#348: Dave Elitch — How to Get Out of Your Own Way

"Slow down. Do it again." — Dave Elitch Dave Elitch (IG: @daveelitch https://www.instagram.com/daveelitch/) first garnered attention with his band Daughters of Mara's debut album I am Destroyer in 2007, but his time touring with the American progressive rock band The Mars Volta in 2009-2010 is what really put him on the map. He has since worked with Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, M83, The 1975, Juliette Lewis, Big Black Delta, as well as many others. Dave conducts master-class lectures worldwide and is a regular in the L. A. session scene, including performing on film scores for many major motion pictures. As an educator for the last 20 years, Dave has developed a reputation as the technique/body mechanic specialist who has helped many of the world's top players and educators overcome physical and mental plateaus at his private studio in Los Angeles. His brand new online course, Getting Out of Your Own Way, is available now at DaveElitch.com https://www.daveelitch.com/ (use the code FERRISS at checkout for a 25% off discount). Please enjoy this episode with Dave Elitch! This podcast is brought to you by FreshBooks https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email. FreshBooks is the #1 cloud bookkeeping software, which is used by a ton of the start-ups I advise and many of the contractors I work with. It is the easiest way to send invoices, get paid, track your time, and track your clients. FreshBooks https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email tells you when your clients have viewed your invoices, helps you customize your invoices, track your hours, automatically organize your receipts, have late payment reminders sent automatically and much more. Right now you can get a free month of complete and unrestricted use https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email. You do not need a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month and see how the brand new Freshbooks can change your business, go to FreshBooks.com/Tim https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email and enter “Tim Ferriss https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email” in the “how did you hear about us” section. This podcast is also brought to you by Audible http://audible.com/tim. I have used Audible http://audible.com/tim for years, and I love audiobooks. I have a few to recommend: Ready Player One https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Ready-Player-One-Audiobook/B005FRGT44/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Ernest ClineThe Tao of Seneca https://www.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/The-Tao-of-Seneca-Audiobook/B01AIXEJKU/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by SenecaThe Graveyard Book http://www.audible.com/pd/Teens/The-Graveyard-Book-Full-Cast-Production-Audiobook/B00LXHQO22/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Neil GaimanNonviolent Communication https://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Development/Nonviolent-Communication-Audiobook/B00TJJNSQG/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Marshall B. Rosenberg All you need to do to get three months of Audible for just $6.95 a month is visit Audible.com/Tim http://audible.com/tim or text TIM to 500500 to get started today. *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews! For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. 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. Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor http://tim.blog/sponsor. 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/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/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/, 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question? No, it is an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks has become the go-to cloud accounting software for literally millions of small business owners who found a faster, more efficient, and much less stressful way to deal with their numbers. And ultimately, this helps you to focus on what you are best at. It is used by many of the fastest-growing startups I've invested in or advised, and it's equally used by many of the best freelancers I work with on a daily or weekly basis. It is one of the easiest ways to send invoices, get paid, track your time, and track your clients. If your self-employed and managing business sometimes means wrestling with spreadsheets, crumpled receipts, and other scattered pieces, FreshBooks can really help. FreshBooks allows you to do many, many different things very easily. Preparing and sending a polished, branded invoice takes about 30 seconds.

• 1:09Tim Ferriss?

  You can set yourself up to receive online payments from your clients in about two clicks, which on average will get you paid twice as fast. Their new Proposals feature means you can include a project summary and timeline as part of your estimate. There are many, many other things. Tracking your time. The quick proposals that I mentioned. Formating free, super easy. Late payment reminders, so you don't have to chase people. Automated expenses. Sharing files and messages with your clients. Award-winning customer service. They are extremely responsive, the interface is super intuitive, and there's almost no learning curve. So, in short, it's easy, it saves you time. And right now, FreshBooks is offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for all of my listeners. To claim yours, check it out.

• 1:51Tim Ferriss?

  Go to freshbooks.com/tim and enter TIMFERRISS in the "How did you hear about us?" section. And that is funky spell, T-I-M-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. So again, go to freshbooks.com/tim and enter TIMFERRISS in the "How did you hear about us?" section. Check it out.

• 2:13Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Audible. Audible provides an unbeatable selection of audiobooks, including bestsellers, how-to, mysteries, thrillers, memoirs, and more. I've used Audible for many years, and I have a few audiobooks to recommend right off the bat. Number one, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. So, listen to the book that caught the attention of Spielberg enough to get made into a major film. The writing is fantastic. Tao Seneca by Seneca the Younger. This is a collection of letters, my favorite compilation of letters of all time that I've recommended the most of all the books I've ever read. And The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. This is the fiction book that I use to convert nonfiction purists into fiction lovers.

• 2:55Tim Ferriss?

  I like the version that Neil reads himself, but that's just me. He has a hypnotic voice. I also recently enjoyed Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, which was recommended to me by bestselling author Neil Strauss. Make sure to get the audiobook version, and you will recognize it by the P sign on the cover. And as an Audible subscriber, you can choose three titles every month: one audiobook and two Audible originals you can't hear anywhere else. And there's some really, really cool stuff among the Audible originals. You can listen on any device, anytime, anywhere, at home, at the gym, while you're cooking, on your commute, or wherever. I often listen to audiobooks when I'm walking my pooch, or on the way to the gym, so on and so forth. You'll also enjoy easy audiobook exchanges.

• 3:38Tim Ferriss?

  In other words, if you don't like what you buy, and you're like, "Ah, buyer's remorse", you can swap it. Roll over credits, so if you don't use credits in a given month, they roll over into the next. And an audiobook library you keep forever, even if you cancel. This last part is important. Unlike, say, a streaming or rental service, with Audible, you own your books, even if you cancel your membership. And right now, for a limited time, you can get three months of Audible for just $6.95 a month. That's $6.95 a month. And that is also more than half off the regular price. So give yourself the gift of listening. And while you're at it, think about giving the gift of Audible to someone on your list. For more, go to audible.com/tim, T-I-M that is, audible.com/tim, or text TIM, T-I-M, to

• 4:23Tim Ferriss?

  500-500.

• 4:28Tim Ferriss?

  Why, hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job each and every episode, this one included, to interview and dissect world-class performers of all different types: business, sports, chess, entertainment, music, sometimes folks who span many multiple disciplines, and this is one of those cases, in my mind at least. We have Dave Elitch, sitting across from me. Dave, how are you? I'm great, man. Happy to be here. On Instagram and Twitter and elsewhere, @daveelitch, D-A-V-E-L-I-T-C-H, daveelitch.com. Instagram would be probably first choice for checking him out. And I'll read the bio,

• 5:08Tim Ferriss?

  and then I have all sorts of questions about the bio, but I think before I get into that, it's helpful to, perhaps as context for some folks, mention what I said to my girlfriend last night, who asked me, fairly, "Who is Dave? Why is he in the house?" Not in an "accuse story" way, more out of curiosity. And you were helping to set up my first-ever drum kit- Yep. -after many, many misfires, which we won't get into right now. There are a lot of people very, very high on drugs who will volunteer to help you assemble kits. Turns out, they don't follow the directions very well. And I wanted her to hear you play, just to tool around, after we had consumed many pounds of pork and biscuits and all

• 5:51Tim Ferriss?

  sorts of other Texan health food. Yes. And she had asked me, at some point, the day before, mostly as a hypothetical question, but also she was very curious, "I wonder who Annie goes to for relationship advice?" And Annie, in this case, is a very well-known relationship coach/therapist. Who does the relationship coach go to for relationship advice?

• 6:20Tim Ferriss?

  I use that as a bridge to say, well, many of the musicians you think of, many of the best drummers you might see onstage, go to Dave. As sort of the drumming whisperer slash like mechanic fixer. Yes. Among many other things. So let's jump into the bio, but for those people who are listening and are, who are thinking to themselves, well, I really don't know anything about drumming. I really don't know anything about music. This is an audio only format. I'm not going to be able to watch Dave smashing on his kit. We are going to jump across all sorts of different topics, so fear not. But let's, let's get into the, the basic bio. So Dave Elitch, first garnered attention with his band, Daughters of Mara's debut album,

• 7:03Tim Ferriss?

  I Am Destroyer, in 2007. Very appropriate debut album name for a lot of reasons. But his time touring with the American progressive rock band, The Mars Volta, in 2009, 2010, is what really put him on the map and certainly put you on my map, which we can get to. He has since worked with Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, M83, The 1975, Juliette Lewis, Big Black Delta, and many, many others. He conducts masterclass lectures worldwide, and in fact, you are going to be conducting a masterclass tomorrow. Yep. Here in Austin, Texas, which is exciting. And is a regular in the LA session scene, and I want to come back to a bunch of vocab here that we can dissect, including performing on film scores for many major motion pictures, and I have questions about that.

• 7:46Tim Ferriss?

  As an educator for the last 20 years, which for people who have listened to this podcast for a while, is part of what makes you so interesting to me, is not just the ability to perform, but the ability to transmit and to break down and to convey and to demystify. Mm-hmm. Uh, let's back to the sentence. As an educator for the last 20 years, Dave has developed a reputation as the technique body mechanic specialist, who has helped many of the world's top players and educators overcome physical and mental plateaus at his private studio in Los Angeles. And your brand new online course, Getting Out of Your Own Way, which is perhaps the best title of any course I've ever encountered, is available at daveelitch.com. I have checked it out. It is fucking awesome. Thank you.

• 8:31Tim Ferriss?

  And I have spent a lot of time thinking about teaching. I've spent a lot of time thinking about learning and... I'm by no means a musician, but have also digested a fair amount of material related to drumming.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 8:46Tim Ferriss?

  Cannot recommend it.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 8:48Tim Ferriss?

  Highly enough. I thought we could start with your T-shirt that you're wearing right now. And it's a T-shirt that I liked so much at one point when we hung out in LA and smashed on some drums. And then ate a bunch of Himalayan yak, if I remember correctly.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  Yup.

• 9:05Tim Ferriss?

  I asked you where I could get one of these shirts. So could you describe for people what you're wearing at the moment and why?

• 9:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. So I'm wearing one of my T-shirts that I, you know, make and are available on my website. That, uh, that say, "Slow down" on the front and "Do it again" on the back. And it came from me having to say that over and over and over again to people as I was teaching them. So I just got tired of yelling at people and saying the same shit over and over again. So I just point at my shirt now and I just go, "Come on, slow it down." Cause so many people, uh, it, it, it's not about what you're trying to learn as much as it is about how you approach learning it.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Which is obviously a universal concept. And so many people try to just rush through things so quickly. And especially when you're doing something that's so physically and mentally demanding as, as drumming. If you don't approach it slowly, your brain has no idea what your body's doing. So all these people try and rush through something and, and they physiologically have no idea what's going on.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  And also do it again because the sheer amount of repetition you have to do to really plug in that muscle memory.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  And, and it's fun. I made it just kind of as a joke, kind of, you know? And then people would come up to me on the street and be like, "Oh, I'd love that shirt." Cause people get whatever sort of meaning they want.

• 10:37Tim Ferriss?

  The Rorschach egg blot test.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. People, and people love it and they get whatever they want out of it. And, uh, it can mean all sorts of different things, you know?

• 10:48Tim Ferriss?

  And this, I think, also highlights for me.

• 10:52Tim Ferriss?

  A difference between, a really critical difference in learning anything, or several critical differences. One is developing a skill versus demonstrating this skill. And you could, you could apply that to say, strength development versus display. Right? Competing in say, powerlifting versus training for powerlifting. And in this case, I think maybe a good contrast that comes to mind would be last night, sitting down at this electronic drum kit, my first kit of, of that type that I've ever used, and playing with the basic posture and body mechanics. And so you would ask me to relinquish

• 11:36Tim Ferriss?

  control of my arm and provide dead weight and to do the same with my leg, to try to ensure that, for instance, when using the, and I never know if I should call it a kick or a bass or- Same thing. Something else, kick or bass drum, or pedal rather, that I would be using my hip as opposed to getting wickety whack with my ankle- Yes. Or other articulation. And in aiming to do that, ensuring that I'm not leaning back like I'm in an Easy Rider, because that creates all sorts of instability. And it was incredible to me, but not surprising, given my time with you, that within about 120 seconds, you took one of my greatest sources of discomfort sitting at any kit, which was feeling like

• 12:21Tim Ferriss?

  I had to be kind of balanced on my left ass cheek- Mm-hmm. To make the bass pedal work properly. Yeah, yeah. And you removed that, so now I could have a little bit of anterior pelvic tilt. And for people who are wondering what that means, imagine your hips are a glass of wine. If you pour wine out the front, that's anterior pelvic tilt. Posterior pelvic tilt would be pouring wine out the back. And so having a little bit of tilt forward so that I can feel my sits bones- Mm-hmm. On the stool, which you also helped me to do by taking a weight plate, because it was in the garage, and the gym is also there, and putting it on top of it. So you diagnosed that very quickly, and then we practiced a very slow, basic sort of ACDC- Yeah. Rock- Money beat, money beat. The money. Yeah, yeah.

• 13:06Tim Ferriss?

  And in doing that, we were able to focus on some really fundamental grips and so on in a very slow fashion. But the video that introduced you to me-

• 13:18Tim Ferriss?

  Has some, a number, it turns out, of stories associated with it that I hadn't heard.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:24Tim Ferriss?

  Seems like a lot of people have come to find you through this video, so I'd love to tell people about it. And I think it came about because I was on Twitter at God knows what unholy hour and was thinking about drumming, and I've always been fascinated by drumming. So I asked something along the lines of like, who is a Beast drummer who is also a good teacher? And somebody threw a link up to this video. What is the video?

• 13:49Speaker 03

  So the video is me playing with the Mars Volta at a Big Day Out Festival in Sydney, Australia in 2010, early 2010. And I would videotape all of the shows that we played. I'd set up a little camera behind me because when you're in the heat of battle, you know, as you could say, you have no idea how it's actually coming across. So if I backtrack a little bit, with this situation and a lot of situations that I get called for, I've sort of developed this reputation as a bit of a mercenary in that like, when someone

• 14:33Speaker 03

  breaks their arm, or someone gets fired, or someone needs someone to do a tour, like last minute, no rehearsals, little rehearsal, whatever, they call me and I have to learn everything last minute. And it's, it's funny.

• 14:48Tim Ferriss?

  The cleaner.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, with, with, with the Mars Volta, with Miley Cyrus, with 1975, with M83, you walk into a room, you go, nice to meet you guys. And you might run through the set once, and then you're playing in front of 15, 20, 30,000 people. And it's a very unique situation to be in. The amount of pressure is unbelievable. Because as a drummer, if you drop the ball, the whole show collapses and on top of you. It's not like, you know, guitar, where you can just like, whoops, flub that, and then you can just kind of keep playing.

• 15:28Tim Ferriss?

  Do it twice if you're playing jazz.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  Exactly. Yeah, drumming, if you drop the ball, like, the whole show caves in on you. So, so, The Mars Volta was, you know, the first big situation that I was in like that. I got that gig when I was 25. They called hundreds of people to do it. People were sending in video auditions and all kinds of stuff. And when they asked me to do it, I, uh, I said, "Yeah, sure." You know, in your head, it's one of them, I'm sure you've had this experience before. They're like, "Great, this sounds great. Do you want to do it?" And in my head, I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no." And then I was just like, "Yes." The "yes" just comes out of your mouth. And I feel like every important life decision I've ever made, that happens. And it's super important to just do it, no matter how.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Grow wings on the way down? Yes, exactly. And, uh, so, so I, so I flew to Europe, met the band, we ran through the two and a half hour set, twice, and then we're on tour. And this is like, for people who aren't familiar with the band, it's extremely complex music. Lots of like, Omar the guitar player, lots of hand signals and eyebrows and, and, and cues. I didn't realize that. So he's like a Major League Baseball catcher? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, there's a long drum solo every night. So there's, you have to really be on point. So I would set up a camera behind me every

• 17:00Speaker 03

  night to just be like, "I need to know what this actually sounds like." Because in, in the heat of the moment, you could think you're killing it, and then you watch a video and you're like, "Ugh, whoops." Or the opposite's also true, always. I could be like, "I really, really, you know, that doesn't, that didn't sound good at all." And then I watched the video, I'm like, "Oh, that was actually okay." So that level of cognitive disconnect is, in that scenario, is huge. So I would go back to my hotel room after the show and watch the video and, you know, take mental notes about things that worked and things that didn't work. And for me, it's always been very important to put on a visual show. I, there's nothing worse than going to see a show and just watching someone looks like they're doing their taxes.

• 17:44Tim Ferriss?

  Why do you think this particular video, and we'll put it in the show notes, so for people who want to see it, you can just go to tim.blog/podcast and it'll be right in the show notes, so you can find the link. But if people wanted to Google this, is there anything in particular they should search for?

• 17:58Speaker 03

  You just type in Dave Elitch drum cam, or just Dave Elitch, and it's gonna pop up at the top somewhere.

• 18:03Tim Ferriss?

  It's one of the very first videos.

• 18:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:06Tim Ferriss?

  Why do you think this video, and it's related to where you were going, I think, why do you think this video caught on in the way that it did?

• 18:12Speaker 03

  Cause I'm going ape shit.

• 18:15Tim Ferriss?

  Fuck.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  Standing up, kicking stuff over, you know, like, just going nuts.

• 18:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 03

  Like, I think it's really important to put on a show, so people are like, "Holy shit, what is go- this is insane," you know, and, uh, so yeah, I'm standing up and hitting super hard, and it's visually entertaining, but the most important part of that is the playing has to be happening. If you, you know, go nuts and then you screw something up, there's no point.

• 18:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  So the playing has to be on point, and then I'm gonna stand up and kick something over, and, you know?

• 18:56Tim Ferriss?

  Before you had your first, whether it's your first performance with the Mars Volta, so you've gone through the set twice.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:05Tim Ferriss?

  You're in Europe.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:07Tim Ferriss?

  Wherever you are in the world.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:09Tim Ferriss?

  What is your self-talk, or your prep, before going out on stage to play?

• 19:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:17Tim Ferriss?

  With this band?

• 19:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you'll be into this, because there's a lot of note-taking.

• 19:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm already into it.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  So, this is something that I do with a lot of people that I work with, just showing them how to properly chart out a song, because so many people write out way too much nonsense, and then it's way too much to navigate. And, learning music at the last minute and having to play it is, you know, that does happen, you know, quite a bit, whether it's like a coffeehouse, or a huge show, or whatever. So, most people will write out- Everything and then they go to look at it and they have no idea what they can't read their handwriting. And so, meaning like what I do with people is it's just the roadmap. You're not writing out notation, you're not writing out, it's just like intro, eight bars, verse, 16 bars. Chorus, 16, it's just that, that's it.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  Like, and I might say where my right hand is, ride symbol, crash, hi hat, but it's very minimalistic. And so I made those charts for all the songs. And I would, I would go through, it's all about how you approach this stuff, right? So a lot of people would go, I'm gonna play through the setlist, just bang, bang, bang, down, down the line. But you're constantly distracted, you're constantly switching, the target's moving, so you can't get deep. So what I would-

• 20:42Tim Ferriss?

  Why is the target moving?

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Because you're switching songs all the time. So what I would do is I would take the first song in the setlist and I would have my notes and the music. And I would play through it as many times as it took for me to be like, I know this really well, but the same thing on repeat. Most people would just go, I'm just gonna go through the set and then it's-

• 21:03Tim Ferriss?

  Now, do the, do the, by the songs changing, you mean that show to show or-

• 21:08Speaker 03

  No, no, I mean like within the setlist itself. So someone would play like the first song and then they, then the second song and then the third song, all in a row.

• 21:15Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  And then they can't remember anything because they're working on all the songs at the same time.

• 21:20Tim Ferriss?

  It's linear.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 21:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's also, just because we've both had a fair amount of caffeine, so I feel like we can just make use of that caffeine now. Uh, this is also a reason why certain mnemonic devices work better than others. For instance, if you use what is sometimes referred to as a memory palace. Uh, in which, this is, has been used for thousands of years, Cicero used it for memorizing speeches, among other things, where you could take, this is also how a lot of memory competitors memorize shuffled decks of cards. Is they will memorize, say, pairs of cards as interacting images and place them along a familiar route. Right, so walking from their, their front door to the grocery store or something like that.

• 22:05Tim Ferriss?

  But one of the challenges with that is if you want to get to the 12th item and recall that 12th item, you have to run through the list. And similarly,

• 22:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 22:15Tim Ferriss?

  If you're only memorizing or getting familiar with a playlist

• 22:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:20Tim Ferriss?

  or a set

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:21Tim Ferriss?

  from one to 12 or whatever the number is.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:23Tim Ferriss?

  And then all of a sudden, I'm just imagining like lead singer is like, fuck it.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:27Tim Ferriss?

  I'm feeling we should just go to five and you're like, I'm not ready for five.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  Totally. That's a very real thing. And that's a real thing also when people are doing method book work like out of a drum book, let's say, like I might have them learn the entire page. This happens all the time. And I'm like, cool, let me hear you start from the end.

• 22:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  And they're like, uh, so that, that, that actually is a very important point. And that comes later in the process, at the end of the process. So I will just go through one song over and over and over and over and over again, until I know it really well. And this is, this is huge. Practicing not in regards to time, but in regards to goals. So the amount of people who go to music school and they go, yeah, I practice eight hours a day. Like, well, you know, it's not about how much time. It's about what you're getting done and having specific goals and, and, and writing that down and go,

• 23:27Speaker 03

  I need to get this from here to here. Once I get that done, I'm done. Check, moving on. A lot of people go, I need to work on this thing for an hour. That doesn't mean anything. It's not a tangible goal. An hour for you and an hour for me are completely different. One, one person could get it in 20 minutes. Another person takes two hours. So, and it's unbelievable how everyone structures things in terms of time.

• 23:49Tim Ferriss?

  How do you know when you, when you have a song?

• 23:53Speaker 03

  It's a good question. I don't know if I can put that into words.

• 23:58Tim Ferriss?

  What does it feel like?

• 24:00Speaker 03

  It feels like you've given a lot of talks, right? You rehearse it enough and you're like, yeah, I don't need these notes. I know you know it in your core.

• 24:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  It's it's like when you memorize your times tables or whatever. It's that same type of thing. You're not, you don't have to like gear up to get it going.

• 24:19Tim Ferriss?

  Someone could like slap you in the face to wake you up and be like, do this.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:22Tim Ferriss?

  And it would just come out.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. It's in your bones. And I prepare in that regard, like an insane amount, like a ridiculous amount. So I'll play the song. I don't know, like five or 10 times with my notes. And then I'm starting like, okay, I think I think I got it now. Then I'll put my notes away and just play. No, sorry. Then I'll play with just the notes, no music. And then I'll play.

• 24:51Tim Ferriss?

  As you're saying, so you're playing, you're accompanying the music first with your notes.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  Yes. And then when I get comfortable, the next step.

• 24:59Tim Ferriss?

  Turn off the music.

• 25:00Speaker 03

  And just play with the notes. And then the next step is music, no notes. And then the final step is just to click track, nothing else. So just a metronome.

• 25:12Tim Ferriss?

  Click track metronome.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I'm hearing nothing and I have to know it so well that I can get through the whole song in my head, hearing everything. And it's that's an insane amount of work. But the deal is, is when you get on stage and there's 30,000 people screaming and like with Miley, like people throwing bras and underwear at me. Like you're you're like.

• 25:32Tim Ferriss?

  Better than batteries and tomatoes, I guess.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  Or beer or beer bottles. Like at that moment, you have to know everything so well that that's not going to faze you. So it takes a long time and I'm in there for 10 or 12 hours at the beginning. But but that type of preparation.

• 25:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  Is is huge. And what's funny is when I went to Amsterdam to rehearse the set with them, I set up an extra floor tom on my left side, which normally wouldn't do that. They're on your right side. And were you gonna say something?

• 26:04Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no, I was just going to, I was, I was going to say for, maybe you could just explain what a floor tom is.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So, uh, so Tom's, yeah, interesting. It's explained in this slide. Yeah, so, um, so, um.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  Man, how would you explain this to Aaliyah?

• 26:20Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna do a poor job.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, great.

• 26:23Tim Ferriss?

  I'll take a s- I will do a terrible job, but it's easy for me to come at this with beginner's eyes because I don't know the fuck I'm talking about.

• 26:32Tim Ferriss?

  So if people hear the kind of like snap of a like, like the generally, please feel free to call bullshit on any of this.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  No, no, you're good.

• 26:40Tim Ferriss?

  Like that, you're going to be hearing, say, a snare drum, right? And when you look at drummers and they have their hands seemingly crossed, they're hitting the hi-hat, and then they're hitting the snare with the other hand. And that's part of the lifeblood of any kind of like rock beat, right?

• 26:55Speaker 03

  And the kick, and the kick drum with their foot.

• 26:57Tim Ferriss?

  So it's like, tch, tch.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 27:00Tim Ferriss?

  That tch is the hi-hat and the snare.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:03Tim Ferriss?

  And then if you, if you were to hear a drummer, say, travel left to right, assuming they're right-handed, like, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga. When you hear that, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, that part is very often gonna be a floor tom.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  Perfect, perfect. I couldn't have done that better myself.

• 27:19Tim Ferriss?

  So, you are right-handed.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  Yes, so you have a rack tom up top, straight in front of you, which is gonna be the higher pitch, like doo, doo, doo, doo, and then you go down further and though you get bigger drums which are sitting on the floor, floor toms, right?

• 27:31Tim Ferriss?

  So having those on the left is not-

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Not normal.

• 27:33Tim Ferriss?

  Not normal. So why, why'd you do that?

• 27:35Speaker 03

  So I put it on my left so I could put my notes on the left, and no one I thought didn't think anyone would see them. And I go to the bathroom after, after the first set and I come back, it's all gone.

• 27:46Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, fuck.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I was like, uh, and the bass player's like, it's cool, man, you, you got it, it's all good, you don't, you don't need those. And I didn't.

• 27:56Tim Ferriss?

  You're like, thanks bass player who's done this set 400 times, but-

• 28:00Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah, yeah, it's okay, great.

• 28:03Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to just note something for, for folks, and I'm so glad we got into this, because that particular way that you-

• 28:14Tim Ferriss?

  Laid out your progression for practicing a song is nearly identical to how a lot of the best public speakers also prepare their keynotes. Hmm. And they will say, take a keynote, and I learned to do this as well, but I was borrowing from other people. And instead of doing, let's just say it's a, for the sake of simplicity, a 60-minute keynote, rather than trying to give the 60-minute keynote from start to finish, they'll break it into, say, four pieces. Yep. Or what they'll do, and this is something I started to model, is because the beginning and the ending is so important. Mm-hmm. Actually breaking out like the first five minutes and the last five minutes.

• 28:57Tim Ferriss?

  So you have, say, five minutes, let's just make it simple if it's a, say, a 40-minute talk, just to make the math a little easier, like first five minutes, then you have three 10-minute sections in the last five minutes. And to practice each one of those individually as opposed to. Yes. In sequence. Yes. And initially not paying attention to time, although having some rough idea of the total length, and then recording, listening to it, making the post-game analysis edits necessary. And then also, at a later point, I remember when I was, and I picked this up from someone as well, when I was practicing, you're talking about the bras and panties and everything,

• 29:37Tim Ferriss?

  when I was preparing for my TED Talk about a year and a half ago, which was going to be opening session, main stage, nervous as fuck. And just as a side note, I'm sure you have a million of these, so I'd love to hear some of these war stories. Sure. There's this area behind the stage at TED, which is, it's called something hilarious like the Zen Room, or the Chill Out Room, where the people who are on deck, like the three or four speakers are on deck, are meant to hang out there, and they're little misters in like cold water and so on. And you walk in there, and at least when I walked in there, it was some of the most polished speakers in the world basically freaking the fuck out. And I was like, I need to leave here now.

• 30:22Tim Ferriss?

  This isn't helping. I need to leave right now. This is like, you know, being in the water with Bear Grylls and all these survival experts, and they're losing their shit because they're like great white sharks in the water, you're like, I can't, this is not helpful, I need to not be here. But one of the things that I'd done in the last week or so of preparation was to load myself up on way too much caffeine, like, like three or four coffees before giving dress rehearsals to strangers at my friends' companies. I would have them call in people during lunch hour and I would give a rehearsal in front of people who really probably didn't particularly want to be there.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 31:03Tim Ferriss?

  Not a super warm crowd.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 31:05Tim Ferriss?

  Who don't care about my feelings particularly.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  And you're all jacked.

• 31:09Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm jacked to try to simulate the adrenaline that I would feel.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  That's smart.

• 31:14Tim Ferriss?

  When I actually got out there.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:17Tim Ferriss?

  In any case, I don't want to, I don't want to, don't want to brain vomit on you too much.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  No, it's all good. That's what we're here for.

• 31:21Tim Ferriss?

  I'll reserve some of my brain vomit for later, but the, the point being that that progression you use applies to so many things.

• 31:33Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know what? We're gonna, we're gonna come. You can see me fondling these, these fondlings, that's a strange word, but these gifts that, gifts, people, get your mind out of the gutter, that you, that you gave me, which I do want to talk about.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 31:47Tim Ferriss?

  So you've, you've followed this progression, song by song, gone through the set twice.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 31:55Tim Ferriss?

  Hour before you get on stage.

• 31:57Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:58Tim Ferriss?

  What does that hour look like?

• 32:01Tim Ferriss?

  For that, for that particular, like, mercenary.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's, it's extremely stressful. You're waking up in the middle of the night going, huh, huh, how does that bridge go? Like, huh, you know, like freaking out, because you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. And it's extremely stressful and a lot of these situations, it's funny, I was thinking about how to sort of present this to the layman. And it's like, your first day on the job, it's some really, you got like a giant promotion, or like you're at a new company, different, different title, different role. And you roll in and you meet everyone, you pick five random people out of the office and you say, great, you guys are gonna go on stage in front of 30,000 people

• 32:48Speaker 03

  together. You, you just met, or you're gonna spend the next month in a bus together, waking up next to each other. It's a very weird situation. And who knows how that's gonna work out as far as personalities and everything. So.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, but the, the hour before the show, I'm, I've done like the, the Sam Harris guided meditation. I've just been, I just go to an area by myself and sit down and breathe and just try and stay as relaxed as possible.

• 33:18Tim Ferriss?

  This is the, the 10 minute?

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:22Tim Ferriss?

  So for people who don't know, so Sam Harris, neuroscience PhD, also very well known author. It's just samharris.org, two R's, one S, has a number of really good guided meditations. So you, you will have done that.

• 33:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:35Tim Ferriss?

  Is that the morning of, is that right before?

• 33:37Speaker 03

  Both. If I'm feeling really anxious, I'll do it right before. One of the things that took me years of touring to figure out is a lot of people will, will, you know, drumming is an incredibly physical instrument, especially with how hard I can hit at times. And you have to really treat yourself like an athlete. And a lot of people will just sit there and, and, and warm, quote unquote, warm up like on a rubber pad and kind of gingerly hit it around for 10 or 15 minutes. And then they go out on stage and their, their feet are cold. So I started bringing a jump rope on tour with me. And I was just like, oh my God, how did I not figure this out earlier? And so I skip rope for maybe 10 or 15 minutes and that gets the blood flowing.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  So when I walk out on stage, I feel like I'm three songs in already, which is a game changer physiologically. So I'll do that, kind of gets your head in the zone because, because skipping rope is the same, it's the same exact thing as playing a musical instrument in terms of focus. It's like a detached focus. If you think about what you're doing, you use a different part of your brain and neurologically, and you'll screw up whatever you're doing if it's a highly learned embedded task, right? So if you're skipping rope and you think about what you're doing, you'll hit your feet and screw it all up. If I'm playing a show, I have to either be totally zen'd out, not thinking about anything at all,

• 35:06Speaker 03

  or I have to be like thinking about what I'm eating after, after the show or like doing laundry or whatever. I can't think, oh, here comes this part or like right, right, left, left, just all immediately. Bungle whatever I'm doing. So but skipping rope, it gets my head in that in that mindset. And and it also gets me warmed up. So yeah, it's just a lot of pacing. Well, I don't drink coffee or Red Bulls or anything because I know my heart rate's already going to be insane. So I try to actually not do that. And yeah.

• 35:43Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have anything that you, any particular rituals or things that you say to yourself before you go out? Or if you are alternatively, do you take either or both of these? When you're talking to a professional who perhaps is really nervous about a tour they're about to do or gigs that they're doing? What's your advice to them right before they go out?

• 36:06Speaker 03

  My advice is what I try to live by. And that if you put the time in and you know the material, there's nothing to be nervous about because you know what you're doing. And as soon as you get on stage, after about five minutes and the adrenaline wears off, you should be comfortable. Because you're like, I've put in so, I couldn't have put more time in. Like I, I put the time in, I know what I'm doing. This is fine. What's really scary is when you don't have the time to put the work in, then that's freaky. Which I try to never put myself in those situations.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  But yeah, as long as you put the time in and when I'm working with someone, I make sure they put that they put the time in. And usually it's a lot of guys who have been in bands for a long time. They have like an ample amount of, they might have a month of rehearsals. So it's not really about, do I know this material? It's maybe some other issue, but I tell everyone to do the Sam Harris guided meditation, especially people who don't. Aren't familiar with that because I, when I first started doing it, I literally had to relearn how to breathe.

• 37:18Tim Ferriss?

  The guided meditation?

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, my breathing was, because I was, I was driving to the studio. And I was recording this record with this band Anti Mask I did with Omar and Cedric from the Mars Volta. After the Mars Volta and Flea was playing bass on it from the Chili Peppers. And I had just finished doing the Killer Be Killed record, which was a metal band I was in. And then, and I had to learn the Miley set after being in the studio all day with the anti-mask. So I was driving to the studio and I was white knuckling the steering wheel and I was holding my breath and I realized, oh my God, like, am I doing this all the time?

• 37:58Tim Ferriss?

  Is this my normal?

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is crazy. And then I started paying attention to it and I realized I was holding my breath all the time. And when I started doing that short guided meditation, I realized, oh my God, I don't know how to breathe anymore. So I had to literally learn how to take a full breath. Because I didn't, you know, from just getting kicked in the balls over and over again in daily life, your breathing gets shallow.

• 38:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  Uh, so I, so that was massive for me. So as far as like the rituals, that's, that's huge. Even if I don't have time to like, sit down and fully do the meditation, I'll, I'll try and get into that headspace because if you start your day with that, you can very easily go back and access that mindset later on. It's much easier for me to go, okay, feeling stressed, like, okay, there's a full breath. Whereas like, if I didn't start off my day doing that, I might not physically be able to access that, that full breath.

• 38:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I haven't limbered up.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:00Tim Ferriss?

  Psychologically and physically.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's huge.

• 39:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the, uh, the breathing facial tension.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 39:08Tim Ferriss?

  You know, yesterday you're asking me when I was sitting at the kit about the jaw.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:12Tim Ferriss?

  And the mouth and, and we were chatting about that last night. It's like, well, is it, is it just from the standpoint of teaching, there's so many different skills that can be enhanced, oddly enough, by paying attention to sort of mouth, jaw, tongue relaxation. And we were chatting last night and then, is it best to tell someone to relax the jaw? Or is that too hard? And in fact, if you ask someone to relax the tongue, do you get that entire structure to relax more easily, right? And

• 39:41Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 39:42Tim Ferriss?

  All of which transcends. Music specifically.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 39:47Tim Ferriss?

  And this is a conversation I've had a lot with someone who's been on the podcast, Kelly Starrett, who always talks about breathing in positions. Like if you can't breathe in the position, you do not own the position.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 39:58Tim Ferriss?

  And.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  That's why I was so excited about doing this with you because I knew there was going to be tons of carryover from different disciplines. And that's what I really love. And so you telling me, oh yeah, if you, if you relax your tongue, you'll relax your whole face and your jaw. That I was like, of course, that's huge. And that's the way I'm going to present it to people from now on.

• 40:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  Cause that's a better way to teach it.

• 40:23Tim Ferriss?

  It's, uh, it's, and you and I were having a conversation last night. Romantic candlelit.

• 40:33Tim Ferriss?

  Hot tub conversation.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  Amongst ice baths.

• 40:37Tim Ferriss?

  That's true. We did ice baths, which was also a great opportunity to work on.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Breathing.

• 40:41Tim Ferriss?

  Breathing.

• 40:41Speaker 03

  Holy shit.

• 40:42Tim Ferriss?

  Big time. And we can have a round two. But the, we were chatting about. In part, we were talking about a lot of things, but what, what keeps me excited? And my answer was seeing the interconnectedness and, and the transferability of these types of concepts, because even if you bleed the stone and work in one area on one discipline and you get to a point where perhaps you just feel fatigued and you want to try something else, but you're not sure if you could ever recapture the excitement you felt in the

• 41:26Tim Ferriss?

  nascent stages of that first dominant skill. For me, it's been, I've realized that there are thousands of different disciplines you could be exposed to and take to like a fish to water because you have knowingly or unknowingly developed all of these meta skills that apply. And you gave me a few gifts.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:49Tim Ferriss?

  That I alluded to fondling earlier. And one of them I'm holding here, and I'd love for you to just tell people what it is and why you gave it to me.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Sure. So this is a book called The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallway. It came out in 1974 and.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  It's sort of one of those books where people are like, oh yeah, that book. It had a huge effect and there's all sorts of spin offs like the Inner Give of Music actually is a book. And the amazing thing with this book is I've read, both of us have read a lot about Zen Buddhism. And the thing about Zen Buddhism is by the very nature of what it is, it's very difficult to pin down and point at directly and define. Because it's so amorphous.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  And this is the first thing I ever read where he nails it down in the context of tennis. It's easier to do that way. Are you a tennis player? I'm not. This is important. Yeah, so.

• 42:53Speaker 03

  So the book talks about essentially these two selves that we have self one and self two. So self one is the analytical, cruel, self-talk, harsh critic. Who, you know, you hit the ball in the net, if we're going to stick with the tennis analogy and self one's like, oh, you fucking piece of shit. Like, come on, get it together. And self two is your subconscious, automatic self that's just. Hey, I'm just trying to, just trying to make this happen here. And the whole idea is calming down the critical analytical self one, your self-talk, right? And letting self two, the automatic subconscious, take over.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  And if you let that happen, everything will just happen automatically. So what's interesting is what I do with so many people is very technique oriented. And this book can be described as like an anti technique because you're, it's sort of the opposite way of coming about it. But what's interesting about this is with the Zen stuff, they will lead you down a path and then just leave you there. A lot of times. And the brilliant thing with this book is it's very easy to understand. Anyone can pick it up and learn. You just replace tennis with any other thing, any other discipline. The brilliant thing with this book is it takes you somewhere and then he's like, yeah, so you know. This is a plateau you have to overcome and this is how you do it.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  And that happens multiple times.

• 44:23Tim Ferriss?

  This is the problem. Here are a few approaches to resolving the problem.

• 44:26Speaker 03

  As a, you know, for instance, if you're really getting in your head, we'll stick with the tennis analogy in a match and you need a device to overcome that self. One, because like I was saying earlier, if you think about physiologically what you're doing in terms of movement, you use a different structure in your brain and you'll botch it. So if you're serving a tennis ball, you throw the ball up and you go, I throw the ball up, then I move my rat. You're fucked.

• 44:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  Right? You're going to hit the net every time. So in order to not do that, he'll, he'll say, focus on the laces of the ball as it's coming at you, or focus on the wop of the sound when you get like a good hit and just focus on those things in and of themselves. And that will take you into that, that space. And we were talking about this last night. Everyone that talks about being in the zone or being on fire, that kind of thing as a state that you can willingly inhabit. It's, it's not really a thing. It's not like true. You can set the stage for it by this type of thing, but you can't willingly enter into that. Or else everybody would do that all the time.

• 45:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 45:39Speaker 03

  And when I'm having these out of body experiences, when I'm playing music, which is what gets you to do it in the first place. Sort of time slows down and unfolds in front of you and you see what you're going to play and.

• 45:50Tim Ferriss?

  Neo back bending with the bullets flying by.

• 45:54Speaker 03

  It's exactly the same thing. And that's, that's what gets you, that's what got me hooked, that, that, that. Yeah, that matrix thing. And you can use that in any discipline.

• 46:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And you can't, as you said, guarantee that you can follow the boot up sequence and automatically enter float at any given point in time, but you can increase the odds.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Sure, absolutely.

• 46:20Tim Ferriss?

  You can increase the odds.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 46:21Tim Ferriss?

  And we were, you were mentioning it in the context of say tennis or a tennis serve, but. Last night when we were tooling around on the drum kit. Very similar, right? When you were noting, you were asking me to note the difference in sound. From say, switching from a sort of French grip. If I'm getting this right, sort of thumb on top to a German grip, which is like all the more internally rotated.

• 46:47Speaker 03

  Flat hand.

• 46:48Tim Ferriss?

  Flatter hand, but using the wrists.

• 46:51Speaker 03

  As a whip.

• 46:52Tim Ferriss?

  As a whip for, I guess it was rim shot or.

• 46:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that's it.

• 46:56Tim Ferriss?

  On the snare drum and asking me to really notice like the feel and the sound of it.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  And what's amazing about this is we're playing an electronic kit. We're not playing an acoustic kit. So even though you're hearing sounds, theoretically, it shouldn't really sound any different because it's not real. You know what I mean? But this is, that's what's even cooler about this being on electronic kit is like, once we got you relaxing and getting those, those, you know, those techniques happening and trimming the fat, it, your vibe and your feel was like totally different, even in that situation.

• 47:31Tim Ferriss?

  And the sound is, or the, the cuing into that sound or feeling, much like anyone who's played tennis, and I've, I've played very little tennis, but knows the gratification of that proper thwack. Who really hit it in the sweet spot, or anyone who's boxed and found that sweet spot on a heavy bag. Acts as an anchor for the 27 biomechanical ingredients that make it up. But if you try to recall the 27 separate ingredients discreetly, when you're pulling your arm back to hit the ball, you're fucked.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  You hit the nail on the head, man. And, and that's, and that is exactly, that's the kind of stuff that I find so exciting is, is, are those carryovers. When you hit a home run, when you smash a baseball, it doesn't feel like you did anything. Like nothing, how did I, that doesn't feel, whereas if you hit it like wonky, you're like, you know what I mean? Like it feels terrible. And it's this, it's the same thing with drums. When you hit them right, the energy should be going out. Not back in. And it's the same with anything else, any athletic movement.

• 48:40Tim Ferriss?

  And you gave this book, The Inner Game of Tennis, to. And we're going to definitely come back to this topic, but to your therapist.

• 48:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:47Tim Ferriss?

  Who's eighty-one.

• 48:49Speaker 03

  Something like that. Yeah.

• 48:50Tim Ferriss?

  Eighty-something and very wise woman.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:53Tim Ferriss?

  It now has a prominent placement on her shelf.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a spot on her mantle as like one of the five or six books she gives out to people regularly.

• 49:05Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I didn't ask you this, uh, because I don't think you mentioned the five or six other books, but do you, do you know offhand any of the other books?

• 49:13Speaker 03

  That Pia Melody, Facing Love Addiction is one of them.

• 49:15Tim Ferriss?

  Pia Melody, P I A Melody.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, I don't know the other ones, but I'll.

• 49:23Tim Ferriss?

  We can make that a bonus feature for the show notes.

• 49:25Speaker 03

  I'll look closer next time.

• 49:29Tim Ferriss?

  So we'll put those in the show notes.

• 49:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:32Tim Ferriss?

  Let's take a look at these other two.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 49:34Tim Ferriss?

  Because I think they are also a fun way to dissect you a bit.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 49:40Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, let's go with this one next. This is a very small book and I always get excited about small books.

• 49:48Speaker 03

  One would not think that.

• 49:50Tim Ferriss?

  As, as, yeah, one would not think that as every time I set out to write a twenty-page children's book, it ends up being a seven-hundred-page, like, bludgeoning tool.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 50:01Tim Ferriss?

  This is title, The Medium is the Message subtitle, An Inventory of Effects.

• 50:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:08Tim Ferriss?

  Marshall McLuhan, is that how you say it?

• 50:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:11Tim Ferriss?

  M, little c, uppercase, L U H A N, and Quentin Fiore.

• 50:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:16Tim Ferriss?

  Is the graphic designer.

• 50:18Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:19Tim Ferriss?

  And then produced, I didn't even notice that, by Jerome Agel, I suppose.

• 50:23Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 50:24Tim Ferriss?

  Something like that.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:25Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, so who knows what, that's not something I typically see associated with books. So I'm not sure what that means, but tell me about this book.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  So Marshall McLuhan was a really interesting and very popular social and media theorist in the fifties and sixties. So I find it really fascinating that, that he's not a household name now, being that media is such a massive part of everyone's life now, especially people who do their own thing. Uh, like, we have to have Instagram and Twitter and all that stuff. Like, it's, you just, you don't have a choice, right? Um, so.

• 51:05Speaker 03

  I, I just, I find, I find societal issues and, and media and how we process and consume media very interesting. And this dude was so ahead of everyone by decades. It's almost creepy.

• 51:22Tim Ferriss?

  Justin, in terms of his predictive ability?

• 51:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and the interesting thing about him is he would, he would spout off all sorts of inflammatory crazy things and people would get, you know, furious about certain things or pick, pick things apart. And he would contradict himself all the time and make these grand statements. And that maybe would have been something that would have bothered me years ago, but now, as long as there are gems throughout and he hits the nail on the head in certain areas and I can take away things that shift my perspective as a whole, that's all that matters to me. So the medium is the message. This is actually the medium is the massage because they screwed up when they were-

• 52:04Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's so funny. I didn't even notice that.

• 52:06Speaker 03

  I know. Well, because they screwed up when they were printing it originally and he thought it was hilarious. And he's like, just leave it. It's fine. So it was supposed to be the medium is the message, but it's actually the medium is the massage. And he's like, that's great.

• 52:18Tim Ferriss?

  That's great. Let's keep it.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. He like loved puns and he was kind of a quirky weird dude. So the, the whole idea of that phrase is that the medium with which information is submitted to you is more important than the actual information itself. So an example I like to use is something like autotune. So for people who don't know what autotune is, uh, if you think of that Cher song like, "Do you believe in life after love?" Like whatever that was like 20 years ago. And it's, it's, so autotune is a, is a software that people use to correct someone's

• 52:59Speaker 03

  vocal take. So if someone's vocal take is wonky, they just sort of massage it a little bit.

• 53:05Tim Ferriss?

  It's been used quite a bit in hip hop.

• 53:08Speaker 03

  Yes. So, so what the new thing with that Cher song was, is they used a, a different key signature to autotune it. So like, so it way overcorrected itself and that's what got that weird T now T-Pain sort of sound.

• 53:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 53:25Speaker 03

  And Drake and now, so like- As something that was a, an experiment now has currently changed the way music is. The software itself has now changed the art form and to the point where I'll have producer friends of mine tracking someone doing vocals in their twenties and they're like, hey, why is my, why does my voice sound weird? And they're like, that's what your voice sounds like. That's actually what it sounds like.

• 53:50Tim Ferriss?

  Uncorrected.

• 53:51Speaker 03

  They expect it to sound like auto tuned. So the technology has now affected the art form.

• 53:59Tim Ferriss?

  Only changed the content, but also changed the perception

• 54:01Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 54:03Tim Ferriss?

  Of the raw materials.

• 54:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you could say the same thing about, there's something called Beat Detective, which is something that, that drummers the world over hate. So it's the same sort of a thing for drummers. So like they can, you can, you can track something, record something in a studio and then they will artificially adjust everything to a, to a grid. And if someone's lazy about it, they just snap it to the grid and it just sounds like it's very stiff and computer-like because that's, that's what it's been turned into.

• 54:33Tim Ferriss?

  Spock on drums.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Exactly. So, so, but people got used to hearing that.

• 54:39Tim Ferriss?

  Can you remove the soul from my music?

• 54:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I've done sessions where like, I'll go in and, and I think do a pretty good job. And then I'll hear it back and I'm like, why did you even have me play on this? Cause they just are lazy. It's more of that just be them being lazy and not going through and, you know, but, but people got used to hearing how quote unquote, perfect that is. And if someone hears something that rushes or drags or is a little bit not perfect, they're like, oh, this is weird. And so a lot of things are beat detected to the point where it's just totally artificial now.

• 55:14Tim Ferriss?

  Drain, you've drained the blood.

• 55:15Speaker 03

  Yes. And then the pendulum will swing back and, you know, that's why Adele was so successful because it was real music.

• 55:21Tim Ferriss?

  Or like Jack Johnson.

• 55:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 55:24Tim Ferriss?

  You do have the pendulum sometimes swinging the abstraction. Is your interest in this? Because I know it's not limited just to this book. And, you know, one I wanted to bring up.

• 55:37Tim Ferriss?

  You have mentioned this to me many times, and in fact, this is a documentary series that has come up repeatedly on this podcast. I'm embarrassed to say that I still have not seen it. Adam Curtis's BBC documentary series, The Century of the Self.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:54Tim Ferriss?

  And hyper-normalization.

• 55:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:57Tim Ferriss?

  You know, so you've said it changed the way that you saw the world forever. And I'll just continue here.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 56:05Tim Ferriss?

  Even if you just check out the first, these are your words, the first 20 minutes of Century of the Self, it'll blow your mind.

• 56:12Tim Ferriss?

  Why is, maybe you could segue into the Century of the Self and hyper-normalization. Tell me why this is so interesting to you, because this seems to be thematically something that is of great interest to you.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:26Tim Ferriss?

  And we were just talking about Beat Detective and other things. People might assume, oh, it's because he's a musician and it's how these things affect music, but I don't know if that's, I don't know if that's true. So can you talk about how you, how did you find Century of the Self? Because it has come up surprisingly frequently on this podcast. And why, why, why does it grab your attention?

• 56:48Speaker 03

  My buddy Chris is a musician friend of mine, and he told me about it years ago. I think it came out in 2000, I think. I'd have to double check that. But it's, the premise of Century of the Self is,

• 57:07Speaker 03

  it starts with focusing on Edward Bernays. So Edward Bernays was Sigmund Freud's nephew. And he took all of Sigmund Freud's theories on the subconscious and came to the conclusion that human beings are either savage animals that are going to rip each other apart, or they can be controlled and made docile via consumerism.

• 57:34Speaker 03

  So.

• 57:36Tim Ferriss?

  The opiate for the masses.

• 57:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's literally that. So. Um, so Edward Bernays used some of these, some of these tactics that he pioneered in, uh, propaganda for World War One. And then after World War One, he was like, oh, well, we can use these in peacetime for capitalists.

• 57:59Tim Ferriss?

  Selling more detergent.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  Yes. So the whole notion of you buying a pair of shoes to express your inner self was single-handedly formulated by him. So we think that's just always been around. But really before him, if people were thirsty, they drank water. If, if people needed it, they would wear shirts for years. Uh, and you know, as, as that dude who I am a big fan of Slavoj Zizek.

• 58:28Tim Ferriss?

  So we're gonna come back to this.

• 58:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:30Tim Ferriss?

  Slovenian philosopher.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:32Tim Ferriss?

  S L A V O J, second name Z I Z E K. Amazing name.

• 58:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:36Tim Ferriss?

  Please continue.

• 58:37Speaker 03

  Amazing person.

• 58:38Tim Ferriss?

  We'll come back to that.

• 58:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. So what he talks about, he, he says, you know, if, if, once you drink Coke, instead of water, the excess is with us forever. You can't go backwards. Right? So, uh, he did interesting things like having a bunch of women smoke cigarettes. Uh, there was some sort of subconscious phallic connotation with that. But at the time, women didn't smoke. And he hired like a bunch of attractive women to smoke on like, in like a parade or in public or something to get it like, quote unquote, trending.

• 59:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 59:10Speaker 03

  Um, so the idea, so.

• 59:12Tim Ferriss?

  It's like having the celebrity wear the sneakers.

• 59:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. So he created focus groups and he created the idea of PR. This is all him. So this guy, single-handedly shaped America as we know it. And of course, America affects everything else in the world. Um, up until recently, anyway. Um, and so, so especially the world we live in now with Instagram and social media.

• 59:41Speaker 03

  He's maybe the most influential person. I mean, in terms of society.

• 59:48Tim Ferriss?

  Who's his name, most people don't recognize.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's, so it blows my mind. He should be a household name.

• 59:52Tim Ferriss?

  This is Edward Bernays.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  Yes. And, you know, the documentaries.

• 59:57Tim Ferriss?

  B E R N A Y S, for people wondering.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  And the doc, and, and what's interesting is, is you would think he, like, you would think he made himself famous via Sigmund Freud, but it was actually the other way around. He took all of his tactics and made Sigmund Freud into Sigmund Freud.

• 1:00:12Tim Ferriss?

  Huh.

• 1:00:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's crazy. So.

• 1:00:15Tim Ferriss?

  That I didn't, that's, I had no idea. That's really wild.

• 1:00:18Speaker 03

  So it's four one-hour episodes, and the first episode's.

• 1:00:21Tim Ferriss?

  The Century of the Self.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's called Happiness Machines. That's the first episode. And Adam Curtis has a really interesting style of making these documentaries. I saw him do a talk in Los Angeles when hypernormalization came out in 2016. And he said, you know, these aren't really documentaries, they're kind of just things that I make. And they're almost like video essays or collages. And McLuhan talks a lot about, about that, presenting things as sort of a, a star pattern of images, because language is sometimes insufficient to convey the ideas. So it, it, it can be like a weird collage, like, you're like, what am I, like, I show this documentary to people, like, what is this? It's really strange. And the music's really weird and bizarre.

• 1:01:07Tim Ferriss?

  Which one are you talking about?

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  Uh, sorry, I'm talking about.

• 1:01:09Tim Ferriss?

  Hypernormalization.

• 1:01:10Speaker 03

  Either one, anything he's made, anything Adam Curtis has made is, is the same style. Uh, and, uh, so it's four one-hour episodes, and it goes all the way up, uh, till the Clinton administration, because this idea, this Edward Bernays stuff weaves its way into politics and all sorts, and it goes into other things, too. So that completely changed the way I, I think about everything. I think about it every day.

• 1:01:38Tim Ferriss?

  In what, what would be an example? Is it just that you're aware of the way your subconscious is being manipulated? Is it that you view other individual and collective behavior differently because you question the free will?

• 1:01:55Tim Ferriss?

  Ingredient, it, how does it on a day to day basis impact how you think about things or view reality?

• 1:02:03Speaker 03

  It's all, it's all of that. And, and if you're just, let's, if we're just talking about consumerism, if I want to buy something, whatever it is, like a drink or a snare drum, which I buy a lot of, or some art, which I also buy a lot of, why, I think, why do I want this?

• 1:02:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  What, what's driving this? And a lot of times, the answer is different than, than what you think it may be.

• 1:02:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or what you want it to be.

• 1:02:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, a lot of times you're filling that, you're, you're, you're filling the void, right? So, uh, that's something that, that's a whole other, other topic, existential angst, but.

• 1:02:43Tim Ferriss?

  That is a big topic.

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  But that's why a lot of people are, you know, are buying things is, is to, to, you know, make themselves feel better.

• 1:02:52Tim Ferriss?

  But you know, I, I heard this quote, not too long ago, it's actually in a collection of quotes, I love just a collection of quotes, I'm such a, like a promiscuous quote reader.

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:03:01Tim Ferriss?

  But there was one, and I don't know the attribution, someone out there on the internet can certainly indicate who the proper attribution is, and I'll actually, I'll, I'll put it in the show notes as well, uh, I'll write down this note, mankind existential animal quote, question mark, uh, and the, the quote is along the lines of, uh, man is the only animal for which his own existence is a problem to be solved.

• 1:03:25Speaker 03

  I love that. Yeah. I love that. That's it right there.

• 1:03:29Tim Ferriss?

  It's like my dog Molly does not seem preoccupied.

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:03:32Tim Ferriss?

  At all.

• 1:03:33Speaker 03

  No, she's just having a good time.

• 1:03:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Uh, you men, you mentioned artwork.

• 1:03:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Tim Ferriss?

  And we're going to come back to, uh, some of the music, and we're also going to jump into some of the, the rapid fire questions.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:45Tim Ferriss?

  That I love to ask, uh, which I haven't, I mean, we've known each other for quite a while, but I don't think I've ever asked, certainly 90% of those.

• 1:03:54Speaker 03

  Great.

• 1:03:54Tim Ferriss?

  We're going to be coming up on, but the artwork, I follow you on Instagram, and I love your drumming.

• 1:04:00Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 1:04:01Tim Ferriss?

  Don't take this the wrong way. Uh, I find the artwork that you discover to be fascinating.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 1:04:11Tim Ferriss?

  And strange.

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 1:04:13Tim Ferriss?

  You're welcome. So I use your account also as a way of discovering different types of graphic design and art.

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:26Tim Ferriss?

  Have you always been interested in visual art? Or, and if not, how did that become what seems like an important part of your life? I don't know if it is.

• 1:04:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a very important part of my life.

• 1:04:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so like, how, how did it become important? Why is it important?

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  I, I used to make art, I used to draw a lot and do watercolors when I was a kid. And then when I started playing drums, like really young, like five, six, seven. And then I, when I started playing drums, I didn't do anything else. Like, it took my full mental capacity. Um, so that sort of fell by the wayside. And then I hit a certain point in my career where, you know, if you just have those blinders on and you're myopic about something because you're very, very focused and driven, you end up burning out of it eventually. So, and touring is incredibly stressful. So I hit a wall a few years ago and-

• 1:05:18Tim Ferriss?

  How old are you now?

• 1:05:19Speaker 03

  Thirty-four.

• 1:05:20Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so like thirty-one, thirty-two?

• 1:05:22Speaker 03

  Something like that, yeah.

• 1:05:25Speaker 03

  And

• 1:05:28Speaker 03

  I turned to art as a sort of oblique form of, of inspiration.

• 1:05:35Tim Ferriss?

  I don't, I don't want to hijack-

• 1:05:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Tim Ferriss?

  The flow here. When you say hit a wall, is that physical fatigue? What do you mean by that?

• 1:05:42Speaker 03

  Mental fatigue mostly. Because you get, we were sort of talking about this last night. You get to a certain point where you check all the boxes of things that you've wanted to do. And I got to a certain point where I was like, I've done everything that I wanted to do, career-wise.

• 1:05:56Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:05:57Speaker 03

  Now what do I, now what do I do?

• 1:05:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:59Speaker 03

  Right? And also, uh, I was talking to, um, Jimmy Chamberlain about this. I've been, uh, he's a good friend of mine and I've been helping him out a little bit.

• 1:06:09Tim Ferriss?

  Who is that?

• 1:06:10Speaker 03

  Oh, he plays drums for the Smashing Pumpkins. And we were having breakfast a few months ago and we were talking about the same type of thing. And he was, he was saying, yeah, and people are like, man, this is great. Your band's doing so well, or, or you're, you're, you're, you're doing all these tours. And you're like, isn't that amazing? And, and I was saying, yeah, it's, it's, it's not amazing. I always knew I was gonna do this. This isn't a, this isn't a surprise for, for me. I always knew this was gonna happen. So, in a way, it's hard to get to the top of Mount Everest and be like, I did it. Cause you're like, well, duh, of course I did it.

• 1:06:44Tim Ferriss?

  Now, how much of that, when you say I knew it was going to happen?

• 1:06:50Tim Ferriss?

  How much of that, and there's certainly could be an option C, D, and E, but how much of that is, I knew it was gonna happen because I knew I was really good versus I'm just doing my fucking job. Like, as a professional drummer, like, I am putting in the work and therefore, like, it is my job to ultimately do X, Y, and Z, and I did X, Y, and Z, so why would I pat myself on the back for doing my job?

• 1:07:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, sort of both.

• 1:07:17Tim Ferriss?

  Or something else.

• 1:07:17Speaker 03

  Well, it's just like, I'm-

• 1:07:18Tim Ferriss?

  Cause I have a lot of the latter. Like, I struggle with that quite a bit.

• 1:07:21Speaker 03

  I'm gonna work harder than you are. And I'm gonna be the first in and the last out. And if this guy can make it work, I can certainly make it work. So it's really that sort of a thing. Like, I'm gonna, I, I, I always say this to people I'm working with. I'm saying, "Look, you can have a good amount of innate ability at whatever you're doing, but the person who puts the work in is always gonna surpass you." And if you have a little bit of innate ability, like I think I do, and you work harder than anyone else, obviously there's a certain amount of luck involved in anything, which you can't do anything about. But there was no other option.

• 1:08:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  And, well, the thing I was talking about with Jimmy is he was like, that just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy down to your, down to the molecular atomic level. If you, if you're operating from that state, things will unfold in that manner because you're, you're working in that. Not like the secret kind of bullshit. Like, not that crap. But, like, I haven't, and he recommended this book to me, and I, and I have so many books I have to read. Uh, is it like, On Becoming Yourself? It's super popular right now. I'll have to look it up.

• 1:08:36Tim Ferriss?

  I wonder who, who wrote it?

• 1:08:37Speaker 03

  I have, I have it in my-

• 1:08:38Tim Ferriss?

  Is it Krista Tippett?

• 1:08:39Speaker 03

  No, she's great, though.

• 1:08:41Tim Ferriss?

  She is, yeah.

• 1:08:41Speaker 03

  Um, I'm reading this Ellen, Ellen Langer book called Mindfulness, which you're gonna super dig.

• 1:08:46Tim Ferriss?

  I've watched you carrying it around.

• 1:08:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's so good. And she, Ellen Langer was on her podcast. That was how I found out about her.

• 1:08:53Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Alright, so, we will follow up. So Jimmy recommended a book.

• 1:08:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Tim Ferriss?

  That may be on becoming something or other.

• 1:08:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, God, I have to look it up.

• 1:09:00Tim Ferriss?

  What's the gist of the book? Or why did he recommend it?

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  It basically goes way into that in terms of a scientific vantage point, like how all of that stuff works. It's very the scientific.

• 1:09:09Tim Ferriss?

  Now, when you say that stuff, you mean when you place yourself on a certain direction and make thousands of micro decisions that are subconsciously aligned with that direction?

• 1:09:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:09:18Tim Ferriss?

  How things unfold.

• 1:09:20Speaker 03

  How does that work scientifically?

• 1:09:21Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  Instead of some voodoo weird, "I want a new car, so I'm gonna put that into the into the universe and then it'll just happen."

• 1:09:28Tim Ferriss?

  Not that. You know, it makes me think, again, I'll be going to blame it on the caffeine, but I just like jumping around and interjecting because I'm too hyperactive. We were talking about Maria Bamford.

• 1:09:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:37Tim Ferriss?

  Who's a fucking amazing comedian.

• 1:09:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:40Tim Ferriss?

  And at one point, she was doing this, uh, this bit on having read The Secret. And so she said, you know, "I went home and I created a vision board. And on my vision board, I had all the things that I wanted. And, uh, my sister came over and her sister apparently is some very successful lawyer or something. And her sister comes over, very type A, and her sister's like, "What is this?" She's like, "Oh, it's my vision board." And she's like, "You have a microwave on your vision board?" She's like, "A fucking microwave? That's ridiculous. I'll buy you a fucking microwave." And then Maria's like, "Bam! Manifest!"

• 1:10:17Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 1:10:18Tim Ferriss?

  So we're not talking about trying to make that?

• 1:10:20Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:10:23Speaker 03

  No. But I haven't read it yet, so I'm kind of talking out of my ass here. But he was saying it's, it's incredible.

• 1:10:28Tim Ferriss?

  How did he think it would help you? Or why did he prescribe that?

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  Because we were talking about it anyway, and he was like, "Oh, have you read this book? That's sort of what it's all about." So I haven't, it's in the queue. I haven't gotten to it yet.

• 1:10:40Tim Ferriss?

  What did he share with you? Or what were his thoughts on this position that you find yourself in? Where it's like, "All right, I've, I seem to have some degree of innate ability for this particular field. I was drawn to it. I've applied myself very diligently over, at this point, I guess, decades."

• 1:10:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:59Tim Ferriss?

  And I've done what I want to do. Now what?

• 1:11:04Speaker 03

  Well...

• 1:11:05Tim Ferriss?

  And you said something, I don't know if you want to debut it here or not. I said, "Oh, my God, you should put that on social media just to further outsource your self, self-esteem."

• 1:11:13Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:11:13Tim Ferriss?

  Which I think is like social media in a nutshell. Uh, but you said, do you want to try to, do you want to take a stab at it?

• 1:11:19Speaker 03

  I said, I said, "Anyone who says, 'Do what you love for a living and you'll never work a day in your life,' hasn't done what they want to do for a living."

• 1:11:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you do anything, day in, day out.

• 1:11:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Tim Ferriss?

  For decades.

• 1:11:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:34Tim Ferriss?

  There's a point where you're like, okay.

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  Even to the point where I'm doing these tours where I'm super stressed out and like, you know, you're walking in on stage in an arena for 15,000 people, Staples Center, whatever. And you're like, oh, you know, after a week, once I have the show down, I'm like, eh, whatever. Making the donuts, you know? Especially if it's a pop thing, because it's literally the same thing every.

• 1:11:53Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:11:53Speaker 03

  Every, you know, if it's something more improvised, that's a little bit more exciting. But there's something that happens that I have to help people out with who are on tours for a year and a half or two years, and it's a pop context.

• 1:12:06Tim Ferriss?

  Holy shit, I didn't realize tours were that long.

• 1:12:07Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, dude. Album cycle, totally.

• 1:12:09Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:12:10Speaker 03

  So you're playing the exact same thing, note for note, day in, day out.

• 1:12:14Tim Ferriss?

  Being on book tour until your next book comes out.

• 1:12:17Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:12:17Tim Ferriss?

  Basically.

• 1:12:18Speaker 03

  Well, and then you'll take a break.

• 1:12:19Tim Ferriss?

  You'll do some recording.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  You'll take a break, do a new record, yeah. But it's intense and you're out with the same people, the same texts. You're away from your family. It's pretty rough.

• 1:12:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Speaker 03

  And so something that happens to people is they're playing the same thing over and over and over again. I mean, literally this note for note, because if you're playing a pop, like when I was doing Miley, that's a massive production. It's like eight buses, 12 semis. The stage production is insane. I'm going up, up and down, above and below the stage. There's a huge video wall. She's riding a giant hot dog like 20 feet above the air in the arena. There's a lot of things that go on there. So you can't do anything different because you'll, because the dancers will be like, oh, like what, what just happened?

• 1:13:09Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:13:10Speaker 03

  So you have people playing the exact same thing, note for note, for a year and a half, two years, and they start to lose their mind because it's so monotonous and repetitive.

• 1:13:20Tim Ferriss?

  It's like the polar bear doing like the lap in the one 10 foot pool and then closing.

• 1:13:24Speaker 03

  Exactly. It's exactly the same thing. So what interesting, what, what starts happening is your brain starts creating weird quagmires for you to, for you to fall into because it's bored.

• 1:13:36Tim Ferriss?

  What would be an example of that?

• 1:13:38Speaker 03

  So like, for instance, you'll get to a certain part and you'll be like, oh, why can't I play that? It's not hard to play. Uh, like there was a guy I was working with who, uh, has played with like Janet Jackson for a year. You know, a lot of people. He's a fantastic drummer and he had like some issues with his, with his foot. And he went to see someone in Atlanta, like a neurologist. And she had some helmet that he put on to, cause I, we were looking at like the technique, the physical issues. And I guess there were some parts of his brain that were like turned off. Like to control the foot. It's crazy. I don't know how that, that, that technology works, but, um, your brain will, will fuck with you.

• 1:14:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:24Speaker 03

  So there, there was times at the Mars Volta or with Miley or whatever, where I would be like, oh, here comes this part. And it's like, ah, you're already dead in the water.

• 1:14:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Speaker 03

  Um, or like when I was doing M83, there was one section where like I would, I would hear the beat in the wrong place. Like

• 1:14:43Tim Ferriss?

  Weird. You had like an auditory hallucination.

• 1:14:45Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah.

• 1:14:46Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and like, it was, it was very, very, it was a very simple section. And I remember at sound check, uh, me like going, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on here? This is like, it, it, and your brain is like, I need something to do.

• 1:14:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:59Speaker 03

  It's crazy. Uh, so I forgot why I got on that tangent.

• 1:15:04Tim Ferriss?

  Talking about, we were talking about Jimmy and

• 1:15:07Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:08Tim Ferriss?

  Climbing Everest and what, what his thoughts were on what to do.

• 1:15:13Speaker 03

  Well, his situation, we were just, we were talking about this sort of last night. It's that there, you know, in certain situations, there aren't a lot of people you can talk to about certain things, right? Um, so we were just kind of going back and forth at that type of thing. And the thing with him is he is in a band that was, that's still huge. Um, and the, the thing with being in a, this is the thing that's uncontrollable in the music industry. Or, you know, there's tons of parables here, but. I can work really, really hard and it doesn't matter if my band makes it or not in a way that if you really hit the lottery, that's totally outside of your control. So that, they

• 1:15:57Speaker 03

  put in all the hard work, uh, but that band hit, hit the lottery.

• 1:16:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:02Speaker 03

  And that is out of your, out of your control. But again, you can sort of set the stage for it. So where he's coming from, because he's in a band that is huge, is totally different from someone like me who's a mercenary.

• 1:16:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:16Speaker 03

  Right? Um, so it's,

• 1:16:19Tim Ferriss?

  A Blackwater sniper. Of drumming technicians.

• 1:16:23Speaker 03

  Totally. So it's, it's, it's a, it's a totally different thing.

• 1:16:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Speaker 03

  Uh, but he's very, very intelligent and great player. Uh, really great guy too. He's amazing. You guys would get along really well.

• 1:16:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'd love to meet him.

• 1:16:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:16:36Tim Ferriss?

  How long has he been, uh, the drummer with, with?

• 1:16:39Speaker 03

  He took a break for, for a while and then he recently got back together with them and they're just on tour right now doing their new record. Yeah.

• 1:16:46Tim Ferriss?

  There's so many tracks that just fueled me through so many parts of college.

• 1:16:51Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:52Tim Ferriss?

  Another part, Zero Butterfly, uh, no, Bullet with Butterfly.

• 1:16:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, dude.

• 1:16:57Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my God. So amazing. I think we should maybe jump into some, some rapid fire, but after, and we will incorporate this, thank you for the index finger point. We're not going to miss this because you mentioned a word earlier, which is a very useful word, uh, word oblique.

• 1:17:16Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:17Tim Ferriss?

  We're not talking about the sides of your abs, although I suppose we are. It's used in that context too. We're going to come back and talk about oblique strategies. But first, since we've consumed, I think several black teas, several green teas, several Topo Chicos and are working our way through a couple of cappuccinos and more green tea. We'll take a short bio break and return for your listening pleasure. We'll be right back.

• 1:17:40Speaker 03

  And we're back as promised.

• 1:17:44Tim Ferriss?

  Oblique Strategies. This is a black case that is holding what looks like a deck of cards. And this deck of cards has all sorts of things written on them. The first two, which I pulled out yesterday, which were highly, highly relevant to a number of corners I've painted myself into recently, were card number one, simple subtraction. Card number two, what mistakes did you make last time? What are these? Oblique Strategies?

• 1:18:21Speaker 03

  So they're cards that Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt made together in 1975. And they're-

• 1:18:30Tim Ferriss?

  Who are those two people?

• 1:18:31Speaker 03

  So Brian Eno is a super famous musician. He's done a lot of different things over the years, but he was first famous with the band Roxy Music. And he went on later to sort of pioneer ambient music-

• 1:18:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 1:18:50Speaker 03

  With Music for Airports.

• 1:18:55Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, literally Music for Airports?

• 1:18:56Speaker 03

  That's what the record's called. It's called Music for Airports. Yeah.

• 1:19:03Speaker 03

  Sorry, I should have clarified that.

• 1:19:04Tim Ferriss?

  I feel like they would get along with McLuhan and the medium is the massage.

• 1:19:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Well, he wanted to make something that sort of neither had a beginning or an end, and you could tune in and out of, and it didn't really matter. So he's a very interesting, brilliant person. And these are strategies when you're making anything. I mean, this is in the context of making music, but you can obviously apply them to anything. They're devices to knock you out of your present state of mind. Like you said, when you paint yourself into a corner, like, yeah, I gotta get out of this.

• 1:19:41Tim Ferriss?

  Or you just feel like you've painted yourself into a corner.

• 1:19:43Speaker 03

  Sure, well, that's a whole other thing, right? So there's a whole deck of cards that are very simple minimalist suggestions, right? So the ones that you picked out,

• 1:19:56Speaker 03

  you know, you already said, but if you pick, if we pick out like just a few random ones-

• 1:20:01Tim Ferriss?

  Tidy up. Do something boring.

• 1:20:05Tim Ferriss?

  The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten. Ain't that the truth?

• 1:20:11Tim Ferriss?

  Overtly resist change. Disciplined self-indulgence. Yeah, so these are prompts.

• 1:20:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:18Tim Ferriss?

  In a way, for getting unstuck or unfucked.

• 1:20:21Speaker 03

  So, you know, I've had, I've had a set of these for years and I thought you would be super into these.

• 1:20:28Tim Ferriss?

  How do you use, how do you use these cards? And, and I'll, I'll, I'll just buy a little bit of time because I noticed there's a, there's a description card, which I hadn't noticed earlier. These cards evolved from separate observations of the principles underlying what we were doing. What we were doing, I'm imagining, is, is very much musically related, but sometimes they were recognized in retrospect. I.e. intellect catching up with intuition. Sometimes they were identified as they were happening. Sometimes they were formulated. They can be used as a pack, a set of possibilities being continuously reviewed in the mind, or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case, the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear. They're not final as new ideas will present themselves and others will become self-evident.

• 1:21:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:21:12Tim Ferriss?

  How do you use, or how have you used these cards?

• 1:21:15Speaker 03

  I always think about them in terms of how I'm supporting music as, you know, on, for the greater good, right? So, a lot of times in an improvised context, these are very, very applicable. Because with an instrument such as drums, or guitar, piano, or bass, where you don't have to breathe to play it.

• 1:21:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:37Speaker 03

  You run the risk of vomit chops.

• 1:21:40Tim Ferriss?

  What does that mean?

• 1:21:40Speaker 03

  It means you, you can just play as much as you want. If you're playing a wind instrument, you literally have to breathe, so that affects your phrasing. So you can pause. And, you know, drumming, you don't have to do that. You can play a million miles an hour forever.

• 1:21:54Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:21:55Speaker 03

  And, and after two minutes, the listener wants to kill themselves.

• 1:22:01Tim Ferriss?

  That's true. There is, yeah, all right. There isn't sort of as much of a, there is a biological limiter, but it's not as obvious to the listener.

• 1:22:09Speaker 03

  No. Yeah, with saxophone or something, you have to breathe every 15 or 20 seconds. So you have to have space and that cliche, that cliche thing of it's not about what you play, it's about what you don't play. It's cliche for a reason. It's really true. And that's something that I try to focus on a lot because if you have a lot of facility, it's very easy to just barf all over the place and overwhelm everyone.

• 1:22:37Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not a musician, as I've stated repeatedly, but I remember someone said to me, "Music is the space between the notes." And I was like, "Ooh, interesting."

• 1:22:47Speaker 03

  And with drumming, especially because you're keeping time for everyone,

• 1:22:52Speaker 03

  it's a very meditative state. A lot of people will

• 1:22:57Speaker 03

  count in between the notes and they'll be very precise about it. And I've always tried to be very zen about it and just feel the void in between the notes that you're playing. It's two totally different ways of doing it. And depending on what you're doing at the moment, one could be better than the other. But, yeah, man.

• 1:23:22Tim Ferriss?

  So you would then, give me an example, if you could. Could be hypothetical. When would you pull out this deck and be like, "All right, I really feel like I need one of these cards."

• 1:23:30Speaker 03

  So, you know, I do a lot of the body mechanics stuff with people. And I also have people who are just like, "Hey dude, give me a bunch of cool, crazy licks to play." Like song enders, you know,

• 1:23:44Speaker 03

  you know, that kind of a thing. Like, I did that with Stacy, my buddy Stacy Jones, who's Miley's MD and drummer. And that was why I had-

• 1:23:51Tim Ferriss?

  MD.

• 1:23:52Speaker 03

  Musical director, sorry.

• 1:23:55Tim Ferriss?

  Hell of a combo.

• 1:23:57Tim Ferriss?

  Let me finish the song and then here's an EpiPen in the leg.

• 1:24:02Speaker 03

  So he was like, hey dude, I just wanna get some rad song enders. It was like, great, we can totally do that. And so I showed him a bunch of licks. We had fun. And this is the kind of situation that's great for these because people, after you work on phrasing, they, after about 20 minutes, they've played everything they know. And then they're like, oh, what do I do now? So you could just pick something out of the deck. Like you just picked out Give the Game Away. And how you interpret that, you can go a number of ways, right?

• 1:24:30Tim Ferriss?

  It's like slow down on your shirt. I mean, anyone who picks that up, they're like, what does that mean? They're like, what does it mean to you? You can like therapize them.

• 1:24:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So like for me, the first, the way I would process that is like, I'm just gonna, a lot of times when you're building up solos, you don't do that. You wanna lead someone in and sort of set the stage because if you start off on...

• 1:24:52Tim Ferriss?

  Don't give them the filet mignon as the appetizer.

• 1:24:54Speaker 03

  Exactly. So this, to me, the way I would interpret this is, is I'm gonna come in guns blazing and then try to work my way out of that because that's the biggest no-no. I'm gonna do that on purpose.

• 1:25:07Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:25:07Speaker 03

  And then see what happens.

• 1:25:10Speaker 03

  Someone could also, someone could also say like, if you're thinking about it in a sports analogy, you know, you could just be like, I'm just gonna play the game and see what happens. Just let it happen on its own. It's not about winning or losing.

• 1:25:24Tim Ferriss?

  Cool. I dig it.

• 1:25:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this is good timing for me.

• 1:25:28Speaker 03

  Great.

• 1:25:28Tim Ferriss?

  So we've, we've talked a lot about playing in front of huge crowds and the musicians you work with and

• 1:25:39Tim Ferriss?

  certainly this show tends to feature people who are very good at something or other. I would like to talk about failures or disappointments. And this is a question I really enjoy asking.

• 1:25:56Tim Ferriss?

  Which is, how has a failure or apparent failure set you up for later success? Could be a disappointment, but, or anything, but do you have any particular favorite failures or failures that come to mind that were, in retrospect, very valuable?

• 1:26:13Speaker 03

  I've gone out for auditions for, for plenty of bands and I haven't gotten gigs.

• 1:26:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:20Speaker 03

  I mean, that's just how it goes. And if you go in there and again, you're really prepared

• 1:26:30Speaker 03

  and you fully present yourself accurately and they don't want it, it's not the right fit, what else, what else can you do? You might think of like, oh, I didn't get the gig. Like it's a failure. But what about if you, it's the same thing as dating, right? What if you present a fake version of yourself and then they like that and then you have to keep doing that and then you're like, who am I?

• 1:26:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:51Speaker 03

  So there's plenty of situations where I go in doing the Dave Smash thing, like in that Mars Volta video and they're like, holy shit, like Jesus Christ.

• 1:27:00Tim Ferriss?

  Get a restraining order.

• 1:27:01Speaker 03

  And it's too much and they get freaked out and it's just like, well, you know, I might not be that guy all the time, but that's definitely possible.

• 1:27:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:10Speaker 03

  A real life situation, which is what I always try to, to talk about because that's the most important thing. So many people run into problems when they just, hyperbole.

• 1:27:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:24Speaker 03

  So when I was out with the 1975, maybe a couple of years ago, George, the drummer, I've been teaching him for, for a while and he broke his collarbone on tour. So it was the same type of situation.

• 1:27:39Tim Ferriss?

  How did you break his collarbone? Maybe it's not for family programming.

• 1:27:44Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't know. I don't know. But he was just like, dude, I break, I broke my collarbone. So, you know.

• 1:27:50Tim Ferriss?

  Good recovery. Continue.

• 1:27:52Speaker 03

  So I was like, who knows, you know? So, uh, so he was like, can you come out here and, and, you know, fill in? So same type of situation. I have to learn all the music last minute. It's, uh, you know, a big, really large venues, arenas. And I show up to Toronto, meet everyone. We have a, a line check on stage, which is you just make sure all the connections are working. We run through a couple of songs, maybe. The people attempting to assemble my drum kit did not do this. Well, that was another thing. George, I'm, you know, I'm like five, six on a good day, right? George is at least a foot taller than me, if not more. Wow. Yeah, he's very tall. He's probably like six, nine. Holy cow. Yeah, he's very tall, so.

• 1:28:37Speaker 03

  I had daddy long legs on that drum kit. Yeah, long legs, long arms, long everything. So I had to rearrange his kit. A lot of times you have to sit down and just play it, uh, which can present some problems. But I had to rearrange things because it was like impossible. And so, yeah, out, outdoor stage in Toronto, 10,000 people, and you just have to go for it. Now you were saying, you said you were going through a line check. Yeah, so line check. Off the reservation. Yeah, so line check is like kit, kick, kick drum, snare drum, guitar, but you know, like checking everything's working, right? And then he was, you know, Matty, the singer was like, can we do this song? Let's do this song. And we just did like a couple of songs. And he was like, okay, great. And then it's just, it's showtime. All right. Yeah.

• 1:29:19Speaker 03

  And, uh, and so, you know, everyone was like, because that's the type of situation where it's a band and you have to come in. And the very difficult thing is you have to assume someone else's character. Yeah. And try to make everyone feel comfortable enough to where it's comfortable. Yeah. Right? So, you know, they were like, yeah, you know, how do you play, play the parts, but like you can have some fun. And so I threw in things here and there and they were like laughing and into it. And, and it was super fun. And, and, uh, so we did that run for about a month. And then I sat down with Matty, the singer, and he was like, you know, man, we have to do

• 1:30:00Speaker 03

  Glastonbury and some BBC One stuff. And it's, it's really important that this band sounds like the 1975. And right now, it sounds like the 1975 with Dave Yelich. Cause your personality is just huge.

• 1:30:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:16Speaker 03

  And at the time, I was like, fuck. I was so bummed because I really like Matty. I really like George, all those guys. And I really liked the music a lot. And I was just like, fuck, man. And, uh, and then I was like, wait, this is like the best compliment anyone could ever give me.

• 1:30:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:35Speaker 03

  Cause having an identity is the most important thing when you're making art. And I was like, you know what? That's fucking awesome.

• 1:30:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:43Speaker 03

  And, uh, and so, you know, that was, they got, they got, um, my buddy Freddie, who was doing it for the week until I got there, Freddie Sheed, who's a really great drummer in the UK. They got him to do it again until George could come back. And, and Freddie's great. And he's a really good buddy of mine. He did a great job. And I was just, at the time, I was like so bummed. Uh, but.

• 1:31:05Tim Ferriss?

  What helped you reframe it? Like, when did, when were you able to reframe it and view it the way?

• 1:31:11Speaker 03

  Took a while. Took, took a few months.

• 1:31:13Tim Ferriss?

  Did you do it on your own? Did it come to clarity through therapy? What helped?

• 1:31:20Speaker 03

  Maybe talking.

• 1:31:21Tim Ferriss?

  Because a lot of people don't recover from, they, they're not able to reframe something that might've been a very difficult time. It continues to be something that was very difficult.

• 1:31:30Speaker 03

  And they just take, it takes them out forever.

• 1:31:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it just becomes this pain, this like dull ache that they revisit every time they have the memory. But you've been able to reframe it.

• 1:31:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think through enough experience and through having enough success outside of that situation.

• 1:31:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:48Speaker 03

  I can, I can definitely see that happening if it's like, that's your one shot. And that's the only amount of success you ever had. But I've done a lot of other things and I did things after that before. And so it's like, oh, that was just that one thing. And it wasn't like, oh, you, you fucked it up.

• 1:32:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:06Speaker 03

  It was just like, you're too distracting.

• 1:32:10Tim Ferriss?

  What's the shittiest music gig you've ever had?

• 1:32:15Tim Ferriss?

  And it could be like, fucking, it could be anything. It could be fucking halftime at like Rogue Olive Garden. I don't know.

• 1:32:25Speaker 03

  Man, I don't know if I can answer that without getting in trouble.

• 1:32:27Tim Ferriss?

  Or any, have you ever, have there any ever been moments when you've doubted yourself or doubted the music path? Where you've just been like, fuck.

• 1:32:38Speaker 03

  Oh, all the time.

• 1:32:40Tim Ferriss?

  What would, any examples come to mind? They could be super early. They could be at any point.

• 1:32:47Speaker 03

  Well, the industry has changed so much in the past 10 or 15 years. Just the way it's structured as a business model alone makes you question things. Like, is this even a working model anymore?

• 1:33:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:05Speaker 03

  And that changes on a daily basis. So just thinking about things monetarily.

• 1:33:13Speaker 03

  Sometimes, does this even make sense? Like, for me, like, am I gonna go out on tour and be away from home and make X amount of money when I can just stay home and sleep in my own bed and make X amount of money teaching?

• 1:33:26Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:33:26Speaker 03

  You know, that, that kind of a thing. And then it's like, well, do I want to teach or do I want to play music? What, you know, and then it's like the grass is always greener. So that, that stuff's constantly swirling around in my head.

• 1:33:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. When you're auditioning for gigs and you're like, really, that dude got the gig? Are you kidding me? And then you're like, if that's what people want, like, that's garbage. Like, but, and everyone else is like, oh, gross. And, you know, like, I can't, like, that dude's such a cheese ball. Like, why would they, you know? And, and they're like, well, is that what people want? And then it's like, if that's what people want, why am I doing this? Cause no one has good taste.

• 1:34:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:06Speaker 03

  You can get in that, that whole thing. So. Just, yeah, to- totally. And I, I think what's, what's very important is doing a multitude of things. I, I teach a lot. That's really my bread and butter. But because of that, I can be selective and learn how to say no to things because of that. So if someone calls me for-

• 1:34:28Tim Ferriss?

  Two playing gigs.

• 1:34:29Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:34:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:30Speaker 03

  So if someone calls me for a tour and I heard a lot of

• 1:34:35Speaker 03

  bad things about the artist, like they're a pain in the ass, I'll be like, nah, I'm good.

• 1:34:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:39Speaker 03

  I don't have to do it. I have a lot of friends who tour and that's all they do.

• 1:34:43Tim Ferriss?

  They have to do it.

• 1:34:43Speaker 03

  And they're like, God, you're so lucky you teach. I have to go out with this piece of shit right now.

• 1:34:49Speaker 03

  And it's like, and, and then it comes around to doing what you love for a living, you know? And then they're like, oh, like, what's the point if, if you go out on the road and you're bumming? So there's something to be said about The Weekend Warrior who goes to their, their suit and tie cubicle job. And then they get out of work and they're like, yeah, I'm gonna go play drums right now. And they're stoked.

• 1:35:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:08Speaker 03

  There's something to be said for that.

• 1:35:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:11Speaker 03

  Cause it's still like a wholly special thing. And that's something that I struggle with, with art.

• 1:35:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:17Speaker 03

  Because I love art so much and it's so important to me. And everyone's like, when are you gonna start making stuff? And I'm just like, but if I start making it-

• 1:35:25Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:35:25Speaker 03

  Then I'm part of it. And then it's like tainted-

• 1:35:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:28Speaker 03

  In a way.

• 1:35:30Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it makes me think of some of my friends who are

• 1:35:34Tim Ferriss?

  very, very successful travel writers.

• 1:35:36Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:35:36Tim Ferriss?

  It's really hard for them to travel for fun. Because they're constantly thinking about, what would the lead be? Oh, how would I describe this? Oh, maybe I should take some notes just in case. They have a, a very tough time experiencing travel without thinking about how they would craft the narrative.

• 1:35:57Speaker 03

  Well, same thing for me. Like if you go on tour a lot. You don't want to go traveling for fun. You're like, I was just out for six weeks. I just want to be home.

• 1:36:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:07Speaker 03

  So like, everyone's like, man, you should take a vacation. And I was like, I don't, I don't want to go anywhere.

• 1:36:12Tim Ferriss?

  I want a staycation.

• 1:36:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:36:13Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you were talking about the, the teaching, which I think is really a, a point I want to revisit because you do, you do multiple things. You have a, you have many different interests.

• 1:36:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:36:27Tim Ferriss?

  And it strikes me that in a sense, you've number one, diversified your identity in such a way that you don't feel psychologically compelled to always tour.

• 1:36:37Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:36:37Tim Ferriss?

  Secondly, with the teaching and, uh, you know, with the online course, right? Getting out of your own way, which I think could be like, maybe it will be the title of this podcast.

• 1:36:50Speaker 03

  Uh,

• 1:36:51Tim Ferriss?

  so interrelated as it relates to, that was a terrible sentence, but you get the idea. Oblique strategies, the inner game of tennis. I mean, so many of these creative pursuits, professional pursuits, personal pursuits are not about doing something brand new that is this gigantic skill you have to acquire over 15 years. A lot of it is just removing the blocks.

• 1:37:14Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:37:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right? But the point I was going to make is that you are not in a position because you've developed these different branches of your life where you have to, to feel or act out of desperation. And it makes me think, for instance, this, this might seem like it's totally out of left field, but Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• 1:37:36Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:37:37Tim Ferriss?

  Never really auditioned. And this is something not a whole lot of people know about him. It's not a secret, but he made millions of dollars in real estate before he ever had his break in film. So he focused on real estate in Santa Monica and other areas and had also other types of business. He had a mail order business. He had a brickling business with Franco Colombo. So that he could be selective about the roles he took.

• 1:38:07Speaker 03

  That's incredible.

• 1:38:08Tim Ferriss?

  And he was able to.

• 1:38:11Tim Ferriss?

  Craft a trajectory even when in, you're talking about the cheese ball taking the gig.

• 1:38:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:19Tim Ferriss?

  When he got started, people are like, this is never gonna work.

• 1:38:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:38:22Tim Ferriss?

  You're a freak show.

• 1:38:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:38:23Tim Ferriss?

  Nobody wants that.

• 1:38:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:38:24Tim Ferriss?

  Like, people want Al Pacino and Taxi.

• 1:38:27Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:27Tim Ferriss?

  They do not want Taxi Driver.

• 1:38:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:29Tim Ferriss?

  Taxi, Taxi Driver, one of the two.

• 1:38:30Speaker 03

  Robert De Niro?

• 1:38:31Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, there we go. Wow. How many ways can I get that story wrong?

• 1:38:38Speaker 03

  We can edit that out.

• 1:38:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, close enough, close enough. This is audio verite, folks, I'll leave it in.

• 1:38:45Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, you get the idea.

• 1:38:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:46Tim Ferriss?

  And he was, he was able to bide his time also so that at some point he could, he could put himself in a position where he could be exactly what people wanted. And you were, I actually, I'll, I'll, I'll give you a public thanks also for, you can see where my, how my brain is connecting these two. For your introduction to Bill Burr.

• 1:39:11Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:39:11Tim Ferriss?

  Comedian who's also on this show, who you teach.

• 1:39:14Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:14Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, who, for people who haven't seen it, does one of the most hilarious Arnold Schwarzenegger bits of all time, which I won't spoil, it is definitely not suitable for works. So don't play it at full volume on YouTube at your job and then get pissed off at me on the internet.

• 1:39:32Tim Ferriss?

  But the, the diversification of identity psychologically, uh, very, very important. And then the, the income diversification for you, allowing you to then as an artist craft,

• 1:39:46Tim Ferriss?

  uh, a more deliberate path, I think are really, really.

• 1:39:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:39:50Tim Ferriss?

  Really, really important.

• 1:39:51Speaker 03

  And if you're not being deliberate about what you're creating, then what the hell are you doing? You're just making garbage, right?

• 1:39:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned George, so this is George Daniel, right?

• 1:40:00Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:40:01Tim Ferriss?

  Of the 1975. So he, he has said, and I quote,

• 1:40:07Tim Ferriss?

  uh, among other things, uh, I'll, I'll read the whole thing. But Dave saved my arms and hands. He made me see I could, in fact, contrary to my belief, develop technique that would save me from blisters and help solve tendinitis for many years of horrible, horribly inefficient technique. We don't have to talk about that, we can, but the next line is what's interesting to me. He taught patience, exclamation point. An incredible player, really great teacher, and all around lovely human. What does that mean, or what does he mean by he taught patience?

• 1:40:37Speaker 03

  I think probably I'm very, as long as someone is putting the work in, I'm very patient with people. Because seeing the light, the light flash in their eyes when something clicks is one of the greatest feelings imaginable. And also probably for him, I think being patient with himself. Like taking the time to, to really hone in on certain things and not having to rush through things and, and just be like, I'm gonna put the work in and I'm gonna take the time. So all this stuff happens the way it should happen. And, and you have to be patient with that. Or else it's never gonna manifest itself.

• 1:41:17Tim Ferriss?

  Or with something that's as physical as drumming. If, if you rush it and your technique is not biomechanically suitable for a human.

• 1:41:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:29Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, human body, then.

• 1:41:31Speaker 03

  Well, that's what I was, that's what I was saying earlier is, is, is, is it's inherently an issue of the drum set as an instrument. In that the way the drum set was formed initially around the turn of the century was, uh, it was called a trap kit because it was short for contraption.

• 1:41:48Speaker 03

  So like you think of these dudes around, you know, late 1800s, 1900s, uh, taking disparate, uh, concert percussion instruments. Like a bass drum by itself and a stereo drum. And then we had, they had to make a pedal to use the bass drum. And the hi-hats were, were originally called lowboys because they were on the floor and you only played them with your foot, you didn't play them. So it's evolved in this really bizarre, strange way. So it's physically strange.

• 1:42:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:15Speaker 03

  Uh, but also the bar is incredibly low in terms of, uh, entry. So it's very easy to play drums in the beginning. You sit down and go. Doot, tat, doot, tat, doot, tat, doot, tat. And they're like, oh, I can play drums. I can do this. I can play along to ACDC and Michael Jackson and like, this is great. And so no one thinks about how anything functions because they can already do it. And then they go on tour and then 10 years later, they're like, oh, my arms are destroyed. Or my hip is just sort of my back, uh, because they're, they're doing everything inefficiently or incorrectly. And then also they, they get stuck as far as the vocabulary goes because they can't express themselves properly. Because they're in their own way.

• 1:42:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:00Speaker 03

  So it's a lot of it is inherently part of the instrument. Uh, itself. And I always use like violin as an example, like you have to sit there for six months, just getting your intonation happening, or, or saxophone, you have to get your embouchure together.

• 1:43:15Tim Ferriss?

  Your what?

• 1:43:16Speaker 03

  Embouchure.

• 1:43:17Tim Ferriss?

  Embouchure?

• 1:43:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, so how it's like, basically like throat control, like how you, how you produce uh, air pressure.

• 1:43:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:25Speaker 03

  And that takes a while, you know, you start learning clarinet or you're squawking all over the place, have to develop that control. And you can't just sit down and just make a sound. You have to, there's a certain amount of gestation.

• 1:43:36Tim Ferriss?

  With drums, yeah, you can get the reward without having to develop.

• 1:43:39Speaker 03

  Immediately.

• 1:43:40Tim Ferriss?

  That body control.

• 1:43:41Speaker 03

  Exactly. And that's the problem, but that's part of the, the instrument, you know, what I was gonna say earlier, when we were talking about the, being able to, to do many different, wear many different hats, do many different things, be deliberate about what you're doing. I had, I was talking to a friend about this and he was like, yeah, what, you know, if you, if your identity is, is largely based on what you do for a living, whatever it is, what if you wake up one day and you don't want to do that thing? And then you're like, who am I?

• 1:44:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:14Speaker 03

  And that's a mindfuck.

• 1:44:15Tim Ferriss?

  Very common.

• 1:44:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:16Tim Ferriss?

  Super, super common.

• 1:44:18Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:44:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:19Speaker 03

  So I think having.

• 1:44:20Tim Ferriss?

  For people who say like, try to retire and then they're like, oh, wait, I've spent 12 hours a day for the last 30 years doing X.

• 1:44:27Speaker 03

  And then you have a whole other black hole where if you're a very important person and you, and you get a lot of respect and then you retire, you're just some guy.

• 1:44:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:36Speaker 03

  And that's a whole other thing to deal with.

• 1:44:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:38Speaker 03

  And then what are you gonna do with your, with your life when you just wake up? Are you gonna play golf all day? You know, that's a whole other thing.

• 1:44:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Huh. What would you put on a billboard? If you could put metaphorically, right? A message, a few words, a word, anything?

• 1:44:56Tim Ferriss?

  On a billboard to get it out to millions of people. He's holding his T-shirt. Slow down.

• 1:45:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, slow down. Because generally speaking, so many people need to do that. Slow down, take a deep breath.

• 1:45:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:09Speaker 03

  Just relax.

• 1:45:11Tim Ferriss?

  You can also cover up or hide a lot of your own mistakes and sloppiness from yourself by doing things too quickly.

• 1:45:18Speaker 03

  Absolutely. That's very common in music.

• 1:45:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, very common in music. It's very common in a lot of things.

• 1:45:23Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:45:24Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, when I watch really good, say, boxing instructors, they're always like, slow down. Uh, in the beginning, certainly.

• 1:45:32Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:45:33Tim Ferriss?

  Like, look, yeah, anybody can flail their arms around so that nobody can see what you're doing exactly. Like,

• 1:45:37Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:45:37Tim Ferriss?

  I want to see exactly what you're doing really slowly in the beginning. And it also brings to mind one of my favorite expressions I've learned in the last few years, which was from a friend of mine who's a former Navy SEAL. And it's not specific to him. It's something that you hear quite a lot, but it is, slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

• 1:45:59Speaker 03

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 1:46:01Tim Ferriss?

  It's like, do not rush. Because if you try to like rush a reload or rush whatever it might be and you botch it, now you're really slow.

• 1:46:09Speaker 03

  Hmm. Hmm. You're slower than you would be even before.

• 1:46:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, like, yes.

• 1:46:14Speaker 03

  Well, it's that, it's the same, like, the weights can shit in the smaller circles.

• 1:46:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:18Speaker 03

  To learn things in large movements or whatever you want to think about this in,

• 1:46:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:24Speaker 03

  whatever paradigm you want to think about this in. And then as you get more comfortable, they get smaller and smaller and smaller.

• 1:46:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:29Speaker 03

  And then you're just throw someone across the room.

• 1:46:33Tim Ferriss?

  And for those people wondering, that's Josh Waitzkin, who is a fantastic guy, good friend of mine, who's thought of, he is the basis for the book and the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. Uh, really a master in many, many disciplines, but that's one of, one of his concepts for sure.

• 1:46:48Speaker 03

  I tell everyone I teach to get that book.

• 1:46:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, The Art of Learning is a fantastic book. Uh, he was the second ever guest on this podcast.

• 1:46:57Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:46:58Tim Ferriss?

  And a lot of great concepts. Also, for people interested, did a, did a television episode with him where we looked at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which he's a black belt in.

• 1:47:07Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 1:47:08Tim Ferriss?

  Among other things. Uh, that was the first time for that TV show that he got on in front of a chessboard. And I think, I want to say 15 years, something like that. His wife said, I cannot believe that he's getting in front of a chessboard. I've never. Maybe never seen him do it.

• 1:47:21Speaker 03

  That thing in the episode where he talks about playing like 50 chess games at the same time.

• 1:47:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the simultaneous games.

• 1:47:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, and talking about feeling the flow of energy in the room and then he felt like a shift.

• 1:47:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, he felt like he'd been juggling 30 balls and one of them got dropped because he was playing, it was something like 30 kids and one of them cheated.

• 1:47:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:47:42Tim Ferriss?

  And he came back around and he didn't know exactly what had happened, but he's like, this doesn't feel right.

• 1:47:46Speaker 03

  And that's, sounds like spooky shit. That's a real thing.

• 1:47:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:51Speaker 03

  I was, that was so, that episode was so affirming and exciting for me.

• 1:47:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:56Speaker 03

  Because he said a lot of things where I was like, oh, I'm doing this right.

• 1:48:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:01Speaker 03

  I'm on the right path because there were so many things that we did similarly.

• 1:48:05Tim Ferriss?

  It's this, it's the, the, the transfer is so, it's so clear.

• 1:48:11Speaker 03

  Huge.

• 1:48:11Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, which is part, part, part of the fun. It's a big part of the fun of having this podcast for me is interviewing people across disciplines that at first glance you would expect to have nothing to do with one another. And you just realize that people who are playing their A game in any field

• 1:48:26Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:27Tim Ferriss?

  have more in common with one another than they do with the B players in their own field.

• 1:48:31Speaker 03

  That's one of my favorite things to do with Burr is we sit down and talk about comedy and drumming and the massive amounts of overlap between the two.

• 1:48:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:40Speaker 03

  Like when we first started working together, he had, uh, basically like a John Bonham led Zeppelin, almost like a replica kit. It's like a huge Bonham fan. And everyone who plays drums is like a John Bonham fan. He's incredible. And it very, he has a very specific sound. So he got this early seventies green sparkle Ludwig kit, giant 26 inch bass drum. Like it's a whole, it's a thing. It's a very specific thing. And we're working together and we're talking about identity and what he wants to say and who he wants to be and getting his posture together and.

• 1:49:20Speaker 03

  And I was like, dude, you wouldn't walk out on stage and start yelling like Sam Kinison. That's his thing. You do your own thing. You walk out on, on stage in, in front of whatever 12,000 people, Madison Square Garden. You're doing your own thing.

• 1:49:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:35Speaker 03

  Like, bring that to this. I mean, he sold the kit immediately. Got his own thing. He's figuring out what his own thing is.

• 1:49:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:43Speaker 03

  It's, it's, it's, uh, and that's so much fun for me to, to do. Uh, uh, and he's one of the smartest dudes I, I know. I mean, he's brilliant.

• 1:49:54Tim Ferriss?

  He's a very smart guy.

• 1:49:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:49:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. You have, uh, I think within, within any field, certainly you have certain philosophical underpinnings or paradigms that people choose as like the foundation for a lot of their decisions and career path and so on. Then you have the strategies and you have the tactics and the, the lower level you go, in some respects, the more the fields diverge.

• 1:50:19Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:50:20Tim Ferriss?

  But certainly at the higher levels, whether it's tennis, comedy, drumming, or otherwise, there's so many, so many commonalities.

• 1:50:28Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:50:29Tim Ferriss?

  What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

• 1:50:36Speaker 03

  That I love?

• 1:50:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'll give you an example.

• 1:50:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:38Tim Ferriss?

  Or just a compulsion. So for instance, Cheryl Strayed, who wrote the book Wild and excellent author, also fantastic podcast host.

• 1:50:51Tim Ferriss?

  The example she gave was she likes to reassemble sandwiches. So when she gets a sandwich, it bothers her if like all the tomatoes on one side of the sandwich and the avocados on the other. She wants every bite to be as uniform as possible. So she'll like reassemble her sandwich. I like the number 555 because I finished editing the final line and the final pass of the four hour body in a Samovar tea shop in San Francisco ages ago and looked up and it was 5:55 PM. So that became this kind of good luck term. So I take screenshots of that whenever it pops up.

• 1:51:21Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:51:22Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, so it could be anything.

• 1:51:24Speaker 03

  It's funny. I think to be good at anything, you need to have a touch of OCD.

• 1:51:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:29Speaker 03

  Absolutely. You have to be detail oriented. And I do have those things, but I, I can't think of anything off the top of my head other than like checking the stove 10 times when I'm leaving the house. I'm like, you know, checking my studio door four times to make sure it's locked. I can't like think of anything weirdly.

• 1:51:48Speaker 03

  Uh, specific like that at the moment.

• 1:51:51Tim Ferriss?

  No problem. I'm sure there, there's, there are depths to plumb there that you can return to.

• 1:51:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:59Tim Ferriss?

  How often do you eat Indian or Himalayan food with some type of curry type consistency?

• 1:52:10Speaker 03

  Every day, pretty much. I mean, that's why I go to the gym six days a week because I have to work off all the, all the clarified butter.

• 1:52:18Tim Ferriss?

  All right. I'll leave that. That may qualify.

• 1:52:25Tim Ferriss?

  When you feel, actually, I'm not going to ask that one. Let me, uh, let me go somewhere else.

• 1:52:30Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:52:31Tim Ferriss?

  See, one, one thing that's come up in our conversations recently because I've, I've never worked with a therapist. And I've listened to interviews you've done where you've mentioned therapy and your therapist. And I've always had, I think, a certain degree of resistance, particularly to talk therapy. Uh, for a lot of reasons I won't bore everybody with. And, uh, I'd like to talk about that because it seems like you've benefited tremendously from it. So why, if you're comfortable talking about it.

• 1:53:02Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:53:02Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you end up engaging a therapist? And what have been, how did you, how did you choose your therapist? And what have been the, some of the benefits that you've derived?

• 1:53:16Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:53:17Tim Ferriss?

  From it so far?

• 1:53:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, I initially.

• 1:53:20Tim Ferriss?

  Because you, sorry.

• 1:53:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:22Tim Ferriss?

  I'll just really continue to step all over your answers.

• 1:53:25Speaker 03

  It's all good.

• 1:53:25Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, you, as well as a few other people, when I have mentioned that I've not worked with therapists are just like, what in the fuck? Are you serious?

• 1:53:32Speaker 03

  Especially you.

• 1:53:35Tim Ferriss?

  Like, really? Like, okay, maybe this is something I should explore.

• 1:53:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:53:39Tim Ferriss?

  This has come up multiple times from multiple people. Uh, so.

• 1:53:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:43Tim Ferriss?

  Your story.

• 1:53:45Speaker 03

  So I started seeing a therapist around, when I was thirty-ish, something like that. Uh, and it was mainly to.

• 1:53:59Speaker 03

  Figure out sort of like relationship issues that kept happening over and over and over again. And I was like, there's clearly something here that's a blind spot to me and I don't know what I'm doing. I need to figure this out. That was the specific reason why I started going. And I found my therapist through a really close friend of mine who is a therapist. And we obviously can't work together because she's a close friend of mine. So she was like, you should see this person. She's incredible. And seeing it, working with a therapist, having a good relationship with someone where you can really trust them and you care about each

• 1:54:37Speaker 03

  other and it clicks. That is unbelievably important. You know, there are so many bad drum teachers out there and there are so many bad therapists out there and it's, it's can be extremely damaging to someone. So having a good therapist who you get along with and connect with and who's very competent, like that's why I picked someone who was, I mean, we hit it off and it was obvious, but she's 80.

• 1:55:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:06Speaker 03

  And it's like, it's like these, all these life coaches running around who were like 25. It's like, the fuck do you know? You don't know anything. So having a therapist who where I can bring up anything and she's like, yep, been there.

• 1:55:19Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 1:55:20Speaker 03

  That's huge.

• 1:55:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:22Speaker 03

  And so it started off with the relationship stuff and then it obviously shoots off in all these other different directions. And even just having someone to go in and dump on and just like brain vomit, who's only there to help you out, help you sort things out. The world would be a completely different place if everyone had that.

• 1:55:42Tim Ferriss?

  Outlet.

• 1:55:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, to just unload.

• 1:55:46Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the ingredients for success, say in the beginning? Would you say that it's, it was important to you to say meet every week for a certain period of time, given how much you could potentially travel, right?

• 1:55:58Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:55:58Tim Ferriss?

  Like what were, what were some of the things that made it work?

• 1:56:01Speaker 03

  Well, it's the same thing with, with drumming. I'm like, hey, look, if you're serious about this, we gotta do this once a week. Because it's like going to the gym. You don't go two days a week for four hours.

• 1:56:10Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:56:11Speaker 03

  You go once a week for, or every day, you go every day for an hour or something.

• 1:56:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:16Speaker 03

  It's, it's you gra, you have consistency. That's crucial. And you're able to make progress because it's a, it's a recurring dialogue you're having with someone. And

• 1:56:28Speaker 03

  So I went once a week for years. And when things got particularly messy, I would sometimes go twice a week.

• 1:56:39Speaker 03

  And there were times when she really saved saved my life, like

• 1:56:45Speaker 03

  dealing with PTSD or, you know, you literally feel like you're gonna die. Uh, so, and now I go once a month. And sort of check in. And what's funny, we were talking about this last night.

• 1:57:00Speaker 03

  The times when I'm like, everything's kind of cool. Like, I think I'm, I don't even really need to go today. Those are the times when you stumble into some massive paradigm shift. And it literally is, it's a paradigm shift. You see the world in a completely different way. And a lot of the times when that happens, it's funny, I'll just be talking out loud, like thinking, but verbalizing it. And you sort of get on a path and then you're like boom, and something happens and you're, you're just like, holy shit, like, where did that come from?

• 1:57:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:31Speaker 03

  Uh, it's almost like an out of body experience. So a lot of it is, is, is trying to get outside of yourself. And which is extremely difficult. And thinking about, well, is this, is this aspect of my personality, is this learned? From my parents or, or someone, some, someone else? Or is this part of me? And a lot of things that I didn't know I was even doing are learned things that can be unlearned. It might take a lot of work. It takes a lot of work. It's the hardest thing I've, I've ever done. But I'm a completely different

• 1:58:14Speaker 03

  person, like a very specific example, that's like something small.

• 1:58:19Speaker 03

  If I'm at the gym and someone re-racks their weights improperly, it drives me fucking bananas. It drives me crazy. Like if they take the, the 25s.

• 1:58:29Tim Ferriss?

  And put it on the 35.

• 1:58:29Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. Drives me crazy. And it's like, this could not be more black and white. Like, how to like, how is that acceptable?

• 1:58:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:38Speaker 03

  And then that fucks up the flow for everyone else. So like, so, you know, and one day she was like, well, you know, they didn't see that you were wearing your invisible police uniform.

• 1:58:51Speaker 03

  They just didn't see it. And I was like, and I start laughing and I'm like, oh my God, you're totally right. Like a feeling this need to police everyone and it's obviously a need for control.

• 1:59:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:02Speaker 03

  Right? Uh, which is a learned thing.

• 1:59:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:05Speaker 03

  And

• 1:59:08Speaker 03

  that's something that I constantly have to check myself uh, about, you know, and, uh, and, and if you, and, and that, that'll take you out.

• 1:59:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:17Speaker 03

  Cause there's so many, so many things like that on the daily.

• 1:59:21Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, yeah, hundreds, thousands.

• 1:59:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, that'll, and they're everywhere.

• 1:59:25Tim Ferriss?

  Why does this guy not know how to use his chip reader on his car?

• 1:59:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Or like, why did you park like an asshole? It's mostly like people being inconsiderate that drives me crazy.

• 1:59:35Tim Ferriss?

  I have one friend, I'm not sure he'd want to be named, uh, explicitly, so I won't mention his name. He's, he's a very, very, um, brilliant guy in his field and, uh, when he goes through TSA and airport security, it drives him completely fucking bananas when people don't know how to go through security.

• 1:59:59Tim Ferriss?

  And they'll leave their belt on or they'll have like a huge container of water after the person has asked them four times if they have any liquids. So what he started to do, he's, he's been also, uh, very recently seeing a therapist and has figured out certain coping mechanisms. And so one of his coping mechanisms, which I think is really hilarious is he will, he will say something like, he, he will, he will become the voice that he imagines they have. That is 30 feet away. So he'll go, what do you mean I can't take water on the airplane?

• 2:00:41Tim Ferriss?

  Last time I was here, I could bring my computer through the metal detector. And he'll do this. And so I remember asking him at one point, I was like, oh, that's really funny. So that's what you say to yourself? He's like, no, that's what I say out loud. And he says, I say it loud enough so that everybody around me can hear it. And people start laughing and like chill the fuck out.

• 2:01:01Speaker 03

  Oh, it's a way to diffuse it.

• 2:01:03Tim Ferriss?

  I think he just did it initially because he thought it was hilarious and uncomfortable to say it out loud. But now he's become like the stand-up comedian at the back of the line. And I now know at least a half a dozen people have spent time with him.

• 2:01:16Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 2:01:16Tim Ferriss?

  Now do.

• 2:01:18Speaker 03

  That's hilarious.

• 2:01:20Tim Ferriss?

  But it's the little things that are the big things.

• 2:01:22Speaker 03

  Well, and it's, and it's also like, why would, it's also for like TSA employees driving me bananas. I travel a lot and a lot of them are totally incompetent. So, but it's like going to anything where you have to deal with someone in that type of a job.

• 2:01:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:37Speaker 03

  You go, wait, why would this person be competent?

• 2:01:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:41Speaker 03

  A competent person wouldn't have this job in the first place. So why am I expecting that to begin with? I'm setting myself up to get angry.

• 2:01:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:49Speaker 03

  Right?

• 2:01:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. It's, it's the small things. Uh, we, we think about

• 2:01:55Tim Ferriss?

  these big existential dilemmas and questions, but it's

• 2:02:00Tim Ferriss?

  in so many cases, that stuff is important or it can be important, but it's also like, are you giving yourself like a hundred pats on the back in your day? Or are you giving yourself a hundred paper cuts? Because you've, you have ample opportunity for both.

• 2:02:12Speaker 03

  And, and you, and you know, what we're talking about might sound trivial, but you stack all of those things up and they'll take you out.

• 2:02:18Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah, for sure.

• 2:02:23Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my God. Uh, we will at some point, maybe tonight over some wine, come back to more unusual and absurd things that you love because I'm sure there is a treasure trove.

• 2:02:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:36Tim Ferriss?

  One or two last questions. You've mentioned a few books here that you gifted to me, which are very, very timely. But are, are there any particular books that you've given the most as gifts to other people?

• 2:02:50Speaker 03

  The Andre Agassi open book is phenomenal.

• 2:02:53Tim Ferriss?

  Incredible book. Even if you don't care about tennis at all, it is an incredible book.

• 2:02:58Speaker 03

  I tweeted years ago, I, I was like, hey, does anyone know any good sports psychology books? Like in directly related to tennis or golf, because I was really fascinated with those. Even, I don't really give a shit about sports really.

• 2:03:14Speaker 03

  But I was really fascinated because this, this psychological warfare you have to navigate by yourself.

• 2:03:24Speaker 03

  Is the same as when the red light's on in the studio, have to do these film scores where you have to sight read everything you've never seen it before. They throw up a book.

• 2:03:32Tim Ferriss?

  Sight reading is you've never played it.

• 2:03:34Speaker 03

  You've never seen the music before. They throw up the sheet music and you have to replay it perfectly the first time because you have to do the whole movie in a day.

• 2:03:41Tim Ferriss?

  Jesus.

• 2:03:41Speaker 03

  Right? So it's very, very stressful. So it's the same, it's the same.

• 2:03:46Tim Ferriss?

  Including films like Trolls, The Book of Love, others?

• 2:03:53Speaker 03

  Logan, that Wolverine movie.

• 2:03:55Tim Ferriss?

  So good.

• 2:03:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, that St. Vincent movie with Bill Murray, uh, a few years ago, that all the divergent insurgent.

• 2:04:03Tim Ferriss?

  But like same, same, same, same, but different, right? In terms of the sports, the tennis, the golf.

• 2:04:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Like when you hit the ball in the sand and you're like, fuck. And you can't, and you have to go, just leave it be. And you have to, you can't let that ruin the whole game.

• 2:04:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:17Speaker 03

  Same sort of thing. When the red light's on in the studio or when you're on, playing in front of 30,000 people, it's the same. You screw something up. You can't be like, oh. And then let, let it screw up the whole show. It's the same exact thing. And I thought that was fascinating.

• 2:04:30Tim Ferriss?

  So was the Agassi book recommended as a result of that post you put up?

• 2:04:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:04:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:35Speaker 03

  And, uh, yeah, I was like, oh my God, this is incredible. So I.

• 2:04:39Tim Ferriss?

  Tremendous book.

• 2:04:39Speaker 03

  I give that to people all the time. Uh, The Art of Learning, I give to people all the time.

• 2:04:45Tim Ferriss?

  Josh Waitzkin.

• 2:04:46Speaker 03

  Yep. Um, I give The Inner Game of Tennis, uh, um, I give Zen in the Art of Archery to people.

• 2:04:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:55Speaker 03

  All the time. I feel like that was the very first book that spawned all of these Zen in the art of.

• 2:05:02Tim Ferriss?

  Fill in the blank.

• 2:05:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:05:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:04Speaker 03

  Just so popular now. Um, God, I need to look at my bookcase. There's so many.

• 2:05:10Tim Ferriss?

  Horton, Here's a Who?

• 2:05:13Tim Ferriss?

  Last but not least.

• 2:05:15Speaker 03

  Uh, there's so many.

• 2:05:17Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, you are, uh, one of the best read people I've met, uh, in the last, I would say five years, which is saying a lot.

• 2:05:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks.

• 2:05:28Tim Ferriss?

  I meet a lot of people who read very widely and this has been so much fun. Uh, we could go on for many, many more hours. So maybe we'll, maybe we'll do that at some point, but. Where are some of the best places for people to find you? We talked about daveelitch.com, Instagram, Twitter, @daveelich. There are other social profiles, I'm sure, but it seems like maybe those are the best. The online course, which is really stunningly shot and very well done, Getting Out of Your Own Way, that's available at

• 2:06:02Speaker 03

  daveelitch.com, yeah.

• 2:06:05Tim Ferriss?

  Any other places where people can find you that you'd like them to pay attention to? Or any other recommendations or asks of the audience, people who are listening?

• 2:06:17Speaker 03

  Well, the easiest place to find me is Instagram, just @daveelich.

• 2:06:23Speaker 03

  Or my website, you can contact me through my website. I'm not super active on Twitter or Facebook anymore.

• 2:06:30Speaker 03

  You know, someone else, who a lot of books I recommend are Douglas Copeland's books. He wrote Generation X.

• 2:06:37Tim Ferriss?

  Copeland, C-O-U-P, in Italian.

• 2:06:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's also, he's also an equally amazing visual artist, which is incredibly rare. I find a ton of inspiration from him. He's, he's, he's great. So I recommend a lot of his books. Generation X is great, like social commentary from like the early 90s.

• 2:06:56Tim Ferriss?

  And he coined that term.

• 2:06:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:57Tim Ferriss?

  Generation X.

• 2:06:59Speaker 03

  He's an interesting sort of social tech theorist. I think he, I think he has a job at Google now.

• 2:07:07Tim Ferriss?

  Very well could. They tend to gather interesting eclectic folks.

• 2:07:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's an interesting dude. So yeah, those are the, those are the two best places to contact me, my website or Instagram. And if any, you know, if anyone hears this and there's sort of kindred spirits in terms of what motivates us, or, or in terms of any sort of creative endeavor, reach out and say, hey.

• 2:07:31Tim Ferriss?

  Lob out a note or a hand wave through the ether.

• 2:07:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:07:35Tim Ferriss?

  That is the interwebs. Dave, so awesome to finally get you on.

• 2:07:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, same, same dude.

• 2:07:42Tim Ferriss?

  And many, many adventures ahead. I'm excited for you. I'm hoping to pop in to the masterclass tomorrow, which I will be completely unqualified for, nonetheless.

• 2:07:54Tim Ferriss?

  Fly on the wall.

• 2:07:55Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 2:07:56Tim Ferriss?

  I really look forward to that. And you know, before I was before I forget Daughters of Mara.

• 2:08:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:02Tim Ferriss?

  Is that is Mara? I've never thought to ask this, but is that a reference to the, what is it? Hindu god? No.

• 2:08:08Speaker 03

  Uh, I can't. I think it's boo. I think it's Buddhist.

• 2:08:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's Buddhist.

• 2:08:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:12Tim Ferriss?

  Mara, who's sort of the equivalent of.

• 2:08:15Speaker 03

  The devil.

• 2:08:15Tim Ferriss?

  The devil.

• 2:08:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. So we had three daughters that would sort of tempt people, sort of like the, the snake in the Garden of Eden, the equivalent.

• 2:08:24Tim Ferriss?

  Daughters of Mara.

• 2:08:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was a band I was in in 2005, six, seven, that was on Virgin Capital Records and did a record and then EMI got bought out by Terra Firma and, uh, and that was that.

• 2:08:39Tim Ferriss?

  I am destroyer. Appropriate.

• 2:08:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, very relevant. Little did we know.

• 2:08:43Tim Ferriss?

  Dave smash.

• 2:08:47Tim Ferriss?

  Everybody listening, as always, you can find links to all the things we talked about, including, say, the crazy Mars Volta video. And we will also look up a few other things like the, the books that, in addition to the P Melody book, the other books, perhaps some of the books that your therapist has on her mantle and the mankind existential animal quote, question mark, etc. will all be in the show notes. You can also find links certainly to getting out of your own way and everything related to Dave at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 2:09:28Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:10:11Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Audible. Audible provides an unbeatable selection of audiobooks, including bestsellers, how-to, mysteries, thrillers, memoirs, and more. I've used Audible for many years and I have a few audiobooks to recommend right off the bat. Number one, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. So, listen to the book that caught the attention of Spielberg enough to get made into a major film. The writing is fantastic. Tao Seneca by Seneca the Younger.

• 2:10:54Tim Ferriss?

  This is a collection of letters, my favorite compilation of letters of all time that I've recommended the most of all the books I've ever read. And The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. This is the fiction book that I use to convert nonfiction purists into fiction lovers. I like the version that Neil reads himself, but that's just me. He has a hypnotic voice. I also recently enjoyed Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, which was recommended to me by bestselling author Neil Strauss. Make sure to get the audiobook version and you will recognize it by the peace sign on the cover. And as an Audible subscriber, you can choose three titles every month, one audiobook and two Audible originals you can't hear anywhere else.

• 2:11:36Tim Ferriss?

  And there's some really, really cool stuff among the Audible originals. You can listen on any device, anytime, anywhere, at home, at the gym, while you're cooking, on your commute, or wherever. I often listen to audiobooks when I'm walking my pooch or on the way to the gym, so on and so forth. You'll also enjoy easy audiobook exchanges. In other words, if you don't like what you buy and you're like, "Ah, buyer's remorse", you can swap it. Roll over credits, so if you don't use credits in a given month, they roll over into the next. And an audiobook library you keep forever, even if you cancel. This last part is important. Unlike, say, a streaming or rental service, with Audible, you own your books, even if you cancel. Cancel your membership. And right now, for a limited time, you can get three months of Audible for just $6.95 a month.

• 2:12:20Tim Ferriss?

  That's $6.95 a month. And that is also more than half off the regular price. So give yourself the gift of listening. And while you're at it, think about giving the gift of Audible to someone on your list. For more, go to audible.com/tim, T-I-M, that is, audible.com/tim, or text TIM to 500-500. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks has become the go-to cloud accounting software for literally millions of small business owners who found a faster, more efficient, and much less stressful way to deal with their numbers. And ultimately, this helps you to focus on what you are best at. It is used by many of the fastest-growing startups I've invested in or advised, and

• 2:13:01Tim Ferriss?

  it's equally used by many of the best freelancers I work with on a daily or weekly basis. It is one of the easiest ways to send invoices, get paid, track your time, and track your clients. If you're self-employed and managing business sometimes means wrestling with spreadsheets, crumpled receipts, and other scattered pieces, FreshBooks can really help. FreshBooks allows you to do many, many different things very easily. Preparing and sending a polished, branded invoice takes about 30 seconds. You can set yourself up to receive online payments from your clients in about two clicks, which on average will get you paid twice as fast. Their new Proposals feature means you can include a project summary and timeline as part of your estimate. There are many, many other things. Tracking your time, the quick proposals that I mentioned. Formating free, super easy.

• 2:13:45Tim Ferriss?

  Late payment reminders, so you don't have to chase people. Automated expenses. Sharing files and messages with your clients. Award-winning customer service. They are extremely responsive, the interface is super intuitive, and there's almost no learning curve. So, in short, it's easy, it saves you time. And right now, FreshBooks is offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for all of my listeners. To claim yours, check it out. Go to freshbooks.com/tim and enter TIMFERRISS in the "How Did You Hear About Us?" section. And that is funky spell, T-I-M-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. So again, go to freshbooks.com/tim and enter TIMFERRISS in the "How Did You Hear About Us?" section. Check it out.