#197: Drunk Dialing -- Ladies Night Edition!

By request, we have another drunk dialing episode (the most recent one can be found here http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/10/12/the-return-of-drunk-dialing/, and the original can be found here http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/09/11/drunk-dialing/). This one is a little different as it's a Ladies Night edition. Some of you may have noticed that ladies were absent from the last drunk dialing fiasco. Why? It's just math. Looking at the results of a recent poll of 11,463 respondents, my audience is 84.04% male, 15.83% female, and .13% other. The people who sign up first get called first. The last time, three out of the 20, which is exactly 15%, were female. Unfortunately, those women (and several guys) did not pick up. This time around, I decided to try the "ladies night" format. In this episode, we discuss: Language learning Exercising with (or around) injuries Viral marketing Handstands and handstand training How I decide my experiments (and what gets shared afterward) Teaching disabilities vs. learning disabilities The craft of writing: common mistakes, goals, etc. Please enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Vimeo Business https://vimeo.com/tim10. Vimeo Business has all of the prior benefits of Vimeo Pro, including VIP support. Whether you make videos for a living, run your own company, or simply want to amp up your video marketing, Vimeo Business is here to help. It has more than 280 million creators and viewers worldwide and makes it easier to share your videos with a global audience and connect with professional video makers to bring your stories to life. Vimeo Business https://vimeo.com/tim10 allows you to upload up to five terabytes and store your videos in one secure place, add up to 10 team members to your account for easy collaboration, and gather feedback with seamless review tools. You can even add clickable calls to action and capture email addresses directly in the player, which can help you generate leads and drive conversion for whatever you're trying to optimize, such as a newsletter or a sales page. Check out vimeo.com/tim10 to save 10 percent on Vimeo Business https://vimeo.com/tim10. This podcast is also brought to you by FreshBooks https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email. FreshBooks is a bookkeeping software, which is used by a ton of the start-ups I advise and many of the contractors I work with. It is the easiest way to send invoices, get paid, track your time, and track your clients. FreshBooks https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email tells you when your clients have viewed your invoices, helps you customize your invoices, track your hours, automatically organize your receipts, have late payment reminders sent automatically and much more. Right now you can get a free month of complete and unrestricted use. https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email You do not need a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month, go to FreshBooks.com/Tim https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email and enter "Tim https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email" in the "how did you hear about us section."

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

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Now, what is the appropriate time?

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Vimeo, specifically a new offering called Vimeo Business. I've done a lot of collaboration with these guys. Vimeo Business has all of the prior benefits of Vimeo Pro, including VIP support. Whether you make videos for a living, run your own company, like yours truly, or simply want to amp up your video marketing, Video Business is here to help. They have more than 280 million creators and viewers worldwide. And Vimeo Business makes it easier to share your videos with a global audience and connect with professional video makers to bring your stories to life. So if you need assistance, it's there. You can also upload up to five terabytes and store your videos in one secure place. You can add up to 10 team members to your account for easy collaboration and gather feedback with seamless review tools.

• 1:08Tim Ferriss?

  You can add clickable calls to action and, perhaps most interesting to me, capture email addresses directly in the player. This can help you generate leads and drive conversion for whatever you're trying to optimize, say for a newsletter or, in fact, a sales page of some type. Video Business helps you optimize your videos by tracking viewer engagement and drop-off, so you can then modify your approach or creative moving forward and improve it. And it connects to Google Analytics for even more insights. So check it out. Go to vimeo.com/tim10 to save 10% on Vimeo Business. That's vimeo.com/tim10.

• 1:50Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks is used by a ton of the startups that I work with or advise, many of the fastest-growing. It is used by almost all of the contractors that I work with. It is the easiest way online to send invoices, get paid, track your time for invoicing, track your clients, so they get... To the point of paying you, all that stuff that you could possibly find. And right now, you can get a free month of complete unrestricted use. And you do not need a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month, just go to freshbooks.com/tim and enter Tim in the "How did you hear about us?" section. You can, of course, customize it to fit your brand with your own logo and color. And FreshBooks shows you whether or not, for instance, a client has looked at the invoice.

• 2:34Tim Ferriss?

  They can send late payment reminders to your clients automatically. So you do not have to think about it or chase them down. And you can track your hours. You can do all sorts of things. There are mobile applets. You take pictures of your receipts and FreshBooks will organize them for you later. It is a great piece of software. And if you are in a small business or maybe a fast growing business that is feeling growing pains and you need to streamline, then this is a place to look. Because certainly for me, this has been a headache in the past. And it doesn't have to be a headache for you. So check out freshbooks.com/tim and try it out and see what you think.

• 3:14Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, ladies and germs, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is normally my job to deconstruct world-class performers of various types of all ilks. This time, we have a slightly different episode. By request, we have another drunk dialing episode, where I meander, gin in hand, Hendrix this time around, to my table where I record myself getting inebriated, dialing to many of you via phone and fielding your questions. Now, this is ladies' night edition. Why is this ladies' night edition? Well, the ladies were absent from the last drunk dialing fiasco. And why is that?

• 3:59Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I thought I would explain a few things. Because it's just math, among other things. So I'm looking at the demographics, a result of a poll on Woofoo here. And we have 11,643 respondents. So pretty, I would say statistically representative. My audience is, as it's Stands right now 84.04% male, 15.83% female, and .13% other. I will leave that to your imagination. And what that means is a few things. If we look at the math, last time, people submitted their names, phone numbers, etc. And it's first come, first served. The people who sign up first get called first.

• 4:43Tim Ferriss?

  And three out of the 20, which is exactly 15%, were female. Unfortunately, those women and several guys as well did not pick up. So if I go to voicemail, I call the next person. That is what happened. So this time around, so that the ladies would not get crowded out by all the dudes, I did a ladies' night edition. And we talk about quite a lot. We talk about language learning. We really get into the weeds on language learning. We talk about exercising with injuries or around injuries. We talk about viral marketing, my thoughts on that, my criticisms of that perhaps. Handstands and handstand training, how I decide what to experiment with, how I decide

• 5:28Tim Ferriss?

  after that what to share with you guys, teaching disabilities versus learning disabilities, and the craft of writing, common mistakes, goals, etc. So I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I did. Of course, the blood alcohol content helps. And that is enough prelude for now. So without further ado, as I always say, after a long introduction, please enjoy volume three, ladies' night edition of Drunk Dialing with Tim Ferriss. Hi, is this Glynnis? Am I getting that right?

• 6:08Speaker 03

  You are totally getting that right.

• 6:09Tim Ferriss?

  Sweet. Yes, yes, miss, yes, ma'am. Where am I reaching you? Where are you located?

• 6:17Speaker 03

  In Toronto.

• 6:19Tim Ferriss?

  Toronto, that's a fine town. I like Toronto.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  It is a fine town.

• 6:23Tim Ferriss?

  I've spent some time there. There's a lot of good food.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Have you?

• 6:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, lots of good, good companies, good people, good coffee. I dig it.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 6:33Tim Ferriss?

  How can I help? What can I answer? Or just lie and try to make something up to answer?

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Um, okay. So, so my question was about, um, I've read The Four Hour Body. Love it. Um, have used the, um, the diet, um, off and on for a little while now. Um, and the, the thing I haven't been able to do, um, has been, have been the exercises. And that's because, um, I have a couple of, uh, sort of ongoing physical, uh, issues. As I said, uh, in my little post when I did this, uh, my body is sometimes a bit of an asshole. And so like I have a, um, I have a, um, a cervical disc that is like basically permanently bulged.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  So I can't do the kettlebells and I have knee problems. So squats long-term are like, not a good thing for me. Um, so I guess I'm wondering what your advice is for people who want to stay active as they recover from injuries or if their bodies are just like, not as keen on some of the sort of basic, like, uh, HIIT workouts and that sort of thing.

• 7:51Tim Ferriss?

  Like For sure.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  A lot of those types of movements.

• 7:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Well, you're catching me at a good time for this because I am in the process of recovering from two injuries as we speak.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 8:03Tim Ferriss?

  I have, uh,

• 8:04Speaker 03

  I'm sorry.

• 8:04Tim Ferriss?

  That's okay. I have a sprained ACL in one knee, so I cannot squat at the moment. And I have a torn left lat slash rib, which is extremely uncomfortable.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, yeah.

• 8:19Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh,

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:20Tim Ferriss?

  I have been addressing this question for myself. So here, here is the short answer. The short answer, and I'll elaborate on this, is do what you can. I'm also sitting about 15 feet from someone who is riddled with injuries, just like me. Who's dealing with the same thing? Okay. And giving me the stink eye. We're all a mess, aren't we? And giving me the middle finger slash stink eye. Uh, the answer is do what you can. And what that means is, uh, and I'm inclined to this as is everyone else. I think to particularly if you have an injury with a primary mobility joint, say something that helps you walk like a knee or a prime mover, meaning a large muscle group like a quadricep

• 9:05Tim Ferriss?

  or a lat or something like that, to just stop. And to be frank, I've been a lazy ass and I have not done a whole hell of a lot in the last two weeks, but I just started yesterday and in the last few days, focusing on the things that I can do, such as long walks, such as, um, effectively stiff legged deadlifts, very slow stiff legged deadlifts, uh, that prevent the, they're doing a lot of the work that say kettlebell swings would do, but they're non ballistic. Right. So I'm using a, I'm using a trap bar deadlift. This is something you step inside of, uh, it's sometimes called, it's sometimes called a hex bar deadlift.

• 9:47Tim Ferriss?

  You could Google that and see what I'm talking about, but I'm doing very slow, controlled deadlifting movement with a hex bar, which is putting less sheer force, uh, strain on say lower back. Uh, cervical bulging disc is, is a non trivial issue. So obviously I should say to cover my own ass as much as yours is talk to your medical professional first. You're in Canada, it shouldn't cost much. Yeah. Uh, although you may have to wait for like 17 months, but do your best.

• 10:24Tim Ferriss?

  Good news is you guys can get everything over the counter. So if that, there's that. It's true. But, uh, There are things that you can do, right? Whether it is just calf raises or something else. In the case of injury, my general recommendation is swimming, number one, which is something I've also been doing.

• 10:45Tim Ferriss?

  If you're not a swimmer, I recommend checking out total immersion swimming. It is a method of swimming. I've written a post on that with my highlights. I think it's how I learned to swim in 10 days. And so can you, or some infomercially sounding headline like that.

• 11:02Tim Ferriss?

  But I didn't learn to swim until I was in my early 30s. So it's, it's, it's a good introduction to that. The, the second guideline that I would provide is low, low speed. So you're performing slow motion movements. And this could mean five seconds up, five seconds down, 10 seconds up, 10 seconds down. There have been a number of interesting exercise science studies performed with elderly women, for instance, who are recovering from, I'm not saying that's you. I'm not saying that's you. Are you saying I'm? No, no, no, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not that drunk. You sound what, 15, 16? No, I'm kidding. Oh, yeah.

• 11:48Tim Ferriss?

  I, that's probably shooting a little, I'm getting a shake of the head over here. I'm getting the director, cut, cut, cut.

• 11:56Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not saying, all right, anyway, I'm not going to keep.

• 12:00Tim Ferriss?

  Once you're in a hole, stop digging. All right, moving on.

• 12:03Tim Ferriss?

  The, the point being that they were recovering from, say, hip fractures and things of this type. They could not, they could not impose any, any erratic forces as reflected in, say, a force plate, right, where they're lifting a weight with momentum and going from zero to 120 to X. So I think that very slow tempo or slow cadence lifting is particularly helpful when recovering from injuries. And in this particular case, in my case, I am doing this as well. When you limit your cadence to 10 seconds up, 10 seconds down,

• 12:44Tim Ferriss?

  you are going to be using lighter weights by necessity to do that. Particularly if you're aiming for, let's just say, seven to 10 repetitions to.

• 12:55Tim Ferriss?

  Temporary muscular failure. And all that means is you're no longer able to pull it up. Right? Or contract the muscle, shorten the muscle.

• 13:05Tim Ferriss?

  And there's, I think it's Doug McGuff. I may be getting this wrong, but Body by Science is a book that discusses this at some length. The For Our Body discusses it as well, but Body by Science, I'm just doing a quick search here for you. Is, it is Doug McGuff. M C G U F F. And there's also the super slow. I believe it's a company, maybe an organization that emphasizes very specifically this, this type of slow cadence lifting.

• 13:47Tim Ferriss?

  And for recovery purposes, I, I think it is extremely flexible. And you, it allows you to work around injuries in a meaningful way. So those are, those are a few of my thoughts. In addition to that, you can add, we're talking about resistance training, but you could add stretching protocols that are strengthening at the same time, meaning they're not limited to passive, long duration stretching. And that would, that would include programs like Gymnastic Bodies, which was created by Coach Chris Sommer, former national team coach for men's gymnastics.

• 14:29Tim Ferriss?

  I am currently incorporating some of that as well. And I'm pretty messed up at the moment, but those are the things that I am reincorporating at, at the moment. Okay. And those are the primaries that come to mind.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  Okay. Cool, man.

• 14:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And, uh, let's see. What else? Uh, what now you're dealing with the disc and any other injuries that are particularly problematic for you?

• 15:00Speaker 03

  Um, I mean, I have, like, I have an ongoing knee condition that I've just had basically since I was, um, like 10 years old, which is the contralatissus of the patella, but it's been better for a long time. Like, I've been able to run and stuff like that. But the cervical disc bulge, um, was quite major. Like, I was in the hospital for it, um, with a pinched nerve and, you know, like, um, like eight weeks of physiotherapy. Well, no, like three months of physiotherapy and 18 months. Um, um, uh, I'm looking at an 18-month, uh, healing process and I'm eight months into that right now. So, uh, that is the primary. It's just, it's sort of completely threw me for a loop

• 15:44Speaker 03

  because most of the things that I did as, uh, to work out, it have just, uh, been shut down.

• 15:50Tim Ferriss?

  How did you, how did that disc bulge happen? Do you know? Was it an acute event or was it something else?

• 15:56Speaker 03

  It was, well, it was an acute event when it happened. Like, it was one night, like, I ended up in the ER because, um, it went out far enough to pinch a nerve.

• 16:05Tim Ferriss?

  What was the, what instigated that?

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Um, my one-year-old son was sleeping on my chest and I was crunched against the backboard, the headboard.

• 16:17Tim Ferriss?

  Ouch. Those kids are vicious.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  Which was not the first time that, yes, they are. And that was not the first time that's happened. Um, so what they think is that it was sort of like a buildup over time, that it had been gradually bulging more and more. And then it was just one night, it finally just completely slipped out. So, so it wasn't a specific thing. It was, yeah. Called being a mom.

• 16:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Full contact sport, that one.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:43Tim Ferriss?

  Cervical use, of course, I'm very, very conservative when it comes to any type of cervical issues because you're dealing with nerves that then affect things like respiration and

• 16:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:56Tim Ferriss?

  heart.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, like I still don't have, I still don't have feeling in part of my thumb.

• 17:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so I would, I would take it slow, whether that is

• 17:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:04Tim Ferriss?

  it certainly get cleared by your, your GP, but I think that extremely slow cadence lifting and swimming would probably be my go-tos, as well as some degree of controlled stretching program that incorporates strength building, which is effectively mobility, as Coach Summer would describe it. So the ability to

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:24Tim Ferriss?

  exhibit strength at the end ranges, not just passively move through them.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:29Tim Ferriss?

  Those, those would be my recommendations for now, but I'm no doctor, I'm no trainer, but

• 17:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:34Tim Ferriss?

  that's what I'm prescribing myself.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 17:37Tim Ferriss?

  And, and the walking.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  And the walking, goddamn the walking, okay, yeah.

• 17:42Tim Ferriss?

  Very underrated. If you need something to do while walking and you're sick of my voice haunting you in your dreams because of my podcast. No, you can listen to Hardcore History. Hardcore History is the one.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. I was gonna ask you what your recommendations are.

• 17:55Tim Ferriss?

  Hardcore History, start with Wrath of the Cons. If you can't find that for whatever reason, Profits of Doom is a good episode as well. I think that's still available for free. But the Wrath, Wrath of the Cons is worth purchasing if you have to.

• 18:08Speaker 03

  Okay, cool. Yeah, my husband is obsessed with podcasts, like, like obsessed. And Dan, Dan who?

• 18:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, he'll go off the rails. He'll go off the rails with Dan Carlin then, yeah, for sure.

• 18:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, apparently he's already obsessed with Dan Carlin, so there you go.

• 18:22Tim Ferriss?

  There you go.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  But I'm sort of like, only a couple of podcasts.

• 18:25Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Well, then he can, he can convert you to Dan Carlin.

• 18:28Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, Blueprint for Armageddon.

• 18:30Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, that's a good one. That's a long series. My, my, my favorite is probably Wrath of the Cons, but I started with Profits of Doom. If you start with Profits of Doom, which leave is available for free, just give it like 15 minutes. It's a very, there's a lot of foreplay involved. It takes a long time to warm up, but then, then it gets really, really good. So just be patient.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 18:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, hopefully that is hopefully that is helpful. And I wish you all the best and good luck with recovering from your injuries.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, same to you.

• 19:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate you submitting your name and number.

• 19:12Speaker 03

  Perfect.

• 19:13Tim Ferriss?

  Have a good night. Watch out for those one year olds. Watch out, they're vicious.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks. They're worth it, too.

• 19:19Tim Ferriss?

  All right, bye.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  Okay, bye.

• 19:23Tim Ferriss?

  Hi, is this Giovanna?

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Yes. Is this Tim?

• 19:27Tim Ferriss?

  This is Tim. Good evening. I don't know what time it is where you are. Where are you?

• 19:33Speaker 02

  I am in Switzerland, in Luton, and it's 4:11 in the morning.

• 19:38Tim Ferriss?

  Wow. Up for the cows, up to milk the cows. Well, I am glad to chat with you. Thanks for staying up or waking up so early.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't be up this early for I for not for a lot of people.

• 19:56Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I am honored and flattered. How can I help? What what might I be able to answer for you?

• 20:02Speaker 02

  So I I was wondering, I mean, before I saw the the article you posted a few hours before the drunk dial thing about studying languages. But now I have another question related to that article.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  How about studying a few different languages at the same time?

• 20:27Tim Ferriss?

  Which languages do you want to study at the same time?

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Well, I'm actually right now I'm in Switzerland. So I lived in US for a few years. And so I kind of got my English to some level, some nice level. And now I want to get my German to that same level, academic level. And I'm also studying French. And I mean, I kind of know some French and Italian and Hungarian. So of course.

• 21:04Tim Ferriss?

  Hungarian is tougher than those other ones, I think.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And of course, I'm not gonna do them all at the same time, but I noticed, for instance, I'm studying like French and German at the same time. And I don't know, I tried to do some Hungarian in the meantime, and I get kind of, I get the words confused sometimes. And now I'm thinking, maybe I should just, you know, focus on one language. Like, how if you learn languages in a short amount of time, how do you, I don't know, uh, when you have to perform or like, talk that language, how do you not confuse it with others?

• 21:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 21:50Tim Ferriss?

  No, I think.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  You learn them.

• 21:52Tim Ferriss?

  If you learn them at roughly the same period of time.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there, so there are a few really interesting questions here. I'll make a couple of, uh, recommendations off the bat. There's one, it's a bit dense. There are some things to be taken from it, called The Loom of Language. This is a very thick book. It's in English, which might be worth looking at. There's also a book called In Other Words, just for people out there, since people will be listening to this, who may not think as adults, they're well-equipped to learn languages, called In Other Words, which is co-authored by someone called, named Hakuta, H-A-K-U-T-A. There are a few approaches that I've used. I actually have an entire folder on my computer that I've kicked forward since 2005 on language

• 22:36Tim Ferriss?

  learning, and it includes a bit on this, just from my own notes that I took in 2004, 2005, when I was studying Spanish and German and a few other languages roughly the same time, within the same three-month period.

• 22:51Tim Ferriss?

  My approach has been, first and foremost, to focus on dialogue whenever possible, so that you're refining your conversational abilities and idioms, idiomatic use of the language. Instead of reading, say, in many classrooms, they use newspapers and things of that type. So my, two of the tools that I use for simultaneously reviewing one language and learning a new language, in other words, I don't, I would not recommend going from ground zero and two languages simultaneously. I think that's very difficult. And in fact.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 23:28Tim Ferriss?

  And in fact, the closer they are, the harder it's going to be. So for instance, if you're studying, what is your native language?

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Serbian.

• 23:36Tim Ferriss?

  Serbian, okay. So I actually had a Serbian roommate in Berlin.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Really?

• 23:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. She was great. She spoke great German, so it's not impossible. But she, and she made fun of me, actually, for the approach I'm about to describe. There's a, there are two different tools I use. One is movies, but I can explain specifically how. The second is comic books, and there are, to be more precise, a number of comic books that are translated into multiple languages. They tend to be Japanese. So for instance, One Piece, there's a comic called One Piece. And if I look at my wall, I have One Piece on one of my bookshelves in four or five different languages. I also do that, did that for Cowboy Bebop, that's another comic book, and a few others.

• 24:26Tim Ferriss?

  What I would do is, say I had developed a decent level of, in this case, Spanish first, and then I went to, no, I'm sorry, German first, and then I went to, went to Spanish-speaking countries like Panama and so on. I wanted to review my German to consolidate it and give it more sticking power, but I wanted to learn Spanish as my new language. What I would do is I would have two versions of the same volumes of that comic book. So let's just say they have One Piece, volume 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I would buy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in Spanish, in German, and in English.

• 25:10Tim Ferriss?

  And then I had, of course, electronic dictionaries and things like that. So I would read the comic in my new target language. And if I didn't understand something, I would go to the same page, the same frame, the same sentence, in the last language that I studied. So in this case, I was reading in Spanish, and then if I didn't understand something, I would go back to German. And I would look at the comic book in the same frame. And the first volume is gonna take you forever. It might take you a few weeks. But within two or three months, you will probably be going through a volume in, let's just say, six to 12 hours. You'll be very, very fast. And...

• 25:51Tim Ferriss?

  Comic books, like I mentioned, are one of the tools. The other is movies. Now, in the case of, say, learning, I'm just going to use an example that a lot of readers will identify with because they are in English-speaking countries, Spanish. A lot of people who try to learn Spanish will watch movies in Spanish with English subtitles. That is only appropriate for very high levels of proficiency. I think it is much more helpful because if you mishear something, you'll make mistakes. If you don't quite catch something, you will also make mistakes and you can't look it up. But if you watch, for instance, movies you know very well with subtitles in your target language, then you can make very, very, very fast progress.

• 26:31Tim Ferriss?

  So I used Die Hard, for instance, the first, I'm dating myself a little bit, to learn not only Japanese at points, but also Chinese and to review. So that helped me with the writing systems, but it also helped me with idiom, it helped me with conversation, etc., just like the comic books. So those are a few of the recommendations that I would make. The post that you saw, I'm not sure which language learning post it was, Benny Lewis, who's L-E-W-I-S, who, whose nickname is the Irish Polyglot, is also worth looking into. He has some very interesting approaches and he speaks many, many languages. So he would also be, I think, a good resource to ping on Twitter or elsewhere.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  So, and what do you think about, like, listening to the music and translating it? Would you surround yourself completely with some language? Like, you know, put your phone on Spanish, for instance, or, you know, do things like that to kind of get into that world or?

• 27:35Tim Ferriss?

  I, my, yeah, no, I can tell you. So my approach, and there are many different approaches, there are different ways to skin this cat, as we would say in English. I don't know where we got that from, by the way, but anyway, I suppose, old, Middle English, we liked skinning cats. But the point I was going to make is that... You have to find an approach that works for you. There are different approaches. My preference is not to do immersion unless I am in the country. I think it's too much work. I would rather bust my ass and try to get an extra week in country where I can immerse myself 24/7 in a real environment as opposed to simulating it here. So I do not change the settings on my phone. I've tried all that.

• 28:19Tim Ferriss?

  I find it more inconvenient than helpful and it's more inclined, in my case, to make me frustrated and quit. So there are, however, people who have become very, very good. For instance, Japanese, there's a site called All Japanese All The Time, AJATT. And this young guy became incredibly good at Japanese by doing exactly what you just described. Benny Lewis, I believe, uses internet radio very much for the same reason.

• 28:54Tim Ferriss?

  This simulated immersion environment. But I've never done that. I find it too frustrating to stumble in the beginning in that particular way. I would prefer to take, for instance, that time and apply it to doing Skype video sessions with someone who can help me work on pronunciation, to get my pronunciation as dialed as possible before I go into a native environment. My general progression would be pronunciation with set phrases that are very useful. So memorizing, say, 20 to 50 set phrases that are high frequency, that you can use all the time.

• 29:33Tim Ferriss?

  Then moving to, say, present tense, original sentence construction and using auxiliary, what are called auxiliary verbs or helping verbs. So for instance, in, it's probably true in...

• 29:50Tim Ferriss?

  It's probably true in French. I don't speak French. It is true in German. It's certainly true in Spanish. You can set, you can learn the conjugations, if you know what I mean, the declinations for, for the verbs to want, to need, uh, let's say should, for instance, there are a handful of them. And that allows you to then learn the infinitives of all the other verbs, basically, and put them at the end. So if you, in, in other words, if you, if you just learn to say, I want, you want, he wants, she wants, they want,

• 30:27Tim Ferriss?

  we want, et cetera, then you can add to eat, to read, uh, whatever it might be. And in, in, by mastering those auxiliary verbs, which is something that I learned from a guy named Michelle Thomas indirectly through his materials, M I C H E L T H O M A S, you can amass hundreds of verbs, uh, but only learn the conjugations for five or six, say. That is a cheat that allows you to make a lot of progress really quickly. And then I would work on basic grammar, but, uh, past that point, you need to be amassing vocabulary

• 31:08Tim Ferriss?

  at a pretty rapid clip. Um, so I use flashcards also from, and I prefer physical flashcards at this point. There are good programs like Unki. Uh, Duolingo is fantastic overall for everything. Uh, but I use flashcards, physical flashcards from a company called Vised, V I S hyphen E D dot com. Uh, so

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I read that in your article about, yeah, the flashcards. Yeah, I, I love the, the things that you can touch and see and write and

• 31:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Things like that.

• 31:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  It works better with me.

• 31:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. That's my, that's my particular preference, anyway. I, I do apologize. I probably should jump off in a bit just because I have to, uh, call quite a few people, but, um, I'm happy to answer one more thing.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Okay, so how do you get to like a a much higher level? For instance, I'm like, I have really good basic basics of German right now. And I wanna get to like academic level, like B two, for instance, or maybe C one. Uh, what's your, I don't know, how how do you get completely into completely fluent in one language in some shorter period of time?

• 32:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this is a longer.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  If you have all those.

• 32:30Tim Ferriss?

  No, I understand. Yeah, it's it's it's a longer conversation, but I would say that you can study for the test, right? So it would be dictated in large part by the test and the certification that you're looking for. Uh, this is something that I studied for in Buenos Aires when I was trying to get my advanced level Spanish certificate, for instance. You can study for the test. Uh, if you want to try to use non teachers, in other words, use a tandem format, that's what they call it in German anyway, where you are teaching someone your language while they're teaching you theirs, which may or may not work for you, but perhaps you help them with English and they help you with German.

• 33:14Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I have found translation of very specific sentences that are preparing for you, preparing you for the test to be most effective. That's probably beyond the scope of this conversation. It requires would require a lot of explanation, but most native speakers cannot teach their native language. So you you have to enable them with very clear instructions. And the best way to do that, that I have found, is trading translations in areas that you have already identified you need help with. So effectively, all they're doing is saying, that sounds funny, or that sounds correct. This is how you should fix it. That's all they're doing is is giving you, for instance, a sentence in English.

• 33:56Tim Ferriss?

  So let's just say they're of an equal level in English as you are in German. And you might be working on the subjunctive case, right? This is a more advanced skill. So you're saying if I had a million dollars, then I would do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The hypothetical case. This is the subjunctive, you know, in German, in Spanish, it's a more advanced skill. Or reported speech, you might be doing, he said to her that she should do this, this and this. It's a more advanced sort of linguistic construction. Then they would give it to you in English and you would translate it into German. So A, you would correct their English so they get a benefit out of it.

• 34:38Tim Ferriss?

  And then you would try to produce the same sentence in German and they would correct it. Right? But you're practicing for the test in either case. So hopefully that helps.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  There's no, yeah, there's no cheating in that.

• 34:53Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there are cheats in the sense that you can use mnemonic devices. And I think Ed Cook, C O O K E, is a good guy to look to for that. He has a company called Memorize, M E M R I S E. Ultimately, I think you can do it in a very short period of time. Certainly three to six months is more than enough time. I think you can, as opposed to three to six years. But you have, but you have to have the deliberate practice focusing on the right things.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 35:24Tim Ferriss?

  So hopefully that helps, but I, I will let you get to sleep since I need to get drinking and smiling and dying.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Okay. What are you, what are you drinking tonight?

• 35:35Tim Ferriss?

  I am drinking Hendrick's Gin and Canada Dry Club Soda, which is probably bottled in Hoboken, New Jersey or something like that. But it says Canada Dry. Don't sue me, Canada Dry.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 35:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So good luck, good luck with your German. Viel Spaß and.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Viel Spaß.

• 35:57Tim Ferriss?

  And.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:00Tim Ferriss?

  And sleep. Bitte schön and sleep well. Maybe I'll talk to you again soon.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Have a good night, Tim. Nice talking to you and all the best.

• 36:09Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Thank you.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 36:11Tim Ferriss?

  Bye bye.

• 36:13Tim Ferriss?

  Hi, is this Samantha?

• 36:16Speaker 04

  Oh my god, is this Tim Ferriss?

• 36:18Tim Ferriss?

  It is Tim Ferriss.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Ah, this is the best day ever, I'm so excited. Hello.

• 36:23Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, how are you? Where are you at the moment?

• 36:26Speaker 04

  Um, I'm in my house in Ottawa.

• 36:28Tim Ferriss?

  Ottawa, good town. That's Shopify country over there.

• 36:32Speaker 04

  It is. Um, actually, I just found out we're like one degree of separation. I've been super excited about it since I found out.

• 36:38Tim Ferriss?

  Sweet. Yeah, you guys have the coolest place to ice skate I think I've ever seen. That gigantic... What is it? I guess it's a riv- what is it? A river reservoir?

• 36:49Speaker 04

  It's a canal.

• 36:50Tim Ferriss?

  Canal that's like eight miles or whatever long that you can scoot around. What are those things called? Uh, help me out here. Not badger. Uh, something tails?

• 37:00Speaker 04

  Oh, beaver tails.

• 37:01Tim Ferriss?

  Beaver tails. Can you explain for all of the Yanks in the audience? What, and everyone who's non-Canadian, what is a beaver tail?

• 37:09Speaker 04

  Uh, it's basically just fried dough smothered in butter and then topped with sugary toppings.

• 37:15Tim Ferriss?

  So delicious.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  It's so good and so bad for you. And it's only proper to eat in the winter while you're on the canal skating with hot chocolate. Like you should have cold hands, warming up with like beaver tail and some hot chocolate. It's fantastic.

• 37:28Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, that sounds so good. So how can I help? I am, uh, well on my way to inebriated and ready to self-immolate. So, please, help me to destroy myself. No, I'm kidding. Uh, what can I, what can I, what can I answer for you?

• 37:44Speaker 04

  Um, well, I have recently took some advice from you and I quit my job and I really hated what I was doing and who I was with and all that stuff. And I went out on my own and somehow became an actress, totally accidentally, and a model also by accident, not what I was looking for. Um, but I also own this little lifestyle brand and I want to work on viral marketing. So, I'm really trying to destruct and understand this whole like elements of viral marketing and how I can get more. So I just did my first Facebook Live video, uh, not yesterday, but the day before. And I got myself more than 2,000 views, which I was pretty proud of. But I haven't, like, I haven't been able to convert it, right? So I don't, I haven't made sales from this yet.

• 38:25Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm. So viral marketing is a very...

• 38:31Tim Ferriss?

  I think commonly misunderstood and also overused term that doesn't make it a valuable concept. There are a few, there are a few people I would recommend taking a look at who have discussed this quite a bit. Two who come to mind, and I'm sure there are many others, since my memory is somewhat impaired at the moment. One is Andrew Chen. Andrew Chen is currently on the growth team at Uber, but for a very long time wrote about this type of thing. The second, actually now I'm thinking of three. The second is a guy named

• 39:09Tim Ferriss?

  Andy Johns. I think it's Johns, plural, it may be singular, but very, very smart guy about such things. Let me just do a quick Google machine search. Yeah, Andy Johns. And he's currently the Vice President of Product at Wealthfront, but has worked at many, many different companies in the growth teams at Facebook, Twitter, Quora, et cetera. And let me think here. The third person now I've displaced because I thought of Andy. I may come up with the third person, but those are two who are very good to start

• 39:52Tim Ferriss?

  with. The, a foundational essay that I would suggest reading, and this is free, which will give you a, I think, a good core principle to keep in mind when doing any of this is 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly. That is on his site, KK.org. If you just search 1,000 True Fans, it should pop right up. But the basic idea is

• 40:23Tim Ferriss?

  For viral marketing to work, and he doesn't use that term, I don't think, but you need a core group of super fans, true fans, to recommend what you do to other people. That is pretty much it. And I think that to echo something that Seth Godin said on my podcast, you know, to go big, you really want to initially aim very, very narrow. And to that end, one thing that may be helpful is reading a particular chapter in a particular book. Very short, this will take you like 15 minutes. It's called "The Law of Category," that is the chapter, in a book called "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing."

• 41:08Tim Ferriss?

  And some of the examples are outdated. I would read this in the original edition. Andy Johns, by the way, if you want to follow him on Twitter, is, I just found this, @IBringTraffic, which is pretty good handle for such a fella. Very, very, very smart guy.

• 41:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, he has a lot to say that's worth listening to.

• 41:34Tim Ferriss?

  The "Law of Category" chapter will reiterate a lot of what you would find, and I think these are complimentary in a book called, I believe it is just "The Blue Ocean Strategy." And a lot of it is superfluous, but I'd say 40% of it is very, very useful. And it discusses effectively how to niche yourself properly so that you are the number one or number two player. And if you're not the number one or number two player, you have to choose a different niche or create a different category. So those are a few starting points. I make no claims to be a viral marketing expert, but I do think I'm pretty good at getting word of mouth.

• 42:18Tim Ferriss?

  And I view them as very, very close cousins.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  Beautiful. Can we talk about being handstands?

• 42:28Tim Ferriss?

  Doing handstands? Sure. I would say I'm at best 10% qualified to give advice on handstands, but yes, I'm happy to attempt to lie, cheat, and steal my way through giving you a legitimate answer.

• 42:47Speaker 04

  Okay, so I'm working on it. I want to get away from the wall and that's what I'm having trouble with. And I know it's definitely me just being a little bit afraid, but my former career was being a barber and I had a lot of repetitive tension and I couldn't do a lot of that type of work because it hurt too much. So now that I'm away from that line of work, I'm super strong all of a sudden. But I'm just having a hard time with the balance part, guys. And I'm just having a hard time figuring it out.

• 43:12Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so a few things. I would recommend, and I'm borrowing from a guy named Coach Sommer, Chris Sommer, S-O-M-M-E-R, who I interviewed on my podcast. So I definitely recommend listening to him because he is your handstand master. A few exercises that helped me very greatly. One would be, and you're gonna have to look these up, an exercise called cast wall walks. This is going from a handstand facing towards the wall into a push-up by walking your feet down the wall and back up. The key, however, is maintaining a hollow and protracted position. And this is discussed in my podcast with him, so I

• 43:56Tim Ferriss?

  won't belabor it here. But protracted really means your shoulders are pushed forward. So if you imagine hugging a telephone pole, in effect, your shoulders should be in that position. It's extremely exhausting. It's actually best to do at the end of a workout. The other is, well, two things really in combination, something called hollow body rocks. And you can, you can look that up. And then tuck hops. Tuck hops are where you're hopping into a handstand position, but your thighs are basically against your abdomen. You're in a tuck position, almost like you're doing a front flip, or imagining someone

• 44:38Tim Ferriss?

  doing a front flip, i.e. front tuck, in a diving competition or something like that, where you're completely compressed into this fetal position. Your legs are going to be in that position while you're maintaining the handstand. And then you bring your feet down when you lose your balance, and then you jump and tuck back up. You hop back up into that tuck position. Tuck hops are really, really helpful. And I would encourage, it's very, it's challenging to do handstand practice on a soft surface, but

• 45:11Tim Ferriss?

  Another exercise that I have found helpful, and you can do this on a mat, is where you walk, you're effectively walking the length of a mat. And I did this exercise with a coach named Sam. She was great at a place called Athletic Playground in Emeryville. For people in the Bay Area who want to check it out. And it involved keeping your, basically imagine you have your arms, you're standing up. You have your arms overhead extended and you raise your shoulders as high as you possibly can by your ears. Okay, you're going to maintain that the entire time.

• 45:52Tim Ferriss?

  And you would then place your hands down, kick one leg up. So your legs are scissored, switch them and bring the opposite leg down. If this makes any sense at all. And then you stand back up and you take another step and you repeat until you get to the opposite end of the room. But I would say to keep things simple, since we don't have video on this, this audio program, that you should focus on hollow body rocks and tuck hops. I think those are two very good tools. And then at the end of a workout, if you are feeling ambitious, you can try cast wall walks. All of this stuff is borrowed from Coach Chris Sommer.

• 46:33Speaker 05

  Thank you so much for calling me. I want other people to have a chance, so I'm not going to keep you, but thank you so much. It would have been awesome.

• 46:39Tim Ferriss?

  Of course, my pleasure. Thanks for, uh, thanks for spending the time.

• 46:42Speaker 05

  Hey, anytime you're in Ottawa, call me.

• 46:44Tim Ferriss?

  Rock on, go Ottawa.

• 46:46Speaker 05

  Have a nice night. Thank you.

• 46:48Tim Ferriss?

  I will. Thanks. Have a good night. Bye.

• 46:50Speaker 05

  Bye.

• 46:52Tim Ferriss?

  Hi, this is Ashley.

• 46:54Speaker 05

  Yes, Tim.

• 46:55Tim Ferriss?

  Ashley, yes, this is Tim. How are you?

• 46:58Speaker 05

  That's good. It's pretty hysterical. Okay.

• 47:02Tim Ferriss?

  Here I am. You're in California or no, you have California. Sweet.

• 47:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. No, I'm actually in Annapolis, Maryland right now. I was asleep. I got a 5:00 AM train to Manhattan.

• 47:15Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 47:15Speaker 05

  But I'm getting up to do this. Let's do it. Yeah.

• 47:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let's do it. Well, good crabs in Maryland. I like, I like Maryland crabs.

• 47:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, I live in DC, but yeah.

• 47:25Tim Ferriss?

  No, that's the right way to do it, right? I mean, you live in, you live in Maryland or you live in Virginia and then you hop, skip and jump into DC.

• 47:32Speaker 05

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 47:34Tim Ferriss?

  How can I help or try to help?

• 47:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, I think it's fascinating, right? So I'm struggling with, I'm personally not struggling, but I'm struggling with, and definitely from a career standpoint, this concept of what I call info-obesity, right? And I think there is a lot of conversation around it in the, I don't know if you've heard it used in like sort of the Silicon Valley area in the tech space, but in the nutrition space, what I've been seeing definitely, instead of like introducing people to how helpful and helpful nutrition, you know, their nutrition is for their body, it's really this like, wow, we have so much information. And so, you know, I use the term info-obesity and that we're all suffering from info-obesity regardless of our health status and, you know, it's drowning the quality of information, right?

• 48:19Speaker 05

  So that's a larger, like, more of a country conversation. But I find where you are and a certain segment of my clients, and I also just find it like an interesting dilemma, right? If you're interested in experimenting, if you're interested in taking it to the next level, if you're interested in really understanding how your body works and what you can do with it, that dance between information and even like finding new things, you know, and learning about yourself with it being too much, right? And sort of, not the orthorexia that people are talking about, this pursuit of perfect, but really just this idea of doing, of taking in so much information or in a certain sense, guinea pigging yourself.

• 49:04Speaker 05

  So what made me think about it was I absolutely loved the podcasts that you just did on the ralpamycin and metformin. And I've heard one of those presentations and it was so interesting because the doctors and scientists were saying, oh yeah, the conclusion of which is, yeah, we don't take those, you know? And I thought one guy's piece was really good because he's like, so, you know, I'm not diabetic, I'm healthy. And so I think the piece for me is, and this is very much to your audience or when I'm, you know, working with people more in the performance space, is where is that space of saying like, you know, discovery and experimentation is fascinating, but at the same time, I actually am healthy and I am right now, you know, doing well, so.

• 49:48Speaker 05

  Um, let's not shake that up, right? You know, so it's not, um, let's not bring in more information or the newest thing and, and the acquisition of knowledge could be different than like testing it out on yourself. So I was curious for you personally, how do you vet that space? You know, how do you decide what you are, are willing to do versus turn around and say, that's super cool. I'm fascinated by it, but I'm not going to do that. And then the other part is when you're thinking about what you deliver for your audience, where do you draw that line in terms of vetting information?

• 50:22Tim Ferriss?

  Sure. All right. There's a lot to tackle here. Let me take.

• 50:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:25Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no, no, it's good. No, no, no, I like talking about this stuff. So I mean, part one is how do I think about my own experimentation and what do I decide to undertake or not undertake? So how do I vet that? And part two is what do I choose to convey to my audience or attempt to teach and how do I vet that? Uh, let me have some gin first. Hold on.

• 50:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:52Tim Ferriss?

  So.

• 50:52Speaker 05

  What kind of gin?

• 50:53Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, this is Hendrix. I'm a big fan of Hendrix gin. Uh, very simple Hendrix and soda. I'm a simple, simple man, simple man. But, um, this is probably doing the opposite of rapamycin at the moment. Uh, uh, let's see. So the, the first part is a, maybe a correction of a misperception, not from you, but from a lot of people. I, I think that I'm very often viewed as a, uh, daredevil, risk-taking, cutting-edge experimenter. And

• 51:29Tim Ferriss?

  I don't view myself that way in the sense that most of what I test has a lot of literature to elucidate at least a plausible mechanism of action and a directional error of causation. All that, that is a fancy way of saying that if I am considering, for instance, using a substance, whether it be rapamycin or metformin or otherwise, there is a lot on PubMed, uh, on clinicaltrials.gov, et cetera, that I can use to determine the potential upside and potential downside of an experiment.

• 52:15Tim Ferriss?

  That's not true for all things, certainly. But generally, I am not the first of 100 monkeys to try something. I am a big fan of looking at underexplored applications or off-label uses of well-tested substances, diets, exercise regimens. Does that make sense? Totally, yeah. So for instance, I may look at resveratrol and its potential applications to endurance instead of longevity.

• 52:55Tim Ferriss?

  I may look at exogenous ketones, like I have keto force and a bunch of weird ketone esters in sketchy, crazy-looking, breaking, bad containers in my refrigerator. They probably don't need to be in my refrigerator, but the point being, I am looking at their potential application in my life to anti-inflammation and breath-halt times. They're unrelated, but those two particular areas, even though they're not explicitly designed for those things or sold for those things.

• 53:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yet, at the same time, I have a good understanding, I would say, or a sufficient understanding of the potential downsides. I think I understand the worst-case scenarios in taking these, at least in the short term. So those are for me personally. I try not to be, I try to be on the dull edge when it comes to compound selection. If we're talking about, say, drugs or different types of food supplements, et cetera, I try to be on the cutting edge of new applications of known.

• 54:15Tim Ferriss?

  Substances, training regimens, diets, et cetera. So for instance, you take the ketogenic diet that was originally developed primarily for epileptic children. This is not very well known. The Charlie Foundation, for instance, has done some great work in this area. And I have very close friends of friends who have stopped horrific, say epileptic episodes where they're having seizures 10s or hundreds of times a day by modifying their diets. It was originally designed for that application, but then we started looking at body recomposition and then we start looking at, say, military applications of exogenous ketones

• 54:57Tim Ferriss?

  to people who need to use rebreathers or something crazy and esoteric like that. As far as what gets conveyed to my audience, I really try to

• 55:10Tim Ferriss?

  ameliorate the problem presented by infobesity, right? And that was the first, you know, this is actually the first time I've heard the term, but information overload, I think, is, is often a consequence of striving for perfection instead of good enough. And I'll give you a perfect example of that. I do think that paleo or the ketogenic diet have some tremendous applications. I also think that strict paleo, just like strict veganism, or the ketogenic diet done properly, because it's a very binary, it's a very binary diet, are going to have at best a 10 to 15% compliance rate, meaning of every 100 people I might try to convey

• 55:56Tim Ferriss?

  the, the prescription for these diets to, of every 100, at best, I'm looking at 15 people, 15 people who succeed. That is not acceptable to me. I think that there is probably a smarter way to convert people to a more intelligent way and healthful way of eating. And for me, that is the slow carb diet. The slow carb diet may be viewed as a, like, poor man's option compared to these others, but I know that I can get a much higher compliance rate. We're talking 50, 60%. And it's the gateway drug.

• 56:32Tim Ferriss?

  To these more strict and unforgiving diets that may have a marginally better outcome, but a hugely, a vastly greater abandonment rate.

• 56:46Tim Ferriss?

  So for me, the question first and foremost is, what is the likelihood of injury? Right? I want to minimize the likelihood of injury, which is why I tend to avoid, or at least provide great disclaimers for anything involving, for instance, breathing exercises or breath hold training. Because the downside is you have a shallow round of blackout and you die. It's a very, very significant downside risk.

• 57:11Tim Ferriss?

  So what is the downside? If it's too great for a, for too high a percentage of my readership or listenership, I don't share it. It's just not worth it. I mean, trying to follow the Hippocratic oath to the extent that I can, even though I'm not a medical doctor. The second is, what is the adherence rate? What is the likely adherence rate? So for me, the priorities are, like, per thousand people or per hundred people, what percentage will actually follow what it is that I am prescribing? Doesn't matter how good it is, if the adherence rate is abysmally low. Right? So adherence, number one. How many people are going to do this? Effectiveness, number two.

• 57:53Tim Ferriss?

  Does it produce the results desired and promised? Number three, efficiency. Is it efficient in its use of time and other resources, capital, et cetera? Right? So those, those are the three checkboxes, or I should say gates through which I pass in my head, all of my potential prescriptions to my audience. So you have safety, adherence, efficacy, and efficiency. That's, that's how I think about it. And going through those checkboxes in that order, I tend to provide a very minimal dose of information for any particular first step.

• 58:38Tim Ferriss?

  You can always invite complexity later and you can make the complexity digestible to a very high percentage of people who have already gone through the minimal and intermediate. But if you try to impose that upon someone who is just opening their mind to a novice level of understanding, 99% out of 100 are going to fail. So that's how I think about it.

• 59:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's really fascinating. I think one of the things you do in that way is take, my sense has been from the guests and from having listened for quite some time, is really taking that information and number one, offering it in a targeted, at minimum targeted or a hyper-targeted way. And then the second part is really providing how to actually implement it. And I think that that's what's missing from a lot of the information that's out there is that it's not delivered. You know, we know that more information is not the answer. It's really how to implement it into your life, into one's life, that's going to actually result in action. And I do see that. I think the other part is, I think your guests also have a level of credibility, either

• 59:47Speaker 05

  from personal, both I think from personal experience and then also the professional side. So it's pretty fascinating. Well, it's super cool. You know, for me, I just, I think it's an area that I'm really passionate about because I think we are definitely overloading the brain, which obviously has such a connection to the gut. And so we just see people that are not moving forward or moving forward successfully. And I think your example about Calio or certainly in the ketogenic space is really spot on. So thank you.

• 1:00:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, thanks. No, I appreciate it. I think that people can do more than they believe possible. They just can't do it all at the same time. And so what I try to focus on a lot is what I consider the magic ingredient that is very widely neglected, which is sequencing.

• 1:00:40Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:41Tim Ferriss?

  In other words, you can choose the right information. So you do an 80/20 analysis and you figure out which 20% of the information or exercises or foods or whatever it might be, supplements produce 80% of the results you're looking for, changes in biomarkers, whatever the hell it might be. But putting those in a logical order or a progression where you get maximum adherence, that is really for me, the secret sauce. I spent a lot of time thinking about that. All right, we have 10 things, we have 10 things out of 100 that are disproportionately important. How can I put these 10 things in a particular order so that for every 100 people who start with step one, I have the maximum number who get through step 10?

• 1:01:24Tim Ferriss?

  And I hate to say it, but most of the instructional information out there does not give a shit about this, or they just don't take the time to really consider it. They put the onus on the learner, and I think that's a problem. And I think as, you know, Eric Weinstein, who I had on the podcast, really brilliant PhD physicist, mathematician, he said, we talk about learning disabilities all the time. We never talk about teaching disabilities. I think if you look, if you look at most non-

• 1:01:53Speaker 05

  Fascinating. I missed that. Oh, that is great. Okay.

• 1:01:56Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. He's, he's, he's great. It's a fun episode. And if you look at the nonfiction books out there that are prescriptive, i.e. how to books of some sort, if you look at classes, if you look at the teaching that fails, it is very often because they don't think about this progression. They just take the 10 things and they've identified what's important, but they teach them willy nilly in some order that is convenient for them, but not a logical progression for the learner that minimizes quitting or overwhelm. So that is, that is how I think about a lot of this. Hopefully that is helpful in some fashion.

• 1:02:41Speaker 05

  It totally is. And I think it's going to be moving forward to continue to address this topic and work to help people, you know, I think- I've done a less stellar job than you just did, so this is helpful to me from a practitioner's standpoint. I love that teachability to you. But the other part is, you know, just sort of looking at when you ask someone whether or not something is applicable from a nutrition standpoint, it's, you know, it really is, who are you right now? And, you know, I often, I have like, great examples of, of people who have jumped on things and, you know, who, because it's not applicable to them right now. I had plenty example was when the study that came out about, uh, fish oils being problematic for, um, prostate or potentially

• 1:03:23Speaker 05

  problematic. Science wasn't great. You know, I had all these emails from people, but you put me on this stuff, you know, should I, should I stop it, et cetera? And then I went through and like 85% of them were women. And I was like, hold on a second, like, if you find your prostate, you know, let me know, you know, that kind of a thing. So I think we, you know, that's like the macro example, but on a smaller scale, I think people are trying to really figure out what's that sequencing, what should they be doing right now? And I think that the more that we can get to that, if that's just, that's awesome. So, um, yeah, really cool. What you should be doing right now is more obvious. So I'm excited to listen to this episode. And, uh, yeah, I hope you enjoy the gym and I am going to, uh, put myself to sleep because we know that that is, uh, that's an important part

• 1:04:06Speaker 05

  of the sequencing. But, um, I really appreciate that. Yeah.

• 1:04:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 05

  It's gonna be a lot to think about.

• 1:04:11Tim Ferriss?

  No, my pleasure. And I would add one more thing, which is, uh, I think that it's important to, to make people coachable and improve adherence to, to help them develop a basic scientific literacy. So there's a book, there's a great book called Bad Science that I recommend to a lot of people by Ben Goldacre. Uh, I did two, one or two appendices in the Four Hour Body that are related, or actually adaptations and excerpts from this book. Uh, but I think on the, perhaps, well, one of the most important concepts and Nav, uh, Navdeep Chandel from the Metformin Rapid Mice and Conversation mentions, but the, the difference between,

• 1:04:52Tim Ferriss?

  we won't get into it right now, but the difference between relative risk versus absolute risk, I think is really important for people to understand because the media fucks that up constantly. So it can, it can set off alarms when they don't need to be set off and let things slide when they shouldn't slide at all. So I will leave it at that and I'll let you get some sleep.

• 1:05:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Tim Ferriss?

  But I appreciate you taking the time.

• 1:05:14Speaker 05

  Thanks. Have a great night. I appreciate it.

• 1:05:16Tim Ferriss?

  You too.

• 1:05:16Speaker 05

  Take care.

• 1:05:16Tim Ferriss?

  Bye bye.

• 1:05:19Tim Ferriss?

  Marissa, this is Tim Ferriss calling. Good evening.

• 1:05:23Speaker 06

  Hello. Wow. Emotion.

• 1:05:29Tim Ferriss?

  Well, how are you this evening?

• 1:05:31Speaker 06

  Good, good. I've never been so happy to, excited to talk to a drunk man, but I guess this is the first.

• 1:05:38Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I've been, uh, I've never been so excited to be drunk and calling someone in the Bay Area. So here we are.

• 1:05:44Speaker 06

  Oh, wonderful. Very good, very good.

• 1:05:46Tim Ferriss?

  We meet at last. How can I help?

• 1:05:50Speaker 06

  Um, well, I have a couple of questions. I'll be fast. I know that you have other ladies to talk to. Um, a entrepreneur and investor, you're both, and I know they're not mutually exclusive, but which one would you say that you paid off better for you, for a better, freer life? And when I say better, not necessarily money, but experience and abundance of life, uh, that kind of feeling.

• 1:06:16Tim Ferriss?

  I would say entrepreneur, uh, because being an entrepreneur offers you more opportunities and more diverse contexts to expose yourself to being uncomfortable and developing comfort with uncertainty. And I think that having the experience of building something yourself as an entrepreneur, trying to persuade others, trying to negotiate effectively in many different areas, makes you, makes you a better investor, uh, more, more than practicing investing with other people's money certainly, helps you to be a more effective entrepreneur. I think that

• 1:07:02Tim Ferriss?

  A, in this case, being an entrepreneur helps you to be a better investor than being an investor, at least in many different contexts, would help you to be a successful entrepreneur. So my answer would be the entrepreneurship. But I should unders, I should, I should just underscore that I don't think everyone should be an entrepreneur. The, the idea of starting a company is, I think, romanced and, um, perhaps dramatized to a great extent in the US on the covers of magazines and everything else. And the the mistake that people make, which they can't be faulted for is there they

• 1:07:45Tim Ferriss?

  end up only reading about the success stories and there are a lot of failure stories. They just don't end up being written about generally as cover stories for magazines. And it's a difficult road. You have to have a particular type of, I think, programming and hardwiring for it to work. So I don't think that everyone should start a company and I don't think that they should feel badly about themselves if they choose a different route. There are many people who've developed incredible skills, built incredible lives and helped to improve the world without ever starting a company of their own. And I think that that it's a matter of embracing and cultivating your own strengths and having

• 1:08:30Tim Ferriss?

  this having or developing the self-awareness to identify those and not just doing what is fashionable in this sense, or I should say in the current day, which is starting a startup. So I'll get off my soapbox now. Sorry for being so long-winded. It is a side effect of the alcohol. Please continue.

• 1:08:55Speaker 06

  That's perfect. No, that makes perfect sense. And, you know, I guess that's the reason why a lot of us don't do it. And then the next question is, you know, what, you know, do you go with a service or a product? And, you know, there are many choices down the line, but also the alternative of not being an entrepreneur is also boring. So that's kind of, you know, tossing up options. Which leads me to the next question. I know that this could go on forever and I don't want to take too much time, but it's so hard to change gears from somebody who, you know, I don't do, I'm not an employee, but and I can all again, I don't say that I'm an entrepreneur either because I don't have a startup company, but somewhere in between and trying to change gears.

• 1:09:39Speaker 06

  Why is it so difficult to change gears and make the change? And I guess, in different words, you know, finding that news, muse. And I know that I've read your four hour week book and somehow I get stuck on the information overload. So it's where to start is. Kind of the question that lingers.

• 1:10:01Tim Ferriss?

  Sure. Yeah, I think I think that the the fallacy that stops a lot of people, and this is propagated by a lot of media, a lot of keynote speeches, a lot of TV, is that you have to choose one or the other. What I mean by that is people think of employee and entrepreneur as mutually exclusive. So they feel like they need to quit their full-time job, jump headfirst into the dark water, not knowing the depth, and figure out being a full-time entrepreneur, and that's not necessary at all. I think that the most important chapter in the Four Hour Work Week is the

• 1:10:45Tim Ferriss?

  chapter on fear setting.

• 1:10:49Tim Ferriss?

  And discusses a gentleman named Hans, who goes from his legal career to building a surf company in Brazil. But the fear setting exercise, which is really identifying the worst-case scenarios and how you could recover from them, is more important than goal-setting and SMART, you know, the specific measurable achievable, blah, blah, blah. I think that identifying your where you have the emergency brake on and elucidating your specific reasons for being fearful is exceptionally important, A. And then, B, realizing that I think the

• 1:11:33Tim Ferriss?

  best way to start a company and to become an entrepreneur is to do it in your off-hours. Start by developing something in the evenings, on the weekends, and testing it with a very, very small group of people. And once you have traction that you think could supplant or replace your full-time income from your job, whatever that might be, then and only then. Once you've sufficiently proven to yourself and others that you have a product in a market that will pay for that product, do you continue?

• 1:12:09Tim Ferriss?

  I think that the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber is a very good book to read as it relates to product versus service. I know that's not the specific question you asked, but you mentioned it earlier. Whenever possible, I think product is easier than service. They're both hard to do well, but I think that service inherently has more operator bottleneck and is more likely to leave you feeling like you cannot at any point leave your business alone.

• 1:12:44Speaker 06

  Which is, that's why I'm in the service business. That's why I was talking about that. I have to be there to service.

• 1:12:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so I think that the E-Myth Revisited is a very good book for you to read because it talks about being a technician versus being a business owner and how to work on your business instead of in your business. I think it's a very helpful book and that would be one starting point that I would, I think, recommend for you just based on the very little that I have gleaned from what we've talked about so far.

• 1:13:21Speaker 06

  Image Revisited, that's the name?

• 1:13:24Tim Ferriss?

  The E-Myth, so it's E hyphen myth revisited.

• 1:13:29Speaker 06

  Oh, the myth, yeah.

• 1:13:30Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly, by Michael Gerber, G E R B E R.

• 1:13:35Speaker 06

  And, okay, one quick question, one quick question. If you were to do it all over again, what would you change first? Very general question.

• 1:13:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, no, this is a great question and you know, I have asked a lot of people this question myself and I'm going to give a very unoriginal answer, but.

• 1:13:57Tim Ferriss?

  I'm really happy with where I am. I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't jinx it. I think that

• 1:14:05Tim Ferriss?

  if I were to, maybe a different approach to answering that question is, and it might seem like a dodge, but what advice would I give to 30-year-olds in general? Right? I'm a 39-year-old guy right now. What advice would I give to my 25, or what advice would I give to a group of 25-year-olds or 30-year-olds? And I think the answer is, the answers would include, one, as a meta-principle to guide other decisions, you are the average of the five people you associate with most. So choose the people you surround yourself with, the people you associate with very, very carefully, which is easier said than done. But I think that's, that is a principle that overlays many other

• 1:14:49Tim Ferriss?

  decisions. Second, learn how to negotiate and persuade. I think that that is part and parcel with learning to communicate well in a written format. You need to get good at writing and persuading. The, let's see, Secrets of Power Negotiating is one book. Ideally, digested in audio. There is audio. That is by, it is Richard Dawson, I believe, D-A-W-S-O-N. I found that exceptionally helpful. Getting Past No is another book that I would recommend, which is the more realistic

• 1:15:33Tim Ferriss?

  counterpart to Getting to Yes. I won't get into all the history of those two books, but Getting Past No, I think is very helpful. And there's a book by, I want to say, William Zinsner. I've had too much gin to pronounce that properly, but On Writing Well is the name of the book. It's been celebrated for decades now. I think it had its 25th anniversary post-publication a few years ago. On Writing Well is a book that I have revisited several times and found very helpful for written communication. Those would be a few of the things that I would generally recommend and certainly underscore for myself at that age as well.

• 1:16:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I second that because it's actually the persuasion and the negotiation. And I only learned it late in life, so I wish I'd known that before, but now I have to catch up now, but it makes sense.

• 1:16:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it takes practice. It all takes practice.

• 1:16:33Speaker 06

  Very good. Well, I could have done this conversation in Lumpharo, but I don't think it would have been fair to everybody because not everybody would understand that, but I was, I was, I would have been excited to talk to you in Lumpharo, but wait, another moment.

• 1:16:49Tim Ferriss?

  La próxima vez entonces.

• 1:16:52Speaker 06

  La próxima vez y que estén bien en curva.

• 1:16:55Tim Ferriss?

  Bueno, gracias, muchísimas gracias, y bueno, hasta la próxima.

• 1:17:01Speaker 06

  Thank you so much for the amazing work and, you know, for not let it get to your head, which is actually very humbling.

• 1:17:08Tim Ferriss?

  Well, thank you for taking the time. Nice to speak with you and have a good night and good luck.

• 1:17:13Speaker 06

  The same here. Goodbye.

• 1:17:15Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, bye bye. Hi, is this Liz?

• 1:17:19Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:17:20Tim Ferriss?

  Liz, this is Tim Ferriss. How are you?

• 1:17:24Speaker 07

  Oh, my God. I'm great. How are you?

• 1:17:29Tim Ferriss?

  I'm good. Are you in Florida? Are you in Florida?

• 1:17:32Speaker 07

  No, I'm actually in Charleston, Top Carolina, but I'm from Florida originally.

• 1:17:37Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's where the tricky phone number comes in. Charleston's great. Have you been, have you been to Husk by chance?

• 1:17:43Speaker 07

  Oh, my God, yes, we love Husk. So, so, so good. I had like, we went there the month that it, or we tried to go the month that it opened, but it was like booked for that entire month.

• 1:17:54Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Popular.

• 1:17:56Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:17:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they have more bacon and pig products and butter than you can shake a South Carolina stick at. That place is intense. I had brunch there and I was like, all right, I'm not going to eat for the next two weeks. So good, though. Very good.

• 1:18:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:10Tim Ferriss?

  Good choice on town. That is a cool town. I've been very, very drunk there before, so it's very coincidental that I am well on my way right now. Let me stop talking and let me allow you to start talking. What can I answer for you or help you with?

• 1:18:27Speaker 07

  Okay, well, I'm quite honored to be talking to you. I'm a longtime listener and reader.

• 1:18:33Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you.

• 1:18:34Speaker 07

  Um, yeah, this will probably make me an even more insufferable fangirl, according to my friends. Um, so, okay, I want to be a writer.

• 1:18:47Speaker 07

  I've always wanted to be a writer. I'm just now allowing myself, giving myself permission to admit that. And I'm actually halfway through The Magic of Thinking Big, which I'm reading per your recommendation. And it's been incredible. It changed my perspective, motivated me. I'm finally writing and creating what I want to create. And I just recently watched your speech that you gave in 2009 called "How to Blog Without Killing Yourself."

• 1:19:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, that was from WordCamp.

• 1:19:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, that WordPress event. And, um, okay, so it was super helpful, and I know that most of it is still relevant. But what I was wondering is, now, since it was seven years ago, I wanted the question, the updated, or I wanted the updated answer to two questions that are related. Number one is, what is the one piece of really bad advice that you hear people, you know, repeating a lot that has kind of been accepted as mainstream, you know, by the mainstream as good advice or best practice? And number two, piggybacking off of that, if you had to start your blog again today, um, in 2016, what are the top

• 1:20:05Speaker 07

  three ways that you would, you would grow your readership?

• 1:20:08Tim Ferriss?

  Woo, that's some, those are some, that's some heavy lifting for my blood alcohol content, but let me do it. Let's see how I do. All right. So the first one, let me, let me try to make this, however, useful, instead of just me mentally masturbating with too much booze. So first is, are you writing fiction or nonfiction?

• 1:20:30Speaker 07

  I'm writing nonfiction. Some of my heroes and influences are people like Glenn Doyle Melton of Momostary, or Jenny Lawson of The Blogist, or Lori Duchene of Tiny Buddha, people like that.

• 1:20:43Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so what kind of stuff are you writing right now?

• 1:20:47Speaker 07

  Um, it's mostly essays. I like to say it's creative nonfiction. I um have, I feel very much a combination of liking to write things like yourself that are very practical things you can implement, things that are helpful, but also just loving the art, the magic that is writing, um, and you know, the stringing of words together. So I don't really want to write anything that's just totally flowery and beautiful, but unhelpful. Um, and so I kind of am trying to um, to write both. I really identify with what you said in one of your most recent podcasts where um, I just like to write, I write things. Um, I

• 1:21:31Speaker 07

  have been writing every day, but I mostly just write things that I, it's more painful to keep them inside of me than it is to finally write them down on paper.

• 1:21:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's, that's the good stuff to write. So are you hoping to write books or blog? What is the format that you are currently thinking of? This will affect the advice that I give.

• 1:21:53Speaker 07

  Okay. Um, I'm writing a blog. I will say that my hope is to become a traditionally published author because of all the benefits that I know that that brings. Um, but I am starting with a blog and um, yeah, and just want to focus on that at least for the next three months.

• 1:22:15Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. What is your most popular piece that you have written to date? And that does not mean likes and retweets necessarily. It could just be which of your friends liked the most, but what piece that you've written thus far has proven most popular or to have the best response, or that you're happiest with? It could be any, any of those or all of those.

• 1:22:44Speaker 07

  Um, I wrote a piece that I really like and that I think most people like called, "Why We Should All Think About Death More," um, which is pretty much what it sounds like.

• 1:22:57Tim Ferriss?

  Um, and, and I also wrote just an ebook that I give away for free called,

• 1:23:04Speaker 07

  "Get Naked: Why the World Needs You to Be a Little More You," which also, um, you know, did pretty well. I think it's been downloaded, I don't know, for me it did well. It's been downloaded like 300 times, which, um, you know, I thought was fine for, for what I was doing. So, those two, I guess.

• 1:23:25Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Uh, all right. So, the first question was related to bad advice that I've heard given out a lot in

• 1:23:34Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:23:34Tim Ferriss?

  the world of writing and/or publishing. Is that

• 1:23:38Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:39Tim Ferriss?

  fair paraphrase? Okay.

• 1:23:41Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. I just, I, you know, I've been researching a lot and I, there's a lot of bad advice out there and I want to make sure that I steer clear of it.

• 1:23:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. All right. So, there, there are two that come to mind. Uh, the first I'm actually stealing or borrowing

• 1:23:54Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:23:55Tim Ferriss?

  from Stephen Dubner, who I had on my podcast, uh, and I had a follow-up question for him, which I ended up, and I ended up putting his answer in, uh, the, the new book, Tools of Titans.

• 1:24:10Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:24:10Tim Ferriss?

  That's the latest and greatest. Uh, but I asked him the same question and his answer was, "Write what you know." So, you hear that a lot. "Write what you know, write what you know, write what you know."

• 1:24:20Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 1:24:20Tim Ferriss?

  And he said, "Why would I want to write what I know when I know so little? I want to write about the things that I don't understand or know so that I have, in effect, I'm paraphrasing, the excuse to explore and experiment in those new worlds. Why would I want to write about what I know? It's so little of what's out there." And I agree with him about that. If you look at my trajectory and I think why my books have succeeded, in part at least, it's because I do experiments in worlds and in, involving things that I have no right to experiment with. They're, they're completely outside of my normal world.

• 1:25:03Tim Ferriss?

  And for that reason, it's new to me. It's exciting to me. And guess what? If it's new and exciting to you, there is a decent chance it's going to be new and exciting to your readers. If it is old and hackneyed and a thousand times rehearsed and rehashed and old news to you, that sentiment is going to be conveyed to your readers. So for me, I think exploring and conveying that excitement of the novelty and the uncertainty and the potential danger, whatever it might be, is a very powerful elixir for creating good prose and ultimately useful information. So that's number one. Write what you know,

• 1:25:47Tim Ferriss?

  not always good advice. Explore what you don't know, I think, might be, in many cases, better advice. The second, and this is extremely boring, but I do think it's practical, is book tours. I've never done a traditional book. I've never done a traditional book tour. This is probably putting the cart before the horse, because you have some goals to check off before you get to book tour, but I've never done a physical book tour. I just have not found it worth the expenditure of time, money, and energy to help my readers

• 1:26:28Tim Ferriss?

  or to help a given book. I find it more useful to focus on the virtual, in many cases. So those are two things that immediately come to mind. Which book writers, which authors of books do you most hope to emulate? Are there any that come to mind?

• 1:26:50Speaker 07

  Sure. Well, are you familiar with Glennon Doyle Melton? She's...

• 1:26:55Tim Ferriss?

  I am not.

• 1:26:58Speaker 07

  Okay. She just came out with her newest memoir. It was chosen for the Oprah Book Club, which instantly made her, you know, super famous. She's been making the podcast rounds, too. She runs a blog called Momastery. Well, Elizabeth Gilbert, I'm sure you've heard of her.

• 1:27:16Speaker 07

  Okay, so she's one who's writing, I just, you know, absolutely admire. She's a hero of mine, read all her stuff. Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild. I really like her memoirs and her podcast is great. So, you know, this might be making myself sound a lot better than I am, but I like to think that those women are people in, you know, whose, um, I don't know, whose path I'm trying to follow, women whose writing I'm trying to emulate to some extent, obviously with my own unique take. But that's the kind of essay-like memoir that I like to write, but also again, bringing a little bit of a practical take so that it's not just all flowery and beautiful.

• 1:27:59Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna stress test you a little bit.

• 1:28:01Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:28:02Tim Ferriss?

  And I would ask the same if you were a male caller, I would be inclined to ask this. So, you mentioned a bunch of female writers. Are there any male writers that you have read that you might emulate or practice emulating?

• 1:28:19Speaker 07

  I really like Mark Manson. Are you familiar with him?

• 1:28:23Tim Ferriss?

  Mark Manson, uh, oh wait, I'm not gonna get this right. What is it? Why I Don't Give A Fuck? The Subtle Art of Don't Giving, Not Giving A Fuck? Is that it?

• 1:28:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck. That's him. Um, so I really like him. His take on like self-help or whatever.

• 1:28:43Tim Ferriss?

  Why do you, why do you, why do you like him to drill into it?

• 1:28:47Speaker 07

  Oh, I like, well, I guess it's his voice. He's so honest. He's so raw. He's so funny. Um, and helpful. I mean, all of those things. Um, he just gets down to the heart of people. And he's not for everybody, but he's certainly for me.

• 1:29:09Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. If you could just be a little careful with the face on the phone.

• 1:29:16Tim Ferriss?

  We're getting a lot of beeping.

• 1:29:19Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, okay, sorry. That'd be great.

• 1:29:22Tim Ferriss?

  Don't worry about it. That's like my signature move as well. But so here's what I would suggest is try to have, in terms of role models and people you want to emulate, two current day authors who are relatively new. You've already checked that box. Two authors or writers who have lasted at least 20 years. So find maybe one female, maybe one male, doesn't really matter, in my opinion. John McPhee would be my usual go to recommendation. M C P H E E. He's been a staff writer for The New Yorker for several decades.

• 1:30:05Tim Ferriss?

  He's won at least one, maybe two Pulitzer Prizes. Everything he writes makes me want to cry in my pillow. And put Poser as a brand on my forehead. He's amazing.

• 1:30:18Tim Ferriss?

  And then, and then study some folks who have lasted 100 or more years. Meaning really longstanding folks. The sort of breezy conversational style of a lot of contemporary writers will not last the test of time. And I'm not saying that's true of anyone you mentioned. But I think it is very much worth studying people who have stood the test of time.

• 1:30:53Tim Ferriss?

  It's very hard to go wrong by emulating that. And if you want a short introduction to, say, John McPhee, two recommendations. One would be a book called Levels of the Game, which is an entire book about one tennis match. It sounds super boring and it will probably be one of your favorite books you've ever read. It's incredible.

• 1:31:15Speaker 07

  Love this game. Okay.

• 1:31:16Tim Ferriss?

  And

• 1:31:16Speaker 07

  Did he write that? Did John McPhee write that?

• 1:31:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, he wrote that. And then the second is a collection of interviews. I should say it's probably one interview spread over multiple segments, but it is called The Art of Nonfiction, and it is an interview with John McPhee, or several interviews from the Paris Review. And it is absolutely phenomenal. You can also search his name, John McPhee, on my blog. For those people listening, just go to fourhourworkweek.com/blog or search Tim Ferriss blog and it'll pop up. Search John McPhee. I have a couple of articles, at least one from the Princeton Alumni Weekly that I've reprinted on my blog with permission

• 1:32:00Tim Ferriss?

  about the craft of nonfiction writing that I think are very, very helpful. So those would be a few recommendations. If you can create a successful blog or a mega-successful single post, you can get a book deal. In the world of nonfiction, that is true. And I think Mark Manson's a perfect example of that.

• 1:32:27Speaker 07

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:32:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there are many such cases. So the traditional publishing game can be shortcutted very effectively if you produce a single blog post that is mega-successful or a blog itself that as a corpus is successful per se, which let's just call that 500,000 to a million uniques per month. Then you can get a traditional book deal, pretty much no problem. So those would be a few of my thoughts.

• 1:33:00Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:33:01Tim Ferriss?

  And if you're gonna write a book, get the book bird by bird. It will save your sanity and keep you tethered to reality so that you don't tailspin out of control and self-destruct.

• 1:33:11Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I love Anne Lamott. She's great.

• 1:33:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, agreed.

• 1:33:18Speaker 07

  Um, well, thank you. I've got so many notes. I've got so many great ideas. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time and for calling me. Am I a last person?

• 1:33:30Tim Ferriss?

  No, I'm gonna keep going. I think I'm gonna do one or two more. We'll see how it pans out. We'll see when my brain decides to go offline. When that happens, then I'm done.

• 1:33:41Speaker 07

  Okay, great.

• 1:33:43Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Thanks for your time. I hope that helps.

• 1:33:45Speaker 07

  Okay. Thank you. Well, I won't talk to you later. I'll hear you later on your podcast.

• 1:33:50Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Bye bye.

• 1:33:52Speaker 07

  Okay, bye.

• 1:33:55Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, is this Lillian?

• 1:33:58Speaker 08

  Yes, is this Timmy?

• 1:34:00Tim Ferriss?

  It is Timmy. Oh, you sound like my mom slash PE instructor. How are you?

• 1:34:06Speaker 08

  Ew, no, no, no. Okay, so which glass are you on?

• 1:34:11Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, which glass? This is like six or seven, I would say, of Hendrickson soda.

• 1:34:16Speaker 08

  I'm getting really drunk, Timmy.

• 1:34:18Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm very, I'm warmed up. Where are you at the moment?

• 1:34:22Speaker 08

  I'm in Washington DC.

• 1:34:24Tim Ferriss?

  DC.

• 1:34:25Speaker 08

  But I'm not from here, so I'm from Lebanon. I'm from Beirut.

• 1:34:28Tim Ferriss?

  From Beirut. Well, Charafna. Nice to meet you.

• 1:34:31Speaker 08

  Oh, look at that.

• 1:34:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I got a few words here. Maybe, maybe it's Kale Marabi. I've got, that's about it. But.

• 1:34:39Speaker 08

  Well, you never see so many things.

• 1:34:41Tim Ferriss?

  So how, so you're up late, I'm drunk, and it feels late. Uh, let's have some fun. How can I help?

• 1:34:48Speaker 08

  Well, you know, I think the thing I really wanted to talk to you about was that I discovered you, I think, three years ago, and I became so obsessed with optimization, and I just became like crazy.

• 1:35:04Speaker 08

  And then I realized, like, I completely burnt out, and then I started hating you a lot.

• 1:35:11Speaker 08

  And now I'm like a good place. But I just wanna know, how do you optimize so much and keep a sense of joy? And novelty in your life? Also, being here for the past two months, because I'm here on a short trip, I kinda understood a bit, like, life here is very different than life back home. And if optimization is about controlling variables in a complex system.

• 1:35:39Speaker 08

  This is kind of feasible here. While back home it's not as much. So I don't know, let's just talk about that to make some sense.

• 1:35:48Tim Ferriss?

  Sure. Well, let me ask you first, how is, how is life different in Lebanon compared to here?

• 1:35:58Speaker 08

  I would start with the internet speed. That's like kind of shit, you know? If I'm writing and I'm feeling like optimistic about something or I'm working and then I just wait for shit to load. I just lose my track of thought and then all my optimization goes down the crapper. Another thing would be like transportation, that kind of shit. We don't have public transportation.

• 1:36:23Tim Ferriss?

  So, so there's just more outside of your control?

• 1:36:26Speaker 08

  Exactly. So very much variables outside my control, but very much controlling of my life.

• 1:36:35Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm. So I would say a few things. So the first is that there is, I think, a misperception that I try to optimize everything. And I think it's important for us to define optimize. So let us define optimize in the context of efficiency as getting things done in the least amount of time possible. Uh, there are domains in my life that I seek to optimize. Generally, those are processes, tasks that I do not enjoy spending time on. And then there are things that I do not optimize, right?

• 1:37:16Tim Ferriss?

  I don't watch my favorite TV shows on two X. I don't read, I don't speed read poetry. I don't, uh, I don't boil myself in water because I want to spend less time in my hot bath by increasing the temperature.

• 1:37:35Tim Ferriss?

  They're Yeah, yeah. Right, you know, I'm not trying to, well, I was gonna say ejaculate as quickly as possible, but maybe that's too much alcohol. I'm not trying to have the fastest sex possible, for instance. Sorry, use the E word, it happens. So, the point being that the efficiency is most important when you're trying to multiply outputs, and particularly when there are tasks or processes involved that you do not enjoy. So, I don't make myself miserable by optimization, specifically because it is compartmentalized and limited to a specific subset of activities

• 1:38:20Tim Ferriss?

  in my life. Does that make sense? And I think, secondarily, the commonality between, say, rules that I would follow here and rules that I would follow in Lebanon, or in many other places, are the same. And that is, you have, for instance, strategies and tactics. Above those two, you have a layer, which would be first principles. And the first principles that I follow could really be codified in the philosophical system of Stoicism. I mean, I have a quote from Marcus Aurelius on my refrigerator, I'm looking at it right

• 1:39:03Tim Ferriss?

  now, it's on the right hand or that I see every morning when I remove anything from my refrigerator. And the, I think, the core, or one of the core tenets of Stoicism, whether you're looking at Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, or otherwise, is close to what people in the US at least would know well as the Serenity Prayer. And a big component of that is identifying the things you can change versus the things that you cannot change. So, in Lebanon, the things that you cannot change would include shitty transportation, shitty internet. Here.

• 1:39:39Speaker 08

  They just keep changing and piling up. Yeah.

• 1:39:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. Here, they might be different things, but nonetheless, there are still factors that are either within your sphere of influence and control or outside of your sphere of influence and control. So separating those are very important. So those, those I would say are two observations just offhand in response to your comments. Number one, relating to how not to be miserable optimizing. So I choose your target, choose your targets wisely. And then secondly, uh, the commonalities or the common operating system that you could run independent of environment, meaning here or in Lebanon or in Ethiopia or in Japan,

• 1:40:25Tim Ferriss?

  it doesn't matter. And it's just a higher level of abstraction, if that makes sense. There are certain tactics you may not be able to use. You may not be able to stream video effectively in certain places, but you can still use the higher levels, the higher first principles that you're imposing upon in a top down fashion, all the rest of the decision making that you, that you employ.

• 1:40:50Speaker 08

  That seems pretty legit. In fact, Alicia, I've heard you say before, but I just wanted to raise the issue. Have you been to our part of the world since?

• 1:40:59Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't been to Lebanon. I've, I've wanted to for a long time.

• 1:41:03Speaker 08

  What are you waiting for?

• 1:41:04Tim Ferriss?

  I have Lebanese friends. They told me not to go because it was dangerous.

• 1:41:07Speaker 08

  Everyone has Lebanese friends and I don't trust those Lebanese friends. I've heard so much crap about them.

• 1:41:14Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know, they said to me, they're like, well, you know, due to A, B, and C factors, I would not recommend that you go right now because it may not be the safest place for you.

• 1:41:24Speaker 08

  Bullshit. We just have a trash crisis and trash is eating our streets. That's totally fine. We still party hard. We still eat good food.

• 1:41:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I would like to visit. I'd, I'd love to go to Beirut at some point. I've been to, I've spent time in Jordan. Uh, that's, that's about as close as I've gotten so far.

• 1:41:41Speaker 08

  You should come to Cairo. There's a startup event this December and I think it's going to be awesome.

• 1:41:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:47Speaker 08

  And it's pretty close.

• 1:41:48Tim Ferriss?

  December will be tough because I have my book launch in December and

• 1:41:52Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:41:53Tim Ferriss?

  Christmas.

• 1:41:53Speaker 08

  Congrats on that.

• 1:41:54Tim Ferriss?

  I'll be some, thank you. I'll be a bit occupied in December, but never been to Egypt. I would love to check it out. Uh, that will be a TBD, no doubt, but I may be spending.

• 1:42:05Speaker 08

  I think you, you'd, you'd enjoy to see like just the chaos there. And I'd love to see your perspective about like just how people can like survive in a place like Cairo. Like every time I visit, I'm just amazed.

• 1:42:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:19Speaker 08

  You'd be shocked.

• 1:42:20Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sure, I'm sure I would be. But I'll have to brush up on my Arabic before I head over. But I guess Egyptian Arabic should be the easiest, I would imagine, to kind of pick up because most of the movies and music and so on are produced in Egypt.

• 1:42:36Speaker 08

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:42:39Tim Ferriss?

  But.

• 1:42:39Speaker 08

  Very true.

• 1:42:40Tim Ferriss?

  We will see, we will see. But yeah, I, I would say that, uh, yeah, optimization can make you miserable and it will make you miserable if you apply it to all things, for sure, because you will.

• 1:42:52Speaker 08

  Yeah, I think I missed out on that part. Like, don't optimize the shit you enjoy.

• 1:42:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:57Speaker 08

  Good point.

• 1:42:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. Savor the shit you enjoy, which means in very, uh, very often that you are doing the opposite of optimizing. Right? You are actually de-optimizing.

• 1:43:11Speaker 08

  We should find a word for that. Yeah.

• 1:43:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you're elongating. You're distending, distending sounds a little odd and anatomical, but you're, you're extending the, uh, the, the time involved for the things that you enjoy. So that's my take. But.

• 1:43:29Speaker 08

  Well, thank you.

• 1:43:31Tim Ferriss?

  For sure.

• 1:43:32Speaker 08

  I appreciate it.

• 1:43:33Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, I appreciate you taking the time. So thanks for dropping in your information.

• 1:43:40Speaker 08

  Thank you. Have a good night.

• 1:43:41Tim Ferriss?

  All right. You too. Bye bye.

• 1:43:43Speaker 08

  Ciao.

• 1:43:50Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:44:33Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks is used by a ton of the startups that I work with or advise, many of the fastest growing. It is used by almost all of the contractors that I work with. It is the easiest way online to send invoices, get paid, track your time for invoicing, track your clients, so they get to the point of paying you, all that stuff that you could possibly find. And right now you can get a free month of complete unrestricted use and you do not need

• 1:45:18Tim Ferriss?

  a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month, just go to freshbooks.com/tim and enter "tim" in the "how did you hear about us?" section. You can of course customize it to fit your brand with your own logo and color and FreshBooks shows you whether or not, for instance, a client has looked at the invoice. They can send late payment reminders to your clients automatically, so you do not have to think about it or chase them down. And you can track your hours, you can do all sorts of things. There are mobile applets, you take pictures of your receipts and FreshBooks will organize them for you later. It is a great piece of software and if you are in a small business or maybe a fast growing business that is feeling growing pains and you need to stream ...then this is a place to look because certainly for me, this has been a headache

• 1:46:02Tim Ferriss?

  in the past and it doesn't have to be a headache for you. So check out freshbooks.com/tim and try it out and see what you think. This episode is brought to you by Vimeo, specifically a new offering called Vimeo Business. I've done a lot of collaboration with these guys. Vimeo Business has all of the prior benefits of Vimeo Pro, including VIP support. Whether you make videos for a living, run your own company like yours truly, or simply want to amp up your video marketing, Video Business is here to help. They have more than 280 million creators and viewers worldwide and Vimeo Business makes it easier to share your videos with a global audience and connect with professional video makers to bring your stories to life.

• 1:46:44Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:47:28Tim Ferriss?

  save 10% on Vimeo Business. That's vimeo.com/tim10.