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The Tim Ferriss Show
#614: Q&A with Tim on Wealth and Money, Book Recommendations, Advice on Taking Advice, C.S. Lewis, Relationships, Behavior Change and Self-Awareness, Why We Are All (Mostly) Making It Up as We Go, and Much More
#614: Q&A with Tim on Wealth and Money, Book Recommendations, Advice on Taking Advice, C.S. Lewis, Relationships, Behavior Change and Self-Awareness, Why We Are All (Mostly) Making It Up as We Go, and Much More

#614: Q&A with Tim on Wealth and Money, Book Recommendations, Advice on Taking Advice, C.S. Lewis, Relationships, Behavior Change and Self-Awareness, Why We Are All (Mostly) Making It Up as We Go, and Much More

The Tim Ferriss ShowGo to Podcast Page

Tim Ferriss
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71 Clips
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Aug 11, 2022
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Episode Transcript
0:00
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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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Stressful to try and figure out some of the best strategies best research and
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best tactical advice. I've seen
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and heard come from 80,000 hours, a non-profit co-founded by Will mccaskill and
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Oxford philosopher, and a popular past guest on this
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podcast will is perhaps best known as being the co-founder of the effective altruism movement, which is gained a lot of steam, and a lot of popular coverage in the last handful of years.
2:49
80,000 hours provides free research and support to help you find a career or path for tackling one of the world's. Most pressing problems, if you're looking to make a big change to your direction, mid-career say address pressing Global problems from your current job or if you're just starting out or maybe starting a new chapter and not sure which path to pursue 80,000 hours, can help join their free newsletter and they'll send you an in-depth guide that will help you identify which global problems are most pressing where you can have the biggest impact.
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and you can check out their excellent 80,000 hours podcast which has in-depth conversations with experts about how to best tackle pressing Global problems. And really try to find that needle in the haystack. There's so many things to choose from. How do you pick the right?
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Right High leverage problem for you to focus on helping solve. My team has raved for instance, about the interview, with Ezra Klein, that's number 94. And you can subscribe wherever you find your podcasts. That's the 80,000 hours podcast if you join the newsletter. Now, as an extra
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bonus, they'll mail you yes. Physical email, you a free book about impactful careers such as well, mccaskill's,
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doing good better. You can sign up at 80,000 hours dot-org, Tim
4:19
That's 80 000 hours. Hourss dot org. Slash Tim. Check it out. I really encourage you to check out this site even if you have no plans to change your career, if you're just curious about picking high-leverage Targets in life to improve the world. So I will also say it one more time because noteworthy, their nonprofit and everything. They provide is free, that takes a hell of a lot of work and a hell of a lot of dedication. And a lot of people, a lot of hours on their part podcast. The
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Newsletter, even
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their one-on-one advice, all free.
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So check it out. 80,000 hours dot org, slash Tim, 80,000 hours dot-org. Tim take a look
5:02
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.
5:25
Hello boys and girls. Welcome
5:26
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
5:32
habits, routines favorite
5:33
books, and so on that, you can apply and test in your own
5:36
lives. This time we have a slightly different format and I am the
5:40
guest as some of, you know, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of
5:44
the four hour work week, which was first published on April 24, 2007 hard to believe.
5:51
I signed 424 copies of the
5:53
book. Get it April.
5:55
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.,
6:18
Lewis lower back pain, solitary time and its challenges lessons from one of my favorite people. Kevin Kelly books. I'm currently reading.
6:25
Reading
6:25
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
6:37
much much more. So I have
6:40
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.
6:51
Red light loud and clear. Jared cab Val. Frank
6:56
Penelope. I'm getting the right Alex, Nick. All right, everybody. How
7:02
many people do we have here 101? I think that means we have
7:05
enough people to get started with this thing. That's actually a good number. So
7:10
I am clicking record on my
7:16
first backup, which is a sure. MV 88 plugged into an
7:21
iPhone with the
7:23
sure motive recording. Then I have my second
7:25
backup on QuickTime audio and then
7:27
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,
7:39
this is probably
7:40
120 bucks, maybe $200 worth of gear total. And then we
7:45
YouTube for free. Thanks YouTube. Thanks Google and I'm excited to dive
7:49
in. So we will go back and forth between live questions. We have 135 people, 138 this will probably continue to
8:00
grow and some questions that were submitted before hand. So I will go
8:04
back and forth between those and just to give
8:08
folks a few minutes to pop in because it's 3:01 p.m. start time of
8:13
three actually.
8:15
Yeah I'm going to reverse the order and
8:18
see if I can answer a few
8:20
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
8:37
lines. By reek, I think you said, one is none. That's a reference
8:40
to. The two is one. And one is none.
8:43
So, if you have to have something
8:45
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
8:54
know. May I haunt your dreams, just a little bit
8:58
less after this. Hello from Ireland, Connor, great
9:02
strong. Irish name, nice to meet you. And let's
9:09
continue down with the questions and then I
9:12
will
9:13
Edit this to make it sound
9:15
pristine for my team
9:16
will. Hello from Quito. Yes. Patricia. Let's see.
9:22
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
9:33
related or
9:36
web 3. Although I've really dialed back on that to reallocate to more of the climate Solutions and
9:43
Generation agriculture things along those
9:45
lines.
9:47
I haven't done a live chat a long time,
9:49
so it'll take me a minute to get accustomed to
9:52
navigating chat box. It's been a long time. All right.
9:55
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.
10:06
So, Chris, actually, just prior to covid, this would have been
10:10
Q4 of 2019. So end of 2019, and then potentially January of
10:16
Only 20 hours and discussions with multiple venues in Austin, to do a live
10:23
podcast series, that would be something similar to the series that you
10:30
might see on say Netflix with
10:32
some of the Late Night show hosts and I
10:36
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
10:46
On the table
10:47
and TVD Jewel.
10:50
Have I considered moving out of the u.s. recently
10:52
things seem to be getting rid of the crazy if so, where is interesting to you? Well, my
10:58
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
11:14
because I
11:16
think
11:16
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.
11:26
So rather than
11:27
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
11:33
the US.
11:34
And I was born here, I didn't choose to be born here. I am very
11:38
grateful and
11:39
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
11:46
feel
11:46
some
11:48
karmic obligation to try to help here as well. So no immediate plans to
11:52
jump John
11:55
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
12:16
I
12:16
And
12:16
continue to skew towards more extremes and
12:21
certainly this point I have no kids. Once I have kids, I expect I'll become much more monk-like
12:27
in my predispositions and we'll
12:31
care, even more about privacy. And now, some of my friends very smart, people
12:35
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
12:45
that does have an impact.
12:46
Impact on not only your life but the lives of those
12:49
around you and I
12:51
think this is particularly important to consider when you're say kids, do not opt in
12:57
if they're not of an age where they can give
12:58
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
13:16
And B, whether that's a professional Plan
13:19
B, a geographic Plan, B income Plan B never hurts.
13:26
That's how I think about these things but understand that I come prepackaged pre-programmed
13:32
with some degree of
13:34
paranoia and hyper-vigilance. So I tend
13:36
to skew that direction, I would say,
13:39
let me answer one more than I'm going to jump to some of the
13:41
questions that were submitted and I will
13:46
Begin with believe, this
13:48
is a company name so I'm going to skip it, but I
13:50
will answer the question and that is, can you share an
13:53
interview? That was the most impactful for you personally?
13:56
And I get this question a lot and my general answer is all of the
14:01
podcast episodes of personal to me in some way. They usually
14:04
are a result of me,
14:05
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
14:14
life.
14:15
Any given interview could be the most
14:18
impactful, but one that I refer people to a lot that
14:21
had a big impact on me is with BJ Miller and I'll let you look it up. But BJ Miller at
14:30
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.
14:45
Make that transition, so to speak, which kind of alludes to a number of other questions I received
14:50
today and I highly suggest that if you haven't heard, it is at
14:55
least five years old
14:56
and there's a lot to it. And if you listen to it two or three
15:00
times, you will learn something new or notice something new each time and there's a good amount of overlap
15:05
actually, in one respect with an ed cook interview that I did,
15:10
this sort of cosmic insignificance therapy, which is actually
15:14
the name of a
15:15
book.
15:15
Excerpt, that also reinforces this point from
15:18
40,000
15:19
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
15:37
it. All right? I said I was going to do one more, I'll do a few more
15:41
Carlos Manuel. Hey, Tim, would you consider doing new version of tribal mentors?
15:45
Your access to really awesome. People keeps growing. Yes. I've actually been considering doing a new
15:51
version, a new volume of
15:54
tribal mentors or tools of Titans. And I was thinking about that this morning literally, because I was lamenting last night at a
16:01
dinner with a friend
16:03
who is also a podcast guess because he
16:05
asked me, are you going to write another
16:08
volume of Tri mentors or tool Titans? Because he and this
16:11
is a very high-performing guy, God lat
16:15
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
16:29
last 100 or 200 episodes of the podcast to glean, what I may have forgotten to highlight, what I may
16:35
have failed to implement and so on and so forth, the motivation would very much Echo what is
16:43
written in the introduction or the
16:45
Preface to tools of Titans. It would be for me personally and the Assumption
16:50
there being that if I do it for
16:52
myself that readers these some
16:54
readers will find it,
16:55
interesting. Okay, let me
16:59
jump into some of these questions that are the selected questions which came in as being pre-submitted, we've got between 400 and
17:08
500 people now on the line.
17:11
So let me jump into that and then I promise I'll come back
17:14
and we'll
17:15
Will answer some more live questions. So, the first, pre-submitted question
17:21
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
17:27
door and provide a tool to people
17:31
who are listening and I'm going to look into
17:32
this. So here is the question.
17:36
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
17:45
System. But the results are really undeniable at least in a lot of friends. And also, for myself
17:52
personally. And I interviewed Richard, Schwartz, who is the founder / creator of ifs? Although Parts work is
18:00
existed in different capacities and been used in various modalities for some time.
18:06
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
18:13
it, I'm super curious. Have you ever explored the
18:15
side of ifs that helps folks, explore inherited, trauma /, energy ifs, refers to this line of inquiry, as exploring quote Legacy
18:25
burdens. And quote, the way you talk about your depressive and angry Parts makes me wonder if any of the energy that those
18:32
parts carry feels inherited. And I guess I'd love to hear your Riff on that. So I'm not going to riff.
18:36
For too long on this but I will say that absolutely both of those to
18:40
specifically feel inherited and
18:45
I am going to look into
18:47
Legacy burdens and may chat again with Richard Dick about
18:53
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
19:00
that. So that is my very short and sweet answer it.
19:06
Is really a non-answers. Just say that
19:08
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
19:21
is so I'll take this as a an
19:23
opportunity to give a Shameless plug
19:26
to a friend of mine, actually, ramit Sethi, and as he thi and his
19:33
podcast, which I think is just
19:36
Rich. It may have a different name, but if you just find ramit Sethi and his
19:39
podcast each episode and I've listened to a ton of them, he has generally a
19:44
couple on and they talked about their
19:47
money issues,
19:49
their money priorities. What it means to live a rich life and what you realize very quickly
19:56
is that people have neuroses or stories at the very least, around money that both
20:05
help and hurt.
20:06
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
20:16
talk to a couple
20:17
that's worth 10 million dollars. And is still comparison shopping for
20:22
strawberries and at the very least it
20:26
normalizes some of the unanswered questions and maybe unrealistic expectations, that people
20:31
have around
20:33
money to answer your question directly.
20:36
I would say that it's hard for me. First
20:39
of all, it's a point to a line after
20:42
which I felt
20:44
Rich if that makes any sense
20:46
whatsoever and that if for the time being and I'm borrowing this
20:52
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
21:00
so you give to it or get from it in the sort of pro and con positive and negative.
21:06
Signs of things. And
21:09
what I've noticed for a lot of my friends is that past a certain
21:13
point well that actually turns into a energy-consuming
21:20
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
21:36
It's on my mind because I think the goal posts tend to move
21:39
for people and it is and can be a very nebulous goal. But implicit
21:45
in that is very often the assumption that once I have this money, once I am rich once I've won that game,
21:52
most of my problems or
21:55
many of my problems will be
21:57
solved and on
21:59
Maslow's hierarchy if we're talking about shelter food
22:03
for right. So rent or mortgage
22:05
Etc, that type of
22:06
Thing. It can be true, but the psychological psycho emotional issues. Tend to not just not get fixed but
22:13
sometimes get exaggerated. So by that, I
22:16
mean power alcohol. Money tend to magnify whatever is there. It's also true with psychedelics for a lot of
22:23
people and
22:26
if you have say paranoia or you're worried about people ripping you
22:30
off fill in the
22:31
blank, it could be any number of things, if you feel insecure in ways, they
22:36
And see all of those levers. I just mentioned, including
22:39
money tend to
22:41
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
22:48
and so on and so forth. And what I found is that people can be very happy and very often are very
22:55
upbeat when they can hold in their mind, the
22:58
belief that once they cross the finish line, these problems will be fixed. Once they have the
23:06
The money more
23:07
often than not, they realize that's not the case, and it can
23:09
actually result in different
23:13
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
23:23
solve the problem. It didn't, now, what? And on, top of that,
23:27
I would say, once you have Team, once you have more stuff, let's say, somebody buys a second
23:31
house,
23:33
Etc. All of that consumes Life Energy on some level.
23:36
And you can
23:36
create systems and so on. But it does create a
23:40
bandwidth drain.
23:41
And for instance, if you have a bunch of
23:43
money, people are going to ask you for that money constantly in some form or another and you will feel compelled. Most people will,
23:51
to think about investing a lot and generating that initial wealth and being really good at investing or two entirely
23:59
different sports. So you may be very well suited
24:02
to the former and very
24:03
ill suited to the ladder. So, again, coming back,
24:06
Back to your direct question.
24:06
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
24:13
aging parents, when thinking about being able to help family members being able to help family members
24:21
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
24:33
all of those things I would
24:36
Say give me a greater peace of mind and a certain degree of Stillness. But on the
24:44
other side of the Ledger, there's a lot of
24:46
shit that eats energy. What do I think a healthy view
24:49
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
25:04
getting a lot of
25:06
Of
25:06
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
25:18
and be able to Exhale and go maybe lay on a beach and rub
25:23
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
25:31
to driving in 6th Gear on the Autobahn and you've
25:35
done that for,
25:36
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
25:46
if you're used to park or
25:48
mostly 6 gear getting used to the gears in between,
25:51
at least for me personally has been very challenging so I'm still working on it
25:56
and I think this is a fascinating fascinating questions so I may not have given
26:01
much Clarity but that
26:03
is my current state of play with these questions.
26:06
Matthew correcting the title 4000
26:08
weeks, the book that I mentioned earlier. Oliver Berkman,
26:11
great book, more highlights in that book and psychology of money, actually by Morgan housel
26:17
than probably, any books in recent memory for me. Alright, next question, is Chris from Annapolis. Tim you've mentioned
26:27
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?
26:36
It wasn't up to standard and was never published in the podcast. The answer is, yes, that has happened. It has not happened
26:43
recently, but I would say, in total
26:46
of the 600-plus episodes that
26:50
we have recorded, there are maybe 6 to 10 that have not been published, and it is true that I give every
26:58
guest Final Cut, which is also what Inside the Actors Studio.
27:02
Did certainly with James
27:04
Lipton and it's not
27:06
That uncommon a
27:07
policy, given
27:08
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
27:32
Cut. However I will say there are conversations.
27:36
Asians occasionally, and first of all, I'd
27:39
say, fewer than 3% of guests ever, take advantage of that. And the intention is to say, rather than
27:46
self-censoring in the interview, this is
27:49
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
27:56
not a great way to put out. Great
27:59
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.
28:06
Edit sober approach applies to podcasting. So what I tell
28:09
people, before we start recording and I say quite a few
28:12
things before we start recording, but one of them
28:15
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
28:31
that's the kind of conversation. We're having just the
28:33
two of us and then we can always
28:35
cut things out later.
28:36
And that's generally the
28:37
phrasing. However,
28:39
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
28:45
important. My general response of there will be. I'm happy to cut this, but what
28:52
that's going to mean, is the interview itself. Cannot stand on its own two
28:55
legs, and I can't publish the interview. So if you
28:58
don't want that component of the
29:00
interview to be included, we just have to shelve the interview and
29:06
that has yet to result in an interview being
29:08
shelved. So those are some of my thoughts and approaches
29:12
on Final Cut and how that applies to podcasts. There are many
29:16
ways to do this. So there are plenty of folks who don't do that with
29:19
guests, but
29:21
I have been too often in the interviewee seat. I mean I've been interviewed hundreds probably thousands of
29:26
times and I'm just operating using the Golden Rule here
29:32
treat others as you would like to be treated. So I will also ask people
29:36
We start
29:36
recording in case you're interested. I'll say a number of things first. It's not
29:39
live. So if you want to go to the bathroom, get water.
29:43
Pause and ask me a question. If you want to
29:46
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
29:56
them what would make
29:58
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
30:06
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
30:16
comfortable. It
30:18
tells them, hopefully, that I am an ally and then
30:22
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
30:31
Write drunk, edit, sober type of approach to audio. I find it super
30:35
helpful.
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32:04
All right. Next one. Brian. I have rarely come across c.s. Lewis.
32:08
Fans are admirers outside of Christian circles.
32:11
What makes him compelling to you, including
32:13
your praise of the movie, the most
32:14
reluctant convert. All right, so I will answer this c.s., Lewis, I first
32:21
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
32:29
writing spectacular and
32:33
I enjoyed the craftsmanship and the Brilliance and I
32:39
still do that goes into his writing and I do think he's
32:43
also
32:44
crossed demographic and mainstream in the sense that he wrote The Chronicles of
32:49
Narnia, which may very well be an allegory for Christianity and
32:54
and Central figures and beliefs in Christianity. However, The Chronicles of Narnia, I was looking this up
32:59
before doing this, Q&A has sold more than
33:02
100 million copies.
33:03
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
33:22
particular film is
33:24
fact based or
33:25
nonfiction history based
33:28
but it is acted and it started off as I understand as a one-man show on Broadway.
33:33
Broadway, or Off-Broadway, but
33:34
as theater and the main
33:38
older actor who plays c.s.
33:40
Lewis narrating, his own life is so good. I mean, the
33:44
acting is so, so incredibly good that I recommended it but it is not for
33:50
religious reasons that I recommended c.s. Lewis and I will look up actually one book again, it's going to sound strange,
33:59
perhaps, but
34:00
that I found
34:03
Tastic that has very strong, religious implications and overtones but the screwtape
34:08
letters by c.s. Lewis, I absolutely loved, I read it more than
34:13
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.
34:25
Lewis really, really, really interesting.
34:27
And I should say the same time that I read the screwtape letters. I was reading Bertrand
34:31
Russell and
34:33
You know, why I am not a
34:34
Christian and all these other books. So, my interests relate to the pros and thinking of these people and is not driven first
34:42
and foremost by belief system, at least, not one that I'm aware of.
34:47
There's always the question of awareness in which
34:50
beliefs, I've come to on my own and
34:53
which I have simply inherited from my family or environment or upbringing or
34:57
otherwise. Okay, let's jump into the live
35:01
questions and I will,
35:03
Grab some more from the chat. All right, from Michelle. Hi from Sunny Scotland.
35:10
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
35:16
do love you cou with Scottish cows are
35:19
amazing. How do you get things done when you're having a bad day? I will
35:23
say this because I hope it makes people feel better when I'm
35:26
having a really shitty day. It's very common that I don't
35:30
get.
35:31
Much done or
35:32
don't get anything done, I get to the end
35:33
of my day and I've been busy maybe and can't remember a single thing. I could not write down more
35:40
than one, perhaps things that I got
35:42
accomplish, that were meaningful in. Anyway, hopefully that makes you feel better, but
35:48
if I am trying to hedge that, in some way, I
35:50
would say exercise and blue light.
35:53
So using some type of light exposure with a portable device. I've used the Philips go light, I believe
36:00
it's called before.
36:01
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
36:11
boot up sequence that I would use cold exposure. Oddly enough. You wouldn't think that
36:16
cold exposure would be a real Archimedes lever here, but it does affect dopamine release.
36:22
There's a lot of literature to support this,
36:24
and for me
36:26
at least has anti-depressive effects that last a
36:30
A while it is not 10 or 20 minutes, there is some durability to it and I find all these
36:37
things very, very helpful. You know
36:39
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
36:50
so fluid, in fact that I have completely
36:52
fallen off the wagon and have not been meditating for the
36:56
last at least month
36:58
and I've excused that
37:00
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
37:19
initial
37:20
program, which I think is somewhere between 10 and 30
37:23
days. And then I will also layer in TM.
37:29
So Transcendental Meditation,
37:30
Ation putting aside some of the kooky stuff that's associated with TM. It's really just a mantra based
37:36
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
37:48
have been consuming some of his lectures, which were quite
37:53
short and that would be my approach to getting back on the horse. All right, let's see what else we have here.
38:01
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
38:14
that my view of higher education and graduate degrees in general, is
38:19
that
38:21
It depends a
38:22
lot on the caliber and name recognition of the school and also what that
38:26
does to your professional opportunities.
38:30
So if you're going to go to business school doesn't make sense to go to the hundred and seventy fourth, best
38:35
business school in the
38:37
US. For a lot of people, the answer will be. No, if you get into Harvard Business School and you're in
38:42
accounting or consulting or banking,
38:46
May that open up opportunities and also give you a
38:49
nice to year.
38:51
Vacation of sorts where you can play
38:54
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
39:05
for your further education. So there are instances where can make sense, but I'm focusing on
39:14
specifically the question of graduate schools. I think for undergrad, the calculus is a little different and you're
39:21
going into say, a liberal arts education. Even if you're focusing in a technical major
39:25
and having a
39:29
brand name of an Ivy League school, that is globally, recognized has lifelong benefits.
39:35
So, if that
39:36
can be achieved and paid for without becoming an indentured servant for the next 10 to
39:42
20 years, I think it's it's worth considering. All right, let's look at a few more.
39:49
All right, here's a
39:50
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
39:57
myself to be in the group
39:59
of my loved ones, which I don't always feel to be the case, I would say there's a line in there from
40:05
tracker rheneas Michelle angle, which is, I don't know where
40:10
I'm going, but I know exactly how to get
40:12
there, okay? Which refers to losing the
40:15
track, not knowing where the animal eventually will be
40:19
And but understanding the
40:20
process by which
40:22
you can get to that animal and trusting in the process, even when you lose the track, which is inevitably
40:27
part of tracking.
40:30
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
40:47
family.
40:50
Get very good at redirection to other
40:52
topics or I just request that we not talk about
40:54
politics, nothing's going to be solved,
40:56
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,
41:05
but I just
41:06
don't see anything productive. If someone is
41:08
not actively in the arena
41:11
dealing with that and trying to solve the problems that they are detailing. Sometimes in excruciating, high volume.
41:19
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
41:40
mind. I mean, I have been
41:41
reading a lot about the history of Yosemite and also the
41:48
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
41:55
transcendentalists or naturalist. So those are a few that come to mind. It's
42:01
question from Michelle. Have you read works by
42:03
Rudolf Steiner thoughts on
42:05
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
42:14
that this is a question from wine.
42:18
I'll just a
42:18
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,
42:29
what is an unfinished project you have that you still care about and
42:33
would like to finish at some point? Is there
42:34
anything? I we, in other words, the
42:36
audience can do to help.
42:37
So I am in the process of thinking about creating fictional worlds
42:42
and also but
42:43
separately writing a
42:45
screenplay and you know,
42:47
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
42:53
something. And if anyone is
42:55
interested in my first published piece of
42:58
fiction, which deliberately I've only made available in one
43:02
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
43:16
like the
43:17
Darius novel treatments for say major
43:21
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
43:35
easily. Let me see what else what's the best purchase I've made over two hundred
43:42
fifty dollars in the last three years. I was expecting that to be under the most recent purchase that I've been enjoying.
43:47
Doing quite a lot is something called the so right PSO hyphen. R ite for.
43:52
So as release it's a very simple piece
43:55
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
44:07
to unlock my lower back, which can cause a lot of sleep disruption for me. And I noticed that with
44:17
same
44:17
Therapy or good soft tissue workers. If they were
44:21
technical enough to really do a nice job of releasing, my
44:23
iliacus that I could sleep really well for, at least one or two
44:27
nights, but I don't always have access to
44:30
such people
44:31
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
44:39
is under $250 over
44:43
$250.
44:45
I'll just think about that. I'll meditate on that. I might come back, I
44:47
don't buy a lot of stuff, I get
44:50
sent a lot of stuff that I just end up giving away, so I'm generally in Purge mode and not acquisition mode.
44:58
All right, here's a question, what would you recommend reading listening to
45:02
to learn about Japanese.
45:04
Martial arts culture,
45:06
I would recommend reading the historical novel
45:09
Musashi, mus a shi. It is
45:14
long and
45:15
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
45:35
number where
45:37
he and I because he's also an affray if you don't know Jocko willing retired Navy SEAL Commander
45:42
has an illustrious career
45:45
Record
45:45
and a fascinating character all around. He had his first long-form, public interview on my
45:51
podcast and we talk in depth about this novel and some of the details with him. So I would say
45:59
Musashi is probably the first that comes to
46:01
mind. Question. I always get one of these something like
46:04
this. Did you lose your razor? You hippie? No. But since I
46:07
can't grow hair here, I like to grow what
46:10
Jason Statham calls, The Upside-Down face. So I get the hair on the
46:13
bottom. So if you rotate
46:15
It kind of look like a hair
46:17
intact. Upside-down head. So I just experiment with the facial hair and frankly, I'm too lazy to shave every day. Question from
46:23
Anand, if you had to recommend only one book, which one
46:26
would it be right now? Today I would recommend awareness by Anthony De Mello. I think it talks about some foundational self-awareness
46:35
issues
46:36
that are the Bedrock of functional or dysfunctional life. So that's probably the first one that I would bring
46:43
up.
46:44
Mornay, what
46:46
123 skills has made, acquiring more skills, easier
46:49
or irrelevant? Okay, I mention
46:52
three. Number one is acquiring relationships with polymaths who have mastered multiple things because if they have mastered multiple, very disparate disciplines for
47:02
instance, Josh waitzkin in the
47:05
case of Chess. And then later Tai Chi and Brazilian jiu-jitsu
47:10
and foil boarding
47:13
who is at a very high level with
47:15
Of
47:15
those or in the case of a friend who saved. Very good musician. Also a very good
47:20
writer. Ideally, I like to look for people who have mastered a, let's call it a mental discipline and a physical discipline,
47:29
then
47:30
I can generally get advice or introductions from
47:34
them or principles that will help me with acquiring any skill. I would like to acquire
47:42
and then if I try to fill the three slots
47:44
that you
47:44
You offered. I would say another one would be learning any language. That is a second language
47:50
or a non-native language to a high degree
47:53
is going to teach you a
47:56
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
48:12
acquire other.
48:15
By becoming say, functionally fluent, which I think you can achieve generally in three, to six
48:20
months. If we're talking about,
48:23
Languages that use a Roman alphabet of some type,
48:27
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
48:46
but let's just take a language. So I would pick say Japanese in my case or Spanish and then
48:53
let's
48:53
One Japanese which also got me familiar visually, with a different way of digesting and encapsulating information in the form of
49:01
characters and then pick a physical discipline. So could be in my case, say Judo could be archery,
49:09
something that has a physical component. And if you
49:11
get really good, let's just say
49:14
defining that as top 5% of the general population, not competitive population, that could be applied to powerlifting as well, right? You're not
49:21
competing against
49:23
In that framing
49:25
people who are at the top of the competition circuit. You're just looking at
49:30
say, your body weight to deadlift ratio for general
49:35
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
49:45
right now. For me, it's archery.
49:46
But let's just say
49:47
it's Judo back in the
49:49
day and then, having the relationships with, at least a few people
49:53
People who are doing
49:54
something similar, right? So, they are polymaths or multidisciplinary in a way that includes at
50:00
least one primarily physical and one primarily
50:04
mental skill. I think you can obviate the need to try to collect in some ad hoc way a lot
50:12
of disparate things and you can you can pick and choose and be very effective when you pick and
50:15
choose Margaret. You have question looking back at your childhood, what is
50:20
your favorite fairy tale or folk story? I was just
50:23
Thinking about this
50:24
before recording
50:25
actually, and I don't know if this will count as
50:27
fairytale. But I was thinking of, I think
50:32
prompted by the question, about c.s. Lewis that took me 2 Chronicles of Narnia. And I started thinking about The Neverending Story.
50:37
I loved the NeverEnding Story, the book when I
50:42
was young and I misbehaved in school, a fair amount and I would get sent to
50:47
detention, but what they didn't realize
50:51
is, I loved attention because
50:53
I was in the
50:54
library and
50:55
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
51:12
reread it. I haven't thought of this. In a long
51:14
time, I would actually take the NeverEnding Story
51:17
and I would hide it in the library so that it
51:21
wouldn't get taken
51:22
out before.
51:23
My next detention. And
51:25
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
51:46
was also interesting to me, but the Articles and the declination of
51:51
the Articles,
51:52
so
51:53
The fact that you have
51:55
masculine feminine and
51:57
neuter for
51:59
indefinite articles, a and an
52:01
English or definite articles, the soul, not only that. But if it's like da teef accusative, or whatever, you
52:10
have, all these different adjustments, based on, if something is say, being used to indicate a direct or
52:16
indirect object so you can have Daddy does
52:20
then you have them, which would be for the dock.
52:23
- and you have I ne -
52:28
einem then you have the, the genitive it goes on and on and
52:32
on. So, part of the reason, our forget German
52:35
the fastest most quickly out of all the languages, I have taken a stab
52:40
at is because as you would expect, right? And just like, people like German engineering, it's a very
52:46
precise language and there are a lot of rules and the Articles and so on, drove me
52:53
nuts.
52:54
Yeah, I found challenging also. The number of prepositions of sorts
53:01
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
53:21
that. I really enjoyed the
53:23
German people also, when I was in Berlin, I just had a great time in Berlin, and I
53:27
found in general, the Germans to be very warm and very funny, very blunt in their humor,
53:34
which I appreciate it. I think maybe coming
53:36
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
53:47
a problem for some people, but I enjoyed how the
53:49
sentence structure and the word ordering can change very, very
53:54
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,
54:05
verb object. I ate the apple, I go to school
54:08
whatever. Now, in Japanese you have the opposite, it's I to the library go I the Apple eat and also pretty consistent
54:16
German, has both and English to some extent, has a few exceptions, but German will have like explore with us. All right, I think,
54:23
That. And then the Delta te te, te te, te, te te, te te te wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
54:28
verb. And in the beginning, I found that confusing as hell and it was really
54:34
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
54:40
verb. And one of my brain became more
54:43
accustomed to that. I just it felt like
54:45
some type of, let's
54:47
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.
54:53
Ian in the brain for
54:54
me. So, there we go.
54:56
There's question. Any updates on the Tim Ferriss fragrance for
55:01
men? You know,
55:03
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
55:16
35 years
55:17
but the fragrance for men may be forthcoming. So keep an eye
55:21
out. In fact, that may become a thing. All
55:24
Let me check a few more and then I will jump to the pre-submitted this is a question from here's one.
55:36
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
55:53
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
56:02
will give a stab. Now what role is
56:05
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
56:17
lot because there are times when
56:19
I'm tempted say to go to two weeks in nature by myself.
56:23
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
56:34
will be of some character that bring about depression or anxiety,
56:39
mostly depression
56:41
and
56:44
One might advise me
56:46
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.
57:02
So if you want to hear more about that, you can
57:04
listen to the 10% happier podcast, that Dan Harris did with me,
57:08
but I had a complete
57:12
Psychological breakdown at this. The pasta Retreat, silent Retreat
57:18
and I didn't make my life. Any easier by making it much more
57:21
extreme and exaggerated
57:23
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,
57:29
but that is a concern. So first of all, I just want to validate that by saying you're not the
57:35
only person who thinks about this. This is something that I certainly think about but your question isn't so
57:40
much.
57:42
one about,
57:44
Solitary time. It's a question about downtime. Now it seems like you're equating downtime to making time for one's creative Pursuits.
57:53
The way I think about this is a little bit different and I would say for me, creative Pursuit right now is dictated by,
58:04
who can I interact
58:05
with? Even if it's just once a week. Even if it's once every two weeks,
58:09
how can this bring me closer to someone? I want to be closer to, and for me?
58:14
Mostly pre-existing friendships,
58:17
but part of my
58:17
reason, the primary reason that I've thought about doing something
58:22
incredibly absurd, effectively a parody of the space in the nft world is
58:28
because I have all these old friends who are scattered around the
58:31
country. And we used to all be in San
58:35
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
58:43
away.
58:44
And web three is one of the first
58:46
times that I've seen almost all of these. People
58:50
get back on the same playing field in a way where they are,
58:53
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
59:01
pretty much everything could go to
59:03
0 and a lot of these things will go to 0. So, this is not investment advice. This is psychological
59:09
commentary for me in terms of choosing
59:12
projects. So, I am actually
59:14
Saying the playing field first and then I'm deciding. All right. Which sport do I want to play on that playing
59:19
field? Which position do I
59:20
want to play on that playing field? But it's actually
59:23
starting with The Who and not starting with the what
59:26
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
59:33
it bolsters me. It feeds me. It nourishes me
59:36
as opposed to making me feel like I'm stepping out to a cliff and peeking
59:40
over the side
59:41
where I can say, yeah, this is a great view. But if
59:44
My foot slips, I could find myself in
59:45
trouble. Hopefully that helps
59:48
Megan. What have I been reading? Listening to lately that has
59:52
impacted your thinking about
59:53
Parenthood. Well, I have something right next to me and I'll
59:56
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
1:00:06
man in the world in
1:00:07
reality. So I would suggest listening to my first podcast I did with Kevin Kelly, but he sent me this little book,
1:00:14
it's called excellent advice for
1:00:16
living.
1:00:17
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.
1:00:39
Kevin
1:00:41
is also one of the most engaged and I would say
1:00:44
successful parents
1:00:47
and
1:00:47
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
1:00:59
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
1:01:12
in the world of business, for instance, or
1:01:14
investing
1:01:15
I know a
1:01:15
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
1:01:30
years that's what I want because I want to be
1:01:32
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
1:01:42
automatically.
1:01:44
Cherry pick one piece of someone's life and force fit it into your own and safely
1:01:51
assume that other parts of your life will
1:01:53
not change as a result of inserting that. So
1:01:57
in Kevin's instance, I feel like I know Kevin well enough, we've traveled
1:02:01
around the world together, I've seen him with his family, I've been
1:02:04
to his house, I've spent time with him. He's not one of my closest friends but I know him well
1:02:08
enough to think. Okay holistically
1:02:13
Kevin is figured a lot out. He
1:02:14
also lives in a very
1:02:16
non-consensus way, but he does it through reasoning. And by paying
1:02:21
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
1:02:29
look up his. What I've learned
1:02:31
birthday posts. If you can't find Excellent advice for living, that's the first one.
1:02:36
And the next one, which I've had on my shelf for a very long time. Is
1:02:39
this this is and I think I'm going to be pronouncing
1:02:41
this.
1:02:42
Correctly. But sorry if I'm not dear author, Johann Hari, I believe it's Johann but somebody could
1:02:48
probably correct me if I'm wrong
1:02:50
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.
1:03:12
Shoes and jumping straight to part three, which is reconnection or a different kind of antidepressant. And really, reading about social,
1:03:20
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,
1:03:38
rather than saying, how can I be the best
1:03:39
parent? Which is certainly a question, I'm sure I'm going
1:03:43
Beat to Death, once I get closer to having kids. But
1:03:47
putting that aside for the second asking rather, how can I set the
1:03:50
conditions such that the likelihood of a kid turning out? Well, happy and healthy the
1:03:57
extent that's possible with some
1:03:59
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?
1:04:12
So those are two quick answers to your very short question. Thank you. Alright, this question of Anthony dream guests who are dream
1:04:21
guests. There's a long list of folks, who have thought about Oprah, of course, and, and many
1:04:25
others. But sometimes the juice is not worth the squeeze. With mega celebrities, you just
1:04:34
have to interact with so many layers
1:04:36
of people and a Phalanx of
1:04:39
lawyers and the manager and the agent and the
1:04:42
Publicist and the publicists
1:04:44
assistant and all of that
1:04:47
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
1:04:57
love to do it. I think Oprah is incredible
1:04:59
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
1:05:10
others that come to mind.
1:05:12
Would be Daniel Day-Lewis. Even though frankly I'm not sure he would ever do it and secondly I have not
1:05:19
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
1:05:27
get a hold of. So there's part of that that is appealing to me in and of
1:05:31
itself. Ryan
1:05:33
Reynolds, I think would be incredible. And
1:05:37
there are certainly many other and I've checked off a lot of my dream guest if you think about Jane.
1:05:42
At all, you know, I wanted to have her on the podcast since day one. Fortunately you know Madeline
1:05:47
Albright Margaret Atwood just name a few and many others Hugh
1:05:52
Jackman and also thinkers. I want to have on for a very long time, scientists who are lesser known.
1:05:57
So, those are a few who come to mind, but what I've come to realize for myself, is number one,
1:06:04
one of the best ways to grow podcast is to focus on Mega celebrities and controversy
1:06:09
and I have
1:06:10
almost no interest in doing either of those things.
1:06:13
So once I let go of
1:06:15
that
1:06:16
and have viewed, this podcast is something that nourishes me. Hopefully, as much as it nourishes other people,
1:06:23
you can
1:06:24
find Fascinating People who will give you
1:06:27
incredibly, good conversations, and takeaways
1:06:31
and actionable,
1:06:32
philosophies, and deep thinking everywhere they are everywhere, in any given country, any given gender race.
1:06:42
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
1:06:49
and at the very least, I think I'll give it a stab. Like once
1:06:53
every six months will throw out a long lead and see if we can get a Marlin. Alright, this is a question
1:06:58
from Aaron. Oh, Aaron's dropped quite a few questions and let me pick one. I'll pick the one that maybe I
1:07:06
can answer. This is from Aaron, vrin. Did you mainly take a break from investing because of loss?
1:07:12
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
1:07:26
separate reasons. So I wrote a post in 2015, which explains it well.
1:07:32
And it is how to say no when it matters most and then in
1:07:36
parentheses or why I'm taking a long startup vacation,
1:07:40
and this was a very popular post October 29.
1:07:42
In 15 how to say no when it matters
1:07:45
most or
1:07:46
why I am taking a long startup vacation and we'll put the link in the show notes
1:07:51
but I will also drop the link into the chat so people can check that out. And
1:07:57
those are my reasons for taking a break. It really related to having time for deep work and focusing on other
1:08:03
projects did not have anything to do with losses at actually
1:08:07
at that time, done quite well, I did however, want to wait given the number of
1:08:12
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
1:08:22
wins, you don't want to
1:08:24
count your chickens. Before they've hatched in this case, you want to count your chickens before liquidity event. So, I wanted to also
1:08:29
weight and focus on other things. And my
1:08:33
crypto investing was around that time
1:08:35
mostly,
1:08:36
so I have not been
1:08:38
speculating day trading or playing much at all.
1:08:42
All in
1:08:44
crypto for the last several years, I'm watching it very closely and I'm interested in
1:08:49
aspects or I should say related
1:08:52
marketplaces and technologies that are underpinned or at the very least denominated in
1:08:58
some sense in say eith or other cryptocurrencies, but I think a lot
1:09:06
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
1:09:12
That is not to give
1:09:13
again any investment advice. Just to tell
1:09:17
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
1:09:30
and that I
1:09:33
am preparing to be and what we would consider it, not just a bear Market
1:09:37
but a
1:09:38
full-fledged recession with high inflation for quite
1:09:42
On time. So I am
1:09:44
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
1:10:04
significant cash reserves. Now that could prove to be the wrong decision.
1:10:09
If my goal were to optimized for maximum return on investment and compound annual growth rate
1:10:17
and so on. But right now, I am optimizing for sleeping well at night and fortunately,
1:10:24
don't spend a lot of money on too much expensive, bullshit. So, I
1:10:27
don't need to feed that monster too badly. Johann, Hari is a worthy podcast, guess. Yes.
1:10:33
Ray, I believe, reading this correctly. I agree with you, so I maybe I'll get him on
1:10:37
at some point. Matthew, you're saying,
1:10:38
strangely satisfying on my head, fits perfectly into the painting behind
1:10:41
you. There you go, check it out, thank you for that commentary. I
1:10:45
appreciate it. Not done on purpose. Let's jump into some of the pre submitted
1:10:50
questions. Next
1:10:52
is I'd like your perspective on this quote. If
1:10:54
being hard on yourself, worked it would have worked by now end quote,
1:10:58
does that ring true in your own self, compassion journey, and how do you feel now about your relationship to yourself and especially,
1:11:03
What you expect from yourself, having been on that Journey for some time now?
1:11:08
So I would say that much
1:11:10
work.
1:11:11
Remains to be done
1:11:13
for me with respect to self-compassion. I am still very brutal when it comes to self commentary and
1:11:20
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,
1:11:32
something akin to. This also would be, if working
1:11:36
harder on this worked. It would have worked by now or if asking for this worked.
1:11:43
In the context of a significant other or something like that. If asking for
1:11:46
this in the way you've been asking, worked it would work by now,
1:11:50
Is, I suppose a mantra for remembering that if you repeat
1:11:57
the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, you are
1:12:01
engaging in some form of insanity. However,
1:12:06
I think the challenge, when we dig into the nuances
1:12:08
here and the Practical results of being hard on yourself, is that
1:12:16
Being hard on yourself. Works for some
1:12:18
things I do think having almost
1:12:21
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
1:12:31
a form of Boulder, pushing you forward does work for some things, it works for piling in the hours. It works for
1:12:41
distracting yourself with a manic, focus on building.
1:12:45
Business for instance, or something like
1:12:46
that. So it's not totally useless. I
1:12:49
think therein lies part of the challenge. That
1:12:53
being hard on yourself does work or seems to help for some things. Does it work for increasing your
1:13:02
feelings of
1:13:03
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
1:13:15
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
1:13:30
asked. So if anyone is struggling with that or
1:13:36
finding that to be a
1:13:37
challenge, You Are Not Alone. Certainly at least
1:13:41
Nathaniel who asked the question and yours truly count is too but I know
1:13:45
Is a very
1:13:46
pervasive challenge for almost everyone. I talked to not everyone but almost everyone you know
1:13:52
who seems to have it figured out although it's hard to tell if he came out of the box. This
1:13:57
way is
1:13:58
Kevin Kelly which is another reason why I find him fascinating and want to make a study of
1:14:02
him.
1:14:04
Next question,
1:14:05
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
1:14:18
with
1:14:20
I agree with
1:14:22
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
1:14:32
meaningful here defined as relationships that I communicate with say at least once every two weeks
1:14:45
and this is partially a function of just how much inbound
1:14:50
Gets directed at me and my team. I mean,
1:14:52
thousands of inbound messages if you count email, social Etc blog and
1:14:58
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
1:15:07
this, but I would like to say that there are few things that helped me not feel stress around,
1:15:15
keeping in touch, with people or staying in contact with people.
1:15:20
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
1:15:34
who has cultivated a high degree of
1:15:36
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.
1:15:50
You can get to anyone else in that
1:15:52
field generally speaking. Assuming that
1:15:55
person, you know, isn't a total bastard.
1:15:58
So you will be able to get to just about anyone, if you get
1:16:02
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
1:16:10
Arena. You can find that person if, you know,
1:16:13
one. So you really just need a toehold
1:16:16
in and I would say,
1:16:18
also, I know a lot of podcasters,
1:16:20
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
1:16:28
last, I would say that busy people, and
1:16:32
most of the people have on the podcast are busy in one form or another,
1:16:36
do not
1:16:36
expect nor do they desire to keep in contact
1:16:40
with or to keep up with many people. And if I
1:16:44
have a two-hour meaningful conversation with them, and if I do my
1:16:50
If I do my prep if my team helps me do that if they come away from the interview thinking in themselves, holy
1:16:56
shit.
1:16:57
That was an experience and I've
1:17:00
never quite had an interview like that before that was really well architected that was really well directed. The
1:17:06
questions were reflective of a really high degree of homework. I'm surprised I enjoyed that so
1:17:15
much. I do not need to email that person a month
1:17:18
later to Ping them to keep
1:17:24
my name top of mind. And I think it would
1:17:27
Damage those relationships if I did that routinely.
1:17:31
So the
1:17:32
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
1:17:40
do tend to be low maintenance,
1:17:45
Seeking low maintenance and they look for density of meaning and connection rather than frequency.
1:17:55
So I really don't feel
1:17:56
compelled to stay in contact with folks
1:18:02
who have established that Baseline connection
1:18:04
with unless there's something meaningful to ask them or
1:18:07
to offer them or
1:18:09
otherwise so there you have it. There are
1:18:12
hundreds of people I've had on the podcast who
1:18:15
I haven't had any contact with and years, but if I were to email them or text them,
1:18:20
I believe they would respond if they're able and it comes down to I think prep
1:18:27
and this is reflected also in their interactions with my team. So from start to finish what was their experience and if it was
1:18:33
great, most of them I think are open to
1:18:37
having some type of dialogue. After the fact, even if we've had no contact
1:18:40
whatsoever and this relates
1:18:44
also to
1:18:45
Presentation I gave at South by Southwest which may be worth listening to, for some folks and I put it on the podcast,
1:18:52
which is, I believe titled
1:18:55
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,
1:19:08
which is a huge huge, huge, huge Festival / conference. So I would say
1:19:15
Say
1:19:15
start there and those are some of my
1:19:16
thoughts. Let me look at
1:19:19
some of the live questions. What would my advice be to 21 year old?
1:19:24
Tim probably drink a little bit less exercise, a little bit more, start
1:19:30
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
1:19:41
immediately. Mornay, are there any of the principles are?
1:19:45
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.
1:19:58
So in today's environment honestly with the amount of destabilization, with remote work with
1:20:06
experiments and decentralization with rentable infrastructure and Services, I think the
1:20:11
principles if you are looking for
1:20:15
Or self-determined
1:20:17
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
1:20:26
the specific Tech
1:20:27
tools and so on that are mentioned in some parts of the 4-Hour workweek.
1:20:30
Like go to my PC clearly are outdated
1:20:34
and a lot of the specific tools could be updated. But if you understand the
1:20:38
principles and the methods, you can find the
1:20:41
specifics, you will have the
1:20:43
ability to search.
1:20:45
And that the particular tools that suit your circumstances and objectives and so on. But I think that in
1:20:51
fact, the 4-Hour workweek
1:20:53
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
1:21:00
preface to the German edition of the four hour work week, where the
1:21:05
book has been spectacularly successful, more copies have been sold in the German markets than in the UK markets and Australian
1:21:13
markets Maybe
1:21:15
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
1:21:24
author says the same thing,
1:21:25
but regardless, the point was, I wrote a preface for a new edition same as the revised Edition in English.
1:21:36
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
1:21:52
lining fear, setting all these tools. All these principles seem to me to be
1:21:57
timeless, but extremely
1:22:00
timely in the current flux that were experiencing and I think we'll continue to experience.
1:22:06
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
1:22:29
description
1:22:31
question, what are three things one should do. When visiting Japan that you wouldn't find on every travel blog. Number one,
1:22:36
try to go to the
1:22:38
Ghibli Museum, ghi bli Museum, and, you know, kishida
1:22:43
park. It is the most wonderful unusual museums. I think I've ever been to. It's adorable. So,
1:22:51
Ghibli, for those who don't know, is the equivalent of
1:22:53
Disney in Japan. Founded
1:22:56
by Miyazaki Hayao, and this particular museum is
1:23:00
just incredible. And when I attended this may have changed but they would give you a ticket and the ticket.
1:23:06
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,
1:23:18
which then brings
1:23:20
me to a food recommendation, which is to
1:23:24
try to find a Streetside Yakitori or
1:23:30
some type of really really low. Brow cheap Japanese food
1:23:33
and if you just search,
1:23:36
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
1:23:44
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,
1:23:50
you know, because you're not going
1:23:52
at a number of entrances
1:23:53
has food kiosks, where you can get any number of things.
1:23:58
So if you wanted to do a two for one,
1:24:00
you could do that. And then number three, I'm shooting from the hip here, I would say
1:24:06
Is.
1:24:09
Get incredibly lost and don't take your phone, so no using Google
1:24:15
Maps. No using Google
1:24:16
translate,
1:24:19
walk around do this during the day, it'll be a little easier to get back to where you need to go
1:24:23
and get
1:24:25
incredibly lost, and then find
1:24:27
a coal bottom, which is a police kiosk. And
1:24:33
You could have the hotel or Airbnb address
1:24:35
or whatever on a card that's fair game and then have
1:24:38
them with their almost certain
1:24:42
broken. English help you get back
1:24:44
to wherever you need to be.
1:24:46
That's an adventurer that I think everyone should have. It
1:24:49
is one of the
1:24:50
most alien places in English speaker,
1:24:53
could visit while still being
1:24:56
Almost completely safe. I think there has been a little bit more violent crime in Japan since I was
1:25:02
there in say 92
1:25:04
93 and I visited many times since, but it is still incredibly safe by global standards.
1:25:10
Let me look at one or two more and then
1:25:13
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.
1:25:26
Around. If you'll still stick
1:25:26
around, I'll keep going. So let me know. Question
1:25:30
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
1:25:45
alone and there's a lot. All right, let's see here. Julie,
1:25:54
what's your system to choose a focus in?
1:25:56
Pick up the 80/20 principle. This is a book by Richard Coke. Koch2.
1:26:03
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
1:26:13
the shortest answer that I can give while still being helpful. There's some commentary on
1:26:19
the four hour work week in German, it is fun to see how its translated into other.
1:26:25
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
1:26:38
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
1:26:49
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.
1:26:56
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.
1:27:06
So
1:27:08
For those who are not aware, I'm
1:27:10
very heavily involved, in supporting nonprofit, research related to psychedelic Therapeutics
1:27:17
and these are often looking at indications like major depressive disorder, treatment resistant,
1:27:23
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.
1:27:37
Ins, which could be manifest in OCD or anorexia nervosa Etc. But these are in some cases very deeply personal
1:27:46
for me. So, my uncle became an alcoholic when he was a child and continued until he drank himself to death in this case.
1:27:54
And we just had that
1:27:57
funeral is really an internment because he was
1:28:00
cremated and I
1:28:03
was surprised because I expected it to be very somber, maybe depressing.
1:28:07
saying and one or two family members
1:28:13
decided to tell really funny stories
1:28:15
about this uncle and
1:28:18
we spent a bunch of time together and it ended up
1:28:21
being
1:28:23
Quite unexpectedly bonding for all of
1:28:27
us to tell these stories
1:28:29
but to focus on the good and to focus on the funny,
1:28:34
he was a joker and he was a joker was his personality. So I think he would have wanted
1:28:39
that and it was the most uplifting I think repairing
1:28:47
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
1:28:57
humor and I'm certainly no expert in this by any stretch. My friend, Matt, mullenweg lost his father, very
1:29:03
unexpectedly found, I think it's on Grief and grieving.
1:29:11
To be very helpful and he is recommended that people read
1:29:16
this before, they
1:29:17
lose loved ones. So it seems to have
1:29:20
some not preventative but some pre-emptive value on Grief and grieving, this is by
1:29:27
David Kessler and Elizabeth Kubla I guess, Kubler-Ross
1:29:34
Came highly recommended. And I've mentioned
1:29:36
that on
1:29:37
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
1:29:49
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
1:30:02
process? Key decision factors.
1:30:04
Moving from the Bay Area to
1:30:05
Austin. Answer to that is check out my Reddit thread I wrote a Reddit AMA answer to this.
1:30:12
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
1:30:25
change but I did move to Austin in part to get away from any mono conversations. Seen
1:30:34
And I anticipated when I moved there in
1:30:36
2017, that Austin would become a seen. Probably
1:30:40
in say, I don't know. Seven to nine years, something like that. I did not anticipate, that covid-19
1:30:50
8, all of that. So significantly, of course. And I would say that Austin has become
1:30:58
A massive scene of scenes, so that is
1:31:02
unfortunate, but it's also great city as a lot to redeem it self. And there are
1:31:10
reasons why people are moving there, but if you want the
1:31:12
basic rationale, check out my Reddit AMA answer. Here's a question. I saw a tweet recently
1:31:19
that said, quote way too many young guys are taking life advice, from childless 14-year old men and quote.
1:31:25
I'm a student in my early twenties and I'm a voracious.
1:31:27
Podcast listener, your
1:31:29
pod, Lex Friedman,
1:31:31
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
1:31:39
generation.
1:31:40
Alright, let's take a stab at
1:31:42
this. So I think that people at
1:31:46
any stage of life should be careful about relying too
1:31:48
much on any particular single archetype or demographic or psychographic.
1:31:58
Think so, I will point out. Also, Balaji has kids. Nepal has kids. So, those two, I would accept
1:32:08
from the question because they're not childless Lex. I don't believe has
1:32:12
kids. I do not currently have kids, so it also depends on what type of advice you are consuming. And
1:32:24
Are these people
1:32:26
practicing what they preach are they walking the walk and not just talking the talk. So
1:32:31
depends for me,
1:32:32
highly on the type of advice. So if I'm talking to a saint ifs therapist, I'm not going to ask
1:32:39
them for say general. Contractor
1:32:42
constructing advice for a remodel that I might be in the middle of
1:32:46
I'm going to recognize, just like me, just like anyone
1:32:51
else, there are constraints and limits to the expertise of any one person.
1:32:54
And I'm going to look for practitioners. So I would say
1:32:56
that and if you are
1:32:58
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
1:33:08
a prompt for pausing and diversifying diversifying here. Really just means
1:33:18
Changing some of those
1:33:19
variables. And I think that is incredibly helpful for
1:33:23
your
1:33:24
intellectual Health. It is incredibly helpful
1:33:27
for
1:33:28
preserving a healthy level of skepticism. So you don't accidentally get indoctrinated into the cult of personality
1:33:36
X and those are my general
1:33:41
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
1:33:48
Speak with
1:33:49
a very wide spectrum of folks. If I only were able to
1:33:53
speak to business people because this were a Strictly Business and Entrepreneurship show. I would have stopped doing this a long long time ago.
1:34:00
And I
1:34:02
do try to follow the advice then that I'm giving right
1:34:04
now and that said, I will also underscore that if you are studying and taking advice
1:34:15
or considering advice, you should certainly consider and stress.
1:34:18
The
1:34:18
advice before implementing it then
1:34:21
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
1:34:31
and yell and Shout on the internet. So if you are engaged in any
1:34:35
type of self-development you are already, I would say ahead of the
1:34:38
curve. But certainly much like a physical diet, a spectrum of different foods.
1:34:48
All likely, cover more bases. Keep you
1:34:50
healthier. Then
1:34:52
some type of strictly
1:34:54
regimented mono categorical type of eating and
1:34:57
that's true for your information diet as well. So I would
1:35:00
say that my general thoughts are pretty simple in that respect. I have a
1:35:06
question here. This is going to be a bit of a long one and
1:35:08
by the way, we
1:35:09
received hundreds and hundreds of submitted
1:35:11
questions. And my first filter is,
1:35:14
do I know anything about this? All right. Do I have anything?
1:35:18
NG to offer in a response that
1:35:22
I think is qualified that I've stressed tested
1:35:24
in any way. And if not, I just do not answer, right? So I try
1:35:27
not to speculate. I think there's too much speculation and in general folks online speak with way too much confidence.
1:35:35
So
1:35:37
I just want to say there are
1:35:38
many questions, I'm not answering in the live feed. There are many questions. I'm not answering
1:35:42
that were that were lobbed in
1:35:44
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
1:35:53
those, I am just not qualified, I would be
1:35:57
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
1:36:06
I have anything. So here
1:36:07
goes
1:36:09
I'm extremely driven to build my version of a deep life,
1:36:11
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
1:36:38
It's in her feelings since she is essentially half of my identity. How do you think I should handle
1:36:42
this? Should I let it go and
1:36:44
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
1:37:02
convince her to it for? Go
1:37:04
comfort and decadence, especially when I'm having a hard enough time doing that myself, all
1:37:08
right.
1:37:08
That's a long question, but I would like to try to respond to it because I, and I think many people have
1:37:16
contended with this on some level. It could be a significant other. It could be a very close
1:37:20
friend. It could be
1:37:23
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?
1:37:33
If this is an issue in your
1:37:36
Most intimate relationship with a
1:37:38
significant other. What do you do? And I can only speak to a few things that I have tried
1:37:44
because hitting it
1:37:45
head-on with some criticism along the lines
1:37:48
of why aren't you interested in self
1:37:51
development? Is not going to be a crowd-pleaser and is not going to get the
1:37:56
response that you want this. So I'm going to answer this in two stages. The first
1:38:04
Is related to
1:38:06
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.
1:38:26
So half my life
1:38:27
away from my partner
1:38:28
effectively or
1:38:30
fully integrate both of us. So we are on the
1:38:32
same program.
1:38:33
I'm exaggerating
1:38:34
In a little bit. But that is a false
1:38:35
dichotomy. There are other
1:38:37
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
1:38:47
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,
1:38:58
it could just be a week to go to Burning, Man. I mean, I'm not saying that self development,
1:39:01
but
1:39:04
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
1:39:23
other or just as easily. I could say, she does that with me. There are times when we do our own
1:39:28
thing,
1:39:30
Okay.
1:39:32
That is component one and then to the
1:39:37
direct last question, how do I convince her to go on this journey with
1:39:41
me to me? Convincing implies speaking and persuading in conversation and I
1:39:50
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
1:39:59
resistance.
1:40:01
Is often identifying what they already love
1:40:05
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
1:40:23
let's just say
1:40:24
hypothetically that your fiance, I'm making this up that she loves going to yoga.
1:40:31
Well, you could find a fantastic teacher training course and if
1:40:40
you know you have one to two weeks of vacation coming up, let's just say it's in a nice location
1:40:44
fill in the blank
1:40:45
could be in, Sedona could be in Bali, who knows, depending on your budget
1:40:48
and you could offer that as an
1:40:52
early Christmas present early birthday present or just as a gift and say that you would like to
1:40:58
cover that. And
1:40:59
you thought
1:41:01
It could be super fun and you've been wanting to spend more time with her,
1:41:04
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
1:41:22
familiarity with terminology and also
1:41:24
Network Etc. So I think we want to
1:41:26
meet people where they are. I don't always do a great job of this. I can be very
1:41:31
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
1:41:46
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
1:41:56
do.
1:41:58
And then try to find a slight variation on one of those themes
1:42:02
that allows them to step foot in a way
1:42:05
that feels good to them, not just to
1:42:07
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.
1:42:26
That increased self-awareness, that could be somatic self-awareness. It could be getting better at applying things like the 80/20 principle
1:42:35
to Career. So it might be a workshop along
1:42:37
those lines. Anything that
1:42:40
Helps to
1:42:41
facilitate the habit of turning the eye
1:42:44
Inward and asking
1:42:46
questions. I think we'll
1:42:47
also not just lead to self development but be self
1:42:51
development in and of itself.
1:42:52
So those are a few of my thoughts on that,
1:42:56
which is not easy situation, is not always an easy situation, but I do think there are many
1:43:01
options in between the two
1:43:03
polar extremes that you indicated and I do not think those two are mutually exclusive. I think you can
1:43:09
incorporate
1:43:09
eight both let me take a
1:43:11
look at some live questions here, folks. Claudia do you have any self discipline advice for ADHD folks
1:43:18
who have already tried everything? I'm a German teacher, by the way.
1:43:22
Well, it's quite
1:43:23
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
1:43:35
maybe still is, but certainly was teaching at Stanford for a long time. And looking at behavioral,
1:43:39
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
1:43:52
change,
1:43:53
having accountability in place in the form of both
1:43:56
people and rewards and or
1:43:59
punishments punishments work really well, say Financial punishment. Where, if you don't do a b and
1:44:04
c, then you will in advance provide 100
1:44:09
Rose to a close friend who will donate it to your least
1:44:13
favorite nonprofit. The one you would not want to be associated with in your name. For instance, these types of
1:44:19
mechanisms
1:44:20
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
1:44:28
already tried everything and I would suggest looking at not methods of convincing
1:44:34
yourself, but the setting of incentives such that it
1:44:39
Is compelling, sufficiently compelling for you to change the behaviors that you want to
1:44:45
change, and both the 4-Hour Body and the 4-Hour, Chef get into
1:44:49
this in quite a bit of detail. But there are other examples, BJ Fogg and then James clear with atomic
1:44:55
habits.
1:44:56
And also Charles duhigg is another one who has written a lot on habit d, uh, IGG.
1:45:03
And I find a lot of what he has presented to be extremely
1:45:08
interesting. Timer, how do you
1:45:11
plan such that emotionally tough moments? Aren't
1:45:13
destabilizing and then the
1:45:15
examples of breakups, death of family members, Etc.
1:45:21
And my
1:45:22
answer to this is there are
1:45:24
certainly tools and philosophies
1:45:26
and
1:45:26
Works like stoicism that can help you whether some of these storms. But in
1:45:32
some ways I find the most
1:45:34
freeing,
1:45:36
Way to think about this to not set the expectation and the
1:45:42
pressure that you can prevent these things from being,
1:45:45
destabilizing expect them to be destabilizing and accept that you are
1:45:53
human and that billions of
1:45:55
people feel
1:45:57
somewhat temporarily destabilized by these things. And that it's okay.
1:46:03
There is a book that I found very helpful.
1:46:06
And I do think the written version is different from the audiobook for some
1:46:08
reason and you can skip
1:46:10
around it. Found me at the right time by Bruce tifft, t.i. ft called Already
1:46:14
Free which really covers a lot of this all over Berkman in his book, also talks about this quite a bit that you feel
1:46:27
and produce
1:46:28
manufacturer stress. For instance when you ask yourself, how can I best
1:46:35
hand?
1:46:35
It'll all of my inbound, which might be hundreds or thousands of different messages.
1:46:40
Whereas on some level, if you accept that is impossible, you can finally begin to make at least psychological or psycho-emotional Headway.
1:46:49
So, I would just say that expecting it to be tough and possibly, destabilizing could be the first
1:46:58
Salve that you apply. And in fact, even if you read the moral letters to Luke
1:47:03
Ilyas or other
1:47:04
examples of writing from
1:47:06
famous
1:47:07
stoics, the most famous Seneca, the younger
1:47:09
Etc,
1:47:10
She was hard, bad things happen.
1:47:13
And it's I think valuable to strive towards certain ideals and to follow certain principles and
1:47:19
philosophies but think accepting
1:47:24
Your Human
1:47:25
Experience and validating it by
1:47:28
not setting the
1:47:30
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.
1:47:40
I'm having trouble coming up with something immediate, but I will say that certainly
1:47:45
watching the markets for the last
1:47:47
few months has just
1:47:49
reinforced as
1:47:51
some of the most famous
1:47:53
and venerated names of the last
1:47:57
few years have been
1:47:58
obliterated in terms of
1:48:00
hedge fund, managers and other types of investors just wiped off the face of the planet financially, even though Gathering
1:48:06
their 2% management fee every year,
1:48:10
Perfectly fine. So no one has to cry. Any tears for the hedge fund managers, they'll be okay
1:48:15
but having seen the complete like, Supernova of capital
1:48:20
destruction, it's just become all the more clear to me
1:48:23
that basically no one knows what they're doing or put a different way that maybe too strong, that
1:48:30
everyone is making it up as they go along, and we shouldn't
1:48:34
convinced
1:48:36
As I heard, Stanley druckenmiller
1:48:38
say once, we should not convince a bull market with being a genius.
1:48:42
Those are two
1:48:43
very, very, very different things. And on one hand that's
1:48:46
depressing or
1:48:48
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.
1:49:05
Abby, next week, it could be five years from now but eventually you're going to
1:49:09
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
1:49:25
at this, a lot of
1:49:26
them happen to just be riding as they would might say, secular Tailwinds, and floating atop a bubble
1:49:33
before it all burst and they were just trying to rake in as much cash.
1:49:35
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,
1:50:02
it should be humbling
1:50:05
collectively.
1:50:05
A and certainly individually but just to
1:50:08
realize that even the best in the world or people who are considered that are getting their faces ripped
1:50:14
off, there are some examples of exceptions but
1:50:18
I find that to be very top of mind for me at the moment. So I've
1:50:24
perhaps changed my mind on how I view very specific
1:50:27
investors somewhat. Although
1:50:30
again, these investors generally if they're really smart figure out ways to win, even if they
1:50:34
lose. So,
1:50:36
One could say they haven't really
1:50:38
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,
1:50:54
so that's something that comes to mind. And every day, every week I am certainly finding more
1:51:03
Examples of
1:51:05
strongly-held, emotional
1:51:07
positions or anger based biases that I have that are more
1:51:14
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
1:51:25
to. So those are those are just a few thoughts in response to that question.
1:51:31
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
1:51:38
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.
1:51:57
Let's see what else we have. All
1:51:58
right, this is a question from
1:52:01
Matt.
1:52:02
How do I ask for money as a Green Beret?
1:52:04
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
1:52:16
work with a particular startup.
1:52:19
Let me respond to this
1:52:20
with a few thoughts, and I'm going to keep it simple. So, the first is,
1:52:25
there's an out-of-print book, not all of it is great advice, but it will be at the Capitol
1:52:33
food for thought, and that is Gorilla financing. There's a book called Guerrilla financing,
1:52:37
which
1:52:38
covers alternative modes of
1:52:40
financing. And I recommend this because most of the startups
1:52:47
and small businesses that get
1:52:49
A lot of media Attention our venture-backed startups. They are taking money from Venture capitalists and Angel
1:52:56
Investors like me and hoping
1:52:59
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
1:53:09
things. So for instance, in
1:53:12
this example of a solar panel Factory
1:53:15
that may be a very
1:53:18
Unappealing and irrational place to focus in that particular startup Venture Capital Market. And there are other
1:53:30
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
1:53:47
alternative.
1:53:49
Mechanisms and
1:53:50
approaches. So gorilla financing would be one. You can also
1:53:54
find early investment decks. These are pitches,
1:53:58
so it could be 10 slides. It could be 20, it could be five
1:54:01
for
1:54:02
startups and companies that have done really well.
1:54:05
So you could look at any number of examples. The earliest examples of decks
1:54:10
are available for a lot of the
1:54:12
unicorns and deca corns and now successful
1:54:15
publicly traded tech
1:54:16
companies and you can find those online.
1:54:18
And if you just
1:54:19
search such and such
1:54:21
company early deck, early investment pitch, you will be able to find a lot of those and those are probably the two
1:54:29
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
1:54:38
about different
1:54:40
ways to structure and evaluate
1:54:43
and contract Venture Capital Investments.
1:54:48
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
1:54:57
different vehicles and approaches. You can take for financing and look at small
1:55:02
businesses not
1:55:04
just venture-backed startups and best of luck. Good luck. Next question.
1:55:12
Why did you stop asking your guests who they think is successful? And why? This was always my favorite question on the podcast.
1:55:18
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
1:55:31
question Ryan. And the kind words,
1:55:34
I stopped
1:55:34
asking the question, who do you think of when I say the word successful and why? For a few reasons?
1:55:46
What I found is first, if I didn't disqualify certain types of answers, I tend to get the same answers
1:55:52
over and over and over and over
1:55:54
again. So I would get Richard Branson,
1:55:56
I would get Elon Musk. I would get Bill
1:55:58
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.
1:56:09
Some people feel as though, if they don't name their
1:56:12
parents, they aren't fulfilling their
1:56:15
Filial piety. So they will say my mom or my dad, or my mom and
1:56:20
dad and it is not generally a real answer. Sometimes it
1:56:26
is, but generally that is
1:56:27
a political answer, not an honest answer.
1:56:32
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
1:56:40
he's actually very similar in
1:56:41
constitution in some ways to Kevin
1:56:43
Kelly.
1:56:44
As Derek severs this question. He said, well, I
1:56:47
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
1:56:59
out to live a life of peace
1:57:01
and quiet and tranquility and to slow down, then his life is potentially total
1:57:06
failure. If he's feeling compelled
1:57:09
to constantly create new companies and so on. So it's very hard at surface level to judge.
1:57:14
Who is successful
1:57:15
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
1:57:25
priorities and his inner Compass to the best
1:57:29
of my ability to tell,
1:57:30
but the point Still Remains. It's difficult to discern. And so what Derek said was really, you should
1:57:37
ask. When I say the word
1:57:39
successful, who is the third person that you think
1:57:42
of? Because first, it'll be
1:57:44
Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos for
1:57:45
whatever. Second it'll be my parents
1:57:49
and then the third answer will be when you finally get to some
1:57:52
degree of truth that is
1:57:55
non-consensus and non-political so
1:57:59
given all of that and the maybe in practicality of
1:58:04
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.
1:58:14
Dropped that from my usual rotation, but I'll consider adding it back end, but, but it was
1:58:21
given some thought it was not accidental that that got
1:58:24
removed from the
1:58:25
rotation, okay? Let me take a look at just a
1:58:29
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.
1:58:44
Still drink alcohol. I had a glass of wine last night but I have found that as I get
1:58:49
older the penalty I pay for
1:58:53
getting properly drunk, let's
1:58:55
just not blackout
1:58:56
drunk. But let's just say three or four
1:58:58
drinks is very high. It ends up
1:59:01
affecting, not just the next day but probably two days subsequent. So I'm just, I'm increasingly unwilling to pay that
1:59:08
tax Reda. Any
1:59:11
tips for someone who wants to start a
1:59:12
podcast if you're an
1:59:14
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
1:59:24
large groups. So if you are saying, I am an introvert,
1:59:27
but people tell me I should start a podcast. What should I do? My answer is, don't start a podcast.
1:59:31
If you are asking, I am an introvert. As I just defined it and you could also Define that as being highly
1:59:40
sensitive to
1:59:41
stimuli.
1:59:42
So I don't like being in.
1:59:44
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
1:59:53
depleting
1:59:56
Ask yourself as an introvert a, my nourished or
1:59:58
depleted by one-on-one
2:00:00
conversations. If the answer is depleted, don't do a podcast. If
2:00:03
the answer is nourished, then you can very easily do a podcast, which is why I
2:00:07
prefer having generally say in the podcast with the
2:00:11
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.
2:00:24
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
2:00:39
day.
2:00:41
There are quite a few actually I think Kevin Kelly
2:00:43
would be on that list. Noah Feldman, who's been on this
2:00:46
podcast would be on that list, Kevin Rose.
2:00:50
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.
2:01:08
Have a good day, sir, but
2:01:10
which one would
2:01:11
Be and why it would be tools of Titans. I think that is just the largest
2:01:14
funnel in the sense that it
2:01:15
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.
2:01:41
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
2:01:52
handful of others. But at
2:01:54
this point yes I still use
2:01:55
Evernote.
2:01:57
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
2:02:04
answer.
2:02:06
From a podcast, guest whose name I invoked earlier in this conversation, dr. BJ Miller, the hospice care
2:02:13
physician who
2:02:15
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.
2:02:35
On don't believe everything you read but I really
2:02:39
think scrutinizing our
2:02:41
thoughts and
2:02:43
beliefs which are the thoughts we take to be true
2:02:46
is increasingly it always has been important but it
2:02:49
is increasingly important in a world that is designed mostly enabled by Tech platforms and social
2:02:56
media to
2:02:57
polarize the shit out of you
2:02:59
and to reward you from making your viewpoints
2:03:02
more and more extreme and
2:03:04
simplified.
2:03:06
Don't believe everything that you think and I would recommend for people who want to explore,
2:03:12
how you might do that in a structured way, you
2:03:14
can look at the work by Byron. Katie and there are
2:03:17
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
2:03:28
helpful and on that.
2:03:31
I am going to see what I can do about exercise and some dinner,
2:03:35
and I
2:03:37
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
2:03:45
on battery charge so I hope it was coherent, at least portions of it were
2:03:49
coherent. Thank you for all the questions. Both the submitted questions that were sent ahead of time as well as the live questions. And
2:04:00
I
2:04:00
I really deeply appreciate all of you. It is
2:04:03
a small miracle that I'm able to do this type of thing for a living as my Jo
2:04:10
B. And I
2:04:12
am
2:04:13
incredibly thankful incredibly grateful every day that I get to
2:04:18
have the conversations I get to have. And, to, hopefully,
2:04:23
share whatever
2:04:25
things I have learned in any small way after the many, many experiments that I
2:04:30
Me and
2:04:32
my life too. So it is really an honor to interact with all of you and have a wonderful
2:04:39
evening wherever you may be, if you're listening to this in the morning, good morning have a
2:04:44
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
2:04:57
time,
2:04:58
Just be a little bit Kinder than you think is necessary when you walk out that door.
2:05:03
If everyone is an asshole, just remember, you are probably the asshole. So, it'd be a good time to remember that billboard.
2:05:09
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.
2:05:33
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.
2:06:03
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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