Good Life Project - Tim Ferriss: The Story Beyond The Tools

Episode Date: January 30, 2017

Tim Ferriss is a man on a mission, driven to deconstruct mastery and excellence, then share what he’s learned.It began with his own relentless experimentation and documentation, which yielded #1 New York Times bestsellers The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Chef.In more recent years, though, this yearning has led him to sit down with hundreds of elite-performers, from a vast array of domains, on a quest to reveal what made them them. What were the experiences, moments, stories, awakenings and methods that shaped them? What are the replicable elements, the unique traits and the ideas that are transferable to others.These conversations are shared weekly on Tim’s award-winning podcast, The Tim Ferris Show. And, the essential ideas have now been “condensed” into a remarkable 700+ page tome entitled Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers. All of this made us curious about a particular question…what made Tim Tim? Where does his lens on the world, on expertise, and on life come from? When did focus on process arise? And, what’s been shaping his own evolution and seeming shift toward more existential question of late? That’s where we go in this week’s deep dive episode.Subscribe to email updates and listen on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two of my, I'm not going to call them resolutions, but themes that I want to follow this year for myself are beauty and absurdity. And they go together very nicely to do things that are beautiful or absurd that don't necessarily have any explicit end goal or point to them. And I don't view that as a waste. I think that a lot of breakthroughs can come from taking your eye off of the productivity track for a little bit at the very least and focusing on that. So what if you could spend pretty much your waking hours sitting down with some of the most elite performers across nearly every domain from health to art, from business and investing to athletics? Nearly, if you can think about it, anywhere somebody has risen to a level of mastery and expert performance. Well, today's guest, Tim Ferriss,

has devoted pretty much his entire adult life to doing just that. And along the way, he's been deconstructing their processes, adding on his own awakenings and syntheses, and sharing what he's learned in books, in media, in podcasts. He's the author of a huge new book called Tools of Titans. And in that he actually shares so many of these lessons, so many of the conversations with the hundreds of elite level performers that he sat down with in his podcast over the last chunk of years, along with a healthy dose of stuff that he's figured out along the way. This conversation really takes you inside Tim's personal journey.

We share a little bit of a crossover in that we were both brought up on Long Island, just outside of New York. So we have a little bit of a conversation about what that was like and also how that formed him and his lens on prosperity and wealth and the choices people make around that. So a really interesting conversation. It takes you a little bit behind the scenes of what made Tim who he is and how he thinks and where he's headed.

Hope you enjoy the conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. We'll be right back. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. So, I think we have, it's so funny that actually we have so many friends in common. We've never actually hung out before. We both grew up on Long Island also. You were out in the East End. Yeah, I grew up as a townie in the Hamptons. Which Hampton?

East Hampton. Right outside of East Hampton. But a townie in the Hamptons. Which Hampton? East Hampton. Ah. Right outside of East Hampton, but I was born in South Hampton Hospital. Yeah. And then grew up, yeah, rat tail skateboard. There you go. Busing tables. Were you a skater?

Yeah. I mean, terrible skater, but yes. Yeah. I was good at getting injured. Was Northport Pipeline still around when you were, or was that out? I think that was out. I think that was out. Or at least it was out as far as my parents were concerned.

I have a lot of fond memories of getting injured there. Oh, yeah. We built quarter pipes, which you couldn't even really call a quarter pipe because they were basically just triangles out of plywood and then spray painted them

and proceeded to get grievously injured. Yeah, it's like wherever you land, you land. We used to go, I grew up in Port Washington, which is, for those who don't know, where Tim grew up is basically the east end of Long Island splits into two different forks and the south part is this place called the Hamptons, which most people know of because of all the glitzy, fancy people who go out there. Yeah, or the TV show The Affair. That. And the lobster roll, which is featured in that series, is where I had my second ever

busing job and got yelled at by people from Manhattan all day long. So now we're hanging out in Manhattan right now. I know, I know. You're walking around, I hate you, I hate you. I've had to reconcile those warring factions of myself. But yes, I'm on the South Fork. Yeah, and I grew up in Port Washington, which is this little peninsula on the north end of the island, which actually, if you've ever read The Great Gatsby, is the actual original East Egg.

The flashing green light. Yeah. So this is interesting. So my town in a different way. I mean, Port had a lot of, there's a lot of wealth in my town. But it was like wealth that kind of lived there, and it was quieter. Yeah. And where you grew up, there was like 10 times the amount of wealth, but it was like, this is where people go to flash it. And as a townie, tell me about that.

Well, you have a few different breeds of, say, Manhattanites who come in. They're not all from Manhattan, but you have the summer people, as they're affectionately or not so affectionately known, who come in. You do have old money. The old money's fine. So you have the Rockefeller-type Gatsby-like money. They're driving around in a beat-up Volvo. They just don't have...

It's so passe to flaunt their wealth. They're like, we've had money for 200 years. We're over it. Then you have the newer money, but self-made. So for instance, say Billy Joel, who would come in.

I also was a bus boy at a place called the Maidstone Arms, which is now great. It's been completely redesigned and actually edited probably a third of Tools of Titans there. But Maidstone Arms, Billy Joel would come in, I think every Sunday, get a coffee.

And this waiter did me a huge favor because he knew I wanted to meet Billy Joel. And he said, you can serve, you can serve him the coffee. And so I would serve him coffee and you tip $20. And he was very, very cool and very gracious because he'd had shitty service jobs before.

Right. Then you have two types that are just terrible. You have the, I can't quite afford to be here, but really want to show off how much money I want to convey to people that I have. Terrible, terrible. And there's a lot of that. And then you had the married into or somehow indirectly fell into money who are also pretty horrible. Because that's kind of had to form so much of your association with wealth. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, my parents were extremely frugal growing up and never made more than, say, 50 grand a year combined, which isn't poor by any stretch of the imagination. But the discrepancy, I mean, humans are positional engines. So the have and the have not discrepancy is gigantic in that area. My friends, I never did this. And I'm actually, that is the truth. I never collected hood ornaments, but some of my friends collected, you know, Mercedes hood ornaments and so on from cars in town. And I think that there was part of me

that had a lot of resentment towards people with wealth. And then there was part of me that wanted, that aspired to be successful, like say the Billy Joels, who were actually very approachable and would talk to a 12 year old, 13 year old kid for 10 minutes and be cool about it. So I think that that conflict probably lived in me

for a fairly long time. Did those four sort of categories, is that something that you've kind of come to later in life reflecting back? Or were you kind of acutely aware of there are different ways to live with wealth when you were younger too? Definitely saw it when I was younger. Because the behaviors were so dramatically different. They were like different breeds of humans.

Yeah. I mean, I remember one time there was this woman, the Duchess of such and such, and she brought in her five or six lady friends with all of their kids. So this is a gigantic 15-person table, primarily kids. They're throwing bread all over the restaurant, making a racket. It takes half the staff to manage this table. They sat there drinking coffee and eating croissants, not really putting in any orders for hours and hours. Got to the end,

and they said to the waiter or the matron of the table, the matriarch, she said, I usually tip really well. Better luck next time. Because for whatever reason, I guess, hadn't picked up the bread every time within a second. Wow. Zero tip for the entire staff. And it was a shared pool. So we just, we got bombed for the entire day. So the difference between, say, that and, in my experience,

Billy Joel was black and white. I mean, they were completely different. So I was very aware of it very, very early. Yeah. And sort of like what money can do to you. Yeah, it just makes you more of who you are. It's like alcohol. Yeah, I think that's true to a certain extent. To some extent.

Unfortunately, it exaggerates the negatives more than the positives generally. Yeah, it's funny. When I got out of high school, like my summers, I spent a couple of summers actually out in East Hampton. But I was more, I was, you know, I didn't come for money. And when I was out there, you know, I found a room in a house somewhere. It was usually like a beat-up old house. And I was like a day laborer.

So I was painting houses. Sure. And I remember the same really interesting thing. There was actually one astonishingly wealthy family that had this house on the beach, on the ocean. And, you know, I spent probably half the summer inside painting this house. And it was gorgeous. I was on the beach, on the ocean. And I spent probably half the summer inside painting this house, and it was gorgeous. I was on the beach. But it was weird for me because I was surrounded by all of this during the day.

And my association much more was as a townie. Oh, sure. Because we'd go out at night. I didn't have money. I was covered in paint. This was back when you could actually go out and beat up old board shorts, bare feet, and a tank top, whatever the local dive was. And it was I remember sort of like the conversations talking with like the locals.

Yeah. Yeah. And how much there was this really, really fierce level of resentment. Yeah. The real life is a bit like the internet in the sense that I think we have selective attention towards perceived threats, i.e. negative whining, complaining when we translate it to a restaurant or a forum or a thread on YouTube, whatever it might be. So when you're a busboy or waiter in a restaurant, you don't notice the eight people who are totally civil and well-behaved. Completely civil. You remember the two people who are complete bastards. And that's what you carry.

And when you have that experience night after night after night, and in the Hamptons or in Nantucket or in whatever resort town, almost all the locals work in some service capacity. Right? And it's unfortunate, but I've come to realize that the quaint romanticized image I have of the locals isn't quite accurate either.

They can be a real pain in the ass. I don't know, ripping off car emblems wasn't quite quaint. Oh yeah, that's not so quaint. That's more, yeah, there are two sides

of that story. No doubt. for sure. Yeah, but it is really curious how sort of early experiences like that can really form associations with,

well, like, do I have a choice? Is this just how people become when you reach a certain station in life or achieve a certain amount of wealth?

Or do you, you know, and it's good to sort of see, no, this is a choice. Like like this is money that money does not equal a certain behavior towards others it's a choice you know you can have it or have not and you can choose to respect or to not respect others well it shows you in a sense who people really are also, and it does take who you are takes, uh, or is informed by conscious choices, certainly. But I think that money shows you how people behave when they no longer have to be nice or feel as though they don't have to be nice.

They don't have to kiss the ring or get on bended knee to have what they want in life. And since in, there are a fair number of cases where you see people change, it's not always true. But I mean, if you want to look at the things that don't change, the people who are say miserable before they have money, when they have a little bit of money are generally also miserable when they have a lot of money. Yeah, it doesn't. Those are things you have to work on separate from economic station, for sure. Yeah, I mean, no doubt. It's amazing to, there was much later in my life,

I ended up sort of being in service of some incredibly wealthy people. And I noticed that exact same thing. It bought them out of nothing. Yeah. You know, it really, if you were unhappy, if you were struggling, if you were having identity issues coming into it, it actually, I almost feel like it made you more fearful. Well, I think that it's, so I've known a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of people who've committed suicide kids I indirectly knew in the movie in very unflattering ways. Because I went from, it's called Born Rich, and I went from high school, public school in East Hampton to then boarding school in New Hampshire to a place called St. Paul's where you had a lot of old money. Not just old money from the U. US, but from around the world. And gives you a very clear

picture of this documentary of why it doesn't solve as many problems as we would like to think. But here is, I think, in part, why there's so many suicides among the wealthy, because they can no longer fantasize about incremental growth in their wealth, fixing their problems. They know it doesn't. So I think that for, for instance, even speaking personally and say 2000, 2000 to 2004, end of 2004,

I thought living in Silicon Valley, if I could just get to X or get to Y, I could just stop. I could ride around on a sailboat and take X amount of interest and everything will be fixed forever. And then you get to that point, whatever your number happens to be. And you're like,

Oh wait, I'm still the same person. I still have the same neuroses and the financial bandaid doesn't fix it. And I think for that reason, when people handle the basics, so they handle, they handle the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, shelter, et cetera. And they get up to the higher points, money doesn't help you. And then they feel

like they have no escape or no remedy. And that's when people make really bad decisions. Yeah. Um, no, that makes a lot of sense. Also, how can we ended up going, uh, up to New Hampshire for high school? Because a number of teachers and one of my friends who had left East Hampton, East Hampton tends to be a bit of a, I think the Hamptons in general, tend to be a bit of a vortex for people, or a black hole. They very rarely leave. A lot of folks, born and raised, stay there, have families, and there's nothing wrong with that.

But I hadn't traveled a whole lot and a number of the teachers said to me in effect like if you want to be so the big fish in a small pond that's fine but we think you should actually stretch yourself and try something else and one of the one friend who had gone to boarding school was like dude you got to get the hell out of here. And that's how it started. Began looking at these boarding schools, knew nothing about it, but looked at five or six and was able to get some scholarships and then have my extended family, also my grandparents and other people, help when I was finally accepted.

And transferred, which was a huge kick in the solar plexus because I went from coasting pretty easily in this public school where nobody really cared to a school where it's six days a week classes. And it's at 6 30 PM, start at 8 AM mandatory chapel, uh, seated meal, coat and tie like dead poet society, mandatory sports. I do. I was just hammered. It was very, very tough for me the first, say, six months. But then after that, when that became the new normal, everything after that, academically, even Princeton, was relatively a cakewalk.

So what helped that become the new normal for you? I think that after a while, when other people view it as normal, it's just normal. It just is. And you're humans like any other animal adapt to these external stimuli and internal. And much like going to the gym, your work capacity improves over time.

Yeah. If you're doing it properly. And you also have it. Fortunately, when you move from a place where you're say one student at a 40 in a class to a place where you're one student and six in a class, there are more support structures in place. Yeah, it's a lot harder to get lost also. Yeah, it's a lot harder to get lost and it's a lot harder to get distracted in a sense because you're in the middle of the woods in New Hampshire. You're no longer, you no longer have the recreational options.

This is like pre-mobile device also. Yeah, you're pretty buttoned down. Did you ever find sort of like the Robin Williams teacher there? Yeah, I had a number of really influential teachers during that period. One was Reverend Richard Greenleaf. I'm not particularly religious myself, but what he did went far beyond religious doctrine of any type. He was a residential advisor when I first arrived and really helped to keep me afloat and keep me encouraged. And ultimately encouraged me to apply to Princeton, which my guidance counselor had advised against.

This is such a sad story with a happy ending, but it's indicative of perverse incentives. So humans respond to incentives. And if you think about it, guidance counselors who are responsible for college advising are judged by what metric? Well, the metric is what percentage of the students who advise got into their first choice college. What's the easiest way to gain that? You make everybody lower their standards.

Because everyone gets it. Yeah. And that was part of it. So Richard Greenleaf was one. Coach Buxton, who was the wrestling coach, was huge. Is that where wrestling really took hold for you? Wrestling took hold a little bit earlier, probably around 10 years old, because I was very hyperactive and also very small, which is a terrible combination because you get your ass kicked a lot

and the wrestling was the only weight class-based sport so the puny kids could battle the other puny kids and i could actually realize it on some yeah you could actually develop some sense of self-esteem as opposed to just getting your head pushed into the gravel during playground every day and then it really matured in high school. And then the last person I'll mention, there are others certainly, but is Mr. Shimano, who is my Japanese teacher. So I went from Spanish. I assumed I was bad at Spanish, but language was mandatory.

So I dropped Spanish, and one or two of my new wrestling buddies were in Japanese. I was like, okay, well well I'm interested in Japanese culture. I'll just do Japanese. If I'm going to be bad at a language, I might as well do it in a class where my friends are. And I excelled in part because of Mr. Shimano and then was offered the chance to go abroad for a year. I'd never spent time abroad.

And my first time abroad was a year in Japan as an exchange student in a Japanese school with a Japanese family. And that was, that was a real, that was a real inflection point for me. And I think that there are very few things, if I ever become a parent that I will insist on, one will be sports, competitive sports. Another will be a year abroad in high school at some point. And I think it's just such a formative, incredibly powerful experience. Yeah.

And it's funny because, you know, it's something that clearly is still such a deep part of you. And you're just sort of your deep fascination and connection with Japan. Oh, it's huge. I'm going back in a few weeks. Yeah. And I'm still in touch with my host family from when I was 15.

Why do you think we don't do that? Do you think it's a money thing? Do you think it's just we don't value the actual transformation that happens in that type of immersive experience? The year abroad or a gap year? A gap year could also work, which is very common in, say, the UK, in between

high school and college, or even college in the so-called real world. There are a few reasons. One could certainly be financial. I mean, that's a real thing. Although there are options that would be cheaper than staying in the US S right. You could always go to say Costa Rica or someplace in, in South America, Japan doesn't have to be the only option. Fortunately, these two schools had a sister program. So a lot of the financial pieces were taken care of by the

schools, but I'd say to a lot of fear on the part of parents uh who i i cannot tell you how many friends of mine i've spoken to whose college choices were narrowed down to one or two based on how close they would be to their families and it wasn't their choice it was their parents choice we're like no we don't want to fly across the country it's so far away we won't see each other. So go to this sort of C tier school instead of an A tier school. That's horrible. Uh, this is a, you do see a fair amount of that. And then last I would say most people, and this would include me say in high school, public school in long Island, don't even know it's an option. It wouldn't even occur to them that it is out there. Right. I mean, I'm involved in a, for instance, a nonprofit right now called quest bridge, which puts about half of the economically disadvantaged kids who go to Ivy leagues into the Ivy leagues.

And part of the way they do it, and this is just one of the many tools in the toolkit, but they'll have say an iPad giveaway in an area where no one has ever applied to an Ivy League school. And the iPad giveaway is, behind the scenes, a standardized application that can get submitted to schools. And so you have these kids who wouldn't even fathom applying to a school like Harvard or Stanford, who have the intellectual horsepower, who are diligent enough, they fill this out and then they get a free ride. But it wasn't even on their menu of options in their mind. I think going abroad is very similar.

People think it's impossible, but they've never really investigated it. Yeah. No, that actually of the three things that you shared, I think that's the thing that jumps out at me the most. It's funny, as you're talking also, I have a 15-year-old daughter. So we're kind of in the early stages of all this right now. And we've actually said to her, we're like, go wherever you want to go because we'll just go close by wherever you are we're like we'll just follow you it's all cool like we're pretty mobile the way we built our living um but uh but yeah i think it is interesting how how much of the big choices that we make in life are sort of controlled by um those around

us or those who are really close to us. They're not wanting to hurt them or move too far away from them. At the same time, while that's definitely limiting in terms of what you do with a kid, my sense is that there's the opposite phenomenon as soon as a lot of people get out of education these days, which is if you look a couple of generations back, families stayed together a lot of people get out of education these days, which is, you know, if you look a couple generations back, families stay together a lot more. You know, if you look at everywhere except for the U.S., families generally don't leave each other. You may not live in the same house,

although a lot of them do, but you may be in the same compound, the same town, the same neighborhood. And it's kind of like the ethos in the U.S. has developed over the last few generations of, like, the moment I'm out, I'm out. And there's no sense of, let me be in proximity to my parents, my cousins, my family, my friends.

Just like I'm going to go wherever I need to go. And I think there's some good to that. But I also think that we're losing something from it. I agree. I read an article that had a huge impact on me. It was recommended to me by a guy named Matt Mullenweg, who's considered the lead developer or one of the lead developers of WordPress, which now powers 26% of the internet and is the CEO of Automatic, which is now worth more than a billion and has hundreds of distributed employees. Fascinating guy. He recommended an article to me called The Tail End by a guy named Tim Urban, who has a site called Wait But Why, which is fantastic. and everyone should read the tail end. The tail end effectively describes it in much more eloquent language, but makes the case that I think at the end of high school, when you leave,

you've, you've used up 80% of the total hours you will ever have with your parents over your entire life. And that put a lot into perspective for me, especially because I think it was weeks later, it might've been months, but I think it was weeks later, Matt's dad passed away. And very unexpectedly, but Matt had been spending time with him. And I was like, wow, this is something I need to recalibrate because my parents are on the East Coast.

I'm on the West Coast. I see them a fair amount, but not as much as I would like. So I've, for the last number of years, been taking family trips at least twice a year, extended trips, have been spending a few months of the year on the East Coast near my parents and spending more time with my brother and really prioritizing that because I do think we lose something. But alas, it's a big country.

It is. People get spread out. I know. And I think technology, on the one hand, makes it better and also makes it worse. You know, it gives us the ability to be more in regular contact, but also,

you know, there's the asynchronous conversations. There's the questionable effect on empathy. Um, and it's just not the same. It's not, I mean, if you're hanging out with your brother across the table,

having dinner, it's just not the same, like jumping on Skype or whatever it might be. Yeah. We're more similar to chimps than we would like to admit. Uh, same, like jumping on Skype or whatever it might be. Yeah, we're more similar to chimps than we would like to admit. If you watch any video of chimpanzees or any type of tracking or observation by zoologists or primatologists over time, look at how often they hug or touch one another. It is constant. And I think we have a very similar need, which is why I've built more of that into my life as well through things like acroyoga or dance or other things. And it is highly therapeutic and

highly necessary. So that is a piece of the puzzle that we can undervalue when we think that FaceTime equals hanging out and giving someone a hug because it does not. Similar, but not the same. Yeah, no, completely. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk.

The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just

15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Great. And I feel like we're also missing, you know, we're hardwired. We have to belong. You know, when we belong, everything gets better. When we don't belong, we basically die just slowly and it causes enduring pain. But I really feel like we're losing a lot of that. I mean,

if you look at, you know, what are the primary things that have given us that sense? You know, it's been family, and that's getting more disparate. It used to be employment. It used to be, like, you'd go somewhere, like, you'd sign up, you'd work, and then, like, 40 years later, you'd retire, and there was a real culture and community. That's over. People are fleeing faith, you know, like, left and right. Or at least, they're not fleeing spirituality, but they're fleeing traditional religious communities. And that was one of the primary sources of belonging. So it's kind of like, where do we get that now?

Veganism, CrossFit, Paleo. I mean, pick your religion. If you don't think those are religions. Yeah, I completely agree agree I think they are they have their demigods whether it's Greg Glassman

in CrossFit or one of the top athletes Rich Froning any of the same people in each of these sects

and it's they also have their dogma they have their commandments people get ostracized you know woe unto the

vegan who says i think my hair is getting brittle maybe i should add in some more fat and then boom you are out of the community it's your fault you're doing it wrong and that is i think a perhaps a bigger danger is when people belong to religious groups or cults and I don't use that in a totally pejorative sense, and don't realize it. Dave, tell me more. If you're aware of it, meaning, okay, I'm in a group where there's a lot of dogma, where people might be calling themselves nonconformists, but in fact the entire group is doing the exact same thing.

Whether I live in San Francisco or Venice or New York City or wherever the place might be, Boulder, Austin, I mean, there's certainly many, many other places. Being aware of the social conventions of your group, no matter how small the group is, I think is very important. And makes me think of a conversation, not to steer this towards money, but it's a good illustrative point that one of my close friends was thinking of, he's effectively an advisor to billionaires. That's what he does. And works with a lot of hedge fund managers and other types of folks. I guess they call themselves wealth managers now or asset managers since the hedge word has become a black mark for a lot of folks. But regardless, these are people who make hundreds of millions of dollars

a year. And my buddy asked him, what is the biggest difference between millionaires and billionaires? Actually, you know what this is? I take it back. This is a friend of mine who is a writer, uh, Neil Strauss, a time New York times, bestselling author. I was thinking of Adam Robinson who has similar observations who does have the job I described, but what is the biggest difference between the mindsets of of billionaires and millionaires and this particular billionaire said billionaires don't the most important things to is to question or reject the social norms of your time not to at face value accept the norms of your time and that's worth pondering i think so the uh don't have to, being in a small group doesn't by definition make you a nonconformist.

Yeah. If you're just adopting whole plate, some book of rules that the alpha fill in the blank hands you, whether it's through a bulletin board or through a pamphlet. It's the same. So that's, I don't think being a part of any of these groups is bad. And we're all parts of groups, whether we want to admit it or not. We have to be. Unless you're the Unabomber, like you have some social fabric,

but it's useful to be aware of that and ask yourself, okay, what are the 10 commandments in this little community or big community? What are the shoulds and should nots? What are the must do's and must-not-dos? Yeah, and I'm always curious also, and I love that. One of the other questions that I also tend to ask when I sort of see this is, how much of my own identity and autonomy

am I willing to sacrifice in the name of getting the sense of belonging that I get from this experience or being one of these people. Sure. And because there's no belonging without some level of surrender of identity and sort of autonomy. Like, it's just how much, you know, where on the spectrum are you willing to go? Yeah.

And how much are you willing to nod your head and say, that's really interesting when in your head, you're thinking, I completely disagree. Right. And I gave you a perfect example. I mean, this is not a popular topic necessarily, but I love, I love marksmanship. So I have guns and I have ammunition and so on in San Francisco. That is like, you might as well be a serial killer who's making lampshades out of humans. I mean, you are such a pariah if you have any type of firearm. And it's entertaining at times to sit down when, if that comes up somehow, in a dinner conversation with people who have labeled themselves progressives and pride themselves on being these open-minded liberals in a place like san francisco and they lose their minds like they they they do not

the there's very rarely a curiosity about it it's an immediate battle uh and that's what i think that's the type of behavior that is is good keep a lookout for, whether it's in the people around you or in yourself. What am I reacting to? What are other people reacting to as opposed to responding to? Those are, I think, profoundly different things. Very different things. Yeah. And I think the meta skill, like the differentiator there is attention.

It's meta attention. It's the ability to actually understand where your attention is It's meta attention. It's the, you know, the ability to actually understand where your attention is and what's happening. Zoom the lens out and say, huh, what's really going on here? Which so many of us, I think, have never cultivated. I know, you know, you've spoken to this a fair amount, and this is one of the things that you've kind of keep coming back to over the last couple of years as you sort of deepen into your work and your body of work and sit down with so many high performers is that it seems like almost everybody who reaches a the population pretty quickly these days. And at the same time, it's becoming almost like mindfulness is kind of like the new authenticity. And I fear there's a risk of it sort of, you know, this beautiful, really powerful practice kind of like jumping the metaphysical shark yeah like becoming a right i mean like a supernova uh of destruction when it hits a certain critical mass uh yeah the the commonality and i've thought a lot about this because i've struggled with way to categorize it i'd say 80 plus percent of the people i've

interviewed for whether it's the podcast you know tim Tim Ferriss show or for tools of Titans have some type of mindfulness practice that we would recognize that fits the standard definition, whether that's using headspace as an app or listening to a Tara Brock guided meditation or sitting down and doing TM very high percentage. But you might ask, what do the other 20% do in lieu of that? And I would say that the, if you were to try to identify how mindfulness fits into a larger category that applies to a hundred percent of the people, it's training the ability to single task and it's the

ability to observe yourself so that you're not standing outside in the storm. You are standing inside looking through the glass at the storm and you're able to assess it. So you might find someone like Jocko Willink, retired Navy SEAL commander, who is like meditation. Are you kidding me? I mean, and he does it in part as a joke, but it would be very difficult to find someone more present state aware than Jocko. And when you sit there and you talk to Jocko, Jocko is looking into your soul and paying every ounce of attention to you. And he would call it say detachment where he can step back in a very high stress dynamic situation and assess things impartially outside of himself. But that is exactly what you might do in, say,

a type of seated meditation where you're noting, oh, thinking, oh, feeling, oh, whatever the distractions might be. It's same, same, but different. And one just has a spiritual tilt to it in terms of language, and the other has a military tilt to it, but it's the same thing.

And single tasking, it's like when Jocko deadlifts, Jocko deadlifts. It seems like a really primitive example, but it's not. It's actually really profound when you look at how good he is at doing things in a serial fashion. And then if you were to look at, pick your mindfulness teacher, they do exactly the same thing. The activities just happen to be different. And so I do think that training that single tasking and training. So the power of your attention, A, and focus, and then B, the ability to step outside of yourself or observe your thought processes are 100% across the board. The commonality.

Yeah, no, I've definitely seen it. It's funny, for the first half of my life, I would access that pretty much only through external, highly physical experiences and environments. So like I was a mountain biker and I would ride fast and single track. So if I lost that, my head's in a tree.

Yeah, exactly. I would rock climb, same thing. So if I lost that, my head's in a tree. Yeah, exactly. I would rock climb, same thing. So I would do all these things where physically there wasn't an option not to be there. Yeah. And the moment that you lost it, you knew. You're penalized. Because it hurt. And you're sort of scraping stuff off your body.

And it took me a long time to sort of, so I've had a seated practice now for since 2010, I guess, pretty much every single morning. What does it look like? And it's 25 minutes. So I start with about four minutes of just some very basic pranayama, basic sort of trapezoidal breathing. So, you know, like in for a certain amount, pause for a certain amount, out for twice that, and then pause for a certain amount. And then I just drop into about a 20, 25 minute really gentle breath-oriented mindfulness practice. And I didn't come to that voluntarily.

Even though I had in the middle of the things that I've done, I owned a yoga studio and I taught yoga and meditation for seven years. My dirty secret was that I was having a lot of trouble developing my own practice. So I would always get it moving my body. That was the way that I would find that place, the athlete's flow, or playing music or something like that. And I didn't come to my seated practice. I came to it on my knees. I was literally like there were some really,

just really tough stuff going on in my life and I was like maybe this will help and the reason I do Pranayama in the beginning of it is actually because I was so distressed when I first started this practice I couldn't sit without freaking out

I was so anxious which I think is common I think it's really common also and then people start freaking out that they're freaking out. Right, exactly. It becomes this awful spiral. Why can't I win at meditating? I'm failing.

Meditation's killing me, man. So yeah, it becomes this evil experience. But it brought me from a really dark place to baseline. And then it brought me from baseline to being so much more present and aware and creative and able to see and do so much more um but i don't know if i would have come to that but for the fact of going into this dark hole the thing that led me to is i have tinnitus so i have a sound in my head 24 7 and i would yeah everyone tells you there's nothing you can do so i was like well let me try and cobble together what I know about these different practices and see if it works. And in fact,

it's changed my life. And the fact that as we sit here, that sound is still in my head. I often wonder, is that the reason that I keep meditating? Like if it went away one day, would I stop? Yeah, That's a good question. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I think because we are so primed to just respond to present pain. Yeah. You know, and it's like if all the good practices, like if the pain just went away. I mean, it's like, you know, like, you know, heart attack patients, like post-cardiac rehab,

vast majority of them revert to all the same behaviors. Oh, sure. Like once they're far enough from the pain because they don't feel it anymore. Yeah, it's very true. And I would just add to what you were saying for people listening and you may have other recommendations, but if you're very skeptical of any type of meditation or feel like you cannot meditate or don't want to meditate, which I did for a very, very long time. And I always found solace through exercise and so on,

which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. I think that it can be an alternative. And there are people in, say, my latest book who certainly use different vehicles. But there is a separate book called 10% Happier by Dan Harris, which I think is a good skeptics guide to how you can take the edge off without losing your edge, if that makes sense. And also a very good writer and some very, very funny parts in that book. But he had a panic attack on live television and was at the top of his game and realized, you know what, like maybe this needs some type of, some type of therapy or some type of addressing. I don't know what tool and then ended up figuring it out. But that's a good starting point for,

I think people were a skeptical or have tried and failed previously to try any of this stuff. Yeah, no, I completely agree that it's a really nice point of entry, too. And then, like you said, there are apps like Headspace, which kind of make it really gentle to enter into the practice. Yeah, and for instance, I mean, I've done TM, and I still occasionally do TM, but I enjoy guided meditations a lot if they're well done. And I've been using, so for the last 40 days, and I know because they've helped you keep track i've been using headspace myself as i'm traveling and so on and i will bounce back and

forth then maybe i'll do some vipassana maybe i'll do some tm but it's i like having something like tm in the back pockets that i'm not totally reliant on technology to do a session. But when available, I will generally use headphones and a guide to meditation. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes the apple watch series 10 available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum compared to previous generations iphone 10s are later required charge time and actual results will vary how do you feel the practice has shifted?

So there are two sides that people generally make associations with. One is not dying, and then one is accessing higher levels of performance. Sort of like from a Western mindset. Obviously, classically, there's a whole different reason that you engage in these practices. Hello, New York City. Oh, yeah. Just in case you thought we were in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We're going to get everything.

Listeners are all used to it now. They're like, I'm right there with you, man. Most of your focus has been on the performance side. How does this weave through people's ability to access the highest levels of performance on a very personal level for you? Because you've been through some dark times also. What has it done on the other side of the spectrum for you? Not the performance side, but the making Tim be okay in a fast-changing, uncertain world side of things.

I think in both instances, the answer is somewhat the same. And I'm borrowing this analogy from Andy Pudicombe, who is the headspace narrator and co-creator. But the image of, or the contrast between standing inside looking out the glass at the storm versus standing in the storm and having the rain stinging your eyes, soaking you wet, the wind whipping through your eyes, soaking you wet, the wind whipping through your ears and deafening you.

It's, it's, it's a profound difference. And it's one of being, I mean, the way that I've thought about it prior to getting that analogy was, and this is, this is an analogy that I've used before, just looking, looking at a washing machine versus being inside the washing machine. And that applies to feeling better, performing better, fill in the blank better in so much as you become a better observer of your thoughts and feelings so that you can preempt overreactions,

whether that's a hair trigger temper, whether that is some type of self-flagellation or self-loathing that's triggered by certain things. And you can, you can start to see it before you're at a full boil. You can, you can see the tiny bubbles rising to the surface and you're like, Oh wait, I'm feeling self-loathing because this, okay, let me circumvent that and redirect it. And then just by noting it, suddenly you've defused it and it has 10% of the impact it would have instead of a hundred percent. And that certainly applies everywhere else.

If you're on a single track on a mountain bike, or you are about to do a max deadlift, your ability to be present state focused while not overreacting positively or negatively. And we could talk about that. I don't think for instance, stoicism is neutering joy as some people might think. Uh, and that is closely related to a lot of this, but becoming less reactive, I think helps you equally in the achievement sphere and in the appreciation sphere. For me, the latter needs more work. I'm a hardwired type A personality. So the setting a timeline with a goal and steps to get there and backing out of it and all of that boring mechanical stuff, I'm very good at. The, hey dude, maybe everything's fine the way it is. Part?

Oh yeah, I'm like, what? Are you, what a sad state of affairs. Are you really just like complacently happy with, that's the inner monologue or dialogue probably in my head. So the latter is, has really benefited from that. And I would say also hypothetically if i lost and i don't think you do but if i lost 10 15 of my edge per se this is a common concern among hard-driving people who are thinking about meditation i'm happy with the trade what are

you working so hard for anyway or what are you driving so hard and fast for anyway? Generally, if you peel back the onion and ask why, okay, why, okay, why, then you get to, I want to improve my quality of life. Well, if you're constantly focused on the future, you're going to be trapped in anxiety. That's not a good life. Not a good life. So let's take a second to stop planning and

just say wow i'm really happy with like how the couch feels on my ass today and that i'm not breathing in the air from beijing right now this mug that i'm drinking my coffee out of uh is such a just such a pretty mug you have a gorgeous mug here white and orange it's just i mean i've obviously very carefully crafted but it's a nice mug like and you notice three things like that your day is going to be a better day yeah i mean it's funny i um i had a chance to sit down with milton glazer a couple years back yeah and take a conversation he's just a stunning guy he's it's one of the few conversations you know we both had hundreds of amazing conversations with just incredible people where I walked away and I noticed myself thinking I would live his life. And one of the things he said to me was that he knew what he was here to do when he was six years old.

And it was in some way, shape, or form to make beauty. And he has, from a really young age, had this ability to notice and appreciate and create beauty. And it's led him to have astonishing impact. And for those who don't know, he's probably the most iconic living designer. He also created New York Magazine. He's built so many brands you have no idea actually that he created. And he taught for like 50 years. He's taught some of the leading designers and creators and makers on the planet.

So the impact he's had is astonishing. And yet at the same time, the choices he's made to sort of preserve that sense of simplicity and appreciation of beauty in his life are amazing. I mean, he works in the same small studio. He could have built a monster firm. He didn't. You know, he works four days a week and then goes and hangs out with his wife three days a week on the weekends in upstate. And I just, I was like, wow, that is really interesting. And so it was fascinating because not too long after that,

I took sort of like a basic strengths test. And appreciation of beauty was one of my top things. So this basic strengths test, so Milton I'm fascinated by because you and I have a common friend in Debbie Millman. We have a lot of common friends, but she talks about Milton and his impact and the exercises that he had her do but the the basic strengths test uh not to take us off the rails but i'm curious why did you take it so i've taken i've taken two okay and what what do you hope to get from it curious so curiosity right so the two ones i've taken

are the the via which came out of you pan and and Marty Seligman and Chris Peterson's work, which is fundamental character traits. You know, it's it's based in virtues. And then there's a classic Clifton StrengthsFinder, you know, like which is based more in, from my understanding, sort of skills, talents, abilities. And I took them both because I felt like, OK, so first I was just curious, like what would actually tell me? Do I agree with it or do I just think it's complete caca? You should be a dictator in a third-world country. What? Ah, moving.

Honey, pack up the house. Honey, grab my Nicaraguan visa. No, because I'm fascinated. The way I look at life is that, you know, fundamentally, a good life is a deliberate life. A good life is a life where we have a sense of agency. We choose to the extent that we can. Obviously, there's stuff that we just can't choose. It just happens. But when we have the opportunity

to say yes or no, it's understanding what to say yes or no to. My question has always been, how can I understand what to say yes or no to if I don't understand the essence of who I am? Did you find them were they satisfying in the answers you got out of them? You know, it's interesting.

Because I'm trying to figure, look, I mean, we're talking at the beginning of a year as we're recording this. I'm thinking a lot about this right now. Yeah, I found them useful, but certainly not conclusive. You know, so I kind of add that to a whole other basket of stuff that I tend to do when I'm reflecting and trying to figure out, okay, what am I about? And where am I focused? And what's meaningful to me at this moment, like in this season of my life? So I found them useful. And what was interesting is in taking both of them, so the character traits or the character strengths one is kind of like, it's not this is what you're good at.

It's like fundamentally, you know, here are 25 different parts of you. And the top five, and these are essentially, these are your virtues, the best parts of you. They're qualities of who you are. And when you look at the top five with the VIA ones, the idea is the more that you move into the world from a place of that where you can bring whatever that quality is to every interaction, the more fulfilled you are. Do you remember your top five? You said appreciation of beauty. Oh, God, you know, I just wrote them down this week.

It was like love of learning, appreciation of beauty, creativity. I'm blanking on the other ones. Three out of five ain't bad. Yeah, right? Pretty precious. Yeah. And so then my other curiosity was because the what's probably the more common one the the gallop based one the other clip the strength finder is more

based on skills and abilities um my question was have i built a life where my sort of top rated skills would be emanations of the the deeper character traits of who i am um because i wanted to see is there misalignment here? Right. Okay. So you're trying to bridge, I guess, the results of those two tests over to your yes-no decisions. Yeah. And I think in an interesting way, if there's a really big divergence between those two,

it hints at the potential of you building a set of capabilities and potentially a livelihood and a life that may be more influenced by external expectations than by the essence of who you are. And that's part of my curiosity around that. Whether it's expectations or external inputs. Yeah. think a lot about this was looking at, so I've artfully ignored slash neglected my inbox for six to eight weeks. I've been very intermittent. And so I have on the order of 3,200 or 3,300. I thought I was bad. Like crush me. And that's 10 or 20% of what comes into my assistant team. And I was looking at it and there are, and this,

this maybe relates to, uh, entrepreneur, Derek Sivers, a lot more than that, but his hell yes or no framework for making decisions. I was looking at this, the inbox. I'm like,

okay, in the first 30, there are a lot of interesting opportunities, but interesting is a nebulous adjective. And I use it very deliberately in this case. So I've been thinking quite a bit about how I need to improve my filter

for yes-no decisions. What, if you don't mind me asking, what have you, have you come to any conclusions about what anything new to say no to or new ways to say no for yourself? Not new ways to say no to, or new ways to say no for yourself? Um, not new ways to say no.

I've actually thought about that a lot over the recent years, because I'm somebody who likes to serve. But I'm also hardcore. So here's another internal metric that I use for myself. Maybe it's helpful to you to a certain extent. I believe that we're all wired on some level to be a maker or a helper. And then there's a continuum between those two. But my sense has been, meeting most people,

that most of us are wired more towards one end of that spectrum, but we teach ourselves how to function on the other side because it's necessary to survive or build what we need to build. But fundamentally, I think, you know, so what's interesting for me is I love to see lights go on in other people's lives. And at the same time, I'm at my happiest when I'm in my cave researching and creating and making stuff. So I've learned how to say no to a lot of people because I've learned that cave time for me is really, really important. Yeah. But I also want to say it in a way which is elevating.

And we're both authors, right? I've gotten a lot of rejection letters in the early part of my career. And some were not pretty. So I never want to do that. So I'm always trying to figure out how do I language it in a way where it feels like there's dignity in the process.

There are definitely more things I say no to. And that's the other thing that I know about myself is I'm also much more wired towards the introverted side of the spectrum. And I've learned that when I'm just out and forward-facing too much, I end up a hollow shell. So are you similar? I'm an introvert who can be an extrovert for limited periods of time. But it's like holding my breath. It's very hard. It's very taxing.

And there are elements of it that I enjoy. But if I do, for instance, this is part of the reason I do very few book signings. If I do a book signing, A, I'm not going to just push people through 10 seconds a person. That's not how I want to do it. If people are traveling in particularly for it or anything like that, which means a book signing could be three, four hours.

And I need to be on because the person stepping up might've been in line for two hours to talk to me for 30 seconds. So I have to be on, on six gear. And after that, I'll need two days of rest. Yeah. I'm the same way. I mean, that's why when I go to events, if like, um, you're probably the same way. Like I, I'd love being on stage.

I love speaking for like the 45 minutes to an hour where I'm up there yeah and then i run for the woods yeah i've started doing more of that because i realize otherwise the tax the the penalty is just too high yeah and it's not that i don't want to hang out with people it's just i know myself and i know that i'm gonna be empty and if i go then work the crowd i'm gonna be wrecked for the next week yeah um so it's pure survival it sounds like we're really similar in that way. A couple other things I want to talk to you about. You spent a lot of your, it seems like adult life in your career, really focusing on deconstructing process for expertise and mastery and high performance and created a really powerful canon.

And when I look at it, there seems to be something that I'm not finding. And I become curious about it. And that is a conversation and an exploration around the cost side of it. Like I'm looking for the story around when you sit down with somebody who's world class at this or this or this or this. And maybe it's just because that's not what you feel like your job is like your job is let me deconstruct the process so i can understand it and maybe allow others to transfer into it on a level what whatever level is appropriate for them i always wonder you know what did this cost you along the way sure are you asking me or you you asking me why? Or is the question more of why is there not more of that?

I think it's both, actually. I'm curious with you personally, and then I'm curious about, does that inform the bigger sort of conversation? Yeah, I would say that I tend to back into that indirectly when I'm interviewing, and I'm doing it more and more often now. Not so much what What does it,

did it cost you explicitly for similar reasons that I don't ask people, what are your favorite books? I will ask them what books have you gifted the most? Because there is, I think you tend to get pat answers or abstract high level answers, uh answers for certain questions. And favorite book has its own issues because people have a primacy-recency bias, so they'll just spew out something that's a good book they remember from the last few years generally. What I will very often ask is, or I'll say something along the lines of,

some people listening might say that what you do cannot be done by other people because you're always confident. You're always on point. So let's talk about that. Is that true? And assuming it's not, could you tell us about one of the darkest periods you've had and how you found your way out of that? And by asking about the darkest period, we usually get the answer to what did it cost you because they're making compromises or sacrifices that then cause them to implode or become unbalanced in some way. And that I think is very important to explore. And that is another reason why I've really made a deliberate choice to talk about a lot of the weaknesses in the people that I interview, a lot of the dark.

Because the highlight reel is helpful, but it's a very incomplete picture. And if you want the highlight reel, you better be able to take the inevitable punch in the face that you're going to take. So that's my answer to, I suppose, part A. In terms of what has it cost me, every decision you make costs you something. And if you look at the word itself, much like incision, decision is to cut away.

For every choice you make, you're generally blocking off other options. If you take one path, one fork in the road, by definition, you are not on the other path. And certainly there are ways, or those who would say, you know, the best option is the option that creates more options. And I do think that's, there's some truth to that. So I make, I try to, whenever possible, make choices that, and focus on projects. And this is borrowed in part from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, who calls it systems thinking. The wording of which I think is a little confusing. But I try to choose projects that help me to develop and accumulate skills and relationships.

So that even if that project fails, over time, cumulatively, there's no way I cannot win, per se. Cost, I would say that I've never been happier. I'm really, I feel like I'm in a very good place. I feel like I'm taking care of the people around me well. And that hasn't always been true. So up until, certainly up until 2004, and then for a period of time,

I would say around 2010 to 2013, also a very difficult period for me. 2015 was a tough year as well. The lesson that I need to learn repeatedly is if you don't take care of yourself, you will not be able to take care of the people around you well. And when I violate

that, then I pay many different costs. Which kind of actually moves into one of the last things I wanted to circle around to with you, which is I felt like something happened in the conversation that you had not too long ago with B.J. Miller. For those who don't know,

palliative care physician in San Francisco who helps oversee the Zen hospice, there was a shift in you that happened, and I feel like it's become more of a persistent and growing thread to something more existential. In a sense, existential in a weird way, perhaps. So I get asked a lot,

which of your interviews is your favorite? And I can't do that, not because I'm trying to be polite, but the, and this may be true for you as well, but the Tim Ferriss show for me is a very personal, in some ways ways selfish endeavor. I go and find people I want to talk to because I think they can help me figure out something that I'm having trouble figuring out, whether it's a challenge or an insecurity or weakness, whatever it might be.

Or they're just a domain expert and I want to see what's beneath the surface. BJ I'd wanted to interview for many years. He's also a triple amputee who was electrocuted in college and lost three of his limbs. It's helped more than a thousand people die. And in that conversation, I want to talk to him for years. This is well before the podcast. I just wanted to track him down and talk to him. I don't know, he didn't approach me. A friend of his did because BJ doesn't go out hunting for media. And I go, okay, this is a sign of some type or I'll take it as such. And what really struck me among many other things, there are a lot of things from that conversation with BJ that have stuck with me. The one that has stuck with me perhaps the most, well, I'll mention a few, the little things are the big things. So for quelling or mitigating existential angst at the end of life for some of his patients, I've asked him what some of the best tools are in the toolkit. And he said, baking cookies,

because the smell, the taste, the communal enjoyment, It's on behalf of nothing in the future. It is all present tense. And he gave a few other examples. And I then asked him, well, what if you had someone who's maybe in a depressive state or very introverted, they don't want to have that social experience. What are the three things you would give them? And he mentioned a comedy, a movie. He mentioned plenty of time to stare off into space. That was one thing he would give them. And the third was a book of Mark Rothko paintings and an art book. And for those who don't know Mark Rothko,

these are paintings of colored boxes that sell for $80 to $100 million. Abstract art. And the point being, I'm paraphrasing here, of course, but that he wants to help cultivate their ability to find and see beauty and things that are meaningless or that are purposeless. And that was really profound to me to not sit by the bedside and have the big religious or spiritual conversation every time you sit next to someone who's going to die in four weeks, because that's not how it works. I've heard this repeatedly from people who volunteered at Zen hospice, for instance, or worked in palliative care. So if you expect every conversation to be this deep TED talk on the meaning of life, you're going to be disappointed. Like it's 99% the mundane, which are the important things. And to not necessarily stress yourself out over the big, why me? Why now? What's the point questions and instead to deliberately cultivate the appreciation of beauty in

purposelessness, meaninglessness. And it sounds depressing, but it's really liberating when you start to contemplate that and practice it. And for instance, I mean, two of my, I'm not going to call them resolutions, but themes that I want to follow this year for myself are beauty and absurdity. And they go together very nicely to do things that are beautiful or absurd that don't necessarily have any explicit end goal or point to them. And I don't view that as a waste. I think that a lot of breakthroughs can come from taking your eye off of the productivity track for a little bit at the very least and focusing on that. And so that's had a very direct impact on my thinking and greatly improved, I think, my quality of life. I mean, there are other things from that interview I won't get into right now, but I call it star therapy, the way that he looks at the stars and meditates, very similar to how Ed Cook and a handful of other people,

another person I interviewed recently does the same thing. So this oddly common activity of stargazing at night as a means of reducing anxiety is another thing that I've taken with me with, uh, from BJ. So when I walk my dog at night, I do that almost every night. Yeah. If it's, if it's clear enough. So those are, those are a few, but I would say that for BJ effectively giving you an out so that you don't feel compelled to obsess on these huge existential questions that may not have answers in the first place or satisfactory

answers has been a huge breath of relief for me in a sense. And oddly enough has allowed me to feel more at peace. No, I get that. And also, I mean, you're somebody who seems just so massively wired for deconstruction and process and analysis that to almost sort of have somebody validate, like, actually, there's a famous Buddhist parable where thousands of monks have gathered, and the teacher is up, and everyone's waiting for the teaching, and he takes a flower and holds it up in the air.

Do you know this? No. Holds it up in the air, and all the other monks are looking at each other like, what, what, what, what does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? And way out in the middle is one all the other monks are looking at each other like, what, what, what? What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? And like, way out in the middle

is one monk just sitting there smiling. And the teacher looks at the monk. He's like, you're the one who gets it. It's like, it's not about anything.

You know, it's just how beautiful is this flower? Yeah. You know, and I think, to me, from the out,

completely not knowing you in any meaningful way, you know, before this, from the outside looking in, it's felt a little bit like something shifted in that conversation in you, or something about the conversations you've been having afterwards, or something about your energy. Feels like you're starting to

be a little bit more of that one monk and a little bit less of the others. I don't know. It's possible. Is that a conscious aspiration for you? I would say so. I don't devalue the analytical machinery and the observational acuity that I've tried to develop. I don't think they're mutually exclusive,

but I think they can be treated as mutually exclusive, and i think i have made that mistake in the past so you mentioned flowers another thing that i do is i will and i was taught this by an ex-girlfriend who deserves a lot of i'll nickname her natasha here but i she has a uh i owe her a lot of gratitude for a number of things including the jar of awesome which is in tools of tit, but I will stop there two or three places. Every time I walk my dog, I'll stop and literally smell the roses. And what's so cute is Molly, my dog, because she's accustomed to it. She will also stop and smell the grass and it's just lovely. It's just this tiny little lovely thing and if you can't, what I've learned for myself is if you can't enjoy the little

things or you don't take the time to enjoy the little things, similarly if you don't take the time to celebrate the small wins, you're never going to be able to really enjoy the big things and you're never going to really be able to savor the big wins. You have to practice small.

Completely agree. So let's come full circle. The name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that phrase out to you, to live a good life, what comes up? To live the good life, I think that for me it's simple. You test assumptions. You don't assume malice. You ask questions. And you try to make people better than you are.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's life, take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for email it if that's the easiest thing whatever is easiest for you and then of course if you're compelled subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience my greatest hope

with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much as always for your intention, for your attention, for your heart.

And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk.