#408: The Random Show — New Year's Resolutions, 2010-2019 Lessons Learned, Finding Joy, Energy Management, and Much More

Technologist, serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, self-experimenter, and all-around wild and crazy guy Kevin Rose (@KevinRose https://www.instagram.com/kevinrose/), rejoins me for another episode of "The Random Show." In this one we explore the language of relationships, polarity, energy management, difficult conversations, finding peace and patience, the importance of self-compassion, the search for palatable decaf coffee, panic-selling, serving the moment, and much more! *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor http://tim.blog/sponsor. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Tim 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 the appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode of The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Calm. I once asked LeBron James, you've probably heard of him, "What is the single most important element of his training regimen?" And I may have edged into it slightly differently, but in effect, that's what I was asking. And you know what he said? He did not say "windsprings." Cryotherapy, maybe? Egg white omelets with a side of butternut squash? No, no, and although it sounds delicious, no. What he focused on, what he said, was sleep. Whether you're an athlete, programmer, or student, healthy sleep, that is restorative sleep, is essential to peak performance. It strengthens your immune system, improves cognitive function, like problem solving and decision making. It gives you creativity and energy, or at least certainly fosters all those things that you want to bring into your day.

• 1:09Tim Ferriss?

  And I've suffered with sleep, or I should say, poor sleep, for a very long time, and have sought out different tools to help me optimize and improve, not just the duration, but the quality of my sleep. And as a lot of us know, there's a common problem. Sound sleep is a rare thing. And this is particularly true when you are hyper-caffeinated, hyper-connected, hyper-stimulated in a modern, digital world. But there is a place to get rest, and that is Calm, the number one app for sleep, downloaded by more than 60 million people. It's really easy to download. Just download Calm, and you'll find a whole library of programs designed to help you with healthy sleep, like soundscapes, guided meditations, and more than 100 sleep stories narrated by soothing voices

• 1:54Tim Ferriss?

  like those of LeVar Burton and Nick Offerman. Right now, listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show, that's you guys. Get 40% off a Calm Premium subscription at calm.com/tim. That's C-A-L-M dot com slash tim. To quote LeBron himself, "You want to seize the day, you gotta sleep the night." Check it out. Go to calm.com/tim. Get calm and get better sleep. Time to restore.

• 2:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. These days, as you know, with a million messages per minute, not enough hours in the day. How do you really catch people's attention? This is where LinkedIn can help. With LinkedIn Ads, you can catch the right professionals, the right people at the right time, and I'll tell you how I'm using them personally in a minute. LinkedIn Ads can drive traffic to landing pages, for instance, engagement, and for many of you, most importantly, conversions, whether that's registrations for an event, downloads of white papers and eBooks, or other important metrics. Me, personally, I'm going to be testing LinkedIn Ads to drive signups to my free newsletter, Five Bullet Friday, which I've realized drives just about everything else. With precise targeting through LinkedIn, entrepreneurs, startups, and SMBs, that's

• 3:09Tim Ferriss?

  small, medium-sized businesses, can better and more cost-effectively reach the people who matter, to them specifically. With more than 62 million decision-makers on LinkedIn, you're able to connect with the business leaders, or just the target audience, who are most relevant to your company, and deliver a clear call to action. That's always where I focus a lot of my energy, obviously, headline and call to action. LinkedIn Ads allows you to cut through the clutter and ensure your messages are getting through to the people you most want to target. So huge, medium-sized, and small businesses alike are all making the most ad of LinkedIn Ads, entrepreneurs, solo printers, you name it. So try it for yourself. LinkedIn is offering a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit to launch your first campaign. Simply visit LinkedIn.com/TFS, as in Tim Ferriss Show.

• 3:54Tim Ferriss?

  Again, that's LinkedIn.com/TFS. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole-body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement? And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole-food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try it. Try AG1 today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs

• 4:39Tim Ferriss?

  with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink AG1, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Hello friends. This is Kevin Rose. I'm here with Mr. Tim Ferriss. Welcome to episode number 947 of The Random Show.

• 5:09Tim Ferriss?

  You're losing your flair, man.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  What? What happened?

• 5:13Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just busting.

• 5:14Speaker 03

  Wasn't that good?

• 5:14Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just busting your balls. It was good, but you looked off to the side like Rain Man, which I liked on the video.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  Oh, did I?

• 5:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, but I like that.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Oh shit. I had my 10 year meetup anniversary with Daria last night. It's our official 10 years together. From our first date, I should say. And yeah, had some wine. I hate wine.

• 5:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you know, this is, it's a love hate thing. So tell me about, tell me about it. First of all, congratulations because 10 years is no joke. That's huge.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is huge. It has been a crazy ride with lots of lessons learned, you know, kids, all kinds of insanity.

• 5:54Tim Ferriss?

  Now, it's appropriate that you would have, I'm not sure if you're willing to go into this. I don't see why not, but it's appropriate that you guys would have wine last night because maybe you could talk about one of your first dates and how wine played into that.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I basically walked into this bar, I had, well, I should back up. So here's, here's the, the quick, I don't want to like spend an hour on this, but here's the quick little overview. I met Daria through Twitter of all places.

• 6:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  And we met on Twitter because I was very fortunate enough to talk Ev Williams, the then CEO, to add me to the suggested user list. This is when Twitter had like 15 people on the suggested user list. So I was one of the default recommended people to a lot of, of different folks.

• 6:33Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  So. This is before they used algorithms for all that stuff. So anyway, Darian's been following me. She retweets me on, on something that I had mentioned Dr. Andrew Weil. She retweets that. I see her little 20 by 20 icon. I'm like, who's this little sexy little icon?

• 6:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the green, the green cutoff shirt, probably, back in the day.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  Probably. That sounds about right. And so I, I clicked through on it and, you know, she says she's into wine, into food. Um, you know, she's a neuroscientist. I'm like, check, check, check. That sounds amazing. Uh, we should go hang out. And so ended up DMing her. Uh, we met up at a bar. I walked in, saw her, was blown away and immediately realized I needed, uh, a substance to kind of like, uh, calm my nerves a little bit.

• 7:16Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I thought you were gonna say to dumb her down so she would succumb to your charms.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, pretty much. I think a little bit of both, actually. So I ended up just walking up and bought a whole bottle of wine and brought it back to the table. And apparently she thought that was a pretty ballsy thing. She's like, who just buys a bottle of wine? But I don't know. I just felt like we were just gonna sit there for a while. And I knew we had a lot of overlap. And even if we were just friends, like, we'd have a lot to talk about. So, you know, that was the first date.

• 7:41Tim Ferriss?

  And I say dumb her down because for people who don't know, Daria is razor sharp and extremely intellectual, very well read and, uh, a scientist. So she's, she's extremely, extremely strong in the hardware brain department.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, she's really good at calling me on my bullshit, which is great.

• 7:59Tim Ferriss?

  It's important. Super important.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  It is.

• 8:02Tim Ferriss?

  I think that's what good friends do too, sometimes.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, no doubt, dude. Um, so what are we gonna do on this episode? You had mentioned you wanted to reflect back on the last 10 years, right?

• 8:11Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I was thinking we could talk about resolutions. We could talk about for 2020 or anything that we've thought about for 2020 and also look back over the last 10 years, which is crazy for me to even contemplate. I was looking at some of the landmarks along the way and it simultaneously seems not long ago at all and 100 years ago.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  Well, dude, I would love to continue this little theme that we started on, because I know your fans always like to hear this stuff, is like, talk to me about your last 10 years of relationships. I know that's tough, but like a lesson, lessons learned, like for, let me just start off with a 30 second version. My lessons learned are find someone that you're always on the same team with. So knowing that you're together in this versus fighting someone or having to like, you know, have your own side is a big one. And the second thing for me was therapy, like therapy. And what got me here today in a very happy, positive relationship is Dari and I, at multiple times went to a therapist and sat down and had a third party kind of analyze and help us work through some of the issues so that we could figure out how to be on the same team.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  But I'd love to hear like, I mean, I've known you personally for a long time, so I've seen you through all types of ladies.

• 9:27Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah, we have, we have mutually assured destruction on this one. If we, if we, if either of us go nuclear, but we have seen, we've watched each other with many different relationships and trials and tribulations and learning, learning moments, teachable moments. I would say that, looking back, there are a few things that are very present for me now that may have come through some really bad decisions in the past. And also just, just kind of mileage, right? I mean, you, you start to realize better what you need over time also.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:04Tim Ferriss?

  Polarity, number one, I would say is extremely important and.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  What do you, what do you mean by polarity?

• 10:09Tim Ferriss?

  We can spend a lot of time discussing various ways to consider polarity. But what I mean by that is, let's just say you have a sliding scale. And this is probably going to get me in all sorts of trouble. So for people listening, I don't care if you're Martian, US, Japanese, male, female, trans, in between. There, there are different types of polarity. And I'm going to use probably heteronormative language. So if you want to crucify me, go for it. But let's just say you have a slider that goes out this way. And right in the middle, you have not as related to anatomy, but rather characteristics, what, let's arbitrarily call like pure androgyny in the center. Okay.

• 10:54Tim Ferriss?

  And then you have feminine characteristics. And let's just assume for the sake of argument that each person's going to decide for them what that means. But feminine characteristics, this direction, masculine characteristics, this direction. So you have sort of, and then.

• 11:10Tim Ferriss?

  What I have observed for myself and also in a lot of my friends is that it's sometimes very helpful to find someone who is equally far away from that middle point in the opposite direction, right? So if you have someone who is maybe hyper excessively developed in terms of masculine traits, however you want to look at that, very often they're going to pair well, from what I've seen, with someone who is as far in the opposite direction and likewise, like this, right? And there are, there are books that discuss this. I read "The Way of the Superior Man" 100 years ago by David Data, which talks a lot about this. And I don't agree with everything in that book, but I do think polarity, maintaining

• 11:54Tim Ferriss?

  polarity, enhancing polarity, which can be done through any number of different practices or reframes, I think is very important for maintaining a relationship where there is intense attraction and healthy, a healthy sex life, for instance, right? I think that's very important. So that's one. Two would be, and this relates to what you said, having structure for cultivating the relationship. That could come in the form of therapy, it could come in the form of having, say, a

• 12:32Tim Ferriss?

  date night once a week, having a couples' day once a quarter, which I do with my girlfriend, where we spend a day talking very candidly about the things we like, the things we're afraid of, sort of fears, desires, boundaries, negotiating new things, testing new things, et cetera. And we spend an entire day doing that, and it's blocked out and it's known in advance that's going to be once a quarter. We have different types of, say, systems, if you want to call it that, for...

• 13:06Tim Ferriss?

  Cultivating the garden before it's in trouble. Does that make sense? I think that for a long time, all was well until there was a code red and things would devolve. People wouldn't say things they needed to say. Resentment might build and then something would explode. And then everyone is firefighting, trying to figure it out. And by that point, emotions have run so high, elbows are coming out and it doesn't mean both sides, but very often elbows would come out from someone and it would just devolve very quickly. So.

• 13:42Speaker 03

  How do you handle when you have these, because everyone has disagreements and they have these little things that may rub them the wrong way when you're in a relationship. And there's this balance between, you know, taking everything personally and just, you know, constantly responding back to your partner, being like, I didn't like this, I didn't like that, I didn't like this. And then it becomes this like little nitpicky type of relationship versus, you know, some of it you may want to just bundle up and discuss at a later point in time. Like, how do you know when something reaches a certain threshold to where you bring it up with your significant other?

• 14:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. I have, and I don't mention my girlfriend's name because the internet's fucking crazy. So I like to try to protect her. You guys are both public figures, so it's part of the game, in a sense, for you guys. But in any sense, or in any case, I should say, that's why I'm referring to my girlfriend as my girlfriend. But she and I generally will batch. And I think that's in large part because I'm very sensitive. I'm a sensitive guy in a lot of ways. And I don't use sensitive. I used to view that word in a very negative light, a very negative connotation, because we think, oh, he's so sensitive, meaning he or she takes everything personally. But I had one of my closest friends,

• 15:01Tim Ferriss?

  who you've met actually, before. Ask me maybe two years ago, he said, "When did you know that you were really sensitive?" And the question really confused me, and I'm gonna get back to the relationship and timing question. What I realized is my instrumentation in certain ways is just very, very sensitive. It's almost like a scale. It just has more decimal points for certain things, and I find a lot of stimulation overwhelming. And for that reason. So, at a young age, I learned how to turn that off or numb that sensitivity. But I don't wanna do that in a relationship. So, over time, in the last 10 years, also learned that turning off or compartmentalizing emotionally

• 15:44Tim Ferriss?

  is short-term effective, long-term, very destructive.

• 15:49Tim Ferriss?

  Coming back to the timing question. So, I'm still very sensitive to having things I might perceive as criticism or suggestions that require me to make decisions, coming at me at like 3:00 PM on a weekday if I'm in the middle of some type of phone call or project or writing, whatever it might be. And there are, there are some timing solutions to that. There are also structural solutions, right? So, my girlfriend tends to work at home and I work downtown. I have a separate place that I use for work. That in and of itself solves a lot of problems. Right. And it's, and it's, and you don't have to figure it all out, being within 20 feet of each other at all times. Like, that is a perfectly valid answer, right? So, that's one. Number two is that we will block out time.

• 16:34Tim Ferriss?

  Say, we'll block out two hours or three hours on a given night. I'm, I'm making this up, but let's just say, once every two weeks, where we'll do batching. And the format of that is not what we tested in the beginning, which was like, "Let's voice all of our complaints." But when we started with that, in other words, this like litany of charges against each other in the beginning, it, it poisoned the well and turned into a very unpleasant experience for both of us that we didn't look forward to, right? We kinda dreaded doing it. And my girlfriend suggested a much better format, because I'm like, "Hey, good news takes care of itself.

• 17:19Tim Ferriss?

  Let's just, like, tell me the bad news." But it turns out, that's also pretty counterproductive in a lot of cases. So, we start with what we think the other person is doing really well since the last batching session.

• 17:35Tim Ferriss?

  And what they're paying attention to and what we'd like, then we will talk about what we think we are doing well personally as a partner. And then what we would like more of, and the phrasing is really important, right? It's not what you're fucking up, it's what I would love more of. So it's sort of positive reinforcement if we're thinking about it like dog training, right? You're trying to shape a behavior. Instead of whacking the dog with a newspaper, you're giving a little Scooby snack to push them in the right direction when they get something approximately right. And that's the format. So we do that. And what's important to us at least, maybe important to me, important to both of us is we take notes. So if there are commitments that are made

• 18:19Tim Ferriss?

  or important points that are brought up, we have something that we can then refer to before the next backching session and we can see where homework wasn't done.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:28Tim Ferriss?

  And if some-

• 18:30Speaker 03

  That sounds really powerful just to have that. I mean, I like the way that you structured that because I could see very quickly how that could just be a negative kind of bitch fest if you don't have that structure around it.

• 18:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah. And I'm, and I'm extremely lucky that my girlfriend's a very clean fighter. That's something I've also learned is extremely important. Because the good times are the good times. But I've, I've heard someone, I don't remember who said this, but the quote is not that adversity builds character, but adversity reveals character. And you really want to know that your partner can navigate rough emotional waters when things are difficult and not immediately pull out a gun and shoot you in the face, you know?

• 19:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'm very fortunate there too. That's something that Daria has taught me a lot is that it just, where are you coming from in this discussion? Like where, if, and it's, if it's from a place of, I want us to be stronger and better together and we are on the same team trying to solve the same problem.

• 19:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  Then it's a, it's, it's very constructive versus it being about tearing down someone.

• 19:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there's a, there's a framework that the Conscious Leadership Group uses, Jim Detmer, Diana Chapman, and so on, that I like quite a lot. I was introduced to their book, which I think is the 15- Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Dustin Moskowitz, a long time ago, a couple of years ago. And they have this concept of being above the line or below the line. And I'll let people look it up if they're interested. But it's a very easy way to check in with yourself or with someone else to see how they are engaging in a conversation, or how you're engaging in a conversation, and if it's likely to go sideways, or if it's more likely to be constructive.

• 20:19Tim Ferriss?

  And so the phrasing they use is sort of above the line or below the line. And I have found all of these helpful. And I think in part, what I'm trying to say is that what's important is not that you use exactly someone else's system or someone else's habits, but that you think about developing and using systems or structure of some type.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, so many people out there, and I was one of these people as well, just believed that if you find the right person, everything will be fine. You know, I was always like looking for that perfect person. And it just doesn't exist, you know, like we're unique creatures. And so, you know, the second you can realize that, and then you realize, well, I do need a framework for this, you're just gonna be in such a better place.

• 21:09Tim Ferriss?

  What resources or practices have you found helpful in your relationship aside from the therapy? And when you were doing the therapy, when you found it most impactful, how often were you doing it? How long were the sessions? Was there a particular type of therapy? What did that look like?

• 21:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, basically, on the therapy side, it was about an hour-long session, and we would go once a week, and we did that for a couple of months. And really, that was, um, her position is like, I'm not a mediator here. I'm here to give you and teach you tools so that you can go off and do this on your own. Um, you know, this isn't about, uh, you know, the chiropractor method where you just have to keep them back for one more session, your back will be fixed, you know? So she was, she was, actually, Daria's in there right now. I'm like, keep telling her, stop going to the chiropractor.

• 22:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you gotta make sure they're not, you know, adjusting you one week and then putting it back to how it was the next week and then just repeating and repeating.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  Exactly. But, um, you know, once we had those skills, and I, and I think a lot of it came down to the language we use with each other, and then also just stopping before the conversation even begins, and realizing and both acknowledging that the conversation we're going to have is so that we can figure out the best path forward because we both deeply love each other.

• 22:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  And we want to find a solution to this. And so that kind of just like, just starting up from that, if you can both get in that mindset, it just really diffuses things right off, right off the bat.

• 22:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  And that's, that's like 90% of it.

• 22:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, language.

• 22:48Tim Ferriss?

  I am embarrassed how long it has taken me as someone who is supposedly a writer to pay close attention to the language I use with my partner. And I've always been semi-aware of the language that I'm using, but I've, I've very often become impatient and wanted to cut to the chase in conversations where that is kind of like lighting your hair on fire and then looking for the fire extinguisher. It's, it's, backfire is more than it helps. And nonviolent communication has been a door that opened a lot to me in the sense that there, there's a framework for nonviolent communication. People can look this up. The audiobook

• 23:32Tim Ferriss?

  of the same name was recommended to me by Neil Strauss initially. And what it made clear to me is that if you phrase things

• 23:43Tim Ferriss?

  such that you are taking full responsibility for your experience and your emotions, it really disarms people and helps to avoid a lot of headbutting and defensiveness. For example, one of the phrases that my girlfriend uses a lot, there are two things she does that I think are very Remarkable, at least that's, that's, that's how I felt and how I still feel. Number one is she will very often preface any type of criticism with the story or something that's bothering her. She'll say, "The story that I'm creating in my own head is that you..." dot, dot, dot, right? "You did X because you wanted me to feel Y and therefore it

• 24:27Tim Ferriss?

  hurt my feelings." But it's fundamentally different from saying, "You did X to make me feel Y." Right. My response to, to the first is very soft and I'm engaged and I listen versus the second. The second thing she does, which I think is very mature and that I've copied, is there are times when I'll ask her a question, maybe we've had an argument or what, or maybe simply it's been a difficult day. I might ask her, "What's wrong? What's on your mind?" And she'll say, "Hmm, I have a lot on my mind, but I'm gonna spend some time processing it. I'm, I'm, I'm feeling a little tired or a little upset and I feel like if we

• 25:11Tim Ferriss?

  talk right now, I'm just gonna make a mess of things. So let's talk later." So she will veto my attempt to engage if she feels like she is emotionally in a place where the content or tone of the conversation might take us sideways. And then next morning she'll be like, "Great, can we, can we put some time on the calendar to talk? Maybe we can go out to dinner and get in the calendar." Then she's in a better place after a good night's sleep, some exercise, then we talk. And I have, as someone who has often been in a rush to rip off the Band-Aid with everything, found that very wise and really, really effective.

• 25:54Tim Ferriss?

  So I've applied that not just in my interactions with her, but with other people also, right? If they call me for a big conversation about something that's sensitive and I'm exhausted, maybe I drank too much coffee, I'm a little... Twitchy, then I will use effectively the exact same phrasing to reschedule.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's brilliant. I I've never thought of that. And it's it's like, it's it makes complete sense. I mean, just hitting pause for a moment to to recalibrate. I think sleep plays a big role in a lot of this stuff. Like, I will feel completely different about a subject the next morning when I woke up and had a good night's sleep, you know?

• 26:30Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's that's on my it's on my my list of things that

• 26:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:36Tim Ferriss?

  certainly, you know, I have all these lists in front of me. But how have you been thinking about either 2020 or the last decade? Because I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this. I'm not done thinking about it. But what is anything that comes to mind in terms of looking forward to 2020 or looking back from 2010 to 2020 for you?

• 27:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think when I look back, I try to think about a couple of things. What were some of the big aha moments that I had that when I look at, I'm like, gosh, wish I would have done that sooner. But, you know, there's not much you can do because they happen when they happen, and that's fine. And then, you know, what's worked well and what do I want to continue forward with and continue to bring forward into, you know, this new decade? And then also, what are some of the things that I totally missed the boat on that I need to go? And especially now, given my age, now that I'm, you know, well into my, well, not well into my 40s, but I'll be 43 this year. What do I want to address to set me up for the long term? And so that's that's how I've kind of been putting these things into buckets.

• 27:46Tim Ferriss?

  What what do you have in any of those categories? I'm particularly interested in the last one. But I'm interested in all of them. Any any any examples that you can give?

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think that I wrote down a handful of things when I was when I was kind of doing my prep for the new year. Looking back on the last decade, the one thing that I didn't do soon enough was admit to really to myself and to others that, you know, I didn't know certain things. And I think the quicker you are to come forward with the fact that there is a hole in your knowledge, the quicker that hole will be filled. And I think that, you know, oftentimes I tried to cover that up because, you know, you get in certain situations, you know, when I was working at, let's say, as a partner over at Google Ventures, or, you know, and you're working with people that that seem to be

• 28:38Speaker 03

  a little bit more well rounded than you in certain areas. And there's this kind of like, fear of, oh, maybe they'll find out that I really don't know as much as they think I do. Or, you know, and you have these little holes, and it can be in all different aspects of life. And I've just, I've kind of like given up on that in the last couple of years and just been like, screw it. Like, if I don't know something, I'm going to come out and just say so, and just try and pick it up from from mentors. So turning people, rather than treating them as like, someone that's going to judge me, is to someone that I can learn from. And that has been just something that in, you know, probably, the last few years, I've gotten a lot better at. But earlier in the decade, I just really avoided and hid from people. So that was, you've always been really good at that, though.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  You're the master of learning new things and admitting when you don't know something.

• 29:25Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, thanks for saying that. I that is, I mean, I've got plenty of, plenty of weaknesses, but I do think that I am, for whatever reason, very good at very quickly saying, I have no idea what that is, or who that is.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:43Tim Ferriss?

  And I think the podcast has helped, quite frankly, because people bring stuff up. And I'm like, if I pretend and nod along, like, I know what's going on, this could this could get really ugly. So if they're like, do you see this movie? I'm not gonna be like, oh, yeah, great movie. And then I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get called on this. So I've become faster at saying, I have no idea who that person is.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  Where do you think your holes are right now? Like, if in in your kind of like, I mean, because I know you have dabbled in so many different things, and we share that common interest. Like, where do you think, like, gosh, I really wish I was a little deeper in this given area?

• 30:17Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's an area that I've spent a lot of time studying and focusing on in the last six to nine months, which is saying no and creating rules and policies that allow you to say no easily or more and or more quickly, right? So I think I've over-

• 30:39Speaker 03

  You've been practicing that for a while, though, because you've been saying no to investing for a very long time. I haven't been able to get you to invest in a deal in like 10 years.

• 30:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's and that is and the result of that, or I should say, the reason that is something I've been able to do is that I set a policy and made a public announcement in, I want to say, 2015, that I was stopping startup investing. And so you can analyze very easily, actually, why it's easy for me to do that versus say no to some other things. And a commitment that I've wanted to make for 2020 and beyond, and this was informed by a Seth Godin blog post, actually, that I that I put in my newsletter in Five Bullet Friday about not trying harder, but creating better systems and rules instead.

• 31:28Tim Ferriss?

  And there are a number of anecdotes in that that really drive the point home. It's a very short piece. People can find it. It's one of the most popular on his entire blog of his 10 million posts that he has. So I've been looking for, and I know you're a fan of the book Essentialism, and Greg McKeon was on the podcast not that long ago. The filter that he uses that I'm trying to also use more is where can I make one decision that removes 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 decisions? So the startup retirement is a great example. It's public, something I can point to, it's accountable, or I can be held accountable, it's not personal, right? It's been depersonalized.

• 32:12Tim Ferriss?

  And that has removed so much stress in my life. It is, it is hard to overstate how

• 32:19Speaker 03

  What, what do you think? But where did that come from? Because when I think about the things that I've seen you say yes to in the past, they have been these epic things like adventures, travel, like new different types of, you know, things from doing sauna and ice training, or you name it. Like you've done so many crazy body hacks. It's like, that was all because you said yes to everything. Like, so where are you saying no to now?

• 32:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, well, I should say that the, what's important to note there is, I thought you were gonna mention startups, but it applies in the same way is that the, the, there's a survivorship bias in the sense that what I say yes to is visible, or my friends at least might be aware of it. But behind the scenes, I'm saying no to almost everything. And I'll give you an example of something that I've, I've been thinking about. So first, I have an announcement already on the blog and so on, which says, I do not do book blurbs. Book blurbs. And that was a decision I made because

• 33:26Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't want to have to pick and choose among friends, which could create all sorts of bad blood and, and drama that I didn't want in my life. And therefore I decided on a blanket no blurb policy.

• 33:39Tim Ferriss?

  Nonetheless, I still get sent dozens of books every week by publishers who have put me on their spam mail lists. I have dozens of unsolicited books that get sent to me and I have many books.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  I get the same thing and I don't know how to turn it off. It's like spam.

• 33:55Tim Ferriss?

  It is. So I'm going to maybe do some, some public shaming with these publishers. So publishers, if you're listening, please take me off your mailing lists. I have not asked ever to be on a single one, but I won't hurt the authors. Don't worry about that. I'm not gonna shame the authors because I don't think.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  I'm gonna start sending you random books like unsolicited now.

• 34:12Tim Ferriss?

  Such a fucker, such a fucker. But the, what I realized is I'm, the, the no blurb policy isn't enough. It's not upstream enough to, to, to try to address the problem because I'll still get tons of books. And if you do the math, right? You read The Tail End by Tim Urban, you realize I might only be able to read.

• 34:34Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know, a few hundred books before I bite the dust, let's just call it. If we're looking at good books that take a long time to digest, some of the classics, let's say, you do not have the luxury of reading books that you are not in full stoke about. And part of finding books that are more likely to invoke full stoke is looking at books that have stood the test of some time. It doesn't need to be 100 years, but it could certainly be five years, 10 years, something like that. So one of the commitments that I'm making, and this is, this is the first time I'm talking about it, for 2020 is I'm not going to read any new books. And new books means no books published in 2020. I'm not going to read any books published in 2020.

• 35:18Tim Ferriss?

  And that will immediately, I'm going to write a post about that. It will be public and I'll be like, hey, that's the policy. So for whatever reason, once making that announcement, I will be ridiculed and called a hypocrite and given unending shit from my loving audience, because that's what they should do, if I betray that, right? So I have to be very, very thoughtful about making that type of decision. But that removes so much of like the FOMO, the neo mania, the keeping up with mentality,

• 35:51Tim Ferriss?

  that I think that could really, really, really return a lot of dividends. So that's one blanket note.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  One of the things I want to call out, and I'm curious to, you know, we can, the thing, the reason I like talking about this is like, we, we know each other pretty well and I, I like to like poke in a little bit further.

• 36:09Tim Ferriss?

  Poke away.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  The one thing I've realized with you is you, and correct me if I'm wrong, or what, how you feel about this, I'm curious to see.

• 36:19Tim Ferriss?

  Oh God, oh God, that's a lot of softball, yeah.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  It's not, it's not bad, but I, when I think about you, you have, when I first met you, you were relatively unknown, in that you didn't have a big following.

• 36:35Tim Ferriss?

  That's right.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  You had your, your book coming out and, you know, people were excited about that, but you know, nothing compared to what you have today.

• 36:42Tim Ferriss?

  No, my mom and a few friends read my blog. That was about it.

• 36:46Speaker 03

  Right. So. I'm curious, like, when I hear you say things about, like, you know, publishers are sending me too many books, like, and I want to make sure not to do blurbs and things like that. It feels to me like you've been bombarded with like too much to where you feel overwhelmed. It's like, everybody wants something from Tim. Like, the number of times that people that have like pinged me and been like, dude, you know Tim, can you send him this thing, blah, blah, blah. It must just be anxiety provoking in some sense in that you're being pulled in so many different directions. It's like, in a way, I mean, you're not like celebrity like, you know, you walk down the street and I'm sure people do recognize you, but not to the sense that not like a massive movie star, Brad Pitt or something

• 37:30Speaker 03

  like that, right? But does that, is that true? And is that starting to like, does that bother you? Is it getting under your skin a little bit? It feels like it's a lot for you to handle.

• 37:38Tim Ferriss?

  It's a lot. I, as someone who is also taking the armor off of a lot of these sensitivities, because I want to cultivate them instead of pushing them underwater, it's a challenge to do that while simultaneously being bombarded with so much stuff, for sure. I mean, I was, I was pulling at my phone just to look at unread email, 618,952.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  Holy crap.

• 38:07Tim Ferriss?

  Right? Then I have 207, I have 287 unread text messages, right? So, I'm 99 notifications on Asana. It goes on and on. But the point being, I don't expect much sympathy because these are taxes that I pay for also a wide range of different types of access and so on that I do have from the size.

• 38:40Speaker 03

  Your private jets.

• 38:41Tim Ferriss?

  No private jet, no private jet. I'd like to use yours. When it's idle, I'll take your private jet. I'm happy to cover the beverage cost. But it is, it is challenging from an energetic management perspective, right? So I find as I get older and looking back at the last decade and looking forward to 2020, that time management is important, but time management doesn't matter unless you have attention management. Right, because you can stare at a screen and have blocked out two hours and if your mind is wandering all over the place and you're getting hit with push notifications and you can't focus, it is rendered useless, let's say. So you have time management, attention

• 39:24Tim Ferriss?

  management, and then if you even have, I'm sorry, you have time, attention, and then even if you have attention, and these are related, but if you are lethargic, you haven't slept well, or you have been depleted from making too many decisions, you're going to make poor decisions, or the likelihood of making bad decisions is really high. And

• 39:44Speaker 03

  Well, there's also prioritization of things at that point, right?

• 39:48Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  You need to know how to prioritize certain things, otherwise you could spend time on the wrong things and attention on the wrong things.

• 39:53Tim Ferriss?

  Right, so I mean, it could be a Zen, uh, Zen, well, it could be Zen, but it could be a Venn diagram with, say, five or six interlocking circles, and you're looking for that sweet spot. And a big part of that is energy management. The only, or one of the best tools I have found for that is looking at your inbound and your projects in terms of categories, looking at, as I did just recently, my last year, looking at energetic peaks and energetic troughs, like what robbed me of energy, the types of things, not single things, single things can be helpful, but the types of things, were they speaking engagements?

• 40:33Tim Ferriss?

  Were they long conversations with lawyers? Were they, you name it, spending too much time in cities?

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Taxes.

• 40:40Tim Ferriss?

  Taxes.

• 40:41Speaker 03

  K ones.

• 40:42Tim Ferriss?

  K ones. Oh, K ones. Love those K ones.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Herding cats.

• 40:47Tim Ferriss?

  Love those K ones. And all of that, what are the categories of things that have depleted your energy? And what are the categories of things that have given you energy?

• 40:58Speaker 03

  So what were those for you? I'm curious, especially on the giving energy side.

• 41:01Tim Ferriss?

  Giving energy side, extended time in nature, for sure.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  So you like the forest bathing stuff?

• 41:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I just spent two weeks in Utah and spent almost that entire time with at least an hour or two in the mountains every day, and it was incredible. I mean, incredibly recharging. I was getting a lot of activity every day because that is certainly interrelated with sleep quality, sleep onset and so on. Lots of activity, exposure to sun and so on. Made a huge difference and I came back to, I love Austin, but it's funny how these shifts can be so relative. If I go to New York City and then I come back to Austin, I get off the plane, let out a huge sigh of relief. I'm like, oh, thank God. My blood

• 41:49Tim Ferriss?

  pressure drops 20 points and it's extremely relaxing. But going from these secluded mountains of Utah to downtown Austin around rush hour, I found completely overwhelming. So I've been very, very tired for the last few days since I got

• 42:05Speaker 03

  You're gonna be in a cave in Utah.

• 42:07Tim Ferriss?

  I might be in a cave. Yeah. So that's one that I find very energizing. Number two would be creative work before problem solving or managing anything or anyone. So having time blocked out in the morning to do some type of creative work, it doesn't have to be writing a long blog post or a chapter. It doesn't have to be a painting. It could just be taking a photograph on a hike to share on Instagram, right? But something that is productive in the most literal sense, like it's producing something that in some

• 42:48Tim Ferriss?

  fashion uses a creative muscle. I find that sets an emotional tone for hours afterwards or the entire day afterwards. It's really more important than I would have expected to have that. There are lots of other things, but what about yourself?

• 43:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, for me, well, you just mean in terms of things that energize me?

• 43:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or thinking about

• 43:17Tim Ferriss?

  2020, things you want to do more of versus or things you want to do less of?

• 43:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've picked some very specific things. One of them is no BPA or plastic this year. So I'm not, I will not drink a beverage out of any type of tin can. They're all lined with BPA on the inside. So and no plastic containers. So I'm using all glass for anything that I drink out of. And so that's been a big thing for me. I just kind of want to get away from plastics in general.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Aside from that core strength, I throw my back out as old and lame as it sounds a couple of times over the last six months, probably carrying kids too much. But I, so I've been getting more into, I've been doing PT, some physical therapy around that. Also getting back into Pilates and then Peter Attia, who you've had on the show multiple times, he recommends a system called Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization, DNS.

• 44:12Tim Ferriss?

  DNS.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  And so have you heard about this at all?

• 44:15Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I have read of it. That's, that's a tough acronym to choose for the internet, but yes.

• 44:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. So, so that's something that Peter's been into over the last, you know, probably a year plus and I'm starting to get into as well. So really excited about kind of building that foundation. You know, Peter has this thing where he talks about the Centenarian Olympics, like what do you want to be able to do when you're 100? Like you want to be able to get out of a pool without like, you know, climbing steps and like, so I really, I think now is the time in our life where we could set ourselves up for that, that future. So I really want to start taking that seriously. The next thing is a big one for me and that is really tracking both, well, mostly my, my drinking over time. So I want to be very mindful about how much alcohol I'm consuming. And so one of the things I did is

• 45:05Speaker 03

  I worked with the folks over at Zero, the intermittent fasting app that, that I started a couple of years ago. There's a whole team around that now and they built an app called Less, L-E-S-S. And so that just launched on January 1st and it helps you, it's completely free. There's no ads or anything like that, but it just allows you to track all of your alcohol consumption. And you can set maximum. Amounts of drinks per week. You could see your week over week, month over month progress. And it's just a great kind of like beautiful little calendar to track and eventually compare with friends. So we could be able to have, you know, like a friend group and see who's drinking what, but it's there's something, there's some accountability there that could be pretty interesting. So.

• 45:46Speaker 03

  They started off by me and a buddy, my buddy Mike Mazer, just tracking all this stuff in a spreadsheet and we just had it in a Google sheet, but it was a pain in the ass to kind of. Put in new, new figures every day by opening up a spreadsheet. So now we have it in a little app form. So that's a, a big piece of it. Also, I've been getting into home automation a lot for my house. So I really. Have finally think that home automation is, is, is here and not in the way I thought it was going to be, but I, I've been starting to mess around with a lot of that stuff just to. Set up routines for my house to consume less energy and, and really just coordinate different things around the house. Get, get, bring more music into my life. And so part of that is just making it super simple to kind of like play and automate throughout the house.

• 46:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I, I was thinking about this call and this conversation. And took all sorts of notes. And. When I look over it, I mean, a lot of this. All comes back thematically to.

• 46:49Tim Ferriss?

  Energy awareness and energy management. And looking for, at least in my case, some of the. Energy drains that you're simply, or I'm simply unaware of, or have been unaware of for a long time. Right? And. I had Jerry Colonna, you may know the name, the, uh. Coach with the spider tattoo, I believe was the name of the podcast, but he's. Uh, does exec coach work with all sorts of CEOs and so on. And he had a series of questions that, that really struck me. That I've revisited a lot since my conversation with him and I did over New Year's. And I'm still looking very closely and I'll paraphrase, these aren't going to be perfect.

• 47:34Tim Ferriss?

  Warnings, but roughly the questions are, how am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? Right? So how, how am I actually?

• 47:45Tim Ferriss?

  Very, perhaps subconsciously, but nonetheless, very actively creating the conditions that I bitch and moan about, right?

• 47:53Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:53Tim Ferriss?

  That's one. The other is, or there are three others, you know, what needs to be said that isn't being said? And another way to phrase that would be, what am I not saying that needs to be said? That's actually a huge one for me, and I'll come back to that. What's being said that I'm not hearing? I think that's very helpful, for me at least, in the context of a relationship. And what am I saying that's not being heard? I don't, I don't feel too focused on that one. But what needs to be said that isn't being said? I think that, from a very young age, for whatever reason, or a number of reasons, I have protected a lot of people who have inflicted harm on me.

• 48:35Tim Ferriss?

  And that, the goal is not to make 2020 the year of vengeance, but rather to recognize, at least for myself, I've had, I've had a number, and by a number, I mean probably six to eight, very uncomfortable conversations in the last two weeks.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  Are these relatives or friends, or what are you talking about here?

• 48:56Tim Ferriss?

  Across the board. Across the board. So these could be people I've worked with for a long time, could be family, could be close friends. And by uncomfortable, I don't mean confrontational necessarily. So some of these are talking to people about episodes, or issues, or old wounds that were never fully cleared. Does that make sense?

• 49:20Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:21Tim Ferriss?

  And trying to do so in a way, based on all the wonderful schooling I've had from my girlfriend, and I mean that very sincerely in communication, doing it in a way where everyone comes away from the conversation, ideally feeling better. But doing it first and foremost to say what you feel you need to say, and recognizing that you cannot control the response of the other person. So not going in with any hope or expectation of how someone will respond, but simply to clear the air.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  And do you think that's because you're feeling the burden of that?

• 49:56Tim Ferriss?

  A hundred percent.

• 49:57Speaker 03

  Like, so you have these things that are unsettled, basically. And you're like, I need to like, just like have this, release it, basically. I mean, you release that by having a conversation with them.

• 50:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and some of these things are months old, some are years old, some are decades old. And it could also be, uh, on the flip side, things that are very positive. But for instance, reaching out to mentors who I never properly thanked. You know, people who really helped me and kind of saved me in a way during high school years. Reaching out and if I get voicemail, leaving a really heartfelt thank you for all the help that they gave me. That at the time I was just too

• 50:35Tim Ferriss?

  young, I don't want to blame it on youth though, self-absorbed maybe, caught up in my own shit, to realize just how valuable they were and how much thought they put in to helping me, that type of thing.

• 50:51Tim Ferriss?

  And it's been so freeing, I have to say. Uh, so, so those questions are questions that I want to pay, in addition to other questions, a lot more attention to in 2020. Because there's been such a process for me of unburdening. And, uh, I don't know if you've had this experience, but let's just say you have a backpack and it's full of shit that you've been carrying around for months, right? There's just stuff that sits in there, could be like, oh yeah, the ball I think I'm gonna roll my feet out on and the extra battery and the this and the book and the notepad and the this and the that. And then one day you're like, aye, aye, okay, well, I'll take a new backpack. And you just stick in like what you need, like a laptop and you walk around and you're like, oh my God, now my back doesn't hurt.

• 51:33Tim Ferriss?

  And you just didn't realize because the new normal was carrying around all that bullshit that suddenly became your new basis, right? It became your, it became your new, uh, reference point. So for me, having these conversations started off as an experiment. And I say that's the big takeaway, or one of the big takeaways from the last 10 years for me is the value of viewing things like this as short-term experiments. But I didn't expect these conversations to have the huge exhale and relief of tension and the persistence of that feeling. Uh, that ended up being the case.

• 52:18Tim Ferriss?

  It's been, it's been really remarkable. I've been, uh, very, uh, impressed and relieved with that.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  So That's awesome. And do you ever do any of this? Um, well, I'll give an example. A friend of mine sent me a really nice note, uh, a couple of months ago that was a handwritten note that he spent the time to, to thank me for something. And I just read it and I was like, wow, that was like a really thoughtful thing to do. Um, you know, and also I know there's also power in even writing notes to people that are no longer here, you know, if someone's passed away and you have something you want to say, um, doing that as well. Have you done any of that or has this been mostly just like in-person coffees and phone calls and things like that?

• 52:58Tim Ferriss?

  It's been mostly voice, uh, and in part because I've had, I think, fear and hesitation around using voice. So I've wanted to face that to

• 53:12Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 53:13Tim Ferriss?

  To hopefully prove to myself that

• 53:15Speaker 03

  Why was there fear around using voice? I, I would think there would be fear around writing something down that I would post on the internet if you send it to me.

• 53:20Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there's that too, which is, which is why I send you fewer love letters than I used to.

• 53:25Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 53:26Tim Ferriss?

  But, uh, the writing I find is a viable option. It allows a certain degree of predictability. You can hone your message and it can be asynchronous, right? You don't have to respond in real time.

• 53:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 53:46Tim Ferriss?

  And I think that with saying what needs to be said, uh, in many of these cases, I wanted to see and feel the responses from these people, whether I was thanking them and expressing gratitude, or perhaps making clear that something that was done or something that wasn't done for me was not okay and that it's had repercussions and that it's something I've suffered through and that I'm not looking for any resolution. I'm not looking for a response, but it's weighed very heavily on me that I have kept this to myself and felt like it was a secret.

• 54:27Tim Ferriss?

  That I alone needed to carry. So it's really, and I make that really explicitly clear too. And in a lot of these conversations that I'm saying it just because I want to feel free after having said it. There's no expectation of a solution, a resolution, behavioral change, none of that. And that I'm just looking for an opportunity to voice something. Uh, so I've done almost all of it via voice.

• 54:56Speaker 03

  That's great. It sounds like such a freeing thing. Like if you, how many of those did you have to do? Do you still have more to go through? Or is it?

• 55:02Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, there are, it's, it sounds like Arya Stark's list.

• 55:08Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 55:09Tim Ferriss?

  It's, it's not a long list. It's, it's really, uh,

• 55:14Tim Ferriss?

  in certain moments, whether it's like

• 55:19Tim Ferriss?

  taking a bath or going for a long hike, I will have these moments of clarity where I'm like, oh, yeah, that thing. There was never any resolution. Right? It doesn't have to be a big, it doesn't have to be a big deal. It's also not like,

• 55:34Tim Ferriss?

  you know, I'm hunting down the guy five years ago who cut me in line at Starbucks to send in the confession. I'm not doing that. I'm looking for the, the, the, the anchors that I at some point, uh, never, never was able to reel in, if that makes sense, right? It's like there was something that was never completed. There was a sense of no resolution. And by resolution, just to make it super clear, I don't mean solution. I mean, closing the loop. Right? And like from an emotional standpoint. So.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think we could all think of one or two of those that we all have. Like I, I have one top of my mind where I'm like, huh, I should go back and close that loop, you know?

• 56:23Tim Ferriss?

  It's like, you know, did, did you do something to also apologies? I've also issued, issued apologies and given apologies to folks. So it could be apologizing for something you did that at the time you felt you were in the right in doing and looking back, you're like. That was stupid. Even, even perhaps you were in the right, but the tone and the delivery you used was really aggressive or unnecessarily heavy-handed. It's like, okay, then that's, that's a closed loop or a loop that you should, that you could benefit from closing, right? And it's, it's been a, it's been an, an exercise for me and a very valuable exercise.

• 57:05Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not saying it, it applies to everyone, but for me, Jerry's questions have been really important because they, for me, they tie together. And let me explain. So let's take, what am I not saying that needs to be said or that should be said? And then you have number one on my list, and how am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? Well, if by not speaking truth in some fashion, I have developed resentment towards someone, right? Whose fault is that? One could argue that it's my fault because I

• 57:44Tim Ferriss?

  kept that inside. In which case I'm complicit in creating this sort of emotional terrain that breeds resentment. Like I am complicit in creating those conditions. So.

• 57:56Speaker 03

  And oftentimes, some of the times those are in your own head. Like you've made up this story of why this person is this way. And then you have the conversation, you're like, oh, I'm actually the asshole. I, I misunderstood where they were coming from, you know?

• 58:09Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. And I will say also that in almost every instance, whatever I expected in these conversations to happen, whatever I thought the most likely response was, was not the response. And that has been fascinating, right? I'm like, well, that person is this type of person. When I say X, they are likely to respond with A, B, or C. And.

• 58:34Tim Ferriss?

  When you use very thoughtful,

• 58:39Tim Ferriss?

  delicate language, like the story I've created in my own head is, suddenly, people you think you know really well can surprise you. And that has opened up a whole new level of depth in many relationships in my life, having these conversations. That's been the icebreaker that's been months or years overdue. It's been, it's been really, really quite profound.

• 59:09Tim Ferriss?

  I'm going to name a couple of other things real quick that were realizations I had when looking back over the next 10 years. And the next 10 years, wow, time traveling back to the future, the last 10 years. Because I have four books, right? Four Our Body, Four Our Chef, Tools of Titans, Tribe of Mentors, then got the TV and got all these different projects. Couple of things, we're getting out of the maybe hyper emotional stuff, happy to go back. But Four Our Chef, since that was an experiment in distribution where Amazon Publishing was boycotted by everyone, Barnes and Noble, Indies, big box retailers.

• 59:41Tim Ferriss?

  And this was reiterated for me with some of my television experiences is you need to really understand or ideally control distribution. And the only way that you're going to do that very often is by financing and owning whatever you produce.

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was just gonna say that.

• 1:00:04Tim Ferriss?

  Full stop, that's it. Like if you are not paying for it, you are not going to have, if you are a persnickety perfectionist like me, the degree of control that you will want, particularly when it comes to choosing distribution. Because I've had these, these projects that have ended up being things I'm extremely proud of, but they're locked in a vault somewhere from a, from a distribution standpoint. And that's been very, very painful. So I've had to learn that lesson over the last 10 years multiple times. And also, this seems so childish, it's embarrassing to admit, but

• 1:00:42Tim Ferriss?

  You're gonna laugh. Get everything in writing. If someone tells you via email or this or that, yes, we're planning on this type of A, B, C, D, and E. It needs to be in the contract. And one thing that I really liked is a frame for agreements, which only came up recently with Gary Keller, who's a huge real estate magnate, innovated a lot in that space, based here in Austin. He said, "You should view every agreement as a disagreement, because its most important function is to tell you what happens and what the options are if there's a disagreement." Right?

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:01:22Tim Ferriss?

  So that's been something I've learned repeatedly. And then the other question that I still pay a lot of attention to, that led me from Four Hour Chef to years later, because I took a long break, for me at least, from books to Tools of Titans, was, what might this look like if it were easy? That's become a really important go-to question for me. Because I think that I pride myself on being able to handle complexity, and sometimes that results in me coming up with somewhat ridiculously unnecessarily complex solutions to things. Where the easiest solution, like rather than spending the next year figuring

• 1:02:04Tim Ferriss?

  out the perfect wordsmithing, so that I can manually reply to everybody who asks me about books, and doing this, and promoting on the newsletter, and doing the podcast, maybe I just do a blog post that's 200 words long that says, "I am not reading any new books published in 2020 in 2020." Like, that is how I got to that, was by asking this question. So those are a few things that have come up for me.

• 1:02:27Speaker 03

  I'm curious, one question I had about your, kind of, this new decade going forward, you know, in looking at your career arc, like, over time, and knowing you since The Four Hour Body, and seeing the focus and emphasis on biohacking, and wellness, and health and nutrition, and cooking, and then moving a little bit more into, you know, mentors, and interviewing other folks, and then your experience with psychedelics, and it seems like the last, like, you know, three to five years has been really focused on emotional well-being and improvement there. Going, where do you, when do you eventually, or are you still involved in the kind of biohacking stuff? And do you see that? Like, what's, what's the next decade look like for Tim?

• 1:03:11Speaker 03

  You know, before, you know, you read your books and it's about like optimizing testosterone and like, you know, certain things in there that like, you know, masturbating with your offhand or whatever it was that you get like the, you know, talking about these little hacks to get like testosterone boost?

• 1:03:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that was actually your ebook on masturbating on the offhand. That was a great experiment. Little side hustle.

• 1:03:33Speaker 03

  You had stuff like that in there. But maybe I got the wording wrong, but you know what I'm talking about. I'm just curious, like, what, you know, what do the next 10 years look like for you on that front? Is that something where you've kind of said, screw it, I take like vitamin C now? Or like, what are you, what are you doing there?

• 1:03:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, on the body hacking front, I've, I've dramatically simplified for the host of reasons. Number one is the Four Hour Body at its time, I think, was, it was, just given the reception and the success of the book, it was, it was a bit of a category killer, right? It was a very different book. But there are many people who picked up that torch and ran with it, who do all sorts of crazy experiments, things that I would not necessarily do. So I feel like there is a, there's a wealth of self-experiment, self-experimentation,

• 1:04:31Tim Ferriss?

  and, and many different folks who are continuing to biohack. I have continued to do experiments.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  What does your regimen look like today? I'm just curious. Like, what do you wake up and take? Just on the supplement side?

• 1:04:48Tim Ferriss?

  On supplements, I take very, very few supplements. I take, right now, the basics are magnesium.

• 1:04:58Speaker 03

  You're getting old man for sleep?

• 1:05:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, magtine specifically, so magnesium L3 and 8, which is recommended by our friend earlier, Peter Tia. And otherwise, I've really tried to minimize.

• 1:05:14Tim Ferriss?

  Supplements, and that's not because I think they are bad. I think it's like saying drugs. There is a very wide spectrum of drugs. And generally speaking, the greater the effect, the greater the side effects. And if you don't know what the side effects are, and it has a very high amplitude effect, then you're just the sucker at the poker table who doesn't realize he's the sucker. Because there are very rarely free lunches in biochemical enhancement. Usually.

• 1:05:42Speaker 03

  Dude.

• 1:05:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:42Speaker 03

  I'm blown away by that because as someone that's been in your house and seen your medicine closet.

• 1:05:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  Or cabinet back in the day.

• 1:05:50Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:51Speaker 03

  You had.

• 1:05:51Tim Ferriss?

  I had a pharmacy.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  Hundreds of bottles.

• 1:05:53Tim Ferriss?

  I had a pharmacy.

• 1:05:54Speaker 03

  You had a whole pharmacy. Like you could have sold out of there. I would have pitched something. Like you had everything.

• 1:05:58Tim Ferriss?

  Timmy's Bodega.

• 1:05:59Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:06:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so I, and there's still a time and a place for that. Right? So if I were optimizing for a particular type of competition, and really, really focusing on, say, endurance development at altitude or something like that, then I would have a particular regimen. I do supplement with protein at this point. Uh, I mean, there's sponsors of the podcast, but I vet everything. I've turned down millions of dollars worth of sponsorships from supplement companies, but Ascent Protein made the cut. So I use Ascent Protein. I use Athletic Greens just for covering my bases, especially if I'm traveling, uh, to help mitigate sickness. When, for instance, I did a Grand Canyon trip.

• 1:06:44Tim Ferriss?

  Actually, more recently, I did a 250 or 280 mile bike trek, mountain bike trek on the Hayduk Trail. From, uh, I guess we started in, I want to say Grand Junction. Might be getting that roughly off, ending in Moab. Uh, I took two days off to ride in the service truck because I was so destroyed. But the point being, where we were staying at the front end and the back end, this is basic airport hotel food, right? And I will use supplementation more as it's intended to supplement when my whole food options are suboptimal, right?

• 1:07:24Tim Ferriss?

  But I do think supplements can become a crutch for people who are not paying sufficient attention to their whole food, to their sleep, to other parameters, right? It becomes a. A Band-Aid to cover other bad decisions. Yeah. But from a biohacking standpoint, I'm still extremely interested in it. What I'm, but I've shifted my focus a bit. So if you look at, say, Four Hour Body, right? We're talking about hormones, right? Testosterone and so on, growth hormone. And there are chapters on doing all sorts of wacky things with different hormones.

• 1:08:00Tim Ferriss?

  And vertical leap, maximal speed, relative, relative strength improvement with deadlift. All this craziness, right? Then you have Four Hour Chef, which was very much cognitively focused and got into different smart drugs and using vasopressin to enhance short-term memory and all this, all this crazy shit.

• 1:08:24Tim Ferriss?

  Then if you look at the last, let's just call it five to six years for me, the fact of the matter is I'm still very interested in biohacking, but it, it starts to get into some very, very fascinating alien terrain that Western medicine and really no, no single medical system or scientific system explains very well. And that is use of compounds.

• 1:08:56Tim Ferriss?

  As one example, classical psychedelics like mescaline, psilocybin and so on, but not limited to those. You could also include in that group MDMA for PTSD. Compounds that seem to exert an effect with, with rapid onset and extremely long duration of effect, meaning in the cessation of smoking studies that have been done. So nicotine addiction studies have been done at Hopkins. You have people who six, I want to say six or 12 months later, 80% of the subjects are still non-smokers. After two or three sessions with psilocybin combined with psychotherapy, but nonetheless, you're looking at.

• 1:09:42Tim Ferriss?

  Three sessions, each of which lasts, let's call it four to eight hours. And the half-life of these drugs is very well-known. Nonetheless, these paradigm, and I do rarely use this word, but sort of paradigm-shifting, mental reorganization and the reformatting of the belief systems and stories these people use to govern their realities have changed so fundamentally that their behaviors remain changed, even in the face of extremely addictive compounds like nicotine, six or 12 months later. So, one could argue that I'm still very much in the biohacking game.

• 1:10:24Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just going from the knowns, right? If we look at testosterone, like testosterone, whether that's naturally-produced or the injectables, testosterone cypionate, or any type of means of administration, or HCG, or whatever, these things are all very well-understood, right? Aspirin, very well-understood. Some of the smart drugs, like hydrogen, very well-understood. And at least very well-studied. So, I'm moving from these knowns into this area of unknowns with psychedelics, where we could, unlike the use of testosterone, at least at this point, with the technology

• 1:11:09Tim Ferriss?

  we have access to, FMRI and otherwise, much tighter study design now than, say, in the 50s. We're in a position to discover fundamentally new ways of looking at the mind and consciousness, and therefore, reality as we experience it. And that, to me, is the money shot, right? Everything else...

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, but that seems like a slight refocus, though, right? Because that's more of a focus on brain and mental health and rewiring that's done there versus, say, longevity.

• 1:11:45Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, well, I mean, yes and no, right? So there's, there's longevity. I do think that psychedelics actually could offer plausible mechanisms of action for extending cognitive function. That's a whole separate conversation, but I have Alzheimer's and Parkinson's on both sides of my family. So my initial interest as an undergrad in neuroscience was purely self-defense. I wanted to learn as much as possible to help my parents, my family, and yours truly to at the very least, delay the onset of

• 1:12:24Speaker 03

  Are you three, four?

• 1:12:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  Oh, you are? Okay. So you have the genetic marker that gets you, what, you're like four or five times more likely to get Alzheimer's than the average person?

• 1:12:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So if we're looking at it from a software perspective, right?

• 1:12:39Tim Ferriss?

  I'm coded to have a much higher predisposition to certain types of neurodegenerative disease. Uh, and that it's, it's, that is the hand I've been dealt. So the question is, how will I play that hand? And looking at, uh, say Hopkins, where all of this has led, especially as a nascent, what I would consider still a very nascent field, the ability to put in relatively small amounts of money. Although, I mean, I've committed a lot for me, uh, about three million or four million dollars now to scientific research related to psychedelics. And I should say that psychedelics are tools in the toolkit,

• 1:13:23Tim Ferriss?

  but really what I'm looking at is novel treatments, potential novel treatments of what are considered intractable psychiatric conditions. Right? Anorexia, highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. Uh, miserable track record in terms of effective treatments.

• 1:13:43Tim Ferriss?

  Treatment-resistant depression, end-of-life anxiety, say, due to a terminal cancer diagnosis, nicotine addiction.

• 1:13:52Speaker 03

  Opioids.

• 1:13:52Tim Ferriss?

  Opioids, opioids. So, at Hopkins, there are a number of studies that will be getting underway at the first Center for, dedicated Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in the US, which is going to be based there, looking at Alzheimer's, looking at opioid use disorder, which, I mean, is opioid addiction, effectively. And, so, my shift has been a shift, but I would argue that, and this is going to be a fortune cookie slash cliche that I'll use, but it's not about how many years I can put into my life, but also about how much life I can put into my years.

• 1:14:31Tim Ferriss?

  So, I think it's important, and for anyone who's seen my TED Talk on fear setting, or read my post titled "Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide," I almost offed myself in college. And there are many people who live a long time, but are trapped in these endless loops of self-recriminating thoughts. They're trapped in the past in depression, they're trapped in the future in anxiety. And I would argue that that is not living, at least not as I would like to experience it. That is surviving, right? That is being a physical form that is not dead, but that is not the same as thriving.

• 1:15:10Tim Ferriss?

  So, if we look at the staggering growth of, say, opioid use in the US, particularly synthetic opioids, if we look at the veteran suicide rates, many of which are comorbid with opioid use disorder, but if you look at, say, the number that I've heard, it may or may not be statistically defensible, but something along the lines of 23 veterans per day committing suicide. If you look at the rates of depression and substance abuse among teenagers, say, there's, to my mind, are clearly societal factors at play that are the perfect soil for...

• 1:15:56Tim Ferriss?

  Producing these types of coping mechanisms. And so for me, yes, the biohacking has shifted. But the same toolkit that I applied to trying to optimize sex drive or testosterone, or whatever it might be.

• 1:16:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:12Tim Ferriss?

  The same literature review and research that I had to do there has been much improved and refined over the last five years in particular to look at psychoemotional health. And I am really, really, really optimistic. And that's coming from someone who thought he had problems that were sort of personalized and permanent, unfixable, let's put a bullet in the head instead, bad. Which is something many people feel. And I am now, at this point, extremely optimistic about some of these new novel treatment procedures. Ketamine is very interesting, has its own challenges.

• 1:16:54Tim Ferriss?

  Both psilocybin and MDMA have been granted breakthrough therapy designation by the FDA to expedite the review process. So I'm cautiously optimistic, but have seen such a difference in my own life. And you've known me for a long time, man. I mean, you've known me since 2007. I feel like fundamentally a different person today than I did six or seven years ago.

• 1:17:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I can definitely see it in you. I can tell the difference, for sure. Just the way that you carry yourself. Even when you came over to our house like a couple of months ago, Daria was like, Tim, just like, he just carries himself differently. You're just like a lot more relaxed.

• 1:17:33Tim Ferriss?

  At ease.

• 1:17:34Speaker 03

  At ease.

• 1:17:34Tim Ferriss?

  At ease. And that's why I actually had trouble preparing for this conversation because I was looking at 2020, I was like, man, well, I guess people are going to expect me to have like a million resolutions. But I don't. And I have a handful of things, but.

• 1:17:53Tim Ferriss?

  What I've realized is that for me at least, like, peace is not found through understanding, right? Peace is not found through more striving. Peace is not found through more achieving. Peace is found through greater acceptance. That's what I have found for myself. And what does that mean? It doesn't mean accepting shitty things and allowing bad behavior and awful atrocities or trends to continue. It just means taking time to recognize that in most circumstances, you are okay, things are okay, and allowing yourself to kind of bask in that. Does that make sense?

• 1:18:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, it totally makes sense, dude. I get it.

• 1:18:39Tim Ferriss?

  You know, and I feel like you have also, especially in the last, I want to say, two years, and I don't know

• 1:18:45Tim Ferriss?

  two or three years, how much of that is kids, how much of it is going through programs,

• 1:18:53Tim Ferriss?

  like you did, is it Michael Singer? The, what, The Untethered Soul?

• 1:18:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, he has one on surrender that's phenomenal.

• 1:19:02Tim Ferriss?

  Surrender, but I've noticed that you still get a lot done, right? You're still very engaged with creative projects, but you seem to me, I was very impressed with this, and I mentioned it to my girlfriend last time we were at your place. I said, "It's really nice to wake up, go upstairs, and see Kevin just sitting with his kids, drinking a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, completely un-rushed."

• 1:19:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's funny, that's on my list of, uh, of things that I had to talk about today. I wrote down, "Not everything has to be done today." Patience.

• 1:19:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:35Speaker 03

  And I think that when you think of things having to be done today, and everything has to be done today, then you're anticipating the feeling of completion. And when you're anticipating that, it's not, you're not enjoying what's happening right now.

• 1:19:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  Because you're thinking, like, "I'll feel so much better when my to-do list is done. I'll feel so much better when I complete this project."

• 1:19:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:56Speaker 03

  And the thing that I've realized over the last couple of years, more than anything, has been that I have, over the last, you know, 10 years, or even, you know, in founding Digg in 2004, and staying with that for seven years,

• 1:20:11Speaker 03

  I never enjoyed it.

• 1:20:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:12Speaker 03

  I never was able to, because it was just like, oh, I gotta run, I gotta do this, I have to make this, I have to launch this, I have to grow faster, I have to do all this. And I, I look back and I'm like, wow, there was no joy. I mean, there was little wins and of course, certain things brought me joy, but it was so rushed that I was never here. I, but my head, my brain was always focused on tomorrow.

• 1:20:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:33Speaker 03

  And so, you know, just having that patience and just being able to exhale and realize that, dude, we're gonna miss all of life if we don't enjoy the day to day dance of it all, you know? And that, that's, that's what I strive to do. I don't always do that, but that's, that's been my, hopefully that is something that I will focus on over the next, you know, five to 10 years, is just really taking it all in. And smiling, you know, and spending, and I think kids helps with that. That's why I've been pushing you to have kids.

• 1:20:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I know. You and I have been trying and trying. It doesn't, doesn't seem to be working.

• 1:21:03Speaker 03

  It's not working. Damn it.

• 1:21:08Tim Ferriss?

  The, the, uh,

• 1:21:12Tim Ferriss?

  the focus on not rushing is one I think is very important, at least for me. And that, for me, luxury in a way, more than anything else, is the feeling of being unrushed. Right? And I think that that

• 1:21:31Tim Ferriss?

  is a goal of sorts, as a litmus test, is, has many, many ripple effects that are beneficial, which come out of that. And there's a book I'm, I'm, uh, reading right now, I'm not done with it yet, but called Already Free, which I suspect is probably quite similar to some of Michael Singer's work.

• 1:21:52Speaker 03

  That just came out this year, right?

• 1:21:53Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I don't know the date. It was recommended to me.

• 1:21:55Speaker 03

  No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding, because you were not supposed to read anything from this year.

• 1:21:58Tim Ferriss?

  Did not come out this year. It, uh, it was recommended to me.

• 1:22:01Speaker 03

  What's it called again? I'm gonna look it up.

• 1:22:02Tim Ferriss?

  Already Free. And it combines Western psychotherapy with Buddhist practice and concepts from Buddhism, which, if you had told me 10 years ago what I just said, I would have vomited a little bit into my mouth and said, yeah, I've been to those bookstores too, with all the crystals and the dream catchers. And there are thousands of those books and I just don't have time to sort through what is bullshit and what might have validity. But this book was recommended to me by a top tier therapist who has

• 1:22:35Tim Ferriss?

  She would never say this, but she's saved the lives of hundreds or maybe thousands of people. She's incredibly adept, and she recommended this book to me. Because she has found it compelling. And I'm gonna butcher it, but do you have the name of the author up in front by any chance?

• 1:22:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's Bruce Tifft Mahlumpf.

• 1:22:55Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:22:56Speaker 03

  Is that who you're talking about?

• 1:22:57Tim Ferriss?

  Could be. If you just search for Bruce Tifft, but "Already Free" is the title of the book. And I've found this book to be very actionable and very compelling. And one of the, I apologize to the author if I'm misremembering this, but one of the practices or steps that he will often take with clients is something along the lines of the following. If they complain that, say, their boss never recognizes them, therefore, they have struggles with self-worth, and this, this, this, this, and this. And that is a complaint that they

• 1:23:40Tim Ferriss?

  have, something they'd like to fix that comes up continually in therapy, is he will try to get them to the point where they are willing to accept that they could have that feeling for the rest of their lives, unresolved. And will guide them through thought exercises and hypothetical scenarios, so they get to the point where they're willing to accept that is a possibility. They will never get rid of that. And what often seems to happen, and I've noticed this for myself, is that they're then able to let out this big exhale,

• 1:24:21Tim Ferriss?

  because it's no longer mandatory that they push this boulder up a hill and fix the problem. And all of a sudden, their experience changes. And that, at that point, they become able to think more clearly and respond less reactively, because they've accepted that if that were to happen, they're going to survive, there will still be moments of joy, they can still build other valuable relationships. And it just reframes the whole thing. So, I have found... That to also, and it is a close cousin to a lot of the fear setting,

• 1:25:04Tim Ferriss?

  but I think that that type of reframe can be very, very powerful. And for me, a lot of it comes back to good questions, right? Which is why I collect questions, why I enjoy asking questions, why I enjoy borrowing questions from, from other people. Uh, and

• 1:25:29Tim Ferriss?

  I would say also, looking back at the last 10 years, for my entire life, I viewed self-love, I think, as self-indulgent, in the sense that I felt it would be narcissistic and selfish and unproductive to feel or embrace or cultivate self-love in any way. And then in fact, the way to drive myself was to constantly pick apart everything I was or did in a very brutal fashion, in terms of internal monologue. And

• 1:26:09Tim Ferriss?

  I think that

• 1:26:13Tim Ferriss?

  that is part of what drove me so close to the edge in college, is that incessant abusive inner voice. And I got a lot done, you know? I did a lot of things. And at the end of the day, who the fuck cares? Really, right? Like in 200 years, we're all dust. No one's gonna remember us. It doesn't matter, right? So great, I got a better grade on my junior term paper. Who the fuck cares, right? At the end of the day, that voice almost drove me to extinguish myself. So what I've also found is that, looking back at the last 10 years, like how you treat yourself affects, it, it in some way influences how you treat other people.

• 1:26:56Tim Ferriss?

  So if you are violent and angry towards yourself, there will be an element of violence and anger towards other people, whether it comes out really obviously, or it comes out in the form of like resentment and complaining and passive aggressiveness. It's going to manifest. So.

• 1:27:16Tim Ferriss?

  Spending time with Jack Kornfield has had a huge impact on me. This was a few years ago when I first met Jack. He's a very famous meditation teacher, wonderful human being, walks the walk. There are a lot of posers in the mindfulness meditation world, a lot of people who really are of the "do what I say, not what I do" school, if you look under the hood. Jack is so adept and has such an incredible toolkit, also is a clinical psychologist for helping veterans, adolescents for self-harming and cutting. He's very skilled.

• 1:27:58Tim Ferriss?

  And we had a conversation at one point and he said something that stuck with me and I'm going to paraphrase it because the exact words are important, but the gist is, and that is, "If your compassion doesn't extend to yourself, it's incomplete." And that seems so obvious, right? But I do think that a lot of people who pride themselves on being achievers spend the vast majority of their time whipping themselves.

• 1:28:28Speaker 03

  And what do you think, I mean, I think everyone has that internal dialogue and some days it can be more intense than others in terms of being critical. Or for me, it's not so much critical on myself as it is just ruminating on certain thoughts and like over and over again. I've had a lot of that. How did you break out of that? Like what was, and is this something that you still struggle with today? Like if someone's listening to this, they're like, "Oh my God, that describes me to the T. Like I have all these, I'm constantly so harsh on myself." What are the steps that someone would take?

• 1:29:06Tim Ferriss?

  Well, some are easier to recommend than others. I've done a lot of really wild stuff and some very, very aggressive stuff. And it's not to say that all tools will work for all people, but I do think that there are certain books that have had a large impact on me that have helped other people. And in fact, now that I think about it, I believe that one of them, Radical Acceptance by Tara Brock, was recommended to me by Daria, which surprised the hell out of me because Daria is very sharp, scientifically minded, very skeptical. And at least back in

• 1:29:50Tim Ferriss?

  the day, my experience with Daria was that anything remotely woo-woo or hand-wavy, she was just like, "Talk to the hand, not interested," right? So when she recommended this book, very generic title, and the subtitle I can't remember at the moment, but Radical Acceptance by Tara Brock, and I thought, "Oh, my God, like, has Daria had a frontal lobotomy? Like, what happened? I don't know how this book would make it through her filter." And it was incredibly helpful. So, Radical Acceptance, self-acceptance, making peace with parts of us, aspects of ourselves,

• 1:30:27Tim Ferriss?

  emotions we have grown to believe are negative or unwanted, you know, reconciling, reintegrating yourself in a way is a worthy goal. And I think I've largely succeeded. I still have my moments where I beat myself up, but it is less than 5% of what it was five or six years ago.

• 1:30:58Speaker 03

  I feel like this could be a good book for you, honestly.

• 1:31:01Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I've already been, I have a Scrivener file with hundreds of thousands of words already put together.

• 1:31:08Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 1:31:08Tim Ferriss?

  It's not in book form, but this is the book that I want to work on. And this is the book I talked about in my episode with Greg McKeon as the thing that I feel I need to do. And...

• 1:31:24Tim Ferriss?

  For 2020, and I started this already at the end of 2019, but I'm getting back to writing regularly on the blog for that reason. It's sharpening the saw so that when I really sit down to put together prose, I want it to be as good as possible. And this is definitely, this is definitely a calling. I feel called to do this. In part because I've seen the effects, not just through using books, but certainly practices. I think that Byron Katie's The Work can be very helpful.

• 1:32:02Tim Ferriss?

  It can be also a little confusing, but Byron Katie's The Work as a means of testing assumptions and stories that you tell yourself, kind of stress testing them, and as an exercise, being forced to come up with evidence or examples that counter your statement, like your belief, is really, can be very eye opening, especially when done in a group context. Then you have certainly meditation without a doubt, especially in my case when combined with either entirely cutting out caffeine or dramatically cutting out caffeine. That is, that is non-trivial for me.

• 1:32:45Speaker 03

  That's, that's tough to do. I did that about a month and a half ago. I wanted to go one month without caffeine and I, I was weaning myself off a little too aggressively.

• 1:32:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:56Speaker 03

  And I started getting those horrible caffeine headaches.

• 1:32:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I hear.

• 1:32:59Speaker 03

  But, but I was able to do it and then I actually just switched to decaf coffee, which has a tiny trace amount of caffeine, but that stuff is horrible. There's no good decaf coffee out there. If somebody out there is listening and knows of some, please let me know somehow, just tweet at me. I'd really appreciate it.

• 1:33:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, it's, I tend to use my time in nature or.

• 1:33:25Tim Ferriss?

  Time fasting, which I'll often do in nature, but my, if I'm spending a lot of time in nature, let's just take this last Utah trip as an example. Unlike a day like today where I am mostly sitting inside. If I'm mostly sitting inside, I have an oral fixation and I'll just drink iced tea and coffee all day because it's sitting in front of me and I'm looking for a fidget, just like I fidget with my, you know, pen and flick my pen around. It's a fidget. Whereas if I'm in Utah and I want to get to fresh powder and I'm waking up early, I'll have a cup of coffee in the morning, but then I'm on the slopes or outside for at least a few hours when I am consuming nothing but water.

• 1:34:06Tim Ferriss?

  And what I realize after a few days of that is that I feel like I've been meditating twice a day for a month, but, and perhaps being outside and skiing and so on is a form of meditation in and of itself, but suffice to say, often I've thought to myself, you can either meditate once or twice a day for two weeks, or just cut your caffeine consumption down to one cup of coffee a day. And the results are very often the same. If you can, if you combine them, all the better, but.

• 1:34:36Speaker 03

  I've never heard of anyone obtaining enlightenment via less caffeine.

• 1:34:40Tim Ferriss?

  You know?

• 1:34:41Speaker 03

  You might be the first.

• 1:34:42Tim Ferriss?

  There's always a first. There's always a first. I'm happy to be the first non-caffeinated monkey shot into space on the quest to enlighten, enlightenment through abstinence, but, uh, and I, I don't like making a recommendation with the following, but it would be the elephant in the room if I left it out, psychedelics. Responsible, supervised, facilitated sessions with psychedelics have provided a reset slash reformatting that is very difficult to achieve via other means. I don't think it's impossible, but it's very challenging and.

• 1:35:23Tim Ferriss?

  I simply have no way. I have theories, but no way to explain quite how

• 1:35:31Tim Ferriss?

  profound and lasting the changes can be, or how they're produced. It's still very poorly understood. What we do know is that in some cases, say with psilocybin, the toxicity is exceptionally low. I mean, it is far less than, say, acetaminophen, Tylenol, and many other things. So I do not take this stuff every afternoon. It's not a... I try not to be a hammer looking for a nail. I do not think these drugs are panaceas. I do think there are significant risks, possible risks, for those who, say, have a family history of schizophrenia.

• 1:36:12Tim Ferriss?

  And you can make very poor decisions. You can make dangerous decisions while under the influence, which underscores the importance of facilitated, supervised sessions. But these compounds have been integral to

• 1:36:34Tim Ferriss?

  providing enough slack in the system and different perspectives from which I can look at myself as an observer. Right? It's...

• 1:36:46Tim Ferriss?

  It can be very difficult to see your own stories.

• 1:36:51Tim Ferriss?

  Right? Because like your entire reality, like what we look at, what we hear, is not the only reality, right? It's like our brains are interpolating and filling in a lot of gaps as we use generic concepts and stories to interpret and make sense of everything around us. So, and I'm not the first person to come up with this metaphor, but it's like trying to look at the lens of your own eye as you're looking through the lens. You just can't do it. But psychedelics in proper setting with supervision can, in some instances, provide you the ability to sort of rotate out or above and really do...

• 1:37:35Tim Ferriss?

  A radical self-assessment that shows you where your blind spots are. And it shows you where your stories and your software are out of date. But I do not recommend people break the law. If you want to talk about side effects, illegal side effects can be significant. I mean, you can, you can go to jail for a long time if you possess or distribute these compounds. They are currently Schedule I. And this is why I'm dedicating, I've dedicated more capital and energy to psychedelic research than anything else in the last few years.

• 1:38:19Tim Ferriss?

  And it is, I want to say, at least it is close to or more than all of the capital I've invested in startups over whatever it was, a almost 10-year period.

• 1:38:35Speaker 03

  So if this, when this becomes a legal form of therapy, are we going to see Tim Ferriss branded psychedelic pop-up shops around the country?

• 1:38:47Tim Ferriss?

  Tim Ferriss psychedelic treatment mall kiosks.

• 1:38:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:38:51Tim Ferriss?

  Right next to

• 1:38:52Speaker 03

  Buy it directly from Five Bullet Friday.

• 1:38:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right next to Express Spa in the airport.

• 1:38:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:38:56Tim Ferriss?

  Why travel sober when you could?

• 1:39:00Speaker 03

  Would you ever be involved in anything like that, though? Like, I mean, all kidding aside, or is that you're more interested on the research side?

• 1:39:06Tim Ferriss?

  It's not just a question of interest. It's a question of maintaining a neutrality so I can be more effective. And I don't, I don't want people to question my motives, which is the same reason, by the way, I, I did not invest in or create any supplement companies before, for our body. I could have made tens of millions of dollars doing that easily. And I knew that because, as you know, I mean, I used to own sports nutrition companies. So I know how those businesses work. I could build one very easily. I have access to all the right people and I didn't do it because I didn't want people to question my motives.

• 1:39:45Tim Ferriss?

  I wanted to be as objective as possible and for people to view me as objective or as objective as possible. And in the world of psychedelics, I don't want to place any bets. In a for-profit capacity that would lead me to even subconsciously exert bias in who I help or what I help. Yeah. And even if I could make a for-profit bet that would not affect my objectivity, it would affect the how others perceive me in the field.

• 1:40:25Tim Ferriss?

  And that would inhibit my ability to move the needle in a number of different ways. And last, I will say, and this is, this is, this is also vocabulary. These are phrases that, you know, Tim of 15 years ago would just be disgusted by, but he didn't know, didn't know what he didn't know. This is a very sacred space. This is, this is very, in some ways, very sacred work. It's, it's incredible when you witness what can transpire for someone in a four to six

• 1:41:06Tim Ferriss?

  hour session and how completely their conception of themselves and relationships, problems, addictions can change.

• 1:41:19Tim Ferriss?

  You feel like you're witnessing something very special and you are witnessing something very special, something very unusual that many people hope their whole lives for and never get. And to that extent, you and I have been very fortunate and we've had all sorts of advantages. We've also had, you know, certain disadvantages and we've made lucky bets and we're in a position where we don't have to make compromises. We don't have to make compromises to generate income, right? Like, we're not worried about how to pay the rent next month. And for that reason, I like having this entire field to be, for me, a...

• 1:42:11Tim Ferriss?

  A capital off limits, a money off limits area in my life. Does that make sense? Like, it's just a, it's just a complication that I don't want and don't need. And, uh,

• 1:42:26Tim Ferriss?

  for that reason, I would be very surprised. I'd be very surprised if there was any Tim Ferriss branded airport psychedelic kiosk. Uh, there, there may be outfits that I assist in some way, but I can't imagine that I would ever tie financial incentives or financial return to anything that I do in this space. I would be disappointed in myself unless something very, very significant changes. And I just can't imagine quite what that would be.

• 1:42:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:57Tim Ferriss?

  And let's say I did something, who knows? Let's just say some gigantic pharma company said, will you advise us on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? As long as I could be convinced, and this, this would be a long shot, but let's just say I was able, I and my advisors were convinced that they weren't just doing this to sort of whitewash their sins and provide a human riot shield for whatever they were going to do. And they wanted advice of some type and they were offering advisory compensation. All of the funds would have to go to funding other types of research or to, uh, some other recipient besides myself, right?

• 1:43:41Tim Ferriss?

  Perhaps it goes into a foundation and then gets funneled directly into some related cause that I care deeply about.

• 1:43:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. It'd be interesting to see how you could think through that a little bit further to kind of figure out if there is an opportunity there that you could just roll it into a complete nonprofit so that you could participate in some of the upside. Because obviously there are going to be, when this stuff does all finally come around and it is, um, you know, stamped with the, whatever it may be, FDA or whoever has to stamp all the way through to actually launching something as a, as a therapeutic product for the consumer, there'll be multi-billion dollar businesses built on the back of this in some capacity, right?

• 1:44:19Tim Ferriss?

  There could be. So there definitely could be. I think it's, I think it's going to be a lot trickier than folks expect. And I hope that the current means of administration, meaning, let's just call it two or three sessions. Of two or three active sessions, there may be placebo sessions, but let's just call it two or three active sessions with long-term persistent effects. I hope that that does not get corrupted and replaced with some type of analog that is or close cousin that is then turned into a maintenance tool.

• 1:44:58Tim Ferriss?

  In other words, I hope that the business priorities of drug developers do not affect the beautiful elegance of how these tools can be used in such a way that they get converted into something that needs to be used three times a week just to get by. And I absolutely expect there will be people who attempt to do that. But I would not want to, I certainly don't want to encourage that. But there could be a lot of money made and there are possibilities.

• 1:45:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, my only point was that I would rather see those funds flow into someone's nonprofit like your own that would then go right back into research than have it go to someone else. But you know, because I didn't, wouldn't trust you with that, those, those funds to do the right thing.

• 1:45:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, I, and there are things I want to do. You know, one idea that I had for 2020 that I thought could be fun, which is not the same as a for-profit business that then provides upside that could be funneled into a nonprofit, which is entirely possible. I mean, that's what I'm doing with my foundation right now. But I've been, I've been thinking about doing a high-end art auction. And I know people have done this in the past. I believe that, I want to say Leonardo DiCaprio has done a very good job of this. Don't know Leo personally, but the concept would be getting pieces donated.

• 1:46:27Tim Ferriss?

  And I don't know if they, it's unlikely to me that Aesop's or Christie's or someone would.

• 1:46:36Tim Ferriss?

  Would do this, they might, but to have incredible pieces of artwork donated by extremely famous artists and to take the proceeds and donate them to psychedelic research or scientific...

• 1:46:52Speaker 03

  Oh dude, you could have this happen in two seconds. I know a ton of the auction folks through my time at Hodinkee.

• 1:46:57Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, great.

• 1:46:57Speaker 03

  So if you want to talk to any of the Christie's or Sotheby's or Phillips folks, like, I mean, this is, this happens already. Like, for example, there's an auction each year that's called Only Watch and every one of the high-end watch manufacturers will create a special, one-off, limited edition watch, or not limited edition, but just one-off. And they raise, you know, tens of millions of dollars for, I can't remember its muscular dystrophy, what the actual cause is, but it's a wonderful cause and it happens every year. This could be that for psychedelics.

• 1:47:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So that excites me, right?

• 1:47:31Speaker 03

  You have to do that. That's a no-brainer.

• 1:47:33Tim Ferriss?

  Because it could be paintings, but it could also be watches. It could be anything. And what's so nice about that is people are bidding. There are certainly tax advantages for people who are buying these items, I would imagine. Maybe, maybe not. But nonetheless, I mean, they're going to a good cause. They are paying for one-of-a-kind, or at the very least, highly sought-after scarce items that have value, sustained value, right? So you're not just kind of begging for money with your hat out. And what's so incredible about the psychedelic research space right now is that for 10 or 20 million dollars, I mean,

• 1:48:16Tim Ferriss?

  you can potentially bend the arc of history. It's so nascent and so much can be done with so little that what would be considered a drop in the bucket for cancer research or any number of other conditions could actually...

• 1:48:33Tim Ferriss?

  Lead to fundamental breakthroughs in an entirely new field. And not just breakthroughs as it relates to a specific compound, but breakthroughs in how we begin to understand how the mind and the brain work, right? Where is, where is the seat of consciousness? Does such a thing anatomically exist? I mean, there are some, these are real questions that people are investigating. And I don't think we fully appreciate the implications of figuring some of that out. I mean, it's, it's incredible.

• 1:49:06Speaker 03

  Oh, that's so cool.

• 1:49:06Tim Ferriss?

  And there's so many artists, as you know, who suffer from

• 1:49:12Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:49:13Tim Ferriss?

  Depression, from anxiety.

• 1:49:15Speaker 03

  That's why it's a no brainer. This is like a perfect match. Like you have people that suffer with something like that. I mean, where's, you must know Banksy at this point, right?

• 1:49:23Tim Ferriss?

  I don't, I would love to, if you have a connection, I wanna, I would love to connect with Banksy for a million reasons, but I do not yet know Banksy. I did go to his hotel, yeah, in the Middle East, which was amazing and pretty incredible. But I've, I've, I've studied him, I know of him, I'm very familiar with his work, but don't know him.

• 1:49:42Speaker 03

  I feel like if we can get him to commit a piece.

• 1:49:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:45Speaker 03

  That's a good place to start.

• 1:49:46Tim Ferriss?

  That would be a great place to start. I mean, and, and there, that would be a great place to start. There are, there are a number of artists I find absolutely incredible who, you know, were they willing to participate would, uh, they would act as the lead domino that tips over everything else, right?

• 1:50:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:06Tim Ferriss?

  You don't need, you really just need that first tenant, right? The first person who says, I believe in this. And, you know, I haven't reached out to anyone at this point, but one of my favorite artists in the world is David Hockney. He's so, so incredible, you should check him out. And there's, there's a wonderful documentary about him called, I want to say, Learning How to See or The Art of Seeing, that you should check out. And such a, just seems like such a beautiful human being, very well spoken, very humble, and

• 1:50:43Tim Ferriss?

  You know, it should be doable, right? This does not strike me as insane.

• 1:50:47Speaker 03

  Let's talk offline, because I have some people you should talk to. I think we can make this happen. That sounds really cool.

• 1:50:52Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Amazing, amazing. That's so exciting. The other thing that, this is jumping around topic wise, but the other thing I want to start doing this year is something that I spoke with Nick Thompson ages ago about, and that is hiring top tier writers at, say, I think the, I think the, I think the rate he suggested was maybe $2 a word or something like that, but really paying top dollar for good, long form journalists to write pieces on my blog, like to investigate topics that would otherwise not get investigated, right? I mean, I'll give you an example. I was having a long conversation with one of my closest friends

• 1:51:37Tim Ferriss?

  about a week ago about how the preceding two days felt like two or three weeks. A lot of things had happened. We'd moved locations a lot. We were spending a lot of time in backcountry doing really strong, physical exertion. And we both noticed that the last, the preceding two days seemed, it's like, oh, my God, that happened two days ago. It seems like three weeks ago. And yet, there are also weeks that go by where you're like, what the fuck did I do this week? Like, I know I was sitting around doing stuff, but like, it just went by like that. So investigating, let's just say as one example, like investigating the expansion of time, right? How can, what are the, what, what does the science say?

• 1:52:22Tim Ferriss?

  What do?

• 1:52:24Speaker 03

  If you want someone to pitch in on that, I will, I'll throw some cash towards that article, too.

• 1:52:28Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:52:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've always been fascinated by this. I would love, love to go in deep on that one.

• 1:52:34Tim Ferriss?

  And it's like, so let's get someone who puts out just stellar, stellar, long form pieces that they can take some time on, right? Because I don't need this tomorrow. I would love to have it tomorrow, but if it takes two months, if it takes three months, so be it. I care more about the quality. But to have, like, let's just say to have five of those at any given time in motion. It just seems like an excellent use of money.

• 1:53:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:02Tim Ferriss?

  Or there are certain people I would love to have profiles, right? Like people who are doing incredible weird things that are never, I don't think would ever make it onto the radar of some of the larger publications I respect. But they're just, they already have, I would imagine, an abundance of wonderful ideas. And I have some, say, A, leads and B, suggestions that could really help people gain access to folks who otherwise wouldn't be accessible or otherwise would never get covered, right? I mean, it's that kind of thing. It's like, all right, let's do a human interest story.

• 1:53:47Speaker 03

  Do you have people in mind on the writer's side that you would use? Because I know we could probably reach out to Evan Medium. I'm sure he's got a bunch of great independent writers that you could hire.

• 1:53:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I spoke with Nick about this. There are few writers I've worked with in the past who I have found to be really, really sharp and also very ethical. Those two don't always go together, as we know, which is a huge bummer. That's another thing I've learned in the last 10 years is like hire for reliability and trustworthiness and attitude first.

• 1:54:28Tim Ferriss?

  Lots of skilled, smart people out there who may not have the best ethical compass. So you have to really guard against that. But there are a number of writers I've worked with who have done fantastic work and they're on the shortlist. They're kind of the first list that I have. But there are so many, there are so many great writers out there. And it should be, it should be possible to get someone, since I would be the editor, so to speak, right? And I have no delusions of thinking I'm David Remnick of The New Yorker or anything. I do not think that I am.

• 1:55:12Tim Ferriss?

  The best editor in the world, but nonetheless, it's my blog, so I have to look at this stuff. And I'm pretty good. Like, I think I'm a very fair, uh, I've edited a lot of my friends' books. Um, because I can't not edit if they give me something to review. But I would be bringing these people in because they are ostensibly, I mean, uh, almost certainly better writers than I am. Uh, so that's really exciting to me. Just to, just to kick the tires and try it, you know?

• 1:55:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 1:55:38Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, and it's, it's also one of those examples of like one decision that removes a lot of decisions. Like, let's just, time is a non-renewable resource. Uh, I'm very confident I can make money back if I need to. Let me just place some bets and let people run. You know, and then it's like, oh, lo and behold, like three months later, an email comes in, got a first draft or got a third draft, whatever it might be. Uh, that would be very exciting to me. Uh,

• 1:56:11Tim Ferriss?

  yeah, what else have, what else have you, uh, put on your list of things to remember for 2020, pay attention to, or just notes from the last, last decade? I've got one, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold on to it, cause uh, we can talk about it in a little, in a little bit. Not that we have to go for five hours, but, um, anything else that comes to mind that you'd like to mention?

• 1:56:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the, the things that, um, I look back on that I'm, I feel that I did quite well over the last 10 years was my track record of investing in the public markets. And I think that I know why.

• 1:56:51Tim Ferriss?

  You're very good.

• 1:56:52Speaker 03

  I appreciate that. Um, I, I've, I think I know, I have kind of like put my formula down on paper, so I, I have a sense of, of what I, how I am able to take big risks without them feeling like big risks. And I think that's key for me not to freak out and, and sell things off. So, essentially, what I've figured out is my mixture of investments. And for me, you know, you've always heard that, well, I mean, there's that saying. Thing that I guess most people think is is bullshit, which is probably true, which is to hold your age in bonds, right? Like the the old saying is if you're forty years old, you should have forty percent of your net worth in in bonds. And I

• 1:57:37Speaker 03

  have always liked having some security like that. Um, I think that that is not a wise strategy for young investors because I think they are too heavily weighted and safer investments when they should be taking the most risk upfront. But um, now that I am into my forties, I don't think of it as just bonds. I think of it as what are some safer investments that I can have that forty percent in? So that could be, you know, higher yield bonds. It could be dividend paying stocks that are blue chip, um, you know, dividend stocks that I that I I hold in a basket or an index. But the thing that that's Exotic animal farms. Exactly. But you know, you know, my investment types, but that there's nothing, that's all you can repick that all this kind of stuff up in any investment book.

• 1:58:22Speaker 03

  What I have done that is different is that I've said that twenty percent of my net worth, whatever that may be, is going to go into alter risky investments, but only ones that kind of soup to nuts. I understand at a very, very deep level. So that means these really risky tech investments for me. And um, that has lead to, you know, early investments in Bitcoin, early investments in in Apple. You know, I remember when Apple came out with uh, OS ten, the first version, and I was just blown away. And I knew this was such a brilliant new direction for the company that was in two thousand and one. The stock back then was trading at a dollar sixty or so a share, which is just insanity.

• 1:59:07Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. But, you know, more more recently in the last few years, that would be, you know, the Shopify's and the the uh, Teslas and things like that. But um, you know, Also avoiding stuff I didn't understand, I think is like the saying no, like for example, everyone was jumping on Netflix, you know, five years ago, maybe even longer. I didn't understand it. I didn't understand how this wouldn't become just like the music business and how it would be, the margins would be ultra thin. I had no idea about creating original content, what those costs, what the cost structure for that would be. It was something that a lot of my friends were making fantastic returns on, but something that I ended up not buying and I missed out on that one.

• 1:59:49Speaker 03

  But that's fine because I was able to concentrate my bets on things that, products not only that I used and enjoy, but understood completely. And that for me, taking that, that 20% of my investments and focusing them on things that I believe that could truly have, you know, 25 to 50x returns over the next couple of decades, I think has been key in kind of growing my, my net worth over time.

• 2:00:16Tim Ferriss?

  So we're talking about, or you're talking about buy decisions. Right. How do you decide, what's your framework for deciding when to sell things? If you have one, and it could be any category or all categories, but you're somewhat famous for telling me what you're going, what you're going to buy and then not telling me six months later when you sell it all.

• 2:00:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I think that the, the thing is, has the underlying, no, that's true.

• 2:00:42Tim Ferriss?

  And then 18 months later, I'm like, oh man, tough, tough order on you. Like I sold that a year and a half ago. I'm like, oh, you fucking bastard.

• 2:00:49Speaker 03

  Well, well, I, I think like have the underlying fundamentals of the business changed, you know, and I think that if the answer is yes, then I consider selling. If the answer is no, but you're seeing a decline due to other market turbulence, then that's actually when I buy more. So if I see a big massive dip and it has nothing to do with the company, but it was just something that came out of Trump's mouth, like I'm going to double down and pick up some more stock on sale. Right? So, um, you know, and then also working with your tax accountant. So you know, when you could take some gains off the table and tax wise, it makes sense for you. But I would say that,

• 2:01:30Speaker 03

  You know, I I am even more skeptical and scared of stocks like Netflix today because I look at all the other entrants in the market over the that, you know, are both coming and have recently launched, whether it be Apple TV's streaming services or, um, you know, the new Disney Plus or, you know, Peacock, which is coming out. There's gonna be so much competition for that five to $10 a month kind of cable plus plus that uh it's it's a little frightening. But um, you know, so it's that's how I, you know, I look at shop. Well, also, I think there's there's a couple of things. One, what's the total addressable market of this business? So, you know, how big is the is the the TAM there and do they have room to grow? So Shopify today?

• 2:02:13Speaker 03

  You know, I I can't, I'm not sure where they're at, 50 some billion dollar company. They were around five early on and and well, actually, dude, Shopify was the one that you're probably killing yourself over.

• 2:02:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I am. I made a terrible, terrible, terrible decision. Well, you know that I am, I have a history. Now, I've I have improved, but

• 2:02:33Speaker 03

  You're an advisor to them before they went public.

• 2:02:35Tim Ferriss?

  When they had eight employees. So I was with them from day, not day one, but very early. And I panic sold. I panic sold. And that was maybe right after lockup expired. So this would be like, whatever that is, six months after IPO. And I just made a terrible, terrible decision and sold a bunch of it.

• 2:02:58Speaker 03

  I'm curious, what was the underlying reason, though, with the talking about when to sell?

• 2:03:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:02Speaker 03

  Like, the the business was was having great numbers quarter over quarter. Like, if you looked at all the fundamentals there, look, I mean, granted, they they're not profitable. But but revenue was increasing, um, you know, cost of acquiring customers was going down. What was it that that you freaked out about?

• 2:03:18Tim Ferriss?

  I don't, I mean, I don't think that freakouts are generally a rational decision. I'm not like, well, if A and if B and therefore C and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, freak out. You know, it's not like that is at the end of a long deliberation.

• 2:03:33Tim Ferriss?

  I think that the

• 2:03:37Tim Ferriss?

  Gain, since my cost basis was effectively zero, right? My gain was such that the absolute number of dollars was enough to, at the time, move the needle for me and provide a level of security that I didn't want to risk. It doesn't mean that there were a bunch of risks. I just didn't know and I, you never know what you don't know.

• 2:04:03Speaker 03

  Listen, there's nothing.

• 2:04:05Tim Ferriss?

  Do you know what I mean though? I was like, you know?

• 2:04:06Speaker 03

  Oh dude, there's that first wave of, I want to take care of myself, pay off my bills, pay off my house. This is like something that's going to secure my future. That you would just be foolish not to take. And I get that. It sounds like that's what you were doing.

• 2:04:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's what I was doing. And the challenge has been, and we don't have to spend a lot of time on this because I think we're getting into rarefied air here, but updating that script, right? Because I, it's not the only example of me panic selling. And I panicked sold other things. I mean, panic sold is very dramatic, but I emotionally sold other things. Alibaba, you know, I invested early in Alibaba. They were pre-IPO. And all sorts of companies that I sold once they went public. And it has taken a lot of reflection and training and planning. That's number one for me. Have a plan, right?

• 2:05:05Tim Ferriss?

  Don't go into a fight with no plan, then get hit and try to figure out your game plan. Have a plan going in. So I've done that in the last few years and I've not, I've not panicked sold or emotionally sold anything in the last few years. That's a lot easier to say, of course, now that I have more security. But the point is, even after the point that I had more security, I was still, I had not updated my OS, right? My operating system was still like Windows 95, like panic, panic, crash, panic, crash. And.

• 2:05:41Tim Ferriss?

  I had to become aware of that before I could change anything. Does that make sense?

• 2:05:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:47Tim Ferriss?

  So you are 100 times better than I am in the public markets and you've been very comfortable in the public markets for a very long time from my perspective, at least what I've seen. I mean, you're a very rare breed of investor because you are successful across many different

• 2:06:08Tim Ferriss?

  classes and many different assets. So you can go super early stage, I mean, white paper early or back of the napkin early, all the way up to mature public. And I've seen you hit home runs in almost every, every, every band of, of investment in terms of size and also in terms of technology. It's been, it's been very impressive to watch. And I have to first admit to myself, lest I get my face ripped off, that I'm not you. Right? Like, I just have a different, different way of approaching this stuff.

• 2:06:48Tim Ferriss?

  So.

• 2:06:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, dude, you'll, you'll laugh at some of the grammar I write you in emails. So we all have our strengths and weaknesses. Like, some of the things that I produce on other fronts are laughable. So, you know, I think it's just kind of knowing what those pieces are and, and playing to your strengths, you know?

• 2:07:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. Play, you can, you can, you can fuck up a lot as long as you play to your core strengths and make a few good decisions. I mean, once a year, once every few years in the startup investing game, right? Like, you can, if you, hopefully they're not all predicated on luck, but if you have a decent process, right? Like you said, you missed out on Netflix. Doesn't matter, right? Like if you hit a homerun, you can strike out. If you hit a few homeruns that are real homeruns, right, which you have, you can strike out a whole lot. And that is-

• 2:07:43Speaker 03

  Well, and you expect to, you know, it's like-

• 2:07:45Tim Ferriss?

  Or better yet, miss out, right? You can miss out. That's a better way to put it. Like you can pick, you can wait for the fat pitches. And if you have rules and certain systems, which I've seen you use, which has been the impressive part, right? If someone's just consistently lucky, I can't model that, right? And I know those people too. You and I both know those people, where it's like,

• 2:08:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:05Tim Ferriss?

  Alright, that article paints them as a genius, but we all know that they like flipped a coin after drinking a bottle of tequila and then like, here we are. So, uh, I can't model that type of dumb luck. And there are some people who just seem to like be hardwired for incredible luck. I don't know what that's about. We both know a few of those too, where it's just like pot of gold falling out of the sky into their lap every two years. I just don't know what that's about. And then there's people who have rules and they have systems and they have criteria. And, uh, I think you've done really well with that. So that's, that's something I've always watched with, with admiration. And that is something that I've tried to model, but not by duplicating all of your rules, but simply having rules certainly helps, helps a lot.

• 2:08:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I mean, I think that the, the one thing I want to emphasize on that last little piece that we talked about on the investing side, the reason why 80% of my stuff is in, you know, standard boring index funds, bond funds, things like that, is because I know how risky the rest of it is. And, uh, you know, I expect to lose a lot of it. So I would never advocate, well, first of all, I'm not, I'm not even in the position to give investment advice. I'm not legally allowed to, but I wouldn't, um, I wouldn't advocate, you know, investing more than you can lose because you, you never know, because there's so many other factors. You have the best company on earth and you could have a downturn in the market that's going to last a decade and you're still going to be underwater. And so it's, you know, you always have to factor that in as well.

• 2:09:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. I'm still, I would consider myself super conservative. And I, and I also want to emphasize, or maybe clarifies the right word, that you talk about ultra risky, right?

• 2:09:50Tim Ferriss?

  20% ultra risky. And it's true that each of those bets you place independently could be considered ultra risky. But you, maybe you could speak to this, but I mean, you also have a portfolio approach and certain advantages, right? Informational advantage and so on. I'm not talking about any public stuff, but with, with these super early-stage companies with different types of, of currencies and so on, I mean cryptocurrencies and, and blockchains and whatnot, that you have, you think about portfolio construction and you think about

• 2:10:33Tim Ferriss?

  allocation, you think about bet sizing, right? So that these individually ultra risky bets, when viewed in total, underscore the possibility that each of them could say, return the fund, so to speak.

• 2:10:56Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:10:57Tim Ferriss?

  Right?

• 2:10:58Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:10:59Tim Ferriss?

  So even though it's an ultra risky, it's, it's a collection of ultra risky assets, the way that you approach it, while still risky certainly, stands a very high likelihood of success. Right?

• 2:11:10Speaker 03

  That's right. Yeah. I mean, that's a little classic venture rule that, you know, it depends on whose math you're looking at, but you know, 80, 80, 80% of the deals that you do will go to zero, you know? But the ones that do make it, you're hoping are, are the massive, you know, thousand X kind of fund makers that, that you, that you can find, especially at the really early stage. But yeah, that's, that's part of, part of getting comfortable with all that is, is saying goodbye and not taking it, you know, when, when things don't work out and, and not taking it personally, just realize it's, the, the riskiest thing that you can do and some of the biggest mistake I see angel investors make without a doubt is they go out and do two deals. They go out and do three deals.

• 2:11:52Speaker 03

  You know, they'll say, I would much rather, and this is how I started out in the early days, I went out and placed Five to $10,000 bets, which from an angel's point of view is really minimal dollars because, you know, most Silicon Valley angels are doing 25 to 100K, you know, chunks when they invest in a startup. I didn't have that kind of money, but I knew the math and the math is that most of them are going to go to zero. And so if that's the case, rather than have two companies at 25K apiece and say, I'm done. I'd rather, you know, go out and have a whole dozen of them at a much lower, you know, five to $10,000 kind of range and have a greater chance that I will find one of those crazy unicorns.

• 2:12:33Speaker 03

  It's going to return all the rest of them or cover for the rest of them. So that's, whenever I meet someone that's looking to get into that side of investing on the angel side, it's always do more with less dollars in. And then if you have the opportunity to buy up in the future with Pro Rata and you do see something that looks like it's going to win, because you're already on the cap table, you can, you know, go in and purchase more shares in future rounds of financing.

• 2:13:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we're getting into the nitty gritty here. But yes, that could be a whole separate conversation on reserving a portion of your sort of annual budget for follow-on with the Pro Rata and all that. But we can save that for our next random show.

• 2:13:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, one thing that, a last little thing I will say that I think is more broadly applicable is you mentioned like, how do you decide when to sell? And this could be applied to public market investing, which most people are comfortable with. You know, when your allocation in that risky, ultra risky category outpaces and outgrows where all of a sudden that was 20%, but now it's actually 40% of your portfolio, then you need to rebalance and that's when you can do that.

• 2:13:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yep. The most fun is when your ultra risky has you locked up. So all of a sudden you're at like 90%, you can't sell a goddamn thing. That's always a really stress-free experience. Very important. That is an important point.

• 2:14:05Tim Ferriss?

  What should we close with? Any last thoughts? I mean, one takeaway that I've had from the last 10 years, and I have actually become much better at this, much better at following my own advice. I remember Sam Harris once, I think he said to me, or maybe he wrote it somewhere, but that wisdom is largely taking your own advice.

• 2:14:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:14:28Tim Ferriss?

  There's a quote, and I can't remember the attribution. Somebody on the internet can certainly tell us, and I'll put it in the show notes, but that "living well is the best revenge." That quote has really been important to me in the last few years. And it comes back to what we were discussing, or what I was saying much earlier about treating myself with anger, and trying to really replace that with more acceptance and understanding and compassion, which I always focused outward. I never really focused it inward. And a byproduct of that, meaning being less angry with myself, was trying to cultivate directing less anger at other people also.

• 2:15:10Tim Ferriss?

  And I was never a yell and scream, throw plates against the wall kind of guy, but I would feel intense anger when I was wronged, or felt wronged, right? And I mean, if you've been in the business world long enough, or if you've had enough relationships, like, you've been fucked at some point, and not in the good way. And I would get very upset, and I would fantasize. I wouldn't always actualize, but I'd fantasize about the kind of eye-for-an-eye-type retaliation. And the reality was that I very, very rarely indulged in that, but...

• 2:15:46Speaker 03

  You rarely took eyes?

• 2:15:48Tim Ferriss?

  I very rarely took eyes. As Colonel Hackworth, what's his first name? I'm blanking, once said, "Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to smash a mosquito with a sledgehammer," something like that, or "smash a fly with a sledgehammer." I think there is a time and place for that, don't get me wrong, but... You know, one doesn't want to set precedent in some unfavorable way, but the point being that I've been, I've become much better and I'm not going to mention this person by name, but very well-known person has as a reminder on his screensaver on his laptop, "Let it go." And this is a very accomplished person.

• 2:16:26Tim Ferriss?

  I actually consider him to be very zen and emotionally resilient and calm. Nonetheless, he has that reminder, "Let it go," on his desktop. And I have realized, tying in this energetic management, that like, living well is the best revenge. If someone's really fucked you and they're that person, chances are, they're not very happy, right? And that's not always the case. There are some super-aggressive, Dr. Evil narcissists, assholes who are quite happy. I hate to tell people out there, but they do exist. Nonetheless, a lot of the people who do awful things, or break their word, or whatever, are pretty miserable.

• 2:17:10Tim Ferriss?

  And like, letting them wallow in their own misery and not engaging because it will contaminate your experience, has been really key for me. Letting it go, to the extent possible, right? And, and just like, living well is the best revenge has, has really stuck with me, right? Like, the best thing you can do is, yeah, live your life.

• 2:17:31Speaker 03

  I think what you just said is, is really, it's, it's interesting in that the way I've always looked at it is, if someone is being very verbally aggressive with you, or angry, or are trying to push their energy on to you, if you take that and carry it on and then release it to other people, you're just furthering their agenda of spreading that, that energy. And it's, it's, letting it go is just the ability to actually set them free in a way. You're releasing that negative energy and you're just like, letting it dissipate. And it's such a freeing thing, you know? It's a beautiful thing if you think of it like that.

• 2:18:08Tim Ferriss?

  You, you've taught me a lot with this in certain instances. I remember I got attacked by some, some troll, as trolls will do, many years ago. This is a long time ago.

• 2:18:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I remember this.

• 2:18:19Tim Ferriss?

  And I think, well, let's see, you might have a different example, but, and you said something like...

• 2:18:26Tim Ferriss?

  Tim, do you really want to engage in a fight with someone with infinite time? And I was like, no, I don't. When you phrase it that way, like, absolutely not. And you've given me, because of course, coming out of, coming out of DIG and sort of early days, you had far more mileage with online communities.

• 2:18:48Speaker 03

  I don't know if you remember this, but I think I told you also that I was like, when was the last time you've left a negative comment on somebody's blog? I've been like, fuck you on somebody's blog anonymously. And it's like, I don't think I've ever done it. Yeah, because you're not that kind of person. Think of like the type of person that's engaging with you here. And you don't need to, it's just the one thing people don't realize about the internet and that I learned through a school of hard knocks is that, just like in society, if you were to go and put 500 people in a room, there are gonna be some assholes in that room. Some like completely dicks that are mean spirited people that want to see other people in misery. The internet is no different. Like, you get a group of people of thousands,

• 2:19:30Speaker 03

  hundreds of thousands, and there are groups of very evil people. You could, if you know that, then you could just be like, oh, that's just one of those evil people.

• 2:19:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's, you know, when you walk by them on the sidewalk, you may not notice, but they're there. And I've seen another quote that has kind of stuck with me, and I'm blanking on the attribution. This is a very famous quote, but the paraphrase is, you know, don't wrestle with pigs because it just makes, it makes you filthy and it makes the pig happy. And it's just like, and it's like, yeah, like, there's, there's, there's nothing to be, there's very little to be gained from engaging with that. So.

• 2:20:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. So my final quote for the day, on my side, since you gave yours, is from that Michael Singer course that I took on surrender, which I think is a phenomenal video course. But he says something in there that stuck with me, where he says, serve the moment, which I thought was really interesting. Just this idea of being so present that you're just serving that moment in time. It's just a beautiful thing if you can pull it off.

• 2:20:36Tim Ferriss?

  How do you, how do you use that? I like, I like the. I like the connotation of that, but did you use that with yourself?

• 2:20:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just think like, where's my head right now? You know, am I really giving my focus and attention and brain space to what's going on right now? My serving to people around me to the fullest at this point in time? And that can be simple things from paying attention to my daughter when she's playing and engaging with that versus being on my phone.

• 2:21:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:12Speaker 03

  Um, you know, to worrying about something or thinking about something in the future that may or may not happen to, you know, wanting to gouge somebody's eye out, like we mentioned, like those are, that's not serving the moment. That's, that's serving the imaginary land, you know?

• 2:21:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's fighting with sock puppets. Yeah. Uh, and I, I, I really meant it earlier when I said I was, I was really struck. Because you've seen me through many chapters. I've seen you through many chapters over many years. And there have been times when I've, I've seen you, and this is the contrast, right? I've, there were, there was a time when if you were sitting down with sort of nothing, no project to work on, I would see you on your phone. And when I was home with you, I came up and you're just sitting there sipping tea, looking at your daughter, playing with blocks or whatever she was doing, unrushed and fully paying attention.

• 2:22:05Tim Ferriss?

  And that might sound quaint, it might sound simple, but if we look at the technological forces and the financial incentives and the funding and market caps of these companies and the armies of PhDs who are attempting to do just about anything to make that impossible. It becomes all the more noteworthy, I think, and all the more valuable to.

• 2:22:34Tim Ferriss?

  Have practices and reminders that help you to have those kind of moments.

• 2:22:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:22:42Tim Ferriss?

  I'm happy for you, man. It's uh, it's been really nice to see you.

• 2:22:45Speaker 03

  Same dude. I mean, I didn't notice, we didn't say this on the show earlier, but I'm really stoked um, who with your girlfriend now that shall go unnamed. Uh, she's, she's amazing. I got a chance to hang out with her and meet her, you know, when you were out here and it's uh, it's really cool to see you happy and and uh, it's, it's been fu- it's, I'm excited for you to have babies soon. So that's all I'll say.

• 2:23:09Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know, it may not be that far off. We shall see, we shall see. But um, nice to see your face and hear your voice, brother. As always, uh, please give uh, give my love to the fam and um, you want to share any, any particular resources or point people anywhere if they'd like to learn what you're up to or see what you're up to?

• 2:23:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'd say most of the stuff I, I publish, uh, I do on Instagram. So I'm just Instagram at Kevin Rose. Um, and then yeah, definitely check out the uh, the iOS app, less, L E S S, less drinking. Uh, I think it'll help you uh, those of you out there that uh, want to be a little bit more mindful about the beverages you consume. Um, it's just a fun little, little project we're working on. And zero two for intermittent fasting. We get, dude, we hit, I don't even think I told you this, we hit 1.3 million monthly fasters now. Not fast, but people fasting.

• 2:24:04Tim Ferriss?

  People.

• 2:24:05Speaker 03

  On zero.

• 2:24:06Tim Ferriss?

  That's incredible.

• 2:24:06Speaker 03

  So that's, yeah, we added 300,000 people this last uh, uh, 30 days.

• 2:24:12Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 2:24:12Speaker 03

  So it's, it's nuts.

• 2:24:14Tim Ferriss?

  I need your help with my email list. Uh, that's incredible. Congratulations. And uh, I'm excited for 2020. I'm really excited about it. And uh, yeah, I don't, I don't have much, everybody can find me at tim.blog and uh, check out the writing. I'm going to be doing more writing. Certainly love the podcast. I'm going to continue to do that, but in service of eventually getting to the point where I'm working on this book on healing and.

• 2:24:45Tim Ferriss?

  Psycho emotional dynamics in a very concrete way. I mean, it's not going to be highfalutin conceptual. They'll be like in the trenches with some crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy fucking stories. I mean, if you imagine a kind of four hour body, but for minded, mind and emotion, it's, it would be like that, but much crazier, much.

• 2:25:05Speaker 03

  Are you, are you using four hour in it anywhere?

• 2:25:07Tim Ferriss?

  Nah. I think, I think, I think I'm retiring the four hour jersey.

• 2:25:11Speaker 03

  Retiring the four hour?

• 2:25:12Tim Ferriss?

  Retiring the four hour jersey. Yeah.

• 2:25:14Speaker 03

  I, I, it's like, I still get joy out of it whenever I see four hours somewhere. Like I remember when I saw the four hour cleaners in San Francisco, sent you a photo of it.

• 2:25:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I remember that. It's on Lombard or whatever.

• 2:25:24Speaker 03

  I want you to be known for that forever.

• 2:25:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Well, you know, we, we, we think, we think we know what we're doing. And then we're like, oh my God, the blessing and the curse that will chase me forever. Here it is.

• 2:25:35Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 2:25:36Tim Ferriss?

  But, you know, they're, they're certainly far, far worse, far worse.

• 2:25:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:25:40Tim Ferriss?

  Prefixes. So I'll take it for now. But, uh, love doing the random show, man. Let's do more of these and, uh,

• 2:25:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:25:48Tim Ferriss?

  Let's, um, let's meet up in person before too long.

• 2:25:52Speaker 03

  Let's do it. Sounds good.

• 2:25:55Tim 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,

• 2:26:35Tim Ferriss?

  for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. These days, as you know, the million messages per minute, not enough hours in the day. How do you really catch people's attention? This is where LinkedIn can help. With LinkedIn Ads, you can catch the right professionals, the right people at the right time. And I'll tell you how I'm using them personally in a minute. LinkedIn Ads can drive traffic to landing pages, for instance, engagement, and for

• 2:27:19Tim Ferriss?

  many of you, most importantly, conversions, whether that's registrations for an event, downloads of white papers and eBooks, or other important metrics. Me, personally, I'm going to be testing LinkedIn Ads to drive signups to my free newsletter, Five Below Friday, which I have realized drives just about everything else. With precise targeting through LinkedIn, entrepreneurs, startups, and SMBs, and small, medium-sized businesses, can better and more cost-effectively reach the people who matter to them specifically. With more than 62 million decision-makers on LinkedIn, you're able to connect with the business leaders, or just the target audience who are most relevant to your company, and deliver a clear call to action. That's always where I focus a lot of my energy, obviously, headline and call to action.

• 2:28:02Tim Ferriss?

  LinkedIn Ads allows you to cut through the clutter and ensure your messages are getting through to the people you most want to target. So huge, medium-sized, and small businesses alike are all making the most "ad of LinkedIn" ads, entrepreneurs, solo printers, you name it. So try it for yourself. LinkedIn is offering a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit to launch your first campaign. Simply visit LinkedIn.com/TFS, as in Tim Ferriss Show. Again, that's LinkedIn.com/TFS. Terms and conditions apply. This episode of the Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Calm. I once asked LeBron James, you've probably heard of him, what is the single most important element of his training regimen? And I may have edged into it slightly differently, but in effect, that's what I was asking.

• 2:28:46Tim Ferriss?

  And you know what he said? He did not say wind sprints. Cryotherapy, maybe? Egg white omelets with a side of butternut squash? No, no. And although it sounds delicious, no. What he focused on, what he said, was sleep. Whether you're an athlete, programmer, or student, healthy sleep, that is, restorative sleep, is essential. To peak performance. It strengthens your immune system, improves cognitive function, problem solving, decision making. It gives you creativity and energy, or at least certainly fosters all those things that you want to bring into your day. And I've suffered with sleep, or I should say, poor sleep, for a very long time and have sought out different tools to help me optimize and improve not just the duration, but the quality of my sleep.

• 2:29:31Tim Ferriss?

  And as a lot of us know, there's a common problem. Sound sleep is a rare thing. And this is particularly true when you're hyper-caffeinated, hyper-connected, hyper-stimulated in a modern digital world. But there is a place to get rest, and that is Calm, the number one app for sleep, downloaded by more than 60 million people. It's really easy to download. Just download Calm and you'll find a whole library of programs designed to help you with healthy sleep, like soundscapes, guided meditations, and more than 100 sleep stories narrated by soothing voices like those of LeVar Burton and Nick Offerman. Right now, listeners of the Tim Ferriss Show, that's you guys, get 40% off a Calm premium subscription at calm.com/tim.

• 2:30:14Tim Ferriss?

  That's C-A-L-M dot com slash Tim. To quote LeBron himself, "You want to seize the day, you gotta sleep the night." Check it out. Go to calm.com/tim. Get calm and get better sleep. Time to restore.