Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity

Gretchen Rubin https://gretchenrubin.com/ (@gretchenrubin https://twitter.com/gretchenrubin) is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Four Tendencies https://www.amazon.com/Four-Tendencies-Indispensable-Personality-Profiles/dp/1524760919/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8, Better Than Before https://www.amazon.com/Better-Than-Before-Habits--Procrastinate/dp/0385348630/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8, The Happiness Project https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Project-Revised-Aristotle-Generally/dp/0062414852/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8, and Happier at Home https://www.amazon.com/Happier-Home-Self-Control-Experiments-Everyday/dp/0307886794/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8. She has an enormous readership, both in print and online, and her books have sold three million copies worldwide, in more than thirty languages. On her popular weekly podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin https://gretchenrubin.com/podcasts/, she discusses good habits and happiness with her sister Elizabeth Craft; they've been called the "Click and Clack of podcasters." Her podcast was named in iTunes's lists of "Best Podcasts of 2015" and was named in the Academy of Podcasters "Best Podcasts of 2016." Fast Company named Gretchen Rubin to its list of Most Creative People in Business, and she's a member of Oprah's SuperSoul 100. Enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Shure http://www.shure.com/tim. Shure is the brand behind my favorite headphones — the SE846. Shure has been trusted by musicians and sound experts for years, and I use Shure equipment to help record each episode of the podcast. The SE846 earphones http://www.shure.com/tim feature a groundbreaking low-pass filter that delivers extended high-end clarity and unparalleled low-end performance of a true subwoofer without sacrificing clarity or detail of mids or highs. Go to shure.com/tim http://www.shure.com/tim and use the coupon code "TIM" at checkout to save $100 on these phenomenal headphones through January 2018. This podcast is also brought to you by FreshBooks https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email. FreshBooks is the #1 cloud bookkeeping software, which is used by a ton of the start-ups I advise and many of the contractors I work with. It is the easiest way to send invoices, get paid, track your time, and track your clients. FreshBooks https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email tells you when your clients have viewed your invoices, helps you customize your invoices, track your hours, automatically organize your receipts, have late payment reminders sent automatically and much more. Right now you can get a free month of complete and unrestricted use https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email. You do not need a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month and see how the brand new Freshbooks can change your business, go to FreshBooks.com/Tim https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email and enter "Tim Ferriss https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email" in the "how did you hear about us" section.

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

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Now would be an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Why, hello there, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. You may also be listening to this on the usually shorter-form Tribe of Mentors podcast. The guest this episode applies to both equally, Gretchen Rubin. She is in the book Tribe of Mentors and has lots of tactical, practical advice to offer, but we take it a little longer in format this time around. And we really do a deep dive into experiments and creativity, happiness, creative flow, daily routines, et cetera. Gretchen Rubin, maybe you've heard of her, Twitter, Facebook, at Gretchen Rubin, R U B I N, gretchenrubin.com.

• 2:06Tim Ferriss?

  Who is Gretchen? She's the author of several books, including the New York Times bestsellers, Better Than Before, The Happiness Project, Happier at Home, and most recently, The Four Tendencies. Her books have sold nearly 3 million copies worldwide. That's a lot of copies in more than 30 languages. On her popular podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, she discusses good habits and happiness with her sister, Elizabeth Kraft. They've been called the click and clack of podcasters. Her podcast was named one of iTunes Best Podcasts of 2015 and the Academy of Podcasters Best Podcasts of 2016. Fast Company named Gretchen to its list of most creative people in business, and she's a member of Oprah's Super Soul 100.

• 2:46Tim Ferriss?

  So without further ado, please enjoy my wide-ranging conversation with Gretchen Rubin.

• 2:55Tim Ferriss?

  Gretchen, welcome to the show.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  I'm so happy to be talking to you.

• 2:59Tim Ferriss?

  I have been looking forward to this for some time. Many, many, many, many of my listeners and fans have been requesting that you come on the show, and here we are. So thank you for making the time.

• 3:10Speaker 03

  Oh, that's great to hear, and I'm so glad to get the chance to sit down and talk to you.

• 3:15Tim Ferriss?

  So I thought we would begin, actually, with a question that's been on my mind related to a tweet of yours, which is not scandalous.

• 3:26Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just hoping to hear you elaborate a bit on where it came from, which is a notebook with "I wish I could not wish," agree or disagree. And where does that come from? What is the origin of that?

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Well, I love koans, you know, which are these statements that Zen Buddhist monks will meditate on in order to free themselves from the bounds of kind of rational thought. So this is what is the sound of one hand clapping and things like that. And so I'm always looking for things like that, kind of paradoxical statements, and that get you thinking. And that was one. "I wish I could not wish" was one that really was an idea that occurred to me that I was like, yeah, I do. Sometimes I wish that I could not wish. And...

• 4:16Speaker 03

  It's like one of these things that the more you think about it, your thoughts kind of twist and turn. And that's what I like about Coens.

• 4:23Tim Ferriss?

  Now, what prompted the desire to lose the ability to wish? Is it the expectations minus reality equals happiness type of equation? And not having that forward-seeking expectation or desire? Or was it something else? What were the circumstances that surrounded you not or considering the desire to lose your ability to wish?

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Well, actually, you know, I'm sort of deeply within the romantic tradition. So I'm a big believer in desire and attachment as part of life. So I'm not a person who really wants to disengage from desire. But certainly, I have times where I wish I couldn't wish. I wish I wasn't wishing. But for me, it was really more of a thought exercise than something that passionately rang true for me personally. I feel like I wish that I wish, sometimes I wish that I had more wishes, that I felt more strongly towards things. Because I think there's a lot of power and beauty that comes from that.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:24Tim Ferriss?

  Where did the, we're going to bounce around a lot since I'm strictly non-chronological.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's be nonlinear. Let's do it.

• 5:35Tim Ferriss?

  How did the law end up entering your life? I mean, it seems like you had some family with legal backgrounds. But was there a point where you decided you wanted to pursue that as a profession?

• 5:49Speaker 03

  Oh, I wish that there had been that moment. Yeah, you're right. My father's a lawyer, a very happy lawyer. So I had a model in my life of someone who was very happy as a lawyer. But really, I just drifted into law. You know, I was good at research and writing. I was good at taking tests. And, you know, I thought about law school. Well, you know, I'll just take the LSAT and see how I do. I'll just apply to law school and see where I get in. And I can always change my mind later. And it's a great preparation for a lot of different things. And, you know, I'll keep my options open. And I never really sat down and thought, you know? I would really like to be a lawyer. And the fact is, law school is really great if you're a person who really wants to be a lawyer.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  And the people I know who are happy lawyers, and they wanted to be lawyers, but I went to law school just because I sort of didn't know what else to do with myself. And I had a great experience in law school. I'm glad that I went, but I certainly just drifted into it because of a lack of any other aim. And it just seemed like something safe, like a safe thing to do that would maybe help me get more clarity.

• 6:58Tim Ferriss?

  You were very successful in law, as far as I can tell. I'm no legal professional, but I mean, you were the editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal. You won some very prestigious prizes. How were you, why were you as good at navigating that system as you were if you were not passionate about it?

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Well, it's interesting because, yeah, the saying that I drifted into law school kind of sounds like it's the lazy, kind of easygoing way. And one of the things I've found about when people drift is it doesn't mean that it's easy or that you're not working hard. So I worked really hard. And like you said, I was editor in chief of the Law Journal. I went on to clerk for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. I worked really, really hard at it. But at a certain point, you know, I sort of did the obvious next thing, you know, like, oh, I'm graduating from law school, I'll apply for a clerkship. Oh, I got one clerkship, I'll apply to the Supreme Court. And then I got to a point where it's like, well, now what are you going to do? And I thought, I don't really know.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  I don't, I mean, I could, there's all these law jobs that I could try for, but none of them really appealed to me. And that's when I started thinking about the fact that, and maybe I needed to think about going in a different direction.

• 8:12Tim Ferriss?

  What directions did you, can you place us in terms of your life as to where you were, what you were doing? Was there a particular evening or a conversation or dinner or event that catalyzed you thinking, you know?

• 8:30Tim Ferriss?

  I don't want to continue on this path. I want to consider other options. Was there a particular straw that broke the camel's back or moment?

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm really lucky because, and I think this is true for a lot of writers, but actually for many people in many different kinds of professions, something started pulling me very, very hard and, and writing began to pull me. And what happened to me was I had the idea, this is probably the most critical thing that happened. I had the idea that eventually did turn into the first book that I ever published. So I was taking a walk under my lunch hour and I was looking up at the Capitol dome, you know, all white against the blue sky. And I thought, and just sort of as a, as kind of a, you know, a mental, just kind of fun game to play with myself, I said, what am I interested in that everybody in the world is interested? And I

• 9:20Speaker 03

  thought, well, power, money, fame, sex. And all of a sudden it was like power, money, fame, sex. And to me, this like locked into my mind as this kind of unified idea. And I became obsessed with trying to research and understand and analyze and write about power, money, fame, sex. And this is something that happens to me often. I will often become obsessed with subjects and do tons of research. So this is not, that was not something unusual that, that happened, has happened to me my whole life. It's like my favorite thing about myself, actually. But this was like unstoppable. I was spending all my free time working on this. And at some point I was like, this is the kind of thing that a person would do if they were writing a book. I'm just doing this in my free time. But this is the kind of thing

• 10:05Speaker 03

  somebody would do to write a book about it. And, and, and slowly I began to think, well, maybe I should write a book about it. And I literally went to the bookstore and got a book called something like, How to Write and Sell Your Nonfiction Book Proposal. I got the book and just followed the directions. And, and part of my thinking was, you know, I've come to a point where I'd rather fail as a writer than succeed as a lawyer. And I need to try. I need to try and fail, or try and succeed, but I need to like, to do it. But I think I was lucky because I Knew what I wanted. Not only did I want to be a writer, I wanted to write this specific book. And so there was immense clarity about my purpose. Sometimes I think when people, and I I I bet you've seen this too,

• 10:49Speaker 03

  where people know they don't know, they don't want what they have, but they don't know what they want. And so they're kind of in that, what color is my parachute? Kind of thing, and that's hard. And for me, it was almost like, I can't help but write this book. Um, I feel the compulsion to write this book. So why don't I see if like, this is my next thing? And then, and then that's, and then that was how I made the switch was from that book on.

• 11:12Tim Ferriss?

  Writing, it strikes me, at least for me, can be very difficult. Even if you have a deep desire to write about a given subject, the the actual process of writing is easier for some, uh, certainly quite hard for many. Uh, I would say that I'm a very slow plotting writer. Uh, and where I'm going with that, I guess, is when did you actually cut bait and quit your job? Was it, had you already sold the book? Uh, were you, had you already sold it and you're partway through writing it? Or did you just kind of throw caution to the wind and quit before the proposal had been sold?

• 11:55Tim Ferriss?

  At what point did you actually stop the salary, so to speak, from the, from the job, from the, from the legal profession?

• 12:03Speaker 03

  Well, it it actually, um, it was, it was like the catalyst was other changes in my life. So, um, I had, I married my husband, who I met in law school. That was one of the benefits of going to law school. Um, and he was working as a lawyer too, and we were living in Washington DC. And, um, we were getting ready to move back to New York. And he took a, he took a class in financial accounting and he didn't apply for a law job. He applied for a job in finance and I didn't apply for a law job. I was just like, now I'm in at work full time on trying to get an agent, trying to write this proposal. And so for us, it was like the move from DC was like, okay, we're leaving that behind. And I remember we got to New York and at one point we got a letter from the Bar Association of New York,

• 12:44Speaker 03

  because we were both members of the New York Bar, saying, you owe us bar fees, which are quite. Quite, it's quite heavy. And I said, Jamie, you know, should we play, should we pay our bar fees and just like, keep it up? And he's like, are you kidding? No. And I'm like, yeah, we're, we're cutting that out, you know? Um, and so that was like, so it was really made easy for me because this physical move corresponded with like, everything's different now. We're switching total professions. Um, my, my whole routine is different. My aim is different. My aim now really at that point was to get an agent, um, which is really harder probably than getting a book contract. Um, and I had no idea what I was doing. Um, but so that's, that's when it was. It was like, it was like, I'm going to work up until this time, but when I'm in New York, I'm not going to look for a law job in New York.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  I'm not going to look for any other job. This now is my full-time profession, um, is to try to get published.

• 13:36Tim Ferriss?

  And when you published that first book, looking back at it now, what were, what were some of the key lessons learned through the process of searching for the agent to publishing that first book? And I suppose going on the road and trying to promote that first book, were there any particular

• 13:57Tim Ferriss?

  life lessons or lessons learned, looking back that then informed later decisions for you?

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Well, you know, it's funny, I, you know, I, I talked to several people before I ended up with my agent who was like, you know, one of the most important people in my life now, Christie Fletcher, who's like this huge influence on my career. And it's this complete love connection, but I talked to other agents before I met her. And one agent said something at the time I thought was preposterous, but in hindsight, I've begun, I, I have learned that what she meant and why she was right. She said, you have too many ideas on each page. And I was like, there's no such thing as too many ideas on a page. Like what we want here is lots and lots of ideas. And I thought she was just like so wrong, but now I realize like, one problem with my writing, and this is something that I fight all the time is density.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  It's like, I want to just cut, cut, cut and only have dense, but you can't read a book like that. You have to have humor, you have to have connective tissue, you have to have pacing, you have to have high, you know, you, you have to have, you, it has To have breath in it. And so that's one thing that I wish that I could go back to her and say, I understand now the wisdom of what you said, and I think about it often, and even now in my writing, and it's, you know, many, many years later. As to the publishing process, I mean, I would just say to anybody who's trying to get published, traditionally, you know, obviously now, a lot of people can self-publish, which is a whole other route. Getting an agent is hard. That is

• 15:26Speaker 03

  really, really hard. Don't think that that's just like a quick, easy step, and that writing the book is the hardest part. I think, you know, getting an agent, and that, I think, probably for many people, is the most challenging stage of traditional publishing. I don't know. What do you think? What do you think is the most?

• 15:46Tim Ferriss?

  That's a good question. I mean, I was turned down by three or four agents before signing with my agent, Steve Hanselman, who's still my agent. And then I was subsequently turned down by 27 publishers, so.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. You showed them. That's the indication. Nice. You're like right up there with Madeleine Lengel, right? She had like 32, I think, or something.

• 16:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And, you know, I think that there are, you know, just because a book is rejected doesn't mean it's a good book. Certainly. I mean, I think there are bad ideas that get rejected. And, you know, there's also an argument to be made that perhaps for those publishers, this book was not a good fit. Maybe, maybe not. But ultimately, for me, I think that the,

• 16:40Tim Ferriss?

  given my past experiences and professional experience, entrepreneurial experience before the nonfiction book selling process, and I think one thing that's important for people to understand, if they're listening to this and don't have any... Background in publishing, generally speaking in nonfiction, you're almost, you can almost treat it like raising money for a venture-backed startup. You go out with this idea and a business plan, i.e. a book proposal, you sell it and then you write it. If you write a nonfiction book and try to go out and sell it, it is incredibly difficult. It is more difficult in most respects than going out with a proposal first. Conversely, in fiction, it's the other

• 17:24Tim Ferriss?

  way around, right? If you're trying to sell an idea for a fiction book, especially if you're untested, it's not going to happen unless you have a completed manuscript. So the, the sales process for me was easier than the writing process because I had more experience.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 17:42Tim Ferriss?

  I had a lot of experience with long sales cycles.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:47Tim Ferriss?

  Because the job immediately, well, I should say, prior to starting my company before that, in which case I was dealing with large retailers and so on, which had extended sales cycles, I had been selling massive, or I should say, mass data storage systems to organizations like FBI, American Airlines, and so on, which also meant multiple-month sales cycles. So I was comfortable in the realm of working with a proposal to sell a publisher. I was less familiar with the process of actually writing a book. So the, so the writing was the hardest process for me. And I was also accustomed to rejection, which I think is not something many people have inoculated themselves against, whereas

• 18:31Tim Ferriss?

  if you are in an external sales position, you're getting rejected all the time. So I didn't view that as a huge blow to my morale. It was just part of racking up enough no's that I would statistically get to a yes, effectively. But, but I'm curious to know for you, after this first book, and we're not going to spend the whole time focusing on, on the book stuff, although I'm fascinated by it, how did you decide on your next book? Had you, because you, you mentioned, and I have this challenge as well, I mean, I do these deep dives on many different subjects, you could go a million different directions. How, how did you narrow? All the options down, or if that's even how it came about, to your next book.

• 19:16Tim Ferriss?

  How did you, how did you end up deciding?

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Well, you know, in retrospect, I didn't realize this at the time. It took me a while, like I was several books in before I realized kind of my own theme. But my theme is human nature. That's every book that I've written, everything that I'm interested in some way is an examination of human nature through, from a different perspective. And so Power Money, Fame, Sex, which was actually excellent background for writing about happiness, because you know, it's sort of the opposite of happiness. And then so my next book was Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill. And I think I was, I know that I was drawn to Winston Churchill because he's such a gigantic character. Everything in him is so huge. He's so studied. He was part of everything in the world for decades. I mean, he, and he was, you know, whether or not you, you agree with his policies or

• 20:03Speaker 03

  his statements, he was, you know, it played an extraordinarily important role. And then he was also a brilliant writer. He's an extraordinarily gifted writer. He painted, I mean, he was just sort of a million things. And, and so for me, I was very drawn to how do you tell the story in a like succinct, interesting, accessible way? You know, people have written, you know, eight volumes of his life. Could I do it in, you know, 250 pages in a way that would be honest and be help, be interesting to people? And so, you know, each one of my books has sort of led to the next one. So I wrote Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill, then I wrote Forty Ways to Look at JFK, because I wanted to try this with another character. I wrote this really weird little book called Profane Waste, which was about like why owners

• 20:49Speaker 03

  destroy their own possessions, which is a subject, again, that had obsessed me since law school.

• 20:54Tim Ferriss?

  Why did that, why did that obsess you since law school?

• 20:56Speaker 03

  Well, you know, um, it's hard to explain why it so obsesses me. But you know, if you think about like the standard idea, and certainly in law school, we talked a lot about this, about like the idea of what it means to possess. What makes sense is that people who possess things, owners try to, try to preserve things or control things. Why would they, why would someone want to burn their house to the ground? And is it legal to burn your own house to the ground? Or like there was a Japanese- This businessman, like mogul, who announced that he was gonna bury his impressionist masterpieces with him, and there was huge public outcry. Why do we think that it's worse for him to bury it with him in his grave than to like keep it in a basement in a bank? Why, you know, why do people, if you've seen the movie Harold and Maude, there's that

• 21:41Speaker 03

  moment when Maude throws the ring into the lake and says, "Now I know, now I'll always know where it is." And to me, like, that's incredibly powerful and kind of taboo thing to do, so I was just trying to understand it. So again, it was just like some weird preoccupation that I had. And it turns out this is like this whole rich, crazy examples of people doing this and why they do it and how you would explain it. And then I got into the whole like happiness and habits and sort of what I'm known for now. But it's all because it's all related to human nature. And so for me, they feel very connected and one led very logically to the next. I think from the outside, it doesn't always look like that, but that's definitely how it feels to me.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Like, I'm always, I always am thinking about, I always have things that I'm dying to get to as soon as I can.

• 22:31Tim Ferriss?

  When, when you do a deep dive on something, whether it's for a book or otherwise, how do you take notes? What is your note-taking system?

• 22:42Speaker 03

  Oh, I love taking notes. So it's, and it's, I'm so glad you asked about it because it's a huge part of what I do. So I'll read books, and I read, like, I always get my ideas, I do everything through reading. Like, I'm a very unwell-rounded person and I don't really do interviews with people or anything like that. Like, in terms of research, I do it all through reading. And I read the weirdest, craziest stuff. And so I will, whenever I read a book, I will take extensive notes. So anything that strikes my fancy, I will take a note of it. So I have a document that's just called Quotes 2006 Plus, and that's just anything that I think is particularly beautiful. Then I have subject notes that I take, like on habits, or color, or happiness, or, you know, if I have big subjects.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  And then everything gets dumped into there.

• 23:29Tim Ferriss?

  Are those separate words? Word documents or what are?

• 23:32Speaker 03

  Those are separate word documents by topic. And then there's no internal structure in these notes. I just will put, like, I might tag something. So if, let's say it was about, let's say I was going to take a note about some habits research. I might tag it accountability, tracking, health. So then what happens? So I have these giant documents of notes and then it eventually turns into a book because at a certain point I have enough notes on a subject that I have started to form my own ideas and started to have my own viewpoint, my own, you know, my own ideas about who I agree with, who I think is, you know, what people are missing, what needs to be added or explained that isn't already added, isn't already, you know, kind of out there.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  And then I will start moving things from the notes into my own structure. And so I will use those tagging words to find, like if I'm writing a chapter about accountability, I would go through and pull, put everything, I would dump it into the accountability section. And from there, then I would begin to turn it into my own original writing. And the advantage of this is I never have a blank page because I'm always working from huge amounts of notes. But taking notes is a big part of my workday. It's, it sounds like, oh, it's very perfunctory, but it actually, it's, it's, there's a lot of thinking that goes into it and then just like the sheer copying things out. Then that also helps me remember things because I, I need to remember a lot. And so I find that physically copying things helps me retain information.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  So I'll sometimes copy things just so that I, I can refer back to it easily. But then it also makes it easier for me to remember, you know, like what that, what did that study say? Or what was, what was the definition of ostensive anyway, or whatever? That helps me.

• 25:14Tim Ferriss?

  And when you're copying things and pasting them, let's just say into your own format or, or.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Structure.

• 25:23Tim Ferriss?

  Structure, thank you. From a software perspective, are you still using Word for that? And it's just a separate document? Or is there... Are you using a different approach?

• 25:32Speaker 03

  Well, so with one of my books, I use Scrivener. And I really, really like Scrivener, but I'm super un-techie. And every once in a while, Scrivener would be like, "Now it's time to update." And that made me super scared because I felt like my document was sort of... I couldn't get to it.

• 25:47Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  And it was so unnerving to me that I haven't used Scrivener since, even though I had a great experience with it. Because I was just like, I really didn't like that. Because I think if I were very technically savvy, then I would just do it and I wouldn't worry about it. But for me, it was always very anxiety-producing. Like, "Am I going to do it right? Is something going to happen? What if this whole thing goes away? And I have to do some week-long customer service nightmare thing to ret..." You know? Because this document is everything to me. You know? It's so precious. And so now I just keep it in Word. I'm like, it was a little bit better, but you know, it's just not worth the anxiety. And so now I do every... I just create a Word document. Yeah.

• 26:23Tim Ferriss?

  So I have more anxiety associated with Word in and of itself. So I actually... I've actually used Scrivener for the last four books in terms of structuring. And I just automatically have developed a schedule and auto backups that then drop a zip file for the entire Scrivener file into Dropbox so that I have multiple copies

• 26:49Tim Ferriss?

  of the entire project backed up into zip files. But I'm always curious about the software. Of course, that's a tool. And there are perhaps more higher-level conceptual frameworks that are more important. When you are reading these books, are you reading a hard copy? Or are you reading, say, Kindle and then exporting highlights?

• 27:14Tim Ferriss?

  So that you can copy and paste things digitally?

• 27:17Speaker 03

  No, almost always I'm reading a hard copy. A lot of the things that I read are old and they don't exist in digital form. Because they're like old random books that nobody cares enough to digitize. Or to have, you know, available commercially. But I also, again, I find, and this is what the research shows is true for many people. It's certainly true for me, that I retain things more when I read them in physical form. And then I also, I feel like if I could just cut and paste something, I would do, I would be tempted to do that. But I do think that the actual physical copying, even though I know people say handwriting is even better, but my handwriting is so bad, I would never be able to read it again. For me, typing does, again, it helps me retain information.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  Because so much of what I do is like, taking a giant subject and then trying to crunch it down. And so I have to have a lot in my mind at one time. So for me, just, you know, having a lot of stuff in my working memory is very helpful.

• 28:11Tim Ferriss?

  I had asked you for Tribe of Mentors, the book that you were kind enough to contribute to, about books that had had a significant impact on you, or that had affected your thinking, or been gifted by you often. And the book you brought up was A Pattern Language. Could you please explain, because you've read so many books, why a pattern language?

• 28:37Speaker 03

  So A Pattern Language is a book by Christopher Alexander, who's kind of this wacky architect in California. And I love many books that he's written. But Pattern Language is interesting because it's nonlinear. So carrying on in our nonlinear theme, what he looks at is what makes, the part that's most interesting to me is like, what makes spaces most interesting and comfortable for people? And he's not saying things like, oh, you know, your dining room chandelier should be 30 inches off your dining room table. Or, you know, you should have a curved doorway, not a square doorway, things like that. It's much more poetic. And it's, and what he does is he's, he's looking, and he and his team looked all across cultures,

• 29:20Speaker 03

  all across the world in time, to see what were the patterns? What's the pattern language of what draws people into feeling good in a space? So for example, it's things like, um, uh, half wild garden, terrace overlooking life, uh, child cave, secret place. Like he says, everybody's home should have a secret place that only the people who live there and the people they tell know about. And my, I'm like, when we moved, I'm like, we are definitely having a secret place in our apartment and we do, we have, we have a couple of secret places. Um, or like sleeping to the east. It's like people like to sleep to these, or like one thing is, um, here's one that really showed me why I like certain kind of like restaurants better. Ceilings at different heights.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  Look around, when you're in a place that feels comfortable, you'll notice the ceilings are at different heights. And then if you're in a place where the ceiling is all at the same height, it doesn't feel as good. Or like cascade of roofs. If you look at roofs from Japanese temples to English manor houses, all across the, you know, Norwegian farmhouses, they have a cascade of roofs and that's very pleasing. And so it's just this, I'm not very visual at all. I can only get, I can only see things through words. And so I felt like reading this book, all of a sudden I was able to key into my visual environment in a whole new way and understand like why certain spaces felt so inviting and comfortable and then other spaces just turned me off. Um, like, oh, like light on two sides.

• 30:47Speaker 03

  If you're in a room that, that has only light on one side, it's not comfortable. You're far more comfortable in a room that has light on two sides. Pay attention, well, you may, living in New York, this is a huge thing. Where is your light coming from? How much light do you have? Huge difference between having light on one side and light on two sides. And, um, so anyway, so it's, and it's, it's a very, it's organized, it's nonlinear. It's just like organized in like bits and pieces. So you could just pick it up and flip through it. It has illustrations and so you see the common, um, uh, patterns in, you know, in like a multitude of different architectures, architectural styles. And so it's just, it's very thought provoking. It makes you see the world in a whole new way, which is my favorite thing. Um, so that's why I love a pattern language.

• 31:30Tim Ferriss?

  I have to pick it up. I thought I knew that book and I do not. I actually, I think that I was confusing it with a book called The Loom of Language, which is completely different, related to language acquisition and absurdly, absurdly dense. So I will have to check it.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  It's a lot of pictures.

• 31:48Tim Ferriss?

  Perfect. Now, given, given all of that, I know, or at least based on my understanding, you do a lot of your work in a home office. What are the, what are some of the key ingredients that make your home office, your home office?

• 32:07Speaker 03

  Well, the one thing that's missing that I desperately want, but my office is too small, is a treadmill desk. I would love a treadmill desk. I gave my sister a treadmill desk. She has a treadmill desk, but my, my office is too small. One thing that I love that I have is three monitors and I, I had for a long time thought, and I think a lot of people think, well, that's just going to be overwhelming. It's going to be too much information coming at me. It's going to be distracting. Like if I need to focus, I can't have three monitors. But then I read a study that said that knowledge workers, of which we are, like their productivity went up substantially when they went from one to two monitors. So I got a second monitor as an experiment and like the next day I bought a third monitor. And I think I would have a fourth monitor if my desk were big enough, but my office is very small.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  But it just, you just can go so much faster. Like if I'm copying something from the internet into a document, it takes one second. I'm like looking up the definition of a word. I don't have to close out of my document. If my, if I need to look up something in an email, like, and like read an email and look up a map or something, you can just do it so seamlessly. So that's something I love. I have a headset, love a headset.

• 33:11Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have a particular headset or monitors that, that you like?

• 33:18Speaker 03

  My monitors are just like Dell Basic. They're all different sizes too, which so it's not very, it's not very sleek looking. And it's a Plantronics headset, all very basic.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Uh, one thing I got that I didn't even know, I, I, it was a pain point that I didn't even realize I experienced until there was a solution for it was I got a, um, you know, like right now I'm speaking to you on a headset that is plugged into my, uh, my hard drive. And for some rea- like the, the, the headset wire was just like always under my, my roll, the rolling wheels of my chair and I couldn't figure out where to put my headset so that it didn't get in my way. And then I found, um, at the container store, it's like a hook that you just put on the side of a desk and then you hook your headset to it. I was like, this is exactly what I need. So I have that. It was a big. I have a book weight. Um, this is a very specific thing, but for people who do, take a lot of notes, it's just a

• 34:13Speaker 03

  strip of leather that has weights on, on both ends. So that if you have a, like a book that's not staying open enough that you can read to copy it, you can put a book weight on it and it will hold it open. Um, I got that as a present and I was like, what am I gonna do with this? And now I'm like, literally I use it every single day. Um, it's

• 34:32Tim Ferriss?

  So it's, so it's a flexible strip of leather with weight on either end?

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah.

• 34:37Tim Ferriss?

  So if you, so if you need to trip a burglar getting away on horseback, you could probably

• 34:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, you can whap him on the head with that too. It's like, don't break into my home office. Um, yeah, but I, you know, I don't, I don't have that much, um, in terms of technology support. It's just like the basics. And my laptop, of course, which is like my puppy practically. I'm so, you know, emotionally attached to my laptop.

• 35:02Tim Ferriss?

  How do you know, in a home office environment, one of the benefits is that you can work when you want to work. One of the potential downsides is that you can work at all times.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:14Tim Ferriss?

  How, what are the rules or systems or parameters, policies, whatever, uh, factors that you've set in place so that you are not in there at all hours or working during family time or fill in the blank? Like how do you, how do you contain that and structure your days, uh, when you're, when you're?

• 35:39Tim Ferriss?

  When you're doing well, if that makes sense.

• 35:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, one thing I do is I will say to myself, like, and it's a different time every day, but I will say like, now is quitting time. And I'll sort of in my mind, think, okay, it's quitting time. And so like, sure, I might check my email or I might like read a book that is research, not for fun, but just like a research book. After that time, but I'm basically not, I'm not working. And then, and I also at that time will sort of clean up my office. And that also is kind of a signal like, okay, this is, I'm done for the day. I'm sort of setting up for tomorrow. And so this is kind of, it's coming to an end.

• 36:15Tim Ferriss?

  You'll clean, clean up your office.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, you know, I'll carry my coffee mugs to the kitchen and I'll file anything that, you know, and throw away anything that needs to be thrown away. Or like, if I got a book off the shelf, put the book back, put the caps on the pens, you know, that sort of thing. Just to kind, that makes it a lot nicer to come in in the next morning. And also it just, it's kind of a visual signal, like now I'm winding down for the day. I'm, I'm kind of lucky because I live in an apartment, but my office used to be a water tower. And the people before, who lived in our apartment before us turned it into a storage room. But a nice storage room with like windows and an air conditioner and heat. And then when we moved, I was like, I could make that my office. So I'm sort of lucky because I have to go up a little flight of stairs to go to my office.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  And so it's not like, I think if your office is like next to your kitchen, it's just right there all the time. Whereas for me, I like, I actually have to open up a door, go out into my service stairs and go upstairs. And so I think that also makes it a little bit easier because it's just, you know, one of the things about whenever we're trying to get ourselves to not do something, making it inconvenient, the slightest bit of inconvenience makes it harder to get, do something, which is a, you know, which we can use to try to make our habits better. So I think for me, that's, that's a thing, like, once I'm down in my, once I'm like, okay, it's quitting time, I'm going down my little staircase. That kind of creates a barrier, which is very helpful.

• 37:37Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned habits, or it's come up a few times. So since that door is open, let's step into it.

• 37:47Tim Ferriss?

  Based on what I've read, one of the reliable, small changes that people can make, or claim that they've made that makes them predictably happier is making their bed. Or making their beds. Are there other small changes that you would also recommend for people who are hoping to increase their self-reported wellbeing/happiness?

• 38:14Speaker 03

  Well, one thing that seems to work for a lot of people is the one-minute rule. This is the rule that if there's anything you can do in less than a minute, you do it without delay. So if you can print out a document and delete the email and file it, do that. If you can scan a letter and throw it away, do that. If you can hang up your coat instead of dropping it on a chair, do that. If you can put a book back on the shelf instead of just leaving it on the counter, do that. And what this does for a lot of people is just get rid of that kind of scum of stuff on the surface of life, you know? Because sometimes it's not that there's any one thing that's so insurmountable to do, but you just feel like, oh, my gosh, just everywhere I look, I see everything's just kind of out of order, and I have to sift through everything to find what I'm looking for.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  And so for a lot of people, they say, just doing this

• 39:04Speaker 03

  just makes them feel like, well, I've got the little things out of the way, and so now I'm more ready to tackle the big things.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  And getting enough sleep, of course, get enough sleep. That is like a huge one. If you have that, and here are some, if you're having trouble getting enough sleep, set an alarm. Most adults need seven hours of sleep. Most adults know what time they're going to get up in the morning. Do the math. Give yourself an alarm, give yourself a bedtime. So it's not like, oh, I go to bed when I'm tired. It's like, my bedtime is 10:30. Um, and then, and you might even need a snooze alarm, just like you have, if you have one in the morning, you might have one at night. And it's like, oh, my alarm went off. Now I have 15 minutes to get myself organized and get to bed, and then the alarm will go off again, and it's my bedtime. And another thing, another habit that can help with this is get ready before your bedtime. I realized that I was staying up late because I was too tired to get ready for bed. Like, I was too tired to like, watch my face and take off my contacts and change my clothes.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  It's clearly very stupid approach. So now I get ready much earlier. And so, once, when I'm actually sleepy, it's easy to turn out the light, because I'm already ready.

• 40:08Tim Ferriss?

  So you do your, you, you, you, in other words, you do your pre-bed ritual well before you need to go to bed?

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah, yeah. So I'm right, I'm ready. But I'm a sleep zealot. I'm a sleep zealot. But if you're looking for like, what's a habit that will make you more energetic, uh, more immune to illness, higher focus and function, better temper, um, and just feel better, um, getting more sleep. If you don't get enough sleep, um, already, is something that, uh, will, will, will surely benefit you. And one of the funny, there's all this funny research that they've done, because we really adjust to not getting enough sleep. And so people think that they're fine. They're like, oh, I've trained myself to get by on four hours of sleep. Like, that's no problem for me. But when scientists study these people, they're quite impaired.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  Like, we lose track of how good we feel when we have enough sleep. And so you might think that you're fine, um, but actually, if you had more sleep, you might feel a lot, lot better, have a lot more energy, have a lot more focus.

• 41:08Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any particular wind down routines or rituals at night?

• 41:15Speaker 03

  Well, one thing, I have a, I have a, my daughter, um, before she goes to bed, often we will have like, we'll just sit together and just, um, kind of, uh, like, it's like ti- it's meant to be time for her, but it's actually time for me too, to kind of unwind and, um, because now she's old enough that we, we go to bed at more or less the same time. I am a sleep zealot. Um, and so that's one thing. Um, but

• 41:41Tim Ferriss?

  What do you guys, what do you guys do when you sit down?

• 41:43Speaker 03

  She just pretty much talks to me about her day, you know, or like we'll talk about, um, she's actually very interested in being a writer too. And so sometimes we'll talk about writerly things. I mean, it's funny. She was reading this book and we had this long discussion about pacing in a novel. Like this book was very, like, you know, the pace of it was like very fast. Did we like that? Like a book that covered 10 years versus a book that covers a summer. And so we'll talk about stuff like that. Um, which of course for, for me is tremendously fun, but mostly she just tells me about like what happened in her day. And, um, you know, she's in seventh grade, so there's a lot of drama to catch me up on. Um, but it's just a really nice way to sit down and really connect at the end of the day. Um, and it's very, it's very relaxing, you know, it's very, very peaceful.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Um, but I, maybe because I am such a sleep zealot and really do guard it, I don't, I, I, I, I, I feel like I wind down pretty quickly.

• 42:37Tim Ferriss?

  And in the morning, do you have any, like, if you look at the first, say, 60 to 90 minutes of your day, what, what does that look like? Is it, is it fairly standard from day to day?

• 42:46Speaker 03

  The first hour is because I get up at 6:00 AM every day. I walk my dog, I get coffee and then I sit down and do what all the experts tell you not to do, which is I spend the first hour of my day checking my email and social media, which everybody says, if you're a morning person, you should do your most intense intellectual work then, because you're, that's when you're at your best. I definitely am a morning person, but I realize like I can't focus on anything until I check my inbox and see what's going on. Check social media, see what's going on there. I just can't, I'm just too distracted by that until I get it done. So I do that and then it's time for my daughter to go to school. So often I'll walk her to school. She doesn't need me to walk her to school, but I do it just because it's fun. It's like a nice way to get out. And then I'll usually, I'll often exercise. So I will either go for a walk in Central Park or I'll go to the gym

• 43:29Speaker 03

  or I do high intensity strength training or I have a yoga class. Um, and then, and then, so then that's kind of the beginning of my day. And then I go into whatever's, am I preparing for a podcast? Am I working on a book? Am I talking to a reporter? Am I writing an email? Am I planning? You know, then, then the rest of the day is, is much more, um, unpredictable or it changes day to day. Unfortunately, I wish I had the life of a Benedictine monk because I would love to have every day be exactly the same. But it's not.

• 44:04Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you could, right? I mean, you ostensibly...

• 44:06Speaker 03

  No, I really couldn't.

• 44:07Tim Ferriss?

  No?

• 44:07Speaker 03

  No, because it's like journalists, you know, they're like, "Well, I'm in, I'm in the UK, so I can't talk to you at 5:00 because for me, that's the middle of the night, or I have to record a podcast, so that has to happen at a certain time." You know, and so, um, I mean, I would have to work so hard, uh, to have that kind of, um, it's, I just don't think it's worth it. I mean, I might kind of enjoy it, but I, it's not worth fighting for. I, in my mind, for other people, it might, they might, they might want to really, uh, make that a priority.

• 44:36Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I guess I've, I've just realized for myself that there's certain categories of activities, media certainly being one, that make my schedule, or make me create a schedule that is more reactive than it could be otherwise. So at least one of my fantasies, we're, we're talking now, for people who might be listening to this later, we're talking in December 2017, and one of the recurring thoughts that I've had is a three to six month sabbatical from both media and social media. So media meaning interviews, and social media, just to see what happens when I remove those two

• 45:15Tim Ferriss?

  categories of inputs that tend to jostle and move things around as much as they do. I don't know what the outcome would be. I don't know if it will happen, uh, although I, I would certainly, planning on seeing Star Wars, uh, tonight or tomorrow, so if we're channeling inner Yoda, uh, I should certainly commit or not commit, but for your, for yourself, I mean, you've written so much about happiness, if, if you were to look back over the last, could be five years, it doesn't have to be, I'm just arbitrarily pulling a number out, what are, what are some of the changes that you've made that have had the greatest impact on your, uh, either levels of happiness, or, uh,

• 46:00Tim Ferriss?

  and these may be the same thing, uh, and... Increased happiness or decreased anxiety and other negative emotions?

• 46:08Speaker 03

  Well, one thing that I did was like four years ago is like I gave up sugar, quit sugar, and basically carbs. So I don't eat sugar, pasta, flour, starchy vegetables. I don't really eat much. I eat almost no fruit. So like the most carby things I eat are green vegetables and nuts. So I do eat a lot of nuts, which help like a fair amount of carbs. So and this for me was the greatest thing. I had always had a really terrible sweet tooth and I hated the feeling of like, can I have this? Or it's just a bite? Or it's for free? Or it's my birthday? Or you know, that whole thing. And I just like, I just, and I write

• 46:51Speaker 03

  about this in Better Than Before, that I realize I'm an abstainer. It's easier for me to have none than to have a little bit. And I just gave it up. I read this book, Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes. And I'm like overnight, I'm like, I'm completely convinced I'm changing everything about the way that I eat. And for me, it was just the most freeing, energizing, positive change. And I also used to get super hungry, like shaking, sweating, hungry, because I was eating like a very low fat diet and it was not even that much protein. And so, and now I don't have that. It was super inconvenient. So for me, that was a huge thing. I'm not saying that would work for everybody, but that was for me. And it was a very dramatic change. My husband actually gave me a Christmas ornament in the shape

• 47:35Speaker 03

  of a strip of bacon to like, like memorialize. This was the year of the beginning of bacon, because boy, we eat a lot of bacon. And so that was a big thing for me. And in the last five years.

• 47:52Tim Ferriss?

  It could be longer if that's helpful.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Well, one thing that I did that added tremendously to my happiness, so I am like this crazy, raving fan of children's literature and young adult literature. So I read it as a child and I read it now as an adult. And I realized when I was writing The Happiness Project that this was something that I loved, but I didn't really make much time for it in my life. It kind of didn't fit with my idea of myself, that I was very sophisticated. I was a very kind of advanced reader who read very, you know, kind of like very adult things. But I realized, you know, I don't really have that many true passions and interests. And so I don't have enough that I can just ignore one of the big ones. And I started a group for adults who read and love children's literature and young adult literature. And

• 48:40Speaker 03

  when I started it, I truly believed that there were no other adults in New York City who would want to join this group. And now there are three of these groups. I just actually had my annual Christmas party when I get all three groups together. One day a year, they all three meet. And I'm a member of all three. But there were so many that there had to be three separate groups. And it's been amazing because I've met a bunch of like bookish people who I love. So I have more relationships. And these are people who share something that I love. I have a way to talk about and learn about something that I truly love. And the fact is, it's like, some people like mysteries, some people like sci-fi. It's like, some people like children's literature and young adult literature. It's just a different taste that some people have and some people don't. As adults, there's

• 49:25Speaker 03

  nothing to do with children in these groups. But that was something where I'm like, wow. When I look back on changes that I made that gave me like huge spike in happiness, both kind of intellectually and also through relationships, because relationships are probably the key to happiness. That was a big one. That was a big one. Kind of acknowledging that and then like really bringing it into my, like really shining a light on it in my life, letting it really kind of take its place as a major occupation in my life.

• 49:54Tim Ferriss?

  What is the rhythm of the groups look like in terms of meetings and so on? And do you communicate via Facebook groups, email? Could you just paint a picture of logistically how it actually works?

• 50:07Speaker 03

  They all, we all communicate through email. So one of the groups, they're all a little bit different. One of the groups, well, they all meet every six weeks and they all take, we all take turns meeting at certain people's apartments. Like, people will take turns. Some people have apartments that are too small or too far away and so it's not convenient. So those people just don't enter the rotation, which is fine. That's just like, whatever. Some people host, some people don't. One person never hosts, so she always brings dessert. That's like her contribution. She brings dessert every time, so, fine. One of the groups, we rotate among classic, modern, and contemporary. So we might read Peter Pan, and then Harriet the Spy, and then The Hate U Give. You know, we would do that. The other ones just pick books, we just pick whatever we feel like reading.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  So like, right now, reading Book of Dust by Philip Pullman, which is like, the, you know...

• 50:56Tim Ferriss?

  I was going to ask you about Philip Pullman. We're gonna come back to this, so please continue.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Okay, whoa, like, oh, let's get going on Philip Pullman. So, and so, and then one of the groups had a tradition, but we've sort of fallen out of it, is that you would serve something related to the books, which was funny. Like, we read Holes by Lewis Seacare, and the person served donut holes. Or like, one time, we read Little House in the Big Woods, and it was like, you know, cornbread, and apple pie, and, you know, red gingham tablecloth. So that's just sort of like a little fun thing you could do if you felt like it.

• 51:28Tim Ferriss?

  Who decides, who decides on the books to read?

• 51:31Speaker 03

  We all work it out. Like, every book groups, all book groups have different ways, and we just sort of talk about it, and, and everybody sort of says like, "Yeah, that one sounds good." So we don't really have a, we don't really have a particular methodology for picking. And sometimes, and usually though now, we're trying to pick a book that at least everyone is talking about it. So it's like a book that's important to read even if we don't like it. Or it's a book that somebody has read and loves. And so they're like, willing to say like, "I really love this book." Because we don't want to read something that is like, no one's gonna like. But sometimes it's worth reading a book just because it is, it's sort of of the moment, and so you want to know what is working right now, or what's, what are people responding to right now? That's always kind of interesting.

• 52:14Tim Ferriss?

  And when you, when you meet up, what does the meetup look like? Is it, is there like, for 10 minutes, we're gonna do this, for a half hour, we're gonna do this?

• 52:22Speaker 03

  During this. The motto of the Kidlet groups is "No Guilt." So you are completely encouraged to come, even if you haven't read the book. If you haven't been able to come for a year because you've been too busy and then you want to start coming again, we welcome you back at any time, no explanations necessary. We talk about the book as much or as little as we want. Sometimes we talk about the book a lot because there's a lot to say. Sometimes it's like, oh, this, you know, it's not that much and we talk about other things that we're more interested in. So it's very loose. It's not, it's not a highly, it's not a highly structured experience. I hear about some book groups and I'm like, oh, my gosh, it sounds like a seminar. You know, like you have to prepare and like you have to give like a statement and they have like an expert come talk. I'm like, no, this is just a bunch of people. We just love it. So it's like

• 53:05Speaker 03

  everybody's sitting around being like, you know, what did you think? You know, and people who really know the books. So, so, you know, it's like if you want to talk about, you know, deep into the Louis, Louisa May Alcott canon, or, you know, the Great Schism in the books is Twilight, in the groups is Twilight. Some people like those books, some people don't like those books. And so that's like, you know, if I'm ever talking to somebody who's thinking, you know, about the group, I'm always like, well, how do you feel about it? Because you have to have an opinion. You don't have to agree with my opinion. But it's like anybody who's in this area like has a viewpoint. It's like

• 53:42Tim Ferriss?

  On the Twilight series.

• 53:43Speaker 03

  You can't, you can't be like, what's that? I've never heard of that. Or, oh, I thought those were just movies. It's like, no, you've got to, you've got to have a view. That's how we know you're one of us. You know, you don't have to like, but you have to think, have a thought.

• 53:54Tim Ferriss?

  So I'd love for you to clarify something for me because this is, this is something that surprised me greatly and it may be a misconception, but I remember picking up the Golden Compass and, well, I actually bought all of, what is it, his dark materials? Am I getting that right? The Philip Pullman series. And I bought it, I remember I bought a paperback initially and it was in the young adult section. And in my mind, that meant easier reading for younger readers. And then I got into this book and I, I had to constantly look up nautical terms and vocabulary. It was a very, very, dense isn't the right word, but intellectually demanding book.

• 54:40Tim Ferriss?

  And I thought to myself, how in the hell could say an 11 year old read this without a good amount of assistance or a dictionary? And then a bookseller said to me, well, it's young adult because the protagonist is a young adult, not because the book is for young adults. And I was like, really? I wasn't sure about that. So could you explain maybe your position on that? Like, what qualifies something to be in the young adult genre? Because I loved the Philip Pullman books, but they are certainly

• 55:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 55:12Tim Ferriss?

  more demanding intellectually than many of the so-called adult books that I've read.

• 55:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, and you raise a very interesting question and one that we talk about a lot and that nobody has a good answer to, which is what makes something YA? And sometimes it's just a feel and a lot of times books are put in YA because the protagonists are young adult. Like Jane Eyre has started drifting into YA. I will often see it in YA. Or like Catcher in the Rye. Catcher in the Rye was not written to be a young adult book. It's an adult book, but it's sort of drifted there because the protagonist is a teenager. And I think you're right, sometimes it doesn't. But like, then there's, I don't know if you've read Black Swan Green by David Mitchell?

• 55:51Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  Like, that is clearly an adult book, but the protagonist is a teenager. I'm like, someday somebody's gonna decide that's a YA book. So I think you're right. I think what makes something YA or not is very much in the eye of the beholder and it doesn't necessarily mean that it's not sophisticated or demanding. And there's a lot of books, you know, now there's a lot of talk of crossover. Like, are there books that adults would read? And I kind of wish, as much as I love children's literature and young adult, I kind of wish that people didn't see this split, because I think a lot of times adults don't read things that they might very much enjoy because they think, well, it's YA, so it's not for me. And it's like, these are really, you know, these are really, really great books on their own terms. So I'm with you.

• 56:35Speaker 03

  I don't think that that's, I don't think that that's what makes a YA book because because there's many books that are, that have, you know, teenage protagonists that, you know, I'm just thinking of like Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Wazeki. Well, half of, like, one of the narrator, there's two narrators, one of them is like a 15 year old girl or something like that. That is not a YA book.

• 57:01Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I, it's very, it's very, it's hard to define what that is. Yeah. It's so good, right? Aren't you glad you read it? So good.

• 57:11Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it's incredible. Yeah, for people, I was so outraged when that movie came out and it's

• 57:15Speaker 03

  I know.

• 57:16Tim Ferriss?

  terrible, terrible, terrible.

• 57:19Speaker 03

  A do-over. Yes.

• 57:19Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely horrible. So for

• 57:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, swing again, guys. That's it's such a good story. Yeah.

• 57:25Tim Ferriss?

  Especially the first book is so, so good.

• 57:28Speaker 03

  Well, for my, my group as a thank you present, somebody brought me a, um, a, a Christmas ornament of a polar bear wearing like a banner, a royal banner. And I'm like, I know I'm in the right group because everybody, I showed it to everybody. They're like, look, it's Jörnik Björnason. And I'm like, of course it is. This is not just some random polar bear. This is like, you know, from the golden compass.

• 57:50Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, such a good, yeah, such a great book. So, so I'm gonna switch gears yet again. And I want to ask you about accountability. You were interviewed by a friend of mine, Chase Jarvis. And I believe I'm getting this right. You can certainly fact check me, but I believe you said a lot of people who are frustrated with themselves just need accountability. And I was hoping you could expand on that and maybe give us some examples of how you or other people have used accountability.

• 58:21Speaker 03

  Well, that's going to require me to go into my four tendencies framework. So can I

• 58:25Tim Ferriss?

  Let's do it.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  bring this on you at this point?

• 58:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yes. Oh, yeah. Totally.

• 58:28Speaker 03

  So the four tendencies is this personality framework that I stumbled on basically when I was writing Better Than Before, which is my book about habit change, because I kept noticing patterns in how people could and couldn't form habits that didn't really, wasn't really explained by everything else that I was reading. I was like, I don't get like, what's going on here? It seemed like there was some pattern there that had, that was, hadn't been identified. And it almost melted my brain. Like figuring this out was definitely the most intellectually challenging thing that I've ever done. It was, it, the catalyst for it was a very ordinary conversation where a friend of mine said, um, the weird thing about me is I know I would be happier if I exercised. And when I was in high school, I was on the track team and

• 59:10Speaker 03

  I never missed track practice. So why can't I go running now? And I had heard many people say similar things like that about my life. But for some reason, when she said that, I was just electrified. I was like, I must. Understand what is going on. What's different? Because it's the same person, it's the same behavior. At one time, it was effortless for her, now she can't do it. How do you explain that? And that's what led me to the four tendencies. So, and accountability is a huge, is, we will get to that. So, the four tendencies has, it divides people into upholders, questioners, obligers, and rebels, depending on how you respond to expectations. I know this sounds super boring, but it gets really tootsie, so. So, it has to do with how you deal with outer expectations, which are things like a work

• 59:53Speaker 03

  deadline, or requests from a friend, and then also inner expectations, which is like your own desire to keep a New Year's resolution, your own desire to write a novel in your free time. So, there are upholders, questioners, obligers, rebels. Upholders readily meet outer and inner expectations. So, they meet the work deadline without much fuss, they keep the New Year's resolution without much fuss. They want to know what other people expect from them, but their expectations for themselves are just as important. Then there are questioners. Questioners question all expectations. They'll do it if they think it makes sense. So, they're turning everything into an inner expectation. If it meets their standard, they'll do it, no problem. If it fails their standard, they will resist. And they typically argue against anything arbitrary, inefficient, irrational. Then there are obligers, and that's my friend on the track team.

• 1:00:37Speaker 03

  Obligers readily meet outer expectations, but they struggle to meet inner expectations. So, they will meet the work deadline, but they're going to have a lot of trouble with the New Year's resolution. And then there are rebels. Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. They want to do what they want to do, in their own way, in their own time. They can do anything they want to do. They can do anything they choose to do, but if you ask or tell them to do something, they're very likely to resist. And there's, there's a quiz on my site, GretchenRubin.com, a free quiz, and more than a million people now have taken that quiz. But most people don't even need to take the quiz, they just hear that, like, little introduction, and they know what they are. And, and this ends up making a huge difference in how you most successfully go through life and deal with other people.

• 1:01:21Tim Ferriss?

  What's your view?

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  I'm an upholder, which means that I readily meet outer and inner expectations.

• 1:01:27Tim Ferriss?

  Now, from the, not to interrupt, but I will. It seems like from the description you just gave that it is by far best to be an upholder. Are there downsides to being an upholder? Because it sounds great if you're able to both follow your inner and intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators.

• 1:01:49Speaker 03

  Well, there's a lot of, there's a lot of great things about being an upholder, certainly. It's a small tendency. Rubble is the smallest tendency and upholders only slightly larger. One of the things, but all of the tendencies have strengths and weaknesses. Usually the strengths and the weaknesses, it's like two sides of the same coin. And when you look at who's the happiest, the healthiest, the most productive, most creative, it's the people who have figured out how to harness the strengths of their tendency and offset the weaknesses and limitations of their tendency. And some of the weaknesses and limitations of upholders, one, upholders can, they can be rigid, like they will lock into like a schedule or a priority list. And then it's, they're like, what do you mean? We have to do something different. Like they tend not to do well where there's a lot of emphasis on being flexible, or where

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  it's not clear what expectations are, or where it's ambiguous what's expected of them, or when things change rapidly. They can be, they can have tightening, which is when the rules get tighter, which is like a friend of mine who had a Fitbit, you know, and was trying to do 10,000 steps a day. He's like, my wife was asleep in bed, I was locked myself in the bathroom and I'm jogging away next to the toilet at 1 a.m. because I'm going to get to my, you know, at midnight because I'm going to get to my 10,000 steps. That's tightening. Like it could be good, but sometimes you can become kind of like the, you know, the mindless bureaucrat of your own paperwork as a, it's something upholders really have to be watched out for. Or like I was doing physical therapy and my physical therapist told me to do it twice a day and then all of a sudden I found I was doing it four times a day.

• 1:03:18Speaker 03

  I'm like, maybe that's good, but maybe that's not good. And then they can also seem very cold. It's funny, the other night I gave a talk and an upholder, somebody was like, oh, she's an upholder like you and I think it's so great to be an upholder. What's the downside? And I was like, because they can seem cold and this woman. leans into me and she goes, "Oh, my gosh, I am so cold." Because upholders are like, "You know, I know that we've got guests coming to stay with us at home this weekend, but I gotta go on a 15-mile run because I'm training for the marathon. So you're gonna be on your own because I gotta go for my run." Or like, "Oh, you're my colleague and our reports are due tomorrow, and you've asked me if I can proofread your report, but I don't have time for that because I gotta finish my report. My report's due tomorrow, too." To an upholder, that seems appropriate. I need to meet my inner expectations as well as, you know,

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  my outer expectation of handing this in tomorrow. But to other people, that can seem cold because they're like, "Well, can't you give a little in order to meet other expectations?" So those are some of the downsides, yeah.

• 1:04:14Tim Ferriss?

  So for your friend who was able to run when she was part of a track team, but now, as I guess, an obliger,

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:04:23Tim Ferriss?

  doesn't have that external force, what type of action or structure? What type of action could she take or structure could she create, given that insight?

• 1:04:35Speaker 03

  Well, this goes back to your original question, which is about accountability. That is the answer for obligers. And I would say of everything related to the four tendencies, this is the most important idea that's helped the most people figure out kind of the hidden patterns of their nature, which is that if you're an obliger, by definition, you're meeting outer expectations but struggling to meet inner expectations. The solution, the way to fix this, the very concrete and straightforward solution is outer accountability. Outer accountability can work for other tendencies. It is essential for obligers. If you want to read more, join a book group. If you want to exercise more, join a class where they take attendance, work out with a trainer, work out with a friend who's gonna be annoyed if you don't show up, take your dog for a run every morning,

• 1:05:19Speaker 03

  and he's gonna be so disappointed if he doesn't go for a run. Plus, he's gonna tear up the living room. Some obligers can use things like their future self, like, "Well, now Gretchen doesn't want to go for a run, but future Gretchen's gonna be so disappointed if I break the chain. I've been doing so well. I need to do it for future Gretchen." Obligers vary dramatically in what kind of accountability structures work for them. Because for some obligers... Paying for something makes them very likely to feel accountable. For other obligers, it's almost like it makes them feel like they're off the hook. Like, "Oh, I paid for it, so that's like the same as doing it." And you're like, "No, it's really not." But so, but that is the thing. When you're an obliger, you want to feel like, figure out, "Well, how can I create a structure of outer accountability around inner expectations?" This is true even for self-care.

• 1:06:03Speaker 03

  This is a word, huge tip-off. If somebody starts talking about self-care, I'm like, "Bing, bing, bing, you're an obliger." Or if you're somebody who's like, "Well, you know, I don't have time to exercise because I give 110% to my clients." Like, you're an obliger. Because you're saying, "I can't meet an inner expectation because I'm always meeting outer expectations." Now, you might pride yourself on that and think, "Oh, I'm such a badass. Of course, I'm always seeing patients. I'm always at the hospital. I never have time to like cook, you know, I never have time to have a healthy meal because I'm always eating out of the vending machines because I'm, I work so hard at the hospital, I do everything for my patients." It's like, "Okay, well, you're an obliger." So, given that, if you do decide that you want to exercise or eat healthfully, or write a novel, or practice meditation, or whatever, how could you imagine systems of outer accountability

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  that would permit you to follow through with that, that inner aim that you have for yourself? And sometimes obligers don't like the fact that they're reliant on outer accountability. They feel like somehow it's weak. Like, who cares? It's, it's the biggest tendency. It's the one that most, the most people belong to, for both men and women. A lot of people are in the same boat. Who cares how, what you have to do to get there? Just figure out what works for you, you know? Outer accountability works? Use it.

• 1:07:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally. It's, it doesn't have to be depressing. It can just be useful. I mean, if you, if you look at the psychology and the incentives involved, I mean, I've, for instance, I mean, I've seen people who've used, to great effect, services or sites like dietbet.com, where you're putting money into a betting pool, or stick, S-T-I-C-K-K.com, or others where you're provided with a framework for holding yourself accountable, whether that results in financial loss if you don't hit the goals, or if you have people who are effectively referees who hold you accountable. Like you mentioned, do you, you mentioned New Year's resolution a few minutes ago. Do you set New Year's resolutions for yourself? Is that a practice that you have?

• 1:07:53Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, kind of my job is to have resolutions. I feel like I'm like resolving constantly. Um, so I don't really make New Year's resolutions in the same way. On, on the Happier Podcast, Elizabeth and I did this thing called 18 for 2018. And that wasn't really like resolutions. It was more like 18 things you want to get done in 2018. So that was like a different, you know, there's all, and then there's like the way I, one, one thing I do, I've done many times is pick a one word theme for the year, which is, is again, a different take at the New Year's resolution. Um, where you're like my, like my, this year, my, my word is delegation. And I've had it in other words be like, um, you know, uh, like there's, uh, you know, um,

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  repurposing, you know, where I'm, it's setting a theme for the year. My sister's one year was Hot Wheels because she wanted to get a new car. Um, but, um, but I don't really make traditional New Year's resolutions anymore. Partly because I do make so many resolutions, sort of as part of my ongoing experiment and happiness and good habits. Um, if something occurs to me, I usually like try it right away because, um, uh, just, you know, for the fun of it. Yeah.

• 1:09:04Tim Ferriss?

  So delegation is your, I like this idea of a one word theme for the year. So delegation is your theme for 2018?

• 1:09:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. Because, um, yeah, I realized I need to delegate more.

• 1:09:15Tim Ferriss?

  So I was gonna ask, how, how does that then get translated into sort of actions, things with deadlines, next steps and so on? What, what is your process from, from the point of identifying that and naming it to starting to implement it and make sure that it's translated into real life? What does that look like?

• 1:09:37Speaker 03

  Well, for me, it's, it's asking myself the question, what is it that I do that someone else can do? There's, there are many things that I do that no one else could do. But there's some things that I do that other people could do. And I need to be more disciplined in identifying that and, and delegating it. Partly it's just like, in any one moment, it's easier to just do it myself. It's like faster to just do it myself than to like sit down and figure out, well, who could do it instead? And how could I delegate it? Or maybe I shouldn't do it at all. Or, you know, it's just easy. That's part of being an appholder. It's easier for me to just execute than to step back and be like, "Well, why should I do this? And is there a better way?" That's what questioners are good at. And so I want to do that. And then like last year, my, my theme was repurposing. But I realized, and I did a very bad job living up to that theme. And I'm like,

• 1:10:20Speaker 03

  "That's because I need to delegate repurposing, which is I need to find like someone who I can ask, like to go through, you know, I have a tremendous archive of stuff, but I always want to just be creating a new thing. But I have all this stuff that I could make something cool out of and say like, say to somebody, "Go through, look at all my stuff and pull out everything related to self-knowledge and put it in some kind of form and then I'll go through it and, and polish it and tinker with it and, and make it into something really cool. But if you would just go through and do that, then my, my work would take a fraction of the time. It would just be the fun part that only I can do. Cause I, you know, instead of me thinking, keep thinking, "Oh, I should go through and like cut and paste." And that would sort of be fun, but somebody else can do that.

• 1:11:03Speaker 03

  So I need, so I'm trying to figure that out. How, how exactly that's gonna, what form that will take. It doesn't come naturally to me. So it's gonna be, it's gonna be a struggle.

• 1:11:15Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any, any particular low hanging fruit or first candidates that you're, that you're thinking of experimenting with delegating?

• 1:11:28Speaker 03

  Well, I, that's, see, that's a very good question because I feel like I could do all these sort of little books and I need to sit down and decide, well, which one would be the most fun for me and for other, and for readers. Like I have all these like one sentence aphorisms, which I love one sentence aphorisms and they're sort of sprinkle, and like secrets of adulthood and they're sprinkled all over the place. But I have to sit down and think like, "Is this something that would be a good book? Is this a book? Is this not a book? Is there something else it should be?" You know, that's like, that's the work that only I can do. But then, once I decide like, "Well, what's that priority?" Then I can start thinking about it. Yeah. So it's a whole, it's, it's a big thing. It's not, it's not like something, it's not like, you know, pick up my clothes every night before I go to bed instead of leaving them in a giant pile on the end of the,

• 1:12:14Speaker 03

  you know, at the chair at the end of the bed, which is another one of my resolutions. But that, that's like easy to execute.

• 1:12:20Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  This one, there's like lots of moving pieces that are very uncomfortable for me to ponder. Yeah.

• 1:12:26Tim Ferriss?

  Huh. Well, how will you go, how will you go about making that process easier for yourself? Or, I mean, I think that a lot of people listening certainly will feel a similar pain in terms of their historic lack of delegation.

• 1:12:47Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any people or systems that you're going to rely on to help you with the getting better at delegation?

• 1:12:55Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's, I think I have to, I think it has to come from my own mind. So I think it's about examining my work process and thinking, well, what is it that I can do? What is it that I should do that no one else can do? And thinking about that. That's what I need to sit down and think about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything from handling email to, you know, all that stuff.

• 1:13:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So I know we don't have too, too much time left, but I'd love to ask you some of my, suppose, usual kind of rapid fire questions. Cause I'm really curious how you'd answer some of them. And one is, one is related to failure. So is there any particular failure of yours that you can think of that set the stage for a later success? Or a favorite, or favorite failure of yours, so to speak, that you, that you learned a lot from or steered you in a different direction?

• 1:13:52Speaker 03

  Absolutely, absolutely. So I wrote a book, which I love, I love all my books, called Forty Ways to Look at JFK. And as they say in the industry, it did not find its audience. Nothing they tell you when a book bombs. So nobody bought this book. Nobody was interested in this book. And, but what it taught me, that was, so it was a very, it was a failure. And they didn't even make it into a paperback. So that was, that was my only book that's only exists in hardback form. And, but what I learned was I had this incredible feeling of helplessness. That here I was, I had poured my heart into a book. I really thought it was good and I was totally dependent on others to shine a spotlight on it. Like there was nothing I could do to try to let people know that the book was

• 1:14:35Speaker 03

  There. Now, maybe they weren't interested, but I couldn't even try to interest them in it. I had no tools. And it was just at this time that everything was beca- all the tools that now exist online were just becoming accessible enough to people who are very un-technical like me. Things like having a blog. And, um, and I had already started working on the Happiness Project. And one of the kind of, and the idea of the Happiness Project is I was test-driving all these things that people tell you about how you can be happier. And one of the things that the research keeps showing is that novelty and challenge make people happier. And I thought, well, that's not true for me. I like mastery and familiarity, but I have to do something because the whole point of the book is I'm going to do this experiment. So I'm like, well, I'll do something novel and challenging. I'll start a blog.

• 1:15:18Speaker 03

  Well, I quickly realized that the blog, which I started thinking that it would be like my gratitude journal and I would quickly abandon it because it wouldn't work, which I did with my gratitude journal. But, um, the, um, but I, but I really enjoyed the blog. It did well. Um, and I realized that it was solving this problem that I had felt before, which was, I have no way to connect directly to readers. Um, and so I feel like if that, if I hadn't had, if I hadn't had that failure, I wouldn't have, I don't think I would have had as much excitement and interest in the blog because I wouldn't have understood how valuable it is to connect with readers. It's one of the reasons I love having a podcast. It's one of the reasons that I like, I love using social media.

• 1:15:59Speaker 03

  Like, I, I love connecting with listeners and viewers and readers about the subjects that I'm interested in. I get immense value from it because I get all kinds of examples and questions and illustrations. And people are like my research assistants. They'll send me links to research and, you know, anything they think, you know, connects to the things that I'm obsessed with. Um, so it's enormously valuable to me, but I don't know. If that book had done fine, I don't know that I would have realized the value of it. Because I would have been like, oh, I'll just write a good book and people will just naturally know about it. And it's like, but now with like shrinking, you know, coverage in traditional media, you know, there's fewer, now it looks like indie bookstores are kind of coming back, but for a while it was, was really scary for indie bookstores, like, um...

• 1:16:43Speaker 03

  I was, I thought, I really do want to be able to connect with people, myself, just like with my own steam, rather than depending on gatekeepers.

• 1:16:54Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:16:55Speaker 03

  Like, if I don't get a book review, then this book essentially doesn't exist in the public mind, or, you know, once it's not in the front table, then no one will ever see it again, or it will never be heard from again. So that was a failure that had enormous consequences for me. It did not feel, it did not feel like a, like a, like a helpful failure at the time, but looking back, it was a lucky failure, for sure.

• 1:17:18Tim Ferriss?

  What's, what's software platform do you use for your blog?

• 1:17:22Speaker 03

  Uh, WordPress.

• 1:17:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, WordPress is interesting, I mean, for a host of reasons, right? Both email, podcasting, and platforms like WordPress are really, I'm also on WordPress, and have been since day one, even before I became involved with Automattic later, the company that handles WordPress.com. But the, the benefit in, say, an open source platform, or something that can be ported from one place, in the case of email, from one, say, email service provider to another, is that your audience travels with you, right? And this makes me think of a conversation that I had long ago with someone who had a multimillion dollar business based on Facebook, and I think Facebook is incredibly valuable for a lot of things. However,

• 1:18:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:08Tim Ferriss?

  when your access and reach to your audience is dependent on an algorithm that is 100% outside of your control, I asked him what it was like to have a business based on Facebook, and he said, "It's like owning the most profitable McDonald's in the world on top of an active volcano."

• 1:18:24Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Wow.

• 1:18:25Tim Ferriss?

  And this, this is something, certainly with books, I mean, the vast majority, this is changing, but many authors, and certainly most publishers, have no means of communication with their readers whatsoever. It's really, really important. So this, this then is a follow-up question, and you might have to pick something else, because I think this, what you just said could be an answer. But what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you've ever made? Could be money, time, energy, anything at all?

• 1:18:59Speaker 03

  I mean, like, well, I mean, I just keep thinking laptop, but that's so basic and so long ago, it doesn't even really count.

• 1:19:06Tim Ferriss?

  What about, what about skill development? Is there any particular?

• 1:19:09Speaker 03

  Learning how to like podcasts, I mean, that's a whole separate skill. Yeah, that was huge. Like entering into that world was a huge, huge thing. Yeah.

• 1:19:20Tim Ferriss?

  How did you, how did you learn? I mean, what, because you have, you have a popular podcast. Certainly you were coming in with an advantage as I did with an audience for your books. But how did you think about learning to podcast?

• 1:19:35Speaker 03

  Well, I did something which is like one of my favorite things to do, which is I was like, I'm going to have a manifesto. Like, I'm really into sort of like taking ideas and trying to distill them. So I went around and talked to as many people I could find who either created podcasts or worked in podcasting or just love podcasts. And I asked them like, what, like, how do you even think about it? And would hear what they talk, and then whenever they would say some things that I was like, okay, it makes the manifesto, you know? And so like, one of them, like, one thing that made the manifesto, which I think about all the time is to be consistent and also surprise. And I think about that all the time. Like, there has to be consistency, but then you also have to break it up, you know, instead of you were, or like, and like, let the outside world into your podcast.

• 1:20:18Speaker 03

  You know, you don't want it to become too insular. You have new people on your podcast all the time, but for us, it's mostly me and my sister. So it's like, you don't want it to start feeling claustrophobic. So how do you get the outside world in?

• 1:20:29Tim Ferriss?

  Just as, just to hit pause for a second, how do you do that? Because it could quickly become just all inside baseball, right? For long-term listeners.

• 1:20:37Speaker 03

  Well, one thing is, we have interviews, but very sporadically. So not nearly, you know, it's like every maybe fifth episode, if even that often. So that's one way to get in. Sometimes our producer will come in and like, like, just like, make a comment. So you're like, oh yeah, they're in, they're in, you know, there is like other people around. Often we try to have clips from like televisions or movies if those are, if those are relevant or, you know, music, if there's something like that, or, you know, even sound effects or just something. So like so that the sound is is changing. Um, so that's one thing. Um. Uh, and so for me, that was, that's very helpful. It's sort of like, okay, I'm, I'm not just like having coffee with somebody and having them tell me about their podcast.

• 1:21:21Speaker 03

  I'm like, I'm looking for those gems that are like the takeaways or like one thing is, um, fans are great, but a community is, is, is better. So how do you change, how do you change fans into a community? Like, that's a question that we still are thinking about all the time. This is an aspirational manifesto. It's not what we do. It's what we try to do.

• 1:21:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. How have you thought about turning your listeners into a community?

• 1:21:46Speaker 03

  Well, one thing that we do a lot of is we have tons of listener content. So like, um, uh, like for the holidays, for instance, we, we were like, okay, send us your best holiday hack. Um, so like some quick, easy thing to make the holidays easier, whether that's about entertaining or your Christmas card list or, you know, buying gifts or dealing with your difficult relatives or like traveling, whatever it is. And then we would go through and have like, oh, here are all these things from our community or like I did this thing which worked out really well where, um, uh, someone had emailed to ask if I had any, because I love quotations so much. I have like a quotation newsletter where I send out a quotation every day.

• 1:22:26Speaker 03

  A happiness quotation. Um, said, do you have any good ideas for funeral readings or memorial readings? Cause I have to like, I have to, um, like there's, I have to go to a funeral and I need readings. And I was like, this is a great question for everyone like. And so it was like a whole community project. People would send in their favorites and then I made a PDF. And then it's just something that people can ask for. Like, do you want the funeral, the readings for, for funerals or? And when you need that, it's like, it's really helpful to get like a 20 page document. That's, and then, and it's from everybody. Or like, we did a thing on Spotify about, you know how like when you're feeling blue? Most people have like a song that they, there's like their go to song to make themselves cheer up.

• 1:23:03Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:23:04Speaker 03

  So we asked people to like submit their songs and it's like, now it's like dozens and dozens and dozens of hours on Spotify. If everybody's like, this is my go to song. So it's like the happiest, most energizing playlist. But everybody built it together. Um, and so that's.

• 1:23:19Tim Ferriss?

  How did they make those submissions?

• 1:23:21Speaker 03

  By email, or voicemail. And then we had a meetup, we've only had one meetup. It was really, it was great, but it was like, it's a thing to pull that off. Like, where do you do it? How do you organize it? How do you get people at RSVP? So, we need to work on that. We've done a couple of live events. Those are super fun. We want to do more of those because we do feel like that's like the great community thing because there's like, everybody's there together. And, and Alyssa, my sister, has another podcast of her own and they have a very fat, active Facebook group, Happier in Hollywood. We have not done that with Happier, but I know that that's something that can be really, really effective too. So, but it's something, again, it's like, everybody would, everybody would have a different answer for like, depending on what they're interested in, what they're good at, what

• 1:24:05Speaker 03

  their audience is interested in, what their content is. But it's a good question, which is, how do you turn fans into a community? And it's like, fun to talk about.

• 1:24:14Tim Ferriss?

  Is the manifesto written out, sort of like Jerry Maguire? So, you have, how long is it?

• 1:24:21Speaker 03

  It's like 15 items, I think, now.

• 1:24:23Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, okay. So, it's really like the 15 commandments of sorts?

• 1:24:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. A manifesto, I feel like, a manifesto has to be one page. Yeah, it's like a resume. Yeah, you've got a, part of it is like, to keep it succinct. Yeah, no, it's like 15 one-liners.

• 1:24:37Tim Ferriss?

  Have you shared it anywhere?

• 1:24:38Speaker 03

  We were, that's one of ours. Yeah, yeah, no, I gave a whole talk about it.

• 1:24:44Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, you did? Oh, okay, great.

• 1:24:45Speaker 03

  No, it's public. If anybody wants it, just email me and I'll send you my podcasting, my podcast manifesto. I love a manifesto. I have a habits manifesto, a happiness manifesto. I love these frameworks. I like distilling things. It's like, it's like, for me, that's like so much, it's like, some people like to write haiku. I like to write manifestos.

• 1:25:04Tim Ferriss?

  Now, I don't want to destroy your inbox, which is entirely possible. Maybe you have some system for avoiding inbox deluge, but when you said people can email you, if they wanted to find or read the habit manifesto or the podcasting manifesto, how would you suggest they find it? I mean, certainly, they could search your name and then fill in the blank manifesto on Google or elsewhere, but...

• 1:25:30Speaker 03

  Right, or on my website. They're, they're, they're there on my website and the resources if they wanted that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:35Tim Ferriss?

  Perfect. So, you, you mentioned quotations. So, if you... Could have a giant billboard anywhere, metaphorically speaking, right? Getting a message out to millions or billions of people.

• 1:25:47Speaker 03

  What a good question.

• 1:25:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so it could be, it could be a few words, it could be a paragraph, doesn't really matter. It could be some, a saying of yours, or it could be another quote from, from someone else. What might you put on it?

• 1:26:02Speaker 03

  Well, I think of everything that I have ever, if it was gonna be a quote for me, of everything that I have ever written, there's clearly one sentence that is the sentence that, that is the most meaningful to people. And that is, "The days are long, but the years are short." That is, I feel like for many people, that is like the most help, that, that's like the thing that's quoted to, back to me the most is, and it's just like this idea that, you know, getting, sometimes getting from morning to night feels interminable, but then you're like, where, where did 2017 go? Like, do I even remember March 2017? Like, what even happened? Like, it just flashed by. So to remember that, um, to remember that.

• 1:26:41Tim Ferriss?

  And if you, are there any quotes that you use as routinely? For, I have certain quotes that I revisit often, or that I have in my home somewhere that I will see them often. Are there any quotes that you might put on a billboard for yourself?

• 1:26:59Speaker 03

  Um, one is, uh, from Robert Louis Stevenson, "There is no duty we so underrate as the duty of being happy," um, which I think is great. And, um, then there's one from Thomas Merton, and I'm not sure I'm gonna get it, um, 100% accurate, but he said essentially, "I am finally coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am."

• 1:27:26Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I like that. I like that a lot.

• 1:27:30Speaker 03

  I may not have that word perfect, but that's the gist.

• 1:27:32Tim Ferriss?

  That's the gist of it, yeah. The, uh, how did you find an interest, and, uh, we only have, you know, we'll take a few more minutes, but in, in koans and these types of...

• 1:27:46Tim Ferriss?

  Thought provoking statements or questions, perhaps without an answer. That's kind of part of the exercise in some respects. But I mean, for instance, one of my favorite quotes, which is certainly at times, or most of the time, quite a head scratcher, which is Rumi, which is "that which you seek is seeking you."

• 1:28:04Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. Oh, well, that's very much like one of my favorite poems, which is Samuel Johnson quoting a Spanish proverb that said, "He who would find the wealth of the Indies must bring the wealth of the Indies with him." Same, same idea. So, yes.

• 1:28:21Tim Ferriss?

  Why?

• 1:28:22Speaker 03

  Yes, very powerful.

• 1:28:23Tim Ferriss?

  What itch do those scratch for you? Or how did you? Why the interest?

• 1:28:31Speaker 03

  I guess I like this sort of escape from logic, or like the way, they're usually like the perfection of the idea, or like the elusiveness of it. Like, right now, one of my weird obsessions that I'm into is color. I'm like really, really obsessed with color. And I have a ton of color poems that are poems that are only about color. And like, oh, here's one that somebody actually said to me in real life. Wait, what was it? Okay, she said, "I walked into a store and I said, 'I want to buy this blue chair.'" And the clerk said, "Oh, everybody says it's blue, but that chair is actually brown." Is the chair blue or brown?

• 1:29:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:17Speaker 03

  Right. What color do you use to paint an object that's transparent?

• 1:29:22Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. Why the interest in color? How did this come about?

• 1:29:26Speaker 03

  I have, oh, so the way it came about was, so on the Happier Podcast, Elizabeth and I, we always have a try this at home, which is like a small, concrete thing that you can do in your everyday life to make yourself happier. And so we tried this at home one week was to pick a signature color. And ironically, neither Elizabeth nor I has ever been able to pick a signature color, but we put it out there anyway.

• 1:29:45Tim Ferriss?

  You said sinister?

• 1:29:46Speaker 03

  Signature.

• 1:29:46Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, signature.

• 1:29:47Speaker 03

  Like your signature color.

• 1:29:49Tim Ferriss?

  Got it, got it.

• 1:29:49Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, not a sinister color. But, um, and so, and, and, and I thought this was sort of a fun playful thing. And again, it's a way to tap into like the power of the moment and your environment. Um, and, but we got so many impassioned, delighted, um, uh, responses from people. And also like so many pictures and, I mean, there were crazy stories, like a woman who said that her mother had really been into the color red and also kind of the southwest, uh, lo- look, that when she died, they got a red southwest designed urn for her ashes. I mean, these are people really taking it all the way. And it just got me thinking about color. And, you know, as I said before, I'm not a visual person. I can only get to the visual through words.

• 1:30:33Speaker 03

  And so I started reading more and more about color. It turns out, there's like this giant literature about color. Uh, there's a French historian of color who's slowly working his way. He had a book called Black, he had a book called Green, he had a book called Blue. Red just came out this year. I'm eagerly awaiting Yellow. Um, there, and then all these kind of crazy, interesting philosophical books about it. Uh, anyway, um, once I got into it, it's just like I couldn't stop. Um, and now I'm doing some like weird little thing, writing kind of like a weird little book called My Color Pilgrimage, which I have no idea what that's even going to be, but I couldn't help myself. I just had to do it. Um, felt that compulsion again to write it. And so part of it is, um, is these cones, like, could a painting include a light yellow that's lighter than a dark white?

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  Can light yellow be light, can light yellow be lighter than dark white?

• 1:31:22Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I like that.

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  Uh, uh, oh, here's a, here's an interesting question. Now, this is like color questions. Do you think dragons are green or red?

• 1:31:34Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, well, I would probably go with green personally.

• 1:31:39Speaker 03

  Interesting, that is historically the color of dragons. I would always say red. So, but this is like, what color are unicorns? They can be any color we want because they don't really exist. But it's interesting, like, I'm like, to me, it's like... Of course they're red. Like, I didn't even know that was a question that anybody would have.

• 1:31:57Speaker 03

  Do you believe in, like, how can a color be achromatic? Black, white, and gray are considered achromatic colors. They're non-color colors. How can you have a non-color color? Is black a color? I say yes, black is a color. But a lot of people say no. So, anyway.

• 1:32:11Tim Ferriss?

  So, on the theme of black, just since you're going down this rabbit hole, I have a recommendation for a very short and exceptionally weird book that may have a few paragraphs you would fall in love with. But it's something you can read in an afternoon really easily. It's called "Impress of Shadows."

• 1:32:31Speaker 03

  Ooh, okay. Who wrote it? I'm writing this down right now.

• 1:32:34Tim Ferriss?

  It's an essay on Japanese aesthetics by Jun...

• 1:32:37Speaker 03

  Oh, I read that!

• 1:32:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:38Speaker 03

  This is the one that opens with, no, it opens with his, like, brilliant invocation of the, like, the outhouse.

• 1:32:47Tim Ferriss?

  That's right, yeah. And talks about how Japanese aesthetics, and also color, right? The use of gold were designed to reflect light in very dim environments. So, contemporary, in contemporary design, when you have traditional Japanese color palettes in brightly lit rooms, it doesn't work and it seems very gaudy, just as one point, right? Hence, the title, "Impress of Shadows."

• 1:33:15Speaker 03

  Well, I'm so glad that you mentioned it because I read it and remembered thinking, there's a lot about that book that is very deeply weird. But I wasn't obsessed with color at the time, so I didn't read it through the lens of color. And so now I want to go back and reread it because it is a very, it's a controversial book in many ways.

• 1:33:33Tim Ferriss?

  It's super, super weird, yeah.

• 1:33:35Speaker 03

  Super weird. And, but, you know, sometimes you read something and you're just not in the same place to, like, I bet now I would read it with a whole different eye. So I'm so glad that you mentioned it because... I will be checking it out of the library tomorrow. I'm going to the library tomorrow. And, uh, yes, I know exactly where it is because I checked it out before. I know they have a copy. Um, so that's great. Yeah. Now, the Japanese are interesting because they have four basic colors, uh, black, white, and a particular blue and a particular red. That's like their core color, which is, which is not. Yeah, it's a different, different approach.

• 1:34:09Tim Ferriss?

  Well, what's Japan? I remember that was one of the first places I realized. My first extended trip abroad was in Japan as an exchange student for a year. So I really went from zero to sixty very, very quickly in terms of culture shock. And I remember one of the conversations that just made my mind sort of tilt its head like a confused Labrador was the fact that the, uh, well, what we would consider the green go signal at a sidewalk, Japanese people call blue, even though they have a separate word for green. And I would ask them.

• 1:34:46Speaker 03

  Only recently. That's a very recent introduction into the vocabulary. That's part of why.

• 1:34:50Tim Ferriss?

  I don't, I don't know when.

• 1:34:52Speaker 03

  Came in recently, yeah.

• 1:34:53Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know when it was, when it was introduced, but the, I mean, they have a clear delineation. If you look at it on paper, you could say this is green, this is blue, and then you'd have agreement. And then you look at the crosswalk sign and you say, it's green. And they say, no, you mean it's blue. And it was really a trip for me. Uh, just a mental trip to realize how socially conditioned even our perception of color is, right? Which you would expect is sensory input converted by these rods and cones at the back of the eye into this objective, fill in the blank color. Uh, but it's just not the case. It doesn't seem.

• 1:35:30Speaker 03

  In Russia, they have a word, just like we have a word for light red is pink. And we don't really say things are light red. We would call it pink. They have a word like that for light blue. They have a whole separate word for it. And, um, and it's interesting in it actually, when you look at the brain function of people who speak Russian and their color identification, it's different. Because when, when you have a distinction like that built into your language, um, it does change the way. particularly with which you could perceive these things. So it is, it's very like, and I just was reading today that the word orange like didn't exist until or literally oranges came into the marketplace.

• 1:36:11Speaker 03

  In Europe, because they just said, they just said yellow, red, they didn't have like a special word for it because there just, I guess there just wasn't enough need for it. And then when the oranges came, they were like, oh, we're gonna, and that's why it's called orange. Cause it's literally from oranges. Cause that's when they began to identify the color. Yeah. So there's all sorts of crazy color history thing. What I'm going to do with this, I don't know. But yeah. So that you're that Japanese, it's a very different way of perceiving color.

• 1:36:37Tim Ferriss?

  I'll give you one more recommendation that is going to make sense to like a fraction of 1% of people out there, but that's okay.

• 1:36:45Speaker 03

  It's my favorite kind.

• 1:36:46Tim Ferriss?

  Which is, uh, look, look into the experimentalists who are creating hardware devices for sensory substitution experiments. So that if, if people want to hear colors or feel sight, there are hardware devices that have been created to help people experience this in various experimental designs. My friend Ed Cook, who's a memory champion and very fascinating guy, has done a lot of experimentation with this, but that could feed into your rabbit hole of, of color.

• 1:37:23Speaker 03

  So it's basically hardware synesthesia?

• 1:37:25Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. Yeah. It's using computers and hardware to enable synesthesia in non-synesthetes, so to speak. I'm curious though, on a completely separate note, what, what try this at home has had the strongest response to date of any that you've done with your audience?

• 1:37:47Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh. Um, so many. I don't know. I mean, we've been going to more than two years. So.

• 1:37:52Tim Ferriss?

  Or any that come to mind that had huge responses from your audiences?

• 1:37:57Speaker 03

  Um, well, this 18 for 2018, people are really responding to, that has been super fun. What are some other, um, big ones?

• 1:38:12Speaker 03

  I'm just going blank.

• 1:38:14Tim Ferriss?

  That's okay.

• 1:38:16Speaker 03

  We just, there's just so many. You know one, you know one thing though, it's, we didn't do it as a try this at home, but it's something that we keep hearing about over and over and over again. It's something that really people respond to. So Alyssa and I, well, we're sisters and our parents live in Kansas City. And my mother made this suggestion. She was like, you know, you know how it is, and everybody has remarked on this, that like, if you see somebody every day, you have tons to talk about with them. But if you see people like once every six months, it's like, how are you? Fine, how are you? Like, it's hard to make conversation.

• 1:38:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:38:46Speaker 03

  So my mother said, let's just email each other with just like the boring details of everyday life. And we instantly realized that this was a genius idea. And so in our family, my nuclear, my, you know, my, my, my, my sister and my parents, the four of us, we will send these periodic updates, like say maybe every four or five days. That just says update, that's the title. And it's just like the most boring thing. It's like my mother will be like, I'm getting my hair colored later today. Or I'll be like, Eleanor is really annoyed because Barnaby tracked snow all over her bed. You know, it's just like the most mundane things are like, oh, I'm leaving tomorrow for London. It should be really fun. I'm seeing my friend Delia. Do you remember her? She was my roommate after college. And, and there's no, it's okay to be boring. That is the motto of update.

• 1:39:31Speaker 03

  And, but what we find is that it dramatically increases our feeling of connection with each other. Because when you know that mundane stuff, and then also it's good if there's like kids, because my parents can say, oh, I heard that you had a Halloween party at school. Or like, they know what's going on in a much more kind of day to day way. And so many people have said, and some people do this as like a group text.

• 1:39:51Tim Ferriss?

  I like that, that's cool.

• 1:39:52Speaker 03

  People have set up private groups on Facebook. People do it all different ways, but the idea is it's better to have frequent, boring, mundane communications than to save it up for like when there's something big to report. Because that's not how relationships work. Relationships really thrive on really being in touch with people. And, and also nobody ever responds to update. So there's no guilt, there's no like, oh, now I have to like craft a witty response or like now I have to do one too. It's just like, you just put it out there and usually nobody. And response and because it's like, let's keep this easy so we can do it. You know, I think sometimes people want to have like, let's start some beautiful thing where we like, write handwritten letters on parchment and mail it to each other. You know, like, no, I'm not going to do that.

• 1:40:35Speaker 03

  So that's something that's interesting because it worked really well for us. And we thought it was sort of our idiosyncratic family, but like over time, like, that's the thing where people are like, tell me again, what was that thing with update? Because I want to do that. That's something that really did.

• 1:40:46Tim Ferriss?

  Love it.

• 1:40:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:48Tim Ferriss?

  So two more questions for you. This is, I suppose, pretty self, self explanatory. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or feel like you've lost your focus temporarily, what do you do?

• 1:41:03Speaker 03

  Oh, I reread a children's book.

• 1:41:05Tim Ferriss?

  Is there a go to?

• 1:41:07Speaker 03

  Oh, I got a million go tos, but like, in fact, like Harry Potter, I was like, I have to hold back. Harry Potter, do not let myself reread it, reread it, reread it. I have to hold it for a moment of need. And so when I got the edits back from my editor for my book, Better Than Before, it was like, I'm like, and now I'm going to start rereading Harry Potter. I need it now. This is the time because I'm processing all of this stuff. But no, I have like a thousand books, you know, Edward Eager, Elizabeth Enright. I mean, Philip Pullman, I mean, I got a million. I got a huge library full, but I love rereading. I love rereading adult books too. I reread adult books all the time. But there's something very comforting about children's books in particular.

• 1:41:50Speaker 03

  C.S. Lewis, I mean, how many times have I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? I mean, easily could be 40, could be more.

• 1:41:58Speaker 03

  But yeah, because it's just like, oh, I'm like, oh, yeah, I need. And in fact, it's almost a tell. It's funny that you ask that because it's almost like sometimes I know I'm feeling overwhelmed without really, I'm like, oh, I'm reading The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper again. I wonder if I'm feeling a little bit stressed out. It's sometimes like my, my reading choice, it tells me more about my emotional state than I'm even aware of.

• 1:42:24Tim Ferriss?

  That's your divining rod.

• 1:42:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. My psychiatrist.

• 1:42:28Tim Ferriss?

  Do you read the entire book? If you're, for instance, you get your edits back on your own book. Do you just need a minimum effective dose, a little, like a vein hit of, you know, two chapters and you're good? Or do you end up reading the whole book? How does that typically run its course?

• 1:42:49Speaker 03

  Um, it kind of depends. Sometimes, you know, and some of these books are so short, you can practically read the whole thing. You know, if you've read it before, if you've read it 40 times before, you can whip through that thing pretty fast. Um, it depends. You know, sometimes I'll just reread like my favorite, a couple of favorite parts that are comforting, you know, or if it's a really good book or a book that I haven't read in a long time, I might read the whole thing. Um, some books are complicated, you know, and, um, but, uh, but I do try to be careful not to read them so often that I wear them out. Um, cause you can do that with a book and kind of lose the pleasure of it because it's too familiar. I kind of, I wore out Roald Dahl early. Um, so I don't re, I don't reread Roald Dahl very much now because I'm like, I just know his books so well that they kind of don't

• 1:43:34Speaker 03

  have any pleasure for me anymore.

• 1:43:35Tim Ferriss?

  What is a short children's or young adult book that you would recommend almost everybody give a shot? Something that can be read in a day or a weekend?

• 1:43:48Speaker 03

  I would say The Midnight Fox by Bets Fiers. That's like a middle grade book. Are you talking about like a middle grade book or more like a YA book? That's a middle grade book, but it is a masterpiece that anybody, anybody, male or female, adult or child, it is, it's just a perfect book.

• 1:44:06Tim Ferriss?

  Great.

• 1:44:07Speaker 03

  It's funny. It's thoughtful. It's got great characters. Um, it's, uh, it's a great book.

• 1:44:15Tim Ferriss?

  So The Midnight Fox, and then for YA, for young adult, what would you, what would your nomination be?

• 1:44:22Speaker 03

  YA gets trickier. Um, what is a YA, uh, One Day This Pain Will Be Useful To You is an amazing character and a beautifully written book. I would highly recommend that. Um, uh, let's see, what is another one? I mean, then there are ones that everybody knows about, like Wonder. That is, that is an amazing book. Um, and, but maybe that's even middle grade. I don't know what they consider that. Um, I would say The Golden Compass, for sure.

• 1:44:48Tim Ferriss?

  It's such a good book.

• 1:44:50Speaker 03

  It's so unbelievably good, and the characters are so unbelievably compelling, and the world is so unbelievably interesting. And it's like nothing you've ever read before. And it's like, very, it's like connected to the deepest core of thinking and philosophy. That is a towering masterpiece. Yeah. So I would say The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. It's, but it's scary. And it's challenging.

• 1:45:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:15Speaker 03

  It's not, it's not, it's not for you to read out loud to your six-year-old, for sure.

• 1:45:20Tim Ferriss?

  Especially, yeah, especially the later volumes. But, uh, yeah. What adult books, book or books have you reread the most?

• 1:45:29Speaker 03

  Ooh, interesting.

• 1:45:30Tim Ferriss?

  Or reread a lot, because you mentioned there are some adult books that you've reread a lot.

• 1:45:34Speaker 03

  Hmm, it's like, you know, probably like, um, I've reread a lot of nonfiction. Like, a book that I love that I have read so many times is Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung. Um, Into the Wild by John Krakauer, uh, Selected Essays by George Orwell, or there's, I have my favorite essays that I will go read. Some of them are in, like, the short, short collections, some aren't. Um, uh, Samuel Johnson essays, I read and reread a lot. I love Samuel Johnson. Um, I read it, I love Regina Wolfe. She kind of blows my head open, so I, it's, it's hard for me to reread it. I'll often reread her nonfiction. Same thing with Flannery O'Connor.

• 1:46:17Speaker 03

  Flannery O'Connor's fiction is so kind of, um,

• 1:46:23Speaker 03

  it really is so mind-blowing that I almost can't take it. I have to be in a very particular emotional. I can reread something like Wise Blood, but I reread her nonfiction a lot, because I love her nonfiction. I love her voice. Um, and it's a lot easier to take. So I have a, for, for rereading, I probably reread nonfiction a lot. And then I love, like, Robertson Davies, um, Jane Austen. Sometimes if I want to reread a novel, I'll read something like that.

• 1:46:47Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, so you have a very, very impressive level of output in terms of creation in the world. How many hours a week, or day, or month, however you want to slice it, do you spend reading?

• 1:47:01Speaker 03

  You know, I don't know, and that is a great question, because every week on Facebook, I post a picture of the books that I've read that week. And I don't have any kind of, I don't do any editorializing or any explanation, but if I've read it, I put a picture of it. And if I don't like a book, I don't finish it. So if I finished it, it means I liked it well enough to finish it. And every week I have read books, but I feel like I spend no time reading. And I'm constantly thinking to myself, how can I find more time to read? How can I find more time to go to the library? How can I find more time to like, you know, have 457 books on my library list in my phone? I just need to make more time to read. And yet I must have reading. And then I do a lot of research. I'm always taking notes off the things I've read. So to me, it is a mystery. And I know I should do time logging, like

• 1:47:45Speaker 03

  Laura Vanderkamp says, and like, really write it down like a lawyer, and figure out, where is my time? When am I reading?

• 1:47:52Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds stressful to me.

• 1:47:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like, I don't know. I really, I don't know how much time I read. It probably varies tremendously. Oh, but here's a great tip that somebody told me. And this has really changed my reading. She said to me that if you're a person who travels a lot for work, as Tim, you and I both do, her rule is, she only reads for pleasure when she's traveling for work. So from the minute that she gets to the airport, to the minute, but she'll work in the hotel room, to the minute that she gets to the hotel, she will only read for fun. On the plane, in the airport, there is no expectation that she's going to work. And to me, this has dramatically improved my experience of travel, and I've gotten amazing amount of reading done. Because it wasn't even like I was getting that much work done,

• 1:48:37Speaker 03

  but I felt like I should be working. So

• 1:48:39Tim Ferriss?

  For sure.

• 1:48:40Speaker 03

  But now I'm just like, you know what? Like, I read Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan. Like, I had a flight, like, a flight from London. Plus, I had all the time in Heathrow. I'm like, I read the whole book. From the time that I left, to the time that I landed, I think I only had a few chapters left by the time. Because I just read the whole time. It's so satisfying.

• 1:49:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:00Speaker 03

  And now I like traveling so much better because I really look forward to having that really concentrated reading time. And I wasn't getting much work done anyway. I mean, honestly, I just wasn't. I was, you know, I was kind of, I think some people can really, really work on airplanes. And if you do, then maybe you want to do that because it's a really good place for you to work. But I was not getting quality work done on airplane.

• 1:49:25Tim Ferriss?

  Well, we could talk for hours and hours and hours, but we'll save that for round two. Is there anything that you would like to, well, first and foremost, where can people learn more about you, what you're up to, where would you like them to say hi, and so on?

• 1:49:42Speaker 03

  If you go to GretchenRubin.com, that's R U B I N dot com. There's all sorts of information, resources, videos, contact. If you contact me through my blog, it really does come straight through to me. You can see my podcast, learn more about my books. Like, there's way more there than you would ever want to know. Read about color. Yeah. Yeah. Go to GretchenRubin.com. Or the podcast is called Happier with Gretchen Rubin, if you're looking for a podcast.

• 1:50:10Tim Ferriss?

  Perfect. And is there anything you would like to close with? Any parting comments, suggestions, next steps, try this at home, anything that people can do to change their behavior, change their thoughts, whatever you want to wrap up with? Any final thoughts?

• 1:50:29Speaker 03

  Can I just, instead, can I ask you a question?

• 1:50:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:50:32Speaker 03

  What is, you know what your tendency is? What do you think your tendency is?

• 1:50:36Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:50:37Speaker 03

  So I would, you would mention it and we moved on before you.

• 1:50:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, I didn't want to make it, you know, I feel like this entire podcast is pretty self indulgent. And so I was hoping, I wasn't going to take it there, but I will say.

• 1:50:50Speaker 03

  I think everybody's want to hear what you have to say.

• 1:50:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So I definitely, it was questioner, right? Or questioning? Was that the, was that one of them?

• 1:51:01Speaker 03

  Questioner is the ones that they'll meet inner expectations, but if they think they make sense, they'll meet an expectation. But if they think it doesn't make sense, if it's arbitrary or inefficient.

• 1:51:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:11Speaker 03

  They push back.

• 1:51:12Tim Ferriss?

  I think that's me. And what is the, now I'm curious to know, what are the downsides of that? And how can one mitigate against the downsides?

• 1:51:21Speaker 03

  The downsides for questioners is sometimes they can drain and overwhelm people with their questioning, like everybody else is like, "Why are we still talking about this?" And you're like, "But what about this? And what about this? And what about this?" So to the questioner, this is like, "Of course, we can't move forward until all these questions are answered, because why would we waste our time and our energy if we don't think it's the right thing to do?" But to other people, like if you're in a team or something, sometimes people, you know, start getting exasperated and exhausted because they feel like it's too many questions. Some questioners experience analysis paralysis, which is when they want perfect information, and so it's hard to make a decision or move forward because they're like, it's like, you know, "What's the best, you know, email service provider?" You don't, "How, I could do more and more and more research on that, and like, "Oh,

• 1:52:06Speaker 03

  maybe I should do this, maybe I should do that," or, you know, "I want to buy a bike, what's the best bike?" And so it's, it can be hard. Some, some questioner, my husband's a questioner, he never really experiences this, as far as I can tell, but for some questioners, it's something where they need to figure out how to contain that so that they can move forward. And, and funnily enough, often, analysis paralysis seems to be about little things, not big things. Like, it's like, a person might not have any trouble deciding to switch careers, but if they were trying to decide what kind of tent to buy, that could really hold them up. It seems to be like, something like those kinds of things seem to be the, the, the things that become the stumbling block. And then also for questioners, and this is something really about a problem that questioners have with

• 1:52:48Speaker 03

  others, is that if you're a questioner, they can sometimes be perceived as, by others, as being disrespectful, insubordinate, undermining of authority, questioning someone's judgment, not a team player. So if you're a questioner child, and you say to your teacher, "Why should I have to memorize the multiplication tables if I can just look it up on my phone just as quickly and more accurately?" And the teacher's like, "Because I say so," or "Because all 10-year-olds have to do it," or "Because that's what you do in 4th grade." The questioner's gonna be like, "Well, that's ridiculous, and that's no answer, and I'm not gonna do it." And so they're perceived by the child, by the teachers being disrespectful or uncooperative, but to the questioner, this makes perfect sense. Or you get a thin-skinned boss, and the boss

• 1:53:30Speaker 03

  Like your questions make me feel like you're rejecting my authority. You're undermining my judgment. You're not a team player. I don't want to work with you. And it's like, but to the questioner, they're like, well, this is how I add value to the team.

• 1:53:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:42Speaker 03

  How can I be a better team player? But then to say to everybody, this is a crazy idea. Why would we ever do this? This is a big waste of our time. But to the boss, they're like, I don't like that. And so partly it's for questioners to realize how they can ask questions in a way that seem constructive. Rather than making other people feel sort of defensive or exhausted because there's huge value to the questioners questioning. And in some places, some work environments or whatever, it's very rewarded and, you know, and praised. But then some places it's like, hey, listen, we're here to do what corporate says. And it's not interesting for us to hear you complain about why you don't think it's a good idea. Like get with the program. Stop interrupting the meetings like you're keeping every, you know?

• 1:54:27Speaker 03

  So if you're a questioner, you maybe want to know, well, what kind of environment are you getting into? Because one might suit you better than another. I don't know. Does this resonate with you? Is this a strike a chord?

• 1:54:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, totally. No, I mean, I got in so much trouble in school consistently. I was actually put at the bad table in kindergarten, which my teacher then forgot.

• 1:54:47Speaker 03

  Was it called bad table?

• 1:54:48Tim Ferriss?

  It was called the bad table. I was put.

• 1:54:50Speaker 03

  Oh, you can't lie. Well, you can't do that today. Holy cow.

• 1:54:52Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, well, she did a lot of things you couldn't do today. I mean, she, she made me eat soap in front of the class because I refused to learn the alphabet. Because she never explained why I had to memorize these arbitrary shapes. Until Mrs. Vinsky in first grade then redeemed me and she was amazing and told me I could actually read books. If I learn the alphabet and that's all I need to know. But yeah, Mrs. Bevan was, was a tough old bitch who was very, very rough on the class, but.

• 1:55:18Speaker 03

  Can I say that is what's so poignant to me about questioners is like I heard, I heard story after story, exactly like the one you told where if somebody had literally taken 10 minutes and sat down with a child and spoken to them in a reasonable way and been like, this is why we're asking you to do this. The child would have been like, cool. I get it.

• 1:55:35Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, 10, 10 seconds.

• 1:55:37Speaker 03

  Is for somebody to just like, explain why this isn't just a big waste of my time. And it's like, all it would take is such, like, instead of you having this whole kindergarten experience, which is just, I mean, the simplest response, respectful response to your question would have solved this. It's just to me. So poignant and such a waste.

• 1:55:58Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, 10, yeah, 10 seconds. I mean, literally like, Tim, you realize this is what Mrs. Vinsky said to me. Because by that point, I was really digging in my heels because I was so embittered by the experience with Mrs. Bevan. And Mrs. Vinsky just very calmly said, Tim, do you realize if you learn the alphabet, you can read any book that you want to read? And it's just like my head exploded because I was like, what? Why didn't anybody tell me this? And then I was off to the races. But yeah, I've.

• 1:56:24Speaker 03

  Also, is it like an entrepreneurial type? A lot of people I know who are questioners, they're like, I don't want to work for anyone else because I don't, I don't trust anybody's judgment the way I trust my own. If I'm telling myself what to do, I know there's a good reason. If other people are like involved in this, it's hard for me. Like, maybe there's a few trusted people that I could rely on, but I don't want to be part of a big system where I'm like, I don't know why people are making these decisions. Like, I want to be the one making the decisions.

• 1:56:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I don't, I can follow decisions as long as I have the latitude to ask questions in such a way that I understand the rationale. But not everyone responds well to that. So that's, that's another thing. But to offset the highly logic oriented framework, I've had to, or I haven't had to, but I've chosen to counterbalance that with other things, right? So for instance, one would be, you mentioned the koans as a way to, I'm using my words, not yours, but get a reprieve from logic almost, right? So there's, there's a quote from, I think it's Novales, I'm not sure if you pronounce it that way, but poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

• 1:57:32Tim Ferriss?

  So I've taken time to try to embrace

• 1:57:39Tim Ferriss?

  art forms or entertainment that is not driven by logic as a way to medicate myself so that I'm not purely overweighted in the reasoning faculty. And I'll give you another example of that. For instance, I interviewed Bosma St. John recently, who's the chief brand officer at Uber. She was at Apple Music and Beats and worked with Spike Lee prior to that. Really incredible woman. And she said, when I was chatting with her, That her advice to her younger self would be do away with pro and con lists by and large. And I asked her why, and she said, it's because usually if you're, if you're creating a pro and con list, you're either trying to talk yourself out of a bad idea or talk, I'm sorry, talk yourself out of a good idea or talk yourself into a bad idea. Wait, did I get that right?

• 1:58:24Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:58:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, out of a good idea or into a bad idea. And it made so much sense to me. And I realized that I've spent a lot of my, I've used my power of questioning in many cases to try to impose an analytical framework on things that are actually best answered with a gut reaction, right? It's like if I, if I, if I meet somebody and I just get the heebie jeebies and I really don't, if I really don't like them for an unclear reason, this is important, right?

• 1:58:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:55Tim Ferriss?

  If, if it's like, ah, like, ah, they have this weird tic and it bothers me, so what? Like, it's, it's very explicit. But if I get the spider sense going off and I can't pinpoint why, that's a hundred times out of a hundred, something that I should have paid attention to.

• 1:59:09Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:59:10Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm, for instance, trying to pay more attention to listening to that as a way to offset maybe the blunt force use of the analytical questioning mind for all situations, which I think has been my default. So that's, you know.

• 1:59:30Speaker 03

  But you know what's interesting is that both you and I have talked, and I had not put my finger on this until you, until I, I heard what you just said, which is like, we've both kind of done things to try to explicitly offset very like pronounced parts of our personality. Like you've been trying to use this to offset your questioning side. And I've been trying to use color to bring me into the visual world, which is like hard for me because I'm so verbal.

• 1:59:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:54Speaker 03

  And so I've been trying to counter that with, by making a study of color. So maybe it is kind of this like, um, you know, the opposite of a profound truth is also true and that you need to kind of figure out, well, if you're too yin, how do you achieve your yang? And maybe, um, both of us are trying to get some kind of balance. And I hadn't thought about that as kind of a pattern, but now I'm thinking, maybe there's a big lesson here. I want to study, how do people do it? It's a pretty, it's a pretty subtle thing. I don't, I didn't even realize I was doing it until you said that. But I wonder how other people, like how you offset that. Like if you're too physical, how do you tap into spiritual? Or if you're too now focused, how do you,

• 2:00:37Speaker 03

  I don't know. Like, there's a lot of things people could try to.

• 2:00:41Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think that, and you know, we're gonna, we're gonna go squirrely and all over the place here, but the, from what I've observed is that if someone has the luxury of having achieved some degree of success, and it doesn't mean, that doesn't mean a lot of success, but they have enough of a toehold in professional success, that they don't have to worry about, say, where the rent check is coming from, or where the mortgage payment is coming from, and they can put food on the table. At some point, they realize, not everybody, but many people realize that the superpower, or the strength that enabled

• 2:01:19Tim Ferriss?

  them to get there, when used in excess, creates other problems, right? So, like, everything in excess becomes its opposite, to an extent, right?

• 2:01:32Speaker 03

  Every medicine becomes poison.

• 2:01:33Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Like, the dose makes the poison. So, it's like, okay, great. This, this hyper analytical OCD focus on whatever, has helped you to achieve a certain degree of financial success, and this, that, and the other thing, but then put into a context of an intimate relationship, you're driving everybody fucking nuts. Or whatever, right? Whatever it might be, right? And then you realize, oh shit, I need to figure out a practice that can offset this, not just dominant, but almost metastasized tendency to apply this one tool to everything. And, so I've certainly seen that. I mean, that would be kind of, I'll let you.

• 2:02:16Tim Ferriss?

  I will, I will let you unleash your own deep dive on this, but it's certainly something that I've seen a lot of people trying to figure out, how can I take what comes unnaturally to me that I recognize as necessary and create a practice of some type. So for me, the last thing, if you had told the Tim of 20 years ago that I would be reading poetry before bed, I mean, he would have like vomited on himself. And nonetheless, here I am, and I find it incredibly relaxing, for whatever reason. And part of me is totally okay with not understanding the how of it, or the why, but reading something like the Tao Te Ching,

• 2:02:59Tim Ferriss?

  which is not necessarily designated as poetry, or Hafiz, or Rumi, in the beginning of the day and at the end of the day to bookend, sort of right before I turn on my hyper analytical mind, and then when I want to turn off my hyper analytical mind, which has historically caused quite a bit of insomnia, dosing myself with something I never would have used in the past, I find really, really helpful.

• 2:03:25Speaker 03

  Well, it's interesting, because I have this, like I said, I have this, it's called Moment of Happiness newsletter, where every day I send out like a quotation about happiness or human nature. And a lot of people say, oh, they like it, because it's, I think for you, like you're seeking out poetry, but for some people, and you can even go with like the Poetry Foundation, I think, like will send you an email with a poem every day if you want that. But this is like, people like to have that practice of some kind of transcendent reading, first thing in the morning, or right before bed, where it's like, it's curated, it's something that's like more beautifully expressed, or a more interesting idea than you're going to read in the newspaper, or whatever, it's some kind of timeless thing

• 2:04:05Speaker 03

  that for whatever reason is going to put your brain in a different place as you start your day or end your day. And I think it's, I think it's a great, it's a great thing. I'm a big believer in like, things, just like, have something be a small thing that you can take in and kind of let fill your mind.

• 2:04:24Speaker 03

  In a bite sized piece rather than thinking, okay, I gotta sit down and read odes to, you know, or like intimations of immortality and get this thing done, or I'm working my way through Paradise Lost. And you know, you're like, okay, that's, okay, one page a day. Just do one page a day and then that'll be enough to kind of reset your brain in a positive way.

• 2:04:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, and we could, we could keep going. But I mean, if I've learned anything about creating, let me, let me rephrase that, developing habits that I have somehow failed to develop in the past, do less than you think you can, I think is the biggest takeaway for me. It's like, oh, you think you can go to the gym for an hour a day and that's your resolution to go for five days a week? Try like 10 minutes a session, three days a week. And that, so that your pass fail mark is low enough that you don't abandon ship because you feel like you've failed, especially if you're a competitive person

• 2:05:28Tim Ferriss?

  as I am, or with poetry. It's like, okay, don't choose a poet that has 10 page poems. Like go with someone like

• 2:05:36Speaker 03

  Robert Frost.

• 2:05:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right, Robert Frost, or Hafiz, or Hafiz, depending on how you want to say it, and The Gift, right? These are one page or 50 word poems that happen to very often be hilarious. Start there and make it easy. And what I've found is like, if you wanted, for me at least, it's like, if you want to do things that are really big, this is something new for me, certainly, but it, it doesn't, the path being hard doesn't indicate that you're doing something virtuous, always, right? Like if, in my case at least, it's like, okay, if I am really loathe to do, I'll make something up. But it's like lower leg ankle prehabilitation

• 2:06:20Tim Ferriss?

  so I don't get injured later doing skiing or whatever. It's boring as fuck. It's really, pardon my French, but it's like, it's really monotonous and not interesting at all. But if I'm, if I tell myself, okay, I'm gonna spend

• 2:06:33Tim Ferriss?

  Thirty to sixty seconds every other day, like before I brush my teeth, doing that. And that's it. That's enough. That's a pass. Then I'm setting the hurdle so low that I'm more inclined to do it. And then I can always do extra credit, but if I set the pass fail mark too high, I'm never gonna do it in the first place because, or I'll put it off for whatever reason. So, in any case, yeah. Diatribe.

• 2:06:59Speaker 03

  I write, I write a lot. That's like the whole thing in my book Better Than Before, which is all about habit change. That's like, like a big theme is like, start small, start big, like, how do you think about that? How do you, how do you, if you have a habit like that, how might you think, how might you analyze yourself to know what's gonna work for you? Because that's, that's a perfect example, the kind of habit that it's like, it can be, in a way, it's not hard, in a way, it's extremely hard. And like, how do you get yourself to succeed? There's like,

• 2:07:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, just like, how can I make this easier? How can I make this easier is a question.

• 2:07:30Speaker 03

  That's all, that's the whole inspiration for Better Than Before. I was just like, what do people do? Like, what, what, and it turns out there's 21 strategies people use. And some work better for some people and some work better for others. And some don't work for some people at, you know, some people, they don't, some don't work at all. And some, you can use it sometimes in your life, but not at other times in your life. But it's good to know the whole panoply of them. Because then you can, you can say, okay, these three sound good. Because you just, you said pairing, which is doing it before you brush your teeth. That's what I would call the strategy of pairing. Scheduling, which is putting it on the schedule, like, I have an idea of when I'm gonna do this. And safeguards, which is the strategy of thinking, how might I screw up?

• 2:08:12Speaker 03

  How might I abandon this habit? I'm gonna think about what is likely to make me not do it, and I'm gonna figure out a way to solve for that. And you're like, if I make this too much, I'm gonna put it off and I do it. I'm gonna make, so I'm knowing, taking into account how I might fail. I'm gonna figure out a way to do it, so I don't fail. So again, it's like, it's, it's, it's not that hard when you know what to do. But. At the same time, you know, it can be very challenging, especially if you do it in a way that's not right for you.

• 2:08:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for me, it's, you know, make it easy to pass and make it really expensive to not do it. And it's like, if I can be shamed by, let's say, a friend of mine who's going to bust my chops endlessly if I do it, or somehow try to embarrass me in front of other friends because we're on a group text where I committed to A, B, and C, and it's already on the calendar, so I have the sunk cost of having paid for lessons in A, B, and C, and someone is going to show up or be on Skype at a given hour, that social accountability will be very helpful and so on and so forth. So it's, BJ Fogg has done some really cool stuff in this space as well, Fogg G, but Gretchen...

• 2:09:19Speaker 03

  He's a big believer in small steps.

• 2:09:20Tim Ferriss?

  He is, yeah. The micro steps, flossing those front teeth as he would have somebody do.

• 2:09:25Speaker 03

  It's interesting that some people don't like a small. They're, they want to go bigger, but go home, they're not interested in incremental change. They like radical, they like big things. And again, it's not that there's one way that's right or one way that's wrong, it's just whatever works for you. If small works for you, that's great. If small is boring to you and you're not going to stick to it, do something big and bold. It's like, you know, there's a lot of ways to do this, it just depends, there's no magic one size fits all solution, I think, it's just whatever works for us as individuals.

• 2:09:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for sure. Well, yes, it is not one size fits all, but part of the, I suppose, excitement, if you can look at it that way, is figuring out which, which tools to put in your toolkit over time.

• 2:10:06Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 2:10:07Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I appreciate the experimental nature that you bring to bear in your own life and then in your work that you share with the world, so thank you for that. And thank you so much for the time today, also.

• 2:10:18Speaker 03

  Oh, it's so much fun to talk to you, I so appreciate it.

• 2:10:21Tim Ferriss?

  And for everybody listening, you can find links to everything we have discussed in the show notes, along with the show notes for every other episode, at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, as always, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered.

• 2:11:04Tim Ferriss?

  It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Man, oh, man, do a lot of listeners of this podcast and readers of mine love FreshBooks.

• 2:11:47Tim Ferriss?

  To the extent that I ended up meeting with the CEO not very long ago. Why are they so popular? Well, they are the number one cloud accounting software designed exclusively for self-employed professionals. That's many of you. And used by more than 10 million people. You can send invoices, track your time, and get paid very, very quickly, which suits the needs of a lot of freelancers, a lot of entrepreneurs, and beyond. You can take pictures of receipts. You can link your credit card and debit card. So all the things you buy automatically appear in your FreshBooks in the right category. So on and so forth. Makes taxes easy, makes invoices easy, makes your life easier. And also, in fact, I'd recommend a PDF. They didn't ask me to read this part, by the way.

• 2:12:29Tim Ferriss?

  They put together a PDF a while back called Breaking the Time Barrier, subtitle, How to Unlock Your True Earning Potential. So you can search for Breaking the Time Barrier. A lot of people ask me, how can I get a four-hour work week with a service business? And the story in that ebook, it's PDF, is the short answer. It's really, really good. So I think you should also check that out. So Breaking the Time Barrier, check it out. But also, why not test out FreshBooks? Claim your 30-day unrestricted free trial at freshbooks.com/tim and enter Tim Ferriss, two R's and two S's, in the how did you hear about us section. That sounds

• 2:13:06Tim Ferriss?

  Like, we're gonna get very little tracking. That's a lot of work. But just go to freshbooks.com/tim and try it out because it is a very good product and I think you will find it simplifies your life. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Shure, S-H-U-R-E, the company behind some of my favorite microphones and headphones. In fact, this podcast has been recorded since day one, effectively, in all of the live interviews with Shure microphones, whether it is the SM58s, which look like stage mics, which Brian Callen introduced me to, or the table-mounted SM7Bs. And most recently, I've been testing one of their headphones, SE846.

• 2:13:51Tim Ferriss?

  Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? These are now my favorite in-ear headphones, and I always use them when I'm at coffee shops or when I'm traveling. Shure earphones have been famous for decades now with professional musicians, and their wireless sound-isolating earphones are truly incredible. The reason that I have doubled down on these earphones specifically is because when I use these on my laptop, as one example, I can keep the volume at, say, 1 out of 10 and hear things perfectly, whereas when I use normal earbuds, I'm at easily 7 or 8 out of 10, just to drown out external noise. And I've become very, very concerned with hearing loss. I've seen a lot of my friends losing their hearing because they're blasting their ears

• 2:14:36Tim Ferriss?

  with normal earbuds on their phones and laptops and so on. So I am using this as an investment in my own hearing, among other things, and they're very, very comfortable. The SE846, which I mentioned, the sound-isolating earphones, feature a groundbreaking low-pass filter that delivers extended, high-end clarity and unparalleled low-end performance. So check it out. Visit shure.com, that's S-H-U-R-E.com/tim, use the code TIM at checkout. That's capital T-I-M. As a special offer for listeners of this show, you can receive a $100 discount on the SE846 headphones. This offer will only be available until the end of January 2018. Let's take a look.

• 2:15:21Tim Ferriss?

  Again, that's shure.com/tim for $100 off.

• 2:17:11Tim Ferriss?

  You