#105: 5 Morning Rituals That Help Me Win the Day

This episode of The Tim Ferriss Show is a bit of an experiment. Most the time, I interview many world-class people, and I ask them many, many questions to try and figure out what makes them good at what they do. Many of you have wondered what would happen if I flipped the script and had to answer my own questions. In this episode, I decided to do just that and answer one of your most common questions: what does your morning routine look like? What you'll find here are the five things I do every morning. These are the five things I'd like to accomplish on an "ideal day." If I can hit at least three of these items, then I've won the morning. And, as the saying goes, "If you win the morning, you win the day." Let me know if you like this type of episode by responding to me on Twitter (@tferriss http://www.twitter.com/tferriss) or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss. Please let me know if you want more, never want to hear these answers again, or suggest another question you'd like me to answer. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last 2 years, and now has more than $2.5B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it's all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams Check out wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they'll show you—for free–exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim. Mandatory disclaimer: Wealthfront Inc. is an SEC registered Investment Advisor. Investing in securities involves risks, and there is the possibility of losing money. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Please visit Wealthfront dot com to read their full disclosure. This episode is also sponsored by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results http://99designs.com/tim. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run…

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

• 0:01Tim 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.

• 0:23Tim 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 second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim.

• 1:08Tim Ferriss?

  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, since it's using software instead of retail locations, etc.,

• 1:50Tim Ferriss?

  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 830 $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on this 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 a user and have them on the podcast.

• 2:33Tim Ferriss?

  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. Now, I do have to read a mandatory disclaimer. Wealthfront, Inc. is an SEC-registered investment advisor. Investing in securities involves risks, and there's the possibility of losing money. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Please visit wealthfront.com to read their full disclosure. So, check it out, guys.

• 3:17Tim Ferriss?

  This is one of the hottest, most innovative companies coming out of Silicon Valley, and they're killing it. They've become massively popular. Just take a look, see what portfolio they would create for you, and you can use that information however you want. Wealthfront.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by 99designs, your one-stop shop for all things graphic design-related. I've used 99designs for everything from banner ads to book covers, including sketches and mock-ups that led to The Four Hour Body, which later became number one New York Times, number one Wall Street Journal. And the brainstorming, a lot of it took place with designers from around the world. And here's how it works.

• 3:58Tim Ferriss?

  Whether you need a t-shirt, a business card, a website, an app thumbnail, whatever it might be, you submit that project, and designers from around the world will send you sketches and mock-ups and designs. You choose your favorite, and you have an original that you love, or you get your money back. It's that straightforward. And many of you who are listening have already used it and created some amazing things that I'll be sharing in the future. But in the meantime, if you want to see some of my competitions, some of the book covers, as well as get a free $99 upgrade, go to 99designs.com/tim. That's 99designs.com/tim.

• 4:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh. Pretty bird. Hello. Meow. This is Tim Ferriss. Sorry for that bit of inspiration from the animal realm. I'm reading a book by Joseph Campbell. It's actually a collection of volumes, The Way of the Animal Powers, historical atlas of world mythology is the first. It's massive, but really amazing, and nobody beside Joseph Campbell really could have written this book, I don't think. But I digress. This episode of the Tim Ferriss Show is a bit of an experiment. Typically, I interview people who are world-class at what they do, and I ask them many, many questions to try to pull out, to tease out, the tactics, tools, habits, routines, et cetera, that make them very good at what they do.

• 5:20Tim Ferriss?

  And you have, as listeners, asked me many times, "Why don't you answer your own questions?" And I wanted to answer one of them that I get asked a lot, and that is, "What does your morning routine look like? What do the first 60 to 90 minutes of your day look like?" So I'm going to answer that, and you can let me know if you like this type of short episode. So hit me up on Twitter or Facebook, Twitter @Tferriess, or on Facebook, facebook.com/TimFerriss with two Rs and two S's. And let me know if you like this, want more of them, hate them, never want me to do one again, whatever. So I am going to describe the five things that I do every morning. Now, the five things I do every morning would be on an ideal day.

• 6:04Tim Ferriss?

  The reality is, if I hit three out of these five, I've won the morning. And if you win the morning, you win the day. And I'm not the first person to say that, but I think it is a good encapsulation of how to think about morning routines. It is setting up your entire day for positive momentum and fewer distractions. Number one, let's get started. Meow. Number one is you make your bed, and I had not done this for my entire life, and then chanced upon meeting a gentleman, a monk from India, named Dandapani. And his website is dandapani.org. I met him at Mastermind Talks in Toronto in 2011, and he convinced me to start making my bed, and I was going through...

• 6:46Tim Ferriss?

  Through a very scattered period in my life at that point. I felt like my energy was traveling sort of a millimeter in a million directions and wasn't being harnessed properly. And he convinced me to start making my bed. And if a monk is too much for you, if that's too woo woo, number one, I would say, open your mind, you savage. But number two, I would say, this is a common belief among many very high achieving military tacticians and folks who've been deployed. For instance, Naval Admiral William McRaven, he has spoken about this in commencement speeches. And I'll just read his explanation first. This is from a University of Texas at Austin commencement speech. Quote, "If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day.

• 7:28Tim Ferriss?

  It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter." Now, I would add to this. I would say that in my life, as a solo prener, in effect, I haven't built a large organization to support me. It's a very lean team of just a few people. There's a lot of uncertainty. There are many unpredictable problems that will always pop up, and there are a few things that help me in that type of life. Number one is reading, for instance, Marcus Aurelius and Meditations, where he prompts

• 8:08Tim Ferriss?

  himself in the morning by effectively reading or writing out, "I'm going to encounter many ungrateful rude people today, and I need to prepare myself for that inevitability." So not expecting the best, preparing for the worst, hoping for the best, but prompting yourself and preparing yourself mentally to address all this uncertainty and so on. The second is to control what you can control. No matter how shitty your day is, no matter how catastrophic it might become, you can make your bed. And that gives you the feeling, at least gives me the feeling, even in a disastrous day, that I've held on by a fingernail off the cliff and I haven't fallen. There is something I've controlled.

• 8:52Tim Ferriss?

  There is something that has maintained one hand on the driver's wheel of life. And making your bed, it's a very small thing. It doesn't have to be complicated. All I do is I have a, say, a blanket or a duvet. I don't tuck in the sheets and whatever. I kind of just hide it. I think that's a guy, typical dude move. Hide it under the blanket, pull up the blanket so that the pillows are either kind of symmetrically under or on top of the blanket, and you're done. That's it. It's very, very simple. And if you work from home, this serves double duty, especially if you work in or near your bedroom. If you see distraction externally, again, speaking personally, you end up creating an internally distracted state. At least, that's very

• 9:35Tim Ferriss?

  true for me. I'm highly visual. If I sit at a restaurant, for instance, I have to position my chair so that I'm not facing some type of TV with sports on it. I will not be able to talk to anyone. It's like taking a puppy out and having squirrels running around. I can't concentrate. So similarly, the more organized, not necessarily clean, but organized your external environment, or environments that you visit repeatedly, the less stressed you will be. And that is particularly important, in this case, with the bookends of the day. So you make your bed, you've accomplished that one tiny task, you've controlled something that you can absolutely control, and then, at the end of the day, the last experience you have is coming back to something that you've accomplished.

• 10:15Tim Ferriss?

  It's hard for me to overstate how important this ritual has become. But number one, I make my bed. Number two, I meditate. And this took me a long time to start. Those of you who have listened to this podcast for some time have noticed, I'm sure, and this was not through any attempt at planning on my part, but 80%, I would say, or so, of all of the world-class performers across all of the disciplines that we've covered have some type of meditative practice, whether that is in the gym or transcendental meditation. Arnold Schwarzenegger even did it for a year and then found those benefits to persist past that year. So he felt like he had sort of locked in a phase shift. Transcendental

• 10:57Tim Ferriss?

  meditation is one option. tm.org, you can check it out. There are things I dislike about it. I think that the amount they charge for the four-day initial course is too high. I think that there is... Some guru worship that you can steer clear of, as I did, I'm pretty secular. But it is very well tested and the teaching method is standardized. So I found this very helpful and TM is focused on a mantra and I hate that word. It's too loaded, but you basically have a sound that you repeat for a period of time with your eyes closed. You can sit comfortably or lay down. You don't have to get into the full Lotus or anything like that. And that acts effectively as white noise to block out other thoughts.

• 11:42Tim Ferriss?

  And they would probably describe this in a different way, but I will just say the practice is bringing your attention back to the mantra. So if you have a session that is a 20 minute session, I typically meditate for 21 minutes, about a minute to get settled and then 20 minutes of meditation. And if you think about that kid who punched you in sixth grade and the dick you have to have a conference call with at 4:00 PM that day, if you think about those types of things for 19 minutes or 19 and a half minutes, but you notice it and bring your attention back to the mantra, that is a successful session because the muscle you're working is bringing your attention back to something.

• 12:24Tim Ferriss?

  You are developing your powers of concentration and it is definitely like a muscle that needs continual conditioning and reinforcement. So I use TM, there are other options, Vipassana meditation. I do use some sessions where I focus on my breath, but quite frankly, I think the easiest place to start is either, and it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive, you could do both of these, Headspace app or Calm, start using guided meditations. Other good guided meditations you could check out include Tara Brach, B-R-A-C-H, who's been on this podcast, great episode, talking about a lot of these issues and topics. And Sam Harris, Sam Harris is a PhD in neuroscience.

• 13:06Tim Ferriss?

  I think it's just samharris.org, H-A-R-R-I-S. And he has a fantastic lecture on video about all of the neuroscience and philosophy behind a lot of these practices. And that is waking up. So you could check out waking up if you like. And the easiest way to find that is just to go to fourhourworkweek.com/vimeo, all spelled out. But suffice to say, I meditate first thing in the morning. Start small, rig the game so you can win it. Get in five sessions before you get too ambitious with length. So start, for instance, if you don't want to use any of that stuff, you could just start with a song that puts you in a good mood, sitting with your back supported somehow, and listening to that song as you

• 13:47Tim Ferriss?

  focus on your breathing. It could be that simple. But do five days, in other words, five daily sessions before you get too ambitious. You have to win those early sessions to establish it as a habit, so you don't have the sort of cognitive fatigue of that particular practice. In any case. So number two, transcendental meditation, or some type of meditative practice. And if you take that 10 or 20 minutes, for instance, and I find with my practice, 15 minutes is just letting the mud settle, and then the last five minutes are really where I get the benefit. It's much like training to failure in the gym. For me, you will still get benefits out of shorter sessions. But if I put in those 20 minutes, I will get

• 14:31Tim Ferriss?

  30 to 50% more done in that day with less stress. Why? Because I have already done the warm up to avoid distraction. And if I do get distracted or interrupted, I can return to my primary task more effectively. That is number two. Number three, I hang. What does this mean? I actually hang multiple times throughout the day and at night. And this is primarily to decompress my spine and also to improve grip strength. But there are a number of people you can look to for more developed thoughts on all of this. Ido

• 15:10Tim Ferriss?

  Portal is one. Ido, I-d-o, portal, P-R-T-A-L. I think I just spelled that in English. And I don't have much exposure to him, but many of the listeners of this podcast have recommended him. So I did check out one of his short articles, it might have been a video, on hang. ...throughout the day. And so I have a rig that I built in my backyard, which is one and a quarter inch. I would probably recommend most people start with one inch diameter galvanized pipe. And I bought this from Plumbing Supply and I built a pull-up rig outside in the span of about 10 minutes. And it cost, I would say, less than $150. And it is not intended for kipping, not good for kipping.

• 15:55Tim Ferriss?

  But if you want to see how I put it together, I also have some rings and then I used kayak dry bags instead of sandbags, which you can put water inside of, in fact, and use as kettlebells and so on when you're traveling, instead of using them to keep things dry. So, there's a photo, you can check it out on my Instagram, just go to instagram.com/timferris with two R's and two S's and you can check out that rig. But I will hang by my hands throughout the day for perhaps one minute at a time, just as a way of breaking up work sessions, or writing sessions, or fill in the blank. At the end of the day, particularly if I do any type of weight training that loads

• 16:38Tim Ferriss?

  the spine, I will hang upside down. And I hang upside down using teeter hang-up gravity boots. These teeter hang-up gravity boots cost around $99. I actually have multiple pairs around the country so that I don't have to travel with them because they're a hassle to travel with. So I have one pair in New York, one pair in SF, one pair in LA, that just lives at a gym, actually. It lives at a gym that I go to, because I don't have a home in LA. The purpose here, again, is to decompress and you can work up to a point where you're even holding weights for short, short periods of time, say five seconds. The gravity boots can be dangerous, so talk to your doctor, I must say this, I'm not an MD, don't play one on the internet, before doing anything like this, particularly if

• 17:23Tim Ferriss?

  you have pre-existing back conditions. Other options, so there are times when I don't want to hang upside down. Maybe I just had a big dinner, maybe I just had a bunch to drink, don't really feel like hanging upside down by myself. And perhaps getting the most miserable acid reflux of all time. In those cases, or if I just don't have a place to hang upside down, I will use something called the Lynx Back Stretcher, L-Y-N-X. And you're basically laying on the ground, locking your feet in place, and then doing a dipping motion, the top range to decompress your spine. Again, for very short periods of time, five to seven seconds, let's say. That is another option, and people do love inversion tables.

• 18:08Tim Ferriss?

  They are used widely for PT and other things. They just take up a ton of room. So I don't want half of my living room taken up with an inversion table. I don't have a garage. So I prefer to either use the boots, and you don't have to have your own pull-up rig, of course. You can go to any CrossFit gym across the country and find a bar to hang from. Or you can use this Lynx device, and I use both every day, unless I have some type of injury that precludes it. So that's number three, hang. Number four is tea. So just to do a quick recap, make my bed, sit down, meditate for 21 minutes, get up, go, jump up on the bar, hang for a couple of minutes, maybe go from one hand to the other,

• 18:50Tim Ferriss?

  maybe do a couple of toes-to-bar with straight legs, which is a CrossFit move, and then drop. Then I go in, I throw on the tea, the kettle, and I will boil water. And a lot of you tea nerds will take issue with this, but that's okay. I use a very cheap kettle here. At home, I have some fancier stuff from Breville. Makes a very good tea preparer, for instance. Well, it makes a great kettle, and they make a very good tea infuser. So if you want to get fancy, Breville, B-R-E-V-I-L-L-E, has some great stuff. But for expedience, if that's a real word, and simplicity, right here, I have one that is called Utilit Tea,

• 19:30Tim Ferriss?

  Utilit Tea, and I believe that's from Adagio, A-D-A-G-I-O. And I think it costs 20 to 40 bucks on Amazon, very easy to find. So I'll throw that on, boil water. While the water is warming up, I'll prepare my tea. And the tea I typically brew in a small glass container. It's a Rishi tea brewer, R-I-S-H-I, and that'll come up again. And I use loose leaf. And it looks like a simple French press. You could, in fact, use a French press if you wanted. And I will put in aged Pu'er tea, P-U hyphen E-R-H. This is a black tea from China. It's very peaty, smells kind of like a wet horse's ass. Why I know that is another story.

• 20:15Tim Ferriss?

  And it's very earthy, and it's an acquired taste. But I will break off a piece of this frisbee of aged dried Pu'er tea, drop it in there. I will also add turmeric and ginger tea. I usually get mine from Rishi, but you could also just shave fresh turmeric and ginger very easily, and I've done that before. If I'm sick, I will shave fresh ginger. If I'm sick, I will also add minced garlic. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So we have the Pu'er tea, we have turmeric and ginger tea. I will also add in some green tea. Now, this is where the connoisseurs of tea leaves will be like, blaspheme, blaspheme. That doesn't make any fucking sense. Blasphemy, I need some more caffeine. Anyway, blasphemy, blasphemer.

• 21:00Tim Ferriss?

  That's where I was trying to get fancy. That's what I was gonna say. And they'll get very upset because they'll say, you know, Tim Ferriss, you should really do your homework because the steeping temperatures for those teas are all different. And if you're using this blunt instrument of boiling water, you're just an idiot and giving bad advice. Well, I'll tell you what, I'm glad to be the idiot if I give people advice that's easy to follow and is the gateway drug into then exploring the complexity of tea. So let's just call a truce and keep it simple. 185 degrees is fine. So I will not pour boiling water into leaves because I can't drink boiling water, and it takes too long to cool down. So I will boil it, or you can set it to not boil, but I'll usually boil it and then just let it kind of sit there for, let's say, three to five minutes.

• 21:44Tim Ferriss?

  After three to five minutes, it's fine. It's a little too hot for me to stick my finger in for more than like a half a second, but it's plenty hot to do what I want to do. I will then let it steep for, say, the first infusion, I'll keep short, and some people will say, ah, 10 to 20 seconds. Look, I mean, let's keep life simple. I'll usually do it for, say, a minute, and then I will pour it into my mug, and my mug will have... Any number of different oils in it. My favorite is coconut oil, so virgin coconut oil I will put in my cup. It's about 70% by weight, medium chain triglycerides. I've written a blog post called, I think it's a joke, people, called Titanium Tea.

• 22:26Tim Ferriss?

  The name is just a tongue-in-cheek joke, but very similar to what you might consider bulletproof coffee. So if I have some Kerrygold butter or something like that, I might put in a little of both. But my preference is coconut oil. I just like it, and it seems to get all of my cylinders firing. So that is what I do with the tea, right? So flip it on, make it hot. I'll usually prepare my puppy's food while I'm doing that, feed the dog, and I'll do that right now by hand. Training the dog is a whole separate episode. And then I'll come back, the tea has boiled and has already cooled off, then I'll make my own tea while the dog chills in a crate and works on a kong, if you want to look that up. It has been frozen the night before. But the tea, again, has Pu'er tea. You can get all this stuff on Amazon.

• 23:12Tim Ferriss?

  Pu'er tea, and I have links in the Titanium Tea blog post if you want to check that out. So Pu'er tea, the reishi, ginger, and turmeric tea, and then a bit of green tea. And you can choose whatever green tea you like. Dragon well is quite tasty if somebody wants to try that out. It's Long Jin Cha is what it is in Chinese. L O N G is dragon, long. Jin is well. Cha is tea. C H A, second tone. So Bruce Lee, for instance, for those people interested, I'm glad you asked, is Li Xiaolong. Li Xiaolong is Li, that's his last name. Xiaolong is little dragon. That was his nickname.

• 23:55Tim Ferriss?

  There are many, many other names and action stars who have that dragon in their name. All right, I digress. So let's go through the roll call. Make the bed, meditate, hang, make the tea, sit down with the tea. And the next thing I do is journal. And there are a number of different options for journaling. I usually do one and not both. There is the five-minute journal. You should check it out. It's a great little journal, and it allows you to establish not only achievement for the day or expectations of achievement, because you're identifying your top priorities, you're identifying your top behaviors or attributes. So.

• 24:35Tim Ferriss?

  There is that component and then you're also establishing gratitude for what you already have or have done or the people around you. This is very important and it's easy to become obsessed with pushing the ball forward as a type A personality and you end up a perfectionist who is always future focused. The five minute journal is a therapeutic intervention for me at least because I am that person that allows me to not only get more done during the day but to also feel better throughout the entire day, to be a happier person, to be a more content person, which is not something that comes naturally to me. I think a lot of my drive comes from constant dissatisfaction. So this is very helpful medicine. The five minute journal, you can look it up. Funny side note, or maybe I think very cool side

• 25:20Tim Ferriss?

  note, is that that journal was created as a muse by people who read The Four Hour Workweek. So that's a very full circle fun anecdote. The other type of journaling that I also do is morning pages and I won't spend a lot of time on this, but if you simply Google Tim Ferriss morning journal, I have actually scanned examples of my own morning journals and what those look like with the morning pages specifically. And I talk about why I journal, the different reasons. And one of them is, in the case of morning pages, is to take whatever anxiety and monkey mind self-talk could interfere with the rest of the day and to trap it on the page so that I can get the fuck on with my day. And that

• 26:04Tim Ferriss?

  is it folks. So again, these are five things, but let's be realistic, I don't always hit these five because if you add them all up, it's probably anywhere from 60 to 120 minutes. Nah, that's bullshit. It's maybe 60 minutes, I would say, all said and done. You know what? Why do I keep on making such large numbers? It's not true. It's like 30 to 60 minutes. And there are days when life intervenes and you have emergencies you have to deal with, but you can always do at least one of these. And if you just tick off three, I find for me personally, that the likelihood of that day being a homerun is infinitely greater. Again, you have make your bed, you have meditate, and that can be very, very short,

• 26:49Tim Ferriss?

  just a few minutes with an app like Headspace or Calm. Then you have hang, so you can figure out a way to hang, or decompress using something like the links. Then tea, and then journal, whether that's a five-minute journal, morning pages, or something else. So, I hope you enjoyed this episode. That's all I have for you now. And let me know if you'd like more, or less, or what you would like. Please let me know on Twitter, @TFerriss, and so that's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. On Facebook, it is facebook.com/TimFerriss, with two R's and two S's. And if you like this kind of advice, or these types of findings, these types of discoveries, every Friday, I send out a very short email. It's called Five Bullet Fridays. It has five

• 27:32Tim Ferriss?

  bullets, and it contains the coolest, most useful things that I have found, or been pondering, that week. It's very small, and it's just a dose of really useful, in some cases, really hilarious stuff, before you go on to the weekend. So, if you're interested in that, just go to fourhourworkweek.com/friday, all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com/friday. Put in your email. It's free, and you can check it out. And if you don't like it, unsubscribe. That's it. Alright, folks. Let me know what you think. And as always, thank you for listening. This episode is brought to you by 99designs, your one-stop shop for all things graphic

• 28:13Tim Ferriss?

  design-related. I've used 99designs for everything from banner ads, to book covers, including sketches and mock-ups that led to The Four Hour Body, which later became number one New York Times, number one Wall Street Journal. And the brainstorming, a lot of it took place with designers from around the world. And here's how it works. Whether you need a t-shirt, a business card, a website, an app thumbnail, whatever it might be, you submit that project, and designers from around the world will send you sketches and mock-ups and designs. You choose your favorite, and you have an original that you love, or you get your money back. It's that straightforward. And many of you who are listening have already used it and created some amazing things that I'll be sharing in the future. But in the meantime, if you want to see some of my competitions, some of the book covers, as

• 28:58Tim Ferriss?

  well as get a free $99 upgrade, go to 99designs.com/Tim. That's 99designs.com/Tim.

• 29:08Tim 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 second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim.

• 29:53Tim Ferriss?

  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, since it's using software instead of retail locations, etc.,

• 30:35Tim Ferriss?

  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. 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.

• 31:18Tim Ferriss?

  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. Now, I do have to read a mandatory disclaimer. Wealthfront, Inc. is an SEC-registered investment advisor. Investing in securities involves risks and there's the possibility of losing money. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Please visit wealthfront.com to read their full disclosure. So, check

• 32:02Tim Ferriss?

  it out, guys. This is one of the hottest, most innovative companies coming out of Silicon Valley, and they're killing it. They've become massively popular. Just take a look, see what portfolio they would create for you, and you can use that information however you want. Wealthfront.com/tim.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  If you want more of the Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to fourhourblog.com, F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com, where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter. It's twitter.com/tferriss. That's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. Or on Facebook at facebook.com/timferriss. Until next time, thanks for listening.