Well, hello boys and girls lemurs and squirrels is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. This episode was just a blast and part of me still doesn't believe that it happened. Of course, my job is to interview and deconstruct world-class performers of all different types of all different Stripes from all different fields. And my guest for this episode is none other than the icon Jerry Seinfeld. So who is Jerry Seinfeld and
Attainment icon Jerry Seinfeld's comedy career took off after his first appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1981 eight years later. He teamed up with fellow comedian Larry David to create what was to become the most successful comedy series in the history of Television Seinfeld. A lot of you have heard of it the show ran on NBC for nine Seasons winning numerous Emmy Golden Globe and People's Choice Awards and was named the greatest television show of all time in 2009 by TV guide and in 2012 was identified as the best sitcom ever in a
Two minutes Vanity Fair pull Seinfeld made his Netflix debut with the original stand-up special Jerry before Seinfeld along with his Emmy nominated and critically acclaimed web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee which has garnered more than 100 million views and which the New York Times describes as impressively complex inartful and variety calls a game changer his latest stand-up special 23 hours to kill was released by Netflix earlier this year. He is also the author of is this anything or is this anything?
I think it's a question with a question mark at the end which is a brand-new book and features. His best work across five decades in comedy. It is a collection of his notes his journaling and certainly his process. You can find them on Twitter at Jerry Seinfeld Instagram at Jerry Seinfeld Facebook at Jerry Seinfeld. And if you have interest in creative process gamifying life mastering the Mind comedy habits and systems of
You can operate at the top of their field for decades this conversation touches all of those things. Please enjoy a wide-ranging conversation with none other than Jerry Seinfeld.
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Jerry welcome to the
show. Thanks Tim. Great to be here.
I really appreciate you making the time and I thought we would start with the beginning of is this anything and in the suppose you could call the introduction of the preface another book pops up, which is the last laugh by Phil Berger and I would love to just know how that book entered your
life. How did I find that? I really don't know but I still have it. I have the copy that I bought.
Wherever I found it, I mean I was in high school and I did the absolute minimum you could do to survive in high school. I never read anything outside if I School except magazines car magazines comic books and Esquire is I don't know and those years, you know early early 70s Esquire was really
full of character and about encouraging mail boldness and inventiveness in lifestyle and just life in general, you know, they were very sophisticated and it was everything I wanted to be. I wanted to be Urban and I wanted to be smart and smarter than I was and I wanted to have like this cool adventurous life and they were very encouraging to that. I don't think there's anything like that.
Around today that was essential and the same with the that book the last laugh. It was it was just like whatever made men in centuries past become explorers, you know, I don't know how they became that I guess. I remember reading about explorers clubs like in 17th 18th century London, you know.
I have two sons and daughter and that's that's the thing. I really wanted. If I could pass along the two things I would want to pass along would be ethics and boldness in life.
But that doesn't answer your question where I got the book. I don't know.
Well, that's okay though. The Genesis story is secondary. It's really the context that you're providing and just as a quick side note a friend of mine Cal fussing used to write the what I've learned interview Series in Esquire. Yeah. I had that mmm back when I went, you know, when it had and maybe still doesn't some little that character that you're describing that boldness. What was it inside the last laugh that grabbed you so
much. Yeah, so if I look back at my
My whole life starting, you know about like second or third grade. It was all this inexorable March towards this Pursuit Of The Comedy arts and there was nothing else about comedy Albert Brooks did a album, but did an article in Esquire called school for Comedians and it was a parody and I had no idea it was a parody.
You grew up in LA and he was making fun of what comedians might need to learn to be Comedians and was an early 70s Esquire article and I had no idea. It was a parody. I mean I just oh there's a school or I just wanted to learn about this world and the last laugh really took your deeply into the world and it is a completely hermetically.
Sealed world that is frankly unrelated to the rest of the entertainment industry and its really unrelated to almost all other creative arts. It is a very sealed ecosystem the world of Comedy particularly stand-up comedy and I was desperately thirsty for any scrap of data about it
that you have much like an Olympic athlete.
Weight of sorts with training logs and workouts and so on you have 45 years of hacking away as its put in the books description on yellow note pads on you've preserved all of this and I'd love to speak or to hear you speak more accurately a bit about your writing process and the preparation that I did for this. I read in the New York Times and I was going to read this short bit you can fact correct this if need be but here's how it reads. I still have a writing session.
Each and every day, it's another thing that organizes your mind. The coffee goes here. The pad goes here the notes go here. My writing technique is just you can't do anything else. You don't have to write but you can't do anything else. I would love to hear you elaborate on that because it actually sounds very similar to what the fiction writer Neil Gaiman has his first career writing as well. Yeah, but what does that look like for you? And what do your writing sessions tend to look like if we look back over the last I don't know 10 years because I'm sure it's changed over time.
No, it hasn't changed. It hasn't it changes the coffee, which I didn't know about coffee in my younger years. I think I discovered coffee after I had kids and I didn't have time to have long meals with my friends anymore, but we can meet for coffee and then I realized boy this coffee really gets you talking and I thought maybe I'll do a show where you just talked with coffee and that's kind of where that
that came from that means in car show but my writing sessions used to be very arduous very painful pushing against the wind in soft muddy ground with like a wheel barrel full of bricks and I had to do it because there's just as I mentioned in the book you either learn to do that or you will die in the ecosystem and I learned that really
Stand really young and that saved my life and made my career that I grasped the essential principle of survival in comedy. Really young and that principle is you learn to be a writer. It's really the profession of writing. That's a stand-up comedy is however, you do it. You know anybody you can do it any way you want but if you don't learn
To do it in some form. You will not survive
and when you sit down is it an empty page? Is it bits and pieces that you've noted through the week as observations that you then flesh out. What is actually in front of you when you
start what's in front of me is usually about 15 or 20 pages of stuff that's in various states of development. And then there's a smaller book.
Of just really really random things like when you're on a cell phone call and the call drops and then you reconnect with the person they'll go. I don't know what happened there
as if
anyone is expecting them to know anything about the incredibly complex technology of a cell phone they offer this little
I don't know is an excuse or an apology. They go. I don't know what happened there. So anyway, so I don't know so that's an example of something in that my little little tiny notebook that I don't know what to do with that. But it's just so stupid to me and funny so that to me is like it's like an archery target 50 yards away and then I take out my bow and my arrow and I go let me see if I can hit that. Let me see if I can create something.
That I could say to a room full of humans in a nightclub that will make them see what I see in that there's something stupid and funny about that to me. That's the very very beginning. So then I'll write something about it. It'll be if I'm lucky it'll be a half a page or a page on a yellow legal pad and I'll write that and then and then session the next
Next day if I get around to it, I will see it again and I'll see what I have and what I like and I don't like and as any writer can tell you it's 95% rewrite. So I have two phases there is the free play Creative phase and then there is the Polish and construction phase of and I love to spend inordinate. I mean, it's not wasteful to me because that's just what I like to do.
Amounts of time refining and perfecting every single word of it until it has this pleasing flow to my ear and then it becomes something that I can't wait to say and then we go from there to the stage with it. And then from the stage the audience will then I imagine, you know, it's a very scientific thing to me. It's like okay, here's my experiment and you run the experiment and then the audience just
dumps a bunch of data on you of this is good. This is okay. This is very good. This is terrible and that goes into my brain from performing it on stage and then it's back through the rewrite process and then new ideas will come and it's you know, it's just millions of different kinds of development. It's just that so you're just trying to get your you just going to that place of
Creating fixing jettisoning. It's extremely occupying. It's never boring. It's the frustration. I'm so used to it this point. I don't even notice it and it's just work time. It's just work time. Which end that's my I like the way athletes talk about I got to get my work in that you get your work in. I like that phrase one of the reasons. I was looking forward to doing the show.
With you is I know that it's something you are very interested in the craft the yeah, the systemization of the brain and creative Endeavor or you know, I really think when I'm working it's very much like when you're watching a picture working.
On stage than that we're going up so that different. So basically it's onstage and offstage it sighs. It's the desk and then the stage and then back to the desk and then back to the stage and that's
endless the process and the repeatable process the experimentation like you phrased it is extremely interesting to me and if we took or take that cell phone example the dropping of reception, that's an observation. It seems to me that you are a real connoisseur.
Our of questions whether those questions are being used as part of a bit or possibly is prompts and you mentioned the coffee in part leading to Comedians in Cars in a Harvard Business Review interview. You also mentioned that it's important to know what you don't like a big part of innovation is saying you know what I'm really sick of question mark right and for you that was talk shows where the music plays somebody walks out to desk shakes hands with the host sits down. Yeah, and what am I really?
Think of being a departure point for Innovation. I would love to hear about any questions if there are questions that you use as prompts to help elicit observation or
materials for yourself. No. No, that's that part is somewhat having a very cranky nature and being a sensitive kind of I don't know if it's perception perception, but you're just provoked by a lot.
Of things, you know and that if you're lucky enough to have that the next thing you must do is to nurture and protect it and never lose it and the enemy of it is success success is the enemy of irritability and crankiness because now you have money and you can remove the difficulties from your life and that's not good.
How do you contend with that? Because you've had certainly you've I would imagine if had to do things to offset in that case the Creature Comforts and so on that come along with the amount of success that
you've yes the thing I did that really solved almost all of that issue is I got married. Okay, and please elaborate that you'll never run out if you get married and if you have kids then then you've got a gold mine.
You mentioned just a few minutes ago about wordsmithing until you get everything pleasing to the ear and really obsessing over the pros. I've read that one of your explanations for this success of all of your television was that quote the show was successful because I micromanage every word every line every
Take every edit every casting and then later on if you're efficient, you're doing it the wrong way. There are a lot of questions I could ask about this but I suppose one is if you are for such a period of time, I understand the logic of it, but it for such a long period of time obsessing over the details like that. Did you not find yourself at risk of burnout or just hitting a point of overwhelm or did that not happen to
you? We're talking about the series now or just yeah, we're talking about
The series the series all the series is say, you know, if you want to look at the comedy Arts is the only thing that interests me creatively I think or they'll think I'm any good at but if you look at the different comedy art such as if you know if I was to break it down, let's just say into like basics of stand-up comedy television series or a movie. I would analogize those two different vessels on the water. So
A TV series is like a pretty big boat that you can run with a couple of people a movie is a yacht there's so many people it's a beautiful thing. There's a lot of money involved. Everybody wants it. Everybody thinks it's the ultimate way to go across the water and stand up for me is a surfboard. It's just you you paddle out and you try and catch the energy and you're all on your own.
And you can do it and go home and nobody but you really even knows what happened. I think the more people you add to the The Vessel the faster you're going to struggle to maintain its progress through the water for sure the TV series got to a point. We didn't nine years and the way I was doing it that was as far as it could go before it was really gone.
Going to stop cutting through the water in that beautiful way that it was doing that's why I pulled out of it before I had to before anyone wanted me to because I didn't want to be on a boat that was starting to struggle. I didn't want to have that experience and I even more than that. I didn't want the audience to have that experience. I wanted to complete this gift to them in a way that they would always.
Is go oh, I was giving a lovely thing one time in the 90s and it was just lovely. I wanted them to have it like that. No excuses. No, if onlys no, it did go on a bit maybe longer than it should have I didn't want to I just wanted them to have this lovely gift. That's why I stopped the TV series. I could also describe the TV series to you as a weather event that
as an energy that gathers and become cyclonic, but every storm blows itself out and that that storm was about to run out of energy. And so we God it's the same thing because I'm I was at the center of the storm and I could feel the slowing of the cyclonic curve the funnel.
Is that something that you had a role model for us as something you simply perceived because it's very rare for someone to
Step out like Rocky Marciano. Usually they go a bit too far. They get slapped around a bit or they end up signing in baseball mitts at Caesar's Palace or whatever it is. Did you have any model for that? It was as something you decided entirely on your
own the closest I had and I would never compare myself in any way shape or form was the Beatles. The timeframe of The Beatles was nine years. They broke up for different reasons we had
No Discord on my show like they struggled with but the portion size of the Beatles just felt so right to me and I thought that and they were together about nine years and we were together about nine years and there was something about adding that other digit to go to 10, you know, like if people said to me, how long did you do that series for and if I said 10 years I could just hear people to wow 10 years. It just just the portion size just felt too big.
is the you mentioned I guess irritation as a Wellspring of what could be a dick material is it irritation or is it sensitivity in the connotation of a very sensitive scale where you're just perceiving more is it a dissatisfaction or a irritability or is
there I think your five senses have been made a little too
too good and that's not quite comfortable I have a friend actually two friends is really weird and they're married this is a really weird story and they both suffered from this breakdown in their hearing there's a bone in the hearing Canal that I guess it's like I think it looks like a little Wishbone or something you know there's all these little fine bones in there yeah
this stir up all these tiny bones
yeah so both of them the
Ben and the wife first the wife and then the husband like six months later. It's a very rare condition. So anyway, they both had to get this very delicate surgery on their inner ear and they replace that bone with a piece of titanium that's made to do the same thing and it's actually this fantastic cure for this problem. And so they both have these titanium ears now and when they first got
Got it. They're hearing was like too good and it's a little uncomfortable for them. And I think now they've adjusted to it fine. But reminded me of how I feel like my senses are my eyes and my ears and my skin and I just feel everything just a little more than I think I would even like to write and so that's yeah, I think that's just kind of a genetic thing, but I don't know another comedian that
In the same and just has this hair trigger reaction to anything that is irritates them.
And a lot of it is visual. I think I think I mentioned that in my introduction that I think jokes come from a kind of intense visual Acuity you did. Yeah. So I think that's part of where it comes from. If we imagine
we meaning a lay audience mentions comics and our minds eyes, you have these sort of hyper sensitive cat-like creatures who might be very difficult to put into any
Can group yes, but yet you mentioned a lack of Discord on the show, which I'm not a Hollywood wonk but I have a little bit of mileage and that seems to be not altogether common to what would you attribute that lack of Discord?
I don't like Discord and I don't like it and I am Fearless in routing it out and solving it. And if anyone's having a problem, I'm
I'm gonna walk right up to them and go. Is there a problem let's talk about this because I cannot stand that kind of turmoil that approach to
conflict resolution is very proactive. It's not like you're being passive-aggressive as yeah like your conflict avoidant. Is that something you got from your parents? Is that something that you just came out of the womb having that direct addressing of Discord or or problems?
I don't know where I got that. I feel like if you break.
Human struggle down to one word. It's confront. And so I kind of approached everything that way and just the act of the confront is like, you know, what do people always say they admitting you have a problem all that nonsense when I did read some pop psychology books. I I was very much a Searcher in my younger years yoga, and this is n and a little Scientology Transcendental Meditation Buddhism
You know, I read a lot of stuff looking. I don't know. What I was looking for. I think I was I was looking for a working philosophy I think is what I was looking for in life to apply and I kind of formed my own little I don't know if religion is the right word, but I've definitely created my own belief or operating system. I think operating system would be the best term for what I've created because it's very pragmatic. It's
Faith based in any way but that's my one of my biggest principles is
confront.
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Are there any other examples that you could give from your operating system any other guiding rules or principles or anything? That's stuck from that seeking period Well, it's
my guiding rule is systemize. What's the problem? The problem is like my daughter. My daughter is very creative. She's extremely bright. She's got a credible head on her shoulders and I see myself in her at that age. She's way farther advanced than
I was at that age, but she doesn't know I said to her you she has a creative gift. Okay, so I say to her when you have a creative gift. It's like someone just gave you a horse. Now you you have to learn how to ride it. You got to learn how to ride this horse and I've seen people that are born by the dozens and dozens. I've seen people that were given black stallions and it usually kill if you if you have a black stallion like from that
Movie and you're born and they just put you on it. And that's what happens. They just put you on it and you either learn to ride this thing or it's going to kill you. Then we have many many examples of that. So she's trying to write this thing. She's struggling. I can't write I keep putting it off. So I explained to her my basic system, which you already talked about at the top of the show, which is if you're going to write make yourself a writing session. What's the
Think session I'm going to work on this problem. Well, how long are you going to work on? It? Don't just sit down with an open-ended. I'm going to work on this problem that that's a ridiculous torture to put on a human beings head. It's like you can hire a trainer to get in shape and he comes over and you go how long is the session and he goes it's open-ended. Forget it. I'm not feeling it. It's over right there. You've got to control what your brain can take.
Okay, so if you're going to exercise God bless you, and that's the best thing in the world you can do but you got to know when's it going to end. When's the workout over it's going to be an hour. Okay, or you can take that. Let's do 30 minutes. Okay, great. Now we're getting somewhere. I can do 30. I'm trying to teach my son who knows how to do Transcendental Meditation how to do it. I assume you know about the I do yeah practice this morning because I can't do it 15.
It's like okay, let's do 10. Let's do 10. Let's come up with something you can do. That's where you start everything. That's how you start to build a system. So my daughter, so I said to her you have to have an end time to your writing session. If you're going to sit down at a desk with a problem and do nothing else. You got to get a reward for that and the reward is the alarm goes off and you're done you get up and walk away and go have some cookies and milk you're done.
If you have the guts and the balls to sit down and write you need a reward at the other end of that session, which is stop now pencils down. So that's the beginning of a system that to me will help almost anybody learn to write which is something you know, I kind of wanted to teach in a way because I find it. I think it's so simple. I think exercise is pretty simple, too.
And what people don't they don't come up with baked good simple little systems. They just try and do it. And that's to me that's you going to fail
the simple doesn't mean easy and no,
no, not me not easy.
So important the incentives right having a reward having a defined format. How long did your daughter end up choosing for her writing duration or how long have you chosen? I
told her just doing our that's a lot.
She says I write all day. No, you're not. Nobody writes all day. Shakespeare can't write all day. It's torture. Yeah, if you
taught a class on writing what other lessons might you have or resources or anything exercises, so I'm imagining that your daughter could sit down. She says, all right. I have an hour and then you ask her how a writing session went. She said well, I didn't have any idea what to write. So you'd have I don't know what age the students would be in your course, but what else would be a component.
Of your class on
writing. Well, I would teach them to learn to accept your mediocrity, you know, no one's really that great. You know, who's great. The people that just put tremendous amount of hours into it. It's a game of tonnage. You know, how many total cars are you going to work per week per month per year you might even want to chart that or with your exercise if you want to get in shape I couldn't get in.
A shape I was like a start as a jogger, you know, like in the 70s and I would run three miles a day and then I got older and I got married late and I had young kids and I really had to get in shape and I picked up this book by Bill Phillips called Body for Life,
but it for life.
Yeah, and it's really really so it's such a system for A Primitive, you know, brain I do it to this day. I think it's a work of Genius this book.
And it really got me in shape because he broke it down to here's what we're going to do in minute one. Here's what you're going to do the minute 5 minute 12, and this is going to end in the 45 minutes or whatever it is and every minute I know exactly what I'm doing now and that like turn the key for me and all of a sudden I was getting in shape. I never had to ask. What am I doing? Now? What are we doing next? It was very it's like you gotta treat your
Rain, like a dog you just got.
You got it. So stupid the brain the mind is infinite in wisdom. The brain is a stupid little dog that is easily trained to use the mind with the brain. The brain is so easy to master. You just have to confine it you confine it. Yeah, and it's done through repetition and systemization.
So let's talk about feedback.
In the experimental Loop that you mentioned earlier, which was desk stage desk stage desk stage one form of feedback would be audience feedback and I'm curious what other forms of feedback you
have. Now, there is no other feedback. That means anything. Okay. Got it. Well, okay. Here's a here's a little fine point of writing technique that I'll pass along to you writers out there. Never talk to anyone.
About what you wrote that day that day. You have to wait 24 hours to ever say anything to anyone about what you did because you never want to take away that wonderful. Happy feeling that you did that very difficult thing that you try to do that you accomplished it you wrote you sat down and wrote.
Wrote. So if you say anything, it's like the same reason I never heard the thing like you never tell people that name you going to give the baby sure until it's born because they're going to react and the reaction is going to have a color and if you've decided and that that's going to be the baby's name. You don't want to know what anybody else thinks. So I will always wait 24 hours before I say anything to anyone about what I wrote so you want to preserve that good feeling because if you let's say you write something and you love
And then later on that day, you're talking to someone and you thought hey, what do you think of this idea of blah blah blah and they don't love it. Now that day feels like I guess, you know that that was a wasted effort. So I don't you always want to reward yourself the key to writing but being a good writer is to treat yourself like a baby very extremely nurturing and loving and then switch over to Lou Gossett and officer and it
Element and just be a harsh prick ballbusting son of a bitch about that is just not good enough that's got to come out or it's got to be redone or thrown away. So flipping back and forth between those two brain quadrants is the key to writing when you're writing you want to treat your brain like a toddler. It's just all
nurturing and loving and supportiveness. And then when you look at it the next day you want to be just a hard ass and you switch back and forth
when you would come off stage and feel like you would really nailed the set. You just killed. Yeah, would you ask for feedback from other Comics? So you might respect who are there would you do something to celebrate instead? You're
not feedback. You don't need you don't.
Ask the professionals that's the paradise of stand-up comedy. You don't have to ask anyone anything stand-up comics receive a score on what they're doing more often and more critically than any other human on earth, you know, even a picture. He's not on the mound for an hour and 20 minutes straight.
You know right having his pitches judged by the Umpire. And by the way, some of those calls are opinions of the Umpire that may or may not be true. Every opinion. The audience gives you is 100% accurate,
right how they feel is
fact some from that pain or have that Advantage
when you did well much like after checking the box of doing an hour-long writing session. Would you reward yourself?
Or was that not part of the process for you?
I'm rewarding myself constantly. I mean but there's no greater reward than that state of mind that you're in when that that is working. If you can extricate yourself from your self, which is the goal in all sports and performance arts. If you get out of your mind and able to just function, you know, your sense technique that
You have there is no greater reward. But you know, if you want to have an ice cream sundae go hon, it's going to it's going to pale in comparison. Yeah, did you have
a long term plan? Let's just if we go back to the the early days. Did you have any type of long-term career plan for yourself, or was it really the ball in front of you and executing on that one next step and then the career emerged from that approach or something
else.
You asking me if I had a back-up plan if stand-up didn't work out. Is that
what you do? I'm asking you if you had a long-term career plan with the real
world. No, but I don't even know if you could make a living as a stand-up comedian and less, you know, you were George Carlin.
So I didn't I didn't know anything about it. I didn't end the truth was there really wasn't there really wasn't a world. I an infrastructure that God exists today.
We didn't know if there was any jobs out there, even if we were able to learn how to do it. We had no idea what we were doing. We was completely blind leap of faith out of the plane with the parachute hoping that wasn't laundry in
there. What is the feeling? I mean, you mentioned it. I would love as someone who is hypersensitive for you to describe that feeling that would make an ice cream sundae Superfluous right that feeling of getting that feedback. What is it?
The body what is it or in the mind? However, you want to answer that. What does it feel like to you?
I sometimes you'll have described it as math and music which is kind of the same thing music is so mathematical.
As is Stand-Up is extremely mathematical. So, you know, I mean, I certainly don't have to tell you of what that you're just looking for a state of mind you're trying to maneuver yourself into a state of mind that you know, is your highest function level, but there are many levels below that that are good enough to get the job done so that you can call yourself a professional. So that's all there is, you know is its musical it's very rhythmic and musical it.
As for me, I'm looking for the to get myself in a rhythm and then to get the audience in a rhythm very much like a conductor I think would feel you know, a conductor has a piece of music. I have a piece of music in front of me and now I have to get the symphony to be doing it the way we know it can be and then the audience comes along and supports that and it's this absurd struggle and I really think being a conductor or a sir.
Refer as the best analogy because the forces that you're attempting to Corral or so much greater than you the wave has so much more strength than you have. All you can hope to do is navigate within it. That's the goal to just get to that very brief, very transitory perception of Mastery. It seems in this moment that I am completely mastering this audience, but
Only a moment. It's only a moment. I couldn't stay up there very long. Even an hour is not a long time. Totally, you know, it's not a long time and it takes years and years and years of work and study and practice to be able to do that to do the hour. The hour is really the standard in my business. A lot of people can do 20. Some can do 35 it a lot of really good guys at 45.
An hour an hour fifteen, I think again my I'll go to my favorite which is baseball for analogies. It's the complete game. Can you finish the game? And that's that's the our 10 hour 20.
That's nine innings of Mastery.
Yes, you need to have not just a lot of material but a lot of practice and tonnage as you put it. So yeah perform at a high level for that period of time and
and manage their energy and yours and it has totally it has to ebb and flow.
And that's
just to piggyback on the analogy used a very much similar Sports and you have had a lot of athletes on the show and even some surfing Legends like Laird Hamilton, they'll say they should call surfing paddling cause that's what you're actually doing most of the time what you get to show at the end of the day as the cover shot surfing the big wave, but that's really the output of a lot of tonnage right? And I know you've been quoted as thinking of yourself more as a sportsman than an artist and for a lot of athletes route,
He in is is super key to managing energy and putting in the Reps and producing good results. There's a quote from you in the New York Times and the quote is I'm not OCD, but I love routine. I get less depressed with routine aside from the writing sessions. Are there any other routines for you that are particularly important as scaffolding or automatic behaviors?
Yeah exercise weight training.
And Transcendental Meditation. I think I could solve just about anyone's life and I don't care what you do with weight training and Transcendental Meditation. I think your body needs that stress that stressor and I think it builds your the resilience of the nervous system. And I think Transcendental Meditation is the absolutely ultimate work tool. I think the stress reduction is great, but
It's more the energy recovery and the concentration fatigue solution, which is of course, you know as a stand-up comic I can tell you my entire life is concentration fatigue, whether it's writing or performing my brain and my body which is the same thing constantly hitting the wall. And if you have that in your hip pocket your Columbus with a compass.
Just chatting with Hugh Jackman on the podcast and he's also a devout seems like an odd word to use since its it can be used quite secularly. But yeah proponent. Yeah of TM. How many times what is your weekly schedule look like for weight training? When do you do it? And do you Duty em twice a day or
do you I do it at least twice a day, but I will do it anytime. I feel like I'm dipping energetically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And if I sit down and the pain doesn't move for like 20 minutes, I know I'm at a guess why the pain moving my weight training routine is three times a week for an hour session, but I'm into that I've been into that. You know, I mentioned the bill Phillips Body for Life For Life the hit training. So it's 3 times a week of weights and three times a week the interval cardio training there.
Are a lot of days so I want to cry instead of do it because it really it really physically hurts. But I just think it's balancing. It's very balancing to the forces inside Humanity that I think are just they overwhelm us. We are overwhelmed by our own power and you got to put that Ox in the plow make it do this stuff that it doesn't want to do. It just keeps it what the hell do I Ox is do in the wild. I can't imagine.
We were happy
checking Twitter just developing neuroses. Yeah,
you know what put it in the harness keep. I mean, I don't know a lot of my life is I don't like getting depressed. I get depressed a lot. I hate the feeling and these routines the these very difficult routines whether it's exercise or writing and both of them are things where it's like it's brutal.
That's another thing. I was explaining to my daughter. She's frustrated that writing is so difficult because no one told her that it's the most difficult thing in the world. It's the most difficult thing in the world is to write people tell you to write like you can do it like you're supposed to be able to do it. Nobody can do it. It's impossible the greatest people in the world can't do it. So if you're going to do what you should first be called what you are attempting to do.
Is incredibly difficult one of the most difficult things there is way harder than weight training way harder what your summoning trying to summon within your brain and your spirit to create something onto a blank page. So that's another part of my systemization technique learned how to encourage yourself. That's why you don't tell someone what you wrote and be proud of yourself encourage, you know treat
Yourself well for having done that horrible horribly impossible thing. I
would have to imagine and maybe this is just a projection because I hope that when I have kids which I don't have yet that this will be true for me. But that being kind to your creative self and offering positive reinforcement for yourself through the process would affect how you parent. I would have to
imagine. Yes. Yes. Unfortunately we seem to have lost the Lou Gossett side of parenting.
Pesky Child Protective Services. Yeah, but are they now?
But yeah, it's similar you want to be very encouraging but you also want to explain there are laws in life that you need to know about or your it's going to hurt. I think one of the better lines I've come up with over my life is that pain is
Each rushing in to fill a void with great speed. Can you say that one more time please pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a void. You don't know that that post of your bed was not where you thought it was but when your foot hits it that knowledge is going to come rushing in really fast.
In a really hurt when your foot hits that post because that was a piece of knowledge that you didn't have that you're going to get you're about to get
your talk about black like Stallion and learning to ride like stallion lest you be broken Yourself by your superpowers. Yeah / potential murderers. I've struggled with depression for decades and have found some respite in the last five or six years for a whole host of reasons, but aside from the
And weight training. Is there anything else that has contributed to your ability to either Stave off or mitigate depressive episodes or
manage? No, I still got them still got him the best thing I ever heard about. It was that it's part of a kit that comes with a creative aspect to the brain that a tendency to depression seems to always accompany that and I read that like 20 years ago, and that really made me happy.
P so I realized well, I wouldn't have all this other good stuff without that that's just comes in the kit that you have a tendency to depression. But I think it's fair to say that I don't know what human that doesn't have the tendency. I'm sure it
varies. I have a number of friends who are in comedy and a lot of them are afraid of getting any type of treatment or taking antidepressants because they worried that it would Rob them of their comedic Insight. I don't know if that's something you've run into.
Yourself, or is it more that you accept it as a natural byproduct or companion to the
Sensitivity? I would agree with a chemical intervention and to stabilize your mood. I would be nervous about that also and besides which is you know, as we all know there are many other better remedies.
That you know, basically a pair of running shoes is probably better than any of the drugs they have on the market depending on the severity, of course.
Yeah, or at least make sure that you're adding those elements into your life since I think we all know people who take antidepressants and are still depressed. So it's worthwhile to contig off the bigger boxes
behaviourally speak. I don't think depression is really A Creative Source, I think irritability and crankiness is
Right, but not depression depression is just an annoying thing. We have to deal
with he gave me a quote. I'll ask you one more question and then we can we close
we can go a little more. I'm enjoying this so much let's go and let's
do it set. I'd love to ask about following up on depression. I'd love to ask about failure just to keep this bright and shiny. Can you think of how a particular failure or apparent failure set you up for later success in other words. Do you have a favorite?
Any type something that seemed catastrophic at the time that in fact set you up for great things
later. Yeah. Yeah. I have a couple really good ones. And there's another thing I try and teach the kids, you know and something horrible happens when I think of all the things I would trade if you could take your experiences and ask to trade them in the last ones. I would trade would be the failures. Those are the
most valuable ones when I moved to LA I was only doing comedy for years, but I had built up a pretty good reputation in New York and New York was really in those days still very much the miners to La which was the majors and so I went out to LA and people talk that I was coming and that I was you know, one of the hot guys coming out of New York and I was only doing it for years. I've you know, 25 years old. I mean I
Really still just starting and The Comedy Store was the club and La that you had a break into that was the club and the guys that work there and the women were Killers. I mean these people made the room just shake with laughter. It was very intimidating to go on there and I went on there and I did very well, you know in those days you would call and they would give you spots if you were good.
And I would never get spots that we get like one spot a week and you know one spot a week. It's like one push-up a week. It's like I don't even bother so I asked to meet with Mitzi Shore who's the owner of the club and person who ran the whole thing there and she said to me she said I'm the kind of person that needs to get stepped on and that's what you need. You need someone to step on you and I'm going to be that person and she
I said if you called and said if I had four spots available and you called in I would give all four spots to this other guy. She mentions this other guy.
And I sat there in her office and I nodded I nodded and I said well, I won't mention the name of the guy. She said she was going to give the four spots to I said, well if maybe he can't do all four. I'd be happy to take any of the ones he can't do and I walked out of there and I never worked at the comedy store again and saying you you're not working at The Comedy Store in La it's like saying I want to be a baseball player, but not the majors.
Nothing major the United
States.
I'm going to apply my treasure someplace else try to lift Lithuania. Yeah, and so from there I went from I hope it doesn't sound Hermanos from being absolutely at the top of the Heap in New York City to playing at discos in the basement in La, you know to like eight people but
My resentment and hostility to her I was a guy who I would say. I was a three day a week guy in terms of my writing discipline in those days and I went from three days a week to 7 right there. And I was like, okay, we're not this is this is I was angry. I was angry. I was frustrated. I was resentful but I used that. It was just fuel for me. She wasn't stop.
I mean nobody was going to stop me but when someone is that hostile to you that can be a very good thing. If you're tough enough to eat shit and say I'm she's not stopping me.
That's a great story. I actually think I've got one of my friends Alexis Ohanian co-founded Reddit and at one point early on they were super excited about of course their company their baby, they put all of their waking hours into
They met with some Yahoo, executive who's basically just fishing for inside information and it's some point in the meeting this exact said, oh there's your traffic. Oh that's a rounding error for us. And so Alexis has got and it's guys took a huge. They made a poster that said you are a rounding error and put it on the wall in their office. Yeah, it worked it worked. So what then transpired after you went from three days a week to seven days a week.
When did you get a glimmer of hope or
Vindication the tonight Show's saw me and every comedian in the world. Wanted to get on The Tonight Show in the 70s and 80s. It was the only way out of the club's to real digs was to be on The Tonight Show. The club's was you working for free right free 0
You know, that's not really the object. The object is to get paid. The object is to be a professional. So when you're when you're on The Tonight Show, you're going from the service road to Lane one
no more. I no more Apple
base. Yeah in five minutes and I told that story in the book to what that felt. Like, you know, my favorite sporting thing. I mean I have I'm a baseball man.
React but the hundred meters in the Olympics is as a thing. I love I love the hundred meters and that's what happens when you did The Tonight Show in those days you I when I see Lindsey Vonn at the top of a mountain or I see those guys kicking their legs when they're in the blocks, you know, I know what that feels
like I know
and I'm very grateful that I know that you know, if you're an adrenaline junkie, which I am there's
Good comedian. That isn't that's a big tree in life to know how that feels that I'm going to change my whole life in the next three minutes.
How many times did you rehearse that three-minute segment of material? I mean, I would imagine you must have done it a thousand times before you
thousand. Yeah thousand.
Did you ever have another conversation with Mitzi Shore or did any
do you ever convey any message to her or and I have any
communication I did when I got my TV series in the 90s I moved up to this fantastic house in the Hollywood Hills that overlooked all of La every day. I would drive down the hill to go to the studio to work on the show. I would see Mitzi taking her walk on a nearby street that we happen to have in common and I would always give her a nice
look.
Flavor hung but our eyes met
no men no men
and you know, maybe she was right. Maybe I didn't need someone to step on. Why did she respond that way? That's
just seems so aggressive did you do
anything? I would never be the broken the type of broken-winged bird that she wanted to have in her little
Chicken Coop of dysfunction that was the calmly foia most days. I was not built like that. Don't be on want to be a stand-up comic is because I wanted to say to myself and to the world. I don't need you. I can do this myself and The Comedy Store was filled with people that needed her the comedy world knows days was a druggie, you know, it's a very dysfunctional world the comedy world because you taking these
Uh, that that can't fit in they can't you know, they have this one skill and then you put them in a situation where they can get anything they want. If so, whatever dysfunctional chemicals sexual you're lazy. You're broken you're messed up. You know now you got the you have no structure around you to fix it. Yeah, you know, I mean you're out in the world of your completely on your own.
It's designed to break human beings stand-up comedy. It's a perfect way to break a person psychologically,
you know, I've only been to The Comedy Store once I was brought there by a friend and I went into one of the back rooms. I'm sure you would know the name of this room, but they listed off a whole lot of old names that I want to say, Sam Kinison and a bunch of others and they said this is where they used the this is the Green Room blah blah blah blah blah and there was this huge table with a mirror top with
ends of scratches on it and not from fingernails, right and you just think yeah. I God if you don't have rails to stay on I mean pun intended, I guess the environment is just designed to destroy
and yes, but that's part of the fun also the Moguls if you it's like you're a fish in the Hudson, it's a toxic environment the equipment.
The attrition is brutal. You never have to say I don't get why people like this comedian. Don't worry. Don't worry. You don't have to comment on it. The the environment itself will correct. It is a self-correcting ecosystem of pure toxic water
the self-sufficiency our desire for self-sufficiency that you give voice to the proving to others.
Is that you don't need that you can do it on your own seems to be a very sharp contrast to a lot of entertainers. I know including Comics who seem to have a lot of codependency, right? Like they need the audience to validate like they need life support if they had respiratory collapse and was that perspective and that character or Constitution
rare I have to say the Constitution is is kind of
But I also have to say I don't know anyone who made it over a long period of time that didn't have it. Yeah, and that's another thing that kind of led me to the leads me to the weight training aspect. I think it I think it builds your Constitution Mmm.
Yeah the weight training, you know, I just want to give credit where credit is due with Bill Phillips. I read that book long time ago. This is before my second book which was on physical performance and I was really impressed because
was it is to me first and foremost a book about behavioral modification and behavioral psychology and it really Nails those elements really really well and you know, I think back across the hundreds of interviews on this podcast, whether it's Bob Iger in the world of business and heading Disney or an athlete or otherwise, if you look at the people who have really performed at a high level for decades weight training seems
One of the constants are one of the near
constants. Yeah, because you're deteriorating you just trying to bend that curve a little bit. You know, I'm 66. I shouldn't be performing at this level at 66 I should be over.
So you have to have to cheat the the biology. Yeah
66. I never I mean I suppose I could have tried to do the math. I never would have guessed. Do you just wake up some days and find that number to be unbelievable to you or is it a foregone conclusion, I guess because you're in your own body and go year by
year. I've learned it. I find it funny and I find it very it really makes the game fun because I know this should not be happening. I am getting away with murder. So I love
It really makes it that's another thing. I believe it. We've talked about systemizing gamifying is another thing. I'm very big on. Let's make this into a game, you know, whatever. The problem is. Let's make it a game to me. It's a fun game. I honestly, you know, I wouldn't say this around my family, but I don't care if I drop dead tomorrow. It's like I just wanted to I still feel like I played the game. Well, you know, yeah, that's what I want to feel. I just want to feel like I've played
The game. Well,
what would be an example of gamifying? I mean I've read of course the about the you know, Seinfeld's productivity secret marking the crosses on the calendar which I guess yeah, some people get an
answer that's not really a game. Yeah, that's more based at I think stats are good. If you want to improve anything my trainer Adam, right and I always like to play this game all this was the maximum amount of weight. You did three months ago.
This many seconds or whatever and then it's like that's so it's a game now. Let's see if I can keep the Reps going for 30 seconds. Last time was 25. So it's a little game. It's just it again. This is goes back to my the human brain is a schnauzer. It's just a stupid little contraption that you can easily trick as soon as you tell me. I did it 25 seconds last time. Okay. Let's see if I can do 30. Yeah. It's not with them. That's not
Since it's a stupid little machine, it's gonna do that every single time every time you tell someone your last best was 25 seconds. You're going to try for 30.
Well thinking back to the buttocks do and they're not in a yoke and how disquieted they would be if they were checking Twitter all
day. Yeah, and then the while yeah in the world of dog
training, I know like a couple of really high level dog trainers and one of the Expressions you here, it's kind of this Mantra like you would
The military or something, which is a tired dog is a happy dog and just ensuring that your dog is properly exerted at
night. Yes.
There's a lot to that as a human all yeah. Yeah. So if you're looking at gamification in the let's just say the fitness realm are there other ways that you've applied that to your creative or professional work. I guess you have these logs so it away I mean you have
yeah, but I don't
If I don't score myself creatively, I don't believe in that this kind of gets into my thoughts on material. I don't know if this will illuminate this for you, but one time.
I love to go on stage at Gotham and hearing about the vaccine today. Got me. Very excited that maybe I'll be going back there soon on 23rd Street in the city. And that's how I like to play with material. So I always I'll go there and I'll and I'll go on stage. I'll do 20 or 30 minutes of just working on material and then I like to take questions from the audience, you know, and I'm when I perform for gigs. It's the audiences are too big to really take questions. It's too.
Difficult, but in a room of a couple of Italy you can take questions. So one night. This guy says to me he says when you go back to the same city twice, do you ever worry that they're going to see the same show you did last time or how do you know what you did and how do you know when it's time to take a piece of material out of your act that you've been doing it too long and it needs to be retired and you should do something else and you know, you kind of reasonable.
Actions from a regular person and I said so these pieces I was doing tonight. I said do you think that you could think of things similar to this and the guy says oh God, no not in a million years and I'm like, yeah, that's what I was thinking.
So what that does that mean the point of that story is if I'm going on stage and I'm doing these bits. However long it took me to figure this stupid bit out, you know, and however many years I've been doing which I don't even know just be glad I'm doing that. You know these it's good thing. It's a good thing. So this goes to my nurturing side of the equation if
An on-stage and standing in front of a group of strangers and trying to make them laugh. God bless you. I don't give a shit what you do? I don't care if it's old stuff new stuff. I don't care if you dirty if you're clean, if you're going to stand up there by yourself and try and make me laugh. I love you, and I'm not going to criticize anything. You do beyond that. I'm not going to criticize it and you shouldn't criticize yourself either. So in other words, there's no to go back to do I gamify it know, it's always a win.
If I got up there and tried to do it I win even if I didn't reach what I'm trying to reach even if I to me, it's like a 4 out of 10 show. I still Pat myself on the back for it still
the win
Tim. I'm still the one
when you hear the word successful who comes to mind for you and why could be parents could be outside of parents could be anybody but for you when you hear that word, is there anyone
Who is really a sort of paragon of what you would consider success or someone you have looked up to as someone who's successful?
Wow. That's a pretty broad
hyper hyper broad. It comes to have that kind of how you define it.
Also, you know, I think I don't know if I mean it as a joke, but I say a lot these days survival is the new success and and I'm a big look Tim. What do you want me to tell you in?
my business if your
60 plus or Olive if you're 55, and you're getting paid to work paid, well, you have crushed it. Yeah, so stand up comedy. You know this I would I would move this plate piece of our conversation next to the toxic ecosystem of this world. Yep. When you have seen the attrition that I have seen it's like in the heart.
Of the sea, you know that book. Yep, Ron Howard made the movie when they're dropping like flies and and the the handful that small handful. Somebody asked me the other day how many people who whose careers were made on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson are still working. I didn't want to answer the question. So longevity is what I because because you had it, you know what? I mean? You had it you
Had you had it. So once you have it, you can only lose it, you know, you can only fail to take care of it and that's when we get to health and work ethic and managing yourself so that you don't break because they're trying to break you. I always tease and my friend Jimmy Fallon that this is
Like a sick experiment these talk show gigs. Let's take a human being put him in a studio for decades. You ain't an hour of Television a day. And let's see what breaks it's sick. It's a sick human experiment. I don't like a pope job. Whoo. It's like they just do it till you're dead.
They forever Skinner box.
Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful brittle
now. I mean, there's a fantastic book about stand-up that I read during the virus called seriously funny and the guy writes only about communities of the 50s and 60s and the introduction of that book which is like 20 pages long and he goes through Woody and Lenny and Joan Rivers and all these great people and how it broke one after the other one after the other was broken by it that they either worn out.
Out or their brains cracked or their psychology cracked or you know, it just took them apart. It's a very very difficult profession to sustain in. So just to survive to me is the game that's my concept of success. Did you beat them at their game their there? They're just they designed this thing to kill you track the travel you realize what it takes.
To travel to go to the airport and if in your 50s and your 60s to fly on planes to go to strange cities to go to hotels to put on a suit to go out on stage and eight o'clock at night and run around and yell and you know and project your physical energy for an hour in front of thousands of people they're trying to kill you. So I'm alive.
I have made it into a game like it's like Mitzi. I'm going to step on you and I went no. No, I'm gonna step on
you
as suppose. That's the game. We're playing that's life life is they're trying to kill you you get this Free Ride till your let's be generous 43 and then God goes. You know what? I'm going to move on to the people in there 16 to 23, and I'm going to give them my best
Best if you want to hang around you can hang around but I'm not giving you anything anymore. It's on you now if you want to stick around her, but I got nothing for you. Okay, you you figure it out.
So this this caught my attention because I'm exactly 43
perfect. We got it. Oh,
yeah,
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna ask you to leave but I got nothing for you seriously funny.
Given these 15 year old girls amazing stuff and the boys. I'm going to give them crazy body. That's my focus. My focus is 15 year olds turning them into superhumans you and with you.
Yeah. I'm the 8-foot sturgeon in the Hudson fairly. Yeah limping along. Yeah,
no one's going to ask you to leave, but we're not giving you no food.
There was no help
survival is the new success. Yeah, if you have time for one or two questions, then we'll I can bring this to a close. I need to go do some interval training need some lentils. This is a question that sometimes hits a dead end and I'll take the blame for that. If it does you've already given a bunch of possible answers to this, but if you had a billboard metaphorically speaking that could get a message quote an image question anything out to billions of people.
What might you put on that billboard
back in the 80s? I had a friend who was teaching a comedy course at the Improv on Melrose in LA and he asked me if I would come in and talk to the class and I said sure I went in and there was like, I don't know maybe 20 people in the class and the atoms in the afternoon and I went up on stage and I said the fact that you have even signed up for this class is a very bad sign what you're trying.
To do the fact that you think anyone can help you or there's anything that you need to learn you have gone off on a bad track because nobody knows anything about any of this and if you want to do it, what I really should do is I should have a giant flag behind me that I would pull a string and it would roll down.
On and on the flag would just say two words just work
just
work just work.
Yeah, I love it. Well, that is I think an excellent place to wrap up Jerry people can find you on all the socials Twitter Instagram Facebook at Jerry Seinfeld. The new book. Is this anything which features your best work across five decades that's nuts in comedy and
A fascinating book and a hell of a ride. I highly recommend people check it out for anyone who's a student of creative process doesn't have to be comedy but craft whatever that craft happens to be. I think you are real Exemplar of just doing the work but doing it in this also a systematic way, which is a particular species of working that I think makes a beautiful case study and this has been so much fun for me. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Jerry-san.
Thanks. So is I love talking with you Tim? And and your podcast is the
best. Thanks so much. It really makes my day to have the chance to have a conversation with you. I've had the bass riff from Seinfeld go through my head all day and not in prep for this and it's a real gift that you're showcasing and sharing your notes with the world over such a period of time. I mean it is I think something that will really
Provide, you know, like you said just work, but nonetheless will provide so much so much help to an inspiration to people who are just setting out unlike the 43 year old 8-foot sturgeons those 15 year olds and 15 to 20 year olds, and I will let you get back to your day, but this has been great and please do let me know if I can help in any way or with anything
else. It's been a great pleasure Tim right pleasure and thank
You for the kind words. It's much
appreciated. Absolutely and to everybody listening will have links to everything including is this anything in the show notes as per usual at teamed up log for / podcast and until next time thanks for tuning in.
Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one. This is five. Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And what do you enjoy getting a short email for me? Every Friday that provides a little more soul of fun for the weekend and five. Bullet. Friday's a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week that could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that
I've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric as I do it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends for instance and it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that check it out. Just go to four hour workweek.com. That's 4-Hour workweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one and if you sign up
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