#382: Safi Bahcall — On Hypnosis, Conquering Insomnia, Incentives, and More

Safi Bahcall (@SafiBahcall https://twitter.com/SafiBahcall) is the author of Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries https://www.amazon.com/Loonshots-Nurture-Diseases-Transform-Industries/dp/1250185963?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, which debuted #3 on Wall Street Journal’s bestseller list. Loonshots describes what an idea from physics tells us about the behavior of groups and how teams, companies, and nations can use that to innovate faster and better. Safi received his PhD in physics from Stanford and his undergrad degree from Harvard. After working as a consultant for McKinsey, Safi co-founded a biotechnology company specializing in developing new drugs for cancer. He led its IPO and served as its CEO for 13 years. In 2008, Safi was named E&Y New England Biotechnology Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2011, he worked with President Obama’s council of science advisors on the future of national research. In this episode, we talk about many things we haven’t covered before, including hypnosis, conquering insomnia, thoughts on depression, optimizing incentives, and much more. You can also listen to my first interview with Safi at tim.blog/safi https://tim.blog/2019/03/15/safi-bahcall-loonshots/. Please enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by Peloton https://www.onepeloton.com/, which has become a staple of my daily routine. I picked up this bike after seeing the success of my friend Kevin Rose, and I've been enjoying it more than I ever imagined. Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right to your home. No worrying about fitting classes into your busy schedule or making it to a studio with a crazy commute. New classes are added every day, and this includes options led by elite NYC instructors in your own living room. You can even live stream studio classes taught by the world's best instructors, or find your favorite class on demand. Peloton https://www.onepeloton.com/ is offering listeners to this show a special offer: Enter the code you heard during the Peloton ad of this episode at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. This is a great way to get in your workouts, or an incredible gift. That's onepeloton.com https://www.onepeloton.com/ and enter the code you heard during the Peloton ad of this episode to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. This episode is also brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim, which offers a smarter system for the hiring process. If you’ve ever hired anyone (or attempted to), you know finding the right people can be difficult. If you don’t have a direct referral from someone you trust, you’re left to use job boards that don’t offer any real-world networking approach. 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• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  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

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:10Tim Ferriss?

  I tend to use a lot of the classes on demand and have four to six of them that I've bookmarked and use over and over again. There are up to 14 new classes every day with thousands of classes on demand, and there are a variety of workouts to choose from. 45-minute classes, 20-minute burns, hip-hop, rock and roll, low-impact, or high-intensity. Pick the class structure and style that works for you. Peloton has an amazing roster of incredible instructors in New York City. They really do have great instructors of every possible personality and style. And you can find one that you love, no matter what you're in the mood for. Personally, I use Matt Wilpers a lot, but I use a bunch of them. I'm promiscuous and enjoy classes from a lot of their instructors. With real-time metrics, you can track your performance over time and continue to beat your personal best.

• 1:55Tim Ferriss?

  I did not think the gamification would work for me, and they really hit the nail on the head. It does work, at least for me, tremendously well to keep me pushing consistently. So, discover this cutting-edge indoor cycling bike that brings a studio experience to your home. Peloton is offering listeners of this podcast a limited time offer. Go to onepeloton.com, that's spelled O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N dot com. Enter the code TIMPODCAST, all one word, at checkout and get $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. Get a great workout at home anytime you want. Go to onepeloton.com and use the code TIMPODCAST to get started.

• 2:38Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Hiring can be hard, really hard, and it can also be super, super expensive and painful if you get it wrong. I certainly have had that experience firsthand multiple times, and I am not eager to repeat it. So I tried to do as much vetting as possible on the front end. And today, with more qualified candidates than ever, you need a solution. You need a platform that helps you to find the right people for your business. LinkedIn Jobs does exactly that. More than 600 million users visit LinkedIn to learn, make connections, grow as professionals, and more than ever, discover new job opportunities. In fact, overall, LinkedIn members add 15 new skills to their profiles and apply to

• 3:22Tim Ferriss?

  35 job posts every two seconds. That's a crazy stat. LinkedIn does the legwork to match you to your most qualified candidates so that you can focus on the hiring process, getting the person into your company who will transform your business. They make sure your job post gets in front of the people with the right hard skills and soft skills to meet your requirements. They've made it as easy as possible. So check it out. To get $50 off of your first job post, go to LinkedIn.com/Tim. Again, that's LinkedIn.com/Tim to get $50 off of your first job post. Terms and conditions apply. But check it out. LinkedIn.com/Tim.

• 4:08Tim Ferriss?

  Well, hello, my cute little Magui, ladies and germs, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to interview and attempt to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the skills, the habits, the routines, all of those things that help them to do what they do. And my guest today is a repeat guest, a very popular guest, Safi Bahcall, S-A-F-I, last name B-A-H-C-A-L-L, @SafiBahcall on Twitter and Instagram. He is the author of Loon Shots, subtitle, "How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries." And he's done at least two of those things himself, so he knows of which he speaks.

• 4:51Tim Ferriss?

  Loon Shots describes when an idea from physics, he's a physicist among other things, tells us about the behavior of groups and how teams, companies, and nations can use that to innovate faster and better. The book debuted number three on Wall Street Journal's Bestseller list, and you can listen to my first episode with Safi at tim.blog/safi. In this episode, we talk about all sorts of things we haven't covered before, including hypnosis, he knows a ton about that, conquering insomnia, thoughts on depression, optimizing incentives, and much more. But first, just a little bit more on Safi, if you haven't heard the first episode. Safi received his PhD in physics from Stanford and his undergrad degree from Harvard. After working as a consultant for McKinsey, Safi co-founded a biotech company specializing

• 5:35Tim Ferriss?

  in developing new drugs for cancer. He led its IPO and served as its CEO for 13 years. In 2008, he was named Ernst & Young's New England Biotechnology Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2011, he worked with President Obama's Council of Science Advisors on the future of national research. He's a heavy, also a great guy. And related to this episode is a documentary, which I believe I mentioned in the conversation itself, but Trip of Compassion. Trip of Compassion is the most impactful documentary I've probably seen in the last five years, and I highly, highly encourage everyone to check it out. It's incredibly important, and the short length that'll take you there, I don't earn a penny from it, is tim.blog/trip. Again, that's tim.blog/trip.

• 6:20Tim Ferriss?

  I encourage everyone to check it out. So, without further ado, here is the incredible Safi Bahcall.

• 6:30Tim Ferriss?

  Safi, welcome back.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Thanks, really glad to be back.

• 6:33Tim Ferriss?

  And I thought we could start with a chapter of your life and a capability that I know nothing about, and that is hypnosis.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 6:47Tim Ferriss?

  Where does hypnosis enter the stage and why hypnosis?

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Oh, man. So, um, this is, uh, I don't think I've talked about that anywhere. In fact, I think a lot of people don't know that I studied that. And, um, I'm glad this is just between you and me. So this doesn't get out to like, oh, he's the hypnotizing CEO or something like that. So nobody will ever use that phrase on me ever. So that's good. No, it began about, well, it started with a, it started with a Thai food truck.

• 7:19Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  So about, when I was in grad school, maybe 20 years ago, I was in, uh, at Stanford in the physics, they, they really didn't have any good food, like anything that was sort of edible around. And, uh, kind of across the campus, there was this Thai food truck, which was awesome. It's like my mouth is watering still thinking about it. It was just like great Thai food trucks. I used to trek across and it was parked right outside the psychology building. And so on my, you know, three or four times a week, I would trek it. One day I saw a, a sign outside a door that said hypnosis class. And I was like, what's that? Like hypnosis is this like freaky thing with like, you wave something and people go, you

• 8:05Speaker 03

  know, bark like dogs or something, right? So why, you know, it's Stanford and it's like, so I went in, at some point I just got curious, I peeked in and there were all these like really tall, big, super athletic looking people, not what I expected peering into like a door that said hypnosis. It turns out it was like half the Stanford football team. So I'm like, now I'm getting curious, like, why is half the Stanford football team studying hypnosis? So eventually, after probably three or four more walks, you know, Thai food lunches, I go in and I sit down, and it's being taught by a physician from the Stanford Medical School who had written one of the classic books on hypnosis. And he starts by kind of debunking some of the myths around it, that, oh, this is kind

• 8:50Speaker 03

  of freaky thing, and it's actually a very natural, um, state. And there's a very important evolutionary reason we have developed this state to, uh, allow ourselves to be hypnotized. What hypnosis is, as he explained, is, in ordinary life, there's something called the magic number seven. As you sit there, or as I sit here, or as anybody sits down in your audience and imagines the world around them, they can kind of be aware of seven, roughly seven different things around them, plus or minus two. The famous article, the magic number seven, plus or minus two. Hypnosis is really the state of bringing that down to one. You're just focused on one thing.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  And it turns out, everybody, practically everybody, has the ability to go into a hypnotic trance. Why? Why does that exist? There's a very interesting reason, evolutionarily, why it makes sense. If you are being chased by a tiger, and the tiger has, you know, clawed a little bit of your leg, and it's incredibly painful, you really only want to be focused on one thing, getting away from that damn tiger. You don't want to be focused on, oh, look, there's a nice bird, or what did I have for lunch yesterday, or what might be dinner tomorrow, or, oh, my leg hurts. You just want to be focused for your survival on that one thing. And that's what hypnosis is. It's just learning how to focus on one thing.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  And in the case of, I got interested in it because I had trouble falling asleep. I would just have racing thoughts in my brain all the time, and I'd end up, like, thinking about them for a couple of hours. And I wondered, oh, maybe I can- For a couple hours? Well, it felt like a couple hours. You know, so I, decades of the same thing, so. Yeah. If, I don't know if it was actually a couple hours, it would feel like a couple hours. I would just have these racing thoughts, and I was like, well, maybe this is a tool, the self-hypnosis, uh, tool. So I started getting curious about it, and reading about it, and taking this class from this physician, I actually forgot his name now, but, um- And why were all these athletes there?

• 10:56Speaker 03

  Because that state of incredibly heightened focus is the same thing great athletes do. So if you are a baseball player and you are on the, you've got your bat in your hand and you're looking at the pitcher, everything is disappearing except that one baseball. And that baseball will seem as large as a big pumpkin to you. That's a state of complete focus. Or if you're listening to music and, I mean, this is why hypnosis and trance induction is so familiar, because we all go into this state of very heightened focus. If you're listening to music or you're deep in a book

• 11:38Speaker 03

  and when someone has to call your name a couple of times and then you just sort of shake your head and snap out of it, you are in a trance. You were completely focused on just that one thing. And that magic number seven plus or minus two in the world around you had just narrowed down to one. So what's hypnosis? Hypnosis is helping someone get into that one. And that's what a good hypnotherapist does, is he induces that trance. And it's not with like a magic, so I learned how to do it and then started practicing over, you know, a year or two with friends and eventually for myself and discovered it's amazing. Firstly, it's completely real. It's amazing what you can do with hypnosis. It probably changed my life.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Firstly, it developed some tricks that, you know, allow me to get to sleep in 30 seconds, some fast tricks.

• 12:29Tim Ferriss?

  Well, okay. Let's, let's, let's talk about the sleep and then I'd love to talk about just induction more broadly, but.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Sure, so the, you can do trance induction. There are many different forms of trance induction. And the masters of this are very good at identifying what forms of trance induction work with what, with different types of people. Cause there's, the idea is, oh, let's just do X, but that's actually not true. There are different personality types and different. So in and of itself, it's kind of a fascinating exercise. And then you do it with yourself. I was most interested in self-hypnosis to actually really, just to help me get to sleep. So, uh, over the years, I, I, I practiced it with friends on hypnotizing others.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  And, uh, I mean, really just for curiosity, to see what it could do and how real it was. And it was just, it was clearly very real. Um, and then on myself, it's kind of like experimenting on myself, on my own mind and guiding your own thought patterns and identifying what little tricks work with your own mind. And eventually found a couple of tricks that, um, are incredibly effective for the, the question that I started with, which is how do you go to sleep quickly? So, there is the, the short and easy, which works maybe sixty, seventy percent of the time. And there's the sort of guaranteed home run, sort of the, the big guns, takes a little bit longer, but it works essentially a hundred percent of the time.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  So, the, uh, short and easy is, um, I've actually shown, uh, told a couple of people this trick and it's helped them a lot. And it's kind of like a, for those people who have a lot of racing thoughts, it's almost like a jujitsu move, or I, I studied a lot of aikido. So it's aikido is you use your opponent's energy, uh, to achieve what you want. Um, so what you do is you close your eyes and whatever comes, whatever visuals you see, you start to really get curious about them. You might, it doesn't matter what pattern you see. You might see some, you might see it, the vague images of a chair and you say, well, what does that chair look like? What's its texture? Is it moving? Is it floating? Is it spinning around?

• 14:48Speaker 03

  Is there something on it? And because your mind is racing, that object, whatever that object is, it might be a chandelier, it might be just weird images, they'll start to change in your mind. And you just get curious. What's it gonna change into next? And the reason that's sort of like a jujitsu or a kikin move is all those racing thoughts, all those firing neurons get redirected to that object. Because it gets curious, like, really, what's it gonna change? That's so wacky. Like, what is it gonna change into? And then, the object starts to take, go from this like amorphous thing that's very far away, to coming clearer and clearer and closer to your mind and sharper and sharper. And the sharper and sharper it becomes in focus, the more you're getting deep in trance.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  The more you're letting the waking world go by. And you just keep asking, well, what's it gonna change into next? I have no idea. Let's follow it. So that works a good fraction of the time. And it just calms you. It just takes all those racing thoughts and redirects them to that one object. And if you find yourself strained, your mind's strained, just redirect it. Well, where was that object? What's it gonna do next? Let's get really curious. And there's so many things to add. What colors are it? Is it sparkling? What's its texture? Is it gonna morph into something? Oh my god, there's my father. Or there's, you know, and just watch it. And the more you watch it, the more it crystallizes, the more you're going deep into trance and you leave the waking world behind.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  If you are, I'm a little more visual. If you have, you're more auditory and you tend to hear kind of a dialogue in the back of your head, there's trick number two. This is a little bit of a weird, I actually haven't told anybody this trick. Again, so glad it's just between you and me. I ask the audio generator in my brain, which is, you know, whatever audio engineer is popping forth, that little audio inner dialogue, to focus on generating a random double-digit number between one and a hundred. So why double-digit? Well, single-digit is not a really difficult enough task. One, three, four, five. It doesn't really engage your auditory engineer very, inner auditory engineer very much.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  Double-digit is just, you know, just enough of an effort that your audio engineer can't play some irritating, keep you awake dialogue and do that other task. It has to pick one or the other. And why random? Well, if you just do twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five sequence, it's kind of boring. And then your audio engineer can go back to that really irritating voice that was keeping you awake.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  So by asking your audio engineer to do this task of generate a random double-digit number and then to keep the audio and the video engineers in your head that are generating this noise busy, you assign them the task of seeing those numbers. So I kind of imagine like a cannon launching these numbers in the sky and watching them. Twenty-two, seventy-six, fifty-seven. I feel like people listening are gonna think I'm crazy, but this actually really works. It's like all those sort of inner racing thoughts, you just take them away from their tasks that they were doing, which was keeping you up, and you focus them on tasks that you would rather have them doing, tasks that are actually helping you get to sleep faster.

• 18:08Tim Ferriss?

  Wow. I love that. Have you found anything else, actually before we get to anything else that has helped your sleep besides hypnosis, what are some of the more common or more effective induction techniques? So if it's not swinging a pendant in front of someone, which it could be, I'm not saying that isn't an option, but what are some of the different induction techniques that apply to different people?

• 18:39Speaker 03

  There's so many different induction techniques. There's a relaxation technique. Let's start by focusing on a part of the body and saying, notice this, how it's relaxing, and then going up the body slowly and notice how that's slowly relaxing as we're talking about it. And then I want you to imagine a color. It's sort of green maybe, and as that color is spreading up your body, it's just getting more and more relaxed each part of your body. And I want you to, and then you go and mark up the body, especially around the neck muscles or the face muscles, and you need to acknowledge, if there's anything going on around them, you acknowledge that and then bring them back to the relaxation

• 19:20Speaker 03

  technique. Then there's the counting down from ten to one as you're walking down, you know, a set of stairs, or as you're floating into a cloud. And then there's the, I want you to imagine, you know, pick someplace you're very comfortable, and as I count from ten to one, I want you to notice, you know, let's say you're on the beach, I want you to notice the sand between your toes, I want you to notice what's around you, and you just get them to that place. All of these are different induction techniques and they're, they're pretty standard induction techniques. If you look at any of the good hypnosis books. What I actually found amazing is some people can do it with just shaking your hand. It, it's actually incred- really great, uh, master therapist at this.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  You interrupt a standard pattern, like you go to reach across to shake somebody's hand. They're expecting to reach it. You pull aside at the last second and you interrupt them and you say, drop. And they just like some, that you shock, you do some unexpected shock to an interrupting a natural pattern. And you just sort of drop them into a trance state. Uh, I can't do that, but I've seen that it's just, it's incredibly, it's kind of mind boggling to see. And it, it really works when you practiced it a lot and you get good at it. Uh, you can help people go into the zone where they're totally focused on the ones like a great athlete is to.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  And that, I mean, like I said, that's why athletes studied, cause it helps them get into that zone. And when they are there, they're focused on your voice. So the hypnosis part is because at that point you can make suggestions. And they, and those suggestions become realized in their body.

• 21:01Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the best applications of hypnosis? Because there's, there are, it could be nearly everything. There could be a smaller subset. It just makes me think of, for instance, you have platelet-rich plasma injections, for instance, for various types of soft tissue pathologies. And turns out, doesn't appear to work uniformly well in different joints. Even though in the, the layperson's mind, in my mind, it's like, okay, joint is kind of a joint. It's composed of the same stuff. Turns out in, as it, as it relates to outcomes, just not to be the case, right? There, there are, there are certain types of pathologies that are really well suited to PRP.

• 21:44Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the better applications or, uh, more effective applications of hypnosis?

• 21:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a great question. And I think there is that common view out there that you can use it to solve problems, um, or, uh, address pathologies. And that is the case and I'll talk about them. I actually found the, the far more interesting use of it. And I'll, uh, I'll, I'll give some examples, actually a bigger gun technique. I gave you this sort of this short. Cute, quick trick techniques for going to sleep quickly if you have a racing mind. But I'll give you the bigger gun one, which has far broader implications. It's essentially about guiding your own thought patterns, being in charge of what's going on in your mind, taking control of what's happening in your mind. And these sort of tools give you the techniques to essentially create...

• 22:32Speaker 03

  The way I think about it is meditation is like a... Meditation is like a volume control on a radio. You can dial down stuff. Learning to guide the thought patterns in your mind is like creating a new station, your own inner playlist for your mind, for whatever you think is... It's like creating your inner Pandora. So one thing is you just... I think meditation is a very useful tool, but it's just a dial-up, dial-down kind of thing. The other one is about creating a playlist. So you can use it either to optimize, or become more effective, or...

• 23:15Speaker 03

  I think the most effective tool is, in some ways, to create inner peace, or inner calm. And I'll come back to that. You asked about a more... Something I hear about often, which is how to treat certain pathologies. And I think what people have found, and this is where hypnosis or hypnotherapy kind of morphs with CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy, for certain things like fear of heights, or fear of... Or certainly for quitting smoking, a really good master hypnotherapist can be incredibly effective for that. Or, in some cases, over-in eating, or basically bad habits.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  It just gives you a new set of tools and techniques for going in and quickly reversing a bad habit. For example, creating an association. You always finish a plate of food. Why? And so I actually did this with, did this a few times to the, back then. Why? Well, it turns out you, really good hypnotherapists can go in there, find out what association do you, when you see a plate, what's the trigger? What happens? Well, it turns out when I was a kid, my mom always told me to finish a plate. So I always, you know, finish a plate. Well, let's go re, just, let's twist that trigger around. Now, when you see a plate, I want you to imagine it half-full, and that's the end. And let's

• 24:37Speaker 03

  just replay that video all the time. So you, you can in about, you know, a 30-minute session, take control of your brain and just change a trigger. So for those kinds of relatively quick fixes, hypnotherapy is very effective. It's not effective for serious biochemical disorders like depression or schizophrenia, that, that it won't work. But for sort of more common sort of ingrained habits or bad habits, or things that are very difficult to change, it can be very effective. Hmm. The other one which I found even more fascinating is for achieving some level of inner peace. And I'll give you an example. I was just fascinated the first few years.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  It's been a long time since I thought about it. Well, let's start with a going-to-sleep example. If, if those quick tricks don't work for you, this kind of approach gives you, this sort of bigger gun approach will give you a sense of what I mean by taking control of your brain. So if, if those tricks don't work, here's what you do. You personify each of the thought patterns that are racing through your head. And here's what I mean. Do you have something about family that you are stewing about? So that's Mr. Family. Do you have something about finances? Oh, should I have made this investment? Oh, should I have not made this investment? Oh, I'm running low on this in my bank account? Or what am I gonna do about this check that's coming in? Or is it something about work?

• 26:02Speaker 03

  Oh, my boss said this to me today. Let's do about that for 49 minutes, you know? Or, you know, my significant other said that. Is he or she really thinking this? Or really think, let's do about that for another 57 minutes and replay that videotape for 57 minutes? Or my parents this, or my kids that, let's worry about that problem. And then cycle back to the finances and cycle back. And you give each of them a character? Give each of them a character. Whatever you wanna name them. Now you put them around a table.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  And you are the chairman of that board. And you say, you start by assuming positive intent. The character that's doing about the work, you thank them for their thoughts and you say, "Thank you for raising those things because that may be helping me and you may be playing that videotape because you want me to learn a lesson." So let's talk about, and before I start, how many minutes do you think you need? I hear you that the reason you're replaying this video in my head is that something happened today and you're replaying that video and over. There's a very good reason that you're doing that and I appreciate that because you're watching out for me. You want me to learn the lesson from that video. So let's do this.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  This is the inner conversation you have with that one character and then you're going to repeat. How many minutes do you need to explain the lesson? Is, do you think you need thirty minutes? Well, not really thirty. About one, well, one is not enough. So then you end up with like, "Let's take two minutes and we're just going to listen to it." You analyze the video and say, "Oh, here's what you're trying to tell me. It's this lesson. I said this stupid thing to my boss. I really shouldn't do that. In this situation, here's what I should do." And then you ask that engineer or that character who's playing that video, work video, over and over and over where he said some dumb thing. "Did I get the lesson right?" "Yes." "Was that good?" "Yes." "Do you want to keep going or was that enough for tonight? Do you think we should get some rest?" "No, we're done." Boom, sits down.

• 28:02Speaker 03

  Then you go to the next, the one that's doing about what you happened with your significant other or spouse or whatever. Let's, and you're replaying some stupid video of some stupid thing that you did and shouldn't have done. Let's go through that. How many minutes do you need? You converge and agree and you go, "How many minutes?" You give that character your full attention. You thank, and you start by thanking it for watching out for you. Assume positive intent. Instead of making enemies with your thoughts and trying to suppress them, you become partners with them, friends with them. And now you walk through, one by one, each of the three or four or five characters that were... Playing videos, or, or sounds, or, or, or audio about stuff that happened that day that you are stewing about, and you just walk around the table.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  And as soon as you're done, as soon as the last person says, "Okay, I'm done", you feel this like incredible calm. And then you just go to sleep. Because these guys are done. These are the guys who were playing video or audio in your head, and they are done. And then at the end of that, when you've gone around the table, you say, "Is there anybody else that feels like they have something they want to..." And you actually, strangely enough, you go, "Oh, well, you know what? There was an email that I got, and there's Mr. Email Guy, about shit that I need to do tomorrow, that's like replaying, "Oh, don't forget this, don't forget this." And then you negotiate, "Okay, let's hear you. You, let's hear you out. How many minutes do you want?" "Well, two."

• 29:29Speaker 03

  And actually, I'd really like you to write this freaking thing down, so you don't forget it. Like, "Okay, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take my little notepad here, and get an open. I'm gonna write these things down. Does that address your concern?" "Yes, it does." "Do you need to raise it again?" "No, I'm done. You can go to sleep now." And that's it. Then everybody in your head, all those little, and of course, we're creating these characters, but it's incredibly empowering to create those characters, because then you can address them, and instead of being in battle with your thoughts, you become in partnership with them. Because they are there for a reason. They are doing you good. They're trying to watch, the only reason they're replaying those videos

• 30:10Speaker 03

  in your head, or those audios, and they're trying to improve you. They're trying to say, "Hey idiot, learn the freaking lesson from this damn thing that happened today." And the reason they're replaying it? You haven't heard them. And then they're just gonna repeat, until they get acknowledged. Once they get acknowledged, whoosh, you watch them, sit down, shut up. They're done. And it's amazing, the first few times you do that, it's like magic, it's like, "Wait a minute, that video's not appearing in my head anymore." "Oh, that's why he was doing it. He just wanted me to get the freaking lesson, and be acknowledged. Now that I got the lesson, it just like completely dissipates." Anyway, that's just, I call that the chairman of the board, or the chairman of the mind routine.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  That takes a little bit longer. It works 100% of the time.

• 30:56Tim Ferriss?

  So, this, I love, and I want to ask you, uh, to dig in a little bit, because this-

• 31:04Speaker 03

  I didn't dig in enough there?

• 31:05Tim Ferriss?

  You did dig in.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 31:07Tim Ferriss?

  But, I want to get your opinion as we experience the background melody of fire sirens and so on, in Austin, Texas, nonetheless. Uh, the power of making friends with your thoughts. And bifurcating, or trifurcating, or identifying different characters, or creating different characters, that represent this, this psyche that you're contending with. Whether it's during insomnia, or because you are suffering with some type of debilitating conflict within your own mental experience of life.

• 31:49Tim Ferriss?

  And this, and I'm bringing this up because, uh, versions of this have been one of the most valuable things I have incorporated into my own life in the last few years. I have not worked with this particular format, but whether it's Jack Kornfield, who's been very, very instrumental in helping me to recontextualize anger, for instance, which was a default of mine for a very long time. There are exercises that, that he prescribed, or visualizations that are kind of close cousins of this. But the, the common ingredient is viewing these different characters,

• 32:34Tim Ferriss?

  validating them, thanking them, and-

• 32:41Tim Ferriss?

  That very often ends, or at least temporarily interrupts the pattern. Right? And I'm curious what you, as a very well-trained scientist, what you... The answer doesn't need to be scientific, but what does that say about the mind? Like, what does that say about the ego and the mind? That sort of splitting it up into these different characters has such tremendous power? Like, why is it so effective?

• 33:13Speaker 03

  Well, I think our mind is a tool for survival.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  And all of those, that stuff that's going on in your head is about survival. It's about enhancing the propagation of the collection of genes that's your body. And so, the thoughts that are going on in your mind are about learning lessons from stuff that's happened so that you can improve in the future and improve your probability of surviving. What's happened that's different in the last hundred years is the world has gotten more complex. There wasn't email and work job and spouse difficulties and, you know, Oprah and, you know, Letterman and Leno and Tim Ferriss, you know, all these things. What's happened in the last hundred years that we have not evolved to is just the flood of inputs.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  So, our brain is fine if all you have to think about is like

• 34:10Speaker 03

  running along the Sahara and finding, you know, a gazelle or whatever to eat. Let's learn the lesson from yesterday's hunt and apply it to tomorrow's hunt. And so, you have the videos of yesterday's hunt in your brain and you're like, "Okay, I got that. I'm gonna apply that to tomorrow's hunt." Fast forward to now and we've got, you know, 10,000 different inputs during the day. And our brain just hasn't evolved. And so, this is sort of a technique to keep pace with how to keep calm and how to keep centered and how to keep sane when you have such a flood of inputs. It's like, "All right, you, the brain, is trying to improve survival, which is a great..."

• 34:54Speaker 03

  Thank you for that, but we're flooded with inputs, so you're just flooding with outputs because there's just so many and that creates confusion. And the reason it's suboptimal is just because our brain has not kept pace with the the evolution of our body and the evolution of our brain has not kept pace with the rapid evolution of technology. So it's the technologies outstrip us. We have far more input that we are capable of handling. So this is just a technique for trying to keep it under control. Anger is a great example. So here's what I do with anger. I think of Michael Jordan. I think of anger as a gift. Why? I reframe it as a gift. Why? I think of a Michael Jordan example.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  Every time I get angry, Michael Jordan, in the later stages of his career, I remember reading an interview or a quote with him, someone said, you know, how do you think about being kind of an older player? He was in his, I don't know if he was in, he was in his mid 30s, I think. And, you know, surrounded by all these younger players, how do you like get up the energy? And he says, and I'm sitting on the bench before the game. I just think they say you are too old. They say you are too old. They say you are too old. They say you are too old. And he has that, he created that soundtrack. See, he's doing the same thing. He's dial, he's tuning his brain.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  He's creating anger. And then by the time the bell rings and he leaps off the bench, he is so fucking pissed off, he goes and he crushes the opponents at age 35 and they're all 10 years younger than him. Anger is a gift. You use it as fuel. So when publishers told me, this is, you know, when, you know, some agents or whatever, like, like, wouldn't even bother returning my phone call when I talked to them about, oh, this makes physics and business and history. And, you know, they kept doing this really irritating thing of like scheduling something and then like an hour before, yeah, can we do that two weeks from now? And then an hour before, can we do that a week from now? Fuck you. That really pissed me off. Like, if you're not interested, just say you're not interested.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  Don't keep like, I'm still angry.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  But you know what? I use it, anger is fuel. And I sit down in the morning, I think about that. Fuck you. I'm gonna make this the best goddamn book ever because of you. Fuck you. This, I'm getting a little carried away. That's how anger is a gift. It's, I think of the Michael Jordan example. Whether it's real or not, and I'm not really like infinitely upset about that. Maybe just a little. But you use it as fuel and then it's a gift. And you know what? I thank all the people who rejected me because they fueled me to make a better story and that, and work harder. So when I was training every eve, essentially training, it's like shooting, you know, three-point shots endlessly or shooting, you know, free throws endlessly.

• 37:56Speaker 03

  It's fuel. Like you imagine like, they say you are too old. Fuck you, I'm gonna do a hundred goddamn free throws. All right, so I'm gonna read, you know, every sentence of Nabokov and deconstruct everything, what he, what are those little tricks or tips, whether it's him or the, because fuck you. And so anger, when someone screws you over, it's a gift. And your job, your trick, is to figure out, how is it a gift? What are they helping you become better at? How are they providing you with fuel? They've just given you fuel. How are you gonna use that fuel? That's your job.

• 38:36Tim Ferriss?

  It reminds me of also Alexis Ohanian, who's one of the co-founders of Reddit. And in the early days of Reddit, they had some meeting with executive at Yahoo. And I think it was, I'm speculating here, but probably a phishing expedition on the part of Yahoo to figure out like, how can we clone these guys if they're doing something interesting? But it was couched in some type of strategic, kinda highfalutin language of import. And so they meet with this guy, and I assume it was a guy. And at some point, he says, after looking at their numbers, he goes, oh wow, you guys are a rounding error. And so Alexis and his team made a huge sign in the office that said, you are a rounding

• 39:20Tim Ferriss?

  error, and put it on the wall, so they would see it every day.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:24Tim Ferriss?

  But my question to you, then I do wanna ask you. About depression in a minute because it seemed like hypnosis might not be the best tool for that. So we'll come to that later. That's why I'm planting the seed. But I have used anger as fuel. So I have done that, but it became my default. Right? So I looked for reasons to get angry, to create the fuel to do things. How do you not slip into, you know, becoming the vessel full of acid that hurts itself more than anything it's put upon?

• 40:05Speaker 03

  Right. So I don't. So I use that whenever I feel a little incipient bud of anger. And then it just dials down the anger. So I, there, there are two ways to get fuel. One is that anger, as you say. But that in some ways, I think that's only useful when you're already angry or you're feeling the incipient. Really, it's a trick for not being consumed by the anger. It's for whenever you feel an incipient bud, you turn it into an opportunity. My real motivation is, I have a phrase that I keep in mind when I started, I got connected

• 40:47Speaker 03

  to a guy, an author named Richard Preston, who wrote, I don't know if you know, he wrote The Hot Zone, which was this huge bestseller, and then a number of other great books as a New Yorker writer. And we were talking, I was really beginning, and he just said, you know, Sophie, just make something beautiful. Don't worry about anything else. Really simple.

• 41:08Tim Ferriss?

  That's great advice.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  And I, I just like, whenever random stuff comes up, hey, could you do this thing? Or could you write, write that byline? Or could you do this interview? Or could you do blah, blah, blah? Or all these distracting things? Or is this marketing thing going well, well? Or is that? I'm like, you know what? Just, my job is just to make something beautiful. Not worry about anything else. And really, the whole time I was writing, I was, I kind of had that phrase, just make something beautiful. Don't worry about trying to please anybody. Don't worry about how this might go. And I didn't. I just was like, Let's make something beautiful that I could be proud of at the end. And so what motivated me was this kind of, um, kind of that phrase. Just make something beautiful. And that, that's what kept me going.

• 41:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the search for, uh, the, the search for or the recognition of beauty, for a lot of reasons, in the last handful of years has become a much higher priority. It seems to not necessarily be a solve all, but it covers a lot of bases. And it's, it's difficult for me to put into words why that's the case, but you're talking about plausible evolutionary explanations for why the ability to fall into a trance state seems to be nearly universal. And similarly, it's like, okay, well, why, why, why is the recognition of beauty or

• 42:34Tim Ferriss?

  even the concept of beauty something that seems to be universal? We don't have to get into that. That's getting pretty, pretty highfalutin', but, um, that, that desire to create or recognize beauty has become much more of a driver for me in the last five years, I'd say, in particular. And it's, it seems to check off a lot of other boxes. So rather than trying to check off 20 different things that I need or solve 20 different problems, if I have a compass that is pointing towards, right, creating something of beauty. But however you end up recognizing that yourself, it, it seems to really solve a lot for me.

• 43:18Tim Ferriss?

  Let's talk about an experience of not being able to see beauty. Mentioned depression earlier. How do you think about depression? What do people get right or wrong about it? I don't know if you've suffered from it yourself. And in all of your exposure to various types of treatments and methodologies and pharmaceuticals, what's out there that actually seems promising?

• 43:45Speaker 03

  That, uh, you know, that, that's a great question. I learned a lot about depression in the last few years that I knew nothing about. Um.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  You know, I'm very fortunate to not have had either depression in the family or experienced clinical depression myself. But what happened the last few years is I got to know somebody closely with depression and realized a lot of wrong things to do. That in fact, no matter how much I thought I either was self-aware or... There are just so many traps. In fact, one big trap that's incredibly common to people like, let's say, you and me, who are really looking to improve how we go about our life in the world. Let's find the things that you can do that will improve. Let's look on the bright side.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  Let's do this little cognitive change. And that, as it turns out, is exactly the wrong thing to do with depression. And I remember, I think I heard, I think it might have been Tony Robbins on your show, talk about, "Well, here are these techniques that I use to help motivate people and do these great things, which work phenomenal in that situation, with these people who are depressed, we should just do the same stuff." Some variant of learn to look at the glass as half-full. Look on the bright side, etc., etc., and just turn, change your mind to focus on the good stuff. And that's what I thought, maybe a couple of years ago. That is a disaster when you're dealing with someone with depression.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Why? It has... Depression is a biochemical. It's essentially a diseased or broken organ. It's no different than you sprain your ankle or you have trouble with your liver. You're having trouble with your brain. It's a biochemical trouble with your brain. And little quick fixes not only don't help, they make it worse. Why? When you suggest to somebody with serious clinical depression, "Hey, there's a glass. Why don't we, let's talk about where it's full. Let's talk about the water. Why do you just keep looking and talking about where it's empty everywhere around?"

• 46:04Speaker 03

  Because I look and I can take the exact same glass and talk about the water rather than the air.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  So when you say that to someone who is suffering real clinical depression, A, it invalidates their depression. It says, "What you're telling me is not valid because it's a real quick fix, and I should have known this quick fix, which takes fifteen seconds, and I've been fucking around for however long, whether it's years, or months, or weeks." So it invalidates them. It tells them that they're weak in character. It's not a biochemical problem, it's not like, you know, you sprained your elbow, or you have a liver problem, you have... You just have a weak personality, that's your problem. See, I have a strong personality, because I know how to look at the glasses half-full, and your problem is you have a weak personality, you're kind of inferior.

• 46:55Speaker 03

  It's just the worst possible thing you could say. And third, they're unable to do that. They do have... It's like telling someone who is... An example I was told recently, it's like telling someone who is infertile, "You know what, just think positive and you'll have a baby." How frustrating and irritating is that to hear? Just think positive. You have a physical biochemical problem that has nothing to do with how you're thinking about the world, and is not a quick fix. It's incredibly irritating, for all of those reasons. And it just makes you feel worse, like, not only can you not do these things, you've just been invalidated and told you have this inferior, weak personality,

• 47:37Speaker 03

  the person that you're talking to totally doesn't understand you. They are on a different planet. They think it's a simple, quick fix, and they just don't get that you are stuck in a deep brown soup, and cannot... There's nothing you can do to get out. It's like a disease that takes over your brain. And it just takes over. It's the depress... When you see this stuff, or you say this stuff, it's the depression talking, it's not you. And it is really no different than having any other damaged organ. It's just... It's like with PTSD, I did get to spend some time with people with PTSD, and it's a damaged organ. And that's okay.

• 48:20Speaker 03

  Everybody gets wounds, that's totally fine, it's totally normal. And what you could do for someone with depression is listen, and accept, and recognize.

• 48:32Speaker 03

  But don't say, hey, let's look on the bright side. That's literally the worst thing you can do. So that's among the things that I've learned.

• 48:38Tim Ferriss?

  Is there, so what can you do in that case? I mean, I certainly, as someone who has suffered from very severe depression, I mean, almost off myself in college, so I have some firsthand thoughts as well. But what, what have you seen to help in those cases?

• 48:55Speaker 03

  Well, definitely professional help.

• 48:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 48:57Speaker 03

  The last thing you want is your buddies or your friends saying, you know, here's some quick fix stuff. It just professional help because, I mean, there are people who spend their entire lives researching whether they're therapists or psychiatrists. And for many, it is amazing how effective pharmaceuticals are. I, you know, I'm in the drug discovery, drug development industry. I don't take a lot of drugs because, um, you know, they may have, I just don't. There are a lot of things of like, oh, you know what? Something aches, I'll get over it. No big deal. I don't really want to put stuff in my body. But I've just seen firsthand, like, and I know for many people with depression,

• 49:41Speaker 03

  even small doses of the right med literally will trans- because you really do have a bio, it's, it's a biochemical imbalance. It's like, you know, your shoulder, what happened? What do you call it when the shoulder falls out of the socket?

• 49:54Tim Ferriss?

  Shoulder dislocation or subluxation.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  Right. That's what happens with your brain in depression. It's just, no amount of talking about, hey, just think positive and it'll go back in the socket. No. You just need somebody to go and, you need somebody to put it back in the socket. And that's kind of what the med does. It's a little bit busted. And in some cases, the right med and the right time and the right dose and the right combination will just put that, pop that shoulder right back. And people will be like, holy cow. All of a sudden, the brown has dissipated and I see light everywhere. So. There are many techniques and many, and they're more in development and there's more coming, but meds, fortunately, there's, as you probably know, there's a handful of

• 50:41Speaker 03

  different therapeutic categories and so really experienced and very good medical doctor who specializes in this will figure out, and different ones will work for different people and we don't know why.

• 50:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 50:56Speaker 03

  We don't know why Class A works for this person and Class, but not for that person, but Class B works great for, so there are these different drug categories. So you really have to have someone who knows what they're doing and is willing to, and there's just very, it's not even very little, there's no way to know which one is going to work for you, but the odds that one of them will work is pretty good, or maybe even a combination. And then, yeah, there is some cognitive behavioral stuff that you can do, often in combination with the meds. And I think the clinical studies have shown that in combination with the meds, that can really improve the response rate compared to just baseline meds alone.

• 51:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I would, I would also reinforce a few things you've said and then add some, some color as someone who's spent a lot of time boots on the ground with this, both in the undesirable sense of having suffered from it, and people in my family have been sort of paralyzed by depression, but also having looked at different tools that are available. I would say the, it is true that you have genetic markers and you can have different software with different output, and that there are certainly seem to be sort of genetic

• 52:22Tim Ferriss?

  factors that predispose you to, say, bipolar depression. And when I, when I sequenced my whole genome, that was one of two things that was highlighted for me. They're like, we don't have much to say, there are only a few things, and one is you seem to be from one to 10 scale and 11 in predisposition to depression and then Alzheimer's, same, same. And I was like, okay, well, looks like I have some research to do. And that having been said, the, to draw an analogy.

• 52:56Tim Ferriss?

  If you have flat feet, as I do, for instance, the flat feet, lack of arches can cause a lot of pain. I've had pain since I was a kid, much like I've had bouts of depression since I was a kid. But there are,

• 53:09Tim Ferriss?

  without necessarily changing the flat foot directly, you could use orthotics. And so I think that there are, there are certainly pharmacological interventions that that work for a lot of people. I know people who've had their lives changed using SSRIs, for instance, as one class, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. No other people for whom SSRIs have had no effect whatsoever. And as an adjunct, just for people who are wondering what you might add to it, and I do think it's, in a sense, more helpful to have this self-directed than someone who is

• 53:53Tim Ferriss?

  well lecturing you, like you said. But Stoic philosophy, for instance, and it sounds very dry, I know it's thousands of years old, but there are some very

• 54:05Tim Ferriss?

  practical tools within that that have helped me, much like you trained yourself to become a better writer, to train myself to view the world differently. And that's true of, say, art classes, where suddenly you realize that you perceive concepts, and when you try to draw a tree, you're drawing what you think a tree is, rather than what you actually see. And I think that Stoicism can teach you to look at things differently, not saying it's sufficient in and of itself, and there are other tools, CBT also, which is, in effect, heavily influenced by Stoic philosophy. And then there are, and feel free to call

• 54:46Tim Ferriss?

  Beasame at any point, but there are also tools out there, more recently explored, say, like ketamine, as an example. And, you know, one of the theories out there currently is that possibly the reason why ketamine can be so immediately effective with, say, intravenous administration for someone suffering from acute suicidal ideation, very often done in a sequence of five or six infusions. Sometimes intramuscular, I would discourage anyone who looks into ketamine. I'm not a doctor, I don't play one on the internet, but nonetheless, it does have an interesting capture profile from an addictiveness perspective.

• 55:27Tim Ferriss?

  So people can get hooked on ketamine, which is why I wouldn't say take lozenges home. But the, you know, one of the theories is that part of the reason SSRIs take a few weeks to produce an effect for some people is that they're ultimately having an effect on, say, an MDA, where ketamine acts on it more directly. Ketamine is also interesting to me, along with some other therapies like psilocybin, for instance, which is being studied at Hopkins for treatment resistance to depression and elsewhere, which might go through phase three trials for that, or prospectively alcoholism.

• 56:07Tim Ferriss?

  What I find fascinating about these compounds, and for anybody listening, don't try to DIY this, I mean, psilocybin found in, say, psilocybe mushrooms is schedule one, so it's in the same class as cocaine and heroin. So the legal side effects can be substantial, and those are beyond debate. But the prospect that you could have, say, a five or six infusion sequence of ketamine, or two to three sessions with psilocybin, and have a duration of effect that is months long, is really interesting. Because the half-life of these compounds is, let's call it, well, in some cases, it's

• 56:49Tim Ferriss?

  going to be 30 minutes, depending on the route of administration with, say, ketamine, and then, let's just call it, you know, four to six hours or less with psilocybin, but nonetheless, the durability of effect can be on the range of months. So I don't want people to, and the reason I'm saying all this, understanding that I'm not a clinical psychologist, MD, or researcher, is that having struggled with depression for so long... There can be a hopelessness beyond the depression. And so I, I, I think it's, at least what I want to do is impart some hope to people

• 57:32Tim Ferriss?

  who are listening, as someone who has struggled with very severe depression for decades, but not experienced any major depressive episodes in the last four or five years, that there are tools available that can help you to sort of put orthotics on your flat feet. And that it doesn't have to be a sort of self-reinforcing pattern where you're depressed, and then you're depressed, you're depressed, and assume you're a broken toy that can never be fixed, and therefore, what's the point? There's this slippery, sort of logically compelling with faulty assumptions process that is really scary, that people can end up in.

• 58:17Tim Ferriss?

  So, for those people listening, I would just say that there are tools out there. You should see a professional if you're suffering from major depression, which I have done in a somewhat unorthodox way, but I have. And also to explore the tools that will supplement any type of pharmacological intervention or prescription that you would use, because there are resources that can help. And, yeah, so I'm talking a lot, but I just want to make two recommendations. The one is to take a look at a William Irvine book, which is on stoic joy, which for many

• 59:02Tim Ferriss?

  people seems like an oxymoron. So, William Irvine and his book on stoic joy, I think is worth taking a look at. There's also a book with a very clear but somewhat cheesy sounding title, which is How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie, which I've also found to be very... Helpful, and it's not going to change necessarily, well, I suppose it could in some fashion, sort of the the composition of your, it's not going to change your genetics, but it might change how you respond to your predispositions, so that it's not genetic

• 59:42Tim Ferriss?

  determinism, you're not doomed to the same response. You're just starting with, say, different attachment points on your like hamstrings and Achilles tendon. So you're not going to be Usain Bolt, but you can get faster and you can train with subpar attributes to develop capabilities that no one would expect, given where you started with your raw materials. So, in any case.

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  I think it's very hopeful that you, and thank you for sharing all that, I think it's incredibly hopeful that you suffered from severe depression, but have been free of a major episode. I mean, just that fact alone. So I'm curious to what would you, if you had to point to one or two things that made a big dip, that may have been responsible for turning the corner there, what would you point to?

• 1:00:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yep. I would point to a few things, and not all of which are things you can go get it righted or prescribed by your physician. The short, the short answer is, well, I'll give you a few, and these aren't necessarily rank ordered, once we get past pole position, but pole position is sufficient supervised administration, in my case, right, receipt of psychedelics to, and this is one theory, sort of down-regulate activity in the default

• 1:01:13Tim Ferriss?

  mode network, which is related to rumination and self-reference. So I, I, I, me, me, me, also seems to be, activity in the DMN appears to correspond to

• 1:01:29Tim Ferriss?

  Let's call it time travel. So what happens in the future, anxiety, what happened in the past, depression. And when that's subdued in some fashion, what many people experience, and this is one theory for why, say, psilocybin can have the effect it does on depression or end-of-life anxiety, is that it acts as a pattern interrupt where people can gain an observer perspective on their behavior without being stuck like on the edge of the vinyl record that's spinning around at high velocity. When you have that perspective, it's difficult, as you said, when someone's like, "Just look at the glass half-full." And when you're in the middle of like, "I'm broken, I'm never gonna be better, I'm depressed,

• 1:02:12Tim Ferriss?

  no matter what happens, I see, I see the glass is half-full, and I still think life is shitty, what's the point?" Right? People can see it, they can see the same thing. Exactly. And they can say, "Look, I know you are right." Exactly. "And yet, I can't fucking see it." And that's the problem. Exactly, right. When that audio engineer, as you put it, is, it just has that one track of self-loathing on repeat, or that one track of acute anxiety related to the "what if," you're not gonna hear anything else. But when you can zoom out to 30,000 feet, see the bigger picture, it is very common that people come out somewhat reformatted.

• 1:02:56Tim Ferriss?

  It's not guaranteed, and I know I'm talking about things that are not readily available, which is part of the reason why I'm spending so much time and money supporting research related to this, because the underground doesn't scale. That would be one tool. Another would be trying to identify coping mechanisms that actually exacerbate the condition you're trying to avoid. In other words, like, what are the, if you can't fix depression, which is a big mountain to try to climb at once, and I don't think it's very productive to say, "I want to defeat my depression." You can...

• 1:03:40Tim Ferriss?

  You can look at the antecedents of depression, or the ingredients, right? And potential triggers, like when do you tend to get depressed? Is it when you're tired? Is it when you go to bed too late and wake up too late and feel behind the eight ball from the moment you get out of bed? And these are personal examples. Does it correlate to consuming too many stimulants, too much caffeine, which leads to the sleep and so on? And then try to compensate for that by consuming more stimulants? Does it correlate to social isolation? Is it inversely correlated to exercise? And this is another thing where people who are depressed are gonna say, "Yeah, no fucking shit, Sherlock.

• 1:04:25Tim Ferriss?

  Like, I know these things, I just can't deal with them." The time to deal with them is in practice when you don't need the safety net, right? So for me, I began to put in place, and this is in combination, I should say, with meditation. And the most effective, specific meditation tool that I would recommend to people, and I have no stake in this, even though I gave him a nice quote, because I think he deserves it, is Sam Harris's app, Waking Up. And the reason I recommend that specifically is there is a progression, and there is a skill acquisition. It isn't just the guided meditation de jour that someone pulls out of a hat at the last minute, because they think it might be popular and get shared on social media.

• 1:05:10Tim Ferriss?

  It's a progression of skill development. And the reason I say this, that people should use that app or something like it, concurrently with trying to interrupt these antecedents, or facilitate the inversely correlated, the things that help, in other words, I'm being fancy, is that if you don't have the awareness of your state in the moment, it's very hard to catch yourself. Whereas if you train yourself to think of consciousness as the light that shines upon everything else that you are aware of.

• 1:05:51Tim Ferriss?

  And this is getting a little abstract. In the training, this becomes very, very understandable as a matter of direct experience. And you, you begin to separate yourself from the emotion. Right? If I am conscious and I can observe that I am hot. Well, it's, it's in fact, the observer is separate from the condition. So like, I am experiencing heat is a way you can reframe that. I am angry. Well, let's reframe that and rephrase it since, I mean, sort of the, our words are the limitations of our world, right? Like Wittgenstein paraphrase. The words are, the phrasing is very important. So you then get to the point where you can say,

• 1:06:35Tim Ferriss?

  I am experiencing anger rather than I am angry or I am an angry person. And if, if you feel then the lethargy and so on, you can recognize that that's leading you to a place that in the past would be a double espresso, triple espresso at 6:00 PM, which is going to end up keeping you up. Okay, I'm getting a little all over the place, but-

• 1:06:54Speaker 03

  Can I inject a thought about a trick that I've found that is super useful for that?

• 1:06:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Speaker 03

  I have this weird thing I do. I sometimes, I don't, haven't experienced like those that I know, the, the severe clinical depression. But especially late at night, I will find myself wallowing in a deep brown stew of thoughts. And it's, I recognize that, as one friend of mine said, that's what our life is like 24/7. It may exist in a few moments for you, but that's what I- What I do is I have a weird trick, which I think was like the mental hashtag. Where a thought bubbles up, and let's say it's self-criticism. I just cash, I do hashtag self-criticism. Like, oh. And as soon as I put the mental hash, I do the little hashtag, I'm like, oh yeah, that's

• 1:07:43Speaker 03

  what it is. And then like the power of it dissipates.

• 1:07:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  Or hashtag anxiety. Like I'm anxious about something coming up. I just do hashtag, and oh, that's what it is. And then the power of it dissipates. And when I'm stuck maybe in that kind of rumination loop, where I'm being critical either of myself or, or something going around me. And I realize, why am I doing, I'm just like feeling mental. I do hashtag FTFF. Filling time by finding fault.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  I tell you, I don't remember anything else. There's an acronym. And so do you, and I just, I get like some critical thought and like I'm getting angry like this thing didn't work out or that person did this and, and then I, why am I even, and then I do hashtag F D F F, oh, that's what I'm doing. I'm just filling empty time because I haven't taken charge of my inner audio engineer or my audio video and they're just playing this loop over and over. And then I, and the way I visualize it, and this comes from a book that probably influenced me more than any other on many of these aspects. And I'll tell you what that, it's called Joyful Wisdom. And I've probably given that book to more people than I can count.

• 1:08:55Speaker 03

  And it essentially captures the idea of making friends with your thoughts rather than trying to suppress them, making, understanding, and I'll, the example that's used there, the way I think about it is I am on a boat going down a river and the thoughts are like the little trees that I'm watching. And oh, there's an interesting thought, let's hashtag it. Boom, hashtag this thing. And then there's another one. Oh, let's hashtag that one. And it just, I find that personally very calming because it does what you're saying in a very, because I'm, I'm pretty visual. And so it just does that in a very visual way that the thoughts

• 1:09:38Speaker 03

  are separate from what you're feeling. So one of the ways that helps me just stay calm as the world is going nuts is I'm on that boat and like, oh, there's that thought going. Let me see what lesson I can take. If there's something useful I need to act on, if not, it just disappears behind my head as I move along the river. The wonderful example that's used in the beginning of that book, it's by a Buddhist monk. I think of it, I can't pronounce the name because I, you know, the last, it's something broch, Ming Poku Blublublai. Yeah. Ming Blublublublublai. The suffix rosh. Yeah. And it's a Buddhist monk who I think got labeled like the happiest man on

• 1:10:21Speaker 03

  the planet or something. But he opens with a story, there's also a very helpful lesson on death that I found.

• 1:10:31Speaker 03

  We can get to it later if you want, but he opens with this story of villagers who are going between their village, need to do an annual trip between their village and some distant neighboring village and they have to go through a forest each time. And every time they've been doing, they've been doing it for years, they get attacked by these bandits. And it's like this horrible thing, they get robbed and so forth, and they go to the village. And then coming back, they get attacked by, you know, a different group of bandits. And, you know, they're fighting and the bandits, you know, get, you know, injured or lose some lives. And then they get to... And then one day, one of the villagers says, as the bandits come and approach, the villager walks out and he says, you know, I, hang on, I got a suggestion for you.

• 1:11:16Speaker 03

  Instead of us fighting each time, why don't we make a, come to an arrangement? We'll give you 10% of everything we have, or whatever the number is. And you protect us as we make this journey. And all of a sudden, they achieve the journey in peace. It's better for the bandits, it's better for the villagers. The bandits don't have to lose any lives, they don't have to, uh, take any risk. They get a steady income. And so that's the metaphor for your thoughts. Instead of fighting them and trying to suppress them, how can you just turn that perspective around and say, oh, thank you for being here. Let's see how what you're doing is really helpful and let's work together.

• 1:12:00Speaker 03

  You're trying to have a better, if it's something that says, don't do this, thank you for being there, you're trying to protect me. Let's say you have two thoughts raised, you know, one side is the, you know, Mr. Red. And the other side is the Mr. Green. Rest, Red is, don't do that, it's very risky, very... Mr. Green's like, go for it, no risk, no, no pain, no gain. And they're kind of at war. Sit them down around the table. Let's hear you out. Let's hear, can you guys, let's come to an agreement. You're absolutely right, you're trying to protect me. You're right, and you are trying to say, listen, if you don't stretch a little bit, you'll never grow. Both are great points. Let's talk this through and let's come to an agreement. And you know what? By doing that, having that kind of inner dialogue, validating, starting, assuming positive intent.

• 1:12:44Speaker 03

  Thanking them for what they're trying to do for you. You may come up with some brilliant, let's say it's a Mr. Red and Mr. Green about making some, let's say it's personal life. Going ahead with this significant other. Mr. Red says, "No, no, no, I don't want to open up and be vulnerable." Mr. Green is like, "Absolutely, that's the only way forward." And then you just don't know what to do, you're being pulled to two sides. Let's sit down, is there, you might come up with some staged approach. Listen, where both sides agree, and then guess what happens? Inner peace. You're calm. So that's the benefit of this kind of joyful wisdom approach, or this inner dialogue, or personifying these characters. Why? It helps you achieve an inner peace.

• 1:13:26Speaker 03

  I can often see that on people's faces. So when I see somebody, you know, where their face is sort of very tense, and they're saying one thing, but their facial expression is indicating something else, do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. And there's clearly an anxiety there that's not resolved. They have a Mr. Red and a Mr. Green, or a Mrs. Red and a Mr. Green inside, and they haven't sat them down and talked about it. So while they're talking to you, Mr. Red is saying one thing, and that's coming out the mouth, and Mr. Green is saying something else, and that's on the face, or the other way around. And you're just getting two different messages. And that's why they have all this inner anxiety and stress.

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

  And so people who look calm, who project calm, tend to be the ones that have already made peace between the two. They tend to go inside and look at, what are their motivating forces? What are those characters, the person, what are their positive intents? They're both trying to get to the same goal, which is a better life for you. Better, more safe, secure, happier life for you. Ultimately, it's the same goal, the same positive intent, two different paths. And once you sit down, you just have a simple negotiation. You're valid, you're valid. Let's see if we can find a great compromise. And what happens when it's done?

• 1:14:49Tim Ferriss?

  Inner peace. Yeah, this also reminds me of a few tools people can look into. The joyful wisdom seems to be, or at least to have a component of this that's very similar. There's something called IFS I was introduced to by Michael and Annie Mithoffe, who are involved with many different things, experienced therapists. And Michael's also an MDA, used to work in the ER, among other places, but is involved with Phase 3 studies involving MDMA for PTSD. And it is MDMA-assisted psychotherapy.

• 1:15:31Tim Ferriss?

  And the two are important to keep in mind together, right? Because you might find a magic bullet out there, but very often it's the context that is wrapped around that that is critical to the outcomes that you see, which can be really remarkable. And one of the tools, IFS, I believe is Internal Family Systems. It's a bit of a confusing name, but the gist of it, which people can look into, is that you are examining and interacting with and making peace with, through validating and thanking and many other things, the different components of your psyche. And viewing many of them as protectors, right?

• 1:16:16Tim Ferriss?

  So the label is protectors. And it is incredible what you can see when someone, and I'll personalize it, when I took that approach with, say, anger, because I would get angry, and then I would get angry at the fact that I was angry, or I would be depressed. And I think for a lot of people who are depressed, and I can speak for myself, it's not the feeling shitty and seeing darkness everywhere, or highlighting the negative, that is the scary part. Like, you know, Eeyore was Eeyore, but Eeyore kind of made it through. It's the fear that it will never change, that no matter how good things get, no matter which partner you're with, no matter how much money you have, you're always going to

• 1:17:01Tim Ferriss?

  simply look at the negative. And that this is something that you cannot escape. And I would just say that, to reiterate something I mentioned earlier for people...

• 1:17:12Tim Ferriss?

  Wondering is that I had that belief. I was just like, this is how it works. I'm not hardwired to be happy, but maybe I can be really good at competition and like, feel worthy by creating some type of value and achieving a lot of things. That's just the hand I've been dealt, so I'll play the hand to the best of my abilities, but I'm not hardwired for this thing that other people refer to as like happiness, contentedness. Sadly, just didn't get it. If you look at my family, you see other examples of the same. That proved to be incorrect. You can change, and you mentioned a few things. IFS, I want to mention two more, and I know we're giving people a lot of books, and what I would recommend is just download them all on Kindle, read the first two chapters of each one,

• 1:17:57Tim Ferriss?

  and then whichever one grabs you, just kind of roll with that. But two others I want to mention, one is Radical Acceptance by Tara Brock, which, as the title might indicate, is cut from the same cloth as a lot of what we're talking about. It's very well-written, and Tara has been on the podcast, and we've spoken about some of the content of the book. Radical Acceptance was recommended to me, again, it might come off as a really cheesy title. Fantastic book, recommended to me by a PhD in neuroscience, who is one of the most skeptical women, and I say that as a compliment, I've ever met. Right? I mean, she is allergic to anything remotely hand-wavy or squishy.

• 1:18:39Tim Ferriss?

  And this book had a huge impact on her, and that is how it found its way to me. The other is a book called Awareness, which came to me not too long ago, because yet another guest on the podcast, Peter Maluk, who's involved in finance, mentioned it in passing and said, "This book generally gives me at least two weeks of deep-felt inner peace," something along those lines. And then we moved on to other topics, and I made a note of it, because it seemed so odd as a passing comment. And Awareness is written by Anthony Demello, D-E-M-E-L-L-O. And the subtitle differs, whether it's paperback or Kindle, which is very confusing, but the one I like is something along the lines of

• 1:19:23Tim Ferriss?

  "The Perils and Opportunities of Reality," which I love as a subtitle. And that book also helps you to separate your responses and emotions, which are often the same thing, to

• 1:19:42Tim Ferriss?

  External factors from your identity. And it's it's been truly stunning to see the before and after on some people who are highly anxious or prone to depression after reading this book Awareness. Does that include you? That does include me. Yeah, I read this book. This is one of the few books. It goes so far beyond pathologies. Like if you want, if you think you're a high functioning normal, i.e. probably neurotic, like a high functioning neurotic or normal, and you want to get to super high functioning, I would also recommend this book Awareness. I think it's it's a, it's a huge

• 1:20:26Tim Ferriss?

  competitive slash unfair slash worthwhile advantage, even if the only person you're competing against is the lesser version of yourself. Do you feel like you experience joy now? Yes. And that wasn't the case a few years ago? I did not have access. There were moments of joy. I don't want to make it seem like I was just this dull gray, you know, pane of like muddy glass at all times. That's not, that's not the case. And also, I should say now, I still have hard days. But everyone has hard days. I feel like my hard days are closer to normal hard days than like, you know what, I wonder what it would be like to like, jump off this balcony right now. Like, would that be easier? I'm not kidding. Like, people

• 1:21:11Tim Ferriss?

  have these thoughts. And it's like, you know what, like, here I am, it's a beautiful day, da, da, da, da, like. And nonetheless, I'm seeing the negative. What's the point? Right? Like, these are the types of questions I ask myself for decades. Just didn't act on any of them. Came very close in college, like I mentioned, but didn't actually get to the finish line with that. Now, my default calibration is much higher. Like, the baseline of contentedness is much higher. I do think the where of happiness is another ingredient that I didn't mention. But like, the, people think of the how and the why, what should I do? Who should I spend time with? The where of peace or contentedness is, is an important. What do you mean by where?

• 1:21:56Tim Ferriss?

  The where meaning the environmental factors, right? So we're sitting here right now in Austin, and it is a beautiful sunny day.

• 1:22:05Tim Ferriss?

  Turns out it's sunny here most of the time. I was in the Bay Area for 18 years. Prior to that, the East Coast, New England, where you get a lot of gray and a lot of rain and a lot of darkness. That was not helpful for me. And there are many ways that I could try to contort myself or go through months of mental gymnastics, which I did and can, to increase my baseline, or I can just spend more time somewhere it's sunny. And exercise is another thing that has become much more consistent. I always did my exercise at night, typically, or in the evening. I have since completely inverted that and I tend to do

• 1:22:45Tim Ferriss?

  my exercise first thing in the morning. And I won't bore people with the many, many different effects and the cascade of effects that exercise can have on the brain, which is not limited to aerobic exercise, although there's a book called Spark that looks at brain-derived neurotrophic factor and all sorts of things that are related to exercise. Weightlifting, resistance exercise can provoke very similar beneficial responses, and actually adaptations over time. But yes, so my default is much higher now. If people want to see IFS in action, although it's in Hebrew and not in English, there is a movie that I just helped put out,

• 1:23:26Tim Ferriss?

  which is a documentary. I Don't Make a Scent. I'm doing it for free because I think it needs to be seen. It was just sitting on a shelf after being broadcast once on television overseas, which is called Trip of Compassion. So if people want to take a look at how therapists work with someone, in this case, under the influence of MDMA, but it can still be powerful by itself, at interacting with the various pieces of themselves, maybe the emotions they haven't had access to as well, then Trip of Compassion, if you just go to tim.blog/trip, you can take a look at that, or at least watch the trailer. I will warn you in advance, it's very intense. I mean, you're seeing actual session footage of people who have suffered extreme trauma. But I think the payoff is worth it. But yeah, I never in

• 1:24:11Tim Ferriss?

  a million years, Safi, thought I would be where I am now.

• 1:24:16Speaker 03

  I mean, that in and of itself is incredibly hopeful.

• 1:24:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:20Speaker 03

  In and of itself, it's just, I think anyone suffering from severe depression, just knowing that is incredibly hopeful.

• 1:24:31Tim Ferriss?

  And also realizing, I know we're... Doing what we do best, which is digressing all over the place, but also realizing that

• 1:24:41Tim Ferriss?

  just as genetics are inherited, so are patterns of thought and behavior. I think this is really important.

• 1:24:52Tim Ferriss?

  And I mean, like you run into people who say like, oh yeah, my, my whole family is big boned and fat. It's like, well, why are your pets fat then? Right? It's like, there are behaviors and there are thought patterns. And it's not to in any way invalidate the software predisposition that you can come out of the box with. That exists. But for many of us,

• 1:25:20Tim Ferriss?

  certainly I'll speak for myself, you know, the, the thoughts that I have in my head are not necessarily my thoughts. Right? Like the scripts that I'm running, the audio engineer's playlist that has been in, I'll speak to the listener, to in your head for years or decades. Maybe the playlist that your mom gave you, your dad gave you, your uncle gave you, your teachers gave you, your friends gave you, and you have the ability to edit that script.

• 1:25:57Speaker 03

  I think that's the most important thing, thought is who's in charge of your mind?

• 1:26:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:01Speaker 03

  You know what? You're, if it's, you know, as you say, if that inner audio engineer playing that tape or the, or the any video engineer showing that movie, issuing the movie because they're, they're doing it for one, one of two reasons. If you're not in charge, they're doing it of one of two reasons. One, as you say, you got it from your mom or your dad or your friend or whatever. And you just didn't realize that. That's a wake up call. It's like, oh, that inner engineer is just following my mom's orders. Well, let's see, who's actually in charge of my brain? I am.

• 1:26:36Speaker 03

  How about I switch to a different station? Or I create my own Pandora playlist? How about that?

• 1:26:42Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, no problem.

• 1:26:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. You know why they're playing that video or that tape? Cause you didn't give them anything better to do. It's really easy to give them something better to do. You know, a simple trick to start with that is let's say you're, you know, we're playing some video. Just close your eyes and watch that video and switch it to black and white.

• 1:27:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:03Speaker 03

  You're like, whoa, I didn't know I could do that, but guess what the emotional power is? Much less. And then take that video, if it's right here in front of your face, and zoom it back like it's on a, on a TV set that's getting farther and farther away. Play the same video, guess what? Much less emotional impact. You're like, I didn't know I could do that, but guess what? You can. You know why? Who's in charge of your brain? You. Those audio engineers, those video engineers, they all report to you. You know why they're showing that movie? It's because you didn't tell them anything to do. They're like, well, it's, you know, it's like 11:30, I gotta, you know, 40 minutes to kill until lunch. Let me just replay the same movie for 40 minutes where I barfed on my boss. I'm just gonna replay that.

• 1:27:48Speaker 03

  Over and over and over. Why? Cause you didn't give that video engineer any other task.

• 1:27:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:54Speaker 03

  You're in charge of your brain. Take control of the audio, the video. And then maybe, as we said, they're different characters and they're each, you know, thank them. They're just idling.

• 1:28:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:05Speaker 03

  Until you start to take control and realize that you're in charge and you can play some movie any way you want. You can turn it upside down, you can make it black or white, you can make it color. I personally found very powerful is to take something and just move it behind my head.

• 1:28:21Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:22Speaker 03

  Then I'm like, oh, okay, it's gone.

• 1:28:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I like that. I haven't, I haven't tried that.

• 1:28:26Speaker 03

  And it's very, you know, here's a fascinating thing, I used to do this exercise all the time is you interview, you ask people who are on time. Just, just a funny-

• 1:28:35Tim Ferriss?

  Punctual.

• 1:28:36Speaker 03

  Punctual. Who are on time, punctual. Why don't you close your eyes and imagine your calendar? Close your eyes and just take your hands and kind of move in empty space, like where do you roughly see your calendar for the day? And the people who are really punctual tends to be their calendar is like, happens to be like right in front of their head. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

• 1:28:55Speaker 03

  Now you ask the same question for your friends or people who tend to be late. "Where's your calendar for the day?" "Oh, it's over here, far on the left." "What's over here in front of your face?" "Well, you know, what I need to do, you know, in my grocery list, or this other thing, or my cat, or whatever." "But my calendar is farther on the left." Hmm. And they're just not really... The people are... the calendar is right there in front of them. In a weird way, optimistic people, "Well, tell me how you see the next day." "Well, it's on a slope going up." "And a week from now..." "Well, it's up over there." Depressed people more like, "Oh, it's down, it's going to the ground." It's very fascinating how... where you put things visually, especially if you're a visual person.

• 1:29:38Speaker 03

  In effect, people who live on the past, you ask them, "What's in front of their face?" "Oh, well, what I did last year." We're always talking about their past. What's in front of their face is sort of like, "Last year, last month, whatever." People who are very... I remember asking my dad one time when I got into this. He grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, right? And, uh, nothing. None of us would ever hear a peep about growing up in the South. You know, we grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and, you know, I was educated, a very, kind of elite scholar at the Institute for Brand Study in Princeton. And Shreveport, like, never came up. And I asked him, "Oh, Dad, what do you think about..." When I closed your eyes, it was down at his feet. Very often, people, like for me, past is sort of to the left, center, and what I need to do today and tomorrow

• 1:30:23Speaker 03

  and over the next year, kind of in the middle, and future is sort of off there, up to the right. Uh, but for him, and... so it's... Who's putting it there? As you say, it's the default thought pattern. Do you have to do the default thought pattern? No. You're in charge. If you're always late, you know, just try experimenting with putting the calendar right directly in front of your eyes when you close. And just, that's training like riding a bike. You have to do it a bunch of times until it becomes ingrained and cemented and automatic. But those are the kinds of things that happen when you... Realize that nobody else is in control of your brain with the caveats that there are certain biochemical things.

• 1:31:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:03Speaker 03

  That that doesn't help. But the things that you can control, those are the things, what your in you audio engineer, etc.

• 1:31:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the biochemical stuff and feel free to slap me down. Actually, I'll come to the biochemical in a second. I have a theory that I'd love to allow you the opportunity to shoot down related to that. But first, I wanted to say the note another tool that really helped me that has made a very significant difference. And actually, it does come from Tony Robbins, which is related to how you how you change your thinking. So you recognize you're in charge of your thing. How do you change your thinking? And one of the approaches that I and many of my friends have found really, really effective

• 1:31:53Tim Ferriss?

  is from Tony and it's identifying your default question, like your primary question that you ask yourself. And for depressed people, anxious people, it is often something very disabling. And it's a leading question, like, what's wrong with you?

• 1:32:14Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 1:32:16Tim Ferriss?

  That assumes something is wrong with you.

• 1:32:17Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:32:18Tim Ferriss?

  And if that's your search function for your brain, your brain is going to come up with answers.

• 1:32:22Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:32:23Tim Ferriss?

  What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? That was my primary question for decades. How could you not end up depressed if that's your default question? I mean, on some level, I'm not saying there isn't a biochemical component, but it is certainly going to grease the wheels for negative thought patterns.

• 1:32:41Speaker 03

  That's what your inner audio engineer is playing over and over.

• 1:32:44Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. If that's if that's your You yell across the room to your audio engineer, you're like, hey, what's wrong with me? It'd be like, alright, coming right up. And then like, there goes the playlist. And becoming aware and thinking about your primary question, your default question that you ask. And then deciding on a replacement. Right? And you, you, you do this, I think, naturally. Uh, maybe you, you came, uh, to use it more through these various books and resources, but the, when you're angry, right? Like, what can I use this as fuel for? Uh, and so a replacement default question that you could use, something like, what can I learn from this? As a, which also depersonalizes the situation.

• 1:33:29Tim Ferriss?

  Right? It doesn't, doesn't assume that you are the primary actor creating all of the problems. Uh, which is not at odds with recognizing that you're in charge of your thought.

• 1:33:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was, give you, that's a great, great example of that. I'd say there are two different kinds of anger. Like, when you get rejected. Whether it's you losing a sport, or someone's telling you, you're too old and you can't play, or you're, that's, you know, an interesting fuel you can use if you choose to use that. I actually, for a long, long time, I thi- I think since I was a teenager, because of one specific anecdote,

• 1:34:06Speaker 03

  have used, I had never thought about it in this language, but anger to trigger a question that immediately diffused the anger. And I'll give you the example. So I was with a friend of mine, who, we grew up playing competitive tennis, and, uh, in the juniors. And my friend, uh, uh, we were a few years older then, uh, probably, you know, a decade older. And we were sitting around and she was talking about, and she had been a star, she'd been, we were both ranked and she, but she was, you know, she'd done really, really well. And had really stopped. And had just, you know, not done any exercises and it clearly, you know, you could sort of see that.

• 1:34:50Speaker 03

  And I remember we were sitting around catching up and she was telling me, with growing anger about her cousins, who would get in a car to drive two blocks to mail a letter. They were so lazy. And it just really drove her angry. And she was like beside herself. Of course, she was like lying sprawled out on the couch and like was getting help to just like reach over for a box of chocolates or whatever to put them in. And I thought, okay, now if I had cousins that would get in their car to drive two blocks to mail a letter rather than walk the two blocks, would it make me, would it be curious? Sure. But would it make me angry? No.

• 1:35:32Speaker 03

  And I s- kind of started to realize that a different cut trigger to anger is, what does this anger say about me? How does this anger identify? Maybe something in me that's kind of an unresolved issue.

• 1:35:50Speaker 03

  And so, probably since then, since I was a teenager, every time I would start to get angry in this way, in something that didn't seem rational, um, it pissed me off somebody, always, I would say immediately, what is it in them that's triggering something about me that I'm not comfortable with? And it doesn't mean to be something that you're doing now. I'll give you an example. When a friend of mine, uh, we were sitting in a bar and, um, we saw somebody go who, a mutual friend of ours, who had said he was gonna quit smoking, go outside to have a cigarette, and I said that, you know. And this was, my friend had

• 1:36:33Speaker 03

  tried and had actually given up smoking. And he said, that so pisses me off that this guy said he quit and he broke it and he went back. And it just, I can't, what a, you know, what a pussy, it really, well, it just pisses. And I'm, I had the exact same reaction. Okay. He, he tried to quit and he failed and now he's breaking his commitment. But I'm not angry about that. Why is, why are you angry? I didn't ask him. It's more inner, like, why is he angry? And what I started to realize is not only an interesting trigger question that completely diffused the anger instantly for me, but it's also a really interesting mirror of whoever you're talking to. If they seem to be getting almost irrationally angry

• 1:37:18Speaker 03

  about something in somebody else.

• 1:37:22Speaker 03

  I set that completely aside and say, what does that tell me about this person? That they're getting, what is it about their own inner struggles? So I saw that in myself. I remember when I was a grad student and there was some guy who was, you know, being accused, or, you know, another grad student of like sucking up to the professors too much. And whenever I would see him, it just would really piss me off. And then I had that same figure, why is that bothering me? Because that wouldn't bother Joe Schmo, but why is it so bothering me? And I'm like, oh, am I worried that I'm speak, because I was very friendly with a couple of really

• 1:38:03Speaker 03

  senior professors who are a generation or two older than me. Am I worried that I'm like acting different to them than I am to my friends? Because I wouldn't like that. And immediately, all of my anger towards that other fellow grad student just completely dissipated. And people often ask me, like, you don't seem to get angry about anything. But firstly, that's not true. Like, when the Xerox machine breaks, I get fricking angry. So, aside from the Xerox machine and the printer breaking at the last minute, I really don't get angry. And that's entirely attributed to this trigger question. I feel the bud of anger. I'm like, oh, there's something about me here. That it's a mirror. And I

• 1:38:46Speaker 03

  may have solved the problem, or not solved the problem, or I solved it years ago, like the quitting smoking thing, the guy who did it versus. But let me, and then all of my anger dissipates.

• 1:38:55Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. You should, I'm going to pick up Joyful Wisdom. I would love to hear your thoughts on this book, Awareness.

• 1:39:03Speaker 03

  I actually am writing these down.

• 1:39:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:06Speaker 03

  It's great.

• 1:39:07Tim Ferriss?

  The awareness really helped me with exactly the type of reframing that you're talking about. Slightly different, though. A little more conceptual. I think the trigger question is more actionable. But as a, as a background, sort of conceptual framework that is really helpful. It's probably a very fancy way to put it. But in brief, in awareness...

• 1:39:35Tim Ferriss?

  One of the discussions is, it centers on, and it's really a transcription, edited transcription of a number of short lectures. Very easy to read, very fun. Actually, the guy's really hilarious. And focuses a lot on cognitive biases and confirmation bias, although it's not called anything super fancy. And a lot of looking at acute responses like anger to situations come to entitlement. Like, what do you feel, this is another angle, right? It's not exactly the same. But it's like, what do you feel entitled to receive right now? Or like, what do you expect? Like, how should the other person behave?

• 1:40:19Tim Ferriss?

  And is that completely unreasonable?

• 1:40:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:40:22Tim Ferriss?

  Because you can't control other people's responses. And it's a way to kind of pick apart the, like, the weaknesses in the scaffolding that is holding up whatever emotion is about to drive you crazy.

• 1:40:37Speaker 03

  That comes straight to the happiness equation. The ultimate happiness, it was very simple mathematical. Happiness equals reality minus expectations.

• 1:40:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:46Speaker 03

  So if you're very frustrated with somebody, is it because of the reality? Or is it because of the expectations?

• 1:40:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:53Speaker 03

  And if you lower your expectations, you can turn that into a positive.

• 1:40:59Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm gonna, I'm gonna give us a 90-degree turn here.

• 1:41:02Speaker 03

  Before, can I?

• 1:41:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 1:41:04Speaker 03

  Just before you, because it was so cool and so interesting, the MDMA stuff. In many ways MDMA is a loon shot. It's something that people have dismissed as nutty or crazy, that it could actually help therapeut, but actually may turn out to be incredibly important. Can I tell you another loon shot for depression?

• 1:41:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, please.

• 1:41:23Speaker 03

  That I'm kind of interested in, that I've seen some remark. Now, it's, it might be in a similar stage, where there's a lot of very good, very interesting patient data. Actually, in this particular case, it has been through phase three trials in a certain form. So this is something called RTMS, which is transcranial magnetic stimulation. And what it has in common is that it has this kind of vibe to it that sounds kooky, or it sounds nutty, or Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, ah, right?

• 1:41:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:59Speaker 03

  But, so it's kind of a loon shot as well. Especially one flew over, the cuckoo's not a slouch. But it is actually based on a very, very interesting observation. As it turns out, it has been through phase three trials and it is approved. And I spent actually quite a while learning about it for no reason other than I just found it a fascinating story of a loon shot and a completely neglected idea. And in this case, I actually ended up talking to a bunch of my psychiatrist friends and there's a center in Boston where I live, that's actually one of the world's centers for it. And so I ended up talking, creating some collaborations there with a group that I

• 1:42:42Speaker 03

  had met that was doing a really novel twist on it in California. But the bottom line is this. In psychiatry today, there's this focus on what you might call, if you're a physicist, you would call it position space. So I'll explain what I mean and I'll explain why this different approach is what, something in physics we call duality, which is two very different ways of looking at the same problem. One way helps you solve it, one way doesn't. And so in psychiatry, in TMS, well, first I'll start with what people do today.

• 1:43:27Speaker 03

  People do today MRIs to diagnose brain problems. And MRIs are, you know, trying to find magnetic resonance, where in the brain certain activities seem to be concentrated. So that is what you might call position space, where in the position inside your brain are certain activities concentrated. But that's not what we did. That's a relatively new in the sense of, you know, a couple decades. But if you fast, if you go back even more to, let's say, the 19, late 1930s, 1940s.

• 1:44:04Speaker 03

  There was a field of study with EEGs, looking at the frequency, the frequencies that are issued by the brain. So in physics, you have position space and you have frequency space, and there are two different ways of looking at the same problem. They're equivalent. One lets you solve problems easier, certain problems easier, the other doesn't, and then for different problems, it reverses. So EEGs, it turns out, it was discovered, the brain has a blinking rate. It's roughly, the average in the population in the US is roughly 10 hertz. So 10 times a second. That became a very interesting field of study for about 10 or 20 years, and then it kind of dropped off.

• 1:44:48Speaker 03

  It was, it's a very inexpensive tool. MRI was a fancier, more expensive tool, and because if you want a big grant and want to be a big professor at a big Ivy League school, you want to use the latest, most expensive one that generates these fancy color images that other people can't do unless they have big grants like you. EEGs, everybody can do. That's why I find it sort of, it's a little bit like MDMA, because it's got this sort of reputation and a... So, as it turns out, with depression, if you measure people's brains, their blinking rate may be a little bit off. And what TMS does, there's really interesting physics about it, which is actually one of the reasons I got interested of how it works. Essentially, it creates, it's an oscillating magnetic field.

• 1:45:32Speaker 03

  There's no surgery, there's no nothing, it's just, it's like a shower, what do you call it? The shower head that they put next to your skull, and it just has an oscillating magnetic field that kind of locks in the rate and sort of nudges it. If your default blinking rate is 10 hertz, is supposed to be 10 hertz, and you're blinking at 9.5 hertz in some parts, it just sort of nudges you back closer to 10 hertz. So as it turns out, that was approved, that was through Phase 3 trials, got approved by the FDA about five or 10 years ago, I don't remember, in a certain format and technique. And actually turns out to work roughly about the same as meds.

• 1:46:15Speaker 03

  Not a much better response rate, not a much worse response rate. Depending on the study and the population, roughly thirty percent response rate in both. Different side effects, you know, you don't have the side effects of taking a drug systemically. But the side effects of TMS, you're not doing any surgery, you're not taking a drug. You're essentially, it's like a refrigerator that's a little broken, you're sort of kicking the refrigerator and getting it, kicking it back into gear. And the side effects are, well, you can read about them, but they're much, much less. And it was approved. And it's kind of fascinating, but the younger psychiatrists who are trained to do this

• 1:47:00Speaker 03

  recognize that this is a very effective tool. What's nice is that when you treat any therapy, you want a tool belt. You want a lot of different tools because you never know what will work with a different person. So this one has shown some efficacy in drug-resistant depression. So that makes it a very useful tool to have on the tool belt. Younger psychiatrists are really, understand the data and understand that its effects safe and effective and approved by the FDA and this technique that was approved, protocol that was approved. Older psychiatrists, much more resistant. But both of them are not using it as much as it could be because of the Jack Nicholson effect. You just say, "Oh, I'm zapping your brain," and they think of like, the tongue's gonna

• 1:47:45Speaker 03

  be hanging out, you're gonna be drooling, and your eyeball's gonna be rolling. Right? And so it's a little hard to get over, but they recognize that it's as effective or more. And then recently, what's so fascinating is there is a group or a few groups that have recognized, although the response rate is pretty good, in some cases it works phenomenally well. You zap the, you do the TMS session, you sort of kick the refrigerator, and oh, the refrigerator sort of starts working. Guy was blinking at nine point five, should've been at ten. You nudge him a little bit and boom, now he's at ten and he's walking off happy. In some cases you get that, and in some cases you get nothing. Kind of like the drugs. But then what one group realized is it put measured probes in different part of

• 1:48:30Speaker 03

  the brain and realized what's fascinating is you can tease out that there's an average blinking rate in the brain, but it's not the same for everybody. So your blinking rate, my average default blinking rate that you were born with might be 11.2 hertz and mine might be 8.7 hertz and the next guy might be 9.3 hertz. It is true when you take the population mean, it is roughly 10. Here's the weird thing, the FDA protocol that was approved in phase three is treat everybody at 10. That's weird. If your thing, if you're at 11.2 and I'm blinking at 8.7, I'm a little, why should I zap you at 10? Why should I be nudging you to 10?

• 1:49:15Speaker 03

  Wouldn't that be the case that it would probably have no effect on you? And it would only really have effect on the small people who's... So there's a group that's realized that and is now doing what's called individualized alpha frequency TMS and is seeing some really pretty spectacular results. And even more than that, they start to look at different regions of the brain and they see, oh, wait a minute, it's not like your whole brain is blinking, just your front left. So if I take, put 11, you know, let's say 15 probes around your head, you know, 12 of them are right at, let's say, you know, Tim, your default blinking rate is 11.2. Then 12 out of the 15 are at 11.2 and these three here are just, they're blinking at 8.7.

• 1:49:58Speaker 03

  So what we do is we take the shower head and we stick it only there and we nudge it back up to 11. Now they're all in alignment. The interesting thing is when you take a patient, and some of these groups have been able to do that, and just do the probe in different regions of the brain without even talking to the patient, some of these physicians have been able to say, well, I think this person is depressed because he's a little too low in the frontal cortex. Or I think this person's problem is mania because it's actually, it turns out to be a little too high. Or manic depressive because it's high here and low there. So let's zap here and zap there. And some of those groups have seen remarkable results, for example, with PTSD.

• 1:50:40Speaker 03

  PTSD is a lot like manic depression. And when PTSD patients come in, it's like all over the map. They've suffered some brain trauma. And, you know, this region's low, this region's high. Yeah, they're out of control. You know, somebody drops, as one guy I know described it, somebody drops a milk carton, he's shopping for groceries, someone drops a milk carton, and he's like, ready to fight, and like pulling out a gun because he's like still mentally on the battlefield. And he's like, that's the main, and then other times can't get out of bed, he's so depressed. Sometimes don't sleep. And I remember talking to one guy who hadn't been able to sleep for more than three hours at a stretch, for maybe seven years, his family had left him,

• 1:51:22Speaker 03

  and he would written a suicide date on a calendar. And he went, and this was being a clinical trial in San Diego, one of the VAs in the San Diego area, the naval base, in the base there. And he was like a last resort case. And went in and got this treatment, this individualized TMS treatment. Family moved back in, suit and tie. Literally, when he got back from the first, it sounds like one of these magic bullet things, but, you know, it's, really, when you talk to these, it is in clinical trials, the one protocol is already being proved, we're really talking about a variant protocol. It is kind of amazing

• 1:52:07Speaker 03

  when you talk to these people and their lives were like, literally, I had a date on the calendar marked for suicide, and now I have, and my family had left me a long time ago. I hadn't slept more than three hours in seven years since I returned from Iraq. And I got back home from the first session, I slept 11 hours. Yeah, that's. It's just amazing. It's wild. So, what we're talking about is loon shots. Yeah. Loon shots of the future. Are they proven? Not quite yet. Are they in clinical trials? Absolutely. Should we wait until the clinical trials out? That'll be different. Again, I'm talking for a variant of an established protocol, for an established therapy. So, if you're interested in TMS, you speak with a psychiatrist, preferably the younger ones are all over. What I've, actually, there was a meta-study surveying.

• 1:52:55Speaker 03

  Acceptance or interest in TMS as a therapy among psychiatrists. And that study identified an age difference, that the older ones were less into it and the younger ones were all over it. So if you are intrigued by this, there are these TMS treatment centers, kind of major cities all over. Identify a psychiatrist, speak with your psychiatrist about it, talk, learn about the pros and cons, see if it's something for you. It's just another tool in the toolkit. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

• 1:53:26Tim Ferriss?

  You could also add, but maybe, I'm trying to think, if the protocol for the individualized studies are published.

• 1:53:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, they are in clinical trials, you know, kind of phase, I think they're, I don't think that they're yet in phase three, I think there's a bunch of phase, and it's interesting who's sponsoring them, firstly, the Army. There are, you know, statements by a number of sort of medical, that I've seen by medical leaders in the Army, that it's an incredibly important potential therapy for them, so they're sponsoring clinical trials. But also, I have heard about insurance companies, because, for example, the one, I talked to a couple of vets who had done this therapy, and they were on so many meds, they went completely

• 1:54:20Speaker 03

  after the therapy, you do maybe a couple sessions a week for four, or six weeks, eight weeks, and maybe there's follow-up. They went completely off meds, completely off opiates, and it's very tough to get off those.

• 1:54:34Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:54:35Speaker 03

  And that's why the insurance companies are sponsoring, because it's relatively low cost and can get you off meds and off hospitalization.

• 1:54:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:42Speaker 03

  So more to come on this. I'm kind of excited about that, more to come, clinical studies in the next couple of years.

• 1:54:47Tim Ferriss?

  I'm super excited about TMS, TDCS also, pretty interesting for other applications, but the, do you know which team is doing the research on the individualized? We could put it in the show notes and figure it out also.

• 1:55:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'll send you an email after and we'll get that out there.

• 1:55:06Tim Ferriss?

  We'll put it in the show notes for people.

• 1:55:11Tim Ferriss?

  So there are tools.

• 1:55:13Speaker 03

  There are these.

• 1:55:14Tim Ferriss?

  There are tools being researched.

• 1:55:16Speaker 03

  There, it's another reason to be, in addition to, you know, Tim Ferriss sitting here, living proof that experience joy and turn your life around. And that's one cause for hope. And the second one is there's a growing toolkit of things that can help. And if the first one, the, the great thing about that is it's different tools in that toolkit that will work for different people. And the bigger that toolkit, the more likely it is that something will work for you. And it's just, that toolkit is just being added to and added to and added to as we sit here.

• 1:55:50Tim Ferriss?

  And the, um, since I alluded to it earlier, and I am going to do the, the right-hand turn after I mention this, but I, I, I said I was going to give you the shot to shoot something down. Uh, but this is, this is, uh, not based on any type of literature review whatsoever, but my theory that I have, uh, and I'm sure there are other people with, with a similar view, but is that there may be bidirectional causality with biochemical impotence associated or, yeah, let's call it biochemical imbalance associated or pathological sort of neurotohmical

• 1:56:30Tim Ferriss?

  activity and the thinking that is assumed to be a byproduct of that. And to, to put it maybe more cleanly, uh, and again, this is not open shut case, but almost everyone knows at least a handful of people who are on antidepressants and still depressed. That could be because they developed tolerance. It could be for many, many different reasons. But, uh, if, if I were to be tasked as a sadistic, uh, experimenter to create some type of biochemical change in the brain, let's just say high levels of cortisol that

• 1:57:13Tim Ferriss?

  would then affect sleep, that would then affect, uh, maybe other hormones that would create a, a, a measurable pathology in biomarkers. I think that could be done. Like you could, you could, you could, you could impose stresses on people that might simulate some of the, um, environments and say warfare, right? Like whistling of bombs and mortars and so on. That would potentially create a state of depression or anxiety or feeling tired and wired, which is when people try to go to sleep, but instead of getting a spike of cortisol in the morning, which would liberate glycogen and increase blood glucose, they get it at

• 1:57:56Tim Ferriss?

  night. And you can measure that with all sorts of devices if you're interested. So the reason I'm bringing this up is that when I've observed myself and also family members who have used pharmaceuticals, different types of drugs to address the manifestations of the depression, that I tend to think that not only can the imbalances help produce the thoughts and just make it easier, but that the thoughts can also in some way affect the biochemistry itself. And so I just, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on the plausibility

• 1:58:41Tim Ferriss?

  of it being bidirectional. Because it just, it seems, I feel like if I were to, like, Tim, we're going to give you $10 million if you can manufacture measurable imbalances, but do it by like forcing someone to visualize a past traumatic event, or what could happen to their kids, or fill in the blank. I feel like, I feel like that, I would take that offer.

• 1:59:04Speaker 03

  No, I think it's been demonstrated. So the idea is that biochemistry can influence thought patterns, but also the other way around. Thought patterns can influence biochemistry. And I think that's been proven. You read about, for example, these, now Monk, I actually forgot the guy's name. I think he actually started as a physicist who suffered from some depression and had medical problems and psychological issues, psychological disorders, but eventually trained his mind through a bunch of the meditation and some of the techniques that are used. And they actually did a whole series of studies. There's actually a whole

• 1:59:47Speaker 03

  literature now of studying the properties, the mental properties of

• 1:59:54Speaker 03

  These Buddhist monks who have practiced deep meditation and you see clear biochemical changes. So it clearly goes both ways. And we know that from so many system in the body, it's almost never one way. It very often, almost every system in the body, there's a feedback loop. So thought patterns influence biochemistry, influence thought patterns, and so absolutely I agree that there is something there. And I think very similar, we were talking about how there are sort of nudges or you get stuck. And the way I, the reason it makes so much sense from a physics perspective, and the reason I actually mentioned duality, looking at the world from two different, so in physics

• 2:00:37Speaker 03

  it's very common to look at, the simplest duality is position space and frequency space. There are a lot of problems you can solve by looking at position. Hey, where's some, you know, electrochemical potential in space and how do you find the minimum of that? And that's where you find your particle is located. You know, I think that this is sort of simplifying a lot. You solve that problem in position space. But you can look at it in frequency space and it's exactly the same problem. There's a simple mathematical transformation, you don't even need to know what those details are. All you need to know is that it's just looking through a blue lens or a red lens at the same world. The world is exactly the same, but you can just see different things.

• 2:01:20Speaker 03

  There's no way to understand the properties of a metal, why metals conduct electricity in position space. And I'll get to exactly what this means about the brain. No way to understand a metal. It turns out when you make the transformation frequency, it's almost easy to solve. The brain. FMRI is position space. Where is something broken in the brain? EEGs are frequency space. What are the frequencies that my brain are firing at? And I think one of the things that's being missed or often not talked about enough in even academic psychiatry. Is, why are we so focused on FMRI and position space? Let's go, but I know EEG is an old technology, but maybe let's see if we can at least look

• 2:02:04Speaker 03

  at the problem and maybe there's something there. Maybe these frequencies are a little bit off and maybe there's something to looking at the same problem in both ways. And when you look in position, in frequency space, in physics, it is very common that when you have something that's called a complex system, which means there's just a lot of interactions, especially as you just said, that go both ways. Where people end up, there's something called an egg crate model. And if you imagine where you end up as you're like a little ball, that's where you are. You might be stuck in one well of that egg crate, but you really want to be in this. This is a kind of the healthy well and you're just stuck there. And that's what you see in frequency space.

• 2:02:47Speaker 03

  When you have complex oscillators, complex frequencies that are connected, you get these sort of egg crate models. And if you are in an unwell state, you may just be stuck in a local minimum, but which is not the global minimum. You really want to be in this other well of the egg crate. And that's what something like TMS does. I gave sort of jokingly the analogy of like bumping a refrigerator that's stuck, but that really is kind of what happens with a complex system. You're trapped in this local minimum and you need to get to the global minimum, but you have a little hill or a barrier. And the TMS just sort of shocks you a little bit and whoosh, you go over the barrier. So when I think of it, the mental model I have is let's say some of these patients

• 2:03:30Speaker 03

  with severe PTSD, they're stuck in this local minimum and they're getting help because they just by themselves or even therapeutics can't get them over that little barrier to the kind of somewhat more well state. So to answer your question, yes, I think it makes a lot of sense that it goes both ways. The brain is what's called a complex system where there are many interactions back and forth. I think it would be an incredibly rare exception if it didn't go both ways.

• 2:03:56Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you for answering that. And you also brought up.

• 2:04:01Tim Ferriss?

  Something I'm going to use as a segue, because I did promise people that we were going to talk about in episode one, I promised towards the end that we would talk about bringing a gun to a knife fight and incentives and possibly what a chief incentive officer might be. And we are going to talk about that. And what I'm going to use as my segue is something you pointed out, which is that the EEG is an older tool. And that fMRI is this fancy, expensive tool. And there may be incentives in the scientific world, whether

• 2:04:42Tim Ferriss?

  it's related to grants, whether it's related to publication bias with newer tools, who knows, that affect the science, aside from the validity of the tools.

• 2:04:53Speaker 03

  I just have to pause and say, that's like a brilliant segue. I had no idea how you would possibly segue from a discussion of hypnosis, and depression, and then brain science to like, let's talk about teams and companies and incentives. Like, there is no, how the hell is this, is this guy going to get from A to B? And you just came up with like, this segue like on the fly. Like, good job. That's a really good segue. Totally not forced. Totally natural.

• 2:05:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this is, this is my job, I guess.

• 2:05:22Speaker 03

  But it actually works, because you're absolutely right.

• 2:05:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there are all sorts of incentives. And I'd love for you to just riff. You start wherever you like, because I think of incentives all the time, all the time. And when we were talking earlier, I'll use another tie in, about depression and what helped. Okay, so let's see, identify the things that you should be doing or shouldn't be doing that act as precursors to well states or precursors to depression. Okay, knowing is one thing. How do you stop drinking so much coffee? And in my case, what I ended up doing was not just deciding and making a resolution, but creating incentives, whether those are rewards or punishments. So maybe that is a betting pool with a friend about who can go the longest without drinking caffeine.

• 2:06:07Tim Ferriss?

  Or it could be some type of reward. If I do X for Y period of time, then I receive, you know, reward Z, whatever that might be. And there are all sorts of different ways to set up incentives. And there are things you have to be cognizant of, like, I think that Andy Grove used to do this. But for every incentive they created to hopefully shape a behavior they wanted, they looked for the inadvertent kind of perverse incentive that was paired with it.

• 2:06:43Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm fascinated by incentives and would love to hear you riff on any aspect of incentives. We can kind of come into it any direction. I just, it's something I think about all the time because I view my job in part through the podcast or other things as examining what works for behavioral change. That's really the crux of all of it. So let's talk about it.

• 2:07:13Speaker 03

  All right. This is a great example of how you come across an idea in science. Because we're, in another segue, which is we're talking about these little things that you see that don't seem to quite fit, or that other people may be overlooking, and you really want to focus on those, teasing out a bigger idea. So let me mention a couple of what seems like odd paradoxes. Individually, 10 people all love some crazy new idea. You bring them together, they reject it. Why? That seems kind of odd. Number two, odd paradox. We have this sort of myth of, oh, the big corporate guys are kind of risk averse. If you're an entrepreneur, this is what you often get to.

• 2:07:58Speaker 03

  And when I was an early entrepreneur, first starting, first time CEO, first couple of years, you got with your friends for drinks, you're all, you know, young entrepreneurs, emerging new company, and you pat yourself on the back and you say, oh, all the great ideas come from folks like us because we're the risk takers. We love, you know, we're the really entrepreneurial types, and none of the good ideas come out of big companies because they're risk averse corporate types. And then as you grow up or as you mature as an entrepreneur, you realize you have to start working with them. You do partnerships with them or whatever, and you start getting to know them as people. And then you go out for drinks with them or have a meal with them, and you realize, hey, they're actually exactly the same as me.

• 2:08:41Speaker 03

  They're really not, they want the next new gadget, or the next new idea, or the next new drug, or the next, exactly, they want to go home and tell their spouse, or their kids, or their loved ones, or their families, or friends, that they worked on something big. And in fact, you hire, eventually sometimes you hire them, and then all of a sudden, the tie comes off, the jacket comes off, and they're pounding the table, just like you. They argue. So why this myth? So that's weird paradox number two. And weird sort of seeming paradox number three, is all this emphasis in articles and books and management stuff that you and I have, and almost everyone has read about culture. And you see these interviews, and these glossy magazines, and these cover stories of these

• 2:09:25Speaker 03

  great, you know, legendary CEOs, and the interview asks, you know, to what attribute, do you attribute your success? Well, it was, you know, it was to our culture. We've built a great, meaning I built up a great culture, usually is what they're trying to say. And, uh, and then two weeks later, the same company's in the toilet. Well, what, what happened? Like, culture couldn't change overnight. So what, you know, what happened? Why does, why does the same company with the same people suddenly transform?

• 2:09:56Speaker 03

  Weird puzzle number three. And that's usually the clue when you're doing science. You see sort of unexplained things that don't quite fit conventional stories. And so, underlying all of those is incentives. And a new way to think about incentives and teams and companies and groups that can help explain all three of those. And that's ultimately what actually Luntzschatz is about. And so, let me explain what I mean. Whenever you put people together into a group, you create two forms of incentives. One is what we often think of, oh, the stake and the outcome.

• 2:10:40Speaker 03

  So, let's take a biotech company. Uh, it might be a 10-person company. Your stake and outcome is, well, 10%. Let's see if everything's divided or just for simplicity. And now, you double that. Well, now you're 20-person now. It's 5%. It's kind of getting smaller. As it grows, your stake and outcome is getting smaller and smaller. So, your incentives for stake and outcome in like, you know, rolling up your sleeves and fighting hard to, you know, help that Luntzschatz or crazy idea succeed, it's very high when you're a small company, but it's getting smaller and smaller as you get older. What's changing? There's a second incentive that you create whenever, no matter what happens, whenever

• 2:11:21Speaker 03

  you organize people into a group with a mission and a reward system tied to that mission, you create a second incentive, and that is perks of rank. Two forms of incentive. Stake and out, a simple way to think of it is equity and cash, equity and base salary. But let's think about it even more broadly. Stake and outcome and perks of rank. What does that mean? Well, are you the team captain or a team member? Are you the CEO or a VP? When you're a 10-person company, perks of rank is irrelevant compared to the stake. Because if you're the team captain or the team member, it might be a few thousand dollars difference, but if your project works or not, it's a few billion dollars or a few million dollars or whatever.

• 2:12:07Speaker 03

  But of course, as it grows, it flips. All of a sudden, perks of rank become more important. So when I am talking about bringing a gun to a knife fight, or a chief incentives officer, what I'm talking about is people spend so much time focused on culture and psychology and empowering and group dynamics. There are literally thousands or tens of thousands of books and articles about it. We spend so much less time on structure. What are the incentives? How are we motivating the behavior that we want to see? And so, for example, here's how it can help us think about that last one. Why do groups suddenly change? Well, as they grow big, all of a sudden,

• 2:12:50Speaker 03

  the balance between those two incentives, the balance between them shifts. And as you grow bigger and bigger and bigger, stake and outcome gets smaller and smaller, and perks of rank matter more and more and more. And at some point, they cross, boom. And that's when people start caring more about politics and promotion, and less about the success of their crazy idea. And when you care about politics and promotion, what do you do? You try to shoot down other people's ideas. And that's when good ideas die. That's when the wisdom of crowd turns into the tyranny of crowds. Underlying that is what you asked, incentives. So understanding that is very important to understanding, for example, that weird paradox

• 2:13:35Speaker 03

  of why companies suddenly turn. When you really understand that and you start to tease that out, you can actually work out what are the control parameters of that transition. So in science, in physics, you talk about a phase transition. That's exactly what, whenever you have two competing forces, boom, you will trigger a transition. But more interesting than just knowing that is what are the parameters? Okay, so you can work that out mathematically. What are the parameters? There's temperature in water, but if you add salt, you lower the freezing temperature. So there's a degree of salt in water. Well, there's the binding energy between them all. If you lower that, you can also lower the freezing temperature. So you can keep something liquid much longer.

• 2:14:19Speaker 03

  If you understand those forces. So the reason that it's important to understand incentives better, for example, to have a chief incentives officer, is that it can help you control the transition between innovation and rigidity. When you embrace wild new ideas and you reject them. It sounds like I'm speaking in a metaphorical sense, but actually you can sort of translate that the way a scientist or physicist is with into a sort of a straightforward mathematical model with two terms of cash and equity and then calculate where is that transition? At what size company does it happen? And you get a number. It happens at this number. And that number is a function of four parameters. And here are those four parameters. So as I dial those parameters, I can dial that number up. Well, that's cool.

• 2:15:03Speaker 03

  I just created four things I can adjust to create more innovative teams. The larger teams that still embrace new ideas rather than reject them. That answer is kind of helps us understand one of those paradoxes, but also helps us understand the one that I mentioned about the myth of the big corporate risk averse guy. What happens when I take a drop of, when I take a molecule of water and I drop it into a glass of water? Well, it slushes around with all the other molecules. What happens when I take a molecule of water and I drop it onto a block of ice? Well, it freezes. But it's the same molecule. And that's sort of the same thing with the group dynamics. It's if you take, you take the same guy,

• 2:15:48Speaker 03

  but you give him the incentives of the startup, he's pretty innovative. The same guy and give him the incentives where it's all about politics and promotion, he's going to be shooting down new ideas. So underlying that paradox as well is incentives. So it helps us understand these sort of strange or mysterious puzzles. The first one that I talked about is you take 10 people who are Love wild new ideas, you bring them together. Well, if their incentives are more about who's going to be the team captain, they're probably going to spend their time shooting down, you know, what gets me promoted? For example, in a large company, you have the same new idea,

• 2:16:32Speaker 03

  let's say a new idea, new drug for a promising new cancer drug gets rid, a whole small biotech company is super excited about it, and they're all united about it, and it stumbles, and everybody rolls up their sleeve and save it, then it stumbles again, they roll up their sleeves again. Imagine you're at Pfizer, you're at a committee meeting, same drug, you're same person. Well, you could pound the table after its first stumble, and say, "No, no, I think it's good, so there's something good here, let's all fight." Or, you know, "How's the success low? And the stake in Acam is not very high, because how much is it going to help your career if it works 10 years down the road? Not very much." Or you can make sort of smart aleck comments that are maybe funny about, "I think the science says this, and in the latest meta-analysis, we see this,

• 2:17:15Speaker 03

  and, you know, I went to this keynote speaker, Nobel laureate, and he's thinking that, and I really think the industry is headed here." And by coincidence, that's what your boss thinks. And that's what your boss's boss, who also happens to be sitting at the table, thinks. And they're nodding along, and you know what they're saying? That young fellow's got a smart head on his shoulders. And if you keep doing that, and playing politics, and sending smart at meetings, and kind of shooting down by pointing out at all the warts, and playing it safe, like the next thing, the next incremental idea. Let's say you had the statin drug. "Let's make the 49th statin drug." "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I think that's a good idea. Everybody thinks that's a good idea. We all think that's a good idea. Good job, young man." You might get promoted. What happens if you get promoted? You get a bump up of 30% in salary.

• 2:18:00Speaker 03

  So what do you want to do? You know, wait seven years, and maybe move the needle of your company by 1%? Or you want to make smart aleck comments and get promoted, and maybe next year for 30%? Incentives. So that is how it helps you think about all three paradoxes, why people individually who might like an idea, when you put them in a group, you create the second incentive of perks of rank that can outweigh. So what do I mean by Chief Incentives Officer? Companies today have a, for example, Chief Technology Officer. What's the job of the Chief Technology Officer? To make sure that everybody's got the latest gadgets and systems. Well, that's pretty good. But how important is it to have motivated employees?

• 2:18:44Speaker 03

  Is that maybe at least as important as everybody has the latest apps and smartphones and software? I would argue that it is as important or more important. How aligned are your incentives with individual goals? The job of a Chief Technology Officer is to take a strategic. You get very highly paid experts. They're given a certain budget. Your budget is X. With that budget, I want you to optimize the quality of our tools. Same thing with a Chief Revenue Officer. You're going to get a fixed marketing budget. Your marketing budget, your sales budget is X. With that, I want you to maximize our revenue. Why not have a Chief Incentives Officer?

• 2:19:29Speaker 03

  I'm going to give you a certain compensation budget. Your compensation budget, equity in cash is X. I want you to take that compensation budget and maximize the motivation of our employees. Some motivation is financial and some is not financial. That's part of your job. What are the non-financial things that are motivating people? They're very different. Some people are, in fact. Financial considerations are very important. Some people, intrinsic stuff like, am I growing? Am I developing? Am I contributing to a bigger cause? Am I getting recognized by my peers? Individual managers who are putting out fires and trying to do strategy and trying to get things done on time, on budget, on spec,

• 2:20:12Speaker 03

  don't really have the bandwidth to sit around and say, of the 11 people reporting to me, what are the different incentives? How can I design something to maximize the return on investment we're giving for those incentives? It's much better handled if there is someone who that it's their first priority than if it's someone who is their 97th priority. What happens today at the vast majority of companies, including big corporate companies, for incentives? It's a good year, everybody gets 10%.

• 2:20:43Speaker 03

  Bad year, everybody gets zero. How motivating is that if you're a, you know, even a thousand person company? And we'll come back to small companies, but if you're a thousand person company and you're like four or 10,000 person company, you're five levels down from CEO, you're working on your project, your design. How much do you influence if it's a company's good year or bad year? Not much. So how motivating is it for you to work harder on your design to know that if it was a good year? Not very. That's called a wasteful resource. In economics, that's called a free rider problem. You might as well, it's the same thing with stock options. The vast, you know, the many companies you say, well, let's give everybody stock options. Okay.

• 2:21:26Speaker 03

  You know, maybe that's great if you're a five person company or a 10 person company or a 50 person company and your project is the one project and if you help it, then the value of, but suppose you're a 10,000 person company or even a thousand, you've, there are 50 different projects and your project might move the needle by 1%.

• 2:21:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, even in a smaller company, a hundred person startup and you're not deciding the strategic direction of the company if you're higher number 100.

• 2:21:52Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 2:21:53Tim Ferriss?

  Most likely.

• 2:21:54Speaker 03

  So what are your incentives? It's, it's a free rider problem because you actually do better off if you can spend your time convincing your boss that you're incredibly valuable, meanwhile, just twiddle your thumbs and if the company has a good year, bang, your options go up and if a bad year, whatever, you know, you spend your time looking for another job.

• 2:22:12Tim Ferriss?

  I'd love to get into maybe some specific examples of, or any examples of common incentives or incentives that you see that are problematic. And I'll just riff on, on a few problems I've observed. I don't know exactly how to fix them, but just as a reflection of how much I think about this, which is not indicative of having all the solutions by any stretch, but for instance, firsthand experience of working on, say, books or television projects when there is a regime change. New leader comes in, says, if this goes well, I'll get none of the credit with this catalog

• 2:22:57Tim Ferriss?

  of stuff that my predecessor approved and if any of it goes wrong, I'll get all the blame. Therefore, it's all going in the vault or whatever, or getting deprioritized, right? Super, super common because.

• 2:23:09Tim Ferriss?

  Well, for the, for the reason I just

• 2:23:10Speaker 03

  Incentives.

• 2:23:11Tim Ferriss?

  For the incentives. And then having more recently spent time in science and looking at where there might be weaknesses, there might be funding deficits correlated to weaknesses,

• 2:23:26Tim Ferriss?

  or funding pressure to perform science in certain ways. You see a positive publication bias, right? So you could have a really well-designed experiment. Intervention, let's just say, in, in, in one case, shows no effect. That's still potentially a valuable study, but there's a, appears to be sort of a publication bias

• 2:23:50Tim Ferriss?

  for positive effects with interventions. So it's like, okay, well, how does that factor into a whole slew of different decisions that scientists make or that funders make?

• 2:24:04Tim Ferriss?

  But whether it's in science, whether it's in for-profit companies, what are some common sort of default and/or default compensation structures or, or offers that you think are problematic?

• 2:24:18Speaker 03

  All right, I'll give you, I'll give you one example that might be close to home, Uber.

• 2:24:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:22Speaker 03

  And we'll talk about it.

• 2:24:23Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 2:24:24Speaker 03

  It'll be interesting, because that'll be an interesting discussion. And I, just so we don't lose the thread, what does it mean, bring a gun to a knife? What do I mean by that? That is, if everybody is doing one thing, kind of a 20th century, like a 50, like, hey, just reward bonuses, they're creating a free rider problem. They are not optimizing their use of incentives. They are weak. If you want to get a competitive advantage as a company, why don't you bring a gun to knife, appoint a chief incentives officer, whose job is to be more strategic? Where those companies are taking X amount of dollars, you know, translate the equity

• 2:25:07Speaker 03

  into dollars, they're taking X amount of cash and equity and wasting it.

• 2:25:13Speaker 03

  Why don't you be strategic? Why don't you take that X, get rid of the free rider problem, figure out what will better motivate and better incentivize and essentially better align incentives and value created for the company? Individual managers don't have the time or expertise or training. You don't ask every individual manager to say, "I'd like you to come up with the best, identify the best software tools and the best smartphone apps and the best hardware and the best middleware for your team and could you get that done by a week from now in addition to all your others?" No, you appoint a chief technology officer, that's his job. Same thing with incentives. So bring a gun to a knife fight.

• 2:25:55Speaker 03

  If all your competitors are doing this weak thing, why don't you just turn that into a competitive advantage? Do it better. Use your resources more strategically to align incentives with value created better than your competitors. And you know what? You'll create a more motivated force. That doesn't mean that the cultural stuff doesn't matter. It's as a complement.

• 2:26:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:17Speaker 03

  Culture and structure. So let's talk about Uber for a second. This will be kind of interesting since you were such an early investor and so one good friend of mine there, senior, who has been around at a lot of tech companies, we don't need to mention any names in this conversation, talked about the culture in the engineering group there, pre-CEO transition, before the transition with Travis, as everyone wanted to be captain of their own speedboat. And the, it was problematic in the sense that whenever you grow very fast, you accumulate

• 2:27:02Speaker 03

  a technology debit. There are liabilities and assets and when you grow, this is actually Bob Sutton at Stanford was, did a great study on this on Uber and he and I have been talking about it and this is the way he described it, which I thought was very interesting. When you grow really rapidly, you accumulate a debit, which is all the little technology stuff that you sort of fast-forwarded past and really needs to go back and get cleaned up if you want to scale. At Uber, everyone, the-

• 2:27:34Speaker 03

  What appeared to be the culture on the surface was that everyone wanted to be captain of their own speed, but they wanted to work on the next Uber thing. Uber eats, or Uber delivery from hospitals of meds, or Uber this, or Uber flower, or whatever. Rather than go back and fix the technology debit, all this stuff from growing hyper-fast that needed to go back. And that led to a lot of problems. So that sounds like a cultural problem on this, doesn't it? Everyone wants to be their own speedboat, but let's go one level beneath that. Yeah. What was the incentive system?

• 2:28:16Speaker 03

  So the incentive system at Uber at the time, and I, you know, you can correct me if you have firsthand knowledge, I just happen to... Everybody has a base salary, let's just for sake of argument, call it a hundred, and let's say you have a bonus target, thirty. Just for sake of argument, it could be a very different number, but let's say that's the multiple. And there is a multiple of bonus that you get based on how your year went. And at most tech companies in Silicon Valley, that, you know, anything less than point five, you know, you're fired, fifty percent, you might be fired. That's actually pretty normal. Seventy percent was not a great year, eighty percent, but a hundred percent is you hit

• 2:29:00Speaker 03

  most of your stuff, and maybe a hundred fifty, like, had a great year. At Uber, it was eight hundred percent. It was, or, it was a huge multiple. So what did that structure encourage? It encouraged everybody to go find their one project, push everybody else away, because that's what they were being compensated on. Because if you could demonstrate that you found some little niche and you grew it, you could get, you know, some huge multiple.

• 2:29:33Speaker 03

  So that led to the captain of the speedboat problem. CEO transition. It sounds like, oh, it was just a culture change. Actually, they changed underlying incentives as well. The captain of the speedboat problem faded and people started playing together better. They started going back and fixing the technology debits that they'd accumulated from the hypergrowth phase. So, lesson, sometimes things that look like culture

• 2:30:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 2:30:05Speaker 03

  may actually be structure.

• 2:30:06Tim Ferriss?

  Totally.

• 2:30:07Speaker 03

  Sometimes, structure drives culture. And that's why having a chief incentives officer is bringing a gun to a knife fight. It can give you a competitive advantage. If you're really busy hypergrowing a company, do you have time to think about the perverse incentives of your stuff? You've got, if you're a CEO or you're an executive, you've got a board of directors, you've got all these fires to put out, you've got strategy, you've got execution, you don't have time to think about, but if you appointed a chief incentives officer and that's his or her job, they can catch some of these traps, they can optimize the use of that resources more effectively. So that's what I mean by chief incentives officer. Now, Uber, what are your, you know, what is your experience?

• 2:30:51Tim Ferriss?

  I think, well, I do not have the ground level firsthand exposure to their compensation structure, so I can't speak to that. I think, I think it's, it's a very valid example in, as well as a, it's a micro example of a macro phenomenon, right? In the sense that, at the very least, incentives are a large part of culture, right? In so much as if we think of culture just to separate it from the for-profit work world or business world for a moment, if you think of culture, whether it's Japanese culture or American culture or fill-in-the-blank culture, what does that really mean? The word gets used a lot, but what does that mean? Like, culture?

• 2:31:31Tim Ferriss?

  And in my mind, it is, it's a, it's a shared set of beliefs and behavior. I mean, to a large extent. Like, okay, well, putting the beliefs to one side, like, what dictates behavior? Certainly, to a large extent, it's incentives. What are you rewarded for and what are you punished for?

• 2:31:48Speaker 03

  And what you're saying is, in many ways, just that structure can drive, I think of culture as patterns of behavior. And I think structure, they're not mutually exclusive circles. They overlap and in some and they interact because structure can drive culture. Certain incentives can drive patterns of behavior. And by saying that structure can matter, it doesn't mean that you're saying culture isn't important, right? So, for example, having regular employee beatings is probably a bad idea. I'm just putting that out there. Yeah. Not that kind of culture where you flog people in 11 a.m. in the town hall. That's probably not going to do great for you. Empowering your employees, celebrating victories,

• 2:32:30Speaker 03

  that's probably good. Those are patterns of behavior. So, all right, here's a wacky analogy, but we talked about nature versus nurture, genetic predispositions versus thing you, this is a great segue, genetic versus, uh, nature versus nurture, genetic predispositions versus things that you pick up from the environment. And I think that's a good example. They're genetic predispositions to diabetes. Mm-hmm. On the other hand, if you drink two gallons of Coke every day, you're probably going to accelerate diabetes. They're genetic predispositions to lung cancer. On the other hand, if you smoke two packs a day, you're probably going to accelerate. Both genes

• 2:33:11Speaker 03

  and lifestyle matter. And same with structure and culture. In a company, both structure and culture matter. And I think one issue is that there's been so much focus on number two and not enough focus on number one. A hundred percent agree. So much focus on culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture. When I first started as a CEO, you're probably the same thing, you know, I consumed those books as I wanted to learn how to be a better leader. And after like the 100th book, you know, that said more or less the same thing, like, okay, I get it already, but, you know, is there any more? Yes. Uh, and then there were all these kind of funny little paradoxes that that couldn't

• 2:33:54Speaker 03

  really explain. So, it's not that those ideas and principles, that there isn't stuff there that's useful. Evidence, they get repeated over and over.

• 2:34:04Speaker 03

  But people have not paid enough attention to structure.

• 2:34:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:09Speaker 03

  And that's why if you do it well, Chief Incentives Officer, it's bringing gun to knife. You create a competitive advantage.

• 2:34:18Tim Ferriss?

  But I think it's also an example of bringing a scientific mindset to something that has a lot of fuzzy logic and is full of paradoxes, as you noted, because it's like, okay, well, if the culture is the variable that is determining the success or failure of this company that's being put on magazine covers, and then a month later, it's a complete U-turn, how does one explain that? And on the incentive side, also, you have very discreet pieces that allow you to run experiments very effectively, whereas I think the culture discussion can get very nebulous very quickly.

• 2:35:02Tim Ferriss?

  It's like, okay, you want to improve culture. First, let's define culture. What are you talking about exactly? Hard to get anyone to, not anyone, but it's often talked about for 200 pages in a book without ever defining it properly. Problem number one. Problem number two, okay, you want to impact culture. How are you going to measure improving culture? Is it in top line revenue growth? Is it in any number of other key performance indicators?

• 2:35:31Tim Ferriss?

  It's not as cleanly examinable or testable as incentives in a lot of respects. And that's why for me, I'll give you an anecdote. And this, for people listening are like, I don't run a big company. This applies to you. This applies to, for me, the culture would be like, just think more positive, right? Culture is like... Go lose weight because you'll be happier. It's like, okay, well, the fact of the matter is I haven't been losing weight. For the last five years, I've had that as my New Year's resolution. Maybe it's time to shift and look at the structure. And I remember talking to somebody at one point.

• 2:36:14Tim Ferriss?

  They were watching phobias being cured on stage and there's some type of mentalist or someone who's doing work. And at one point, the, uh, this woman gets on stage and she's afraid of heights. And there's a ladder that's put up and, uh, you know, she, she, she talks to the mentalist who's cures her of her phobia doing A, B, and C. And then she walks all the way up to the top of the ladder and comes down. And he goes, how do you feel? And she goes, I feel great. My husband said he would give me a hundred dollars if I climbed to the top of the ladder.

• 2:36:43Speaker 03

  It's like, structure drives behavior.

• 2:36:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Incentives, people. It's like, it's the incentives, stupid. Like sometimes it's like follow the money. It's the economy, stupid. Yeah, well, with human behavior, it's like, it's the incentives, stupid. Like really, really pay attention to that. And you can rig the game so that it is more likely you'll get the outcomes you want if you think about that structure, right? If you think about the incentives.

• 2:37:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, you touched on another thing. It's a more scientific approach. So it gives you actionable ideas that are sort of

• 2:37:17Speaker 03

  surprising or starting points for discussion or different ways. I'll give you two examples.

• 2:37:24Speaker 03

  So you can work out the mathematics of, you know, when you get this transition and you get these control parameters that are parameters of organizational design. And so here's one thing it tells you that you can do if you want to build more innovative teams and companies, which is get managers out of the decision of bonuses or promotion.

• 2:37:48Speaker 03

  Just take them out of the decision loop.

• 2:37:51Speaker 03

  That sounds kinda weird. You're a manager and shouldn't you be deciding? I'll give you company A and company B that do it the different ways and I'll be pretty clear why. So imagine, you know, there is a, uh, let's call it some kinda client service consulting company. It could be a design company, architecture company, consult, any kinda consulting here in Austin. And there is the local office, it's a global company and there's a local office here. And there are three vice presidents and there are thirty associates in the Austin office. And a spot opens up for a fourth VP.

• 2:38:30Speaker 03

  Now, in most companies, the local office is gonna decide on which of those thirty candidates is gonna make that, you know, get that promotion and become the fourth VP. And so what's gonna happen? Those thirty associates are gonna be sucking up to those three VPs and politicking and stabbing each other in the back all year long. Cause they all wanna get that promotion. Now imagine a different company, and this is actually done in many ways at Google and was done at McKinsey and maybe at some other companies, but not very many. Local office, three VPs, thirty associates, spot opens up for a promotion. Three VPs don't decide.

• 2:39:14Speaker 03

  They fly in somebody from, uh, you know, Denmark. Specifically chosen, cause he or she doesn't know, let's make it a she. Let's call her Eleanor from Denmark. Flies in because she doesn't know the three VPs, doesn't know any of the associates. Maybe from a totally different industry or field, but same group. And her job is to spend a week, two weeks, three weeks interviewing broadly. Might interview ten, fifteen, twenty people. Will certainly interview the three VPs. Will interview many of the peers of the candidates of the thirty associates. Will interview their customers, interview their internal customers, their external customers, up, down.

• 2:40:00Speaker 03

  And see...

• 2:40:03Speaker 03

  Make a decision on or make a recommendation to an independent committee that will make the decision. Now, what happens? In the second situation, what are those 30 associates going to do? Are they going to be sucking up to the VPs all year round? No, because the VPs aren't making that decision. Are they going to be stabbing each other in the back? Not really, because the other associates are going to be interviewed on this decision. So what do you have? Everyone's kind of going to focus on their job and doing good client work because they're going to be interviewing the clients and going to be interviewing the internal people. So everyone is kind of cooperating. What did we just do? We took the manager out of the decision. So where does this come from? Well, if you work out in kind of the mathematical economic model, you can calculate something called return on politics.

• 2:40:47Speaker 03

  What's the incremental value, incremental probability that you increase your promotion likelihood versus the incremental hour you spend on politics? When that variable or parameter, return on politics, is high as it was with the first company, you really hurt innovation. When that variable is low, as it was with the second company, you really improve innovation. So that just falls out. So you mentioned scientific, that just actually falls out of the sort of straightforward model of the incentives and these two variables, return on politics. And so it gives you a way of quantifying something that's sort of fuzzy.

• 2:41:30Speaker 03

  So if I tell you, or we're sitting around, we're talking, a friend of ours says, you know, this company, you know, I just joined this new company, it's very political. It sounds like a cultural thing, but actually there's a way to quantify. It just means my return on, my expected value of return on politics is higher here than in my old company, and that sucks. Everybody, every manager is different. Everyone is less susceptible, more or less susceptible to politics.

• 2:41:55Speaker 03

  But there's some average and that's what you mean.

• 2:41:57Tim Ferriss?

  Right, and everyone's susceptible to incentives.

• 2:42:00Speaker 03

  And everyone's susceptible to it. So that's just kind of one example of how you can think a little bit more scientifically of incentives. What are my incentives around politics and promotion, in which case it's not going to be a great place for innovation? Or my incentive is pretty well aligned around the success of my idea, or my project, or my team's project?

• 2:42:22Tim Ferriss?

  Not just innovation, but am I going to be in an environment where I feel supported by my peers, or is it going to be like The Hunger Games?

• 2:42:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:42:31Tim Ferriss?

  Right, I mean, which certainly innovation is one thing that suffers. There are a lot of things that suffer.

• 2:42:37Speaker 03

  Right, and so designing incentives, it's a complicated problem. It's not like I'm saying, oh, there's an easy shot. I'm just, I'm saying that the return on investment of spending more time and more energy, making it at least as equal a function as your chief technology officer, your chief revenue officer, is worth it. Chief revenues officer is to motivate customers to buy your product as best as you can with a fixed budget. Well, don't you want to motivate your employees to work as hard as you can on the best projects? Yeah. That's what this chief incentives officer should do. Isn't that just as important as motivating your customers, motivating your people? Yeah, so why don't we do that? Why don't we make it at least as good?

• 2:43:17Tim Ferriss?

  And this, I should say, I think certainly also applies to very small companies, even one-person shops, because whether or not you've designed them, you are responding to incentives.

• 2:43:31Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 2:43:32Tim Ferriss?

  So it makes a lot of sense to sit down and to figure out like what you're responding to, what you're most motivated by, positively, negatively. Safi Bahcall, loonshots.com.

• 2:43:45Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 2:43:46Tim Ferriss?

  At Safi, S A F I, Bahcall, B A H C A L L on Twitter, if anybody wants to wave hello. The book is Loon Shots. It's a really fun read. And for someone like me who really learns best by example and story, to deduce the principle or the lesson, it is just chock full of stories that...

• 2:44:17Tim Ferriss?

  I would have expected to have heard at some point in all of my reading and all of my adventuring in the business and scientific worlds and yet the vast majority I'd never come across, which made it not just an actionable read, but a very, very fun read. So, thank you for that.

• 2:44:37Speaker 03

  Thanks for saying that. It means a lot. I really appreciate it.

• 2:44:39Tim Ferriss?

  And do you have any parting comments before we wrap up?

• 2:44:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, because I don't think we've spent enough time together and talked about enough ideas. I think we've got another 72 hours worth of material because we've been so superficial.

• 2:44:57Tim Ferriss?

  That's true.

• 2:44:58Speaker 03

  You know, not more than a few seconds on each chapter. No, no, it's super fun to be here, of course, and I hope, you know, my hope with this book is that it, the thing that's been most, and it's made me feel the most satisfied, and you probably experience this with stuff you do as well, is that a lot of people, especially younger people, have come to me and said they just find it inspiring and uplifting. And my hope with this is that it's an especially exciting thing for me, that if it can inspire people

• 2:45:36Speaker 03

  who have a crazy idea, or people who are being told that their idea is crazy, to just keep going a little while, because there is some gold out there. If you just persist through the stumbles, and that's not just the exceptional idea, it's almost every single important idea. So if you hit a bunch of rough patches, it may be because you're on to something really, really important.

• 2:46:00Tim Ferriss?

  Dig it. Safi, thank you again for all the time. It is time for us to go grab some food. And for everybody listening,

• 2:46:12Tim Ferriss?

  You can find links to everything we have talked about in the show notes, as per usual, at tim.blog/podcast. And you can search Lunshots, Safi. Safi is probably the best bet, S A F I. If you just search his name, all of the links will pop up in the show notes. And until next time, thank you for listening. 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

• 2:46:56Tim Ferriss?

  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. 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 fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.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.

• 2:47:36Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Hiring can be hard, really hard. And it can also be super, super expensive and painful if you get it wrong. I certainly have had that experience firsthand multiple times, and I am not eager to repeat it. So I try to do as much vetting as possible on the front end. And today, with more qualified candidates than ever, you need a solution. You need a platform that helps you to find the right people for your business. LinkedIn Jobs does exactly that. More than 600 million users visit LinkedIn to learn, make connections, grow as professionals, and, more than ever, discover new job opportunities. In fact, overall, LinkedIn members add 15 new skills to their profiles and apply to 35

• 2:48:21Tim Ferriss?

  job posts every 2 seconds. That's a crazy stat. LinkedIn does the legwork to match you to your most qualified candidates so that you can focus on the hiring process. Get in the person into your company who will transform your business. They make sure your job post gets in front of the people with the right hard skills and soft skills to meet your requirements. They've made it as easy as possible. So check it out! To get $50 off of your first job post, go to LinkedIn.com/Tim. Again, that's LinkedIn.com/Tim to get $50 off of your first job post. Terms and conditions apply. Check it out! LinkedIn.com/Tim. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. I love Peloton.

• 2:49:06Tim Ferriss?

  Peloton is a cutting-edge indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right to your home. You don't have to worry about fitting classes into your schedule, making it to the studio, or dealing with some commute to the gym. I have a Peloton bike in my master bedroom at home, and it is one of the first things that I do in the morning. I wake up, meditate for 20 minutes, and then I knock out a short 20-minute ride. Usually, high-intensity interval training or HIIT. Then I take a shower, and I'm in higher gear for the rest of the day. It's beautifully convenient and has become something that I actually look forward to. And I was skeptical in the beginning. I didn't think I would dig it, and I really do. So, you have a lot of options. For one, if you like, you can ride live with thousands of other Peloton riders from across the country on the interactive leaderboard to keep you motivated.

• 2:49:49Tim Ferriss?

  I tend to use a lot of the classes on demand and have four to six of them that I've bookmarked and use over and over again. There are up to 14 new classes every day with thousands of classes on demand, and there are a variety of workouts to choose from. 45-minute classes, 20-minute burns, hip-hop, rock and roll, low-impact, or high-intensity. Pick the class structure and style that works for you. Peloton has an amazing roster of incredible instructors in New York City. We really do have great instructors of every possible personality and style. And you can find one that you love, no matter what you're in the mood for. Personally, I use Matt Wilpers a lot, but I use a bunch of them. I'm promiscuous and enjoy classes from a lot of their instructors. With real time metrics, you can track your performance over time and continue to beat

• 2:50:33Tim Ferriss?

  your personal best. I did not think the gamification would work for me and they really hit the nail on the head. It does work, at least for me tremendously well to keep me pushing consistently. So, discover this cutting edge indoor cycling bike that brings a studio experience to your home. Peloton is offering listeners of this podcast a limited time offer. Go to onepeloton.com, that's spelled O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N dot com. Enter the code TIMPODCAST, all one word, at checkout and get $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. Get a great workout at home anytime you want. Go to onepeloton.com and use the code TIMPODCAST to get started.