How to Handle Information Overwhelm (And Social Media)

After reading Tools of Titans https://toolsoftitans.com/ and Tribe of Mentor https://tribeofmentors.com/s, many of you have asked me how I process all of the information I receive. This episode will help you manage information overwhelm, recommend techniques for dealing with social media, and answer a few questions that have been frequently asked about building a world-class network and writing books. I hope this information strengthens the signal, discards the noise, and helps you make every piece of information that you choose to receive easier to process. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, "If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?" My answer is, inevitably, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. It is my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body and did not get paid to do so. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you'll get 30 percent off your first order at AthleticGreens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. This podcast is also brought to you by ZipRecruiter https://www.ziprecruiter.com/tim. One of the hardest parts about growing any business is finding and hiring the right team. Nothing can drain your resources and cost you time and money like making mistakes in hiring. ZipRecruiter https://www.ziprecruiter.com/tim developed its own system and platform for helping solve two of the biggest bottlenecks for employers: posting jobs easily and making it even easier to find the best candidates. More than 80 percent of jobs posted return qualified candidates based on your criteria in just 24 hours. As a listener to this show, you can give it a try for free at ziprecruiter.com/tim https://www.ziprecruiter.com/tim!

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

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

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• 0:08Speaker 02

  Now would seem an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:05Tim Ferriss?

  So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one. Drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Social media. Let's talk about the abusive spouse we all know that we go back to because they give us a flower. And we walk back onto the internet and the first thing that happens is they throw a brick out of a window as we're walking down the sidewalk and catches us in the teeth. Anyway, a little dramatic maybe, but internet's a rough place and social media is certainly a full-contact sport. And I do have a few guidelines or policies for myself that help me to maintain my sanity. Number one is that my phone is on airplane mode. I would say eighty plus percent of my day.

• 2:01Tim Ferriss?

  This is particularly critical post dinner, all the way until I finish my morning routine the next day. So my phone is almost never on, or say off of airplane mode when I'm in bed. I don't like the health implications particularly, and I don't want to go into a reactive mode when I wake up. I want to have my meditation and/or exercise and sitting down doing, say, a five-minute journal, or determining my top one or two priorities for the day while I have my tea. And then and only then, once I have calibrated my true north for the day and my one or two

• 2:45Tim Ferriss?

  must-do to-dos that make everything else on the list easier or irrelevant, only then do I open the window in my bulletproof car and let the bullets start whizzing. And that, I'm only referring to in the case of text messages and potentially email. I do not have notifications on my phone for most things. I do not have email notifications. I do not have news notifications. I turned off all news notifications. I have no social media notifications. I want to be able to select the exact times that I engage, if I engage, on social media. So a few thoughts.

• 3:28Tim Ferriss?

  Number one is that if you don't want to amplify something or encourage someone, then starve a given, say, tweet of oxygen. So the first, my default action for negativity or attacks is starve it of oxygen, because I'll have people deliberately attack me just to provoke a response, because it will benefit them for me to respond. So I very, very, very rarely respond to any type of attack on the internet for many different reasons. Also, because it will then, in almost a sunk-cost fallacy-type of way, engage me and make me feel committed to engaging, right?

• 4:10Tim Ferriss?

  So if I send a retort and I think it's addressed them, or in some way defeated them, and they respond, I will feel the inclination to respond yet again, and then you're just... Wrestling in the mud with a pig makes you filthy, makes the pig happy. So I opt out whenever possible. And I don't remember exactly who this is attributed to. But the quote is, "The best revenge is living well." So that's, that's how I feel. The best revenge is living well. And the best way to live well is to ignore things. And the even better way to live well is to not see things. So I never look at, for instance, home screens on, say, Twitter.

• 4:53Tim Ferriss?

  I will look at my at replies because many of my readers and listeners are very good at finding things I find really, really interesting and fascinating and say, "Hey, Tim, I thought you'd really enjoy this study related to A, B, and C." And say, "Hey, Tim, you, you shared this video about blah, blah, blah in Five Bullet Friday Newsletter. I thought you'd love this video that very few people have seen outside of Poland." Awesome, fantastic. That's the stuff I want to see. So Twitter is useful for specifically looking at feedback via at mentions, but also connecting with celebrities or well-known people, I should say, who then can communicate with you if they follow you or if you can catalyze, you can encourage them to follow you in a bunch

• 5:37Tim Ferriss?

  of indirect ways, like retweeting things they've done, favoriting things they've done, following them, doing all three of those things at the same time, or in, in rapid succession. Then you can DM with them and neither of you has to exchange personal information. That is how I've got probably 40 of the people who are in some ways above my weight class to be involved with Tribe of Mentors. But the, the different social media networks also to me represent different types of neighborhoods. So Twitter is, of those I engage with, readily the most...

• 6:14Tim Ferriss?

  Poisonous, in a way. It's the most, it's not the most violent. There are others that are more violent. But it's, it's really a street, as I mentioned in the beginning, where you walk down the street and people are throwing potted plants at your head, for no apparent reason.

• 6:31Tim Ferriss?

  And yelling at you, and calling you names. And it's, it's really a pretty nasty neighborhood. Not very friendly.

• 6:40Tim Ferriss?

  Facebook is significantly better. I think in part because there's less anonymity. It's significantly better, in my experience. And then, one level further would be, maybe it's just my experience, but Instagram. I find Instagram to be a much, much friendlier environment. So I'm most inclined to look at a, say, the entire bulk of comments to a specific post on Instagram, because people aren't dicks as much. They're still idiots on Instagram, don't get me wrong. And I also have absolutely no problem with muting or blocking people. So if someone comes to my profile, to my post, and they start berating me,

• 7:22Tim Ferriss?

  I view that as them coming into my house, kicking off their shoes, or keeping their shoes on, putting their feet up on my dinner table, and spitting on the floor. So, they're not invited back. I routinely block and mute. Just without any regard for whether those people are having a bad day and they're just off, they're gone. It's, it's a one-strike-you're-out policy. And if I feel that I am already pre-agitated, meaning I have a lot going on, I'm feeling somewhat reactive or combative, I think very carefully about going on social media. And I think about it specifically at night. All right, so let's say that I'm going to have a really late dinner, right?

• 8:07Tim Ferriss?

  It's like 10 o'clock dinner, so I'm probably gonna go to bed within the next two hours. And I'm tempted to go on Twitter. Because sometimes, I'll look at my, say, I'll look at my verified @mentions, like, oh my god.

• 8:22Tim Ferriss?

  Such and such basketball player, or such and such director, or purse athlete, whoever it might be, listens to my podcast. How cool. But that's, I would say, 20% of the time. 80% of the time, there's gonna be someone who's like, "Tim Ferriss is a stupid blah-bitty blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And then I'm gonna get my knickers in a twist, and I'm gonna be all wound up and potentially angry right before going to bed. The worst possible time for me to be stuck in my head, considering hypothetical arguments and how I could win those arguments. Not productive, not helpful. So I think about that. I'm like, if I turn on this phone and I look at Twitter,

• 9:04Tim Ferriss?

  there's an 80% chance that I will have a bad outcome. Okay, let's not do it. And I put it down. So those are a few of the ways that I think about managing social media, so to speak. Managing by neglect. And cultivating selective ignorance, I think, is very, very important. Because you have, in social media, companies with billions of dollars of capital in R&D and advertising and product development, whose sole job is to take you off-task. And one of the most effective ways to take you off-task is to make you angry.

• 9:49Tim Ferriss?

  All right? This is what many of the polarizing news outlets have figured out and used for a very, very long time. If it bleeds, it leads. If I can scare you, make you upset, that takes you off-task. So the advertisements you're gonna see might do that. And certainly, I think, in today's political climate, people are more interested in fighting than reconciling. And it would appear the vast majority of people are taking what I would consider the lesser route to making themselves feel better. All right? You can make yourself better, or you can make yourself feel better. Those are not the same thing. You make yourself better by evaluating your own weaknesses,

• 10:32Tim Ferriss?

  by evaluating your own strengths, and working on yourself. It's hard work. It takes focus, it takes dedication. You will have painful moments. But ultimately, in the long term, it makes everything easier. So as one of my mentors, Jersey Gregor, would say, "Easy choice is hard life. Hard choices, easy life." Alright, so you can make yourself better. If you want to make yourself feel better, you tear other people down. And you throw mud. And you spend time on social media, biting ankles. And that might feel good in the short term, but in the long term, you're going to lose. You're going to lose in competition, and you're going to lose your own self-respect. And that, I think, is the, perhaps the ultimate travesty.

• 11:17Tim Ferriss?

  So, some thoughts on social media, but focus on making yourself better, not making other people feel worse and yourself feel better. That's a loser's game. Alright? And when in doubt, fucking starve it of oxygen and focus on what you're supposed to be doing. Because social media ain't it, generally speaking. Good luck.

• 11:42Tim Ferriss?

  So I get asked a fair amount, "How do you contend with the sheer volume of information and advice that you hear and receive from, say, podcast guests?" Right? Because I'm doing six podcast episodes a month. They are two to four hours in length typically. And it could seem that I, and maybe even my listeners, would be getting waterboarded with details to the extent that they wouldn't be able to absorb or assimilate them. And it's pretty simple for me. There are a few, there are a few different tactics and, I would say, beliefs that allow me to get a lot out of it without feeling overwhelmed.

• 12:21Tim Ferriss?

  The first is actually something that relates to writing after doing extensive research, because you suffer from the same problem. I have 15 notebooks with 1,500 pages of notes, and I'm writing a 200-page book, if you're not me.

• 12:37Tim Ferriss?

  How am I gonna condense all this? How am I gonna remember the most important parts? And what Cal Fussman, who is an incredible writer, and also a very gifted interviewer, was taught at one point by a very famous novelist, and then he told me this story was, "The good shit sticks." So the good shit sticks just means, don't stress about it. The really standout stuff has a strong foothold in your mind. And it will either stay with you or it will come to you when you need it. So have that confidence. If you are paying attention and you're present when you take the notes and you're present when you're listening to people so that it can make an initial imprint, the good shit sticks. Just have that faith. I hate to use that word typically,

• 13:21Tim Ferriss?

  but just have the faith that if you're present and really paying attention when you're reading or writing something down or listening to someone, that the imprint has been made and the good shit has stuck. That's number one. Number two is actually borrowed from Derek Sivers. So, very well-known entrepreneur, a philosopher king of sorts in the programming world, also a tremendous musician. And his policy for evaluating opportunities is, if it's not a hell yes, it's a no. Alright, so if it's not a hell yes, it's a decline. And I think that similarly, when I'm interviewing someone and I have a notebook at all times when I'm interviewing someone, if they say something that really grabs me,

• 14:06Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, it's not, "Oh, that's kinda cool." It's like, "Whoa, I get pulled by the shirt." I'm like, "What the fuck? That's a, oh my god, it's a me. I have to do that." Then I note it down, alright? If it's lukewarm, I don't highlight it. If it's lukewarm, kinda cool, I pay attention. It makes the imprint, but I don't note it down. So at the end of, say, any given three-hour interview, I may only have four or five highlights of things I want to test. What's important at that point is that I put it into a calendar. If you want to try something or if you want to purchase something, within the two hours after that interview, I set down some type of next step. So I either go on, say, Amazon Prime,

• 14:50Tim Ferriss?

  boom, I bought it, I'll have it in two days. Or I go into my calendar, it's like, "Okay." I want to commit to scheduling, say, voice lessons. After I did a podcast with a very well-known musician, I said, "All right, I want to schedule voice lessons. It's gotta be done now, or it's just never gonna happen." So as soon as I finished, I got into Slackster to communicate with my assistant. I also did some preliminary research, looked at my calendar as to where I would be, thought about what my parameters and criteria might be, and boom, it's in motion, right? So in my world, and in many worlds, if it doesn't happen now, or it's not put into the calendar, it's not gonna happen. It will never happen, right? So that's part two. And I would also say part three is another belief, and that is, you don't have to do

• 15:35Tim Ferriss?

  a million things right. You really just have to get a few things right, and have first principles, which is why I enjoyed so much my interview with Ray Dalio, who manages the largest hedge fund in the world. He is always thinking about first principles, because you have principles, strategies, tactics, and then everything else, right? For instance, if you want to be an artist, okay, you could use every latest tech tool, the different crayons and markers and pencils, and get really stressed out about which of these to use, but ultimately, you need to have the fine motor control, and then you

• 16:17Tim Ferriss?

  need to have the ability to see, right? So learning to be an artist, or learning to be a physicist in some ways, is learning how to see, which is what Ed Catmull, president of Pixar, said to me, and I thought very deeply about this, and I said, "Okay, this is a first principle. I can think about that." And if I cultivate that skill, my ability to observe, that then filters down to 20 other fields, okay? So if you don't fixate on the tiny little tools, they can be fun, the apps and so on, don't get me wrong. If it grabs you by the shirt and you're excited, try it, but you only have to get a few things right, and by that, I mean you only need to cultivate

• 16:57Tim Ferriss?

  a handful of skills: deal-making, negotiating, nonviolent communication, prioritization by, say, reading something like "The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker, and you're good. You're gonna win at the game of life if you don't drown in the lower-level detail, right? So just have the confidence that it's not about doing a million things right. It's actually about saying yes, hell yes, to a handful of things. And then saying no, thank you to a thousand, 10,000 other things. So those are a few of the approaches that I use. And I often will very frequently use Evernote to keep track of different notes that I've taken on various interviews.

• 17:42Tim Ferriss?

  And with articles online, for instance, I will pull them using the Evernote Clipper offline into Evernote. And I will read all these articles in Evernote. And when I find little tidbits that I find useful, unlike say Kindle, where you can highlight things and then review your highlights. In Evernote, with something that's just a mishmash pulled off the internet, what I'll do is I will put three asterisks before what I find really interesting and then bold and underline it. Then all I need to do is in those notes, if I want to do a quick refresh on what I found very important at the time, is I'll do a Ctrl+F, which is Find. And it'll say, "Found seven instances of star, star, star." Boom.

• 18:26Tim Ferriss?

  And then in five minutes, I can do my review. And I would say, last but not least, try to specialize in, as I mentioned, first principles and those higher level tools. But secondarily, try to focus in Kathy Sierra, who's amazing, first said this way to me, "On just-in-time information, not just-in-case information." So if you think about it, like, how many books have you read? Nonfiction books, and you're like, "Just in case I need this." I'm interested in, I remember way back in the day, like, "Import-export." "I want to be an import-export." This is a long time ago. And I read it, and that was with the understanding, but I suppose not with all too much clarity, that I probably wouldn't use that for years.

• 19:11Tim Ferriss?

  So what happens? If I need to use it years from then, and it's a book, I just need to reread the damn book. So instead of doing that, focus on just-in-time information. So it's like, "All right, I have this to do tomorrow, next week. These are the ways I can prepare." Boom, and you're on it. Instead of just-in-case information. And that also relieves a huge psychological burden.

• 19:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, hi. Thank you for joining me for another video. This is my dog Molly. And this is a wooden wine glass. I'm going to talk to you about mistakes that people make. Networking. What a dirty word that is. And I'll talk a little bit about how I've built my own network, as it were. My advice, in short, is to go narrow and to go long. All right, so that involves deep relationships with a small number of people and then playing the long game. What many people do is they go to an event to collect business cards and then they follow up with people with whom they have no common interests in the hopes of some type of transaction in the near term,

• 20:20Tim Ferriss?

  the next few weeks, the next few months. That can work. But what I would suggest you do is, if we're looking at events which can be very, very high yield, look at either volunteer events where you can volunteer, all right, or super high-end events where you can attend and pay a premium to attend. And in the former category, I can give you an example of a tipping point for The 4-Hour Work Week, my first book. And that came about by going, in part, to South by Southwest 2007. And my tactic was, as an attendee here, which is fairly expensive, to go to moderated panels. And then, when a panel ended,

• 21:04Tim Ferriss?

  instead of flooding the scene to get in line to talk to a panelist, I would actually talk to the moderator, who people tend to ignore. And I would be very, very humble, to the extent I could, and say,

• 21:18Tim Ferriss?

  "It's my first time at South by Southwest. I'm pretty nervous. I just wrote my first book. I don't know anybody. Not going to pretend to understand everything about tech. I don't. But I'm really interested in A, B, C, D, and E. And I'm originally from this part of the world, and these are some of my interests. Is there anyone you think I might enjoy meeting here?" Now you have, say, Mary or Joe, whoever, saying, "Yeah, you should meet Mike such and such." Then I go and find Mike, or I'm introduced to Mike, and I already have that social stamp of approval of one person. Okay, now I meet that person, and we talk. And there's no explicit ask. This is really important. I do the same thing.

• 22:02Tim Ferriss?

  Just got to South by Southwest, my first time here. I apologize, kind of a random introduction, but I don't know anybody. And I have my first book out. I really don't know what to do, because I have my launch coming up. But I'm here to learn. That's it. I'm here to learn and meet people. I don't even know what to ask for. And talk to them, talk to them, talk to them. And then, if the timing seems right, and it may not, it may never be right, but if it is, you can ask, "Is there anybody else here you think I should meet up with, or buy a drink for?" Who can I buy a round of drinks for? Just to have fun. Cool people, who I might be able to hang out with, and who might enjoy hanging out with me. And then you go to the second person, and so on.

• 22:46Tim Ferriss?

  And now, all the way up to this point, I've not made a single ask. All right? Other than the question, "Is there anybody else you think I might enjoy meeting?" Now, at some point, you will then have a small gaggle of people, and probably you'll be buying booze. At least, that's my tactic. It's fairly, fairly easy to buy booze for people. And then, everyone's talking. So let's say you have a group of people in tech, or you have a dog who wants a treat, who's coming back to say hello. A bunch of people in tech, who are talking about tech things, and they're saying things like, "Blabidi, blabidi, blah, Ruby on Rails." And I don't know what that is. As a guy, I'm talking to the guys here, because women generally don't have this problem. Don't pretend like you know everything. It's really not endearing.

• 23:30Tim Ferriss?

  So they would say something like, "Blah, blah, blah, Ruby on Rails." And I would say, "You know, so sorry to interrupt. This is deep in the end of my ignorance pool. I don't know what Ruby on Rails is. What is Ruby on Rails?" And every once in a while, I would interject and ask for clarification, just to learn. Eventually, after two or three rounds of drinks, someone will say... Who are you again? Like, what do you do? What are you doing here? And then you can offer a little bit. You say something like, "Well, I just finished my first book. I'm really nervous. It's coming out on such and such a date, and I don't know what a book launch is. So I'm here to try to meet people and learn different skills to figure that out." And then you stop.

• 24:13Tim Ferriss?

  You don't give them a two-minute or three-minute pitch. And chances are, someone will ask, "Okay, well, what's your book about?" And then you can give a little bit more. And then, let's say you're in a group of eight people. You watch the one or two who are going to have more follow-up questions. And then eventually, maybe, in a group of eight people, you say to one of them afterwards, you say, "Look, I have a ton of books that my publisher has sent me. These are review copies and advance copies. I don't know what to do with them. I don't think you'd actually read the whole book, but there's a 20-page bit that I think you'd really enjoy on X, Y, and Z." Because you know that. You've already ascertained it through the conversation you had.

• 24:56Tim Ferriss?

  And you say, "If it wouldn't be a burden, if you'd enjoy it, maybe I could send it to you. But if not, that's cool." And I would say 90% of the time, they said, "Yeah, sure. That'd be cool. I'd love to see it." And that's how it all happened, guys. That's how the book hit the New York Times Bestseller list, was by doing that over and over again. And, this is the key point, you don't have to be a networking whore. You don't have to sell yourself to the highest bidder or compromise and spend time with people you don't like. You can find people who are A-class players in a given world, who you want to spend time with, who have similar values and hobbies. So, that one person out of the 10 who said, "Yeah, cool. No, I'd love to check it out."

• 25:40Tim Ferriss?

  The vast majority of those people from 11 years ago are still my friends today. And that's going narrow and going long.

• 25:52Tim Ferriss?

  Alright, should you write a book? Should someone or anyone write a book? I get asked questions about launching books all the time. "How can I make my book a bestseller? Have you written a book?" "No, I'm going to write a book." "Have you written any books before?" "No." "Why are you writing a book?" And we get into this conversation. And ultimately, I ask one question, and that is: For the period of a year, can you make this your number one priority? For a period of at least a year, can this be your number one? If you have a company, that means your business is number two. If you have a family, that means your family is number two. Can this be your number one priority for a year? That's the general litmus test. Because if you put out a mediocre book, or even a good book,

• 26:35Tim Ferriss?

  a good enough book, which by the way, equals shitty, as Brian Grazer, legendary film and TV producer, would say, it's more of a liability than a help. Okay? So, a mediocre book is more of a liability than no book at all. You can't take it back. So, as Michael Gerber told me, who wrote The E-Myth Revisited, which is a book that had a huge impact on me, before I launched The 4-Hour Work Week, he said, "If you're gonna write a book, write a fucking book." Meaning, like, you're all in. All of your chips are into this book. So, how did I know that I should do The 4-Hour Work Week? Right? Was it that obvious? Was it clear? Was I dying to be a writer?

• 27:18Tim Ferriss?

  Which, by the way, I don't think is a necessary checkbox. You don't have to write the book yourself, necessarily. Open by Andre Agassi, by the way. Agassi. Andre Agassi was ghost-written, but it was a collaboration that took a long time and a lot of Andre's time. Beautifully written, but nonetheless required a lot of focus from him. So, you can have a collaborator. But my, I suppose, hurdle was, it was easier for me to get it out of my head... Than it was for me to live with it in my head. All right, it was less painful to put it down than to have it ricocheting inside my head.

• 27:58Tim Ferriss?

  And I had all these experiences from 2004 to say, end of 2005, where I was restructuring and reformulating my entire business to run without me, traveling the world for 18 months without any set schedule, meeting all these case studies. And I was teaching a class at Princeton twice a year, sometimes in person, sometimes remotely, in high-tech entrepreneurship, where I was sharing my findings about scaling a bootstrapped business. And that slowly morphed into lifestyle design, how to create a business or career to allow you to take advantage of the most valuable non-renewable resource, which is time. So I'm already giving these two to three-hour classes and I would take notes.

• 28:41Tim Ferriss?

  And over time, because one of the students said, "Why don't you just write a book and be done with it?" As opposed to teaching a class of 40 students, which was actually a snarky Princeton student response, it wasn't a real suggestion, I don't think. Nonetheless, I had insomnia for many, many, many, many years. And I couldn't get to sleep because these chapter ideas would come, these stories would come to mind, and I just couldn't get to sleep without jotting down a little note on a piece of paper. And I ended up with a huge pile of paper on lessons learned and so on. And I knew that at least two of my friends, and there were two specific friends in mind, one who was trapped in a decent-paying job where he had no time, disliked what he was

• 29:25Tim Ferriss?

  doing, but he could finally afford that nice car, right? So he felt like he was trapped. And then I had a friend who had started his own company, who similarly is making decent money, but felt trapped in a monster of his own making. And I felt these notes would help them, okay? Did not want to write a book at that point. Actively did not want to write a book, alright? But I felt a moral obligation to share this material somehow. And a few of my friends who were authors recommended that I explore the path to publishing it. And I made a few assumptions going into it. Because keep in mind, I did not want to write a book. I assumed it was going to be extremely difficult and brutal to write the book, which it was.

• 30:09Tim Ferriss?

  And we're talking repeated moments of doubt, I should throw in the towel, I am going to have an earth's breakdown. Repeatedly, okay? That has more or less been the case for every book that I've written. I'm at five now. The second assumption was that I was going to probably hate the book itself, which I did, okay? And that has been largely true for every book I've done. Assume that up until a year after the book comes out, you're going to look at it and be disappointed with what you've produced. Given that, the third assumption was that I would write the book and if it even changed the life of one or two people, that would justify all the pain, all the self-loathing,

• 30:52Tim Ferriss?

  all the loathing of the book, all of the opportunity cost of putting it together, alright? And that, last but not least, it was easier for me, less painful for me to get it out and throw a hail mary and hope for the best than to keep it inside of me and wonder what if. Okay? So a lot of different checkboxes. And the book, keep in mind, Four Hour Workweek was rejected by 27 publishers. And then, when it was finally printed, first print run was about 10,000 copies. You don't even get national distribution with that. Nobody really expected a whole lot. And then with the same amount of focus that I put into the writing, put into launch, ended up hitting the New York Times with Seller List, and now it's millions of copies

• 31:37Tim Ferriss?

  in 40-plus languages, okay? But I don't think you get to millions of copies in 40-plus languages trying to write a book for the world that is going to help your business. I just don't think it happens. I've never seen it happen. And instead...

• 31:53Tim Ferriss?

  Check all the boxes that I mentioned. And I wrote this book for two friends, very specifically. And by personalizing it in that way, by talking to them in a very conversational way, we ended up with the results that we had. Could have very easily gone a different direction. But if you can listen to everything I've just said, and you think to yourself, "I should write a book," then by all means, go for it. But for most people, this doesn't mean, "I am a great writer, therefore you need to be a great writer." No, I'm just saying, it was less painful for me to put it out than to keep it in my head.

• 32:33Tim 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.

• 33:16Tim 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 ZipRecruiter. You may have heard them everywhere. They're growing like crazy. They're an innovative platform for doing several things, but especially improving the hiring process, making it slick and elegant and easy. One of the hardest parts of running any business, growing any business, is finding and hiring the right team.

• 33:58Tim Ferriss?

  I've seen this firsthand in close to 100 startups now. God, I'm getting old. From all over the world at different stages of growth. And nothing can quite drain your resources and cost you time and money like making mistakes in hiring. ZipRecruiter developed their own system and their own platform for helping you to solve two of the biggest problems and bottlenecks for employers. Posting jobs easily and then making it even easier to find the best candidates. Unlike other job sites, ZipRecruiter does, in effect, the opposite of what you'd expect. So they do not depend on candidates finding you. Their technology finds the right candidate for you.

• 34:41Tim Ferriss?

  And in fact, more than 80% of the jobs posted on ZipRecruiter return a qualified candidate based on your criteria that you select in just 24 hours. So no more juggling email reviewing hundreds of unqualified candidates. I've been there, done that. Don't recommend it. Or dealing with calls to the office, etc. None of that. Simply screen, rate, and manage your candidates all in one place on ZipRecruiter's dashboard. And as a listener of the Tim Ferriss Show, thanks for that. ZipRecruiter wants to allow you to start posting jobs and trying their services for free. So if you're thinking of hiring somebody, you need to find an executive assistant, you need to find a developer, whatever it might be. Try it out.

• 35:21Tim Ferriss?

  Just visit ziprecruiter.com/tim and you can experience just how ZipRecruiter has been used by businesses of all different sizes to find the most qualified job candidates. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com/tim. Check it out. Give it a spin. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. Every year, of course, people look for new ways to become healthier, to take their fitness and so on to the next level. For me, step number one is having some form of nutritional insurance. That's how I would look at it. And the nutritional insurance needs to make sure all of my basic needs are met, all the boxes checked, regardless of travel, schedule, missed meals, and so on.

• 36:05Tim Ferriss?

  There are going to be times in the new year when your diet and exercise will get interrupted. Life will interrupt it. And during those times, you want a safety net. I get asked all the time, if you could only use one supplement, what would it be? My answer is inevitably Athletic Greens. It is your all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body, did not get paid for that, and I travel with it to avoid getting sick. I take it in the mornings to ensure optimal performance. It just covers all my bases if I can't get what I need through whole-food meals throughout the rest of the day. As listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can receive 30% off of your first order by visiting athleticgreens.com/tim. That is a great deal on one of my favorite products, and it covers my bases each day.

• 36:50Tim Ferriss?

  It is part of my routine, and it leaves me with less to worry about if, for instance, I have to skip a meal or just can't get a high-quality meal. So check it out. Go to athleticgreens.com/tim and learn all about it.