Episode 6: 6 Formulas for More Output and Less Overwhelm

This is a new variation on the podcast -- a short experiment. This episode is less than 20 minutes long and just me riffing on productivity. It's intended to give you tools for the week or weekend ahead. Please let me know what you think by pinging me on Twitter (@tferriss) using #TFS! What do you like and what don't you like? Would you like more of these or something else? Thank you, Tim

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

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  Welcome to the Tim Ferriss Show, folks. This is an experimental format. I am going to be putting out a short-form audio, in this case. Tell me if you like it. If you don't like it, what you would suggest instead by pinging me on Twitter @tferriss, 2Rs and 2S's, #TFS. This is going to be an essay, reading of an essay that many of you have not come in contact with, and that is, as a start, "The Choice Minimal Lifestyle: Six Formulas for More Output and Less Overwhelm." That is today's essay, this week's essay, and it is intended to give you some philosophical tidbits, as well as practical tools that you can apply over the week or over the weekend.

• 0:44Tim Ferriss?

  And it's intended to be, of course, shorter than the normal podcast, which is one to three hours in length. So again, this is "The Choice Minimal Lifestyle: Six Formulas for More Output and Less Overwhelm." I'm not going to edit this thing, because quite frankly, I don't know how. So if I misspeak at any point, you'll just have to pardon me, and I will catch myself and then correct. Here it goes.

• 1:08Tim Ferriss?

  "I was stressed out over dog cartoons. It was 9:47 PM at Barnes & Noble on a recent Saturday night, and I had just 13 minutes to find a suitable exchange for a book titled 'The New Yorker Dog Cartoons,' $22 of expensive paper. So should I go to the bestseller rack, the staff recommends rack, new arrivals, or classics? I'd already been in the store for 30 minutes. Beginning to feel overwhelmed with this ridiculous errand, I'd expected to take just five minutes, I stumbled across the psychology section. One tome jumped out at me, as all too appropriate in this case, and it was 'The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.' Now, it wasn't the first time I had seen or read Barry Schwartz's 2004 classic, but

• 1:52Tim Ferriss?

  it seemed like a good time to revisit the principles. Among them, number one..." The more options you consider, the more buyers regret you'll have, or regret in general. Number two, the more options you encounter, the less fulfilling your ultimate outcome will be. So this raises a difficult question. In life, in many, many things, is it better to have the best outcome, but be less satisfied? Or have an acceptable outcome and be satisfied? For example, would you rather deliberate for months and get the one of 20 houses? That's the best investment, but second guess yourself until you sell it five years later? Or would you rather get a house that is 80% of the investment potential of the former, still to be sold at a profit, mind you, but never second guess it?

• 2:37Tim Ferriss?

  Which is better? That's a tough call. Now Barry recommends making non-returnable purchases. So in this case, with the dog cartoons, I decided to keep the stupid pooch cartoons. Why? Because it's not just about being satisfied, it's about being practical. Income is renewable, that is renewable resource, but some other resources like attention are not. I've talked before about attention as a currency and how it determines the value of time. For instance, I have a blog post you can search on Google for, "The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen." This post explores this entire concept using case studies, but here's one example. Is your weekend really free if you find a crisis in the inbox Saturday morning

• 3:20Tim Ferriss?

  that you can't address until Monday morning? Okay, think about that. So if you're just about to go into your weekend and then you find a big mess in your inbox that you can't fix until Monday morning, is your weekend really free? Even if you don't have something scheduled? So for instance, even if you have a scan in the inbox that lasts 30 seconds, the preoccupation and forward projection for the subsequent 48 hours effectively deletes your entire experience of the weekend. You had time, but you didn't have attention, so the time has no practical value. Okay? So time has no practical value without attention.

• 3:55Tim Ferriss?

  All right, coming back to the choice minimal lifestyle idea. The choice minimal lifestyle becomes an attractive tool when we consider two truths, or things that I consider to be truths. Number one, considering options costs attention that then can't be spent on action or present state awareness, right? So considering options sort of pulls you out of the present state. Number two, attention is necessary not only for productivity, getting things done, right, but appreciation. Attention is necessary for both of those things, achievement and appreciation. Therefore, too many choices equals less or no productivity. Too many choices equals less or no appreciation. Too many choices equals sense of overwhelm. So all in all, pretty bad thing.

• 4:41Tim Ferriss?

  Some people find that religion enables a practical choice minimal lifestyle, as religious tenets often limit the number of possible actions. And we could look at a very fun example with A.J. Jacobs. A.J. Jacobs is a friend of mine. He writes for Esquire. During his year of attempting to follow the rules of the Bible literally, which is a book called The Year of Living Biblically, it's fantastic. The then agnostic A.J., well, he actually said, you know, "I am to Judaism what Italian food is to," or what the Olive Garden is to Italian food. It's just kind of funny. But so A.J. then, an agnostic, cited the rules and restrictions of the Bible as amazing in this respect, that is, limiting options.

• 5:25Tim Ferriss?

  Not having to consider a wide spectrum of actions as he was following immutable, if then, rules allowed him to focus undiluted attention on the areas that weren't constrained. So the result, he had increased output, increased happiness all around. These were positive constraints. Personally, even though I attended an Episcopal boarding school, I'm not religion in the conventional sense. And I don't use the term spiritual because I think it's kind of a cop out. So his approach isn't mine. So what are you to do if you're secular? Or perhaps if you're undecided about religion, what to do? And there are six basic rules or formulas that can be used regardless of denomination to decrease the number of options you consider in life and to be, therefore, happier.

• 6:12Tim Ferriss?

  More productive and generally just a more smiley person, okay? For lack of a better description. Number one, and there's six rules. Number one, set rules for yourself so you can automate as much decision making as possible. Right? You can search on my blog, which is just fourhourblog.com for email autoresponders and so on. Automate as much decision making as possible. It could be as simple as putting your bills on auto pay. It could be many other things and we'll get to a couple of examples. Number two, don't provoke deliberation before you can take action. In other words, don't ruminate on decisions until you can actually make them. All right? You don't, most decisions don't require months and months of deliberation.

• 6:54Tim Ferriss?

  So one simple example, don't scan the inbox on Friday evening or over the weekend if you might encounter work problems that you can't address until Monday. Right? That's a very practical example. Number three, don't postpone decision, decisions or open loops, which is what they would be called in GTD or getting things done parlance, just to avoid uncomfortable conversations. All right? Open loops are a huge drain. All right? For instance, if an acquaintance asks you if you want to come to their house for dinner next week and you don't, and you know you won't, don't say, "I'm not sure I'll let you know next week." Instead, you could use something soft but conclusive like, "Next week? I'm pretty sure I have another commitment on Thursday, but thanks for the invite. Just so I don't leave you hanging, let's assume I can't make it, but I'll let you know if that changes." Okay?

• 7:39Tim Ferriss?

  So rather than follow up with me next week, or I'll follow up with you next week, say, "I'm pretty sure I can't make it, I'll let you know if that changes." All right? So decision made, move on. Number four, learn to make non-fatable or non-fatal or reversible decisions as quickly as possible. All right? So risk to me is the possibility or the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome. If the risk defined as such is low, Make decisions and move on, alright? Most of them are going to be non-fatable or reversible. So, in practical terms, you can set time limits for certain decisions. I won't consider options for more than 20 minutes and then just go with something, anything. You can limit the number of options.

• 8:23Tim Ferriss?

  I'll consider no more than three options, right? If you're looking at homes, or startups, or whatever. Or you can set financial thresholds. For instance, if it costs less than a hundred dollars, or the potential damage is less than a hundred dollars, I'll let a virtual assistant make the call, right? And that is how I freed myself up with my first business in large measure, was saying, hey, I, you know, I am no longer your customer. The customers are your customer to these contracted companies. If anything could be fixed for less than a hundred dollars, I don't want to hear about it. Don't contact me as an intermediary, just go ahead and do it. And then I raised that threshold over time. I wrote most of this essay after landing at the monster that is Atlanta Airport. It's a beast.

• 9:06Tim Ferriss?

  Now, I could have considered half a dozen different types of ground transportation, right? In 15 or 20 minutes, maybe saved, I don't know, 30%, but I grabbed an Uber instead. Now, why, why did I do that? I could have saved some money. I didn't want to sacrifice 10 attention units, let's just say, of my remaining 50 to 100 total units, since those 10 units couldn't then be spent on this essay, right? You have limited decision-making capability. You can Google "decision fatigue", it's been written about. I had about eight hours before bedtime due to time zone differences. Right, plenty of time, but scarce usable attention after I pulled an all-nighter, and due to fun stuff, and a cross-country flight, right?

• 9:47Tim Ferriss?

  So, fast decisions preserve usable attention for what matters, okay? Likewise, you shouldn't spend a lot of time deciding what to have for breakfast in the morning, and I'll come back to that. It's a waste of your decision-making power that you should only allocate to creative or valuable things. Alright, rule number five. Don't strive for variation and thus increased options when it's not needed. Routine enables innovation where it's most valuable, okay? Routine, routine, routine. And there's a book, in fact, it's part of the Tim Ferriss Book Club called Daily Rituals, which provides, I think it's 167 rituals of some of the most productive people of the last several hundred years, composers, artists, scientists. Take a look at it, alright?

• 10:29Tim Ferriss?

  So Daily Rituals, great book. I produced the audiobook, in fact. But don't strive for variation. Embrace routine. Okay, explaining this. In working with athletes, for example, it's clear that those who maintain the lowest body fat percentage, generally speaking, eat the same foods over and over and over again. I've eaten the same slow carb breakfast and diet, you know, same breakfast and lunch for nearly two years. Putting variation only into the meals that I focus on for enjoyment. Okay, so there's utility and then enjoyment. And for me, that's dinner and then all meals on Saturdays, which is cheat day, go ballistic. And on any given Saturday, you can search on Twitter, hashtag cheat day, and you'll see all sorts of crazy stuff. The same sort of distinction can be found in exercise versus

• 11:13Tim Ferriss?

  recreation, okay? So utility versus fun, exercise versus recreation. For fat loss and muscle gain, even as much as 20-plus pounds of muscle gain in four weeks, I followed the same exercise protocol, Occam's Protocol, which was explained in The Four Hour Body, with occasional experiments since 1996. That's a long time. Same thing, without variety. For recreation, though, when the focus is enjoyment and not efficacy, I tend to try something new each weekend, right? So long, long walks, climbing, rock climbing at Mission Cliffs or outside, mountain biking in Marin, tasting wine in Napa, whatever, right? There's a lot of variety in the recreation category, but not in the exercise category. So don't

• 11:57Tim Ferriss?

  confuse what should be results-driven with routine exercise, right, fuel for breakfast, with something that is enjoyment-driven, that benefits from variation. Okay. Number six. Regret is past tense decision-making, right? So think about this. Regret is past tense decision-making. It's already water under the bridge, so eliminate complaining to minimize regret. Alright?

• 12:24Tim Ferriss?

  Condition yourself to notice complaints and stop making them with a simple experiment, like the 21-day no complaint experiment, which you can also search on the blog. If you just search "21-day no complaint experiment, my name," it'll pop right up. You take a bracelet or a rubber band, you put it on wrist, and you snap it every time you complain. And we need to define what that means very, very carefully. What is a complaint, exactly? But just a bracelet and awareness can prevent wasted past tense deliberation. Right? Regret, being pissed off with people who've wronged you, grudges, all of that nonsense that improves nothing and depletes your attention and emotional reserves. All right, so consider a 21-day no complaint experiment.

• 13:05Tim Ferriss?

  It is really a game changer, a complete life changer, and it's so simple to do. All right, so in conclusion, decision-making isn't to be avoided. That's not the problem. Right? You want to be a good decision-maker, but of course, you can look at any good CEO, top corporate performer, and you'll see a high volume of decisions. But it's the deliberation, the time we vacillate over and consider each decision, that's the killer. All right? Total deliberation time, not the number of decisions, is what determines your sort of attention, bank account balance, or debt, right? Where you start to make really sloppy mistakes. And if you look at, for instance, Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines, he had a journalist with

• 13:49Tim Ferriss?

  him at one point, and they said, "Oh, my God, your job must be so stressful, must be so difficult." And he said, "No, actually, it's really simple, because I have parameters." Are we the lowest-cost airline? And every decision can be made through that lens. And he had the journalist sort of make decisions for him with a bunch of different proposals that came in. Lo and behold, really easy, really fast, low emotional tax, right? Because you have good rules. Okay. So let's assume that you pay sort of 10% overtime by following the six rules that I mentioned. You cut your average decision cycle time by 40%. All right, so 10 minutes goes to 6 minutes, for example. Not only will you have much more time and attention to spend on revenue generating

• 14:31Tim Ferriss?

  activities, for instance, if that's your goal, you'll also get greater enjoyment from what you have and experience, right? And you really need to focus not just on achievement, but appreciation of what you have. If you can't be happy with what you have and what you're doing, you'll never be happy with what you get or do, alright? So, consider that payment over time, right? That 10% of additional cost, literally, you could say, like, the things that you buy are 10% more expensive because you're cutting down your decision time. As an investment and part of your ideal lifestyle tax, it's not a loss. It is an investment in your quality of life and your results.

• 15:10Tim Ferriss?

  So, embrace, eh, embrace, not only embrace, but embrace the choice minimal lifestyle. It is a subtle and under-exploited philosophical tool that produces dramatic increases in both output and satisfaction, all with less overwhelm. Alright? So, make testing a few of these rules, there are six of them, you can listen to this again, it's pretty short. Make testing a few of these principles the first of many fast and reversible decisions, because most decisions aren't that risky. You can get back to where you are now, so make them faster, okay? And I hope you enjoyed this essay. Let me know if you did. Shoot me a note on Twitter, @TFerris, hashtag TFS.

• 15:54Tim Ferriss?

  If you would like more of these, let me know. If you hated it, if it's a waste of your time, please also let me know. I can do more of these, I could also do something where I answer questions, for instance. And I take, I have questions voted up, and then each week or every two weeks, I answer a few of them in this type of format, which is, let's say, five to 15 minutes. Alright, that is it for now. Please visit the blog, fourhourblog.com, all spelled out. Of course, there's the normal show, The Tim Ferriss Show, with long interviews, one to three hours. Visit the blog, I hope you test some of these things out, and let me know what you think. Thanks so much for listening.