. I would like to acquire
and then if I try to fill the three slots
that you
You offered. I would say another one would be learning any language. That is a second language
or a non-native language to a high degree
is going to teach you a
hell of a lot about not just fact acquisition. So declarative knowledge. But the procedural knowledge of producing novel sentences and describing Concepts. When you don't quite have the vocabulary, you will learn a lot about how to
acquire other.
By becoming say, functionally fluent, which I think you can achieve generally in three, to six
months. If we're talking about,
Languages that use a Roman alphabet of some type,
you will find that a lot of the meta principles that you gain from learning language will transfer to other areas. And if you haven't read the 4-Hour Chef, there's an entire section on meta-learning. So the 4-Hour Chef confusingly is mostly focused on accelerated learning. So the metal learning section of that covers a lot of this
but let's just take a language. So I would pick say Japanese in my case or Spanish and then
let's
One Japanese which also got me familiar visually, with a different way of digesting and encapsulating information in the form of
characters and then pick a physical discipline. So could be in my case, say Judo could be archery,
something that has a physical component. And if you
get really good, let's just say
defining that as top 5% of the general population, not competitive population, that could be applied to powerlifting as well, right? You're not
competing against
In that framing
people who are at the top of the competition circuit. You're just looking at
say, your body weight to deadlift ratio for general
population. If you can figure out a way to assess that. So, if you have one mental, let's say, in my case Japanese, which includes both declarative and procedural, then you have a physical
right now. For me, it's archery.
But let's just say
it's Judo back in the
day and then, having the relationships with, at least a few people
People who are doing
something similar, right? So, they are polymaths or multidisciplinary in a way that includes at
least one primarily physical and one primarily
mental skill. I think you can obviate the need to try to collect in some ad hoc way a lot
of disparate things and you can you can pick and choose and be very effective when you pick and
choose Margaret. You have question looking back at your childhood, what is
your favorite fairy tale or folk story? I was just
Thinking about this
before recording
actually, and I don't know if this will count as
fairytale. But I was thinking of, I think
prompted by the question, about c.s. Lewis that took me 2 Chronicles of Narnia. And I started thinking about The Neverending Story.
I loved the NeverEnding Story, the book when I
was young and I misbehaved in school, a fair amount and I would get sent to
detention, but what they didn't realize
is, I loved attention because
I was in the
library and
so I could skip these classes that board the hell out of me and just read whatever I wanted. And The Neverending Story was definitely one of my absolute favorites. I think it has a lot of philosophy embedded in it, that is actually intended for more adult audiences. And for that reason, I would like to
reread it. I haven't thought of this. In a long
time, I would actually take the NeverEnding Story
and I would hide it in the library so that it
wouldn't get taken
out before.
My next detention. And
in that way, I would be the only person who knew where the NeverEnding Story was, and I could always continue where I left off. So that is one. Okay, this is from noodle. Are you do I apologize? I'm not sure on the pronunciation. What did I most enjoy your find. Fascinating about learning German. And what did you find, especially annoying or challenging about it? I'll start with annoying or challenging. It
was also interesting to me, but the Articles and the declination of
the Articles,
so
The fact that you have
masculine feminine and
neuter for
indefinite articles, a and an
English or definite articles, the soul, not only that. But if it's like da teef accusative, or whatever, you
have, all these different adjustments, based on, if something is say, being used to indicate a direct or
indirect object so you can have Daddy does
then you have them, which would be for the dock.
- and you have I ne -
einem then you have the, the genitive it goes on and on and
on. So, part of the reason, our forget German
the fastest most quickly out of all the languages, I have taken a stab
at is because as you would expect, right? And just like, people like German engineering, it's a very
precise language and there are a lot of rules and the Articles and so on, drove me
nuts.
Yeah, I found challenging also. The number of prepositions of sorts
that are thrown onto the front of verbs. I won't get into a ton of examples here, but I found that challenging. What did I enjoy about it? I enjoyed learning a lot about older English, and the etymology of certain say, older English or even Modern English words, looking at Germanic Roots. I really enjoyed
that. I really enjoyed the
German people also, when I was in Berlin, I just had a great time in Berlin, and I
found in general, the Germans to be very warm and very funny, very blunt in their humor,
which I appreciate it. I think maybe coming
from New York growing up in New York. I found it pretty easy to digest all of that and I I really enjoyed and this is going to be
a problem for some people, but I enjoyed how the
sentence structure and the word ordering can change very, very
Dramatically depending on how things are laid out. So for instance in English or in Mandarin Chinese, the sentence structure is pretty consistent. It is subject,
verb object. I ate the apple, I go to school
whatever. Now, in Japanese you have the opposite, it's I to the library go I the Apple eat and also pretty consistent
German, has both and English to some extent, has a few exceptions, but German will have like explore with us. All right, I think,
That. And then the Delta te te, te te, te, te te, te te te wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
verb. And in the beginning, I found that confusing as hell and it was really
hard for my working memory as an English speaker to hold on to all of this crap that I need to remember before we got to the
verb. And one of my brain became more
accustomed to that. I just it felt like
some type of, let's
just say you had the equivalent of like, a frozen shoulder in your brain and then it suddenly regained, its range of motion. I had that sensation.
Ian in the brain for
me. So, there we go.
There's question. Any updates on the Tim Ferriss fragrance for
men? You know,
this has been one of the stupid things that I've wanted to do for a long time. That may end up being not that stupid much. Like I've always wanted to be able to do the side splits between chairs, like Van Dam. I think I may give that one up. It's been on my New Year's resolutions for like
35 years
but the fragrance for men may be forthcoming. So keep an eye
out. In fact, that may become a thing. All
Let me check a few more and then I will jump to the pre-submitted this is a question from here's one.
Oh that's funny. All right so I think this is a real estate agent in Germany. Daddy does. Yeah I'm already 15 years in German but still difficult. Totally feel you, I feel you. All right, this is a question from anti fragile. I will read it as it would be pronounced in
shhhh what role has downtime had on the severity of your depression. This is a great question and I actually think it has been also in the pre submitted questions so I
will give a stab. Now what role is
downtime had on the severity of your depression how can one make time for one's creative Pursuits? While diminishing the vulnerability such mental space Solitude can summon. This is a very good question and I think about this a
lot because there are times when
I'm tempted say to go to two weeks in nature by myself.
there's definitely a part of me that is concerned that when I provide that amount of negative space or empty space, that the thoughts and the loops that creep in
will be of some character that bring about depression or anxiety,
mostly depression
and
One might advise me
that that's true initially and then it clears out. However, I have counter-examples and this is true for my of the pasta Retreat that I've spoken about at some length in the past and spoke about at some length on Dan Harris has 10% happier podcast.
So if you want to hear more about that, you can
listen to the 10% happier podcast, that Dan Harris did with me,
but I had a complete
Psychological breakdown at this. The pasta Retreat, silent Retreat
and I didn't make my life. Any easier by making it much more
extreme and exaggerated
in a few respects, one was coming into its six days. Fasted because I really wanted to make the most of this limited amount of time,
but that is a concern. So first of all, I just want to validate that by saying you're not the
only person who thinks about this. This is something that I certainly think about but your question isn't so
much.
one about,
Solitary time. It's a question about downtime. Now it seems like you're equating downtime to making time for one's creative Pursuits.
The way I think about this is a little bit different and I would say for me, creative Pursuit right now is dictated by,
who can I interact
with? Even if it's just once a week. Even if it's once every two weeks,
how can this bring me closer to someone? I want to be closer to, and for me?
Mostly pre-existing friendships,
but part of my
reason, the primary reason that I've thought about doing something
incredibly absurd, effectively a parody of the space in the nft world is
because I have all these old friends who are scattered around the
country. And we used to all be in San
Francisco together and we spent a lot of time together and had so much fun and then life progresses. People get married. People have kids people move
away.
And web three is one of the first
times that I've seen almost all of these. People
get back on the same playing field in a way where they are,
interacting and having fun this. By the way, is not a recommendation to invest in web through nft. So, I think you should assume that
pretty much everything could go to
0 and a lot of these things will go to 0. So, this is not investment advice. This is psychological
commentary for me in terms of choosing
projects. So, I am actually
Saying the playing field first and then I'm deciding. All right. Which sport do I want to play on that playing
field? Which position do I
want to play on that playing field? But it's actually
starting with The Who and not starting with the what
if that makes any sense. And I found that and have found that at least so far to be very helpful to my mental state, in the sense that
it bolsters me. It feeds me. It nourishes me
as opposed to making me feel like I'm stepping out to a cliff and peeking
over the side
where I can say, yeah, this is a great view. But if
My foot slips, I could find myself in
trouble. Hopefully that helps
Megan. What have I been reading? Listening to lately that has
impacted your thinking about
Parenthood. Well, I have something right next to me and I'll
just pull two books. So, the first don't even know if this has been published yet. It was sent to me by Kevin Kelly, who's an incredible human being and I still think probably the most interesting
man in the world in
reality. So I would suggest listening to my first podcast I did with Kevin Kelly, but he sent me this little book,
it's called excellent advice for
living.
Seeds for contemplation and these are based on his I want to say for the last two or three years, his annual what I've learned lists, where he turns 68, and he put together, I think 68 bullets and then he turned 69, he put together another 69 bullets and this little book contains I want to say through between 300 and 400 of such bits of advice.
Kevin
is also one of the most engaged and I would say
successful parents
and
Spouses I've ever seen. So I find Kevin to be a role model worth studying so that doesn't directly answer your question perhaps. But
for me it's about understanding someone's complete picture. Well enough that you don't cherry pick one piece and find it later to your detriment to be hitched everything else. So, what I mean by that is
in the world of business, for instance, or
investing
I know a
lot of young men make this mistake. They're like okay I want to emulate and I'm sure young women make this mistake or older men and women but they'll say I want to emulate fill in the blank investor he or she has compounded, 20% for the last 17
years that's what I want because I want to be
rich and what they may neglect to do is go on to Wikipedia and read about this person and realize they're on their seventh marriage and that you can't
automatically.
Cherry pick one piece of someone's life and force fit it into your own and safely
assume that other parts of your life will
not change as a result of inserting that. So
in Kevin's instance, I feel like I know Kevin well enough, we've traveled
around the world together, I've seen him with his family, I've been
to his house, I've spent time with him. He's not one of my closest friends but I know him well
enough to think. Okay holistically
Kevin is figured a lot out. He
also lives in a very
non-consensus way, but he does it through reasoning. And by paying
attention, to his internal Compass, not simply to be a contrarian. So for all those reasons, I find Kevin Kelly fascinating and you can certainly just
look up his. What I've learned
birthday posts. If you can't find Excellent advice for living, that's the first one.
And the next one, which I've had on my shelf for a very long time. Is
this this is and I think I'm going to be pronouncing
this.
Correctly. But sorry if I'm not dear author, Johann Hari, I believe it's Johann but somebody could
probably correct me if I'm wrong
Jo hannah0 is name, Har I This Book Is Lost connections and the subtitle is uncovering, the real causes of depression and the unexpected Solutions and most of this relates as far as I can tell. Now, In fairness, I'm only Reading part three. I'm skipping the description of all of the causes of depression and I'm skipping all the descriptions of the issues.
Shoes and jumping straight to part three, which is reconnection or a different kind of antidepressant. And really, reading about social,
cohesion, and social structuring. That might be a strange way to put it, but how to think about cohabitating neighborhoods Community such that parenting among other things can succeed. So,
rather than saying, how can I be the best
parent? Which is certainly a question, I'm sure I'm going
Beat to Death, once I get closer to having kids. But
putting that aside for the second asking rather, how can I set the
conditions such that the likelihood of a kid turning out? Well, happy and healthy the
extent that's possible with some
genetic determinism. Maybe, how can I do that through thinking about where we live, who is around us? What support structures exist and so on?
So those are two quick answers to your very short question. Thank you. Alright, this question of Anthony dream guests who are dream
guests. There's a long list of folks, who have thought about Oprah, of course, and, and many
others. But sometimes the juice is not worth the squeeze. With mega celebrities, you just
have to interact with so many layers
of people and a Phalanx of
lawyers and the manager and the agent and the
Publicist and the publicists
assistant and all of that
that when you finally get to the interview, you feel worn down and it can take a year or a year and a half, two years, three years to get these things done. So I have not pursued that very hard even though I would
love to do it. I think Oprah is incredible
and for those interested in learning more about her, the making of okra is a short mini series podcast that I've only listened to the first season of. But I found it very interesting
others that come to mind.
Would be Daniel Day-Lewis. Even though frankly I'm not sure he would ever do it and secondly I have not
listened to many long-form interviews, but I think he's such a spectacular performer, that it could be interesting and he is very hard to
get a hold of. So there's part of that that is appealing to me in and of
itself. Ryan
Reynolds, I think would be incredible. And
there are certainly many other and I've checked off a lot of my dream guest if you think about Jane.
At all, you know, I wanted to have her on the podcast since day one. Fortunately you know Madeline
Albright Margaret Atwood just name a few and many others Hugh
Jackman and also thinkers. I want to have on for a very long time, scientists who are lesser known.
So, those are a few who come to mind, but what I've come to realize for myself, is number one,
one of the best ways to grow podcast is to focus on Mega celebrities and controversy
and I have
almost no interest in doing either of those things.
So once I let go of
that
and have viewed, this podcast is something that nourishes me. Hopefully, as much as it nourishes other people,
you can
find Fascinating People who will give you
incredibly, good conversations, and takeaways
and actionable,
philosophies, and deep thinking everywhere they are everywhere, in any given country, any given gender race.
Creed you can find them. So I don't worry too much about the wish list anymore, but yeah, I do have a short wish list
and at the very least, I think I'll give it a stab. Like once
every six months will throw out a long lead and see if we can get a Marlin. Alright, this is a question
from Aaron. Oh, Aaron's dropped quite a few questions and let me pick one. I'll pick the one that maybe I
can answer. This is from Aaron, vrin. Did you mainly take a break from investing because of loss?
Asses in the market before returning to crypto investing, how do you feel about the bear market now? No, I did not take a break from investing because of losses in the market. I took a break from investing for a bunch of
separate reasons. So I wrote a post in 2015, which explains it well.
And it is how to say no when it matters most and then in
parentheses or why I'm taking a long startup vacation,
and this was a very popular post October 29.
In 15 how to say no when it matters
most or
why I am taking a long startup vacation and we'll put the link in the show notes
but I will also drop the link into the chat so people can check that out. And
those are my reasons for taking a break. It really related to having time for deep work and focusing on other
projects did not have anything to do with losses at actually
at that time, done quite well, I did however, want to wait given the number of
Investments to see how many turned out because I did not have complete confidence. I still don't have complete confidence that I'm very good at Angel Investing. Even though I've had a number of
wins, you don't want to
count your chickens. Before they've hatched in this case, you want to count your chickens before liquidity event. So, I wanted to also
weight and focus on other things. And my
crypto investing was around that time
mostly,
so I have not been
speculating day trading or playing much at all.
All in
crypto for the last several years, I'm watching it very closely and I'm interested in
aspects or I should say related
marketplaces and technologies that are underpinned or at the very least denominated in
some sense in say eith or other cryptocurrencies, but I think a lot
of what's going on in crypto web through the vast majority of it's going to end in tears and it's going to run red. So
That is not to give
again any investment advice. Just to tell
you about my own thought process. I've been mostly on the sidelines. How do I feel about the bear market now? I think that no one should be surprised, I think no one should be surprised by this and that what goes up comes down
and that I
am preparing to be and what we would consider it, not just a bear Market
but a
full-fledged recession with high inflation for quite
On time. So I am
not currently in the mode of deploying as much Capital as possible into what one might think of, as the bottom of the market, that is not how I'm viewing things. I'm definitely measuring twice and cutting once and I am personally holding on to
significant cash reserves. Now that could prove to be the wrong decision.
If my goal were to optimized for maximum return on investment and compound annual growth rate
and so on. But right now, I am optimizing for sleeping well at night and fortunately,
don't spend a lot of money on too much expensive, bullshit. So, I
don't need to feed that monster too badly. Johann, Hari is a worthy podcast, guess. Yes.
Ray, I believe, reading this correctly. I agree with you, so I maybe I'll get him on
at some point. Matthew, you're saying,
strangely satisfying on my head, fits perfectly into the painting behind
you. There you go, check it out, thank you for that commentary. I
appreciate it. Not done on purpose. Let's jump into some of the pre submitted
questions. Next
is I'd like your perspective on this quote. If
being hard on yourself, worked it would have worked by now end quote,
does that ring true in your own self, compassion journey, and how do you feel now about your relationship to yourself and especially,
What you expect from yourself, having been on that Journey for some time now?
So I would say that much
work.
Remains to be done
for me with respect to self-compassion. I am still very brutal when it comes to self commentary and
criticism, I do think it's improved some incrementally improved and to reflect on the quote because you asked for that, if being hard on yourself, worked, it would have worked by now. Now,
something akin to. This also would be, if working
harder on this worked. It would have worked by now or if asking for this worked.
In the context of a significant other or something like that. If asking for
this in the way you've been asking, worked it would work by now,
Is, I suppose a mantra for remembering that if you repeat
the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, you are
engaging in some form of insanity. However,
I think the challenge, when we dig into the nuances
here and the Practical results of being hard on yourself, is that
Being hard on yourself. Works for some
things I do think having almost
impossibly high standards and just whipping your back with the help of the demons in your psyche and whatever collected trauma. You like to use as
a form of Boulder, pushing you forward does work for some things, it works for piling in the hours. It works for
distracting yourself with a manic, focus on building.
Business for instance, or something like
that. So it's not totally useless. I
think therein lies part of the challenge. That
being hard on yourself does work or seems to help for some things. Does it work for increasing your
feelings of
contentedness? Does it work for increasing your feeling of spaciousness? And he's I don't think so. Certainly that's not the case and
I feel like I've solved for many things in my life, but that is that last collection of three or four things, I just mentioned is one that I continue to try to solve for and I think many of you who listen to the podcast regularly will have noticed that in the guests and the type of questions that I
asked. So if anyone is struggling with that or
finding that to be a
challenge, You Are Not Alone. Certainly at least
Nathaniel who asked the question and yours truly count is too but I know
Is a very
pervasive challenge for almost everyone. I talked to not everyone but almost everyone you know
who seems to have it figured out although it's hard to tell if he came out of the box. This
way is
Kevin Kelly which is another reason why I find him fascinating and want to make a study of
him.
Next question,
considering dunbar's law of having a Max of 150 meaningful context. How do you manage the relationships and friendships with all the amazing people you've met over the years and especially through the podcast, they all seem like people. You would want to stay in contact
with
I agree with
dunbar's law timing, a Max of 150 meaningful contacts. In fact I would say it's a lot lower than that. For me I don't think I can maintain more than a few dozen meaningful context
meaningful here defined as relationships that I communicate with say at least once every two weeks
and this is partially a function of just how much inbound
Gets directed at me and my team. I mean,
thousands of inbound messages if you count email, social Etc blog and
so on it is impossible, physically impossible to digest and respond to all those. So I do think there's, there's a certain degree of decision fatigue that feeds into
this, but I would like to say that there are few things that helped me not feel stress around,
keeping in touch, with people or staying in contact with people.
The first is if, you know, one person who is really, really good, they don't even need to be famous but just very, very competent, I was about to say gifted but that's not the same thing. Someone
who has cultivated a high degree of
expertise and ability in any field, that could be neurosurgery that could be Applied Linguistics that could be Venture Capital if you know one person.
You can get to anyone else in that
field generally speaking. Assuming that
person, you know, isn't a total bastard.
So you will be able to get to just about anyone, if you get
to know someone who is a national finalist in the dog agility championships, you want to find someone in the dog world, especially in the competitive
Arena. You can find that person if, you know,
one. So you really just need a toehold
in and I would say,
also, I know a lot of podcasters,
And those podcasters very often do something, akin to what I do. So they also have their own collection of these wedges. So, to speak
last, I would say that busy people, and
most of the people have on the podcast are busy in one form or another,
do not
expect nor do they desire to keep in contact
with or to keep up with many people. And if I
have a two-hour meaningful conversation with them, and if I do my
If I do my prep if my team helps me do that if they come away from the interview thinking in themselves, holy
shit.
That was an experience and I've
never quite had an interview like that before that was really well architected that was really well directed. The
questions were reflective of a really high degree of homework. I'm surprised I enjoyed that so
much. I do not need to email that person a month
later to Ping them to keep
my name top of mind. And I think it would
Damage those relationships if I did that routinely.
So the
folks that I select to have on the podcast and the people who self-select to be on the podcast, generally just by virtue of being world-class, whenever they
do tend to be low maintenance,
Seeking low maintenance and they look for density of meaning and connection rather than frequency.
So I really don't feel
compelled to stay in contact with folks
who have established that Baseline connection
with unless there's something meaningful to ask them or
to offer them or
otherwise so there you have it. There are
hundreds of people I've had on the podcast who
I haven't had any contact with and years, but if I were to email them or text them,
I believe they would respond if they're able and it comes down to I think prep
and this is reflected also in their interactions with my team. So from start to finish what was their experience and if it was
great, most of them I think are open to
having some type of dialogue. After the fact, even if we've had no contact
whatsoever and this relates
also to
Presentation I gave at South by Southwest which may be worth listening to, for some folks and I put it on the podcast,
which is, I believe titled
sounds a little hyperbolic, but how to build a world-class Network and record time. And I gave this at sxsw because the organizers asked me if I would do a session explaining how to get the most out of South by Southwest,
which is a huge huge, huge, huge Festival / conference. So I would say
Say
start there and those are some of my
thoughts. Let me look at
some of the live questions. What would my advice be to 21 year old?
Tim probably drink a little bit less exercise, a little bit more, start
meditating and do not participate in anything as an Impulse that you think might destroy your shoulders. I would say those are a few that come to mind
immediately. Mornay, are there any of the principles are?
Is in the 4-Hour workweek. You think apply less today principles? Now I think the principle is as far as I can recall. And I did look at the book recently because I had a question like this, come up the principles, I think still apply equally if not even more.
So in today's environment honestly with the amount of destabilization, with remote work with
experiments and decentralization with rentable infrastructure and Services, I think the
principles if you are looking for
Or self-determined
security per se. If you are looking for preserving optionality, I think the principles in the 4-Hour, workweek apply more. So now than when the book first came out
the specific Tech
tools and so on that are mentioned in some parts of the 4-Hour workweek.
Like go to my PC clearly are outdated
and a lot of the specific tools could be updated. But if you understand the
principles and the methods, you can find the
specifics, you will have the
ability to search.
And that the particular tools that suit your circumstances and objectives and so on. But I think that in
fact, the 4-Hour workweek
principles apply now more than ever. And I'm remembering another thing that reinforce this for me. As I was asked to write a new
preface to the German edition of the four hour work week, where the
book has been spectacularly successful, more copies have been sold in the German markets than in the UK markets and Australian
markets Maybe
Um, I can explain to me why Germany and Korea seem to be such voracious book reading, cultures across the board. My other friends were
author says the same thing,
but regardless, the point was, I wrote a preface for a new edition same as the revised Edition in English.
Of the four hour work week. And I went back, and I looked at the book, as a review. And I thought to myself 80/20 pretty as principal Parkinson's law as a helpful heuristic dream
lining fear, setting all these tools. All these principles seem to me to be
timeless, but extremely
timely in the current flux that were experiencing and I think we'll continue to experience.
Time. So hopefully, that is helpful. And for anyone who's wondering, you can find dream lining if you search that and my name you can find worksheets and so on for free. And if you're interested in the fear setting, as I described it, that was the subject of my TED Talk. That I did a handful of years ago, and you can find that at Tim dot blog, /, Ted, and I also include some text as a
description
question, what are three things one should do. When visiting Japan that you wouldn't find on every travel blog. Number one,
try to go to the
Ghibli Museum, ghi bli Museum, and, you know, kishida
park. It is the most wonderful unusual museums. I think I've ever been to. It's adorable. So,
Ghibli, for those who don't know, is the equivalent of
Disney in Japan. Founded
by Miyazaki Hayao, and this particular museum is
just incredible. And when I attended this may have changed but they would give you a ticket and the ticket.
Contained a clip of a real cell from one of their animated films and I just loved it. When I was last in Japan, you can get tickets for that at Lawson, I think, which is the equivalent of say a 7-Eleven,
which then brings
me to a food recommendation, which is to
try to find a Streetside Yakitori or
some type of really really low. Brow cheap Japanese food
and if you just search,
Search. I'm sure you can find which subway stop would take you to Orange train, stop would take you to such a place where you can
wander around and have some street food in Japan. And in fact, if you want to do two for one, you know, because you're a park,
you know, because you're not going
at a number of entrances
has food kiosks, where you can get any number of things.
So if you wanted to do a two for one,
you could do that. And then number three, I'm shooting from the hip here, I would say
Is.
Get incredibly lost and don't take your phone, so no using Google
Maps. No using Google
translate,
walk around do this during the day, it'll be a little easier to get back to where you need to go
and get
incredibly lost, and then find
a coal bottom, which is a police kiosk. And
You could have the hotel or Airbnb address
or whatever on a card that's fair game and then have
them with their almost certain
broken. English help you get back
to wherever you need to be.
That's an adventurer that I think everyone should have. It
is one of the
most alien places in English speaker,
could visit while still being
Almost completely safe. I think there has been a little bit more violent crime in Japan since I was
there in say 92
93 and I visited many times since, but it is still incredibly safe by global standards.
Let me look at one or two more and then
I will jump back to some of the presets and I see now that we've been going for an hour and a half, I was only planning on an hour. I will keep going probably for another half hour for those people who are willing to stick around, just let me know if you're still going to stick.
Around. If you'll still stick
around, I'll keep going. So let me know. Question
from Goku, what's the most, beautiful location you ever visited? One of them first that comes to mind is Queenstown New Zealand, incredible, incredible, spot. That is one that comes to mind. But there are many, there are many, many, many places. Certainly, I could probably pick 10 in Japan
alone and there's a lot. All right, let's see here. Julie,
what's your system to choose a focus in?
Pick up the 80/20 principle. This is a book by Richard Coke. Koch2.
May actually say his last name Kashi. I think that's how he says it. You can listen to my conversation with him which was, I think a very, very solid conversation. But the 80/20 principle I would just pick up that book. That is
the shortest answer that I can give while still being helpful. There's some commentary on
the four hour work week in German, it is fun to see how its translated into other.
Other languages like Danish is something like fiea team has a bazooka and just loved learning all of the translations because I'm still language nerd. So it's helpful to
just pick up, you know, 5615 words with each translation. All right. I'm going to give this a shot. This is a question from coal. What
sort of strategies have you applied to overcoming grief? After losing a loved one? Suddenly there seems to be a lot of bad content plateau.
When it comes to death and grieving I'll comment on this just because I recently attended my uncle's funeral and he died of alcohol-induced cardiomyopathy.
So
For those who are not aware, I'm
very heavily involved, in supporting nonprofit, research related to psychedelic Therapeutics
and these are often looking at indications like major depressive disorder, treatment resistant,
depression complex, PTSD in the case of mdma-assisted psychotherapy, but at NYU you have psilocybin for alcoholism and psychedelics. I do think apply more broadly, two different types of addictions including thought.
Ins, which could be manifest in OCD or anorexia nervosa Etc. But these are in some cases very deeply personal
for me. So, my uncle became an alcoholic when he was a child and continued until he drank himself to death in this case.
And we just had that
funeral is really an internment because he was
cremated and I
was surprised because I expected it to be very somber, maybe depressing.
saying and one or two family members
decided to tell really funny stories
about this uncle and
we spent a bunch of time together and it ended up
being
Quite unexpectedly bonding for all of
us to tell these stories
but to focus on the good and to focus on the funny,
he was a joker and he was a joker was his personality. So I think he would have wanted
that and it was the most uplifting I think repairing
such service I've ever been to. So I do think that there's probably a place for storytelling with an emphasis in some cases on
humor and I'm certainly no expert in this by any stretch. My friend, Matt, mullenweg lost his father, very
unexpectedly found, I think it's on Grief and grieving.
To be very helpful and he is recommended that people read
this before, they
lose loved ones. So it seems to have
some not preventative but some pre-emptive value on Grief and grieving, this is by
David Kessler and Elizabeth Kubla I guess, Kubler-Ross
Came highly recommended. And I've mentioned
that on
podcasts with Matt because I've had him on several times and I've had tremendously positive feedback from listeners. So I would say that would be another possible recommendation although I have not read it yet
myself. All right, let me jump into some of the submitted questions and then we'll keep going. All right? I'm going to do a quick one, AJ, what was your thought
process? Key decision factors.
Moving from the Bay Area to
Austin. Answer to that is check out my Reddit thread I wrote a Reddit AMA answer to this.
That went somewhat viral so I would just search Tim Ferriss move from San Francisco to Austin Reddit AMA and it'll pop right up. Has it worked out entirely the way? You anticipated short answer. No, anything you change? I don't think there's anything. I would
change but I did move to Austin in part to get away from any mono conversations. Seen
And I anticipated when I moved there in
2017, that Austin would become a seen. Probably
in say, I don't know. Seven to nine years, something like that. I did not anticipate, that covid-19
8, all of that. So significantly, of course. And I would say that Austin has become
A massive scene of scenes, so that is
unfortunate, but it's also great city as a lot to redeem it self. And there are
reasons why people are moving there, but if you want the
basic rationale, check out my Reddit AMA answer. Here's a question. I saw a tweet recently
that said, quote way too many young guys are taking life advice, from childless 14-year old men and quote.
I'm a student in my early twenties and I'm a voracious.
Podcast listener, your
pod, Lex Friedman,
Balaji, interviews, and of all etcetera. I think this tweet was cynical and off the mark. But do you think people at my stage of life, should be careful about relying too much on what they learn from your
generation.
Alright, let's take a stab at
this. So I think that people at
any stage of life should be careful about relying too
much on any particular single archetype or demographic or psychographic.
Think so, I will point out. Also, Balaji has kids. Nepal has kids. So, those two, I would accept
from the question because they're not childless Lex. I don't believe has
kids. I do not currently have kids, so it also depends on what type of advice you are consuming. And
Are these people
practicing what they preach are they walking the walk and not just talking the talk. So
depends for me,
highly on the type of advice. So if I'm talking to a saint ifs therapist, I'm not going to ask
them for say general. Contractor
constructing advice for a remodel that I might be in the middle of
I'm going to recognize, just like me, just like anyone
else, there are constraints and limits to the expertise of any one person.
And I'm going to look for practitioners. So I would say
that and if you are
getting all of your advice from people who fit neatly into a handful of parameters, let's just say 40 year old childless men, then I do think that is
a prompt for pausing and diversifying diversifying here. Really just means
Changing some of those
variables. And I think that is incredibly helpful for
your
intellectual Health. It is incredibly helpful
for
preserving a healthy level of skepticism. So you don't accidentally get indoctrinated into the cult of personality
X and those are my general
thoughts. Part of the reason I do this podcast and kept the Tim Ferry show, very Broad and it's possible scope is I want to
Speak with
a very wide spectrum of folks. If I only were able to
speak to business people because this were a Strictly Business and Entrepreneurship show. I would have stopped doing this a long long time ago.
And I
do try to follow the advice then that I'm giving right
now and that said, I will also underscore that if you are studying and taking advice
or considering advice, you should certainly consider and stress.
The
advice before implementing it then
you are ahead of a lot of people who just don't do that at all. We're happy to regurgitate whatever. The latest news is that they've pulled from their Doom, scrolling on Twitter
and yell and Shout on the internet. So if you are engaged in any
type of self-development you are already, I would say ahead of the
curve. But certainly much like a physical diet, a spectrum of different foods.
All likely, cover more bases. Keep you
healthier. Then
some type of strictly
regimented mono categorical type of eating and
that's true for your information diet as well. So I would
say that my general thoughts are pretty simple in that respect. I have a
question here. This is going to be a bit of a long one and
by the way, we
received hundreds and hundreds of submitted
questions. And my first filter is,
do I know anything about this? All right. Do I have anything?
NG to offer in a response that
I think is qualified that I've stressed tested
in any way. And if not, I just do not answer, right? So I try
not to speculate. I think there's too much speculation and in general folks online speak with way too much confidence.
So
I just want to say there are
many questions, I'm not answering in the live feed. There are many questions. I'm not answering
that were that were lobbed in
some of them because they're asking for really particular legal or medical advice, which is just not something I can do comfortably, but in many cases including
those, I am just not qualified, I would be
misrepresenting myself as an expert and in so doing on some level being dishonest and lying to all of you and I don't want to do that. Now, this one will see if
I have anything. So here
goes
I'm extremely driven to build my version of a deep life,
filling it with things that are meaningful and substantive cutting out the frivolous and harmful and hedonic pieces and avoiding the seemingly infinite Temptations of American life that lead to a shallow and frustrating existence. My fiancé is seemingly little interest in the arduous nests of this lifestyle preferring ease and comfort. As most do I do not falter at all for this preference and I love her Above All Else, and fully plan on spending my entire life with her. But every time that I try to convince her to tackle, the task of self-improvement with me, it only leads to argue
It's in her feelings since she is essentially half of my identity. How do you think I should handle
this? Should I let it go and
try to live half my life in each Camp. I find that hard to swallow since I'm fairly positive, that the comfortable American Life, basically, Smooths out the Contours of your soul. Nice wording. And I have an immensely difficult time. Watching that happen to her. No, I don't think that's an option. So I guess my final question is, how do I convince her to go on this journey with me? How do I
convince her to it for? Go
comfort and decadence, especially when I'm having a hard enough time doing that myself, all
right.
That's a long question, but I would like to try to respond to it because I, and I think many people have
contended with this on some level. It could be a significant other. It could be a very close
friend. It could be
the five people you associate with most and certainly Drew of Dropbox. And I and others have said, you are the average of the five people you associate with most. So, if you do want to get rid of your friends, what do you do?
If this is an issue in your
Most intimate relationship with a
significant other. What do you do? And I can only speak to a few things that I have tried
because hitting it
head-on with some criticism along the lines
of why aren't you interested in self
development? Is not going to be a crowd-pleaser and is not going to get the
response that you want this. So I'm going to answer this in two stages. The first
Is related to
an assumption that's embedded in the first section of this question. And that was, you know, should I let it go and try to live half my life in each Camp. I find that hard to swallow that the done. No, I don't think that's an option. There's a false dichotomy being created here. So the options that are being presented at least in the question are live, half my life in each Camp.
So half my life
away from my partner
effectively or
fully integrate both of us. So we are on the
same program.
I'm exaggerating
In a little bit. But that is a false
dichotomy. There are other
options and there's a gradient, I think between those two. So first, what I've learned is some things you're just meant to do on your own and you don't have to do everything with your significant
other. However, if you are going to say, take a week to do a workshop or a week for a solo Expedition, or whatever it might be,
it could just be a week to go to Burning, Man. I mean, I'm not saying that self development,
but
you will benefit from a relationship that can sustain that. So to people who are fully capable of being say self, entertain or self-directed at least four stents at a time. I think that's important. I do that with my significant
other or just as easily. I could say, she does that with me. There are times when we do our own
thing,
Okay.
That is component one and then to the
direct last question, how do I convince her to go on this journey with
me to me? Convincing implies speaking and persuading in conversation and I
don't know that is going to be the most effective path. What I have seen personally and what I've also seen in other couples is the path of least
resistance.
Is often identifying what they already love
the things they already enjoy the activities. They feel drawn to and trying to bend the Arc of one of those 1% to include what you consider to be self-development. So
let's just say
hypothetically that your fiance, I'm making this up that she loves going to yoga.
Well, you could find a fantastic teacher training course and if
you know you have one to two weeks of vacation coming up, let's just say it's in a nice location
fill in the blank
could be in, Sedona could be in Bali, who knows, depending on your budget
and you could offer that as an
early Christmas present early birthday present or just as a gift and say that you would like to
cover that. And
you thought
It could be super fun and you've been wanting to spend more time with her,
in her yoga, practice that you can do it together and that would be a non trivial step in the direction of self-development. I think that would be a programmatic way to improve yoga capabilities and
familiarity with terminology and also
Network Etc. So I think we want to
meet people where they are. I don't always do a great job of this. I can be very
Stubborn and headstrong and aggressive. The whole, I don't always implement this in the most delicate or diplomatic way but I have had success. Also with this is just trying to first before you decide what you're going to convince someone
of or where you want them to go to meet them where they are, do a mental audit of the things, they love the things that are easy for them to
do.
And then try to find a slight variation on one of those themes
that allows them to step foot in a way
that feels good to them, not just to
you towards a path of self development. I would also say that self-awareness is a very powerful precursor to self-development. So if there are things that you can do together, not just giving her homework assignments.
That increased self-awareness, that could be somatic self-awareness. It could be getting better at applying things like the 80/20 principle
to Career. So it might be a workshop along
those lines. Anything that
Helps to
facilitate the habit of turning the eye
Inward and asking
questions. I think we'll
also not just lead to self development but be self
development in and of itself.
So those are a few of my thoughts on that,
which is not easy situation, is not always an easy situation, but I do think there are many
options in between the two
polar extremes that you indicated and I do not think those two are mutually exclusive. I think you can
incorporate
eight both let me take a
look at some live questions here, folks. Claudia do you have any self discipline advice for ADHD folks
who have already tried everything? I'm a German teacher, by the way.
Well, it's quite
nice to meet you and I would say and you can find quite a bit written on this. You could see examples from BJ Fogg who
maybe still is, but certainly was teaching at Stanford for a long time. And looking at behavioral,
Location, you could look at Atomic habits, you could also look at the 4-Hour Chef, which talks about this at some length and the 4-Hour Body, and that is using accountability and incentives. So, if you want to make a
change,
having accountability in place in the form of both
people and rewards and or
punishments punishments work really well, say Financial punishment. Where, if you don't do a b and
c, then you will in advance provide 100
Rose to a close friend who will donate it to your least
favorite nonprofit. The one you would not want to be associated with in your name. For instance, these types of
mechanisms
and setting these types of conditions can be very, very effective. So certainly even though I appreciate the question, I don't believe that any of us have
already tried everything and I would suggest looking at not methods of convincing
yourself, but the setting of incentives such that it
Is compelling, sufficiently compelling for you to change the behaviors that you want to
change, and both the 4-Hour Body and the 4-Hour, Chef get into
this in quite a bit of detail. But there are other examples, BJ Fogg and then James clear with atomic
habits.
And also Charles duhigg is another one who has written a lot on habit d, uh, IGG.
And I find a lot of what he has presented to be extremely
interesting. Timer, how do you
plan such that emotionally tough moments? Aren't
destabilizing and then the
examples of breakups, death of family members, Etc.
And my
answer to this is there are
certainly tools and philosophies
and
Works like stoicism that can help you whether some of these storms. But in
some ways I find the most
freeing,
Way to think about this to not set the expectation and the
pressure that you can prevent these things from being,
destabilizing expect them to be destabilizing and accept that you are
human and that billions of
people feel
somewhat temporarily destabilized by these things. And that it's okay.
There is a book that I found very helpful.
And I do think the written version is different from the audiobook for some
reason and you can skip
around it. Found me at the right time by Bruce tifft, t.i. ft called Already
Free which really covers a lot of this all over Berkman in his book, also talks about this quite a bit that you feel
and produce
manufacturer stress. For instance when you ask yourself, how can I best
hand?
It'll all of my inbound, which might be hundreds or thousands of different messages.
Whereas on some level, if you accept that is impossible, you can finally begin to make at least psychological or psycho-emotional Headway.
So, I would just say that expecting it to be tough and possibly, destabilizing could be the first
Salve that you apply. And in fact, even if you read the moral letters to Luke
Ilyas or other
examples of writing from
famous
stoics, the most famous Seneca, the younger
Etc,
She was hard, bad things happen.
And it's I think valuable to strive towards certain ideals and to follow certain principles and
philosophies but think accepting
Your Human
Experience and validating it by
not setting the
expectation that you will be able to avoid these emotions, may be freeing in some capacity. I see a lot of questions about things. I've changed my mind about in the last 12 months.
I'm having trouble coming up with something immediate, but I will say that certainly
watching the markets for the last
few months has just
reinforced as
some of the most famous
and venerated names of the last
few years have been
obliterated in terms of
hedge fund, managers and other types of investors just wiped off the face of the planet financially, even though Gathering
their 2% management fee every year,
Perfectly fine. So no one has to cry. Any tears for the hedge fund managers, they'll be okay
but having seen the complete like, Supernova of capital
destruction, it's just become all the more clear to me
that basically no one knows what they're doing or put a different way that maybe too strong, that
everyone is making it up as they go along, and we shouldn't
convinced
As I heard, Stanley druckenmiller
say once, we should not convince a bull market with being a genius.
Those are two
very, very, very different things. And on one hand that's
depressing or
unfortunate, because it'd be nice to think. If I just find the right expert, I'll be able to figure out my finances invest and always make money in this that the other thing, but when you talk to someone like Morgan household and you realize whatever your favorite asset classes at some point, it's going to go down by 70 percent that could be next year.
Abby, next week, it could be five years from now but eventually you're going to
get punched in the face. Extremely hard by these macro Trends. So what I'm saying is I'm going to be nice to think that if you just find the right expert, everything would be solved. But it's also freeing when you realize even the people who are supposedly the best
at this, a lot of
them happen to just be riding as they would might say, secular Tailwinds, and floating atop a bubble
before it all burst and they were just trying to rake in as much cash.
Cash as possible before that happened. And I find that kind of reassuring. If that makes any sense, right? It's kind of like watching reality TV and you're like, wow, I complain about my life a lot. But as Chris Bosh said on this podcast, if you got a whole table of people together and they all put their problems on the table, you might pick up your problems right back and keep them for yourself that when you watch reality TV and you're like, wow, these people are a mess and you feel better about your own situation,
it should be humbling
collectively.
A and certainly individually but just to
realize that even the best in the world or people who are considered that are getting their faces ripped
off, there are some examples of exceptions but
I find that to be very top of mind for me at the moment. So I've
perhaps changed my mind on how I view very specific
investors somewhat. Although
again, these investors generally if they're really smart figure out ways to win, even if they
lose. So,
One could say they haven't really
lost the game per se, they just chose the right game to begin with, for more on that I recommend reading more money than God by Sebastian, mallaby. I believe it is. Yep. Sebastian. Mallaby who also has a very good book on Venture Capital more recently, I believe it's called the power law,
so that's something that comes to mind. And every day, every week I am certainly finding more
Examples of
strongly-held, emotional
positions or anger based biases that I have that are more
reflective of my upbringing and environment than any objective truth in the situations that seem to catalyze them certainly, that's something. I'm also paying a lot of attention
to. So those are those are just a few thoughts in response to that question.
All right guys got a few more minutes. I'm going to see what else we have. There's question nerd Dane do I still do
slow carb? Yes I do still do slow carb and I am currently following slow carb. That is the slow carb diet for those who are not familiar. If you search how to lose 100 pounds on the Slow Carb Diet, you will see a number of case studies that are. I think very impressive and lay out the basics of the diet. It is not complicated.
Let's see what else we have. All
right, this is a question from
Matt.
How do I ask for money as a Green Beret?
I got good at military process for funding training, equipment, and special projects. Now I'm building a solar panel Factory in South Texas. In the civilian world of funding is a new animal for me as an investor what inspires you to ultimately invest and
work with a particular startup.
Let me respond to this
with a few thoughts, and I'm going to keep it simple. So, the first is,
there's an out-of-print book, not all of it is great advice, but it will be at the Capitol
food for thought, and that is Gorilla financing. There's a book called Guerrilla financing,
which
covers alternative modes of
financing. And I recommend this because most of the startups
and small businesses that get
A lot of media Attention our venture-backed startups. They are taking money from Venture capitalists and Angel
Investors like me and hoping
for a 10x or 100x return on that money to their investors and certainly to themselves and their employees that model does not work for most
things. So for instance, in
this example of a solar panel Factory
that may be a very
Unappealing and irrational place to focus in that particular startup Venture Capital Market. And there are other
options, right? You have things like invoice factoring. You have certainly, let's just consider it traditional debt. You have different ways to secure that debt. And I think that it is probably a good idea to broaden the Horizon of awareness related to
alternative.
Mechanisms and
approaches. So gorilla financing would be one. You can also
find early investment decks. These are pitches,
so it could be 10 slides. It could be 20, it could be five
for
startups and companies that have done really well.
So you could look at any number of examples. The earliest examples of decks
are available for a lot of the
unicorns and deca corns and now successful
publicly traded tech
companies and you can find those online.
And if you just
search such and such
company early deck, early investment pitch, you will be able to find a lot of those and those are probably the two
first recommendations I would make. If you really want to learn about Venture Capital, there are some good books out there. Brad Feld is a very good investor, who has an entire book
about different
ways to structure and evaluate
and contract Venture Capital Investments.
I would say before you go barking up that tree and do it really deep dive on venture capital. I would get a broader understanding of the many
different vehicles and approaches. You can take for financing and look at small
businesses not
just venture-backed startups and best of luck. Good luck. Next question.
Why did you stop asking your guests who they think is successful? And why? This was always my favorite question on the podcast.
Hearing successful. People define success has helped rewire my own thinking around success, just as reading for our work, we change my entire perspective round time as an aside. Thank you for all you do your work has improved. My life immeasurably. Well, thank you for the
question Ryan. And the kind words,
I stopped
asking the question, who do you think of when I say the word successful and why? For a few reasons?
What I found is first, if I didn't disqualify certain types of answers, I tend to get the same answers
over and over and over and over
again. So I would get Richard Branson,
I would get Elon Musk. I would get Bill
Gates the names. You might expect from the tech Titan Pantheon of sorts. That's the first issue. The second is on a large podcast.
Some people feel as though, if they don't name their
parents, they aren't fulfilling their
Filial piety. So they will say my mom or my dad, or my mom and
dad and it is not generally a real answer. Sometimes it
is, but generally that is
a political answer, not an honest answer.
And I tend to agree with Derek severs because I asked Derek siver's, I highly recommend all my conversations with Derek. He is fantastic
he's actually very similar in
constitution in some ways to Kevin
Kelly.
As Derek severs this question. He said, well, I
can't really answer that question without knowing the motivations and goals of the person I might name. So he said, you know, I might be tempted to say Richard Branson, but if Richard Branson has set
out to live a life of peace
and quiet and tranquility and to slow down, then his life is potentially total
failure. If he's feeling compelled
to constantly create new companies and so on. So it's very hard at surface level to judge.
Who is successful
without understanding their motivations and priorities? And so on now had Richard Branson on the podcast. Also, I think that he is certainly following his
priorities and his inner Compass to the best
of my ability to tell,
but the point Still Remains. It's difficult to discern. And so what Derek said was really, you should
ask. When I say the word
successful, who is the third person that you think
of? Because first, it'll be
Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos for
whatever. Second it'll be my parents
and then the third answer will be when you finally get to some
degree of truth that is
non-consensus and non-political so
given all of that and the maybe in practicality of
asking someone. So when you hear the word successful who's the third person who comes to mind explaining the question would take just as much time as them answering it.
Dropped that from my usual rotation, but I'll consider adding it back end, but, but it was
given some thought it was not accidental that that got
removed from the
rotation, okay? Let me take a look at just a
few last questions. And then I'm going to hop off, guys. My planning to do my drunk-dial shows again from her nest has no time soon. Those were fun, but I've cut back substantially on alcohol consumption. Not because I think it's a bad thing.
Still drink alcohol. I had a glass of wine last night but I have found that as I get
older the penalty I pay for
getting properly drunk, let's
just not blackout
drunk. But let's just say three or four
drinks is very high. It ends up
affecting, not just the next day but probably two days subsequent. So I'm just, I'm increasingly unwilling to pay that
tax Reda. Any
tips for someone who wants to start a
podcast if you're an
If I consider myself an introvert, I am recharged by myself, or in very small, groups, say dinner with one to three people. And I'm depleted by
large groups. So if you are saying, I am an introvert,
but people tell me I should start a podcast. What should I do? My answer is, don't start a podcast.
If you are asking, I am an introvert. As I just defined it and you could also Define that as being highly
sensitive to
stimuli.
So I don't like being in.
Loud restaurants at home like being in places where there's a high volume on any sense. Could be bright lights, I don't enjoy that at all. If I
depleting
Ask yourself as an introvert a, my nourished or
depleted by one-on-one
conversations. If the answer is depleted, don't do a podcast. If
the answer is nourished, then you can very easily do a podcast, which is why I
prefer having generally say in the podcast with the
long-form interviews one-on-one conversations that I can then broadcast to millions of people, that is my ideal. I also enjoy doing these q&a's but it's basically me looking at scrolling text and my own bald head on a webcam.
So it's kind of like giving myself some Stuart Smalley affirmations in the mirror in the morning, it has some effect along those lines. Okay, Anand one person. I would interview any day or every
day.
There are quite a few actually I think Kevin Kelly
would be on that list. Noah Feldman, who's been on this
podcast would be on that list, Kevin Rose.
Probably another who would be on that list and I'm sure I could come up with more question. If I had to recommend, just one of my books to a random person I met on the street and be be a funny exchange, for sure. Excuse me. Hi, my name is Tim Ferriss. I'd like to recommend one of my books.
Have a good day, sir, but
which one would
Be and why it would be tools of Titans. I think that is just the largest
funnel in the sense that it
will appeal to the highest percentage of people I could give it to. There's something in that book for everyone. I think so. It would be tools of Titans request for Larry David on the podcast. Absolutely, would love to have Larry David on hoping that Bob Einstein on is very sad that he passed before. I had the chance Tracy, am I still using Evernote every day? Yes, I use Evernote almost every day and I find the you.
Hi, fine. And it's easy enough to use. I'm a creature of habit so I have used it forever. At some point, I might make a transition. I think Rome research is very interesting and there are a
handful of others. But at
this point yes I still use
Evernote.
Here's a question. I'll end on this one. So this is from Cafe. You know that's funny. What is on my billboard so I'm actually going to steal an
answer.
From a podcast, guest whose name I invoked earlier in this conversation, dr. BJ Miller, the hospice care
physician who
has helped thousands of people to die and he in turn got this from some bumper sticker. I asked him where he found it and I thought it was hilarious. I was expecting this really profound nuanced story said, no I think I saw on a bumper sticker and the answer is very present for me right now and that is don't believe everything that you think. So. This is a variation.
On don't believe everything you read but I really
think scrutinizing our
thoughts and
beliefs which are the thoughts we take to be true
is increasingly it always has been important but it
is increasingly important in a world that is designed mostly enabled by Tech platforms and social
media to
polarize the shit out of you
and to reward you from making your viewpoints
more and more extreme and
simplified.
Don't believe everything that you think and I would recommend for people who want to explore,
how you might do that in a structured way, you
can look at the work by Byron. Katie and there are
worksheets you can download for free that allow you to scrutinize some of your beliefs and thoughts. And I, and many of my podcast guests have found those worksheets to be incredibly
helpful and on that.
I am going to see what I can do about exercise and some dinner,
and I
very much. Appreciate everybody being here. Thank you for tuning in. Hopefully, this was helpful in some capacity, I'm running a little low today
on battery charge so I hope it was coherent, at least portions of it were
coherent. Thank you for all the questions. Both the submitted questions that were sent ahead of time as well as the live questions. And
I
I really deeply appreciate all of you. It is
a small miracle that I'm able to do this type of thing for a living as my Jo
B. And I
am
incredibly thankful incredibly grateful every day that I get to
have the conversations I get to have. And, to, hopefully,
share whatever
things I have learned in any small way after the many, many experiments that I
Me and
my life too. So it is really an honor to interact with all of you and have a wonderful
evening wherever you may be, if you're listening to this in the morning, good morning have a
wonderful morning or afternoon, have a wonderful day as it may be, and everything that has been discussed will be put into the show notes later if this is broadcast on the podcast at teamed up blog / podcast. And until next
time,
Just be a little bit Kinder than you think is necessary when you walk out that door.
If everyone is an asshole, just remember, you are probably the asshole. So, it'd be a good time to remember that billboard.
Don't believe everything that you think, scrutinize those thoughts. They can be pretty squirrelly. And thank you all for tuning in. Hey guys. This is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off and that is five bullet Friday with you. Enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday. That provides a little fun before the weekend, between one and a half, and two million people. Subscribe to my free newsletter. I see.
We're short newsletter called five bullet Friday, easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things. I found or discovered or have started exploring over that week kind of like my diary of cool things it often includes articles and reading books, I'm reading albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech, tricks and so on, they get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests and these strange, esoteric things.
End up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short. A little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. Something think about if you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim DOT log / Friday type that into your browser. Tim DOT, log, / Friday, drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by 80,000 hours. You have roughly 80,000 hours in your career. That's
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