#231: How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker -- Cheryl Strayed

If you're interested in the creative process of a famed author, jumpstarting your own creation, note taking, list making, or simply handling hard emotions, this episode is for you. Recorded in front of a 2,000-plus person crowd at SXSW in Austin, Texas, this one was a blast. My guest is Cheryl Strayed (@CherylStrayed https://twitter.com/CherylStrayed), author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Wild http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307476073/offsitoftimfe-20, the New York Times bestsellers Tiny Beautiful Things http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307949338/offsitoftimfe-20 and Brave Enough http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1101946903/offsitoftimfe-20, and the novel Torch http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345805615/offsitoftimfe-20. Her books have been translated into forty languages around the world. Wild was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her inaugural selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0 http://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/Preview-Oprahs-Book-Club-20-Interview-with-Cheryl-Strayed-Video and was made into an Oscar-nominated film http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00RVC2TG8/offsitoftimfe-20 starring Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern. Strayed's essays have been published in The Best American Essays, The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, The Sun, Tin House, and elsewhere. Strayed is the co-host, along with Steve Almond, of the WBUR podcast Dear Sugar Radio http://www.wbur.org/dearsugar, which originated with her popular Dear Sugar advice column http://therumpus.net/sections/dear-sugar/. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by iD Commerce + Logistics http://tim.blog/scale/. I'm asked all the time about how to scale businesses quickly. Rule number one: remove unnecessary bottlenecks. Many businesses can do so by outsourcing inventory management and fulfillment to a company that makes this its primary focus. iD Commerce + Logistics http://tim.blog/scale/ is just such a company. It helps online retailers and entrepreneurs outgrow their competition by handling all types of details -- from inventory to packing and shipping. I depended on iD to handle these types of details when I launched The 4-Hour Chef so I could focus on promoting the book. As a listener of this podcast, you can get up to $10,000 off your start-up fees and costs waived by visiting tim.blog/scale http://tim.blog/scale/ or idcomlog.com/tim http://idcomlog.com/tim/. This podcast is also brought to you by MeUndies http://meundies.com/tim. I've spent the last year wearing underwear from these guys http://meundies.com/tim 24/7, and they are the most comfortable and colorful underwear I've ever owned. MeUndies are designed in LA and made from sustainably-sourced MicroModal—a fabric 3 times softer than cotton. Even better, it includes free shipping. If you don't love your first pair of MeUndies, they'll hook you up with a new pair or a refund. If you love the product, they have a subscription offer where you can save up to 33% after your first pair. Check out MeUndies.com/Tim http://meundies.com/tim to see my current faves (some are awesomely ridiculous, like the camo). That's Meundies.com/Tim. http://meundies.com/tim

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 shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  No, this is 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 ID Commerce and Logistics. I'm asked all the time about how to scale businesses quickly. Rule number one is removing unnecessary bottlenecks that are a headache and also an emergency brake on growth. For many companies, one of the first things they should outsource is inventory management and fulfillment. There are companies that do this all day long perfectly for fast-growing companies. ID Commerce and Logistics is one such company. They focus on helping online retailers and entrepreneurs outgrow the competition by handling all types of logistics for you. They manage your inventory, pick, pack, and ship, and handle everything you can imagine so that you can focus on the things you are best at instead of all of these details under the hood.

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  I partnered with them myself during the launch of The 4-Hour Chef so that I could focus on promoting the book, which is what I'm good at, and they ensured that things I'm not good at got done perfectly. In other words, that readers were happy with dozens of different products we needed shipped out during holiday crunch season. ID Commerce and Logistics works with many different types of businesses, including e-commerce, consumer packaged goods, subscription boxes, and dozens more. They're also integrated with top e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, my personal favorite, Magento, BigCommerce, and others, which makes the startup integration partnership seamless. As a listener of this podcast, you can get up to $10,000 of your startup fees and costs waived. That is a big discount.

• 1:48Tim Ferriss?

  Just visit tim.blog/scale. That's tim.blog/scale. Or you can go to idcomlog, that's I-D-C-O-M-L-O-G dot com forward slash tim. You can go to either one. The easier one to remember is probably tim.blog/scale.

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by MeUndies, which I'm wearing right now. I've spent the last year or so wearing underwear from these guys nearly 24/7, except when I'm having fancy time, and they are the most comfortable and colorful underwear I have ever owned. If you can imagine really awesome graffiti that you've seen in cities like LA or elsewhere, then turn into a print and put onto underwear, you get the idea. There's also some weird stuff, like Halloween-themed camo, which I have for myself. MeUndies, designed in LA and made from sustainably sourced micro modal. Why is this important? It's three times softer than cotton, and you feel that difference on your loins. Ladies and gentlemen, they feel great. And if you don't love your first pair of MeUndies, they'll hook you up with a new pair or a refund.

• 2:55Tim Ferriss?

  What kind of person sends in used underwear back to someone? I don't know. That makes you a strange person. Maybe you should sell them in Japan or something. But if you love the product, and they make great gifts also. And for those people wondering, Igo boxer briefs. If you love it, they have a subscription offer where you can save up to 33% after your first pair. So check it out, meundies.com/tim. You can see some of my favorite underwear. And also plenty for the ladies. That's meundies.com/tim.

• 3:27Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, ladies and germs, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, whatever it might be that you can apply to your own life and test as soon as today, tomorrow. These are the tools and tactics that count, whether they come from the world of entertainment, military, or other. And there are many different buckets of other. This particular episode was a blast to record. It was recorded in front of a 2,000-plus-person crowd at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, which is one of my favorite conferences and also was the tipping point for The Four Hour Work Week way back in 2007.

• 4:11Tim Ferriss?

  If you're interested in the creative process of a famed author, if you're interested in jump-starting your own creation, creativity, note-taking, list-making, or... For how to handle hard emotions, this episode is for you. We cover a lot of ground. My guest is Cheryl Strayed, @cherilstrayed on almost all the socials. And I will keep this short because I have another intro, which I recorded live. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Cheryl Strayed as much as I did. And as always, thank you for listening.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Hello, everyone.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Hi, guys.

• 4:57Tim Ferriss?

  Good afternoon, everybody. You guys ready for a show? Yeah. All right. So this is the first live Tim Ferriss Show in Tejas, in this fine city of Austin. So thank you all for coming.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  It's the first one?

• 5:13Tim Ferriss?

  It is.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  I didn't know that. I'm so honored.

• 5:15Tim Ferriss?

  And I am so honored to have Cheryl Strayed here. You may know Cheryl.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Hi, everyone.

• 5:23Tim Ferriss?

  And for those who don't know Cheryl, I'll give you a little bit of context. And then we'll dive into it. And I will double check with the organizers, but I think we have between 60 and 90 minutes. I have a 60-minute countdown, but I think we have up to 90. So if that's too long, those are the exits over there. Cheryl Strayed is the author of the number one New York Times bestselling memoir, Wild, one of my favorites, the New York Times bestsellers Tiny Beautiful Things and Brave Enough, which has a permanent home on my coffee table at home, in fact, and the novel Torch. Her books have been translated into 40 languages around the world, probably more. At this point, Wild was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her inaugural selection for Oprah's

• 6:03Tim Ferriss?

  Book Club 2.0 and was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern. Strayed's essays have been published in the Best American Essays, The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, The Sun, Tin House, and elsewhere. Strayed is the co-host, along with Steve Almond, of the WBR podcast Dear Sugar Radio, which originated with her popular Dear Sugar advice column. She lives in the lovely city of Portland, Oregon. Please welcome Cheryl Strayed.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Thanks, everyone.

• 6:35Tim Ferriss?

  And there are so many questions I would love to ask, but I thought I would format this a little bit differently because I know that there are so many questions you all want to ask. So I am actually going to base this entire conversation around questions that you all have submitted via Facebook and Twitter and use those as jumping off points. So I thought we would start with one from Twitter. And this is Charlie Charbonneau. I may be pronouncing it incorrectly. The question is, or one of several, is, "What's it like to know tiny, beautiful things saved lives, including mine?"

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Oh, that's amazing. Thank you, Charles. It's right up there with just a very small handful of the most extraordinary experiences of my life, actually. I know the power of literature because books have saved my life, too. And it was always my intention from the very beginning, when I first, when I was like six and learned how to read and felt the beauty and the truth that words on the page can make. I wanted to join that club. I wanted to be somebody who would make that kind of beauty and truth in the world, too.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  But I didn't know if I ever would be there, you know? And I didn't know what would be the mark that I would reach that I could say, "Yes, I did that, too." And I will say, it's that thing. It's people coming up to me and saying, "Your book changed my life. Your book saved my life." And so it's really the highest praise I've ever gotten from a reader in any way.

• 8:12Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned that books have saved, changed your life. What are some of those books? Are there any particular books that come to mind that have had a huge impact on you?

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so many books. Well, one of the things, I think I wrote this in Wild, that I felt that books were my religion. And what I mean by that is that, you know, I do think that there are all kinds of ways that I get spiritual solace or a sense of connectedness with others or a sense of comfort or consolation. But I would say that the books have been the main one. And the first book that came to mind when you just asked me that is Dalton Trumbo's novel, Johnny Got His Gun. Have any of you read that book? It's sadly, I think, not read by a lot of people now, but for some reason I came upon this book when I was about 14. I don't know how it got into my hands, but it did.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  And I, you know, it was a book that was written, I think, in the 30s, and it was, you know, this book that, really about a reality that was so far from my own, and yet, when I was this teenager, I really could feel like the power of narrative, the power of inhabiting the life of another human. And I do think that, you know, all kinds of art gives us that, that ability to inhabit another human's experience, but none do it so well as books. That is literature's thing, right? Subjective truths. We get to be inside the mind of that young woman who's hiking the Pacific Crest Trail when she's 26, or the man who's, you know, in the midst of a divorce, whatever that situation is, we get to be in it. And

• 9:51Speaker 02

  so, you know, I do think that books have the power to not only remind us of our own humanity, but the humanity of others, too. And that's, for me, a spiritual experience. That is what divinity is. That is what God is to me.

• 10:07Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned inhabiting another's experience, and that, that actually segues quite nicely to another question, which is from a friend of mine, who will remain anonymous. "When one shares so much of their experience publicly, especially perhaps through writing, people who don't know you feel like they know you, and often want to pour their hearts out to you. How do you connect and engage with a large audience without getting drawn into other's struggles in such a way that your time and energy are compromised?"

• 10:35Speaker 02

  It's hard. I wonder if you also...

• 10:38Tim Ferriss?

  I struggle with it. I struggle with it tremendously. Particularly when people come to me with extremely heartfelt, serious, and sometimes urgent problems.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:49Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm sure you've run into that quite a bit yourself. How do you think about contending with that?

• 10:55Speaker 02

  You know, I don't have the final answer yet. I think it's in progress for me. But I will say what I've learned in these years since I began writing the Dear Sugar column in Wild and even with my first book Torch. It was read by fewer people than read Wild, but I still had a whole batch of people who were coming to me, you know, after reading that book, saying, "You told my truth. You said something, I feel, and no one else has ever said it." And that's a really powerful kind of intimate connection. And I think that for me, early on, I felt like, "Okay, we share this thing, so now we have to share more. We have to correspond, or email each other, or be friends, or yes, I have to meet you

• 11:39Speaker 02

  for coffee and talk about it." And, you know, that just became unsustainable. You know, with Torch, you know, the five people who read the book, I could meet them for coffee. But with Wild, that became unsustainable. And what I realized, too, is that I already gave them the best thing I have to give them. You know? That book, Tiny Beautiful Things, that saved somebody's life, or the Wild that somebody saw themselves in. Like, I gave them that thing already. And any further interaction with me will only be a reiteration of what I tried to achieve in those books. Is my microphone messing up?

• 12:17Tim Ferriss?

  It could be either of our microphones, although I guess mine is attached to my head, so it might be.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  I think my necklace is messing with it, so I'm gonna put it backwards.

• 12:24Tim Ferriss?

  All right, no problem.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  I'm sorry you don't any longer get to see the beauty of my necklace, but...

• 12:28Tim Ferriss?

  So, as context, could you describe what just disappeared behind door number one?

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 12:35Tim Ferriss?

  What is the necklace?

• 12:36Speaker 02

  So what this necklace is, and I was telling Jim before we went on stage, that, you know, I tend to be, one of the writing assignments, my best writing prompts that I give when I'm teaching writing, is I talk about the use of objects and talismans in narratives. I think that it can be a really powerful source of story. And, for example, if I made you all right now... Take out your keychain and then write the story of every key. You would all have written something really interesting and something very telling about your life. And so when I do things like this, like talk to Tim Ferriss, you know, before you all, I always want to have like a talisman of what I hope happens.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  And so this necklace that I just made disappear, what it is, is that it's a zipper that's just unzipped and it's just glued to a piece of felt. Let me show you. See, so it's an undone zipper glued to a piece of felt, bought at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. And I love the, I love the idea of unzipping, you know. I think a lot of people, they think of going on stage and having this kind of formal interview as the time that you're going to be guarded or try to present a certain public face. And while we're doing that, I think I'm also hoping we get something beneath the surface that we can sort of unzip in some ways.

• 13:58Tim Ferriss?

  Me too. So let's, let's, let's get amongst it. This is, well, I shouldn't, I could say that for every single question that I'm going to ask when I look at paper because these are from the audience, but in short, I'm going to just preview it a little bit. What often sets someone down a path of self-discovery is trauma. So as a mother, how do you work to nurture a sense of security for your children while also encouraging them to go on their own quests of self-discovery?

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's really tricky because my kids are like, they have the opposite life than I had as a child. My kids are just basically little cupcakes, you know, and nothing, you know, my, my son a couple of years ago, my kid's going to public school, but a couple of years ago, we were thinking of applying, we, we applied to this private school and my son had to fill out the application. And even though he was like 10, they were like, you know, describe, you know, a challenge that you've overcome. And my son was like, I don't have any, I haven't had to overcome anything, mom, you know, and he was like so upset that nothing bad had happened to him. And I was like, my God, what an uninteresting life you have, you know.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  So, so it is kind of funny because like I, you're right, I protect my kids, I want my kids to have, to not be witness to, you know, I, I had a lot of traumatic things actually happen to me at a young age. And, and one of the great

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Profound joys of my life is that my kids do not have that experience. I remember a few years ago, I told my kids about my father being abusive to me. I mean, it was more than a few years ago. My kids are maybe five or six when I first told them that my father had battered my mother and had been physically abusive to me. And my kids actually thought that I was joking because they didn't understand that adults can behave that way. They didn't really actually understand that that could be true because all of their encounters with adults had been, you know, people behaving like you should behave. And so, you know, I love that we're not replicating that.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  And I think that, of course, like any humans, my kids will have their own challenges. And maybe one of them is just going to be like having the perfect childhood that I gave them, being the perfect mother.

• 16:23Tim Ferriss?

  Overcoming the life of obstacles. Mom, what am I going to put on this application?

• 16:30Speaker 02

  I made their life too easy. No, I'm kidding about that because, of course, I'm the most imperfect mother. But what I mean is, I think that no matter what your circumstances are, you always have challenges, right? I mean, this is always, I mean, the human struggle is true, whether you're living, you know, in difficult circumstances or a life of luxury, and we all know that.

• 16:50Tim Ferriss?

  We were talking backstage a bit about quotes that have resonated with people. And I'd love to know, whether in Brave Enough or elsewhere, what are some of the quotes that have most resonated with your readers and fans?

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Oh, some of the quotes that are...

• 17:10Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. Whether they're in the book or elsewhere, what has really struck a chord?

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Well, you know, what's interesting to me, and I say this in the introduction to Brave Enough, that it's, I really believe that, of course, you know, the writer creates these words and they're his or her, you know, sentences on that page. But the minute we release them into the world, they really belong to the readers. And so, I didn't know, when I was writing my books, I didn't know what quotes would resonate with readers, right? And I loved that in Brave Enough, it was essentially a crowdsourced book, that I looked to the internet and said, well, what are people, you know... They tattoo things on their bodies. And one of the big surprises for me, there's lots of people who have a tattoo of the last line of "Wild," how wild it was to let it be.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  And I know what that line means to me, and I know what that line means in the context of the book. But what's beautiful about every one of those wild tattoos from that last line is that whatever it means to that individual who had that tattooed on their arm or whatever, it's not mine. It's not my story. You know? Nobody's going to get that written on their body because it has something to do with me. It has something to do with them. And I love that way that we can own beauty that other people have made because it lives within us then. You know, those quotes that mean something to me that other writers have written, it's not so much about their intention, it's about the meaning I took from it.

• 18:43Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any other quotes that come to mind that have been particularly well-tattooed or turned into t-shirts or otherwise?

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Well, there's a lot. You know, there's "How wild it was to let it be," "Be a warrior for love," "Write like a motherfucker." I mean...

• 18:59Tim Ferriss?

  Very important.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  You know, "Write like a mother..." You know, actually, "Write like a motherfucker" has become such a thing that I didn't even... it's not even in "Brave Enough." Like, it's not one of the quotes in "Brave Enough." I write about it in the introduction. But my favorite thing is at my book signings, people will come up to me and say, you know, "Will you please write 'engineer like a motherfucker'?" Or, you know...

• 19:25Tim Ferriss?

  "Mother like a motherfucker."

• 19:26Speaker 02

  "Mother like a motherfucker" is another common one. And I love that because that's what "Write like a motherfucker" means. Like, that's what that column... I don't know if any of you have read that column, but that's what I was driving at when I was writing about, you know, writing this letter to this writer who's saying, "I'm a writer, but I can't write, and I want to be David Foster Wallace, but I'm not David Foster Wallace, and I'm 26, and why aren't I famous yet?" I was saying, "Shut up and write like a motherfucker." And, you know, I think that that applies to almost any kind of work we do.

• 19:59Tim Ferriss?

  So, can you elaborate on that? Because I'd love to hear, for those people who haven't written, like, what does "Write like a motherfucker" mean to you when you are writing?

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Okay. It's about having motherfucker-tude.

• 20:13Tim Ferriss?

  Please continue, yes.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Which is a combination of two seemingly opposing ideas, and that is humility, okay? Which I think sometimes gets misinterpreted as weakness, as being subservient. And there's a reason we think that, right? To be humble. We say, when somebody came of humble means, we mean they came from nothing. The word humble actually comes from the Latin humus, which means the ground, to be down low, to be of the earth. And what I've found in my journey as a writer is that, you know, even though I aspired to greatness, even though I wanted to make beauty and truth and all those big highfalutin things,

• 20:55Speaker 02

  the only way that I could do it was to be humble and to say, "I'm gonna really try, and I might fail, and I'm not gonna feel sorry for myself. I'm gonna be strong," you know, in the midst of my humility. My humility is about really forgetting about all of those glorious things that one gets when one has what we call success: attention, fame, money, whatever, achievement. But just put my faith in the work and be really fierce when it comes, and very exacting, and demand a lot of myself when it comes to actually doing the work. And so that combination of that kind of, you know, real strength that you have to have

• 21:39Speaker 02

  to do something that's hard. Writing a book is hard, writing an essay is hard, writing a poem is hard, with that kind of sense of surrender, that sense of kind of like, "Here I am. I'm gonna do this work, and I don't know where it will lead." And acceptance, you know, I think of humility, acceptance, and surrender as all these really, you know, words that are connected to each other in meaning. And we think of them all in these kind of... We disassociate them from things like strength and power. But I really think that the only way to get to those places is through those things.

• 22:14Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:15Tim Ferriss?

  Just the adaptability that comes with being able to surrender, even if it's just surrendering to uncertainty.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 22:21Tim Ferriss?

  See, if you look at, then, if we take those principles, and this segues nicely to Jody Valley Smith, I think it is, from Facebook. Does she show up every day for two hours no matter what it takes? A few days or a few days at a time away from home? In other words, what is your writing process? Finding space to write with mom things to do is hard. And of course, morning routines. So I think that Jo do just like to hear about what your writing routine looks like.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:51Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe to make it specific, if you, let's say on a book deadline. Or on any kind of deadline.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:55Tim Ferriss?

  What does your process look like? What time of day? Any rituals?

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. So for a long time, I denied the fact that I was a binge writer. And I'm here to tell you, my name is Cheryl Strayed and I'm a binge writer. You know, when I, I remember being like in my twenties and I would go to like, you know, see writers give lectures and readings and so forth. There would always be some like, you know, old guy who was like, of course I write every day. If you don't write every day, you're not a writer. And then you would look deeper and you know, this man would be like in his office and then his wife would like bring him lunch. And then he would have lunch and then he would write a little. And I was like, that's just not my life. Nobody's like catering my life, you know? I had to, you know, have a, I was bringing lunch to other people. I was a waitress.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  I was, so what I found is that I creatively, and this was true before I had kids, it's true after as well, for different reasons, is that I do best when I can say, this is the block of time that I'm not going to be able to write. And sometimes that's like a couple of days. Sometimes that's a couple of months. And you know, therefore I release myself from any kind of guilt or shame or I should be writing when I'm not writing. And the counterpoint to that is to say, now I am going to write on these days or during these months. And I try to arrange my life so that that happens. And so, you know, what that looks like for me is not so much a daily practice as it

• 24:24Speaker 02

  is looking, you know, looking at the month and saying, when can I write and when I'm, when am I not going to write? And so, you know, for me, Especially since I had kids, you know, when the children came, my kids are 11 and 12. When I had kids, suddenly my whole life had to be redefined, obviously. But especially that work life, because writing is all about concentration, solitude, and silence. And those are the three things that children are most not about.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  And I had to find, you know, a place to do that. And so, once my kids were a little bit older, I had them 18 months apart. It was like a rip the Band-Aid off, fast approach to childbearing. And once they were like two, I said to my husband, "I'm gonna go check into a hotel, like, down the street for two nights. I'm gonna be gone for 48 hours. Don't call me unless somebody stops breathing. And I'm gonna work." And I would get more work done in those 48 hours than I got done for weeks at home. And this isn't to say I didn't, you know, write around the edges of things at home. But I find that I can, when I do that immersion, it's incredibly fruitful for me. And, you know, like I said, that was true even before kids.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Like, you know, I never thought of it until I had kids and actually had to get away to a hotel or whatever. But before that, I would go to writers' residencies, or I would just go rent a cabin somewhere. And there's something about that sort of uninterrupted time to make something happen that works far better for me than, you know, that every day, like, you have to write two or three hours every day. And that's just how it is. That, you know, that's just my process.

• 26:05Tim Ferriss?

  I had the same experience, because I remember, very early on, this writing teacher, I really, really respected, said, "No matter what, from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 every day, I sit in front of a blank piece of paper." And I tried that. Within 48 hours, just wanted to throw myself face-first through it. Couldn't do it. And I wanted to ask you about the hotel. So, I've heard, after hearing a number of writers, about a number of writers doing this, I remember I hit a really tough spot with The Four Hour Chef, and I checked into a hotel in the town where I live, and also got a tremendous amount done. What did those days look like for you? So, you have a few days blocked out. What do the days look like?

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Like, if somebody had a video camera and, like, recorded me during those times, it would look like sheer madness, because I hardly sleep, I hardly eat. All I do is go on walks and write, and go on walks and write, and go on walks and write. There is this...

• 27:02Speaker 02

  I think there's something about it too, that it's when you have like 48 hours or whatever number, like I knew that my time was limited and therefore it was really valuable. And I got into the flow, you know, I think it's, I mean, there are different terms for this, the immersive flow, that kind of thing that happens. And you know, I think that you need to have that thing happen for any kind of real work, but especially creative work. You know, when you're writing what you're trying to create on the pages, John Gardner describes it as this vivid and continuous dream. You actually are trying to create an alternate reality for somebody else. You have to tell them, you know, what that person looks like, what that person feels like, what that person is thinking, what's

• 27:46Speaker 02

  in the room, what does it smell like? All of those things have to come alive. And that can't come alive on the page if you aren't inhabiting that. And it's really hard to dip into that for 15 minutes at a time. And so I just knew that I had to just go all the way there during those hotel stays. You know, and what about you? I mean, is that your experience? Is it kind of like you're a madman?

• 28:07Tim Ferriss?

  I am, and I've always-

• 28:10Speaker 02

  I mean, we know you are, but-

• 28:11Tim Ferriss?

  I'm madman, just base level, number one lunacy, and then absolutely a binge writer. And I've always had some degree of shame or insecurity about it because I hear about these-

• 28:23Speaker 02

  Every day.

• 28:24Tim Ferriss?

  And I have friends who are, say, journalists, who say, "Oh, writer's block doesn't exist." I'm like, "Really? Like, am I the only one who believes in Santa Claus here? Or what's happening?" And I need those uninterrupted blocks of time, where it's very likely that the majority of the day, it may look like I'm just staring off into space, but if I don't have that space, I'm not going to get to the writing.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Well, that's right. Part of the writing is just wandering the room and yeah, that sort of thing. You know, I do think that the reason that this is- Important, I think, to say and talk about is, for some reason, like shame and guilt is a really big thing for a lot of writers. You know, this thing that we should be doing. And I can't tell you how many times I've told the story of being a binge writer and somebody comes up to me afterwards and says, "Thank you, thank you. You know, you gave me permission to call myself a writer." And the most moving experience I had in that regard was, I was giving a talk in Ohio

• 29:24Speaker 02

  a few years ago, and afterwards, this woman came up to me and she was a single mother with four kids and had been, you know, slowly writing her novel over many years. And she worked at like a 7-Eleven or some job like that. And she was crying about this thing I had said about binge writing. And she said, you know, because one thing I said is like, "It doesn't matter what you should do, just make an intention and follow through with it." And so if all you can do is say, "I'm going to write one day a month. I'm going to take one day a month, that's all I'm doing is writing." That's 12 good days a year. That's a lot of writing you can get done. And she said to me, "That's what I do.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  I write once a month, my mom takes my kids." And she had never allowed herself to think of herself as a writer because she'd been doing it wrong. She hadn't been doing what that old guy who gets his lunch brought to him by his wife had said you had to do. And, you know, I think it's really liberating to say you have to do, like with anything, writing with life, you have to do it in a way that works for you.

• 30:28Tim Ferriss?

  And to that point, I remember one of the best pieces of advice that I got when I was completely paralyzed for a period of months with just fear of writing this particular project I was working on. And the advice was, "Two crappy pages a day." "You're on deadline, but it's not going to be Tolstoy, relax. Two crappy pages a day. You might not use any of what you write for a week or two, but just put down two crappy pages per day."

• 30:52Speaker 02

  And what happened?

• 30:53Tim Ferriss?

  What happened is, some days, it is two crappy pages, and it's terrible, and you don't use it. But other days, you end up writing 20 pages, and then there's five good pages.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  And it's Tolstoy.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Which you transcribe from his novel.

• 31:06Tim Ferriss?

  I'm working, I'm working. It's a work in progress. Question that I've actually wanted to ask you in some form for a long time. This is from, I think it's Finja, F-I-N-J-A from Twitter. How do you get through wild or destructive emotions without destroying anyone or anything?

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Oh, you mean like how do you write a memoir without hurting somebody's feelings? Is that what you mean?

• 31:29Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know. I think this is broad enough.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  How do you get through wild?

• 31:32Tim Ferriss?

  You can interpret it however you might. But how do you work through potentially wild or destructive emotions? And I mean, very closely related to this is another question, which is related to pouring out your heart on paper.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  I see.

• 31:47Tim Ferriss?

  And whether that is cathartic, whether it reinforces maybe the pain that you're feeling. But how do you sort through difficult emotions yourself?

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. No, that's a question that comes up a lot. And I think that there are basically two kinds of people. Those who think talking about, thinking about difficult experiences, or painful memories, or painful emotions is a bad thing, because it brings up those feelings again. Why would you want to dwell on something that makes you cry, or makes you remember that sorrow? There's that camp. And then there's the camp that is like, let's dig it all up, because the only way ever to understand what happened, or make some meaning of that suffering, is to examine it and to look at it, and to tell stories about it. And I'm definitely in that latter camp.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  I think that, did I sometimes cry writing wild? Yeah, I would say probably every day. Probably every day. And was that good for me or bad for me? It was really good for me. When I first, my first book, Torch, is fiction, but there are autobiographical elements to it. It's a story about a woman who dies young of cancer, like my mom did. And it's kind of, you know, a first novel. In that way that a lot of first novels are, you know, both fiction and autobiographical. And I remember when that book first came out and I was always, you know, talking about the real life experiences that were connected to that book. People would say, was it cathartic for you to write it?

• 33:22Speaker 02

  And I was, I would always say, no, you know, because I was in some ways defensive about that. Maybe specifically as a woman writer, because I think whenever women in particular write about emotional things, it's put in this kind of like, oh, that's your nice little journal. You're processing your emotions versus it being allowed to be in like the sort of high art camp of great American literature. And so I would say, absolutely not. It is not cathartic. I made, this is literature. And by the time I published Wild, I felt confident enough in my work and also evolved enough in my own life that I could say, you know, both things are true. That there is no question that, you know,

• 34:04Speaker 02

  the most cathartic, I would say the most cathartic thing in my life, right alongside motherhood for me, has been writing. It is through writing that I have come to understand who I am and what I've been through and therefore who we all are. And that's really been an emotional journey and one that I'm better for having taken. And so, and yet that can also be by way of creating literature, creating art. And so, you know, I, I think it's good that I had to understand more deeply what happened to me. I mean, one of the things, once you start to tell a story about your suffering,

• 34:45Speaker 02

  is you have to think about the people or person who made you suffer. And you start to have to empathize with them. You have to start to ask like, well, why did this person do this to me? Or what did it mean when that happened? And, you know, I think that it really, you know, this word healing is kind of overused and yet it's exactly what that is. I think this is why therapists are always, you know, they don't put you in the chair and say, let's not talk about anything bad that happened to you in your childhood. They say, what happened? You know, where are your wounds? And writing is all about that. Writing is all about where are your wounds? And you see this, I see this over and over again in teaching. You know, this is what people, these are the stories that people want to tell. I don't know if this is true or not,

• 35:30Speaker 02

  but I've heard that the oldest continuously used sentence in the English language is "woe is me." And one of my favorite writing prompts is, I ask my students, "Write a 'woe is me' narrative." And everyone can do it instantly, because everyone feels sorry for themselves. Everyone has a complaint, whether it be large or small. And we have lots of stories to tell about ourselves, the ways that we've been wronged by the driver in the next lane, or the mother who didn't do this or that. And I think that there's something good about our stories rising from those wounded moments.

• 36:10Tim Ferriss?

  You have some fantastic writing prompts.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 36:15Tim Ferriss?

  And there are so many of them that have made me go, "Ooh, that could really produce something interesting." Such as, I think I'm probably paraphrasing here, but "Who has been your darkest teacher?"

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:27Tim Ferriss?

  Which can be interpreted many different ways. What are some of the prompts that have produced the most, for you, interesting writing in your students?

• 36:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, well, the talisman one. When I ask people to write about an object... So a talisman is simply an object that has accumulated meaning for you or your character, right? And so this could be, I mean, it could be anything. It could be, like, a cultural talisman is like my wedding ring. We all know what this means, right? And then there are other things, like, "You don't know the meaning of this ring." Okay, that's a personal talisman. And all of those things have a story attached to them. And I find, too, that when people write about themselves via a physical object, it's incredibly expansive. People are willing to say more about themselves

• 37:18Speaker 02

  often when the story is about something other than them.

• 37:23Tim Ferriss?

  Right, it's more indirect.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Exactly, so that's a good one. The "woe is me" one never fails, because, like I said, we can all complain. And sometimes that complaint is serious and deep and valid, and sometimes it's just like these little dumb things that we're pissed off about. And, you know, the rants and raves, we're all really good at that kind of passion. I think something like "Your darkest teacher," that one, is a really important one to me. Because part of my... I would say one of the most significant stops along the way for me as a writer was feeling grateful for the people who taught me things that were difficult, or painful,

• 38:07Speaker 02

  or ugly, things that I didn't want to know, and actually getting to a place with them that I did feel grateful for what they had given me.

• 38:17Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned the ranting. I want to come back to those days in the hotel, because I'm so interested in process, as are a lot of people in the audience who sent questions. I remember once, this is before I wrote my first book, when I was toying around with the idea of writing, and I was in an audience where Poe Bronson was being interviewed, writer, and I raised my hand and I asked him what he did when he had any type of block. And he said, "I ask myself, what makes me angry?" And he used that as a way to jumpstart his writing. When you hit a place, let's just say, in the 48 hours that you have to write, and maybe this doesn't happen, which is a valid answer too, where you're not sure how to piece something together, or it's just not flowing, what are some of

• 39:01Tim Ferriss?

  the mechanisms, or tricks, or habits that you use to help in a situation like that?

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Well, you know, one of the things, I'm 48 now, I've been a serious writer since I was like 19, and I really have learned how to remember the lessons I've learned along the way. And one of the lessons I learned is, it's always hard for me to begin. And not just, I don't mean just like what the first line is of any given chapter or piece, which is always hard, but even like when you've been in that flow, and then you take that break, you finish that section, and then you have to begin the next. And I think that I get, it's almost like this, almost like performance anxiety, like I'm always like, you know, what's the first thing I'm gonna say when I step into the room?

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Once you write, like, that's difficult for many of us, right? It's like that beginning. You know, you know what you have to say, but how do you get to the part where you get to just say what you have to say? And so in writing, what I do is I take a shortcut around it. And when I'm feeling stuck, you know, if I don't have that first line or that first paragraph, I just say, "Write the part that you know." Okay? So, like, that might mean it's kind of sloppy, like, that I have to start writing something that's like, you know, a third of the way into the piece. Like, it's a scene that I've already imagined that's going to be in there, or a paragraph, a description of something. And what I find is, once I start writing, I relax, and then, of course, you can go back and make that beginning.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  You know, so just begin in a nonlinear, like, trust that you don't have to write something in a linear fashion. And sometimes that also reveals to you, like, a better way that the story can be told.

• 40:45Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Because, you know, chronology is always like a question in any piece you write. Do you begin here or do you begin there? And sometimes the writing process actually can teach you the answer to that question.

• 40:55Tim Ferriss?

  This is a question from Fallon Goodman, Facebook. She mentioned in a Facebook post once that she thinks about mortality daily. So, again, this may not be accurate.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  That I do, yes.

• 41:07Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, great. Love to hear her explain what triggers them. What do these thoughts motivate her to do? What do they prevent her from doing? So can you elaborate?

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, I did make a Facebook post one time that said that. I don't remember what compelled that post, but I know what compelled it in my life. So, when I was 22, my mom died very suddenly of cancer at the age of 45. She knew that she had cancer for seven weeks. She was like this healthy person, and then she got what she thought was a bad cold, and one thing led to another, and she was told that she had advanced-stage lung cancer. She hadn't been a smoker, and she just died. I mean, she just died seven weeks later.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  And I was a senior in college, my mom was a senior in college too. And what happened to me, really from that moment on, is I was like, I was like, not only devastated that I'd lost my mom, but I was shocked. I was young enough that I, like, it never occurred to me, like, really mortality, I'd never had to confront it. It had never occurred to me that my mom would die, you know, at a time when I used to think that she wasn't meant to die that young, you know? I still had this kind of youthful idea that, like, people live to be old, and of course, that's what happened. And so, when my mom died, I suddenly was just acutely aware that any of us could die at any moment. And I know that it sounds strange to be 22, and, like,

• 42:41Speaker 02

  rationally, I knew that we could all die. But I didn't know it in my bones, you know? I didn't know it in my body. And my mom dying gave that to me. And so, it's true. I think what I said in that post is that every day since my mom died, there hasn't been a day that I haven't thought about my own death. That's true. And I don't think about it in a morbid way, but I think of it in a way that I'm aware of not taking my life for granted, and not taking your life for granted, or any of our lives for granted. It's not, I think we have this, really, a problem with death in this culture. You know, we put it, we keep it at a distance. And I think even at the expense of our imagining our own mortality,

• 43:26Speaker 02

  like, we think of this as sort of a grim thing to think about. And I actually just think it's a very realistic way to carry out throughout your day, to think, you know, okay, here I am, and I'm lucky to be here, and let's just hope this goes till tomorrow, you know? And I think that it has given me, I don't know what the word would be, a more realistic sense of who we are and what we're doing here, you know? And a greater sense of consequence, I want to use the word consequence, you know? When I say bye to people, I think, you know, I try to make that connection. Do you think that's crazy?

• 44:04Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think it's crazy. I mean, goodbye is God be with you, right? So it's intended to be a, I may not see you again. It's not crazy to me at all. And I had a very close friend die of cancer I didn't know about. Certainly not remotely as difficult as what you went through. But nonetheless, found out late stage on a ski trip that he was going to die a few months later because he had metastasized liver cancer. Seeming was a former super athlete.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:36Tim Ferriss?

  No outward signs whatsoever. And had a few incidents. Shortly thereafter, a friend, a close friend of mine from college, killed himself, also completely out of left field. So for myself, began a revisiting Stoic philosophy. And I mean, they are somewhat obsessed with death in every form. But also planting these memento mori around my house so that I would think about mortality more often. Is there a particular way that you prompt thinking about your own mortality? Or do you have any rituals? For instance, one thing that I do, every time I'm in a plane and it's about to take off, I ask myself, would I be, would I be okay with dying right now?

• 45:21Tim Ferriss?

  As a way to evaluate what I'm focusing on. And that's just a very simple way, because I travel so much, to revisit mortality.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Right. What do you, what's your answer?

• 45:31Tim Ferriss?

  Almost always yes. And if it's not, that's the catalyst for making some changes. Usually saying no to more things.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah, me too. That same note. But I'm not okay with dying, just for the record.

• 45:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Now, I should clarify, being okay with dying, any crazy stalkers in the audience, means, not that I want to die. You try to kill me, I will throat punch you. But that it's a way of gauging.

• 46:01Tim Ferriss?

  How true I am being to the things I claim are important to me.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I get that. Yeah, to me, it's not, it's more organic, like, it really is just an awareness because it sounds, I want to return to this thing I said where it never, it had never occurred to me that my mom would die. And of course, I'm being hyperbolic. It had occurred to me, but it occurred to me in that same way, like, that most of us go along in our lives feeling rather complacent, right? That like, you know, it could happen, but it probably won't. So let's, like, just push that really far. And so at this moment, you know, when my mom died, I was, like I said, a senior in college. I was also in this moment of my life and all of our lives when we're in our early twenties, where you're, you're trying to figure out like who you are, you know, coming into your manhood or your womanhood. And that's, that's, you know, what was happening to me. And, you know,

• 46:50Speaker 02

  it took me, one of the most fascinating processes I ever went through was, was actually letting go of my mother. And, you know, my, even like, I would, you know, I had like months of just dreams about accepting my mother's death. And the, the dream that I had over and over, which I know is the boringest thing in the whole world to have somebody tell you their dream, but I'll just keep it quick, is that I would had to murder my mother over and over, had to kill her, had to beat her to death, had to bury her alive, had to run her over with a truck, had to do terrible things to my mother. And it was just like, because I couldn't believe she was dead. And I think that, that what I've come to know through my work is that, you know, I've talked to so many people who have experienced

• 47:34Speaker 02

  deep grief, and they also went through that. And, you know, it's, it's something that, for whatever reason, we don't really know how to talk about in a public way, or to, to sort of bring into the fold of like what it means to, what, what, what human experience is. And so it's, to me, my awareness of my mortality is, is, is, it's just more that it's something that I, that I notice in a way that I didn't notice it before. Instead of choosing that sense of complacency, like, well, that won't happen to us. It's living in that place where you say, yes, it will. Every single one of us, right here in this room, every single one of us, we're going to have that shared experience of dying.

• 48:12Tim Ferriss?

  There's a, there's really... Fascinating experiment that was done. I want to say it was NPR, but there were these dinners hosted around the country called "Death Over Dinner," and there were discussions about death. Because, like you said, it's a subject that I think is underexplored and under-discussed. And then people are caught very much unprepared for the emotional hardship and everything that goes with mortality. This is a question from Jessica Larson from Facebook. Were there ever Dear Sugar questions that she felt unequipped to answer? And in general, did she have a particular process for answering the questions?

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, many times, so I used to write a column, the Dear Sugar column, but now I have this podcast. And, you know, there are definitely questions that are like, wow, I don't know what to say. You know, I don't know what to tell you to do. But, and, you know, one of the things I've always positioned myself as when it comes to giving advice is sugar, is it's not really, I'm not trying to tell people what to do. I'm trying to help them ask deeper questions. I'm trying to help illuminate, maybe. Sometimes people think that their question is this, but it's really that. And I think of myself as somebody who's trying to illuminate a conflict or a struggle by way of giving advice.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  And there are some times where it's just impossible. I would say, you know, the few times, both in the column and then now on the radio show, that I've received a question from a woman who is pregnant and doesn't know what to do. Like, have an abortion, have the baby, and then give it up for adoption, or keep the baby. This, I'm thinking of one woman right now wrote to me with that scenario. And, you know, what I, I broke my own rule in this, in this one question, is I responded to her personally. Usually, I only respond... On the show or in the column. And I emailed her personally because I felt like she was in a really desperate situation and needed help. But I also wrote to her to say, like, I could not possibly be the person, nobody would

• 50:16Speaker 02

  be the person who could tell you what to do. Because there are some decisions that have such high stakes and such personal consequence that only you can say. So those are really hard ones. When it's, when it's a, you know, those are, that's a very black and white decision, right? Whatever that person decides, that's, that's, you know, really a big deal. Usually the kinds of questions we get.

• 50:38Tim Ferriss?

  Not to, not to interrupt, but I will. How do you help someone in, say, an email that you send to her to process that?

• 50:44Speaker 02

  How do I help?

• 50:45Tim Ferriss?

  Help her to process it, like you mentioned, because I think you're very good at it. And you say, you, of course, mentioned in the email, I can't make this decision for you. But is, is there more to the email?

• 50:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, no, it was like one of the longest emails I've ever written.

• 50:59Tim Ferriss?

  So.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  What I did is I walked her through my thinking about the consequences of each decision. And, you know, I, I said, you know, these are the things, this is, this is what, you know, I did with her the way I would do it in the column, which is like, okay, so, you know, what are, why are the reasons that you would do this or that or the other thing? And I, you know, we, I lived all the, all the scenarios out. And I think that that's in my own life, always what I do when I'm having a hard time. And I, I talk about this a lot on the show. It's like, I'm a super big fan of list making. I'm like the list queen. And every problem I've ever had has been solved by a list.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  You, you write down like all the reasons for this and all the reasons for the other thing and then all the, you know, and it's like, then there's sublists and, you know, you could color code them, you could get highlighters, and the answer is there.

• 51:54Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. We have to do a deep dive on the list.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  I know, you're gonna make me talk about the.

• 52:00Tim Ferriss?

  I would, I would love any example.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 52:03Tim Ferriss?

  Of yours.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 52:05Tim Ferriss?

  And how you, what was the challenge or problem or question? And what did the lists look like?

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I mean, it's so hard to pick one because there are so many times. Okay, oh, this was a big one. Well, speaking of kids, so I have two kids. So when I was almost forty,

• 52:26Speaker 02

  I thought that I was maybe pregnant again. And it wasn't planned, but it was kind of like, well, maybe we should have a third kid, you know? And so my husband and I were like agonizing. We're like, well, what do we do if, you know, like, we, this is, a kid is a big deal. Do we want a third kid? And so I made a list and it was like everything, I, all the reasons I didn't want to, all the fears and what I mean that there are sublists is like, well, why are you afraid of this thing? Like, sometimes the thing that you're afraid of, that's like on the no side of the list, can actually be solved by another list. Because you can, because you can solve that problem.

• 53:03Tim Ferriss?

  Meaning that you would say, why am I afraid of X?

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Why am I afraid of this?

• 53:06Tim Ferriss?

  And once you make that list, you realize that it's not scary?

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Exactly. Or you can say, okay, well, this can be addressed. You know, like, oh, I don't ever have time to write. Well, we could do this or that, you know? It allows you to sort of see instead of just feel what your challenges are. There's something about having it in front of you that in some ways,

• 53:30Speaker 02

  it pins it in place rather than allowing it to float around in your head and be this like big terrible monster thing.

• 53:35Tim Ferriss?

  Nebulous.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then the reasons to do it and the reasons not to do it. You know, and those are, those are like really, I think, they allow you to kind of see, it's literally like a map on the wall of your life. You know, what you want, what you fear, what you desire. And, and I think that those things, that we make them very explicit rather than just imagined. A list does that.

• 54:00Tim Ferriss?

  I do something very similar, actually.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:02Tim Ferriss?

  When I'm afraid of something, I'll ask, it's effectively the worst case list. What are the worst things that could happen if I did X?

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:10Tim Ferriss?

  Which I kind of want to do, but I've been putting off. And then how could I mitigate the risk of all of these horrible things from happening one at a time?

• 54:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:17Tim Ferriss?

  What could I do to get back to where I am now?

• 54:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:19Tim Ferriss?

  It usually ends up diffusing in some way, a lot of the things that I Expect are going to be these insurmountable

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:26Tim Ferriss?

  Problems which are in fact just nebulous and need to be

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Very much so. And often, you know, sometimes too, you know, like there could be, I did, we did end up not having a third child. I wasn't pregnant, you know, and we decided not to. But what was really striking to me about that list and the reason I brought it up is that there was only one thing on the list of reasons we should have a third child. And there were like 300 things on the other list. But the one thing on the list to do it was more important than any of those other 300 things.

• 54:57Tim Ferriss?

  Is that a visceral, is that a instinctive perception? Or is there some way, is that just a feeling that you have in terms of the importance of that one versus the 300?

• 55:09Speaker 02

  No, the importance of that one is that, you know, having, like, my, my husband and I made this list together. It was like, having our kids is the best thing we've ever done bar nothing, you know? So it was just like a very clear truth that was standing at counterpoint to these like, you know, we don't have as much time as it is and, you know, we won't be able to sleep for another two years and, you know, all of that stuff, you know? And so, you know, obviously, that I think that this is often true when I've had professional I've been at sort of crossroads when different opportunities have come my way, you know? Here are the reasons to do it, here are the reasons not to. It's not about the number of things on the list, it's about the weight of those things.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  And almost always, I think the things that, that mean and matter the most really come down to sort of one question, what do you really want to do? And this is something that I really believe to be true. And I, and I have the privilege of seeing letters from so many people who write to Dear Sugar. And almost always in the letter of the person who's saying, I don't know what to do and I have this problem and I don't know if I should break up with her. Or if I don't know if I should do the, take this job or move to New York City or, you know, go to Paris, you know, whatever it is. The person who writes the letter almost always knows. And I think that one of the scariest things in our lives is actually doing what we know we want to do.

• 56:34Speaker 02

  Most of us don't give ourselves permission to do that. Most of us take many years to do that. You said earlier, one of the hardest things for you was to learn how to say no.

• 56:46Tim Ferriss?

  Still is.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  And that's me too. And that's about giving ourselves permission to do what we want to do. And it's because we associate that, like even that phrase, like when I say, "doing what you want to do." I'm sure some of you in the audience think, "Well, that's very selfish." We associate that with being selfish. And it's kind of like the way humility is strength, vulnerability is strength. Those two seemingly opposing things sit opposite each other. They're also the same thing. I really think there's something about this, that actually doing what you want to do is the opposite of selfishness. It's actually a kind of generosity because you're being honest.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  You're saying, "This is what I need to do. I won't expect you to do something you don't need to." What have you learned about your journey to saying no?

• 57:40Tim Ferriss?

  I've come to a very similar conclusion. Now, that doesn't mean it always translates to the action. Although more and more it does. What I've realized for myself is that, A, and what I've observed just in my female audience is that many mothers have also come to the same conclusion. If they don't take care of themselves, they cannot most effectively take care of other people. So I do not have kids, but I feel an obligation to act on behalf and do things on behalf of, say, my readership and my listeners. And there have been points in the past where I've made some very unwise sacrifices and compromises with health and otherwise. Not to mention all the harebrained physical experiments that I've done.

• 58:23Tim Ferriss?

  But putting those aside, I think just remembering that if you don't protect the vessel, you're going to ultimately, in some way, hinder everything else that you want to do for others.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:34Tim Ferriss?

  So that's part one. Part two is that I've realized for myself in the saying no...

• 58:41Tim Ferriss?

  Thread that there are certain things that I can moderate well. And there are certain things where I'm very binary. And that if I say yes to one, I'm going to suddenly open the floodgates. And be more prone to saying yes to many, many things.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:56Tim Ferriss?

  So that is why, for instance, I stopped across the board doing any startup investing. I was involved with technology for a long time, for about a decade. And I realized that as soon as I let one in, I'm going to feel a compulsion to compare it to everything else that has come in. And all of a sudden, I'm looking at hundreds of emails.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:15Tim Ferriss?

  And that I don't do moderation well in that sphere. So it's either a yes to opening the floodgates, or it's a no to everything.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:26Tim Ferriss?

  And trying to be as honest with myself when I journal, say, to clarify my own thoughts or make lists, I also have a hypergraphic tendency to create lots of lists. To try to be as honest with myself and in longhand, explore what I am good at moderating and what I'm not good at moderating. And whenever possible, in the things where I'm not good at moderating, saying no to everything in that category, unless it is of primary importance with the answer to the what do I really want.

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:59Tim Ferriss?

  Which I think is, for me at least, a surprisingly tricky question at times.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Right. And yeah, obviously, and we're also, we're not talking about like, I want a hot for Sunday right now, so let us go get one. I mean, I'm not talking about that. What I say to do, you know, that most of us take a long time to learn how to say what we want. I mean, for those, those bigger things, like, you know, for me, it's been very connected to what I give beyond, like, the books I write to, you know, how do I keep that, that line of communication open between the readers and the writer? And how do I also have my own private life, you know?

• 1:00:35Tim Ferriss?

  For sure.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  And it's tricky.

• 1:00:36Tim Ferriss?

  It is tricky. For those people who are wondering, and here in person, we are going to be doing a book signing at the book signing location after this session. So there's that, since it's related. But I would love to ask you.

• 1:00:52Tim Ferriss?

  Who you, not who, but what type of people do you go to for advice? So you're very good at giving advice. When you need advice, what type, what are the characteristics of the people you go to? And how do you elicit advice?

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  You know, I think that maybe what helped me sort of have the audacity just to even begin writing the Sugar Column, because you know, of course, the first question I asked myself when I agreed to write the Dear Sugar Column is, who the hell am I? You know, why do I, why would I think that I could give anyone advice? And you know, what I realized right away is like, first of all, I never, I never positioned myself as the authority on anything. And, and the reason I could do that so comfortably is that much of the best advice I've received does not come from somebody who has like a credential to give advice, right? You know, I mean, obviously, I think that psychologists and therapists can give great advice and do, and they absolutely serve a function.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  I'm not questioning that at all. But I also think that most of us get wisdom from a wide range of sources, from the people we know and love, from strangers on the street, from therapists and counselors, from teachers, from books, you know, from podcasts. And so, you know, I turn, I turn in all of those directions. When I find that I'm stuck, for example, this question of no has been a big one for me over the last few years. I have asked Oprah how she says no.

• 1:02:23Tim Ferriss?

  Good person to have on your speed dial.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:02:29Tim Ferriss?

  That's amazing. No, no, that's a great person to ask.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  I've asked Oprah, who let me tell you, has some really interesting things to say about that, which I know is talking to all of you, right? I've asked, you know, friends, I've asked people at parties who I met, you know, like we get on this subject of no. I think a lot of people struggle with this question, you know, they, we all have different relationships to, you know, what, what kinds of things are being asked. But, but almost everyone has something to tell you, to tell you about it. And, you know, I think that, to me, that's always too. When I'm giving advice, I always feel like I'm just one voice. And I encourage people, "Don't just listen to me. I'm gonna offer you what I can offer you." And then somebody else, it's not about being right or wrong. It's about illumination. It's about getting you, as the person who's seeking advice,

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  to ask deeper questions, to bring into consciousness maybe a little piece of this that you didn't see before you talked to me. And I love that. I love that about both advice giving and advice taking.

• 1:03:28Tim Ferriss?

  It's also, I mean, the approach that a lot of successful crisis hotline operators use, in the sense that they're not trying to give a solution to a problem. They're trying to defuse acute reactionary impulses and help people to illuminate

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:48Tim Ferriss?

  what it is they're feeling and thinking.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I think too, that I would say that the, maybe the most important kind of thing that people take from my advice is just that sense that they're not alone, they're okay. Even when you just, when you said earlier that saying no is hard for you. Like, I just, if there were like little nodes attached to my brain, you know, some little pleasure center would have been, you know, bumped up then. Because, because it's like, okay, oh, yeah. So you seem like this together person who's successful and making it happen, and you clearly know how to say no. And then when you say, "I don't know how to say no either. It's a struggle for me." It's not advice that you've given me, but it's a sense of consolation. It's a sense of being part of a struggle.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  And I think that that's also what we seek when we seek advice.

• 1:04:38Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  Nobody can tell us, you know, to end our marriages or do this or that or the other thing, right? But we can say, "You're not alone, and I too have had that struggle."

• 1:04:49Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned marriage. I'd love to ask you a question that was both a lot of men and women wanted to ask in some form or another, which is, why did you stray?

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  Why did I stray?

• 1:05:03Tim Ferriss?

  Because this is something that people have either experienced on one side or another, or have as a fear, or a thought, or a desire. It's a very, this is not a new phenomenon.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Why did I stray? I strayed in a number of ways, but yeah, I think with that, so, you know, because I was young, so for those of you who don't know what this question means, I was, as I wrote about in Wild, I was married, young, and I just, my mom died, and I just couldn't stay in the box, in the box that my marriage was in, that my life was in. So many of the, so much a part of my growing up, I think, especially in my twenties, doing that real adult growing up, was about testing the fire and seeing what it felt like to do something that I wasn't allowed to do.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  And maybe that was, that thing that I wasn't allowed to do was what I wanted to do, and seeing what it felt like to do that. And, you know, it was really painful, and interesting, and necessary. So that's why I strayed. And, you know, it led me, and of course, like, almost always, when we, when we make mistakes that harm ourselves, it almost always leads us to, if we, if we listen to that lesson. I mean, in some ways, that was a dark teacher, right? It led me to this, this place that I could then, you know, make other choices, walk in a direction that was going to be not, not about increasing my suffering, but rather lessening.

• 1:06:44Tim Ferriss?

  So this is a question from Max Alpert. If she knew that there were people listening who are currently hiking in the Pacific Crest Trail, like me, is there anything she would say to them?

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Oh, I wish I were with you.

• 1:07:01Speaker 02

  That's what I would say. You know, one thing that every, I've talked to so many people who have hiked some long-distance trail or gone on even, you know, just a few weeks backpacking trip. It's always like the best thing any of us have ever done. And I don't understand why, because it's also really technically quite miserable. I mean, you have to like poop in a hole that you dug yourself with a stick. And you have to like sleep on the ground and it's cold and it's hot and it's all of these things and you have blisters. But it really, there's something about that kind of doing something hard, making yourself suffer in a physical way that feels like the opposite of suffering, incredibly restorative. So I have such nostalgia for my time on the Pacific Crest Trail.

• 1:07:45Tim Ferriss?

  Any piece of advice that you would give people on the trail? Or maybe, I'm just making this up, but a third of the way through, who knows, a week through and they just are thinking of packing it in, calling it a day?

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's always, it's not just long-distance hiking, but certainly long-distance hiking, but I think any kind of journey, any kind of trip you're going to take, to remember that it's not, that it's, that usually it's not going to be fun all the time and sometimes it's not going to be fun a lot of the time. Almost always when we're about to go on a trip or a journey, we imagine, like what we're imagining are those like sort of postcard scenes that we think we've gone to, you know, Bucharest for or to the PCT for or whatever. And then you get there and it's like, you know, it's not like that. But what I always say is, I'm a real believer in retrospective fun. And that is the fun that you have remembering the shitty thing that happened.

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  You know, and you know, this is really like when you if I asked if you and I, you know, if I asked you to tell me about some of your travel experiences, I guarantee you the things that you remember the most acutely are that like the time you almost died in Guatemala because you had such terrible diarrhea for a week, or the, you know, like the diarrhea stories, they're our best travel stories, you know.

• 1:09:03Tim Ferriss?

  America's best diarrhea essays.

• 1:09:06Speaker 02

  Everyone remembers, right? You remember that horrible, you know, I mean, my husband is a documentary filmmaker and he was making a documentary in Cambodia and he ate something and he went to bed and he was so sick that he literally shot the bed, like he woke up. My kids, that's their favorite travel story. They're like, tell us again, Dad, about when you pooped in the bed. And it's like, and this is really true. And same with the Pacific Crest Trail. You know, what did I write about? The funny thing about when I was writing Wild, I have my journals and I was reading my journal, like, you know, what was I writing about on the PCT as part of the research for my book?

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  And, you know, like, literally half the pages are me complaining about how much my feet hurt, you know? And it's because that's you remember your suffering and it becomes pleasure afterwards. Do you, is that true?

• 1:10:01Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely have it. So I think of the retrospective enjoyment and I also think a lot in my own life and for my family, meaning my parents and siblings, of perspective enjoyment. So I try to schedule one or two events or trips with my family per year, and this is relatively new in the last two or three years, so that we have, even if the event itself is a disappointment at the time, although I hope it not to be and I try to make it fun, that we have, say, six months to look forward to the trip. And then that trip happens and then six months, hence we have another trip scheduled so we can look forward to it and plan it and look at photographs.

• 1:10:44Tim Ferriss?

  And there's, I think, I really feel like, it's an arbitrary number maybe, but 80% of the fun is looking forward to it.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  Okay. So I'm retrospective fun, you're anticipatory fun.

• 1:10:54Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds like it.

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. But the trip always sucks.

• 1:11:01Tim Ferriss?

  I do my best to have the trip also be fun.

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  I know, I know, I hear ya.

• 1:11:04Tim Ferriss?

  On occasion, like when I went to India and you want to talk about diarrhea stories and I get stuck with typhoid fever effectively in the ER in Calcutta for a week. Makes for a good story.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:11:13Tim Ferriss?

  Wasn't very much fun.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  If we locked the doors and made everyone get in a circle and spend, we would spend the night going around the room, everyone tell their poop story, you would all have one. And it would be very fun.

• 1:11:28Tim Ferriss?

  If you could, or let's just say you had the opportunity or the obligation to assign one or three books as a gift to every graduating college senior. So some philanthropist says, alright, I'll pay for it all. One to three books that you can give to every graduating senior. What books come to mind?

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  See, I was all ready to say like my favorite books, but now with the graduating and senior thing, you made it. I would, I, the first book that came to mind would be Claudia Rankine's book Citizen, which came out a few years ago and is just a really important book for us to be reading right now. But you know, I, one of my old standbys too is my favorite, Alice Munro is my favorite writer, her selected stories. My favorite book is her book, The Lives of Girls and Women. And, but she's just an amazing short story writer, I love her so much. I'm also, you know, I love so many poets, Mary Oliver is one of my favorites and, I

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  mean, it's, it's always hard for me to think about, you know, forcing one book on everyone. But, but all of those would be good, good ways to go.

• 1:12:47Tim Ferriss?

  What do you like so much about Alice Munro?

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  Wow, I don't know if anyone's ever asked me. She is...

• 1:12:56Tim Ferriss?

  Glad I got one.

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  I know. What do I love about her? She is, she's the kind of writer who...

• 1:13:06Speaker 02

  I've read all of her stories many times. And almost always, the experience is, like, I'll be just going in to try to find a passage of her quote, and I find myself accidentally reading the whole story again. And every single time, that takes my breath away. She's so, her craft is so, she's such a, you know, virtuistic prose writer. She has the capacity to inhabit, you know, a sense of perception that exceeds even what we already know to be true. And when you see writers do this, what I mean by this is like, a good writer can make you feel what it feels like to be, you know, feeling unwell in Cambodia, right?

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  You can be inside that physical experience, you can hear the sounds and the smells and feel like what they're thinking of that moment or that situation. And Alice Munro and a few other really great writers can transcend beyond what you already know that experience would be like, and actually show you a deeper level of that experience. That's, you know, when we say, "I was astonished by this," what we mean is, we were shown a truth that we know is true, but couldn't yet articulate to ourselves until it was shown to us by that writer. And that's magic. I mean, that's a magical act. And I think it's what every writer aspires to do. It's certainly what Alice Munro has done in pretty much every one of her short stories.

• 1:14:35Tim Ferriss?

  When you hear the word "successful," who or what comes to mind?

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I'm just a real believer in...

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  In many different definitions of success. You know, I know I'm not the first person to say this to you that, you know, like this idea of like that our culture has created this notion of success that has to do with money and position and sometimes fame depending on, you know, what your, what your career is. And I reject that. I don't think it's successful to, you know, be at the top of some, some pile and have like a sad, pathetic life. I don't think it's successful to have a bunch of money and be mean to people. You know, I really take very seriously my values, I guess, that have to do with not just achievement and following through on the things I said I would do professionally,

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  but like the way we are and the way I act in the world. You know, are you kind? Are you honest? Are you generous? Are you, are you, are you transparent? I think transparency is something too that's like a sign of success, a mark of success. And I think, you know, to me, it really comes down to a couple of questions. Did I, did I, did I set intentions and did I follow through with them? Did I say, do what I said I would do? And every time I've done that in my life is when I feel like I've succeeded and every time I have not done that in my life is when I feel like I've failed. And that's in ways large and small.

• 1:16:07Tim Ferriss?

  What is something you're currently trying to improve or something you're struggling with and how are you going about it?

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  Well, I have spent most of the last week cleaning my, cleaning my closet like a motherfucker. Because things have gotten out of control in my life, Tim. I'm a little bit like, you know, it's like, I, you know how the stuff, the stuff is encroaching? And I realized it was actually like, you know, violating my psychic space. And I needed to just like, once and for all, and that's, I was feeling like a failure because I kept saying like, I have to deal with all this junk I have. You know, like the old Lego pieces that my kids don't use anymore and the old whatever, like this, this pants I'll never fit into again or whatever. And I finally just like went, I was just like went through all my stuff. I even hired, like, these guys came and like reconstructed my closet, like physically,

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  like, you know, reconstructed my closet. And then I, I got it all like together. And I brought my daughter into my closet to show it to her and she said, "Mom, it's like Pinterest."

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  So I'm very proud of myself. I'm a success.

• 1:17:22Speaker 02

  It's like Pinterest.

• 1:17:23Tim Ferriss?

  That's high praise.

• 1:17:25Speaker 02

  And I know you sometimes ask people, "What's the purchase under a hundred dollars or whatever?"

• 1:17:29Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:17:30Speaker 02

  That you've made?

• 1:17:30Tim Ferriss?

  That's most positively impacted your life.

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  Okay, let me tell you guys. I didn't know this until last week. There's a thing called a boot box for your long boots and you put your long boots in them instead of draping all over the floor of your closet and then you put them up on the shelf.

• 1:17:43Tim Ferriss?

  Boot box.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  Like Pinterest. It costs like ten dollars.

• 1:17:49Tim Ferriss?

  What is something, or maybe there are multiple things, something absurd that you love doing?

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  Something absurd that I love doing?

• 1:17:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, and I'll give you an example because I was asked this recently and it caught me off guard and I thought about it and I realized I have this habit of whenever I'm feeling stressed, or very often, I don't know why I do this, but I go, and I stretch my jaw. And sometimes it's in public and I open my mouth like a yawning lion, but it could be at a bookstore and then you'll see mothers like guarding their children because I look like a lunatic. So I think that would fall into the absurd category. I think it's because I clench my teeth at night, but certainly looks ridiculous. It doesn't have to be that odd, but is there anything absurd that you love doing that comes to mind?

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh, this is a hard one.

• 1:18:33Tim Ferriss?

  It is.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  Nothing comes to mind. I do tend to be a little obsessively, like, you know, if my kids are eating like Skittles or M&M's or something, which they're not generally allowed to eat so much, like I'll have to organize them by color.

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  But I don't think that's absurd. I think that's perfectly reasonable.

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  I mean, why would you want to eat the colors out of order?

• 1:18:54Tim Ferriss?

  Makes sense.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  No, this is, I thought of something. This makes my husband crazy. So I, like sandwiches, I'm a Virgo and I like things to be ordered and so sandwiches are, they're greatly problematic for me because, you know...

• 1:19:10Speaker 02

  Because you might, like, here's my whole theory of the sandwich. And I think that there are people who have a different theory, but maybe a couple of you have my theory, which is every bite should be as much like the previous bite as possible. Do you follow?

• 1:19:22Tim Ferriss?

  So you need everything bite.

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  So like, what if the, there's like a clump of like tomatoes here, but then there's like some, you know, hummus over, like, everything has to be as uniform as possible. So any sandwich I'm ever given, I open it up and I immediately like completely rearrange the sandwich. And then I close it, my husband's always like, "Would you stop touching your food?" And I'm like, "You're just jealous because I haven't done this to your sandwich." And he's like, "Get your hands off my sandwich." So do some of you also believe in this uniform sandwich idea?

• 1:19:54Tim Ferriss?

  Look at this, like 70% of the audience.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Who knew?

• 1:19:59Tim Ferriss?

  I think that definitely-

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  So is that absurd, though? Who thinks that's absurd?

• 1:20:03Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think absurdity depends on the belief of the majority. So apparently with this audience, it's completely normal.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  That's right, there on my side. The audience is full of Virgos, I can see. Do you believe in astrology?

• 1:20:13Tim Ferriss?

  I would say generally I do not, but I don't know anything about it. I will say anything I know about it, I've been told by other people.

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  And so you don't believe in something you don't know about?

• 1:20:24Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I would say generally I have a high degree of skepticism related to astrology.

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:20:30Tim Ferriss?

  I'm open to, I'm open to input, but generally, I'm a pretty literal, sort of falsifiable hypothesis kind of guy with labs and blah, blah, blah, which can be very boring, but that's just my hard mark.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, no.

• 1:20:45Tim Ferriss?

  But then again, I live in San Francisco and I can get pretty far out in move territory with other stuff, which probably makes me a total hypocrite.

• 1:20:53Tim Ferriss?

  Favorite failures. When you think of, is there any favorite failure or any failures that come to mind that, looking back, set the stage in some way or planted the seeds for a later success? Or just a fantastic failure story?

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting, whenever you ask a writer, I guess, except for like those few writers who come out of the gate at 22 and they, you know, win the National Book Award or something, that, you know, it's not one story, it's like a decades-long journey of being told.

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  You didn't do enough, or we don't want you, or you're not going to be included, or we don't want to buy this or that, or the other thing. Like, I think that part of being a writer, and probably any kind of artist, you know, you have to sort of always be hearing that something's not good enough, even if it ultimately is. When you're being told, "Okay, this is great, now revise it." "This is great, now revise it." "This is great, now revise it." So, failure is just like, literally, part of, like, I just, like, part of my life, or part of the vernacular, I guess. But I will say that I have had a couple of experiences that were, that were, in retrospect, kind of helpfully crushing.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  And they were always, they always served that purpose that I spoke about earlier, of like, reminding me what I was really doing, and why I was really doing it. And it was reminding me to be humble, and to not take for granted that I was going to be loved, or that what I made was going to be loved. Because the thing about making art is that you have to be committed to making it, even if you aren't loved. And so you have to attach your, you know, that engine that drives any of us forward in the work we do, it can't be connected only, I mean, obviously, we all want to be loved, me too. But it can't, you know, the driver of that engine cannot be that other people accept and love you and praise you. It has to be that you really want to do this work.

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  You really want to make this thing in the world. And so, the times early on, you know, I remember when I was in graduate school, I had a piece, you know, I was, the writer's failure stories are always so boring. It's like, you know, oh, an agent, and all these agents loved that piece, and they all want to see your work. And then I was like, "Oh, here's, you know, the first 100 pages of my novel," which weren't really ready to be shown yet. And, you know, they all were like, "Thanks, but no thanks." And, you know, I went from feeling like, "Oh, I'm, they love me," to, "They don't love me." But, and that hurt in the moment, but at the time, you know, in retrospect, I think, "Oh, that was really a great lesson." Because what I did then is I said to myself, "I will never again show an agent my work until I'm really can..." Feel like it's ready to go.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  And that's advice I've shared with a lot of writers. You know, when they say, well, you know, how do you get an agent? Or what advice do you have? My first advice is always like, make sure your work is ready to show. You know, don't rush. You know, most of us rush for that external approval. I understand that impulse, but it's almost always the wrong impulse.

• 1:23:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think that there is a conflict in many people's minds between, say, the, I think over romantic says, say Silicon Valley notion of fail fast, fail forward. If you're not embarrassed by the first version of the product you ship, you shipped it too late, which I think does apply to certain things like software in some cases. But I was talking to, and I won't mention the name because it's a private conversation, but a very successful stand-up comedian. And I asked him what advice he gives to novice comics. And he said, don't move to New York or LA until you're good.

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:35Tim Ferriss?

  He said, get good on the smaller stages first, and then you can go play in the big leagues. But until you're ready, don't step onto the stage in the big leagues.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's really interesting. And it's interesting to me because I really agree with it. This message that we're hearing a lot in the last few years is like, failure is good and failure teaches us things. And like, I believe all of that deeply. But I think that what gets lost in the translation is that there's a difference between failing and being sloppy and expecting other people to do your work for you. And I am a real old-school believer in craft when it comes to stand-up comedy, or writing, or developing software. Like actually really genuinely doing your work, apprenticing yourself to the craft of what it takes to make that work and what it takes to make it good.

• 1:25:30Speaker 02

  And then go forward and fail. There's still plenty of room to fail out there once you know what the hell you're doing. But this, you know, I do see this sometimes with people who approach me where it's like, they actually haven't done their work. They're approaching me in this spirit of like, well, you know, like, failure teaches us things. And I'm like, but no, you, I'm not going to do your work for you. You've got to do it for yourself. And I'm kind of an old-school, you know, sort of stern in that regard, you know, that regard when it comes to that message about what failure means and what it can teach us.

• 1:26:02Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I was chatting with, in this case, it was a lawyer. Very successful lawyer who was talking about at one point drafting some type of document for one of his professors. And the professor would say, "Not good enough. Do it again. Not good enough. Revise." And I think it was three or four refusals like that and requests for revision before the professor actually looked at the document. And in fact, he hadn't looked at it at all. He just wanted it to be in tip-top shape. And it was.

• 1:26:36Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 1:26:37Tim Ferriss?

  But I'm not saying he should by default do that as a teacher. But the fact of the matter was, this particular person who went on to become a very good lawyer was able to dramatically improve what they delivered.

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think that that's what we should do with ourselves, is you finish that first draft and say to yourself, "Not good enough. What can I do on that next round?"

• 1:26:56Tim Ferriss?

  If you had a huge billboard, this is more a metaphorical question than anything, but to, that you could use to get a short message, question, anything out to millions of people, what would you put on that billboard?

• 1:27:13Speaker 02

  Oh, you know what? I think it would be this thing that I learned when I was writing my first book. It would be surrender to your own mediocrity.

• 1:27:22Tim Ferriss?

  Please explain.

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  Which sounds kind of sad, right? I mean, we're supposed to be aspiring to our greatness. But I think that here again, this idea of humility and strength is connected. Because what I learned, when I was writing my first book, I really felt like, okay, I'm going to try to write the great American novel. Like every writer who is, you know, is like, "I want to be that. I want to write the best novel that has ever been written." Even when I knew that I probably wasn't going to be able to do that, that was where I aspired to be. I was like, you know, there's this American idea, right? Like that you reach for those kinds of heights. And I found when I was about two-thirds of the way into that endeavor, writing that

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  book, that that idea of greatness was what was actually keeping me from...

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  From fulfilling this dream. You know, and that what I had to do was that humble thing where I say, "Guess what? It's true. I might be writing a mediocre book. I might be writing a book that nobody ever reads." And I just have to surrender to the truth of that. And I have to surrender to this notion that even if I'm mediocre, what matters more to me than writing a great novel is writing a novel. And that was a huge lesson. And it was a lesson, you know, later, when I was thinking so much about like my hike on the Pacific Crest Trail when I was writing Wild. You know, that was something that I learned every day. You know, I would be like, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to like do this much, and then I have to do this much, because this is what I can do."

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  And I think that when we, when we learn that, like it's not about, it's not about so much accepting a limitation rather than accepting

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  that by doing the best we can do, the work that we have to do, that that's the only way to get to greatness, you know? And that we aren't the judge of our own greatness. We're only the judge of like our intentions and follow-through.

• 1:29:24Tim Ferriss?

  I love it. And we also take the off-the-performance anxiety and pressure

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:30Tim Ferriss?

  with this label of greatness or aspiration of greatness that ends up producing exactly the opposite. Sort of a

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:38Tim Ferriss?

  choked, overthrottled attempt that is full of fear.

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that, I mean, I'm all for having those big dreams. But I do think that at a certain point, you can let your dreams get in the way of the actual work you need to do.

• 1:29:54Tim Ferriss?

  What advice would you give to someone who came to you and said, "I wrote a memoir, successful as a book or not, that is being turned into a movie." What advice would you have? Or what would you prepare them for?

• 1:30:10Speaker 02

  Well, first I would say be very, very, very careful about who you trust to make that movie. Like, you know, that you, for me, having that sense of like really trusting that my book was in the hands of people who were good humans and who were gonna be good for their word, who pledged Reese Witherspoon when, when she first read Wild and asked me about, you know, her being the one to bring it to the screen. We had a deep, long talk about What the book meant to her, why she felt like she was the person to play me and to essentially midwife that film as the producer into the world.

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  And also, you know, what values she would hold true throughout that process. And she was, you know, she followed through. She actually pledged to honor the book, and she did. And I think that that's really important. It felt really vital to me that, you know, I had the opposite experience in Hollywood. Many, many writers tell you terrible stories about what happened to them in Hollywood. And I have to say, like, from Reese, to the director Jean-Marc Bellet, to the screenwriter Nick Hornby, to the studio, Fox Searchlight, all of those people were creative, good humans

• 1:31:29Speaker 02

  who had, like, depth of character and really cared about not disrespecting, you know, what I'd written. That in so many ways, it wasn't, obviously, they can't make my, you know, you can't have everything in the book in the movie, but that they cared about the spirit of my book. And that mattered a lot to me. And I think my friends who have had opposite experiences, it's that those, all the people who are making that movie, they don't really care about what's happened in the book. What they care about is that product they're making as a film. And I just don't think that that ever leads to good things. And so, you know, I think that that kind of old-fashioned, you know, trusting people who are, who are good for their word matters a lot.

• 1:32:14Tim Ferriss?

  So I have a tremendous amount of respect for Reese and a lot of people who were involved with the film. That said, Hollywood is full of people who are very good at making empty promises.

• 1:32:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:25Tim Ferriss?

  So what were you looking for in those meetings?

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  Authenticity.

• 1:32:30Tim Ferriss?

  Was it just a spider sense that you had?

• 1:32:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a spider sense I had, and I really do have that. I mean, I, it's one of the areas that I would say, like, that I actually do. Feel like I get a sense of people. And I got a real sense of Reese. And I could tell I trusted her. And one of the first things that I felt about Reese is she was immediately open and vulnerable with me in a way that you would never expect a movie star to be. And you know, you asked me this earlier question about, you know, success and who comes to mind when I think of success? And I think of Oprah Winfrey and not for the reasons that we all think because obviously Oprah Winfrey is wildly successful.

• 1:33:13Speaker 02

  But one of the things I never forgot is the moment I met Oprah, she had picked Wild for her book, she was restarting her book club with Wild. And I went to her house in Montecito, near Santa Barbara. And you know, like I was brought to this little like guest house, which is, you know, like nicer than any of our houses. But it's like, and I'm like, they do hair and makeup on me and they get me all ready to see Oprah. And because we're shooting this show, she's interviewing me on the show. And you know, it's this big kind of moment, like I'm like, okay, I'm going to meet Oprah Winfrey. And they tell me to go down this path through this like redwood trees. And at the end of this path, there's Oprah and

• 1:33:55Speaker 00

  It's like getting married.

• 1:33:56Speaker 02

  I know, I know. I walked on this little rocky thing and then it's like, oh, she's like Cheryl, you know, and she hugs me and we sit down at this table. And the thing that struck me and I was like, this is Oprah's, this is why Oprah is successful, is that she, the look on her face and what I could see in her eyes is her vulnerability that I was meeting Oprah and I wanted her to like me and Oprah was meeting me and she wanted me to like her. It wasn't like meeting the queen, even though for the record, she is a queen. But she

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  Didn't act like one. Like she never, like she was still like this incredibly humble human, who was really looking to have an authentic interaction with me. And I thought, you know, this is what has driven her success. Is that it wasn't, you know, like the thing that makes her get up and do that work that she does every day is that that genuine desire to connect with people and be vulnerable and to be open to what's going to happen next. And that kind of curiosity has driven her, you know, to these great heights. And I think that, you know, some people, they forget that. Like they forget that thing that got them to where they are, right? And to me, the mark of success is staying open in that whole way. You know, and Reese Witherspoon has also done that.

• 1:35:17Speaker 02

  You know, so when I had that first conversation with Reese, and my first question to her was, why, you know, why does "Wild Matter" to you? Like, what did, why, you know, because she said, "I read it and I cried," and I was like, "Why? What happened in your life that made you feel these, you know, that made you respond the way you did to the book?" And she told me. And she told me things within five minutes of talking to her that she's never told the world. And I trusted that.

• 1:35:51Tim Ferriss?

  Well, this, this is a conversation that I would love to continue for hours. But we're coming up on time. And perhaps this is a good point to ask. Is there any suggestion, ask, that you have for the people listening? Anything you'd like them to consider doing, ask themselves or otherwise?

• 1:36:14Speaker 02

  Well, I think I should give them all a writing assignment, don't you think?

• 1:36:17Tim Ferriss?

  Perfect. Yes, I do. I do think.

• 1:36:21Speaker 02

  I think, um, one of the, so one of the prompts, in your book, "The Tools of Titans," you did this list of-

• 1:36:31Tim Ferriss?

  Tremendous list.

• 1:36:32Speaker 02

  Writing prompts. What's your, you mentioned the darkest teacher one. Do you have a favorite one from that, from that list?

• 1:36:38Tim Ferriss?

  That is, that was my favorite.

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:40Tim Ferriss?

  Because it immediately- Put me on my heels and made me think about the juxtaposition of darkest.

• 1:36:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:50Tim Ferriss?

  And framing it as teacher.

• 1:36:51Speaker 02

  So, yeah, your darkest teacher is, and so that's the question I would have for your listeners and people in the room if you feel like going home and doing their writing assignment. Write about your darkest teacher, and that is to say, a person in your life who taught you something you didn't want to know about humanity, or the world, or yourself. And so often, you know, those people have hurt us by teaching us those things, and so we just like push them away and we put them over there. And then we never actually get to learn that what ends up always being a valuable lesson from them. And, you know, for me, so much of writing about, like, in my case, it's my father.

• 1:37:36Speaker 02

  I've written about him in ways, you know, and I couldn't, I couldn't really write about him until I sort of worked my way to that place that I understood him as a teacher. And when you understand that somebody is your teacher, that you can't help but feel, like I said earlier, a little grateful for them, a little grateful for even the thing that you got from them that you didn't want to have. So do that.

• 1:38:02Tim Ferriss?

  That is a great assignment. Thank you for being here, Cheryl.

• 1:38:04Speaker 02

  Thank you all.

• 1:38:05Tim Ferriss?

  Ladies and gentlemen, Cheryl Strayed.

• 1:38:07Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:38:15Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:38:56Tim Ferriss?

  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 MeUndies, which I'm wearing right now. I've spent the last year or so wearing underwear from these guys nearly 24/7. Except when I'm having fancy exams and they are the most comfortable and colorful underwear I have ever owned. If you can imagine really awesome graffiti that you've seen in cities like LA or elsewhere, then turn into a print and put onto underwear, you get the idea.

• 1:39:38Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:40:22Tim Ferriss?

  You can see some of my favorite underwear and also plenty for the ladies. That's meundies.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by ID Commerce and Logistics. I'm asked all the time about how to scale businesses quickly. Rule number one is removing unnecessary bottlenecks that are a headache and also an emergency brake on growth. For many companies, one of the first things they should outsource is inventory management and fulfillment. There are companies that do this all day long, perfectly for fast growing companies. ID Commerce and Logistics is one such company. They focus on helping online retailers and entrepreneurs outgrow the competition by handling all types of logistics. For you. They manage your inventory, pick, pack, and ship, and handle everything you

• 1:41:05Tim Ferriss?

  can imagine, so that you can focus on the things you are best at, instead of all of these details under the hood. I partnered with them myself during the launch of The Four Hour Chef, so that I could focus on promoting the book, which is what I'm good at. And they ensured that things I'm not good at got done perfectly. In other words, that readers were happy with dozens of different products we needed shipped out during holiday crunch season. ID Commerce and Logistics works with many different types of businesses, including e-commerce, consumer packaged goods, subscription boxes, and dozens more. They're also integrated with top e-commerce platforms, such as Shopify, my personal favorite, Magento, BigCommerce, and others, which makes the startup integration and partnership seamless.

• 1:41:46Tim Ferriss?

  As a listener of this podcast, you can get up to $10,000 of your startup fees and costs waived. That is a big discount. Just visit tim.blog/Scale. That's tim.blog/Scale. Or you can go to idcomlog, that's I-D-C-O-M-L-O-G.com/tim. You can go to either one. The easier one to remember is probably tim.blog/Scale.