#295: The 4-Hour Workweek Revisited

My first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307465357/offsitoftimfe-20 recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. Thousands of you have asked me how I would update it today -- and many have asked why I haven't updated it since 2009. For this episode, I discuss common questions and misperceptions, and how I would adjust certain chapters and recommendations. As always, thank you for listening! This episode is brought to you by WeWork https://we.co/tim. I haven't had an office in almost two decades, but working from home and coffee shops isn't always what it's cracked up to be. When I moved to Austin, one of the first things I did was get a space at WeWork, and I could not be happier. WeWork https://we.co/tim is a global network of workspaces where companies and people grow together -- in fact, more than ten percent of Fortune 500 companies use WeWork. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  No, it is an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is typically my job to deconstruct world-class performers of different types and tease out their habits, routines, favorite books, and so on, so that you can apply them to your own life. This episode is going to be a little bit different. So if you want the long-form interviews, go back a few episodes, or go to tim.blog/jimmy for Jamie Foxx, or Jaco Willink, tim.blog/jaco, or whatever might tickle your fancy. This episode is going to be in response to many, many, many, many requests related to my first book, The Four Hour Work Week, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, and thousands of you have asked me how I would update the

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  Four Hour Work Week today. And you've also asked why I have not already updated The Four Hour Work Week, which I did do, in fact, two years after 2007 and 2009. But why haven't I since? And to answer those questions and many more, I sat down for an interview where I actually asked one of my friends, Adam, to interview me, to discuss common questions, misperceptions, as well as how I would walk someone through the book today. What I might expand if I were to, at the age of 40, as opposed to 29, expand certain chapters and so on. So if that's of interest, then I think this episode will have something for you.

• 2:51Tim Ferriss?

  And if not, the long-form interviews will return the very next episode. And as always, thank you so much for listening.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  I am not Tim Ferriss, but I am asking questions to Tim Ferriss. This is very meta. All right, Tim. More than 10 years ago, Four Hour Work Week comes out. It's published. 10 years later, it is still the most quoted book on Amazon. Why has the book had such longevity?

• 3:27Tim Ferriss?

  This is a curious question. The answer is, in brief, I'm not sure. But I would say that if I had to speculate and come up with something, I would say I wrote the book very personally to two of my friends. And the backstory on that is, when I was writing the book, there are many plausible other explanations. That The Four Hour Work Week is a title, gets a lot of people to buy the book, and due to the volume of sales, there's a high potential for highlighting, since it is a nonfiction how-to book.

• 4:08Tim Ferriss?

  Whereas people are less inclined to highlight a fiction book, even if it is 1,000 times more popular than The Four Hour Work Week. There are many plausible explanations. But if I had to take a stab at how the content or the writing style might contribute, I would say that when I started writing the book, and it was largely written in Argentina, went back to Buenos Aires, where I lived for nine months in 2004, 2005, to write. And...

• 4:38Tim Ferriss?

  The first attempt failed completely. I had four or five chapters that were very academic. I was trying very hard to sound smart. And not to say I never do that now, but it was really awful to read. Just three syllable words where one syllable words would suffice. And it was awful, which I think I actually developed in college. I think that in the process of writing papers there, I developed that habit. So I threw out those four chapters, four or five chapters. Then I went the opposite direction and tried to make it slapstick funny and really fast and loose. And it was equally bad, just for different reasons.

• 5:21Tim Ferriss?

  And in part, both of those failed because I was writing for a broad audience. I was trying to write for as many people as possible. And I couldn't do it. Certainly couldn't do it well. Maybe other people can. So I sat down and actually opened up a window to compose an email and started, as a first draft at least, writing a chapter to two of my friends. One who was trapped in a company of his own making and felt like he couldn't leave. He couldn't kill his baby. It wouldn't run without him, et cetera, which was the exact situation I'd been in. And then another friend who was working at a bank and was becoming a victim of his own success.

• 6:01Tim Ferriss?

  He had no time and was deciding to increase his burn rate by things he didn't need to justify how much time he spent working. Felt similarly trapped. And these were guys around my age at the time, 29 or so, 29, 30. And I knew them really well because I was effectively them. I mean, we had so much shared experience, so much shared DNA, so many shared goals, aspirations, problems. And so I wrote a very, very personal book ultimately with two friends in mind. And I think that the feedback I very often get, I don't think I know, feedback I very often get with the book is, I felt like you were writing it just to me.

• 6:47Tim Ferriss?

  And I had a very, very narrow focus to begin with, meaning I'm writing for effectively people who have very similar life circumstances or goals, aspirations, fears, trappings. And it was by definition, if you look at who's writing the book, going to be males in a fairly narrow age range, who are tech savvy, very interested in a handful of things. But it's important to realize that the, the target isn't the market. And this is not something I made up. I don't know who originally to attribute it to, but my original target, just so I could write effectively from my own experience, was that group.

• 7:30Tim Ferriss?

  But as soon as it came out, then it immediately bled over into women who fit the same psychographics and so on. And then it started to bleed out by age. And now if I go, I've been to commencement speeches where the, the parents or grandparents will come over and ask me about The Four Hour Workmeat because they read it. And then I have high school students who are reading it. So the original market was very, very, very narrow. That does not mean, in some cases, certainly in the case of this book, that it can't expand later. That's my best guess. That's my best guess is that it's very personally written and it's also in the category of

• 8:12Tim Ferriss?

  advice how to nonfiction, which is prone to receiving more highlights.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:17Tim Ferriss?

  To begin with.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  So I know you've been asked many times and have thought about it as well, about updating the book, because a lot has changed in, in more than 10 years. But I also know, as does everyone else, that you have held back on that urge. Why is it that you have decided, at least so far, to not make any changes to, to the book and, and updated?

• 8:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this is a good question. There, this is something that I have had a tremendous amount of internal debate about and internal conflict about. On one hand, I really want to provide the latest and greatest and cutting edge to my audience. On the other hand, in the format of a book, that is a losing battle. It is a fool's errand because as soon as I update the tech and the tools, it will be outdated. Six months later, it would need to be completely rewritten, in most cases. So if we look at The Four Hour Workweek, I would say there are a few levels to the framework and strategies and advice in the

• 9:26Tim Ferriss?

  book. You have principles, the first principles, ordering principles, that are the most important. If you understand those principles, you can usually come up with, say, strategies, which are broad approaches to solving certain problems, maybe even frameworks. So we could call also the principles core beliefs or assumptions, let's just say. Then you have it or if then statements, right? Then you have the strategies, which are, well, given those assumptions and first principles, here are the broad strategies, which do not include tools or specific tactics. Then you go up a level and you have tools and tactics. For instance, using Google AdWords to test, which was very effective, and one of the primary

• 10:11Tim Ferriss?

  options at the time The Four Hour Workweek was published, that would now be, at the very least, supplemented with, say, Facebook advertising. Right. And other types of contextual advertising and testing and so on and so forth. There are many, many more platform options and testing options than existed when the book was first published in 2007, meaning the book was written in 2005, 2006. Right. It was updated in 2009, so it's moderately updated. But the tools and tactics are always going to change. And for that reason, I encourage people, and the reason I haven't updated those in the

• 10:55Tim Ferriss?

  written format in the book thus far, is that if you understand and focus on the principles and strategies, you can figure out the tools and tactics. Right. And in fact, you're going to have to do that. If you're going to choose to be an entrepreneur, someone who makes something from nothing, let's just say, very broadly speaking, someone who moves assets and resources from an area of low economic yield to an area of high economic yield, which was the, one of the original definitions from J.B. Say, I believe his name was, you are going to have to become very good at improvising and problem solving. So if you're not willing to figure out the tools and tactics on your own, I would say you're ill-equipped or unwilling to be what is required to achieve any modicum of success as an entrepreneur, right? And that's not just me absolving myself with the responsibility of updating. Right.

• 11:40Tim Ferriss?

  The principles and the strategies are very important. 80/20 analysis, let's just say, some assumptions, which could be falsified, but that time is the most valuable non-renewable resource compared to, say, income, right? All of these, then inform the later decisions. So a book is not the best format for tracking technology. Nonetheless, it would be nice to update, but it would be better done via some type of community online or online repository. I tried that with a forum, and it turned into, as you're well aware, a gigantic pain in the ass headache, so I euthanized that. The other piece of it is part two.

• 12:22Tim Ferriss?

  So if part one is tools and tactics change too quickly, and I would have to put a lot of effort into updating that would immediately be obsolescent, the second piece of it is looking back, say, at the Four Hour Work Week, there are parts of it that make me cringe a little bit. Not that I regret having written it the way I wrote it, but the 29-year-old Tim Ferriss felt like he had a lot to prove. And he did have a lot to prove. I mean, there are hundreds of thousands of books published every year. And I had, at that time, no media training. I was utterly unprepared for everything that transpired because the initial print run. Well, the book was, first of all, turned down by 27, I think.

• 13:07Tim Ferriss?

  It's 27 publishers. Just a few. Violently, in some cases. And then the initial print run was between 10,000 and 12,000 copies. You couldn't even get it in many places in the US alone. The book was not expected to do much at all, and therefore, I was completely unprepared for everything that came afterward. In writing the book, also in writing for my two friends,

• 13:32Tim Ferriss?

  I was very much myself at the time. And myself at the time had a bit of chest puffing, very hyper-aggressive. And, looking back, if I were to edit the book now, it would have a very different voice, it would have a very different tone, have a very different feel. But, The Four Hour Workweek Now has been translated into more than 40 languages. It is almost always in the top 100, top 200 on Amazon. Like you said, for 2017, it was the most highlighted book across all of Amazon, which was even, to me, a big surprise.

• 14:14Tim Ferriss?

  And, there's a certain, for lack of a better word, there's certain magic or alchemy in that book that made it click, and still makes it click 10 years later, that I don't want to fuck with. I'm really afraid that if I go in there and start tinkering, that I'm gonna step on the butterfly that then, you know, causes like, a hurricane on the other side of the world within the book that somehow affects what that book has done. And...

• 14:47Tim Ferriss?

  If it's not broken, I don't want to try to fix it. So that's another reason why if we look at not just the tools and resources and so on. If I were to go into the book, I worry that I would tinker in a way that would damage it. And if people want to read the later Tim, they can. It's very easy. You just read the later books.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:10Tim Ferriss?

  Each of those books is a snapshot of me at a very particular point in my life. And although I wouldn't view them as autobiographical, they absolutely capture a lot of my goals, priorities, neuroses and so on of a given point in my life. So those are a few of the reasons why I've chosen not to update the book.

• 15:31Speaker 00

  If there was a section or two, which you've been asked a thousand or two times to update.

• 15:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  Is there anything that comes to mind that now feels a little outdated and some that when you think of today, what you were doing, you would be like, you know what? Here's how I would refresh that section.

• 15:53Tim Ferriss?

  There are a few sections, I say broadly speaking, since the four hour work week is broken into definition, elimination, automation, liberation, the automation section, which talks about business process, outsourcing, delegation, the tools that can be used for that. Certainly the testing components of what we might call now developing, launching, iterating on a minimally, a minimum viable product, MVP. Those could all be updated. And I left out another reason why updating is challenging. And I would take it one step further.

• 16:37Tim Ferriss?

  We're talking about tools and tactics, right?

• 16:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:40Tim Ferriss?

  We come down a level. Let's consider the principles and strategies. Let's take art as an example, drawing. All right, so you might have certain principles and organizing principles, which are beliefs about materials and 2D and so on for charcoal or some type of drawing. Then you have strategies, which is composition and so on. Then you have the tools, given pens, pencils and so on. Given my audience right now, if I recommend a given pen, right? It is almost certainly immediately going to be sold out. That problem, which has been nicknamed the hug of death by some of my fans,

• 17:22Tim Ferriss?

  applies even more so to services. So if I recommend a given service that currently has a few thousand users or even tens of thousands, and then they get hit by a million or two million, it can absolutely destroy the service. Particularly if it's not automated and there's some type of client interaction or customer service. If there is a manual component, I can completely destroy it. So I am I am loathe to, in some cases, recommend any particular, I get asked all the time, "All right, which outsourcing service should I use? I would like to get a virtual assistant in the Philippines or India. Who should I use?" Well, I've made those recommendations in the past, and within a week, they go from five out of five star

• 18:06Tim Ferriss?

  in customer service to one out of five star.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:09Tim Ferriss?

  Why? Because they suddenly have to 10x their client capacity overnight, and very few service businesses are equipped to handle that. Almost none. But if I had a gun to the head and had to update, particularly with tools that can handle and scale, maybe they're based on AWS or otherwise,

• 18:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:31Tim Ferriss?

  Amazon Web Services are not as prone to crashing and being destroyed. Then it would be the the MUSE development testing components. For those people who don't know the term, MUSE referring to a cash flow optimized business that can scale effectively without scaling and headcount or hours necessarily. And the other elements of delegation and automation. Those, I think, from a tool and tactic standpoint, are the most outdated and therefore what I'm asked most frequently for.

• 19:09Speaker 00

  Right. So if people were to listen to the podcast and read the book, or read the book and then listen to the podcast. As one would hope, after 10 years, there's been, as you've even talked about, a shift in mindset and personality. If you were to rewrite it, would there be a section that you would add to that? Obviously, so much about mindset and mental approach, Stoicism, something that has come into your life. Would there be an element that you would add that maybe 29-year-old Tim, 28-year-old Tim, never even realized the importance that it played in terms of either growing a business or having a mindset that would allow you to not only sustain, say, success, but happiness with that success?

• 19:54Tim Ferriss?

  I would expand a section that I think gets overlooked a lot. There is a section or a chapter called "Filling the Void", and it's a really, really, really important chapter that most people don't pay much attention to.

• 20:10Tim Ferriss?

  And it answers the question, what should I do once I have created a self-sustaining semi or fully automated business that funds all of my cash flow requirements? And I have location, independence, and flexibility with time?

• 20:33Tim Ferriss?

  Hence the chapter title, which is "Filling the Void", how to reallocate your time and direct your focus once you've gained a few rungs on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Right? So you're paying your rent, you're covering all of your material needs, then what? And this relates to a common misconception of the four-hour work week, which is, oh, the objective is to just sit on a beach, sipping a pina colada, rubbing cocoa butter on your stomach for the rest of your life.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  Wait, wait, wait, that wasn't the point.

• 21:11Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Or somehow being idle, right? The objective is to whatever, just live spring break 24/7 for the rest of your life.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 21:19Tim Ferriss?

  And the people who...

• 21:23Tim Ferriss?

  Lodge that complaint, A, haven't read the book, but they, they, they very specifically have missed this filling the void chapter, which talks about contribution, getting outside of a me, me, me focus, so that you're hopefully putting a positive dent in the world in a way that certainly extends outside of yourself and even your immediate family, but also hopefully has some type of persistence over time, so that you leave, A, I hesitate to use the word because it's so loaded and has some baggage, but a legacy of some type. And so that really you're taking the tools you've developed in a business capacity and

• 22:04Tim Ferriss?

  applying them to impact in some fashion, whether that's focused on education, scientific research, where I'm spending a lot of time, actually focused on both of those and have been for a very long time. I, I think I would expand that and make it clearer that that is mandatory reading. It's not a nice to have when you have an extra few hours, five years from now, you should read this, it's like, no. I expect that many people skipped it because maybe they don't expect to succeed, right? Right? They're like, hey, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, I don't have to even think about it now. And the fact of the matter is, you know, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of

• 22:47Tim Ferriss?

  thousands of people have created these businesses and then they fuck up that part, right? And they get even in some cases, they get, and this is really common, they're location independent, a lot of their friends have nine to five jobs, and what started off as a party and a celebration, oh my God, I can't believe I figured it out, ends up being very, very lonely and they feel really isolated. And they don't know how to address that. And the way you address that is by digging your wells before you're dry and thinking about that filling the void and starting to incorporate those pieces into your life before you end up in.

• 23:27Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe a challenging emotional, psychological position where you're on your heels a bit. You end up being reactive or so set in your ways, even if you are technically, financially independent, since you haven't filled the void with anything non-business related, you were just going to continue to work for work's sake. This is really common. This is the default. Right. For people who succeed in any capacity to the extent that they no longer need additional income or cash flow or liquid net worth. It's really common. It's very rare that you find someone who's been in sixth gear for a very long time,

• 24:11Tim Ferriss?

  who then retires and is really good at chilling the fuck out. Right. Not common. Learning to relax and enjoy other aspects of life and engage with people around you, friends and community, or build community. Those are skills you have to practice and develop. Just like you need to develop and practice the skill of split testing for headlines or anything else. It's not a default ability that you have as soon as you hit stop and so-called retire or do something like that. So I would spend a bit more time on that. I think that is the chapter that I'm... I was qualified to write at the time, but I'm much more qualified to write now because I've had so much more practice.

• 24:55Tim Ferriss?

  I've just had, put on a lot more mileage and done a lot more experimentation and have had the ability to observe dozens and hundreds at this point of mega-successful people who have grappled with some of these issues that can be really existential for someone. If the business has been your identity for a long time and all of a sudden you want to replace that, if you don't have a compelling replacement, you will just continue working because you don't want to sacrifice that identity.

• 25:23Speaker 00

  And how can someone possibly prepare for that? Because I think what, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, has probably been amazing for you to see is the number of businesses and success stories that have born out of 4 hour work week. You obviously expected that when you wrote it, it would be able to help people. But over 10 years, the number of huge businesses that have been started out of thin air, it's not even like you were accelerating. People quit their job, started this, and it had built out of nowhere. How do you take someone who's just like, maybe, maybe this could work? And then they do it, and the next thing they know, they do it because they want to believe, but they probably don't believe in the first place.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  But as you said, if you don't have that preparation, you might wake up one day and find yourself in a position that you're not prepared for. So when someone comes into this with the mindset, I want to give this a try. It's like when people want to lose weight. Everyone wants to lose weight. Everyone wants to make more money. But very few people actually believe, and then they follow the steps and they get there and they're like, oh, what now?

• 26:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  How do you build a mindset that is prepared for reality that a part of you probably doesn't even think is real?

• 26:33Tim Ferriss?

  I would say in the beginning, aside from making sure you're exercising and taking care of the highest value asset you have, you're going to need to throw a lot against the wall with the business to figure out what works. You can't do an 80/20 analysis if you don't have anything to analyze. So you're going to have to try many, many, many, many, many things to figure out what you're good at, what you're enthusiastic about, and to succeed and endure respectively. You need both. You have to have endurance and you have to have ability. And that can be God-given talent, or it can be a skill that you develop. But in all of those cases, you need to throw a lot against the wall.

• 27:14Tim Ferriss?

  So in the beginning, there isn't going to be much diversification of identity. You're going to have to really throw a lot against the wall. That's the front-loading period. Then you can start to do 80/20 analysis and so on. I would say, once the business has enough traction that you've proven what the tech world would call product-market fit, and you believe you might have a tiger by the tail, that you can grow in a meaningful way. Once you have that, there are a few steps you can take. Number one is to...

• 27:50Tim Ferriss?

  Build a business that you can sell, even if you never plan on selling it. This is a very helpful, not just thought exercise, but blueprint to keep in mind and lens through which you should look at your business. And there are, there are other books out there that I think can be quite helpful. The E-Myth Revisited is one. Looks mostly at service businesses, but could be applied to product. Built to Sell by John Warlow is a book that I found very interesting to ponder. And when you start to look at your business as something, as another product that you are going to ultimately sell,

• 28:33Tim Ferriss?

  you remove single points of failure, key man or key woman risk. You begin to really emphasize process instead of just results, which you can get. I mean, if you're a type A, super driven person with some ability and some numeracy, so you can analyze things well, you can white knuckle your way to a fair amount of money. But you might be rewarding a really unsustainable, bad process because you're getting good results. And not only does that not scale, it's unsustainable, you will burn out, or most people will certainly, or you'll be miserable. And you most certainly can't sell it unless you want to be attached to it forever.

• 29:15Tim Ferriss?

  And I would view that as lens slash step number one is, once you have some traction and you believe that you can pour gasoline on something that is already working. Okay, now let's take a step back, look at your org chart. You don't need a lot of headcount. It could still be a one person business, but how can I automate certain things? How can I empower, say, freelancers or fulfillment centers, companies I work with to make autonomous decisions?

• 29:50Tim Ferriss?

  And otherwise create recipes and policies that replace me as a bottleneck that needs to make one-off decisions over and over and over again. That's really important. The second would be simultaneously or shortly thereafter, diversifying your identity. You asked about happiness a bit earlier. Let's just call it sense of well-being, sense of inner peace, just feeling unconflicted and unanxious perhaps. What I've found very effective for that is diversifying your identity. What does that mean? If the only thing you do, and having lived in Silicon Valley for 17 years, recently

• 30:32Tim Ferriss?

  moved to Austin, but having lived in Silicon Valley for so long, you see people who, in some cases, by necessity unfortunately, in sometimes a zero-sum game of venture-backed startups, their only, their only identity is their startup. And if the startup has a good day, they have a good day and they feel good about themselves. If their startup has a bad day, they have a bad, they have a bad day and they feel badly about themselves. And there are factors outside of your control when you run a business, clearly. There are many factors within your control, but there are many, many factors outside of your control. Macroeconomic climate, stock market, the amount of disposable income that your customers may have.

• 31:16Tim Ferriss?

  If you're heavily weighted with, say, a handful of distributors or clients and they represent a large percentage of your sales or income, also a palpable risk factor, right? And who knows? Like I, for instance, I had an experience when I was running one of my first businesses and the, one of my primary customers had a key man risk, i.e. a president who made a lot of decisions. He had, he had a heart attack, needed emergency surgery. And the second in command, who was effectively the default succession plan, said, hey, we need to like, we need to stop a bunch of what we're doing just to get back on our

• 31:54Tim Ferriss?

  feet, which is totally understandable, but it put my business into a very reactive, precarious position. All right, so thinking through all these. But where, where I'm going with that is if you are building a muse or a business that is based on the principles and strategies and so on in the four-hour work week, in some capacity.

• 32:16Tim Ferriss?

  I would encourage you to diversify your identity, which means having, say, a consistent physical practice that is goal-based. So, when I was writing The Four Hour Body, I had a deadlifting protocol, among other things, based on what sprint coach Barry Ross and awful Pavel Tsatsoulin, what they had taught me related to developing maximal and relative strength in the deadlift. And if I had a really tough week with my book, so authors do this too. They go into this cave, which is book deadline. And if they make progress on a book in a week, they have a good week, they feel good.

• 32:55Tim Ferriss?

  If they do not make progress, they hit a roadblock or are simply having difficulty writing, it can throw them existentially into a really dark place. But, alright, had a terrible day writing, but put 10 pounds on my deadlift, good day. Alright, so you have now multiple silos in which, independent silos, within which you can win. And so you could have, let's just say, startup or book. Then you have something exercise-based, could be rock climbing, could be Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Acro yoga, it doesn't matter. Something consistent, ideally with other people, alright? Not in your garage gym, which I had at the time,

• 33:40Tim Ferriss?

  but I chose to go to a rock climbing gym where they also had weight training facilities, to be around other people. This is undervalued. And then the next piece could be anything. Could be voice lessons, could be a musical instrument, could be some type of artwork, it doesn't matter. But these are three independent silos or more. I usually have two or three. So that if one of these fails, it's self-contained, right? Sort of like on any type of cruise ship or a large seaborne vessel at this point, you'll have compartments so that if something terrible happens, it gets punctured by an iceberg or something like that, the whole ship doesn't go down. It is a self-contained, controllable...

• 34:25Tim Ferriss?

  Set of damage, right? And I think that you can view your identity very similarly and you want to set that up before you need it. Do not wait until one of, do not wait until your single silo fails to then try to build the other two. You have to preemptively put it in place.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 34:39Tim Ferriss?

  So those are a few of the things that, that I think about and have implemented quite a bit for myself and that I've seen successfully implemented by other people.

• 34:50Speaker 00

  I would call you overall insatiable when it comes to the things that you want to do, the goals that you want to achieve and the speed and level of achievement that you want to achieve them in. I imagine it was the same way when you were writing this book, but I also know that you are much more reflective. What would Tim Ferriss right now tell the Tim Ferriss who is writing For Our Work Week, knowing right now the success the book has had, how many people it has genuinely helped and the difference it's made overall to so many people's lives?

• 35:35Tim Ferriss?

  I think this is going to be a very dissatisfying answer.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  That always works.

• 35:40Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think I'd tell him anything until the book was done. Because, and this is, this is a dissatisfying answer that a lot of my interviewees on the podcast give me. And I'm always like, ah, come on. But they're like, hey, much like me with my hesitancy to go back and edit the Four Hour Work Week. It's like, I don't want to step on that one butterfly that then changes everything, the entire trajectory. And if you think about it in a given day, I remember I was, I was contemplating this at one point. We think of life-changing as big events. X, Y, and Z was life-changing. X, Y, and Z changed my life, some big event.

• 36:22Tim Ferriss?

  But almost every decision, every act you take at every given moment in a day is by definition, life-changing. You choose to breathe in a certain way or hold your breath or drink coffee instead of water. These are all life-changing events. If you were to look at two parallel movies of your life,

• 36:46Tim Ferriss?

  choosing to take an Uber versus walking, I mean, these can all change your life. So I don't. Underestimate the impact of seemingly small changes. I wouldn't say anything to him until he had finished the book. Even then, I might say nothing, but if I were to tell him anything at maybe a few critical junctures, I'd say, everything's gonna be okay. You can probably get what you need done, but dial back the anxiety and worry at least 20%. I don't think Tim of 29 would have listened. I would agree. But nonetheless, maybe I would say something like that.

• 37:30Tim Ferriss?

  What I would probably say to Tim at multiple points is something that came up in Tribe of Mentors, my last book repeatedly, which was, there have been multiple points where I have felt like a failure, or have experienced what from every vantage point objectively looks like a business failure, or a publishing failure, or a huge mistake, gigantic fuck-up. And something that came up a lot in interviews for the last book was, sometimes you need life to save you from what you want, so you can get what you need. This is another reason why I now ask so many people, what is your favorite failure?

• 38:13Tim Ferriss?

  Meaning, a failure that in retrospect, set you up for a much larger success later. And I've really suffered from overly fixating on and worrying about what seem like, or seemed like failures. That's caused me a lot of pain. And both in the present moment, and looking back at it, and wondering about the persistent effects of that so-called failure. So I think I would say, hey, I know this seems like catastrophe at the moment, but this is actually going to...

• 38:58Tim Ferriss?

  Open a door that you can't even imagine right now to greater opportunities. And that might sound like some bullshit, shallow motivational speaker nonsense. But like, in fact, like, trust me, I can't tell you what it is. Just like, this is going to serve you. And that's true. I mean, if you look back at, for instance, the very difficult experience, which was publishing The Four Hour Chef, and I won't go into great detail about this, but it was an incredibly difficult book to write. Very proud of it, but almost killed me. I mean, physically, it was one of the most difficult books to write, put together, very complex, lot of moving pieces. It was because it was published by Amazon and was the first major acquisition by what was then announced to be Amazon Publishing. It was boycotted by everybody.

• 39:42Tim Ferriss?

  Barnes & Noble, indies, big box retailers, people wouldn't carry it. And it was, it was an extremely, extremely painful, let's just say, two to three years for me. And I was burned out, I was completely burned out. So I was, I was really just depressed and demoralized and felt like hiding from the world during and after that experience. I was so burned out that I decided to take a break from writing and I decided to do something lighter because during the promotion of The Four Hour Chef, even though the book didn't perform the way I'd wanted it to, I had this experience with a new format called podcast.

• 40:24Tim Ferriss?

  And I was interviewed by Marc Maron and Joe Rogan and the Nerdist gang, including Chris Hardwick. And I had so much fun during those podcasts and I could be myself and we could get into the weeds because it wasn't two to three minutes on television. I wondered to myself, what if I tried that and just like those guys, edit very minimally and use it as an opportunity to get better at asking questions, to get rid of some of my verbal tics? And use it as an excuse to talk to more interesting people and record it and be more social because I'm prone to isolating myself? Why not? Why don't I give that a shot and try it for six episodes? So if I hadn't had what I considered a complete catastrophe at the time...

• 41:07Tim Ferriss?

  This podcast wouldn't exist, which has turned into something much arguably much bigger than all of my books combined, at least based on feedback from listeners and certainly based on monthly reach. That's one of many, many examples. So I think I would say, look, just trust me because I'm your future you. So I know more than you do, actually, kid. This seems like a mess, but you need life to save you from what you want sometimes to give you what you really need. And trust me, like this apparent failure is going to give you like a hundred X on the flip side. Just be fucking patient and don't do anything stupid and self-destructive because you're really depressed and sad right now. That's what I would say.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  And how important is that? That the failure can really happen at any point?

• 41:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  And when you think about Four Hour Chef, you had two number one bestsellers at that point. And Four Hour Work Week, I think, was on the bestseller list for forever is a good way to put it.

• 42:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, like four and almost five years straight.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. So knowing that a lot of people associate failure at the beginning when they start, but the failure can happen at any point and that resilience is important. How much is that almost even a lesson that needs to be applied to Four Hour Work Week? If someone is picking it up or going back or thinking about giving some of the recommendations a try. I think resiliency, as you said, it's something that you've learned, but is it something that you can prepare for as you try to start something new, which is scary for anyone?

• 42:39Tim Ferriss?

  There are many ways to practice it and many ways to train yourself. I won't beat a dead horse on Stoicism since I've certainly talked a lot about it, but Stoic philosophy, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius have both been very, very helpful. And for those people who have no familiarity, I'm not going to get into it, but you can Google Tao of Seneca. I put together gigantic compilation that contains some of my favorite writing. It's available for free as an ebook. You can find it easily, tao, T A O of Seneca. But

• 43:11Tim Ferriss?

  Everyone from Bill Belichick, right, competitor Supreme, certainly in the football arena, to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, I mean, you go through prisoners of war from Vietnam War and other periods have all cited, or in some fashion, actually, Bill Belichick hasn't personally cited, but I know that Patriots, Seahawks, and so on, at every possible level, have consumed Stoicism as a means of competitive advantage. But in terms of developing resilience and tempering emotional reactivity, so you can make better decisions, that's a fantastic

• 43:52Tim Ferriss?

  tool. It's really a toolkit, so that's one. In general, I would say on a daily basis, and this is especially true for me in the last six months, actually with the help of Tony Robbins, who I've gotten to know over the last few years, and Tony's one of those people who, it's easy to be skeptical of Tony. I've always been a fan. I mean, my very first business was a byproduct in part of listening to Personal Power 2, which I bought used at a used bookstore and listened to in my crappy, hand-me-down, piece-of-shit, green minivan, which my coworkers affectionately nicknamed the Molester Mobile. Thanks, guys. Not because I'm a molester, but because it was a fucking beat-up minivan that looked

• 44:35Tim Ferriss?

  like something out of Silence of the Lambs, and had the seats stolen out of the back, which didn't help matters. Long story. Anyway, I would get stuck in traffic on 101 in the Bay Area, which anyone who's done it knows sucks, and listen to Tony Robbins back and forth. And so it's very largely responsible for my first business. In any case, I've gotten to know Tony over the last few years. I've attended two of his events. I've spent a lot of time with him in person, had him on the podcast a couple of times. And he's more impressive, the better you get to know him. And what he really drove home for me in the last few months is the importance of trying

• 45:14Tim Ferriss?

  to identify your primary question or primary questions that you ask yourself as a means of dictating behavior, and it's very often something subconscious. So it could be, and this is very common for folks, you know, "Am I good enough?" Or "Why am I not good enough?" Or "What the fuck's wrong with me?" Like, these are very common default questions that unsurprisingly then result in many types of debilitating thought patterns, neuroses, sabotaging behaviors in relationships, whatever it might be. And spending time, and Tony's the right guy to look to for direction on that, I'm not gonna do it justice here, but figuring out your default questions and then crafting

• 45:58Tim Ferriss?

  new default questions. So my default question, or one of my default questions now that I try to revisit on a daily basis, because again, you have to practice this stuff. It's not like you just decide, write it on a piece of paper, and then your life is changed forever and your behavior's upgraded indefinitely. No, you have to practice this stuff, is, you know, "How can I even more so appreciate this as a gift?" All right? And there's a bit more nuance to it, but let's take a simple version. "How can I appreciate this as a gift?" And specifically, that is to be used when you are frustrated, when someone is challenging you, when you get an email or a phone call you hate that throws you into a tizzy.

• 46:42Tim Ferriss?

  When things happen that you would normally look at as a problem, or perhaps, at best, a challenge, like, "How can you view this as a gift?" "Oh, you're stuck in traffic, you're gonna miss your flight? Okay, this is a chance to practice, because guess what? You're missing your fucking flight no matter what." So, how can you view this as a gift? What is this an opportunity to do? That is another way to develop an ability to reframe quickly that is incredibly pragmatic and incredibly effective for becoming less reactive and more able to be responsible

• 47:26Tim Ferriss?

  in the sense of response able, you're choosing your response. And that perhaps more than anything else, if you want some semblance of well-being or a feeling of inner peace, it is that. It is not, by the way, I mean, if you look at a lot of the noise and craziness right now in the media cycle, there are many people who are training themselves and encouraging other people to try to make everyone in the world change their behavior, to make everyone other than themselves less offensive, right? This is the opposite of making yourself resilient.

• 48:05Tim Ferriss?

  It is much more, much more practical and possible to train yourself to be less easily offended, to train yourself to reframe so that you can take people, many of which are never going to change their behaviors, and repurpose what they might present you with as an opportunity or a gift. This doesn't mean you don't call out terrible behavior, doesn't mean that at some points you don't put on brass knuckles, metaphorically speaking, and like deck someone in the face. Yeah, there are times when you fight, but if your default is always fighting, not a good approach.

• 48:45Tim Ferriss?

  You're not going to have the stamina or the strength to actually fight the larger necessary fights, and you're going to exhaust yourself and you're going to alienate people. I remember a very good friend, actually, I won't mention him by name, but mutual friend of ours, said to me at one point, who works with very, very high-level players in many different worlds, he's a bit of a consigliere, and he said, to me over dinner once, he said... So I was laying out all these various initiatives and causes and so on I wanted to pursue in the new year. This was a few years ago and he said, "I think you should, as a thought exercise, just imagine that you have six bullets. You have a revolver with six bullets and that's all you get to spend over the next year or two. You have

• 49:29Tim Ferriss?

  six things you can take really seriously and do very publicly. That's it. So pick those very wisely, which is not unlike Warren Buffett's approach to saying, here's your card. You have 10 hole punches. Those are the investments you get to make for the rest of your life. Just as a means of pumping the brakes and making better decisions, I think that's a useful way to think of things. So those are a few things that come to mind."

• 49:58Speaker 00

  I will not make you do a request of your audience or ask you what will go on your billboard, but I will ask you that if someone were to go back and reread The Four Hour Work Week, or if they were to pick it up for the first time, as you mentioned, tons of people are still discovering this book, which is, I think, part of the beauty of it. What would you tell them to keep in mind as they're reading through it to really make it or allow it to have the greatest impact on them?

• 50:27Tim Ferriss?

  I would say a few things. Number one is that if the brash, aggressive Tim Ferriss annoys the shit out of you at points, you're not alone. And try not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Meaning, I am conveying in that book, principles, strategies, approaches that I have collected from other places and other experts. So if for whatever reason the tone annoys you, try, as an exercise, to absorb the message without getting obsessed

• 51:08Tim Ferriss?

  with the messenger. Number one. And for what it's worth, that's not true for a very high percentage of people. But there's some folks, for whatever reason, many valid, I'm sure, find the tone, particularly in the first maybe chapter or two, to be a little off-putting. So just go into it, maybe expecting that, and ride it out.

• 51:34Tim Ferriss?

  Second, I would say that the tools and practices like the fear setting chapter and the fear setting exercise, 80/20 analysis, these are not one and done practices. These are practices like having blood work done every quarter or once a year that you repeat over time and that become more and more valuable over time the better you get at implementing them and the better versed and more nuanced you become in using them.

• 52:06Tim Ferriss?

  That's what I would say. Those are two. And then last, perhaps, which relates to everything we've been talking about, is focus first and foremost on the different reframing of assumptions about life and principles, the core tenets of the book, the strategies, and don't get overly distracted by the tools and tactics. So if you're not interested in building your own business or building a business along the lines of what is described in the book, that's fine. Just focus on the higher level concepts.

• 52:49Tim Ferriss?

  And this has been applied by many, many, many people. I mean, if you look at some of the most successful venture capitalists or billionaires who certainly do not have what they would consider a four-hour work week, nonetheless, a lot of them have read this book and been quoted in The New York Times and other profiles that are out there. You have people working in, say, education or defense contractors or even attorneys who have read the book and operate at a very high level who are applying the principles in some fashion, maybe just 10%, and seeing very dramatic results but not building a business.

• 53:34Tim Ferriss?

  So don't get fixated on the...

• 53:40Tim Ferriss?

  The type of pen that is being used, or the type of crayon that's being used. Look at the, look at the concepts of composition and then the principles of drawing in artwork. And learn those because they are transferable to many different areas.

• 53:55Speaker 00

  Awesome. Thank you, Tim.

• 53:57Tim Ferriss?

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

• 54:42Tim Ferriss?

  for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

• 55:06Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Peloton. And I'd heard about Peloton over and over again, but I ended up getting a Peloton bike and the whole system after I saw my buddy Kevin Rose. I've known him forever. Some of you know. And he showed up at my gate at my house a while back and he looked fantastic.

• 55:27Tim Ferriss?

  I asked him, I said, "Dude, you look great. What the hell have you been up to?" Because he's always doing a weird diet or another, but it only lasts like a week or two. So he always regresses to the mean after like 75 beers. And he said, "I've been doing Peloton five days a week." Now, that caught my attention because Kevin does nothing five days a week. And you know I love you, Kevin. But it really piqued my curiosity, ended up getting a system. And it's become an integral part of my week. I love it and I really didn't expect to love it at all because I find cycling really boring usually. But Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home. You don't have to worry about fitting classes into your schedule or making it to a studio with some type of commute, etc.

• 56:11Tim Ferriss?

  New classes are added every day and this includes options led by elite New York City instructors in your own living room. You can even livestream studio classes taught by the world's best instructors or find your own favorite class on demand. And in fact, Kevin and I rarely do live classes and you can compete with your friends, which is also fun. Kevin, I'm coming after you. But we usually just use classes on demand. I really like Matt Wilpers and his high intensity training sessions that are shorter, like 20 minutes. And I think Kevin's favorite is Alex and everyone seems to have their favorite instructor or you can select by music, duration, and so on. Each Peloton bike includes a 22-inch HD touchscreen, performance tracking metrics.

• 56:55Tim Ferriss?

  I think that, along with the real-time leaderboard, are the main reasons that this caught my attention when cycling never had caught my attention before. It's really pretty stunning what they've done with the user interface to keep your attention. The belt drive is quiet and it's smaller than you would expect, so it can fit in a living room or an office. I actually have it in a large closet, believe it or not, and it fits with no problem. So Peloton is offering all of you guys, listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show, a special offer, and it is actually special. Visit ONE Peloton, that's O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N, onepeloton.com and enter the code TIM, all

• 57:35Tim Ferriss?

  caps, T-I-M, at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. Now, you might say, meh, accessories? Wait, I don't need fancy towels or whatever, other supplemental bits and pieces. Nope, the shoes you need. You need the clip-in shoes and those are in the accessory category, so this $100 off is a very legit $100 off. So. If you want to get in your workouts, if you want a convenient and really entertaining way to do high-intensity interval training or anything else, or you just want to get a fantastic gift for someone, check out Peloton. OnePeloton.com and enter the code TIM. Again, that's O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N.com

• 58:20Tim Ferriss?

  and enter the code TIM at checkout to receive $100 off any accessories, including the shoes that you will want to get. Check it out. OnePeloton.com, code TIM.

• 58:32Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by WeWork. I love WeWork. I haven't had an office in many, many, many, many, many years, since 2000 or so, when I had my last "real" job, I suppose, in quotation marks. But when I moved from San Francisco to Austin not long ago, I decided, you know what? I'm tired of working at home. I'm tired of working at coffee shops. So one of the very first things I did was to get a space at WeWork. I could not be happier with this change in my life. WeWork is a global network of workspaces where companies and people grow together. The idea is really simple. You focus on your business and WeWork takes care of all the rest, including front desk service, utilities, refreshments, and more.

• 59:16Tim Ferriss?

  I also often have that shipped from Amazon and elsewhere to my office at WeWork. Here in Austin, I've been completely blown away by the members-only events, special offers, and perhaps the best cold brew coffee on tap that I've ever had. It's been amazing. It's been a real, real change in my life and improved my quality of life. And there are also dog-friendly WeWork locations all over the place. How fun is that? WeWork caters to everyone, from entrepreneurs and freelancers to startups and even large enterprises, including GE, Salesforce, Microsoft, Mastercard, Samsung, Spotify, Pinterest, and Red Bull, among many others. In fact, more than 10% of Fortune 500 companies currently use WeWork, and it's a rapidly growing group.

• 1:00:01Tim Ferriss?

  In other words, it's not just solo printers and ground-level startups that use WeWork, but everything from that to the big companies, who are seeing very huge benefits as well. WeWork believes that creating spaces where people can connect and create meaning together... Right, after all, if you are someone who has built a business modeled on the principles of the Four Hour Workweek or elsewhere, it can be a lonely road sometimes. Even though you're digitally connected, it can feel very, very isolating. So, in these spaces, you can connect with real humans, and all the while, you space more efficiently and cost-effectively, which makes you and your business better equipped to face the challenges of today and tomorrow.

• 1:00:43Tim Ferriss?

  WeWork now has more than 200 locations, so you can find great spots all over the world. So head over to we.co/tim. That's we.co, C-O. We.co/tim to become a part of the global WeWork community. At the very least, I encourage you to check out pictures of some of the locations around the world. There are some incredible spots. So check it out, we.co/tim.