#734: In Case You Missed It: March 2024 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

This episode is brought to you by 5-Bullet Friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=timblog&utm_medium=timblog&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship, my very own email newsletter. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=monthly-recap, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out the routines, habits, et cetera that you can apply to your own life. This is a special inbetweenisode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place so you can easily jump around to get a feel for the episode and guest. Based on your feedback, this format has been tweaked and improved since the first recap episode. For instance, listeners suggested that the bios for each guest can slow the momentum, so we moved all the bios to the end. See it as a teaser. Something to whet your appetite. If you like what you hear, you can of course find the full episodes at tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=monthly-recap. Please enjoy! * This episode is brought to you by 5-Bullet Friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=timblog&utm_medium=timblog&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship, my very own email newsletter that every Friday features five bullet points highlighting cool things I’ve found that week, including apps, books, documentaries, gadgets, albums, articles, TV shows, new hacks or tricks, and—of course—all sorts of weird stuff I’ve dug up from around the world. It’s free, it’s always going to be free, and you can subscribe now at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=timblog&utm_medium=timblog&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship. * Timestamps: Start [00:00] Scott Glenn: 00:03:20 Barbara Corcoran: 00:05:10 Seth Godin: 00:08:11 Hugh Howey: 00:15:44 Full episode titles: Legendary Actor Scott Glenn — How to Be Super Fit at 85, Lessons from Marlon Brando, How to Pursue Your Purpose, The Art of Serendipity, Stories of Gunslingers, and More (#729) https://tim.blog/2024/03/27/scott-glenn/ Barbara Corcoran — How She Turned $1,000 into a $5B+ Empire: PR Stunts, Sales Techniques, Critical Early Wins, Fighting Trump, and Becoming a Real Estate Mogul (#725) https://tim.blog/2024/03/06/barbara-corcoran/ Seth Godin — Coaching Tim on Overcoming Resistance, Lessons from Isaac Asimov, Writing Secrets After 8,500+ Daily Blog Posts, The Dangers of Authenticity, Practices for Consistency, and Much More (#728) https://tim.blog/2024/03/20/seth-godin-3/ Hugh Howey, Author of Silo and Wool — A Masterclass on Writing, Unorthodox Self-Publishing, and Living in The AI Age (#726) https://tim.blog/2024/03/13/hugh-howey/ * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors http://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, Margaret Atwood https://tim.blog/2022/02/22/margaret-atwood/, Mark Zuckerberg https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/, Peter Thiel https://tim.blog/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/, Dr. Gabor Maté https://tim.blog/2018/02/20/gabor-mate/, Anne Lamott https://tim.blog/2021/07/09/anne-lamott/, Sarah Silverman https://tim.blog/2022/01/12/sarah-silverman/, Dr. Andrew Huberman https://tim.blog/2021/07/06/andrew-huberman/, and many more. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers, and it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time, because after all, the podcasts, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week.

• 0:43Tim Ferriss?

  It's free, it's always gonna be free, and you can learn more at tim.blog/friday. That's tim.blog/friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with, and little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So, check it out, tim.blog/friday.

• 1:26Tim Ferriss?

  If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot, and you can, of course, easily subscribe anytime. So, easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog/friday, and thanks for checking it out, if the spirit moves you.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question?

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Now would be an inappropriate time.

• 1:53Speaker 03

  What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 2:07Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply to your own life. This is a special in-between-isode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month. Features a short clip from each conversation in one place, so you can jump around, get a feel for both the episode and the guest, and then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes. View this episode as a buffet to whet your appetite. It's a lot of fun. We had fun putting it together. And for the full list of the guests featured today, see the episode's description, probably right below wherever you press play in your podcast

• 2:46Tim Ferriss?

  app, or, as usual, you can head to tim.blog/podcast and find all the details there. Please enjoy.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  First up, legendary actor Scott Glenn, whose acting career spans nearly 60 years, and includes performances in Apocalypse Now, The Right Stuff, The Silence of the Lambs, and The Bourne Ultimatum, as well as a return to HBO this year for season three of The White Lotus.

• 3:20Tim Ferriss?

  What advice, let's just say, 10 years from now, your grandkids are listening to this, and they're wondering what life advice?

• 3:27Speaker 05

  I would give them both the lessons I learned from Sir Lawrence and from my dad, which is if you love it, make it your life. Right along with that, be tenacious. Learn that the most important thing about being knocked down is getting back up. And if you can put yourself in the spot where you say, "I don't care how many times I get knocked down, I'm getting back up every single time and going after what I want," that's the answer. I mean, again, I'm at a bar with Laurence Olivier, who created the National Theatre of England, who was the biggest movie star in the world, was the most creative

• 4:05Speaker 05

  stage actor in the world, and director. He'd done everything. My question to him was, what is it that you need to make it in this business? Is it... Timing, right place at the right time, is it contacts, knowing the right people? Or is it just working on your skills and becoming better and better at what you do? He said, "My dear boy, none of the above. Develop very strong jaw muscles, learn how to bite on and not let go." I said, "You're telling me it's just pure tenacity?" His answer was, "Yes. If you're a monk outside the gates with a beggar's bowl and you stay out there long enough, they'll finally get sick of seeing you open the gates and let you in."

• 4:53Speaker 04

  Next up, Barbara Corcoran, an investor shark for the past 15 seasons on ABC's Emmy award-winning Shark Tank and host of the top business channel on Patreon, Barbara in Your Pocket.

• 5:10Tim Ferriss?

  I would add another superpower in so much that I've seen of you and heard and watched, the one thing I have never seen, and maybe I've just missed it, but I have never heard you take a victim perspective. And I have heard you say, for instance, that the difference between successful people and others is how long they spend feeling sorry for themselves.

• 5:31Speaker 06

  So true.

• 5:32Tim Ferriss?

  I've also heard you say, and I'm paraphrasing here, so if I get it wrong, please correct me.

• 5:36Speaker 06

  So far, you're right, Jim.

• 5:37Tim Ferriss?

  That you are at your best when you're being talked down to by a man, or something like that.

• 5:42Speaker 06

  Definitely.

• 5:43Tim Ferriss?

  And I would love for you to perhaps tell the story of your 51% partner and the founding of the company, but also I'm so curious where that resilience and ability to reframe what other people could take as victimization and turn it into something to your advantage. Because I've seen that over and over again in your story.

• 6:06Speaker 06

  It's such an important part. I mean, recovering from failure, in my book, is 95% of life. If you're going to have a good life, you better be really good at getting back up, like a jack in the box. Boom, boom, boom, just get back up, get back up. I think I got that, honestly, by being dyslexic. Because when you're the kid in class that's dumb, you're a failure by anybody's standard. And you're constantly put down or looked down on. And I was embarrassed. I learned shame in the classroom. Terrible thing for a child to feel like a nobody just because they don't have a certain skillset. But that definitely taught me about, I had to go to school every day. I had to go back and sit there and hope they didn't call on me for reading, whatever.

• 6:49Speaker 06

  And I got used to being a loser like that and getting back up and just, I just had to go to school. So I got early training in that area. And I also learned from learning sales to you my whole life. That really was the only difference between the superstars that I had making two, three million dollars a year and people made an average of forty five thousand, which was the norm. How does a superstar do it? You know, I became a student of that. I used to think it was connections I would hire for that. Work ethic, I would hire for that. Who did they know in real estate, high-priced real estate, I would hire for that. And then I realized that's just a starting gate. It gets you in easy. But when it comes down to it's how well you get back up and how long it takes to feel sorry for yourself.

• 7:33Speaker 06

  They drove me crazy too. But I admired my superstars so much because of that ability. I could see them like you could punch them around. They go, ah, they back up. And so I learned from them too, you see?

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Next up, Seth Godin, author of 21 international bestsellers, including Purple Cow, Linchpin, The Dip, This Is Marketing, and his new book, The Song of Significance, A New Manifesto for Teams.

• 8:11Tim Ferriss?

  How do you choose or think about kind of next chapters? Or how, what advice might you give me as I contemplate, but what's next type of question?

• 8:21Seth Godin?

  You know, I think it's very kind of you to say I'm very good at it. I don't think I'm good at it, but because I'm sort of in public and I do it in a certain way, it's noted. You know, I did five years of Akimbo. It was in the top 1% of all podcasts and then I just stopped. And I stopped, not because I didn't love it, I did love it. I stopped because if I kept doing it, there's something else I wouldn't do instead. And creating a vacuum is required so that I will do the hard work of filling the vacuum. But if I just keep doing the thing, then there is no vacuum. And sometimes the technology changes. That's why Spinnaker went away.

• 9:06Seth Godin?

  That's why you couldn't keep making VCR games. It's why my head start in the CD-ROM business was worthless because CD-ROMs went away. I'd liked, in every time I did this, being a pioneer in a new media space because that's for me the funnest spot. And then when the technology changes, I gotta move on. But podcast technology is never going to change. I mean, you're noting there's a change in the production format and that is a change. So in my case, what I'm trying to do is not maximize my income per hour spent, nor am I trying to maximize the size of my audience. What I'm trying to maximize is, are the people I'm serving glad that I did,

• 9:50Seth Godin?

  that I showed up to solve an interesting problem? And two, as I build the stack of things on the bookshelf behind me, can I point to them and say, "That was interesting and generous and I'm glad I did it." And you know, that's part of a limited attention span theater. So it's not for everybody. But my whole point of view is that life is projects, it is not a job.

• 10:12Tim Ferriss?

  And when you stopped the podcast and created that vacuum, did you already have something kind of warming up in the batting cage that was pending that you need to create that vacuum for? Or did you create the vacuum and then wait for something to get pulled into it? Not to strain the metaphor, but if you get the idea.

• 10:29Seth Godin?

  No, you're not straining it. If there is something pending, it's not a vacuum. There have been times when something so good came along, I did it and then had to remove things so I could do it. You know, when a few of us started Squidoo, which was one of the first social networks, I had to completely reorganize my life because we built the 40th biggest website in the US with only eight employees. So we were busy. This is not what I'm talking about. I am talking about an actual uncomfortable vacuum where you feel like you're never going to work again, where nothing can possibly be worth what you gave up. And that's hard to do.

• 11:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it is hard to do. So just to put a microscope on that, I have as means of backstory, done this for periods of time and have found it deeply, deeply uncomfortable, sometimes fruitful, oftentimes not terribly fruitful. In part, I think, because when I create that vacuum, I don't know if the best way to embrace the vacuum is to basically just stare at the wall and watch paint dry or to do something else and my mind just kind of folds in on itself. You create the vacuum and then what do the next few weeks look like in terms of how you spend your time day to day or week to week?

• 11:43Seth Godin?

  I think a fundamental difference between you and me, there are so many of them, but one of them, as I am here talking to what? The world tango champion?

• 11:51Tim Ferriss?

  Former world record holder, long time ago, yes.

• 11:54Seth Godin?

  Is the only thing I have a world record in is being part of the largest co-author book signing in history in which me and 400 other people all signed our book at the same time. Because I am not a high performer. I am interesting. And being interesting is really important to me. But I am not holding myself to the standard you hold yourself in so many ways. And so I could imagine that the thing that gives me comfort might not make you happy.

• 12:29Tim Ferriss?

  Right, for sure. I agree with all of that. And how does that difference translate to what you would do in the weeks following creating the vacuum after, say, stopping the podcast? Because I guess you have activities that you're still carrying forward. It's not like you're completely idle. You're writing still, presumably.

• 12:46Seth Godin?

  If someone looked at me from the outside, I think that they would see that my days aren't that different. I'm not shipping public work because I don't ship junk, but I am internally creating lots of mediocre work and basically creating straw people and saying, what would this be like? And then what would that be like? And here's this thing and I've sat with my 60 or 80 watt laser cutter and I cut this thing out. What do I think of that? And that invention cycle is joyful, but I can't do it forever because I also need the satisfaction of shipping the work

• 13:31Seth Godin?

  and not giving into resistance. So what I'm doing, when I was a book packager, we sold 120 books in 10 years, a book a month, but I had more than 800 books on my hard drive, ready to go. Not finished, but two-page, five-page proposals. Because the only way to have a finished proposal for me is to have an unfinished one that you didn't ship.

• 13:53Tim Ferriss?

  What is it, and this is probably a fundamental question I should have asked earlier, but what do you get from writing and having written as consistently as you have been doing? What is the payoff? Like, why do that?

• 14:06Seth Godin?

  Okay, so the biggest payoff is simple. Not in terms of equity, stock value, but in terms of the noise in my head. The biggest benefit is I will be writing tomorrow because it's Friday, not because I've written the perfect blog post. That every single day, something gets published by me because I decided that 24 years ago, not because I have reconsidered each day whether this one is good enough.

• 14:33Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:34Seth Godin?

  And even if no one read my blog, I would still do it. And I'm very fortunate that people give me the benefit of the doubt, knowing that I am not guaranteeing this is the best thing I ever wrote, and they're still willing to look at it. So that's lovely. In terms of my professional practice...

• 14:55Seth Godin?

  Again, back to genre, having a sinecure, a platform where for a long time if you typed blog into Google, I was the first match because I just showed up more than just about anybody. There's a lot of value to saying, this is my lane and you can count on me in this lane. And for someone who is as peripatetic as I in their creative pursuits, having one of those turned out to be a really useful thing.

• 15:28Speaker 04

  Last but not least, Hugh Howey, the New York Times bestselling author of Wool, Beacon 23, Sand, Machine Learning, Halfway Home, and more than a dozen other novels.

• 15:44Tim Ferriss?

  I read in the process of doing research, which is always fun for me to do with friends when I have them on the podcast, because otherwise it'd be really creepy to do like a bunch of Google sleuthing on my friends. And I was wondering, I think you gave the advice, and I'm wondering if it still applies, that writers not take days off. That's one. That could be one of those, don't believe everything you read on the internet. The second is related to writing for, I think it was a book review website and becoming accustomed to working on deadline. And I'd just love you to speak to the importance of that, because I know for me, I think of myself occasionally as a writer, if I don't have a deadline, man, I am not terribly productive.

• 16:27Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 16:28Tim Ferriss?

  There's the deadline piece, if you could speak to that, and then just how you would suggest people train themselves to write. Is it daily? Is it a few days a week? Is it something else?

• 16:38Speaker 08

  So I can only speak to what works for me, but I will say that I found that I have way more in common with other writers than we are dissimilar. Like, I hear the same laments, like you were just mentioning. I know you and I have a lot of the same hangups about writing. And the famous quote about writing is, "I hate writing, but I love having written."

• 16:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right.

• 16:55Speaker 08

  Everyone loves to have, like, gotten some pages behind them. And I tried for 20 years to be a writer, from age 12 to 32. My number one bucket list thing in life is to write a book, and no one was stopping me but myself. But for 20 years, I couldn't do it. And honestly, like, all I had to do was write a little bit every day, and I would write a book. That's all I ever wanted. And so how can you get in the way of yourself that consistently? And we all do it as writers. And once I unlocked the ability to write, my fear was ever turning that switch back off. And that's where I think the daily habit is critical. Like I wrote today before I came here and it's Saturday. And I'll write on the plane and I'll write in the back of an Uber. I'll do whatever it takes to get some words in that day.

• 17:40Tim Ferriss?

  Is there a certain amount or is it just something?

• 17:43Speaker 08

  It used to be, I used to try to do like 2,000 words a day.

• 17:46Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, that's a lot of words.

• 17:48Speaker 08

  Yeah, now if I do a thousand words a day and what I find helpful in my word document, whatever I'm working on, there's the word count written in the document at the end, wherever I'm writing. And when I start my daily session as I'm writing, I can see at the bottom of the word document, what the current word count is, and I can just see the comparison. And that gives me my, like, you need to do a little more. And then once I'm done for the day, I update that number to the day's number. And so I'm always just trying to march that forward. It sounds calculated and cold, but if you just sit around waiting for inspiration and try to write a few sentences here and there, you'll never stay with the story enough to know what it's even about.

• 18:28Tim Ferriss?

  When you said effectively, when you turned on the spigot, you're afraid of turning it off. So you kept up this daily practice. But how did you, after so many years, turn it on in the first place? Like, what was the catalyst?

• 18:38Speaker 08

  You mentioned the review website I was writing for. So I was trying to help a friend get this crime mystery thriller website up and running. And he was doing the film movie side of it and I was doing the books. And I just put a call out to publishers. It was a beautiful website that he had made. So I was sharing the URL of saying, this is what we're doing. And I started getting a flood of books in the mail. And for a reader like me, this was like Christmas every day. I was getting more books than I could review. So I was having to go through and see which ones appealed to me. And I was building bookshelves all over my house to house these things.

• 19:10Tim Ferriss?

  For one genre?

• 19:11Speaker 08

  Yeah, for one genre. And but it was the biggest genre. It was like the one that publishers make a lot of their money on. And in order to keep up with it, I started reading and reviewing a book a day. And this is all I was doing. And I'd done this in college too. I'd gone through a period of like two years where I was reading a book a day as a challenge. And some of these are 400 page books. So you're not doing much else, just that. I didn't know how good this was gonna be for my writing, but absorbing that much prose just made it so easy for me to tap into, not only the ability to string words together, but all the plot elements that I was absorbing from weeks and weeks and weeks of absorbing this many books. And then I was also writing that review every day.

• 19:56Speaker 08

  And so I was getting a daily writing habit. And that wasn't even a job, wasn't getting paid to do this. I was doing it for a friend to try to get a website going because I love reading. But that experience is what made it possible for me to write.

• 20:11Tim Ferriss?

  Is there any Mount Rushmore of fiction books that come to mind? Right. This is not a fixed list, but whatever comes to mind. If you were to say, look, and I'll make this personal. So I've been experimenting with short fiction for the last year or so. Think I will do quite a bit more, possibly in screenplay format, which I definitely want to talk to you about at some point.

• 20:33Speaker 08

  Oh, cool.

• 20:33Tim Ferriss?

  But what are some books people should consume or that I might want to consume to provide myself with really good nutrition for absorbing some of what you're describing?

• 20:46Speaker 08

  I think reading beautiful prose is almost like striking a tuning fork before your writing session. I think it's really awesome to pick up. There's several things you can do. You can read stuff that's nonsense, but beautiful, like some Proust. And you can just turn to any part of Proust. It's all the same. The beginning of a story reads just like the middle of the stories. But the way a good translation of Proust flows, that iambic pentameter, the run on sentences, it's like it's, you start to hear the tonal quality of good music in words. And then you can start to sing in that key yourself. Some of the books I've read recently that have, I think, upped my writing. One was This Is How You Lose the Time War, which is-

• 21:28Tim Ferriss?

  So good.

• 21:29Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's so good.

• 21:29Tim Ferriss?

  That is an incredible book.

• 21:31Speaker 08

  And it's short. And it's one of those that you can just pick up and read again to like, remind yourself what writing can sound like.

• 21:37Tim Ferriss?

  Also fascinating because it was written by two authors.

• 21:40Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 21:40Tim Ferriss?

  Who alternated back and forth.

• 21:41Speaker 08

  Alternated back and forth, which is structural to the story, which works. Cersei, have you read that?

• 21:46Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't yet read it. I have seen so many people reading it. I've seen friends reading it.

• 21:51Speaker 08

  Took me forever to read that. The prose in that book is so special and will make you a better writer. Just recently is another one that someone recommended was Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

• 22:03Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I haven't heard of it.

• 22:04Speaker 08

  I tried to read that like five times and it was the hottest thing. And I never gave it enough of a chance, but when I finally finished it, I was like, that's what I'm aiming for with my writing.

• 22:14Tim Ferriss?

  No kidding. Why did it take you five times?

• 22:15Speaker 08

  I've heard this from a lot of people. So if you're here, this recommendation and you want to read the book, get through the first like 70 or 80 pages. And I know it's like, I'd rather read something that's captured me from the first page. This book pays off. So those are recent books that have, that have.

• 22:30Tim Ferriss?

  You recommended Lincoln Highway to me.

• 22:32Speaker 08

  Lincoln Highway.

• 22:33Tim Ferriss?

  Which I thought was spectacular.

• 22:34Speaker 08

  Anything by Amor. Amor Tolle is one of the.

• 22:37Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a book full of literary and narrative magic tricks. It's wild.

• 22:42Speaker 08

  He upsets me because he, he wasn't even a writer as his primary career.

• 22:47Tim Ferriss?

  Oh no, one of those.

• 22:48Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah. Super successful investment banker. You know, it's like a Michael Lewis kind of story, like super successful in other ways. But it turns out the quality of reading that he does, and he's just one of the smartest human beings I've ever met. But his writing, there's a short story collection coming out by him this year called Table for Two. Get it on day one, because there's one short story in particular in there that is the cleverest thing I've ever read. So he's another one that I'll read his works in order to remind myself like what we're aiming for.

• 23:22Tim Ferriss?

  And his wordsmithing is beautiful.

• 23:25Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 23:25Tim Ferriss?

  But it's not purist, right? It doesn't strive to be that.

• 23:29Speaker 08

  It's clear.

• 23:30Tim Ferriss?

  But it's so clear and the story arcs and character development and the weaving.

• 23:37Speaker 08

  Hmm.

• 23:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right. And he's like sitting at a loom of prose and just like weaving these carpets. And you don't see the finished pattern until after, if you say an hour and you're like, oh my God.

• 23:48Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 23:49Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't see that coming at all.

• 23:50Speaker 08

  He's a genius and he works hard at it. You know, it spends the years and time it takes. That's a level of writing that it's fun to aspire to, but I know I'll never reach. But you have to have like loftier goals than your expected outcome.

• 24:07Tim Ferriss?

  And now here are the bios for all the guests. My guest today is someone I've wanted to have on the podcast for years. We did the interview at his house in Idaho. He has no social media, no website, and his name is Scott Glenn. He is a legend. Scott Glenn's acting career spans nearly 60 years. His impressive film resume includes performances in Apocalypse Now, Urban Cowboy, The Right Stuff, Silverado, The Hunt for Red October, The Silence of the Lambs, Backdraft, The Virgin Suicides, and The Bourne Ultimatum. I would venture that every single one of you would recognize his face. More recently, Scott has appeared on the small screen as Kevin Garvey Sr. in The Leftovers, The Blind Sensei Stick in Marvel's Daredevil and The Defenders, and as the retired sheriff

• 24:52Tim Ferriss?

  Alan Pangborn in Castle Rock. This year, Scott will return to HBO to join season three of The White Lotus. And there is so much more to his story. He has, I would consider it, the gold medal trifecta in terms of mastery across life. My guest today is not only incredibly successful in her various endeavors, she is absolutely hilarious, and I burst out laughing a lot in this conversation. I had a blast. I think you will enjoy it as well. Barbara Corcoran. Barbara Corcoran has been an investor slash shark for the past 15 seasons on ABC's four time Emmy award winning show Shark Tank, investing in more than 100 businesses to date.

• 25:37Tim Ferriss?

  Even more impressive to me, she is also the founder of an eponymous real estate company, The Corcoran Group, which she started with a $1,000 loan after leaving her job as a waitress in New York City. You've seen this name everywhere. It's on signs, buildings, all over the place. Over the next 25 years, she would parlay that $1,000 into a $5 billion real estate business. And we get really deep into the weeds about early decisions, critical inflection points, and oh my God, some of her stories are just incredible. Barbara is the author of the national bestseller Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 Into a Billion Dollar Business, and host of the top Business channel on Patreon, Barbara in Your Pocket, which provides exclusive

• 26:20Tim Ferriss?

  content created for entrepreneurs at every level. On Patreon, Barbara will dive deep into the topics most important in business today, give an inside look at how she runs her business and works with her Shark Tank companies, and join members live to answer their toughest questions. You can find Barbara on TikTok, on Instagram, LinkedIn, all Barbara Corcoran, and you can find Barbara in your pocket at patreon.com/BarbaraCorcoran. One of my favorite people to ask for advice is Seth Godin, and this is a walk and talk, which means Seth and I were walking and talking while we recorded this, and I had

• 27:03Tim Ferriss?

  many burning questions I wanted to ask. He did not fail to deliver a lot of sage advice, tactical, practical wisdom. And what more can I say? The guy's a gem. He delivers every time. Who is Seth Godin, you might ask? Seth Godin is the author of 21 international bestsellers that have changed the way people think about work. His books have been translated into 38 languages, and Seth's books include Tribes, Purple Cow, Lynchpin, The Dip, and This is Marketing. Seth writes one of the most popular marketing blogs in the world, 8,500, 8,500-plus daily blog posts, just to put that into perspective, and two of

• 27:43Tim Ferriss?

  his TED Talks are among the most popular of all time. He is the founder of the AltMBA, the social media pioneer Squidoo, and YoYoDine, one of the first internet companies. His latest book is The Song of Significance, A New Manifesto for Teams. You can find him at sethgodin.com, and you can find Seth's blog at seths.blog. So you can go to both of those for a lot of resources. And I'm going to just reiterate why we did this format the way we did it. Because there's too much sitting in the world, it's not good for you. We weren't evolved to do it. And I am trying to counteract the trend, the impulse,

• 28:23Tim Ferriss?

  all the incentives to do podcasts in a fixed location. This isn't good for my health, and it's certainly not good for your health to force you to consume it that way. So I'm at least experimenting with being out and about, doing something that we are designed to do, and that is walk.

• 28:42Tim Ferriss?

  My guest today is my friend Hugh Howey. And man, oh, man, do I love having conversations with Hugh. I always learn so much, I laugh so much. But who is Hugh? Hugh is the New York Times bestselling author of Wool, Beacon 23, Sand, Machine Learning, Halfway Home, and more than a dozen other novels. His Silo trilogy was recently adapted by Apple TV, becoming their number one drama of all time. A series based on his novel Beacon 23, starring Lena Headey, also released last year with season two due in March. Hugh's works have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold millions of copies around the world. He lives in New York City with his wife Shay. You can find him at HughHowey.com.

• 29:26Tim Ferriss?

  That's Hugh H-O-W-E-Y dot com. And on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as Hugh Howey. We talk about all sorts of things, creative process. We talk about his publishing journey from a small press to self-publishing, to hitting the New York Times list with a self-published book, to a first-of-its-kind print-only deal with a Big Five publisher. He breaks all the rules, and he is a very original thinker, and also a prolific, prolific producer of all things.

• 29:57Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would 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, my super 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've found or discovered, or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

• 30:40Tim Ferriss?

  And these strange, esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday. Type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday. Drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.