#219: Lessons from Warren Buffett, Bobby Fischer, and Other Outliers

Adam Robinson (@IAmAdamRobinson https://twitter.com/IAmAdamRobinson) first appeared on this podcast in the "Becoming the Best Version of You" episode (#210) http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/12/20/becoming-the-best-version-of-you/ alongside Josh Waitzkin http://tim.blog/2016/03/23/josh-waitzkin-the-prodigy-returns/ (chess, jiu-jitsu, investing) and Ramit Sethi http://tim.blog/2014/10/09/ramit-sethi-on-persuasion-and-turning-a-blog-into-a-multi-million-dollar-business/ (personal finance, entrepreneurship). By popular demand, this is a dedicated episode of Adam's stories and life lessons. Adam Robinson http://robinsonglobalstrategies.com/ has made a lifelong study of outflanking and outsmarting the competition. He is a rated chess master who was awarded a Life Title by the United States Chess Federation. As a teenager, he was personally mentored by Bobby Fischer in the 18 months leading up to his winning the world championship. Then, in his first career, he developed a revolutionary approach to taking standardized tests as one of the two original co-founders of The Princeton Review. His paradigm-breaking -- or "category killing," as they say in publishing -- test-prep book, The SAT: Cracking the System, is the only test-prep book ever to have become a New York Times bestseller. After selling his interest in The Princeton Review, Adam turned his attention in the early '90s to the then-emerging field of artificial intelligence, developing a program that could analyze text and provide human-like commentary. He was later invited to join a well-known quant fund to develop statistical trading models, and since, he has established himself as an independent global macro advisor to the chief investment officers of a select group of the world's most successful hedge funds and family offices. In his spare time, he's also become pen pals with Warren Buffett. This is a wide-ranging conversation (aka conversational parkour) with lots of takeaways. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed recording it! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and now has more than $2.5B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it's all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they'll show you -- for free -- exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim. This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim, which is non-spec. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run...

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  No, we're just in an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is the future of financial advice. They've become incredibly popular among my friends in Silicon Valley and across the country because they provide the same high-end financial advice that the best private wealth managers deliver to the ultra wealthy, but for any account size and at a fraction of the cost. For instance, they monitor your portfolio every day across more than a dozen asset classes to look for opportunities to rebalance or harvest tax losses. Now, would you do the same? Are you doing the same? Probably not. And the power is in the software. Wealthfront now manages more than $4 billion in assets, which is up from around $2.5 billion when they started advertising on this podcast. They're growing incredibly

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  quickly. Unlike old-fashioned private wealth managers, Wealthfront is powered by innovative technology, making it the most tax-efficient, low-cost, hassle-free way to invest. They don't have bloated sales teams or retail locations, so they can deliver all of this sophisticated financial advice and these services at a fraction of the cost of a traditional financial advisor. So at the very least, go to wealthfront.com/tim and take their free risk assessment survey. It only takes a couple of minutes and Wealthfront will recommend a personalized portfolio of investments. In other words, they'll tell you exactly where they would put your money. So even if you don't use their service, you have a huge leg up and you have additional information for making good decisions. They

• 1:47Tim Ferriss?

  use investment theory to automate good financial behavior and decisions that people typically don't make but should. So go to wealthfront.com/tim to get your first 15K managed for free or just to get more details. Check it out, wealthfront.com/tim.

• 2:06Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. I've used 99designs for years for all sorts of graphic design needs. Whether you need a logo, website, book cover, or anything else, 99designs was created to make great designs accessible to everyone and to make the process of getting designs much, much easier. So when I first started out, for instance, testing prototype covers and getting prototype covers for the 4-Hour Body, I want the contest drop. That is one option. This is a great solution if you're looking for fast, affordable design work and the ability to choose from dozens of options, risk-free. Let's say you need something late-night, quick turnaround. Well, people in other time zones, other countries can also help you solve that problem.

• 2:45Tim Ferriss?

  Since then, I've worked with 99designs on a separate path or a different option, and that is the one-to-one project service. So, in a number of cases, and I'll give you one example, when I wanted to create the cover for my audiobook, The Tao of Seneca, this was a very important project to me, I decided to use their one-to-one project service. And with this service, you can invite a specific designer to your project, agree on a price, and then work together until you're satisfied. And they allow you to iterate and provide feedback and all this stuff. And I haven't shared it yet, but we also got some incredibly good, really some of the best illustrations I've ever seen from using this one-to-one project service with a handful of different designers and illustrators. It blew my mind.

• 3:29Tim Ferriss?

  99designs makes this all very easy and efficient. So you can check out the Tao of Seneca design and other work that I, and your fellow listeners for that matter, have done on 99designs at 99designs.com/tim. Again, that's 99designs.com/tim.

• 3:50Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. That is Molly chewing a bully stick, otherwise known as bullpizzle in the background, but you're not here for that. You are here for what we do every episode, that is, deconstruct world-class performers, whether they are from the worlds of business, sports, entertainment, chess, or otherwise, to tease out the habits, routines, philosophies, beliefs, et cetera, that you can apply to your own life. And this time around, we have someone by popular request who is perhaps all of those categories wrapped into one, Adam Robinson. Adam first appeared on this podcast in the Becoming the Best Version of You episode, which was number 210, so episode number 210,

• 4:31Tim Ferriss?

  alongside Josh Waitzkin, who is best known for chess, jujitsu, investing, and Ramit Sethi, best known for personal finance and entrepreneurship. So we had this roundtable, how do you end your year? All sorts of great stuff came up. So I encourage you to listen to that as well. But this is a dedicated episode full of Adam's stories and life lessons. He came out to San Francisco to spend time with me. I wanted to learn from him, and that is how it came to be. Adam Robinson has made a lifelong study of outflanking and outsmarting the competition. He is a rated chess master who has awarded a life title by the United States Chess Federation. And as a teenager, he was personally mentored by Bobby Fischer in the 18 months leading up to his winning the world championship. Bobby Fischer is considered by

• 5:12Tim Ferriss?

  many to be the best chess player who has ever lived. Then, in his first career, Adam developed a revolutionary approach to taking standardized tests as one of the two original co-founders of the Princeton Review. His paradigm-breaking, or as they say in publishing, category-killing test prep book, the SAT, subtitle, Cracking the System, is the only test prep book ever to have become a New York Times bestseller. Then, after selling his interest in the Princeton Review, Adam turned his attention in the early 90s to the then emerging field of artificial intelligence, developing a program that could analyze text and provide human-like commentary. He is a jack-of-all-trades, master of many. He was later invited to join a well-known quant

• 5:54Tim Ferriss?

  fund, we could get into that another time, but well-known quant fund to develop statistical trading models. And since, he has established himself as an independent global macro advisor to the chief investment officers of a select group of the world's most successful hedge funds and family offices. So in other words, he is brought in to give advice to billionaires, mega billionaires, and beyond. In his spare time, for instance, he's also become pen pals with Warren Buffett, and we dig into lots that he's learned from Warren. This is a wide-ranging conversation with a lot of takeaways. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed recording it. So, without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Adam Robinson.

• 6:39Tim Ferriss?

  Adam, good sir. Welcome back to the show.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me, Tim.

• 6:42Tim Ferriss?

  And we are sitting here in Casa Ferris on this comfortable couch in viewing distance of my lovely dog, Molly. And we could start just about anywhere. We have a thousand topics we could explore. And I thought we would start with an anecdote that made an impression on me, and I'd like to explore it a little bit. Could you talk about Warren Buffett and his day planner, please?

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Ha. So we were having dinner, 10 of us, with Warren. And he held up with great dramatic effect his day planner for the year. And he said, "Time is the most precious thing I have." He said, "I'm going to show you how precious it is. I'm going to show you my day planner." And he, so it's a little 2-inch by 3-inch little booklet that you get at any stationery store for the year. And he held it up for all of us, and he riffed through it. And every page was empty. And that was his day planner for the year.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  So it's really important to Warren that his time is his most valuable asset.

• 7:53Tim Ferriss?

  And what does he do with all that empty space?

• 7:56Speaker 02

  He reads.

• 7:57Tim Ferriss?

  All day, every day?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  All day, every day. Reads, thinks, and hunts for his next acquisition.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  So that's what he does with his time.

• 8:09Tim Ferriss?

  Does he think of himself as an investor or an acquirer of businesses? At this point in time, how do you think he thinks of himself?

• 8:19Speaker 02

  You know, everyone calls him the world's greatest investor, and he's certainly the world's greatest something. But I think he's actually the world's greatest builder of businesses.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  An acquirer of businesses. And so that's what he does. He acquires a business and tends to hold it forever.

• 8:35Tim Ferriss?

  Let's, let's talk about, talk about investing, but take a slightly different tack. We were chatting over Thai food a little bit about a book called, and I might get the title slightly wrong, but I believe it is You Can Be a Stock Market Genius. It's something along those lines by Joel Greenblatt.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 8:56Tim Ferriss?

  And that, that book had, made an impression on me and had an impact on me when I was pretty young. I think I was a little too young for it when I was around 16 or 17 and directly preceded my first stock purchase ever, which was Pixar. And when I, when I met Joel, many, many, many years later, this is probably just a few years ago, he said that in some respects, people should read his books in the, the reverse order of their publication. Because the, the Stock Market Genius book really covers a lot of what some people might consider event-based investment or, or trading. And I was wondering if you

• 9:38Tim Ferriss?

  had any thoughts. You brought up, but I said, hey, let's, let's talk about it in the conversation when we're recording. You mentioned, yes, you were familiar with, with Joel. And then also you brought up Lynch.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Peter Lynch.

• 9:49Tim Ferriss?

  Peter Lynch. And so I'd love to just hear you expand on what you were going to say, but I cut you off during dinner because I wanted to say it for this.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Right. So, so Peter Lynch went up on Wall Street and, and Joel Greenblatt, both brilliant investors, both investing geniuses. And, and my, my only concern about, about empowering individual investors is that when you invest as an individual, you are entering the, the fiercest gladiatorial arena ever invented. And you're competing with highly incentivized participants around the world who are out for your lunch and going to eat it if you're, if, if you don't have an edge. So I just want to be sure that individual

• 10:38Speaker 02

  investors, when they choose to do that, realize that it's, again, a gladiatorial pit and, and you need an edge when you invest.

• 10:48Tim Ferriss?

  So what is your take on then say a Lynch or a Greenblatt in that capacity? And I don't know if it was Greenblatt who, it could have been elsewhere, when there's a discussion about the edges, the types of edges you could have, and one would be informational advantage, one could be a analytical advantage, another could be, say, perhaps a behavioral advantage. And reading a lot about Buffett, it seems like at least one of his advantages behavior, at least very unemotionally, it seems like affected by market movements.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 11:21Tim Ferriss?

  And can divorce himself emotionally from these temporary ups and downs. But do you have any particular observations related to Peter or Joel as relates to advantages, edges or otherwise?

• 11:37Speaker 02

  You know, it's so funny, and before we go any further, you know, I, because we, this is so much more intimate than a conversation than we had at the 92nd Street Y in front of 1,000 people. And this is almost like parkour jumping, but a conversational version of that, where you leap from topic to topic, not knowing where you're going. So the edge, Warren Buffett, one of my favorite quotes of Warren Buffett is, "If you're in a poker game for 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy." And so, so you need an edge, but you need to know that you have an edge over the market.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  And in terms of information, since 2000, the SEC published Regulation FD, Fair Disclosure. So in a sense, everyone has access to the same information at the same time. So information edges are very, very difficult, especially with modern technology and, and other resources. So information edges are tough. Behavioral edges are really important. And you said Buffett, he's completely unemotional. So yes, when everyone is panicking is when he gets greedy. In fact, Buffett said, Buffett articulated in one sentence, the, the secret

• 12:58Speaker 02

  to investing. And, and that's, he said that we, meaning he and Charlie Munger, are

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Fearful when others are greedy. And we are greedy only when others are fearful. And so the secret to investing in, in public securities is knowing when to be afraid and knowing when to be greedy.

• 13:22Tim Ferriss?

  So what I'd like to do in this, in this American Ninja Warrior course of conversational parkour is maybe, maybe take a step back, really far back, and to discuss a few of the experiences of your childhood, because I was not aware that you had spent, was it two years, two and a half years?

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Two and a half years, yeah.

• 13:42Tim Ferriss?

  In the hospital when you were, when you were a kid. Could you describe why that was the case? What happened?

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Sure, sure. Well, it was a Blythe Children's Hospital, which was started in, in, wow, I think in the 40s by Eleanor Roosevelt. And it was for children with long-term congenital illnesses. And I had a bone disease. And back then, the only way to cure it was to put you in a bed and wait for the disease to kind of run its course. And so I don't know if you remember Forrest Gump?

• 14:13Tim Ferriss?

  I do.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  At the beginning, he had those leg braces. So between the ages of four and six and a half, I was wearing those leg braces in a bed in a children's hospital. Yeah, so.

• 14:23Tim Ferriss?

  What was, what was your childhood like?

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 14:28Tim Ferriss?

  And where'd you grow up?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  So I grew up, I was born in New York and then was put in the hospital. And then when I got out, we moved to, to Chicago, to Evanston, Illinois, which is where Northwestern is. So if you've seen any of the movies like Ferris Bueller's Day Off or Home Alone, those were all filmed and within a mile of where I grew up.

• 14:51Tim Ferriss?

  So that was, that was the where. What would you, and if you were to paint, because we talked a little bit about in the last episode. Princeton Review.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:00Tim Ferriss?

  And we talked about that chapter of your life in part. But what were some of the formative influences in your life up to, say, end of high school? Influences or events, anything like that?

• 15:14Speaker 02

  You know, being in the hospital for two and a half years as you're growing up, you you get divorced from your body in a hospital bed and and you you get divorced from the world. The world is something out there that you can't touch and you can't participate in. And you but you observe it and you think about it. And I guess one of the formative influences was was meeting Bobby Fischer.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Who was my hero.

• 15:39Tim Ferriss?

  How did you meet Bobby Fischer? And for those people who don't know who Bobby Fischer is, how would you encapsulate?

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Fischer is said by some to be the greatest chess player of all time. And I met him right before he won the world championship and knew him right through the world championship. And then sadly afterwards, he began to lose his mind to to paranoia and died in 2007. Sad. But I knew him at the height of his powers, right before he won the world championship. And it's funny how I I met him. He freshman year, when I was in high school, somebody beat me in a game of chess in homeroom. Beat me in like five moves. Like, I knew how the pieces moved, but that was the the extent of my knowledge.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  And this so frustrated me, I thought, OK, I'm gonna I challenged him in a game the next day, and he beat me again. In fact, he beat me every day that week. So I resolved that I would study this game and just in order to beat this kid by the end of the year. That was my sole goal. And because I was really into swimming at the time, you know, swimming four or five hours a day, you know, six, seven days a week, and chess was really much a sideline for me. But I got into the game and. And I decided to go to the library, actually a bookstore, and get a chess book. And the only book that they had was a book called My 60 Memorable Games by Bobby Fischer. And at the time, this was four years before he would win the world championship.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  So I played over these games every night, these 60 games. And I realized, but wait a second, he's played hundreds of games. So I went to the library. This is pre-internet for those of you millennials who don't know what a library is. And I got 20.

• 17:27Tim Ferriss?

  It was the slow version of the internet.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Yes, the slow version of the internet, yes, when you actually had to look up things yourself. And I went through 20 years of back issues of chess magazines laboriously, every chess magazine that I could find in the world, and went through page by page. And if I found a Fischer game, I would write it down. So I compiled my own notebook of about 700 of his games that he had played. And I played over these games for two, three years, and I knew them by heart.

• 17:55Tim Ferriss?

  When you say played over.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:58Tim Ferriss?

  Does that mean you would set up a board? Or did you do this in your head and you would go move by move through both players?

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 18:06Tim Ferriss?

  Decisions?

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 18:07Tim Ferriss?

  Did you do it on a board?

• 18:08Speaker 02

  On a board, yes. Some people could do it in their heads. I mean, like Magnus Carlsen, world champ, or Josh Waitzkin, our buddy. They can do it in their head. I had to use a board. And so I remember it was my, I was 16 years old with my mother on Easter Sunday and visiting her in New York. And we were walking up Sixth Avenue towards Central Park, beautiful April day. And across the street, across Sixth Avenue, right in front of Macy's, I saw Bobby Fischer. So imagine, this was my hero, right? And again, this was a year and a half before he would win the world championship.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  And again, for those of you who don't know, it would be like spotting Bigfoot, or I mean, he was, or J.D. Salinger back, right, right back in the day. And. So I said, Mom, I know I said I would spend today with you, but that's Bobby Fischer over there. I'll see you later. So I cut across traffic. I ran up to him and I said, Mr. Fischer, Mr. Fischer, in 1962, when you were playing Ryshevsky in the US Championship, because I had years of questions for him and I knew all his games by heart. And he just, and he was, by the way, he was a notorious recluse. He had maybe two friends in the entire

• 19:34Speaker 02

  world. And he just looked at me kind of amused because I knew his games so well. And he said, well, I don't know, we're going, I'm going to lunch. Want to join me? And I said, sure, of course, like, right? And that was the beginning of a friendship that lasted two and a half years. It actually stretched beyond that, but after the world championship, but I fell out of touch with him for about a dozen years because he fell off

• 19:58Tim Ferriss?

  The map.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  The map for a dozen years.

• 20:00Tim Ferriss?

  So you met him, how old were you at the time?

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Sixteen. He was 28.

• 20:03Tim Ferriss?

  Sixteen.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:04Tim Ferriss?

  What was that first, what was that first lunch like?

• 20:08Speaker 02

  I mean, fantastic. I mean, imagine you're meeting your hero that no one gets to talk to. And here he is inviting you to lunch. I mean, fantastic. And I wish I realized at the time how lucky I was. And, but I wasn't thinking about that. I was only thinking about him and his chess games. And I remember talking with him and people don't know, I mean, they think of chess players as, you know, intellectual nerds and very not athletic, but he was built like an Olympic athlete. He was 6'3" and ate literally two meals over lunch, like two

• 20:50Tim Ferriss?

  Two simultaneous meals.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Two simultaneous meals. He just demolished. Again, and when I say Olympic athlete, I don't mean like a powerlifter. He was like an American football player, but very lean and had incredible energy. When we walked down the street, again, I'm 5'8", he's 6'4", he towered over me and walked with these huge strides. I mean, had incredible power. You know, and the amazing thing about Fischer was that

• 21:22Speaker 02

  And I don't think this has ever been done in the history before. He was entirely self-taught. He learned the game at the age of six and then decided to take on the Russians, for whom chess was their national sport. It was proof of their superiority during the height of the Cold War. And single-handedly beat them at their own game. He had no coaches, no nothing, and did it all on his own. And remarkable, remarkable guy. We, oh, we, we, I remember debating Motown songs with him. We were at a diner. And we had, we had dollars between us, but we had no coins. And they used to have these little jukeboxes at each dining table.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  You put in a quarter and you have three songs. We had a quarter between us. And so we were debating which three songs we, we were going to choose. He loved Motown and so did I. So I can't remember which songs we picked, but I remember doing that with him.

• 22:23Tim Ferriss?

  How did that first lunch turn into an ongoing relationship? And maybe a better question would be, what happened at, in the last half or quarter of that meal that led to a second meeting? You can tackle it either way. I'm just so curious because people have these opportunities, these golden opportunities.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:44Tim Ferriss?

  And then they're not able to capitalize on them. Or it's a flash in the pan. They have a great single story, but that turned into an ongoing relationship. Why?

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Why? Because I was totally focused on him. And I, it never occurred to me when I first approached him that he would say, get lost, kid. I just had questions and, and he was my hero and it was entirely innocent. And, and, and I'd done my homework. I knew his games better than he did. So I remember talking about games and we played hundreds of games of speed chess. And so imagine playing pickup basketball and you're a very good basketball player, but you're playing with, you know, Kobe Bryant or, or Curry, right? I mean, what, one of the greats. And I remember.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  I would play his moves against him because I knew all of his games by heart. And then he would correct me like he would, I'd say, oh, I don't understand why you played that because you said black is better in your book. And he said, I did? I said, yeah, you did. And I, he said, oh, I was wrong. White's better. And he would crush me. And so it was, I think it was just because I knew his game so well. I'd done my homework. And, and I think the lesson for, for everyone is, is if you've done your homework to, to, to be focused on the other person and not your fears and reservations and, and, and

• 24:16Speaker 02

  yeah, so in terms of continuing the relationship.

• 24:19Tim Ferriss?

  Focused on them in the sense of being curious about them as opposed to worrying what they're thinking about you.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Exactly. Totally focused on them. And it was interesting because he would then reflect it back on me. So the next year, when he was preparing for the Spassky match and I got to spend two weeks with him.

• 24:37Tim Ferriss?

  Spassky's world championship?

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Right, for the world championship, right? Now, you'd think if there was any time that he wanted to be alone, it was like preparing for the world championship, but I, he invited me to spend two weeks with him at, at Grossingers. Now Grossingers at the time was a resort in the Catskills and Muhammad Ali used to train there. And so they invited Fisher to train for the Spassky match. And I, I got to spend a week with him, sorry, two weeks with him at there all alone and watched him prepare for the Spassky match, which was really fascinating. So he'd play over games studying and then he would turn to me and say, well, what would you do here? And I said.

• 25:20Tim Ferriss?

  When you say play over games, and I apologize because I wouldn't consider myself a chess player, but.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Sure, sure.

• 25:24Tim Ferriss?

  That means that he's sitting in front of a board by himself?

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Hmm. He's sitting over a board by himself, well, with me, I'm sitting next to him, or rather across the table from him. And he's got a full chessboard and a book of Spassky's games. It was a red book, like 600 games. And just as I did with Fisher's games, he had a little red book of Spassky's games and he just played over these over and over. And it was really fascinating. And I don't think people realized Fisher conducted the longest con.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  In sports history, a long con, and if you're not sure what a long con is, I mean, I know you know Tim, but for listeners, a long con is when a confidence man sets you up and the payoff is years away, not like later that day. And so Fisher, when he was growing up, played always pawn to king four as his first move. And had a very limited opening repertoire. In terms of, in football terms, he had a very limited playbook. And he always played the same opening moves. And he defied the Russians and defied the

• 26:40Speaker 02

  world to beat him. Essentially, he's giving, here's my playbook, these are my opening moves, do your best. And so from the age of 12 till the age of 29, when he's, right? So this is 17 years, he played exactly the same opening moves. And what was curious for me was that when I was with him, about a month before the, sorry, two months before the match began, I noticed he was playing, studying games outside his opening repertoire. And I asked him, I said, Bobby, what are you, like, why are you studying those games? And he just kind of smiled cryptically. And he said, I don't know, we'll see. And sure

• 27:24Speaker 02

  enough, against Spassky, now, mind you, Spassky was supported by the Russian chess machine.

• 27:32Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Dozens of the world's top players were all Russian, who were supplying Spassky with analysis of all of Fisher's old games. But then he played an entirely new opening repertoire. He set them up for 17 years. He said, these are the moves I'm going to play. So imagine, it'd be like a boxer, always leading with his right hand, and then all of a sudden, he's leading with his left, and they didn't know what to do. They were totally flummoxed.

• 28:02Tim Ferriss?

  Or Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Oh, that.

• 28:05Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not left-handed.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:07Tim Ferriss?

  One of those.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  That is exactly right, The Princess Bride, yes, Iocane.

• 28:11Tim Ferriss?

  We were talking about Iocane powder yesterday. And what are some of the other things that you observed about Fisher or learned from Fisher? Does anything come to mind?

• 28:21Speaker 02

  He was very childlike, very simple.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  In his analysis of the games, you know, Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of my favorite quotes is, he said, "I wouldn't give anything for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I'd give my life for the simplicity on the far side of complexity." And Fisher was the simplicity on the far side of complexity.

• 28:48Tim Ferriss?

  It was the informed simplicity, not the uninformed.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Yes, like Picasso. You know, it's funny, I always dismissed Picasso as a painter, not that I'm an art expert, but it's only when you, when you see his paintings as a, as a 16-year-old and he's painting like Rembrandt. So when he went over and, as an adult, and started painting like a child, it was an informed simplicity. It was a choice. And Fisher was like that.

• 29:16Tim Ferriss?

  In what other ways did the childlike nature manifest itself?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  His enthusiasm, always he was enthusiastic about everything. In the way that he explained things, like, I remember once, we were looking at a position on the board and he had, again, he was 6'4", he was enormous, and he, he, he's trying to teach me a lesson about the position of chess pieces on the board, and he held his hand over a few pieces, and he said, "If, if your pieces can move outside of your hand, they're too far apart. They're not well coordinated." Like, it was a physical and intuitive encapsulation

• 29:59Speaker 02

  of a very profound principle that, that he illustrated, again, physically with his hand. "Your pieces move outside your hand, they're too far apart, they can't coordinate."

• 30:12Tim Ferriss?

  And you're like, "Do you mean your size pancake or my little hand?"

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Right, my little hand, exactly. Yeah, because his hand practically is half the board. Yeah, so, so, so that's how genius manifests itself, as, as a childlike simplicity.

• 30:33Tim Ferriss?

  What are other, if there are, other essences of genius in your mind? Because you, and we talked about this a bit in the first episode, and I'm sure we'll touch on this in a few different ways in this conversation, but you have been successful in many different worlds, and you've met many people who are geniuses in different domains. So aside from this childlike simplicity that is on the other side of complexity, what are other essences of genius in your mind?

• 31:07Speaker 02

  I think the American psychologist Maslow said, "If your only tool is a hammer, you view every problem as a nail." And I would flip that and say that if you're, the geniuses have very limited toolsets. They have a hammer, and their genius is in looking for nails. That's their genius, right? They have a very limited skillset, but they master it and apply it incredibly well. You know, I'm reminded of the movie Karate Kid, right?

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Where it's wax on, wax off, you know, sand the floor, right? And then he had that crane kick move, and he won the California State Championship on the basis of those three. And I'm goofing here on the Karate Kid, but I think it illustrates a profound point, to master a few skills well, and then look for domains when you can apply those skills, and stay out of everything else. Warren Buffett does the same thing with his investors.

• 32:21Tim Ferriss?

  I was gonna ask you, and then I want to come back to you, but in the case of, say, Buffett, what are his wax on, wax off, crane kick, etc.? What is his, what are his primary superpowers? And how much are they innate versus developed, or acquired, maybe is a better way to put it?

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Right, well, you know, one of the great partnerships of all time was Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  And the two of them spend all their time just reading and just looking. And by the way, other great investors like Sam Zell do the same thing. They spend all their time on the prowl. Either prowl for ideas or prowl for businesses.

• 33:10Tim Ferriss?

  Are they reading primarily filings? Are they reading far ranging books on different subjects?

• 33:16Speaker 02

  On everything, on everything. You just don't know where you're going to get your next idea. Not so much filings. I mean, they would read those too, of course. But read far and wide because you just don't know where you're going to get your next investment idea. And I think that's one of their superpowers. And the other is a long-term focus with Buffett and Munger. So when everyone is panicking, say in 2007, when the world seems to be imploding, they're eagerly looking for values. So they invest for the long haul and they don't get distracted by vicissitudes,

• 34:01Speaker 02

  economic or otherwise.

• 34:05Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned, so I'm going to go back to you in the library.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 34:10Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So you're going through hundreds of games and taking notes.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:15Tim Ferriss?

  On the Bobby, or going through years of magazines.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 34:20Tim Ferriss?

  And taking down all the Fisher games.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:23Tim Ferriss?

  I would imagine.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  That's all I did.

• 34:25Tim Ferriss?

  Right, so I'm imagining there were not many kids in your class or your school who did this. So the question is, what do you think your core strengths are? And what are some of the core strengths you've developed that you didn't have at a young age?

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:44Tim Ferriss?

  Or weaknesses that you have overcome?

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Well, I always look for, and we talked about this at the 92nd Street Y, for things that don't make sense. I look for patterns. I look for quirks even in my own mind. I remember, let's see, how old was I? I was nine years old and I was listening to Ms. Callahan, who was my teacher and I was in love with her. And she was using, she was talking about something. Again, I was just totally in love with her and I don't, I forget what she was talking about. But she. She's spoken and I realized she spoke the word of. And I realized, oh, I don't know how to spell that word.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Now, what was fascinating is, I mean, I had learned how to read when I was five in the hospital. But I was stunned that I didn't know how to spell a two-letter word. And so I spent the rest of the day trying to spell the word of. And this is the way I did it. Mind you, I was nine years old. I said, okay, I knew the first letter was a vowel. So on a sheet of paper, I wrote A, E, I, O, U. And then I wrote Y, because sometimes Y is a vowel. And then I wrote all the consonants, right? B, C, D, and so on. And I spent the rest of the day going through every possible pattern, like A, B. And I'd say, ab, is that of? Okay, that's not. And then A, C, and A, D.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  And I went through every single permutation, trying to find the word of. And I never found it. Because of is not a, it's not, it's not phonetic.

• 36:21Tim Ferriss?

  It's not phonetic.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Not phonetic.

• 36:22Tim Ferriss?

  English is a tough language that way.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Yes, I didn't realize that at the age of nine. But I think that was one of my core strengths, looking for patterns and things that don't make sense. And being amused by my own mind and failings. And, but I, I.

• 36:39Tim Ferriss?

  Can I interject for a second?

• 36:40Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 36:41Tim Ferriss?

  Why didn't?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  You can interject whenever you want.

• 36:42Tim Ferriss?

  Why didn't you ask how to spell it as opposed to going through that exercise?

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Because I, I wanted to.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Because the real question was why I couldn't spell it, not, not what is?

• 36:56Tim Ferriss?

  The answer.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  What is the answer? And it's such an important thing, you know? Thank you for bringing that up. Because the questions you ask about the world determine the success you get in the world. And one of my favorite questions is Tony Robbins', what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? And, and so the questions we ask are key. So I wasn't interested in the answer, how to, how to spell the word of. I mean, I knew that was trivial. I knew it was a two-letter word. But what wasn't trivial is that I couldn't. Spell it.

• 37:28Tim Ferriss?

  Why do you think that is? Because that's an odd. That is, it strikes me as very unusual that you would have learned to read, but then four years, three, four years later would have this word that sticks out as something that you couldn't spell.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  Well, it was just a one, it was one second. I knew it was the way you can forget somebody's, you know, the name of an actor in a movie or something. Like, I knew it was a momentary glitch, but I was, I was fascinated by it. And, and looking back on it, I was, I'm fascinated that the age of nine, I, I, I was very systematic. I had two columns and I spent the rest of the day ignoring Ms. Callahan and the rest of the class, since I spent most of my time daydreaming anyway. And she would just let me, trying to figure out how to spell the word of very systematically. And that, and I thought that was a good use of my time.

• 38:15Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned questions and I'd love to ask you, because I think they're related. You can, you can place this at any time. We're going to jump around chronologically because that's.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Because this is parkour.

• 38:28Tim Ferriss?

  That's parkour. Never know what, what's, what obstacles coming up next. And decision making, what is your decision making process for choosing opportunities? Or your criteria? Or how do you think about choosing opportunities or more so than finding? When you have a number of different opportunities, a number of different paths you could go down, what is your decision making process or your selection process?

• 38:59Speaker 02

  The problem is I'm so intellectually curious that I really have to be careful because it's, it's going down a rabbit hole. I mean, I have to limit the things that I allow myself to be interested in. And I think I choose the one that's the most fun. And, and, and I guess my life is like parkour, right? Just jumping in and, and, and knowing that you'll be resourceful and, and land on your feet and then be able to jump from there too. So.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  I look also for, for, for areas that we touched on this, the ball bearings principle, right? For opportunities with things that people haven't explored before and, or they've explored to death and they, they're no longer interested in. And so I try to look for things with, with fresh eyes. Yeah.

• 39:52Tim Ferriss?

  And for the ball bearings folks, we could go into it, but we, we spent quite a bit of time on it in the first episode with Adam. So you guys can explore that there. I'd like to talk about post Fisher. Where'd you go to college?

• 40:05Speaker 02

  I went to Wharton undergrad and then I got a law degree at Oxford.

• 40:10Tim Ferriss?

  And how did you choose Oxford? And then, then we're going to talk about apples.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, yes. Apples, Granny Smith apples. Okay. I chose Oxford. My, I, you know, my, my father died when I was 19 and I was pretty lost and I could have finished Wharton in, in, in two years. Um, two and a half years anyway, because it's take six or seven courses, a term. And, uh, cause I, I found everything really interesting and you were only required to take four, take six or seven. And, um, my father died and I, I didn't know what to do. And I, I wanted to get away and I don't speak any foreign language fluently enough to, to go to a, a country other than like, say, England. So I chose Oxford and I thought

• 41:03Speaker 02

  law would be an interesting way to beguile, um, a couple of years, two, three years. So, uh, it was kind of a default actually. And, and while I was there, I spent most of my time taking dance classes in London. Um, hip hop.

• 41:17Tim Ferriss?

  Hip hop dance lessons in London?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. So I, I, I, I only, I was the, not the most conscientious law student at Oxford. Um, but, uh, but anyway, so that's what I did.

• 41:30Tim Ferriss?

  If you owe me asking, we don't have to get into it if you don't want to, but how did your, how did your dad pass?

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Uh, he took his life.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  And he suffered from depression, as I did. And, you know, I remember the last thing he said to me before, before he did so. He said, you know, I'll always remember that you did everything on your own. And I didn't realize that he was using past tense then.

• 41:59Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  He said, I'll always remember that you did everything on your own. This was the last, and then two years, two hours later, he was, you know, the police called and said he was dead. And I, and he did me a disservice because for, and we'll get to this later in our parkour excursions. But, you know, for, for decades, I, I did do everything out on my own. And it's only this last year that I realized the importance of the other with a capital T, capital O, that magic is, is unleashed in the world only when you're, a circuit is, is, is opened, when you're, when you're connecting with someone else.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  And that, and that's where the magic and the miracles occur. And I wish I had known that earlier.

• 42:51Tim Ferriss?

  Why don't you think you explored that earlier?

• 42:53Speaker 02

  I wasn't aware of it. You mean the other?

• 42:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, the magic that occurs.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Cause I was always in my own world, right? I mean, I was an introvert. In high school, I didn't discover this till later, there were people that had never seen me speak. People were around me every day for four years, had never seen me speak. And, and then, and yet I was so animated with Fisher, right? And running up to him.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  So I lived in my own world and, and I, the world of ideas. So, I mean, I was aware of other people and of course we all are. But I was an introvert to, to an otherworldly extreme. And, and then only this year have I realized and been excited, really excited, I'm by engaging other people. And we, you know, and we should revisit those three rules of success that we talked about at, at the 92nd Street Y. Cause they're all about other people.

• 43:58Tim Ferriss?

  We can talk about them now if you'd like, or we can come back to it. Do you have a preference?

• 44:03Speaker 02

  No, no. You're the

• 44:06Tim Ferriss?

  I'm the conductor here.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Yes, you're the ringmaster.

• 44:09Tim Ferriss?

  All right, we're gonna come, we'll come back to that. After the tragedy with your father, involving your father, you head to Oxford. You're taking dance lessons. Ostensibly, you're there for law.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:23Tim Ferriss?

  This is, this is a left turn yet again. But how do, we talked about this a bit last night and I just remember saying, what? So how do, how do apples enter the scene?

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. You mean my nutritional odyssey?

• 44:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, your nutritional odyssey and why, why did it? Why did it become what it was?

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, so I arrive at Oxford and I had prepaid for a room and board. And, you know, it's a cliche to say, again, this is back then, actually, the food you can get in England now is fantastic. But back then, when I was a student, it was a cliche to say English food was, was awful. But then English institutional food was, it was inedible. And I, and I couldn't afford, I could only afford to eat one meal a day. And out, I, you know, pay in a restaurant. And, because I'd already paid for a room and board and I refused to eat the food. So I used to go to this, the only restaurant that I could afford in Oxford was a vegetarian restaurant.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  And I started eating just vegetarian food. And I, and I realized as the days went on that, that there were three food groups. There were foods that made me feel really good. Foods that were neutral and foods that made me feel bad. And the foods that made me feel good, the Granny Smith apples, carrots, raisins. Oh, I remember what the fourth was, cabbage, cabbage, cabbage. And the, the neutral foods were vegetables, green vegetables, red vegetables. But not white, like rice or corn. Anything, any grains were negatives.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Meat was a, became a negative and dairy products were negative. And so my whole life, I'd been training four or five hours a day, swimming plus weightlifting. And then at Oxford, I do nothing. Except eat Granny Smith apples, basically.

• 46:28Tim Ferriss?

  How did the negative?

• 46:31Tim Ferriss?

  Affect you?

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, if I had, oh, I love, for example, milk with my coffee. And if I had so much as a teaspoon of milk in my coffee, I'd get a sore throat, I'd get instantly congested, I'd get tired. And so I just weeded all those things out so that by the end of the year, I was basically a fruitarian. I think Steven Jobs, for a while, was a fruitarian. And so was I, and I was a bore to be around because people would say, let's go out for lunch and I'd have like a salad or a fruit cup.

• 47:07Tim Ferriss?

  The Mr. Ed special, please.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly, the Mr. Ed special. And so I come back and I had lost 20 pounds.

• 47:14Tim Ferriss?

  And to put that in perspective for people, I mean, you are not Bobby Fischer, right? So at the time, before you lost the 20 pounds, what was, what were your dimensions like?

• 47:22Speaker 02

  I was 135, pretty solid muscle, because I've been an athlete my whole life.

• 47:27Tim Ferriss?

  Right, at 5'8", you said?

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, 5'8", yeah, yeah.

• 47:30Tim Ferriss?

  So then you lost 20 pounds.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And, but I wasn't aware that I was that skinny. Because I guess your body image shifts with it. But I just wasn't hungry. Like a meal for the, for the day might be a pound of apples or two pounds of apples, maybe some carrots, really Mr. Ed, right? And then I just wasn't hungry and some days I wouldn't eat at all. And anyway, so I come back to New York where I was living at the time. My mother was living. And I go to my brother's health club because I decide I should get back in shape. I hadn't trained for a year. And imagine you, Tim Ferriss, not training for a year, right?

• 48:12Speaker 02

  And so I remember the first machine I sat on was this Nautilus shoulder press. And I set it for five plates, like 50 pounds, because I didn't want to overdo it. And my arms shot up, they were weightless. And then And then I asked my brother, who was standing next to me, I said, Matthew, just lowered a couple of plates and then make it 70. It also shot up. And I said, okay, Matthew, you lowered a couple more because I need a little weight. So that's too light. So he does so. And then I pressed like 20 times. I said, yeah, that's about right. And he comes around to the front of the of the machine. And he said, okay, I'm not going to do anything. I just wanted to come back around to the because the plates, the setting were behind you.

• 48:54Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Where I set it. And he'd set it on the very lowest setting, like the full stack, like the football players, right? And every machine was like that. I could max out on all the machines easily with no effort.

• 49:10Tim Ferriss?

  So odd.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  It's so odd because I had, you know, lost all this weight, hadn't hadn't trained for for over a year. And even at the when I was at peak condition, I wasn't able to do that prior to the dietary odyssey that I went on. And

• 49:29Tim Ferriss?

  How did you explain that to yourself?

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Well, I actually then started doing research, like I discovered, for example, that primitive man ate only fruit. They've done they did a molar studies that of they found of skeletons and things. And primitive man, if you ate vegetables, there were fiber scratches on the on the molars, and there were none. So they concluded that primitive man had basically eaten mostly fruit. And so I don't know, I think that was just, you know what? Now that I think about it, Tim, it's exactly what you do. You endlessly experiment

• 50:10Speaker 02

  to find the optimal combination of whatever to max out your performance on whatever dimension. And that's what I did unwittingly. And, you know, I weeded out the foods that made me feel bad and focused increasingly on the foods that made me feel good. And that's what I did. So I was I was a Tim Ferriss acolyte before you were around.

• 50:35Tim Ferriss?

  Have you and I'm guessing you have probably not replicated the

• 50:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 50:40Tim Ferriss?

  The Granny Smith experiment. I'm very curious, and I'm not recommending, folks, by the way, that you go out and do the, the apple-only diet, but we were joking last night about how there are at least two foods that I've experienced during certain training periods that seem to have an odd performance-enhancing effect. One, so this is a long story, guys, so I'm not going to get into this too much, but for whatever reason, tart apples.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:07Tim Ferriss?

  And lentils for me also, and which, which many people don't respond well to, but very, very odd. And

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's not odd, and you know, and again, neither of us is advocating, you know, that you start consuming Granny Smith apples exclusively, but certainly you should pay attention to your body's responses to any food. And, and again, I, I had a taxonomy of three food groups, those that made me feel good, those that were neutral, and those best avoided. And, and, and all of us should do that, not just with our foods, with everything in our lives, right? Optimize our functioning. And that's what you're all about.

• 51:50Tim Ferriss?

  It is in a lot of ways. Now, these days, though, you do consume your coffee with milk.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 51:56Tim Ferriss?

  So, and I think this is how the iocane powder came up. So have you, have you, did you gradually reintroduce these foods, including negatives that you wanted to include?

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Sure. I mean, I was a bore to be with, because people invite me out to a Japanese restaurant, and I'd say, oh, I really can't eat anything on the menu.

• 52:18Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have apples?

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Right, apples. And so, so it took me a couple of years, actually, to get back to normal eating. And so, right now, I eat healthily, but I eat some negatives. You know, I, I try to limit dairy products, but, but I love, I love milk in my coffee, so what the hell, you know? I know it's not optimal for my body, but, but I enjoy it.

• 52:47Tim Ferriss?

  What was it? It was maybe Elizabeth Taylor, I want to say, who said?

• 52:52Tim Ferriss?

  Something along the lines of the problem with people who don't have vices is that you can be pretty sure they have very annoying virtues. You all need a few vices here and there.

• 53:03Tim Ferriss?

  Let's, let's go back to the three rules for success.

• 53:08Tim Ferriss?

  Can you, I'll let you take it from here. The mic is yours.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  Sure. Well, you know, and, and just by way of, of, of, of background, it began when you asked me how you, you mark the end of a year. And I said, well, I, I reflect on the lessons I learned the, the past year and I make a conscious effort to apply them in the coming new year. Cause you asked me this, what, a month ago, right?

• 53:33Tim Ferriss?

  That's right.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Right back in December. And, and so I, I, I thought you asked me, what did I learn in, in 2016? And I said, I learned three things and, and I, I learned the importance of fun, enthusiasm and delight in everything you do, absolutely everything. And first and foremost, fun, enthusiasm and delight. And we'll come back to that. The second is connecting with everyone you encounter on however fleeting a basis. And you've been with me and you see, I do that.

• 54:12Tim Ferriss?

  Uber drivers, maîtres d's.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Everybody.

• 54:16Tim Ferriss?

  You name it.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  I, right. I'm, I put that into action. You really connect with the person in, in, in however fleeting that connection is, but you, you make an effort to make a connection. And, and the third is to lean into each moment and each encounter and everyone you meet expecting magic or miracles. And, and those were the three things I learned. And the interesting thing about all of them is that none of them have anything to do with me. It's all about the other person. Right? And when I say fun, delight and enthusiasm, it's to create fun, delight and enthusiasm for the other person.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  And that that goes for if you're going to a meeting and you want us with a venture capitalist because you're looking for funding for your startup, or you're going on a date, or you're going on a job interview, forget the fact that it's an interview. You're going to delight the other person. That's what you're there for first and foremost, and to make a connection. And if you do, if that's your focus as opposed to getting the job or getting the funding, then you get magic and miracles. But that should be your primary focus. And and what it does is it it gives you infinite power

• 55:43Speaker 02

  because you want nothing and you're offering everything. All I want, and that's what I in this moment now with you, sitting, sitting in front of you on your couch, is to is to connect with you and to delight you. So it's I'm playing a game I can't lose and I'm in total control and I don't want anything. And so that's such a revelation for me and I wish I had known that earlier.

• 56:14Tim Ferriss?

  How did how did that I'd be curious to hear how that revelation came about. So you mentioned depression earlier, which I definitely want to talk about. And I've certainly talked and written about my own battles with extended depression and some very severe episodes over the years. And you mentioned Tony Robbins earlier. So Tony Robbins, I remember underscored something for me maybe a year and a half ago, which was effectively suffering is an excessive focus on yourself.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  There you go, yourself, right?

• 56:48Tim Ferriss?

  That was a lesson that I underlined and highlighted and revisited many times since he imparted that to me because it seemed like the best medicine for fixing myself was to stop focusing on myself in many respects.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And I Tony Robbins.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  One of the greats, right? However, with respect to depression, one of the insidious things, nah, insidious isn't the right word. One of the sinister things about depression is that it's a, it works by getting a vice grip on your thinking. So you're incapable of thinking outside of yourself. And really, the worst aspect of depression, between the ages of, oh, golly, 14 and say

• 57:47Speaker 02

  30, there wasn't a day I didn't wrestle with the Hamlet question, to be or not to be. And the worst thing about, and some days, for example, I remember a period, for a couple of months, I didn't leave my apartment. I had the blinds drawn, I would order in from a deli. And the worst aspect of depression is that you come to despise yourself. And you believe that only now, in depression, are you thinking clearly.

• 58:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  And that before, you were delusional.

• 58:28Tim Ferriss?

  Delusional, yes.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  And you hate yourself for it. You hate yourself for being deluded. And that nobody understands now, now, I am thinking clearly. Now, nothing matters. And that's really the devil at work. That's why I say sinister. Because depression traps your thinking, and it hijacks your thinking, like a virus. And you despise yourself. You despise yourself for being deluded previously. And a lot of people in their lives despising themselves.

• 59:09Tim Ferriss?

  What took you out of that pattern? You mentioned, I'm blanking on the exact ages, but you said something like 14 to 30.

• 59:18Speaker 02

  Sure. And then episodically, after that point, I mean, between 14 and 30, it was unrelenting. It was a siege.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  Of me against my, my depression. And then it was episodic and then I'm not sure it just. I don't know if it was biochemical, but it just lifted and.

• 59:47Tim Ferriss?

  How, if you don't mind me asking, man, when, when it lifted, how old were you?

• 59:51Speaker 02

  When I say lifted, it, again, it would, it could come back.

• 59:55Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  Um, but I haven't, for example, now I haven't had an episode in, of depression in probably. Hmm. A decade.

• 1:00:06Tim Ferriss?

  That's a lot, that's.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  It's a long time.

• 1:00:07Tim Ferriss?

  Very long stretch.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  And I, I think it's a biochemical shift because depression also, as you know, a, and the word depression. Reflects not just the mental state, but the physical state, your energy level is low. And I think, you know, and to go back to Tony Robbins, you know, one of the great things about Tony Robbins is he's high energy. And you think about all like Richard Branson and Elon Musk and you, Tim, high energy and, and, and. One way to, to, to, uh, escape from slipping into depression is, is. To be ever vigilant about keeping your energy level high and to notice the biochemical.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Uh, markers that precede depression so you can, uh, uh, head it off at the pass before you, you slip into it. Cause once you slip into it, I mean, you.

• 1:01:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  You know, it's very difficult. You're essentially, you're going to go down that slope for a while. And then it's going to take, you know, days or weeks or months to come out of it.

• 1:01:12Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the, I guess not red flags, but orange flags? For yourself, the biochemical markers that would tell you, check engine light, okay, something, something's going in the wrong direction.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  Right. Certain seasonal things like in the winter and people suffer from seasonal affective disorder. It, I, I think it's really just noticing your energy levels day to day. For me personally, that was the marker for me. And each individual will have markers that will be, if you suffer from depression. And by the way, neither of us is giving medical advice.

• 1:01:45Tim Ferriss?

  No, of course, we're not.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Anything or investment advice or advice of any kind.

• 1:01:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Um.

• 1:01:49Tim Ferriss?

  Informational purposes only.

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  Informational purposes only, but, uh, but, but all of us should become aware of. And again, this is a Ferris principle, a first principle or axiom is to be aware of what works and what doesn't work and keep experimenting and doing more of what works and less of what doesn't work. And eventually you optimize and become a very high functioning individual.

• 1:02:22Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm going to come back to depression. I'm going to shift gears a little bit. I'm going to come back to because in my interactions with you, I know that your brain works very well in this conversational format.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  Sure, sure.

• 1:02:32Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm going to allow the question on depression, which is going to be 10 years ago, when you seem to click out of that

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:02:41Tim Ferriss?

  condition, what things correlated? Were there other things? New people in your life, new behaviors, dietary changes, whatever it might be? We don't have to hit it right now, but I'm going to let

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  Let's leave that at as a parenthesis. We'll come back to it.

• 1:02:52Tim Ferriss?

  We'll come back to it because I know that that will be working on the back burner in your head.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  Sure, sure.

• 1:02:57Tim Ferriss?

  Things that work. And to provide some context for folks, so you were very kind to come out and visit me in San Francisco and you brought a lot of ideas with you. And I remember this was after, at the 92Y, Josh agreed that you were one of the best gift givers in the world.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Tim Ferriss?

  And the gift said would take you some time to prepare and then there were ideas for me and you came out to share them and we've been spending a lot of time together.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Tim Ferriss?

  You have also been writing a book and you've been taking a lot of baths. And I remember asking, do you always take baths when you are working on some type of creative project? And you said, well, are you familiar with the three Bs of creativity? I said, no, I am not. So speaking of things that work, can you describe the three Bs of creativity?

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Sure. So the three Bs of creativity, you know, creativity is getting in touch with your unconscious. And, and you know, you consciously pose a question to your mind and you allow your unconscious to, to percolate on it. And Josh, our bestie, has written extensively about this and, and, and few people in the world do it better than he does. But the three Bs are bed, bath, and bus. And, and bus is a metaphor for traveling. So when you want to, when you have a problem that you're, you've, your, your conscious mind

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  has thoroughly exhausted, then you give it over to your unconscious. And so you go to sleep, right? That's bed. For me- Which could be a long overnight sleep or- Could be a nap, right? Could be a nap. You want to get to the dream state. Bath, which you could do at any point also, or you switch location. Bus is, again, a metaphor just for alliterative purposes. You, you switch your, your location and, and that allows your, your unconscious mind to, to address the problem. And that, again, that's

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  where the magic occurs, your unconscious mind. We, in, in, in Western civilization over the last few thousand years, we've, we've deified logic and rationality. And the irrational intuitive mind has gotten, you know, short, the short end of the stick and, and we dismiss it. But that's actually our intuitive mind and our unconscious mind, I would say our primitive mind in that sense, is far more advanced and far more powerful than- Then the advances we've made in logic and deductive thinking, which is, you know, our unconscious mind is like a supercomputer compared to the trivial apparatus of our logical mind.

• 1:06:00Tim Ferriss?

  I've been, this is something I've been thinking about a lot in the last three years. And some of it relates to psychedelic research, we'll call it. But that's, there are two episodes on that for people interested. So Martin Polanco, Martin Polanco, and Dan Engel and James Fadiman, if you want to look those up. We're not going to dig too deep there right now. But I've tried in the last three years to really pay more attention to and sensitize myself to these tiny perturbations. Is that a real word?

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:06:38Tim Ferriss?

  And my visceral response to things and to really hone what I had trained myself to ignore for so long. And you were talking last night and also today about being detached from your physical body after the hospital experience and so on. And only reintegrating those sensory inputs and really relishing them and paying attention to them.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:03Tim Ferriss?

  Recently, and for me, I've been doing the same thing in the last three years. Instead of powering ahead and ignoring all these physical cues and what you might call intuition, which has gotten a bum rap for very understandable reasons. I think it's abused and misapplied in a lot of places. But I've been paying attention, trying to pay more attention to this, what we might call primitive, but certainly evolved.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:07:26Tim Ferriss?

  Instinctual reflexive response to things.

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And you know, the thing is that, actually, I'll share a fascinating experience.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  I was at a chess tournament 20 years ago and I'm a rated master, very, very strong. And I was playing another rated master at a big tournament, the World Open in Philadelphia. This is like 20 years ago. And I had had a strong opening advantage against this opponent. And if you're unfamiliar with the game of chess, it would be, imagine a wrestling match where you haven't pinned the opponent yet, but you've He's having a hard time moving and if it goes on much longer, you are going to pin him. So my opponent was squirming because I had the opening advantage and then I blundered.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  I lost a piece. Actually, I lost what's known as the exchange, a rook for a knight. Which is, I lost one of my stronger pieces for one of his weaker pieces. So he had an edge and he was really happy and I knew I'm gonna lose the game. I mean, I was really pissed with myself because I blundered. I wasn't paying attention. And as I'm staring at the board and again, I'm just really pissed with myself. I hear a voice. Somebody whispers from behind and says, "You can win this position." Just like that. And I spun around because at chess tournaments, you're not allowed to Give advice. Give advice. And there was no one there.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  And I thought, oh, well, that's odd. I was like sure someone had just whispered in my ear. And you know, just to jump ahead, it was my unconscious mind that was tapping me on the shoulder. But it manifested itself as a voice and really distinct. So if you can imagine, I'm looking at the chessboard and I don't want the opponent to see that I have any hope or anything. So I'm doing my best Woody Allen imitation, you know, like, "Oh, I'm gonna lose this." But meanwhile, I'm studying the board really closely and I see an incredible combination, like the kind of combination that Magnus Carlsen would

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  have been pleased with himself if he had seen. And I won the game. And I lost every game after that in the tournament because I wasn't interested in the games anymore. I wanted to hear the voice that spoke to me. And the thing is that your unconscious mind, the muses, the gods, the universe are all whispering to you all the time. And you need to close out your conscious mind, find ways to shut it down to hear those voices because they're whispering all the time.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  And you need to hear them and heed them. So like you, I have been actively looking for ways to hear those voices because they're there all the time.

• 1:10:37Tim Ferriss?

  And I think for myself at least, I prided myself on not being distracted by some of those things, meaning emotional insights that were not tapping me on the shoulder, probably punching me in the shoulder for many years. And I remember at one point, this is probably 2004, 2005, I was agonizing over this contract. It was going to be a long-term business deal and I had a number of issues, a number of issues with it as well as the parties involved. And I created these huge pro and con lists. And I remember at one point, agonizing over this for weeks and it was just consuming my

• 1:11:21Tim Ferriss?

  thoughts 24/7. And my girlfriend at the time asked me, she goes, "Do you even trust this guy?" And I looked at her and I go, "Not really." And she goes, "Then don't do the deal." And I was like, "Good advice."

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:11:36Tim Ferriss?

  And of course, if I had, I immediately knew the answer and I was trying to override it with some type of hyper rational, logical apparatus.

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:11:48Tim Ferriss?

  And it would have been self-defeating. In retrospect, I absolutely should not have done the deal and I'm glad that I didn't.

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  Right. So three things jumped to mind. So first, you had a choice there, right? You didn't have to do the deal, but because you wanted to do the deal, you were looking for ways to rationalize what your unconscious mind was telling you, right? Your unconscious mind was saying, "Don't do the deal." And in the same way that... So you don't have to take every deal and that's one of the, to jump back to Warren Buffett, that's one of his advantages is, and he's, he's written extensively about this, that it's like the market is a pitcher and, and every day it's going to pitch lots of balls to you.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  And you don't have to swing, but you know, swing at any of them that day. You just wait for a fat pitch and then you swing for it. Um, so, so one of the, one of the dangers when you really want something, whether it's a relationship or a business deal, your conscious mind will rationalize and will shut down your unconscious mind, which is screaming at this point, don't do it. Walk away. Whenever things seem a little strange or a little off, that's your unconscious mind telling you they're really strange and really off. And walk away because you always have a choice, again, whether it's a relationship or a business deal, just walk away.

• 1:13:20Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Uh, in a minute, I'm going to come back to the clicking out of repeated episodes of depression to ask what might have correlated or corresponded.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:13:32Tim Ferriss?

  Even if it's not causal, I'm just curious, but I'm going to give you a taste of things to come. This is a new exercise. I'm going to be pulling.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Hey, wait, wait, where's, where's, oh, there she is. I was looking for Molly. She's asleep.

• 1:13:45Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah. No, Molly's, Molly's resting in her typical pose, which is half of her body on dog bed, head on the extremely hard floor.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  You know, for those of you who don't know that Molly is, if I have ever met a sweeter, better behaved, more beautiful dog in my life, I don't recall. And, and so I was hoping she would come on over, um, and just sit in my lap while, by the way, she's 60 pounds and not like an easy sit in the lap, but, but, um, she's, maybe she'll grace us a little later with her, with her.

• 1:14:20Tim Ferriss?

  With her presence.

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  With her, with her joy.

• 1:14:22Tim Ferriss?

  She's, she's, she's being a good intra-interview dog. She's, she's figured out that this is. This is usually a sideline gig.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:14:33Tim Ferriss?

  But I'm going to pull out a random question, ala the Tao Te Ching, which is one of Josh's favorite books. So in the spirit of Josh, who is in absentia here at the moment, just going to pick a random question if I don't like any of these.

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  Okay, more parkour, let's jump.

• 1:14:53Tim Ferriss?

  Let's do it. What do you, okay, here we go. This is just pulled out of a, a selection of questions. What are you most daring about?

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  Well, oh, boy, that, that, that, that, that, I gotta think about that. What am I most daring about? Well, I'll tell you something. 2017 is a year about being daring about everything. I don't know that there's a most daring. I'm daring about everything. I'm daring about the future.

• 1:15:20Tim Ferriss?

  Do you view yourself as a risk taker?

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  You know, it's funny, let's reframe risk.

• 1:15:27Tim Ferriss?

  I would love that.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:28Tim Ferriss?

  Which is why I throw it out there.

• 1:15:29Speaker 02

  Sure, of course.

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  So there are two ways to, to, to, to live life. And one is, is in the pursuit of gain or to avoid loss. And

• 1:15:42Tim Ferriss?

  Those are the two options.

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  I think, I don't know. There's another, I think it's pretty binary.

• 1:15:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  And, you know, nature has, has evolved us as a species to be risk averse, to avoid taking chances and, and not to lose.

• 1:16:02Tim Ferriss?

  And to overreact to perceived threats.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:05Tim Ferriss?

  Because the penalty for overreaction to perceived threats is less than underreacting.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  Right. And to go back to Fisher, the great thing about Fisher was he wasn't afraid to lose. He wanted to win. And if it meant he was going to lose a game, so be it.

• 1:16:22Speaker 02

  Because he wanted to win and, and he was willing to lose in order to win. And, um, you know, I, I play a game now with myself, with the world, um, that I can't lose. So there's no risk. It goes back to those three things, connecting with people, which I can do. And I think I do pretty well. Um, creating fun and delight and approaching each person with enthusiasm. Which again, I'm in total control of, um, and leaning into each moment expecting magic. I'm in control of all three. So what's the risk?

• 1:17:01Speaker 02

  I mean, I have nothing to lose and, and, um, I mean, it's a game that, uh, yeah, it's a game you can't lose. So what's the risk?

• 1:17:13Tim Ferriss?

  Now simultaneously, you made an astute observation earlier, which we don't necessarily have to get into the weeds on, but I do think it's a, it's a good observation. And it came up, we were having Thai food and I mentioned a book that I enjoyed a great deal, uh, that when I read it about, I'm guessing now maybe seven or eight years ago, called More Money Than God by, I think his name is Sebastian Malloway.

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:39Tim Ferriss?

  But which I thought was a very intelligent overview of the origins of the hedge fund and some of the, the characters and styles in the, in the hedge fund world.

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. Well.

• 1:17:53Tim Ferriss?

  But you observed that many hedge funds do not in fact hedge.

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  Hedge. Yeah. Right. So, so yes, so hedge funds, the concept of a hedge fund was originated, golly, 1948, however many years ago that is, uh, um, I'm not going to interrupt the flow of the magic of the moment to try to calculate that.

• 1:18:19Tim Ferriss?

  That's okay. We'll go with 48.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  52. Wait, I'm going to do it right now. 52 is 16. It's 68 years ago. Oh no, 69, because this is 2017. Um, so the notion of hedge funds was invented 69 years ago and, um,

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  But yeah, most, most funds do not truly hedge. And by hedge, that means taking a position, say, buying Apple stock, or selling gold, or whatever it is, and then simultaneously executing another transaction that'll protect you if you're wrong about the first.

• 1:19:00Speaker 02

  So yeah, most hedge funds don't hedge.

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  Even though they, they think they are, they, their various strategies like being long and short, but yeah, they're hedge funds in, in name only, not, not in fact.

• 1:19:23Tim Ferriss?

  Let me grab another.

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  Another question. Okay, parkour.

• 1:19:26Tim Ferriss?

  Another card.

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  We, we just called this the parkour deck.

• 1:19:30Tim Ferriss?

  This, this.

• 1:19:30Speaker 02

  Conversational parkour.

• 1:19:31Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. We have the rapid fire questions, many of which we hit the last episodes. We're not gonna, uh, we're not gonna beat those to death. But, okay.

• 1:19:42Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick a new one.

• 1:19:44Speaker 02

  Oh, come on. Come on. I'm not afraid.

• 1:19:47Tim Ferriss?

  All right. This, this question, I, I'm not, this is, this is ridiculous. This is a presumptive question. I didn't.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  Zoom away.

• 1:19:54Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't, I didn't write this. Why is it suspicious when your lover starts talking baby talk? That's ludicrous.

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  That's ludicrous, yeah.

• 1:20:00Tim Ferriss?

  Let me pick it. Let me pick a different one.

• 1:20:03Tim Ferriss?

  When have you lost your way?

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  Oh, well, I, I think I lost my way

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  years ago. I think I only found my way this last year.

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  And again, it was, it was getting out of myself and realizing it's all about the other person.

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  You know, by way of metaphor.

• 1:20:32Speaker 02

  To create an electric circuit, you need two. You can't do it alone, right? And when you're charged with another person, you open up a cosmic circuit. It's very hard to explain. But I've seen it in real time. And you create magic. And so I'm on the hunt for it all the time. I'm on the hunt for magic.

• 1:21:05Tim Ferriss?

  So let's talk about that hunt for a second, or a potentially related tangent.

• 1:21:12Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:21:13Tim Ferriss?

  At some point over the last two days, you said, "Let's talk about Stoicism." And then you mentioned hedonism.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:22Tim Ferriss?

  And so I'm gonna let you run with that. And you got what you requested.

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  I got what I was hoping for. Molly's right next to me.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  So Stoicism, which is an enlightened philosophy, but at the same time that Stoicism... Oh, Molly. You can't see this, but I'm getting licks from Molly here. Sweet dog.

• 1:21:49Speaker 02

  Hedonism in modern culture has a... You know, the pursuit of pleasure, physical pleasure. But in fact, it was a profound Greek philosophy that originated simultaneously, roughly 350 B.C., with Stoicism. And it was the pursuit of pleasure, but for them, the highest pleasure was a spiritual pleasure and intellectual pleasure. And for me, the highest pleasure is creating delight for the other person.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  So I'm a hedonist about creating delight and magic for others. And so to go back, I'm forgetting what the question is now, but

• 1:22:33Tim Ferriss?

  It wasn't really a question. It was more of a statement that I wanted you to comment on. Maybe you're a sympathetically hedonistic Stoic?

• 1:22:40Speaker 02

  Well, yes. Well, I admire the Stoics, but for me, the Stoics are, Stoics are impassive. Impassive meaning not feeling and to greet success and failure with indifference. And I disagree. I believe life should be celebrated. And the Stoics, for me, and again, they're enlightened, Aurelius and Seneca, these are such wise people. But for me, there's something lacking in Stoicism because it's a, to go back to our earlier choice, it's playing not to lose as opposed to playing to win.

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  And we are physical creatures on this plane to delight. And I think that's what life is all about, creating delight for others. And in doing so, you have delight for yourself. And which is why I joked on stage and you know, Joss agreed, you know, I said, I'm the world's best gift giver. And I came here bearing gifts for you. And I'm really, really excited because my pen pal, Warren Buffett, I'm creating a gift for him. He keeps encouraging me to write because he sends the stuff I write, he sends it on to his friends.

• 1:24:06Speaker 02

  And so I'm writing a book that I started right after our podcast, a parable. And I'm rushing to finish it because I'm going to see him on the 19th in a couple of weeks. So I have a week to finish this bloody thing and give it to him as a present. And I'm really excited about the book.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  I get such delight giving away presents. And people don't realize I'm totally selfish because I'm the one relishing and enjoying it. Whatever pleasure they get, nowhere close to what I'm getting out of it.

• 1:24:44Tim Ferriss?

  And I think that also whether it's hedonism or stoicism, that those are in fact

• 1:24:51Tim Ferriss?

  large umbrellas under which there are many different species and derivative types of stoicism or hedonism.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  Sex, almost, right?

• 1:25:04Tim Ferriss?

  Right, so if you look at, say, stoicism, there are those who would

• 1:25:09Tim Ferriss?

  who might talk about the practice of stoic joy, which is joy, but a joy that is not in tandem with a commensurate emotional overreaction to negative events. But I've always, for instance, one of the things that I've always thought, well, you know, if I'm, say, 80% stoic, let's just say for the sake of thought exercise. If I were 80% stoic, what would the other 20% be?

• 1:25:38Tim Ferriss?

  What Seneca did, which is actually what, in a way, what Charles Darwin did with to effectively hater-proof or critic-proof

• 1:25:49Tim Ferriss?

  his writing, was to insert his position of his staunchest opponents

• 1:25:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:25:58Tim Ferriss?

  in a not only plausible but almost complimentary way.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:26:02Tim Ferriss?

  In his own work. So Seneca, knowing this as an incredible orator and also just what would he be called, a rhetorician or debater and so on,

• 1:26:14Tim Ferriss?

  took his letters, in his letters to Lucilius, one of his students, who he knew was a fan of Epicurus. He would take choice tidbits of Epicurus, of the Epicurian school, and insert them into his own letters, the moral letters to Lucilius. And the Epicurians, in a lot of ways, were viewed as being the opposite of the Stoics. They were happy to tend their gardens and they focused on the little pleasures and I'm simplifying it here. But I always thought, well, he did such a good job of embedding those that I would probably be at least 10% Epicurian. And then the last 10%, maybe that's some type of...

• 1:26:57Tim Ferriss?

  Some type of sympathetic hedonist.

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  Well, it's your own synthesis of it all.

• 1:27:01Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe that's the aspiration, yeah. Are there any particular, you're a very widely read human being. Are there any particular philosophers who draw your attention? Or who you wish people would pay more attention to? Or, I realize this is a lot of commas. If you had to prescribe, say, high school seniors to become familiar with one or more philosophers, do any names or even schools come to mind?

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  Oh gee.

• 1:27:35Tim Ferriss?

  Could just be thinkers, doesn't have to be philosophers.

• 1:27:38Speaker 02

  Right, well, I mean, I mentioned this. You asked a similar question at the 92nd Street Y. And I'm gonna start, just to buy myself a little time as I search my memory for philosophers that I would broadly recommend, is Rumi, the poet Rumi. And the wonderful thing about Rumi as a poet, and he was also a philosopher, is he gets you in touch with the magical and the mysterious. And I think we need to be in touch with that, all of us, in everyday life. And so I would say that

• 1:28:18Speaker 02

  I would read Plato, because Plato, in the dialogues, would create an interlocutor. He would start arguing against himself. And again, in philosophical discourse and in your own reasoning, you have to place yourself in the position of the other. And if there was one theme today, and certainly in my life in 2016 and moving forward in my life, is the importance of the other. And what is he or she thinking? Or what is he or she want? As opposed to what I want or what I think.

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  And by the way, you have to do this in chess. You know, you're playing against an opponent who also has plans. In fact, plans diametrically opposed to yours. And so it's well to take the other person in mind and what they're planning.

• 1:29:23Tim Ferriss?

  We're going to jump back to that bookmark that I set a while ago. The depressive, ongoing depressive period, intermittent episodes, and then about a decade ago or since.

• 1:29:35Speaker 02

  A lifting.

• 1:29:36Tim Ferriss?

  A lifting. Did anything correspond to that?

• 1:29:39Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:29:40Tim Ferriss?

  Were there any things you introduced or removed?

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  I think there was, at that point in my life, so this is 2007, I, I just made an abrupt decision to, to move away from everything in the past, that I had made many mistakes. Gosh, I've made so many mistakes in my life, but, but I, to, to, to, to re, to go back to first principles and fundamentals and, and, and by the way, I turned my back on, on, on a couple of successful careers and, and decided to embark on, on a new one and, and to set myself up as a advisor to, to, to major hedge funds.

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  And so I, I think it was a decision, a break from the past and, and a conscious one. And I think that was, that was the marker.

• 1:30:39Tim Ferriss?

  Now, let's just say you decide that on a macro level to break from the past and many things in the past. Let's say you do that after dinner one day, you go to bed. How is your next day different? Are you separating yourself from contact with certain people? Are you identifying when old thought patterns come up and stopping and trying to replace them? What, what is, what is the difference between?

• 1:31:07Speaker 02

  Well, you know what the difference is? We talked about it when, when, when we were walking Molly earlier. So again, you're listening, so you, you, the, the, the, the, the audience, you, you just, you have to imagine this, we're walking Molly on, on the streets of San Francisco and in a, in a wonderful Sylvan Canyon enclave that, that I've never known about and where, anyway, Tim resides. And so we're walking Molly and.

• 1:31:46Speaker 02

  Molly, when we're walking on the left side of the street, you always want Molly away from the traffic. And so we're walking along and on the left side Molly is okay. But when we switch to the other side of the street, Molly has to be on your right side, which is again away from the traffic. And Molly, again, this is by way of metaphor. You said that Molly is more, it's a little more awkward for her. So she's got to be a little more conscious and thoughtful about what she does when we're walking on the right side of the street. And when I made a conscious break to end, I mean, I ended a relationship and I ended a business and decided to start anew.

• 1:32:32Speaker 02

  And you become conscious. You know, I think too much of our lives are on automatic pilot. And so like Molly walking on the right side of the street, she has to, it's a little different for her. So she becomes conscious of everything she does. And I think that's really important to be, to live consciously and mindfully. And one way to do that is to get yourself out of old ways of being. Take a new path to work.

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  I'm not saying you should be dramatic and everything as I didn't start anew. But you can, you can make little choices. And again, to live mindfully and consciously.

• 1:33:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Tim Ferriss?

  So that's the decision you made. And you've pointed out some very cool word origins, or I should say word components at the very least. And I always mix up etymology and entomology, but I'm pretty sure this is etymology.

• 1:33:43Speaker 02

  Etymology. We're not studying insects.

• 1:33:45Tim Ferriss?

  You're talking about if we're eating paleo, for instance, what would we, what would a new replacement for companion be? If companion, which if you were to look at this, let's just say, since I don't speak Latin, Spanish, comba with bread.

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  With bread.

• 1:33:58Tim Ferriss?

  Breaking bread with someone else. You know, what would the paleo equivalent of that be? Or matrix, the fact that if you look at matriarch or matrimony, there's a mother component, mother related.

• 1:34:11Tim Ferriss?

  The decision you made, and I might be making this up, but I don't think I am.

• 1:34:16Speaker 02

  I'll make it up.

• 1:34:17Tim Ferriss?

  Incision, decision to cut away.

• 1:34:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:34:20Tim Ferriss?

  The cutting away.

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  To decide is to cut.

• 1:34:23Tim Ferriss?

  To cut away.

• 1:34:24Speaker 02

  Like incision.

• 1:34:24Tim Ferriss?

  Correct. So the cutting away of relationship, business, all these things.

• 1:34:32Tim Ferriss?

  If, well, I shouldn't, I shouldn't project, but for myself to do something like that, it's very often something I know I need to do. It's something that on many levels I want to do, but I put it off for a very, very long time. I get close and then I.

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:34:47Tim Ferriss?

  Then I flinch and then I go back to my easier, automatic way of doing things. Or the devil that I know, the comforts that I'm afraid to replace because of the unknown. What led you to get to the point? And was there a certain conversation, a certain journaling exercise? Was there, what led you to finally?

• 1:35:07Speaker 02

  Make the break.

• 1:35:08Tim Ferriss?

  And make the break?

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  I, I think you just realized that.

• 1:35:17Speaker 02

  For me, I mean, it's different for each person. You're just, whether you're being authentic. And, and I realized I wasn't being authentic and I had to make a break and, and, and.

• 1:35:29Speaker 02

  And start a new life. And, and, and so I think authenticity is a big thing.

• 1:35:39Speaker 02

  It's hard to be authentic and, and.

• 1:35:43Speaker 02

  But it's, and there are challenges and, and, and I was going to say risks, but I, again, to go back, I don't know that there are risks if you play a game and the game is all about creating fun and delight for everyone around you. And. You know, this reminds me of a joke.

• 1:36:04Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:36:06Speaker 02

  I don't know if you've heard this one. So a guy walks into a bar and, by the way, this is a profound philosophical point that I'll make, but it'll only become clear once I tell you the joke. So this guy walks into a bar and.

• 1:36:21Speaker 02

  And goes up to the bartender and orders a drink and the bartender looks at him and goes, I, I haven't seen you in the bar before.

• 1:36:29Speaker 02

  And the bartender, the customer says, well, no, I just came to town. And the bartender goes, oh, well, what brings you down and what do you do? And he says, I'm a gambler. And the bartender says, really? And, and, and he says, yeah, I, I, I'm a gambler, a professional gambler. It's what I do for a living. And the bartender goes, really? You can make a living at that? And he says, yeah, I never lose. And the bartender goes, okay, give me a break. And the gambler guy, the customer says, yeah, no, I've never, I don't lose. And so the bartender goes, okay, give me an example. Make me a bet.

• 1:37:11Speaker 02

  And so the customer says to the bartender, look, I'm warning you, I'm a, I'm a professional gambler. I just warned you that I never lose. Are you sure you want to do this? And the bartender goes, absolutely. And he says, okay, I'll bet you $50. Hold on, I gotta make sure I get this bet right. I'll bet you $50 that I can bite my left eye. And the bartender rolls his eyes and slams down 50 bucks and, and goes, you're on. You're on.

• 1:37:48Speaker 02

  And so the, the, the gambler guy takes out his left eye and, and bites it in his mouth and, and pops it back in. And the bartender is furious, but the gambler guy says, I warned you and scoops up the money. And, and, and the, have you heard this one before? No. Oh, okay. So again, the payoff is really funny. And then I'll make the philosophical point about life. And so the bartender goes, okay, give me another chance. And, and the gambler guy says, look, I'm a professional. I just warned you. I just took $50. Are you sure you want to do this?

• 1:38:32Speaker 02

  And, and the bartender goes, yeah, give me another chance. And the, and the gambler guy says, okay, I'll bet you another $50 that I can bite my other eye.

• 1:38:43Speaker 02

  And the bartender goes, wait a second. Okay, I miss the fact that that one eye was glass. But there's no way that you're blind. I know you don't have two glass eyes. Okay, you're on. And he throws down 50 bucks. And by the way, other patrons are now circling around, watching what's going on and egging the bartender on. And so the gambler guy takes out his dentures and gently bites his eye, his other eye with the, with his dentures. And the bartender is steaming now because he's lost two bats. He's furious. And the gambler guy says, I warned you. And anyway, the gambler guy throughout the evening is getting drunk. He's buying drinks for everybody.

• 1:39:26Speaker 02

  He goes to the back of the bar. And then he comes back to the bartender and says, look, I'm going to make it up to you. I'm making another bet. And now the whole, the whole bar is around him. And, and so he says, I'll bet you $500 that I can stand on this bar, right here on the bar, stand up on one leg and you see that vodka bottle behind you? I can pee into that bottle and not a drop of pee will go anywhere else but that bottle. And the bartender goes, there is no way that that's going to happen. And he puts down 500 bucks and so does the gambler guy. So the gambler guy, and by the way, he's pretty drunk at this point. He can barely stand up.

• 1:40:09Speaker 02

  He gets up to the top of the bar, pulls it out and pees everywhere but the vodka bottle. Pee's all over the bartender and the bartender is laughing his head off. And so is everyone else, right? And, and the, the gambler guy gets, you know, does his, finishes his business and gets down off the bar and, and the bartender triumphantly grabs the 500 bucks from the gambler guy. And he says, ha, I, I thought you never lose. And the gambler guy says, I didn't. He said, what do you mean? I just took $500 from you. And he said, the gamer guy says, yeah, but you see that table, those guys back there, those college guys?

• 1:40:51Speaker 02

  I bet them $2,000 that I could stand up on this bar and pee all over you. And not only would you not object, you'd be laughing when I did it. And, and so, so, so the interesting thing there, talk about a hedged bet, right? The, as we were talking about hedge funds earlier, is that the payoff is, uh, there's a huge payoff. He lost the 500, but there was a much bigger payoff. And in life, if your focus is on the other person and delighting the other person, again, whether it's a job interview or a relationship, a date, or you're looking to get funding for your startup. Or pee all over him and give him $500.

• 1:41:36Speaker 02

  Right. But the payoff, the universe pays you back on the back end. And, and, and that's a faith. So that's, that's the gospel that I preach is the gospel of the other. And, and focus on the other and exclusively. And you'll get tremendous delight yourself. And, and, and the universe has a way of throwing you extra, uh,

• 1:42:08Speaker 02

  so much more than you could think. And I'll give you an example of magic. And I said before, the, the, it's something I, stop me if I said this to the vice secretary. Did I talk about getting a present for Warren Buffett? And then, and then the gallery? Okay, so, so I, I, I create a Christmas present for Warren Buffett. And I want to send it to him, right? And my pen pal. And, uh, and so I created a framed pack of Beaman's gum, which used to sell as a child. And so it took me, the Beaman's gum, for those of you who don't know,

• 1:42:48Speaker 02

  The company that made Beaman's gum went out of business about a decade ago.

• 1:42:54Speaker 02

  And Warren Buffett, when he was a child, used to sell it. And I tracked down on the internet, a candy collector, and asked him if he had a pack of Beaman's gum from like 50 years ago, like an old, ancient pack. And he said, I might in my warehouse in Montana. And sure enough, he found it. And I said, I'll pay any price for it. I bought it. And then I had a calligraphy write from small beginnings. Anyway, I had a framed pack of gum that I was going to send to Warren Buffett for Christmas. So this is December 20th or so, and I'm in a gallery in Tribeca. And the gallery owner says- New York City.

• 1:43:39Speaker 02

  New York City, yes, I'm sorry. And the gallery owner says, do you like the frame? It's just been framed. And I said, oh, this is so beautiful. He's just gonna love this. She doesn't know who I am and doesn't know who this is going to. It doesn't say for anybody. And I said, oh, how am I gonna get this to

• 1:43:59Speaker 02

  Nebraska?

• 1:44:02Speaker 02

  And she said, what do you mean? And I said, well, if I send it FedEx, I don't care how many times I bubble wrap it, the gum will fall off the frame, like it'll fall off the backing. It's shadow boxed, right? Right, it's shadow boxed, right. And I thought, oh, it's gonna, it has to be couriered. And I said, how am I gonna get it there? And she said, oh, I'll take care of that. And I said, oh, great, you know a delivery service? And she said,

• 1:44:28Speaker 02

  that'll deliver personally. She said, yeah, I'll take care of it. I said, well, what delivery service? Because I'd like to know, just for future reference. She said, oh, I'm sorry, I don't think, I'll deliver this personally. I said, what? I squinted at her, I said, what? She said, yeah, I'll take care of this, free of charge. I said, excuse me, this is Nebraska. Right? It's not like going to some fun location, like,

• 1:44:54Speaker 02

  with respect to those of you who are from Nebraska. I'm gonna get all kinds of hate mail.

• 1:45:00Speaker 02

  It's the winter, it's the winter. It's the winter, right, right, right, right. Why would you want to be going to Nebraska? And she said, she looked at me and she said, I'll do it for free. I can see how important this is to you.

• 1:45:15Speaker 02

  And I, I was so stunned and I just looked at her, young woman, maybe 28, 29. And I said, um, I said, you know, I can't let you do that. That's the best gift anyone's ever given me and I'm the world's best gift giver. And here I was, I got like, like.

• 1:45:31Tim Ferriss?

  You got one upped?

• 1:45:32Speaker 02

  I got one upped and I said, uh, I said, oh my gosh. Um, really, that's the kind of thing I would have said. And I said, I can't let you do that. I, I'll pay for you to do it. I'm not going to ruin the magic because there was some impulse in you that wanted to do that, to offer that to me. And I'm going to have to, I'll, I'll pay for the trip. So thank you. And, and that's an example of the magic. She didn't know who it was going to, uh, didn't know who I was. She just knew it was important to me. And in the, in the, because I was so focused on getting this present to someone that I

• 1:46:13Speaker 02

  cared about, and she could see that, she was swept into the magic. And that's an example of the magic that, that happens when you're just focused on someone else instead of yourself. And, uh, boy, I was humbled by that. I mean, wow, I'm, I'm really one upped in the, in the present giving department. So.

• 1:46:34Tim Ferriss?

  The magic of focusing on the other.

• 1:46:36Speaker 02

  On the other, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:46:39Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think you're a master of, and I didn't know the pre, let's say, I didn't, when did we, did we first meet? I'm not sure if it was 2014, 15.

• 1:46:51Speaker 02

  14, I think.

• 1:46:52Tim Ferriss?

  Probably 14.

• 1:46:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:53Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't, I didn't know the Adam pre 2014, but you, you strike me as an expert in what another podcast guest, Gabrielle Reese, Gabby Reese.

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:47:05Tim Ferriss?

  Called Going First. She said, go first. Yeah. I asked her if she, if she had any parting request for the audience, she said, go first, meaning smile first, make eye contact first, say hi first. You're very good at that. And I think that's part of eliciting the potential magic of, of that situation.

• 1:47:24Speaker 02

  Absolutely. When you're really.

• 1:47:29Speaker 02

  The secret to everything

• 1:47:33Speaker 02

  to creating in the world, whether it's creating a relationship or creating a business, I don't care what it is, is you have a vision of what's possible.

• 1:47:47Speaker 02

  And you

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  convey that vision to the potential partner, whether it's a business or a romantic partner, of what's possible. And you get them excited about it. And you get other people excited about it if it's a business and so on. And so, yeah, it's about having visions, positive visions of what's possible. You know, and this is 2017. And I'm, I think the world is in a very perilous place right now. But I'm very excited for the world because this is a fulcrum moment. And by fulcrum moment, I mean a moment when you can achieve great results maximally,

• 1:48:36Speaker 02

  leveraging whatever resources you've got. Like now is the time to act. And we get fulcrum moments in our lives as individuals and as countries and as a planet. And this is a fulcrum year.

• 1:48:55Speaker 02

  And we all sense it that great changes, positive or negative, we've got to be careful.

• 1:49:03Speaker 02

  And to seize the fulcrum moment, now is the time to press hard. And I think the world's got to do that with positive visions and excite. Again, it's all about the other. Excite everyone with a positive vision. And we can create magic in the world or not. And then we're in trouble. I'm really excited about 2017, for myself and for the world.

• 1:49:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:38Tim Ferriss?

  Before we wrap up, I think we might, we might have a date with a Russian bath in our future, but before we close up the conversation, do you have any parting requests for the audience, questions for the audience, suggestions for the audience, anything you'd like them to take with them?

• 1:49:57Speaker 02

  Well, that was a big one, that this is a fulcrum year. I'm telling you just intuitively, I know for myself, and I'm sure as you, the listener, reflect on your life, and there are great opportunities. The world is such tremendous beauty and possibility. It's so exciting right now, and yet everyone's focused on the negative, and instead focus on the other and positive and creating magic. Lean into each moment and each encounter, creating magic.

• 1:50:38Speaker 02

  And by the way, that's a great editing principle, like when you're in an, you're about to argue with a cab driver, or with your spouse, or with your best friend, or whatever, ask yourself, is what you're gonna say create delight in the other person or magic? And if not, don't say it.

• 1:50:56Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I saw you do that last night with a, with a hostess at a restaurant, when the restaurant was fully booked up, it's raining outside, we walk in, and in fact, it wasn't we, it was just the two of us walked in, because we had, we had another party with us waiting in the Uber, because we didn't think it would be possible potentially to get a table.

• 1:51:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:51:21Tim Ferriss?

  And I don't remember the exact wording that you used, but you walked up and...

• 1:51:25Speaker 02

  To Bryn, I remember smiling at her, yeah.

• 1:51:28Tim Ferriss?

  And you just walked into the exchange, opening first, second, expecting us to get a table.

• 1:51:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:51:39Tim Ferriss?

  And lo and behold...

• 1:51:41Tim Ferriss?

  She said, I feel like your chances are very good after 30 seconds of Adam turning on the charm and then called, called their whole party in and a few short minutes later, after some, a little bit of me drinking wine and all of us drinking sparkling water, we got arguably the best table in the house.

• 1:52:00Speaker 02

  It was the best table in the house.

• 1:52:02Tim Ferriss?

  It was the best table in the house.

• 1:52:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And because I just could, really, I still remember, it was just about creating some fun for her and she realized we were fun people and fun energy and damn straight she was going to give us a table.

• 1:52:17Tim Ferriss?

  Shazam.

• 1:52:18Speaker 02

  Shazam. Yeah.

• 1:52:21Tim Ferriss?

  Adam, I always love our conversations and many more ahead.

• 1:52:27Speaker 02

  Our conversational parkour.

• 1:52:29Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly.

• 1:52:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:52:30Tim Ferriss?

  Conversational parkour, which is my favorite kind of parkour because I can't damage my knees. And is there anywhere you would like people to learn more about you online or elsewhere? Website, anything else that you'd like to mention?

• 1:52:43Speaker 02

  Well, they can always get in touch with me through my, my website, Robinson Global Strategies. There's a contact form there and they want to talk about global strategy or, or magic. They can always drop me a line and, and I'll respond.

• 1:53:02Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Well, on that note, I think this is a great place to, to temporarily table this ongoing conversation that we have. And for everybody listening, anything that we mentioned, if it is linkable on the internet, you can find all of the resources and whatnot at the show notes with every other episode. And those can be found at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast, all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 1:53:37Tim Ferriss?

  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? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is 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 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.

• 1:54:20Tim Ferriss?

  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 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by 99designs. I've used 99designs for years for all sorts of graphic design needs. Whether you need a logo, website, book cover, or anything else, 99designs was created to make great designs accessible to everyone and to make the process of getting designs much, much easier. So when I first started out, for instance, testing prototype covers and getting prototype covers for the 4-hour body, I want the contest drop. That is one option.

• 1:55:03Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:55:47Tim Ferriss?

  And I haven't shared it yet, but we also got some incredibly good, really some of the best illustrations I've ever seen from using this one-to-one project service with a handful of different designers and illustrators. It blew my mind. 99designs makes this all very easy and efficient. So you can check out the Tao of Seneca design and other work that I, and your fellow listeners for that matter, have done on 99designs at 99designs.com/tim. Again, that's 99designs.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is the future of financial advice. They've become incredibly popular among my friends in Silicon Valley and across the country because they provide the same high-end financial advice that the best private wealth

• 1:56:32Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:57:13Tim Ferriss?

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