#399: Adam Grant — The Man Who Does Everything

Adam Grant — The Man Who Does Everything | Brought to you by Zapier http://zapier.com/tim and Peloton https://www.onepeloton.com/. "When you feel like you're not productive, it's not necessarily because you're lazy or because you have bad habits, it's because you're not working on the right projects and you haven't found the ones that are intrinsically motivating and meaningful to you." — Adam Grant Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant https://twitter.com/adammgrant) is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, where he has been the top-rated professor for seven straight years. He is an expert in how we can find motivation and meaning, and lead more generous and creative lives. He is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of four books that have sold over two million copies and been translated into 35 languages: Give and Take https://www.amazon.com/Give-Take-Helping-Others-Success/dp/0143124986/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=adam+grant&qid=1575415508&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=efd03886b41361aca527f01557c591f7&language=en_US, Originals https://www.amazon.com/Originals-How-Non-Conformists-Move-World/dp/B01A7Q61LI/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, Option B https://www.amazon.com/Option-Adversity-Building-Resilience-Finding/dp/1524732680/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=adam+grant&qid=1575415508&sr=8-5&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=0acddfd50299d8a765a45761089e285b&language=en_US, and Power Moves https://www.amazon.com/Power-Moves-Lessons-from-Davos/dp/B07H4WPSS2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=adam+grant&qid=1575415508&sr=8-4&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=d78eb3e3bd83cdcfb71027691400c7ad&language=en_US. His books have been recognized as among the year's best by Amazon, The Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal and been praised by J. J. Abrams, Richard Branson, Bill and Melinda Gates, Malcolm Gladwell, and Malala Yousafzai. Adam hosts the TED podcast WorkLife https://www.ted.com/podcasts/worklife, and his TED talks https://www.ted.com/speakers/adam_grant have been viewed more than 20 million times. His speaking and consulting clients include Google, the NBA, and The Gates Foundation. He has been recognized as one of the world's 10 most influential management thinkers, Fortune's 40 under 40, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and received distinguished scientific achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and the National Science Foundation. Adam writes for The New York Times on work and psychology https://www.nytimes.com/column/adam-grant and serves on The Department of Defense Innovation Board. He received his B. A. from Harvard and his Ph. D. from the University of Michigan, and he is a former magician and junior Olympic springboard diver. 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. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 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 inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Peloton. I love Peloton. 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

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  from across the country on the interactive leaderboard to keep you motivated. 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.

• 1:51Tim Ferriss?

  With real-time metrics, you can track your performance over time and continue to beat 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.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.

• 2:39Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Zapier, Z-A-P-I-E-R. You may, in your own mind, say Zapier, but it's not Zapier, it's Zapier, like happier. They are a new sponsor, but not new to me as a service at all. I've been using them for many years now. If you run your own business, think about all the hours and hours, maybe endless hours you spend moving information from one software program to another, all because they don't easily work together. Well, now they can automatically, thanks to Zapier. My team has been using Zapier for years, as I mentioned, which helps us with a ton of tasks, including, let's just take one example, connecting Facebook ads campaigns to our email platform. You can also, as I do, automate the posting of your Instagram photos to all social platforms.

• 3:24Tim Ferriss?

  This has saved me and my team hundreds of hours alone. My team has also raved about Zapier's support, which is very important. If things go sideways, you want to be able to reach someone. And in their words, "It is in a class of its own." A class of its own, that's the exact verbatim quote from one of my employees. As with all sponsors of this podcast, we try to test everything ourselves, and we have used Zapier as full paying retail customers. That is, we paid for the service long before we ever had contact with the company as a sponsor. They support more than 1,500 business applications, so the possibilities for automating processes are virtually endless. You may know, if you've read The Four Hour Workweek, that the third step is automation. Not adding headcount

• 4:07Tim Ferriss?

  to a messy problem to try to fix it, but automating as much as possible. You want to eliminate automate and only then delegate. And Zapier is one of the best pieces of automation software that I've ever come across. It connects all of your business software and handles work for you, so you can focus on the things that matter most, the things you're good at. For instance, instead of trying to cobble stuff together or code. To learn more and try it out, go to zapier.com/tim. Connect the apps you use most and let Zapier take it from there. You can do a million things. As one more example, Zapier lets you instantly engage with leads, send them to a CRM or spreadsheet, and then notify your team so they can act fast.

• 4:47Tim Ferriss?

  And like I mentioned very briefly, the beautiful part is that you can build the solution you need in minutes without writing code or asking a developer for help. So join the 4.5 million people or more at this point who are saving an average of 40 hours per month by using Zapier. Now and for a limited time, try Zapier free by going to our special link zapier, z a p i e r dot com slash tim. That's zapier.com/tim for your free 14 day trial. Check it out. Zapier.com/tim.

• 5:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today has a bio that reads almost as unbelievable. Adam Grant. Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, where he's been the top rated professor for seven straight years. It didn't always start out that way, and we're going to talk about the very beginning. He is an expert in how we can find motivation and meaning and lead more generous and creative lives. He is the number one New York Times bestselling author of four books that have sold more than 2 million copies and have been translated into 35 languages. Give and Take, Originals, Option B, and Power Moves. His books have been recognized as among the year's best by Amazon, The Financial Times,

• 6:08Tim Ferriss?

  Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal, and been praised by J.J. Abrams, Richard Branson, Bill and Melinda Gates, Malcolm Gladwell, and many, many others. Adam hosts the TED Podcast Work Life. That's one word. Work Life, capital W, capital L. And his TED Talks have been viewed more than 20 million times. His speaking and consulting clients include Google, the MBA, the Gates Foundation, among others. He's been recognized as one of the world's top 10 most influential management thinkers, Fortune's 40 Under 40, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. And has received distinguished scientific achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and the National Science Foundation. Adam writes for the New York Times on work in psychology and serves on the Department of Defense Innovation Board. He received

• 6:51Tim Ferriss?

  his BA from Harvard and his PhD from the University of Michigan, and he is a former magician and junior Olympic springboard diver. Adam, welcome to the show.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Thank you, Tim. Great to be here.

• 7:02Tim Ferriss?

  And this is one of those pictures from the bio that if I were creating a character in a novel, I feel that my editor would encourage me to clip back on. You have a very impressive, not just bio, but timeline and the amount you've done in a very, very compressed period of time. So I think we're going to talk a lot about productivity habits and things that are related to that. But I want to just bring up a few other quotes. Some of the quotes are from media. This one is from the New York Times, quote, "Grant took three years to get his PhD and in the seven years since has published more papers in his fields, top-tier journals, than colleagues who have won lifetime achievement awards." And then

• 7:47Tim Ferriss?

  there's another note from one of our mutual friends, which says, "When another Wharton professor got tenure, he opened his speech by saying, quote, 'I'm so grateful to be in a place where everyone is focused on the same research question, how does Adam Grant do it?'" And that's the question on my mind. And I thought where we could possibly start is with rewinding the clock and going back to your very first experiences teaching. And I have a cheat sheet note here that says, "You were so uncomfortable in the beginning that your first evaluation forms read, at least for one person, quote, 'You're so nervous you're causing us to physically shake in our seats,' end quote."

• 8:32Tim Ferriss?

  How do you improve at that point? What did you do to improve after getting those feedback forms?

• 8:40Speaker 03

  Oh, thanks for reminding me.

• 8:42Tim Ferriss?

  You're welcome.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  It was, it was painful. I, you know, I remember going to grad school and thinking I've sort of found my calling. You know, I had, I had these professors who changed the way I saw the world and they were incredibly inspiring. And I wanted to try to pay that forward. And then I go in front of my first audience and I get comments like that. And it wasn't just one student, right? It was over and over and over again. Instructor seems very nervous. Instructor seems like the most nervous professor I've ever heard in my life. Instructor is sweating so much that I've completely stopped paying attention to the lecture. And it's just, it just went on and on. And I, I think I did what anyone would do in that situation, which is I started to wonder whether I should quit.

• 9:28Speaker 03

  And then I started to realize that the reason I got into this in the first place was not about me. It wasn't, it wasn't about my emotions or my anxiety or the fact that I was described as looking like a muppet. Awkwardly moved around the stage. It was, it was because I loved ideas and I wanted to share them. And I wanted to be helpful to the students that I would one day teach. And so I guess I took, I took a little cue out of, out of my diving days. And I said, okay, when I started diving, I was really awful. What did I do? I did as many reps as possible every day. It, you know, it, it sounds really boring, but last time I checked, you kind of plant the seeds of greatness in the daily grind.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  And I know you, you've lived your whole life that way, Tim. But for me, that meant I'm, I'm going to go and get in front of as many audiences as I can. And so I actually started volunteering to give guest lectures for other people's classes. And forced myself into a situation where I would have to be on a stage every day. I would have to give multiple talks on the same topic. I would then have to write new talks. And, you know, I think physiologically you can only sustain anxiety for so many hours at a time. Right? And eventually it started to fade a little bit. I started to get a little more comfortable. And then, you know, a couple of, a couple of good things happened. I remember I, I cracked a joke offhand after I'd, you know, done a lecture a couple of times. And a few people laughed.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  Wait a minute, the audience actually liked something I did. Maybe there's hope. And so I think momentum, I guess, grew from there. And I felt like I had a couple of small wins to build on. And as I got more comfortable, I think it started to go better. And then, and then eventually I decided I actually really enjoyed teaching and maybe I would become halfway decent at it.

• 11:14Tim Ferriss?

  Ed, what were you teaching at the time? What were the talks that you were giving, the lectures?

• 11:19Speaker 03

  So I was, let's see, the first lecture that I was doing was, it was actually for a, an intro psychology class on career choice. And I was, I was the worst person in the world to give this talk because I, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my career. And one of the reasons I became a, an organizational psychologist was I, I had figured out that I could take all the jobs that I thought were interesting. And I could study those and live them vicariously. And so it's kind of cheating, right? I still don't know what I want to do with my life, so I study other people's interesting jobs. But I was, I was trying to, I guess in the, in the early lectures, I was trying to get students to think about tunnel vision. It's, it's a problem I've seen over and over again with high achievers. Yeah, I, I certainly felt it as an undergrad.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  I, I've watched a lot of my students at Wharton go through it since then. And I, what I was trying to highlight was that, you know, just because you're highly motivated and driven and you have, you have clarity about your goals today, doesn't mean that you won't wake up in two years and wish you had considered other goals. And so you might want to broaden your peripheral vision a little bit was sort of the, the punchline of the talk.

• 12:26Tim Ferriss?

  So let's, let's dig into broader, broadening peripheral vision or uncovering blind spots. The feedback form, I'd love to talk about the feedback form. Were the feedback forms standardized so you didn't have input into the feedback forms? Or were you able to design questions that you then gave to these sort of early students slash victims of your many, many rehearsals and trial runs? And in either case, I'd be curious to know what you did, what you paid attention to in the feedback forms.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  So I actually, when I went to give that first guest lecture, I asked the professor, you know, if they could give out their standard feedback forms so I could learn how to improve. And the professor said, "Guest lectures don't do feedback forms. You're donating your time. You know, you're probably pretty comfortable and confident in having something of value to offer. And, you know, you don't then want a bunch of students telling you why you weren't as good as they wanted you to be. And, you know, if that's not the case, you don't need any more praise anyway. And so, you know, nobody really bothers with it. And I said, "Well, I really feel it. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know if this is gonna be a train wreck or just really bad.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  And so I feel like I have to learn something from the audience. And so I just drafted a very simple feedback form and had two questions on it. One was, "How can I improve?" And the other was, "Is there anything I did well that, you know, I should try to repeat or build on?" And I remember, I actually remember getting the feedback forms and looking at them and thinking, "Wow, there are a lot of letters written on the 'improve' question.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  There's a lot of white space on the 'things I did well' question."

• 14:20Speaker 03

  But I think what I took away from that was, I'd always thought you needed to be really structured in the feedback requests that you make. And I think that sometimes that's helpful, right, to say, "Okay, you know, could you tell me how to make my talk more interesting? Or, you know, how could I have kept you awake?" But then I would have been limiting the feedback to the things I already knew I needed to work on, right? And I wanted to, I knew I had blind spots. I wanted to figure out what those were. And so I think by asking the broad question, I got much more varied feedback. And then, as I designed future feedback forms, I would always ask those broad questions. And then I'd follow up with a few targeted questions on specific things I was trying to work on.

• 15:02Tim Ferriss?

  What were some of the things, do you recall some of the things that were specifics you wanted to work on at any point in your development as a teacher?

• 15:10Speaker 03

  There's a long list. So, you know, I actually, I wonder, Tim, if you've had this experience too. I find teaching way easier than speaking or lecturing. Cause teaching is interactive, right? You're having a conversation. You get a lot of questions, you know, throughout, throughout your presentation and you can very quickly start to figure out what the audience is interested in and tailor it, right?

• 15:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Whereas, you know, I think the guest lecturing was a little bit of trial by fire because I had to stand up and perform. And I wasn't, I wasn't a skilled or comfortable performer. And so I, early on, it was very simple things like pausing between sentences, occasionally breathing. I got, I got feedback at one point that I didn't blink ever.

• 15:57Tim Ferriss?

  Just like a barracuda.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, just laser focus. My wife tells me I still sometimes don't blink in interviews, which, which cracks me up. But I, you know, some of it was really granular, kind of nuts and bolts, stage presence. And, and some of it was content. I was, I was trying to, I was trying to get students and, you know, and later other kinds of audiences to, to question their assumptions. And I think one of the things I learned very quickly was I was attacking their assumptions way too hard. And the moment I said, you might hate your investment banking career. You might not fall in love with management consulting. They got defensive and shut down. And so I was working on finding other ways of, of landing at the conclusion on their terms instead of mine and saying, okay, how much

• 16:44Speaker 03

  do you really know about investment banking? Is it possible that if you're not someone who reads about markets for fun in your spare time, that it's not going to be the most joyful thing you've ever done to spend a hundred hours a week looking at a spreadsheet? So, you know, a lot of what I was working on was was just trying to figure out how to take a message that was provocative to the audience and make it palatable.

• 17:07Tim Ferriss?

  You're you're very right. I just want to agree with what you said at the beginning of that, which is teaching, providing much more intermittent valuable feedback in the sense that when you're teaching, depending on the format, of course, but very often, confusion becomes clearer earlier to the teacher. Does that make sense?

• 17:32Speaker 03

  It does.

• 17:33Tim Ferriss?

  If you give up and provide a keynote and then walk offstage, the feedback loop, if it exists at all, is really slow and kind of on a macro level. But if students if students can interrupt you, they can raise their hand and say, I don't understand.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  I think that's huge. It's so valuable. And also, I think you're often in the position where when you finally finish your keynote and you get to the audience questions, when you hear the first two questions, you realize, oh, if I'd known that's what you're interested in, I would have given a completely different talk.

• 18:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, definitely. And I'm going to hop from this to perhaps something that people listening can model, since some people will be in front of students, but some may not. So I'd love to discuss what I've heard phrased as the challenge network. And this is from a, well, it's PhillyMag.com, but it's from a profile from 2018. And it reads, feel free to fact check, because I don't believe everything I read on the internet, but it says, he, referring to you, literally has a challenge network, in quotation marks, a cohort of people he relies on to give him unvarnished feedback. And then the next part, which we'll get to also, he keeps a resume of his failures. It's three pages. And he constantly asks

• 18:47Tim Ferriss?

  for advice on what he could tweak, tune up, or totally reconsider.

• 18:53Tim Ferriss?

  What is a challenge network and how did you assemble it? And where I'm reaching, what I'm reaching for here is how, what did you do? And what might you recommend that other people also try or at least consider?

• 19:06Speaker 03

  So I guess I've been, I've been doing it for a long time. I didn't have a name for it or really a structure, a formal structure for it. Until actually I did my first podcast episode where I went to Bridgewater. And I was really interested in Ray Dalio's, you know, culture of radical transparency. And I'd studied it for a few years, but this is the first time I'd really tried to tell a story in audio as opposed to writing about it. And I went in and I was, I was thinking, okay, what is, what is different? And, you know, in the time that I've spent at this place where, you know, where people not only are comfortable with criticism, but they actually seem to enjoy getting it. What, what is different about that? And I think at one point it just clicked that they are trying to build a different kind of network.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  That we, we all know the value of a network, but mostly when we think about networks, we're thinking about a support network, which is the group of cheerleaders that you surround yourself with to motivate you, to encourage you, to, you know, to, to see more potential in you than you see in yourself. And I think that's incredibly important. I think that it's hard to imagine anyone achieving anything, right? Without having some kind of support network behind them. You know, whether that's building their confidence or opening doors for them or helping them build their skills. But Bridgewater really is about creating a different kind of network. And I feel like what they have built is a whole company that's organized around a challenge network. Where your job is to say, look, I want you to be as good as you can be, Tim.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  And so that means I'm going to try to tear your logic apart to see if there are any holes in it. And try to improve your reasoning and your thinking so that you make better decisions. And you come up with, with more compelling solutions to problems. And in a way, it's, it's a form of tough love, right? I think having somebody who's, who's pure challenge and never gives you any support. That just sounds abusive.

• 20:59Speaker 03

  But I think, you know, I think a great member of a challenge network, I'll tell you about mine, is somebody who, you know, pushes you because they believe in you. And they're not willing to settle for, you know, for half baked ideas or for something that's not your very best work.

• 21:15Tim Ferriss?

  If I could just jump in for one second also, for people who don't know Bridgewater Associates just as context, it is perhaps still the largest, certainly one of the largest asset managers, some might call it a hedge fund, with something like $160 billion under management. So when you're deploying that type of capital, and let's just say you're a portfolio manager or someone making decisions or at least proposing positions or trades, there are very, very real stakes involved. And part of the reason that I'm so excited to hear about how you have implemented this or how it's manifested for you is that, you know, when you're dealing with tens or hundreds of billions of dollars,

• 21:58Tim Ferriss?

  the the consequences are perhaps very obvious, right? And the incentives are very obvious. But in, few people think of putting together a challenge network

• 22:12Tim Ferriss?

  for themselves. So I'd love to hear what that ended up looking like for you.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Sure. So I think where it actually started when I transitioned from from doing those guest lectures to teaching my first class. So I'm a grad student and, you know, I'm responsible for teaching a whole semester long course. I remember being so freaked out for the first class that my wife actually came and sat in and pretended to be a TA. Just so afterwards, she could tell me that, you know, that the people were still going to come to the next class. But I got through it and, you know, we met twice a week because of class on organizational change. And the students seemed to be genuinely engaged and enjoying it. And, you know, it was such a pleasant surprise coming from the lecturing to teaching in that way because I felt like I was building relationships with them, I was getting to know them, I was, you know, being,

• 23:04Speaker 03

  I was adjusting the class in real time as I learned what they wanted to, what they wanted to learn. And so. I um I moved along in the class and I realized that it it was really easy to focus on things that were going well because my expectations had been so low. And I needed to figure out what was going wrong because as a brand new teacher, I was still very nervous, I still did plenty of lecturing in the class. And I was gonna have to teach much less receptive audiences than a group of undergrads who signed up for an elective. And so I did I did feedback forums a couple of weeks in. And then I did something, I guess, that was sort of radical. I went to one of my advisors and I said, I've gotten all the feedback from the forums

• 23:47Speaker 03

  and there is a lot of real criticism in there about things I'm doing very poorly. I was horrible at time management, as as an example, and a bunch of people said that, you know, it'd be really nice if I ever made it through even 10% of the material I promised at the beginning of the class. And so but I, you know, as soon as a student answered a question, I felt like I had to answer it. And so, you know, I just get sidetracked from, well, I don't I don't care what my lesson plan was, right? I'm here to serve the students. Anyway, so I I went to my advisor and I said, I have all this feedback and I'm just gonna open source it, I'm gonna share it with the whole class. And she said, what are you insane? They're gonna they're gonna band into a mob of angry millennials. And once they find out that they're all upset about the same pieces of the class, you know,

• 24:31Speaker 03

  it's gonna be a mutiny, don't do it. And I felt like I felt like it was a it was sort of a crossroads because it it left me wondering, who do I want to be? Do I want to do I want to be the the person who's so determined to prove myself that I'm afraid of of students finding out what they probably already know about me? Or am I more interested in improving myself? And I I picked the improving route and so I typed up all the feedback verbatim, I emailed it out to the entire class, and then I devoted a whole class session to discussing all the suggestions for improvement. And I guess what I'd done was I'd turned the students a little bit into my, my coaches. But it was very much a challenge network because their job was to tell me everything that was not working about the class.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  And then brainstorm with me about what we could do to fix it. And so we spent the, it was funny because the, we spent then a half a semester of a class on organizational change. Uh, kind of living an experiment on how to do organizational change in the context of a class. And after that experience, I said, okay, I always want a group of students who are a challenge network for me. Which has meant in some cases, when I write a book, uh, the first group that sees the draft of each chapter is a group of students. And their job is to violently disagree with every word that I write. I try to, you know, really try to poke holes in, in, in the evidence and in the logic.

• 25:53Tim Ferriss?

  So they're reading it like a debate team who has been assigned the counter argument, even if they don't, or simply the, the task of disassembling your argument, even if that's not how they feel, that's the responsibility that you give them.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so they end up almost competing to see who can get, give the most devastating criticism. I, I remember walking into a lab meeting once and a student said, at no point, at any time during reading this chapter, did I feel like I could say the words page turner.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  Okay. Uh, but so that, that's, it's played out in a lot of different ways, right? So when I was, uh, when I was preparing to, to do my first TED Talk, uh, I had a group of people who watched it. And their job was to, to argue with me about all my points. Um, and then, you know, I've done the same thing with op-eds. And so after I went to, to Bridgewater and sort of the, the term clicked and I thought, oh, challenge network. That's what I've been trying to build for myself. I actually reached out to some of the people that I've relied on the most in the past decade for that role. And I've said, hey, I just wanted you to know that I consider you a founding member of my challenge network. Uh, I, you know, I, I know I'm not always as receptive to your criticism as I would like to be.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  And sometimes that's probably frustrating for you, but I keep coming to you because I know I need it and I value it, even if I don't like it. And I want you to keep providing that because that's one of the central roles that you play in my life and you've made my work infinitely better. And you know, sometimes that's I feel occasionally that's emboldened them in ways that well, you know, I'm not sure that I really needed that my outfit to be criticized in that particular talk I gave. That's not the feedback I was looking for, but I think it's been just immensely beneficial. So Tim, I'm curious, do you have a challenge network?

• 27:38Tim Ferriss?

  I have, I have certainly people I rely on to call my babies or decisions or whatever the facet of my life might be under scrutiny ugly when necessary. I definitely do. That's it's clearest when I am considering a what would be for me a large decision where I'll call people just to reality check my thinking. I want them to really spot any weaknesses or glaring omissions or blind spots that they see with a bit more distance and also

• 28:17Tim Ferriss?

  in writing. So I can't have cheerleaders as editors, at least proofreaders. So I will send chapters typically to very specific people and I will force their hand a bit because they're they're all intrinsically quite nice people, but I'll ask them, this is where I think the, you know, the wording, the questions is so important. But for me, I'll ask them, if you had to remove, say 20% of this chapter, which 20% would you remove? Gun to the head, you have to cut 20%.

• 28:49Speaker 03

  Oh, I love that.

• 28:50Tim Ferriss?

  What would you cut? And then I also ask them, if you could only save 10% or 20%, depends on the length of the chapter, what do you think I should absolutely keep in? And the the rule that I have, it's I suppose a more heuristic, it's not a hard and fast rule, but something that I think about is to absolutely remove something requires a consensus of at least two people. So if two people say you should absolutely remove this, I take it very, very seriously. To keep something only requires a vote of one. So if five people respond with five different answers for this is the 10%, I would absolutely 100%. Keep in, then I do my best to keep all of that.

• 29:33Tim Ferriss?

  So that would be, that would be an example. I don't have a formal challenge network, but this is making me consider doing that. And is the challenge network, your challenge network, the, the Bridgewater style challenge network, something that you involve ad hoc as you are working on projects and so on, or is it, is it something that has a cadence where you're scheduling like once per month, I'm going to ask X, Y, and Z of these following four people, or once per quarter, I'm going to do A, B, and C, anything like that. Is there, is there a structure or a scheduling to it?

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Interesting. I think there's a structure for big projects. So when, when I'm writing a book or working on a podcast season, you know, I'll have a, a meeting of my, my challenge network of, of students. That's usually once every two weeks. And yeah, there's a pretty regular cadence to the, sort of the, the process of producing episodes and I know that, you know, there's going to be new material for them to, to trash every, every time we come together.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  I, I love your idea of saying, if you were going to cut something, what would you cut? Because I found, early on, I felt like, you know, they, they really let anything that they had in their heads fly. And they weren't too worried about it. And I guess as I've accomplished more, they've been either more worried that I have a big ego. Which is ironic because I think the more you accomplish, the easier it is to, you know, to face a failure and say, hey, that doesn't matter. I've, I've, you know, succeeded in other ways. Or, you know, they're, they're just worried about hurting their relationship with me. And so I've, one of the things I've found with the regular structure is it's helpful for me to have a senior student in there who's worked for me for a long time, or with me for a long time.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  And I'll actually tee it up, tee it up in advance and say, I want you to come in guns blazing with the toughest criticism you could ever give, even if you don't fully believe it. Because I want you to model the kind of, of challenge that I want. And I'm going to be prepared, prepared for it. And I'm going to respond as, as, with as much openness and, you know, and curiosity as I can muster. And that way we're going to try to set the tone and the norm for, you know, for the next few months.

• 31:42Tim Ferriss?

  It's really smart.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  It helps, I think.

• 31:44Tim Ferriss?

  But, oh yeah, it works in in all sorts of settings. Group therapy, if you want people to open up. I mean, there are a lot of contexts in which that is really smart. That's great.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  I liked that. And then for the for the unstructured, I do this spontaneously a lot. So every time I get off a stage, you know, you usually somebody will say, oh, you know, that was that was great. Or, you know, thanks. That's that's not useful to me, right? So I'll always say, what's the one thing I can do better? And I've kind of drafted them against their will into my challenge network.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Sometimes they say, well, you know, nothing. And I feel like I have to push them a little bit. And so I've I've started that. I guess I've gotten a little edgier about this over the past few years. And I'll say, huh, you know, it's funny. I thought you had higher standards than that. You couldn't find a single thing I could improve on? You really think this is perfect? Come on. And then if they if they won't give me anything, I will criticize myself out loud. And I'll say, look, here are the three things that I think I did poorly. Tell me if you agree with any of those and then what I'm missing. And then I've never had somebody just completely punt at that point. They always offer something.

• 32:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's great. That's great. Yeah, you you're just giving them permission with more and more weight pushed behind it. Why do you keep a resume of your failures? Is that an accurate description of whatever they were trying to describe in this piece? What is a resume of your failures? And what's the point of it?

• 33:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's actually an idea I got from a scientist, Melanie Stephan, who said, look, we do such a disservice to to young people in any field. Because when they look up their role models, they only see them at their peak. And when you look at somebody's resume or bio, it only has their accomplishments. And not all of the schools that rejected them, not all of the jobs that denied them, not all of the creative projects that failed. And so it can be really discouraging if you're moving into a field to look up at people who seem perfect. And so I I just thought it was a it was a clever way to to be comfortable sharing all the all the things that I'd stumbled in. Uh, and then also it was I I found it, I thought it was a good exercise for me to say,

• 33:52Speaker 03

  you know, look, it's it's easy to get caught up in believing that as you accumulate more success, your odds of success go up over time. Uh, because you gain experience, you surround yourself with better people, uh, you, you know, maybe avoid repeating past mistakes. And the reality is, I think that you also take on more ambitious projects. And so in in some ways, the odds go down. And it was, it's just, it's been a reminder to me that, uh, I've rarely ever done anything that didn't fail radically before I achieved some success. And it it it's it's a good, I guess it's a good way to to do a little bit of mental time travel and say, hey, you know what? Uh, I remember, I remember throwing away a hundred, two thousand words of my my first

• 34:36Speaker 03

  draft of my book, uh, which was a hundred, three thousand words. And at that moment, I felt like I was never going to write a book and I couldn't make it as an author. And, you know, I kind of edited that out of my story in the way that I think about, uh, you know, the process of writing a book, uh, because I moved past that. But if I remember that, it's a lot easier to cope with with today's failure or tomorrow's failure.

• 34:57Tim Ferriss?

  How did you decide to do that? A hundred and two thousand words is a lot of words. Uh, for for people, for people wondering, uh, I suppose if we're talking about like an average trim size, meaning average book size, physical paperback book, I'm I'm probably gonna screw this up a little bit, but a hundred, like fifty thousand words would be the length of many books. That would be, let's call it, I have no idea, two hundred, two hundred to two hundred fifty page book or something like that. Uh, may maybe, maybe less, it depends a lot on the words per page. But how did you decide to, like, walk me through the day where you were like, this is it? I'm scrapping a hundred and two thousand words.

• 35:40Speaker 03

  Okay, I think it was August two thousand and eleven.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  And the lead up to it, I think, is important, which is I had I decided in the spring, right after I got tenure, that I wanted to start sharing ideas, you know, outside of just academia. And one of my favorite collaborators, Barry Schwartz, who you probably know from The Paradox of Choice.

• 36:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Paradox of Choice.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  Barry had coincidentally reached out and said, hey, I'm thinking about writing a book on motivation and incentives. I know you do a lot of work in that area. Do you want to write the book together? I was so flattered. And it just seemed like a great way to begin communicating ideas, and I loved working with him. So I had a meeting with my students that day and talk about Challenge Network. They held me hostage, and they told me they would not let me leave the lab meeting until I promised them that I wouldn't write somebody else's book before I wrote my own. And I didn't want to let them down. So I said, OK, I'll write my book, and then maybe one day Barry and I will do something together again. And so I went through the whole process to find a literary agent and had Richard Pine come in as my agent, and he said, write a proposal.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  After we talked about a bunch of ideas, I started working on the proposal in June, and I got so into it that I accidentally wrote the book.

• 36:56Tim Ferriss?

  For people listening, that doesn't generally happen.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Well, hold on, hold on.

• 37:03Tim Ferriss?

  All right, continue.

• 37:05Speaker 03

  No, no, it happens. Here's how it happens, right? So this is 2011. I am writing a book about a topic I've been studying for a decade. I've been living it and breathing it, and I have so many thoughts and ideas about it, and I never really sat down to organize them. And so, you know, I start to write about a study, and then that calls to mind three other studies that I love. And then that reminds me of a story that I think will illustrate the study in an interesting way. And so it just it just became, I mean, it's literally all I did for that summer, right? Was write the draft of the book. And so I sent it to Richard in August. He had actually checked in and said, hey, where's that proposal? And I said, oh, it's a little long, because I think I have a draft of the book.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  And Richard, being a great member of my challenge network, said, I've got to be honest with you. I don't even know if your academic colleagues would finish reading this book.

• 37:58Tim Ferriss?

  That was after he sent, after you sent him, rather, the draft.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  Correct. Yeah, I don't, I don't actually think he made it through the draft. It was so bad. But, you know, it was basically like reading a hundred research papers thrown together and academic research papers are not, they're not interesting. For the most part, so he, he gave me some great advice, though. He said, he said, just do me a favor. Don't write like you write journal articles. Write like you teach. And that was a light bulb moment for me. And so it, it kind of turned around from, this is agonizing. I think I will never be an author. To, okay, if I were gonna, if I were gonna tell the story of these ideas in the classroom, what would I do?

• 38:42Speaker 03

  And then I actually, I started, I started doing the talk out loud so that I wouldn't go back into the trap of academic writing. And I found that it was way easier to write about other people's ideas than my own. And so I, I decided I was gonna leave my ideas out of the first couple of chapter drafts. And just write about other people's stuff as if I were introducing it to my students with the same excitement that I would in a classroom. And that, I found a lot of, that felt really familiar and comfortable. And then from there, the, the second draft was better. I resuscitated about a thousand words from the first draft. And we'll never show the other hundred, two thousand to anyone.

• 39:25Tim Ferriss?

  Wow. Yeah, I thought, I thought it was hard throwing away four chapters. Two or three times of my first book, a hundred and two thousand words is a lot, or a hundred and one thousand, excuse me.

• 39:37Tim Ferriss?

  You've said earlier about your.

• 39:42Tim Ferriss?

  Getting diverted during class and not following lesson plans is reflective of you being horrible at time management. Now, based on the bio and the, it seems awe with which many of your colleagues, certainly people within your world, but also outside of your world, experience with looking at all of these accomplishments, how, what would, how would your good friends, the people who really know you, explain your ability to get things done?

• 40:22Speaker 03

  Oh, well, first, we have the pot calling the kettle black here, Tim. I was really amused when you texted me and said you were gonna hustle so that we could start early, cuz I, I literally don't think you are capable of not hustling.

• 40:40Tim Ferriss?

  Well, we need to, we need to get into the nuances of hustle, but I, I have two speeds. I have park and six gear. There's really very, there's very, there's very little in between. That is true.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  But you're even, you're even intense about your park.

• 40:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there is, there's a certain baseline intensity. I will not deny, I will not deny, but, but, but you, you and I have also played in some similar sandboxes, but also a lot of very different sandboxes. I think I've cheated in the sense that I have, have kind of rigged games and loaded decks of cards so that I can sort of freestyle my way through whatever this is that I have ended up calling a career. But you, within the seemingly very well-established constraints of the academic world and research world, have done things

• 41:40Tim Ferriss?

  that seem to defy belief. That's a lot harder, I think.

• 41:45Speaker 03

  I beg to differ cuz there are, there are, there are rules and norms, right? You, I, what I I had to do is I had to go into somebody else's system and figure out how to succeed within it. You had to create your own system. I think that's way harder, but we can we can duke that out later.

• 42:01Tim Ferriss?

  Well, yeah, we can.

• 42:01Speaker 03

  I will. I will try to answer your question.

• 42:03Tim Ferriss?

  How would your if it allows you to speak more directly to it because I it's it's not always easy to kind of pat yourself on the back. And that's that's not what I'm aiming for here, but you are an outlier. I think objectively speaking, you are an outlier. So how would people who really know you explain the factors, the behaviors that have contributed to that?

• 42:26Speaker 03

  So I've I've asked a bunch of people that question because I got tired of saying, I don't know, I just work a lot, I guess. Uh, when it when it came up and I think there are there are a few things that I've learned that I didn't know were maybe useful habits. Uh, that I I guess I either do instinctively or at some point decided were effective. So the my college roommates used to tell me that I um, that I I had a productive form of mild OCD. And the I I guess they they saw it when I was I was writing my my undergrad thesis. And I I think I finished it four months before it was due.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  Uh, because I I just I just woke up in the morning and I would write until I had said everything I had to say. And yeah, I'd rarely get up out of my chair and you know, sometimes I would go to eat lunch. But I I think I I really I hate leaving something unfinished. And so this is this is actually both a blessing and a curse. So the blessing is it means that, you know, when I sit down to start something, I will finish it. What that means is whatever else was on my agenda after that is just going haywire. Uh, so I'm constantly late because I have a chronic inability doing to disengage from the current thing on my agenda. Uh, to you know, to go and move on to the next thing, right? And time is sort of an arbitrary human construction.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Like, well, I didn't know yesterday when I scheduled this meeting that I was going to be in flow today at this time. And so, you know, I I hope this person values our collaboration enough. Uh, or, you know, is is glad to be able to, you know, to yell at me about always being late. Uh, enough that they're willing to put up with it. But I think that for me, that's I I think I'm bad at time management, but I'm I've gotten good at attention management. And I just, when I sit down, I know as a psychologist, we have decades of evidence that people are horrible parallel processors. Right, we're serial processors. It's really, not just in the multitasking sense, but in the course of a morning, you're

• 44:31Speaker 03

  not going to be that productive if you're trying to work on five different things. And so what I try to do is I try to do one project or task at a time until, you know, I've either gotten as far as I can go with it and I've run out of ideas, or I've physically run out of time, that I can't work on it anymore. And I find, I find that that's useful, and what that means sometimes is, I'm in a meeting, one of my colleagues, I asked, okay, you know, is there, is there anything I do that, that's productive, that I don't realize is productive? And she said, yeah, we're in a meeting, we've got seven minutes left, and we've just finished a task. And I'll, I'll just start chit-chatting. And she said, what you do, I guess what I, what I learned with it, I do, is I'll say, well, we've got another task that we could at least start in those seven minutes.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  And so we end up using those extra minutes, but also then the meeting stretches 20 minutes over because then we got into a rhythm and, and we got a little bit more done. And I think that, that people are way too rigid about respecting time boundaries, as opposed to saying, look, you know, you, if, if you're all, if you're all about time management, then you're just gonna, you're gonna just notice how much time you waste. And then you're gonna waste more time beating yourself up about how much time you waste. So you're like a meta-time waster. And I, I really believe in the idea of attention management instead, which is to say that, you know, if I am, if I'm choosing people and projects that matter to me, it does not matter how long they take. And so I have a project I want to work on today, and, you know, whenever it's done,

• 46:00Speaker 03

  it'll be done. But I'm excited to be working on it, and I'm not going to pick up anything else until I, I feel like I've made meaningful progress on it. And I don't know if that's useful or not. You tell me, did I say anything novel there?

• 46:11Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I, I, yes, you did. I, I think there are a few things to look at here.

• 46:18Tim Ferriss?

  And I, I don't want to take us down a dead end, but, but what I'm, what I'm trying to

• 46:25Tim Ferriss?

  splice out are the trainable habits from perhaps hardwiring or attributes that are not as easy to model, right? Yeah. So the, so the, the OCD, right? This OCD, I saw, we don't have to get into it, but the dark side of Nintendo, if that rings any bell. This is, I'll just, I'll just give the short version. So there's a, there's, yeah. In the Detroit Free Press, there is a, an article that was headlined, "The Dark Side of Nintendo", with a photograph of you aged seven clutching a Nintendo console and staring at a television.

• 47:08Tim Ferriss?

  But you've had this, this extreme ability to focus for some time, it would seem. The, the, the attention management versus time management, I think, is really important and something I'd like to explore a bit. Because, but you're right in the sense that

• 47:28Tim Ferriss?

  time management can end up becoming a subconscious obsession with measuring units as opposed to the substance of the project or the output goal of, of some type of task, right? And what I'd love to hear about is, I, I, I really think renegotiation is a critical skill in all human affairs, but you, you alluded to this earlier in the sense that it, there are times, many times, when it's hard to predict when you'll be in flow. And the information that you then have that day is different from the information you had

• 48:11Tim Ferriss?

  the day before when you made commitments A, B, and C, right? So how do you say no to people when you've already said yes? How do you renegotiate or cancel these commitments when you realize that you want to do something else? You're out of bandwidth or whatever the reason might be? How, how do you approach that?

• 48:31Speaker 03

  Well, my first goal is always to minimize the number of times that happens. And so I read some research early on about the difference between chunking and sprinkling, as I've come to think about it. So the research was on doing random acts of kindness. This is Sonia Lubomirsky and her colleagues. And the idea was, let's imagine, Tim, that you're gonna do five five-minute favors this week. If you're randomly assigned a sprinkle, you're gonna do one each day throughout the week. If you're gonna chunk, you're gonna pick Thursday as your helping day, and you're gonna do all five of them stacked in that one day in a block. And the question is, who gets happier and more energized? And when I pose this to audiences, about 80% of people on average say it's the sprinkling.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  Because you get a little bit of extra bounce in your step, you feel like you did something good every day, it's not a big distraction, and they're totally wrong. Over about three months, only one group gets happier and more energized, and it's actually the chunkers, not the sprinklers.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  And we think what's going on there, this is still pretty early, but it's been replicated a few times now, both in the workplace and in volunteering, is when you do one little act of giving a day, you end up sort of feeling like it's a drop in the bucket. And it also is yet another thing on your to-do list. Whereas when you pick one day each week as your giving day, you feel like you made a difference that day. And also, you're really focused on, okay, what can I do to help these people in those moments? And then the rest of the week, you can focus a little bit more on getting your own work done. And so I took that to my schedule and said, alright, I'm gonna have days that are focused on getting my own creative work done.

• 50:15Speaker 03

  And then I'm gonna have days that are focused on being responsive and available for other people. And so, early on, that meant I would have days where I was on campus, and I would teach a class, and then I would have four hours of office hours back to back. And then I'd do whatever else I needed to do on this, and then I'd go home. And then the next day, I wouldn't go into work, and I'd work from home all day, and I would not talk to another human being who wasn't a member of my family. And that's kind of how I've tried to organize my life. And what it means is, Paul Graham wrote a great little blog post about this. He called them maker days and manager days. It means I don't feel like I'm that productive, you know, when I'm on campus or I'm in a back-to-back meeting day. But it also means then that on the day when I'm doing creative work,

• 50:58Speaker 03

  there's nothing that's going to interrupt my flow because I'm not scheduling anything that, you know, that that might distract. And so I think prevention is always the best cure there. But you wanted to know about also what happens when that fails.

• 51:09Tim Ferriss?

  Correct.

• 51:10Speaker 03

  So when that fails, I had this happen actually recently. I had agreed to to travel and give a speech. And I ended up having a conflict with a project that I had committed to earlier, but didn't know the dates for. And I felt awful. I it's it's a core principle for me to follow through on my commitments. And I'd never I'd never reneged on a speech like that before. And so I reached out to the the organizer. I apologized profusely. And I said, you have my word that I'm going to recruit someone far better than me. So that you will be thrilled that I canceled because you have a much better talk. And then I made it my mission to to find somebody who would either hit a more relevant

• 51:53Speaker 03

  topic or who is going to give a more electrifying presentation. And then, just to be safe, I recruited three more speakers for the event because I was really worried that I was still letting them down. And that that for me is is the only renegotiation strategy I ever feel comfortable with, which is to say, look, my calendar has gotten the better of me, or I've I've overextended myself yet again. And so I promise you that the time you have lost today, I will make up for it in spades for you tomorrow.

• 52:22Tim Ferriss?

  I like that.

• 52:24Speaker 03

  How do you do it?

• 52:25Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, I'll answer that. I'll answer that. Let me I'm also learning, so I'm fishing for for tactics here. But would you use that also? How would that wording change if it says a meeting with a colleague? Something where there is no?

• 52:45Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, replacing of yourself for a future engagement.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  Uh.

• 52:49Tim Ferriss?

  Does that, how, how would the wording potentially change? Understanding that you try not to do it.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:55Tim Ferriss?

  But let's just say you're writing a book, you're on deadline and that chapter you've been stuck on, all of a sudden you're in complete flow. And for whatever reason, it's, it's not, it's, it's on a day where there's, there's, there's a commitment that has been made.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  Hate being irreplaceable in that sense, but I, I guess I would, so I've, I've had that happen. I, I guess that's a, happens at least a few times a year. And what I've usually done is, uh, I'd either email or call the person and said, I've tried to email actually, because it's less likely to disrupt my flow. And I've said, look, I'm really sorry. I've had something come up. Uh, I know you're counting on me to be here. I'm not going to be able to make it. What you can count on me for is always delivering results. And so you may not always get the face time that I promised. You may not always get me to show up exactly at the moment I said I was going to be there. I will never miss a deadline.

• 53:51Speaker 03

  I will never fail to deliver something I promised to you when you need it. And so you let me know what your hard stop is and I will stay up as late as I need to tonight to finish what I need to do. If you want to hop on the phone early in the morning, I will be on the phone with you. Uh, and so I guess I'm trying to find a way to, to let the person know that I am dependable for the outcome. Even though I was not dependable necessarily for the interaction.

• 54:14Tim Ferriss?

  That's great. Yeah, that, uh, makes a whole lot of sense.

• 54:18Speaker 03

  And you?

• 54:19Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, and me. It's, it's very context specific, I think, uh, as these examples bring up. Uh, there are some meta principles, right? I think the, the meta principle is make up for it.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:35Tim Ferriss?

  Right? So like you are causing some pains. What can you do to remove that pain or, uh?

• 54:44Tim Ferriss?

  Make them feel on some level that you are going above and beyond to make up for what was lost. I think for me, a lot of it is being very honest and just saying like, when I made the commitment, I wholeheartedly felt like I would be able to do A, B, and C. It has become clear based on new information or A, B, C, and D, that if I make an attempt to do this, let's just say, this is kind of broadly speaking, that I think at best, I am going to do a mediocre job because of the limited bandwidth I'm going to have,

• 55:24Tim Ferriss?

  and that would be a disservice to Project X or everything that both of us were hoping for for this. Let me find a replacement. I would like to find a replacement. Something along those lines.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  I like that.

• 55:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And it's, what I try not to do is, sorry, I can't do this right now. Ask me again in three months unless I genuinely believe that it is something I want to do. Because the punting is a huge fuck you to the person you're interacting with. It's much better to give a hard no than a maybe that in your heart of hearts is actually a no. So that I really try to avoid by all means necessary.

• 56:10Speaker 03

  I wish I'd learned that a few years earlier. I looked at that one the hard way.

• 56:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, it creeps up on you. That is just like the creeping death. And it's bad for everybody. And what I also have tried to remind myself of, I think a lot of the renegotiating that I do, and I've done a lot more of it in the last few years, is not because I capriciously make more commitments, but because things do change. If I commit to do something, and let's just say it's six months out, and there's still plenty of room to maneuver, and life circumstances change. I used to, come hell or high water, say, my word is my bond. You're only as good as your word. I'm going to follow through on everything. Thing I initially commit to, but I've I've come to rethink that. And it doesn't mean people can't depend on me.

• 56:59Tim Ferriss?

  People can depend on me to be very truthful about changes and circumstances. And what I've noticed for myself, because I have people do this to me as well, who are very, very busy and they just for whatever reason, they can't go on a trip with me or they can't help with whatever the project might be, is that I don't get particularly, I don't get upset. I don't get upset unless they leave me hanging last minute, because I know they didn't just figure it out last minute. They knew probably weeks before, right? As long as they give me a heads up, I don't get upset. And so the Ted Geisel, AKA Dr. Seuss quote, you know, those who matter don't mind and those who mind don't matter, is something I really try to remind myself of.

• 57:42Tim Ferriss?

  Because when you say no, whether it's an initial no or a renegotiated no, assuming you're doing it with plenty of time and you're not really leaving someone hanging, is something you can control, but you can't, you have, you have no control over the other side's response. That's more of a reminder and self-talk that I use for myself in those circumstances. Because I do think that the tactics you're able to deploy are dependent largely on the beliefs you have. And if the belief you have is every relationship is equally important and if I burn any bridge, I'm screwed, you're going to make a lot of compromises that have a huge impact on your ability to steer your own direction.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  It's, it's true. And Tim, this makes me think, it's, it's interesting. It seems like you, you had a really sort of literal definition of integrity early on. And over time, you've, you've been more comfortable saying, look, I'm going to be authentic. And you know, sometimes that means past Tim did not calibrate well with the present Tim. So there's, you know, there's, there's a commitment made then that no longer makes sense. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to make that right however I can. I wonder, there's, there's all this research on behavioral integrity, which says that, you know, you're, you're basically supposed to practice what you preach. And I have been wondering lately if we've got that backward.

• 59:11Speaker 03

  And if instead what we should be doing is only preaching things that we already practice. And then we don't have as many of those gaps.

• 59:20Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So you're not, you're not the, the behavioral greyhound chasing around the sort of theoretical bunny.

• 59:27Speaker 03

  That's a great phrase.

• 59:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  That's exactly it.

• 59:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. And let's, let's talk a little bit more about no and, and saying no, because, and we'll get there in a bit of a roundabout way, perhaps. I'd like to discuss you a piece you wrote in the New York Times about email.

• 59:51Speaker 03

  Uh oh.

• 59:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah. Let's, let's, let's talk about it. So, and it starts with no, you can't ignore email. It's rude.

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  I did not write the headline.

• 1:00:03Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no, no, it doesn't. It doesn't. That, that, okay. So you didn't write that line. Somebody else did. But the, maybe you could, I'll let you speak for yourself. Could you share your, share your thesis and when it applies and when it doesn't apply?

• 1:00:16Speaker 03

  I feel like bad headlines ruin more good upheads than I can count. But

• 1:00:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  I, what, okay. So the, the reason, the reason I wrote this piece is I read two articles back to back, one in the Atlantic, one in the New York Times, that basically said, you know what? Forget inbox zero, just go to inbox infinity and you don't ever have to respond to anybody's email. And I was stunned by that because I thought, okay, would you, if somebody said hi to you in the hallway, would you just ignore them? If somebody, if somebody called you, would you never return their voicemail? That, you know, that, that seems unprofessional. And so what makes digital snubbery okay? And, you know, I, I started thinking about the research on this. And there's, there's a whole bunch of evidence

• 1:01:05Speaker 03

  suggesting that of all the personality traits that matter for job performance, whether we look at your objective productivity as a, a salesperson or an engineer, or your performance reviews and promotions that you get from your manager, the single most important personality trait across hundreds and hundreds of jobs in dozens of countries around the world is conscientiousness, right? Being, being hardworking, organized, disciplined, dependable. And there's a, there's a component of conscientiousness that's about being responsive, which says two things. One, I'm on top of things. And two, I care. And so I'm not, look, I'm not saying you have to answer every email that every

• 1:01:48Speaker 03

  random person sends you, right? And I think this is, this is complicated for a lot of jobs. But I think that if you are habitually not responding to legitimate emails from people that you have a professional relationship with, it is sending a signal to them that you are either disorganized or that you don't care about their priorities. And people are constantly saying, well, wait a minute, but, but, hold on, but, you know, my inbox is other people's priorities. And my response to that is, yeah, but shouldn't your priorities include other people? And also, don't you want people to respond to your emails? And so, you know, I just, I, I, I felt like it was time for somebody to write the counterpoint.

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  And so I sat down and I said, look, I think that if you are, you know, a consistent non-responder to, to serious emails, that suggests that there's a problem with your process. And you need a different way of handling it. If you want, if you care about being perceived as, you know, as somebody who's responsible and reliable and concerned about others, which is really important for your success, even if you don't care about your image. So that was, that was the motivation behind it.

• 1:02:54Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of your processes for email? How do you, how do you process email? Do you have, do you have any particular rules, times, approaches, anything at all, tools that, that you, that you use consistently?

• 1:03:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have, I actually, Tim, I read, you, you, you gave fantastic advice about this. I remember right after Give and Take came out, I just got a deluge of emails from, from readers. And I read a blog post that you wrote about how to be more efficient with email. And one of the first things I saw in there was you were talking about Tony Shae's Yesterbox, which I tried out and found really useful. You know, just, just the habit of, of going and saying, okay, if I can answer all of yesterday's email today, I will never fall behind. Amazing. I do a lot of batch processing. So, you know, I try to, I'm not somebody who will just, you know, kind of randomly answer one email. I will sit down and try to go through thirty or forty or a hundred emails. And I think I break one of the cardinal rules that most

• 1:03:59Speaker 03

  of the writers I know have with email, which is on my writing days, I actually deliberately start in the morning by answering a few emails.

• 1:04:06Tim Ferriss?

  Why is that?

• 1:04:07Speaker 03

  Well, it's simple. I want to get into a rhythm of writing. And the flashing cursor, it's just, it's so ominous.

• 1:04:17Tim Ferriss?

  I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah, I like that.

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  I actually found myself curious a couple of months ago when I was trying to write an article and, and, you know, kind of mini writer's block, thinking like, huh, I wonder if the cursor was named after all the writers who cursed it.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  And it's just, you know, it's really daunting, right? It feels like, okay, I have to say something important. I have to have a grand idea. I have to, you know, I have to be coherent. I just woke up. And so email's a low bar. And so I feel like, okay, my fingers start moving. I get into, you know, a little bit of a productive rhythm and I answer a few easy emails. And I feel like, hey, I've accomplished something today. Maybe, maybe I can organize a coherent thought. And then, you know, that spills over and builds my confidence and gives me a little momentum for my writing.

• 1:05:04Tim Ferriss?

  Do you use Gmail? Do you have any tools that you use for going through email?

• 1:05:11Speaker 03

  I'm embarrassingly Luddite on this, even though everyone I know and trust has told me to switch to Superhuman. I am still using Outlook without any shortcuts.

• 1:05:22Speaker 03

  Will you still talk to me after knowing that?

• 1:05:24Tim Ferriss?

  I will, I will still, I will still consider future conversations. I actually, you know, if I can admit something embarrassing, I actually quite like Outlook.

• 1:05:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:05:38Tim Ferriss?

  For some of its functionality. There are a lot of tools out there that I think are quite helpful, but I do. Quite like Outlook and in fact, I do a lot of my batch processing with Gmail offline because the split pane view that I can use is actually reminiscent, both in appearance, but also functionality to Outlook. And I don't want to receive emails as I am replying to emails.

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  That's the worst.

• 1:06:14Tim Ferriss?

  It's too demotivating.

• 1:06:17Tim Ferriss?

  How do you say no in an email? And you could give any, there may not be one no for all occasions, but what is, if someone gets a no from Adam, what might that look like? And what are they asking for and what do you say no to? Are there anything, anything's categorically that you say no to?

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, definitely. I don't take meetings with strangers. Period. I used to take meetings with anyone who asked. And I guess as I've gotten more visible, there just aren't enough hours in the day for it and I had to decide, I prioritized this and my family comes first, my students are second, my colleagues and friends are third and everybody else is fourth. And you know, that, that meant that, okay, I will happily respond to an email from a stranger if it's reasonable and it's up my alley.

• 1:07:04Speaker 03

  And you know, but I just don't have enough hours in the day to, to meet with people that I don't have a, an existing reason to be collaborating with or trying to help. And so that's a categorical no. And what, one thing I will never say is I don't have time. That is a lie. Everybody makes time for something that's important.

• 1:07:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  And so what, what I don't have time really means, or I'm too busy, that's even worse, right? Everybody's busy. The busiest people I know have the, often the clearest calendars. You've written about this before.

• 1:07:36Speaker 03

  You've written about how Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and George Lucas and others, they basically have nothing scheduled all day, which is kind of an amazing life. But I think that, I think too busy is dishonest and cruel. And what you, what you really mean when you say that is this or you are not a priority for me right now. And so I've tried, I think that sounds a little harsh. And so the way that I will try to say it is, um, you know, based on the commitments that I have on my plate, this is not something that I can add. And then what, what I'll try to do is, is suggest either some books or articles to read, or um, some people who might be interested in having that discussion. That's, that's probably the go-to response.

• 1:08:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's great. Do you have an auto-response of any type?

• 1:08:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have, uh, so I have an auto reply that comes to my public email address and I made the decision about, I guess, yeah, it was right after Give and Take came out, uh, when my email volume increased exponentially. I, I said, okay, I have a choice. I can either maintain a public email address and accept the fact that I will not be as thoughtful and responsive to every person as I have been the rest of my life. Uh, or I'm going to be unreachable. And I'm going to miss out on opportunities to be helpful to random people. And I felt like the, it would, it would have been better for me to, to go the private route and, you know, be a little bit harder to reach.

• 1:09:04Speaker 03

  But I felt like the right thing to do was to still be accessible and just, okay, so if it hurts my image a little bit, that's, it's a small price to pay. And so, uh, my public email address though, the, the, I guess, the attempt to protect myself is an auto reply, uh, that basically says, you know, look, I have, uh, I do get more emails in a day than I have the time to respond to. And, uh, here are a bunch of resources that might be relevant, depending on the kinds of questions that you have. So there are various teams that handle different things for me. Uh, there are some, you know, links to books and podcasts and articles and talks. And then, um, I have a, a triage team that works with me where if there's something that I think we can collectively be helpful on, but I don't have time to engage with it in that moment, I will forward it

• 1:09:49Speaker 03

  and let them figure it out and then come back and tell me if they think I can be helpful.

• 1:09:53Tim Ferriss?

  What would an example of a triage team task be and what is their?

• 1:10:00Tim Ferriss?

  What does their activity look like? So what would be a real or hypothetical example of something you would send to them? And then what do they actually do with it?

• 1:10:08Speaker 03

  So I'll give you a bunch of quick examples. You tell me which one you want to run with. So standard triage. I'm looking for career advice. I am interested in becoming an organizational psychologist and I wonder what the best place to start is. I'm thinking about writing a book. What advice do you like to give to writers?

• 1:10:27Tim Ferriss?

  Are these all from students?

• 1:10:29Speaker 03

  They're from all over the map, probably similar to what you get.

• 1:10:33Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm. Okay. And any others I can pick from those or?

• 1:10:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I can rattle off a bunch more.

• 1:10:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let's try a few more.

• 1:10:40Speaker 03

  Can you? Can you help me solve my problem with my boss? Can you fix my organizational culture? Can you get me a raise? You know, I think there's a funny. Yeah, go ahead.

• 1:10:52Tim Ferriss?

  Let's go with can you fix my organizational culture?

• 1:10:58Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:10:59Tim Ferriss?

  No. Okay, got it.

• 1:11:01Speaker 03

  No, it's hard, right? So what I would do in that situation is if, you know, if somebody wrote me a nine page email on that, I would just forward it right to triage. If it were a two paragraph email, I might respond and say, you know, here are my two favorite books on the topic are Switch by the Heath Brothers and The Culture Code by Dan Coyle. I think there's a lot of great advice in there. If you read anything and have questions on it, let me know. Or if you have questions on things that they didn't answer, come back to me and I'll suggest some other books to check out. And if it goes to the triage team, what they will do is they might send a bunch of advice and articles and books. They might suggest a phone call or they might come back to me and say, we're not really sure how to respond to this. Do you know anyone else that we should talk to?

• 1:11:46Tim Ferriss?

  The triage team, are those comprised of student slaves? Or are those full time employees? Who are these people?

• 1:11:56Speaker 03

  So.

• 1:11:57Tim Ferriss?

  Santa's workshop elves? I need some of these triage.

• 1:12:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's. It's I've worked with a couple, a couple of different structures for it. So sometimes it's a person who works with me in a different capacity, who then does triage as a side project. Sometimes it's a master's or PhD student who's doing this, you know, kind of in spare time.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  And I think in one case, it actually maybe in two cases, it's somebody who's aspiring to go to grad school in my field and wants to see behind the scenes.

• 1:12:30Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm. The reason I chose the can you fix our organizational culture is because it's the only one that hopped out as a broad question that might have an opportunity hiding in it for you compared to the others. So I was curious about how that might be treated.

• 1:12:51Tim Ferriss?

  How do you decide what's important in the sense that you have many, many, many different projects you could focus on, many, many different books you could write, many, many different people you could you could meet.

• 1:13:11Tim Ferriss?

  How do you decide on projects?

• 1:13:13Speaker 03

  I'm still trying to figure that out.

• 1:13:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, maybe we could do it. It might be easiest with the rear view mirror in the sense that you look at a project and say, how did you of the universe of options?

• 1:13:23Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:13:23Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you choose that one?

• 1:13:24Speaker 03

  So, okay, so two, two quick examples on that. One is after Give and Take came out, I, I felt like I was ready to start thinking about a new topic and writing a new book. And I felt like a book was a good choice for a few reasons. One, I feel like unlike articles, it actually has staying power. Right? I think that I'm not sure that the pen is muddier than the sword, but I definitely think the ink lasts longer. You know, I think articles kind of fade after a week. People keep books, they reread them, they lend them. So I felt like that was meaningful. And I also felt like it was a chance to to challenge my own, my own thinking a little bit. I found that when I wrote Give and Take, I actually

• 1:14:07Speaker 03

  learned more about the topic that I was studying than than I had when just doing research on it, because it forced me to synthesize lots of different kinds of ideas and also to go and meet people who are living the principles I'd been studying. And so I wanted to go through that learning exercise again. And the way that I chose what the topic was going to be was I paid attention to the questions I was being asked over and over again that I thought were really fascinating and important and hard to answer. And there were two that kept coming up over and over again. One was from senior executives who were consistently asking, how do I fight groupthink? How do I, you know, I know there are people who have different ideas for projects we should be pursuing, people who have creative thoughts, people who might disagree with

• 1:14:49Speaker 03

  a big strategic decision, and I don't hear from them until it's too late. How do I change that? And then on the flip side, my students were giving me their version of that, which was, we come into an organization at 22 or 27, and we have all these ideas and nobody above us wants to hear them. Like, you MBA student, you are overqualified and underexperienced, shut up until you know something about this industry. How do we overcome that and get our ideas heard? And I realized those were two sides of the same coin. And that, you know, nobody had, there were lots of books about creativity, nobody had really tackled the question of, of what do you do after you have a creative idea? How do you champion it? How do you get it heard? And I had, I'd been doing some research on proactivity and creativity that was relevant,

• 1:15:33Speaker 03

  and that, those dots all connected. And I said, okay, there's a, there's a nice Venn diagram here of a problem that people are dealing with constantly, that really matters, and that I also have some sort of unique insight into. And so I want to take this on.

• 1:15:48Tim Ferriss?

  And for you, how do you, how do you determine if a project like that has succeeded or failed?

• 1:15:55Speaker 03

  Oh, I want to, I want to hear your answer to this. This is, this is one of the worst things about being an entrepreneur of ideas, as opposed to products or services.

• 1:16:04Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:16:05Speaker 03

  Like, user counts are not that helpful, right? It doesn't, it doesn't matter how many books you've sold if nobody read them.

• 1:16:10Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:16:11Speaker 03

  And I, I won't name any names here, but there, there is probably an economist who sold a lot of books about inequality that I'm not sure anyone read. And you, you wonder, does that have an impact? You don't know.

• 1:16:25Speaker 03

  For me, impact is seeing the ideas getting embedded in people's language and then in their actions. And so, you know, for for me, part of the way that I felt give and take had been more successful than I than I had expected going in was I would come into an organization and they would tell me who the givers, takers, and matters were. Or they would tell me how they were trying to weed out the the most selfish takers from their hiring process. And I would say, huh, wow, this is this is in your vocabulary. That means, I think so much of what I do as a social scientist is I try to provide a framework and some evidence to describe things that maybe you've you've lived but not known how to talk about. And so if that happens, that's powerful. And then, of course, if behavior change happened,

• 1:17:09Speaker 03

  that's even more powerful. But it's really hard to know the scale and scope of that. And so, you know, largely, I think anecdotally, I pay attention to, you know, yes, you know, selling more books is probably better than fewer, having more podcast listeners is better than fewer. But ultimately, it's it's reader feedback, listener feedback, that, you know, if somebody says, hey, I tried your approach, it worked. Or I tried it, it didn't work, but here's what I learned. It feels like it, you know, it at least advanced somebody's thinking, and that that feels like a contribution. You've been at this a lot longer than I have. You've also had a lot more success. How do you know when you're when you're successful or when you've had an impact?

• 1:17:47Tim Ferriss?

  Good question. I I'll tell you what I try to do, and that is to select projects where I win even if it fails. And so I really try to embed the success question into the design or selection of the project. And I'll explain what I mean by that. This is reflective of thinking that I arrived at myself. It's also been been talked about at some length by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, who has written about this in the form of career

• 1:18:31Tim Ferriss?

  advice, which I thought was really good, and which was also Scott Adams essays at one point were highlighted by Marc Andreessen, very well-known entrepreneur and investor, certainly. And the basic idea

• 1:18:47Tim Ferriss?

  Is that I'm, I try to choose projects where I am heavily weighting two things. One is acquisition of new skills, development of new skills, or just rapid development of existing skills and developing relationships with people I can know for 10, 20 years and would enjoy spending time with, who are also some of the best people in the world at what they do. So I try to, this might seem like a dodge, but it's not a dodge because over time at least, I've realized how many factors that could dictate, say, commercial success, which

• 1:19:27Tim Ferriss?

  in is, is often a corollary to impact in terms of the number of hands you can get into, the number of eyes you can get in front of. For instance, The Four Hour Chef, I mean, by far the hardest book, the most elaborate book, the most detailed book I've ever done. Very proud of that book, but it was also a gamble, which I knew going in, because it was the, the first book announced along with the launch of Amazon Publishing in the New York Times and, or I should say, covered by the New York Times. And for those who don't remember the history, what that meant was Amazon said for the first time, in effect,

• 1:20:09Tim Ferriss?

  we are going to compete with publishers for writing talent. And we are going to write advances, in some cases, big advances, to authors, and we are going to be producing books ourselves. And that scared the living hell, rightfully so, out of the publishing establishment. And I anticipated that would mean blowback from Barnes and Noble. I did not anticipate that it would be boycotted by Every retailer you can imagine, I mean, I want to say Target, Costco, Walmart, all of the big box guys, in addition to the Barnes and Nobles of the world and independents

• 1:20:52Tim Ferriss?

  on top of that. So the, there were so many, so many elements outside of my control and I found that experience to be really punishing. I was, I've never with a book had my ass handed to me so badly. Not to, not to point fingers because we both have friends at the New York Times, but the, the New York Times bestseller list is not a strictly compiled by the numbers list. There is some secret sauce or at least a black box involved. So for instance, with, with Four Hour Chef, I sold more than a hundred thousand copies in week one.

• 1:21:30Speaker 03

  Wow, that's huge.

• 1:21:31Tim Ferriss?

  It was, and I'm not going to name names because they were also, the, the books involved were very good, but there was a book that according to Nielsen BookScan, which is how I was tracking my sales, sold about 20,000 copies and it was two spots above me on the New York Times. And so all of this, whether it's subjectivity and/or factor, factors outside of my control, led me at that point to really double down on trying to embed the determinants of success in the designer choice of the project.

• 1:22:11Speaker 03

  I think that's.

• 1:22:11Tim Ferriss?

  Projects themselves.

• 1:22:12Speaker 03

  That's so compelling because what it says to me is you decided that learning and relationship building are the two leading indicators of success, but also there were the ends in and of themselves. And so even if they don't drive success, you're still going to be glad you invested in something that, that sort of formed a meaningful connection or taught you something. That is such a clever workaround to the problem of do I, do I know whether I'm accomplishing anything?

• 1:22:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it, it's, I wish I had come to that conclusion sooner, quite frankly, because the, if you approach things with that lens, at least in my experience so far, eventually you're gonna win, as, as measured or.

• 1:23:01Tim Ferriss?

  Determined by the outside world, if that makes sense, right? It's like if you continue to acquire skills and deep relationships with people you care for, who are also incredibly good at what they do.

• 1:23:15Tim Ferriss?

  You will, success cannot be kept from you indefinitely. And if it weren't for the Four Hour Chef and that incredible learning experience, but also gigantic donkey kick to the face, I would not have started podcasting. Right? And it wouldn't have happened. And that, it was through the Four Hour Chef and looking for the uncrowded, meaning undervalued, but high leverage avenues for promotion, which ended up being podcasts. I do that for every book. And in that particular case, podcasts were still very undervalued. And that led me to have these incredible experiences on the, on these various podcasts

• 1:24:00Tim Ferriss?

  with Joe Rogan and Marc Maron and Chris Hardwick and the Nerdist guys and so on. And came away thinking, wow, not only did these podcasts really move the needle in a way that was so disproportionate based on how undervalued they were at the time, but I also had a hell of a good time doing them and I could be myself. And I didn't have to memorize a 20 second soundbite after getting my face airbrushed for an hour at five o'clock in the morning for a AM TV show, where maybe I will be asked a question that isn't read off a teleprompter behind my head, but maybe not.

• 1:24:43Tim Ferriss?

  And that was a real turning point for me and it, so I'm grateful for it.

• 1:24:53Tim Ferriss?

  And that's been, that's been my approach since. Anyway, sorry for being so long, long-winded, but that's, that's how I think about it.

• 1:25:01Speaker 03

  I think that's powerful and it's, it's something, it resonates a lot with me because I, I got into the podcast world much later than you did and felt like, you know, it was by that point, pretty crowded. And, you know, there are a lot of interesting people having interesting conversations. And so I, I was pretty hesitant about it at first and then eventually said, okay, my biggest problem is I have spent the past five years getting invited into some of the most interesting organizations on earth and telling them things I already know, mostly. And I'm not learning anymore. And so even if the podcast completely fails, I'm going to pick the people and the places that I want to learn from. And then, you know, I'm going to come away with new insights on the backend that in some format I will

• 1:25:44Speaker 03

  share. And it, it was extremely valuable. I mean, it gave me all kinds of ideas for articles and books and for research projects I wanted to take on. And it would, it would have been great even if we didn't do a season two and beyond. And I think that, I think you're right. I think there, there are ways to structure new projects so that even if they don't achieve conventional success, you still gain more than you invested in them.

• 1:26:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, definitely. And speaking of learning, you mentioned two books earlier, Switch and The Culture Code, I think they were. Is that right? What other books have you gifted the most to other people besides your own, of course?

• 1:26:26Speaker 03

  Try not to gift. You can't, you can't gift someone your own book. It's like, here's this thing I wrote. You do a bunch of work and digest it as opposed to if we know each other, maybe you should just, we can just talk about it, right?

• 1:26:40Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just screwing with you. You know, it makes me, it makes me think of, I don't know if you've seen What About Bob? Classic.

• 1:26:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:26:46Tim Ferriss?

  Fantastic. But when he was like, there's this groundbreaking new book out, Bob, let me, let me find it here. And he drags his finger back and forth on the shelf, which has like 100 copies of his own book. And he goes, ah, yes, here it is. But what, what books have you recommended or gifted?

• 1:27:02Speaker 03

  I have to tell you as a quick aside, I was speaking at a Google event a few years ago and a bunch of people just went way too far in self-promoting their books. And it was, it was over the top. And I I I got up there, I ditched my slides. And I about halfway through my talk, I said, all right, I I've got to tell you. If you really want to understand what motivates people, you have to read this incredible book, which I wrote.

• 1:27:31Speaker 03

  I would normally not be that sarcastic or that snarky, but I just felt like somebody needed to acknowledge the elephant in the room. But otherwise, I would never recommend my own book. Right? So to your question, what have I gifted the most? I've got a I've got a few favorites. So, you know, I I I think I tend to gift mostly in the genre that I write in. So, you know, thinking about big ideas that are evidence based that can improve the way we work and live. And so, uh, mistakes were made, but not by me is a favorite. Yep. I'm sure you know that by Tabitha Aronson, a great book on why we our egos get in the way of just about everything and how to overcome that.

• 1:28:13Speaker 03

  Um, I've gifted Susan Cain's book Quiet, uh, more times than I can count. And interestingly, I started I started out gifting it to introverts, thinking, okay, this is going to be a book that shows you all of your strengths and the ways you're not alone in the world. Um, and, you know, it certainly spoke to me that way as an introvert. And I have to tell you, the the biggest fans of that book, from my experience, are actually extroverts who say, oh, you know, I need to embrace my quieter side and I need to make more room for the quiet people around me because I'm missing out on their brilliance. Uh, so that's, I think that's always fun. And it's especially fun to give that book to an engineer who has never heard of introversion, extroversion. And it's a giant light bulb.

• 1:28:53Speaker 03

  I actually had a student, uh, early on who who read it and said, oh, my gosh, my boyfriend isn't boring, he's just an introvert. I didn't realize.

• 1:29:03Speaker 03

  Anyway, so that that's another favorite. And then, um, I have, it's a newer book, so I haven't been able to gift it as many times yet. But I've recommended a lot recently that if people want to figure out what their biggest blind spots are, that one of the things they ought to do is spend a little bit of time reading Tasha Yurich's book on self-awareness. And I think it's called Insight. And the insight that I took away from it was that people who are really self-aware don't spend a lot of time agonizing over why they are the way they are. They don't find it that productive.

• 1:29:45Speaker 03

  I guess I've never found it that productive to psychoanalyze myself. Why did I get the way I am? I don't know, there could be a million biogenetic and life experience factors, but it doesn't really matter. Here's how I am, and then how do I work with that to be effective and live a life of meaning? And I think it was a really cool book on how to become more aware of what your strengths and weaknesses are.

• 1:30:09Tim Ferriss?

  Do you know how to spell the author's name?

• 1:30:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, Tasha, T-A-S-H-A, and then Yurich, E-U-R-I-C-H, I believe.

• 1:30:18Tim Ferriss?

  Cool. I will find it and put it in the show notes for everyone. Yes, U-R-I-C-H. There it is.

• 1:30:29Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 1:30:30Tim Ferriss?

  Also available on audio for people who are interested. Subtitle, The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why... That's all I can see on the preview. I'll put that in the show notes. Yeah, blind spots, what a thing. And are there any other tools or questions you ask yourself or have other people prompted with to help you?

• 1:31:02Tim Ferriss?

  Further find your blind spots.

• 1:31:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, one of the things I learned about actually doing a podcast episode on your hidden personality, I went to Bain, the consulting firm, in part because they spend a lot of time building brand-new teams where people who know nothing about each other have to go into, you know, often in their twenties, into very senior executives' offices and tell them how to run their companies. And they have a lot riding on whether these brand-new teams can interact smoothly. And so, they, not surprisingly, put a lot of energy into figuring out, okay, you know, what are the traits and strengths and weaknesses of everybody? And how do we get up to speed on that as fast as possible? And I met a manager there

• 1:31:48Speaker 03

  who had said something really interesting. He said, you know, when I buy a new car, it comes with an owner's manual, so I know how to operate it. But when I work with a new person, who's way more complex than a car, I don't get anything. And so, I'm kind of starting from square one, when, in fact, they have all these experiences that could teach me something from their past about how to work with them better in the present and the future. And so, what he did, same as Orr Skolnik, he sat down and he wrote up a one-pager on how to work with him effectively. What are his strengths? What are his weaknesses? What are the triggers that bring out the worst in him? What are the moments that bring out the best in him? And then, he didn't stop there. He asked his team to write their

• 1:32:32Speaker 03

  user manual for him, so that he could gauge his own self-awareness. And, of course, he found the team's analysis much more insightful and accurate than his own, because of the blind spot factor in part. But now, every new person who works with him gets that one-pager and gets to immediately start as if they've known him for a month or two, and say, okay, you know, here are the things I might want to adapt if I want to be really effective with this manager. And so, I've gone and done that. I asked a bunch of people who work with me to write my user manual, and it is very simple. The questions are, what are my strengths? What brings those out? What are my weaknesses? What brings those out? What are my blind spots? And what do you know now about working with me that you wish you had known when we first started working together?

• 1:33:14Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, great.

• 1:33:16Speaker 03

  Invaluable.

• 1:33:17Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the answers to that last one?

• 1:33:20Speaker 03

  Uh, the, the last one, uh, I, I've gotten a few funny ones. Uh, one, one that really caught me off guard was, uh, it really bothers you deeply at your core when somebody pretends to know something that they don't. You, you, you just all of a sudden go from being a pretty friendly, affable person to, uh, to just in intense prosecutor mode, uh, which was a, a, a novel, a novel observation for me. Uh, I got a, I got another one that said that, um, I think the exact quote was that I am unaware that sometimes when I say an idea is not good, I've just crushed somebody's

• 1:34:02Speaker 03

  three months that they've invested in that idea. And, and here I am thinking I'm helping them move on, you know, more efficiently and not, not at all aware of, of how much they've already invested in the idea. So.

• 1:34:14Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you, maybe you're doing both. I think that, uh.

• 1:34:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I could probably do it better.

• 1:34:19Tim Ferriss?

  Better to, better to crush three months of effort and save them the next three years, but.

• 1:34:24Speaker 03

  Agree, but maybe, maybe they don't have to be crushed at all. They could be let down a little more gently.

• 1:34:28Tim Ferriss?

  They could just be very strongly squeezed.

• 1:34:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Uh, but then on the, the other side of that, uh, I think mostly when we, Tim, when we talk about blind spots, we think about our weaknesses, right? So there are things we're not good at, but we don't realize it and we can't see them because we're, we're inside of our own heads. We also have blind spots about our strengths.

• 1:34:49Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 1:34:50Speaker 03

  You might call them bright spots.

• 1:34:52Tim Ferriss?

  Great point.

• 1:34:53Speaker 03

  Uh, there, there are things you're good at that you don't even know you're good at.

• 1:34:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's a really good point.

• 1:34:58Speaker 03

  I think that you, you need to see those through other people's eyes too. So I have some, some colleagues who developed this great tool at the University of Michigan. It's called the Reflected Best Self-Exercise. And I, I have, I have all my students do it. MBAs, undergrads, senior executives, everyone in between. And they, they often come back and say it was eye-opening and occasionally even life-changing. Uh, what, what you do is you reach out to usually 15 to 20 people who know you well. Uh, you get to choose them, often different walks of life. So some colleagues, maybe a boss, a friend, a family member, and you ask them to tell a story about a time when you were at your best. And you collect all these stories, it is the most delightful week of emails you will ever get.

• 1:35:43Speaker 03

  This is how amazing you are again and again and again.

• 1:35:47Speaker 03

  But then you have some work to do. You have to analyze the stories and find the common themes. And figure out, okay, what is the portrait of me when I'm at my best? And what is it that activates those strengths? And I first did this my first year of grad school and I learned that, that apparently, I didn't realize this, but one of my strengths was actually recognizing other people's strengths. It showed up in almost every story was, you know, I was at my best when I was hoping someone else be at their best. And so I said, I've got to make that part of my job. I have to figure out a way to do that because I love it and people are telling me that I'm good at it, or at least that they like it. And I never would have thought of that, just did not cross my mind.

• 1:36:28Speaker 03

  And so it's, it's an exercise I'd like to see people do, you know, I think every couple of years, because sometimes you, you have new people in your life who see different strengths, your strengths evolve. You find new ways to activate them and I'm a, I'm a big fan of that exercise.

• 1:36:42Tim Ferriss?

  I love it.

• 1:36:43Speaker 03

  Have you done it?

• 1:36:44Tim Ferriss?

  I have not, no. I've done the opposite, which is, I suppose, on brand for my

• 1:36:50Speaker 03

  Your reflected worst self?

• 1:36:51Tim Ferriss?

  Brand of self-flagellation. Well, no, it wasn't specifically my reflected worst self, but I did a 360 interview process with a whole group of people I've worked with and as, as Joe Gebbia, one of the co-founders of Airbnb.

• 1:37:11Speaker 03

  I know Joe, we suffered through Ted together.

• 1:37:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, said to me when we were doing our podcast, or maybe when we were talking, either way, he did it also. And I was like, am I the only one who had like a near nervous breakdown and just wanted to cry in my car? He's like, he's like, nope, same thing happened to me. And I was like, fuck, man, that was rough. It's like, because the, I think part of what made it so rough for me is the way we did it. And I think this is how it's typically done, but I've only done it once. You get all this feedback, some of which is very, very, can be very blunt and very brutal, which is all anonymized. And for me, that is very hard, not because I want to bludgeon the people who gave me hard feedback, but because I want to fix.

• 1:37:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:53Tim Ferriss?

  Or apologize. I want to fix things or apologize for past transgressions or mistakes or bad delivery or whatever it might be. And I can't do that when it's anonymized. And a good facilitator won't give you the names, of course.

• 1:38:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:08Tim Ferriss?

  Even if you try to kind of trick them into it by triangulating, which, which I'm not too proud to say I tried. And really tough. So I like the idea of this reflected best self-exercise, though, not to offset all of the psychic damage done by the 360, but because I don't know if, I don't know if, if you have observed this in yourself, I've certainly observed it in myself and that is, and in many of my friends who are good problem solvers. They are rewarded for solving problems, whether it's in math class, in primary school, or for solving

• 1:38:49Tim Ferriss?

  thorny dissertation issues, or solving problems with a marketing campaign, or spaghetti code, or whatever it might be. And as they are continually positively reinforced for solving problems, they begin to look at the world through the lens of finding problems.

• 1:39:07Speaker 03

  And Yep.

• 1:39:09Tim Ferriss?

  I certainly have done that. And as a result, I'm never looking for the, rarely have I looked for the strengths that are going unseen. I'm just looking for all the things that are screwed up, or the weaknesses, or the Achilles heels, so that I can fix them. And I've become more and more convinced, I'm really glad you brought this up, that it is equally important to look for those bright spots, as you put it, not just the blind spots.

• 1:39:35Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 1:39:36Tim Ferriss?

  Really important.

• 1:39:37Speaker 03

  I think so. And it's funny, I had a mentor, Rick Price, who was trained as a clinical psychologist before he moved into the organizational world. And he, he used to have a code with his wife that she would just always remind him, Rick, sympathy, not solutions.

• 1:39:54Speaker 03

  When I tell you something, I do not necessarily want you to fix it. I just want you to know, I just want to know that you care, right? I want to feel heard. And I think for those of us who like to solve problems and probably especially for those of us who are men, that's probably sage advice. But the interesting thing that I think that surfaces for me is there's another reason why you want to know what your strengths are, because we often misapply them or overuse them. There's research from the Center for Creative Leadership, which has shown that one of the ways that you identify career derailers is you look at strengths that people overuse. So you've gotten reinforced all your life for being assertive, and then you talk over people in meetings so much that nobody else can get a word in.

• 1:40:38Speaker 03

  You've been reinforced for a lot of your career for having charisma, and that becomes a crutch, and you don't prepare for the talks that you give. And you end up kind of underperforming or underdelivering.

• 1:40:52Speaker 03

  And that's, of course, I think when you think about yourself as a problem solver, that's a case potentially of strengths overused. And so, one of the things that I've taken out of the reflective best self is, I don't just want to be clear about what my strengths are, I want to know when is an appropriate time to use them? And when might be a time to actually say, you know, I might want to turn off this strength so that somebody else can use that strength.

• 1:41:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. Or turn off that strength so that you don't use it to cover for weaknesses that perhaps you should address, right? That's certainly something that I've experienced personally as well. It's easy to become a hammer looking for nails.

• 1:41:37Tim Ferriss?

  What, we only have a few minutes left, but I'm really curious to know, you mentioned some time back, the architecture of your week, right? You have some days that are... Working on projects or talking to family, but no one else. And I have, and this is fairly common among a lot of the high-producing individuals I've come across. I know Jack Dorsey did this for quite a while, and maybe he still does, but kind of separating out days, not just portions of days, but days for very specific things, product focus, or hiring focus, or fill in the blank.

• 1:42:18Tim Ferriss?

  And for instance, you know, we're recording this on a Friday. When I do any recording, I try to do my recording on Mondays and Fridays. And I also try to place the vast majority of my phone calls or admin-type tasks that I need to be involved with in some sense on Mondays. Right? So I do have a weekly structure. I also have kind of certain daily non-negotiables that give me a structure around which to build everything else. It provides me with a sense of of control that I find very helpful, but also it puts a lot on autopilot so that I'm not making a lot of extraneous decisions.

• 1:43:03Tim Ferriss?

  So I'd love to hear if you have any

• 1:43:10Tim Ferriss?

  routines or activities, whether it's on a weekly or a daily basis, that you do very consistently. And that could be like the first two hours of your day. It could be the first, what you do in the first hour. It could be the last half hour. It doesn't really matter. But are there any particular routines that you treat as very important for yourself?

• 1:43:32Speaker 03

  You know, I did for a long time, and there's still some that I use. But I have become a little less routine-driven in the past few years. I think in part because The moment we talked about in the classroom earlier of kind of losing track of the lesson plan and just following the student questions, that's really unusual for me. I tend to be so laser focused and linear that I worry I'm not being flexible and adaptable enough. And so one of the routines I've been working on is just being comfortable shifting my routine. But I'm probably unusual in that way. So the things, I'll tell you the changes that I've made to new routines that I've found most helpful. One is, as a morning

• 1:44:14Speaker 03

  person, I used to try to do all my creative work in the morning because I knew that was when I was most alert. And then I read a bunch of research showing that you actually do your most creative work when you're a little fuzzier. Because that's when your thinking is more nonlinear, it's when you make more unexpected leaps, and you know, kind of free associations. And so now what I'll do is, at night before I go to bed, when I know I want to write the next morning, I still like to write when I'm fresh, so that it actually makes sense. But the night before, I'll actually start jotting down some ideas. It might be a couple of sentences, it might be an outline, and then I've got some, hopefully some novel material to run with in a more organized way in the morning. And so you can obviously flip that if you're a night owl and say, huh, maybe I actually have some

• 1:44:57Speaker 03

  creative ideas in the morning, when I feel like I can't think straight. You don't want to think straight if you're trying to be creative. So that's one that I really like. Another one that I've adopted recently, which has been extremely productive for me, is I actually take phone calls right after workouts. Because I've found that right after a workout, I'm just not, I'm not very, I'm not in work mode yet. And so I feel like I need some kind of transition space to get back into focus. And oftentimes, like, I just wasted the half hour, you know, after I wasted cardio, and so I might as well have had a conversation

• 1:45:38Speaker 03

  during that time. And so that's become white space. And then my last favorite routine, which is definitely on the new side, is I actually go to sleep listening to podcasts. Uh, I, for years I would read or watch TV going to sleep, uh, but it's so much more relaxing to not look at a screen.

• 1:45:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:58Speaker 03

  And I find that, uh, I, I process the information a little bit more deeply than if I had read it and I also fall asleep faster.

• 1:46:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sounds, it sounds like win-win. I haven't tried going to sleep with podcasts. Do you have a favorite bedtime podcast or, uh, types of podcasts?

• 1:46:18Speaker 03

  I, I don't like, uh, I don't like our kinds of podcasts at bedtime because I actually want to be awake and learn from them. Uh, so I just, I just did, I binged the shrink next door, uh, in a, in a few nights, which was fascinating. And I, I ended up staying up way too late one night because I just wanted to know where the story went. But the other nights it was great. Um, I did, uh, I did cereal that way. And, uh, so I guess it's mostly more of the, uh, either the, the narrative or fiction style shows.

• 1:46:44Tim Ferriss?

  Uh huh. Cool. What does your workout regimen look like? You mentioned exercise.

• 1:46:49Speaker 03

  So I, uh, I do, I lift weights twice a week. I do, my target is three days a week of cardio, which is usually a mix of an ultimate frisbee game, uh, tennis match and, uh, elliptical. And then, uh, lately, actually just a few weeks ago, I got back on a, a diving board for the first time.

• 1:47:11Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:47:11Speaker 03

  I retired half my life ago and I had not been on a real diving board in, in more than a dozen years and, uh, got back on to, to try to relearn some of the old, the old tricks, uh, which hurt very badly the next morning. Uh, but has, has been, has been a lot of fun and a good workout, too.

• 1:47:30Tim Ferriss?

  What prompted getting back into the diving?

• 1:47:32Speaker 03

  Um, a couple of things. One, I was, uh, I, I happened to catch some, uh, I think those senior national, uh, US finals. And after spending six years of my life, almost every waking hour, either thinking about it or doing it, uh, you know, the moment I watch it, I want to get back into it again. And, uh, also I'd, I'd been, uh, teaching our kids some techniques. And so it seemed like it was, uh, it was a good time to, to, to get my skills back in order.

• 1:48:04Tim Ferriss?

  Well, we could, I mean, I've, we're not even a tenth of the way through my notes. It sounds like your early day lesson plans. But I know we, we have to wrap up shortly. Let me ask this and I'll have maybe one or two questions after this. But if you could put a quote message symbol, anything you want on a billboard. You've probably heard this question before, but metaphorically speaking, to get a message out to billions of people, let's say, what might you put on that billboard? Could be.

• 1:48:42Speaker 03

  That one's, that was easy.

• 1:48:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:45Speaker 03

  I think the most meaningful way to succeed is to help other people succeed.

• 1:48:49Tim Ferriss?

  Dig it.

• 1:48:50Speaker 03

  That's kind of the way you live your life. So no surprise there.

• 1:48:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Try, try, man. I, I, and certainly the way that you have lived your life, it's, I feel like you're just getting started. I'm very excited to see what you do next. And people can certainly learn more at adamgrant.net. Is that correct?

• 1:49:13Speaker 03

  As far as I know.

• 1:49:14Tim Ferriss?

  As far as you know, as far as I know. And then on social, on Twitter, at Adam M Grant, Instagram, Adam Grant, Facebook, Adam M Grant. Is there anything you would like to point people towards? Anything else you would like to say, recommend for people?

• 1:49:33Tim Ferriss?

  Encourage people to check out anything at all that you'd like to say before we wrap up?

• 1:49:37Speaker 03

  I, maybe, maybe just one thought on productivity. Cause it's, we've talked a bunch about it and it's such a core theme for you and your audience. I think one of the mistakes that people make when they try to boost their productivity is they're focusing on the wrong goals.

• 1:49:53Speaker 03

  I don't think being more productive is actually that motivating. It's like, I got more done. I wrote words today, more words today. Woo.

• 1:50:02Speaker 03

  I think that, you know, for me, productivity is a means to an end. And I've always been more productive when I've found a project that I care about or, you know, a topic that I'm really intensely curious about. And I think that, that frequently, when you feel like you're not productive, it's, it's not necessarily because you're lazy or because you have bad habits. It's because you're not working on the right projects.

• 1:50:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:24Speaker 03

  And you, you haven't found the ones that are intrinsically motivating and meaningful to you. And so I think that, you know, I guess I would just say, you know, I think if, if productivity is your goal, maybe you've got the wrong goal.

• 1:50:37Tim Ferriss?

  That's a great point. That is a fantastic point and very well said. Yeah, maybe it's not how you process email. Maybe it's impotent goals.

• 1:50:49Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe it's the wrong project. That's a great, great way to put it. Uh, well, Adam, thank you so much for taking the time today. This has been a lot of fun.

• 1:50:57Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me, Tim. It's been, uh, it's been a delight and a treat to, to join.

• 1:51:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, definitely. So I'm sure my audience will have more questions for you. So maybe we do around two at some point. But for now, this is a great first installment and I really appreciate you making the space to do this. And, uh, for everybody listening, I will have links to everything we discussed, lots of details, all the books, everything else at the, uh, page for show notes as per usual, tim.blog/podcast where you can find everything. Uh, Adam, thank you again.

• 1:51:33Speaker 03

  Thank you. Let me, uh, can I close with one question for you?

• 1:51:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 1:51:37Speaker 03

  You don't have to. You can decide whether you want to run it or not, but.

• 1:51:40Tim Ferriss?

  Fire away.

• 1:51:41Speaker 03

  I, I would love to know, uh, what big projects is on the horizon for you next? And what your, uh, your biggest challenge is right now?

• 1:51:48Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yes. All right. So big, big things on the horizon for me are some very large scientific projects, uh, involving researchers and, uh, studies related to.

• 1:52:03Tim Ferriss?

  Mostly classical psychedelics is applied to what are considered widely intractable psychological or psychiatric disorders, whether that is PTSD or treatment-resistant depression, where I've already helped to fund studies at places like Johns Hopkins, or eating disorders. There's a very long list, and that would be a very large project, and more of a series of projects coming up. Let's see, biggest challenge, biggest challenge would be perhaps wanting to disappear for

• 1:52:47Tim Ferriss?

  a while, for an extended period of time, which I've been doing in increments of weeks, but feeling a very strong call to disappear off into the wilderness for a while. And, struggle is too strong a word, but feeling perhaps conflicted about the best way to do that. And I feel confident that I and my support structure will figure it out in some way, but yeah, kind of reconciling that.

• 1:53:29Tim Ferriss?

  It's a very difficult to explain feeling. It's really more of a, like a very core emotional or visceral drive that I have without much left-brain analytical Excel spreadsheet data to support it. And I think coming from a life where I have certainly over-relied on that analytical machinery.

• 1:54:07Tim Ferriss?

  I think it's going to take me some very interesting places. So it's just really building up the courage, or dare I say faith, oh my God, what a word that is, to sort of follow the feeling and believe that the, like, the, the understanding will come later. So that's maybe a very strange answer, but that's

• 1:54:30Speaker 03

  No, it's interesting. What I like about it is you get so much done that you can disappear for a long time and still be annoyingly productive.

• 1:54:40Speaker 03

  The one, the one other thing I was, I was just top of mind wondering about is you got LeBron and his trainer. Who are your next dream guests? And if you could have anybody?

• 1:54:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you know who I'd love to have on, and the timing might actually be pretty good, is there, there are quite a few, a lot of the names no one would recognize, but many of my old mentors and professors, and I just recorded one that should be coming out soon. But I would really enjoy to have a long conversation with Oprah and also with Howard Stern. And they both, they both recently had books come out. So I think the timing could be decent. It would only be worth doing if they were willing to really play ball and

• 1:55:28Tim Ferriss?

  have a long form conversation like this one. But I find both of them endlessly fascinating. And I think that their, their abilities, if you kind of look between the, if you listen between the notes of music, so to speak, to really observe how they can craft conversations, navigate interviews and so on, it's, it's really remarkable. And not to mention the macro level perspective of their careers, but those would be two that come to mind.

• 1:56:06Speaker 03

  That's very cool. Well, you kind of want them to interview you then. So you can, you can experience it. But I guess turning the tables works too.

• 1:56:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, I mean, certainly both of them are pretty good at saying, oh, you're going to interview me? Wait a second.

• 1:56:21Tim Ferriss?

  I have some questions for you, so who knows, but I think that would be, I think that would be fun. If they're willing to play ball, right? I wouldn't want to have someone drag them kicking and screaming into doing it, because I don't think either side would enjoy that. But if they were, if they were game, I think that a long form conversation with either or both of them would be, would be quite fun. And thanks for asking.

• 1:56:45Speaker 03

  No, I look forward to hearing both of this.

• 1:56:48Tim Ferriss?

  To be continued on that one. And I will, I will let you get back to your day. But Adam, speaking of to be continued, as we said before recording, it is no small miracle that we haven't actually bumped into each other at, given the many, many concentric, or I should say overlapping circles that, that we live and operate in. So it's, it's nice to, to spend this amount of time on the, on the phone, having this conversation. And hopefully be able to share some, share some food, break some bread, raise a drink at some point in the not too distant future.

• 1:57:27Speaker 03

  I will look forward to that. In the meantime, thank you again for having me.

• 1:57:30Tim Ferriss?

  Of course. And to everyone who is tuning in, thanks so much for listening. And until next time, take a peek at tim.blog/podcast.

• 1:57:48Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the, the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:58:31Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 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. This episode is brought to you by Zapier. Z A P I E R. You may, in your own mind, say Zapier, but it's not Zapier. It's Zapier, like happier. They are a new sponsor, but not new to me as a service at all. I've been using them for many years now. If you run your own business, think about all the hours and hours, maybe endless hours you spend moving information from one software program to another, all because they don't easily work together.

• 1:59:16Tim Ferriss?

  Well, now they can automatically, thanks to Zapier. My team has been using Zapier for years, as I mentioned, which helps us with a ton of tasks, including, let's just take one example, connecting Facebook ads campaigns to our email platform. You can also, as I do, automate the posting of your Instagram photos to all social platforms. This has saved me and my team hundreds of hours alone. My team has also raved about Zapier's support, which is very important. If things go sideways, you want to be able to reach someone. And in their words, "It is in a class of its own." A class of its own, that's the exact verbatim quote from one of my employees. As with all sponsors of this podcast, we try to test everything ourselves, and we have used Zapier as full-paying retail customers.

• 2:00:01Tim Ferriss?

  That is, we paid for the service long before we ever had contact with the company as a sponsor. They support more than 1,500 business applications, so the possibilities for automating processes are virtually endless. You may know, if you've read The 4-Hour Workweek, that the third step is automation. Not adding headcount to a messy problem to try to fix it, but automating as much as possible. You want to eliminate automate and only then delegate. And Zapier is one of the best pieces of automation software that I've ever come across. It connects all of your business software and handles work for you, so you can focus on the things that matter most, the things you're good at, for instance, instead of trying to cobble stuff together or code. To learn more and try it out, go to zapier.com/tim, connect the apps you use most, and let Zapier take it from there.

• 2:00:47Tim Ferriss?

  You can do a million things, as one more example. Zapier lets you instantly engage with leads, send them to a CRM or spreadsheet, and then notify your team so they can act fast. And... Like I mentioned very briefly, the beautiful part is that you can build the solution you need in minutes without writing code or asking a developer for help. So join the 4.5 million people or more at this point who are saving an average of 40 hours per month by using Zapier. Now and for a limited time, try Zapier free by going to our special link zapier, z-a-p-i-e-r dot com slash tim. That's zapier dot com slash tim for your free 14 day trial.

• 2:01:28Tim Ferriss?

  Check it out, zapier dot com slash tim. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. I love Peloton. 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.

• 2:02:11Tim Ferriss?

  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. 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.

• 2:02:56Tim Ferriss?

  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 be 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.

• 2:03:39Tim Ferriss?

  Go to onepeloton.com and use the code TIMPODCAST to get started.