#210: Becoming the Best Version of You

This is a special episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. The audio is from a live conversation with not one, not two, but three guests: Josh Waitzkin, Ramit Sethi, and Adam Robinson. Josh Waitzkin http://www.joshwaitzkin.com/ is an endlessly fascinating person who gets mentioned a lot on this show for good reason. For the uninitiated, Josh was the basis for the book https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140230386/offsitoftimfe-20 and movie https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00GJNQ3I0/offsitoftimfe-20 Searching for Bobby Fischer. He's perfected the techniques that made him into a chess prodigy and a jiu-jitsu black belt, and he shared them in his book The Art of Learning http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743277465/offsitoftimfe-20. Ramit Sethi (@ramit https://twitter.com/ramit) is a personal finance guru who has built a huge company from his blog. He's the best-selling author of I Will Teach You to be Rich http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0761147489/offsitoftimfe-20. Adam Robinson http://robinsonglobalstrategies.com/ is the trusted outside global macro advisor to the heads of some of the world's largest hedge funds and family offices. He's written a best-seller on test preparation http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0517880857/offsitoftimfe-20, developed artificial intelligence text analysis, been recognized as a chess master, and he's hilarious. I hope you enjoy this special edition of the podcast. 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 Four Sigmatic http://foursigmatic.com/tim. I reached out to these Finnish entrepreneurs after a very talented acrobat introduced me to one of their products, which blew my mind (in the best way possible). It is mushroom coffee featuring chaga http://foursigmatic.com/tim. It tastes like coffee, but there are only 40 milligrams of caffeine, so it has less than half of what you would find in a regular cup of coffee. I do not get any jitters, acid reflux, or any type of stomach burn. It put me on fire for an entire day, and I only had half of the packet. People are always asking me what I use for cognitive enhancement right now, this is the answer. You can try it right now by going to foursigmatic.com/tim http://foursigmatic.com/tim and using the code Tim to get 20 percent off your first order. If you are in the experimental mindset, I do not think you'll be disappointed. This podcast is also brought to you by Audible http://audible.com/tim. I have used Audible http://audible.com/tim for years, and I love audiobooks. I have two to recommend: The Graveyard Book http://www.audible.com/pd/Teens/The-Graveyard-Book-Full-Cast-Production-Audiobook/B00LXHQO22/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Neil Gaiman Vagabonding http://www.audible.com/pd/Travel-Adventure/Vagabonding-Audiobook/B00GCHWZHG/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audible.com/Tim http://audible.com/tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose any of the endless options they offer. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim http://audible.com/tim and get started today. Enjoy.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Josh Waitzkin?

  No, we're just in an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 4Sigmatic. I reached out to these innovative Finnish entrepreneurs of all things because a very skilled acrobat introduced me to one of their products, which is a mushroom coffee made out of chaga mushroom, powerful antioxidant, considered a superfood. I was introduced to chaga by Laird Hamilton, of all people, and another mushroom called lion's mane, which is considered a nootropic or a smart drug. And I had half a packet, and let me put this in perspective, tasted just like coffee, just add to hot water, only 20mg in half a packet of caffeine. That's as little as 1/10 what you would find in a

• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  strong cup of coffee. And I was on fire for the entire day. I probably got more done in that day than I got done in the three or four days prior to that. So I would highly recommend checking it out. It is very impressive. You will not see visuals, so you can use it for work. And you can check it out at 4sigmatic.com/tim. That's 4-sigmatic.com/tim and use the code TIM to get 20% off your first order. I highly encourage you to try it out.

• 1:40Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for years. I love audiobooks, and I have two to recommend right off the bat. Number one is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time, and that is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, the only audiobook I've wanted to immediately listen to a second time as soon as I finished. It's amazing. You will thank me. The Graveyard Book. The second is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis for a lot of what became. The four hour work week. So all you need to do to get your free 30 day trial is go to audible.com forward slash Tim, T I M. And you can choose one of those two books, or you can choose from more great options than you can possibly imagine. So that could be

• 2:24Tim Ferriss?

  a book, that could be a magazine, that could be a newspaper, it could be a class. It's that easy. Go to audible.com forward slash Tim. That's audible.com forward slash Tim and grab a book. Enjoy.

• 2:38Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My dog just got really startled. I'm at home for the holidays. And this episode, like every episode, it is my job to try to tease out the habits, routines, and specifics from world-class performers so that you can test them and apply them in your own lives. This is a special edition because the audio is coming from a live performance, although I'm not sure you'd call it performance, conversation, a collection of grabassing and insightful, hopefully, answers from my guests at the 92 Y, 92nd Street Y in New York City. It was

• 3:18Tim Ferriss?

  my first live podcast event on the East Coast, and we had a blast. The guests are threefold. We have two favorites that you guys have loved in the past, and those are Josh Waitzkin, best known as the inspiration, the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer. He's thought of as a chess prodigy, but he has a framework and approach that he has applied to several different fields to become world champion in push hands, among other things. Now works with a lot of the top people in the finance world. We have Ramit Sethi, and Josh can be found at joshwaitzkin.com. He very rarely crawls out of his cave, but he joined us

• 3:56Tim Ferriss?

  on this occasion. Ramit Sethi, at Ramit on both the Twitters and Instagram. He is the, I suppose you could call him, personal finance guru who has built a huge company out of his blog, which started way back in the day. And he is the bestselling author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich, also has a site by the same name. And then we have a new guest that is Adam Robinson, very close friends with Josh Waitzkin. And where should we begin? Well, you can learn about him at robinsonglobalstrategies.com. But check this out. Look at this bio. All right. So Adam has made a lifelong study of outflanking

• 4:39Tim Ferriss?

  the competition. It began with acting as the co-founder, one of the two co-founders of the Princeton Review. So he developed a revolutionary approach to taking standardized tests. And his book became the first ever based on test prep to be reviewed by the Wall Street Journal and become a New York Times bestseller. After selling his interest in that company, he turned his attention to the then emerging field of artificial intelligence. This was in the early 90s. And he developed a program that could analyze text and provide human-like commentary. He was later invited to join a well-known quant fund, this is in the world of investing, to develop statistical trading

• 5:20Tim Ferriss?

  models. And then, following that, and currently, he is an independent global macro advisor to the chief investment officers of a select group of the world's largest hedge funds, as well as family offices. And he has a degree from Wharton, he has a master's degree from Oxford University. And not only that, he is a rated chess master, who was awarded a life title by the United States Chess Federation. And as a teenager, he was personally mentored by Bobby Fischer in the 18 months leading up to his winning the world championship. So, seems like too incredible to be nonfiction, but that is Adam. And he is hilarious. So I think you guys will really enjoy

• 6:03Tim Ferriss?

  those three guests. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And I must mention that the live event was helped by meat undies and exo protein.

• 6:14Tim Ferriss?

  They provided all sorts of goodies to the attendees. So check out some of my favorite underwear and lounge pants. I'm wearing them right now, in fact, at meundies.com/tim. And you can check out Exo Protein. These are the only bars that I eat these days. And I liked them so much that I ended up becoming an investor and advisor to the company. No soy, no dairy, no grain, no gluten, but paleo, 10 grams of protein. And it's real food. You can check it out. It is based on cricket protein, of all things, which is about as pure and unadulterated as you can get with full spectrum protein. So check it out, X O E X O protein.com.

• 6:56Tim Ferriss?

  And without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Josh, Ramit and Adam. So you guys may be familiar with Mr. Waitzkin, the esteemed Mr. Waitzkin. I'll give a little bit of context to those who might not know him, and then I'll let him correct me. Well, many people think of him as a chess prodigy. If you've read or seen Searching for Bobby Fischer, very much based on his life, although I don't think the word prodigy applies to Josh in so much as he really has an extremely methodical and conscious approach to learning and mastery. And he's applied that to Tai Chi Push Hands, in which he was a world champion.

• 7:39Tim Ferriss?

  He's applied it to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, first black belt right under Marcelo Garcia, who is the phenom, probably the most successful, best grappler who's ever lived. And I'll leave it at that for now. Works with a lot of interesting top performers and we'll get into that, I'm sure. Ramit, where should we begin? It starts a long time with the long walks on the beach, both of us. And turned a blog way back in the day into one of the most successful destinations and resources for personal finance and very much more than that. Has a hugely successful company, has been featured in, was it Fortune?

• 8:19Tim Ferriss?

  In a spread right aside to Warren Buffett, that's pretty good company. And Adam, you know, I think I'm going to leave the introduction, Adam, our mystery guest, to Josh to give just a little bit of context on who Adam is.

• 8:34Josh Waitzkin?

  Okay, Dimbo, it's great to be here with you.

• 8:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, thanks for coming.

• 8:37Josh Waitzkin?

  Adam is a dear friend of mine. My five-year-old son, Jack, would say he's a closer friend with him, which... He's a beautiful human being. Adam, back in the day, in the 1960s, was a chess master. He's still not a chess master, but that was when he was really actively playing chess. After that, well, then he was very close friends with Bobby Fischer, for better or worse, in the 60s, 70s. Really at the center of the chess world back then. Then Adam founded the Princeton Review, so he's one of the most fascinating educational minds. He's written 10 educational books. And I've watched Adam just work with my little boy with so many people in education.

• 9:20Josh Waitzkin?

  He's a brilliant mind around the learning process. And then Adam took his kind of uniquely versatile mind and applied it to economics, macroeconomics. And that's the world in which he and I met a number of years ago. And Adam is a consultant with some of the... I can't say their names because confidentiality is a huge part of what Adam does, but some of the most brilliant and well-known names in the finance industry. He's an incredibly brilliant thinker in a lot of fields. And I love the guy. He's a really beautiful human.

• 9:49Tim Ferriss?

  He will charm all of you with his charisma. He just captures the room. He tried to pinch Ramit's nipples earlier.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  Wait a second, wait a second.

• 9:58Ramit Sethi?

  It was a welcome approach.

• 10:00Tim Ferriss?

  So, no, this is a common greeting where he's from.

• 10:06Speaker 04

  He and I have safety words, so...

• 10:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we do have safety words. And we're gonna get into all sorts of nonsense because that's kind of my style. But we have a very smart crew here. I thought I would just begin by dumbing it all down. Josh, can you tell us... Josh gave me a warning before we got started. It was a tooth caveat. What's happening with the tooth?

• 10:28Josh Waitzkin?

  Be very careful of the things you say to Tim right before he pulls you onto his podcast. I've learned that several times. I forgot it this time around. I have a... A number of years ago, I was spearfishing. Free diving is something I love. I was spearfishing and I... It was actually an interesting moment because I had just spearfed a couple... Mutton snapper for lunch with my family down in, I don't have an island in the southern Bahamas. And I was just taking target practice with this kind of Hawaiian sling, it's like a bow and arrow. And I was shooting these little shells 20, 25 feet away, just stroking it. And I had reached this, this realization where if you barely touch the spear, barely grip it, as you know from bow and arrow, like there was, I was just missing by a quarter inch versus large, longer. And I was in this beautiful zone and then my sister screamed, Josh, there's a big, big barracuda swimming with her and I thought she was in trouble.

• 11:11Josh Waitzkin?

  So I released the wrong side of it. It exploded into my tooth and um, so I had this wonderful snaggletooth and I just told Tim right before that it came loose right before now. So I, I might, I, I could very easily have a snaggletooth with a screw hanging out within about five, 10 minutes of the beginning of this, this discussion, which will add to the flavor of it. So I'm not sure why we're talking about that, but there it is.

• 11:30Tim Ferriss?

  So for those of you listening on audio only, this is what you miss when you come, when you don't come to a live Tim Ferriss show. I, I thought we'd begin and maybe, uh, maybe Adam will, will start with you. We are recording this towards say the tail end of a year. How do you think about the transition from one year to the next? Do you have year's resolutions or do you have any particular routines or approaches as you close out a year?

• 11:58Speaker 04

  I try to take stock of what I've learned the past year and I, I've learned three things that this year and which, two of which you exemplify. And I wish I had known them when I was younger and, and I'd like to share them because I, I think they're the keys to success. And again, you exemplify them. And the first is the importance of enthusiasm with everything that you do, absolutely everything. The, the second is the importance of connecting to people. You know, I, I, I live in the world of ideas and it's only this year that I've learned the importance of connecting with brothers like you guys. And, and the third, this is best illustrated with a metaphor.

• 12:42Speaker 04

  About 20 years ago, I met the dog who was in the mask. Do you remember the Jim Carrey movie, The Mask?

• 12:49Tim Ferriss?

  So was that just like a personals ad or?

• 12:52Speaker 04

  This was the, this, no, I met the dog and his trainer.

• 12:56Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, okay. Oh, I got it. Got it. Got it.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Right. Okay. So I met the dog and his trainer and we were walking down the street in, in New York. And the dog, so this is a star dog, right? A Hollywood star dog. And, and so he was walking down, little Jack Russell Terrier, walking down the street. And every time someone passed by, he went like this. And so, and he'd walk a little further and then, and, and I thought, that's so perfect. He expects magic in every encounter. And, and I think that's one of the key things that I've learned, that if you expect magic in every encounter, you find it. And, like this. I mean, I'm really excited for you guys, because I know the magic that's gonna happen here with, with this crew.

• 13:42Speaker 04

  So, so that's what I've learned this year. So that's what I do with my New Years.

• 13:46Tim Ferriss?

  Do you, now, is that something that you ruminate on as an internal dialogue? Is it something you write down? How do you, are there any ways in which you attempt to ensure that you continue to pay attention to those things?

• 14:01Speaker 04

  I just try to live it. I mean, there's no, expecting magic, I just, again, I pictured that little dog walking down the street, like, and, and, and I lean into every moment expecting magic, the way that dog leaned into every person. And...

• 14:18Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think we saw that, we saw that in the green room, just before, we're not gonna name names, but to everybody in the room, even people you hadn't met, if you heard their names, sort of, from far away, he would go, "Jack!" And just walk straight up, and the person would be like, "Hi!" And then, big hug, and then, Thickest Thieves, right from the get-go. Uh, Rameet, what about you? How do you think about the, the end of years, the beginning of New Years?

• 14:45Ramit Sethi?

  Uh, I think about relationships. I think in the past, it was, you know, I'm 23, or I'm 25, or I'm 28, where am I supposed to be? And I think at a certain point, you, that sort of loses its, you realize there's no real roadmap, right? You're gonna carve out your own path. Uh, the thing that became more important for me is, who am I meeting? What's the quality of those relationships? And so...

• 15:11Ramit Sethi?

  If it was up to me, I'll basically sit in my house and work all day long. And that's just like, I love it. That's what I want to do. And I would just do that forever. And it's probably not the healthiest approach to life. So I try to force myself to go out, you know, not only maintain the relationships I have, but build new ones. And I think the end of the year is a really good time to take stock. So I actually have a list of every single person I met the whole year. I have it in a Google Doc and I just look at it and say like, like this is, is this, first of all, is this the right level that I want to be doing? Like if I've met five people, that's, that's not good for me.

• 15:51Ramit Sethi?

  And also, is it just making lists or is it actually making new friends? Like I said, it would be easy for me to just sit around and just work all day.

• 15:58Tim Ferriss?

  So are you then like each, let's say you come home, you've had a number of meetings that day or that week. And on a weekly basis, you're inputting these names?

• 16:06Ramit Sethi?

  No, I just write it down. I just write down their names. That's it.

• 16:08Tim Ferriss?

  I see.

• 16:08Ramit Sethi?

  Just so I can go back and look and say like, hey, these are amazing people that I met. And now I'm remembering, I look at it every week. Oh, okay. Wow. I found this interesting article. I want to send it over. Oh, I'm going out to the museum. Let me text this person to come hang out. And it's just a good reminder for me that like it's, the business is the business. It's going to grow this and that. But the one thing that I want to fight for, to make time for is to build those relationships.

• 16:31Tim Ferriss?

  What would you like to improve upon most personally or from a business standpoint? Next year?

• 16:39Ramit Sethi?

  Oh my God. Easy, easy by a factor of a thousand. It's becoming a better leader and manager. Like I feel like in my business, we get the human psychology part of what we do. That's what we do. But management and leadership is so infinitely complex that I think I could spend the next 20 years just getting good, not even great.

• 17:03Tim Ferriss?

  How do you think about, and this, this might be one that we get to as a group, but. Manager or management, I think, is relatively easy to grasp. People can envision what that means. What is, what is a good leader? How would you define a good leader? Or what are the characteristics that distinguish them from someone who is merely a good manager of say, a team of 50 people or 100 people?

• 17:29Ramit Sethi?

  Well, first of all, I'm a student, so I'm trying to learn that myself. But the leaders that I've seen, first off, I think they know when to speak up and when not to speak up, almost like a good parent. A good parent knows when to get in there and like, oh, okay, you're about to fall off a cliff, let me save you. But if you're just gonna fall down on the grass, let me let you make that mistake. And that's something that I'm trying to learn, which doesn't come naturally to me. If it were up to me, I want to get in there every minute. And that's not a healthy way, I think, to be a leader. So that's something that I've been working on. My team's been telling me, and I have to listen to that. You know, other leaders, I think, create a vision for where they want to go, and it's more than money. And that's something that, that I'd like to get better at as well.

• 18:14Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know, it's, I want to underscore something you just said, because it's something I'm also trying to get better at, this falling on the grass, like letting people fall on the grass. And I don't recall the exact person this came up with, but it was someone who's in the B-Club, billionaire of some type. And they explained, actually, I do remember exactly who it was. And it was not somebody necessarily, I don't think he's in the B-Club, but he's certainly very, very successful, Astro Teller. So he's the head of X, formerly Google X. This is Google's moonshot factory, I guess now Alphabet's moonshot factory, where they are working on things like loon and contact lenses that can act as glucometers, all these really incredible bets on the future.

• 18:54Tim Ferriss?

  And he was describing how, in his organization, people would come to him for conflict resolution. And, and he would make a point of insisting, even though it would take a lot more time, that they figure out how to solve it themselves, because he said, if I step in and I solve your conflict, I'm the parent you come to for the quick and easy path, you will always come to me. And I need to train you to actually develop the skillset of handling this dispute, this type of conflict on your own. What about you, Josh? You're an introspective guy. You're very good at blocking out time for deep work. I think something that I try to emulate to the extent possible when I'm not running around.

• 19:39Tim Ferriss?

  I scattershot 24/7. What did the last days of a year and the first few days of a year look like or mean to you?

• 19:50Josh Waitzkin?

  I think that's a particularly intense question for me right now because I, first of all, just turned 40 a few days ago and I took off for Costa Rica and surfed some big waves on my 40th and I was reflecting on the year quite a bit. And I came extremely close to dying a year ago.

• 20:07Tim Ferriss?

  I thought you were gonna say again.

• 20:08Josh Waitzkin?

  No, no, no, no.

• 20:11Tim Ferriss?

  Like, there's a pattern here. Just, can I pause?

• 20:13Josh Waitzkin?

  Although on the One Wheel, I came really close like a couple of weeks ago too, but nothing like this, yeah.

• 20:18Tim Ferriss?

  The shallow water blackout.

• 20:19Josh Waitzkin?

  Yeah, and I think most of you have heard me speak about it with Tim on the podcast last time he pulled me onto it. But I was, long story short, I was doing this breath hold work and cold water immersion work. I made the mistake of doing it in the water. I've been a lifetime freediver, but this not doing hypoxic breath work. And I didn't know, even though I'd been freediving my whole life, that it was actually carbon dioxide that gave you the urge to breathe.

• 20:47Josh Waitzkin?

  Because I'd never done breath work that would actually wipe all the carbon dioxide out of my system. And so I went from this ecstatic state to passing out, blacking out underwater, shallow water blackout, and I was on the bottom of the pool for three and a half minutes plus after blacking out before someone pulled me out. And all the doctors said 45 to 60 seconds, I should be brain dead or dead. So I've been reflecting on this year through the lens of that experience. And it's been, so I have, as I mentioned to you before, I've had this year of just waves of love, gratitude, and beauty flowing through me. And I've never felt a more powerful dedication to every moment in life and to living life as fully as I can possibly live it. And a core lesson, you asked about lesson, for me, that I...

• 21:34Josh Waitzkin?

  Think about broadly and across disciplines is how insanely important it is to be focused on the most important question, to know what it is. In that, in this situation, I had a technical oversight. I didn't, I wasn't present to the most important question, which was carbon dioxide is what gives you the urge to breathe. But, you know, when you work with brilliant investors, for example, there's no better way to train someone in than folk, than developing their ability to focus on the most important question. Same thing with chess players, knowing where to look, or martial artists, knowing where to focus on. It's not, the great ones aren't who focus on more, they focus on less actually and better. And so that lesson for me, which I've applied to intellectual and physical disciplines my whole life, I blew it on in this critical moment of my life. And so it

• 22:18Josh Waitzkin?

  feels much more potent to me.

• 22:22Tim Ferriss?

  Do you keep, say, the most important question in X? Let's just say it's a project or a challenge or a problem, whatever it might be. I know that you have a very consistent journaling practice. Is, do you keep that present, that question present so that you don't make, for instance, mistakes like that? Using journaling? Or how do you go about ensuring that you don't miss that most critical thing when you need it most?

• 22:47Josh Waitzkin?

  Well, as you know, my journaling system is based around studying complexity, reducing the complexity down to what is the most important question, sleeping on it, and then waking up in the morning first thing and pre-input brainstorming on it. So I'm feeding the unconscious material to work on, releasing it completely, and then opening up my mind and riffing on it. And then, you're gonna say something?

• 23:09Tim Ferriss?

  I was. You saw me pursing my lips like a goldfish. So here we go. The, the question that I had was, could you give somebody an example of the type of thing that you would drop into your mind so that you can digest it overnight? Like, what, could you give us an example or examples of the types of things that you might?

• 23:28Josh Waitzkin?

  Yeah, I actually, at this point, I've been doing this for like 20 some years personally. And for now, I use question somewhat metaphorically. So often studying complexity. I'll study a, like if I'm gonna be working with someone, I'll study a 20-page psychological diagnostic that someone's responded to. And then I will just release it completely. And that, that whole thing will be the question. And then what I'll sit with, then I'll wake up and sit with it, or I'll do a workout and then sit with it, and I'll just see what arises. What core patterns, what core themes, what core blockages did I pick up and all of that? Right? Because the unconscious is so much more powerful at studying complexity than the conscious mind.

• 24:00Tim Ferriss?

  And are you then just jotting these observations or emergent thoughts down on paper? Do you capture them in that way? Is that how?

• 24:08Josh Waitzkin?

  Yeah. Oh, and I actually use Evernote.

• 24:10Tim Ferriss?

  You do, got it.

• 24:10Josh Waitzkin?

  I'm riffing on Evernote. No, but, but there's often a question as well. I mean, I find that most great thinkers are slicing through complexity like a knife through butter, and then they arrive in an area of stuckness. And they'll spend a long time on that stuckness. And they can spend consciously at that point, days, weeks, months, at that stuck point. But they can also study everything involved at that stuck point, sleep on it, wake up and just slice right through it.

• 24:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 24:30Josh Waitzkin?

  And so, you know, for me, the question is usually that's, that area of stuckness after I've, I've studied all the complexity. And that rhythm between consciously integrating technical information into my being and then releasing it, and then seeing what arises, is a huge part of how I approach creativity.

• 24:48Tim Ferriss?

  And for those people who haven't heard my conversation with Reid Hoffman, founder, or at least co-founder of LinkedIn, who's called the oracle of Silicon Valley, oftentimes by A players in Silicon Valley, he has a nearly identical process. But, but he, I believe, does it effectively right before bed. You do not.

• 25:12Josh Waitzkin?

  No.

• 25:13Tim Ferriss?

  Am I right? Okay. Could you explain your rationale for, for when you sort of infuse your mind with, say, some particular problem, data set, challenge, whatever it might be, and then let it go? What time do you do that and why?

• 25:25Josh Waitzkin?

  I mean, in my experience, and Reid Hoffman's awesome, and I'm sure what he does is just crushing it for him. So, but for me, and for people who I've worked with, I've seen the pattern of if they're thinking about it right before bed, they're actually thinking about it consciously. They're not releasing the conscious mind, which is a huge part of that. Right? So you think about Hemingway's core principle, would you? We're speaking about when in a in that podcast you did about our best hits, or whatever you called it.

• 25:49Tim Ferriss?

  Josh Waitsky.

• 25:50Josh Waitzkin?

  Distill.

• 25:50Tim Ferriss?

  That was my headline.

• 25:52Josh Waitzkin?

  Just that he that he that, you know, a core Hemingway principle of of writing and then finishing his workday, leaving something left to write, right, as opposed to tapping the well, finishing it all up, which most people who are who are externally driven in what they're doing or thinking about how they're looking or moved by guilt as opposed to something more intrinsic, they feel guilty if they're not if they don't do everything they have to do as versus, you know, Hemingway's principle about doing just that. It's very interesting. But he would always speak about, and I read this when I was 11 years old, which is a big part of my foundation, I think, in this in this habit, he'd speak about the importance of stopping your thinking at that point. Then he would relax, he would drink wine, he would he would release a day.

• 26:28Tim Ferriss?

  Drank a lot of wine.

• 26:29Josh Waitzkin?

  And also, for me, as a chess player, I found that if I studied chess openings up until bed, I was thinking chess positions. If I studied it earlier and then released it, then I was able to dream about the insight.

• 26:39Tim Ferriss?

  So for you now, earlier, does that generally mean end of workday pre dinner?

• 26:44Josh Waitzkin?

  End of workday pre dinner. Yeah. And it's usually I usually have a workout post-workday, like right immediately then my workout of my workday, I have some kind of exercise to do to flush my physiology. So it's before that workout.

• 26:56Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, we're going to come back to the workout, but I want to I want to rotate. I could spend seven hours with each of these guys, and we have spent seven hours together, certainly. Adam, I'd love to know, and I've wanted to actually ask you this for quite a while, is in your calendar, say, your weekly calendar, do you have any particular things blocked out or that occur on a weekly basis that are particularly important to you? I know that's super specific. So if nothing jumps to mind.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  Well, nothing jumps to mind. I advise clients, very large hedge funds, on all global asset classes, so equities, currencies, bonds, commodities, and.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  And it's 24/7. And so usually, and by the way, it starts Sunday night, which is when markets open up in China. So there's a brief window in the sense that what Josh does about consciously turning off his mind. I do that about 3 o'clock on Friday. And for the next 24 hours, I make a point of not thinking about global markets. And then already comes Sunday morning, I have to get ready to hit the ground running. So that's usually when I get my ideas is Sunday, because I've given the week over on Saturday to just unconscious dreaming. And then I have to hit the ground running.

• 28:17Tim Ferriss?

  What do the first few hours of Sunday look like? Do you have any particular morning routines or anything, boot up sequences that you use for yourself?

• 28:27Speaker 04

  Workout, meditate. Josh introduced me to heart rate variability training, which is outstanding. I'm the kind of person who can't still sit still for normal meditating.

• 28:37Tim Ferriss?

  So what does your meditation look like?

• 28:39Speaker 04

  It's just heart rate variability training. I just watch my heart rate for 20 minutes, do it a couple of times a day.

• 28:45Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  So I start off the day with that.

• 28:47Tim Ferriss?

  So it's like the cardiac equivalent of biofeedback or neurofeedback?

• 28:51Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 28:52Tim Ferriss?

  And the workout? What is the workout?

• 28:54Speaker 04

  Weights, very intense, get it over with. And then sometimes cycling. And then, and then I start to write down what I expect to happen. I think the key to certainly investing is to have expectations and then wait to be surprised. And one of the key things with investing, I don't know how many of you invest, but I think this is a life truism, is to be aware when you hear a voice in your head that says, and you'll usually squint your eyes, or you'll hear someone say the following words, "It doesn't make sense." And it's always a sign of something really powerful.

• 29:37Speaker 04

  So if somebody says to me, "It doesn't make any sense why gold keeps going lower," I know that it's got a lot lower to go. Because what that person just said in saying it doesn't make sense is, this person has a dozen logical reasons why gold ought to be going higher, and it's going lower. And he says, "That doesn't make sense." But the world always makes sense. What doesn't make sense is his model. And this applies in life.

• 30:08Speaker 04

  In June, about a year ago, Donald Trump announced his candidacy. And his first, I think his first thing was, "We're putting up a wall. And they're gonna pay for it." And his numbers shot up in the polls. And somebody said to me, and I heard pundits on TV saying, "That doesn't make any sense." And I thought, "Oh, my God." Wait. But that's precisely it. It means it's going higher. If a stock goes up and there's no rational reason, it means that there's some X-factor that you haven't considered. Because it makes total sense now in retrospect. But then it didn't.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  So whenever you hear someone say something doesn't make sense... I was talking to Sam Zell, great real estate investor. And all he does, he reads the newspaper, and all he's looking for are things that don't make sense. So I said, "Give me an example, Sam." And he says, "Okay." I'm reading the newspaper, and I see that there's a Starbucks that's just opened up, this is like 15, 20 years ago, in Mongolia. Right? And he thinks to himself, "Well, Mongolia? I thought they drank tea. What's with that?" He's so curious about this, because it makes no sense, that he takes his jet, private jet, flies to Mongolia, and he discovers that they've started mining.

• 31:36Speaker 04

  This was the beginning of the big China infrastructure build. And the only reason he knew about it was, it didn't make any sense. So I'm telling you, that's the key thing. People stumble on these ideas, and they dismiss them, because they go, "Ah, it doesn't make any sense." And I'm telling you, that's where the gold mine is. Things that don't make sense. That's all I pay attention to now.

• 31:57Tim Ferriss?

  And on Sundays, when you're trying to come up with expectations, or, I suppose, educated or just hunch...

• 32:07Speaker 04

  And I'm looking for things that don't make sense.

• 32:08Tim Ferriss?

  No, understood.

• 32:12Tim Ferriss?

  There's so many things in my life that don't make sense, but this isn't a therapy session yet. Wait till the tequila comes out. What is the timeline? Are you looking for things that day? Are you looking at things that might occur over a longer time horizon?

• 32:29Speaker 04

  Sometimes I've set expectations weeks or months prior. And then I wait to see that things unfold as I expected. And if not, you have to revise your hypothesis.

• 32:39Tim Ferriss?

  And one of the reasons I wanted Adam to be on stage is because we hadn't had a real chance to catch up in a while. And I was like, well, why don't we just do it in front of 900 people? So the question that we, I know we've chatted about just a little bit, but you have such an eclectic background. So you have the Princeton Review, you have the chess, and now global markets. What makes you good at those different fields? If we were talking, you're a very humble guy, but if we were talking to your closest friends and we asked them, what is his superpower? Or what are the, what are the unique abilities or combination of abilities that have made him good in these very seemingly unrelated fields? What would they say? Or what would you say?

• 33:22Speaker 04

  Well.

• 33:25Tim Ferriss?

  I might have to pull in Josh.

• 33:26Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm.

• 33:27Tim Ferriss?

  Can you help with that?

• 33:28Speaker 04

  I'm a heretic. So I always approach things to disrupt the order. And, and I start with looking for things that no one else will spot. And there are two places that I know people don't prospect. And I've already told you the first, things that don't make sense. And the second is things that are really obvious. It's obvious, no one bothers to, to examine it. And so in global markets, I start from the, the premise that understanding is an illusion. That explanation is impossible. The world is simply too complex to understand.

• 34:13Speaker 04

  So I don't bother trying. And all I do is I watch investors.

• 34:20Speaker 04

  Attempt to make sense of the world and they form views. So they're looking at the world, trying to predict what's going to happen. And all I'm doing is studying them. Cause they're the ones who are gonna make buy and sell decisions and affect asset prices. So they study the world, I'm behind them. It's like playing poker and-

• 34:40Tim Ferriss?

  I was gonna say, don't play the hand, play the person across from you.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  Exactly. And so I, and so I see the hands that global investors are, are playing. So I don't try to understand the world. I just try to get into their heads in the same way I did with chess, right? Getting into the head of the position or the other player. And in, in the SAT, getting into the head of the test. This is worth sharing, it takes about 30 seconds.

• 35:07Tim Ferriss?

  We got plenty of time.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  I, um, I, I went to Wharton undergrad and I got a law degree at Oxford. I come back to New York and I thought that what I wanted to do was write screenplays. So I go to a friend of my, my father's and, and he said, so what are you gonna do now, kid? You know? And I said, all expectation, I said, I'm gonna be a writer. Just like that, like full of expectation, you know, a recent grad. And he, he, this is, this guy was one of the top producers on Broadway ever of all time. And he looks at me for about a minute, doesn't say a thing. And then he says, well then, if you're gonna be a writer, I guess you better have something to say. And I, oh, shit, I, I, what do I know? I'm 25, I, I have nothing to say.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  And I thought, okay, well, I have to support myself somehow. And while I'm writing and I, I know if I went to Wall Street or worked in a law firm, I would never find the time to write. So I thought, I know what I'll do, I'll, I'll tutor kids. And, and I thought, well, what could I tutor them in? And I thought, I know, the SAT. Now you don't know this, but back then, nobody was getting tutored. And I wrote to every private high school in New York. And I remember there were 31 at the time, cause I had to type 31 letters, the same letter, 31 times, it's like, dear Dalton or dear Spence, you know, I just graduated. If you have any students who wanna prepare for the SAT, send them my way. And out of that mass mailing, I got one student. Just a, a single student. And, and, and I, so I, I gave her a practice test. I said, you do this and we'll go over it.

• 36:40Speaker 04

  And what was fascinating was that she got all the easy questions right and all the medium questions right, but she missed every single hard question, every single one. And just closing your eyes and guessing, you get one in five, she was batting zero. And she was smart, she was really smart. And I said, "Oh, Joanne, what are you..." I still remember her name, Joanne. And I said, "Joanne, could you just tell me your thinking process?" And what was fascinating is she crossed off, let's say, choices A, B, and C, get it down to D and E, and whichever one she chose, the answer was the other one. And I said, "Joanne, could you just explain the logic?" Again, trying to get into her head, always about getting into the head. It's all about appearances, it's all about thinking, there is no reality. Plato would have made a lousy investor.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  Anyway, to get back to Joanne.

• 37:26Tim Ferriss?

  Short Plato.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  Short Plato, exactly. So she said, "Well, I cross off the ones that I know are wrong." I said, "Good, good, then what do you do?" She said, "Well, I pick the one that I think is right." So I blurted out, "Well, you gotta pick the one you think is wrong." And then I realized, "Oh, right, I just cracked the SAT." The only reason a hard question is hard is that whatever seems plausible can't be right. That's why it's a hard question. And that was my first insight. And then her score shoots up, she tells a bunch of friends, and their scores shoot up, 10 students, 100, 200. Then I teamed up with a guy, and then we started the Princeton Review. John Katzman.

• 38:12Tim Ferriss?

  Who was, and I really apologize if I'm misattributing this, but was there a sort of fictional character that you used to typify?

• 38:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I said, because I didn't want her to... So you get schizophrenic, because then she would think, "Okay, well, I think that's right, therefore it's wrong, but wait a second." Like, she'd get into a feedback loop, right?

• 38:34Tim Ferriss?

  This is like every day of my life.

• 38:36Speaker 04

  And her brain would explode. So when I was at Oxford, my Don always referred to Blogs as the man on the street. So I thought I would Americanize him, and I said, "Okay, well, ask yourself, what would Joe Blogs do? And whatever he would do on a hard question, you do the opposite. And by the way, if you're stuck on an easy question, the ones at the beginning, you follow whatever Joe Blogs would do." And by the way, the test, because of these techniques, they had to change the SAT because of the stuff I was doing.

• 39:07Tim Ferriss?

  That's how you know you're doing something right.

• 39:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's very different now, so you can't use those techniques.

• 39:15Tim Ferriss?

  Did you ever cause irreparable harm to someone who actually had the last name Blogs?

• 39:19Speaker 04

  I don't know. I hope not. I hope not.

• 39:23Tim Ferriss?

  Just wondering.

• 39:24Josh Waitzkin?

  Do you mind if I throw in one question to dig in on Adam?

• 39:27Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, sure, then I have a whole slew for our silent partner here.

• 39:31Josh Waitzkin?

  So one of the things that's so amazing about Adam is how prolific he is and how high-quality it all is. And he's in this realm of economics in which maybe one of the first principles is don't speak publicly about one of your views, because then you'll get locked into it, and you'll be able to change your mind. And yet, he's able to. And so, one of the things I think might be really interesting to hear you talk about is how do you avoid falling into constructs yourself when you're giving advice so consistently?

• 40:05Speaker 04

  Because I never have views on the market. I'm always agnostic. So all I'm doing is reporting how the market is positioned to respond. So for example, last November, 13 months ago, last November, early November, US interest rates, I don't know if this is making sense to you, but were 2.32% on the US 10-year. And Janet Yellen was due to raise interest rates five weeks later. This is again about a year ago. And I sent out an alert to my clients saying that... Interest rates were about to plunge to multi-year lows and they said, "That makes no sense." And I said, "Precisely." But I gave them the logic and they understood the logic.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  It's because one group of traders in the world has never been wrong about predicting interest rates. And it's not who you would think.

• 40:57Speaker 04

  But I'll tell you, it's metals traders. They're always right about interest rates. And anyway, so I always, once a client asks me, I said, "Okay, rates are going lower." And he said, "Well, what would you need to see to change your view?"

• 41:14Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that's a good question.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  It's the best question ever, right? It's the scientific method. If you can't falsify your hypothesis, you don't know whether it's true. If you don't know when you're wrong, you certainly don't know when you're right. So I said, "Oh, well, if we see copper versus gold rally sharply, then rates will rally. But if copper gold is going lower, then interest rates are going to go lower." And they went, they plunged. She raised rates in December and by July, they were at all-time lows, which made no sense. Certainly to Janet Yellen, right? She was expecting them to go higher and they went lower. So always that's the key thing with anything. And probably you could apply that question to relationships.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  Like, "This is what I think. Well, what would I need to see?" So you set that up, you set up that marker ahead of time. Because otherwise, confirmation bias will come in and you'll start to rationalize.

• 42:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, you'll not only have confirmation bias, but then you might even have, if depending on the position you take, some type of sunk cost fallacy and just start layering problem upon problem.

• 42:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:21Tim Ferriss?

  And it's also, by the way, just as a side note, a great way to avoid debates or arguments that will go absolutely nowhere. If you ask someone, is this slightly different? But, "Is there anything I could say that would lead you to change your mind about X?" If that's what they want to have a debate about, if they say no, you're like, "Great, I'm gonna go get a burrito." You can argue with this empty chair because it's pointless exercise to begin with.

• 42:46Tim Ferriss?

  Such an important question. Ramit, you have... You've really intelligently run, I mean, from my perspective, the company you've built and set policies in place and really made a study of management. And I've watched you refine it over time where you've not only become more successful as a company and organization, but you've become more relaxed and you seem like you have as much bandwidth as you'd care to have, even though your default is just jamming, jamming, jamming. What are some of the most important decisions or different decisions you wish you had made in the early days? When you were hiring the very first people, let's say?

• 43:31Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, I mean, first things first, I wish that I had understood it's okay to let people make their own mistakes and the idea that I don't have to be instrumental in every single decision. Now, you know, we have a much bigger idea, a much more refined concept of big wins. Focus on the big things in life. Like, for example, the thing that a lot of people may have heard me say is, don't worry about lattes, right? This is a classic thing in personal finance. Everyone says like, oh my God, don't spend $3 on lattes, which is the worst possible advice you can ever listen to because we have limited cognition, limited willpower. We don't want to waste that precious resource on a $3 purchase, right?

• 44:14Ramit Sethi?

  Get the big things right in life and you don't need to worry about that. I wish I would have applied that earlier on in the business to the people that I started working with. That was sort of unconventional. The other thing that was very conventional was hire great people, fire fast, the sort of things you sort of hear thrown around. Everybody hears it, everybody nods, and everybody ignores it until it happens to them. So every one of my friends who runs a business, we get together behind closed doors and everyone talks about the mistakes they made where they should have listened to typical advice. And I think one of the problems, if you get any level of success, is that you start to

• 44:57Ramit Sethi?

  think those basic rules don't apply to you, when in reality, they apply to you more than ever. So it's very important to just remember, get the basics right. And if you get the basics right in life, you don't have to worry about often optimizing at the margins. Like, life works pretty well if you have a good job, if you have good relationships, if you have a solid roof over your head, things are pretty good. And that's a good basic thing.

• 45:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, not majoring in minor things. And this is a lesson I had to learn for myself. Well, I've had to learn for myself repeatedly. I mean, letting the the small, bad things happen.

• 45:30Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah.

• 45:31Tim Ferriss?

  To get the huge, good things done. On the on the the front of hiring, were there any particular books or resources? I know there's a book called Who that a lot of the startup CEOs that I know have found very helpful, which is sort of a distilled version of top grading. Were there any particular resources or bits of advice? I know you've done quite a bit with Jay Abraham, but maybe not on the hiring front.

• 45:54Tim Ferriss?

  What were the resources or books or otherwise that you found most most helpful? If any.

• 46:01Ramit Sethi?

  I wish I could recommend one, but this is something that I hear a lot of friends who are starting to hire and build their teams. They have 10, 15, 20 people and they're starting to realize, hey, this is actually pretty important. And they come to me and they go, I want to hire a project manager. How do I hire the best project manager? And I say, basically, get ready to eat shit for the next two years. Because it's really hard and there's no great book that's going to lay it out because it is inherently complex and messy. And the fact of the matter is, the first hire you make is going to be not good. The second's not good, the fifth. But eventually you're going to find, you're going to learn what works, what doesn't. And by the way, it would be different for my company than another company. We just worked with it.

• 46:46Ramit Sethi?

  We did a partnership with this other company and they start their meetings off by doing like a cheer. And they, you know, they like sing songs and our company does not do that.

• 46:56Tim Ferriss?

  The Beats company starts with ritual painting.

• 46:59Ramit Sethi?

  Kumbaya.

• 47:01Ramit Sethi?

  And like, and that's great. Their company is awesome and our company is awesome in its own way. So nothing I could say would help them, except that the best advice I could give them is you have to go through the fire. You got to do it. You're going to make mistakes. Just kind of accept that.

• 47:16Tim Ferriss?

  Reminds me of this story that the director, writer, musician, polymath, Robert Rodriguez, told me where he goes to these film festivals and he's had all these huge blockbusters now. And film students or would be filmmakers come up to him and they go, yeah, you know, I want to do this, but this happened and then we didn't have enough money for that. And well, you know, you can't do A, B, and C because this happened. And he said, what they don't realize is that's the job of filmmaker. Nothing is going to work and it's up to you. Like that is the starting point, like literally the job description begins with nothing is going to work. And then you have to figure it out.

• 47:54Tim Ferriss?

  Now I want to talk to you a little bit about something we were chatting about in the green room, which I think you're particularly good at, and that is interacting with haters and belligerent people on the internet.

• 48:07Ramit Sethi?

  So I've never had anyone send me an email like that in my life.

• 48:11Tim Ferriss?

  So, so some people like golf, some people like boxing, some people like, I don't know, badminton. You like interacting with belligerent people on the internet.

• 48:21Ramit Sethi?

  Love it.

• 48:22Tim Ferriss?

  So.

• 48:22Ramit Sethi?

  Do with every single one.

• 48:24Tim Ferriss?

  So can you, can you describe for us the, the rules of engagement and sort of best practices for this sport?

• 48:31Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, let me break it down for you. Everybody listen up because you're going to get one of these people in your life. I'll tell you that right now. First of all.

• 48:38Tim Ferriss?

  So twisted.

• 48:38Ramit Sethi?

  When, it is very, it's very sadistic. Okay, when do you get the chance to talk to somebody who runs up to you in the street and says like, F you? Never, it never happens because people don't do that in the street, right? But online they do it all the time.

• 48:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 48:54Ramit Sethi?

  And then, and then I think about like, I don't really feel much at risk because like if I went to a comedy show, if I go to Comedy Cellar, I would never dream of heckling the comedian because that's their job. They're always going to win. So I sit there politely and I listen and I laugh and then I leave. When somebody comes in and sends you a message, but you see 50 or a hundred of them a day, there's no chance of them winning. And actually, so I, I love it because I get the chance to interact with someone I normally would never interact with. If you play it right, you can get to see inside their mind and actually learn something pretty interesting. Sometimes they might leave it at just F you, but like over time I've come to realize it's very mathematical. Of a hundred people that email me.

• 49:37Ramit Sethi?

  So they'll say something like, F you or whatever, just very.

• 49:41Tim Ferriss?

  Just to translate, that's Burmese, it's fuck you.

• 49:46Ramit Sethi?

  And I'll go, I'll say something like, "Why?" Because what you need to do at this point, you need to bring it down. You need to tone it down, okay? Or I'll say, "What's wrong? Are you having a bad hair day?" And, and then, it's very fascinating what happens next. So 50% of people never respond. You guys find that interesting? They sent you this email. You respond back. They don't respond at all. So what's up with that? And if you really wanted to find out, you could re-reply a day later and track that. So what is up with that? Okay, I'll tell you what's, okay, so, let me, 25% of people are gonna double down and get really, really angry. In which case, you double down and put a picture of someone with a really bad hair day. Yeah. And now they don't know what to do.

• 50:31Ramit Sethi?

  25%, and this is, this is why it was all worth it. They go, "Oh my God. I didn't know you were actually gonna read this." And now you have a discussion, right? Now you can find out, why did they send that? And this happens to me all the time. I cannot even tell you how often. And it is so fascinating to get the chance to talk to someone who's been on my email list for, say, four years. They never have written me. They've literally gotten tens of thousands of pages of material. We've sent them for free. And they, the first thing they wrote was, "F you." I go, "What's up? Why'd you say that?" And they go, you know, "Some random joke I made on page three of this email really set him off." And, and they just had to write back. They had to write back.

• 51:15Ramit Sethi?

  And most of them, they still say, "I didn't think anyone would actually read it." I find it so fascinating that in the world where we are so connected to other people, there's so many people that feel that no one is actually listening, that they would send an email, knowing that no one's gonna read it. That's what they believe. They would send it with all this emotionally loaded language, and they would just send it out there. But when someone actually listens, they're- They're struck and that's when you can start engaging with them. I find it totally fascinating.

• 51:43Tim Ferriss?

  So another technique, another judo move that I've seen you do on Twitter specifically, which I admire, and Chris Saka is also very good at this, you should check out his technique, is when someone will be like, "Hey, fuck you scam artist, what the fuck, ah, get rich, ha, ha, ha, lol's", you know, and you'll respond with something like, "Interesting, I'm intrigued, tell me more." And then they don't know what to do because they're expecting you either respond with some anger, respond with something trying to be clever, but instead you're like, "Interesting."

• 52:19Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, so here's the thing, people are pattern matching, right? If you read Cialdini's book Influence, he talks about click-wer. You do something and people are gonna respond, very programmatic.

• 52:30Tim Ferriss?

  Click-wer?

• 52:30Ramit Sethi?

  It's like, it's a, he's-

• 52:31Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I got it, wer.

• 52:32Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. It's, people are programmatic, so if you write someone an angry email, they're almost always gonna write back really angry. But for me, there's no, I'm not angry at them, right? I haven't done anything, all they did was send me an email, which I've seen a thousand other people send, and I know it's not me. I know that because that email that they're reading got sent out to like a million other people, and they all loved it. So it's probably not me, it's probably something going on with them, and I wanna know. So when you sort of respond in a way that's not the obvious, then all of a sudden, you shift the entire conversation. Now, if I wrote back and said, "F you", now it's, that's what they expected and they feed on that, but when you change the whole dynamic, I think that's when you can have a really interesting discussion.

• 53:17Ramit Sethi?

  Same thing for business, by the way. If you're looking at markets where, for example, if you were trying to create another Princeton Review today, or you're trying to write another personal finance book, you probably don't want to go with the same click-wer, programmatic strategy. You wanna try to analyze what is missing in the market, how are people not being taken care of or responded to, instead of going with the same thing that everyone else is doing.

• 53:40Tim Ferriss?

  So Josh, I want to ask you a question. Are you famous on the internet for handling haters well?

• 53:47Josh Waitzkin?

  I don't even, I barely know what the internet is. But you know, this is, this is actually a really great fight principle. Now, I don't have any experience interacting with haters on the internet, but I, but I do have quite a bit of experience interacting with people who essentially say that in person. And it's-

• 54:05Tim Ferriss?

  So wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So you opt not to be on Facebook, but then you go out and find people who are gonna say fuck you in person?

• 54:12Josh Waitzkin?

  No, I'm talking about like competing in martial arts competitions, right? And so, like, it's, it's ama- I spent years training at how to deal with fighting dirty opponents. So, you know, people who, you know, in some kind of martial arts exchange, after the bell will target your eyes.

• 54:28Tim Ferriss?

  Or chess.

• 54:29Josh Waitzkin?

  Or chess, yeah. Chess is like kicking you under the table, or cheating with like talking to a coach and, you know, the chess world. But in martial arts, it's a little bit less subtle. Like, they'll actually try to like, you know, kick you in the balls in between, or take out your knees in between rounds. It gets pretty wild. They're targeting your eyes, neck.

• 54:46Josh Waitzkin?

  And initially, it will throw you off. But I trained for years because I had to win national world championships. You need to be able to deal with these guys and be at your best when they're at their worst. And so I, I spent a lot of years bringing in the dirtiest players I could find and learning how to, how to play with them in the gym. And then, I remember this time in the 2002 world championships in Taiwan. I was fighting this Austrian guy, and he was just the textbook dirty player. He was, he was doing this, he was like trying to bust my knees up after the bell. He was just all, he hit me, you know, two solid, like, straight up groin shots, which were well-placed. And, but I'd done all this training at this, and so I was focusing very purely, and I was smiling at him,

• 55:31Josh Waitzkin?

  which is kind of your move. And he was so used to people responding to his dirty play with anger, that when I didn't give it to him and I smiled at him, he got desperate and he kept on, you know, doing more and more outrageous things. And when I responded with no emotion, he, at the end of the fight, he was basically throwing himself on the floor. I mean, he was completely destroying himself. He needed my response like a leg. That was a leg he was used to leaning on. And so like the, I, I, I think your principle is brilliant and I practiced the in-person version of it.

• 55:59Ramit Sethi?

  It's interesting how much they apply. And also I noticed something you just offhandedly said that you trained with dirtier players. And that's something you'll find true of a lot of people who are at the top of their game. They, they find something that is interesting that's helping them develop and then they will actively seek it out. Like what person in their right mind would seek out dirty players and fight against them? Only someone who wants to be the best.

• 56:22Josh Waitzkin?

  Well, it's a very interesting thing that happens, you know, in, in different forms of competition, which is that if somebody plays outside the rules, the typical response is righteous indignation, right? Because like that person isn't playing by these rules, which are arbitrary rules anyway. So like the weakness of almost any martial artist is the dogma of his sport, right? And we could go through different martial arts like, you know, Judo guys, for example, are incredible fighters, but the rule, the rules of Judo is that you can't line it on your back. And so they'll turn themselves and land on their stomach in the middle of a throw, which is, you know, exposes their back to being choked out in a real fight, right? Or Jiu-Jitsu guys might have a bias against foot locks, right? Or will may not be such good strikers or like in Chinese martial arts, people believe it's not honorable to fight on the ground.

• 57:06Josh Waitzkin?

  So you build all this, you know, you kind of make a cult of your inhibitions and you.

• 57:10Ramit Sethi?

  Make a cult of your inhibitions.

• 57:12Josh Waitzkin?

  Yeah, I think that's actually the, that's, it's the, I think it's, my, that's actually comes from, my dad used that line in one of his books. I think it's a great, it's a great term because people basically have some kind of insecurity or inhibition. Um, and they, they build a cult out of it. Like they, they, they protect it. They, they, instead of taking it on, instead of finding, finding the dirty player to, um, you know, to go at your neck and your eyes. And so like, for example, as a fighter, the way this manifests is that someone takes out, like charts targeting your Adam's apple and your eyeballs and you don't know how to deal with it. You're going to be furious because it's, you don't know technically how to deal with it. But if you train it how to deal with it, then you're not going to have that emotional reaction.

• 57:46Ramit Sethi?

  So, so we've talked about.

• 57:49Tim Ferriss?

  Fighting Austrians, I want to talk about dancing bears. This is going somewhere. Bear with me. I'm not on LSD. Um, yet. No. That's a joke. Don't try this at home, kids. We're trained professionals on a close course.

• 58:05Tim Ferriss?

  So Josh is, uh...

• 58:10Tim Ferriss?

  Recluse? Is that fair? Yeah, so Josh, Josh, when he's, when he's not fighting dirty Austrians, prefers to be left alone for the most part. Occasionally, I'll drag him out to do something like this, in part because he will most certainly text me the next day and go, "You fucking fuck. You fucking fuck." Which I find endearing. Uh, but he does not engage on the internet, does zero media, and I admire that because you're able to get a lot of deep work done. And it's a challenge for me. I'm able to do it, but it takes a lot more effort because I've exposed myself. Not in a criminal way, but in a very public way. And, uh, could you, could you explain? So we will sometimes joke when we're

• 58:56Tim Ferriss?

  forced or volunteer, in my case, to do something in front of a lot of people, or to do something like a speaking engagement, like Dance Baby Dance, and we'll talk about the bear. So could you, could you give us some context on where this came from?

• 59:09Josh Waitzkin?

  Yeah. Oh, so I have some history with this, this theme because I, you know, when I was 11 years old, my dad's book, Searching for Bobby Fischer, came out. And then when I was 15 years old, the movie came out. And it was a big deal. And so I was thrust into this mainstream media spotlight without, you know, asking to be. And that was in the middle of my chess career. And so I had this deep love for this, for, for this art. And, and I was so passionate about it, but I had so much, um, attention on me that I found myself getting pulled into this externalized relationship with my first love. And it was heartbreaking. And I didn't have the internal tools to resist that pull. And I've had several times in my life when I've kind of had to do some, so I used to develop this computer chess program called Chessmaster.

• 59:49Josh Waitzkin?

  And I had to do, you know, press things for that. And then I wrote, um, The Art of Learning. And I had to do this big... You know, what you're doing right now and what you're awesome at. And during that time, I got pulled into the public speaking tour quite a bit because everyone wanted it. But the thing is that nothing really calcifies the growth process, in my opinion, like people who are on the speaking tour, because they're being asked to speak about the same ideas that they spoke about the year before and the year before they wrote about three years ago, and it's supposed to break new ground. And I'm personally allergic to anything that will calcify or slow down my growth process, because I love learning more than I love anything. And so I have this ingrained allergy to anything that externalizes my relationship to the game.

• 1:00:33Josh Waitzkin?

  So the last keynote address that I ever gave was a lot of years ago. Some speaking agency convinced me to work with them and I was doing some talks. And I was conflicted about it and I had all these ethical constraints on them and they talked me into going to this event in Florida. What were the ethical constraints? I would only work with beautiful companies that were helping the world and that were awesome. They're like, oh, one of these guys. One of these guys. So they just completely bullshit me about what I was gonna go do. And I went out to Florida, I think I was working with this group they told me was donating all these medical supplies to the countries in Africa, and I thought it was awesome and beautiful. Turns out I was going to the national sales convention of this big group. And I just was literally the follow-up back to a monkey on stage.

• 1:01:16Josh Waitzkin?

  And I was speaking about, it was actually a monkey, there was a monkey on stage that was doing like, "Are you smarter than a monkey?" or something. And I was, you know, I just like, I lived my life in the realm, like authenticity is the most important thing to me. And I was gonna speak about like my pain and my ideas from chess and martial arts and stuff that I kind of love. And then I was just feeling this wild hilarity of being the follow-up back to a monkey and being just, yeah, that was the way the dancing bear thing came from. So that was the last keynote address I ever gave. And so now I only will do a public, I mean, I only do public things frankly with you. I mean, I think it's been the last many, many years, that's all I've done. And then if I give a talk, it's always a Q and A, which is a dynamic dialogue where I actually can feel like I can learn from,

• 1:01:59Josh Waitzkin?

  because you're speaking to a small group or a big group of really brilliant people who are all in on their training process. And it's an exploration that I can learn from their questions. And so that's where the dancing bear comes from, follow-up back to a monkey.

• 1:02:13Tim Ferriss?

  A real monkey. Are you smarter than a monkey?

• 1:02:18Tim Ferriss?

  That's coming up next, folks. So, stand by.

• 1:02:23Tim Ferriss?

  What book or writer, or could be thinker, has most influenced each of you in the last, say, year? Or someone who's really just influenced you? Adam, do you have any thoughts on who or what that might be?

• 1:02:42Speaker 04

  Well, I'm always forging for ideas. So, for example, Cialdini's book, Influence. But I read far afield because the ideas in investing come from outside the domain. If you want to have an insight in whatever your field is, it helps to look outside your field. So I read constantly and I read poetry. I like Rumi.

• 1:03:06Speaker 04

  So, actually, someone say Rumi, because he's gotten me in touch with the mystical and the mysterious and the magical.

• 1:03:14Tim Ferriss?

  Do you gift many books?

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  I'm sorry?

• 1:03:16Tim Ferriss?

  Do you gift books to other people?

• 1:03:18Speaker 04

  I gift all the time. I'm a world champion gift giver.

• 1:03:22Tim Ferriss?

  What are your...

• 1:03:24Tim Ferriss?

  So that's true.

• 1:03:24Josh Waitzkin?

  Adam has given so many books, gifts, it's amazing to me and my son Jack. He's like, he is a world champion gift giver. I think that's absolutely accurate.

• 1:03:32Tim Ferriss?

  This is going to be a digression, which is kind of my thing. So I remember once reading a bedtime story to Jack, long story. And the book was Giraffes Can't Dance. And this book, for like two weeks, has been just decapitating me on Amazon. This book is a juggernaut. It is, it is just

• 1:03:51Josh Waitzkin?

  Seriously?

• 1:03:51Tim Ferriss?

  Killing the top 10 list on Amazon. Every Christmas, Giraffes Can't Dance will kick your ass.

• 1:03:58Josh Waitzkin?

  And you just blew it up on your podcast.

• 1:04:00Tim Ferriss?

  I did.

• 1:04:01Josh Waitzkin?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:04Tim Ferriss?

  I think that's, that's like Harakiri. I think that's what that's called. Jack loves that book. I will have to delay the publication of this esteemed podcast featuring Giraffes Can't Dance. First one's on me, guys. Come sponsor my podcast.

• 1:04:21Tim Ferriss?

  Where the hell was I? Oh, yes. So, you've given a lot of books as gifts. What books have you gifted most often to other people? Is there a shortlist? Or just those that come to mind that you've gifted more than once?

• 1:04:34Speaker 04

  No, it's really unique to each person.

• 1:04:38Speaker 04

  So, so there's no one book, because each gift reflects something I want to share with that person.

• 1:04:46Tim Ferriss?

  But I would imagine there have to be some generally applicable books that you've enjoyed that you've given to more than one person? Or is that not the case?

• 1:04:56Speaker 04

  Oh, I'd have to think about that.

• 1:04:57Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, we'll come back.

• 1:04:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, come back to that.

• 1:04:59Tim Ferriss?

  We'll come back. We got Rumi and we got Giraffes Can't Dance.

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  By the way, I can't let Ramit's fuck you thing go. If any of you want to get in touch with him, you now know how to get his attention.

• 1:05:12Ramit Sethi?

  Oh, God. What have I done?

• 1:05:15Speaker 04

  Wait, if you have business opportunities, anything.

• 1:05:20Speaker 04

  And I believe this works well with everyone.

• 1:05:24Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks so much. And if you want Josh to do a speaking engagement, you have to practice your dirty fighting skills and figure out how to be very good. Groin kicks.

• 1:05:36Speaker 04

  That'll get his attention.

• 1:05:37Tim Ferriss?

  And for all the people who've been asking me to introduce them to Josh to do media, he's not gonna do it. He would rather be fighting and cooking turkeys and riding his one-wheel around. Surfing. And surfing, which is a big thing. So, Ramit, what about you in terms of thinkers or books or anything really that's influenced your thinking a lot in the last year?

• 1:05:57Ramit Sethi?

  I read a lot of military books. I think that the military is amazing at building training programs and identifying people who are good and then making them great. So, especially at the special operations level. And having met some of those folks and doing some work with them. It's pretty outstanding the way that they can cultivate mastery. So that's, that's great. Books I gifted, Gift of Fear is an amazing book. Particularly for women, but I actually think everybody. Learning to Trust Your Intuition.

• 1:06:32Tim Ferriss?

  Gavin DeBecker?

• 1:06:33Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, Gavin DeBecker. And he talks about.

• 1:06:36Tim Ferriss?

  Who, by the way, just not to interrupt, but does, has a company that does very high end. Security details for high profile folks.

• 1:06:44Ramit Sethi?

  Exactly. Trusting your intuition, knowing when the little intent at the back of your head goes up. And you can't see anything and we so often say, it's nothing. I'm, I'm gonna walk down that alley or I'm gonna just go into my house like normal, but. Listen and learn to trust your intuition because we have it. But it kind of gets suppressed because we don't want to be that weird person. So that's a great, that's a great gift. I can't recommend it enough. Two books I wish I could gift more. Charlie Munger's.

• 1:07:14Tim Ferriss?

  Poor Charlie's Almanac?

• 1:07:15Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, Poor Charlie's. I mean, amazing book on mental models, super dense. And nobody wants to get that book as a gift. I mean, it's a gift you have to buy, not get gifted. That one and also Breakthrough Advertising, which I think is one of the most sophisticated books on. Marketing ever written, super dense. I read it every year. I learn something new.

• 1:07:35Tim Ferriss?

  Who's the author?

• 1:07:37Ramit Sethi?

  Eugene Schwartz.

• 1:07:38Tim Ferriss?

  Eugene Schwartz.

• 1:07:38Ramit Sethi?

  And amazing, amazing book on copywriting and, and really human psychology. But again, nobody wants to get that as a gift. Look it up and buy it if you want it, but it's fantastic.

• 1:07:51Tim Ferriss?

  What about you, Josh? And, and I'll give you. Two options here. It could be someone or something that has really changed your. Or informed your thinking in the last year. Or it could be something that you're really looking into, subject matter wise, or a particular thinker. Diving into in the coming year.

• 1:08:13Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you and I have talked about books a lot, right? So, we're just gonna set that.

• 1:08:17Josh Waitzkin?

  Well, we don't have to.

• 1:08:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Josh Waitzkin?

  We've done a lot of best books.

• 1:08:19Tim Ferriss?

  Set the record on the platter and play the same track.

• 1:08:22Josh Waitzkin?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Tim Ferriss?

  But, uh, subject matter wise.

• 1:08:26Josh Waitzkin?

  Yeah. I, I am, so my foundation of books which we, like, which we've discussed of, you know, Lao Tzu, Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Robert Persig, these are books that were really important to me. Recently, and we've discussed all these, so we're not gonna.

• 1:08:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, but I have a question for you about one of them.

• 1:08:42Josh Waitzkin?

  Which one?

• 1:08:42Tim Ferriss?

  Can we jump in?

• 1:08:43Josh Waitzkin?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43Tim Ferriss?

  So, the Tao Te Ching?

• 1:08:45Josh Waitzkin?

  Tao Te Ching, yeah.

• 1:08:46Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So, this has come up a lot in the podcast. A lot of people like it. Rick Rubin, yourself. But, if I recommend that book to, say, ten people, of those ten, two may seem to enjoy it and eight are like, "What is this? I can't make any sense out of it. It's just like a book of fortune cookies." What?

• 1:09:08Josh Waitzkin?

  Yeah. It's so ambiguous.

• 1:09:10Tim Ferriss?

  There's no there there. Like, what the hell is this? So, what are they missing? Or how should they read it?

• 1:09:15Josh Waitzkin?

  My favorite definition of wisdom comes from the, the, um, the glossary of Robert Thurman's translation of the Vimal Kirti Sutra, and it's tolerance of cognitive dissonance. And that's what Lao Tzu is about, right? So, if you read the Tao Te Ching, first of all, I think it depends what translation you read. You need to read, in my opinion, the Jia Fu Feng and Jane English version.

• 1:09:34Tim Ferriss?

  Say that one more time.

• 1:09:34Josh Waitzkin?

  Jia Fu Feng and Jane English translation of the Tao Te Ching, I think, is the most, is the most true that I've run into, and I think I've read them all. I don't read ancient Chinese, so I've had to kind of circle it.

• 1:09:46Tim Ferriss?

  So lazy.

• 1:09:47Josh Waitzkin?

  And a lot of these are, a lot of, I almost took up reading, learning ancient Chinese years ago for that one purpose. But the, the, the reason, a lot of these translations are sort of thesis statements, which take away the ambiguity. And I think a lot of people don't want to tolerate cognitive dissonance. I mean, Lao Tzu doesn't tell you what to do. It's, it's a.

• 1:10:03Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so is it the lack of specific prescription that is kind of almost a Rorschach test of sense? I mean, you're looking at the tea leaves and like, what you see tells you, how you interpret it tells you what you need to know, as opposed to?

• 1:10:15Josh Waitzkin?

  Well, this principle that, um, Amit was speaking about, um, you know, the response to aggression with empty space, with nonviolence. I mean, this is, this is at the essence of, of Lao Tzu.

• 1:10:26Josh Waitzkin?

  For me, it was very important during my period, the period where I was transitioning, where I was dealing with this existential crisis in my chess career, where I'd been working with a coach for several years who was urging me to study the opposite style from what was natural to me. I was being pulled in this externalized relationship to things. And it was a kind of the entrance into my philosophical exploration of self-expression, of authenticity, of a deeply intrinsic relationship to my search for truth as opposed to being driven by the external, competing from the inside out as opposed to the outside in. So it was a big part of my foundation in self-development. So maybe that's, and all those books that I just mentioned, those authors I just mentioned were a huge part

• 1:11:11Josh Waitzkin?

  of that. In the last year, I have to tell you, this is a brilliant book. Tim sent me an advanced copy. I mean, this Tools of Titans is a, I'm not, Tim and I are dear friends. I love the guy, but I give him so much shit. Like, trust me, I'm not saying this if it isn't true. It's a goldmine. I mean, your podcast is brilliant, and I believe it's your calling in a lot of ways, at least in this period of your life, because you've taken the art of deconstruction, which I think is your finest art. And I think, and you've developed this medium with which you can study people and get to the essence of them, you know, so quickly. And I'm stunned by how you can have so many conversations that are deeply meaningful, and that you can really get to the essence of someone,

• 1:11:54Josh Waitzkin?

  studying them for, you know, a few days or a week. I mean, I couldn't fucking do that. It's a beautiful thing to see, to see then you have this, you're bringing it to the world, you're gifting the best ideas of a lot of, you know, who you consider brilliant people through this podcast. But then you have to listen to, you know, two, three-hour talks, which is awesome, but it's a lot of people on the patience. And this is a way of just shortcutting your way. And so I think this is actually a goldmine. I've been reading it and loving it myself. Thanks, Josh. I really mean that. Thanks, Ben.

• 1:12:23Ramit Sethi?

  It's true dude.

• 1:12:24Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks man.

• 1:12:25Ramit Sethi?

  I wouldn't say it wasn't true.

• 1:12:26Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't slip him a 20, he's an expensive date.

• 1:12:30Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you Josh.

• 1:12:30Ramit Sethi?

  Another book which I think is really important right now is a buddy of mine who you had on, Sebastian Junger, his book Tribe.

• 1:12:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, 100% agreed.

• 1:12:41Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah, I thought your interview with him was beautiful, you guys really like, the introduction of these two guys was hilarious, like the text exchange to get them to like loosen their shit up with one another was really funny, but finally they did and I thought that was a, you know Sebastian's been studying evolutionary psychology.

• 1:12:57Tim Ferriss?

  So we were, so Josh introduced us.

• 1:12:59Ramit Sethi?

  It's ridiculous.

• 1:13:00Tim Ferriss?

  We were sort of doing this like, "Very nice to meet you sir, yes, good day sir", this very kind of weirdly.

• 1:13:04Ramit Sethi?

  Have your publisher talk to my publisher.

• 1:13:05Tim Ferriss?

  Exchange and so Josh jumped in a few, a few levels down, he's like, "Guys loosen the fuck up." I was like, "Okay, alright."

• 1:13:14Tim Ferriss?

  Tribe, I highly, highly recommend, it's a great short read. So I've, I've asked people oftentimes, and we are going to do some Q and A in about 12 minutes, so hold your horses, but we'll, we'll definitely get there shortly.

• 1:13:28Tim Ferriss?

  The question I've asked often, and there are many, but is what advice would you give your 30 year old self or your 20 year old self, tends to produce one or two of the same answers. I wouldn't say anything because I wouldn't want to change where I am, or enjoy it, very common. The question though that I'd like to pose is, is a bit different and it is, what advice do you think the happiest version of your 80 year old self would give you now?

• 1:13:57Tim Ferriss?

  So anyone who wants to tackle that is welcome to, to give it a shot.

• 1:14:02Ramit Sethi?

  Well, let me riff off of something that Josh said about, you know, you're talking about the book where two people love it and eight people are like, "What is this?" And I think that in this day and age, we are given so much advice and as someone who's in the advice industry, I see it and I have a healthy disdain for a lot of advice and you know, if you, if you followed the advice that people give you, you gotta wake up and by 3am you need to be hustling and you need to be doing all this stuff until, you know, and it's crazy, you can't do all this stuff and feasibly be a normal human being.

• 1:14:39Ramit Sethi?

  I had books that people told me I need to read. And I opened them up and I'm like, this book is shit. Who the hell, but like 20 people I like told me to read it. And then

• 1:14:51Tim Ferriss?

  Give me an example. Can you think of one?

• 1:14:53Ramit Sethi?

  Yes, because I ended up loving it. So here's a classic, simple example.

• 1:14:56Tim Ferriss?

  Four Hour Work Week.

• 1:15:03Ramit Sethi?

  When I was, when I was like in my early twenties, I read 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. Or branding. And I'm like, what is this? And I just, and then I picked it up again when I was 30 and I'm like, this is awesome. I wasn't ready for it. And I'm glad that I gave it another chance because I didn't have the context. And I'm willing to bet, and I'm not saying that I got better, I did, things just changed. And by the time I was 30, I was ready for it. Guarantee this book, maybe some of the people just don't like it and that's fine. But maybe some of them don't have the context or they're not ready or it's just not integral. Right now, you know, everybody, including in the book, which I love. Meditation's a classic thing. I don't meditate.

• 1:15:46Ramit Sethi?

  And I try not to feel guilty about it because I don't think it's the right time in my life. Like I have a very calm mind. And I have the, you know, the ways that I like to enjoy and all that stuff. It just doesn't involve meditation. But I'm sure, because I believe that most of us are basically the same in most parts of life. And if we embrace that, then we can optimize it and we can free up that 2% that we're different and get really unique and special. I bet you that as I get a little bit older, I will become more spiritual. I will probably meditate. These are classic things that happen. I think if I were 80 years old, I would look back and say, listen to the advice and hear what people are telling you to do.

• 1:16:29Ramit Sethi?

  But if it doesn't feel right, it's okay to say, you know what? I'm going to put that aside. Come back to it in a year or five years. And maybe at that point, the book will be great or I'll be ready to meditate. But I just, I don't have interest in it right now. It just doesn't feel right and That's okay. I don't need to do what everybody else says. I want to do what's right for me, be a great version of myself, improve, but be really judicious about who you're listening to and what you're applying.

• 1:16:55Tim Ferriss?

  I think also, you mentioned intuition and the gift of fear. This is something I've really tried hard to resurrect for myself in the last few years because I've been driven by pro and con lists and spreadsheets and this, that, and the other thing, using my left side of the brain, that's simplistic, obviously, but just trying to use an analytical framework for everything and took a lot of wrong turns. I'd be like, this deal is great. And then I remember at one point, ages ago, this girlfriend said to me, but wait, do you trust this guy at all? I was like, not really. And she's like, oh, Jesus. And then I did the deal. And of course, it was a disaster. So I think the intuition is also really important to develop an ear for when you're making those types of decisions to put things aside.

• 1:17:40Ramit Sethi?

  Adam, what about, what would your 80-year-old self tell you now?

• 1:17:45Speaker 04

  Well, one of my favorite quotes was by one of my heroes, Juan Belmonte. And Juan Belmonte was sort of the Rocky of bullfighting in the early part of this century. He fought pre-antibiotics. So even a scratch of a bull's horn, you could die from that. They used to call him the flying matador because he was so bad that bulls would just keep tossing him in the air. But he was really...

• 1:18:11Tim Ferriss?

  I did not see that coming.

• 1:18:16Speaker 04

  And there's, there's a quote in there that I love, and actually one I'd really like to share because it's germane to everything we do. And, and, because we hear about achieving and performance and being our best selves. And he said, mind you, this is a bullfighter who rose from poverty to be the best bullfighter of all time. And...

• 1:18:37Speaker 04

  With no aptitude for the, for the sport. Really, and you know, you're bad at martial arts or surfing, whatever, you know, but you're bad at bullfighting, you die. And, and, um, anyway, so he said the following, he said, um, he said, "No life worthy of the name consists of anything more than the continual series of struggles to develop one's character through the medium of whatever one has chosen as a career." Which is fascinating, because now your career becomes reframed as merely something with which you're going to develop your character.

• 1:19:19Speaker 04

  And so, so, I think that's what my 80-year-old self would, would just remind me of that. Keep working on your, your character. Really doesn't matter what you do.

• 1:19:30Tim Ferriss?

  What aspect of your character are you most trying to develop in your current primary?

• 1:19:36Speaker 04

  Fearlessness.

• 1:19:37Tim Ferriss?

  What was that?

• 1:19:37Speaker 04

  Fearlessness.

• 1:19:38Tim Ferriss?

  Fearlessness.

• 1:19:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:42Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, Josh, it's a tough act to follow.

• 1:19:45Josh Waitzkin?

  That was beautiful, man.

• 1:19:49Tim Ferriss?

  I have trouble remembering four-word quotes, that was amazing.

• 1:19:53Josh Waitzkin?

  That was really.

• 1:19:53Tim Ferriss?

  I'm like, "To be or not to have?" All right, Josh, uh, your 80-year-old self.

• 1:20:01Josh Waitzkin?

  Well, I'm in the midst of this transition from being a fighter, a competitor, um, and then literally a fighter, to being a nurturer primarily. And my relationship to the sport that I'm taking on now is paddle surfing, which is my fourth big mountain in terms of my own training, is much more about receptivity. And feeling the ocean and entering it, like entering that sweet spot of enormous power of something that's traveled thousands of miles. And so, a, a big reason that I've, I've gone that way is because I feel that, that the art of receptivity.

• 1:20:42Josh Waitzkin?

  And is just a never ending pool, I intuit from here.

• 1:20:47Josh Waitzkin?

  And so receptivity and love is a huge, is a huge part of what I intuit is, is where I'll be focused for the next 10, 20, 30 years. And so I would say from here that like, that's what, from my perspective now, that's what I would think my 80 year old self would be, would be telling me to, to focus on is, is um, deep listening to humans and, and nature and, and what's moving most elementally inside of myself. Um, I'm a completely devoted dad and um, I don't, I think that, I can't imagine my 80 year old self saying anything, but you know, seize every moment you can with these little dudes and give them every ounce of love you can.

• 1:21:29Josh Waitzkin?

  And I also, you know, I, I feel in myself now a commitment to living life, you know, every last drop as fully as, as I can ever live it. And honestly, this is, I, I live in New York now and this is putting that into a, into question. Cause I'm so passionate about, about the, I'm a, I love New York. I've lived, I'm a New Yorker. I, I love this city, but, but I'm yearning for nature right now. I feel in some ways that living on the water is what's needed for this next surge of, of me living life as fully as possible and, you know, my own development. And so I think that that's the direction my 80 year old self would be giving me a kick in the ass, but um, but he'll be a lot wiser than I am, so.

• 1:22:06Tim Ferriss?

  There's so many questions I want to ask. We'll have to, we'll have to continue this, but uh, let's start with one, which is, what is some of the worst advice that you hear given out in your world? And you can choose world, however you want to define it. That could be past career, current career, could be circle of friends, could be anything like that, but, or a terrible piece of advice. It doesn't have to be the worst, but a common piece of advice. And I mean, I'll, I'll buy some time here. I mean, for me, I remember applying to colleges and having my guidance counselor in high school tell me to lower all of my standards. Because I wanted, I had my reach schools, my A list, I had my, I think I can get into B list schools and then my safety schools.

• 1:22:49Tim Ferriss?

  And he said, no, no, no. He laughed. He said, oh, Tim, silly, silly boy. You need to take your safety schools and make those your reach schools. You're like five paragraphs too high here. And uh, not realizing at the time, I realized this soon thereafter, that his incentive was to be able to say,

• 1:23:08Tim Ferriss?

  X percentage of my students got into their first choice college. Easiest way to do that is to make everyone lower their standards. So that was a terrible piece of advice that I received and a terrible advice, piece of advice that I hear a lot.

• 1:23:20Tim Ferriss?

  So the antithesis of that would be hold the standard, which is the advice, for instance, at the Fat Duck, which was at the time, the number one ranked restaurant in the world. Heston Blumenthal said that to someone I've had on this podcast, Chris Young. It's like, hold the standard because he tried to pass something off that was like 99% perfect, but not 100%. So anyone want to take a stab at that?

• 1:23:41Josh Waitzkin?

  Do it the way that guy did it.

• 1:23:43Tim Ferriss?

  Do it the way that guy did it.

• 1:23:44Josh Waitzkin?

  Yeah, like people give advice all the time that you should, you should follow this prescriptive path to success. And I think that excellence is all about self-expression. And so people look outside and try to replicate the path of somebody else. But then when the shit hits the fan, as it always does, when the pressure's on, it's not coming from inside of you.

• 1:24:02Tim Ferriss?

  How much of self, how much of self, let's just say, Tim, Josh, and so on, is discovery versus creation in your mind?

• 1:24:16Tim Ferriss?

  In other words, like

• 1:24:17Josh Waitzkin?

  That's a great question.

• 1:24:18Tim Ferriss?

  Do you start with the raw materials of, of everything that Josh represents? And then it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a process of pulling back the layers of the onion and discovering these different pieces? Or is it really just tabula rasa?

• 1:24:32Josh Waitzkin?

  I think they're entangled. I think that as we're discovering ourselves, we're creating ourselves. I mean, I think about this in the context of someone taking on an art.

• 1:24:42Josh Waitzkin?

  They have to understand who they are. I think people should do what they love and they should do it in a way that they love. But that evolves. And so it's, it's not stuck. It's not static. It's dynamic. It's dynamic quality versus static quality. And so there's, there's the act of creation in the discovery process. And I mean, I've experienced like the biggest losses that I've had and the biggest disappointments that I've had have led to the biggest wins of my life. In many ways, that's because I created myself based on my, the response to that experience. And I think that it's, that's, that's actually really an important part of this principle of, you know, unobstructed self-expression, doing it from what's inside out is that that's always changing and you have to be attuned to it. So I would, the way I would respond to that would be that intuitively they're fundamentally

• 1:25:27Josh Waitzkin?

  entangled in navigating that, that entanglement is a big part of the genius in the growth curve.

• 1:25:32Tim Ferriss?

  Do you agree? I do agree. Well, I agree that that is an interesting viewpoint to have on it. It's something that I'm... That sounds like a dickish way of saying I didn't understand a thing that you just said. But it's not. It's just that I don't have a firm position on it. It's something that I'm exploring for myself and thinking through myself. So that's why I hang out with these guys, is to get something to chew on. So I have to chew on that. I don't know if I agree with it. I don't know either. You just asked a question. I thought I was gonna talk. That's what I think. Rameen?

• 1:26:06Ramit Sethi?

  I heard one of the most interesting pieces of advice recently, and it blew up something I'd believed my whole life. So my friend Nick Gray runs a company on museums, and he takes people in museums and he gives them tours that are really cool. And he was talking about how he goes to a museum himself. And he said, "If I go to a museum, I'm spending 90 minutes, max, and the first 30 minutes are in the cafe, planning where I'm gonna go." And I'm sitting there saying, "Wait, what?" And I said, "What do you mean?" The way I was raised, you know, we would go to a museum maybe once every five years, maybe, as kids.

• 1:26:47Ramit Sethi?

  We'd save up our money to go there, and we would spend seven hours going every level, because we knew we were never gonna go back. And what Nick was saying was, in so many words, have the abundance to know that you can go back, and don't think that it's once and done, and also know that leave at the peak. There's power in leaving at the peak. And it blew my mind to think that my whole life, until that point, at 34, that I had just thought, gotta go through every single thing and check the box. But really, he's talking about curation, he's talking about abundance, all in a simple, one-sentence example.

• 1:27:28Tim Ferriss?

  I love it. It also reminds me, we won't dig into it right now, but we've talked about it before, the ending on a good rep, ending on quality, really closely related, for both achievement, in that case, and skill development, but also just for appreciation and quality of life. Adam, what about you?

• 1:27:44Speaker 04

  Which question we talking about here?

• 1:27:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, what are your thoughts on the last 10 minutes of conversation? Bad advice that you've received or heard, or that you wanna give?

• 1:28:01Speaker 04

  I remember I had sold my interest in the Princeton Review and I was wondering what to do next with my life and I was speaking at the time with two older, very successful, like mega-successful businessmen and this is about 20 years ago and one of them said, "I should go into ball bearings." Like he thought for a second, he said, "Adam, ball bearings." Right, I love that. Right, and I said, he said, "Okay, stay with me here." He said, "All the smart talent from universities and they've gone to Wall Street and they've

• 1:28:42Speaker 04

  exhausted whatever is to be found there and you're crazy smart, but you're competing with other people who are crazy smart and why do that?" And by the way, I thought he was, so he said there were no more possibilities there, which that also was wrong, but the second part was interesting. He said, "Ball bearings." You do ball bearings? Right, but, no, but you'll see the relevance in a second. He said, "Ball bearings has not had its Edison." Right? He's, no one's gone into ball bearings, so it's, no one's ever thought about ball bearings. It's brutal ground. It's all round things, different shapes, but, I mean, sorry, different sizes.

• 1:29:21Speaker 04

  So, so he said, he said, it was a metaphor, right? The metaphor was, go where no one else, go with something that no one's ever looked at and you look at Uber, like who thought about taxis? You look at Airbnb, you look at the most successful companies and they're pursuing the ball bearings philosophy, right? And, and so, the first part that, that opportunities on Wall Street had been exhausted, that part was wrong, but the ball bearings part was right, you know, and I was talking to a friend and I passed on who was wondering what she should do with her career and I said, "Oh, ball bearings." You know, find, find something that...

• 1:30:07Speaker 04

  I said, and there was a pencil on the table, like a number two pencil. I said, "There, why don't you reinvent the pencil? Who thinks about pencils? I don't." Which means there's an opportunity there. And the wonderful thing about the world is today, you can find any niche, and there are enough people in the world that you can make a fortune on number two pencils. So if any of you are wondering what to do with your lives, I mean, they're number two pencils. Or ball bearings, but find, really, cups, or it doesn't matter. Find something that tables, find something that no one thinks about, and think about it.

• 1:30:44Tim Ferriss?

  No, it's great advice, and it actually reminds me of a trip I had recently. I went to Utah, and we went to this, it's not even fair to call it an estate. It was just, it was a state. I mean, the guy, this single individual basically owned a state. It was this gigantic property. He had his own airstrip. He had tons of buildings. He had his own fishing pond, ludicrously wealthy. And I asked what he did to make all this money. And they go, "Oh yeah, you know those little, like, these little parts of the wing that flip up vertically?" He figured those out. Like 10 years ago, something you probably barely notice, and in the aviation world, it's kind of like the equivalent of wheels on luggage. It was like, "Why didn't

• 1:31:29Tim Ferriss?

  anybody think of that earlier?" And now it just prints money. But it's because he took something very unsexy and was willing to dive into it. Well, I want to let these gents have a shot at cavorting and causing trouble in the back. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give a hand for Josh Weiskin, Ramit Sethi, Adam Robinson.

• 1:31:49Ramit Sethi?

  Thanks, guys. Thanks a lot.

• 1:31:54Tim 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.

• 1:32:37Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for years. I love audiobooks and I have two to recommend right off the bat. Number one is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time, and that is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, the only audiobook I've wanted to immediately listen to a second time as soon as I finished. It's amazing. You will thank me for The Graveyard Book. The second is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, which had a huge impact on my life and formed

• 1:33:22Tim Ferriss?

  the basis for a lot of what became The Four Hour Work Week. So, all you need to do to get your free 30-day trial is go to audible.com/tim, T-I-M, and you can choose one of those two books, or you can choose from more great options than you can possibly imagine. So that could be a book, that could be a magazine, that could be a newspaper, it could be a class, it's that easy. Go to audible.com/tim, that's audible.com/tim, and grab a book. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. I reached out to these innovative Finnish entrepreneurs of all things because a very skilled acrobat introduced me to one of their products, which is a mushroom coffee made

• 1:34:04Tim Ferriss?

  out of chaga mushroom, powerful antioxidant, considered a superfood. I was introduced to chaga by Laird Hamilton, of all people, and another mushroom called lion's mane, which is considered a nootropic or a smart drug. And I had half a packet. Let me put this in perspective, tasted just like coffee, just add to hot water, only 20mg in half a packet. Caffeine, that's as little as one tenth what you would find in a strong cup of coffee. And I was on fire for the entire day. I probably got more done in that day than I got done in the three or four days prior to that. So I would highly recommend checking it out. It is very impressive. You will not see visuals, so you can use it for work.

• 1:34:49Tim Ferriss?

  And you can check it out at foursigmatic.com/tim. That's four-sigmatic, S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com/tim. And use the code TIM to get 20% off your first order. I highly encourage you to try it out.