#778: Q&A with Tim — How to Live with Urgency, Find Joy, and Fight Complacency

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Tim Ferriss Show - Episode #778: Q&A with Tim — How to Live with Urgency, Find Joy, and Fight Complacency

Release Date: November 19, 2024
Host: Tim Ferriss

In this transformative episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, Tim Ferriss steps into the role of the guest, responding to a series of insightful questions from his dedicated community. This unique Q&A format delves deep into Tim's personal evolution, offering listeners a rare glimpse into his strategies for maintaining urgency, cultivating joy, and combating complacency. The discussion is rich with practical advice, personal anecdotes, and philosophical insights, all aimed at empowering listeners to enhance their own lives.

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1. Parenting and Personal Pivots

Key Discussion:
Tim opens up about his evolving perspective on parenthood, revealing a significant shift in his mindset over the past few years.

Notable Quote:
"I do think on some level becoming a parent is fundamentally self-interested... you are choosing to have kids so you want to make sure you bring them into the most supportive circumstances possible for them to flourish."
— Tim Ferriss [00:30]

Insights:

• Initial Hesitation: Tim admits his initial reluctance towards fatherhood, citing uncertainties about his capabilities and the long-term commitment involved.
• Influence of Peers: Observing friends thriving as parents played a pivotal role in his decision to embrace fatherhood.
• Future Outlook: While he doesn't claim to be the "world's greatest dad," Tim expresses optimism about this new chapter, emphasizing the importance of creating a nurturing environment for his children.

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2. Career Reinvention and Future Projects

Key Discussion:
Tim explores his approach to career diversification after a decade of podcasting, detailing his ventures into creative fields like comic book writing and animation.

Notable Quote:
"Each time you try something that's not really bound within your current identity, it buys you permission to do that over and over again and to open up a whole new realm of possibilities."
— Tim Ferriss [09:53]

Insights:

• Identity Diversification: Tim stresses the importance of stepping outside one's comfort zone to prevent complacency and stimulate growth.
• Creative Ventures: Projects like "Cockpunch" (a comic book series) and potential animation endeavors highlight his commitment to exploring uncharted territories.
• Self-Publishing and Community Feedback: Considering alternative publishing methods, Tim aims to engage his audience in the creative process, fostering a collaborative environment.

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3. Finding Joy and Maintaining Well-being

Key Discussion:
The conversation shifts to Tim's personal practices for sustaining joy and well-being amidst a busy life.

Notable Quote:
"Joy for me is very often the forgetting of the self. Whereas the quest for happiness can sometimes get turned into an obsessive focus on the self."
— Tim Ferriss [18:08]

Insights:

• Simple Pleasures: Tim finds joy in straightforward activities like spending time outdoors, exercising, and connecting with his dog.
• Structured Routine: Allocating specific parts of the day to physical activities and focused work helps him maintain balance and productivity.
• Social Connections: Regular gatherings with close friends, often involving active pursuits like hiking or hunting, contribute significantly to his sense of joy.

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4. Creativity and Ecstatic Moments

Key Discussion:
Tim delves into the nature of creativity, referencing Rick Rubin's concept of "the ecstatic" as a compass for breakthrough moments.

Notable Quote:
"It's like an energetic scent trail, if that makes sense... it's like a quickening of sorts."
— Tim Ferriss [56:30]

Insights:

• Recognition of Flow: Tim describes the "ecstatic" feeling as a state of calm but intense focus that signals a fertile ground for creative breakthroughs.
• Physical Awareness: By tuning into his physiological responses, Tim identifies and nurtures moments when creativity is at its peak.
• Project Selection: Projects that evoke a strong positive physiological response, like "Cockpunch," are prioritized as they unlock new energy and potential.

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5. Handling Grief

Key Discussion:
Addressing the universal experience of grief, Tim shares his perspectives on navigating loss, particularly the passing of beloved pets.

Notable Quote:
"Grief is a really good question... it serves as kind of a microcosm of the macro challenges within society."
— Tim Ferriss [50:13]

Insights:

• Natural Process: Tim emphasizes that grief is an integral part of the human condition and not something to be avoided.
• Cultural Shifts: He reflects on how modern, secular society often lacks the structured mourning rituals found in traditional religions, leaving individuals to navigate grief independently.
• Personal Coping Strategies: Sharing experiences, such as burying a pet in a meaningful way, helps in processing and honoring the loss.

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6. Longevity and Health Practices

Key Discussion:
Tim discusses his approach to health and longevity, advocating for foundational practices over chasing the latest fads.

Notable Quote:
"What can I subtract that might make me live longer or just live more healthfully?"
— Tim Ferriss [52:52]

Insights:

• Avoiding the Bleeding Edge: Tim prefers tried-and-true health practices like regular exercise, creatine supplementation, and minimizing exposure to harmful substances.
• Skeptical Approach to New Trends: He expresses caution towards unverified longevity compounds and emphasizes the importance of understanding potential trade-offs.
• Basic Health Fundamentals: Prioritizing fundamental health measures, such as proper hydration and balanced diet, forms the cornerstone of his longevity strategy.

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7. Developing Patience and Self-Regulation

Key Discussion:
The dialogue touches on personal growth, specifically Tim's journey towards cultivating patience and self-awareness.

Notable Quote:
"My challenge has been since childhood, that I have a very hypervigilant system."
— Tim Ferriss [66:07]

Insights:

• Physiological Awareness: Tim shares his efforts to become more attuned to his body's responses, using tools like meditation and mindfulness apps to manage stress.
• Behavioral Adjustments: By recognizing and noting his physiological states, he aims to reduce reactive behaviors and enhance emotional regulation.
• Long-Term Growth: These practices are part of his broader strategy to maintain mental and emotional well-being, contributing to his overall ability to find joy and stay motivated.

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8. Advice for Career Transition and Finding Passion

Key Discussion:
In addressing listener questions, Tim offers guidance for those contemplating significant career changes in the face of technological advancements like AI.

Notable Quote:
"Adaptability and confidence in your ability to trial and error and ultimately figure it out."
— Tim Ferriss [75:45]

Insights:

• Fear Setting: Tim recommends the "fear setting" exercise to assess potential risks and develop contingency plans when considering major career shifts.
• Focus on Skills Over Fields: Emphasizing adaptability, he suggests building versatile skills that transcend specific industries, making individuals more resilient to technological disruptions.
• Embrace Uncertainty: Encouraging a mindset that accepts uncertainty as part of the journey, Tim advises embracing trial and error as essential steps toward finding fulfilling work.

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9. Closing Reflections

Key Discussion:
As the episode concludes, Tim reflects on the importance of balancing seriousness with lightheartedness and cultivating compassion for oneself and others.

Notable Quote:
"Taking the view, poke the person next to you, try to share a laugh, because it's just not that long."
— Tim Ferriss [41:33]

Insights:

• Compassion and Connection: Developing compassion, both inwardly and outwardly, fosters deeper relationships and personal fulfillment.
• Embracing Impermanence: Recognizing the fleeting nature of life encourages living authentically and cherishing meaningful moments.
• Humility and Humor: Balancing ambition with a sense of humor and humility helps mitigate the pressures of success and fosters a more joyful existence.

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Conclusion

In this introspective episode, Tim Ferriss provides a multifaceted exploration of personal growth, career evolution, and the pursuit of joy. Through candid answers and thoughtful reflections, he shares actionable strategies for listeners aiming to live with greater urgency, find lasting happiness, and navigate the challenges of complacency. Whether contemplating parenthood, seeking creative fulfillment, or managing grief, Tim's insights offer valuable guidance for anyone striving to lead a more intentional and fulfilling life.

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Notable Quotes Reference:

• Quotes are attributed to Tim Ferriss and other speakers at relevant timestamps within the podcast transcript.

Transcript

[Tim Ferriss]

Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss.

[Unknown Speaker]

Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is usually my job to sit down with world class.

[Tim Ferriss]

Performers of all different types to tease.

[Unknown Speaker]

Out their habits, routines, favorite books and.

[Tim Ferriss]

So on that you can apply to your own lives.

[Unknown Speaker]

This time around the format is going to be a bit different. By a request, I am the guest.

[Tim Ferriss]

In the sense that I took questions.

[Unknown Speaker]

It was an ask me anything of sorts from people who supported my fan.

[Tim Ferriss]

Supported model way back in 2019.

[Unknown Speaker]

Believe it or not, that was an ad free experiment. Ended up returning to ads by request. That's a whole long story. If you want to read about how that went down, you can go to Tim Blog Podcast Experiment. But the point is we did a zoom call and they asked me anything they want to ask and we covered a lot of ground. I answer questions about how I've changed my mind around parenthood, what's next for me, and how I'm thinking about next steps, how I find joy or attempt to find joy, how to live with.

[Tim Ferriss]

Urgency, my advice for career reinvention, or.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thinking about careers in the age of AI and all of the unpredictability that entails avoiding complacency ruts and so much more. Which is not to say I have all the answers, but certainly I explore.

[Tim Ferriss]

A lot of my thinking in this.

[Unknown Speaker]

And I had a blast. So I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and we're going to get right to it. But before that, just a few words from the kind people who make this podcast possible.

[Tim Ferriss]

The following quote is from one of the most legendary entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley. And here it goes. This team executes at a level you rarely see, even among the best technology companies.

[Unknown Speaker]

End quote.

[Tim Ferriss]

That is from Peter Thiel about today's sponsor, Ramp. I've been hearing about these guys everywhere and there are good reasons for it. Ramp is corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. In fact, they're already doing that across the board. Ramp has already saved more than 25,000 customers, including other podcast sponsors like Shopify and 8 Sleep, more than 10 million hours and and more than $1 billion through better financial management of their corporate spending. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting, allowing you to close your books 8 times faster on average. Your employees will no longer spend hours upon hours submitting expense reports. I mean within companies fast growing startups or Otherwise, a lot of employees spend.

[Unknown Speaker]

Half their time, it seems, trying to get all this stuff together.

[Tim Ferriss]

No more. Ramp saves you time and money. You can get started, issue virtual and physical cards and start making payments in less than 15 minutes, whether you have five employees or 5,000 employees. They've streamlined everything and businesses that use Ramp save an average of 5% in the first year and now you can get $250 when you join RAMP. Just go to ramp.com Tim all spelled out that's rampant. Cards issued by Sutton bank member fdic. Terms and conditions apply. As many of you know, for the last few years I've been sleeping on a midnight luxe mattress from today's sponsor, Helix Sleep.

[Unknown Speaker]

I also have one in the guest.

[Tim Ferriss]

Bedroom downstairs and feedback from friends has always been fantastic.

[Unknown Speaker]

Kind of over the top to be honest.

[Tim Ferriss]

I mean, they frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages.

[Unknown Speaker]

What kind of mattress is it? What do you do? What's the magic juju?

[Tim Ferriss]

It's something they comment on without any prompting whatsoever. I also recently had a chance to test the Helix Sunset Elite in a new guest bedroom which I sometimes sleep in, and I picked it for its very soft but supportive feel to help with some lower back pain that I've had. The Sunset Elite delivers exceptional comfort while putting the right support in the right spots. It is made with five tailored foam layers including a base layer with full perimeter zoned lumbar support right where I need it, and middle layers with premium foam and micro coils that create a soft contouring feel. Which also means if I feel like.

[Unknown Speaker]

I want to sleep on my side, I can do that without worrying about other aches and pains I might create.

[Tim Ferriss]

And with a luxurious pillow top for pressure relief, I look forward to nestling.

[Unknown Speaker]

Into that bed every night that I use it.

[Tim Ferriss]

The best part, of course, is that.

[Unknown Speaker]

It helps me wake up feeling fully.

[Tim Ferriss]

Rested with a back that feels supple instead of stiff. That is the name of the game.

[Unknown Speaker]

For me these days.

[Tim Ferriss]

Helix offers a 100 night sleep trial, fast free shipping and a 15 year warranty.

[Unknown Speaker]

So check it all out.

[Tim Ferriss]

Get 25% off on all mattress orders plus two free pillows by going to helixsleep.com Tim that's helixsleep.com Tim for 25% off on all mattress orders plus two free pillows. Optimal?

[Unknown Speaker]

Minimal at this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question?

[Sarah Carley]

Now? I'll see an appropriate time.

[Tim Ferriss]

What if I did the Opposite.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'm a cybernetic organism.

[Tim Ferriss]

Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.

[Unknown Speaker]

Cool. This is a cozy bunch. Not too big, not too small. Scott, I like your taste in the headsets.

[Scott]

Thanks.

[Unknown Speaker]

Got Lee popping in. All right, so I think the most interesting way to do this is just to kind of go around and have a conversation and people can ask their questions. It could be the question that you submitted, frankly, to keep it interesting for me. It could be something else, too, but up to you. Let's see. Sarah, would you like to go first?

[Sarah Carley]

Yeah. So I haven't seen you in 30 years, which you may or may not remember.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I was going to say, I know that name and I know that face. Yeah.

[Sarah Carley]

Yeah. Well, it's Sarah Carley to you.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. It's been a minute. Nice to see you.

[Sarah Carley]

It's been a long time. So it's good to see you. Well, I had a question about something in the past two years that's been a significant change of mind for you. A place where you've really made a big, big pivot in something you thought you knew.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'd say the biggest pivot that comes to mind is related to parenting, fatherhood. Just never felt like I had any evidence to support that I would be a good dad for a host of reasons and felt like since that, as far as I know, is a forever decision, or at least decision until you pass away, hopefully predating your kids, that I just did not feel comfortable thinking about pulling the trigger on something that significant. Also, because I do think on some level becoming a parent is fundamentally self interested. I don't want to call it selfish, but you are choosing to have kids so you want to make sure you bring them into the most supportive circumstances possible for them to flourish. And it's, I would say in the last handful of years, as more and more of my friends have had kids, and then second kids, in some cases third kids. And I've spent time with a lot of those kids that I've heard over and over again from friends. You would be a great dad. You got to get on that train. You got to do it. So I would say that's probably the most material pivot. I can't say with 100% confidence I'm going to be the world's greatest dad. But I suppose the question that I.

[Tim Ferriss]

Ask myself, but never really applied to.

[Unknown Speaker]

This, but I do apply to a lot of other places is with question X or challenge Y, has anyone less capable or less intelligent or less resourced.

[Tim Ferriss]

Ever figured this out?

[Unknown Speaker]

And done a pretty good job. And of course the answer is yes with parenting. I just, for whatever reason, never made the cognitive hop to apply that same question that I put so many other places to parenting. So I would say that's the biggest one that comes to mind. Seems like the next great chapter and adventure, so we'll see where that goes. I have some prereqs to figure out first. Girlfriend, partner, wife, mother of the children kind of situation. I guess technically I don't need to travel that path, but that's where I'm focused at the moment. Thanks for the question. Nice to see you after three decades. All right, we can go in any particular order. So I'm just following some line of sorts on my screen. Scott, would you like to go next? Not to favor all the people with headsets. Oh, no, we have multiple headsets down here. Andrew as well.

[Scott]

Yeah. So I guess my question kind of dovetails with Sarah's a little bit. It seems like you're kind of thinking about maybe next steps for you and your career. You're, you know, you've hit 10 years on the podcast. It sounds like you're maybe exploring some new stuff with writing a book and doing art. And I'm just curious, what types of new things are you exploring and how are you maybe thinking about the next, say, 10 years of your life and kind of what's next?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, it's a big one. So start with all the big. Start with the big questions. Then we can get down to what's your new favorite pair of socks later. All right, so I would say I'll back into that from the end of the question first. So next 10 years, who knows? For me, I've never really had super long term goals that are well planned out, in part because I feel like looking at it from the professional perspective at least. If you can hit your plan reliably point by point, it's probably too far within your sphere of comfort, if that makes sense. And there are so many unpredictable elements that it's probably, I don't want to say an exercise in futility, because I do think it's important to have a plan, even if that plan isn't something you can execute on perfectly.

[Tim Ferriss]

But my plan time horizon tends to.

[Unknown Speaker]

Be, I would say, with most things in this 6 to 12 month range.

[Tim Ferriss]

And the assumption is there that if.

[Unknown Speaker]

I do really well at something over that period of time, it will open doors that I could not have predicted or foreseen ahead of time, if that makes any sense. If you think about Say, the first book. If you think about the podcast, I could not, in any universe I can imagine, have foreseen what those would bring to the door two, three years later. I just could not have even imagined, certainly at least half of the things that would have appeared. So I tend to think of it in those terms. But some of the, let's just say, side quests and alleyways that I'm exploring mostly relate to trying to break outside of what I've done before. And there are a few reasons for that. So one is I recognize in myself that it's very easy to not become complacent, but to become comfortable with repeating certain recipes that you have in your life, whatever those recipes are. And they typically relate to a domain you know pretty well. So in my case, let's just say that's publishing, that's podcasting on some level, that's early stage investing. And while I enjoy all of those things, or facets of each of those things, I have felt a huge benefit in identity diversification over time. Each time you try something that's not really bound within your current identity, it buys you permission to do that over and over again and to open up a whole new realm of possibilities that you might not have considered. If, for instance, I viewed myself as an author, I could have constrained myself further to being a business author. And that was part of the reason I chose to once the success of the four Hour Workweek gave me a certain grace period within which I could try anything, because publishers would be like, well, like, we missed the first one, but let's maybe get the second one. Or we want to keep him for the long term so he can do the three hour work week and the.

[Tim Ferriss]

Two hour work week.

[Unknown Speaker]

So fine, if it makes him happy to do this stupid thing called the four Hour Body. And that's not what the publisher said. But they were more excited for me to stay in my lane. The Four Hour Body then proved to me I could experiment outside of the lines that would limit me to, say, the business category. And then that furthermore led me to experiment with a lot of other things. Things. So that is a long preamble to say that the areas that I'm looking at really closely right now are, for instance, games, which is totally out of left field. Right. It wouldn't fit neatly in my Wikipedia page, I'll put it that way. And cockpunch and the whole NFT craziness was an example of also doing something very far afield. And I'll show you another one, actually, because I Couldn't show this to you otherwise. So hold on a second, I'll show you. This, for instance, is a great book, by the way. This is the DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O'Neill with an introduction by Stan Lee. This is actually a great, great book. And I just visited Comic Con for the first time, in this case in New York City, which was huge. I could not believe the scale of it. I have always loved illustration and wanted to be a comic book penciler. Actually, this is going to suck for people who only have audio, but I'll do some more show and tell. Hold on. Okay, so this is artwork that my mom kept that is from way back in the day. But just to give you an idea, these are kind of covers of magazines that I did way back in like 95, 96. And this type of stuff, this type of illustration, I'm not saying it's the best in the world, but it's a longstanding interest of mine and reinvigorating that. So part of what I've done is look backwards in time to guess at what might elicit a lot of energy, recharge for me in the future. So looking back at what really activated me and seeing if I can explore some of those edges in the future. Furthermore, animation is way up there and doing creative pushes, which I experimented first through the fiction writing associated with Cockpunch, which, by the way, if you replace that word with anything else, it is a pretty viable fantasy world. But it was a way to take pressure off of myself to publicly position it as a joke and a satire, but allowing me with very little pressure to play with things that otherwise, if I presented them as serious, I think could cause a lot of performance anxiety and insecurity. Because if people critiqued it, I would take it very personally. Stuff like this, masterpieces of fantasy art. This is Frazetta on the COVID Lots of amazing artwork in this one, and those are a few. And there's certainly the new book project, but within the book project, changing a lot of variables. So, for instance, and I haven't made any decisions around this yet, but the possibility of self publishing, the possibility of taking that book, presenting it serially, so sharing the first chapter or the first two chapters, something like that, having a private community of I don't know how many people, 100, 200 people, maybe, who test aspects of the book and then provide feedback and can refine it over time and release a chapter a week or something like that over time and have the audience track it, the small audience, the private audience track it in real time, and then polish the whole thing into a diamond, hopefully, and publish it later, which could be very much. Almost certainly at least a high percentage of that project would be outside of traditional publishing. So I'm taking something I know, but I'm creating a permutation that might lead somewhere very, very interesting. And this is a very long answer. So obviously I'm thinking about it a lot. In the case of, say, the publishing, this is true with all the other games, comic books, et cetera, that I mention. I'm looking for projects that will help me to either build or deepen relationships and acquire skills that can transcend that project. So, for instance, if so, cockpunch. I mean, yeah, sure, it succeeded in the sense that it raised $2 million for Scisei Foundation. All of the proceeds went to my nonprofit foundation to fund science and so on, early stage science. But NFTs as a whole, as you may have noticed, have fallen out of favor for a million and one reasons, which is fine. And I anticipated that might be the case, and so set expectations very, very low upfront because you can't predict these types of market conditions. But I learned a lot through that. Ended up doing a scripted podcast, met some of the best artists in the world. So say Dungeons and Dragons and Magic. The Gathering worked really well with them. So, most importantly, proved to myself that I could work with a small team of creatives and we would actually get along, as opposed to B being unreasonable and overly stubborn and a control freak, which are probably ways I would describe myself. But it actually worked, and I was like, holy shit, okay. As a proof of concept, I could take that newfound confidence, that very limited experiment, but the feeling from that and apply it to possibly something more ambitious or completely different. Like animation, as an example, would be a very, very, very different iteration of that process. So, not sure if that answers the question, but that's how I'm trying to think through a lot of these things myself. Is that helpful at all?

[Scott]

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks.

[Unknown Speaker]

All right, let's hop around. Theron.

[Theron]

My question for you, Tim, is what's bringing you joy these days?

[Unknown Speaker]

I would say it's always the simple things, right? We can search for all these esoteric means of satisfying this happiness and joy, and usually the absence of those things is remedied pretty quickly with just returning to basics. So for me, I would say I experienced one of the most uninterrupted periods of joy, most recently being in the mountains, spending the first half of every day more or less outside with my dog, getting Tons of exercise in the sun, pushing the system, adding some stress, getting all the benefits of the hormonal cascade and so on. That comes from that. And then in the second half of the day, spending time on first and foremost, the admin stuff of life is always there, but really blocking out consistently. And it's easier for me to do this when I have less time in a day to allocate to work. When I have all the time in the world and I'm in an urban environment, I can fritter away all that time in 10, 15 minute distractions and end up not really accomplishing very much and not feeling very good about it. If I have the first half of the day, which you could do in an urban environment too dedicated to motion, movement, physical skill development, in this case time with my dog. So it could be some type of group class or otherwise, it doesn't have to be the whole day, but really having that in the first half of the day, then having two to four hour period where I'm focused on something very immersive, single tasking without any distractions. And in this case that would have been latter half of August, September and then early October, it would have been book focused. And doing that in collaboration with one other person who I'm deeply involving in this book project. So I would say those are a few. And then along the lines of week to week identity diversification, so that if one thing stalls or doesn't do well, or as well as I would hope, I can still have a win, so to speak, like chalk things up to a win. Archery has been great, that's ongoing, so I'm spending a lot of time with archery. I overdid it the other day, so my shoulder and elbow are killing me because I overdid in a particularly stupid way. So I'm taking a few days off. But that has been a really consistent practice, such that if I'm not in the mountains, because practice, I mean, you asked me personally what I'm doing, but for a lot of folks it's like, okay, well great, if you happen to be able to put yourself in the mountains, around rivers and lakes, fantastic. But even where I'm sitting right now, for instance, not tomorrow because I need the elbow and shoulder rest, but the day after that, as soon as I wake up, it's going to be meditation, briefly. And I just recently got back on the train and we might speak more about that later in this conversation. Then an hour of archery and then cold plunge. That's the morning it doesn't have to be four or five hours, it can be quite a bit shorter and that sets the tone for the rest of the day. So those are a few things that come to mind on an annual level. I would say the most important thing that I do for my sense of joy and well being. And I think joy for me is very often the forgetting of the self. Whereas the quest for happiness can sometimes get turned into an obsessive focus on the self. Does that make sense at least? I think that's where I slip sometimes. It's like, I should be happy, I should be happy, am I happy? Whereas joy is this sort of emergent experience of forgetting yourself. So for me to facilitate that, blocking out multiple, say one week periods where I'm with groups of friends, that's just the most reliable way to do it. So each year I'll look through the past year, identify, let's just call it the relationships that are most enlivening for me, where they're reliably always going to be. Hell, yeah. I wish we could have spent more time together. Can't wait to do that again. Those people, it's a short list. And then scheduling time with those people in group environments, ideally doing something active like year to year back country skiing or hike. Or in the case of. Most recently I was a hunt with five other people. And I don't hunt very frequently. But that's my protein for the next three to six months, depending on how many meals I can replicate with the exact same protein. And those are some of, I suppose, the variables that seem to consistently deliver. But if I'm out of sorts, it's like, all right, are you getting enough light in the morning? Are you getting enough exercise in the morning? Do you have your diet dialed? Are you in a place like New York City where surprise, surprise, you've been out and you've had alcohol four nights this week with your stupid friends who also do the same thing. It's very often the basic things and removing those emergency brakes that facilitates what we're looking for or what I'm looking for. Is that helpful?

[Theron]

Yeah, that was great.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thanks, Tim. Okay. Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right, so I'm gonna kind of like wind my way around here. Let's see. Christina, would you like to go next?

[Sarah Carley]

Somehow related to what you were talking about how you think about the next whatever, 612 months. One of the things I really admire about is your way of thinking and questioning and not particularly with that was genius. Overtaking for me. The ability to ask the right questions, different questions. Good Questions is probably the more important. So I'm curious about your thoughts and how do you keep those questioning fresh?

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, not to get too meta, I mean, that is a question I ask myself quite a bit too. So thanks for bringing it up. I'd say with questions, there are a lot of different settings for questions. First of all, you can ask me a question, I can ask the group a question. Those might be different species of questions. Asking yourself questions. This can also be a different species of question. And the way I keep questions fresh, I'll give you a simple tactical answer is. For instance, I was preparing for a podcast interview recently and had a research doc, had read through the bio, had asked the guest for certain topics they thought would be interesting to explore, had done my own searching, come up with some independent questions. But we all get in ruts that we don't recognize. And those ruts aren't necessarily a bad thing, but they're an easy thing. So I might have my 10 go to questions, and it's easier to sit with those 10 than to come up with another 10, which may or may not work. So I went into ChatGPT and I said, effectively, how might James Lipton of Inside the Actors Studio interview Guest x? What are 10 questions that are variants of questions that have come up a lot in Inside the Actor studio? Give me 10. Boom. All right, great. And then the next one is like, give me 10 more for Terry Gross interviewing the same person. Fresh air. Give me 10 more with Charlie Rose. And it was very, very helpful. Or if like 10 more with Lex Friedman, sure, why not just throw in anyone who is not me, basically? And I'd be like, okay, I wouldn't ask seven of these, but that's an interesting one. And I wouldn't have thought of phrasing it that way. Or it's asking a question that I think would be of service to my audience within the theme of the show. So I'm not deviating too far, not getting too far afield, but it's coming at it from an angle that I wouldn't have considered. So I would say those are all approaches I take. If I find questions that I like, I save them. You could save them too, anywhere, Evernote notion, wherever you keep your notes. But I have documents that are basically running lists of questions, and they could come from anywhere. It could be a novel. There are questions in novels that I yank. One character asks. Another could be in an in flight magazine, if those still exist. I don't even know if those still exist. Could be practically from anywhere. And then there are, I would say, consistent questions that I find very helpful.

[Tim Ferriss]

Which you might find in some form.

[Unknown Speaker]

Like the five Minute journal, for instance. Those are consistent prompts that work to achieve a desired result. Much like a recipe, if you're cooking something specifically, there are guidelines that tend to work repeatedly. Those are a few ways that I think about it. All right, let's hop to Josh. You want to go next? Yeah.

[Josh]

I was going to ask if you.

[Scott]

Spend your life battling tech admin stuff like we do, but that. That was answered pretty quickly.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, there's always that stuff. There's always that stuff, Yeah.

[Scott]

I guess my real question, some of the successful people you've interviewed have gone through long periods of being unsuccessful or rejected or bankrupt or whatever. You've sort of documented some of your own struggles writing the Body Book and some of the other things, I guess, you know, what are some of the unifying themes about those who eventually do break through and kind of how to get out of a rut you've already touched on, which was part of my question. But I think, you know, anything you could just elaborate on that producer would be great.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I can. Could you give me, if you're open to it, you don't have to, but a little more context for why that question? Because that could. That could help, I guess, you know.

[Scott]

Sort of taking a little bit of a career break as you have and thinking about things that have brought me joy in the past was certainly one thing that, you know, looking to do next moves. And I think the decision process that you've already outlined a little bit is things that bring you joy. And you've kind of arrived at a couple core principles of things that you're looking for your next projects to help you do. I guess, just a little bit more upstream from that, how you made the decision to call time out after the 10 years and take the sabbatical, and then, you know, just how you sort of got out of the day to day of doing what you do so very well. And, you know, I know you've touched upon it's. It's hard to do that. But, you know, just anything on that that you could share would be helpful in terms of how you realigned your thinking to do something a little bit different. But building on what you've already done.

[Unknown Speaker]

Very well, I'd say a few things so I could speak to my decision to hit pause or rethink things. I suppose there are a few fundamental beliefs that led me to do that or allowed me to do that the first is that constant motion in some respects or constant productivity per se is the enemy of oblique thinking. So if you're looking at seeing a problem or a situation with fresh eyes in an uncommon way that allows you to make unique or highly leveraged decisions when you are constantly churning, I think it requires you to be this close to the problem and therefore it's hard to zoom out. So for me, I had that belief to begin with that not necessarily stillness, but having a little bit of distance is necessary for me to really consider doing X before the entire rest of the world does. X. And I'm looking for ideally being a category of one. I don't like competing in my professional life in this particular way. Archery or something like that. Great. Compartmentalized, very clear. It's time bound, pass, fail, follow the points, great. But when it can become a never ending story of unquestioned ambition within, say, the world of podcasting, then I want to make sure there are periods built in where I have some distance. The other fundamental belief and I'm sticking with the belief stuff because these are thoughts that we take to be true. Beliefs are thoughts we take to be true. And I'm sure I'm borrowing that from someone like Byron. Katie the belief structure is sort of the reed raft upon which everything else floats. And if you really want to have the most optionality with your direction, I think it very helpful to make the implicit beliefs explicit and look at them carefully. So the other belief that I think is helpful, I actually know quite concretely this is not limited to people who are in the top 1% of 1%. The world does not end. If you slow down or take a break, it'll carry on just perfectly fine generally without you. Now there are constraints. If you're saying that you want to take a break from a job that provides all the income from your family and pays the mortgage and puts food on the table. Obviously there are constraints, but if you were to delete all social media from your phone and titrate down the aperture of noise and news that gets flooded into your system, you'll be fine. You'd probably be better off. So the hyper kinetic feeling of modern society is not conducive or necessary for making decisions with outsized outcomes, if that makes sense. Those are a few underpinning beliefs and there are people who prove this. A lot of the people that I most respect in their profession, like a Daniel Day Lewis or something, they disappear for five years at a time. They come back. No one's like, where's Daniel Day Lewis. Lewis. What are his latest tweets about politics? Nobody gives a shit. Right. As long as you're really good at Kraft X, you are going to have, I think, a good number of options. So I'm meandering a little bit, but help me refocus. Is there a particular aspect of your question that you'd like me to hit?

[Scott]

I think you're really hitting on a lot of the stuff. And like you said earlier, some of the stuff about hitting. How do you think about things that bring you joy and then you realign with your beliefs? Do you get the. I think this is really helpful. Thanks. Yeah. I mean, it's inspiring that someone as successful as you at something has done this and taken stock and sort of stepped back because it kind of gives the rest of us hope to do the same thing. You know, even if it's just something that you're just saying, I'm going to take a step back and then do similar to what I'm doing and some other stuff, maybe in a different way, with a different lens. It's just helpful to think through that to get the rest of us to the. To the happy place.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Happy to try to assist. I definitely don't have everything figured out. I would say also that. And this comes back to Christina's question. On questions. If you're hitting a dead end or you don't seem to be able to reliably answer a question and it's causing you stress, for instance, how can I find joy? Let's just say that you've been banging your head against that question and it hasn't been producing great results. One thing you can do that I will sometimes do is, okay, maybe that's not a good question, but there's a feeling that I'm going for if I look back at the past. What are some of the antecedents to joy? So maybe the question isn't like, how do I create more joy? It's how do I create some precursor to that? And for me, one of those is a sense of losing the self or the dissolution of the self. That's another way that I think about these things. Antecedents 2x just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.

[Tim Ferriss]

This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that.

[Unknown Speaker]

Supports whole body health.

[Tim Ferriss]

I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop. AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more Check it out go to drinkag1.com Tim that's drinkag1, the number one. Drinkag1.com Tim last time drinkag1.com Tim check.

[Unknown Speaker]

It out all right, let's we're just going to work our way through. Wade, would you like to go next?

[Wade]

Well I just want to say thanks for everything you do. I genuinely appreciate it. Love the content, love what you're about, learn a lot. You've been like a gym companion for me for like nine years. There's nothing better than a good Tim Ferriss podcast in the gym. So genuinely appreciate that. I think my question is around and maybe I'm wrong. It's just an observation I've listened to for a long time. Seems like maybe the edges have softened a little bit in regards to your life from a personality. Seems like maybe there's a hint of spirituality that's evolved a bit since I've been listening. So is there anything in particular that has helped maybe soften the edges? And is there a different perspective on spirituality than there used to be?

[Unknown Speaker]

I would say I've definitely softened a lot in the last five years especially, and maybe I'm just getting older and tired, who knows. But if we take that off the table as an explanation, although I think a lot of stuff comes down to I was talking to a friend and they were like, oh yeah, just become so much chiller in conflict resolution with my partner after 10 years. But it took five years and I was like maybe it's just fatigue. I was being a jerk about it, just being playful. But if I take that off the table, there are a few things that were proactive and also just life experiences I think that contribute to that. I would say one is seeing dozens upon dozens upon dozens of close friends or podcast guests who are materially successful beyond belief, have all the prestige you could possibly imagine in a business capacity, who are nonetheless dissatisfied or chasing something like a hungry ghost, if that makes sense. And the reason that's relevant is that a lot of the piss and vinegar and sort of spitfire focus that I've had, I think, has been predicated subconsciously on some belief that with enough of X success, that success resolves. I'm not going to say all issues because I never would have said that, but most issues, and that's just not true. It's just not true at all. I would say also what I've observed in very wealthy people is that they build. They build. They build their number moves, they make X amount of money, then they want 10x, and then no, it's as soon as I have 100x and then it's as soon as I have a thousand X, then I can chill out and I'll know everything's going to be okay. If you put that under scrutiny. When I've seen older people and I've spoken to, say, grandparents or people who are building dynastic wealth, it seems like this is going to sound obnoxious, but I'll just say it, which is like, if you give your kids a ton of money, let's just say that's more than 10 or 20 million bucks. People who are making just obscene amounts of money, building incredible amounts of wealth, there is an amount of money past a certain point that seems to just fuck up your kids horribly. I'm not saying that's always the case, but the I just want to create a better and brighter future for my kids and give them the things I didn't have and da da, da, da da. There's a point where more is a lot less, from what I've seen. It's just my personal impression. So if you realize that the professional stuff is not going to solve all your problems or all your challenges, let's just say, and if you realize accumulating Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth and then donate it all to your kids, if it turns into a serious amount of money, is probably a bad idea. It's not just neutral. You might actually really screw your kids up, then it raises the question, why around a lot, at least around the business stuff, I think it contributes, in addition to other things that I'll mention, to taking it seriously, but not too seriously, taking it less seriously. Does that make sense? And when you take those things less seriously, if you have been inclined to take them very seriously and consequently yourself very seriously, I think by taking those things less seriously, you start to take yourself a little less seriously. These conversations also about legacy and leaving someone to be remembered, they're helpful in some cases, like those myths. But it's like, how many people can name the most powerful people in the world when the Assyrians were running around, how many people can name the most powerful Babylonian, Alexander the Great. What's his full name? Nobody knows. The idea, especially with the amount of information overwhelm that is our current day, the idea of also creating some permanent record of yourself that just persists over like more than 10 years after you're dead, if you're lucky, is kind of silly. I mean, it's a little silly, but.

[Tim Ferriss]

We all need reasons to do things.

[Unknown Speaker]

And actually, I think, Josh, you were asking about people who failed and failed and then succeeded. I think myths are very helpful here. So coming up with myths, whether that is when I have enough money, it's going to solve everything, great. That's an incredible incentive. Or the myth that I am the only person in the world who's destined to create this amazing piece of art. Okay, maybe that's true, but it's probably a myth. But it can be a very empowering myth. And it makes me think of Seth Godin who said, I'm paraphrasing, but past a certain point, money is a story. So pick a story you can live with that benefits you instead of handicaps you. Then on the spirituality side, I generally.

[Tim Ferriss]

Steer away from that term.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's a useful term because there isn't a great replacement in some conversations. But it can get used in a lot of different ways. But I would say that my openness to. It's not even openness. It's like my recognition that the more we know, the more we realize we don't know. I think has opened my mind as have a lot of strange experiences that I've had with whether it's psychedelics or otherwise. It's not limited to that. And I explore the fringes, right? I mean, I really do. And I try to keep my skeptics hat on. I think I'm actually quite good at not fooling myself. And I will ask what are the alternate explanations for this? How might this otherwise be explained, et cetera, et cetera. But there's a lot of strange stuff out there. It doesn't mean it's magic, but it does highlight sometimes the limits of our current abilities to kind of measure and freeze frame things for scientific studies. So those are all contributors, I would say, in the bucket, broadly speaking, of not taking myself too, too seriously. If my work is a subset of myself, then it applies to that too would be having a lot of friends die. I've had lots of friends pass away. I've had people get very sick. I've seen people succumb to dementia. As you get older and you see more and more of this, it just highlights the fact that this ride is not. It's not a long ride. And I'm not convinced that death is the end necessarily. But still, we don't know. Let's not spend the entire roller coaster worrying about whatever Trump said on your phone. Rollercoaster is not going to last forever. So focus. Taking the view. Poke the person next to you, try to share a laugh, because it's just not that long. And even if you come to a natural end in old age, it's not long. But sadly, I've lost a lot of friends and acquaintances, certainly to car accidents. I mean, you name it, you just don't know. So I think the softening is around a lot of that. The softening also comes from, I think, exploring different modalities for trying to metabolize the childhood abuse that I've talked about elsewhere. And that requires a degree of cultivated compassion for yourself that I historically have not paid a lot of attention to. It's hard for me to see any way around developing compassion, more compassion for yourself if you want to genuinely express compassion for other people. I'm not sure there's a workaround there. I've thought about this quite a bit. It goes both ways, but fundamentally I think that's a homework assignment for a lot of people that if I'm not going to say solved, but if that is paid sufficient attention, has all these downstream benefits, one of which I think is just a general softening, I would say. So those are the things that come to mind.

[Wade]

Thanks, man, that was awesome.

[Unknown Speaker]

Appreciate it. Yeah, my pleasure. All right, so the faces have moved around a little bit. I'll try to keep track. I think I can keep track of who's gone, who hasn't. Since Tim is up in the corner next to me. I'm going to go with Tim. You want to go next?

[Joel]

Yeah. Again, thanks for all you do. It's been an amazing journey from your books, through your podcast journey and. And cockpunch load of coffee.

[Unknown Speaker]

I've got some right over there. I'm still drinking it.

[Joel]

So I had a question that was kind of tuned to all these longevity protocols with AI and all the latest research that's coming out as far as the compounds, the protocols, like how do you keep up? Right. For you, I've been introduced to Peter Attia, Andrew Huberman, Lane Norton and a lot of other great kind of contemporary leading edge science backed information seekers and deliverers. So how do you approach handling that? Especially with this. We're in the age of AI now. So that was going to be my question. That's what I submitted. But on the topics that you just have been going through, and it's in my own life, I'm realizing these instances, you know, when people are passing. My dog Pepper passed away just like two months ago. What do you do with grief? And how is that something that, as far as your approach, something that you see is helpful, something to be avoided? I mean, you're kind of all through it with what the information you've just been walking us through, but just kind of with grief, because you only have so much time.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right. Thanks. Yeah, for sure. So on the grief side, I definitely don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's part of the human condition. No expert, but I would say a few things that this kind of comes back to Wade's question about spirituality in the sense. And I will come back to the longevity protocols and so on. Might as well talk about that. But I think that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater in some respects, with the stripping away of religion from. Let's just call it modern secular society. And what I mean by that is not that we should believe in a guy with a beard in the clouds. I'm not saying that, but that there are cultural milestones, in some cases rites of passage, these markers along the way on this journey of life that are codified in, say, religion. And in some cases, that can be very helpful. So, for instance, mourning periods will sometimes be very carefully outlined, and a group of people will agree with this type of death. You mourn for this period of time. Here's the protocol. Maybe you wear black, and so you can have a feeling of completeness and perhaps closure within the construct of this societal norm. Right. We don't really have that. It's left up to everybody to sort of create our own. And I'm not saying this for everybody. There are certainly plenty of religious folks out there, but by and large, let's just say in places where I spend a lot of time, Austin, New York, California, people are somewhat cut adrift. And sure, they might be able to tell you all about different philosophers they read in college and listen about on podcasts. But fundamentally, there's a sense of being somewhat unmoored, I would say. So the grief topic is a really good one, and it serves as kind of a microcosm of the macro. The challenges within grief, I think, reflect broader societal challenges. The book on grief and grieving is probably the most common recommendation that I hear from say, podcast guests. So I think that could be worth checking out on the longevity protocols just to take a hard left. I would say I really don't try to stay up to date with the longevity protocols, in part because there's so much garbage and there's so many influencers, quote unquote, trying to peddle whatever rev share stem cell clinic they've partnered with in Tijuana or whatever might be the case. It's very difficult to separate fact from fiction if you don't have a really reliable source. I would say just follow Peter, honestly, Peter Attia for that specifically. That's really his wheelhouse. He focuses on health span. I've known him since 2009. I've spent time with his doctors in the clinic. I've gone through Biograph, which he's involved with, and so on. So I have a high degree of confidence in Peter and I've seen him repeatedly turn down offers for very lucrative business arrangements in exchange for promoting X, Y or Z. And he just won't do it if he doesn't really feel 100% comfortable supporting their conclusions and claims. So I would say pay attention to that. And frankly, the more we learn, the more the basics or the basics for a reason. It's like creatine's been around for decades. This is nothing new. It just took some before doing this conversation. It's present in a lot of food that we consume naturally. It's a known quantity in the body. Pretty well understood.

[Tim Ferriss]

As soon as you start getting into.

[Unknown Speaker]

The bleeding edge where it's like, well, these people are going to Honduras and injecting themselves with Follistatin and look at these amazing before and after photos. But it does kind of turn off your fsh and so might make you infertile. In these animal models, something like that seems to happen. But look how awesome his apac looks. It's like, I'm not sure you want to be the third monkey shot into space with that stuff as a human subject. So I tend to stay away from the bleeding edge. I used to be very aggressive with this. Certainly in my four hour body days I was very aggressive with this. And I think in part because I was fascinated, in part because I didn't foresee how nagging certain problems could be. It's like, yeah, if you fuck up and have problem that causes orthopedic issues in your elbow, it's not a foregone conclusion that that's going to be fixed a year later. You might just have tendinosis for the next 40 years. Oop. So I do pay more attention to the downside. And I would say that in general, one of the ways that I frame this for myself is not what can I do that will make me live longer, but what can I subtract that might make me live longer or just live more healthfully? So, for instance, I mean, this is going to sound maybe funny and there's a lot of pseudoscience, wackadoodle stuff out there about this, but just minimizing exposure to plastic, plastics and phthalates and things like that, it seems very conclusive at this point that from an endocrine perspective and so on, these are just very, very bad news. So it's like, don't heat things in plastic, use more glass. These are very, very basic things. Use filtration, have proper filtration for your water. If you don't have really, really good filtration for your water, you might want to take a look at it because even in very rural areas, you could have, for instance, in some of the mountainous areas, I've spent time, like high levels of arsenic because there used to be mining. And if you're way out in the country, you might have higher concentrations of groundwater, pesticides, things like this from agriculture. So just paying really close attention to that kind of stuff. Exercise, it's like the cure, all right. It's like zone two weight training. You just got to do it or you don't have to do it. But people are always glad to have done it, I would say. And it feels good for me at least. It's the most consistent mood elevator for sure. In addition to cold exposure and these tools. I think if someone is on the verge of being diabetic or diabetic, there.

[Tim Ferriss]

Could very well be a role for.

[Unknown Speaker]

These drugs like Ozempic or Mounjaro, et cetera. But they're not free lunches. Come back to the blog post I wrote some time ago. I think it's just called no biological free lunches. It's like there are trade offs here. And if you don't know what the trade offs are, it's not because they don't exist. It's just because we have not identified them as consistently yet. But if it's a matter of life and death and you need to lose weight, hey, then you do a risk calculus. But in general, the stuff that I'm doing for longevity is the stuff I've been doing for 10 plus years. Creatine exercise. Try not to stuff your fucking face every Time you sit down to eat, which is my biggest challenge. I love eating. God, do I love eating. But these are known problems. So those are my thoughts on the longevity stuff. Thanks, Tim. Yeah. I'm sorry about your dog, man. I think about that all the time. Got my pup right next to me. It's just like, oh, God, I think I'm going to cry on planes every time I think about it. So I'm sorry. All right, Joel, you want to hop in?

[Josh]

Hey, Tim. And other Tim. Sorry about your dog, too. I lost a cat two months ago. Also had her for 14 years. Had her from when she was a kitten. And something that really helped me. I mean, she was. I spent a lot of time with that cat.

[Sarah Carley]

Right.

[Josh]

I lived in a small apartment for many years, just me and her. And now we have some land and I buried her. I dug her four feet down. I dug the hole myself with my wife. Like it was nighttime and digging a hole. And we really think a lot about environmentalism because we. We're not religious, so we just really like thinking about nature. And so to bury her, not cremator. To get her body from the vets and not put her in a plastic bag and dig her deep enough where animals don't get to her and she's on our land and she's going to biodegrade. Return to the earth. Yeah. And wear black for a couple days and see it as mourning. I know she's. She was just a cat, but I think there's that gravestone that meme that from like 100 years ago where she was enough of a human to be a comfort in times of stress and sadness even though she was just a cat. That helped us. That was our process two months ago, coincidentally. So just thought I'd share that, Tim.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, thanks. Yeah.

[Josh]

So, question. So I've got a pre prepared question that coincidentally Josh I saw, he was asking about kind of creative projects and he had a copy, because we have the video, which is pretty cool, of Rick Rubin's the Creative Act. I saw that copy on Josh's Zoom. So my question is about that. I think a lot about creativity. I've been making a living as an artist for a number of years. And in his book the Creative Act, Rick talks about the ecstatic. It's one of the chapters and he's describing creative projects where they give you like a primal feeling of warmth in your body. And he says that that's a great creative compass to recognize when you're searching for a breakthrough. When you're like in the slog of bad work and mediocrity and experiments that are going nowhere. But when you feel ecstatic about something, that's a great compass for trying to discover greatness or a breakthrough or, he says, like an answered prayer. And I certainly felt like glimpses of it at times. But I'm curious in your past, present or your future, what you're working on, when you have felt the ecstatic. The ecstatic and ecstatic. Sorry, the ecstatic in creative projects and especially in the future, what you think in the next projects might be. What gives you that sense of the ecstatic?

[Unknown Speaker]

I think about this a lot.

[Tim Ferriss]

Not in those terms.

[Unknown Speaker]

I know Rick decently well and makes sense that that would be in the book. I haven't read the entire book, but it makes a lot of sense. It would be in there. I think a lot about a few things, not just feeling that I would say for me, it's a quickening of sorts. It's like if I'm engaged with a certain type of project or discussion about a potential project, and I've got the kind of two cups of coffee with no jitters, just that extreme, comfortable focus, like a calm but intense focus that is energy giving. I pay a lot of attention to that. I also think about clearing the deck so that you can actually pick up that signal.

[Tim Ferriss]

For instance, if you consume too many.

[Unknown Speaker]

Stimulants, too much coffee, too much this, too much macho, whatever the hell it might be, in a sense, you're raising the level of gain might not be the right word, but level of static. So it becomes harder to pick out that signal. You might get a lot of false positives, or you might be irritable and then get a lot of false negatives where you're just like, oh, this is making me creepy and crawly. And it's like, no, it's because you had your fifth double espresso for the day, dummy. So for me personally, I try to keep track of that and paying attention to the physiology, which is not inherently natural for me, or it doesn't come reflexively because I've spent so much time looking at the spreadsheet analysis side of things, being really analytical. But if I get off a phone call and I'm drained, or if I get off a phone call, I'm like, yeah, fuck yeah, I want to do another one of those. It's sometimes that simple. And it's not that I know with certainty that X marks the spot. This is the project when it's done. And it looks like this, this is going to be the ecstatic moment. It's not so much that for me, it's like a scent trail. It's like an energetic scent trail, if that makes sense. And there's a description. I can't remember whose description it was about writing a novel. And the metaphor was writing a novel is like driving across the country starting at night with your headlights on. It's like you can't see your destination, but you don't need to see your destination. You just need to see far enough in front of you to kind of navigate your way and adjust. So I would say, for me, those are some of the ways I think about it. I mean, a cockpunch, as ridiculous as it is, that was one of those where I was just so energized by the prospect of digging into the art specifically and the fantasy and what that would do from a freedom perspective in writing fiction versus highly researched nonfiction. I was like, okay, I don't even know. That seems kind of like a dead end. This could be a huge mistake. But I'm getting so much of a physical response. I was like, fuck it. This seems like not the kind of thing to ignore. And that liberated so much energy that I could apply not just to that project, but to other projects that I have no regrets about it whatsoever.

[Josh]

I'm curious if you've ever gotten into Lord of the Rings because it's such a cultural phenomenon. And Lord of the Rings has had a big impact on my life in terms of fantasy. And with Cockpunch and dmd, do they have like a hero's journey, like Bible Jesus, like Lord of the Rings does? Did you think about that at all with Cockponsh? Does D and D have that, like a singular figure, like Frodo carrying the ring? Like, have you ever inserted that or thought about that?

[Unknown Speaker]

D and D, as far as I know, does not have that Lord of the Rings. I mean, I was just in Oxford for a week in the UK and was looking at original handwritten notes from Tolkien and looking at his scripts of Elvish spending time in pubs where he and C.S. lewis and others would hang out. So I am deeply, deeply interested by Tolkien. I think a good dungeon master will have some felt sense of the hero's journey as they're weaving adventures for people that are playing out in real time. So the circumstances and the players in the module don't always conform to, like, all is lost, and then there's the redemption. It might just be, all is lost, and then you're fucking dead. So does it always have like the Star wars like, yeah, go R2D2 moment.

[Josh]

Like, do you have a singular hero in Cockpunch?

[Tim Ferriss]

As it's laid out right now, that's.

[Unknown Speaker]

Not made clear in my mind. If I were to so that with some of the recent art I put on Instagram, I said, okay, we're going to call this Legends are Varlata. And so I just took the cockpunch out. So let's say it's Legends of Varlata. There is a character that I keep coming back to in my own mind too. And it's not a Jesus character, but it's sort of like an Ender's game. Frodo ish character is Tyrolion. So the sun, who is in the last few episodes of the podcast. So Tyrolian and his father. That particular dynamic I have. If somebody was like, here's a hundred million bucks. Go make something awesome, I'm like, I know exactly what I would make. This is what I would do. And it would be fucking amazing. I know this sounds ridiculous and just so arrogant to say, but it's like, no. Based on working with the concept artists.

[Tim Ferriss]

The feedback I can give, I can.

[Unknown Speaker]

Storyboard well enough to kind of like Frank Miller esque. I can be a primary writer, but I can also have the sort of directorial cinematic sense for how things might be framed visually. Also that I can work really well with creatives who are working with animation, moving pictures, whatever. So I would say the core relationship that would drive that movie would be the father son. And nothing tragic has happened yet. But if I were to continue my writing for a few more thousand words, stuff would get very exciting and super off the rails really quickly. And then there would be things to solve. Something like that. Yeah, I think it would be fun. It's just figuring out how to go from Rooster NFTs to $100 million animated film. It's just a couple of hops in between that I need to figure out. But seeing for instance, and this is like, I'm not a gaming studio with gajillions of dollars in revenue, but arcane, seeing what League of Legends and Riot Games did with Arkane, if you guys haven't seen Arkane on Netflix, go watch it. It's bananas. I mean, if you want to see something where I mean like the most off the rails budget for something animated, it's really remarkable. And there's a YouTube series on the making of which I would also recommend checking out. All right, let's see Chris the Katana and a Fender Stratocaster maybe in the background.

[Lee]

Yeah, that was a practice. Should have been more conscious. Maybe in the background.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'm not sure. Oh, I like it. I'm into it.

[Lee]

It's practice short. So I mean, what. Where do you put it? You put it there. It kind of helps people when they come in the office. Kind of sits the tone a little, I guess. Thanks first for putting this together. I love the format. It's kind of neat to meet all different people who. We share an interest in what you've been doing, if that comes.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, my pleasure. I'm having fun.

[Lee]

I was wondering in your case, you know, I think about your 10 years and that kind of thing. For me, if I looked at the last 10 years for myself, there was an underlying theme for me that I really found that I wasn't. That I was an impatient person, but I found that really developing high level of patience with both myself and others. It seemed to drag everything else along in a positive way, whether it be compassion or empathy or that kind of thing. If I had to pick a theme in the last 10 years for myself, that would probably be it. That really might account for positive changes and growth in that regard. I was wondering, over the last 10 years you found a common theme the same way.

[Unknown Speaker]

Last 10 years. Well, I could use some lessons in patience. That's never been my strong suit, I would say. My mom has made jokes about my impatience since I was a little kid. So I guess I'm the counterexample. Although that's been a project. But if I'm looking at a through line over the last 10 years, I would say it is developing more awareness in different capacities so that I can self regulate my physiological response. That's a very wordy thing to say. But to explain it, I could say that my challenge has been since childhood, that I have a very hypervigilant system. So my sympathetic nervous system, just the noradrenaline and adrenaline, all these things kick off at the slightest provocation. It could be just someone dropping a book in a hotel in the room next to me when I'm asleep. And then all of a sudden heart rate's whatever, 120 and I can't get back to sleep, that type of thing. And that can come up also in conversation. If I'm talking to someone and they say something that I create a story in response to and the story is very upsetting and then suddenly my physiology is fucked, then the physiology feeds back.

[Tim Ferriss]

Into the cognitive loop.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right. I explained it to another therapist recently because this was a CBT context. I was like, well, we're going to work on the thoughts. And I said, we can work on the thoughts, but I'm not convinced the thoughts are where things start. I actually think that it's possible my physiology gets activated, and then it's a state in search of a story. That's the phrasing I used. It's a state in search of a story. You have this uncomfortable feeling or this strong feeling. And because we're meaning making machines, we don't like uncertainty. It's like, well, let me go find a story that could explain that. And maybe it's a story about myself, maybe it's a story about the world, maybe it's a story about somebody else. So I would say the last 10 years has been trying to cultivate an awareness with different tools. Meditation, psychedelic therapies, reading books like Awareness by Anthony De Mello, so that in the moment, I can at least be aware of what's happening. So, for instance, I have been using this app, which is what I use to get back on the train, for the last handful of weeks. Kevin Rose, good buddy Kevin Rose, introduced me to Henry Schuchman, and I had Henry on the podcast twice. He is a Zen meditation and master. Now, I don't like that master term, but he's one of, I want to say, three or four people authorized to teach this particular school of Zen in the United States. And he then developed, started to develop an app. I invested in it, but it was early days, kind of backup and napkin thing. And now it's built out. It's called the Way, if you want to try it. And I've been using it 10 minutes a day, twice a day. And I had a really, really challenging conversation today with someone I'm very close to. And I could feel my physiology just getting. I have so much background with this person. And I was just like, oh, here we fucking go again. It's one of those. I was just like, ah. And I was able to. And this is going to seem very rudimentary, but as I was having this really strong physiological response just to go body, like, as I'm listening to the person, just be like, body. I'm just noting that my body is having this extreme response. And by noting it, not trying to suppress it necessarily, just noting it having that drop in intensity so that I could engage in a way that was less reactive. So I would say the project then, for the last 10 years, has been developing an awareness of an appreciation of how much my physiology drives everything that happens up Here and paying more attention to that, not just trying to cross examine the thoughts because the thoughts are I think a byproduct sometimes of a rapid heart rate and things like that. Does that answer the question? Absolutely.

[Lee]

That's great.

[Unknown Speaker]

All right, cool. Yeah, thanks for the question. All right. I think we have one person left, Lee, I believe. Would you like to go? Hi there. Hi.

[Theron]

From Canada. I was having technical difficulties when everyone was doing their introduction. So I guess my question is a two part or part and a half question. So I'm a 47 year old man with a 5 year old daughter. So I started late in life and all I wish for her is to see her find something that lights her up. Anything, I guess that ties into me and my life right now as I'm wishing that so badly for her. I realize that I need to make a career change. I don't above my job. So I have kind of. I decided to go with a clean slate. Any of my past doesn't matter. I want to start figuring out something that lights me up. Is there a few questions that you ask yourself if you ever feel stuck trying to figure out what that is?

[Unknown Speaker]

So you're feeling stuck at the moment in terms of choosing a path forward.

[Theron]

For yourself to find something that lights me up. I'm lucky right now because I have six months off so I can think about my next move, where I want to go, what I want to do. Any little ember I get and I follow down that path. I think to myself, okay, well, is AI going to do this in five years? How much effort do I want to put into it? And I'm just trying to. There's a few questions I can ask myself or a few things I can do just to find that thing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. What are some of the options that you're considering at the moment?

[Theron]

So one of them was architectural and house design. But I'm thinking in five years that's going to be pretty much taken by AI. I'm sure that's the thing. I'm stuck. I used to be in the restaurant business. I don't want nothing to do with that anymore. I owned a restaurant for a while and you know, I'm just kind of at that point where the next decision I make, I really want to get excited about it and it could be anything. I'm all about learning things and just I need to find that spark. So I'm into architecture and that's what I thought was going to be the path. And then I thought, okay, well I.

[Unknown Speaker]

Don't have all the answers, of course, but my thinking around AI, because this is a common concern, right? You're not alone in this. A lot of people are wondering what will be gobbled by AI. And I think the short answer is nobody has an idea, right? Nobody really knows. And. But it's easy to become paralyzed given that there's so much uncertainty around it. But my feeling is there are certain career paths, let's just say, that are already being eaten. If you were to say, I'm going to be a logo designer and earn my money on Fiverr, I'd say that's probably going to get consumed within the next very short period of time. But if you have the flexibility to consider paths, I would pay more attention to the quickening than speculation about AI. Number one, there's no right path. So you can take some pressure off yourself when you realize that everybody's making it up as they go along. There's no one right answer in the mathematical proof of your life. Does that make sense? It's going to be a trial and error process like it is with everything that we do in life. So I would say that with something like architectural design, for instance, I actually, I don't think it is a foregone conclusion that it's all going to be consumed by AI, in part because there are open questions around this technology. For instance, will people want to watch movies that are purely generated by AI that make them cry? Are people going to want to cry knowing that no human was involved, that it was just based on a large language model? Plus other AIs being trained on certain data sets, finding patterns and then producing a desired emotion. Are people going to want that? For instance, people still buy handmade shoes, people still buy artwork produced by artists. People still pay for many things that they could pay less for if they were willing to go to the lowest cost provider. So there is a market for that. And I think that in questions of taste and conversation and so on, most people are not going to be do it yourselfers with everything in their lives acting as the direct interface with AI. What I could see is that you end up, let's just say, working in architectural design and Instead of having three employees, you have three really well trained AIs that you pay 19 to $100 a month for that take the place of those employees and help you with various aspects of the job. I could see that in the same way that you might use something like FreshBooks for account and you'd be like, well, I'm not the Best draftsman. But I can do this, this and this. And my value is in interfacing with the client and figuring out these following things. And then these steps of the process are going to be well handled by an AI. So I think that that's entirely possible. But my uninformed perspective is that the magical skill, it's not magical, but the powerful skill in any rapidly changing world, which includes AI, it's not limited to that. There's a lot of stuff, I mean, the rate of change is just going parabolic in so many different fields. So it's not going to be limited to AI, is adaptability and confidence in your ability to trial and error and ultimately figure it out. So I do think that a lot of this hinges also on how we think about worst case scenarios. So I don't know anything about your personal setup, but let's just say you have some savings and you have a methodical plan for handling costs associated with your daughter. And you live in Canada, so unlike in the us, there may be some things covered by your fine government that we don't come across as easily here. Then you may have more room to experiment than you give yourself credit for, if that makes sense. You may have more safety nets and the worst case may not be that bad. So for instance, you could do. And this is available on the blog, if you just go to Tim Blog ted, I think there's the TED talk on fear setting and then there's the text from the four Hour Workweek on fear setting just to do that exercise. And what you may realize is, let's say worst case, AI eats architectural design. But you get three or four years of feeling really gratified by your work. You're learning a ton, you're interacting with people really respect. And it's like we all deal with bullshit, right? It's not going to be all kittens and rainbows. But overall you're like, wow, this is so much better than running that restaurant X number of years ago. And then AI eats it and you're like, okay, now I have to start over.

[Tim Ferriss]

Would you regret having done it?

[Unknown Speaker]

Maybe not. It depends a lot on what the worst case looks like when you make it granular. And the only way you're going to figure that out, or at least the only way I can figure it out, is trying to put it on paper and figure out what are the worst things that could happen. How could I decrease the likelihood of those things happening? Next column. What could I do to get back on my feet? Okay, so let's Say you try that and you're like, fuck, that didn't work. I need to figure out what's next, but in the meantime, I need to make some money. Could you do something in your current industry? Could you? Worst case, you're like, oh, I really don't want to do it, but I'm going to consult for people who own restaurants for a period of time to make ends meet, and then I'll figure out my next move, probably Right. So I would say a place that might help you get unstuck, and this is true for me as well, is doing the fear setting exercise and also realizing that very few moves are fatal. Very, very, very few. So those are my thoughts on that.

[Theron]

Awesome. Thanks so much.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah. All right, guys, well, we've been going for a minute here, and it's time for me to go get some food, since I had basically mixed nuts and sweet potato fries for my whole day of food, which is not going to necessarily help me live to be 150, but we all have our off days, so I'm going to go try to get a proper meal and really nice to meet you all and spend time with you all and see some of you for not the first time in the case of a few folks who were here earlier. So have a wonderful evening and a great weekend, and thanks for being part of the express. Hey, guys, this is Tim again.

[Tim Ferriss]

Just one more thing before you take off, and that is five Bullet Friday.

[Unknown Speaker]

Would you enjoy getting a short email.

[Tim Ferriss]

From me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1 and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week? It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange, esoteric things end up in my field. And then I test them and then I share them. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short. A little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. Something to think about.

[Unknown Speaker]

If you'd like to try it out.

[Tim Ferriss]

Just go to Tim Blog Friday.

[Unknown Speaker]

Type that into your browser.

[Tim Ferriss]

Tim Blog Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thanks for listening.

[Tim Ferriss]

As many of you know, for the last few years I've been sleeping on a midnight luxe mattress from today's sponsor, Helix Sleep.

[Unknown Speaker]

I also have one in the guest.

[Tim Ferriss]

Bedroom downstairs and feedback from friends has always been fantastic.

[Unknown Speaker]

Kind of over the top, to be honest. I mean, they frequently say it's the.

[Tim Ferriss]

Best night of sleep they've had in ages.

[Unknown Speaker]

What kind of mattresses? What do you do? What's the magic juju?

[Tim Ferriss]

It's something they comment on without any.

[Unknown Speaker]

Prompting for me whatsoever.

[Tim Ferriss]

I also recently had a chance to test the Helix Sunset Elite in a new guest bedroom which I sometimes sleep in. And I picked it for its very soft but supportive feel to help with.

[Unknown Speaker]

Some lower back pain that I've had.

[Tim Ferriss]

The Sunset Elite delivers exceptional comfort while putting the right support in the right spots. It is made with five tailored foam layers, including a base layer with full perimeter zoned lumbar support right where I need it, and middle layers with premium foam and micro coils that create a soft contouring feel. Which also means if I feel like.

[Unknown Speaker]

I want to sleep on my side.

[Tim Ferriss]

I can do that without worrying about.

[Unknown Speaker]

Other aches and pains in my creek.

[Tim Ferriss]

And with a luxurious pillow top for pressure relief, I look forward to nestling into that bed every night that I use it. The best part, of course, is that.

[Unknown Speaker]

It helps me wake up feeling fully.

[Tim Ferriss]

Rested with a back that feels supple instead of stiff. That is the name of the game.

[Unknown Speaker]

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[Tim Ferriss]

Helix offers a 100 night sleep trial, fast free shipping and a 15 year warranty.

[Unknown Speaker]

So check it all out.

[Tim Ferriss]

Get 25% off on all mattresses orders plus two free pillows by going to helixsleep.com Tim that's helixsleep.com Tim for 25% off on all mattress orders plus two free pillows. The following quote is from one of the most legendary entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley. And here it goes. This team executes at a level you rarely see, even among the best technology companies.

[Unknown Speaker]

End quote.

[Tim Ferriss]

That is from Peter Thiel about today's sponsor, Ramp. I've been hearing about these guys everywhere and there are good reasons for it. Ramp is corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. In fact, they're already doing that across the board. Ramp has already saved more than 25,000.

[Unknown Speaker]

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[Tim Ferriss]

And Eight Sleep, more than 10 million hours and more than $1 billion through Better Financial management of their corporate spending. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting, allowing you to close your books 8 times faster on average. Your employees will no longer spend hours upon hours submitting expense reports. I mean, within companies, fast growing startups or otherwise, a lot of employees spend.

[Unknown Speaker]

Half their time, it seems, trying to get all this stuff together.

[Tim Ferriss]

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