#305: Daniel Pink — How to Make Better Decisions and Be More Creative

This podcast explores how to make better decisions, ask better questions, and be more creative. The stories range from escapes to India and speechwriting for Al Gore, to writing bestselling books and using “motivational interviewing” with kids. The guest is Daniel H. Pink (@danielpink https://www.evernote.com/OutboundRedirect.action?dest=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FDanielPink), the author of six provocative books, including his newest, WHEN: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735210624/offsitoftimfe-20 WHEN is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, and Publishers Weekly bestseller. Pink's other books include the long-running New York Times bestseller A WHOLE NEW MIND http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594481717/offsitoftimfe-20 and the #1 New York Times bestsellers DRIVE http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594484805/offsitoftimfe-20 and TO SELL IS HUMAN http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594631905/offsitoftimfe-20. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into 37 languages. Pink lives in Washington, DC, with his family. Daniel was the host and co-executive producer of Crowd Control http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/crowd-control/, a television series about human behavior on the National Geographic Channel. For the last six years, London-based Thinkers 50 http://thinkers50.com/t50-ranking/2015-2/ named him as one of the top-15 http://www.businessinsider.com/most-influential-thinkers-in-business-2015-2015-11 business thinkers in the world. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by Four Sigmatic http://foursigmatic.com/ferriss. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today is Daniel H. Pink, at Daniel Pink on Twitter. He is the author of six provocative books, including his newest, "When," subtitle, "The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing." "When" is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, and Publishers Weekly bestseller. That's a lot of lists. Pink's other books include the long-running New York Times bestseller, "A Whole New Mind," and the number one New York Times bestseller, "Drive and to Sell is Human." His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into 37 languages at last count. He lives in Washington DC with his family. You can also find his work, his various goings-on, at danpink.com. And

• 2:08Tim Ferriss?

  if Facebook is your thing, facebook.com/danielhpink.

• 2:16Tim Ferriss?

  Dan, welcome to the show.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Tim, thanks for having me.

• 2:19Tim Ferriss?

  It has been quite a while since we last-

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Several years.

• 2:23Tim Ferriss?

  Several years, and I know we were talking about all things Japanese, most likely, at least in one of our recent conversations-

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:31Tim Ferriss?

  -based on one of your books. And maybe you could tell people, actually, just as context, a little bit about that book that we were chatting about in manga format, or Japanese comic format, and we'll use that as a jumping off point.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Yes, indeed. That was one of my best ideas that didn't go anywhere.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  So, that was a book called The Adventures of Johnny Bunko. And, as you say, Tim, it was written in the Japanese comic format known as manga. And as you know, as a Japanophile, in Japan, manga, the comic format, is much more versatile and more widely used than it is here in the United States. So, you have grownups reading comics, and they can be things about financial advice, things about love life, things about history. And so, I did a fellowship in Japan with my wife and our three kids, where I studied the manga industry. And I came back and said, "You know what? I think it's time for manga to broaden its reach here in the United States of America." So, I wrote a book called The Adventures of Johnny Bunko.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  And it's a graphic novel in manga form that reveals the six essential lessons of any satisfying productive career through the story of a hapless young accountant named Johnny Bunko.

• 3:52Tim Ferriss?

  That was a fantastically concise description. And I wanted to also, you said in the beginning that it was the best idea that didn't go anywhere, or something along those lines. And I wanted to bring up the book because it seems for those people it struck a chord with, it struck a very deep chord. And I believe it was Kevin Kelly, arguably the most interesting man in the world, who was on this podcast. And he mentioned that that book was, at least at the time, his most gifted book. So I wanted to at least highlight the fact that if it's good enough for Kevin Kelly, it should be good enough for many, many other people.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. Kevin did say that. And I actually think it's a good book. We did reasonably well with it. It didn't blow off the doors. I think I was, you know, this is a common thing that happens in life and in investing and entrepreneurship and publishing and anything, is that you could be right too early. I think that's what it was. That I actually think that this format of graphic novels and comics having a more expansive reach in the United States is probably going to happen. I might have been, as they would say in the world of politics, I might have been a little ahead of the voters.

• 5:08Tim Ferriss?

  Or using a surfing metaphor, paddling a little too early for the wave, which

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Right, right, same thing.

• 5:13Tim Ferriss?

  Which sometimes means you don't catch a wave. In investing, it sometimes means you paddle right into the impact zone and then get smashed. Now, you mentioned politics. I wasn't going to go here right away.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 5:25Tim Ferriss?

  But, and I'm going to get there in two hops. But, so I'm looking at, in front of me, the Yale Law and Policy Review, Volume Eight, Number Two, 1990, and it says on top

• 5:38Speaker 02

  This is like a deposition now. What do you, do you have, like, Exhibit A? Am I going to, did I say something 30 years ago that you're going to make me pay for right now?

• 5:48Tim Ferriss?

  I'm auditioning indirectly, albeit for my role on True TV as talent. But this won't go into any incriminating territory unless you volunteer something along those lines, which I doubt will happen. But it says on top, Editor-in-Chief Daniel H. Pink. So how did fate intervene that you are not currently in the legal profession?

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Oh my God, this is one area where I want to thank fate for her grace and kindness. Here's the thing, I went to law school and I went to law school largely because I was a middle-class kid from the middle of America and that's kind of what you did. And once I sort of saw the inside, and it was a terrible decision and it actually helped me figure out how to make better decisions. It gave me some actually really good advice on how to make better decisions, but I basically went to law school without knowing what lawyers did or even what law school was. It was just something I did because that's what I was supposed to do. I found out I didn't really like it very much and I, and once I found out what lawyers

• 6:52Speaker 02

  actually did, and God bless the lawyers listening to this, but once I found out what lawyers actually did, I was like, "Oh, you hire somebody else to do that." You know, it's like, like, you know, it's like, I mean, it's like, it takes, like, it takes skill to like plunge a toilet or, you know, you know, that kind of thing, or, you know, mow a gigantic backyard. I mean, it takes skill to do that. It's just that, you know what, it's really not my thing. And so what I'd rather do is do something else and then pay someone else to do that kind of dirty work. And yet I found myself stuck and because I was risk averse, I didn't, I did leave for a little while, actually. I dropped out for a little while, but I came back. And, and so I went to law, so I went to law school.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  It wasn't a, you know, accumulated massive, massive, massive, massive student loans, but I was very fortunate in two dimensions in my law school trajectory. One was that my school had a very, ahead of its time loan payback program keyed to salary. So if you made less than a certain amount, they would offer assistance in repaying your student loans. And that gave people much more, nobody, not many people took it, but that gave you theoretically more career flexibility if you decided not to practice law. The other thing is that I met my wife in law school. So it's, it's, it's a decision that ended up having a profound positive effect on my life.

• 8:15Tim Ferriss?

  How did it help you learn to make better decisions?

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Going to law school?

• 8:21Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right. You said that...

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Well, here's the thing. Okay, you know, here's what it did. Here's what it did. Here's the thing. Okay, so there's this principle in social science. It has a fancy name, but it is something that we all do and something that we should do. It's the principle of surrogation. Okay? How do you make decisions? You use the principle of surrogation. And surrogation basically means find someone like you who made this decision and see what happened to him or her. That is, find out what it's really like. It's, again, this is a totally fantasized way of something that is very commonsensical. What, you know, should I go to this restaurant? Well, let me check the Yelp reviews of 47 other people who've gone to this restaurant. And what I did, and it's amazing to me, Tim, when I think about this, and it's advice that I give to my own kids as well.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  I went to law school, literally, having never spent a day, not a day, 10 minutes, talking to a lawyer about what you did. I'm not, I mean, I'm embarrassed to say that, but that's absolutely the case. I went to law school having never sat in on a law school class. I mean, it's unbelievable to me in retrospect. And, and so had I done those kinds of things, I might have approached it more skeptically. But I didn't do those things. And so, and, and because that ended up being an incredibly expensive decision, even though it led to some, you know, it basically, I mean, it led to the most positive thing in my life, which is my wife, even though it led to something positive, it was a terrible decision.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  So now, I'm, I'm sort of a, a surrogation ideologue, you know? It's like, I believe in surrogation for everything. Largely because I got bitten by that bad decision.

• 10:03Tim Ferriss?

  Could you give us an example of at some fork in the road or some prospective decision where you've used surrogation? Or where you're planning on using it?

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Okay, okay, so I'll give you an example of it. So, again, it's, you know, again, we're not talking rocket science here. We're talking like, basically, hey... Act like a reasonably intelligent grown up is what I'm, is, you know, is basically what I'm, what I'm doing here. But let's go back to the, uh, let's go back to the Japan, uh, I think. So I got a fellowship to go to Japan and I went with my wife and her, and her kids, as I mentioned. But before I did that, I talked to, you know, six different people who had the same fellowship before I accepted. Six different people who had the same fellowship, what it was like for their kids, what would, what the work was like, what the living was like before I made the decision. Now, again, that is not a monumental intellectual breakthrough,

• 10:52Speaker 02

  but it's something that I didn't do when I was much younger.

• 10:58Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's, it's a best practice that can often get skipped, right? Whether that's something like this or something that should be very straightforward. If you look at, say, Atul Gawande's work in the Checklist Manifesto and checking various things to avoid bacterial line infections in a hospital, right? It's very straightforward, but if you neglect it over time, bad things are gonna happen.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  But it's also the, you know, I think that as, as I've gotten older and gotten more experienced, I've actually, um, become much more aware of the importance of intellectual humility. And like what, you know, when I was, when I think of when I was younger, I feel, well, I, I know what law school is like. How do you know? Well, I just know because I, I thought about it and so I know. Uh, I know what lawyers do because like I met somebody who was a lawyer and I know what lawyers, you know? And so there's a degree of arrogance in that of thinking that you know something when you actually don't. And so if you approach all kinds of decisions with a degree of intellectual humility and ask yourself, what don't I know about this? Where are my blind spots? Then I think you end up making better decisions.

• 12:06Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. Uh, speaking of blind spots, I promised I would segue into politics and that is somewhere uh, I have very, very little confidence in any of my knowledge or expertise. How did you, so I was looking at what I believe to be one of your first articles that really. I'm not gonna say put you on the map, that's too, too much of an overstatement, but the, the Free Agent Nation article of Fast Company, which was at the

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:32Tim Ferriss?

  end of nineteen ninety.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Twenty years ago.

• 12:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, nineteen ninety seven. And in the bio, or the byline, rather, of that article, it says, until recently, chief speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore. So where did you go from law school, or dropping out of law school for a period of time, to speechwriting for then Vice President Al Gore?

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Well, when I graduated from law school, I was actually very keenly interested in politics. Uh, it was probably my deepest interest at the time. And I said, you know what, I'm gonna go where, I'm gonna work in politics.

• 13:04Tim Ferriss?

  Why, why was it interesting to you at the time?

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Uh, a couple of reasons. Number one is that I thought, um, it'd be, it was a venue for, for achieving something in the world and making a contribution to the world. The other thing is that I found the actual practice of it quite exciting and interesting in the way that sports is exciting and interesting. So it was a combo platter for me. Um, and, uh, and I'd been interested in it for many, many years. And I said, okay, this is, this is what I, this is what I wanna do. So I got out of law school and I, I started working on political campaigns, which at the time I liked because political campaigns are totally interesting. I mean, again, it's like a sport in that there's, it's, you know, there's a beginning and there's an end and there's a very clear outcome. Uh, and it's exciting and you're making decisions on the fly.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  And I find political campaigns, more than other kinds of organizations and institutions, fairly meritocratic. Because there's so much going on and so much crazy stuff happening that if you can do something, you will continue, you'll, you'll be asked to do it again. And that's pretty much what happened to me in that someone at some point asked me to write a speech and I did it and it was okay. And then they said, hey, that's okay. You wanna do it again? And I did it again. And then I did it a third time and all of a sudden that was my job. Um, and. And it ended up being something that I had a certain affinity for. And it's something that a lot of other people did not. And so just in the supply and demand of who has to do what, that's what I ended up doing and I enjoyed it. I did it on political campaigns.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  I did it for a cabinet secretary. And then I ended up doing it for the, I ended up doing it for the vice president. And the trouble was is that when I had spent all these years in the belly of the beast, you know, it's sort of like, wow, I really want to work in politics. And all of a sudden, in a pretty kind of half-assed way, I was at a pretty good gig in the belly of the beast. I realized, hey, I'm not sure this is my thing. I thought this is my thing, but I'm discovering that this is not my thing. And it was even worse is that if I project out even further and look at, say, what I'm going to be like or what I'm going to be doing in 10 years or 20 years,

• 15:18Speaker 02

  I really don't like that picture because I see some of those people around me.

• 15:22Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. Now, is there anything besides the projecting forward, looking at the people who had been in the game, so to speak, for a longer period of time and saying, wow, I could see myself filling their shoes and I don't like what that looks like? Was there anything else, any other indicators or moments that made you realize it wasn't for you?

• 15:43Speaker 02

  There were a few things.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  First of all, the amount of BS that was involved was startling to me. I expected some, but the, if you do, if you do a pie chart of BS and not BS, the BS slice is extraordinarily large. Larger than, larger than you would, larger than you would imagine on a number of different dimensions. And here's the thing, Tim, I fricking lucked out too in who I was working for because my last two jobs, I worked for Al Gore, who's a very smart guy and a very good guy all around. And before that, I worked for the then Labor Secretary. I was a speechwriter for the then Labor Secretary, a guy named Robert Reich, who's a very smart guy and a good guy.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  So I had basically the best kinds of bosses you could possibly have. Um, and so that was another indication, like I got the best bosses you could possibly have, and I still like, hmm, it's not the species of Reich or Gore I don't like, it's the genus of politics that is actually bringing me down, you know? And so, uh, and so among the things that I didn't like, uh, let's go back to the BS. Uh, there was an enormous amount of, enormous amount of time spent basically, um, um, in the air in almost everything that was going on within the boundaries of the law, obviously, concerned for basically pandering and fundraising. Um, it was really quite remarkable.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  The other thing is that I also felt like a lot of, like, a lot of the people who were good people, that they were so interested, they were so absorbed in the mechanics of things, that they, I, I, I felt like I was losing sight over like what we were doing here in the first place. Right. Uh, what did we actually, what did we actually believe in? That the, um, there was so much short-termism, so much short-term insane kind of posturing and, and, oh, let's get this slight advantage over the day. Um, and, um, and it was like, what's the point, you know, what's the point of all this? I'm working really, really hard and I, I'm not sure this is, I'm not sure we're actually doing that much. And here's the scary part, it's like, that was 20 years ago.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  In retrospect, those are the good old days, right? I mean, you ha- you have, I mean, you, you, you know, we were, I mean, I'm old enough, I did this long enough ago where I'd be, I'd be pumped when something I wrote made it on to the, the quote unquote evening news. I haven't watched the evening news for 19 years, you know? Um, uh, we weren't dealing with social media. Um, the world was very, very, very partisan then, but nothing like the way it is now. So I remember devoting a couple of days in my office to some subpoena that was given to Gore's office for finding some document about some nonsense thing. And I'm like, and I, and I'm like really concerned about that because I didn't do anything wrong, but it's like, oh my God, if I have an email that mentions X, Y, or

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Z, and I don't find it, and then someone else finds it, like, I'm gonna have to hire a lawyer and I didn't sign up for this garbage. So, um, so I finally decided to, I finally, yeah, so, so again, this thing that I thought I was deeply, deeply interested in, once I actually experienced it, I found myself far less interested in it than, than I would have suspected. If you had told me. That when I left that job, if you had told me 10 years earlier, you're gonna have this job and you're gonna leave it because you're tired of politics, I would have been very, very surprised.

• 19:12Tim Ferriss?

  If you look back at that experience, the skills you either had natively or developed,

• 19:21Tim Ferriss?

  how do you prepare your speeches now? Or maybe if we take an example of a speech that you've given that has received very positive feedback, or really, from your perspective, engaged the audience, how do you go about preparing a 30-minute, 60-minute speech? What does that look like? Is there any example that you can give us?

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it depends. I mean, actually, that experience, writing speeches, was actually extraordinarily useful in going out and, you know, being a writer and then going out and talking about what I've written about. I mean, it's extraordinarily useful. I mean, if for no other reason, Tim, it was because, you know, I spent a lot of time as a speechwriter watching audiences react, seeing what worked and what didn't. And that, I think, has completely left an imprint on me. Again, I was able, you know, I had this, before I went out on doing it myself, I spent, you know, as much time as any human being could have done, like, watching speeches being given.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  But I always would watch, whenever, when any of my bosses would give a speech, I would actually watch the audience rather than my boss to see, because that's how I learned how to get better at it. Hey, that line works. Hey, that line's a dud. Hey, they're spacing out here. Hey, this person over here looks confused. Wow, this went on too long. Wow, this could have gone on a little, well, I never had the experience, it could have gone on longer. But this, you know, this could have, seriously, you know, this could have, we could have, we could have, we could have cut it out there. And so, so seeing audiences react just gave me, I mean, it's hard, it's almost like, let me think of an analogy here.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  Okay, I mean, it's an imperfect analogy, but it's almost like, um, um, I'm gonna go, um, basically walk up and down the streets of Santiago, Chile for a couple of years. I'm not gonna do any talking, but I'm gonna listen to everybody else talking. And it's like, whoa, you can learn some Spanish that way. It's not gonna be, you're not gonna be perfectly Spanish, but you have a huge advantage of someone if you do that and then go and say, hey, I think I'm gonna learn how to speak Spanish.

• 21:45Tim Ferriss?

  It also makes me think of a very useful feature for potential speakers, although it's probably not worth the labor for the TED organization, would be to take the camera C that's always pointed at the audience and give you the option of listening to TED Talks while watching the audience respond.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  That's an interesting idea. That's an interesting idea. I mean, they do cutaways on those kinds of things, but the cutaways don't show people being bored.

• 22:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right, exactly.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  That's actually, that's actually more revealing than anything else. And I'll tell you, like, from the speech giver's point of view, and it's interesting you raise this, Tim, because I haven't really thought a huge amount about it myself, but one of the things that I enjoy most about giving talks is seeing the audience's reaction and figuring out what's good and what isn't. So if I come up with, hey, I got this killer line I just thought of, this is gonna totally rule, and then I deliver it, and it's like, whoa, that bombed. And in my head, I don't feel like, oh, I'm so sad that it bombed, but in the back of my head, I'm like, huh, that bombed, that's so interesting, I gotta make a note of that, like, that one bombed,

• 23:01Speaker 02

  you know? And why did that one bomb? Did people not understand it? Was it obnoxious? And so I love that part of, and when you give speeches, when you do something in real time with people, or really anything before an audience. So if you and I were talking... Before a live audience, we would be getting feedback on our conversation that I would that I think would be really useful and interesting. And when you do things that are asynchronous, as we're doing now, or writing a book, which is asynchronous, you get that feedback much later. And so the feedback is less is less meaningful. So if I um uh if I write something and someone says, you wrote this passage here, I just don't get it.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Um, that's sort of a bummer for me because I don't have time to cure it. But if I say something before an audience and I get a bunch of blank looks, I immediately know, wow, okay, I didn't explain that very well. I gotta go back next time around and explain it better.

• 23:56Tim Ferriss?

  So I I've so many different questions I want to dig into related to what you just said. The first is actually connected to something we were talking about just before we hit record. And that was you having listened to the interview I did with Brian Koppelman, the screenwriter, filmmaker, co-creator of the the hit show Billions, among many other things, and his penchant and recommendation for forensically studying film, watching films with a notebook in hand and taking notes on what worked, what didn't, his responses and so on.

• 24:38Tim Ferriss?

  And you you mentioned a number of different questions and cues that you might ask yourself while watching in your speechwriter days, the audience, while you're essentially your boss is giving a talk. Would you be writing those things down? Uh, would you be would you be sitting there kind of with a notebook in hand, recording this this type of thing?

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Um, what I would be, uh, what I would often be doing would be, um, I would have, okay, so if if I had a, if it was a speech where I had a written, where there was a written text, which is not always the case, in some cases for for lower key, for for less significant things, it would be, say, you know, a conversation, some talking points and some things like that, you know, but let's say for a speech that was actually delivered, that is, a speech that was written out and then delivered, um, you know, behind a podium, I would almost always have the actual physical text of the speech and I would mark up. That physical text of it. So, so in, in, in some cases, because it was helpful for me in terms of

• 25:44Speaker 02

  just relating to my own boss, let's say that he skipped a paragraph. I'm like, hmm, I wonder why I skipped that paragraph, you know, maybe ask him about that, or maybe I could even figure out why he skipped that. You know, he skipped, he didn't even bother reading a paragraph, or he skipped a line. Or he ad-libbed a, a new, a new version of the line. That was actually very helpful to me in terms of just dealing with my boss. Because again, what you're trying to do in a, in writing a speech for somebody else is that you're, you're trying to make that person sound like the best version of him or herself. And so it could be that the way I phrase something didn't sound like him, but he knew what I meant and he was able to phrase it in his own words and that, and that actually was helpful for me in terms of doing the, the, the, the, the tactical craft of my job.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Um, but so I would have the, I would have the text with me. And let's say there was a joke. You know, I would say, I mean, it basically would look like plus, I mean, seriously, like plus and minus. You know, um, and say, hey, that joke worked, that joke didn't work, that line worked, that, that line, that line didn't work. Um, and one of the things that it taught me was also is that you don't go based on, uh, I'm getting in the weeds here a little bit, but you don't make permanent decisions based on one reaction. And I do that myself now in my own stuff. So if I say something and it doesn't work the first time, I don't say, I don't abandon it then. I make a note of that and then I try it again. Because sometimes different audiences, different contexts, different things, it, it can work. But, um,

• 27:11Speaker 02

  so, but, but I, yeah, I would, I would do that. It was just sort of, you know, and here's the thing, I don't want to make this sound like, like I use the word forensic to talk about what compliment is doing. Mine was less forensic. It was more, um, hygienic. It was to me, it's like, that's just like good staff hygiene, you know? I, you know what I mean? I wrote a speech and this, and this dude is delivering it. I should pay attention to like how it's going. You know? Definitely. And if I do that, if I do that, I'm going to do better next time and he's going to do better next time.

• 27:43Tim Ferriss?

  If I look at the, my own writing, the writing that I've done that has, has received the best response, I'll just keep it broad, nine times out of 10, it's something that I have tested and honed in some speaking format, whether it's a presentation, or a class, or something else, which is part of the reason why, if, if I'm giving a talk, or doing an interview in front of a live audience, I always ask them to raise the house lights, because for whatever reason, a lot of venues like

• 28:13Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 28:13Tim Ferriss?

  really dim it down, but then you can't see the response.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Total.

• 28:16Tim Ferriss?

  So, so I always ask them to raise the house lights. When you are testing out a speech, or an article, or a chapter, on someone else, what types of question, what are you looking for, or what types of questions do you ask? You can pick any of those that, that you'd like, but, but what type of questions do you ask?

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me take your simple question and complicate it.

• 28:41Tim Ferriss?

  Let's go for it.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Because I, because I actually think that, that speeches and written words are different things.

• 28:49Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  And so, so the way that I would convey an idea in a speech is going to be different from the way that I would convey the similar, same idea in a book. And so, so, so, so, so for me, like, one of the most, like, I, I have to say, it's, it's a simple question, but, and I, I find myself asking it all the time to people, is this following question, does that make sense? Does that make sense? Or what I've sometimes found, an easier way to rephrase that is, this is actually, I think this is actually useful, a, a writing hack is, what about that doesn't make sense?

• 29:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, that's a great question.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  I think that people are more likely to say, does that make sense? They're, you know, sort of out of politeness and also just out of self. Oh, of course that makes sense. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, but sort of what about that? So I converted a little bit. What about that? What about that doesn't make sense? With, when you give us, when you, when you, when you explain an idea to somebody or you're talking to an audience, I really think, I mean, maybe I'm overestimating my own abilities, but I really think you can tell by the looks on people's faces. There are all other kinds of markers of that, too. So, for instance, you know, especially now, if you have slides, what are people taking pictures of? All right? What, what slides are they taking pictures of? What things are they writing down? So I look at those kinds of cues in, in, in, in, in talks.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  I think writing is, is more difficult. And I'll tell you what I do in, in writing, especially books. And this is a little bit insane. Or it's, I mean, it's insane in the sense that you, it requires, it requires someone who is deeply devoted to you in a way that someone you truly love is devoted to you. So here's, here's the thing about my books. I, even though, I'm, even though I just said speeches and written words are different, for me, I actually improve my writing by listening to it. Not because I listen to written words different from the way I listen to speeches, if that makes any sense. And so when I write books, so the latest book, I mean, you know, latest book in all

• 31:05Speaker 02

  the previous books, I, I have an office here behind my house in Washington DC. It's a garage, refurbished garage. And for, I will sit in my office and I'll give you, let's talk about the latest book, okay, just to give you an idea. So this is a book, I don't know, it's like 280 pages or something like that. I read every word of that book.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Out loud to my wife at various stages. What's what's more, I read drafts, multiple drafts of chapters out loud to my wife in this office. But wait, there's more. My my wife read every word of this book out loud to me, including drafts. Because for me, that's how I that's how I process the that's how I process the written word. So for me, I can tell what works in a speech because you have a large audience of people behind, you know, reacting to it. When in in terms of written words, like, I I don't know, it's just like, I, you know,

• 32:11Speaker 02

  after all these years, I know what's good and what's not when it comes to written word. And I actually know what's not good, really, is what I know. And so I try to remove all the not good stuff. Um, and and the way I do that, and it's a very laborious way, is to read aloud, because that helps me look at the words a different way, but also to have them read aloud to me. Now, what's amazing to this, and it shows you just how incredible and awesome my wife is, is that I am the worst person on the planet to be read aloud to. Because I'm a complete pain in the ass when it comes to, especially if you're reading my my words. Oh, come on, you got to read with more expression than that. Oh, come on, no, the emphasis is on that word. No.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Um, my saintly, my saintly wife has done this for several, several, several books now.

• 33:03Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, she's a keeper. Uh, I, so I've only, and I suspect this is more common than either of us might expect, but John McPhee, the nonfiction writer, also writes, I think he still writes for The New Yorker, fascinating guy, but I took a seminar with him in undergrad, and he also explained how he reads all of his work. I believe he reads not only his feature works, but his articles out loud to his wife.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Really? I actually did not know that.

• 33:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yep, yep, so this is, yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  So I'm in pretty good, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in pretty good company.

• 33:43Tim Ferriss?

  You're in, you're in good company.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  I started reading, I started reading John McPhee when I was like a, like a, a pretty, you know, like a young teenager. And one of the best McPhee books I've read was a book, you might have read it, called Levels of the Game.

• 34:00Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I was, it's so good. It's so, so good. Maybe you can just.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  I love that book. I read it again. I actually read it again about two years ago. But I read it, I read it as a kid. Um, you know, I got it out of a library. I spent a lot of time in libraries when I was a kid. And, and I don't know how, some librarian or somebody told me about it. Cause there was a, cause he has that famous book about Bill Bradley, A Sense of Where You Are. So I read that, cause I was a basketball fan. And it's like, oh, I was also a tennis fan. It's like, oh, you read about tennis too? And I read that book. And I didn't, you know, at, at the time, I, I guess, I was, I was saying, wow, you can actually write about sports in a way that's kind of more interesting than just sports. Um, that's a remarkable book. I mean, I, I can explain it quick. So it's, it's a story about a match between, a single tennis match between Arthur Ashe,

• 34:47Speaker 02

  uh, who then was very young, just out of Richmond, and a guy named Clark Grabner, who was from a, uh, wealthier, white guy, wealthier family in, I think it was like suburban Cleveland. And what he does is he basically describes the match, but throughout he pulls back and tells each of their stories of how they actually got to the court that day. I think it was the US Open, a US Open match. And so he actually describes them playing a point, and then he pulls back and talks about how Arthur Ashe got there. And he pulls back and talks about how Clark Grabner got there. And he does it with such elegance and such concision. It's just, it's a, it's a joy to behold.

• 35:22Tim Ferriss?

  It's, it's truly spectacular. And for those who haven't read McPhee, you should. If not for any other reason, that he can take any subject matter you can imagine, uh, and make a riveting book about said subject. It could be oranges, Plymouth Rock.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, the oranges book, oranges book is great. I read that when I was a kid too.

• 35:43Tim Ferriss?

  Carved, hand carved canoes, uh, geology. It just, you name the topic and he can turn it into a page turner. But Levels, Levels of the Game is, is just spectacular. And. One thing that McPhee is very, very good at is, and I think this is also shared territory with you, is asking questions. Given the nature of his writing, a very significant portion of his time is spent interviewing. And what about that doesn't make sense is a really powerful tweak on the maybe alternative that you mentioned, which is, does this make sense, right? Or does this make sense or not?

• 36:26Tim Ferriss?

  And this may be digging too far into the weeds, but I was really fascinated to read about an approach that you've detailed in one of your books called motivational interviewing.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:39Tim Ferriss?

  And I hadn't heard of this before, but the example that stuck out to me, and you don't have to give this exact example, but was asking a student who is seemingly struggling with algebra a certain question instead of others. I don't want to butcher it, but I can certainly also, I have it in front of me, so I can pull it up if need be. But can you explain for people what motivational interviewing is and maybe give an example?

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is actually a, it's a therapeutic technique that actually I think has wider applications. And I heard about it from a fellow named Mike Pendleton, who's at Yale School of Medicine, who used it in, I think, addiction treatment. And it's basically like this, so let's say that, let's say that you have, let me think of a good example here, of something that somebody typically isn't that keen to do. Okay, let's say, let's go to algebra. Let's say you have somebody, let's say you're a parent and you have a kid who's in eighth grade, and he has an algebra test and doesn't want to study for the algebra test, isn't

• 37:52Speaker 02

  into it, doesn't want to do it. And so, you know, typical reaction from parents, from anybody in authority figure is like, what the hell is wrong? You know, start saying, just sort of demanding, start demanding compliance. And motivational interviewing is almost the reverse of that. So it basically, so let's say you have a kid named Bob. You could say, you know,

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Uh, hey Bob, um, I see you're not studying for your algebra test. Um, let me ask you a question, you know, I, I see you have an algebra test tomorrow. On this, on a scale of one to 10, how ready are you to study for your algebra test? How ready are you to start studying for your algebra test? All right, how much do you want to start studying for your algebra test? And Bob is totally unmotivated by it. Bob might say, I'm a three, uh, right, a three out of 10. Now, again, our reaction as bosses, as parents, as people in figures of authority is basically is to say, what do you mean you're a three? You should be a nine, you know? But instead, you're more chilled than that and you say, okay, you're a three. Uh, why didn't you pick a lower number? And that always, that always wakes people up. So he says, I'm a three out of 10 in terms of my desire to do this thing.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  And you say, instead of saying, yo, my God, you should be a nine. What are you crazy, you lazy ass? You say, oh, why didn't you pick a lower number? And what's interesting about that is that, is what it does to Bob is that Bob has to now say why he's not a two. And so he begins saying things like, well, you know, if I don't study for this test, um, I'm probably going to bomb the next test. If I don't master this material, it's going to be harder to go into later on. If I don't do well on this test, you might hassle me. And so what happens is, is that Bob begins articulating his own autonomous, intrinsically motivated reasons for doing something. And that's the key. And what we know from a mountain of, of social science research is that when people have their own reasons for doing something,

• 39:40Speaker 02

  they're more likely to endorse the behavior and they're more likely to carry it out. And so this becomes a way to surface Bob's own motivation for it. Um, through questions rather than through, rather than through dictates. And it can be a very, very powerful technique. You can also turn it inward. Um, you know, you say, well, how, how, how, how ready are you Dan to finish this chapter? Oh God, you know, I'm like a three. Then you say, well, Dan, why aren't, why aren't, why aren't you a two? Oh, you know, and so anything you can do to help people surface their own reasons for doing something, makes them more likely to commit to behavior, more likely to follow through on the behavior.

• 40:14Tim Ferriss?

  That last extension is really important. I had been prepping this and reading the background, some of it, and it didn't even occur to me that you could apply it to yourself and use it for journaling or something like that to uncover or maybe rediscover the motivation that drove you to start it in the first place, even though you lost sight of it or petered out or whatever the hell it might be.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you could use it for going to, you could use it for, you could use it for, you could use it for going to the, you know, going to the gym or going to, going to workout, like how, like, you know, how ready are you, how, you know, how excited are you about, how motivated are you to work out right now? I'm a two, all right? Well, I say it to myself, well, why aren't you a one? Well, you know, I know that probably I'll feel better if I work out rather than if I don't work out. I know that actually, um, um, if I don't do this aerobic exercise today, I probably gonna, you know, might not have a chance to do it tomorrow, which means I'm gonna feel like crap. Um, and so you can, you can turn it on yourself as well. It's all about those surfacing, you know, you know, one of the things that we've done

• 41:21Speaker 02

  in turn in management and parenting and all, and all other realms of life is that we have over, we've overdosed on control. Um, and control is not an effective way to motivate people for important things, um, because human beings only have two responses to control. They comply or they defy. And that's a history of humankind, is basically, human beings either complying or defying with control. Uh, and so we need to abandon control as a motivator and look for ways for people to summon their own autonomous motivation for doing things.

• 41:57Tim Ferriss?

  So we talked at the very top of this interview about Johnny Bunko and how you were head of the voters, in a sense, didn't quite catch, you might have been a bit early with the manga format. In contrast, A Whole New Mind seems to really have resonated strongly and it did catch. So I'd love to try to deconstruct why that was the case. And as one example, it appealed so much to Oprah Winfrey that she gifted, I want to say, 4,500 copies to the Stanford graduating class of 2008 when she did her commencement speech there. Why do you think that is? And the subtitle, I should just mention, is A Whole New Mind subtitle, Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future. Why did this one take?

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say. I think a reason that it took is that it was a fairly original idea conveyed in a way that was easy to understand and also had the advantage of probably being more right than wrong. So the idea in that book is the following, that I was arguing then, I still believe it today, that the structure of our brain offers a metaphor for describing the future of work. And, you know, all your listeners know, there's been a lot of stuff written about left brain and right brain over the years. Most of it's just total garbage. But one of the, what we know about our brains

• 43:25Speaker 02

  is that they're actually somewhat efficient. And then over time, they've divided up tasks. So the left hemisphere specializes in one set of tasks, tasks that are logical, linear, sequential, analytical. The right hemisphere specializes in a different set of tasks, tasks that are about understanding context, about synthesis, and about simultaneous processing. And so that division of labor in the brain, I think, offers a very powerful metaphor for understanding what I thought was going on in the world of work, and it continues to go on in the world of work. But actually, to make sure I got the underlying science right, in a tearing of a page from the Tim Ferriss playbook, I actually went to the National Institutes of Health to get my own brain scanned, see my own brain

• 44:08Speaker 02

  in action, which ended up being a profoundly disappointing experience. But that's another story for another day. And so, basically, the idea here is this, that the abilities that used to be the most valuable in the economy, characteristic, it's a metaphor, characteristic of the left hemisphere, logical, linear, sequential, analytical, spreadsheet, SAT abilities, those abilities are still necessary, but they're no longer sufficient. And it's abilities more characteristic of the right hemisphere of the brain, artistry, empathy, inventiveness, big-picture thinking, those abilities are now the first among equals. And the reason for that is that is a very hard-headed reason, that those kinds of abilities are easy to outsource, easy to automate, that the left hemisphere abilities, sorry,

• 44:53Speaker 02

  the left hemisphere abilities, the SAT spreadsheet abilities are easy to outsource, easy to automate... And less valuable in iterating something new, in dealing with the demands for new that comes from an abundant world. And so, and so, actually, maybe another reason that took is that I basically came to a soft-hearted conclusion in a hard-headed way. There was a very clear economic argument for that. You know, the three As, Asia, automation, abundance, reductive left-brain work can be done cheaper overseas. The other A, automation, it can be done faster by computers and now smart machines. And then finally, abundance, that our material needs have been satisfied and oversatisfied,

• 45:35Speaker 02

  that there's a premium now in coming up with something utterly new and giving the world something it didn't know it was missing, which is very much of an artistic ability. And so, that's the argument in that book. And it's an argument, I think, that people resonated to because they were seeing inklings in their own life and they needed a way to describe it, categorize it, put words on it.

• 45:57Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it seems like history has proven your prediction or description very accurate at this point, for sure. And it also would, it also occurs to me that this is, this is another place, manga aside, where you and Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired magazine are very much on the same page. You mentioned something in passing, though, that I can't let go because I have to hear the separate story. Why was your brain scan disappointing?

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Oh, because it, you know, I looked at my brain, I was thinking my brain would be special some kind. It looked like every other brain I'd seen. Like, I couldn't pick my own brain out of a lineup. So, that's what it was. I mean, it's sort of, I shouldn't say disappointing. It's humbling, you know? Like, the idea that, here's the, here's my, I got this brain in my head, all right? And leaving aside the, leaving aside the thorny issue of where does the brain end and the mind begin, or vice versa, my brain is largely responsible for who I am, and yet, when I see a picture of it, it's completely unremarkable and looks like every other brain that's being scanned that day.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  There's something kind of weird and humbling about that. Disappointing, too. I don't know, I was expecting my brain would be cooler or something like that, to know.

• 47:21Tim Ferriss?

  Looking back at all of your books,

• 47:25Tim Ferriss?

  do you find any commonalities? Or patterns? And I mean, we can also forge all sorts of spurious correlations. But looking at the books that seem to have struck a nerve? And those that for whatever reason didn't perform up to your hopes?

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Um, I, you know, I don't know. I mean, I think that, I think that when it comes to actual performance of things, um, like how well a book does, that's something that's not fully, I mean, you know this, I mean, any writer knows this. That's not something that's fully in our control. And, and I'm, and I'm actually, you know, I'm actually more or less okay on that. I mean, it's disappointing when something doesn't do as well as you want. But to me, my criteria, my criterion is, did I write the best book I possibly could write? And then once you put it out there, there's so many other variables, you just don't know whether it's going to take or whether it's not going to, whether it's not going to take. Um, so, I mean, I wrote a book, you know, my very first book was a book called Free Agent Nation.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  Uh, that was not a monumental, that did okay, but it was not a monumental hit. It should have been because I think I was right. Um, um, but for whatever reason, I think it came out, like, I think I, I think it just came out at the wrong, I think it came out at the wrong time. It should have come out slightly earlier. Um, and so, so on that, so, so to me, the, the, you know, um, how well a book does, that's, there's so much randomness in that, I'm not, I try not to lose any sleep over it. Um, in terms of actual, you know, is there a through line among all the books? Uh, that's an interesting question, and I, I can say from the creation point of view, there's absolutely not a through line. Um, there is no intentional through line through, through, through these kinds of, through these kinds of books.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  It's not as if I have mapped out somewhere on a whiteboard here in Pink Ink World Headquarters in Washington, D.C. This like grand scheme to create the pink oeuvre in a certain fashion and a certain timetable with certain things covered like that. Far from it. I just go from one thing to another. I just like figure out what I'm gonna do next. And as you know, Tim, I mean, writing a book is so difficult. It's so hard. It's so time consuming. That if you're not in love with the idea, if you don't love working on it, you're gonna, it's gonna be miserable for you. So, so I just pick the next topic based on what I'm really interested in and what I want to spend a couple of years, you know, a few years working on. Um, so I, I think it's possible that people can detect a through line.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  That readers could detect a through line. Maybe they're seeing something that I'm not, but if there's a through line, it's visible only retrospectively. It's not something that was intentional.

• 50:06Tim Ferriss?

  What was, speaking of difficulty and writing process, what, if there is a, if you had to pick one, what has been the most difficult book for you to write and why?

• 50:17Speaker 02

  I think it was this, I think it was the last one, the last book that I wrote. Believe it or not, you would think it would get easier over time, but it didn't. Um, so this last book, When, about the science of timing, that was the most difficult book to write. Um, partly because I went to, I went into that book, um, with, so I went, I started writing A Whole New Mind, having done the, done some research and saying, hey, I think there's something going on here. Like, I think we're moving to this world, you know? And sort of I had a theory of the case. With Drive, I had a book about motivation. I had looked at a lot of the research in motivation. I said, whoa, wait a second. People are missing like a huge story here. With When, um, I went in totally with questions rather than with any kind of theory of the case.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  I basically said, hey, I'm making all kinds of timing decisions in my own life. I'm making them in a totally half-assed way. I'd like to make them in a better way. Could somebody please give me some guidance? And I started looking around for guidance and it didn't exist. And then I started looking at the research and I realized that across all of these domains of research, literally dozens and dozens, you, from, from the hard sciences of molecular biology to endocrinology, to the social sciences of economics and social psychology, uh, to many, many domains, these scholars are asking very, very similar questions. What's the effective time of day on what we do and how we do it? How do beginnings affect us? How do midpoints affect us? How do endings affect us? And so I went in saying, wow. How do I make better timing decisions myself, but I didn't have a theory of the case?

• 51:45Speaker 02

  And so the volume of research for this one was so monumental. There were so many studies out there and there were so many different, in so many different fields and fields that like molecular biology is not a subject that is at my fingertips. All right. I had a, I spent so much time, I mean, I basically would read those papers. I would read them through and I would write down all the words that I didn't know the meaning of. And then I would look up those words and then I would read it again and I would read it a third time. And so very painstaking. Um, and then also because I didn't have a theory of the case, I just had questions rather than even a kind of skeleton or a shape of what I wanted to write. Um, I had to figure that out. So I probably did, I don't know, seventeen, eighteen different outlines, um, of, of that, of that book.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  So that was, um, that was, you know, you would think it would get easier, but it actually got hard, it would actually got harder.

• 52:37Tim Ferriss?

  Eighteen outlines. What do, what do, what, what would such an outline look like? How long is it? What's the format?

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Outline, uh, when I say an outline, it's, it's relative, relatively short, just like one or two pages, nothing, nothing too comprehensive. I guess outline is, outline is, is, um, outline is, well, it's partly the right word. Because I'm a, I, I, I'm a firm believer when it comes to speeches and when it comes to books, I'm a firm believer in structure and shape. Um, I think that those are what makes some things work. I think it's true for television shows. I think it's true for podcasts. Um, I think that structure.

• 53:12Tim Ferriss?

  Uh-oh, uh-oh.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  I think that, that structure and shape are very important. All right. Um, no, see, here's the thing, Tim. I think your podcasts, they don't necessarily have a structure, but they have a shape. There's no question they have a shape. All right? And so it's, you know, it's just, it's a difference between, you know, we can have, you, you can have sculptures, beautiful sculptures that have right angles and you can have other beautiful sculptures, like a Henry Moore sculpture, that has no right angles at all, but it has a distinct and memorable and identifiable shape.

• 53:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  So, so, um, but I'm a big believer in, in, in structure and shape and. Um. So what I'm doing there is that that's basically just my search for how do you organize the ideas? And what's the shape or the structure of the final product going to be? Because once I see the shape, I I can do a lot better work. But for this other, you know, it's like I like I'm reading through seven hundred studies on all this kinds of stuff. And I'm like, good God, how do I even make sense of this? What do I put where? I started thinking about organizing it. Do I organize this book about timing? Do I organize it basically the way that we organize time? So do I write about, you know, the hour, the day, the week, the the week, the month, the year, the lifetime?

• 54:29Speaker 02

  And that's a really bad way to do it. But I ended up.

• 54:34Tim Ferriss?

  Why is that? Why is that bad? How did you decide that was a bad approach?

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Because um um for for a couple of reasons. Number one, um, the material didn't organize itself cleanly in that way. Number two, uh, that's that struck me more as a uh, like a handbook, like a farmer's almanac, rather than uh, an intelligent book of science journalism with takeaways. Um, and more important, that's not a book I would want to read. And, you know, and so so I so I abandoned that. But I did it, but did I really abandon it? Because I actually ended up writing a whole chapter in this book about the day. So I ended up cleaving off some of that and and keeping it for and keeping it for for for other things.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  And so um, so it took me a long time to, it took me a long time to find the shape. And the way I find the shape is I basically write it down on either what I call big ass stickies is giant post-it notes or um, or or on a whiteboard that I have in my office. But I went through many, many, many iterations. And on that, I have a somewhat social view of of that. And that what I'll do is I'll I'll run it past people to see what they think. Um, and say, hey, what do you think if I organize a book that way? Does that make any sense? Or um, or what about that doesn't make sense? Or what am I missing here? Or what's the weak spot there? Uh, but it took me a long time to, it took me a long time to find the shape of uh, of this book. That coupled with the fact that the the amount of research was so massive.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  It was, it was actually, it was actually um. It was actually the hardest book I've had to write.

• 56:09Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you're doing the research as you're writing the book, right? I- in- in effect, it sounds like, because you're coming into it with questions, but then you're having to

• 56:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:17Tim Ferriss?

  digest all of the information that might lead or might not lead

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 56:21Tim Ferriss?

  to answers while you're writing it, yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly.

• 56:24Tim Ferriss?

  Very, very hard.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  And that's hard to write, exactly. You're so right about that. That's hard to do too. And a lot of people, I mean, you know, as a writer, it's- it- it's- it's- it's- it's messier than that. There's this notion that I'm gonna do my research, and then when my research is done, I'm gonna do my writing. All right?

• 56:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  And so it- it never works that way. But- but when you have more questions than you have, when you don't know the shape yet, and you have- still have a lot of questions, what happens is, I'm gonna do the research. Now I'm gonna try to write down something about it. Crap! You know what? Now that I write it, I realize I'm missing a whole thing here, and I gotta do more research. So let me go back and do that. So it's less of this kind of, you know, um, you know, happy march from, you know, uh, happy jump from here. I'm gonna go from this lily pad to that lily pad and happily jump from each one to another like a delighted frog.

• 57:14Tim Ferriss?

  There's a lot of task switching. I- I- that's exactly why The Four Hour Chef for me was also by far the most difficult book, among other reasons, to write, is that I came into it intending to try all of these experiments, ask all of these questions, and write the book somewhat chronologically as I'm getting answers. And, uh, that was a very punishing way to approach things. But to- to- to look at the content, so going past the structure and looking at the- the content and the findings of when,

• 57:51Tim Ferriss?

  I- I was looking at an NPR interview that you did and, uh, teasing out some Potential ways that I could apply the content from this book into my own life. And I'm going to read a quote, you can feel free to correct it, but this is, this is what I have as, as one very clear example. And I'd love to, basically, I'm going to ask you what types of decisions have changed. Free or easy ways that people can think about making changes related to timing. So here's one, then I'm going to, I'm going to truncate it a little bit, but quote, "In a lot of this research in big data, you see systematically poor performance in healthcare settings in the afternoon. Example, the incidence of hand washing inside of hospitals dramatically drops in the afternoon." And that seems like a bad thing to me. Uh, that's my voice, not yours.

• 58:33Tim Ferriss?

  You look at colonoscopies, endoscopists find half as many polyps in colonoscopies in afternoon exams versus morning exams, even with the same population. Doctors are more likely to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics in the afternoon compared to the morning. And this seems, this is very, very actionable, right? If we are to trust the data, if the patterns, if the correlations hold, then you are certainly better off, it would seem. Uh, if you're, if you want to mis-ritigate, uh, I'm not sure that was English. Risk mitigate, I think I swapped the first two letters. That's, that has a fancy psychological term.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  It's called, it's called in linguistics, a tip of the slung.

• 59:11Tim Ferriss?

  A tip of the slung.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:14Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. Uh, and you, you might come back to your undergrad and linguistics, but, uh, what, what are, what are other examples related to the when, the timing?

• 59:26Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 59:26Tim Ferriss?

  That people can, might be able to implement.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh, there's so much stuff. I mean, the good news about this is that, is that when I did finally wrestle the research to the ground and figure out how to structure it, um, it yielded so many great, great takeaways for, for readers. So, so, so take, take a step back. What we know from a mountain of research, took me a while to figure this out, was, um, that we tend to move through the day in three stages, a peak, a trough, a recovery. Peak, trough, recovery. Um, now, most of us move through the day in that order. Um, people who are night owls, people who have an evening chronotype, they move through the day in the reverse order, recovery, trough, peak. But what we know is that, um, we, we know a few things about human performance over the course of a day. The most important thing, and this is a, this, I wish somebody had told me this.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Before I was fifty, rather than once I was fifty, alright? Is that our cognitive abilities do not remain the same throughout the day. Our cognitive abilities change during the day and they can change in some dramatic ways. And they can change in predict- they change in predictable ways. But how we perform depends on what we're doing, alright? So, what we know about the peak, which again for most of us is the morning. For night owls, it's later in the day. What we know about the peak is that the peak is when we are most vigilant. And what does vigilance mean? Vigilance means we're able to bat away distractions. Um, and so when we're vigilant and can bat away distractions, that makes it the best time for analytic work.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Work that requires heads down, focus, writing a report, analyzing data, that kind of work. Um, there's no, that piles of research tell us that we should be doing our analytic work during the peak. Right, the trough, that's the early afternoon and early to mid afternoon. As you mentioned from the data on, on healthcare, a lot of bad stuff happens then. I mean, you have standardized test scores for students go down in the afternoon. You have, um, if you look at auto accidents, once you control for cars on the road. Uh, obviously there're gonna be more accidents when there're more cars on the road. But once you control for that, the most dangerous time to drive is four to six AM. The second most dangerous time is two to four PM.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  During that midday trough, um, we should be doing more of our, uh, administrative work. We should be answering our routine emails. We should, I mean, you, you, you, you, you talk, you've talked in the past, Tim, about batching. We should be batching our routine emails and answering them during the trough. We should be filling out our TPS report. We should be filling out our expense report, whatever. That kind of stuff that we have to do during the course of a day that doesn't require a lot of major cognitive power. Now, the recovery period, again, because this peak trough recovery is a pattern of mood that also is a pattern of performance. The recovery period is actually really, really interesting. During the recovery period, we have elevated mood.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  Our mood is better than during the trough, but we're less vigilant than during the peak. And so it's really important to think about that combo platter here. That is, you have. Higher mood, but less vigilance. That makes it a good time for things like brainstorming, for things like insight work. Where if you're too locked down and focused, you're not going to be that creative. And so that that degree of looseness coupled with the elevated mood makes that recovery stage better for what are called insight problems. Uh, brainstorming, things that require iteration. And so what we see is that if you, if we recognize that our cognitive abilities don't stay the same over the course of a day,

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  that they change in predictable ways and that what we do, that when we do something, it depends on what we're doing. We should be moving our analytic work to the peak, our administrative work to the trough, and our insight and creative work to the recovery. And it's that simple. And what the research tells us also is this, I mean, is that time of day explains about 20% of the variance in how people perform on cognitive tasks. So if you think about that, that's a big deal. Like, we can explain the very, like, if Fred, you know, if we have two people, you know, Maria and Sally, and they perform differently on cognitive tasks, how do we explain that, all right? We say, how do we explain that variance in how people perform, you know, Maria, Sally, and, and, you know,

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  18,000 other people perform on cognitive tasks? We say, oh, some people are smarter than other people. Some people are more conscientious than other people. Some people have more social advantage than other people. But what the research is telling us is that 20% of that variance is time of day. Right. And so, and so, so what we should be doing is, and what we're not doing, is we should be making our when decisions in a strategic way, rather than in the lazy haphazard way with which we tend to make our when decisions. And so, and you see this most glaringly, and this is my rant of the, of the, of the year. You should see this most glaringly with meetings in organizations.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  When we schedule meetings in organizations, the only criterion we use is availability. That's it. Who's available? We don't say, what kind of meeting is this? Is this a meeting where people have to be analytical? What kind of meeting is this? Is this about travel voucher policies? What kind of meeting is this? Are we brainstorming? Who's gonna be there? Are they gonna be morning people? Are they gonna be intermediate people? Are they gonna be evening people? We don't even ask those questions. We just say, who's available? And it's causing, it's one of the easiest things organizationally to fix. And it's something that at the unit of one, individuals can be a lot more systematic and intentional about moving the right work into the right time slots.

• 1:05:06Tim Ferriss?

  What time of day do you generally wake up, personally?

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  I wake up a little after seven.

• 1:05:14Tim Ferriss?

  And what is the first two hours of your day look like? Do you have particular, any particular routines? Can you walk us through what that?

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't have the detailed routines that you have written about, that you actually have experimented with and, you know, things like journaling and meditation or anything like that. Here's what I do. I wake up, all right? I take a shower. A shower helps me wake up. So I take a shower. I go downstairs and I feel better if I see a member of my family. So whoever happens to be awake. I have two kids in college now, so I don't see them. But I have another kid who's still around. So I see him, I see my wife. And I like to have some protein for breakfast, if that's a ritual, and caffeine. Protein and caffeine is my preferred breakfast.

• 1:06:05Tim Ferriss?

  What's your go-to protein?

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  You know what? I probably eat more hard-boiled eggs than almost any other person in America.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  I am keeping the hard-boiled egg industry in business. I think I'm single-handedly responsible for the advent of hard-boiled eggs for sale in individually wrapped packages in airports. I really think so. Because once they introduced that, I bought them all. And they go, oh, my God, there's such demand for these hard-boiled eggs. So I was actually saying to my wife, I eat so many eggs, it's ridiculous. So.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Um, so I don't have a cholesterol problem, fortunately. Um, so, um, so, uh, hard-boiled eggs or, um, or peanut butter. And then, um, what I do is when I'm in my writing day, and this is actually something I did better having read this book. When I'm on writing days, um, I will go to my office, which again is behind my house. And I will not bring my phone with me. Uh, I will not turn on my email. And I will give myself a quota. And that quota is usually is a word count. So call it seven hundred words. I'm a fairly slow writer. So you got these people out there who are like, I write three thousand words a day. And it's like, I don't think I've ever done that. Um, um, and so.

• 1:07:27Tim Ferriss?

  I'm very, very slow. I'm probably, I may be slower than you are even.

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, here's the thing, I'm slow and basically, I'm, I'm basically slow in every, um, in every domain of my life. I'm like just such a, I'm a slow runner. I'm a slow reader. I'm a slow writer. I like, I, I, I really heavily scrutinize my twenty-three and me report to see if I had some kind of like tortoise gene in me somewhere. That somehow like one of my ancestors in Latvia somehow mated with a tortoise at some point. And so, um, and so, um, and so, so, but what I will do though is I will come in and give myself that quota. And I won't do anything until I, I hit that number. Um, and then, then I'm free to do other kinds of things. Um, and then what I'll do is I always, you know, I'll, I'll have lunch.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  And then I will, um, I like to do, I, I, I have done a good job, especially after, like, this, this book changed the way that I organize my day. Because I do my analytic work better in the morning. So this book, this book impelled me to clear out my mornings to do that analytic work, which for me is writing. Uh, I stuff the administrative stuff often to the, um.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  Uh, to the, to the midday and then batched emails and that kind of garbage. And then I like to do interviews, um, especially when I'm interviewing, like for book interviews. I like to do those later in the day because I'm a little bit more, um, I li- I like the interviews to be a little bit more freewheeling. I'm not doing, I'm not an investigative reporter. I'm not conducting a deposition. I just, you know, want to hear people's stories and what they think about stuff. And so.

• 1:09:06Tim Ferriss?

  You're not quoting the Yale Law and Policy Review, Volume Eight, Number Two, nineteen ninety?

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  No, no, no. And so I'm not, I'm not, you know, so I want that to be a little bit more iterative. And then I, and then I actually end up exercising later. I end up exercising later in the day and in the early evening because I find that that, that works best for me.

• 1:09:23Tim Ferriss?

  You said on a writing day, when you were on book deadline, how many, what is your week, weekly structure tend to look like? Do you, do you, is every day a writing day? How, how do you allocate things?

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I'm a, I'm a, I'm also, I'm also a momentum player. So, um, so for me, writing every day is hugely important. Um, when I'm, when I'm working on a, when I'm working on a, when I'm working on a book or working on a long article. So I, I try to do that, I, I try to do that every single day, like, like seven days a week.

• 1:09:54Tim Ferriss?

  And do you have, do you have set periods of time between books? Do you decide in advance, I'm going to take X period of time until I investigate another book? What is, what is your macro planning look like?

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  Macro planning, boy. My macro planning is neither macro nor planned, I think.

• 1:10:17Tim Ferriss?

  That, I think that needs to be on a motivational calendar somewhere.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  Like for, um, I don't know.

• 1:10:28Tim Ferriss?

  Put it, put it another way, if that question sucks, which it might, uh, because it's also making a bunch of assumptions. How do you decide when to take on new projects or new books? If, if that's a better question.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I sort of go in, I sort of go in cycles. So I'm actually heading to that cycle right now. So I've spent a lot of time writing this book and trying to make it as good, as, as good a book as I can. In terms of actually spreading the word about it, I try to do that with, you know, give the cliche, not leaving anything on the sidelines and doing everything I possibly can, being everywhere, being strategic about it all, trying new stuff, trying cool stuff, uh, trying to get some momentum behind, behind the book. And then, you know, when that, and when that sort of white hot center dissipates, um, um, and the book, we hope, has some momentum of its own, uh, then I'll go back and figure out the next project, whatever that project might be. And the way I do that is, I know this will shock you, Tim, in a slow, laborious way.

• 1:11:23Speaker 02

  Uh, and, um, so what I do is, is I, um, I have, uh, I'm a sort of a, I use, I'll give you my mechanisms here. So I use, believe it or not, I use a lot of paper folders and I have a labeler. Um, I use paper folders and a labeler to label my folders. Uh, cause I, I, I, I was like a getting things done guy before getting things done was cool. Um, the, uh, I met, I met David Allen like in nineteen ninety-seven. Um, and, you know, I bought a labeler like shortly after that.

• 1:11:58Tim Ferriss?

  I was gonna ask if he's, if he's sending you your customary, you know, five percent royalties for your, uh, the, the brain power. You're like the guy who invented rollerblades or the gal, you know, forty years before they became cool.

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. No, no, I, I, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a GTD devotee. I'm not, I'm not hardcore. I'm not like, you know, orthodox, but I'm not, I'm not reform, I'm not reform either. I'm sort of like in the middle. And so, um, so, uh, so anyway, I have these paper files with labels. And so when I read stuff or make notes to myself, I throw stuff in those, those files. I use Evernote and I also use Dropbox. Um, and I just throw ideas in there and then what I do is every six months or so, I go through those ideas, uh, of like, hey, this would be a cool television show to do. Hey, this would be a cool article to write. Hey, this would be a cool book to write. And as I look at those ideas, maybe revisiting them every six months or so, uh, I realize that Most of them are just god awful ideas.

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  Um, one of my beliefs about the human brain is that, or creativity is that in order to have good ideas, you have to have a lot of ideas. Um, and so I have a lot of bad ideas, uh, which I think is the only way for me to surface any decent ideas. So I'll revisit those ideas and then when it comes, um, and I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll call. And what often happens when I call is that a few ideas end up just staying there over and over again, every six month cycle. And then when it's, again, to this point now, I, I will go back to all of those files and look more carefully and say, hey, I sort of have in my mind, I right now, three possible projects.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  And, and so I'll, and I'll more heavily vet those projects, read a lot more, talk to people, bounce them, bounce ideas off of people. And, um, and I like bouncing ideas up of people, about which more in a moment. And, um, and then when it comes time to write a book, uh, I will actually write a book proposal. Um, even if I have the deal already done, so for, like, I have a two book deal, like, I, I have to, I have to write another book. Um, but I'll still write a proposal for this next book, maybe forty page proposal. Uh, which allows me to figure out, is there a, there, there, is this something I really want to work on? Um, you know, uh, I think, I think a lot of things sound really good when you're just shooting the breeze. Um, they, they sound less good if you have to say, can I, can I explain this?

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  Can I explain this idea, who's gonna buy it, why it's cool, why it's original, why no one else is doing it? Uh, can I explain that in a coherent written document? That's a tougher order. And so not everything lends itself to that. And I will bounce ideas out of people. So I had, so actually it's funny, you mentioned Kevin at the beginning of the show. Um, I had this one idea where I went out and I, I went to, I, I made the pilgrimage to, uh, what is it, what do you call this town? Pacifica. Pacifica. Um, yeah, and, um, made the pilgrimage to Kevin's house and said, I got an idea I want to run past you. Uh, for a book. And Kevin was one of the people who said, that's not a very good idea.

• 1:14:56Speaker 02

  And unfortunately, he was not the only one who said that. And

• 1:15:03Tim Ferriss?

  Or fortunately, depending on how you look at it.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  I mean, if he's Yeah, no, no, actually fortunately, you're right. Fortunately, he was he was not the only one who said that. So I abandoned, I actually ended up abandoning that idea in part because he was another brick in the wall of people saying, no, no, no.

• 1:15:18Tim Ferriss?

  Let's pause there for a quick second. Do you mind sharing, I don't think Kevin would care at all, on what he or other people

• 1:15:27Tim Ferriss?

  made his arguments against you pursuing this idea? And you can tell us what the idea was, or you can

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be skittish about the idea. But let's just say it had to do with morality. All right, I wanted to write a book dealing with morality.

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  And Kevin, who is a person of religious faith, who, you know, is extraordinarily well read, and among people who are very well read and very intelligent, there are, I think there are a dearth of people who have strong religious faith. It's just an observation, it's not like a judgment one way or the other.

• 1:16:03Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  And so I thought he would be an especially good person to run this idea past. And and I guess he and others,

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  the theory of, the theory of the case that I had, he and others had two criticisms of it. And they are not insignificant criticisms, Tim. The first criticism was, you're wrong.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  All right?

• 1:16:28Tim Ferriss?

  To begin with.

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  Yes, you're wrong, all right? And the second part, the second criticism was, you're right, but it's not interesting. So those are two pretty, like, that's, those are, like, those are significant critiques.

• 1:16:44Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:16:46Speaker 02

  So, um, so, so that's, so, so that's how I, so, so that's, that's, that's generally, that's generally how I do things. When I came up with this idea for when, uh, it was an idea that was kicking around there. And one of the, one of the ways that I knew it was a good idea, uh, were, were, were two things. Number one is that, um, uh, when I was writing the proposal, when I, first of all, I was looking at the research and I found myself wanting to do more research, which is always a good sign. Like, holy crap, is that true? Well, what about Baba de ba? And I go look at Baba de ba. Oh, my God, Baba de ba, you know? And so I found myself wanting to do more research. Uh, that was one thing. And then when I started writing the proposal for that, it, it was like, for me, it doesn't happen very often, but there were portions of it that were just like butter.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  I could just explain it so clearly, like, here's what I'm gonna try to find out and here's why it matters. And it was like, it was like that, you know, that, um, that scene in, in Jerry Maguire, where he sort of writes all night and, you know?

• 1:17:46Tim Ferriss?

  I'm taking the goldfish, minus the goldfish.

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  I was, and I was doing handstands against the wall and everything like that. So, uh, there, and, and that's some, that's sometimes, that's sometimes a good, that's sometimes a good sign.

• 1:17:58Tim Ferriss?

  I think it's a, yeah, that, that lack of or overabundance of energy, I think, is undervalued. Uh, how much the project actually gives you more fuel in the tank.

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  And I think that's a big, I, you know, here's the thing. I think a lot of writers, I think a lot of people who come out as journalists, and, and before I started writing books, you know, post-speech writing, sort of, sort of as a, you know, and even the first time I was writing books, I did a lot of magazine articles, a lot of magazine writing, long-form magazine writing, which I, which I, which I like. And I found a lot of journalists who would write an article, the article would do well, and they would get a book offer, and they would do the, they would, they would not pop, they would not properly vet it, um, about whether they want it, because there are a lot of ideas that you, you know, maybe want to go out on a few dates with, but they're very few ideas that you want to go steady with, let alone marry and have kids. And I think that books are basically you're marrying and having kids.

• 1:18:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  And that's a very, very, very high bar.

• 1:18:56Tim Ferriss?

  There are a lot, there are a lot of great articles that should stay articles and make

• 1:19:01Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:19:02Tim Ferriss?

  very mediocre books. And, uh, you know, I mean, potentially, I suppose not vice versa, it's very rare that you go in the opposite direction, but...

• 1:19:09Speaker 02

  Oh, that's, it's so, I mean, it's so off. I read, I read, I want to say the name of it. I read one of those, I mean, it sent it to me in a blur, but I read one of those this weekend where somebody had an article that did really well. They got a book deal. They turned it into a book and it's like, okay, you know what? This art, this thing has so much more impact as an article rather than as a book.

• 1:19:32Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to dig in a little bit on this tickler file that you review every six months. Because one of the most frequent questions I am asked is how do you pick projects? How do you vet projects? And you mentioned revisiting every six months with a few mundane questions. Within Evernote, do you have a specific notebook that is tickler file or something like that? How do you keep track of all of these ideas?

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  I, I, I can actually look that up right now. I could, what I do is I categorize them. So, so I have, so what I have is I have a giant file called MISC, all right? Just like shards, okay? But then I'll go through that and say, wait a second, let me think of an example here. Wait a, wait a second. I, wow, I'm collecting a lot of articles about, here's a book I'm not gonna, like, it could be interesting. At one point, it's like, God, somebody should write a book about courage. All right? Like, what about courage? What do we know about courage? All right? I'm not gonna do that. If one of your listeners wants to go out and do it, God bless you. I think it could be really interesting.

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  So I could go into the MISC file and say, ooh, the MISC notebook, I guess that it's called, is, what do we know about courage? And I'll go in the MISC notebook and I say, wow, I got a lot of articles about courage. What, that's gonna, they're gonna, that's gonna birth a separate notebook on courage. And then I organize it that way. So I'll have, I'll have notebooks of MISC and I'll have notebooks of, of particular ideas that, that I have, that end up being fuller because it's like, oh, this, this one has stuck around for a little bit longer than others.

• 1:21:17Tim Ferriss?

  And you mentioned during these reviews, you might say, oh, here's a cool idea for this, a cool idea for that. Oh, this could be really interesting. That could be really interesting. I would imagine. Even after the the second glance and noticing that some of these ideas are coyote ugly and you're like, holy shit, how did I think that was a good idea? Even after removing the the flies in the soup, you still you still have, yeah, you still you still have way, you could drown under the weight of these kind of cool ideas. You have many things that could be interesting. How do you then, what are the parameters or thought processes, questions, anything

• 1:22:00Tim Ferriss?

  that help you to get down to the three finalists?

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  Um, okay, so so what do we, so it would be, um, uh, what, uh, it's it's really like, what would I want to spend a couple of years on? And so if I really sort of, like, like, maybe courage would be an example of that. It's like, I'm sort of interested in that. But it'd be like, I would, I would rather read a good book about courage than write a book about courage. Like, I'm serious, like, that, like, you know what I mean? And it's like, and so when you, when you go face to face with that and you start saying, do I really want to do this? Then I think your, your soul at some level tells you, hey, this is, you're into this, you're not, you're not so, you're not so into that.

• 1:22:47Speaker 02

  Um, and so that, I think that's the, I think that's the initial cut. Um, but it's also the one reason why I, so to get to the three finalists is actually really kind of intuitive in a, in a, in a way. And and there's no magic number to three, it could be four, you know? Um, and, um, and and so, but this is one reason why I will write, uh, uh, book proposals. Um, because it just forces me to, it forces me to reckon with the idea and actually, like, make it real. And and there's this principle that I learned in college, at a writing course in college. Um, and I actually ended up giving a commencement speech around this idea.

• 1:23:32Speaker 02

  I'll spare you that for now, but the idea was, the idea was following. It was a revelation to me when I was, whatever, 21 years old. So I had this, so it was this writing, it was this essay writing course, sort of higher level essay writing course. And I had a draft of an essay or something like that. I went into the professor, his name is Charlie Yornoff. He's still, I went to Northwestern, he still teaches at Northwestern. And um, so Charlie um, gave me some feedback and I said, I was like all insistent, okay, I can fix this. I can move this part over here, maybe I do another piece over here, maybe I do another piece over here. And he's like, no, no, no, no, Dan, that's not your problem here. The problem is that you don't know what you think. That's, that's why this essay sucks, this draft of the essay. You don't know, you don't know what you think. He didn't say sucks, but he, that's why this essay, that's why this essay, that's why this essay stinks.

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  And then he said something to me and I, and I don't wanna, I don't want it to sound glorified or sound like something that is confected where a swell of music will come up behind me and this. But what he said, he said, but it's words I've never forgotten, truly. He said, sometimes you have to write to figure it out. Sometimes you have to write to figure it out. And that was a revelation to me because at the time I was in this mode, very kind of traditional schooling mode where, sort of like we were talking about before, you do your research, then you write. You make your outline, then you write. And what he was saying to me is that, you know, the real writers are, it's more dynamic than that. Uh, sometimes you have to write to figure it out. And that was transformative for me.

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  And so um, that sort of gave me permission to say, oh, I don't know, like, I can change my mind in midway writing something. I can start writing without knowing fully exactly what it is I'm gonna say. And to me, that's the um, that's, that's why I write book proposals, is that I write to figure it out. And, and a lot of times what I figure out is, this is not a book. Or, this is not a book I wanna write. So I had this one moment not meant a few years ago where, not a while ago now, actually, ten years ago even more, where uh, my, my, I, I sent, it was like winter, like late, second half of December. And I asked, I said to my wife and, and I said, hey, why don't you just take our guys, our kids, three kids, just go see your parents, just go for a week, right?

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  Uh, or two weeks or something like that, you know, go and like, I just, I gotta get a book proposal done. I just, I'm distracted. It's like, if you guys, when you guys, when my family leaves, it's like, I live like an animal, you know? Um, I mean, I It's like a raccoon that got into the house. No, truly. I mean, it is raccoon-like in that I I literally eat out of containers, you know. So like my my family leaves, I eat out of containers, don't shave, and basically work around the clock except for a few ESPN breaks. That's basically what I do when my family is gone. And so I will um so I so I started so I said, I'm gonna write a proposal for this next book. And after about seven or eight days, I called Jessica at her parents' house. I say, hey, I got some good news and some bad news. Uh, the good news is that

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  you can come home now. The bad news is that I realized this is not a book. Um, but it was only writing to figure out that that allowed me to do that. So I actually wrote uh, uh, basically one and a half proposals before writing the when proposal, uh, because I had a couple of ideas and I said, okay, this is sort of interesting, but let me write to figure it out. And what I realized in in, you know, two very important things. One, it's not a book. Maybe it's an article, uh, or two, it's not a book that I want to write.

• 1:26:56Tim Ferriss?

  There's there are a few things, raccoon behavior aside, uh, that I want to follow up on. Uh, the first is just to to highlight something for people listening, and that is how liberating it is to think about writing as something you do, not when you have your ideas ready, but something you do to figure out your ideas.

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:27:22Tim Ferriss?

  Because it

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  When did you when did you learn that?

• 1:27:25Tim Ferriss?

  I it's been, I would say, reiterated, it's something that is easy to forget, particularly if you have, or something that you will willfully forget if you have a perfectionist streak and a penchant for procrastination. So if you want to wait until all your ducks are in a row, so you can go to the debutante ball, pristine, and blow everybody's socks off, uh, it's easy to forget this, but the the sounds like, uh, you know, the cat came back the very next day. I don't know if you know the song, but Kevin Kelly, just to incant his name again.

• 1:27:58Speaker 02

  Yes, indeed.

• 1:28:00Tim Ferriss?

  He emphasized this to me, he's such a prolific writer and emphasized this to me a number of years ago. And I want to say it goes back probably to McPhee, who is also, much like you, obsessed with structure. And there's a book, I think it's called Draft Number Four. Yeah, it just came out. It has some really fascinating explorations of this for those people who really want to get into the weeds. He'll also do it graphically. He'll draw out diagrams of what the structure looks like, which appeals to me. But trying to stay on track here, I would say Kevin is the most, well, you are the most recent person, but a number of years ago Kevin emphasized that to me and probably

• 1:28:45Tim Ferriss?

  before that McPhee. So it's really liberating, number one, to embrace that, even if you're not fully convinced it's the case. And I also want to give a little bit of context for people who may not be familiar with book proposals. So book proposals in the world of nonfiction books, I suppose I should take a further step back and say, in the world of nonfiction, so if you're, novels and fiction are totally different. In many cases, you need to finish that puppy before anyone will tell you if your baby is ugly or not, which is, has to be terrifying. Yeah. It must be. In nonfiction, you create a book proposal before you write your book.

• 1:29:27Tim Ferriss?

  And the book proposal, and feel free to interject at any point, but the book proposal is in effect, a business plan and an overview slash executive summary for your book. And there's, you find with the best book proposals and the best startup pitches, which take the form of a deck, say a PowerPoint or something like that, very often, they're exceptionally

• 1:29:53Tim Ferriss?

  Similar, the ingredients that make a good startup pitch and the ingredients to make a good book proposal are very similar. But that is, and I'd love to actually know what the structure of your book proposals look like. I mean, I know what ingredients I would potentially include in a book proposal. What does the table of contents look like for one of your book proposals?

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd have to go back and look. I think they vary a little bit, but they probably have some core design elements. One of them is, and it's a question that I want to ask myself, which is, what is this book? What's it about? Okay, pretty simple, pretty simple question. Why, I think the more important question is, why does it, why does it fill a need that hasn't been filled yet? Which is basically very similar. I, I, I use the same business plan analogy that you do on book proposals. But it's sort of like a business, like why, why is it providing, why is it filling a need that hasn't otherwise been met?

• 1:30:58Speaker 02

  Like, like, basically if you draw a map of the marketplace, what part of the marketplace of ideas is, does this, does this cover that hasn't been covered? All right? Is it this, you know, so that, so it's, it's, you know, and I don't even mean it in, I sometimes will use the high concept, I sometimes will use the high concept pitch of it's X meets Y, which I actually think is actually a very useful heuristic in figuring out ideas. So for instance, I pitched A Whole New Mind as future shock meets seven habits to highly effective people. Which I thought was a pretty good pitch. And so.

• 1:31:39Tim Ferriss?

  Very common in pitching films also, just to highlight. It's really useful.

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  It's a heuristic. And basically, to me, it says, if you think about a map of the territory, if you think about a map of ideas out there, why is no one over here on this part of the map? All right? Like, or show me, show me where, show me, show me where on the map your idea is. All right? And let's make sure that someone hasn't gotten there first. And then tell me why someone hasn't gotten there first. What are they missing? And so in the case of when, for instance, I say, well, the reason they're missing is everybody thinks science, timing is an art. But it's actually a science. Oh, okay, got it. That's why no one is there. Um, and um, so I'll talk about what's it about? Um, where does it fit into the marketplace of ideas? Uh, why is it original? And this is also really important. Who is it for?

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  All right, and and the big mistake that that everybody writing a book, and if there's one takeaway from this conversation for prospective writers out there. It's this. The mistake that writers make, and I think business people make too in their in their pitches is when they say who's it for? Who's the audience? Who's the customer? They always want to say everybody. And it's not. It's never everybody. All right, and and what I try to do is I have included a section of who is who is not going to buy that book? Like, I will have a You have a section on who isn't the customer? Right. Who is not? Who is not going to buy this book? Because I think that that's the only way to think carefully about because books are not a mass medium. And even media products in general are no longer mass medium. Mass media.

• 1:33:13Speaker 02

  They're no longer mass. And it's like, who is, and so I'll have bullets and they're saying who is not going to buy this book? Um, and um, um, and that and and and that helps, um, and that helps to find the audience too. And also I try to, you know, and that that's all that, you know, that's really all that it is. Uh, but if you know, uh, what the book is about, uh, where it fits into the marketplace of ideas, uh, why it's different from anything else that that came before it and why and who's and who it's for. I think those components are really essential. But that fourth component is, and I say this to writers too. Like I, writers too, tell me who the book is not for. Tell me who's not going to buy this book. And people have a hard time saying, oh, everybody will buy this book.

• 1:33:56Speaker 02

  Somebody pitched to me an idea, somebody came to me once with an idea of a book about, um, uh, uh, somebody was giving me, asking advice on it. It was a book about, um, I I hope I don't, I don't, I think the book might have gotten published. I I don't want to reveal the name. Uh, it was a book about the history of yoga in America. All right, the history or maybe the history of yoga. Yeah, I think it was the history of yoga. And it's like, oh, okay, that's that's cool. So I think a lot of people, um, who do yoga might be interested in that. And she said, Well, I think people who don't do yoga are gonna be interested in this. And I said, no, they're not. Like, people who don't do yoga don't care about the history of yoga. All right. There are a lot of, there are a shitload of people in America who do yoga. Like, that's a pretty good audience right there, but don't tell me every, you know what I mean?

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  And so, um, you know, um, you know, so, so, so, so for me, it's like, you know, for me, it's like, like my books, like, okay, I know that the, um, the, um, like this book about the sci, this book about the science of timing. I know that, um, certain people in my neighborhood in northwest Washington DC who read, or of a certain age and read only, um, uh, literary fiction and 700-page biographies of founding fathers, they're not gonna read this book. They're not gonna read, they might be my neighbors, they're not gonna read one of my books. Um, and so I, I, I think that's really, really important about who is the book not for.

• 1:35:25Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's also an indicator of focus and logical slash rational thinking in a sense, right? Because if you're, for instance, just to digress for a minute, but if you're in the world of investing, where I spent a long time with early-stage startups, 17 years or so, if, if they say everyone is my customer, there is a very real risk that if you give them X number of dollars, you give them a million dollars, that they could be developing Dropbox for, say, early tech adopters in the first wave. And they, they need to get from zero to 10,000 users. And if there is a, if a 80% off deal for

• 1:36:05Tim Ferriss?

  uh, something like shopping mall circulars or something, that they would jump on that and piss away all, piss away all their money. And, uh, yeah, it certainly, I think books, a lot of books fail, and this is true of presentations too, from too much miscellaneous information, not too little.

• 1:36:24Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, if, if that makes any sense.

• 1:36:25Speaker 02

  Absolutely. It's, it's a matter of, it's, it's, it's really just a matter of, it's really just a matter of focus. And I, going back to the speech thing, I mean, one of the, one of the pieces of advice, the extent that anybody ever asked me for advice on, on giving, on giving speeches and whatnot is, um, you know, and, and it sounds a little like a, it, it sounds like a Zen Cohen-ish sort of phrase, but basically my point is, uh, say something important rather than say important things. Um, and like I find a lot of times people say something important rather than say important things. And cause I think a lot of times people like to sort of stuff within the skin, all the things they've found out, all the things that they know, and they end up not saying anything important.

• 1:37:06Speaker 02

  Um, and so, you know, um, I, I, I, I, yeah, so, um, uh, so that's, that's the reason for doing that. So anyway, you get the idea.

• 1:37:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, it, it is. And there are so many, uh, comparable examples. Uh, if, if for instance, you look for this, this vetting of ideas by putting together a short synopsis of some type.

• 1:37:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:35Tim Ferriss?

  And, and there's one example, for instance, and I, I believe this is true. Uh, I've, I've certainly heard it and read about it a few times and I know a fair number of people who work at Amazon, but they, they'd have to confirm. But I think Ian McAllister, who used to at least be a, a general manager at Amazon, talked about this, is working backwards. And for, for new, for new initiatives, the product manager who would be in charge of developing, say, a new product, has to write an internal press release, which announces the finished product, right? So that, and, and that has to focus on effectively exactly what, what, uh, what you said. And I'm quoting here from a, a, a medium piece, but quote, centered around the customer problem, how current solutions, internal or external fail, and how the new product will blow away existing solutions.

• 1:38:17Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. If you can't write that press release, like how on earth are you going to navigate the decision tree of getting to? A product that finds its feet. I mean, it could be very different, difficult, not to say you don't iterate, but it's a good, it's a good filter through which you can at least catch the detritus that shouldn't make it to step two.

• 1:38:44Speaker 02

  Oh, man, I have to say, I am your halla lea chorus on the press release technique. I've, I've literally done that, uh, working with, uh, working, uh, I think it's helpful for like nonprofit groups that I'm involved in. So nonprofit group wants to do a big project, um, but they're all over the place. They don't know exactly what they want to do. And I literally did this. I said, I'll tell you what, here's what I think the project is. Let me write a press release from two years from now, um, and they'll send it around. And it ended up being, uh, I got the idea from Amazon, too.

• 1:39:12Tim Ferriss?

  I get it.

• 1:39:13Speaker 02

  It ended up being this thing that was really, really focused. So the, the blah-ba-dah-blah, uh, group, uh, announced today that it was doing blah-ba-dah, blah-ba-dah, blah-ba-dah-blah. And it's like, you know, and then it had quotes and things in it and it ended up being this, this focal point on, for, for the whole organization on what are we actually trying to accomplish here? So I'm a, I'm a, I, I second that emotion there, big time.

• 1:39:36Tim Ferriss?

  And, and just to return to another thing that you said, which I'll paraphrase here as if everyone's your customer, no one's your customer.

• 1:39:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:44Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, another filter that, or question that I use, or have used, I'm not really in the startup game anymore, but have used a lot with startups because they'll ask me to review, say, a landing page and look at copy and messaging and so on. And before I will review it, because I'll, if, if with no further information, I have to review it based on my pair of eyes and my perspective and my particular problems, that I can try to empathize, uh, and put myself in other people's shoes, but I have to know whose shoes to put myself in. And so I'll ask them, if you could only have a thousand people sign up for this,

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:40:18Tim Ferriss?

  who would they be and why? Like, describe for me, and this isn't a politically correct exercise, like what is like gender, uh, race, if that matters, maybe it doesn't, like where do they live? What magazines or websites do they read? Uh, what is their household income? Like really get granular about what these people have in common, right? Like, do you want all the readers of People Magazine?

• 1:40:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:40Tim Ferriss?

  Do you want the

• 1:40:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:40:42Tim Ferriss?

  two thousand people who attend TED? Do you want something in between? Like really describe that for me.

• 1:40:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:40:47Tim Ferriss?

  And only once that's been done. Can I actually give feedback on modifying any of the features or copy or messaging on a particular page? So that's, I mean, it's, it's, these, these principles really transfer to a lot of different areas. Well, I, I, let me ask a, just a handful of additional questions and then maybe we can do a round two sometime, but the, we've been talking a lot about the decisions you've made, the routines that you have, and although you're very self-effacing, I mean, someone could look at your bio and be very intimidated and assume that you step up to the plate and hit home runs more often than not.

• 1:41:29Tim Ferriss?

  Could you tell us about, maybe specific, if you're open to it, difficult period that you've gone through, or a down period, challenging period, or failure, it could be any of those things, and what you did to get back on your feet, or the decisions you made that helped you then kind of get, get back on firm ground, if, if anything comes to mind?

• 1:41:52Speaker 02

  Sure, sure, sure. There are all kinds of things. So, I mean, I hate to keep going back to the, I hate to keep going back to the law school days, but, but I, I did leave law school after my first year, and I hated it so much that I went to India instead. And I traveled around, I traveled around India, which was an incredible life-changing experience because I was a young guy, you know, whatever old I was, like 25, 26 years old, and, you know, at the time, it was, you know, it was a while ago, so at, at the time, India was even cheaper, well, much, much cheaper than it was. So if you're like, a 25-year-old dude traveling on your own with a tiny little bit of money

• 1:42:36Speaker 02

  in your pocket, you can make it go very, very, very, very far. And so, so at the time, I guess I felt like, because I didn't do very well in my initial foray into law school, I didn't really like it, I was pretty miserable, I felt I had made a terrible decision, and I, at some level, just tried to escape. And and the way I got back into it was um um essentially saying, okay, if I'm gonna do this, then um I'm gonna try to figure out what are the one or two things that I can find valuable in this experience and just try to power my way through. And I guess that's all I guess that's all that I I guess that's all that I I guess that's all that I did to to overcome that. But I felt pretty bad about how I didn't do very well.

• 1:43:20Speaker 02

  I didn't I didn't really like it. I felt I had made it like I felt I had made like a ruinous decision about about how my life was gonna go. And when I sort of kind of woke up and matured a little bit, I said, okay, some people make like bad things actually happen to people. And I think going to India was actually helpful in that regard, too, because like, okay, I'm not living in a tar paper shack with filthy water, all right? I'm just I'm not I'm not self-actualizing fast enough for for a twenty five year old middle-class person. That's not a real problem. Um, and so I think that sort of putting the problems in perspective and just trying to find some um some goodness in what you're doing next.

• 1:44:02Speaker 02

  And also, I just like really deriving specific lessons from these kinds of failures. And and I think that's another part that's really important to me is that rather than rather than simply allow like sort of this hazy notion of what you learn, I again, I'm a big believer in writing things in in writing things down. I'll give you I'll give you a better I'll give you a better example of that. Um, and this is I don't want to call this like a a a a major failure because it's not that that's not that significant. But so I did a TV show for National Geographic and I worked with a a TV series and I worked with some really great people and we put on a really fricking great show and it didn't get picked up for a second season. And um and so it was disappointing, but it's not like a massive failure.

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  It's not like anything real like in in life. But at that time, what I did is I said, you know, I basically created a file and said, okay, here's what I learned from this. Here are the things that I learned from this experience. Like, one, I like working with really talented people. They people who help me perform better. Two, um, I don't like to be involved. And projects that I don't have full creative control over. Three, um, um, working with people in traditional television can be very perilous because they're subject to all kinds of pressures that are out of their control. And so you have this experience where things didn't go the way you wanted to, but if you actually literally write down the lessons, I think you can get something positive out of it.

• 1:45:29Tim Ferriss?

  And was the writing down of these lessons more of a cathartic exercise? Or these, would you go back and revisit that?

• 1:45:39Speaker 02

  You know what? I, I, I, like, like for me, a lot of times what I will do is for me, it's sometimes certain writing things down is simply the act of writing it down is enough to solidify it. Um, so I'll do the kind of thing where before a talk or something like that, I will, um, like write an outline, like, like basically I'll, I'll know what I want to do and then I'll take notes and write an outline of the speech and the points I want to hit. And then I will literally will not look at it. Like I sometimes won't even bring it up with me. I'll forget to bring it up with me because the act of, the act of actually memorializing it is really what gives it its, its, its oomph.

• 1:46:16Tim Ferriss?

  This is a...

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  But, but what I don't want, what I'm trying to say in a, in a, in a somewhat ham-handed way is that like when you, you want to, um, you, you don't want those kinds of lessons to be hazy too much. Uh, you want to actually what like, what specific thing did I actually derive from this? Um, and I think that's really useful. There's also a great technique that Tina Selig has used, Tina Selig who's at Stanford has, has used where she talks about, she, she writes a failure resume. So she has a resume of all of her failures and then with each one, what she learned from it.

• 1:46:55Tim Ferriss?

  When would she use something like that?

• 1:46:57Speaker 02

  Um, I, I mean, she keeps it for herself, but she would use it...

• 1:47:01Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I see. It's an ongoing working document, just like a regular resume.

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh, ongoing working document that basically, so you can look at it and say, okay, what are, you know, boy, I made a lot of mistakes, but here's what I learned from it and don't make the same mistake a second time. I don't mind making mistakes. What I don't like is making the same mistake twice.

• 1:47:20Tim Ferriss?

  With the two questions on India, why India? And then second, how did you decide to find the compelling,

• 1:47:34Tim Ferriss?

  I suppose, benefits of continuing with law school versus changing course?

• 1:47:43Speaker 02

  Let's see.

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  You know what? I think, okay, so on the second one, I think I was too risk averse to change course fully.

• 1:47:54Speaker 02

  I think that would, I think that would have been too much, excuse me, too much of like a narcissistic injury just to like leave altogether. I probably would have, I probably would have felt like an abject failure. So I don't even think that was in the cards. So on the why India, a couple of reasons. I'd always been fascinated by it. I knew that I could get around, that I, that I, the previous summer I had been to Southern Africa and, you know, and it was the first, I had never been out of the country

• 1:48:26Speaker 02

  until I was 23 years old, never been. And so the first time I left the country, I went to Southern Africa on a, I got, I raised some money to do this, to do a project there. And that was a revelation, like, holy crap, this world is a lot bigger than I thought. And so I wanted to go to someplace that wasn't, you know, Europe or someplace that was a little bit different from, a little bit more different from the United States. And so India was a place that I'd always been fascinated by, it spoke English and it was cheap.

• 1:48:54Tim Ferriss?

  That's, that's a compelling combination for someone leaving law school for a period of time.

• 1:48:58Speaker 02

  Well, when you're, when, yeah, when you're 25 years old or however old I was and, and you have like a little money in your pocket, but you can go, you could go so far on so little money. It was unbelievable to me, you know, especially if you're willing to like sleep over, like take overnight trains rather than pay for a place to stay

• 1:49:19Speaker 02

  or, you know, live in these, you know, go to sleep in these places where there's just a row of beds on a, on a balcony and then mosquito nets over each one.

• 1:49:29Tim Ferriss?

  So the, I mean, travel is one of those gifts that keeps on giving, in a sense. I would put books in that same category.

• 1:49:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I agree.

• 1:49:38Tim Ferriss?

  You've written a lot of books, you've read even more books. Besides your own, and I'll just segue into a couple of short questions. What, what books, are there any books that you've gifted often to other people?

• 1:49:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Um, uh, so, uh, there probably books that you've, uh, I, I mean, it might have been books that you've covered in this, in your show here. So one of them is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont.

• 1:50:06Tim Ferriss?

  So great.

• 1:50:08Speaker 02

  One of the greatest things ever. Um, I come back to that advice so many different times. It's a saying even in the Pink Household, uh, where like, we'll just say, like, like one member of my family will say to the other who's struggling, okay, bird by bird, bird by bird. Um, and so, um, I, I am a huge, and I stumbled into this book. I remember I got, I remember where I got this next book. I got it in the airport in San Francisco, uh, in, in the bookstore in the San Francisco, SFO. Um, and for some reason, uh, I picked it up because it had this really weird cover. But one of the first editions of The War of Art, um, by Steven Pressfield, had this kind of silvery cover to it.

• 1:50:52Speaker 02

  And I bought that book in the, I think it was a Compass Bookstore in SFO, just because it's, oh, that's kind of cool, it's silver cover and it's really short. And I, I got it and it's like, oh my God, I can't believe how good this book is. Um, and so I even have a little sign on my desk here that says, Beat the Resistance. So I've given that book out a lot, too. Uh, so Pressfield, Anne Lamont, and then, um, um, man, I have to say Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, uh, is up there, too. It's less, I, I give it to be, I, I've given that out less, but, uh, that's a, that's a hugely important book for me.

• 1:51:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's that's one of those books I really need to reread. And I think you've you've actually spoken about, let me get this right. I was about to say Animal House, but that is not right. Animal Farm.

• 1:51:41Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, Animal Farm is Animal Farm is one of the greatest books ever.

• 1:51:45Tim Ferriss?

  And and how you it's a completely different experience as a book at different points in your life.

• 1:51:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely right.

• 1:51:53Tim Ferriss?

  And the last time I read Man's Search for Meaning was probably, I would say, seven to 10 years ago. And a lot has changed in my life in that period of time. I think that that is worthy of a reread. And have you it sounds like you've reread each of these books, also Bird by Bird, The War of Art, Man's Search for Meaning yourself. You've read these more than once.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I have. I've read it more than once, yeah.

• 1:52:17Tim Ferriss?

  And.

• 1:52:18Speaker 02

  But I'm not I'm not like a chronic rereader. I'm like, there are some people who are regularly re there are relatively few books that I have that I have reread.

• 1:52:28Speaker 02

  But but those those I those I absolutely have. And once, you know, I had another experience in college. I the only thing I remember in college are shards of things that professors said, like basically one liners. But I had a professor once in college who, in an American Studies course, he assigned us to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. So you're at a you're in college and your professor assigned you to read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. People are like, oh, you know, because like, everybody read that book in high school. And and he said something, he said the following words, he says, I know you've read that book, but you haven't read that book, meaning the person you are today. And and that ends up being but that ends up being true. So when I've read, I read Animal Farm at different points in my life.

• 1:53:13Speaker 02

  And had a different view on it. I've read Great Gatsby at different points in my life. I have seen the play Death of a Salesman.

• 1:53:24Speaker 02

  Before, I don't know, probably seven times. And each one feels a little bit different to me. I had a completely different view of Death of a Salesman once I became a father versus before I became a father.

• 1:53:34Tim Ferriss?

  I can imagine.

• 1:53:36Speaker 02

  I had another view of Death of a Salesman uh, uh, before I knew about, uh, uh, you know, knew, you know, had read about psychopharmacology and mental illness and after I did. Um, and so, you know, I, I, I, I think that that experience, I think those kinds of experiences are really fascinating. Animal Farm was like, oh, this is really cool. It's about the Soviet Union and how power corrupts. And blah, blah, blah, blah. And, and I, and now I read the book. It's like, okay, this book is basically about organizational dysfunction. This book, who cares whether it's supposed to be about the Soviet Union. This book is about the Acme Widget Corporation and how screwed up human organizations are. Like this, I, I, I think that Animal Farm should be in every organizational behavior class in an MBA program.

• 1:54:21Tim Ferriss?

  That's another one I need to reread. Not a long book either. I mean, I read that in

• 1:54:24Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 1:54:25Tim Ferriss?

  sixth grade or something. I mean, completely

• 1:54:27Speaker 02

  You'll, you'll, you'll see it completely, you'll see it completely, you'll see it completely differently. That's a, that's a great book. I've read 1984 multiple times too.

• 1:54:36Tim Ferriss?

  Also a very timely book, uh, these days.

• 1:54:42Speaker 02

  Oh, well, I have, on that front, I, I read, uh, uh, The Handmaid's Tale for the first time. I was sort of 30 years late to it that I read and I loved that book. Um, I have a whole, I'm not joking around. And if, if you want validation, I'll send you a photograph of it. I, I basically have a, a stack of books right here that is, that is basically dystopia books. That includes Philip Roth, The Plot Against America, um, an Octavia Butler book, um, Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here, um, another sci-fi book called Elliot, by Elliot Pepper called Cumulus, another one called Infomocracy by Maka Alder. I have a whole, I'm basically, I have a whole pile of dystopian works.

• 1:55:22Tim Ferriss?

  Why is that? Why do you, why do you read so much dystopian?

• 1:55:26Speaker 02

  I want to understand the, the current moment more, more clearly.

• 1:55:31Tim Ferriss?

  So, well, this might be, this might be an appropriate next question. It doesn't have to be related to what you just said, but if you could put a short message on a billboard, metaphorically speaking, to get a word, a quote, a question out to millions or billions of people, what might you put on that billboard?

• 1:55:51Speaker 02

  Well, it's interesting, because I think it is related to what we were just talking about, or maybe the fact that you asked it in this context made me related. But one of the, one of the things that I would, I would write would be, assume positive intent. That would fit very nicely on a billboard. Assume, assume positive intent, because I think, and I, and I've changed my view on this, Tim. I, I, I, I've actually, in some ways, become, I've sort of gone the reverse, like, like, basically, the, the, the general view is that people are idealistic when they're young and cynical when they're older, and I've actually become less cynical as I've gotten older.

• 1:56:32Speaker 02

  And the other thing is, basically, on, on politics, like, you know, like, there's this old line in politics, like, everybody dies a Republican.

• 1:56:42Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:56:43Speaker 02

  You know, because like, a, a, as you get older and you have something to conserve, you become more conservative. I find myself going actually the, the opposite direction as I understand more about the, more about the world. But the point is, a point of all that, and assume positive intent, is that, I think, and it, and it goes to our politics right now, is that a lot of times, I, I don't, you know, I, I just think, like, your defaults, you know this already, our default settings are so important in any realm of our life. And I think a lot of times, if your default setting is that people have, everybody you deal with has negative intent, that's going to lead you down one pathway. There's no question about it. And, and I, and here's the thing, I don't think that's true. I really, my experience as a human being is that some people obviously have negative intent, but most people do not.

• 1:57:28Speaker 02

  Most people actually have positive intent. So... My view is that if you assume positive intent on the part of others and let them disprove that, that's a better way to go than to assume negative intent and say, "I'm going to assume that you have negative intent, Tim Ferriss, until you prove that you actually have positive intent." Um, I think just doing the reverse, doing the reverse is better, is like, assume positive intent. Not that, I don't, I'm not Pollyanna here, I don't think everybody has positive intent. But I think most people do, and if you just make that your default setting, you're going to have better interactions with people, you're going to learn, you're going to learn a lot more.

• 1:58:04Tim Ferriss?

  The default setting, default state, as you put it, in this case, creates a completely different experience of reality.

• 1:58:14Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:58:15Tim Ferriss?

  Whether it's guilty until proven innocent, as you look at everyone and anything around you, or innocent until proven guilty. And I remember, you're talking about these one-liners, these shards, that, that stick in the mind, I remember, I can't, I can't recall who said this to me, but they said, "If you go out one day, you walk around, and you meet an asshole, that person is an asshole. If, on the other hand, you go out, and everyone you meet is an asshole, you're the asshole." And if, if you assume that everyone has negative intent, you yourself become that which you loathe.

• 1:58:54Speaker 02

  Nice point, that's a really good point.

• 1:58:55Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh...

• 1:58:56Speaker 02

  Very good point.

• 1:58:58Tim Ferriss?

  I love that, assume positive intent, well...

• 1:59:00Speaker 02

  It also fits, it also fits on a billboard.

• 1:59:03Tim Ferriss?

  It does.

• 1:59:04Speaker 02

  You know, that's the other, I was actually taking that thing very literally, it's like I'm literally picturing in my head, like, what would be, what could, what could, what could fit on the, what could, what could fit on the billboard?

• 1:59:13Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think that's, I think that's a great place to wrap. Uh, I mentioned a few things at the top of the show, danpink.com, @danielpink on Twitter, Facebook, Daniel H. Pink. Is there anything else that you would like to mention as closing comments, or request and ask of the audience, anything else you would like to say?

• 1:59:37Speaker 02

  No, I mean, we've covered a lot. We've covered a lot of ground and, you know, if people have listened this far, God bless them. I mean, I can't, I, that's, even I'm not that ungrateful to ask for something more after this kind of indulgence.

• 1:59:54Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I, I'm a big fan of your work. I have been for a very long time and for, including Johnny Bunko.

• 2:00:01Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:00:01Tim Ferriss?

  Which I still have to this day. So you may recall ages ago, lifetimes ago, I think it was at South by Southwest, actually, which is timely since I now live in Austin, Texas. You inscribed, you signed a copy of that book for me, which I still have. I've carried it with me.

• 2:00:15Speaker 02

  I, I remember where we were sitting.

• 2:00:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:19Speaker 02

  I do.

• 2:00:19Tim Ferriss?

  So I appreciate it and I still have the book and it's really been nice to reconnect and catch up a bit.

• 2:00:27Speaker 02

  Indeed, yeah. Yeah. It's been fun, you know, obviously it's been fun to watch all the great things that, all the great things that you're doing and just how this is massive audience that you've built and just, you know, I've, I've gotten so much, I have a, my dog-eared, you know, it's too bad we don't have a video, but I could show you my dog-eared copy of Tools of Titans.

• 2:00:47Speaker 02

  Which is a, which is a, which is a great book title, by the way.

• 2:00:51Tim Ferriss?

  It is the only book title that came easily. It is the only one. All the other ones were agonizing,

• 2:00:58Tim Ferriss?

  agonizing, agonizing sessions of brainstorming and picking one of the titles among many that I felt dissatisfied with. Tools of Titans, for whatever reason,

• 2:01:11Tim Ferriss?

  thanks to the universe or whatever powers that may be, or, or luck that may have

• 2:01:17Tim Ferriss?

  happened upon me, but that, that is one that just kind of came and I was like, oh yeah, no, that's, that's the title and that was it.

• 2:01:21Speaker 02

  I didn't, I also didn't realize that you were in Austin. How did you end up in Austin? Or why did you end up in Austin?

• 2:01:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, I, I have felt a gravitational pull to Austin for a very long time. I, in fact, wanted to move here right out of college, but I didn't get the job at Trilogy Software and made it to a final, made it to a final round of interviews, which brought me out to Austin. Really fell in love with the town. The, the baseline of friendliness and warmth here of neighborly feel is higher than just about any other place I've experienced. And then

• 2:01:56Tim Ferriss?

  Instead of getting a job here, I got a job in the Bay Area, which took me to San Jose, Mountain View, and San Francisco for the better part of nearly 20 years, which I loved for that period of time. But much like with books, I think that you visit places and your experience of those places changes over time. And what attracted me to the Bay Area, I think, has morphed into something else. And I have also morphed into someone else. And it felt like a good time for me to experiment with a new location. Also, I found myself

• 2:02:33Tim Ferriss?

  within the very, almost inescapable conversation of tech to be just drinking the Kool-Aid a little too heavily, or believing my own bullshit, maybe. Not necessarily bullshit, but getting caught up in a lot of platitudes that are thrown around so often in Silicon Valley to have become part of the daily vernacular. And that scared me, quite frankly, that I was like, wait a second. If I look back at the last five to six months, how many conversations have I had that don't include the following 12 words, or 12 expressions? I was like, wow, I can actually count them on both hands. Interesting, interesting. And... Interesting. Where did you grow up?

• 2:03:15Tim Ferriss?

  I grew up at the very end of Long Island, and was born a townie in the Hamptons, which is a very odd thing to be. I see. For anyone who's seen The Affair, I have not, but I've heard that The Affair, this TV show, is apparently quite popular. A lot of it takes place in this restaurant called The Lobster Roll, which is in Montauk. And I used to be a busboy at The Lobster Roll. Nice. Yeah, so Long Island is where this whole thing started. Weirdly, I remember from...

• 2:03:52Speaker 02

  Four Hour Work Week. I think that you described yourself as a Hellion. Hellion.

• 2:03:59Tim Ferriss?

  A little Hellion. Good memory.

• 2:04:00Speaker 02

  Which is a great word. It's such a great word. Yeah. But I realized I didn't have any geographic sense of where you grew up.

• 2:04:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think the use of Hellion is actually in the dedication to my parents and my mom.

• 2:04:16Speaker 02

  That's right. I think that's right. You know why? And one reason I remember that is that I listened to part of, I got part of that book on audiobook. And I remember at the beginning, because you read that book, I'm almost certain.

• 2:04:28Tim Ferriss?

  It was Ray Porter who has a voice that is easily

• 2:04:35Tim Ferriss?

  mistaken for my various mannerisms that I've developed now via podcasting. So that was Ray Porter. He did a great job.

• 2:04:44Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. Okay.

• 2:04:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:04:46Speaker 02

  But I'm pretty sure that I, but anyway, it's just a great word.

• 2:04:48Tim Ferriss?

  It is a good word. It is a good word.

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  It's a great word.

• 2:04:51Tim Ferriss?

  And

• 2:04:53Speaker 02

  I'm gonna try to use it in the next 24 hours. When I have it, when I come up with a good, when I hear a good word, I try to, I try to drop it in the next 24 hours, just because it helps reinforce it for me.

• 2:05:03Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I'm gonna try to use surrogation and I'm going to try to eat more hard-boiled eggs in the next 24 hours.

• 2:05:09Speaker 02

  You're golden.

• 2:05:12Speaker 02

  Your life will change markedly if you start employing the principle of surrogation while eating hard-boiled eggs. Everything will, the sun will come shining up and the sun will burst out from behind the clouds and unicorns will scamper across your front lawn.

• 2:05:28Tim Ferriss?

  Well, my dog will love that. And Dan, this has been, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you.

• 2:05:34Speaker 02

  Thanks a lot for having me. I appreciate it. It was a lot of really interesting.

• 2:05:36Tim Ferriss?

  And for everybody listening, as always, you can find links to everything, including Dan's social website, the new book, When, and much more in the show notes, which you can find at timetoplog/podcast. And until next time, thanks for listening.

• 2:05:56Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:06:38Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by WeWork. I love WeWork. I haven't had an office in many, many, many, many, many years, since 2000 or so, when I had my last real job, I suppose, with quotation marks. But when I moved from San Francisco to Austin not long ago, I decided, you know what? I'm tired of working at home. I'm tired of working at coffee shops. So one of the very first things I did was to get a space at WeWork.

• 2:07:23Tim Ferriss?

  I could not be happier with this change in my life. WeWork is a global network of workspaces where companies and people grow together. The idea is really simple. You focus on your business and WeWork takes care of all the rest, including front desk service, utilities, refreshments, and more. I also often have been shipped from Amazon and elsewhere to my office at WeWork. Here in Austin, I've been completely blown away by the members-only events, special offers, and perhaps the best cold brew coffee on tap that I've ever had. It's been amazing. It's been a real, real change in my life and improved my quality of life. And there are also dog-friendly WeWork locations all over the place. How fun is that?

• 2:08:07Tim Ferriss?

  WeWork caters to everyone from entrepreneurs and freelancers to startups and even large enterprises, including GE, Salesforce, Microsoft, Mastercard, Samsung, Spotify, Pinterest, and Red Bull, among many others. In fact, more than 10% of Fortune 500 companies currently use WeWork, and it's a rapidly growing group. In other words, it's not just solo printers and ground-level startups that use WeWork, but everything from that to the big companies who are seeing very huge benefits as well. WeWork believes that creating spaces where people can connect and create meaning together, right? After all, if you are someone who has built a business modeled on the principles of The Four Hour Workweek or elsewhere, it can be a lonely road sometimes.

• 2:08:51Tim Ferriss?

  Even though you're digitally connected, it can feel very, very isolating. So in these spaces, you can connect with real humans, and all the while, use space more efficiently and cost-effectively, which makes you and your business better equipped to face the challenges of today and tomorrow. WeWork now has more than 200 locations, so you can find great spots all over the world. So head over to we.co/tim. That's we.co, C-O. We.co/tim to become a part of the global WeWork community. At the very least, I encourage you to check out pictures of some of the locations around the world. There are some incredible spots. So check it out, we.co/tim.

• 2:09:35Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. You might remember Four Sigmatic for their mushroom coffee, which was created by those clever Finnish founders. And when I first mentioned that coffee on this podcast, the product sold out in less than a week. It lights you up like a Christmas tree, which can be really useful. However, recently I've been testing the opposite side of the spectrum of new product, and that is their Reishi Mushroom Elixir to help me end my day, to get to sleep. As you guys may know, longtime listeners at least, I struggled with insomnia for decades. I've largely fixed that, but still shutting off my monkey brain has never been easy, still isn't easy very often. And I've found Reishi, which I've been fascinated by for a few years now, has been very, very effective and calming.

• 2:10:20Tim Ferriss?

  Their old formula, however, for Sigmatix old formula, included stevia, and I like to avoid sweeteners, all sweeteners, for a host of reasons. And I then just pinged them and asked, "Hey, guys, I would love to experiment with this and maybe actually suggest it, but I'd like a version without sweeteners if you'd be open to it. If too much of a headache, don't worry." And they are always game for experimentation, and so they created a special custom version without the stevia, without sweeteners. Now it is part of my nightly routine. Their reishi elixir comes in single-serving packets, which are perfect for travel. And in fact, I'm about to leave the country right now, and I have a packet in front of me that's just gonna sit in the end of my carry-on bag.

• 2:11:04Tim Ferriss?

  You only need hot water, and it mixes very, very easily. Here's some recommended copy that they put in the read, so I'm gonna read it and I'll give you my take. Quote, "A warning for those in the experimental mindset. Reishi is strong and bitter, in parentheses, like any great medicine. So if the bitterness is too much, I recommend trying it with honey and/or nut milk, such as almond milk," end quote. So I'm gonna say, "No, you should suck it up and you should drink the tea, because it's not that bitter. And maybe you should take the advice of old Chinese people when they're criticizing young'uns when they say, '不能吃苦,' which means you're not able to eat bitterness." Bitter is, in many cases, an indication of things that help liver detoxification and so on.

• 2:11:49Tim Ferriss?

  Not saying that's the case here, but I've tested this reishi elixir on family members, on friends. Everybody has liked it. It's a little bit earthy, it's not that hard. So I would just say suck it up and no, don't put in honey or nut milk or any of that shit. Just drink the goddamn tea, it's delicious, I think. If you like pu er, that kind of stuff, that type of tea, you're gonna dig it. So just try it. Okay, back to then, my read. If you'd like to naturally improve your sleep, both onset and quality, I think naturally, you might just enjoy this reishi elixir without any sweeteners. It has organic reishi extract, organic field mint extract, organic rose hips extract, organic tulsi extract. And that's it.

• 2:12:33Tim Ferriss?

  No fancy stuff, no artificial whatchamacallit, anything. So check it out. Go to foursigmatic.com/ferris and get 20% off this special batch. I don't know if they're gonna be making much more of this, since it was made specifically for you guys. So do me a favor and try it out, so that they continue to be open to experimenting with me to create products for you guys specifically. Check it out, foursigmatic, that's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com/ferris, F-E-R-R-I-S-S, and get 20% off this special batch. And you must use the code ferris to receive your discount, F-E-R-R-I-S-S. So again, go to foursigmatic.com/ferris and then use code ferris

• 2:13:17Tim Ferriss?

  for 20% off of this rare exclusive limited run of reishi mushroom elixir for nighttime routines without any sweeteners. Enjoy.