#191: The Art and Science of Learning Anything Faster

This is a special episode because it doesn't focus on the lessons of one particular person. Instead, I explore the tips, tricks, and framework I've used to learn just about any skill. This is the meta-skill of meta-learning, or learning how to learn. I'm going to share techniques that can help you -- even if you're sub-par or a rote beginner -- take the smartest first steps and use 80/20 analysis to accelerate your progress. This is adapted from The 4-Hour Chef https://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Chef-Cooking-Learning-Anything/dp/0547884591/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, which is the cookbook that's not a cookbook -- it's a book on accelerated learning. Without further ado, please enjoy this episode on meta-learning. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Vimeo Business https://vimeo.com/tim10. Vimeo Business has all of the prior benefits of Vimeo Pro, including VIP support. Whether you make videos for a living, run your own company, or simply want to amp up your video marketing, Vimeo Business is here to help. It has more than 280 million creators and viewers worldwide and makes it easier to share your videos with a global audience and connect with professional video makers to bring your stories to life. Vimeo Business https://vimeo.com/tim10 allows you to upload up to five terabytes and store your videos in one secure place, add up to 10 team members to your account for easy collaboration, and gather feedback with seamless review tools. You can even add clickable calls to action and capture email addresses directly in the player, which can help you generate leads and drive conversion for whatever you're trying to optimize, such as a newsletter or a sales page. Check out vimeo.com/tim10 to save 10 percent on Vimeo Business https://vimeo.com/tim10. This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and now has more than $2.5B under management. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it's all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they'll show you for free the exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Well worth a few minutes to explore: wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim.

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. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Now would be the appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 02

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Vimeo, specifically a new offering called Vimeo Business. I've done a lot of collaboration with these guys. Vimeo Business has all of the prior benefits of Vimeo Pro, including VIP support. Whether you make videos for a living, run your own company, like yours truly, or simply want to amp up your video marketing, Video Business is here to help. They have more than 280 million creators and viewers worldwide. And Vimeo Business makes it easier to share your videos with a global audience and connect with professional video makers to bring your stories to life. So if you need assistance, it's there. You can also upload up to five terabytes and store your videos in one secure place. You could add up to 10 team members to your account for easy collaboration and gather feedback with seamless review tools.

• 1:08Tim Ferriss?

  You can add clickable calls to action and, perhaps most interesting to me, capture email addresses directly in the player. This can help you generate leads and drive conversion for whatever you're trying to optimize, say for a newsletter or, in fact, a sales page of some type. Video Business helps you optimize your videos by tracking viewer engagement and drop-off, so you can then modify your approach or creative moving forward and improve it. And it connects to Google Analytics for even more insights. So check it out. Go to vimeo.com/tim10 to save 10% on Vimeo Business. That's vimeo.com/tim10.

• 1:50Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set-it-and-forget-it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years, and they now have more than $2.5 billion under Management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is, why? Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra wealthy, but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, etc. And I'll come back to that in a

• 2:31Tim Ferriss?

  second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim. Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. And here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis, but normally aren't. Great investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned,

• 3:14Tim Ferriss?

  since it's using software instead of retail locations, etc., can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible. Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees. For everything, they charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first 15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on the show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials. So I couldn't be

• 3:57Tim Ferriss?

  a user and have them on the podcast. But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now, back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account. But just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free. There's no downside that I can think of.

• 4:31Tim Ferriss?

  Hello ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all types, to tease out the habits, routines, and so on, that you can apply and test yourself in your own life. This episode is a little bit different. It's special because it doesn't focus on the lessons of one particular person. Instead, I'm going to explore the tips and tricks, and really the framework, that I've used all along the way to learn just about any skill. And this is the meta-skill of meta-learning. Learning how to learn, in other words. And in particular, I'm going to share techniques that can help you, even if you're subpar at

• 5:13Tim Ferriss?

  something, or a rote beginner, to take the smartest first steps, and also use 80/20 analysis and so on, to accelerate your progress. I'll share the story of how I became fascinated with all of this. We will dig into swimming, Michael Phelps, and beyond, and also about how learning any skill can be as simple as the acronym DISSS. And we will get into that. This is adapted in audio from The 4-Hour Chef, of course, which is a cookbook, but not really a cookbook. It is a book on accelerated learning disguised as a cookbook, and it's a big honk and doorstop. You can check it out if you like.

• 5:57Tim Ferriss?

  So without further ado, as I always say, please enjoy this episode on meta-learning.

• 6:05Tim Ferriss?

  Meta, or meta-learning. Meta is where you will learn to mimic the world's fastest learners. It is possible to become world-class in just about anything in six months or less. That's based on everything I've done, everything I've seen. Armed with the right framework, you can seemingly perform miracles, whether with Spanish, swimming, or anything in between. Smart Design became one of the top industrial design firms in the world by being, you guessed it, smart. With locations in New York, San Francisco, and Barcelona, Smart Design represents clients ranging from Burton Snowboards to Starbucks. The company has also been strategic partners with OXO International since 1989.

• 6:47Tim Ferriss?

  That ubiquitous line of Good Grips kitchenware with the comfy black handles? The ones that cover an entire wall at Bed Bath & Beyond? Yeah, they made those. In the documentary ObjectiveFied, Dan Formosa, PhD, then with Smart Design's research department, explained one of the first steps in its innovation process. Quote, "We have clients come to us and say, 'Here's our average consumer.' For instance, female, she's 34 years old, she has 2.3 kids. And we listen politely and say, 'Well, that's great, but we don't care about that person. What we really need to do to design is look at the extremes. The weakest, or the person with arthritis, or the athlete, or the strongest, the fastest person.

• 7:29Tim Ferriss?

  Because if we understand what the extremes are, the middle will take care of itself." End quote. In other words, the extremes inform the mean, but not vice versa. That "average user" can be deceptive or even meaningless, just as all averages can be. Here's a statistician joke for your next hot date. Person A: "What happens when Bill Gates walks into a bar of 55 people?" Person B: "I don't know. What?" Person A: "The average net worth jumps to more than $1 billion." Well, it's not exactly Chris Rock, but the joke makes an important point. Sometimes, it pays to model the outliers, not flatten them into averages. This isn't limited to business.

• 8:13Tim Ferriss?

  Take, for instance, this seemingly average 132-pound girl who ended up anything but average. Note to listener, imagine average-looking high school girl here. Her picture was sent to me by Barry Ross, a sprint coach, or track and field coach, who creates world record-breaking athletes to illustrate an ab exercise called the torture twist. He nonchalantly added on the phone, "Oh yeah, and she deadlifts more than 400 pounds for repetitions." What? For those of you not familiar with the deadlift... Google Mark Bell. Even more impressive, she developed this otherworldly power the wrong way, or at least according to all conventions. Rather than train the conventional full-range of motion, she utilized only the weakest-range

• 8:58Tim Ferriss?

  of motion, lifting the bar to knee height and then lowering it. Total muscular tension, actual weight lifting, was limited to five minutes per week. This all makes our average-looking high schooler extreme. But the real question is, was she an exception? In the outside world, absolutely. Even in track and field, she was a total freak. Had she been thrown into a study with 40 randomly-selected female sprinters, she would have been a ridiculous exception. Must have been a measurement error, then the baby would get thrown out with the bathwater. But, WWWBS, that is, what would Warren Buffett say? I suspect the Oracle of Omaha would repeat what he said at Columbia University in 1984

• 9:42Tim Ferriss?

  when mocking proponents of the efficient-market hypothesis. First, he pointed out that, yes, value investors, that is devotees of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, who consistently beat the market are outliers. But, then he posed a question, which I've condensed here. Quote, "What if there were a nationwide competition in coin flipping? 225 million flippers total, then the population of the US, each flipping once per morning, and we found a select few, say 215 people, who'd flip 20 straight-winning flips? Flips where the result was guessed correctly, on 20 mornings." Then he continued, emphasis mine, "Some business school professor will probably be

• 10:23Tim Ferriss?

  rude enough to bring up the fact that if 225 million orangutans had engaged in a similar exercise, the results would be much the same: 215 egotistical orangutans with 20 straight-winning flips. There are some important differences in the examples of value investors I'm going to present. For one thing, if A, you had taken 225 million orangutans, distributed roughly as the US population is, if B, 215 winners were left after 20 days, and, here's Tim Ferriss emphasis, if C, you found that 40 came from a particular zoo in Omaha, you would be pretty sure you were on to something." End of emphasis. So you'd probably go out and ask the zookeeper about what he's feeding them, whether they had special exercises, what books they read, and who knows what else.

• 11:08Tim Ferriss?

  More tymperous emphasis. That is, if you found any really extraordinary concentrations of success, you might want to see if you could identify concentrations of unusual characteristics that might be causal factors. So, back to our sprint coach Barry Ross. He has a most unusual zoo. In fact, he can engineer mutants at will. His best female distance runner has deadlifted 415 pounds at a body weight of 132 pounds. His youngest male lifter, 11 years old, has deadlifted 225 pounds at a body weight of 108 pounds. So, our extreme high schooler is the standard in his gym. This naturally led me to ask, could I, a non-elite runner and an average, possibly replicate her results?

• 11:53Tim Ferriss?

  I tried, and it worked flawlessly. In less than 12 weeks, with no coach and following a printout from Barry, I went from a max deadlift of 300 pounds to more than 650 pounds. Just about everything you need to know about metal learning can be understood, or at least observed, by watching two videos on YouTube related to freestyle swimming, of all things. The first is from Michael Phelps, you probably know that name, and the second is from Shinji Takeuchi, a much lesser-known name. Phelps makes sense, but who the hell is Shinji Takeuchi? Phelps learned to swim at the tender age of seven. Shinji, on the other hand, learned to swim at the well-ripened age of 37.

• 12:38Tim Ferriss?

  More interesting to me, Shinji learned to swim by doing practically the opposite of Phelps. Shinji drives his lead arm forward, almost two feet beneath the water, rather than grabbing near the surface and pulling. Rather than focusing on kicking, Shinji appears to eliminate it altogether. No paddleboard workouts to be found. Shinji often trains freestyle stroke with closed fists, or by pointing his index finger forward and keeping the arms entirely underwater. Phelps, on the other hand, looks like he's attached to an outboard motor. It's a heroic output of horsepower. Shinji has been watched millions of times because he offers the flip side: effortless propulsion. So who would you rather have as a teacher? Phelps or Shinji?

• 13:21Tim Ferriss?

  Arthur Jones, founder of Nautilus, when asked how to gain muscular mass quickly, recommend the following, and I paraphrase. Approach the biggest bodybuilder at your gym, ideally a ripped 250 to 300 pound professional, and politely ask him for detailed advice. Then, do precisely the opposite. If the T-Rex-sized meathead recommends 10 sets, do one set. If he recommends post-workout protein, consume pre-workout protein, so on and so forth. Jones' tongue-in-cheek parable was used to highlight one of the dangers of hero worship, and that is, the top 1% often succeed despite how they train, not because of it. Superior genetics, or a luxurious full-time schedule make up for a lot.

• 14:06Tim Ferriss?

  This is not to say that Phelps isn't technical. Everything needs to be flawless to win 18 gold medals, of course. It's the people a few rungs down, the best you realistically have access to, whom you need to be wary of. And then there's the second danger of hero worship. Career specialists often can't externalize what they've internalized. Second nature is very hard to teach. And this is true across industries. As Eric Koselmann, executive chef of Kokari, my favorite Greek restaurant in San Francisco, said to me, I've been my novice questioning, "The problem with me is I've always been a cook. I don't remember ever wanting to be something else." Daniel Birka, a designer at Google and the co-founder of a tech startup called Milk, echoes the sentiment.

• 14:51Tim Ferriss?

  "I don't think I'd be particularly good at teaching the basics of CSS," a language used for the look and formatting of webpages. "Now I do 12 things at once and they all make sense. I can't remember which of those was confusing when I was just starting out." These top 0.01%, who've spent a lifetime honing their craft, are invaluable in later stages, but they are not ideal if you want to rocket off the ground floor. The Shinji Takeuchi's, on the other hand. The rare anomalies who've gone from zero to the global top 5% record time, despite mediocre raw materials, are worth their weight in gold. I've spent the last 15 years finding the Shinjis of the world and trying to model them.

• 15:33Tim Ferriss?

  Inhaling hormones: What could go wrong? My interest in accelerated learning started at a biochemical level. In 1996, as a planned neuroscience major at Princeton University, I began experimenting with a panoply of smart drugs, otherwise known as nootropics. I'd imported to the US under the FDA Personal Importation Policy. Footnote: This is not something I recommend. One mistake and you're illegally trafficking drugs which the federales frown upon. Back to the text. After four weeks, I'd fine-tuned a routine for Mandarin Chinese character quizzes. Fifteen minutes prior to class, I would administer two hits of vaporized desmopressin in each nostril.

• 16:14Tim Ferriss?

  Desmopressin is a synthetic version of vasopressin, a naturally occurring antidiuretic and peptide hormone. As a nasal spray, it's often prescribed for children who bed wet past a certain age. Not my problem. I was more interested in its off-label applications for short-term memory. Putting theory into practice, it looked like this. Step number one: Two hits of desmopressin in each nostril. Step number two: Flip through characters in a book called Chinese Prima: Character Text almost as quickly as I could turn the pages. Step number three: Score 100% on the quiz five to 10 minutes later. Footnote: If you'd like the opposite effect, uh, go binge drinking, perhaps.

• 16:57Tim Ferriss?

  Excessive alcohol inhibits vasopressin release, which explains the peeing every 10 minutes followed by time travel, i.e. blocking out or forgetting everything. Back to my quizzes. This method was fantastically reliable, but after a few months of testing hydrogen, oxoracetam, and combinations of dozens of other drugs, surprise, surprise, headaches set in and a thought occurred: Perhaps snorting antidiuretic hormones isn't the best long-term strategy. And, my dorm bathroom had also started to resemble a meth lab, which was repelling girls a very high priority at the time. So I shifted my obsession from molecules to process. Was it possible to develop a sequence, or a blueprint, that would allow me to learn anything faster?

• 17:41Tim Ferriss?

  Any subject, any sport, anything at all? I suspected so. I'd glimpsed one piece of the puzzle four years earlier, in 1992.

• 17:52Tim Ferriss?

  Material Beats Method. In 1992, I was fifteen years old and had landed in Japan for my first extended trip abroad. I would be an exchange student at Seikei Gakuen High School for one year. For those interested, it's in Kijijouchi. On the first day of classes, I reported to the faculty lounge in my required navy blue uniform, looking like a West Point cadet, with the high collar, the whole nine yards. I nervously awaited my student chaperone, who would be taking me to my home class, the group of forty or so students I'd be spending most of my time with. One of the faculty members noticed me sitting in a corner and approached. "Ah, Timu-kun," he said with a wave. "Kun" is kind of like "son," but used to address male inferiors. "Kore wa..." "This is..."

• 18:36Tim Ferriss?

  he said as he pointed at a mysterious piece of paper. I could barely manage greetings, so he hailed an English teacher to explain the document. The page, written entirely in characters I couldn't read, detailed my daily schedule, as it turned up. Then the English teacher translated. "Physics, mathematics, world history, kobun, eh, traditional Japanese," and on it went. That's when panic set in. I'd only had a few months of rudimentary Japanese prior to arrival, and my teachers in the US had reassured me with, "Don't worry, you'll have plenty of Japanese classes." Now, irretrievably in Tokyo, I realized I was dealing with a major lost-in-translation screw-up. Quote, "Japanese classes hadn't meant language classes."

• 19:19Tim Ferriss?

  For the entire year ahead, I was to attend normal Japanese high school classes alongside 5,000 Japanese students prepping for university exams. And so this is when I pooped my pampers. I proceeded to flounder horribly, just as I'd failed with Spanish in junior high. Sadly, as a lot of people conclude, it seemed I was simply bad at languages. Six months into my exchange, I was ready to go home. Then Lady Luck smiled upon me. I stumbled upon a poster while looking for the Book of Five Rings, written by Miyamoto Musashi, in the Kinokuniya Bookstore in Shinjuku. This poster, which I still have on my wall 20 years later, contains all 1,945 of the Jōyo Kanji,

• 20:05Tim Ferriss?

  the characters designated for basic literacy by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Most newspapers and magazines limit themselves to using the Jōyo Kanji. So, for all practical purposes, this means that if you know the meaning-rich characters on this one poster, you know Japanese, including all the most important verbs. Japanese on one page! So to me, holy shit, that was quite the discovery. Language is infinitely expansive, much like cooking, and therefore horribly overwhelming if unfiltered. This poster was a revelation. It brought to light the most important lesson of language learning, and that is, what you study is more important than how you study.

• 20:49Tim Ferriss?

  Students are subordinate to materials, much like novice cooks are subordinate to recipes. If you select the wrong material, the wrong textbook, the wrong group of words, it doesn't matter how much or how well you study. It doesn't matter how good your teacher is. One must find the highest-frequency material. Material beats method. The authors of most Japanese-language books appeared to think that reading the Asahi Shimbun, that is, the Asahi newspaper, was the only litmus test for Japanese mastery. For a high-school student, and even now for that matter, reading the Asahi Shimbun is about as interesting as watching paint dry. Fortunately, as long as you hit the highest-frequency material, I learned that content matters very, very little.

• 21:33Tim Ferriss?

  My panacea, it turned out, was Judo textbooks. Though the vocabulary, think "ingredients", was highly specialized, I eclipsed the grammatical ability of four- and five-year students of Japanese after two months of studying Judo. Why? Because the grammar, think "cooking methods", were universal. The principles transferred to everything else.

• 21:56Tim Ferriss?

  I came back to the US after Tokyo and scored higher on the Japanese SAT II than a friend who was a native speaker. By high school graduation in 1995, I'd developed two simple lenses through which I viewed language learning methods and learning in general. Number one, is the method effective? Have you narrowed down your material to the highest frequency? Second, is the method sustainable? Have you chosen a schedule and subject matter that you can stick with, or at least put up with, until reaching fluency? Will you actually swallow the pill you've prescribed yourself? In other words. Alas, there is still one missing piece: efficiency. If effectiveness is doing the right things, efficiency is doing things right. Martin Luther King Jr.

• 22:41Tim Ferriss?

  famously remarked, "That justice too long delayed is justice denied." Learning is similar. Speed determines its value. Even with the best material, if your timed fluency is 20 years, your return on investment, ROI, is terrible. Though 1996 heralded itself with vasopressin and its cousins, taking me to the biochemical level for immediate payoff, it wasn't until 1999 that I returned to the hardest part, the most slippery element of the puzzle: the method. Again, thinking of efficiency. The catalyst came serendipitously one evening on Witherspoon Street in downtown Princeton. I was heads down working on my senior thesis, a sexy tome entitled, "Acquisition of Japanese Kanji: Conventional Practice and Mnemonic Supplementation."

• 23:26Tim Ferriss?

  And I'd developed a phone friendship with Dr. Bernie Feria, then director of curriculum and development at the world headquarters of Berlitz International, conveniently located only miles from campus. He'd invited me out to a jacket and tie dinner, and I put on my fanciest: corduroys, an ill-fitting sports coat, and a counterfeit polo shirt. It was a glorious feast, and Bernie was a gracious host. He knew his languages, and the red wine flowed, which I couldn't afford at the time, by the way. We shared war stories from the linguistic trenches, lessons learned, comedic mistakes, and cultural faux pas. Bernie shared his French adventures, and I told him about the time I asked my Japanese hostmother to rape me at 8:00 AM the next morning.

• 24:06Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, just one vowel off, but okasu, to rape, was not okosu, to wake up. He roared, and it went on and on, and by the time dessert came around, Bernie paused and said, "You know, it's a shame you're not graduating earlier, as we have this project starting soon you'd be perfect for." The project was helping redesign their introductory Japanese curriculum, which doubled as an opportunity to revisit their English curriculum, which then accounted for 70% of their roughly 5 million lessons a year at 320 language centers around the globe. Imagine wandering into your local guitar shop and approaching the high school intern behind the counter. "Hey kid, how would you like to tune the, uh, London Philharmonic Orchestra? They have a live gig in Central Park next week

• 24:49Tim Ferriss?

  and it'll be broadcast into 50 countries. You in?" I felt like that kid. So, much to perhaps my parents' chagrin, at least briefly, I left Princeton in the middle of my senior year, just months before graduation, to pursue this love of language. I worked for Berlitz, then, itching to test new ideas immediately, traveled to Taiwan, where many of the pieces started to fall into place for DIS, which I'll explain shortly. Then I did something odd. I applied the same DIS process to learning kickboxing and, less than two months later, won the Chinese National Kickboxing Championships at 165 pounds. Flash forward to 2005. I'd spent six years testing different approaches to natural languages. Here's what my language acquisition times looked like in order,

• 25:34Tim Ferriss?

  using standardized testing for all but Chinese. Japanese: one year. Mandarin Chinese: six months. German: three months. Spanish: eight weeks. Now, you must recall that at age 15, I'd failed to learn enough Spanish to hold a basic conversation. Now people were lauding me for being "good at languages" or congratulating me on being "gifted", it was pretty hysterical to me. I just had a better instruction manual, had nothing to do with my raw attributes. In 2005, I traveled the world as a digital nomad, an experience that I later chronicled in The 4-Hour Work Week. I focused on language to conquer the loneliness. This ranged from Irish Gaelic to Norwegian to German to Spanish,

• 26:19Tim Ferriss?

  including el un fardo, dialect in Argentina, anything I came into contact with. The refinement continued through 2010 and to the present. I vetted the process on Turkish, Greek, and other languages over shorter one-to-two week periods. The DISSS process I used was effective for acquiring declarative, that is, facts and figures knowledge. For instance, memorizing serial numbers, remembering where your car is parked. It also worked incredibly well for what's known as procedural or action knowledge. For instance, practicing judo, riding a bike, driving a car. It even worked for hybrids, such as writing Chinese characters. None of this is said to impress you. It's said to impress upon you, however, that there is a repeatable process

• 27:04Tim Ferriss?

  that hundreds of readers, that is, of my blog and other books, have used to replicate my results. It is possible to become world-class and to the top 5% of performers in the world in almost any subject within 6 to 12 months, or even, in some cases, 6 to 12 weeks. There is a recipe, and the real recipe in this book, and that is DISSS. D-I-S-S-S. The recipe for learning any skill is encapsulated in this acronym. How to remember it? Ah, the 1980s, cultural contribution to modern English. DISSS, to diss someone. Just remember DISSS with an extra S, that is, D-I-S-S-S. If you're a gamer and no PS3, that is PlayStation 3, just think of DS3.

• 27:49Tim Ferriss?

  So here's the sequence. D stands for deconstruction. And in that step, you answer the question, "What are the minimal learnable units? The Lego blocks I should be starting with?" The first S is selection. "Which 20% of the blocks should I focus on for 80% or more of the outcomes I want?" You may have noted that we ignored the I, so just use it to remember the word, that's it. Second S is sequencing. "In what order should I learn the blocks?" And then the last S is stakes. "How do I set up stakes?" S-T-A-K-E-S, that is, not steaks that you cook. "How do I set up stakes to create real consequences and guarantee I follow the program?" CAFE.

• 28:34Tim Ferriss?

  That's uppercase C, lowercase a, uppercase F and E. There are several secondary principles that, while very helpful, I use all three constantly, are not required. Here, CAFE is the acronym, so you can think of it as a secondary framework for accelerated learning even further. First C, the only C I suppose, stands for compression. Can I encapsulate the most important 20% into an easily graspable one-pager? F, frequency. How frequently should I practice? Can I cram? And what should my schedule look like? What growing pains can I predict? What is the minimum effective dose, otherwise known as the MED, for volume? And the E stands for encoding. How do I anchor the new material to what I already know for rapid recall?

• 29:19Tim Ferriss?

  Acronyms like DIS and CAFE are examples of encoding. Deconstruction is best thought of as exploration. This is where we throw a lot on the wall to see what sticks, where we flip things upside down and look at what the outliers are doing differently, and also what they're not doing at all. First and foremost is where we answer the question, how do I break this amorphous so-called skill into small, manageable pieces? Just as with literal deconstruction, taking a building apart, for instance, or demolishing something, breaking it apart, whatever it might be, dissecting something, you need the right tool for the job. And in our case, one of the best tactics is interviewing. Here is a real-world example of how I've used interviewing to learn just about any

• 30:03Tim Ferriss?

  skill, and I include the exact questions that I asked and still ask. A while back, this is probably a few years ago, I was sharing drinks with startup vet Babak Nivvi. You may have met the guy, co-founder of Angelist, angel.co, you can check it out. We were discussing the deconstruction of various skills when he randomly suggested, if you ever want to deconstruct basketball, I have the DVD for you, Better Basketball. And that is how a lot got started. Now, ever since 7th grade, when a PE teacher told me I dribbled like a caveman, which I did, I'd written "basketball" off. So, I said, "Thanks, but no thanks," and that was my answer to Nivee. But, lo and behold, 3 years later, I found myself watching a Lakers game with my friend

• 30:48Tim Ferriss?

  Kevin Rose and his wife, Daria, a Lakers fanatic. Their dog even had a Lakers jersey on. And it's then that I had an epiphany. Even if I have zero interest in playing basketball, perhaps learning the fundamentals over a weekend would allow me to love watching it. That's when I asked Nivee to point me to the master, Rick Torbit, the founder of Better Basketball. Rick has coached entire teams to shoot better than 40% for 3 consecutive seasons. To put that in perspective, in the last decade, only 1 NBA team, the Phoenix Suns, came close to 40% from the 3-point line. To dissect his unusual success and his process, I started by emailing a bunch of interview questions, the answers to which I'll share with you

• 31:31Tim Ferriss?

  shortly. But let's start with the general process. First, create a list of people to interview. Seems self-evident, I suppose. If you're going to go for high-level athletics, for instance, 1, use Wikipedia to find out who was the best, or second-best, which is often ideal, in the world 5 to 10 years ago, or 2 to 4 Olympics ago, since those currently in the limelight are less likely to respond. Number 2, search Google for, quote, "insert your city, insert sport, insert Olympian or world champion or world record," end quote. Hypothetically, I might look for "San Francisco bobsled Olympian," which gets me to a team doctor, perfect for a first lead.

• 32:13Tim Ferriss?

  Next step, make first contact and provide context. "Dude, do me a favor" is not a compelling pitch, as much as I receive it myself. The proposed interview should somehow benefit your contact. The path of least resistance is to freelance write for a blog, newsletter, or local newspaper and do a piece on this person and his or her methods, or to quote him or her on a related topic as an expert, for instance, "expert predictions for Winter Olympics," or something like that. Once you're in the door, ask your expert all the questions that you'd like. Are you terrible at writing? No problem. Make it a Q&A format and simply print the relevant questions and answers. On the other hand, if they coach and do hourly consultations, you could also just pay for a telephone or Skype session. Last step, ask your questions.

• 32:58Tim Ferriss?

  When I was looking into ultra endurance for the 4-Hour Body, I sent different combinations of the following questions to people like the legendary Scott Jurick, who won the Western States 100, a mountainous 100-mile race, a record seven times. Who is good at ultra running despite being poorly built for it? Who is good at this who shouldn't be? Who are the most controversial or unorthodox runners or trainers? Why? What do you think of them? Who are the most impressive lesser-known teachers? What makes you different? Who trained you or influenced you? Have you trained others to do this? Have they replicated your results? What are the biggest mistakes and myths that you see in ultra-running training?

• 33:42Tim Ferriss?

  What are the biggest wastes of time? This is a really important one. What are your favorite instructional books or resources on the subject? If people had to teach themselves, what would you suggest they use? If you were to train me for four weeks, or a, fill-in-the-blank, competition, and had a million dollars on the line, what would the training look like? What if I trained for eight weeks? In the case of basketball, I started by sending Rick four questions related to shooting. Number one. First, what are the biggest mistakes novices make when shooting or practicing shooting? What are the biggest misuses of time? That should sound familiar. Number two. Even at the pro level, what mistakes are most common? Number three.

• 34:26Tim Ferriss?

  What are your key principles for better, more consistent shooting? What are they for foul shots, free throws that is, versus three-pointers? What does the progression of exercises look like? That's the fourth and the final. I received his email responses and, two days later, hit nine out of 10 free throws for the first time in my life. Then, on Christmas Eve, I went bowling and realized that many of the same principles applied. Remember, we talked about transfer. I scored 124, my first time over 100, and an Everest above my usual 50 to 70 points. Embarrassing, yes. Upon returning home, I immediately went outside and sunk the first two three-pointers of my life. For Lakers games with the Roses, I now see a ballet of kinesthetic beauty that was completely

• 35:11Tim Ferriss?

  invisible before. That is a hell of a lot of fun.

• 35:16Tim Ferriss?

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

• 35:58Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set it and forget it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple and world famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and they now have more than $2.5 billion under management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is why?

• 36:43Tim Ferriss?

  Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra wealthy but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, etc. And I'll come back to that in a second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim. Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they put you in. And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. And here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis but normally aren't. Great investing.

• 37:25Tim Ferriss?

  A marathon, not a sprint, and little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, etc., can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible. Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees. For everything, they charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first $15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them.

• 38:09Tim Ferriss?

  In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal: they wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials, so I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast. But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now, back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account. But just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim.

• 38:52Tim Ferriss?

  It's fast, it's free, there's no downside that I can think of. This episode is brought to you by Vimeo, specifically a new offering called Vimeo Business. I've done a lot of collaboration with these guys. Vimeo Business has all of the prior benefits of Vimeo Pro, including VIP support. Whether you make videos for a living, run your own company, like yours truly, or simply want to amp up your video marketing, Video Business is here to help. They have more than 280 million creators and viewers worldwide, and Vimeo Business makes it easier to share your videos with a global audience and connect with professional video makers to bring your stories to life. So if you need assistance, it's there. You can also upload up to 5 terabytes and store your videos in one secure place. You could add up to 10.

• 39:35Tim Ferriss?

  Ten team members to your account for easy collaboration and gather feedback with seamless review tools. You can add clickable calls to action and perhaps most interesting to me, capture email addresses directly in the player. This can help you generate leads and drive conversion for whatever you are trying to optimize, say for a newsletter or in fact, a sales page of some type. Video Business helps you optimize your videos by tracking viewer engagement and drop-off so you can then modify your approach or creative moving forward and improve it. And it connects to Google Analytics for even more insights. So check it out. Go to vimeo.com/tim10 to save 10% on Vimeo Business. That's vimeo.com/tim10.