#630: Insights from Dr. Matthew Walker, Adam Grant/Atul Gawande, Diana Chapman, and Rich Roll/David Goggins

Brought to you by Athletic Greens http://athleticgreens.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement, Pique https://piquelife.com/tim premium pu’er tea crystals, and Shopify http://shopify.com/tim global commerce platform providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, where it is usually my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out the routines, habits, et cetera that you can apply to your own life. This episode is something different. It’s an experimental format that I’m super excited about, and it’s back by popular demand. This is an episode that scratches an itch I’ve had for years. I am not always able to listen to every great podcast episode out there, even when they are by some of my closest friends. The answer to my predicament was to ask them to send me a top segment from their podcast that I could listen to and—more importantly—also share with you, my dear listeners. My team edited them together, and here we are! This episode is a compilation of 15-to-30–minute clips from some of the best podcasters—and also best interviewees—in the world and certainly some of my favorites. At the beginning of each clip, you will hear an intro from the host and where to find their work and podcast. I’ll also share one or two of my favorite clips from episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast. You can view this episode as a buffet, and I strongly suggest that you check out the shows included. If you like my podcast, you will very likely enjoy the featured shows in this episode. And before you go: Do you like this format? Please let me know on Twitter at @tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss and also mention @TeamTimFerriss https://twitter.com/teamtimferriss. Please enjoy! * This episode is brought to you by Pique https://piquelife.com/tim! I first learned about Pique through my friends Dr. Peter Attia and Kevin Rose, and now Pique https://piquelife.com/tim’s fermented pu’er tea crystals have become my daily go-to. I often kickstart my mornings with their Pu’er Green Tea and Pu’er Black Tea, and I alternate between the two. This rare type of naturally fermented tea is more concentrated in polyphenol antioxidants than any other tea—it supports focus and mental clarity, healthy digestion, metabolism, and a healthy immune system. Their crystals are cold extracted, using only wild-harvested leaves from 250-year-old tea trees. Plus, they triple toxin screen for heavy metals, pesticides, and toxic mold—contaminants commonly found in tea. I also use the crystals for iced tea, which saves a ton of time and hassle. Pique https://piquelife.com/tim is offering up to 20% off of their pu’er teas https://piquelife.com/tim, exclusively to my listeners. To sweeten the deal even more, you’ll get a free sampler pack with 6 of their best-selling teas. Simply visit PiqueLife.com/Tim https://piquelife.com/tim, and the discount will be automatically applied. They also offer a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, so your purchase is completely risk-free. Just go to PiqueLife.com/Tim https://piquelife.com/tim to learn more. * This episode is also brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product. * This episode is also brought to you by Shopify http://shopify.com/tim! Shopify http://shopify.com/tim is one of my favorite platforms and one of my favorite companies. Shopify http://shopify.com/tim is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. In no time flat, you can have a great looking online store that brings your ideas to life, and you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day and drive sales. No coding or design experience required. More than a store, Shopify grows with you, and they never stop innovating, providing more and more tools to make your business better and your life easier. Go to Shopify.com/Tim for a FREE trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features http://shopify.com/tim. * [07:10] Who is Matt Walker? [07:39] Drowsiness is the sincerest form of flattery here. [09:01] Alcohol and sleep. [16:58] Caffeine and sleep. [25:25] Who are Adam Grant and Atul Gawande? [26:24] “Just say yes until you’re 40, and after 40, just say no.” [30:17] Avoiding burnout during the “say yes” phase. [31:57] Worst advice Atul has gotten. [32:36] Why should everyone (including a busy surgeon) have a coach? [36:22] Receiving and reacting to feedback. [39:17] The culture of an organization is the worst behavior you tolerate. [42:30] Who is Diana Chapman? [42:58] The Drama Triangle. [49:25] Body intelligence. [51:56] A walkthrough for getting in tune with your whole-body yes (or no). [1:00:28] Who are Rich Roll and David Goggins? [1:03:56] Why haven’t you done that thing you’ve been talking about for years? [1:04:43] Why your flimsy excuses don’t matter to David. [1:08:27] The Accountability Mirror. [1:11:05] Participation trophies. [1:12:00] How do you overcome what’s really holding you back? * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors http://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, Margaret Atwood https://tim.blog/2022/02/22/margaret-atwood/, Mark Zuckerberg https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/, Peter Thiel https://tim.blog/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/, Dr. Gabor Maté https://tim.blog/2018/02/20/gabor-mate/, Anne Lamott https://tim.blog/2021/07/09/anne-lamott/, Sarah Silverman https://tim.blog/2022/01/12/sarah-silverman/, Dr. Andrew Huberman https://tim.blog/2021/07/06/andrew-huberman/, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Peak. That's P-I-Q-U-E. I have had so much tea in my life. I've been to China. I've lived in China and Japan. I've done tea tours. I drink a lot of tea. And 10 years plus of physical experimentation and tracking has shown me many things. Chief among them, that gut health is critical to just about everything. And you'll see where tea is going to tie into this. It affects immune function, weight management, mental performance, emotional health, you name it. I've been drinking fermented Pu'er tea specifically, pretty much every day for years now. Pu'er tea delivers more polyphenols and probiotics than you can shake a stick at. It's like providing the optimal fertilizer to your microbiome. The problem with good Pu'er is that it's hard to source.

• 0:43Tim Ferriss?

  It's hard to find real Pu'er that hasn't been exposed to pesticides and other nasties, which is super common. That's why Peak's fermented Pu'er tea crystals have become my daily go-to. It's so simple. They have so many benefits that I'm going to get into. And I first learned about them through my friends, Dr. Peter Attia and Kevin Rose. Peak Crystals are cold extracted using only wild harvested leaves from 250-year-old tea trees. I often kickstart my mornings with their Pu'er green tea, their Pu'er black tea, and I alternate between the two. The rich, earthy flavor of the black specifically is amazing. It's very, very, it's like a delicious barnyard. Very peaty, if you like whiskey and stuff like that.

• 1:25Tim Ferriss?

  They triple toxin screen all of their products for heavy metals, pesticides, and toxic mold, contaminants commonly found in tea. There's also zero prep or brewing required, as the crystals dissolve in seconds. So you can just drop it into your hot tea, or I also make iced tea, and that saves a ton of time and hassle. Their fermented teas have never been discounted, but for you, my dear listeners, only for you, and for a limited time, Peak is offering up to 20% off, plus a free sampler pack with six of their bestselling teas when you order their Pu'er teas. This all comes with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, so it's risk-free. Check it out. Go to peaklife.com/tim. That's P-I-Q-U-E-L-I-F-E.com/ T-I-M.

• 2:08Tim Ferriss?

  Peaklife.com/tim. And the discount is automatically applied at checkout. Enjoy.

• 2:18Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is one of my favorite companies out there, one of my favorite platforms ever. And let's get into it. Shopify is a platform, as I mentioned, designed for anyone to sell anything, anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. So what does that mean? That means in no time flat, you can have a great looking online store that brings your ideas, products, and so on to life. And you can have the tools to manage your day to day business and drive sales. This is all possible without any coding or design experience whatsoever. Shopify instantly lets you accept all major payment methods. Shopify has thousands of integrations and third party apps from on demand printing to accounting to advanced chatbots, anything you can imagine.

• 3:02Tim Ferriss?

  They probably have a way to plug and play and make it happen. Shopify is what I wish I had had when I was venturing into e-commerce way back in the early 2000s. What they've done is pretty remarkable. I first met the founder, Toby, in 2008, when I became an advisor, and it's been spectacular. I've loved watching Shopify go from roughly 10 to 15 employees at the time to 7,000 plus today, serving customers in 175 countries with total sales on the platform exceeding $400 billion. But what does that really mean? That means every 28 seconds, more or less, a small business owner makes their first sale on Shopify. More people in more places of all ages every single day.

• 3:45Tim Ferriss?

  They power millions of entrepreneurs from their first sale all the way to full scale. And you would recognize a lot of large companies that also use them who started small. So get started by building and customizing your online store, again, with no coding or design experience required. Access powerful tools to help you find customers, drive sales, and manage your day to day. Gain knowledge and confidence with extensive resources to help you succeed. And I've actually been involved with some of that way back in the day, which was awesome. The Build a Business competition and other things. Plus, with 24/7 support, you're never alone. And let's face it, being an entrepreneur can be lonely, but you have support, you have resources, you don't need to

• 4:26Tim Ferriss?

  Feel alone in this case. More than a store, Shopify grows with you and they never stop innovating, providing more and more tools to make your business better and your life easier. Go to Shopify.com/Tim. That's S-H-O-P-I-F-Y.com/Tim. All lowercase for a free trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Start selling on Shopify today. Go to Shopify.com/Tim right now and check it out. They have a lot to offer. Shopify.com/Tim.

• 5:00Speaker 01

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

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 5:06Speaker 03

  No, it would seem inappropriate.

• 5:10Speaker 02

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

• 5:23Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show where it is usually my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out their routines, habits, et cetera, that you can apply to your own life and lives. This episode is something different. It's an experimental format that I am super excited about, and apparently so are many of you. It's backed by popular demand. This is an episode that scratches an itch I've had for many years now. I'm not always able to listen to every great podcast episode out there, even when they are by some of my closest friends. To answer that predicament, I decided to ask them, many of my friends, to send a top segment from their own podcast, podcasts, that I could listen to

• 6:05Tim Ferriss?

  and more importantly, also share with you, my dear listeners. My team edited them together, and here we are. This episode is a compilation of roughly 15 to 30-minute clips from some of the best podcasters and also best interviewees in the world, and certainly some of my favorites. At the beginning of each clip, you will hear an intro from the host and where to find their work and podcasts. At the end, I'll also share one or two of my favorite clips from episodes of the Tim Ferriss Show. You can view this episode as a buffet, and I strongly suggest that you check out the shows included. If you like my podcast, you will very likely enjoy the featured shows in this episode. For the full list of the guests featured today, see the episode's description, or as usual, head to tim.blog/podcast for all the details. And before you go,

• 6:52Tim Ferriss?

  Do you like this format? Please let me know on Twitter at T Ferriss, T F E R R I S S, and also mention slash C C at Team Tim Ferriss if you remember. Without further ado, please enjoy.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Hi there. My name is Matt Walker and I am a professor of neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. I'm also the author of the book Why We Sleep, and I've given a couple of TED Talks here and there as well. I'm also the host of the Matt Walker Podcast, a sample of which I wanted to offer here. Now, I think it's safe to say that when most podcasters think about their audience, perhaps falling asleep or nodding off while listening, it can be profoundly disheartening. However, based on the topic of this podcast, I'm going to actively encourage

• 8:00Speaker 01

  that kind of behavior from you. In fact, knowing what I know, particularly about the relationship between sleep and memory, it's the greatest form of flattery for me to think that people like you cannot resist the urge to strengthen and consolidate what I'm telling you by falling asleep. So please just feel free to ebb and flow in and out of consciousness throughout the entire episode. I'll take absolutely no offense. And today, in terms of the episode, we're going to speak about two things. First, I'm going to tell you about the impact of alcohol on your sleep.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Which, right from the off, is going to make me deeply unpopular.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  And if that wasn't bad enough, I'm going to follow it up by speaking about the impact of caffeine on your sleep. So let's first speak about nightcaps. And here, by the way, I'm not speaking about the physical kind. What I'm talking about here is the liquid kind. We're talking about alcohol and sleep. So we're going to talk a little bit about what alcohol is as a chemical. Then we'll speak about how alcohol impacts your sleep. And then we'll explain why it is that alcohol has these harmful impacts on your sleep.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Alcohol is perhaps one of the most misunderstood sleep aids that there is out there. As we're going to learn, it is anything but a sleep aid. And even though people may feel as though a wee drink in the evening, or several drinks in the evening, may be helping their sleep, in fact, it's harming your sleep. Alcohol will impact your sleep in three specific ways. First, alcohol is in a class of drugs that we call the sedatives. And sedation is not sleep. But when we've had a drink in the evening, we mistake the former for the latter.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  We mistake sedation for sleep. And I should probably explain in a little more detail what the difference is between those two. Because sedatives, such as alcohol, will effectively switch off brain cell firing, particularly in your cortex. Sleep, on the other hand, is very different. As we learned about in the first episode of this podcast, it's during sleep and especially during deep sleep, when hundreds of thousands of brain cells all of a sudden decide to sing together in this amazing feat of coordination.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  And they all fire together and then they all go silent together. And then they fire together and then they all go silent together. And that's very different to sedation. And if I were to show you the electrical signature of your sleep when you have alcohol on board versus a natural night of sleep, you would recognize that those two electrical signature patterns are very different. So that's the first issue regarding alcohol. We shouldn't mistake sedation for sleep. But when we've had a few drinks in the evening, we tend to think that we fall asleep more quickly. In reality, all we're actually doing is losing consciousness more quickly.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  We're not going into naturalistic sleep. The second issue with alcohol is that it fragments your sleep. In other words, alcohol will litter your sleep with many more awakenings throughout the night. One of the problems, by the way, with these short awakenings is that you typically don't remember them, but it still leaves your sleep peppered or littered with all of these brief awakenings. In other words, your sleep is less continuous. And a good example of this is a recent experimental study conducted in a sleep laboratory. If you take a group of healthy adults and you give them a body standardized dose of alcohol,

• 12:25Speaker 01

  one that would probably just put you right at the legal blood alcohol content limit for driving. And then you let the sleep recordings offer the sort of the jury verdict, as it were, relative to a placebo night of sobriety. Sleep, especially in the second half of the night, was far More fragmented when alcohol had been taken on board. Indeed, come the last four hours of the night, those participants spent ninety-four percent more time awake, having had alcohol in the evening, relative to when they were sober. Because of that fragmentation of your sleep caused by alcohol,

• 13:09Speaker 01

  despite the fact that you don't remember it, you wake up the next morning and you don't feel restored by your sleep. You don't feel refreshed by your sleep. The third concern with alcohol is that it will block your rapid eye movement sleep, or what we often think of as dream sleep. In fact, alcohol is one of the most potent suppressors of REM sleep. That's perhaps concerning considering that REM sleep is associated with a constellation of different benefits, both for your brain and also for your body, and we'll speak about those in subsequent episodes. But this includes things such as learning and memory, creativity,

• 13:52Speaker 01

  rebalancing your moods and your emotions. And downstairs in the body, REM sleep is associated with the recalibration of numerous different hormone systems, including, for example, testosterone. And more recently, we've discovered that REM sleep is significantly associated with your longevity. And the less REM sleep that you have predicts a shorter lifespan. So in other words, REM sleep seems to be critical for numerous aspects of health and wellness, even for the fundamentals of life. Which brings me on to one of the strange side effects of alcohol. Some people, um, and I'm not suggesting it's you, uh, listening to this,

• 14:37Speaker 01

  but let's just say some hypothetical people may have gone out on a Friday night or a Saturday night, and they've had a good number of drinks. And the next morning, they may end up experiencing very vivid, very strong, and very intense dreams. Why is this? Well, it turns out that your brain keeps a clock counter of how much REM sleep you should normally have, and how much REM sleep that you have lost as a consequence of alcohol being in your system. The brain throughout the night then starts to build this incredible hunger for REM sleep. This drive for REM sleep because it's been starved during the early part and the middle

• 15:22Speaker 01

  part of the night as the alcohol has been washing around in your system. And then if you sleep late into that subsequent morning, into a Saturday or a Sunday morning, after a few too many drinks, your brain will try to get back some of the REM sleep that it has lost. So then, as you're sleeping late into that subsequent morning after a night of a few too many drinks, your brain is clever. Having kept a clock counter of how much REM sleep you should have had, but how much REM sleep you have not been able to achieve, it will try to get back some of the REM sleep that has been absent. This is what we call a REM sleep rebound effect.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  In other words, the brain in those last few hours of the night, when your liver and your kidneys have finally cleared out the alcohol, will not only try to get the normal amount of REM sleep that you would have, but it will also try to get back some of the REM sleep that you have lost. As a consequence, that's why you have these really intense, really vivid dream experiences. And again, just to make mention, the brain never gets back all of the REM sleep that it's lost. It will only get back some of that REM sleep during the REM sleep rebound effect. So that's a little bit about what alcohol is and the three different ways in which alcohol can disrupt your sleep.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  And also some of the ways that it can give you some rather strange, rather vivid dreams on the morning after. So that's sleep and alcohol, but now let me transition to something different. Sleep and caffeine. This is perhaps going to sound strange coming from someone like me, but I'm going to suggest that you drink coffee. Because the health benefits associated with coffee are numerous and many of them are significant. And in a separate episode of my podcast that we won't feature here, I will tell you why coffee is associated with those health benefits.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  But for the rest of this episode, we're going to focus on exactly what caffeine is as a substance. And then we'll dive deep into how caffeine can impact your sleep at night in several different ways. Also, we'll speak about how and why different people can be more or less vulnerable to the effects of caffeine. So let's start with exactly how caffeine works. In our previous episode on sleep pressure, we learned all about how caffeine can keep you awake during the day. Here, we're going to focus on how caffeine can impact your sleep at night.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Caffeine is in a class of drugs that we call the psychoactive stimulants. And I'm sure that you knew that caffeine was some form of a stimulant. However, there are several hidden consequences of caffeine that you may be less aware of. One of these is the duration of action. Caffeine has what we call a half-life of about five to six hours in the average adult. In other words, after five to six hours, 50% of that caffeine is still going to be in your system. What that means is that caffeine will then have a quarter life of about 10 to 12 hours.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  So in other words, let's say that you have a cup of coffee at 2:00 PM in the afternoon. Almost a quarter of that caffeine could still be circulating in your brain at midnight, or perhaps even more than a quarter of that caffeine. And the probably rather crass analogy here would be that if you have a cup of coffee at 2:00 PM, it would be the equivalent of getting into bed at midnight, and just before you turn the lights out, you swig a quarter of a cup of coffee and you hope for a good night of sleep. And it tends not to happen. In part, this comes back to the stimulant properties of caffeine.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  First, caffeine is going to make it more difficult for you to fall asleep when your head hits the pillow. Added to this is the fact that caffeine will increase levels of anxiety. So as you're lying there, not being able to fall asleep, you suffer that sort of terrible experience of a racing mind that won't shut off. I almost liken this to a sort of a rolodex of anxiety that can flood your brain due to the effects of caffeine. The second and related issue is that not only will caffeine make it harder for you to fall asleep, it will then also make it more difficult for you to stay asleep soundly across the night.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  This is because caffeine will make your sleep more unstable. In other words, it will cause you to wake up more frequently at night. And the consequence is something that we call sleep fragmentation, meaning that your overall sleep efficiency or the quality of your sleep becomes significantly worse when you have caffeine on board. As a quick aside, some people will tell me, "Look, I am one of those individuals, and I can have an espresso with dinner, and I fall asleep and I stay asleep." So, no harm, no foul. Well, yes and no. Even if you fall asleep easily and then you stay asleep across the night, caffeine will

• 21:11Speaker 01

  still decrease the amount of deep sleep that your brain can generate. And I'll go into that in far greater detail in the second episode, but I make that point because most people are not consciously aware of the lack of that deep sleep, even though they don't remember having a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep. And in fact, why don't I just pause for a second? Let's linger on this common statement that I receive from people about their sensitivity. What we know is that the effects of caffeine are highly variable from one individual to the next. I said earlier that the quarter-life of caffeine is somewhere between 10 to 12 hours, but that's for the average adult.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  It's really quite different from one person to the next that you will pass on the street. Using a variety of different assessment techniques and methods, what we've recently discovered is that your sensitivity to caffeine is due in part to your genetics. Different people will have a more or less efficient version of an enzyme that breaks down caffeine. And if you're, if you're nerd curious like me, the class of liver compounds that we're talking about here are called cytochrome P450 enzymes.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  I've always thought, by the way, that cytochrome P450s would be a great title for an album. Don't you think that would be brilliant? No, probably just me. Anyway, getting back to the story, some people will have a version of that enzyme that allows them to metabolize the caffeine very quickly. Whereas other people will have a version of that enzyme or set of enzymes, it turns out, which is much slower in its speed of breakdown of that caffeine. And as a result, that caffeine will linger in their system far longer than it would do in someone who can metabolize it quite quickly. For those people who can't metabolize it and cleanse the system of the caffeine as

• 23:19Speaker 01

  quickly, those are the people who are highly sensitive to the effects of caffeine. By the way, unfortunately, having run my own genetic screening test, I am one of those slow caffeine metabolizers. Oh, it makes me so sad because I adore the smell of freshly ground coffee. I love that ritual. I would say, however, that decaffeinated coffee, if you find the right one, can be almost as extraordinary. But again, I'm telling my story. This is not about me. This is about you and this podcast. If you would like to know, by the way, which caffeine sensitive type you are, there are several genetic testing kits out there, and I won't name names that you can easily buy

• 24:04Speaker 01

  online, and they will often assess those specific set of relative genes. And once again, if you're curious, the two most relevant genes for you to look out for regarding this caffeine sensitivity are called CYP1A2 and AHR.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Total alphabet spaghetti, wasn't it?

• 24:30Speaker 01

  And with that spaghetti thrown against the informational wall of today's episode, I will simply say thank you for listening. And if you want to connect with me further, you can find me on Twitter using the handle at Sleep Diplomat. You can find me on the web at sleep diplomat.com. But mostly, and if you've not lost the will to live, listening to my dulcet British tones at this point, you can listen to many more episodes from this, which is my podcast. It's called the Matt Walker Podcast on all

• 25:12Speaker 01

  of your standard podcast platforms. So take care and goodbye from me.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Hey, everyone. It's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore how they think and what we should all rethink. Today's guest is Atul Gawande, a surgeon, Harvard professor, New Yorker writer, and bestselling author of books like Complications and Being Mortal. I've long admired Atul's work on error, checklists, and coaching. And in a conference last year, I got to see his confidence and compassion firsthand when he helped rescue me from a severe allergic reaction. Thanks, Atul. In January 2022, he started a new job in the White House as

• 26:10Speaker 03

  Assistant Administrator of USAID's Bureau for Global Health. So it's a perfect time to talk with him about leadership, learning from mistakes, and how he works with his coach.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  You chose surgery. That's an enormously consuming career. Somehow, you managed to find time to write for The New Yorker. How did your identity expand from, I'm just going to be a surgeon, and that could take up all my time, to I'm actually going to have a side gig as a prominent writer?

• 26:42Speaker 04

  The best advice I got, which came late in life but seemed to register, was a colleague who said, just say yes until you're 40. And after 40, just say no. When you're young, you don't know what actually energizes you and what you will prove to be good at. You don't have a sample size to know. And I started with a base assumption that I grew up around medicine, so I could be comfortable in it. But even in medicine, you don't know what you're going to be when you grow up. What kind of field do you want to go into? Do you want to lead people? Do you want to go deep in a technical area? Do you want to be in a research lab? Do you want to do startups? Do you want to do public health?

• 27:26Speaker 04

  There's so many different directions to go. And I just said yes. I hit college and found my mind was blown. I was from a rural town in Ohio, and there was incredible possibilities. I ended up going to a place like Stanford, where everything was open to me. It was too much choice. And so I just started saying yes to stuff. And then I paid attention to the things that actually energized me. Just finding time flew when I did certain things. I was very into Stephen Jay Gould, the writer on evolution. I was very into health policy. And I was very into understanding clinical trials and how you create impact in science.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  That blossomed into saying yes to spending time on presidential campaigns around health care. And I worked for Gary Hart and Al Gore when he ran. Long story short, by the time I got out of college, I was ready to do several things that took 10 years to fit together. I did a degree in politics and philosophy. I worked on the Hill in Washington. I started my training in surgery.

• 28:44Speaker 04

  I would end up getting a degree in public health during my surgery training. And when I put it all together, the thing that was totally unexpected was I had stuff to write about, and I began writing for Slate Magazine, and that became The New Yorker magazine. I loved surgery, and I found I could have technical skills in how to build public health interventions and make it work. And only later did I reach that point, my late 30s, hitting 40, where I said no to everything, except how I could put together writing as a way of exploring what I was

• 29:24Speaker 04

  experiencing in day-to-day medicine and the failures of the system, and how we cope with the fact that we now are in a world where we can live into our 80s on average if we can access the capabilities of a science that has given us drugs, medical and surgical procedures, public health interventions. But only part of our population gets to have that advantage in the United States or around the world. And our job has become to deploy that capability town by town to everybody alive. And I get to explore it through writing. I get to live it through my practical work as a surgeon. I did.

• 30:06Speaker 04

  And then I built a public health institution around starting to solve problems and making that work. And I found my life's purpose doing that.

• 30:16Speaker 03

  It's amazing. I'm so fascinated by this advice you got to say yes until you're 40, which, on the one hand, I think you make a very compelling argument that it's a great way to discover what your passions are or develop those passions and also hone your skills. It also sounds like a recipe for indentured servitude and possibly burnout.

• 30:37Speaker 04

  You also have to pay attention to what is exhausting you and you gotta pare that out because that's the cause of burnout, right? You are finding your own balance. I found for me, my personality, I was doing surgery and that energized me. Even though I was in the middle of surgery residency, even though at that time it was 110 hours a week, I still was fired up about it. I hated staying up all night. I couldn't stand that. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel that that might end. But then I'd weirdly, I'd get home and a friend said, would you write for Slate on healthcare stuff? And I found I was making time at nine o'clock at night to work for a couple of hours. And I was doing it.

• 31:21Speaker 04

  Like that was a signal to me. I was not energized spending time in labs. So I just stopped the stuff that I didn't have the energy to do. There was a lot of things that I quit, a lot of things that I quit so that I wasn't burning out. And even today, the work can be overwhelming at times, but I'm marshaling my energy around spending as much of it doing the things that I can value and enjoy. There's always crap. There's always a grind in everything and that part is there. It's just there has to be some saving grace that keeps you going. What's the worst advice you've ever gotten? Well, the constant advice I got early on, which is you have to pick one thing a tool.

• 32:06Speaker 04

  And I just resisted it because some people will be brilliant and best diving deep into one thing. But there's lots of creativity at the edges of combining fields, combining approaches. And so I combined surgery and public health and then I combined in writing and that work. And That is where I'm successful. It may not be the same way other people are.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  Atul, one of my other favorite pieces of writing of yours was the article you wrote on having a coach. And I remember seeing this headline and thinking, of course, it makes perfect sense. Athletes have coaches, musicians have coaches, everyone else should too, if they want to be at the top of their game. You have a coach.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  So you're eating your own dog food or drinking your own champagne, depending on how that's going. What's that been like? What are you learning? I think it's one thing to be coached in a profession like surgery, right? Which is very task oriented. To be coached as a leader is much broader, much more ambiguous in many ways. I'd love to hear what that's been like and what you've learned about coaching through this experience.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  You know, that piece was prompted by recognizing that I was paying like 125 bucks to have a tennis coach and that Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Djokovic, the top players in the world, all have coaches. But that is not our paradigm in whole swaths of other professions. We have an educational paradigm. You will put in your 10,000 hours of education and then you will be a self-learner. Part of the education is how to train and advance yourself. And so which one was correct? Music was really interesting to me because in parts of music like voice, I got to speak

• 34:01Speaker 04

  to Rene Fleming, the opera singer. All singers have coaches. They follow the sports paradigm. But in things like violin, they don't have coaches. And I got to call up Isaac Perlman, the greatest violinist of his generation, and ask him, do you think you need a coach? And he said, we don't have coaches in playing violin, but I always did. His wife that he met when he was at Juilliard, after a period of time as a professional musician herself, she stopped playing to become his coach. Sit in the audience, observe his performances, give him feedback and do it in effective

• 34:45Speaker 04

  enough ways that he could improve, set new goals and move onward. And that's what I learned is the pattern of coaching. Effective coaching is different from teaching in that it involves an external view of your own reality. And then ideally, it orients around the goals that you set for where you want to advance. It can give you a framework for where you want to advance. And so I tried it out, and I'm so glad you asked me about this because I decided to bring a coach into my operating room, and it was a fellow surgeon who was one of my professors and one of the surgeons I most wanted to be like, named Bob Osteen, and he died just a couple of weeks ago. A cancer surgeon I just tremendously admire, and was my coach in the operating

• 35:30Speaker 04

  room, and would observe, and we would set goals. I'm going to work on how my team work in these next few months. I'm going to work on my technical skills. I'm going to work on, you know, the things we worked on most until I stopped doing surgery in December, which was painful, teaching, and how I could be a more effective teacher. Translating that into this atmosphere, as I started building public health institutions, I had an executive coach that I engaged, a guy named Alan Foster. He's terrific. And we've been together now for a decade, and working on, as I've started up multiple organizations,

• 36:12Speaker 04

  as I've advanced them along the way, and now in this role. And I actually think a lot of people have executive coaches, and it has become a familiar thing. But the key to it has been not just my giving him my independent view of the world, but having him do a 360. And we actually just came through our 360 here with our team, where he reviewed and talked to all of my leaders, and we got inputs from more than 30 people, including people reporting up to me, people above me, people that we have to work with as peers across the government, and, you know, identified things that were going

• 36:50Speaker 04

  Well, and the strengths I was building on and the opposite things. In that variability, it was the flip side of my strengths. So, for example, I'm, I'm very energetic, as you might hear. And, and I'm also good at making decisions and making them quickly. But I'm moving so fast that I'm not communicating them. And I'm not recognizing how to move them down into the organization and across to other people. I'm already moving on to my next thing. It's the rubber band theory of leadership. You want the rubber band to pull ahead enough that people are coming with you, not, not fall so far behind that people are just swinging around behind you. I will tend to go so far that I can break the rubber band.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  Do you have strategies for making sure that you take that feedback seriously as opposed to brushing it off and saying, well, that's just how I work. You better get with the program.

• 37:43Speaker 04

  The main strategy is identify actions to take, which include informing people, here is what I've heard. And trying to set that model that you make feedback part of the culture of the place that you are advancing. One line of feedback, one of many lines of feedback, was that I tended to interrupt people as they were talking. And that was really bad. And so we came up with that I would owe $10 to the candy jar that we kept out for people walking through. And every time I interrupted people, and so people could call me out, have permission. It's $10 in the candy jar. And my whole goal was to get rid of the candy jar. Like, I wanted an empty candy jar.

• 38:25Speaker 04

  I definitely never had an empty candy jar. And so I wasn't quite accepting it. It was recognizing that, you know, it was trying to diffuse it, trying to reduce it. I reduced it, but not eliminated it. And there's a certain degree of. You want to share the strengths so you're not sacrificing the strengths along the way. They're typically related, the strengths and the weaknesses.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  I think of Deborah Tannen's work on what she calls high consideration versus high involvement conversation styles. And for you to say, listen, when I interrupt, that doesn't mean I'm intending to be rude or impolite. It means I'm really engaged and it's a sign that I'm excited to jump in and build. But as a leader, I know that carries a lot of weight and it might silence people in the room. It seems like even being able to have that conversation, right, is a helpful step, whether or not you make it to the candy jar.

• 39:16Speaker 04

  Yes. You know, it's acceptable once in a while, but it can't be an acceptable pattern. The culture of a organization is the worst behavior you tolerate. We'd be in a wonderful place if the worst thing that happened is that the boss sometimes interrupts you. We have bigger problems to work on in every organization I've been part of because it's not just about me. It's also getting the organizational feedback. This I got out in surgery, right? You cannot have a functional surgical world where you are not recognizing there are behaviors that can cost people's lives and then address them. And we have an institution every Wednesday morning reviewing our deaths and major complications for the patterns that underlay them. And when you're doing that on a regular basis, it's recognizing

• 39:59Speaker 04

  failure occurs regularly and then you're activating that we're going to look out for them and then address what are the worst things that happened and then our plan for not tolerating them. And, and I think that's absolutely crucial in public health work because of exactly the reasons you mentioned. The scale at which we do this work, we will have failures, we have risks we absolutely have to take, and we have to drum out the worst behaviors that set us behind and identify where we can attack them.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  Music to my ears. Well, thank you, Atul. This has been just packed with insight and I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing for not only the US but for public health at scale around the world.

• 40:46Speaker 04

  Well, I'm always delighted to talk to you, Adam. Over the many years we've known each other. Fantastic to get to do it in the medium of your podcast, which I'm an avid listener to.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  Well, thank you. I'm glad we didn't end up in the ER this time. Cheers.

• 40:59Speaker 04

  Cheers. We'll leave that story for to be told later.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  Seriously. Thank you, Atul.

• 41:10Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably AG1 by Athletic Greens. If you're traveling, if you're just busy, if you're not sure if your meals are where they should be, it covers your bases. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, you'll be hard pressed to find a more nutrient dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multi-mineral greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health and immunity formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens. You get the idea. Right now Athletic Greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all-in-one formula, which is a free

• 41:54Tim Ferriss?

  vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I've found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com/tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim.

• 42:30Tim Ferriss?

  And now a clip from the Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today, I'm very excited about Diana Chapman, C-H-A-P-M-A-N. Diana is a co-founder of the Conscious Leadership Group and a co-author of the book, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, which I am rereading right now. It just so happens. Her passion is to help organizational leaders and their teams eliminate drama in the workplace and beyond.

• 42:58Diana Chapman?

  I learned about this thing called the drama triangle, which many people out there may have heard about, but I realized my whole life is running around on this drama triangle. And the drama triangle was created by Steven Cartman back in the seventies and he defined ways in which human beings get caught in victimhood that create reactivity. And I realized I'm on the triangle most of the time and there is a big cost to me and my people when I'm on the drama triangle. And so that was the wake up call for me. And then I just spent every day since looking for all the tools I can for how to keep myself out of that triangle as much as possible.

• 43:38Tim Ferriss?

  Since you mentioned it, let's just jump right into the drama triangle. Could you give us an overview of what it is and how you might use it?

• 43:49Diana Chapman?

  Okay, so Cartman says, "Many of us got trained to live in a state of victimhood, and there are three unique flavors of victimhood in the drama triangle. We call them bases. So the first base is the pure victim, and the pure victim, you know, it's so hard here. I'm trying, I don't know, it's just any kind of a, oh, help, you know, it's got this very disempowered feeling. And it's somehow like they've got the power, somebody else has it, not me, and I'm very at the effect of things. So I could be at the effect of my bank account, at the effect of this email that just came in, at the effect of the traffic, at the effect of the new policy on going back to work, at the effect of COVID.

• 44:33Diana Chapman?

  All those things are forms of being a victim." Then the next role in the drama triangle is the villain, and the villain's job is to blame. So I can blame me, God, I should have known that, or I should have been more prepared, or any should have over here on me, or I'm not smart enough, or I can't count on myself. That's all villaining toward myself. Or we can villain toward another, you know, you, you're the reason why I'm not having as much fun as I could be having, or we could be a villain to a group of people, which is very popular in our culture, so we all know who's screwing it up for the rest of us, you know, it's that group over there, and everybody's pointing to particular groups who are the bad guys. So villain's very popular because it gets our adrenaline really kicking in.

• 45:16Tim Ferriss?

  I think it's actually in the Terms of Service on Twitter that you have to play that role when you use the service. Anyway, just a side note.

• 45:24Diana Chapman?

  Right, right, who's screwing it up? Who's wrong? Yeah, you don't know. You're wrong. I'm right. And so the last role in the drama triangle is the hero. It's also called the reliever or the rescuer. And the hero's job is to seek temporary relief. So, oh my God, I had such a hard day today at work. Let me come home. I'm gonna drink my alcohol, or do my gaming, or get lost in Netflix, or whatever I'm gonna do to give myself some temporary relief. And it works. But I gotta do it again tomorrow. Because tomorrow I'm gonna come home, potentially burn out again, and then I'm gonna have to do the same pattern. So heroing is temporary relief over and over again. So I can hero

• 46:06Diana Chapman?

  myself. I could hero another, you know, oh, you look like you're struggling at work, and let me take over some of your work that you're doing. I could do that from a place of real presence. But when I'm in hero doing it, I'm actually creating some codependence where I keep needing you to not be able to handle your work, so I can keep helping. And then I'll resent you over time. And then we can hero them. You know, there's lots of philanthropies, especially in the past, they're getting better at this now, where we just throw a bunch of money at a population. And then next year, they have all the same issues, and they need more money, and nothing ever really changes. So, the key thing is temporary relief. So, we all know the story about you can give the man a fish every night, or you could teach him to fish for himself. So, the hero gives the man the fish night

• 46:49Diana Chapman?

  after night after night. And if you're off the drama triangle, you shift to a place where you see people as empowered, and the hero asks good questions to help people get more effective around them.

• 47:02Tim Ferriss?

  So, my next question, I wanna share an observation from my rereading of the book. And then the next question, just to plant the seed, is I'm gonna ask you why it's called the drama triangle. What drama actually means here. But in my reread, which I'm in the middle of right now, of The Fifteen Commitments of Conscious Leadership, which was recommended to me by Dustin, and I think it was also recommended in my last book, and Tribe of Mentors, by Dustin. And there's a section that I needed to reread, which was related to the drama triangle. And it pointed out that the villain could take the form of someone

• 47:42Tim Ferriss?

  in a meeting, who, to try to resolve conflict, or maybe not resolve, to try to Minimize conflict always takes the blame. Like eventually at the end of the meeting, they just say, you know what? It's my fault. I should have done this, this, this, this, and this. And it's easy, at least for me, to conflate radical responsibility with overly blaming myself for everything. And I don't actually have a great way to approach navigating discerning those two for me, if that makes any sense. So we could try to unpack that, or we could jump to why it's called the drama triangle. But I'll let you choose the direction.

• 48:27Diana Chapman?

  Well, let me do both. So the reason why it's called the drama triangle is because the whole triangle is set up for a nah, nah, nah. It's I'm right, you're wrong, you're to blame, or I'm to blame. It's not asking everybody to really take 100% responsibility for how they're co-creating experiences. So if I'm in the drama triangle, the villain, if I'm taking on, I'm more responsible, what happens is I'll say, oh, I'm here at the meeting, you guys, and look, it's my fault. I'll take some of your responsibility and take it all on me. And so there is a place to say, hey, I have a part in how I've co-created this. Let me tell you my part. That would be me taking my 100%.

• 49:08Diana Chapman?

  I would also know that everybody else has a part to play too. So I'm not taking on their responsibility as well. That's the difference between a villain and somebody who's just simply acknowledging, I have a role to play here.

• 49:23Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Thank you. So we were chatting before we started recording, and you and I have spoken quite a few times before, we've met before, spent time together. And you asked me why I invited you on to the podcast. And there are a number of answers I gave. One of them was related to Kinesthetic awareness, or what our mutual friend and your business partner, Jim Detmer, have called, at least in my, in his notes to me for this conversation, this may be your term for all I know, BQ, so like IQ, EQ, but body intelligence. And I feel like you're very well calibrated for this.

• 50:07Tim Ferriss?

  And when we spoke, maybe a year and a half ago, two years ago, I was working on this no book, you might recall. And then as I kept working on it, and kept working on it, I kept coming up with great reasons to say no to the entire book, which was very meta, and I ended up stopping. But we spoke a lot about the whole body yes. And I would love to maybe use that as a wedge to start the conversation, because I found this so incredibly helpful. When I am certainly prone to over-intellectualizing everything into some extremely complicated matrix, or spreadsheet, or god knows what. So could you lead us into that in whatever way makes sense?

• 50:52Diana Chapman?

  Sure. The idea is that we have these different centers of intelligence. So we have our head, our heart, our gut, and IQ, EQ, BQ are some of the ways we might be describing those things these days. So body intelligence is a recognition that I have an instinctual awareness that is known by my sensations, known by how the body feels. And that there's a lot actually there, that if we start to drop into the body and pay attention, it's got a lot of guidance for us, as does our emotions, as does our intellect.

• 51:35Diana Chapman?

  And so I do have a ton of access to my body intelligence. I think it's what I lead with in my own getting clarity about which directions to go in my life. And I've put a lot of attention on it. So it's very palpable to me. My body screams often, you know, no, don't do that, even though my intellect might have an understanding of why.

• 51:56Tim Ferriss?

  Let's, if you wouldn't mind, walk people through how they might understand and use the whole body yes. Because for me, when something is screaming, I'm decent at paying attention, but it's not always a scream. Sometimes it's oftentimes it is, it is a little more nuanced. So could you walk people through the whole body yes and what the flight checklist looks like?

• 52:24Diana Chapman?

  Well, I could have people, if we wanted to, go through an experience of starting to feel what their whole body yes and no's feels like.

• 52:31Tim Ferriss?

  Great. Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that.

• 52:32Diana Chapman?

  Should we do that? It's very experiential. So it'll take about 10 minutes and I'll have people, if they're listening, I'd recommend they close their eyes.

• 52:40Tim Ferriss?

  Wonderful.

• 52:41Diana Chapman?

  Does that work?

• 52:42Tim Ferriss?

  We have all the time in the world. This isn't morning television.

• 52:45Diana Chapman?

  Okay. So the idea is that your body knows when there's a no, when there's a yes, and when there's a, what I'm going to call a subtle no. And we say anything other than a whole body yes is a no. And to your point, it's easy to hear those screaming no's, but not so easy to hear the subtle no. For example, someone contacted our organization the other day and he wanted to talk. And it wasn't clear to me whether he was trying to sell us something or whether he genuinely had clients that he wanted to connect us with. And even in my, I had suspicions that it wasn't as clean as he was suggesting. And I asked for clarification and his clarification still, I couldn't really tell. But my body

• 53:30Diana Chapman?

  did know, eh, I felt this flat feeling in my body when I thought about having the call. And unfortunately, my head said, well, maybe you're not sure. So let's have the call. And indeed, it was a sales call and it was not a good use of my time. And I quickly hung up. That was a time in which I skipped over my no, because it was very subtle. And my intellect started to get worried, like, what if I'm missing something? And, you know, what if you don't know? So. I use this all the time and I'm still learning, as I did just last week, to pay attention to the intelligences that are outside of just my intellect. And so for you all, if you want to learn more about this, what I'd like you to do is close your eyes

• 54:14Diana Chapman?

  and I'd like you to bring to mind an experience from the past that was deeply valuable to you.

• 54:22Diana Chapman?

  It was something that was nurturing. It was something you would gratefully repeat that scene again. It could be a time when you were celebrated. It could be a time when you were in a highly creative state that made something valuable. It could be a time when you were in nature, feeling deeply centered. And so I'd like you to go back into that scene as best you can and see the images of that scene and hear the sounds.

• 54:55Diana Chapman?

  And as you're in that scene, I want you to start to pay attention to the body

• 55:01Diana Chapman?

  and see if you can notice just simply how the body is vibrating right now.

• 55:09Diana Chapman?

  When you imagine yourself in that scene, seeing those images, hearing the sounds, how does your body vibrate? Is there a particular direction in which energy is flowing through the body?

• 55:27Diana Chapman?

  Now, some of you might go, "Diane, I'm not feeling anything here." That's fine. Just imagine if you were feeling something. Let it be okay that it might feel like pretend, just for now. Is there a certain temperature that you notice in the body?

• 55:46Diana Chapman?

  For some people, they might feel very specific sensations. It might feel like shapes inside the body. And some people might be auditory and hear tones

• 55:58Diana Chapman?

  or see visuals in their mind's eye.

• 56:04Diana Chapman?

  What you're doing here is getting a map of what does a whole body yes feel like?

• 56:13Diana Chapman?

  Just strolling around inside of the body, feeling what you're feeling. No right or wrong answers here. And everybody's so unique. We all have our own different ways we feel it. For me, my body gets warm. There's an uprising of energy. It flows up for me.

• 56:33Diana Chapman?

  There's a push in the flow for me, but yours will be what it is.

• 56:39Diana Chapman?

  And so then I'd like you to take one last, like a memory, take a memory shot of this so you can remember what this feels like. And then I'd like you to shake it off and let it go.

• 56:52Diana Chapman?

  And then I want you to think of a scene in the past that you don't want to repeat. And I don't recommend finding something traumatizing. Find something that you really didn't feel like was a good use of your time, didn't serve you, you don't want to repeat it ever again, or you prefer not to.

• 57:12Diana Chapman?

  If you can bring that image to mind.

• 57:16Diana Chapman?

  And again,

• 57:18Diana Chapman?

  see the visuals of that memory and hear the sounds.

• 57:25Diana Chapman?

  And I want you to notice what happens now in the body.

• 57:32Diana Chapman?

  Is there a different way that the body's vibrating?

• 57:38Diana Chapman?

  How is the direction of energy flowing or not flowing in this version?

• 57:44Diana Chapman?

  Is there a difference in temperature?

• 57:48Diana Chapman?

  Any other significant sensations or shapes you feel in or on the body? And again, tones in the ears or visuals in your mind's eye may also be included.

• 58:04Diana Chapman?

  And you're getting a map for what no, this is a big no. Uh-uh. I don't want, I don't want this.

• 58:12Diana Chapman?

  I don't think this is going to serve me. Just mapping the territory in the body for what does this feel like?

• 58:24Diana Chapman?

  Take one last picture of that and shake that one off. And then we've got one more to do, and this is the subtle no. This is similar to what I was just describing earlier of taking a meeting. You know, it didn't kill me to take the meeting. It didn't hurt. Lasted 10 minutes and I got off the phone. But I don't, it wasn't a yes. It wasn't an alive experience for me. So this is called a subtle no. So I want you to think back. Everybody's got in the last two to four weeks, something that's happened in which it was a eh. Wasn't bad, wasn't good. Eh.

• 59:02Diana Chapman?

  See if you can come back and see that scene in your mind's eye and hear those sounds. And you're going to check and see what's a subtle no feel like for you. How do you experience that scene? What do you notice in the body? How does it vibrate here? How does energy flow? Or not flow? Is there a difference in temperature? What parts of the body light up? Sensations? And tones or visuals as well?

• 59:45Diana Chapman?

  Trying on here, and again, if you don't notice much, that's okay. Just imagine if you did notice, what would you notice? And this is your map for what a subtle no feels like. And you want to remember this feeling so that the next time somebody says, hey, you want to go out to lunch? Or could you meet me to talk about ABC? That you, if you feel this, likely it's an invitation for you to try no. And so you can shake that one off and then we'll bring our attention back to the ongoing conversation.

• 1:00:28Speaker 06

  Hey everybody. My name is Rich Roll. I'm a writer, an ultra endurance athlete, and host of the Rich Roll Podcast, which delivers long-form conversations with the intent of extracting timeless wisdom from a variety of exceptional humans specializing across a wide spectrum of disciplines with the specific goal that you, as the audience member, glean actionable wisdom, powerful insights, and practical guidance you can then apply to improve your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual lives. The Rich Roll Podcast is available on every major podcast player and as a high-production-quality

• 1:01:13Speaker 06

  video on YouTube. You can follow me @RichRoll on Twitter and Instagram and on YouTube at youtube.com/RichRoll. And you can find links to all of these platforms, resources, and more at richroll.com. So, many thanks to Tim himself, an absolutely stellar example of someone doing the kind of vitally important work that I respect and admire, for this opportunity to share with all of you a small example of my podcast. The excerpt that follows centers on mindset and is excerpted from my first interview with former Navy SEAL-turned-endurance

• 1:01:56Speaker 06

  athlete and author David Goggins, which was recorded back in 2017 and is, I believe, David's very first podcast interview ever. For those not familiar, David just might be the toughest athlete on planet Earth. He has completed many of the world's most grueling endurance challenges, including running 203.5 miles in 48 hours, as well as securing top finishes at dozens of the world's most grueling foot races of 100 miles or more, demonstrating, time and again, an absolutely superhuman capacity for resolve and a preternatural ability to inspire others along the way.

• 1:02:43Speaker 06

  But perhaps David's greatest accomplishment is that throughout his life, he has faced and overcome a series of seemingly insurmountable obstacles to become the man he is today. Obstacles like asthma, sickle cell anemia, psychological and physical abuse, obesity, academic struggles, and even a congenital heart defect that often left him competing and winning on a mere fraction of his actual physical capabilities. As a result, David's insights on mindset and mental toughness are all the more profound and actionable. As a quick note, in this clip, you'll hear us discuss a race called Badwater,

• 1:03:26Speaker 06

  which is often described as the world's toughest footrace. It's a 135-mile, non-stop jaunt across Death Valley and culminating up Mount Whitney, during which David ascended 14,000 feet of total elevation gain and endured temperatures often exceeding 120 degrees Fahrenheit. So, without further ado, this is me and David Goggins.

• 1:03:56Speaker 07

  So many people tell me, "I would love to run Badwater one day." Why the fuck haven't you done it? You told me that five years ago. I had an idea to run Badwater. I did it in four months. I qualified in four days and ran the damn race. I wanted to be a Navy SEAL, had to lose 105 pounds in 60 days to get in and do it. I lost the weight and became a damn SEAL. I wanted to be a Ranger at 41 years old. People go, "What are you gonna do next?" I don't know. I've already done it. Because the second I thought about it, I researched it. I didn't ask questions. I achieved it. We waste tons of time not starting our journey for asking so many fucking questions on how to start the journey.

• 1:04:39Speaker 07

  Get an idea, start walking and figure the shit out as you go. Vision quest.

• 1:04:43Speaker 06

  But David, you don't understand my life.

• 1:04:45Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 1:04:46Speaker 06

  I got, you know, I had to get up at 5:00 and I worked till 9:00 and I got three kids and I'm barely making ends meet. It's cool that you can do that, but like, it's just not possible.

• 1:04:55Speaker 07

  What I love about that is people can come at me with all that crap all day long. When I say that right there to you, I was a full-time Navy SEAL. There's 24 hours in a day. I would do an ultra races and how I did it was I had to be at work at 7:00 in the morning. I woke up at three o'clock in the morning. I ran and then I rode my bike to work and I did the same thing and I came home. If you want it, you will find time in your life to do it. If you don't want it, you will continue to do exactly what you're doing now is give me excuses. You're gonna make up every excuse on why you can't do it. And that's why I can't connect it to you. That's why you hear the passion come out of me and you wanna say it's anger. No, cuz I know it can be done.

• 1:05:40Speaker 07

  And you're telling me all this shit on why it can't be done. And then what you do is he's crazy, he's in a can't, no. You don't want it bad enough. If you want it bad enough, you will figure out how to make this shit happen.

• 1:05:52Speaker 06

  Are you willing to like entertain the possibility that you do have some talent doing this? Or is it all like you're chalking it all up to preparation and mindset?

• 1:06:02Speaker 07

  Well, like I said, if anybody's familiar with sickle cell, it's a blood disease that pretty much is called sudden death syndrome. A lot of African Americans, you have it, they just pass out and die. My VO2 max is horrible. My hematocrit and all this stuff is horrible. And also having the hole in your heart that the size I had, it took away a lot of my

• 1:06:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's the other thing, like you have like, you have like, you're operating with 25% of your capability.

• 1:06:29Speaker 07

  And that's what I'm trying to tell people, right? And I was trying to tell people, everybody thinks that they wanna believe, and I wish I was. After every race, I was either in a wheelchair or whatever, because running with sickle cell is just not the smartest thing to do. Those distances. At mile 50 of every 100 mile race, man, I was destroyed. And I just had to find, but the feeling of the next 50 miles I had to go. I learned a lot about David Goggins and the will, it was always me against me. So no, I don't have any ability.

• 1:07:03Speaker 06

  See, this is the heart of the whole thing though, because I think it's really important. Because if you are a genetic freak of nature, then it's very easy for somebody to shrug you off. Like, oh yeah, well, he does it, but like he's Dave Goggins, you know what I mean? Like, normal people can't do that. And for you to always anchor it and bring it back to, look, man, these are the challenges that I'm facing. I'm facing, I have to overcome more of these challenges than the average guy. Like, I'm actually starting at a deficit with this.

• 1:07:31Speaker 07

  And I'm not gonna ever let anybody make themselves feel better. By telling me that I was some genetic freak. I'm not gonna make yourself feel better about that. You, I suffered. And I always say suffer because that's what I did. It was miserable. The races, every single race in Hell Week, in Buzz, in Ranger School. I suffered tremendously. I was not, I should never have been able to do it. Which is why I'm so proud of myself. I don't care what place I came in. I don't care. I walked 105 miles of bad water. I did it. That was the journey. That was the mission. That was about, it's not about, oh, well, this guy's just a freak. If that makes you feel bad, that's fine. No.

• 1:08:14Speaker 07

  You can do it off just a breath of air in the right mindset. That's the message. So you, you watered down my message by putting me in a category of I'm crazy. I'm a freak, whatever.

• 1:08:27Speaker 06

  All of those arguments are comfortable arguments to allow people to stay stuck in whatever situation.

• 1:08:33Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 1:08:33Speaker 06

  You know what I mean?

• 1:08:34Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:08:35Speaker 06

  So it's more uncomfortable if they have to actually reckon and wrestle with the fact that you are like them.

• 1:08:41Speaker 07

  Just like them.

• 1:08:42Speaker 06

  And, and no one, people don't want to do that.

• 1:08:44Speaker 07

  Just like them.

• 1:08:44Speaker 06

  They don't want to look in the mirror, right?

• 1:08:46Speaker 07

  And, right.

• 1:08:46Speaker 06

  So tell me about the, the mirror thing is a big thing with you, right?

• 1:08:49Speaker 07

  It's a huge thing for me. It's called the accountability mirror. So I talk about my childhood and if anybody thinks I'm some great person, listen to my childhood again. I had to change my thinking process and basically the accountability mirror is what did it. I started shaving my head and my face when I was 16 years old. And I realized when I started shaving my face and my head, you have a lot of time to look at your reflection. And for some, it sparked in me. I'm like, man, I, I'm a piece of crap. I ducked school. I ducked school. I barely am graduating. I'm, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm all these things, man. And I had to really.

• 1:09:29Speaker 07

  Tell myself the truth. And so many people, when you say you're dumb, the first thing people say, oh, no, you're not. If you're dumb, you're dumb. If you're fat, you're fat. But if you're not willing to tell yourself that, and everybody around you in your circle continues to give you this positive feedback, if you suck, you suck. If you tell yourself you suck, that is when you become great.

• 1:09:53Speaker 06

  Well, then you're you're getting into the solution.

• 1:09:55Speaker 07

  That is what I'm talking about. So that accountability mirror was, I gotta get to the surface of who I'm not. And I held myself accountable. I lied to this person today. I'm a liar. I'm a cheater. I'm this, I'm that. And I tell myself. And I fixed these issues and fixed these issues. And that part was hard. It was hard to not be jealous of this person who had this and this and this had nothing. Nothing. It was hard to tell this person, yeah, I'm jealous of you. And I'm insecure. I'm a very insecure guy. And I have nothing. It was hard to look at all that. I'm not real smart. But I had to fix these issues. And the accountability mirror was, now I look at myself in the mirror and say, wow, you fixed these issues.

• 1:10:40Speaker 06

  Right. So that's a thing that you consciously practice every day.

• 1:10:44Speaker 07

  Every day of my life.

• 1:10:44Speaker 06

  In the mirror.

• 1:10:45Speaker 07

  Every day of my life, even now. So if I were to say some little white lie, and I go to the mirror in the morning time, I shave my head, I was like, man, why the hell did you say that to that guy? And he would get a call from me and say, look, dude, I lied.

• 1:10:57Speaker 06

  That's like, that's like 12 step, man. It's like doing your daily inventory and like making amends for your bullshit.

• 1:11:03Speaker 07

  That's it.

• 1:11:03Speaker 06

  You know what I mean?

• 1:11:04Speaker 07

  Because you only lie to yourself.

• 1:11:05Speaker 06

  When you see this, you know, we're in this cultural malaise right now, where like every kid gets a participation trophy. And like, we have to tell everyone that they're great. Even though, you know what I mean? It's all about like feelings and everybody's a special snowflake and all of that. Like, you know, that must make you insane.

• 1:11:23Speaker 07

  It makes me more than insane. It's the destruction of this country. And I love this country. I've fought hard for it. I will continue to fight for it and hopefully through. Mental toughness, it takes mental toughness to change how you look at things. And giving a person a trophy, saying you're great when you're really not. If I had that growing up, there would be no David Goggins. Zero. There'd be no tough people. None, which is why the world is where it is today. Some weak people.

• 1:11:56Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:11:57Speaker 07

  There's a lot of weak people now.

• 1:11:59Speaker 06

  Right. So let's wrap it up with this. If you can like distill everything that you're about into like kind of one core message that you want people to take away, like what is it beyond what we've already talked about? What is it that's holding people back? That's limiting them, that's keeping them stuck in their blind spot? And how can you speak to that to perhaps shake it loose a little bit? And get people to think a little bit differently about how to proactively approach their lives?

• 1:12:27Speaker 07

  The truth, their truth, the real truth about who they are as a person. I think it all really starts there, the truth. And knowing that you may not be a courageous person, you may not have this and that. But are you willing to find it within yourself to go through the very hard journey? A lot of people in this world have died 80, 90, 100 years old. And they lived a great life. They had a lot of things. But a lot of people who have died never really started the true journey that whatever you believe in, God, or whatever you believe in, if you believe in nothing. I believe we're all here to start a journey. And that journey is fucking hard. If you choose your real journey. Most of us, we decide to take a different journey in life.

• 1:13:11Speaker 07

  It's a journey of least resistance. And so what I challenge people to do is to realize that in themselves that yeah, I have taken a lot of left turns and I should have stayed straight because why? I wasn't good at something. And it embarrassed me to not be good at something. Or I wasn't the smartest person or this or that. Whatever all these excuses are that we build up. Find the truth of who you are. Go back to the start of your journey and go down that path. I guarantee you, if you finish that journey and you don't fear and waver and go places that are very easy, the other end of that journey, let me tell you, is a peaceful end.

• 1:13:58Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half-page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered, or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

• 1:14:40Tim Ferriss?

  And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday. Type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is one of my favorite companies out there, one of my favorite platforms ever. And let's get into it. Shopify is a platform, as I mentioned, designed for anyone to sell anything, anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. So what does that mean?

• 1:15:24Tim Ferriss?

  That means in no time flat, you can have a great-looking online store that brings your ideas, products, and so on to life, and you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day business and drive sales. This is all possible without any coding or design experience whatsoever. Shopify instantly lets you accept all major payment methods. Shopify has thousands of integrations and third-party apps, from on-demand printing to accounting to advanced chatbots, anything you can imagine. They probably have a way to plug and play and make it happen. Shopify is what I wish I had had when I was venturing into e-commerce way back in the early 2000s. What they've done is pretty remarkable. I first met the founder, Toby, in 2008 when I became an advisor, and it's been spectacular.

• 1:16:07Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:16:49Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:17:31Tim Ferriss?

  All lowercase for a free trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Start selling on Shopify today. Go to Shopify.com/Tim right now and check it out. They have a lot to offer. Shopify.com/Tim. This episode is brought to you by Peak. That's P-I-Q-U-E. I have had so much tea in my life. I've been to China. I've lived in China and Japan. I've done tea tours. I drink a lot of tea. And 10 years plus of physical experimentation and tracking has shown me many things. Chief among them, that gut health is critical to just about everything. And you'll see where tea is going to tie into this. It affects immune function, weight management, mental performance, emotional health, you name it.

• 1:18:15Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:18:58Tim Ferriss?

  I often kick-start my mornings with their pu'er green tea, their pu'er black tea, and I alternate between the two. The rich, earthy flavor of the black specifically is amazing. It's very, very, it's like a delicious barnyard. Very peaty, if you like whiskey and stuff like that. They triple-toxin screen all of their products for heavy metals, pesticides, and toxic mold, contaminants commonly found in tea. There's also zero prep or brewing required, as the crystals dissolve in seconds. So you can just drop it into your hot tea, or I also make iced tea, and that saves a ton of time and hassle. Their fermented teas have never been discounted, but for you, my dear listeners, only for you, and for a limited time, Peak is offering up to 20% off, plus a free sampler pack with six of their best-selling teas when you order their pu'er teas.

• 1:19:43Tim Ferriss?

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