#544: How to Design a Life — Debbie Millman (Repost)

Debbie Millman https://tim.blog/2017/01/12/how-to-design-a-life-debbie-millman/ (@debbiemillman https://twitter.com/debbiemillman?lang=en) has been named one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company, and she is the host of Design Matters https://www.designmattersmedia.com/designmatters—a great show and one of the world’s longest running podcasts. She is also Chair of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts and Editorial Director of Print magazine, and she has worked on design strategy for some of the world’s largest brands. This episode originally aired in 2017. You can find the show notes here: https://tim.blog/2017/01/12/how-to-design-a-life-debbie-millman/ * This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product. * This episode is also brought to you by “5-Bullet Friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=timblog&utm_medium=timblog&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship,” my very own email newsletter, which every Friday features five bullet points highlighting cool things I’ve found that week, including apps, books, documentaries, gadgets, albums, articles, TV shows, new hacks or tricks, and—of course—all sorts of weird stuff I’ve dug up from around the world. It’s free, it’s always going to be free, and you can subscribe now at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=timblog&utm_medium=timblog&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship. * 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. 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. 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• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably Athletic Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it, in fact, in The Four Hour Body. This is more than 10 years ago, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole-food sourced ingredients, you'd be very hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense and comprehensive formula on the market. It has multivitamins, multimineral, greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an immunity formula, digestive enzymes, adaptogens, and much more. I usually take it once or twice a day just to make sure I've covered my bases if I miss anything I'm not aware of.

• 0:44Tim Ferriss?

  Of course, I focus on nutrient-dense meals to begin with. That's the basis. But Athletic Greens makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when whole foods aren't readily available. From travel packets, I always have them in my bag when I'm zipping around. Right now Athletic Greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all-in-one formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I've found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com/tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D

• 1:30Tim Ferriss?

  and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim.

• 1:40Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers, and it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners, and Book readers have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time because after all, the podcasts, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week.

• 2:23Tim Ferriss?

  It's free. It's always going to be free and you can learn more at tim.blog forward slash Friday. That's tim.blog forward slash Friday. I get asked a lot how I meet my guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with. And little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So, check it out. tim.blog forward slash Friday. If

• 3:08Tim Ferriss?

  you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot. And you can, of course, easily subscribe anytime. So, easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you.

• 3:24Speaker 01

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

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 3:31Debbie Millman?

  No, it would seem inappropriate.

• 3:34Speaker 02

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

• 3:47Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job, each episode, to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, from entertainment to sports, chess, military, and everything in between, to tease out the habits, routines, thought processes, decision-making processes that you can use and test yourself. This episode, we have a very, very special treat. And I will say in advance, we cover some very, very deep, hard, and also sensitive material in this episode.

• 4:20Tim Ferriss?

  People who listen to this, it will be, I think, the most important podcast episode you ever listen to, and that has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with the stories and lessons of Debbie Millman. At Debbie Millman on Twitter and elsewhere, you can say hello, is, quote, "one of the most influential designers working today," end quote, by Graphic Design USA. She is also the founder and host of Design Matters, which is the world's first and longest-running podcast about design. She's interviewed nearly 300 design luminaries and cultural commentators, including Massimo Vignelli, Milton Glaser, with an S, and remember that name, he will come back. Her artwork has been exhibited around the world.

• 5:02Tim Ferriss?

  She's designed everything from wrapping paper to beach towels, greeting cards to playing cards, notebooks, to T-shirts. And if you've heard of, say, Star Wars, well, she worked on the merchandising. Burger King, the redesign, Hershey's, Tropicana. At one point, if you walked into any given grocery store, or, say, supermarket, anything like that, she had a hand in about 20% of everything you might see or touch. She is the president emeritus of AIGA, one of five women to hold that position in the organization's 100-year history. She has six books that she has authored. And in 2009, Debbie co-founded with Steven Heller the world's first master's program

• 5:45Tim Ferriss?

  in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where I've spent some time. Now in its eighth year, the program has achieved international acclaim. We cover a lot. We cover facing rejection, overcoming personal and professional crises of faith. And this is one of the most powerful conversations that I've ever had on this podcast. So, without further ado, please enjoy and think hard on, reflect on, this conversation with Debbie Millman.

• 6:17Tim Ferriss?

  Debbie, welcome to the show.

• 6:19Debbie Millman?

  Thank you, Tim. It's really wonderful to be here.

• 6:21Tim Ferriss?

  I have wanted to interview you on numerous occasions now over the last few years. So I'm thrilled that we are finally doing this. Point number one, and I thought I would start with a question that someone like yourself, who has explored so many different things and so many different formats. When someone asks you, what do you do? Let's say you meet someone at a party, they say, what do you do? What is your answer to that?

• 6:48Debbie Millman?

  That's a tough question. What do I say? Well, now I say that I'm a designer. And sometimes if I'm feeling wordy, I'll say that I'm a designer and a writer and a podcaster. And sometimes people look at me like, huh? Like, huh?

• 7:11Tim Ferriss?

  Too many hyphens. What does that mean?

• 7:12Debbie Millman?

  Exactly. I found when I was working at Sterling Brands, which I did for over two decades, I had resolved to just saying when I was filling out what I did on passport applications and things like that, I used to say executive. And that made sense.

• 7:33Tim Ferriss?

  Executive's a great catchall.

• 7:35Debbie Millman?

  Executive is a great catchall. For a long time on Twitter, I had Debbie Millman is a girl until enough people said, Debbie, you've really got to change that. And then I did.

• 7:48Tim Ferriss?

  The internet. Well, you can put anything there. And I think about 10% of the people who come across it will be outraged for one reason or another.

• 7:54Debbie Millman?

  Oh, yes. I've found that the very things that delight and excite some people are the same exact things that outrage others. It's really hard to please everybody all the time.

• 8:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think that if you try to please all the people all the time, you'll just end up displeasing yourself all the time. That's the only guaranteed outcome there.

• 8:11Debbie Millman?

  Oh, Tim, I learned that the hard way.

• 8:13Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I want to talk about so many things, Debbie. But let's start with, and for those people wondering, I always ask... My guests beforehand, are there any particular, say, prompts for stories that we could explore that might be fun to dig into? And one of them was drawing you did when eight years old. And so I know nothing about this, and I just want to start there, since it seems to make sense to begin at the beginning.

• 8:42Debbie Millman?

  Well, I have a somewhat of a pack rat mentality. I keep things. I am, I'm a sentimentalist at heart. And I like to keep things from all different stages of my life. And I have boxes of journals and drawings and all sorts of report cards and you name it, I have it. Well, apparently, I got this trait from my mother, who a couple of years ago, did what a lot of good old Jews do. She moved from Queens, New York to Florida.

• 9:18Tim Ferriss?

  The Great Migration.

• 9:20Debbie Millman?

  Yes. And before she moved, she unloaded several boxes of ephemera of mine that she had kept unbeknownst to me. And I went through everything quite gingerly. It was all sort of folded up very neatly and very tidily, and came across an illustration that I did when I was about eight years old. And after I admired my handiwork, because I thought, wow, eight years old, I was, I was like rocking the drawings. I realized that, that this particular drawing had predicted my whole life. And, and so I will explain, I will try to explain this drawing as best as I can. And, and for some backstory, I

• 10:05Debbie Millman?

  am a native New Yorker. I was born in Brooklyn. When I was about two years old, my parents took me to Howard Beach, Queens. I moved there before there were any sidewalks. That will give you a little bit of a sense of how old I am. I lived there until I was about, I was, I was in the middle of a third grade and we moved to Staten Island. And I lived on Staten Island until I was in the fifth grade, end of fifth grade. My parents got divorced. My mom took my brother and I, who's two and a half, he's two and a half years younger than I am, to Long Island.

• 10:40Debbie Millman?

  My childhood was spent in almost all of the boroughs except Manhattan. And for some reason, I had a, I guess, a sense of what Manhattan looked like and felt like, probably from television. And at eight years old, I drew a picture of the streets of Manhattan. I'm walking, I'm a little girl, I'm walking along with my mother. My mother, by the way, is wearing a very popular Barbie outfit of the time, an outfit called Tangerine Dream, which I really loved. I put her in that outfit. And despite not having a lot of time on the streets, or any time on the streets of Manhattan,

• 11:23Debbie Millman?

  I drew it quite, in quite good detail. There were buildings and buses and taxis. And I labeled everything. I labeled the cleaners cleaners, and I labeled the bank, bank. And I labeled the taxi, taxi. In the middle of the street, there is a delivery truck. And I not only labeled the delivery truck, I also drew the sign on the delivery truck. And the sign was Lay's Potato Chips. I drew the logo at eight years old. And when I saw this drawing, I realized that I had predicted my whole life.

• 12:06Debbie Millman?

  I'm a native New Yorker now, living in Manhattan. I've been living in Manhattan for 33 years. I go to the bank, I go to the cleaners, I take lots of taxis, lots of buses. And at the time I found this drawing, I was drawing logos for a living. And, and, you know, had I known that it would have been that easy just to follow that drawing, I would have saved decades of experiments in failure and rejection.

• 12:38Tim Ferriss?

  So this is fascinating to me for a number of reasons. I've had a few guests on the podcast. Chris Saka would be another example, was an investor, and he at some point wrote in a journal, well, I think it was one of these composition notebooks with the sort of modeled black and white zebra slash camouflage covers.

• 12:56Debbie Millman?

  Oh, I love that.

• 12:57Tim Ferriss?

  What he would be when he was 40 years old, and he must have done this when he was 10 or 12, something like that. And he found it in his, I think his parents' garage later, around the age of 42 or something like that. And it also predicted effectively exactly what he would be doing, but it was lost in the slipstream. And he took this very meandering, in some ways odd, seemingly fractured path to come right back to where he started, in a sense. Did you then, it sounds like you didn't follow that plan that was so neatly summarized in this picture, because there are folks out there say, you know, when I

• 13:36Tim Ferriss?

  was five, I knew I always wanted to be X. But what was your, or should I say, when did you figure out that you wanted to actually do what was in that drawing on some level, that you wanted to be a designer?

• 13:49Debbie Millman?

  I actually never set out to be a designer. I thought that I was going to be a journalist. The only thing that I knew for sure when I was in college was that when I graduated, I wanted to live in Manhattan. At that point, I had not ever lived in Manhattan. And that was my big dream. And I came to Manhattan the summer of 1983. I often say that that was the summer of David Bowie's Modern Love and The Police's Synchronicity. I saw both concerts that summer. I moved into a sublet apartment with a friend that had also recently

• 14:33Debbie Millman?

  graduated. She had found a sublet on the corner of Hudson and Perry Streets in The Village. I didn't know it at the time, but moving into an apartment on the intersection of Hudson and Perry was almost as if I was entering the movie Gidget Goes to Manhattan.

• 14:53Debbie Millman?

  I didn't know where I was going. I, it was quite serendipitous. My friend Jay found the apartment for us. Unfortunately, that wonderful summer turned out rather unfortunate because the woman who Jay and I were subletting from was, rather than paying the rent with the rent money that she was getting from us, was keeping it and not paying the rent. So at the end of the summer, we all got evicted and...

• 15:22Tim Ferriss?

  Surprise.

• 15:23Debbie Millman?

  Yeah, I ended up appealing to the landlord to please, please help me find someplace else to live because I really didn't have any place else to go. And he ended up being able to rent me another one of the apartments he had in another building he owned on 16th Street, which was a fourth floor tenement walk-up, a railroad flat that I couldn't afford on my own and ended up living with a couple, my roommates were a couple. Because it was a railroad flat, I had to walk through the apartment, which meant through their bedroom to get to mine, which often meant I was stuck on one side or the other, depending on their nocturnal habits.

• 16:04Debbie Millman?

  Or afternoon delight, depending on, you know, what they were doing. And lived there for about five years before I ended up moving back into the village for a short period of time. So that was the one thing I knew that I wanted, to live in Manhattan. I did not know that I could be a designer, that I would be a designer, or that design was even a discipline. Until my senior year of college, I had worked my way up to be the editor of the arts and features section of the student newspaper at SUNY Albany, where I went to school, and realized very quickly that as much as I loved assigning articles

• 16:44Debbie Millman?

  and coming up with themes for this section of the newspaper, I was endlessly fascinated by... Putting the paper together by designing the paper and thus a baby designer was born. I took all of one class in design while I was in in college and really learned almost everything I knew at that time, working in the newsroom, putting the paper together. Everything was done, old school layout, paste up, computer graphic machines, stat cameras. And then when I graduated, was both doing freelance editorial and freelance layout and paste up for the first couple of years of my career.

• 17:25Tim Ferriss?

  When did you start at the student newspaper? Was that something you started at the very beginning and followed throughout your, I guess, undergrad experience?

• 17:36Debbie Millman?

  Interesting and perceptive question, Tim. I wanted to write for the student newspaper, I think, the very first issue I saw when I got to SUNY Albany freshman year. And went up to the student newspaper, which was on the third floor of the campus center, and approached the editor at the time and asked if I could be a writer or offered my services, volunteered my my my services. And he looked at me and asked me if I had any clips. And I was like, you know, I didn't say what I was thinking, but like, hair clips? I mean, I didn't know what he was talking about.

• 18:19Debbie Millman?

  And I didn't have anything and I didn't know what to do and I was embarrassed and humiliated and ashamed and sort of scurried away and didn't go back until my junior year. I was so intimidated by the talent and the work that was coming out of that newsroom. And it was at the time, and very well may still be, one of the best student newspapers in the country. And I it came out twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, and I would I was just enamored with this newspaper. And I fantasized about writing really pithy, erudite letters to the editor in chief that would then get published in, you know,

• 19:01Debbie Millman?

  the letters to the editor section, and they would realize what a great writer I was, and then invite me to be a reporter, and I'd sort of walk around like Rosalind Russell with a pencil behind my ear and my heels click clacking in the newsroom. And of course, that never happened. I never wrote one letter to the editor. And for some reason, and I guess an aberrant moment of courage, I went back up to the newsroom, my second semester junior year, and there was a women's uprising. And the student, right in the student health food store. And they were like, could you go cover that? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. And I went and did it. And that was how I started writing for the paper.

• 19:45Debbie Millman?

  I then wrote a piece about an exhibit in the art center. And by the end of my second semester junior year, only because I think no one else would take it, I was offered the job of being editor of the arts and features section and began that, that summer. That senior year in college was one of the most exciting and best years of my life in that, for the first time ever, I felt like I had purpose. Suddenly, working on this paper, I felt like I was something, I was part of something bigger than myself. I felt like I was, I had some reason for being.

• 20:27Debbie Millman?

  And I loved learning about design. I loved being able to work with writers. And I felt, for the first time in my life, really excited about something.

• 20:40Tim Ferriss?

  I want to talk about that aberrant moment of courage and dig into that a bit. So you were rejected from, or maybe you rejected yourself, or both initially, when you approached the paper. Then, years later, you have this aberrant moment of courage. What precipitated that? Was there a conversation, a realization? You watched a movie? What triggered that? Do you remember?

• 21:04Debbie Millman?

  I actually don't. I wish that I did. It would make for a much better story and certainly a better interview. But what I can tell you is that, all these years later, I have noticed a pattern in my life of Being very easily hurt by an initial reaction or an initial rejection, so much so that it thwarts any other attempt at making something like that happen for a very long time. I am extremely sensitive and any rejection sort of takes me off of that path.

• 21:47Debbie Millman?

  For quite a long time, it takes me a while to recover.

• 21:50Tim Ferriss?

  Could you give any examples of that?

• 21:52Debbie Millman?

  I would say my entire life. I will give you, I can give you 43 examples. Get comfortable, Tim.

• 21:58Tim Ferriss?

  I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm definitely settling in with my water. I'm ready to go.

• 22:03Debbie Millman?

  Well, there I was rejected that first year of college. Took me then three years to go back again. I might have been feeling confident about something else that had gone well in my life and thought, what the heck? Why not go back and try? And, and then took those steps up to the campus center and went back up to the third floor and asked again. I am somebody that has a very hard time taking no for an answer, but it takes me a long time to recalibrate and get my courage back to continue to keep trying.

• 22:40Debbie Millman?

  And when I graduated, because I had such a hard time finding a job initially that I really loved, and because I was having so much trouble figuring out what I wanted to do with my life, I kept bouncing around from opportunity to opportunity. And every time I would try something new and would ultimately get rejected, I used that first rejection almost as a permission slip to avoid having to try again. So when I graduated, I, I started working at a couple of different newspapers, not magazines. I worked for a cable magazine and I worked for a rock magazine doing layout and paste

• 23:25Debbie Millman?

  up and some editing. And at the time, thought, oh, I'm really enjoying this, but I don't really feel qualified to be doing this. Maybe I should go back to school and get a master's degree in journalism. And I lived in the neighborhood of a very good journalism school, the Columbia School of Journalism, and my dad had gone to Columbia and studied pharmacy. And I thought, why not apply to the Columbia School of Journalism? But that was the only school I applied to. I thought, you know, I want to consider getting a master's degree in journalism. There are a lot of good journalism schools in New York City, but for some reason, I had my heart set on this one school. I didn't get in. I got rejected and abandoned my hopes or dream of going to get a master's degree in journalism. Shortly thereafter, because I

• 24:10Debbie Millman?

  also am a painter, I had been accepted into a show at Long Island University, the Brooklyn Campus, and got some good reviews and thought, hmm, maybe I should become an artist. I love doing this. I'm getting some good response from it, but I don't feel qualified or educated enough. Maybe I should get an advanced degree in art. And I applied to the Whitney School. The Whitney Museum of Art had an independent study program that would allow me to continue working during the day. I applied for that. I had really good references, wonderful clips at that point, you know, some good reviews, and got rejected to that and then abandoned

• 24:47Debbie Millman?

  that dream. And so it's been a long history of making an attempt, getting that early rejection, retreating, and then finally sort of licking my wounds, re sort of knitting my confidence or hopes and dreams together and then trying to do something else or trying again.

• 25:12Tim Ferriss?

  So a few questions. The first is, what would you have, or what would you say to your college self after that first rejection at the newspaper?

• 25:27Tim Ferriss?

  Or what advice would you give someone who had the near identical experience and was hardwired the same way?

• 25:33Debbie Millman?

  It's an interesting question, Tim, because I have the benefit of hindsight. And looking back on those years, yes, I certainly could have tried again sooner and maybe had more of a runway to experiment and grow and learn in that newsroom and in that environment. But I also think that those years in between, learning and growing in other ways, contributed to my ability to then, when appointed the editor of the arts and features section,

• 26:18Debbie Millman?

  I somehow had a lot more to pull from. And maybe this is my own sort of synthesizing happiness, or calibrating to my own set point, or looking back and thinking, well, it all sort of worked out, so why give somebody advice that I wouldn't have necessarily taken at that point? What I would say is, don't accept the first rejection, ever. Give yourself options. The timeliness of those options, or the timeliness of those retries, do at your own pace.

• 27:02Debbie Millman?

  You're not in competition with anybody but yourself. So if you are rejected to something that you want, then think about what it is that caused that rejection, and work to better understand how you can...

• 27:21Debbie Millman?

  Present your best possible self when you try again.

• 27:25Tim Ferriss?

  And your clips mentioned, where you're like, clips? Hair clips? Reminded me of a story I heard when I was a student. So you work with a lot of students, and we're going to come back to that.

• 27:36Debbie Millman?

  Oh, Tim, can I add one more thing?

• 27:38Tim Ferriss?

  Of course.

• 27:38Debbie Millman?

  I'm sorry. This is an interesting...

• 27:41Tim Ferriss?

  You can add many things, please.

• 27:42Debbie Millman?

  So, one thing that I haven't shared about this particular story is that the man that... the young man that rejected me that first year is somebody that I have... that I then befriended in that experience of working at the paper that junior year. And I graduated in 1983. It is now 2017. And I have been friends with that man. His name is Robert Edelstein. I have been friends with him ever since. So, just because somebody rejects you doesn't mean that they don't like you. First of all, he didn't even reject me.

• 28:25Debbie Millman?

  He asked me for a very reasonable... He asked me for something very reasonable. He asked me for some examples of my writing. I was so intimidated and was so embarrassed by not knowing exactly what he meant and the fact that I didn't have anything other than some things from high school, which I didn't feel were appropriate, that I was the one that rejected myself in many ways. One of the interesting things that I've found is... and Rob is not the only person that I can point to as being somebody that initially provided some sort of obstacle or roadblock that was a reasonable one. And then ultimately, I befriended and we've become... we are now lifelong friends.

• 29:10Debbie Millman?

  He didn't even remember rejecting me that freshman year and is mortified now by the notion that he might have done anything to hurt my feelings. So, one of the other things that I would suggest that people consider if they believe they are being rejected is consider what the perception from the other person doing the rejection, or the supposed rejection, might be. And that sense of empathy might be really helpful in understanding where you're coming from and what you're bringing to that specific example or that specific experience.

• 29:48Tim Ferriss?

  I'd like to underscore this because it's such an important point and I, in some respects, like you, have been very sensitive. I still am in some respects, very sensitive and my particular brand of that, or my particular type of response is to feel some type of sense of injustice. And, and so I'll get rejected and looking back at what I see as a rejection, either when I did this perhaps 10 years ago, I looked at a number of instances where I felt like I'd been rejected via email and so on, that A, it wasn't a rejection for all time. It was a not now. It was, it was, it was a very temporary impossibility

• 30:32Tim Ferriss?

  due to logistics. And I took that as a no, not ever, and felt very hurt by that and didn't try a second time in many cases.

• 30:41Debbie Millman?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 30:42Tim Ferriss?

  So number one, no may just mean no, not right now. And you can even clarify that, right? You can ask that as a clarifying question. Number two is that at some point, someone said to me, and this doesn't apply to your particular instance, but don't, don't ascribe to malice what can be described, what can be explained by incompetence. And that didn't cover it all for me though, but it, it really made a profound impact on me when I, when I was told this. Cause I would read email with inserting, if I were doing an audiobook of the other person's voice, some type of really angry or upset person. And nine times out of 10, that wasn't the tone at all. It was just, I was misreading it. So I started

• 31:23Tim Ferriss?

  to assume for myself, don't ascribe to malice, what can be explained by incompetence or just busyness. The person is busy. If they send you a really short response to your mini novella of an email, it doesn't mean that they think you're worthless or not worth their time. It could just mean that they have 10 times more to do than you do. And it's sometimes hard to have that perspective when particularly you're starting out and you're, you're a bit fragile and you're on wobbly legs and you send this huge outpouring of your emotion to someone you respect and then they respond with, sorry kid, not right now. And you're like, really? That's it? And then you die. I'm not going to name names, but there was someone who now I'm very close friends with, extremely well-respected writer. And I got one of these one-line responses in 2000.

• 32:06Tim Ferriss?

  Five or six when I sent an early manuscript of the Four Hour Workweek to this person via email and the response was effectively, "Thanks, but sorry, don't have time to read this right now." No Dear Tim, no signature, just one line. And I felt so slighted by this that I held this subconscious grudge for years. And now we're really good friends and the whole thing is ludicrous in retrospect.

• 32:30Debbie Millman?

  One thing that I find about human nature is that ambiguity is always perceived negatively. So there might be nothing in that one-line email that would be in any way disparaging or insulting or anything, but because we as humans perceive ambiguity negatively, we tend to read into things that aren't there in a way that makes us feel bad. But I also think that a lot of that, for me, comes from having a very sort of fragile center and

• 33:07Debbie Millman?

  not necessarily thinking that they are specifically upset with me because of something that I've done, but just because everything that I do is sort of bad. They're just cognizant of that. So it's not something specific, it's just something all-encompassing. And so that's been something I've been struggling to overcome over the decades.

• 33:36Tim Ferriss?

  So I have a few questions about how you came to find your niche, or the first time you clicked into place, so to speak, doing something that resembles what you ended up doing up to this point. But before I get to that, just to put a button in the anecdote related to clips. You mentioned clips, hair clips. I was told this story by a professor in college about Nantucket Nectars when it was just getting started. And there are, I believe, two guys who were... Really faking it until they made it in a lot of respects. And at one point, they're meeting with this distributor because they'd been selling these

• 34:19Tim Ferriss?

  concoctions via boats in Nantucket, from boat to boat to boat. And they wanted to go into retail. And they met with this, it was either a retailer or distributor, but it was early on. And they were really nervous. And the muckety muck they were meeting with, at least in their eyes, said, "Do you have a lot of POS materials?" And they looked at each other like, "Oh shit." And they said, "Oh, POS, we're all about POS." And he's like, "Good, good, good." And then they walked out, they're like, "What the hell is POS?" Point of sale, which of course, you know, plenty about. But I wanted to, before we get to when you sort of first clicked into your niche and how

• 35:03Tim Ferriss?

  that happened, you mentioned knowing that you wanted to be in Manhattan. And I've been thinking a lot about the components of, and this is a dangerous word sometimes, but happiness. And that oftentimes, we think of the, let's say, the journalist W's, right? The interrogatives, the why, the what, the where, and so on of happiness. And I think humans tend to at least put why at the top, then maybe what somewhere lower, and then where is often an afterthought. But I've started to believe that the where is more, is much more critical than we give it credit for, and that you can, you can actually start there. So I, I've, I've thought about this a lot for myself, but really the, how important

• 35:47Tim Ferriss?

  the geography can be, because it determines in large measure who you're surrounded with all the time, and what you're surrounded with all the time. But I guess it's more of an observation than a question. But how do you, if you've ever, if you think about that, how do you think about the components of happiness or well-being for yourself?

• 36:08Debbie Millman?

  That's a big, big question, Tim.

• 36:10Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:12Debbie Millman?

  Well, there's sort of two parts to the question, I think. And the first is this notion of New York sort of being the place that I wanted to be. And what I told myself at that time.

• 36:28Debbie Millman?

  And then ultimately, how that leads to happiness or fulfillment. And one of the things that I struggled with when I first moved to Manhattan, or when I first graduated really, was what was I going to be? What was I going to do? I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't have any network. And I certainly didn't have any type of connection to any inns for apartments or jobs or anything like that. And I wanted very badly to be in Manhattan. That was something that I knew for sure.

• 37:08Debbie Millman?

  In thinking about what I wanted with my life, I knew that I wanted to do something creative. One of my big hopes and dreams at that time was to work at Conde Nast. And I did apply and I did get a call back and I got rejected and then never tried again. Another example of that. But one of the more high altitude aspirations was either being an artist or being a writer. So being more of a, of a fine artist and not a commercial artist. But at the time, I did not think that my chances of success at that would either be

• 37:51Debbie Millman?

  possible, and certainly, if it were possible, not fast. And because I wanted to live in New York City, because I wanted to live in Manhattan, I felt that I needed to be able to get a job that would pay my rent. And because I didn't want to be a waitress and because I didn't want to be a bartender, I needed to make some type of reasonable income in order to pay that rent.

• 38:23Debbie Millman?

  And so I have been telling myself for decades now that I decided that I needed to work as a designer because I needed to have some sort of income that would give me some sense of self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency has been enormously important to me. And I've said that for years and years and years. And that being safe and secure and being able to manage the course of my own life, having financial stability, was something that was a bit of a lead gene for me in making the decisions that I did. And back in that summer of David Bowie and the police,

• 39:07Debbie Millman?

  I remember coming home from a club one night and I was on the corner of Bleecker Street and Sixth Avenue. And it suddenly occurred to me that I had to make a decision. And the decision was, what was I going to do? And I realized that if I wanted to be an artist or a writer, that I would likely have to take some type of job that would not necessarily be able to safeguard what I considered to be my financial future. And therefore, made this little pact with myself in my head that I would become a designer so that I could make enough money to be able to be secure.

• 39:52Debbie Millman?

  And I've been telling myself that for decades. What I realized in the last couple of years was that I was, unbeknownst to my psyche, my consciousness, I was lying to myself. I was absolutely, positively lying to myself. Because more than the self-sufficiency was the desire to be in Manhattan. I could have easily become, or more easily, become an artist, or a fine artist, or a writer, if I didn't want to live in the most expensive city in the world. I could have gone and lived with my mother in Queens. I could have lived with friends in Albany.

• 40:35Debbie Millman?

  I could have had seven roommates in a little commune in Bed-Stuy. There would have been any number of things that I could have done if my lead gene had been artistic.

• 40:49Debbie Millman?

  Purity. But no, I told myself that it was because of X, Y, and Z. But really, what it was, was the most important thing to me at that point in my life was being in Manhattan. And I lived in a fourth-floor tenement walk-up. I had to walk through somebody else's bedroom to get to mine. I was living on a floor with people that were constantly, the other tenants in the building were locking each other out. It was an elderly couple and they were always fighting. There were a whole family of pigeons living on the fire escape outside of my window in my bedroom, which was so decrepit, I couldn't even open the window in the summertime. And there was no air conditioning in this apartment.

• 41:31Debbie Millman?

  I mean, the conditions that I lived in were deplorable. But yet, that was the most important thing to me. So when I talk to people now about what do they want to do when they first graduate, I ask them to think about, what is the one most important thing to you? What is the one most important thing to you? Because if it is truly the one most important thing to you, you will likely do whatever it takes to get it. And the most important thing to me was not being a writer and not being an artist. It was living in Manhattan. And I did whatever it took and lived in whatever conditions that I needed to

• 42:16Debbie Millman?

  in order to make that happen. I think that's a really important realization.

• 42:20Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, definitely. And so you've, by hook or crook, you're living in Manhattan.

• 42:27Debbie Millman?

  Yes.

• 42:30Tim Ferriss?

  So that is the outcome in part of all of these decisions and the lead gene, as you put it. Where does the need for stability, security, or the desire for that come from?

• 42:45Debbie Millman?

  Well, I do think that it's certainly in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a really important one.

• 42:51Debbie Millman?

  Yeah.

• 42:52Debbie Millman?

  For me, it takes on, I think, any, an extra level of significance in that I grew up in a really, really challenging environment. So, my parents got divorced when I was very young, I was about eight years old, and I had a very, very complicated relationship with my father. My father died last year unexpectedly. My father, sort of in my daughter eyes, was brilliant, charismatic, he was an incredibly well-spoken man. He was also extremely turbulent.

• 43:32Debbie Millman?

  He had a lot of anger issues, and over the course of our lives together, I had five different experiences with him where he rejected me and decided that he didn't want me in his life. And so, one of those periods was about nine years. So, we had a very, very turbulent relationship. When my parents got divorced, I told myself at the time that I was really happy about that because I was so scared of his anger and so scared of the anger that they had for each other. About a year after my parents got divorced, my mother married again, and she married

• 44:17Debbie Millman?

  a man who was physically and sexually abusive to me, physically abusive to my brother, and also sexually abusive to his two biolo-- well, to one of his two biological daughters, and was, and severely, severely beat us for four years. During that time was one of the times, the first time actually, that I was estranged from my biological father, and so, I had a lot of brutality in my life, and--

• 44:52Debbie Millman?

  After they got divorced, I was 13. My father came back into my life. My mother then got involved with another, another man who was 10 years younger than her, so therefore only 10 years older than me and was also, I guess I'll put it sexually provocative with me and also emotionally abusive. So for the first like 18 years of my life, I lived in a state of constant terror and compensated or self-soothe, but with art, with a lot of extracurricular activities in school. I was always an overachiever, probably in an effort to prove to myself and to my family

• 45:34Debbie Millman?

  that I wasn't worthy of the abuse that was being inflicted on me. I wanted so much more for my life even back then and grew up thinking that if I had the resources to take care of myself, that I would never allow anything bad to happen to me. Not, not quite a realistic expectation, but, but was something that I felt was possible to do. Of course, it's not. That takes decades to also figure out. But at that time, I wanted very badly to be able to live in my own home, to be able to take care of myself and to be in a position where I would never be vulnerable again, you

• 46:18Debbie Millman?

  know, sort of Scarlett O'Hara. I'm never going to go hungry again. Yeah, it doesn't always work out that way, but it was definitely the, the, the journey that, that I've been on.

• 46:29Tim Ferriss?

  Well, thank you for sharing that. I had no idea and.

• 46:33Debbie Millman?

  It's not something I talk about a lot, mostly because I've had an enormous amount of shame about it and, and that's a very normal thing and I still do and it's still very, very hard for me to share these types of things. But I do think it's important that people do.

• 46:53Debbie Millman?

  See that there is hope for a better life even when you are the victim of these types of situations. I've spent a lot of time working on better integrating those experiences into my life in a way to not only understand what happened, why it happened, what the aftermath then caused, but also how I can use that empathy and that understanding to try to help the world.

• 47:32Debbie Millman?

  And that's a lot of the reason that I've started to do the work that I do with Mariska Harkitay and the Joyful Heart Foundation, which is a foundation that Mariska started after she started working on Law and Order SVU. Shortly after she started working on that television program, she started to receive a lot of letters from people that the very victim she was trying to find justice for on the television show and realized that this is way more than a television show. This is a huge opportunity to make a difference in our culture. And shortly thereafter, started the Joyful Heart Foundation, which is an organization

• 48:13Debbie Millman?

  to help eradicate domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. And I've been working with Mariska and Miley Zambuto, the CEO of the foundation now for the last five years. And this work, I believe, the branding work that I've been able to do with them, taking into all the expertise I've had in repositioning and branding some of the biggest CPG companies in the world, and now dovetailing that with my own background, really, truly makes me feel like my whole life makes sense to him.

• 48:52Tim Ferriss?

  That's beautiful. And I'm really glad you're talking about this because I can imagine a very different experience, but I've had my own battles with darkness of different types. And it's very easy to believe that you are alone or isolated, or that things will never change. And I'm sure there are people listening who have had similar experiences to yours who have never talked about them, or have never found a way to perhaps integrate or reconcile them. And this might be an incredible catalyst for them. I would love to ask, if you're open to talking about it for yourself, have you found any particular avenues or

• 49:36Tim Ferriss?

  types of work to be particularly helpful to you? Of course, the work that you're doing with the Joyful Heart Foundation, but apart from that, are there any particular types of exercises or work or anything really that has helped you to be more at peace with your experience?

• 49:57Debbie Millman?

  I think that the work that I've done in therapy has saved my life. I have always been really dedicated to my therapy and have been in therapy with the same analyst now for over two decades.

• 50:22Tim Ferriss?

  What type of therapy is that, if you don't mind me asking? I know very little about.

• 50:26Debbie Millman?

  She is, the person who I work with is a PhD. She was very involved in the psychoanalytic community in New York City. She's now living in Santa Fe. I think that it's a combination of a number of different philosophies and theories, probably at its foundation, psychoanalysis, but certainly with quite a lot of variations. It's talk therapy. I started back in the early 90s, five days a week, and then moved down to three days. And now I'm usually two to three days. And it is enormously helpful to help me try to make sense of

• 51:12Debbie Millman?

  These experiences that I've had, for anybody that is either in the midst of experiencing them, or experiencing the aftermath, there is a lot of, there are a lot of resources. One of the things that I experienced when I was in the midst of, of these experiences was a sense of profound aloneness. The experiences that I had, the worst experiences I had, were in the seventies. And at the time, the topic wasn't one that was as understood. I didn't know what was happening to me.

• 51:55Debbie Millman?

  I thought I was the only person in the world that this was happening to, because it seemed so surreal, and unnatural, and punishing. It didn't occur to me that this was pervasive, that this was a cultural epidemic. And I was told at the time by the perpetrator, that if I told anybody that he had the resources to hurt my brother and my mother, that he would kill them.

• 52:30Tim Ferriss?

  Horrible.

• 52:31Debbie Millman?

  And I believed that. I was a little girl. I believed that. And I was protecting them. And I didn't know that I had any other resources, none. And didn't even tell my mother until after they got divorced. Because, Tim, I didn't want to be the reason. I didn't want to be blamed. And I also didn't think anybody would believe me, and I didn't want my mother and my brother to be harmed. It wasn't until I was much older, that I realized that this was pervasive.

• 53:09Debbie Millman?

  And so for anybody that is listening, if you feel alone, know that you're not. You can go to the Joyful Heart Foundation, joyfulheartfoundation.org, and there are resources and phone numbers. You can also go to knowmore.org, which is another organization that I've helped. And there are resources, and people that are there to help, and listen, and get you out of the situation that you are in.

• 53:37Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you for that.

• 53:40Tim Ferriss?

  To insert some levity, I'm not sure how to segue from here. But I will.

• 53:45Debbie Millman?

  Well, let's talk about some of the really, really important things that, that people are doing now to not only eradicate this type of violence, but also to change the world. One of the other things that Joyful Heart is doing that I am so proud of is ending the backlog. There are hundreds of thousands of rape kits that are not being investigated, that are sitting in shelves in police departments all over the country. And so the Joyful Heart Foundation, along with Vice President Joe Biden, has been very involved in getting funding to help analyze those rape kits to be able to analyze the

• 54:27Debbie Millman?

  DNA and get serial rapists off the streets and get, and get justice for the victims of those crimes. So that's a really, really important thing that they're doing and something that I feel can ultimately change not only the sort of rape culture that we're living in, but also the blaming of victims. So we can change culture by doing this work together. That's something I'm super proud of.

• 54:55Tim Ferriss?

  And to those people listening, all of these resources that are being mentioned throughout this episode will be in the show notes. So you can certainly find links to no more.org, the Joyful Heart Foundation, and so on at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast, all spelled out.

• 55:13Tim Ferriss?

  Debbie, I'd love to ask you to shift gears just a little bit, or perhaps a lot. The Speak Up Story.

• 55:23Debbie Millman?

  That's one of my favorite stories.

• 55:25Tim Ferriss?

  I will, I will let you run with it. I would love for you to, I would love for you to share.

• 55:30Debbie Millman?

  Okay. So, so I want to start this story by letting people know that this was something that while it was happening, I thought was the worst professional experience of my life.

• 55:45Debbie Millman?

  And it's turned out to be the most important and life-affirming of my life. So, so let me tell you a little bit about the Speak Up story. So, the year is 2003 and the time in the world was, was quite different than it is now. So, we were, we were online, but we weren't quite online in the way that we are now. I think YouTube was just, just, just beginning. It was a, a video sharing site more than anything. We were online, but we were playing games and we were ordering from the J. Crew catalog. I, I don't know if people remember when the J. Crew catalog went online. People's heads exploded. You could buy things online and they could be shipped to you and you don't have to leave the house.

• 56:31Debbie Millman?

  Oh, my God, that's so amazing. And we were playing, like, we were playing games and we were emailing and, and reading the news. And there were forums where people would congregate, but they tended to be more niche forums and, and not so much mainstream cultural forums. Prior to that, leading up to, to that time in my life, I had joined Sterling Brands in 1995. And this was one of the first moments of that click that you had mentioned earlier, where suddenly, without even realizing it, I had joined a firm where I was hired to help grow the business via the acquisition of new clients in branding.

• 57:16Debbie Millman?

  And the job was one of the first times in my life where I was almost effortlessly successful. I think because of my early childhood in my father's pharmacy, being surrounded by brands, I had, and my own sort of obsession with things like Lay's potato chips. I was gonna say Lay's potato chips. Exactly. I had this almost magical ability to understand why and how people chose the objects that they did to be part of their lives, mostly the brands that they chose.

• 58:00Debbie Millman?

  So, I started working at Sterling Brands and had this heretofore unbelievable level of success financially. And I really enjoyed it. I am also endlessly fascinated by the choices people make for the objects in their lives, what they choose to surround themselves with, the kinds of things they buy and share and eat and wear and so forth. And in as much as I loved what I was doing and in as much as I was relishing the level of success that in my early 30s I was finally, finally getting, I also was still sort of

• 58:39Debbie Millman?

  longing for that artistic, creative sort of part of my life that I felt was deeply missing.

• 58:50Tim Ferriss?

  At that point, what department were you working in?

• 58:53Debbie Millman?

  I was working in marketing and sales.

• 58:55Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 58:56Debbie Millman?

  And I wasn't at that time doing very much design work. I was doing some work freelance. I had been appointed the off-air creative director at Hot 97, which is a whole other sort of story to share at some point. But I was working to develop the identity and the graphics for the first ever hip-hop radio station, which happened to be in New York and was called Hot 97. That was the only thing that I was doing on the side. I started working at Sterling Brands and was longing for a design community and was longing for a feeling of being part of something bigger than I was on my own, but something

• 59:36Debbie Millman?

  that was much more creative and had no commercial implications. And I found the AIGA, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and they had a special interest group within AIGA called the Brand Experience Center. And I was so excited. I thought, oh, my God, this is the Venn diagram of my life. I can do branding and they have designers and all these famous designers are on the board and I could meet them and I could be part of this great community. And so I went and I volunteered and I became a member of AIGA and I was working with this brand experience group and I loved it and I was appointed to the board and I felt

• 1:00:20Debbie Millman?

  really, really part of something. And the board term was, I think, two years. And at the end of the term, if we wanted to be on the board again, we all had to reapply. And in that two years, I was very active. I went to all the meetings and we weren't funded by AIGA. We had to self-fund and so I made cupcakes for bake sales and we had a flea market and I was very, very involved in the sort of day-to-day runnings of this little special interest group. At the end of the two years, we all had to reapply if we wanted to be on the board again and every single person reapplied. And every single person was appointed on the board again, except me. I was rejected.

• 1:01:02Tim Ferriss?

  You set me up with the cupcakes.

• 1:01:07Debbie Millman?

  I know, I know. They were really good cupcakes and brownies. And, and I was devastated. I was just devastated. And Rick Raffey, who was then the executive director, he had been aware of how much I wanted to be in, in AIGA and how much I wanted to do and my aspirations. And I think he felt really bad for me. He asked me if I wanted to have lunch and he took me to a very expensive lunch at 11 Madison and over the course of lunch. Yeah, it was super wonderful and generous of him. Over the course of lunch, he said, please, please, don't give up on AIGA. We need people like you and don't give up. We'll find a place for you, I promise.

• 1:01:47Debbie Millman?

  And I guess as a bit of a consolation prize, he asked me if I would be a judge in the upcoming annual competition that AIGA had called 365. And he asked me if I wanted to be a judge in the package design category. This, to me, was almost worth being kicked to the curb by the special interest group of the brand experience. And this was like the biggest honor of my career at that point, to be a judge in the country's biggest design competition was unfathomable to me. It felt like a miracle.

• 1:02:25Debbie Millman?

  And so I went to the judging and there were two other judges with me. We had 700 entries that we needed to look at in one day. And when I got to the to the judging at AIGA headquarters, I met with the other two jurors. One was a very well-known designer who had a bit of a boutique agency, very posh. She was very stylish. I did not feel nearly as stylish. Another guy was there from Apple and this was shortly after the iPod had been released and he was on his iPod the whole time and really didn't spend a lot of time paying attention to the judging. In any case, this other juror.

• 1:03:07Tim Ferriss?

  What a dick.

• 1:03:08Debbie Millman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Tim Ferriss?

  Anyway.

• 1:03:10Debbie Millman?

  The other juror.

• 1:03:10Tim Ferriss?

  Sorry, guy, I don't know.

• 1:03:11Debbie Millman?

  Yeah. The other juror looks at me when I get there and she's like, just so you know, I don't intend to have any mass market packaging in this competition get an award. And I was like, oh, okay. And I didn't agree with that. I mean, I understandably had come, I was working at a CPG package design firm and we had recently designed the Burger King logo and the Star Wars Episode 2 Attack of the Clones packaging and merchandising and the Hershey bar. And so, you know, I was coming from a completely different point of view. We ended up disagreeing so vehemently that at one point I thought we were going to actually come to fisticuffs, but we.

• 1:03:53Tim Ferriss?

  Was this behind the scenes or is this while you're on the panel?

• 1:03:57Debbie Millman?

  This is while we're on the panel and there's somebody that's trailing us, writing notes for an article that's going to appear in the annual. It was mortifying. In any case, we were only able to agree, I think, on seven things that would go into the competition journal, which is not a way to encourage future applicants to apply for the competition. So AIGA was not particularly happy with us. This juror of mine, the fellow juror, hated me and I felt at the end of that day that I would never, ever be asked to do anything with AIGA ever again. And I remember walking back to my office, which was at the Empire State Building at

• 1:04:39Debbie Millman?

  the time, it was sort of dusk and I felt like, oh, this is never, ever going to work out. And resigned myself to that. Rick asked for some.

• 1:04:50Debbie Millman?

  Work of mine to be included in the journal as evidence of my credentials for being a juror. And the two biggest projects that I had done at the time were the Burger King identity and the Star Wars identity. And so I sent those in as my credentials. They were printed in the journal and that was the end of that, or so I thought. May 2nd, 2003, I get, I get a link from a friend of mine. She sends me an email and she's like, read this in the privacy of your own home, preferably with a big drink.

• 1:05:26Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, boy. What a setup.

• 1:05:29Debbie Millman?

  I know, right? And I am not one that likes surprises or anticipation. I need instant gratification. So I don't wait to go home. I don't wait to get a drink. I click into the link at my desk in my office and come to a letter, an open letter to AIGA, written by a designer named Felix Sockwell, on this thing called Speak Up. And Speak Up was one of the first weblogs and the first design blog. And the letter chastises AIGA for including me, Debbie Millman, as a juror in their annual competition.

• 1:06:11Debbie Millman?

  What is supposed to be the most prestigious competition in the country, and accused me of not only being a corporate clown, but also because of the work I do, they called me a she-devil.

• 1:06:24Tim Ferriss?

  A she-devil. Wow.

• 1:06:28Debbie Millman?

  And proceeded to take my entire career down. And it was a pylon. So not only was the open letter quite harsh, but then there was the pylon of comments that happened in the early days of blogging. Remember that?

• 1:06:42Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yes. I'm so glad that hateful comments are a thing of the past. But yes, oh, yes. Intimately familiar.

• 1:06:53Debbie Millman?

  And I'm reading this and my jaw is agape and I am just

• 1:06:59Debbie Millman?

  in a state of catatonia. I couldn't move. I was ashamed, embarrassed, terrified that people in my office would see it, that the reputation of the firm was being sullied by me.

• 1:07:18Debbie Millman?

  And I didn't know what to do. I was despondent. I remember walking home from work that day crying, thinking that I had to quit. I had to leave the design business and I, my career was over. This career that I had finally found for myself was now officially over. And I, I honestly did not know what to do, Tim. I felt like if I wrote in, that it would seem defensive, that it would bring more attention to this story. I felt that if I didn't write in, that I would be missing an opportunity to at least contribute to the conversation with a point of view that might be different than theirs. I didn't know what to do.

• 1:08:01Debbie Millman?

  And looking back on it now, I'm actually really ashamed of what I did because it was disingenuous, but at the time, it was the only thing that I felt I could do. And so a few days after the story broke and the comments piled in, I contributed and my first comment was, and you're gonna, you're not gonna approve of this.

• 1:08:23Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, we'll see, we'll see.

• 1:08:25Debbie Millman?

  I wrote, what a cool discussion. I love it.

• 1:08:31Debbie Millman?

  I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I, you know, the, the book Cool Girl had not come out at that time, but had it been out, I would have said, that's what I was trying to be. I was trying to be the cool girl. Nothing matters. I can eat five chili dogs and I don't gain weight, you know?

• 1:08:49Debbie Millman?

  I'm quoting the book. So, yeah, I, I came in and that's what I said. But I ended up having the best possible back and forth I could muster. I tried to talk about how we had constructed the Burger King logo and the amount of testing we had done around the world and how consumers really seemed to like it and who were they to sort of declare that it wasn't worthy? And I, I tried to be as

• 1:09:20Debbie Millman?

  As opened and as defenseless as possible. And ultimately, they continued to pile on some more insults and made fun of the practice that I had. And then a couple of people weighed in otherwise. And the final comment was from a man named David Weinberg, who I've since become friends with as well, who at the time worked at Landor.

• 1:09:46Tim Ferriss?

  Landor, what is?

• 1:09:47Debbie Millman?

  Landor is one of the world's biggest and most respected brand consultancies, started by Walter Landor about 80 or 90 years ago. And he wrote in, you know, "Let's see what Felix could do with that Burger King logo and great work over there at Sterling." And that was sort of the end of that conversation. Nobody else came in with another comment. And what I thought was over really wasn't because the-

• 1:10:12Tim Ferriss?

  Felix is the-

• 1:10:13Debbie Millman?

  He was the original writer of this open letter, Felix Aqual, the illustrator and designer.

• 1:10:19Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 1:10:20Debbie Millman?

  And then they, I thought it was over. I thought it had ended with some sort of a compromise in viewpoints. But to my chagrin, the writers at Speak Up kept writing about me. And the next article was called, "Is the Dark Side Prevailing?"

• 1:10:39Tim Ferriss?

  So subtle, so subtle.

• 1:10:42Debbie Millman?

  Very subtle. At that point, Tim, I was obsessed. I was going to this site 15, 20 times a day, constantly refreshing, seeing what they were writing about me. And finally gave up and went to my IT person and said, "Put parental controls on my computer at work. I don't want to be able to see this site." And he did.

• 1:10:58Tim Ferriss?

  Sometimes you need a helpful pair of handcuffs, yeah.

• 1:11:05Debbie Millman?

  Well said. And, but I'd still, you know, I'd go home and look, but whatever. A couple of weeks later, the founder of Speak Up, a young man about 23 years old named Armin Witt, reached out to me. He wrote me an email and he apologized. He didn't apologize for calling my work a pair of turds, which is what it is.

• 1:11:29Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't realize turds came in pairs. Shows what I know.

• 1:11:35Debbie Millman?

  And but he so he apologized for the bullying and for the unprofessional way in which the conversation ensued as opposed to he made it very clear that he still thought my work was a pair of turds, but he didn't feel that it was right the way that I had been spoken to. And I took a lot of care in responding to him. I accepted his apology. But at the time, I was really fascinated by this whole blogging thing. It was really interesting to me, this sort of real time communication, holding people accountable. And I wrote him this sort of diatribe about it. And he responded and said, Well, would

• 1:12:15Debbie Millman?

  you like to write for the site? And I was like, Whoa, didn't expect that one. And I so I said, Yes. And I started writing for Speak Up.

• 1:12:28Tim Ferriss?

  The Darth Vader column.

• 1:12:29Debbie Millman?

  Well, what was so interesting about the experience, Tim, was that the sort of what they were, what the Speak Uppers were calling the precious design world, the AIGA world, they had already rejected me. And now the renegades, the anti-AIGA contingent, they were rejecting me. So at that moment, I actually felt like the most hated woman in graphic design.

• 1:12:51Tim Ferriss?

  Masterless Samurai. Weird.

• 1:12:55Debbie Millman?

  Exactly. So what what happened after that was it was really surreal. And this is why I say that what felt like at the time in May of 2003 to be the lowest point of my professional career actually became the catalyst upon which everything else has been built. And so I started writing for Speak Up. And all of a sudden, I started to have that sense of what I had been originally searching for in my efforts with Speak Up. I felt like I was part of something bigger than myself. I felt like I was part of this sort of renegade group of misfits that were trying to change the world through graphic design criticism and online conversations. We all decided that year in the fall of 2003

• 1:13:38Debbie Millman?

  that we were going to go as a group of sort of guerrilla Speak Up writers to the upcoming AIGA annual conference in Vancouver. And we were going to give out this little brochure that Armin had put together called Stop Being Sheep, which was a riff on the great typographer Eric Speckerman's book Stop Stealing Sheep, which is about letter spacing.

• 1:14:05Debbie Millman?

  You know, thin slicing here to the very best of our ability. And so we went with this little brochure en route to the conference.

• 1:14:15Tim Ferriss?

  And so these people then ended up accepting you? The people who had previously vilified you?

• 1:14:20Debbie Millman?

  The people that had previously vilified me not only accepted me, but over the years, Armin and his wife Bryony and I have become such good friends that I am now the godmother to their eldest daughter.

• 1:14:36Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:14:38Debbie Millman?

  So sort of similar to that Robert Edelstein story back when I was in college, where he rejected me, or what I thought was a rejection of me, then ultimately became one of my lifelong friendships. And now Armin and Bryony are also family at this point, family.

• 1:14:53Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing. So I interrupted, though. So you're en route with this group of heretics and a pile of brochures or pamphlets.

• 1:15:02Debbie Millman?

  Right, because brochures change the world, you know that. And I'm sitting next to people that are also, there was at that time, one direct flight from New York to Vancouver. The flight is filled with design luminaries, Michael Bayrude and Paula Scher. And I'm sitting next to a woman who is beautiful and elegant, and I'm wearing sweatpants and carrying a bag of McDonald's breakfast, you know? And the only people that like the way McDonald's breakfast smell are the people eating it, not the people smelling it.

• 1:15:35Tim Ferriss?

  True fact.

• 1:15:38Debbie Millman?

  You know, I don't know why I didn't think that I would see people that I knew on this flight. I was, well, in any case. So I start talking to this woman next to me, and it turns out she's going to the conference as well. I ask her what she does. She says she's a writer at Print Magazine. I tell her about Speak Up. She's all interested in what we're doing. She gives me, I tell her that we're having this get together, this party over the course of the conference. She's, I'd like to invite her. She gives me a card. Without looking at it, I put it into my bag. We had, we talked through a couple of hours, and then we go off and do our own thing with, you know, whatever else we were doing on the flight. When I get to my room in Vancouver, I take her card out of my bag, and I see that she's the editor in chief, Joyce Redder Kay.

• 1:16:23Debbie Millman?

  I invite her to the party, she comes and we start a correspondence. I had this, I harbored this hope that maybe I could write for Print Magazine one day. And a couple of months later, she writes me and asks me if I want to participate in something she's putting together for the upcoming Howe Conference the next year in San Diego. And be, at the time, reality TV had just sort of burgeoning into culture and there was a very popular TV show called Iron Chef about cooking in real time and the audience voting. And she wanted to do a riff on that called Ironic Chef, where three designers would create work onstage in real time and the audience would vote.

• 1:17:08Debbie Millman?

  This, to me, sounded like the definition of hell.

• 1:17:10Tim Ferriss?

  And just to clarify for people, Print Magazine is actually called Print.

• 1:17:18Debbie Millman?

  It is called Print Magazine. It's the oldest print mag, it's the oldest graphic design magazine in the country. It's 75 years old. It has won, I think, five National Design Awards, General Excellence Awards for the, not National Design Awards, I'm sorry, Magazine Awards, which is the highest honor and effie, I believe it's called, that a magazine can win. And it's a remarkable magazine and I had this dream of someday writing something for it.

• 1:17:49Tim Ferriss?

  So Ironic Chef.

• 1:17:50Debbie Millman?

  Yes, Ironic Chef.

• 1:17:51Tim Ferriss?

  Debbie Millen's personal version of hell.

• 1:17:53Debbie Millman?

  Yeah. And I'm afraid to say no. I feel like if I say no, I'm never going to be offered an opportunity to do anything with Joyce again. So I say yes and I'm further humiliated when I get to San Diego when I realize that I have to wear a chef's outfit onstage. There are pictures of this, by the way, I'm not lying or exaggerating. So I go through with this, I am onstage with the emcee, Steve Heller, who I had never met. Steve Heller is one of the world's foremost design critics. He was the art director of the New York Times Book Review for 30 years. He started numerous programs at the School of Visual Arts, graduate programs, and he's

• 1:18:35Debbie Millman?

  written about 170 books about design and graphic designers. He is the judge. I am terribly intimidated because he is Steve Heller, one of the greatest people that has ever lived.

• 1:18:48Debbie Millman?

  And there were three of us. I come in second, which is not terrible. I don't win, but I don't lose. And in another aberrant moment of courage, I asked Steve, because he was nice to me that day, if he'd want to have lunch in New York City when we were back. He lived in New York City as well. He agrees. We go to lunch. I was so intimidated, I had a cheat sheet that I'd prepared of topics in which I could discuss with Steve, wrote it on a paper napkin, put it in my lap, and I could refer to it if I choked and knew not what to say next. In any case, I had some book ideas. Steve told me they were both bad.

• 1:19:30Debbie Millman?

  I went away a little bit discouraged, but still happy that I had met him, and he told me that I'd get a book, just to be patient. Four months later, a publisher calls at the recommendation of Stephen Heller with a book that he had turned down. They had wanted him to write with the horrific title, How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer. Once again, I think if I don't say yes to this, I'm never going to be asked for anything again, and I take on this book. But I ask them if I could do it in a different way, because I didn't believe that there was just one way for a great graphic designer to think. There were myriad ways. And could I interview great graphic designers and reveal how they

• 1:20:10Debbie Millman?

  think? They agreed, and that became my first book. In the meantime, Joyce, Redder Kay, the editor of Print Magazine, reaches out and asks me if I'd like to write a review about Wally Olend's then upcoming book on branding. I agree. I write my first piece for Print Magazine that year, and I've written for every single issue since. Wow. Thirteen years later, two years ago, I was appointed the editorial and creative director of Print Magazine.

• 1:20:41Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it seems like those brochures did play a role.

• 1:20:43Debbie Millman?

  Yep. And that's just the start of it, Tim. If it weren't for Speak Up and that story, I was then contacted by a fledgling internet radio network called Voice America in 2004, shortly after a piece that Mark Kingsley and I wrote about election graphics that kind of went viral. And they wanted me to host a show about branding. I was worried that if I said no, I'd never get another opportunity again and asked if I could sort of do it about branding, but maybe do it more about design and pitch this idea to them about Design Matters, a radio network show. They said yes, just when I was beginning to think, ooh, I might get rich from this.

• 1:21:28Debbie Millman?

  They told me that I needed to pay them for the airtime.

• 1:21:33Tim Ferriss?

  Surprise, another surprise.

• 1:21:35Debbie Millman?

  But I was really excited about this. And at that time, you know, everything I was doing was very commercially driven and felt that this would be a way for me to talk about graphic design and engage with people in a way that had no commercial value whatsoever. It was just all about how to satisfy sort of our souls, our creative souls. And that's how Design Matters was born. My podcast was born on this sort of Wayne's World-esque internet radio network called Voice America. I did the show for four years on Voice America, paid them for four years to do it, and then brought the show to Design Observer. Bill Drantel, the late, great Bill Drantel, the founder of Design Observer, invited me

• 1:22:18Debbie Millman?

  to bring the show over to Design Observer in 2009 with the proviso that I improved my sound quality.

• 1:22:28Debbie Millman?

  I was doing my show with two handsets. You know, you ever have a conversation with two people on the same phone line in your house and you're on different handsets in different parts of the house and the Echo and all of that?

• 1:22:39Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:40Debbie Millman?

  Those were my early shows. But I had no idea what I was doing. There was no podcast when I started. I started to upload my show to iTunes just for the kick of it, just to be able to share it. And now 12 years later, three weeks, I'm going to have my 12th anniversary of Design Matters. We won a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in 2009. The end of 2015 iTunes, and you know this because you're always on the list, but after 11 years iTunes designated it one of the best podcasts on iTunes and I've transitioned the show from a show about why design matters to a show about how creative people design their lives and the trajectory that people take.

• 1:23:25Debbie Millman?

  Even from this conversation, you can probably tell how interested I am in how people make their lives, the choices that they make and how they live and what they dream about and what they become. And so that's the direction that the show has taken and I'm about to approach my 300th episode.

• 1:23:45Tim Ferriss?

  Congratulations. That's a huge milestone and you being interested in the way that you are and with the intensity that you are interested, I think is very well reflected in the episodes themselves. And we've spent some time in your studio.

• 1:24:04Debbie Millman?

  Yes.

• 1:24:04Tim Ferriss?

  It is one of the most lovely and engaging conversations I've ever had in interview format. It was such a relaxed and fun experience for me, which is not the norm, as you know. I certainly recommend everyone check out Design Matters, but I want to talk about some of your decisions and specifically, we could talk for 20 hours, but I want to talk about a name that I had not heard in my life until very recently, Milton Glazer.

• 1:24:42Debbie Millman?

  Hmm, yes.

• 1:24:44Tim Ferriss?

  And as you'd mentioned, you'd done, I guess, brand makeovers or branding for Burger King, Star Wars, I think you, Hershey's, Tropicana, I think was that?

• 1:24:54Debbie Millman?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:24:55Tim Ferriss?

  And tell me if I'm getting this wrong, but you know, at one point, if you walked in any grocery store, supermarket, et cetera, you had a hand in, say, 20% of everything that you saw, something like that.

• 1:25:05Debbie Millman?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 1:25:06Tim Ferriss?

  It's nuts.

• 1:25:07Debbie Millman?

  Yes, it is.

• 1:25:07Tim Ferriss?

  That's mind blowing when you consider the number of different products, right? The SKUs and for people who are wondering what CPG is, Consumer Packaged Goods. And so at some point, your hand was involved in Just an incredible array and plenitude of different products. How did Milton Glaser enter the scene? And could you describe for people who he is?

• 1:25:32Debbie Millman?

  Milton Glaser is the elder statesman of the design world and is the world's one of, certainly one of, if not the greatest living graphic designer. He's in his 80s. He is responsible for the I Heart New York logo. He did that iconic Bob Dylan poster of Bob Dylan in profile with the streams of colorful hair. He is one of the founders of New York Magazine. The list goes on and on. He's had more impact and created some of the most memorable, well-known and iconic brands and identities in the world.

• 1:26:16Debbie Millman?

  My relationship with Milton really began when I took a class of his at the School of Visual Arts, a summer intensive in the summer of 2005. I had already interviewed him for Design Matters, but it was over the phone and I, while I cherish that interview, it was one of my very, very early interviews, so I'm still, I'm somewhat gun-shy to send people to listen to that one because it's so early in my journey as a podcaster. But in any case, I took this class with him and that class, you know, it's interesting about how we started the show, talking about my eight-year-old drawing and you talking

• 1:26:58Debbie Millman?

  about your friend who had written this essay that then predicted his life. Milton taught this summer intensive, I think, for about 40 or 50 years and he used to say that it was one of the most important things that he did. He's not teaching it anymore. He had us do an exercise in that class where we had to envision the life that we could have if we pursued everything that we wanted with the certainty that whatever it is that we wanted, we would succeed. And I wrote an essay in May of 2000, no, I'm sorry, July of 2005. It was supposed to be a five-year plan.

• 1:27:39Debbie Millman?

  And he asked us to dream big and not to edit. And said that it had a bit of a magical quality that he experienced with his students over and over. So to be careful what we wished for. And I created this essay with these long ranging, far fetched goals that I can tell you now, 12 years later, have almost all come true. It is spooky, spooky. And so that's an exercise I do now with my students. He's had, Milton has had one of the most profound impacts on my life, aside from, you know, the profound impact he's had on the world. I feel really, really lucky that I have been a student of his and have gotten to interview

• 1:28:24Debbie Millman?

  him now numerous times and feel that my relationship with him is certainly one of the luckiest things that's ever happened to me.

• 1:28:32Tim Ferriss?

  Can you describe the exercise as you do it with your students now?

• 1:28:38Debbie Millman?

  Well, I teach undergrad and graduate classes at the School of Visual Arts. I run a master's in branding program at the School of Visual Arts, which I was given this opportunity via Steve Heller, who I again would not have met had that whole speak up experience not happened. So yet another thing, every single thing that I'm doing now in my life, Tim, stems from that experience.

• 1:29:02Tim Ferriss?

  Well, also, just to underscore another theme, he had, in some sense, you could interpret it as rejected two of your book ideas, even though he was nice to you and went out to lunch with you, but now, later on down the line, you kept that relationship and lands you at SVA.

• 1:29:24Debbie Millman?

  Absolutely. I mean, Steve is one of the most generous and engaging people I have had the privilege of knowing. And I often tease Steve and say that he's my fairy godfather because he's the only person in my life, or maybe one of two people in my life now, that I could say has just been, he has this sort of generosity that is all about, here, take this, do that, make this happen. This is for you. With no strings, no ties, no obligations, it's just pure generosity.

• 1:30:06Debbie Millman?

  And he has done that over and over and over and over again for me since meeting him back in 2004. So the exercise that I do now with my students, because they're quite a bit younger than I was when I was doing this five-year essay or a five-year plan, I ask them to do a 10-year plan. And so this gives them a chance to really mature into who they are in their 20s and into their early 30s. And it's this 10-year plan for what I call a remarkable life. And it's about imagining what your life could be if you could do anything you wanted without any fear of failure. And they are the most life-affirming essays.

• 1:30:51Debbie Millman?

  They are so full of hope and optimism and well-being and goodness that it gives me a sense that humanity is, can be saved. And so I've borrowed that exercise from Milton and now use that both in my graduate program and the undergraduate classes that I teach.

• 1:31:16Tim Ferriss?

  This is gonna seem nerdy, but I'm a nerd, so I'll run with it. And that is, do you have any parameters for people at home who might want to try this? Or recommendations, ways to start? Is it bullets or is it prose?

• 1:31:32Debbie Millman?

  No, it's, so it's all paragraphs.

• 1:31:35Tim Ferriss?

  How does it end? Any recommendations for people who would like to give this a stab?

• 1:31:38Debbie Millman?

  So let's say it is winter 2027. What does your life look like? What are you doing? Where are you living? Who are you living with? Do you have pets? What kind of house are you in? Is it an apartment? Are you in the city? Are you in the country? What are your, what does your furniture look like? What is your bed like? What are your sheets like? What kind of clothes do you wear? What kind of hair do you have? Tell me about your pets. Tell me about your significant other. Do you have children? Do you have a car? Do you have a boat? Do you have, talk about your career. What do you want? What are you reading? What are you making? What excites you? What is your health like?

• 1:32:22Debbie Millman?

  And write this day, this one day, 10 years from now. So one day in the winter of 2027, what does your whole day look like? Start from the minute you wake up, brush your teeth, have your coffee or tea, all the way through till when you tuck yourself in at night. What is that day like for you? Dream big. Dream without any fear. Write it all down. You don't have to share it with anyone other than yourself. Put your whole heart into it. And write like there's no tomorrow. Write like your life depends on it because it does.

• 1:33:06Debbie Millman?

  And then read it once a year. See what happens. It's magic. It's magic.

• 1:33:14Tim Ferriss?

  I love this. I need to do this. I'm not asking for some hypothetical listener. Listeners, I love you guys, but this is also for me.

• 1:33:22Debbie Millman?

  It is astounding. And I do this now with all of my students. And I can't begin to tell you how many letters I get from students from 10 years ago that are like, Debbie, it all came true. How did this happen? And I am so thrilled that these things can make a difference. And this goes back to the earlier part of our conversation about my own fears about what I could or would or should become. And the idea that at that same time in my life, that intersection on Bleecker Street and Sixth Avenue, peering deep into my future and not knowing that anything was possible for me, to give somebody at that same stage in their life,

• 1:34:07Debbie Millman?

  or any stage really, but particularly at that vulnerable stage when you are so worried about what you can or can't become, to give somebody that sliver of a dream, of a hope that this could happen, and have them declare what they want. I think is a remarkable exercise. That's why I call it your 10 year plan for a remarkable life.

• 1:34:31Tim Ferriss?

  How long was your essay? And is there any consistency to length or their guidelines? Or is it as long as it takes? And some are two pages, some are 20 pages.

• 1:34:42Debbie Millman?

  Some are two pages, some are 20 pages. I think the longer it is, the more likely it is to be affirmed for some reason. I find the more care you put into it, the more, the more care and detail you put in. Oh, doggy.

• 1:34:58Tim Ferriss?

  That's, that's, that's doggy. Yeah, that's, that's my Molly. Sorry, she's excited about this exercise. Please.

• 1:35:03Debbie Millman?

  Clearly. I think that the more care you put into it, the likely, the more success you'll have coming out of it. Mine was, I wrote it in a journal that I was keeping at the time. So it was about five by seven and it was probably about 10 handwritten, big handwriting. I had big handwriting, 10 big handwriting pages. And it was the whole day. And then because I was really excited about it and because I love lists, I made a list of everything that I wanted to come true.

• 1:35:33Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I tell you, I think that might be a good place to wrap up this part one, which I think we, I think we may have more conversations than us. I have so many questions I'd still like to ask, but I think that is a, given people have a primacy and recency bias, I want them to remember this exercise as, as one of, one of the, the actionable recommendations that they can, they can, they can certainly explore from this interview. And there's so much, but let me ask, before I let you go, the, and I'll ask where people can find you and so on, learn more about your work.

• 1:36:17Tim Ferriss?

  But before that, is there any parting piece of advice or recommendation question, anything that you'd like listeners to carry with them when they stop listening to this?

• 1:36:30Debbie Millman?

  Well, let's see. I recently went through a pretty major transition in my life and.

• 1:36:43Debbie Millman?

  It was something that I had to make a pretty big decision about. And it was a somewhat prolonged agonizing decision, so much so that my friends and loved ones were no longer listening to my sort of machinations in making the decision because I thought that I never was going to actually make the decision. And so I can share that because I do think on the other side of that decision now is an important realization that I think can help people. I was working, I've had a full-time job since I graduated college. And for the last 22 years, I was working at a branding consultancy, as I mentioned, called Sterling Brands.

• 1:37:28Debbie Millman?

  And had been very lucky to be able to sell the company that I was a part of and ultimately a partner in after about 13 years of working there. So in 2008, the two partners that I had, the man that originally hired me, Simon Williams, and then Austin McGee, who was the third partner to come in after me, we sold our company to Omnicom. And at the time, I had been offered this opportunity with Steve Heller to start the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts and organized my time so that my day job at Sterling Brands wouldn't be impacted by what I was going to be doing

• 1:38:10Debbie Millman?

  at SVA, which was made possible by starting my branding program as an evening program. So I had two full-time jobs, a day job at Sterling and my night job at SVA. And most people thought that I would go through my earn-out at Sterling and then leave and transition to working at SVA and doing all of the personal projects that I had been talking for so long about doing. So the five years happened and we had a really wonderful, successful earnout. So there was no excuse to him for me to continue on the same path. And it was time to make that change. And the last thing I wanted was to end up like the characters in Revolutionary Road, that remarkable book where people talk about making these changes their whole lives and

• 1:38:54Debbie Millman?

  then never, ever do. But I became terrified. I became terrified that if I made this change, that I would not have financial stability anymore, that I would not be able to fulfill all of the dreams that I had and would have to confront that. And so five years turned into six years and six years turned into seven years. And just at a point where I was starting to think about really doing it, sort of like Al Pacino in Godfather III, I was offered an opportunity to take over as CEO of the company. Simon Williams, the then CEO, was looking to become chairman and needed to appoint a new CEO and he came to me and asked me if I wanted the job. And here it was.

• 1:39:39Debbie Millman?

  This is the big decision of a life. Do I become the CEO and have this amazing continuation of money and career and security and everything else that is conventionally approved of? Or do I say, no, actually, I am not going to double down. I'm going to live the way in which I have been saying I wanted to with more freedom and more opportunity to do personal projects and pro bono projects and give back. And I had to decide. And it took me four months to decide. Simon Williams finally said to me, Debbie, anything that takes you four months to decide probably means you don't want to do it.

• 1:40:23Debbie Millman?

  And it was the hardest decision of my life, but I turned it down. I turned the CEO job down. And then two things happened. First of all,

• 1:40:34Debbie Millman?

  One of the things that I realized was that I was in this trapeze. And rather than just let go of the trapeze and do something else, I had every single crook of my body holding on to some other trapeze. And that there was this sense of if I am not doing enough, I am not worthy. If I am not making enough, I am not worthy. If I am not producing enough, I am not worthy. And suddenly, I had to not just let go of the trapeze, but let go of the entire apparatus. And I have realized now, two things.

• 1:41:17Debbie Millman?

  One, most people live in a world of scarcity. We think that all we have now is all we ever have, and if we give something up, we will just have less. What ends up happening is that we don't think about all the possibilities of things that could come up if we give ourselves openings to receive them. And so now, as opposed to having less than what I thought, I have way more because I have all these new things that I'm doing that I never would have thought possible. Second, that hard decisions are only hard when you're in the process of making them. Once you make them, they're not hard anymore. Then it's just life and freedom. And it's an extraordinary experience that I really would like to share with your listeners,

• 1:42:02Debbie Millman?

  with our listeners.

• 1:42:03Tim Ferriss?

  It's such an important discussion on many levels. And I want, I think it's worth repeating a few things, and certainly this echoes in my experience as well. One, that agonizing over the decision is often harder than whatever the outcome of the decision will be. And for that matter, if you make, in many cases, not all, but in many cases, if you make a decision and you decide that it's not the right decision for you, you can quit. You can do something else. It's not a permanent sentence necessarily. And also, this is something that I've had to learn and relearn many times in my life,

• 1:42:45Tim Ferriss?

  which is if it's taken you that long to make a decision, you probably don't and shouldn't, don't want to and shouldn't do, whatever it is that you're agonizing over with pro and con lists trying to justify in some fashion. It's, and both of those points, I think, are so, so important.

• 1:43:05Debbie Millman?

  I also think that if you're waiting for something to feel right before you do it, if you're waiting for a sense of security or confidence, that those things are sort of like being on a hedonistic treadmill. If you think you need enough of this before you do that, when you achieve whatever that is you think you need, you're gonna then up the ante and you're never, ever going to be satisfied with whatever it is you think you need before you do something, if it's not something that is real. So if you think, oh, I need this much money before I do this, when you get that much money, then you're gonna realize, oh, I actually think I need this much more, and it's just gonna be this carrot in front of you that you are in agonizing,

• 1:43:49Debbie Millman?

  that you're agonizing over trying to reach. And then the other thing is, I'm gonna quote Dani Shapiro here, the great writer Dani Shapiro, "If you're waiting for confidence," and she, I asked her once about confidence, and she said that confidence is highly, highly overrated, and that most confident people, or overly confident people, tend to be kind of annoying. And she said what she felt was more important than confidence was courage. And I fully, fully agree, taking that first step. Confidence really only comes from repeated attempts at doing something successfully. But in order to take that first step, you need courage. And that's much more important than confidence. So for anybody that's waiting for the confidence to show up,

• 1:44:33Debbie Millman?

  take the first step in a moment of courage, even if it's aberrant courage to come full circle in this conversation.

• 1:44:40Tim Ferriss?

  Such good advice, and it reminds me of something that the brother Kamal Ravikant of another friend of mine, Naval Ravikant, told me. Naval is a very, very successful entrepreneur and investor, among other things, very, very good writer as well, as is his brother Kamal, who just had a novel come out. But Naval said to his brother, "If I always did what I was qualified to do, I would be pushing a broom somewhere."

• 1:45:05Debbie Millman?

  Well said.

• 1:45:10Tim Ferriss?

  And I thought that was very, very encouraging.

• 1:45:12Debbie Millman?

  Touche.

• 1:45:13Tim Ferriss?

  Debbie, I have so much fun every time we get to spend time together. Where can people find out more about you? Where can they learn more about your work? Where would you like people to say hello on social, if that? And I'll put all of this in the show notes for everybody listening.

• 1:45:29Debbie Millman?

  Sure, absolutely. I'm Debbie Millman on Twitter and Instagram. You can see more about my program at the School of Visual Arts at sva.edu and debbymillman.com, where you can listen to all my podcasts and see my visual essays and my books and so on and so forth.

• 1:45:45Tim Ferriss?

  For people who are not, who would be novices or new entrants into the world of, say, graphic design, recognizing that your podcast is about a lot more than that, which episode or episodes would you suggest they start with?

• 1:45:59Debbie Millman?

  I would suggest that they start with Chris Ware. He is an extraordinary graphic novelist. It's one of the most favorite episodes that I've ever conducted.

• 1:46:11Tim Ferriss?

  How do you spell his last name?

• 1:46:13Debbie Millman?

  W-A-R-E. And from there, some of my favorite episodes over the last year, aside from my episode with you, which I cherish, my episodes with Amanda Palmer, my episode with Alan de Botton, my episode with Krista Tippett, Nico Mulli, the great composer, those are all episodes in the last year that I'm most proud of.

• 1:46:35Tim Ferriss?

  Wonderful. Debbie, you're a rock star. Thank you so much for the time.

• 1:46:40Debbie Millman?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 1:46:41Tim Ferriss?

  I really appreciate it. And to everybody listening, as always, you can find show notes, links to resources, all sorts of things that we talked about and maybe more, at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 1:46:59Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:47:42Tim Ferriss?

  And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So, if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday. Type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably Athletic Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it, in fact, in The Four Hour Body.

• 1:48:24Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:49:08Tim Ferriss?

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