#240: Accelerated Learning and Mentors - My Personal Story

This episode is by request. You have asked me many times for an episode on education, accelerated learning, and my mentors. It will all be covered in the following conversation with Charles Best (@charlesbest https://twitter.com/charlesbest), the founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org https://www.donorschoose.org, a nonprofit website that enables anyone to help a classroom in need. It is one of my favorite companies -- profit or non-profit -- in the world. (And I'm not just saying that because we used to be wrestling partners in high school.) Charles founded DonorsChoose.org back in 2000 at a public high school in the Bronx where he taught history. Flash forward to 2017, and DonorsChoose.org is one of Oprah Winfrey's "ultimate favorite things" and made the cover of Fast Company https://www.fastcompany.com/1795719/getting-schooled-starting-business-donorschooseorgs-charles-best as one of the "50 Most Innovative Companies in the World," the first time a charity has received such recognition. To date, teachers at more than seventy percent of all the public schools in America have created classroom project requests on DonorsChoose.org, and more than two million people have given to those projects. Charles joined me for a conversation at SXSWedu http://sxswedu.com/ in front of an audience of educators and administrators to talk about learning things faster, good teaching versus bad teaching, the value of tough love, and much more. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Alibaba and Gateway17 http://gateway17.com/. If you're an entrepreneur or business owner in the US, the stars don't always align -- but this might get close. Alibaba (if you're not familiar with it, imagine Amazon and Google having a baby in China) is hosting Gateway17 http://gateway17.com/, a conference designed to help US businesses tap into the five hundred million consumers of China's growing middle class. Gateway17 http://gateway17.com/ takes place June 20-21 in Detroit, Michigan, and it puts you in direct contact with experts who want to help you grow your business into the booming Chinese marketplace. Speakers include Alibaba founder Jack Ma (in his only speaking engagement of the year), UPS CEO David Abney, and master interviewer Charlie Rose. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, Alibaba is offering you a ticket for $125 (they're usually $500) if you sign up at gateway17.com http://gateway17.com/ by May 25 and use the code "Tim" at checkout. This podcast is also brought to you by Soothe.com https://www.soothe.com/, the world's largest on-demand massage service. Because I've been broken so many times, I have body work done at least twice a week -- so I have a high bar for this stuff. I do not accept mediocrity, and I wouldn't expect you to, either. After much personal testing, I can affirm that Soothe delivers a hand-selected, licensed, and experienced massage therapist to you in the comfort of your own home, hotel, or office in as little as an hour. I was amazed at the quality of service and convenience. Think of it as Uber for massages, available in fifty cities worldwide. Download the app at Soothe.com https://www.soothe.com/ and use code TITAN20 to get $20 off your first massage.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Tim Ferriss?

  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 Alibaba and the Gateway 17 event. This is very cool, so listen up. If you are an entrepreneur or business owner in the United States, the stars don't always align, but this might get close. All right, the opportunity is this. The Gateway 17 event, which 17 is 2017, is hosted by Alibaba. And Alibaba, if you don't know it, you could think of as a combination of Amazon and Google in China. It is huge. This event is designed specifically to help you guys tap into the 500 million consumers in the Chinese market.

• 1:03Tim Ferriss?

  Their fast-growing middle class is larger than the entire US population. Alibaba has created a marketplace, better technology, to help you connect with the people you want to connect with, those 500 million. And now they're looking for US-based businesses to fill the demand. The Gateway 17 event is designed to help matchmake and educate you, teach you everything you need to know. The speakers include Jack Ma, who is the founder of Alibaba. He has an estimated net worth of more than $20 billion. This is his only speaking appearance in 2017. David Abney, the CEO of UPS, Charlie Rose, and more. It's a two-day event. It's in Detroit, Michigan, June 20 and 21.

• 1:45Tim Ferriss?

  And it puts you in direct contact with experts who want to help you grow your business, specifically to access the 500 million in China. And as a listener of this podcast, there is a very legit offer at which more sponsors would offer this type of discount. Alibaba is offering you the normal. Tickets, which are $500 for $125. That is a 75% discount if you sign up by May 25th. So if you sign up by May 25th, you can get a $500 ticket for $125 if you use the code TIM at checkout. That's capital T lowercase i m.

• 2:25Tim Ferriss?

  You might have to try all lowercase or all caps, but to start with, capital T lowercase i m. So check it out. Just the website alone teaches you a lot about the Chinese middle class and this new consumer base, which has incredible purchasing power. I happen to know a decent amount about it. Go to gateway17.com. That's gateway, the number one, seven dot com. And enter the code TIM at checkout. That's gateway17.com. There are a limited number of spots and it is a low cost event with potentially very, very high upside for the right folks. So check it out. Gateway17.com and use code TIM.

• 3:07Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by soothe.com, the world's largest on-demand massage service. What? And let me tell you, I have a high bar for this stuff. I have bodywork done at least once a week because I've broken my body. I have 30 plus fractures and 100 plus MRIs. I need bodywork, so I have a very, very, very high bar for that. Soothe, which I've tested, I tested, my assistants tested, my employees tested, delivers a hand-selected licensed and experienced massage therapist to you in the comfort of your own home, hotel or office in as little as an hour. I've tested them in San Francisco. I've tested them in Austin. I've tested them all over the place.

• 3:49Tim Ferriss?

  And I have to say, I was really, really amazed at the quality of therapist. And I do not accept mediocrity at all in this area. The process is super simple. Think of it as Uber for massages, right? You choose the kind of massage you want, say Swedish or sports massage, deep tissue, whatever. Then if you want, you can opt for a couples massage. I imagine that's an edge case as the tech people say, but whatever. You set the length of your massage. So let's say you want 60 minutes, 90 minutes, two hours. And let's be real, if you want a proper massage, go for 90 or 120 minutes, for God's sake, and you select the gender of your therapist, and then click, you're off to the races.

• 4:33Tim Ferriss?

  And they bring the massage table, sheets, oil, music, so you can unwind no matter where you are. And I have used this at Airbnbs, hotels, et cetera. Soothe is in 50 cities, including most major US cities, as well as London, Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, and Vancouver. So, number one, download the app Soothe, S-O-O-T-H-E, in the iOS App Store or Google Play Store, and then use the code, let me try that again, use the code, TITAN20, T-I-T-A-N two zero, Titan20, all caps, to get $20 off of your first massage. That's a lot, that's a very good discount, so you should use it.

• 5:19Tim Ferriss?

  So, again, download the app Soothe, S-O-O-T-H-E, and try out the code, TITAN20, all caps, for $20, not percent, $20 off your first massage. And if you're anything like me, I have been paying, and I've been enjoying, so give it a shot. Try out Soothe, and your muscles, nervous system, and sleep will thank you for it. What the fuck kind of read was that? It was pretty good, that's what I think. Okay, enjoy, bye.

• 5:56Tim Ferriss?

  Why, hello, you sexy little minxes. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, where it is usually my job to deconstruct world-class performers of various types. This episode is going to be a little bit different, and it is by request. You have asked for an episode on accelerated learning, on education, on mentors, my past mentors, all of these things, and it is going to all be covered in the following conversation between yours truly and Charles Best, who is the founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, one of my favorite companies, profit or nonprofit companies in the

• 6:33Tim Ferriss?

  World and it took place at South by Southwest EDU with an audience of primarily educators and administrators. So, an unusual audience for me, but a very exciting audience. And as some context, Charles Best, who is he? Well, we met in high school as wrestling partners of all things and we'll talk about that. But he has since done many, many things, including launching donorschoose.org in 2000 at a Bronx public high school where he taught history for five years. Now, flash forward to today, what are we looking at? Donorschoose.org is one of Oprah Winfrey's ultimate favorite things. It has been on the cover of Fast Company as one of the 50 most innovative companies in the world, the first time a charity has ever received such recognition.

• 7:16Tim Ferriss?

  And teachers at more than 70% of all the public schools in America have used donorschoose.org to create classroom project requests. And you should absolutely check this company out. It is lean, it is run as well as anything out there. But the conversation itself focuses on topics that you can apply to your own lives in terms of learning things faster. It talks about teaching, good teaching, bad teaching, tough love, the value thereof, and many, many different things. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did with the one and only Charles Best.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  All right, packed house. This is awesome. So, Tim is an old and dear friend of mine. We went to high school together, we were on the wrestling team together. So, this is actually a fireside chat, not just a euphemism for an informal, warm conversation. So I'm just thrilled to be asking you some questions. We've got a lot of teachers in the audience, so why don't we kick it off by, let me ask you, tell us about a teacher or two who made a really big difference in your life.

• 8:22Tim Ferriss?

  So I'll start with just thanking everybody in the audience. You guys are doing really important work. So, education has played a huge role. Thank you, guys.

• 8:31Tim Ferriss?

  In my life, there are so many different inflection points. I'll mention two who come to mind. The first is Mrs. Vinsky, who has sadly passed, but she was my first grade teacher, public school in Long Island. And I had refused to learn the alphabet up to that point. I'd been made to eat soap as a result, which I don't recommend. And I wouldn't survive first grade, is what my mother had been told. So Mrs. Vinsky took me aside and she said, "Tim, if you learn the alphabet, you'll be able to read any book you want. And if you can read books, you can learn anything that you want." And I was like, "Why didn't anybody tell me?" So, and on top of that, she discovered something, which was competition really motivates me.

• 9:12Tim Ferriss?

  So she had a long paper line up on the wall, the entire length of the classroom, and each student had a race car. And based on the number of books you read and completed, that race car moved towards the finish line. And for whatever reason, that is really what drove me to consume as many books as possible. So that's Mrs. Vinsky, number one. And then flashing forward, so a familiar name for both of us, would be John Buxton. It's very strange for me to say his first name, because I would never dare. So Mr. B, Mr. Buxton, was our wrestling coach, but he was also a teacher. He was also involved with the administration and, I believe, the endowment.

• 9:53Tim Ferriss?

  And he provided a very unique form of tough love in the wrestling room that was extremely critical to me, I think, in that sort of 10th grade, 11th grade period in particular. So, looking back, I think almost everyone on that team has done some really amazing things, and they all look back and would mention Mr. Buxton. So I would say those two immediately come to mind.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Totally, yeah. Mr. Buxton is the teacher who made me want to be a teacher, and so if not for Mr. Buxton, I think there'd be no DonorsChoose.org.

• 10:30Tim Ferriss?

  Well, when you were on Oprah, you brought up Mr. Buxton.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 10:34Tim Ferriss?

  And he was one of the teachers, one of the seminal, sort of pivotal figures in your life that you brought up, so.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, actually, I remember thinking, if anyone ever looked up to me the way that I looked up to Mr. Buxton, I would have done my share and knew I wanted to be a teacher. So we're going to be talking about accelerated learning and your insights for learning more quickly and more deeply. Let's start with just your framework for how someone can learn more quickly and more deeply.

• 11:00Tim Ferriss?

  So the general framework that I use was really pieced together over many years via trial and error. I think there are some applications in the classroom certainly, but I can pull from my personal experience. The general acronym is DIS with, you leave the I out, you'll get there, don't worry. So D and then three S's, that's the framework. And it refers to step one, deconstruction. And the order's very important. So deconstruction is really taking a skill, learn a language, learn to swim, whatever it might be, and breaking it into the smallest Lego pieces possible. For instance, I didn't learn to swim until I was in my 30's. This is very embarrassing as someone who grew up on Long Island.

• 11:43Tim Ferriss?

  Granted, rat tail, fine, whatever, we can talk about that later. But I was deathly afraid of the water and had some near drowning incidents. I tried to take courses and take lessons, none of it worked until I was introduced to something called total immersion. And what total immersion did, that no other method did for me at least, was break down the constituent pieces. And so it wouldn't put me in the water to say, get on a kickboard right away, because there are a bunch of issues with that. I said, alright, let's separate breathing, let's separate proper body position for hydrodynamics. Then you take out kicking, so that's a separate piece, then upper body movements, and then you order them in the least threatening way.

• 12:27Tim Ferriss?

  So breathing isn't even a piece of it. For the first, say, day or two, you would just focus on standing in a four-foot-deep pool and kicking off the side and practicing your streamlined position. So deconstruction is step number one. The next is selection. And selection, in effect, you're using the 80/20 principle or Pareto's Law to answer the question, what 20% of those Lego blocks deliver 80% of the results or more than I'm looking for? And there are certain places where this is really, really profound in language learning, for instance. So I thought I was bad at language learning up until the point that I transferred to the school where we met, St. Paul's, and that's a whole separate story, and had the

• 13:11Tim Ferriss?

  chance to study with Mr. Shimano in Japanese. Because I figured, well, if I'm gonna be terrible at Spanish, I might as well be terrible at a different language with my friends who are actually in the class. And in, say, any language, you can take...

• 13:26Tim Ferriss?

  2,000 words and be functionally, conversationally fluent. And you can identify the highest frequency words. You could also take even something as complex as learning to say, read and write Japanese, and narrow it down to the common use characters, which is around 1,900 something, I believe. And then from there, say, well, let's, let's, let's break it down even further. Almost all of those characters are formed by, say, 100 to 120 radicals. Okay? And that's what you would focus on. So the 20% deliver 80% of the results that I'm looking for. And next you have sequencing. And sequencing, I think, is the most neglected, perhaps. What is a logical progression in which to lay out the Lego blocks that I've selected,

• 14:11Tim Ferriss?

  those 20%? And you can, you can figure out pretty quickly that if you ask, for instance, what if we did the opposite for 48 hours, just as a testing approach, that you can unearth some real gems. So when I learned, for instance, to dance tango in Argentina, partially because I was forced to, I had a female teacher who was very, very high level. I learned the female role, the follow before I learned the lead. And it ended up being a, a key reason why I was able, able to compete in the world championship six months later, is that I learned the female role first, which is very odd. Also, if you talk to, say, a friend of mine, Josh Waitzkin, who is the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer, he, he is the kid.

• 14:55Tim Ferriss?

  When he learned to play chess, when he had his first real coach, they took all the pieces off the board. They didn't start with openings, which everyone does. And you memorize basically the answers in the teacher's book, and you just learn all these openers. And instead of that, his teacher took all of the pieces off the board and put, he had king and pawn, I'm sorry, yes, it was king versus king and pawn. And he reduced the complexity to focus on principles.

• 15:26Tim Ferriss?

  Really flexible principles instead of tactics that were memorized. So the sequencing is very, very critical. And the last piece, you would think is very self-evident, but it's often not, and that is stakes. Not stakes, like flipping stakes on a barbecue, but consequences. How do you build in incentives and motivation, whether that's a reward or a punishment or both, so that you or other people will actually do what the plan includes? That could be the race cars. That could be stakes. That could be an incentive. You could also say, take any number of different approaches.

• 16:04Tim Ferriss?

  There are tools like STICK, S-T-I-C-K-K dot com, and others that you can use to harness loss aversion to your advantage. So for instance, if you want to lose weight, and there's another one called Diet Bet, you could take, and this is something a lot of people have done successfully, you could take, say, a hundred dollars, or whatever amount is going to be painful for you to lose, put it into STICK, it goes into escrow, and if you don't hit your goals, and other people verify this, then that gets contributed to your anti-charity. So an anti-charity is a nonprofit that you would rather nuke than give money to. So it could be the American Nazi Party, it could be whatever it might be, and you'll

• 16:45Tim Ferriss?

  be on the public record as having donated if you don't lose your 20 pounds in two months. So, believe me, and my friend Derek Sivers, who's an entrepreneur, has said, you know, if more information were the answer, we'd all be billionaires with perfect abs. You just need incentives. So that's the basic framework, and you can get into all the nuances and details, but that basic framework has helped me with all of the skills that I've tackled, I'd say, in the last decade certainly.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  So, speaking of the skills that you've tackled, let's see how this framework works in action. Tell us about a particular skill that you've attained in an especially unorthodox way.

• 17:27Tim Ferriss?

  Let's see, I'm trying to maybe omit the odd ones like Japanese horseback archery. That would be. Turns out not a long career, particularly in the US if that is something you focus on. I'll come back to, I think, the swimming. Because it had all of the ingredients for something that I would fail and did fail at for a very long time. The fear factor was very, very high. The shame factor was very, very high. And so the unorthodox approach that I took, well, just to give you actually back into it, so what are the results? The results were, didn't swim, couldn't do two laps in a small pool until early 30s.

• 18:11Tim Ferriss?

  10 days later, after getting a book, I didn't even have video at this point, with Total Immersion, I was doing 20 to 40 laps per workout to relax. This is 10 days later. And I've had many, many friends duplicate this, many, many of my readers and listeners and so on. So, unorthodox for me because in retrospect, it seems so obvious. Yet, if you go into any pool and have, say, the general staff teach you, they're going to teach it very, very differently. So, in this particular approach, A, remove as many failure points and fear areas as possible for the very beginning.

• 18:53Tim Ferriss?

  So, you want people to get as much positive reinforcement early on as possible. In this case, I was in a four-foot-deep pool, kicking off the side. And I realized, wow, even without any strokes, without any kicking, I can cover, say, a third of the pool distance if I just get my body in the right position. Second, questioning assumptions, and this is something that Terry, who's the founder of Total Immersion, does very well, is that I had always tried to swim on top of the water. Well, body is dense, tends to sink. So, assume that your body's gonna be 90, 95% underwater. And you actually think of it conceptually as swimming downhill. Isn't that odd?

• 19:35Tim Ferriss?

  So by swimming downhill, your arm is actually angled down underneath the water, say by three feet. The pressure on that arm helps to tilt your lower legs up and makes you more hydrodynamic. Okay, and you figure this all out by kicking off of the wall and then standing up. Kick off the wall, stand up. And then I would say, secondly is finding the exercise, and this can be applied to any domain. What is the one exercise that makes all of the other exercises irrelevant or less important? And this is part of the sequencing. But what I realized in my own experimentation with it is that a hand-swapping drill

• 20:16Tim Ferriss?

  in swimming, where you're basically trying to have your arm enter the water at the same time that your other arm is straight and then replace, it extends the period during which you are in your extended fuselage position. And if I just focused on that one exercise, hand-swapping drill, everything else fell into place. And that was going from zero to shortly thereafter, because this was, we're gonna come back to incentives, about eight months before, a friend and I had assigned each other New Year's resolutions. By the way, more effective than coming up with your own. And so my friend was just completely addicted to double espressos,

• 20:59Tim Ferriss?

  had like 12 a day, and I was like, "Okay, yours is nothing stronger than green tea for a year." And he's like, "Okay." And he did it. Now, granted, he would pack like 12 days' worth of green tea into a French press. "I don't know why I feel so sick." I'm like, "I think I see your problem." But he stuck with it. And his assignment to me, after seeing me flail around in the water and get out at one point, he said, "You need this as a life skill for yourself, for your kids. You'd have to do a one-kilometer open water, meaning ocean or lake, probably swim by the end of the year." And I got to July, August, had failed every class effectively that I took and abandoned

• 21:40Tim Ferriss?

  it until total immersion. And then, I would say, two weeks after starting, I ended up doing a one-mile, not a one-kilometer, open-water swim by myself in the ocean where I grew up, in, at this specific beach where I had one of my near-drowning experiences. So that would be, I think, an example. And it's important, it's an important example because it was a skill that I was deathly afraid of. And I think a lot of students end up in that position for many different reasons.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  Wow. So I feel like helping someone get over a near-drowning experience is something that may not be totally safe for teachers to do with their students. But, so I want to ask you, of all the experimentation and adventuring that you've done, from ice baths to archery on horseback to, you name it, which of those activities can kids try themselves? Which of the experiments you've done, the adventures you've had, can a teacher assign to their students or help their students undertake?

• 22:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'll leave out the 10-day fasts and the muscle biopsies, also probably not great for insurance policies at schools. I would suggest a competition of some type. And the one that comes to mind for me is how many foreign vocabulary words, so forget about grammar, forget all of that, but like, how many vocab words can you memorize in a day? And have a reward. Have an inspiring reward. It doesn't take much. And I recall at one point, so keep in mind, you know, the kid who was bad at languages, who had done very poorly in Spanish, until I had Mr. Shimano, who's incredible, and the right environment.

• 23:29Tim Ferriss?

  I then, after that point, have often played this game with myself, where I'll say, take Italian and became obsessed with mnemonic devices. So, memory tricks like the, say, the Memory Palace, which was used by Cicero, or the Linkword mnemonic. There's a gentleman, I believe by the last name Grunberg, who wrote a number of books that highlight how to use word association, and image association, I should say, to memorize foreign vocabulary. So, let's say you have Spanish vaca, right? V-A-C-A, vaca. Okay, so how would you learn, if you're a native English speaker, vaca? All right. And this is where I think you can engage a lot of kids. All right, well, imagine a cow with a vacuum head, vacuuming up grass.

• 24:14Tim Ferriss?

  All right, cow, vacuum head, vacuuming up grass. Okay, so like, think about it, do that for 10 seconds. And you could probably teach a class where you do that at the beginning of class, come back 30 minutes later. All right, so-and-so, what's the word for cow in Spanish? And they will remember it. And you can, they might remember it a week later, just from that 15 seconds. And so, you play this game of imagery and creating these associations, and I kid you not, you will probably, if you had a classroom of, say, 50 students, it depends on age, but you could very well have students who successfully remember, a week later, 200 to 300 vocabulary items from a single day. That would not surprise me at all. And keep in mind, the sort of minimal effective dose, if you want to be considered, or perceived as conversationally fluent,

• 24:59Tim Ferriss?

  is probably around 2,000 words. Okay, so, how many of us have heard, "It takes a lifetime to learn a language"? I certainly was told that, and I was like, "Lifetime? Screw that." A lot of things I want to do. I don't want to commit to a lifetime of studying something just to be good at it. Oh, that's so depressing and demoralizing. But instead, if I said, "Oh, all right, you just did 200 words in a day, two days. If you did that times 10, what is that, two weeks? You would have all the raw materials to be considered conversationally fluent in language." How encouraging is that? How exciting is that? And to position a language as, say, a second lens through which you can experience life, you're effectively doubling your lifespan. Okay? Wow.

• 25:44Tim Ferriss?

  And you use all of the tricks and tips that I'm sure many of these people in this room are familiar with, but context, maybe some kids are into hip-hop, maybe some kids are into comic books and manga like I was when I was in Japan. Utilize all of that. And I think that would be an experiment that I would run because it's so easy to apply that DISC framework to it. And the implications for each of those stages are so easily mapped to just a foreign vocabulary memorizing competition using mnemonic devices. So there are a lot of macro principles embedded in this one micro exercise, if that makes sense. You're learning the macro from the micro.

• 26:29Tim Ferriss?

  And the student doesn't have to know any of this. This is just a Trojan horse for kind of slipping it in there, just like Josh Waitzkin and his teacher taking the pieces off the board.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  So I feel like you arrive at so many of these tactics and breakthroughs like mnemonic devices by way of experimentation where you're often running an A/B test and doing more of what works, doing less of what doesn't work, always, always A/B testing. Has there ever been a time when you decided you needed to forget about the data, not run an A/B test, and just go on gut because you believed something in your heart and it felt inappropriate to run an A/B test?

• 27:07Tim Ferriss?

  It's very rare, I'll be honest. Now, but the question allows me to maybe chat a little bit about how I think about the use of intuition because I do, I'm trying to increasingly use intuition. Intuition helps me to identify things that I would like to test, even if they seem ridiculous. So for instance, every time I've had a roommate in a foreign country where I'm using comic books to learn a language, I get ridiculed. Every single time. They're like, "Wham, bow, smash, really? Like, that's what you're gonna..." And then three months later, they're a convert because they see I'm studying dialogue. That's why the comic books work. Same reason that scripts, if you can get translated scripts for movies, which you can

• 27:52Tim Ferriss?

  very easily, work so well for language learning.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 27:55Tim Ferriss?

  And so I use intuition.

• 27:57Speaker 03

  Scripts from foreign films that you can then read while you're watching the movie?

• 28:00Tim Ferriss?

  Or scripts from, say, a movie that you know really well, whether that's Die Hard, Babe, whatever, which are two real examples for me.

• 28:10Tim Ferriss?

  If you know this, as for the renegade duck. So, yeah, anyway. That's from Babe, not Die Hard. You could also look at, for instance, I would actually encourage people to take movies they know really well. I'm getting off track, but where...

• 28:26Speaker 03

  It's a great technique. I wanted you to draw it out.

• 28:28Tim Ferriss?

  Where you have subtitles available in your target language. Because if you do the inverse, if you don't catch a word orally, you're not going to be able to look it up or write it down. So I tend to use the opposite. But the point being, intuition is oftentimes just a proxy for interest. So if I'm really interested in something, that checks the box partially of the stakes and incentives, right? So I use intuition in that case. I will very often, for instance, use my intuition, even if I split test. And I've done this a lot, say, for book covers, even book titles.

• 29:11Tim Ferriss?

  So I tested The Four Hour Work Week alongside 12 other titles and subtitles in Google AdWords. It was just the ad headline and the ad text. And then I looked at the max click-through, which one had the best click-through a week later. It cost a few hundred dollars, and I knew exactly which title and subtitle would perform the best. That's how I came up with the title. However, when I looked at the top, say, three results for the book title, I had to ask, which of these can I live with? Which of these will I be happy with? Because once this genie's out of the bottle, I have to live with this forever. And so for better or for worse, I'm the four-hour guy for the rest of my life. But I knew I could live with the title.

• 29:51Tim Ferriss?

  And so I have vetoed best-performing outcomes when I split test, if I feel strongly that I'm more interested in or will live more soundly, sleep more soundly with number two or number three.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  Yep. So I've been listening to your podcast of late, especially getting ready for this conversation. But even before that, you have these incredible interviewees, both bold-faced names and people that I'd never heard about before, who proved to be fascinating. Of all the incredible people that you've interviewed, whom would you nominate to design the ideal school?

• 30:31Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, I'm gonna answer that. The first recommendation I wanna make is just backtrack for a second. Everyone should read, there's a book called Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. Just on the subject of data and split testing and statistics. Most say science, and it could be split testing, that is represented in media is misreported. And it's extremely critical, has never been more critical, I would say, to be scientifically literate. So, Bad Science covers how to become a more intelligent and astute reader of science and results.

• 31:11Tim Ferriss?

  So you can be very strategically and importantly literate in that sense. So I would read that A. But, which would inform, in fact, how you design a school. Because a lot of it, I think, tracking is very important. I think experimentation is very important. The, when it comes to mastery, no one in my mind pops up more often than Josh Waitzkin. So Josh Waitzkin has a foundation. He has taken his learning framework for chess, and he's considered a prodigy, but I think it's a misnomer. Give like a two-sentence bio on Josh Waitzkin.

• 31:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Josh, so Josh is the little kid in the Oshkosh overalls who ends up playing speed chess against the hustlers in Washington Square Park in Searching for Bobby Fischer, dominating. So there are some God-given talents, certainly, in Josh. And then going on to compete very, very, very successfully. There's a book and a movie based on his life. But he has since taken his ability to deconstruct something like chess, applied it to Tai Chi pushhands to become a world champion. He applied it to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to become the first black belt under Marcelo Garcia, who is considered the G O T, or G O A T, goat, excuse me, the greatest of all time.

• 32:31Tim Ferriss?

  He's like the Mike Tyson, Wayne Gretzky, Mickey Mantle combined in the world of grappling.

• 32:38Tim Ferriss?

  And so you could look at something called MG in action. And you might think this would never apply to anything else. But MG is Marcelo Garcia in action. So he's taken different starting positions, transitions and finishing positions, and created a, effectively, a database where you can look up any possible combination to learn more effectively. And Josh has thought very deeply about the importance of, say, single tasking, focus, and also skills that enable you to learn other skills. So that lead domino. In other words, that we discussed a little bit earlier, which is which of these will make everything else easier or irrelevant or less important?

• 33:22Tim Ferriss?

  And sequencing things in the right fashion. So I'd say Josh Waitzkin.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  So imagine you're hired as a teacher at Josh Waitzkin's school. What subject do you teach?

• 33:32Tim Ferriss?

  I would teach... What would I teach? Either, and I would call it something sexier, meta-learning. So how do you learn to learn? This is not something that's very often explicitly taught. I would say, all right, we're going to cover the toolkit that you can apply to all of your other classes. Let's practice that.

• 33:56Speaker 03

  What is a lesson you teach on one particular day as the teacher of meta-learning at Josh Waitzkin's ideal school?

• 34:07Tim Ferriss?

  Well, the first class, and it depends a lot on grade level, but I think the first class would just be all demos. So what will get the attention of these kids and hold their attention so that I am credible, but also maybe aspirational in some sense? Which Mr. Buckson was. I mean, Mr. Buckson could kick your ass. He was a tough, tough man. And he could still go into the weight room and demolish the students. So there was an incredible amount of respect, awe, aspiration. There are a lot of magic ingredients that are not so magic. You can tease them out and deconstruct them. So I think the first class would really be all demos.

• 34:49Tim Ferriss?

  So let's say, go around the room, memorize kids' names, have them go out, come back in, sit in different seats, remember all their names. Maybe have them shout out random numbers, memorize a string of, say, 50 digits.

• 35:04Tim Ferriss?

  Like that, and then turn around and give it to them. I'd be like, "Oh," and you give it to them backwards on purpose? They're like, "No, you're wrong, you're wrong." And be like, "No, no, no, keep going." And they're like, "What?"

• 35:14Tim Ferriss?

  Things like that. So the first class would just be demo credibility. This is somebody whose second class you want to come to. And then, I think, right away, I would take somebody in the class, who doesn't, you know, who in this class thinks they can't do this? A bunch of arms club. And I'd pick one kid who looks the most fearful, and then convert them right in front of the class. Boom, just like that. And make them a hero in the class, briefly, and...

• 35:47Speaker 03

  But then crush...

• 35:47Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, and then shoot them down.

• 35:48Speaker 03

  Then crush their spirit.

• 35:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. "Who do you think you are?" No, I would not do that.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  That's where the soap comes in.

• 35:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. "Bad table." And that's, I think, the critical, that groundwork is so, so, so important. You need the patient to be willing to take the medicine. You need the patient to be willing to take the medicine. So that would be step one.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  I want to be in that class myself as a teenager. You were talking about Mr. Buxton and his ability to hold a room, and kind of the awe that we had for him. Of those people you've interviewed on your podcast, if Josh Whiteskin could design the ideal school, which of your podcast interviewees would be the virtuoso classroom teacher? Which of your interviewees do you imagine just holding a room of 25 rambunctious 10th graders? And how come?

• 36:44Tim Ferriss?

  Rambunctious 10th graders? Oof, 10th graders, okay. Yeah, 10th grade is tough. I would say...

• 36:54Speaker 03

  I mean, Jamie Foxx probably would, just by virtue of being Jamie Foxx.

• 36:57Tim Ferriss?

  10th grade, the first person who comes to mind, and I want to give a couple of other answers. Jaco Willink, retired Navy SEAL commander.

• 37:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:07Tim Ferriss?

  You wanna be tougher? Be tougher! And he's 230 pounds. Brazilian, you just do black belt, like, everyone's gonna behave. They will be at attention. So, I think Jaco, definitely, in terms of getting his to behave, he'll get 100% on his test. But, I'll give two others real quick. Maria Popova, who runs Brain Pickings, is a phenom, and she is very good in a world of listicles, where everyone's trying to out-buzzfeed buzzfeed, and buzzfeed's great at what they do. I don't think you should compete against them. She can make, potentially, dense literature very, very popular. And philosophy, very, very popular.

• 37:52Tim Ferriss?

  She is a long-form writer, does not compromise, does not dumb her material down, and yet, she built a private, I think it was a private newsletter that went out to five of her friends, up to now probably more than 10 million people a month. That's really impressive to me. She's also better at writing in English, which is her second language than I am, which involves some shame on my part. But, last I would say, and I really encourage everyone to check this guy out, BJ Miller. BJ Miller is a palliative care physician. He's a young guy, he's helped more than 1,000 people to die. And, he also suffered a horrible electrocution accident in college, actually at Princeton, where I went undergrad.

• 38:37Tim Ferriss?

  He was a warning to all of us coming into Princeton. He lost three of his limbs, so he's a triple amputee. And, I think his perspective on life, and fulfillment, and achievement, and the balance thereof, is incredible. And he just has this uncanny ability to sit down and just immediately...

• 39:02Tim Ferriss?

  Look into someone's sort of soul and their wants and desires and fears and read it. I've really never encountered anything quite like it. So I think BJ would be a life-changing teacher.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Wow. I want to switch gears just for a second, recognizing that any number of people in the room are ed tech entrepreneurs. How do you feel, how has technology accelerated and enriched the pursuit of learning? How has technology hindered the pursuit of learning?

• 39:37Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think as with, as with any, well, I should say, technology, whether it's an app on an iPhone or a stick that a chimp is using to fish out ants, it's a tool that helps you to solve, in an ideal case, that helps you to solve some type of prevalent problem. And technology makes a wonderful tool, it makes a terrible master. So I think that anytime technology ends up in the driver's seat in determining your behavior, there are a lot of risks and a lot of problems. So how does it help?

• 40:19Tim Ferriss?

  There is a lot that can be automated, and whether it's machine learning or some form of deep learning, there are many ways technology can aid the learning process. So I was one of the first investors in a company called Duolingo, which now has 100 million users. It's the largest free language learning platform in the world, and they have a lot more coming. It's incredibly powerful. And it is, it was the byproduct of a number of founders, but one of, one of those founders, Luis Van An, from Guatemala originally, created captchas and recaptchas. So if you ever have to type in a bunch of weird characters to prove you're not a robot on a website, you have him to thank for it. But he used that.

• 41:04Tim Ferriss?

  You might have noticed, back in the day, there were two fields, and you'd fill one in. The program knew the answer to that. That's how it would confirm that you weren't a robot. And then the second was taken from books that machines couldn't transcribe accurately. So you're actually, he was harnessing millions and millions and millions of people to transcribe books effectively, so that people, so that the blind could use them, so that anyone could search them, et cetera. And he's applied that to language learning in some really fascinating ways. And there are many, many examples like that. In terms of hindering, I would just, I would say that we live in a digital world where

• 41:49Tim Ferriss?

  the economics of many of these businesses are dependent on distracting you as much as possible. So if you go on Facebook and you're like, "All right, I just need to get, check a direct message from a friend to figure out what I'm going to be doing on Tuesday," and then two hours later, you're like, "Why am I watching an orangutan video? What happened? What, did I just time travel?" And the business models are predicated on being able to distract you effectively. And they are very, very, very good at it. They're putting billions of dollars, probably collectively trillions of dollars, into discovering new and better ways to distract you off of your chosen task.

• 42:30Tim Ferriss?

  So I think that technology can be exceptionally damaging, not just as it relates to learning, but I'm sure in a bunch of cognitive capacities. And actually, "The Distracted Mind," written by a friend of mine, Adam Gazelli, who's a neuroscience PhD, runs a lab at UCSF, is worth checking out to see the, some of the consequences of that. But I'd say broadly speaking, distraction. And conversely, if you can, if you can teach yourself and your students to single task, not multitask, to single task more effectively, that ability, which used to be par for the course, is becoming a superpower.

• 43:09Tim Ferriss?

  So if you can establish ways of blocking or blocking out distraction-rich technology for even short periods of time, you have a huge competitive advantage.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Let's go back a couple thousand years when distraction-rich technology was just a non-issue. This is a question I'm just thinking of right now. Could you give us a one-minute primer on Stoic philosophy? And then riff on how you think Stoic philosophy could or should inform our public school system?

• 43:47Tim Ferriss?

  I'm really glad you brought this up because Stoicism, I think, is one of the best operating systems for thriving in high-stress environments. And you want to prepare yourself and students for that. So I was going to say, well, I hesitated when I brought up meta-learning classes, the other option would have been Stoicism. But it would have been a class about, and I can't call it planned suffering, but in effect, the more you schedule and practice suffering, the less unplanned suffering will disrupt your life. And so Stoicism, if we go back to, say, Seneca,

• 44:30Tim Ferriss?

  Marcus Aurelius, is really very similar to Zen in many, many ways. But it is a practical set of beliefs, frameworks, and exercises that allow you to inoculate yourself against fear of the unknown, fear of worst-case scenarios, to become less emotionally reactive, which is why Stoicism. And certainly, you can look at George Washington, Thomas Jefferson at Seneca on his bedside table. I think Bill Clinton reads Meditations by Marcus Aurelius every year. But if you want to look at some additional contemporary examples, it's become hugely popular in Silicon Valley. It's become hugely popular in the NFL.

• 45:12Tim Ferriss?

  Including the past of the Super Bowl winners, past two Super Bowls. Because it teaches you how to view obstacles as opportunities and how to become less emotionally reactive. So you're effectively putting the Serenity Prayer into practice, where you are learning to separate the things you can control from the things you cannot control and to only focus on the former. And to develop the courage and the ability to act. So what might that look like in a classroom? Well, I was chatting with Phil Zimbardo. The episode hasn't come out yet for the podcast. Phil Zimbardo is a professor emeritus at Stanford, where he designed the Stanford Prison Experiment,

• 45:57Tim Ferriss?

  which people might be familiar with, and many others. So he's very good at explaining how good people can be turned evil and vice versa, how you can determine how people behave based on conditions. And so he has an exercise he calls, for instance, Deviant for a Day. And, hold on, I know this is family programming, I'm getting to the point. He puts a black square using a, say, erasable marker, not a Sharpie, encourages students to do this and then walk around for a day. And so despite the ridicule, despite people trying to rub it off, to wear this black mark on your forehead for a day and to see how much social pressure affects your emotional

• 46:41Tim Ferriss?

  responses. Okay. There are other ways that you could implement this. So Cato, who was considered the perfect Stoic by Seneca, would wear, I think it was a tunic of an odd color, so that he would deliberately get ridiculed by others. So he would learn to be ashamed of only those things worth being ashamed of. So right now, I think in the hypersensitive, politically correct environment in which we live, the only way serious problems are going to be solved is if we have very uncomfortable conversations. And right now, people are too afraid of being labeled, called out, whatever it might be.

• 47:18Tim Ferriss?

  Ostracized to have those uncomfortable conversations. So you can train yourself to be more comfortable with discomfort by planning it. So I have these pants, I call them my party pants. They're hideous. They look like the upholstery from, say, my grandmother's couch. I mean, they're terrible. And I'll wear them around in environments where I know I'm going to get heckled. And there are many such exercises that you can make fun. You can do comfort challenges where it's like, okay, student X, I want you. We're gonna, we're gonna go to the gym because that's our next segue. And I want you to go in and we're not going to mention anything. You're just gonna lay down on the floor around all of these other students for 10 seconds. You're not gonna explain what you're doing. You're just gonna lay down on the floor.

• 48:00Tim Ferriss?

  And to show them that you're gonna be nervous, you're gonna be afraid, and then nothing's going to happen. And so to really teach people how to pick apart and analyze their fears effectively. And you could organize an entire curriculum around that, full of exercises that are fun, that will make your students more resilient and willing to take risks. Because when you teach them to define it, say, the way that I would define it, which is the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome, most things just aren't that risky at all. And I think that if you want to embolden them and encourage them to really be change makers, put a positive dent in the world to become entrepreneurs, teachers, or otherwise,

• 48:43Tim Ferriss?

  that that's a toolkit that they can take with them for the rest of their lives.

• 48:47Speaker 03

  If you'd worn those party pants today, you could have had 3,000 people heckling you.

• 48:50Tim Ferriss?

  That's true.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  And it would have been.

• 48:51Tim Ferriss?

  On the internet, and then it would get rebroadcast. It would have been great practice.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Okay, so speaking of people heckling you, I want to turn to audience questions. Before we, before we do that, you've been an incredible advocate of DonorsChoose.org for just about a decade now. Why have you been so good to our effort?

• 49:15Tim Ferriss?

  There are a few very specific reasons. I'm not involved with many nonprofits. I apply the same filters to nonprofits as I do to for-profits. And I've been very fortunate in Silicon Valley to work with, as an advisor or investor, a lot of the fastest-growing companies in the world. So I've been an early investor in Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba. I was pre-seed advisor to Uber. And I support donors' choose because A, you run it like a lean for-profit. And I think the criteria should be the same. B, it's the specificity and accountability. I don't like contributing or donating to causes that are nebulous. And in this case, I recognize that education and certain teachers and opportunities have

• 50:00Tim Ferriss?

  played a huge, huge role in my life. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for a half a dozen people I could name off the top of my head. Two, if I can level the playing field in very specific ways. So for instance, I want to find projects where schools and teachers can't afford, say, headgear and wrestling mats for wrestling programs. Okay, check. I can do that in very specific areas. I want to find, say, projects where students are taking science projects home. All right? So you're encouraging students to actually work on hands-on projects in science on their own. That's very important. Well, I can get really, really, really granular, and you know this, but I've done flash funding

• 50:43Tim Ferriss?

  for, say, Long Island, or for New Hampshire, or for some areas in the Bay Area where I live now. And the fact that you can target so specifically and then get feedback and look at the results so, so specifically, as someone who tracks everything, I just find that incredibly attractive. So those would be, I'd say, and it applies to whether you have $10 to apply to a single teacher in your hometown where you grew up, or $1 million or $10 million to deploy more widely to really, really change the entire national conversation. And results you see from certain types of classrooms. It's a good startup.

• 51:22Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 51:22Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm betting on you guys, don't screw it up.

• 51:24Speaker 03

  Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Would you take some questions that have been upvoted? I think they might be on your.

• 51:32Tim Ferriss?

  I will, I will. I'm looking at some upvoted questions here, as well as here. So we have redundancy in case my eyes go sideways. I think I have good enough vision to look right here. The first question from anonymous, oh, my favorite,

• 51:46Tim Ferriss?

  is what is the number one skill you think our students need to learn today that we don't teach them enough? I would say it probably, above and beyond the meta-learning, is comfort with discomfort. I think that our kids are too infantilized, our students are too infantilized. And going back to Mr. Buxton, Mr. Buxton was very supportive, but he was supportive at the right times and in the right way. If you got a good job, that was a nice double leg. For Mr. Buxton, that was an event. And he didn't dole it out all the time, so that you became numb to it. He was very, very tough, and he forced you to do things you thought you could not do.

• 52:30Tim Ferriss?

  And I remember one time, hopefully he's okay with me sharing this, but we were doing these horrible exercises, what are they called? Like blood pits, they had some terrible nickname. And where we did these rotations in a small group, and you just got, you received zero rest. And I remember telling Mr. Buxton, I walked over, I said, "Mr. Buxton, I think I'm gonna vomit." And he goes, "No problem. Bucket's right there. Go vomit, and then come back, because you're up next." And I was like, "Oh, my God. They saved me." And lo and behold, I came out of that practice, and I had done two, three times what I thought I was capable of doing. So that type of toughness, I think, is important in training that toughness.

• 53:12Tim Ferriss?

  An ability to be resilient in the face of criticism and ridicule is a prerequisite if you want people to then use what you would give them in the meta-learning. Does that make sense? So helping kids to become more comfortable with discomfort and dissect their own fears and overcome them, which you can sometimes demonstrate very quickly in the cases of, say, language learning, so that you can then give them the meta-learning, I think would be my approach. All right, so next question.

• 53:45Tim Ferriss?

  What things do you think a person cannot or should not learn rapidly? Nothing that comes to mind. I just haven't run into anything. With any given skill, even if it takes 10 years or 20 years, there is, I think everyone can agree, there is a dumber way to go about doing it and a smarter way to go about doing it. There's a spectrum. You want to be on the smarter side, which is going to be faster. Next one is from Jeremy Shore. What sub $100 purchase has most changed your life in the past six months? Well, this is the first that comes to mind. I would say it is a Marpak Dome White Noise Machine that I have in multiple locations because it's so important to me. And this is to help with sleep.

• 54:27Tim Ferriss?

  It is effectively, it sounds like a fan inside a small device that is very, very useful for sleep. So that would be, I think sleep is a force multiplier for many, many other things.

• 54:39Speaker 03

  You know what, actually, just on the prior question, because I actually also didn't catch AL Framework. I don't know what that stands for either. But to the question about, if you wanted to speak about how

• 54:51Speaker 03

  some of the tools you've developed and systems of thinking you've developed can be used to address inequity in our public schools.

• 55:00Tim Ferriss?

  Sure. And I'll apologize to everyone in advance that you all probably know a lot more about that environment than I do. I mean, I just, I'm not an expert in any school administration or curriculum. So I'll take a stab at it. But I think that if I were in charge of it, and let's make it micro, because I think you can learn a lot from case studies. If you gave me a classroom of, say, minorities or people who are considered to be victims of that inequity, whether it's female students, learning disabled students, you name it, right? I would give them the tools to perform.

• 55:48Tim Ferriss?

  In the sense that I think you need to...

• 55:53Tim Ferriss?

  Arm people with tools and training so that they believe in themselves and that they can demonstrate beyond a shadow of doubt that they can compete. And there are many other inequities and problems that are not addressed by that. There are plenty of systemic issues. I would have to try to tackle those one at a time, but I would say in general, whether it's, for instance, another nonprofit that I'm involved with, QuestBridge, is very good at this. And I think they place something like half of the lowest-income kids, which by the way includes, say, poor white kids in Appalachia and so on. It's not race-specific, but people at an economic disadvantage into Ivy League schools. I think they placed about half last year.

• 56:38Tim Ferriss?

  And they do that by, in part, making talented kids who are driven but who are at a severe disadvantage economically or in a social situation where they're not even encouraged to apply to college but could get a free ride to Harvard, to go to different programs that will enable them and give them these tools and give them the belief system that will allow them to make those choices. So that's my best attempt, but I apologize if that is a dissatisfying answer. As teachers, we talk about the difference between memorizing and really learning, internalizing. When does that transition happen for you in your framework? Okay. So let's define, I think, whenever we get into conversations, whether it's about super-sensitive

• 57:22Tim Ferriss?

  topics, say inequity, we didn't have time to get into it, but if we were having a bunch of wine and talking about this more, I would ask for a lot, I would ask a lot of questions before trying to answer that question. What are we talking about exactly? Where did it start? What are the ramifications? What are some examples? So really learning here, I will say really learning means that you have a firm grasp of principles that allow you to adapt to different environments, including high-stress environments. To me, that would, that would mean you're an adept learner in X. Languages are a great case study for this, but I don't want to belabor the language learning because even teachers' eyes tend to glaze over if I talk about language learning too long. But I should also highlight When does that transition happen?

• 58:05Tim Ferriss?

  The transition happens, I think you really start learning very often, or you become an adept learner, again, to use definitions really clearly, when you get to a more intermediate level. You can't get to that intermediate level until you have a critical mass of the raw materials and building blocks so that you can start to create in novel combinations. Whether that's swimming, whether that's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, whether that's experimentation in sciences or anything else. So I would say, don't dismiss memorizing per se. I think that memorizing is actually really, really important because you do need to have a... You do need to consolidate the memories and practice

• 58:49Tim Ferriss?

  of these, say, building blocks, 20%, that gets you the 80%, the 1,000 most important words, before you can start to get fancy and improvise and become an adept learner. So I would say you're learning, meaning you're absorbing, from the very get-go, from minute one of day one of the framework that I laid out. But you don't become an adept learner in the adaptable sense until you start getting into more of an intermediate phase, which does not mean two years later. That could be two weeks later for a lot of skills. Could be two hours later. Just depends on the subject matter. Okay, this is a great one. How do you recommend teachers address students who struggle with competition tasks

• 59:32Tim Ferriss?

  due to anxiety or learning disabilities? This is a really, really, really, really important question. And just in my personal opinion, and by the way, I don't view myself as a writer or a podcaster or investor. I view myself first and foremost as a teacher. I'm not the best writer. I don't think I'm Tolstoy. I think we could probably all agree on that. I do, however, write all of my books to make the complex simple. So I think about it as a teacher. And the way that I've experienced tackling this question, how do you address students, including my readers, listeners and so on, who struggle with competition tasks due to anxiety or learning disabilities?

• 1:00:16Tim Ferriss?

  So I've dealt with thousands and tens of thousands of people who fall in both categories. The way that you deal with that is not by protecting them from competition tasks.

• 1:00:26Tim Ferriss?

  The way that you, I think, address that is by dosing them, starting off very, very lightly, and titrating up with larger and more intimidating tasks to make it less scary. And I'm gonna keep it at that. I think a lot of it is just operant and classical conditioning. So, teaching myself how to change my own behavior, looking at BJ Fogg out of Stanford, ultimately, it all comes back to a lot of this stuff. So, I do think that you can learn a lot about training yourself. I learned a lot about changing my own behavior when I was training Molly, my puppy, reading a book called "Don't Shoot the Dog." And it's fantastic, by the way. It's really, really good.

• 1:01:10Tim Ferriss?

  But I would say that you need to dose people who are afraid of something with that something, just like iocaine powder in "The Princess Bride," if you guys get that reference, and then titrate up from there. That is, I think, how you help people with that. In the same way that something like Toastmasters helps you get over fear of stage fright, you don't help someone with that by having them think their way out of it. It doesn't work. You get them on stage, day one. And if you want to do stand-up comedy, I've asked a number of professional stand-up comedians on my podcast, because that is my biggest fear in the world, is getting on stage trying to make people laugh. Forget about it. And they said, if I asked them the question, I ask many people, which is, "If you had

• 1:01:52Tim Ferriss?

  a million dollars on the line, you get a million dollars, you have eight weeks to prepare me for stand-up comedy, I have to have, say, 10 minutes of material. What would the curriculum look like in the first week?" And they said, "Day one, I have you on stage. Don't even care what your material is. You're not gonna have any. I just want you to get comfortable on stage, because it's gonna terrify you." And they're like, 90% of it is just getting comfortable on stage. And the whole world is a stage, so you need to get students comfortable with it.

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  I'm gonna jump in with a final question, and then we'll give folks back maybe one minute at least on their days. So, what legacy do you hope to leave in the field of education and learning?

• 1:02:31Tim Ferriss?

  I really think about, I'd say two things. So, one is, I'm trying to create...

• 1:02:40Tim Ferriss?

  A benevolent army of learners who have an incredibly good toolkit that they can then impart to more people. Right? So, a large group, millions of people who are, in effect, enabled super learners, not because they have any innate talent for it, but because they have a better toolkit, who can then impart that and spread it and hand it on to other people. And I would say, if we're talking about inscription on a gravestone, it would be a teacher who wanted his students to always be better than he was. That's it.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  Well, if ever there was a benevolent army of learners, I think it's the community assembled right here. And I know I speak for Tim and myself in thanking each of you for the time you've spared to listen. And on behalf of this benevolent army of learners, I want to thank you, Tim, for your insights and your tools and tricks. Thank you so much.

• 1:03:37Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you, guys. 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.

• 1:04:22Tim Ferriss?

  And it's very short. 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 soothe.com, the world's largest on-demand massage service. What? And let me tell you, I have a high bar for this stuff. I have bodywork done at least once a week because I've broken my body. I have 30-plus fractures and 100-plus MRIs. I need bodywork, so I have a very, very, very high bar for that.

• 1:05:04Tim Ferriss?

  Soothe, which I've tested, I tested, my assistants tested, my employees tested, delivers a hand-selected, licensed, and experienced massage therapist to you in the comfort of your own home, hotel, or office in as little as an hour. I've tested them in San Francisco. I've tested them in Austin. I've tested them all over the place. And I have to say, I was really, really amazed at the quality of therapist. And I do not accept mediocrity at all in this area. The process is super simple. Think of it as Uber for massages, right? You choose the kind of massage you want, say Swedish or sports massage, deep tissue, whatever. Then if you want, you can opt for a couples massage.

• 1:05:48Tim Ferriss?

  I imagine that's an edge case, as the tech people say. But whatever, you set the length of your massage. So let's say you want 60 minutes, 90 minutes, two hours. And let's be real, if you want a proper massage, go for 90 or 120 minutes, for God's sake. And you select the gender of your therapist and then click. You're off to the races. And they bring the massage table, sheets, oil, music, so you can unwind no matter where you are. And I have used this at Airbnbs, hotels, et cetera. Soothe is in 50 cities, including most major US cities, as well as London, Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, and Vancouver. So, number one, download the app Soothe,

• 1:06:30Tim Ferriss?

  S-O-O-T-H-E, in the iOS App Store or Google Play Store, and then use the code, let me try that again, use the code Titan20, T-I-T-A-N 2-0, Titan20.

• 1:06:46Tim Ferriss?

  All caps to get $20 off of your first massage. That's a lot. That's a very good discount, so you should use it. So again, download the app, soothe, S-O-O-T-H-E, and try out the code TITAN20, all caps, for $20, not percent, $20 off your first massage. And if you're anything like me, I have been paying, and I've been enjoying, so give it a shot. Try out soothe and your muscles, nervous system, and sleep will thank you for it. What the fuck kind of read was that? It was pretty good, that's what I think. Okay, enjoy, bye.

• 1:07:28Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Alibaba and the Gateway 17 event. This is very cool, so listen up. If you are an entrepreneur or business owner in the United States, the stars don't always align, but this might get close. All right, the opportunity is this. The Gateway 17 event, which 17 is 2017, is hosted by Alibaba. And Alibaba, if you don't know it, you could think of as a combination of Amazon and Google in China. It is huge. This event is designed specifically to help you guys tap into the 500 million consumers in the Chinese market. Their fast-growing middle class is larger

• 1:08:11Tim Ferriss?

  than the entire US population. Alibaba has created a marketplace, better technology, to help you connect with the people you want to connect with, those 500 million. And now they are looking for US-based businesses to fill the demand. The Gateway 17 event is designed to help matchmake and educate you, teach you everything you need to know. The speakers include Jack Ma, who is the founder of Alibaba. He has an estimated net worth of more than $20 billion. This is his only speaking appearance in 2017. David Abney, the CEO of UPS, Charlie Rose, and more. It's a two-day event. It's in Detroit, Michigan, June 20 and 21. And it puts you in direct contact with experts who want to help you grow your business,

• 1:08:55Tim Ferriss?

  specifically to access the 500 million in China. And as a listener of this podcast, there is a very legit offer at which more sponsors would offer this type of discount. Alibaba is offering you the normal.

• 1:09:11Tim Ferriss?

  Tickets, which are $500 for $125. That is a 75% discount if you sign up by May 25th. So if you sign up by May 25th, you can get a $500 ticket for $125 if you use the code TIM at checkout. That's capital T lowercase i m. You might have to try all lowercase or all caps, but to start with, capital T lowercase i m. So check it out. Just the website alone teaches you a lot about the Chinese middle class and this new consumer base, which has incredible purchasing power. I happen to know a decent amount about it. Go to gateway17.com. That's gateway, the number one, seven dot com, and enter the code TIM at checkout.

• 1:09:56Tim Ferriss?

  That's gateway17.com. There are a limited number of spots, and it is a low-cost event with potentially very, very high upside for the right folks. So check it out. Gateway17.com and use code TIM.