Jocko Podcast - 50: With Tim Ferriss – Darkness & How to Stay on the Path, Last Days of Life & What to Do, Back-up Plans, Misconceptions

Episode Date: November 23, 2016

0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:57 - Tim Ferriss Introduction 0:09:50 - Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide" from Tim Ferriss's new book, "Tools of Titans" 1:15:08 - Tims additional thoughts on getting out of the Darkness 1:L16:41 - How to Stay on the Path and not get distracted. 1:30:31 - Always searching instead of enjoying what you have. 1:36:51 - Is there a Job that would NEVER be outsourced? 1:40:22 - What would Tim do if he were to die in 18 months? 1:44:21 - Helpful Relaxation Activities 1:50:54 - Work that is relaxing and therapeutic . 1:56:48 - Back Up Plans? 2:02:26 - Biggest misconceptions about Tim Ferriss 2:06:23 - Falling short in leadership. 2:19:34 - Entrepreneurship, the "cool" thing.  Tims peeves.  Posers, fakers, and being an entitles rookie. 2:32:11 - Cool Internet, Onnit, Amazon and Jocko Store stuff 2:36:57 - Extreme Ownership Muster 2 2:37:50 - ClosingSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 50 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. To be or not to be. That is probably the most famous of all of Shakespeare's lines. And in fact, it's so famous that it's often unfortunately used as a punchline. uses a joke to be or not to be it becomes easy to forget what Shakespeare is actually talking about he's talking about death and more specifically in this case he's talking about

suicide and Prince Hamlet the character that delivers that famous line who's often called insane, but who himself says, I am essentially not in madness, but mad in craft, meaning he is playing the role of insanity to further his own objectives. But not everybody even agrees on that point. But here's what Hamlet does say, to be or not to be that. That. is the question whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in other words he's talking about is it worth it to suffer through the problems we have in life and he goes on or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them meaning should we

should we fight against the pain of life this sea of troubles and in that fight should we choose death which is the only alternative to life and he goes on to die

to sleep no more and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. So he's saying that death lets you escape all these hardships of life

and these thousand natural shocks. And he finishes it out tis a consummation devoutly to be wished for to die. He's saying that that is what we should wish for to die. That is this most famous of soliloquies is about killing yourself.

It's about suicide. Now, we have a guest on today. And this is a guest who I've come to know since I sort of debuted in the world. And in fact, this guest happens to be the person that actually debuted me to the world that brought me into the world. His name is Tim Ferriss.

And in September of 2015, he interviewed me on his podcast just prior to the release of my book, Extreme Ownership. Now, at the time, I was certainly a Tim Ferriss listener. I'd read the four-hour work week. I'd listened to a bunch of his podcast, but I hadn't listened to all of them. And I think I had kind of the broad view. that most people have of Tim. The human guinea pig, the investor, the author,

just, you know, Mr. Smart, successful, healthy guy who's out there enjoying the fruits of life. And with all that, stuff in my mind, there I was in the first ever interview I had ever actually done with anybody ever, And it's a setup. The setup is, it's an interesting setup going into this for me, right? We're alone.

I don't know Tim. I'm not the most open person in the first place. I don't know Tim. We meet two hours before. Now we're in his house alone at a table. And the interview starts going kind of jaco-ish pretty quickly, and I start going a little bit heavy on some stuff. And at one point, Tim asked me about.

books that I've read and I brought up about face and and then I brought up Cormac McCarthy Blood Meridian and I described how I liked that book because it captured the darkness and not just the darkness of the world but the dark nature of human beings in the world And Tim, after I described that darkness, he said something along the lines of, like, hey, Jocko, I struggle with this. How much should I voluntarily expose myself to darkness? Because I've had my own ups and downs that I contend with. And then he kind of took that question from there. and from that personal level,

and he really quickly transferred it into something that was more about the world than about humanity in general. But the initial question that Tim started to ask, it wasn't about the world. And it wasn't about humanity in general. The question that Tim was asking was about Tim. And I didn't catch that during the interview.

It went right over my head, but when I listened to the interview, I caught it and I heard it. And I heard that beneath this guy that we all see, this happy go lucky exterior, kind of a solid image of mental and physical and spiritual strength. There was some darkness in there. And Tim and I were going back and forth a few weeks ago. And he said something to me, you know, I'm not sure if I'm aligned with the types of guests you normally have on your podcast.

And thinking back instantly to that moment, I said, oh no, Tim, you definitely are. Because you are a person. You're a human. And this is a podcast about human nature. And despite all the success you've had, you've had some challenges in your life. You've had some dark times and you still do. And we all do. And people ask me about suicide.

I mean, most of the time it's some indirect messaging or some messaging through Facebook, but people will ask me about suicide whether they're having those thoughts. And I haven't really addressed it directly. Because even though it's suicide has definitely impacted my life directly in some awful and horrible ways that I'll never forget. But I don't have that same level of knowledge. So today we do have that level of knowledge. and we're going to dive into it. So without further ado,

Mr. Tim Ferriss, welcome to the show, and thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me on. Now, I don't even want to play around here. I want to get writing, I want to get this hard stuff done. I want to talk about this book that you just put out. It's called Tools of Titans.

And in this book, and I just got done telling you this, You know, I looked and found the blog post that you had originally written that's named a very Tim Ferriss name, in my opinion. It's some practical thoughts on suicide, right? Only Tim would think about practical thoughts on suicide. So, and you sent me the book, and I had found that blog post and I'd read it, but when you sent me the book, I saw that you'd put it in the book. And I think that was awesome for you to do that to put it in this book so that people have that. access to it. So I want to get into this piece of it right now from the book and here we go.

Some practical thoughts on suicide. In this chapter, I'm going to talk about suicide and why I'm still on this planet. It might seem dark, but the objective is to give hope and tools to those who need them. It is a much larger number than you might imagine. I kept the following story secret from my family, girlfriends, and closest friends for years. Recently, however, I had an experience that shook me, woke me up, and I decided that it was time to share everything. So, despite the shame I might feel, the fear that is making my palms sweat as I type this, allow me to get started.

Here we go. So you had some serious hesitation on putting this out there in the first place. I did. it sat in drafts for between six and nine months with fits and starts because I had a lot of doubt about my motivations for putting it out, the good that it might do, the bad that it could have indirectly that I couldn't foresee, unforeseen consequences, and just the embarrassment and also the fear of how my family would respond. There was a lot, there were a lot of factors that kept it in my drafts folder for a very

long time. And then this story that you tell here is is the story of what made you finally decide to talk about it in the public forum. And what happened was a guy came up to you and said, you were at an event, a guy comes up to you and says, hey, can you sign this for my brother? It would mean a lot to him. And you know, you give him the, hey, no problem. You're kind of notice that there's something odd about the way the guy's acting, but you sign the book and A little while later, as you're leaving, he comes up and he says, you know, I got to talk to you. And you say, hey, got to leave, but what do you got? Let's go.

Walk with me. And you find out that this guy's younger brother, who you had just signed the book for, had recently killed himself at the age of 22. And this guy told you, people listened to you, Tim. Have you ever thought about talking about these things, about suicide or depression? You might be able to save someone. And then you say here in the book, I didn't know what to say. I also didn't have an excuse, unbeknownst to him. I had every reason to talk about suicide.

Some of my closest high school friends killed themselves. Some of my closest college friends killed themselves. And I almost killed. Myself and you held that in for a long time Long time and there you were a public figure and you hadn't you had never talked about this Now as I said for me I certainly have brushed up against suicide Starting with my best friend when I was a kid

A kid named Jeff and I had joined the Navy and I was in seal training and I got way and we had kind of of grown apart and I talked about this when I was on your podcast. You know, I grew up with in, in a rural area in New England and there was a lot of hippies and just kids, you know, deadheads and whatnot. And I didn't go in that direction, but my really good friend did and he ended up getting heavily involved in drugs and booze and everything else. And he got involved with the girl and when they broke up, he killed himself in a horrible way that I'm like, I'm not even to talk about. But I got word of it.

I was going through seal training, and I get word that this kid, you know, that I was such good friends with, killed himself. And then on top of that, now we go 1993. And again, one of my best friends in the SEAL teams, absolute stud of an individual, of a human being, an incredible athlete quarterback at the Naval Academy, by the way, record holder

at the Naval Academy, just a hilarious guy, leader of men, just incredible human being named Alton Lee Grizzard. He got murdered along with a female naval officer named Carrie O'Neill. They got murdered, both of them by a... Another Navy officer who also went to the Naval Academy who then killed himself. So murder, suicide. And I'll tell you what, anybody that knew Gris, I mean, this was just devastating. Devastating. Just damn near broke my heart.

And then most recently, in December of 2012, another seal that I knew, who was the commander of the seals in Afghanistan. The commander of all the seals in Afghanistan. On deployment in Afghanistan. Goes to a meeting. Gets done with a meeting. Goes to his room. Shoots himself in the head.

Kills himself. No suicide note. No strange behavior. No indicators. Nothing. And like I said, this guy was in my sister platoon at SEAL team too. I mean, just a great guy, respected seal, and boom, gone.

And I guess that's why I feel strongly about wanting to bring you on and talk to you about this because I know you felt it. Personally, you're talking about it. And personally, I actually have never wanted to kill myself before. Now, I will say there are times in my life where I cared less. about living than other times. And it's certainly in combat, I definitely accepted that I could die and I was okay with it.

And there's probably times in combat where I crossed the line a little bit towards the just straight bring it on. Let's do this. But I never seriously had that, you know, that thought. But it's something I know is out there. Like I said, it's brushed up against me. It's crushed me.

and when you say in this book that you almost killed yourself, and we'll talk about what got you there and how you ended up there, but how real is that feeling when it hits you? There's nothing realer. I think that the delusion or the set of delusions that you find yourself in seem as real as this table that we're sitting at. as real as anything you see or hear. And the voices in your head, that internal dialogue, the self-talk, is a powerful thing. And it can be powerful in constructive ways and it can be powerful in extremely destructive ways.

So for me, it felt permanent. It felt inescapable. It felt concrete. I felt like I had a column of evidence, Exhibit A through Z, to indicate that I would be better off killing myself. So it wasn't a desire to, it wasn't a desire to end my own life. It was a desire to stop suffering and stop causing the suffering of others or what I perceive to be inflicting on my loved ones and family members and so on. And feeling trapped.

I think above all it's feeling trapped and feeling alone. Like you are flawed and in being flawed, you are unique. And you should just be sent back to the factory and that equals taking yourself out. extremely real though it's definitely it was it it was as concrete as any emotion or any object or any interaction that you could imagine and it's it's got to be weird now and again and you say this like you're looking back at this now and of course this is so easy to see and go you know i was not thinking straight and right now you can tell it's not real or those problems that you perceived you could tell that they weren't real problems, they weren't unsolvable problems, they weren't

worth ending your life over, but you get trapped in there. And I think in particular you do get trapped. And in my case, there were, say, five or six different events that happened roughly at the same time that caused me to spiral. And as I spiraled, I got to a point where I felt like I would never contribute anything meaningful to other people or to the world because I was so handicapped by this pessimistic, dark view of the world and of myself. And I was like, well, if that's the case, why go through all this pain to try to solve

these various problems? When clearly, like you said, in retrospect, it's ludicrous. I mean, it's ridiculous, but at the time, it seemed anything but why not just control I'll all too late. Let's just shut this computer down. You know, I got, I get to see this a little bit right now. You know, I got kids and, you know, I got teenage daughters. And little things in the world that they think are the most important, you know, things in the whole world.

I mean, literally like a dress or a pair of shoes. I'm like, it's okay. We can get you some more shoes or whatever. It's, you get to see a glimpse of what you're talking about. just with any human, any human anywhere that even in a workplace where someone's going through some problem at work and they didn't get the report turned in on time. And they're acting like it's the end of the world. And it's actually the end of nothing. And actually, in many cases, means almost nothing. Almost nothing. I'm going to go back to the book. So you say to Silas,

which is the guy that had come up and asked you to sign the book, you come up and say, you say look I'm sorry for your loss and then you had sort of the internal talk once again with yourself and you say I'd failed his brother by being such a coward in my writing how many others had I failed these questions swam in my mind and then you look at Silas and you say I will write about this I promise that's probably when you made your first decision to get this draft going actually you said and with that I got into the elevator and I added my own phrase on here and you should have me edit this but you said and with that I got in the elevator and I added and headed down because the next part of this is called into the darkness and you got a great quote in here that I'd never heard before the quote is they tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds.

And I think that's an awesome quote. They tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds. And I can tell you that I didn't bury these thoughts and these feelings. And I'm thinking back, I'm just trying to kind of deconstruct where my attitude came from with all the stuff.

And I think that when I grew up, I listened to some things that may, that, that just pulled those seeds right out of the ground. Like they were playing as day. When you grow up, listen to the kind of music that I listened to, just dark, heavy music that sang about this stuff. And I'll tell you, there's a, one of the best pieces of music that you can hear on this subject. And I don't even, it's dark. But Henry Rollins on an album called Lifetime, there's a song called Gunnesty.

in mouth blues. And I saw him perform it many times live. And it like took me through those emotions. You go on YouTube and trying to, it doesn't deliver the way it was when I was a kid, when I was 14 or 15 years old. And I got a guy on stage, a grown man to me at that time who was, you know, 25 or something, whatever Rollins was at that time. And he's singing about that. And so for me, I'm thinking of myself, well, those seeds weren't buried for me. They were out, right? I was thinking about that, but I wasn't, like, I was okay with me. You know what I'm saying? And a lot of the music that I listened to back then talked about that stuff. So I didn't bury those seeds ever, really. And is that something that you did? Obviously, you put the quote in here, but how do you

see yourself? How did you bury those seeds? So I included the quote, for a few reasons. The first is effectively exactly what you alluded to. So these internal demons, these self-doubts, these self-criticisms, I felt were a huge weakness. And so to compete to whether that's in sports, academics or otherwise, I kept that all in. So I actually grew up on the same music or similar music, but I was listening to Slayer. I was listening to. A lot of dark music, which I can still appreciate the double bass and so on and a Slayer album.

But for me, because I never chose to express any of that, I had no release valve. So it actually fed, I think, in a way, this type of self-loathing. And it could have been biochemical in the first place. I don't know, quite frankly. And I mean, my family, at least on one side, has a history of extended depression and schizophrenia and so on. schizophrenia less so but so maybe it started there who knows I don't know what the origin is and so I included that quote as a reminder of two things a when you try to suffocate or bury or disregard these thoughts and emotions as opposed to contend

with them or deal with them in some fashion they are seeds and you're pouring fertilizer on them when you try to neglect and avoid them the second reason I put that in is to remind myself if you feel like external consequences, if you feel like external circumstances or external actors, meaning people, are stacking the deck against you or trying to bury you, right, trying to defeat you in some fashion. You are the seed. So you can recover from that. And there's strength to be found in the struggle. So I included it for both of those reasons. Yeah, and I've talked about that before,

this idea of battling demons, right? And one of the things I said on the podcast, I want an earlier podcast, I just said, don't let the demons ambush you. Don't let them sneak around in there. You've got to bring them out. You got to bring them out and confront them and deal with them.

Don't try and bury them. Bring them out. And so that's very similar. And also, when you were a kid, this is also interesting because you were an overachiever as a kid, right? I was good in school.

I was very, very small. I got the shit kicked out of me routinely up until about sixth grade. But you wrestled? You were a good wrestler, right? I did, yeah. I got up to national level towards the end of high school. I did not wrestle in college since it was Title IX at Princeton where I ended up going. But I was academically, certainly, a high achiever.

And a really good wrestler, academically. I mean, you're going to Princeton, right? So that's pretty much. And then you landed Princeton. By the way, that counts is kicking ass. Yeah. No, no. I had very supportive parents, did really well in school,

got to Princeton and realized everyone was at that level or higher. And it's a different playing field. And is that one of the things you think that as you started thinking about this darkness, you're looking at these other people going, oh, they don't have that. I got to bury it because they're all smart as me and great athletes. And so I'm competing with them. and I don't want to have that chalk against me of saying, oh, you know, I'm a little bit sad today. That's bad.

I'm going to be positive. For sure. I think that was part of it. On one hand, I enjoy competing. So having a bunch of stronger competitors didn't bother me at all. I was actually pretty thrilled about it. But I did feel like to compete on this higher level playing field, it would not behoove me or help me to walk around, bemoaning my weaknesses at all. So I didn't. And I felt like particularly being the, going to that

school was a real stretch for my entire family and extended family. I felt like I had to deliver. And there was no pressure from my parents whatsoever, but I don't need anyone else's pressure. I can deliver plenty of that for myself. And I felt that a lot was riding on that. And the plan, And of course, as many people might have in their lives is get good grades in high school, go to a good college, get great grades in college, get to a fantastic job and so on and so forth. So which led up to, I mean, a lot of the catalyzing events later in college in senior year that were really the straws that broke the camel's back. Because I wasn't always near the precipice.

I mean, I was healthy for long stretches of time. Then I'd have maybe a depressive period, but it was manageable. oftentimes coincided with winter. I don't handle that type of weather very well, which is part of the reason that I now live on the West Coast. Did you, were you self-aware of that? Very aware. Very where.

At the time, probably less aware of the weather, having the impact that it did. But you would literally say, oh, man, I'm feeling down right now. This is one of my secular things. It'll be okay. Definitely. And used... That's pretty introspective for a kid.

Well, I spent a lot of time in my own head. and there are benefits that come from that you can get very good at academics and then sometimes you're just your own worst enemy so being trapped in my head is not always the the the carnival that you might think it to be sometimes it is for sure depending on what I've eaten or imbibed as well but that's a separate podcast the the but I've learned to manage it we're jumping a little bit ahead but for instance and we'll get get to it, I'm sure, but the writing of the senior thesis. That was a major trigger for a lot of reasons.

Now, for instance, writing the book that's sitting in front of us, I flew a researcher from Canada to be with me almost 24-7 while I was in the final six to eight weeks of writing this book. Why? Did I need him to come from Canada to be there in person? No, absolutely not. But I wanted another human around, so I wouldn't go red rum, red rum. And well, when you write 700 pages books, my brother, you're going to end up a lot more likely to end up in the red room than in the normal room. So you're right that we do start getting into this. Let's talk about this. But can I can I say one thing?

One of the reasons, and you did give me a 20 to say this so in fairness, but one of the reasons I recommend your podcast so much is because you talk about the darkness and you talk about. how common it is. And I think the reason, for instance, out of the blue, one of my friends, super handsome guy, wealthy family, ladies throwing themselves out of him in high school, kills himself out of the blue. No one expected it. And I think that when you find people in any circumstance

who end up taking it to that point, it's because they think it is a rare flaw. They're the one in a thousand who happens to be so fucked up beyond repair that it's not worth continuing. And by exposing and discussing the darkness, you realize, I mean, that's 50% of the people or more 50% of the time. It is extremely common. No matter what you think your defect is, anger, depression, you have plenty of people

to keep you company. So in any case. It gets crowded up there. It gets crowded. So that's a great point. let's go into this then when we go into what happened and some of the things that went down this downward spiral is what you call it and and again in here I'm going back to the book in hindsight it's incredible how trivial some of it seems and in I put my note in there's next that's like

because you're detached from it now and that's such a key thing I talk about all the time right we want to remain detached from things we don't want to get wrapped up in the emotion We want to stay back because when you detach from it, every answer is so clear when you're not wrapped up in it. This stuff that happened to you. Sure, was it challenging? Yes, did it suck? Was it hard? Yes, of course.

But detached from it now, you're looking at it. You might literally be laughing at this stuff now. Oh, I do. I mean, I wrote it. And that's why at the end there's this part towards the end. It's like many of you might be thinking, wait a second, a Princeton student got a really bad. Great, boo fucking who? Like, are you kidding me?

Yeah. But that's the whole point, right? That is the whole point. Is that people, we don't detach, we get absorbed in this stuff and it becomes our world. So you get, here, I'm going back to the book. I include wording like impossible situation, which was reflective of my thinking at the time. And it begins senior year, slated to graduate in June of 1999, somewhere in the next six months, all these things happen. First, you fail to make it to the final interviews.

for McKenzie consulting and some other company, and you start losing confidence. So this is the first time you get kind of a little bit beat in your life a little bit. For sure. I was doing extremely well academically, and all of a sudden I didn't know what I was doing wrong. And just to provide a little bit of context,

and this is like, I have this huge smirk on my face because it's so ridiculous, you know, in hindsight. But at Princeton or any Ivy League school, really, there are only a handful of industries that recruit. Primarily, you find management consulting firms and investment banks. Why? Because they want to hire you and then use your pedigree, Princeton, so that they can charge their clients in the case of management consulting $500 an hour for photocopying.

It's not at all as exotic as it might seem, but everyone is competing for those slots. And I didn't know what to do next, so I just decided being very driven in that way. I'm going to compete for what everyone is going after because I think I can beat them. Now, this is the first time that I really felt like, A, I got my ass handed to me with, and B, this was important. If I lose a wrestling match, I know why I lost. Here, I didn't know what was wrong.

So that unknown variable hit me reasonably hard. I can imagine that now you're doubting everything. In a wrestling match, you go, hey, my conditioning wasn't good. Or, hey, my takedowns weren't on point. And here you're just going, what was wrong? I don't know what was wrong. Exactly. Something's wrong with me.

No one could tell me. Even the people who interviewed me, they wouldn't give me the feedback. So that's point A. Very shortly thereafter, have a long-term girlfriend break up with me, which, again, in isolation, I think I could have weathered and I had weathered many times before. But I'm kind of reeling on my heels a little bit. And then my... Hold on.

I'm going to go to the book here because you give some pretty good specifics on that. She breaks up with you because this is... from the book, because I became insecure during that period, wanted more time with her and was massively disrupted to her varsity sports. But my point is that these things compounded, right? You get insecure and you think, why didn't they, why didn't they hire me? And then you look at your girl and you say, well, I'll go to her for comfort. Hey, but, you know, I need more from you.

And she's going, which all humans do, which is, oh, you want to throw yourself at me? I don't need you. Exactly. It was not only that, but. so she wakes up like you do and I tend to go to bed when you do and so I would want to have these late night conversations and it screwed up her competition I mean and it was it was extremely important to her rightly so she was a varsity athlete so exit stage left girlfriend gone and then the the primary piece of this sort of the in my mind the checkmate for a loss was the

interactions that I had with my counselor or thesis advisor and I was in the East Asian Studies Department. I started in psychology and then I moved from neuroscience to East Asian Studies to focus on language acquisition and this the senior thesis just to put this in perspective not every college university has a mandatory senior thesis Princeton does and it breaks a lot of kids so I'm not unique in this but I thought I was at the time it breaks a lot of kids When you say breaks, like they don't graduate because they don't finish it? Or they just get emotionally, they go through total turmoil and it tests them as a human. Both of the above and what I realized after the fact is a lot of kids kill themselves, actually.

At many of these top schools, and I'm sure other schools, but it's such a pressure cooker or the kids perceive it that way. God, I feel old call on kids. But regardless, it's such a pressure cooker. I got there for you, Tim. It's very, very common. So it really does break a lot of kids, but it's generally, let's just call it, and it varies by department, but 60 to 100 pages, sometimes longer. And it can count for 25% of your four-year, or just a cumulative departmental GPA. It is weighed very, very, very heavily.

So even if you've had straight A's, it can really throw a wrench into the works if you want to finish with a very strong GPA. Now, keep in mind, I had already been turned down for jobs. and so they go together here. Lose my crutch that's keeping me up, which is the girlfriend. And then at that point I am researching for my thesis. Everything's going fine so far. And I meet with the head of curriculum design

for Berlitz International, which is near Princeton. Had a great dinner, and he said, it's really too bad you're graduating an X number of months because we actually have a fantastic job for you that I could give you right now, you'd be a perfect fit. So I think to myself, well, this is going to solve a few different problems. I don't know what I want to do. I'm not getting picked up by these other companies.

Why don't I take some time off and figure out the job and then figure out the thesis. Now, the thesis, I'm going a little bit out of order here, but the thesis was important because I had a meeting with my thesis advisor who had his own research agendas and And as is very common in academics, professors will utilize the help of students at times to integrate things or research things for them. Slave labor. Slave labor. And he dropped a pile of, say, 50, 60 pages of original Japanese research. So this is all in Japanese to integrate into my thesis.

It wasn't a fit. It was a round peg in a square hole. It would be nearly impossible to put into my thesis. But I decided, all right, well, he's the advisor. He's tenured. this is mandatory. It's not an optional. Then I figured out, oh my God, well, I could take this job,

take a year off, do a great job on thesis, come back, problem solved. So I have a meeting with my thesis advisor to tell him that I'm going to do this, not realizing at the time also that his research needs of me are time sensitive. And he lost it. He basically said, oh, you're just going to cop out and take all this time off of school. Well, better be the best thesis I've ever seen in my life. And not so subtly saying, I'm going to tank you. If this is what you're going to do, I'm going to tank you.

And I don't think I was misreading that. And I was completely bewildered, then really upset, meaning sad, depressed, then really angry. And I was like, you know what? This is bullshit. Like, this is Princeton University. Focus on the undergrad. This should be a solvable problem. So I go to people in the administration.

And I tell them what happened and collectively the response was effectively he wouldn't do that. Because once you have your immunity bracelet in the form of tenure, you're not getting voted off the island. And even people within the department would not pick a fight with him or even really seek to clarify it. And that was when I felt totally hopeless. And that was kind of the beginning of the end as I saw it. at that point, it's very important to note I was not suicidal. I just felt completely trapped and without options. I ended up regardless taking the year off.

And that is where things got particularly dark because I went from being surrounded by students. Didn't have the girlfriend, but I was in a social environment to working for burlitz, but what I didn't realize was going to be the setup, the logistics, was working. working remotely. What does that mean? That means that I'm off campus now with two of my friends who go to work every day, normal hours, and I'm left in a bedroom or a living room alone to try to work on my thesis and to do work for bullets, completely solo. That is where the carnival in my head is a very dangerous thing. I'm outmatched. Right. And we can keep going. Yeah, I mean, So the other thing that struck me as once that happens,

now you also start to see your friends graduate. And they're all done. They're done. And you got the heavy burden still on you. Yeah, that was, that was, seemed to be a huge piece of it as well. And then I'm going to go to the book. Back to the book here. Your coping mechanism is to cover myself in sheets,

minimize time awake and hope for a miracle. No miracle arrives. One afternoon, as I'm wandering through a Barnes & Noble with no goal in particular, I chance upon a book about suicide. It's right there in front of me on a display table. Perhaps this is the miracle. I sit down and read the entire book, taking copious notes into a journal,

including other books listed in the bibliologist, For the first time in ages, I'm excited about research. In a sea of uncertainty and hopeless situations, I feel like I've found hope. The final solution. The idea just appears in a book. Yeah. And you go full Tim Ferriss on this thing. Yeah, with the same enthusiasm and rigor and OCD that I tackle anything, I dove into that.

and went to Firestone Library, great library at Princeton, to check out as many of those referenced books as possible to do my research. And one of them was not in, one of the key pieces. And so I made a request, put in a request to get notified. And I was living, I think it was in Lawrenceville, which is near Princeton at the time.

And I think it's worth, noting that I was past the point of deciding. I was in planning. You say that in the book and I'll just read it. It's important to mention that by this point I was past deciding. The decision was obvious to me. I'd somehow failed, painted myself into this ridiculous corner, wasted a fortune on school that didn't care about me.

So what would be the point of doing otherwise? To repeat these types of mistakes forever to be a hopeless burden to myself and my family and my friends, fuck that. the world was better off without a loser who couldn't figure out this basic shit. What would I ever contribute? Nothing. So the decision was made and I was in full on planning mode. In this case, I'm dangerously good at planning. I have four to six scenarios all spaced out, start to finish, or sorry, spec'd out, start to finish,

including potential collaborators and covers when needed. So as you just said, as you just pointed out, you were full on Tim Ferriss, researched complete, decision made, going forward, figure out the best way to execute this and make it happen. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember. And actually, something that's not in there. I recall, I recall when I had the plans and then it was a matter of scheduling. And I was waiting for that last book to see if I missed any research before proceeding. but I had driven to Firestone, taken out these books, and was very lethargic. I remember, I mean, this coincides with this type of deep depression, just very tired all the time, and laid down to my van, my used minivan, hand me down for my mom, after going to Firestone and just slept for like three or four hours and woke up. And I was like, okay, let's just get this done.

Let's figure it out and put it on the calendar. and the what prevented that it was pure luck i had forgotten that instead of using my lawrenceville address i hadn't changed my address with the registrar so my mail was going back to my home address where my parents lived on long island and so my mom gets this postcard in the mail i mean thank god this didn't happen a few years ago would have been via email she wouldn't have seen it and it's a in effect, good news. The book on suicide that you reserved is now available at Firestone Library for Pickup.

So I got a very nervous call from my mom, which I did not expect to interrupt plans. Did you think your mom, did your mom sense it? Oh yeah, I could tell. I mean, her voice was very shaky. And I quickly tap danced and talked my way out of it. And I said, oh, no, no, it's a friend at Rutgers. He couldn't get it at his library.

so I reserved it at Firestone, but it shocked me out of my self-imposed false reality. And it sounds so odd to say, but it was the first time that I realized my suicide would affect no matter how cleverly I laid it out. It would ruin the lives of people around me. Because I thought, well, let me figure out a scenario where I can make it look like a complete accident. It won't look like suicide. It'll just look like an accidental death. I really, I really figured it out.

And it didn't matter. It didn't matter. I realized after that phone call that... Did your mom confront you with it? She asked me about it, and I was very fast to come up with the Rutgers lie. Did she say like, hey, Tim, are you okay? She did. She did.

And we love you, you know, we love you, right? And it wasn't a 30-second conversation. It was a longer conversation. And there were follow-up phone calls. Props to mom for picking up on that. Yeah. Yeah. So that was dodging a bullet metaphorically by a millimeter.

I'm going to go into this here. It's sort of you get through that. You kind of get through what you just said. You realize that this wasn't just about you. This was going to hurt everybody. You get through that. And then you say, the very next week I decide to take the rest of my year off, truly off, to hell with the thesis and focus on physical.

and mental health. That's how the entire sumo story of the 1999 Chinese kickboxing sansu championships came to be if you read the four-hour work week. So you go on a full-on year off just complete. Now my question for you on that is what about normal people, right? Normal people that can't take a full-on year off. They got to find another way to get their focus off the what's going on in their brain at their work. and get out of that carnival and focus on their mental and physical health while they're

working their job, taking care of their kids, doing whatever they have to do for sure. How's a normal person pull that off? Well, there are, I think, a few strategies and tactics that I have used and continue to use. So it's critical that people understand. It's not like I summited the mountain, slayed the dragon, and I'm done. This is a movie that tends to. like Groundhog Day, repeat itself, not necessarily that intensely, but if you are predisposed to periods of darkness, as many people are, you need to develop coping strategies. And it's not

so much the year off. It was a focus on other things that helped. And there are a few. I mean, looking back on it now, I have a better toolkit. The first is people talk about mind over matter, mind over body, mind over body, this type. I think body over mind is extremely underrated. So if you can't get out of your head, get into your body. Number one, that is the number one. Get out and move. And really, things didn't change for me dramatically

until I started, oddly enough, getting punched in the head going to the toughest boxing gym I've ever seen in Trenton, New Jersey, where I was the only guy not on work release. So I don't recommend that therapy for everyone. But, you know, one broken nose a lot of bloody sparring sessions later, I was feeling more like my old self. So if you can't get out of your mind, get into your body, I think is very important.

There are a lot of good biochemical reasons for this. I'll back that up too. And Tim Kennedy, who's a MMA fighter. Amazing. Just an awesome guy. He posted something on Instagram a month ago or something like that in Facebook and whatever. And basically he was saying, he's addressing PTSD and that sort of darkness, right? And he basically said, look, guys, get out.

Go work out. Go push yourself. And it's very similar to what I tell people like, hey, man, do jujitsu, lift weight, sprint, surf. Go get outside, get into your body. So I think that's universally, I universally agree with that statement. So let me lay out a couple of super concrete recommendations. And I should say in advance, I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on the internet.

So you may need, certainly there are many people who need. medical interventions, whether it's pharmaceutical or otherwise. In my case, a few things that very much help with or without other adjuncts. Cold therapy, so cold exposure, and this has been studied, very, very effective as a supplemental or singular therapy for antidepressive purposes. It's very, very effective. So I routinely, when I'm home in San Francisco, for instance, even on Long Island in the winter, I take short cold showers, pure cold showers.

And Van Gogh, for instance, when he lopped off his ear and was put into treatment, he had two ice baths every day. That was one of the treatment protocols. And it's been looked at quite closely in the last few years. So cold exposure, one. So even if you don't get outside of the house, that's an option. You're going to take showers, hopefully. Anyway, then you have, if you can afford it, I think, a good test to have performed is comprehensive blood work. Look at micronutrient deficiencies in

particular. So you could have, this is very common with depleted ground soil, selenium deficiency, zinc deficiency, copper deficiencies. These affect hormone production and much more and can be fixed relatively easily once you identify them. I have friends, for instance, one was deficient in selenium was going through depressive period and he started eating brazil nuts very high insulinium content and he he called me a week later said i feel like i'm on cocaine now that's a dramatic example and no you shouldn't use cocaine uh to fix your depression but blood work i think is if you get your car checked more often than you get your body checked you need to rearrange your priorities Stoicism would be the next one.

I find Seneca in particular, moral letters to Lucilius, Marcus Aurelius. People tend, if they read both, to either be full on Marcus Aurelius guys or full on Seneca guys. And there's not a whole lot of overlap. I tend to read Seneca, but I will listen to, say, one of the letters, letters of Lucilius every few days. And if I'm going through a tough period, I will listen to a 15-minute letter every day in the morning. as I walk to say get a cup of coffee. And what stoicism helps to teach you at its core, I think, or what it represents is an operating system for being non-reactive in high-stress situations.

And high stress is relative. High stress could be going to the DMV and waiting in line for some people. But stoicism is also not just something you read. It's a practice. So there's fear setting and fear rehearsal is very important. So the practicing the worst case is something that I'll do regularly, for instance, taking a few days of every month to fast. I do that.

Taking a few days every month or every quarter to sleep on your kitchen floor in a sleeping bag and eat oatmeal for a few days and realize even if I have to quit my job, even if I get fired for my job, there's a lot of concerns for many people are financial. I'll be fine. Things are fine. Things are manageable. So I spent a lot of time defining the worst case scenarios, not just being vaguely afraid of bad things happening, and practicing them so that I build up some level of immunity.

Not immunity, but it's an inoculation. It's like getting a flu shot. Stress inoculations. This is what we did in the SEAL teams to each other. You go through hard training. You put all kinds of combat stress, and it's that way when you get in these scenarios in real life, you're kind of used to it. Well, exactly. And did one of my other favorite quotes, and I'm probably not going to get it.

get the pronunciation right on this name, but Archilocus, I think it is, says we do not rise to the level of our hopes, we fall to the level of our training. And that applies to a lot more than military. It applies to everything. So those are a few recommendations. I do think I'd be remiss if I didn't mention some type of meditation or mindfulness practice, which can take dozens of forms. It can take the form of exercise, anything with a repetitive motion, or anything quite frankly that forces you to be present state aware. If you're performing Olympic lifting, I guarantee you're not thinking about your to-do list. Yeah. Or the argument that you had with a coworker. That's, you know, I think it was when I was doing a follow up for the first podcast that I did with you

and somebody asked me about meditation. And I was like, no, I don't meditate. Guess what I do do. Surf, jiu-jitsu, weight lift, all this other stuff. So that kind of falls into. Again, I don't know. because you say, do you meditate? My answer is no, I don't meditate. You don't see me sitting in a corner with my legs crossed Indian style chanting, right? I don't do that. Do I get those benefits that people talk about? Do I feel them when I'm on the jiu-suitzumat or when I'm Olympic weightlifting or

when I'm doing whatever these physical activities I do? I guess I do. I guess that's where it is. And I think my word that I go back to all the time is being able to detach. I already said it once a day is being able to detach from these situations, detach from these stresses that are there and actually going back to the book here you say I returned to Princeton turned in my now finished thesis to my still sour advisor get chewed up in my thesis defense and I don't give a fuck and I think that is a very powerful tool that is a very powerful tool

and it's got me through all kinds of things and I'll tell you specifically like oh things are going bad at work fire me go go ahead what you you go You want to fire me, do it. Bring it on. I'll find another job. I'll go do something else. You know, even in the SEAL teams, you know, in my book, I talked about this horrible situation that happened with the fractureside.

And that was the beginning of deployment. Well, as things continued on deployment, more, it's not like the bad thing. Stop there. Other bad things are going to happen. And what I knew was that I was doing the best job I possibly could do. And if you guys above me in the chain of command want to come and fire me, bring it. And it wasn't that I actually didn't care? but I kind of told myself I didn't care.

And when you release yourself of that stress of caring, you can actually perform better. You perform better when you say, you know what? And we talk about with fighters all the time. Fighters will be in an event and maybe they have a hard match and they barely get through. And then they go, you know what, screw this.

I don't even care if I win or lose. They go out there and have the performance of a lifetime because they relieve themselves with that stress. So sometimes not caring is one of the best antidotes for performing better. But it's very contradictory because you're saying, okay, I got to perform really well, so what am I doing? I'm not going to care, but I want to perform well.

But you've got to, and I used to say this with guys would deal with girls, right? In the SEAL teams, you've got guys, they're going through, they're young guys, right? They're 20 years old, 22 years old. And so they get these relationship problems, and sometimes you've got to help them through that. And one of the things I'd say, I'd say, listen, they would be sad because they'd whatever. And I'd say, listen, man, you've got to not care.

And then I'd say, you can't just act like you don't care. you have to actually not care. That's what you actually have to. You have to actually not care. And if you do that, you're good. And you can walk away. Somebody asked me that the other day on Twitter. How do you get over someone that you love that doesn't want you anymore?

And I was like, wish them luck, walk away. Don't look back. Don't look back. You've got to not care. And I think when you wrote that in the book right there, I think it's a powerful thing. It is. And I want to look at the ingredients that led to that, or at least one of them. So a key component in that entire story is after deciding, after having the mom intervention,

after deciding to focus on other things, getting the thesis done, but not staring at pages on the floor in my house by myself 12 hours a day, I was offered an opportunity. It was half joking, but from a friend of mine I'd wrestled with. who is going to be competing in the Sancho Nationals, Chinese kickboxing. So that became a focus. That became a clear goal where I knew input in, output out, you know, garbage in, garbage out, good training in, probably good results out. Maybe I get knocked out, but there's always that chance. And the reason this is important, you don't need to have a large athletic event, what I've realized I accidentally did then and now I always do is much like,

And I think you're saying don't care. Another way that maybe you could phrase it is not being preoccupied by it, right? And if you're an investor, let's just say you're not a full-time investor. How do you create that piece of mind? You diversify your portfolio so you don't have all your eggs in one basket. You can do that in life in a number of ways. One of them is diversifying your identity. So the way that I had set myself up for failure is all of my worth was set up in whether this thesis would be a success or not.

and there were factors outside of my control that could affect that. What I try to do now, and I'd recommend this to startup founders all the time, I'm like, look, if your startup is the way you measure your entire worth as a human being, there are factors outside of your control that could tank it, macroeconomic or otherwise, competitive, etc. You can't have it dictated by how well your company is doing that day. So, for instance, why don't I show you how to do a very simple deadlifting protocol? And therefore, as a result, even if your company is having the most difficult quarter imaginable, if you're putting 10 pounds on your deadlift.

Put 10 pounds on my max. Yeah, it's all good. That's a winning week. And so I try to have at least three primary goals, which would seem to distract me. Maybe for someone who isn't predisposed to depression and darkness, you can have one singular goal. for me having, say, three, provides me with that identity diversification. Yeah, and also, it sounds like you're not going to pick goals that are counterproductive. I mean, you can run a good company and still increase your deadlift.

100% and work on your breath hold. Absolutely. Absolutely. They're all complimentary. They're all going to help. Exactly. They're all complimentary. And I should also say, this is going back to the meditation piece.

So meditation is terrible word. I mean, it needs a complete brand overhaul. It's just ludicrous. It carries a lot of baggage with it. another option for getting your monkey mind out of your head so that you can function properly is to, and we had a funny exchange on Twitter about this, but is to journal in the morning. And really, you can look at morning pages, I won't get into it now, but stream of consciousness writing for three pages will very often show you how stupidly trivial your concerns are.

It makes it concrete. When you try to write it out and you're like, wait, that doesn't make any sense. I'm going to take that one step further. You want to know what it actually does? Well, in my mind, what it actually does when I'm writing something, because I now write for my own podcast, right? When you write, you are forced to detach from what you're writing. You are forced to detach from it.

So when I'm writing something, you're looking at it. It's not in you anymore. It's out there. So that is a good way to detach. It's by writing something down. That's another thing that happens when you do pros and cons list, right? Oh, I'm going to, hey, I don't know what decision I'm going to make them or do pros and cons. Well, all you're doing is physically detaching, physically pulling those things,

give those ideas out of your brain, putting them on a paper, and now you're detached from them and you can make a good decision. I hate when I agree with you, Mr. Tim Ferriss. It makes the Internet so much less fun when we agree. But a few other recommendations. One would be, and this is something that I've used as a coping mechanism often, if you can't make yourself happy. And happiness is a word is really problematic, I think.

And chasing it tends to mean you're not going to catch it, by the way. But if you are in a low state or a depressive state, you can't figure out how to make yourself happy, just try to make other people happy. And it seems cliched kumbaya, but it's like, look, something is simple. And this is something that I do as paying for the coffee, for the person behind you in line at Starbucks, can actually have a significant impact on. the well-being that you experience in a day. Something tiny like that.

Or like sometimes I'll just walk in. I'll be like, all right, it's a Friday. There's six people in this coffee shop. All right, round a coffee on me. Like it's such a simple thing to do. But cheapest therapy you will ever have. You want to know what I do? It's kind of similar to that,

but it's a little bit different. When I interact with some, let's say, I'm not a coffee drinker, but let's say I'm in a 7-Eleven, right? A 7-Eleven. I'm going in there. I've got to pick up whatever, a bottle of water. When I interact with the person that's selling me a bottle of water at 7-11 who's making $8.25 an hour, I treat that person like a human being.

Yeah. I treat that person like a human being. I say, hey, how's it going? Yeah, just this bottle of water. Thirds is hot out there, isn't it? Hey, I hope you have a good day. I just do that. Because I always see people in the world that treat those other people like they're not people. And I think that just dehumanizes you as an individual. So somebody that's cleaning toilets and is coming out of the thing with the bag of garbage and whatever. Hey man, how's it going?

Everything cool? You know, hey, thanks. Something like that. I think those are important. And I definitely, the way you put it in the book is if you can't seem to make yourself happy, do little things to make other people happy. Very effective magic trick. focus on others instead of yourself. Totally agree with that one.

Go into the gym. The other ones you put in here is go to the gym, move for at least 30 minutes. I tell this, this is like the solution to everything, right? Yeah. Oh, you got problems in your life? Cool, go to the gym. Cool, go get a workout on the next,

let's at least start there. I think those are super powerful. And to give some specific recommendations that if you're not particularly prone to working out by yourself, a couple of recommendations is going to sound funny, but any kind of partner or group exercise, and you can take your pick. I think rock climbing is fantastic.

Any kind of belay system, for instance. Any type of dance. I have to recommend dance on the Jocko podcast. Echo edit that out. Acro yoga, even better. I'm going to keep going here. Okay, we're going into the black hole here. Or it could be tieboxing, right?

Somebody with pads. interact with a fucking human being. We like to say Jiu Jitsu. Jiu Jitsu. I'm just involved with Jiu Jitsu enough to get choked out on a regular basis. No, you actually, you got a great list in here of practical gremlin defense is what you call it. You know, you talk about, and these are all in the book that you put out. All these little tricks, they're not necessarily to combat depression.

There are just things for people to maybe do better in their lives. morning rituals you got productivity tricks you got how do you face things that you're afraid of you've got the jar of awesome you got gymnastics you got acro yoga

but I'm not going to talk about that one but my point is you got a bunch of these things written about in the book which I think is very helpful to people hey I got to put this out there too just because people are listening to this if you're in that zone 1,800 273-8255

suicide prevention line. If you're there, give it a call. 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Get yourself up, get through it, brother. And if you're prone to those cycles,

also one of my very close friends, who, by the way, extremely successful CEO, so material professional success does not make you immune to this necessarily. And that should be reinforcing and reassuring for people, meaning to say,

the people you see on magazine, covers, they might very well be fighting the same battle that you are, something very, very similar. And what this friend of mine did, extremely successful. I mean, top 1% by any measurement. And he got close to the edge a number of times. And he realized he didn't care about himself, but he cared about his promises that he made. So he made a non-suicide pact with his brother because he knew that he would never break his worked to his brother, even when he didn't care about himself at all, which is another effective

approach. I believe that. I know plenty of guys, at least in my old job, we definitely all cared more about our friends, our brothers in the SEAL teams than we did about ourselves without questions. So that would be a powerful thing there as well. I'm going to take it to your little section here where you wrap this section up of the book. Back to the book, my perfect storm was nothing permanent. But of course, it's far from the last storm I'll face. There will be many more. The key is building fires where you can warm yourself up

as you wait for the tempest to pass. These fires, the routines, habits, relationships, and coping mechanisms you build help you to look at the rain and see fertilizer. instead of a flood. If you want the luscious green of life, and you do, the gray part is part of the natural cycle. You are not flawed.

You are human. You have gifts to share with the world. And when the darkness comes, when you are fighting the demons, just remember, I'm right there fighting with you. You are not alone. There is a large tribe around you, and thousands of them are reading this book right now. The gems I've found were forged in the struggle.

Never, ever give up. Much love to you and yours, Tim. It would appear that once again the podcast went into the darkness a little bit, and I think that's okay. and again I think that having you on here Tim someone that certainly like you just talked about comes across as outwardly happy and successful and loving life and having you talk about these things and having you put them in the book is it real service to people I think it's the most important thing I've ever written period hands down end of story and that's a bold statement that's a bold statement and I think the other thing is that people that aren't maybe necessarily in that boat, it's important that they learn to so that you can recognize, look for signs, understand some solutions that you can give to people. And also remember that the darkness that seems all consuming, we've seen it time and time again.

We've seen it. And it's not. It's not. It is not stronger than the forces of good. The darkness will subside and the light will win in the end. So hold on, fight on, drive on, and look. Look into the distance out there somewhere in all that darkness. There is light and there's hope and there is renewal and rebirth.

and there is joy and there is this thing, this amazing thing, this crazy thing, this beautiful thing, this horrifying thing, this magnificent thing that we call life. And it isn't easy. It wasn't meant to be easy, but it is worth every second.

To live it. With that, I wanted to make sure that I pointed out that this book, which is 700 and something pages long, actually, it's 600 and 65 pages long. This book is not in any way. This is the book is not a book about suicide. This is a fraction, was it five pages, eight pages, something like that. I just wanted to make sure that I covered the subject. I don't think that most people are going to pick up the book and say, oh, I'll cover

the suicide section. No, they leave that for me. That's my job here. But the book, what it really is is a compilation of all the lessons that you've learned talking to, all the people that you've talked to on the podcast, which is a wide range of different people. And you've taken that and distilled it down. For those of you people that go and listen to Tim Ferriss podcast and you go, man, what am I can't get those? I can't get those.

I can do it. Two hours. Two and a half hours. Who has two and a half hours? Now you can get it done in 15 minutes. You can get it, the distilled version, the peak knowledge there. And that's what the book is. All this information kind of distilled down into nice little digestible pieces,

like a reference book that you can look at, which actually, now we're going in the question zone, by the way, hot seat, Tim Ferriss, get some. Rolls reversed. First question. Can I say something first? Yeah, absolutely. So I just wanted to also note for people who might be listening to this and thinking of themselves,

while I'm not prone to depression, I'm not prone to these dark periods, the so-called coping mechanisms that you would use to take yourself from bad to so-called normal, they are also the same strategies you can use to go from normal to better or from better to far better.

They're the same. It's just shifting into a higher gear. That's a great point. And I use a lot of those strategies, work out every day, wake up early, get after it. Of course, I read a lot. write a lot

okay and you know what I feel pretty damn good right now how's that how that I'm appell I feel better and to just put a button in it also I have with using these different approaches for those people maybe listening to this and still feeling somewhat

hopeless the dark periods have gotten shorter I've been able to turn down the volume and the joyful periods the zone like periods of productive periods have become longer and brighter. And you can engineer that.

It just takes the right toolkit. Love it. This is a good piece of the toolkit right here. Speaking of toolkit, tools and titans. Speaking of the book, this ties into it, the book is filled with all kinds of good ideas

and enticing options and they all sound really good. How do you take and pick the right path and not get distracted by all these other shiny objects that are out there, especially because the path is laid out and you think, oh, cool, oh, this looks really good. You know, I'm going to do this. Do what Tim Ferriss told me to do in this interview. And I'm going to do that.

And then you get a week into it and you haven't, you know, you get, it's hard. You realize that it's hard. You realize that you don't like doing that thing. And all of a sudden you go look for the next solution and you end up jumping from solution a solution and you never get any progress because you're too busy trying to chase this shiny object. How do you resolve that? Yeah. This is a common problem. You have, for instance, in the self-help world, you have seminar junkies. I don't really do seminars, but you have people who go to a different seminar every weekend. They get all hopped up on enthusiasm, take a lot of

notes. They do nothing from Monday to Friday and they hit another seminar. It's like a junkie getting a dope hit. But they don't put in the work. So the, the way, that you stack the deck is by understanding behavior modification in a few ways. And you don't have to do a lot of reading about this, but there are a few necessary ingredients. One is, if you just look at the literature, do less than you think you're capable of doing. So what does that mean? If you are 100 pounds overweight and you are starting exercise after no exercise for 20 years, do not start off with five days a week of an hour of running on a treadmill.

The pass fail threshold is too high. So you set it. First, let's get you to the gym. That is priority, number one. So make it five minutes of walking on a treadmill two or three times a week. Let's just say. Of course, my preference would be weight training, but makes an easy example. Anything beyond that is bonus points.

When I write a book like this, which is just a monster, and like you said, kind of a choose-your-own-adventure book, but two crappy pages a day. Best writing advice I ever got. Your quota is two crappy pages a day. You don't even have to use them. But if you put out two crappy pages a day,

that is a successful day. And it takes away the performance anxiety and the procrastination. If you've never flossed, you want to floss, front teeth. That's it. Get those pearly whites in the front done. Actually, I got an issue with that.

Okay. If you break off the first, the floss and you can't floss the rest of your teeth after you get done with your front ones you've got issues well get in the game and floss all your teeth people come on so I think I think we got to get people there with the the gingerbread trail maybe appropriate for the flossing conversation but so the point is though if you want to cement a behavior you have to break that behavior down into a few pieces one is just getting out the floss and starting then the other is finishing the different components to it so if I can get someone to say five sessions is my general guy you

Make it as easy as possible so that you cement the first five sessions. Flossing to the first front to your front teeth. Generally people are going to do more But you start there do it for five days. Don't do more call me We'll send a drone to your house With shoe laces his boots have big shoe laces folks. Don't let them do it. So there's that the other piece that is very underestimated is incentives and what I mean by that is and actually a guest on the podcast, Derek Sivers, who's an incredible entrepreneur and sort of a philosopher programmer, made millions of dollars, donated all to music education. He's a real character. But he said, if more information were the answer, we'd all be billionaires with six-pack abs. More information

is not the answer. Generally, of course, there's good and bad information, but I'll give you a great example. This is kind of a ridiculous one, but it proves a point, which is, I have a friend named AJ Jacobs. He's a writer. And he wanted to get into better shape, but he'd never been athlete, never really worked out, never watched his diet. But there he is. He's got one kid, another one on the way, and skinny Jewish guy, but he described his physique as a python that it swallowed a goat physique. So it wasn't morbidly obese, but just not look enough super hot. And he knew what to do. He just wasn't doing it. So he wrote a check to the American Nazi party for $1,000. And I believe it was his best friend. This is like merciless friend. He gave this check to

He said, if I don't lose 20 pounds by the end of next month, something like that, I want you to mail this check-in, which would put his name, A.J. Jacobs, known writer and Jew, on the list of contributors for the American Nazi Party. He lost the 20 fucking pounds, is the punchline. And you can use sites like Coach.com, or Stick, S-T-I-C-K-K, where you actually create an anti-charity, so that there's a nonprofit or a charity you'd rather nuke than give money to. You can actually put money into escrow,

and if you don't hit your goals and they have referees and judges and so on, that money goes to your anti-charity. And it sounds so ludicrous. You could also do something simple like a betting pool. I know people who've never lost weight and they, let's say, five coworkers each put in $100. And whoever changes their body composition, ideally, rather than a scale, right?

But using a Dexas scan, for instance, gets the pot at the end. And it is incredible. How hard people will work to not lose A and then B, lose money. I know two guys who worked at Google, both fatties at the time. And one of them has since lost more than I want to say 80 pounds and run a few marathons. But it started with a commitment to go to the gym together. And if anyone missed the session, they had to pay the other person a dollar.

These are people who make 100,000 plus a year, no problem. And it worked, is the funny part. But incentives. Whenever you're like, how can I change this behavior, you need incentives. So give your close friend who you know would love, nothing more than to see you humiliated. Pictures of you, you're like fat ass, I'm just making this up,

but like whatever in like your tidy whiteies. And if you don't lose X number of pounds by Y point in time, those go on Instagram and a story. Like you will lose the weight, I promise you. But there need to be incentives. Humans are incentive driven machines. And so those that when now we're trying to narrow all this information,

do you pick one? Do you set a certain amount of time like, okay, I'm going to stick with this program here. your candlebell swings at night, right? I'm gonna do 75 kettlebell swings at night. Do you say, I'm gonna do this regardless of the outcome? And I think you did this with podcast too. You said, I'm gonna do eight podcasts or six podcasts.

I'm gonna record them. Regardless if I hate it, it doesn't matter, I'm committing to it. So that's sort of a way to avoid distractions on other things as well. Definitely. So there are two different aspects to that. So the podcasting was a goal, but I always try to set goals where you can win even if you fail.

So these are goals that have side effects that carry over. And Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, talks about this and Tools of Titans, actually, he calls it systems thinking. And in the case of podcasting, he did this with blogging. I asked myself, what can I take out of this in terms of skills and relationships, even if it bombs this podcast? I can get better at asking questions, which means getting better at thinking. I can start to minimize my verbal tics, both of which will help me to do research for books later. and on down the list there were maybe 10 different things that I would benefit from even if the podcast failed so six was this critical mass I tend to do things in terms of sessions five or six

times it's usually my experimental minimum but for a period of time let's just say behavioral modification so kettlebell swings or fill in the blank some kind of dietary intervention I'm going to start with intermittent fasting okay so I'm going to fast 16 to 18 hours a day I've done up to 10 days, but let's just say I'm starting with 16 to 18 hours a day of fasting, then I will measure things. It's a very, I don't want to scare people off, but scientific approach. It's like you have to know what effect something is having. So you can do that subjectively, zero to 10, how do I feel? Or you can look at things like number of reps, weights lifted. I mean, I'm off the, I have my mug of my mug of tea and my get after a jaco mug approved. Thank God. If I had an unapproved,

I'd look at all these knives on the table. But this is one of my training logs right here. And I've had these training logs since I was 16. So I like to treat most of my behavioral experiments, exercise experiments, dietary experiments, as a two-week experiment. And that's the minimal effective dose that I'll use in cases like that. And I'll always do the fewest number of things possible. So let's just say you have, you read a book like this or any other book. I think I take the opposite approach.

Unfortunately, probably bad. I'll just go as many as I can possibly get it done. So for those of you don't know, Jocko is a cyborg. He is a robot. I don't know. I'm actually just an idiot. Poorly programmed robot.

But the reason, here's how I think about it. When I'm looking at goals or I'm looking at behaviors, I ask myself, all right, I'm really enthusiastic. I've this list of 40 things that I might do. Which of these, if done well, will make the others irrelevant or unnecessary.

I'm looking for a lead domino. Which of these will make all of the rest irrelevant, meaning I don't need to do them or easier. And that is how I choose the behaviors or the goals to focus on. And then once I have those, just so I can control my variables to the extent possible, so I'm changing my diet and six different exercise routines and my sleep all at the same time,

I may not know which is contributing to higher reps in the kettleball swing, right? Maybe the kettleball swing is killing me, but because I fix my diet, I'm actually recovering properly. So you don't have to take it to that level. B.J. Fogg, Fogg has done some very interesting work in this area. But I would say, honestly, you want to get good at training yourself and this is going to sound ridiculous and it is kind of ridiculous. Take a dog training course or train a chicken. Chickens are the most interesting because they don't respond to negative reinforcement.

But maybe that's not Jocco's way. You need something you can like hit with a lash. Train a, I don't know what that would be. What do you change chickens to do? So if you train a chicken, clearly not. I didn't even know that was actually a thing. Well, so it is a litmus test. There's a couple that I'm blanking on their name right now

who trained more than 1,500 species for espionage purposes at one point. And they started as marine mammal trainers. So they were training dolphins, orchas, et cetera. And you can't just roll up a newspaper. or a bad orca and hit it on the head for a lot of reasons but it doesn't work so they have to use a positive reinforcement and we really get into the weeds with this but they also use a reward marker or a bridge which is a clicker in this case or a whistle to indicate when the animal's getting closer to the desired behavior so in the case of a chicken you could teach it to say turn

counterclockwise or turn clockwise to take a certain number of steps and then come back to you to receive feed you're only using feed but you know one of the quotes that I really liked from a trainer was you shouldn't be allowed to have a child until you've been required to train a chicken. And there's a lot of truth to that, but it's just operant and classical conditioning. But anyway, I could really go down the rabbit hole.

There's a great book called Don't Shoot the Dog about this type of training. But I digress. The point being, understanding that we're all incentive-driven, I think, is very important. And then trying to work on one or two things at a time because you're only doing it for two weeks in the way that I, the mental model that I use, and then you're assessing things.

And which, by the way, is why I generally recommend, if we're talking about diet, so someone who needs to lose 100 or 200 pounds, and I've had the chance to interact with a lot of these people, and they've lost that weight. I will put them on a diet that has the, there are three criteria that I use when I'm trying to, say, design a diet for an intervention for someone. Number one, adherence. So if 100 people I tell to do it, will I have the highest percentage of compliance possible?

And you could tell people, hey, the best workout routine for losing weight is taping bowling balls to your hands and doing wind sprints on the down a stadium stair. Well, not too many people are going to stick with that. So you look at the adherence, then the effectiveness, does it produce the desired result, and then the efficiency last in terms of, is it time economical, right? Among other things. But the point being, a lot of folks give me shit on the internet.

They're like, what? Slow carb, beans, that'll make your intestines explode. And I'm like, A, if your intestines explode, like, you're training yourself to be weak. You need to fix your regimen. But, like, B, you could throw 1,000 people into strict paleo or strict veganism, whatever your religion happens to be. And one out of 1,000 are going to make it. Whereas if you use the gateway drug of, say, slow carb diet, which is more convenient, a little easier to work with, in two weeks, let's say, someone who weighs 300 pounds, has 100 to lose, they'll probably lose between 5 and 10 pounds in the first 10 days.

So treating it as a two-week experiment, they now have the positive reinforcement and the results that will lead to a credibility for me where I can drive them to do more ambitious things. And step by step, that can then lead them to strict, say, paleo or whatever. But when you have to start with the good program you practice is better than the perfect program you quit. You see this an exercise all the time. People come hot out of the gate and they quit four days later. Yeah.

Yeah, really, I know what you talked about earlier is for me as prioritized and execute which I talk about in the book Extreme Ownership is, you know, what's the biggest impact you're going to have? Make that thing, take that thing to the top of list and start working on that one. Boom, done. Yeah, totally. All right. Next question.

All right, there was a friend of mine that was older than me and he was always looking for the right girl and the right girl to settle down with and to marry and have kids and all that stuff. And it never seemed to happen. And the reason it never seemed to happen is because he was always looking for perfection. Always looking for perfection. And I told him that, you know, profession doesn't exist. And I also had another buddy of mine that was, when he were like surfing.

And he was always looking for like the next good time. Always looking for, he was looking for happiness, right? and one time we're surfing and I go, bro, you keep looking around for happiness, this is it. This is it, man. We're surfing. This is happiness right now. Do you ever feel like you're searching too much and looking for something instead of enjoying what you have? Ten years ago, I would have said yes.

Right now I feel like I've found a few things, meaning realizations and, I view my job as testing things on the fringe and reporting back. It's like half, like, ethnobotanist might be eaten by cannibals, plus a little bit of athletic stupidity, and really trying to find the things at the extreme so I can inform the mean. And as an experimentalist or an experimenter, I view that as my responsibility, my job. And I've also replaced a number of words in my life.

So we used happiness because it's just the easiest reference point for a lot of folks. I think that the better word is excitement. So I chase what excites me. Now, that's a razor's edge. You got to be careful with. But when I say excite, it means I wake up excited and I go to bed exhausted, basically, is what that means. And I've also realized. that there are things to optimize and there are things to savor.

And I don't have a lot of trouble with that. Most people would think that I'm just like speed reading poetry and watching every movie on like 28X forward with subtitles, just to cram in as much Mr. Robot as I can or whatever. And no, I feel like I am increasingly better at the appreciation portion of the equation. The achievement I've always been, I wouldn't say hardwired for, but very well trained for. I'm good at putting goals in the sites and achieving those goals. But if you're constantly looking for the next thing, whether it's the next goal or it's the next girl or it's the next high, then you are never going to be operating in the present tense. Was there something that you said 10 years ago, if I would ask you this, you would have probably been on your heels a little bit?

Is there something that happened where you said, you know what? Did I just, you know, did you get home from a trip one time and say, what did I just do? No, I can tell you. I can tell you. It was, so this is related to something that, you know, Robert Rodriguez, who's the director, producer, writer, musician, everything. He's a fascinating guy. Also huge. I didn't realize how big he was.

So Sin City, good on the list, right? He has a lot of hits. And he said, I always find it funny, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he's, he's, he's, he's, he, He's one of the longer chapters in the book. He said, I always find it funny when filmmakers come up to be a brand new filmmakers, and they say, nothing went the way it was supposed to go. Like, this happened, and that happened, and shit broke, and then we missed this shot. And he said, they don't realize that that's their job, that nothing is going to work.

Like, if you're the director, your job is nothing's going to work. So at one point, I was feeling maybe existentially scattered. I was like, well, I'm trying all these different things and doing all these different experiments. and when am I going to figure out my thing? And then at some point, someone just said, no, your thing is going meta. Like, your thing is doing these types of experiments. And what I realized is my one thing is learning things quickly.

And whether that is cooking or sniping, I've taken some sniping courses, that's a separate story, rally car racing whatever tango doesn't matter that the approach to deconstructing these things

and learning them quickly compounds so if I get better or one I get better than next it doesn't matter what the subject area is

so that's my one thing and it just gave me great peace of mind A you don't need one thing in a traditionally defined sense maybe your thing

is as I have found being a human guinea pig and trying to train people to be better learners is my one thing And that made me feel more confident in this sort of experimental approach.

I don't have tenure plans. And that used to bother me a lot. I am no longer remotely bothered by that because I have two-week experiments and I have six-month projects. And if I do my, we actually talked about this and you've written about it. But rather than worrying about the next 17 promotions, you just do what's in front of you, in my case, say, a book project, if I do an exceptional job,

I knock it out of the park with this one thing, opportunities will present themselves that I couldn't have conceived of six months ago. And then it's just a matter of paddling for the wave. That's awesome. Yeah, but I'm a lot better at appreciation than I was along, say, 10 years ago. Because 10 years ago, it didn't matter how well I did, what I won, what I accomplished,

I was always obsessing on the next thing. I never took the time to actually enjoy it. Good lesson. All right. And this is almost down the same line of thinking. So I kind of see you as the king of outsourcing, right? But for me, my whole life, I was doing a job that I absolutely loved, a job that I wouldn't outsource to anybody, ever.

And I feel like I was really lucky. And even right now, I'm doing this podcast. You know what? I love doing this podcast. And people have sent me, hey, we can help you, you know, set up for it and help you. I would read books for you and give you notes. I'm like, no, I don't want you to help me read books and give me notes. I'm doing that.

That's what I'm doing. So is there a job that would satisfy you that you said, or let me ask you this, what jobs do you do that? I own this thing and I'm not going to let anybody else do it. The podcast, for instance. It's my favorite part of bookwriting without the book. book writing. It's fantastic. And nobody's trying.

I don't have some like suit who's paid to manage the bottom line with no creative bone in his body trying to tell me how the podcast should be run. It's fantastic. So I think that the podcast I could see doing indefinitely. And there are many things like that for me. I mean, I could see doing, well, I'll give an example just because I have to take the opportunity to talk about tango on the jaco podcast just to shave your nuts. I'll edit this out.

So the reason I stopped doing it, I mean, I got to the world championships, but the reason I stopped it. I was a semi-finalist of the world championships in Tangus. I don't even know. What that means? I can't even imagine what the world championships in tango is. I know tango's a dance, but how do you attack the other people? Like, how do you get them out of the arena?

How do you do? You throw them out of the rank? What happens? It's, well, it's very delicate. So there's points, is there points or something? Yeah, they're judges. and so on. It's just like a diving competition

zero to ten kind of thing. But the point being, I stopped because I left an environment in which it was highly competitive. I went from Argentina where there are dozens, hundreds of world-class dancers to the U.S.

where they're just a fraction. There's like seven. A handful. Right. Oh, it's Bob again. Okay. Great. So the one thing, honestly,

is teaching people, to test assumptions and become better learners. That's it. That's my thing. So that's the one thing. That's the constant through all the books, through the podcast. Don't believe everything you think. Detach, to use your word, right?

Assess and test the assumptions and get better at getting better, ultimately. That's it for me. But there are many things that I do now that I could see doing for very, very long, decades for sure, including the podcast. Good. Yeah, the podcast, we were talking about this earlier. The great thing about the podcast is, is that you can do whatever you want. Oh, yeah.

It can be three minutes long. It can be three hours. It can be 30 hours long. You can talk about whatever you want. No one's going to just do what you want. And if you've written a book, the amount of other people that start to weigh in on that thing, it can be a little bit, that's not oppressive. But it's just not as nice as, hey, I'm going to turn this on and do whatever I want, which is a good feeling. All right.

And speaking of doing whatever you want, and I know that's kind of how you set your life up, which is awesome. But to take that notion to the extreme, if you got diagnosed with a horrible disease. And I try to think of a better way to ask you this question, which isn't like majorly depressing because this is. But if you got diagnosed with a disease that was going to kill you. in a year or 18 months, what would you do with those months? So I roleplay this all the time. Not because I want to dwell in the darkness, but this is part of the rehearsing the worst case scenario.

So not only do I rehearse this for myself, but I try to spend time around people who are going to die. And when I get back to the Bay Area, I actually want to volunteer in a hospice center to contend with that. There are a few things. So I would get my affairs in order relatively quickly. They're already largely in order so that my family would be taken care of. And to be honest, there aren't many points in my life where I could say this.

I would largely keep doing what I'm doing, honestly. I think that I stopped, for instance, the tech investing about two years ago because I felt like I was replaceable. I felt like if I, in a sense, didn't participate, there were a hundred other people in who are going to step up and write a check. And that wasn't a unique opportunity nor a unique skill that I held to hopefully put into the world to benefit people in some way. But, you know, all the ludicrous experiments, some more practical than others, and the podcasting and so on, I feel like I'm putting out the best work that I can.

And I think I'd keep doing it. I'd certainly, and in the last few years, I've, after reading an essay, I think it's called The Tail End by Tim Urban on Wait But Why about how effectively by the time you're 18 and leave the house, you've spent 80% of the total hours you ever spend with your parents. I've reorganized my calendar in my year to spend a lot more time with my family, meaning my parents and my brother. And I think I'd keep doing what I'm doing, honestly, until I, until I slip, you know, end up in a pile of dust, which is where we're all ending up.

That's where we're ahead. Sooner or later. I was listening. I keep wanting to do this. I want to, when I'm listening to certain podcasts, sometimes I want to just live tweet, like when I'm having thoughts about them. And I do it with Rogan sometimes. I go, man, I should just be live tweeting this.

because sometimes when he had, who do you have on? Oh, when he had Sam Harris on, I was just, there were so many things that they were saying that were just hilarious to me. And I wanted this live tweet, but when you had Shea Carl on, at one point, I can't remember his quote. There was this, where you got to this topic and, you know, of what you would do. And it wasn't the same question. But it was somewhere in the same thing. Maybe it was about money and he got enough money now or something along those lines. And kind of at the same time, you know, he says, he says, he's.

says something like, you know, just imagine being able to spend all this time with your family. And then you said at the same time, cocaine and horrors. And I was like, I wanted a live tweet down. I was like, that's gold. Yeah, Shay and I had spent a couple days together. Yeah, classic. And which, just for those people don't have any context, he's also, you know, raised Church of Latter-day Saints, you know, Mormon, Utah.

And so I was like, cocaine and horrors, which is the nature of my podcast. I thought that was classic. It's a little things. It's a little things. Yeah, that was another one I wanted to live through because he was saying to some really classic lines in there as well. All right. Normal day to day, okay?

No imminent death that I just placed with. You're healed, my son. Thank you. Demons be gone. No disease. It seems like you've gone through your life going from all these different hobbies. You talk about tango, you talk about jiu-jitsu, you wrestle. you did judo when you were in Japan.

Now you're talking here, we show up here, you're talking about archery, right? You got all these different things going on. For me, I've only had a couple things that have made me feel that way, that thing, right? Number one is combat. That's as good as it gets. For me, Jiu-Jitsu is the next thing down.

It's this empty brain and just awesomeness and surfing is up there to, maybe jamming with my band, getting it on in that way. How come you're jumping around so much, and is there anything that you always go back to? So I jump around. I had a conversation about this with one of my very close friends, Josh Waitskin.

So Josh Waitskin, for those who don't know, he's the inspiration for the book in the movie searching for Bobby Fisher. He was a chess, well, considered a chess prodigy. I take some issue with the name. He doesn't like that label either. very good at learning just about anything. He's also the first black belt under an incredible jiu-jitsu athlete and teacher named Marcella Garcia.

Legit. Who is? And Echo finally chimes in. When Echo chimes it, he just wants to point out that, yes, Marcello Garcia is legit. Yeah, Marcelo is one of the finest grapplers in the last hundred years, for sure. Which, by the way, makes him one of the best grapplers in the hands. history of the world and the universe. Exactly.

No, this is completely true. I mean, I've, not to go down the Marcello rabbit hole, but I had the opportunity to train with Marcello and it's just another planet. It's actually, Josh invited me when I get out to New York, Josh said, hey, come on by the academy. I'm like, okay, yeah, no problem. I'll be there. So what am I going to get out there?

He's like, oh, we got geese and everything. He's like, he got everything. Yeah. Just like service. Oh, it's a fantastic school. It's a fantastic school. And he's applied his learning approach to Jiu-Jitsu. He's applied it to Tai Chi Push Hands.

He was a world champion. And he's applied to a handful of things, but not a lot. He's not as frenetic as I am. But we've spent a lot of time together. He's a very close friend. And he said, and this is his words, not mine, but he feels like I am one of the best people on the planet at getting people from zero to,

to 80% of a skill as quickly as possible. And he's focused on the last 1%. Getting someone from 99 to 100. So he works with some of the biggest names in the finance world, people who are very under the radar, to get them from, say, beating 99.99% of the competition to 0.999. And I think those are complementary skill sets.

But for me, the high that I get is different from the high Josh gets. the high that I get is taking someone, for instance, I didn't learn to, we talked about this, I didn't learn to swim properly until I was in my 30s. For a host of reasons I won't bore everybody with. I did a TED talk on why that is as absurd as it is. But taking someone who hasn't been able to swim ever and getting them in two days to the point

where they can swim, say, open water in the ocean for a half a mile, which is completely feasible. It's completely possible for someone who has some athletic background. That's my high. showing someone that the impossible or what they thought was impossible is not only possible, but in a time frame that seems

completely unrealistic, that's my high. So I think that's part of the reason I jump around is in part to learn, but it's also being able to teach someone in a way that saves them hundreds of hours and just to see their head go. And you get that,

obviously then you get that satisfaction yourself when you try something for the first time. Oh yeah, yeah. There's nothing better for me. I mean, when I figure out, for instance, with archery, blank bail practice. And I'm like, oh, my God, it's just like dry firing with a pistol. To fix your, like, casting or healing. It's like, oh, my, it's the same fucking thing.

Oh, my God. You know, and then I get all excited because I'm piecing these things together. Or, oh, the way that you train someone figure out their eye dominance. Like, if you're constantly missing basketball shots by like an inch, you probably haven't figured out your eye dominance. It's like, oh, then you shift your eye dominance. your center line slightly, so you're raising the ball in a different way. Oh my God, it applies in the same way to bowling, even though no one even talked about bowling. Those types of things get me very excited.

I always thought I was going to be a teacher because I had these coaches and teachers in ninth or 10th grade who steered me from this very bad path onto a much better path. A lot of my friends growing up, Long Island, ended up overdosing, dying. My best friend growing up was one of them, or drug addicts or alcoholics. and I got steered in this other direction and that ninth, 10 grade window is what I always thought I would go back and teach. So I love teaching.

So that's why I jump around. But what creates the zone for me is partially just that aha moment is exciting for me. So I do spend a lot of my time looking for fertile ground, so it's a new skill set. But the skill sets compound.

So the better you get at learning any skill, the faster you will learn subsequent skills. But if I had to default to a few activities, I would say it's, and I have to be trying to be smarter about this, but it's a physical activity with a component of danger. That's it. It's a physical activity with a risk,

with real stakes of some type. So that could be rally car racing, which is very physical. It could be jujitsu. It could be a different martial arts, a Thai kickboxing where I've probably spent the most time outside of Jiu-Jitsu and wrestling, those would be the activities that put me in the zone by necessity,

because the penalties are so swift and so immediate and so severe, strongly incentivized to not think of the Al-free runs are going to hit when someone's trying to kick you in the head. Similar question. Next one down the list here. Now, I was with a friend of mine the other day. We were doing some work on his car, just like body work, right? You're sanding and then you're polishing and then you're sanding again.

You're polishing it, you're painting, priming and all this stuff. And there's a certain level of detachment and sort of, for lack of a better word, like a Zen mindset where you're doing this thing, but you're not doing it, right? It's the same thing with cleaning guns. You know, you're cleaning guns. You're just there. It's just a very calming thing. You know, sometimes when I just need to relax, I'll just clean my weapons. I think everyone kind of does that.

but do you do that is there anything that you do that put you in that state of mind of that just let's let you kind of relax oh absolutely there are there are a number of them and i view them as medicine i need consistent dosing of these things the first few that come to mind a swimming now that i do for fun which blows my mind to this day because i'm so terrified of it forever but swimming laps just a very repetitive left right left right that rhythm is hypnotic for me. God, somebody asked me the other day like, oh, do you still swim? I said, no.

I surf, but I don't swim. Like, I swam enough. My whole life has been swimming. And I don't swim, like, um, on purpose. Oh, yeah. So, and the reason somebody said, why, it's, it's, and I, I said boredom, right? Yeah. Uh, maybe I need to revisit that.

So that, that boredom is, is, is, can be a positive thing. It can be. So I find, uh, this is, I mean, one of the reasons that I, this is slightly, This is different because you'd have to pay attention with this one, but dog training. I went really deep with dog training. And for a lot of folks, it's really monotonous. Shaping a behavior at a high level is extremely repetitive. And I find it therapeutic.

I love it. So swimming would be one. And here's how I make swimming a little more interesting to me. With swimming, I focus on the efficiency of strokes per length. So you've got a little challenge going. I have a little game. I have a game. Or I will look at, instead of, say, right left, breathe, and then breathing to the alternate side.

So you're breathing every third stroke. I'll try to do every fifth stroke. And I have these metrics that I use to keep me motivated. That's the little Scooby snack. So cooking, I find something I always hated until maybe three years ago. No, more five years ago. I find also very present state forcing. It's a forcing function for me.

When you're trying to figure out five different dishes going at the same time and timing everything, you don't have any slack to think of other things. So I very rarely cook for one person, meaning myself, but having groups over, we had an entire pig for my birthday a few months ago. And spatch cocked, for those who don't know what that is, is you basically splitting it down the middle and then spreading it out like a pancake and we just created this raging inferno

in my backyard with a pig and fish and all this stuff and everybody was involved probably 10 different people and I was not the commander-in-chief for that one we had a friend who really knows what he's doing but just one of the most relaxing experiences that everybody had had. Everyone came away from that

after two days of being involved and they said it felt like a six-month vacation. I think that this is a problem for me, right? In the military, starting really early in the military, you eat for time, you eat to get fuel in your system, and I'm really not a good relaxed, let's take some time, prepare the meal, sit around and eat it. I'm shovel it in so we can go to more stuff. I don't enjoy that enough. And I love eating.

I mean, I love eating, but I don't ever just sit and relax and eat. I'm always in the game, like trying to get that food. down so I can go and get after it some more. Any kind of detailed practice for me where I have immediate feedback is, it can put me into that zone. Shooting. Shooting steel, I was just...

Yeah, shooting steel. Particularly if I'm doing any type of drilling at close distance with a handgun. Although there are different types of feedback. For me, if I'm doing longer range marksmanship, then I'm thinking more about a lot of my breathing and so on with the, with pistols, if I'm using a, whatever, Glock 34, or M&P 45, whatever it might be,

the focusing on the subtleties of predicting when you're going to pull the trigger, the flinches and the stutters and stammeres that can affect the shot, and then making an adjustment and then taking the next 10 shots. I find that endlessly, interesting isn't the right word, endlessly focusing. That's another thing that the military kind of screwed up for me. is because shooting in the military on the best ranges in the world with unlimited ammunition and all, that's what you, it's your job.

And so you get in this mode where you're just loving it. And then you get in the civilian world and, you know, you go to the range and the ammunition costs money, right? You're all angry about that. And then they say, oh, you can't shoot steel in this range. And what about moving targets? What about, you know, I want things. And you just get used to, so you get spoiled in the military a little bit.

And there's some great civilian ranges out there as well that offer the same thing. that I love to utilize. It's awesome. Good. All right. I like that. There's some kind of a dichotomy between Zen state and shooting, but it's all. And Irish flute.

My prefer, I'm kidding. Okay. Yeah, that's cool. All right. Now here's another one. So when I retired from the Navy and got out and started the consulting business working, and one of my risk averse friends that was staying in the military for its welfare program.

It's a paycheck, right? And the guy wasn't, you know, he wasn't all fired up anymore, but he was in. And so he had a mortgage to pay and kids to feed, so he's just staying in. And he kind of looked at me when I was getting out, and I said, yeah, man, I got bills to pay too, but I'm going to go and get after it somehow.

And he said, what are you going to do if it, if the business doesn't work and you end up you know, you're going to come back in and what are you going to do? You won't be able to get back in. And I said, bro, worst case scenario. Everything goes to hell. Guess what I'm going to be doing. I have an RV.

I will be in my RV with my family. We'll be driving up and down the coast of California raiding jiu-jitsu schools and training and I'll be surfing. It's all good. And it won't cost me barely anything to do that. My retirement will be good to go. You got a backup plan like that? Well, let me rephrase that.

if you needed a backup plan like that, what would it be? This is one of my favorite topics. So I would say that I have an infinite number of backup plans. And the way I think about that is by doing what I call fear setting. So much like you just said, looking at my goals, the worst things that could happen, the ways I could mitigate that, and the way I could get back to where I am now, if all hell struck it once, helps me to remove the fear of taking these steps that might paralyze me otherwise. The second part is by, say, practicing fasting, practicing spending no money for certain

periods of time. I don't fear, I would say, the top handful of things that tend to stop people from taking what they perceive as risks. The other very important thing is that risk has a very specific meaning for me. And I realized early on that people talk about risk tolerance, taking risks, but if they don't define it clearly, it can end up being paralyzing and how nebulous it is. So for me, risk is very simple. It is the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome. That's it. So most things I do, even though people look at it, they say, oh my God, this guy's investing in speculative startups when it's just one guy and then idea, man, he's a risk taker. I don't view myself that way at all. I view myself as if

anything, someone who's very, has taken a lot of time to get good at mitigating risk. I'm a risk mitigator. And in the case of say specular investing, I am only using money that I can comfortably afford to lose. And for me, backup plan, similar to yourself. You know, throw my dog in an RV, get some instant oatmeal, sleeping bag, Yosemite's right in my backyard. I don't know, go to find some dirt bag climbers and hang out there. Good to go. Yeah, go hang out with my parents, get to see more of them, go for a run in the woods while I'm trying to figure out the next step. And you had that attitude when you were taking more legitimate risk. I mean, right now, obviously, you're pretty good to go. But in the beginning, when you moved out to the West Coast,

You had to have the similar attitude of because I know I did that that that attitude for me freed me Like oh worst case scenario I lose everything cool I'll still have my RV it's paid for Yeah We're good yeah totally I had that add more surfboards than any other human should ever have And and knives and surfboards we roll deep I I think I had that realization early on and of course when I first graduated from school went out to the west coast I did not have a lot of money I remember when I came out to California for the first time for a job interview, I couldn't afford a hotel.

I stayed at the Fairtex kickboxing gym on the second floor sleeping on a bunk bed with a Thai instructor sleeping above me and washed my clothes in the sink. Good to go. And I was happy. I mean, I was fully content. I didn't feel like I was missing anything. But let's not kid ourselves. I mean, when I first moved out, it was 1999. This is at the peak of the bubble.

rental prices are out of control. And I was making 40 grand a year, pre-tax. Get some. Yeah. And my office, my desk, was in the fire exit. I mean, it was completely illegal. I was, I had a pretty slick setup, but it was very low budget.

But really what I think freed me on some level is realizing, and hopefully this doesn't sound prickish or arrogant or whatever but no matter what difficulties might befall me whatever unemployment might come my way there are people with fewer

resources with less education who have figured it out before and survived so if dozens or hundreds or thousands of millions of people have figured this out I'm going to come out the other end and be fine and so that

that was very reassuring to me That is a good one. And move to the next question. Any misconceptions about you that you want to clear up? Well, you actually confirmed a misconception for everybody tonight. You said, oh, well, you know, if Jocko's going to train somebody, he's going to need to beat them. And that's like people always think that. And it's just so wrong.

So wrong. So wrong. I mean, I'm not going to go into it now because I talk about it on the podcast all the time that that stuff is ineffective. and you actually have to lead people. So that was a good misconception. You piled on. I'll now spend another five years trying to debunk that and prove to people

that I'm not a drill instructor with a lash. But it's good. Thank you. Appreciate it. Which was deliberate. I'm just done. Jocko's so effective at busting my balls on Twitter. And then everyone takes it literally.

I'm like, okay, well, I have to take this opportunity. So the first misconception, so the cocaine and horrors only twice a week. folks. It is not disabling. That's a joke, internet, by the way. So the, I'd say the biggest misconception is, and it's very understandable. Look, I mean, my book titles, I didn't expect the four-hour thing to become a thing. So the four-hour work week, funny story behind that, the original idea for the title, and I had dozens, but the one that I ended up testing first was the two-hour work week, which was about the amount of time I was spending, managing my company

at the time. And some people at the publisher were like, that's way too unrealistic. Two hours a week and I was like four hours a week? And they're like, that's so much better. I was like, yeah, ch'in. Perfect. Nailed it.

And it sounds like a product you'd see after like the spray on hair and before the rotissory chicken at three in the morning. It sounds like an informational product. So I get it. But the biggest misconception from people who have not read the book or books is that I advocate idleness. Oh, okay. And that's not the case.

I have no problem with hard work as long as it's focused on the right things. So I think of maximizing per hour output. That doesn't mean I advocate dropping a bunch of acid and like watching your cat walk around the house for 12 hours a day. That doesn't do much good for anyone. So that's the biggest misconception. I have no problem with hard work. I just abhor doing something well that shouldn't be done at all. I think that's a waste of skill and a waste of energy.

That's the biggest. There are plenty of other ones You know something too That you need to watch out for is just because you work hard Doesn't mean that you're doing good Right and there's a bunch of little Sayings about that But just because you're working hard

Getting up early and you think you're getting after it You might be moving a lot but you're not making any progress And there's a big difference there And I think that's something that people need to watch out for as well Right so the for instance I think the prioritize and execute People need to I think

that's such an important starting point. Like what you do is infinitely more important than how you do something. If you have a list of unimportant to-dos and you're killing it with the unimportant to-does, that's still a chalking up to a loss. Yeah, yeah. And you're still losing, my friend. You're still losing. So for me, when people ask me about time management, I'm like, no, no, no.

If you don't have time, you don't have priorities. So focus on the what should you be doing. And for me, you know, the effective executive by Peter Drucker is, is the classic there. Don't worry about your apps and your email management and so on. Just read a book that's a few decades old that just talks about prioritizing.

So the biggest misconception, yeah, just the whole four-hour stick that is my blessing and my curse forever. That part. This is another reason why, this is my first book without four-hour in the title. Hopefully it'll sell. We'll see.

I also lost the Timothy and went to Tim just so I don't have to feel like I'm getting chastised by my mom every time. What made you go to Timothy on the first ones? I don't know. Sounded more official. I have no idea. I honestly have no idea.

Awesome. All right. We're getting, we've got one more question here. You as a leader, right? There's actually millions of people that follow you, right? That listen to you, that respect what you say. and they truly follow your lead. I mean, clearly they follow your lead.

We saw this with the launch of, or the release, what's it called when a book comes out? When my book came out, you had kind of predicted everything that was going to happen to a T of like, yeah, when we talk about this book, it's going to, you know, people go and buy it.

And so people clearly follow you and listen to what you say as a leader. And I don't know if you foresee yourself that way, but you are a leader. Two questions. One, where do you think you fall short? And two, and more important, where are you trying to lead people? Yeah, these are good. So I haven't thought of myself as a leader, but I think that two terms sometimes get used interchangeably and I view them is very different. So as a leader, if I'm looking through that lens at myself, I think I'm

very good at affecting national conversations and steering the attention of groups to one thing for sustained periods of time. I think I'm very good at that and helping people to prioritize. If I were to view myself as a manager, I think I have many deficiencies. And one of them would be, and this has been a help and a hindrance, as many things are, impatience. I have extremely high standards and hold myself to just a ridiculous degree of expectation for perfection, which of course leads to a lot of problems we've talked about earlier. but on the flip side I get a lot done in part I think because that is is a driver that can also damage

relationships very quickly and it can in a management environment cause hurt feelings and people do not put forth their best because they feel like they are being criticized and not lauded for their successes and in part that is because as an athlete I really and hopefully the doesn't sound weird. I don't really care if it sounds weird, actually. In sports and in business, my general feeling was, and I remember a mentor early on said something like this to me. He said, don't tell me about the good stuff.

The good stuff takes care of itself. Just tell me about the bad stuff. And that's always been my personal policy for myself. But that does not always translate well to team environments. So that, I think, is my homework that and, and deficit that I've been working hard to correct for the last few years is getting better at managing people who do not necessarily conform to that mindset at all times, which I think can be a big problem when it's out of control. But that would be the biggest deficit. But if we're,

if we're defining leader as someone who can put forth a vision or an objective or catalyze a movement and move attention in people in one direction. I feel like I'm quite good at mitigating the risk of that. Because, for instance, people think that the haters, this is a very popular word on the internet, and not all critics are haters, of course. Important to be able to take criticism and feedback, but many people who are thrust into a position where they have the opportunity to lead people virtually on the internet, which is a huge responsibility, and I take it extremely seriously, worry about, say, they're detractors

causing problems. It's not the detractors, in my experience, that can do the most damage. It's the diehard fans who get the message wrong, who get the directive and misinterpret it. That is where you have to do damage control and think ahead. So I think I'm quite good at that. As far as where I'm leading people, if I'm leading them anywhere, I've always, I shouldn't say always, but for the last at least five years, thought of my goal as creating a benevolent army of super learners effectively who can teach in turn 10 additional people each the same skill set. So to propagate a toolkit that enables people to be elite problem solvers instead of accidental haphazard problem creator. has been my goal for at least the last five years explicitly. Teaching people how to learn so they can teach people how to learn.

That's right. And part of learning is problem solving. So by definition getting people who are good at dissecting problems, testing assumptions. That's where I'm leading people. Yeah, that's solid. I mean, that's obviously a really positive thing. I always talk about the fact that, you know, I want to help people learn how to learn. I talk about that all the time, and I've said that before on the podcast.

You know, teach people how to, not what to think, but how to think. Obviously, I'm not the same scale that you are in terms of volume of masses of people, but there's definitely some people out there that I think are following me in some way, and that might be a strong word, but I always, think that what I'm trying to get people to do if you're following me I'm really trying to get you to follow yourself and lead yourself I don't I don't you know lead yourself okay you see it my path that's cool my path was good I like my path now forge your path you know figure out where you want to go how you're going to get how you're going to get stronger how you're going to

get faster, how you're going to get smarter, how you're going to get, how you're going to get better. And I always think that those answers work best when they don't come from somebody else, but when they come from yourself. Absolutely. And I think also the teaching people how to learn, enabling my audience to learn how to learn. And when I say that, I mean 10, 100 times faster than would be expected in a lot of domain. That's only one leg of the stool. So let's say there are three legs.

The other two would be teaching them to dissect and manage fear. And then the third leg would be teaching them to be emotionally aware and resilient. And that I think is covered largely by stoicism if you take it as a practice and not as something to passively ingest. Yeah. And I just talked about stoicism on my last podcast because somebody hit me up on Twitter and says, do you practice stoicism? And I was like, no. I just said no, because I'm pretty terse on Twitter. And the guy kind of wrote back, I don't want to say he was offended.

And I don't want to rehash the whole story because I just talked about it in the last podcast. But he said, hey, what's wrong with stoicism? And I wrote back, I'm like, man, there's nothing wrong with stoicism. I get it. But for me to say that I practiced it or even that I learned it from studying the agents is not true. I didn't go to Princeton. You know, I didn't study. When I was in high school, I wasn't an overachiever.

I was an underachiever. I was a troublemaker. So I didn't learn anything about stoicism until much later in my life. My roots aren't, my beliefs aren't founded on what I read. They're founded on what I lived. And it's just, does it make sense? Yeah. When I look at it now and people have always asked me,

are you going to do Marcus Aurelius on the podcast? And really all I'll be saying is like, Look, Marcus Aureli has said this thousands of years before I did. Awesome. And I would love to be all educated, but I wasn't. I was just, I went down the path that I went down and experienced the things that I experienced in my life. And I came to the same conclusions that these ancients came to. So it's an interesting dynamic.

No, it is. And I think it's worth noting also that if you find anyone who is consistently good, at operating at a high level in stressful environments, the tools are the same. Exactly. I mean, if you read one of my favorite books, Musashi, historical fiction, fantastic book, it's all the same shit.

You read that. Stoicism, Stoicism, and Seneca was my real introduction, but that didn't come into my life until 2004. So it was after graduation. For those of you that want me to do Musashi on this podcast, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do Musashi, and I'll tell you why. And if you've read it, you know.

You can't. You've got to go through Musashi to get to the end. You've got to go through the whole thing to get the end. It is one of the best rewards in all of literature to get to the end. And the end, this is a, what's, how many pages is Musashi? It's 900 something. It's massive book. And it's, and you have to read the whole thing.

And it's all good. But it all comes. And it's literally, I think in my copy, because I always laugh about this, It is two or three pages from the end of the whole book. It's where you get to the end of Musashi, where you go, damn, that just happened. Yes. Oh, the payoff is so good.

Oh, the payoff is so good. And I'm not going to do it on here because obviously I'd have to give away the payoff. And so I'm not going to do that. And you have to go and read Musashi. It's awesome. And the ending is just as good as it gets. It's as good as it gets. And it's historical fiction.

But that happened. Oh, yeah. That's documented. Oh, yeah. And it doesn't get any better. So read Musashi for yourself, people. Maybe I'll give us like a one year lead time. And then I'll do it.

One year. Episode 100. Maybe we'll do, give people enough heads up. Episode 100, we'll go back and do Misashi if you, and I'll give up a spoiler alert at the beginning. Because Musashi's good when you get to the end and go, God, yeah. Is that kind of like the Matrix? What's that?

The movie. Is there like a spoiler at the end of The Matrix? Oh, does it... Kind of, I guess. Oh, man. I got to watch more movies, apparently. More Echo Charles movies. I highly recommend Babe.

It involves a pig. I think you'd like a jaca. Didn't you watch that a bunch of times or something? You've got some Babe story, right? Yeah, I do. So I tend to, when I write books so that I don't feel isolated, I will generally, I write late at night. That's when I do my synthesis. So I can do research and interviews and so on, but I'll do my writing generally between

11 p.m. and 5 a.m. And so that I don't feel like I'm sitting in a cave by myself, I will generally listen to the same track or same album over and over again for a given book. That's how I focus. And then I will have a movie playing on mute in the background so that I feel like there are other people in the room. Now, at one point, I was like, all right, I've seen the born identity

5,000 times I don't want to see it anymore. I've seen, because I was for the first book. I've seen Sean of the Dead, which is a comedy, 6,000 times. I don't want to watch that anymore. Because I'll just watch it on repeat. So I might watch a movie five times a night. Okay, let's go to Amazon Prime.

And I pull it up, and the first movie that gets displayed is Babe, about a little pig and Farmer Hoggett. And I put it on, and I was like, oh, this is hilarious. This is all right. Well, I'll pick a real movie after this. And then I was like, good God, this is a fine film. And The Renegade Duck. Anyway, so yeah, babe, I don't think you'd actually like it.

I think you'd be disgusted with my recommendation. I don't watch enough. I don't watch a lot of movies. I think you'd like Narcos, which is a miniseries. I've heard of that one. About Pablo Escobar. Right. I've heard about that one.

Then you're jumping into what, like 30 hours of content? That is only, yeah, you're looking at about 20. Then you're in the vortex. You know what? You know what I want to watch that? Like when I'm 78. I'll watch Narcos. Put that on my list.

Did you have any questions, Echo? Yeah, I have a question. Echo Charles chiming in for the second time. You know how like we're going to go to entrepreneurship? Sure. You know how it feels like anyway that it's kind of become like a trendy thing to be an entrepreneur? Whereas a lot of times like you might even notice people. They don't know what they want to do.

They don't know what problem they want to solve or product they want to develop. They just want to be an entrepreneur because it seems like it's like this cool. the cool thing now. Do you find that to be the case? And if so, is that a good thing? Yes. Entrepreneurship. I think that it is highly romanticized

and it's easy to believe. All you got to do is drop out of college and next thing you know, you're a Zuckerberg. And you have a company with billions of dollars, but that's not how it works, folks. And so I do think that entrepreneurship is a mindset. You don't have to start a company to be an entrepreneur.

And if you were to look at the Spanish equivalent, you know, like, emendres to like undertake. It is someone who makes something happen. And you can innovate within a company that is not your own, within an organization that is not your own, or you can create a company. So it's someone who makes things happen at the end of the day. So who is it in a, are we in a boom cycle?

I think if we're looking at tech entrepreneurship, Absolutely. I think there are certain experiences every human being should have, even if they fail. I do think that starting a business or enterprise, even if it's a side gig that they moonlight, is worth the education. But there's a huge survivorship bias out there, meaning, so you open a barons, let's say. And lo and behold, you see all these mutual funds advertising. Oh, my God, they've had incredible returns for 10.

10 years straight. Well, maybe they're just the mutual funds that happen to survive by luck for 10 or 20 years. They happen to place the right bet. So of the 500, well, the other 490 are no longer advertising. So you're getting a false sample size. And you see that a lot with entrepreneurship. They don't talk enough about the failures. They don't talk enough about the vast majority who will fail.

Is it good? I think that it's good for certain groups. it's certainly good for investors if they can play the game well because even if there are a thousand shitty ideas that might mean if more people a higher percentage of

say high schoolers or college students or otherwise are going into entrepreneurship that you get an extra five that changed the world at the end of the day so I am a big fan of entrepreneurship even though much like anything else that is perceived as high risk

and therefore treated sometimes with reckless abandon where people are throwing haemarries when they should be doing risk management you're going to have a high fatality rate

and I don't view that as a bad thing necessarily but I do think that and this is actually a question that Brian Johnson who was a friend of mine

he started a company called Brain Tree he was sold for I think 800 million cash to eBay and he settled huh? Yeah he settled

he settled he he shows up in tools to Titans as well but the question that he has because he's constantly flooded with various questions from entrepreneurs who want to make $800 million dollars say oh what should I do this should I do that what about this idea what about that idea and he just asks them is it an itch or is it a burn and he's like if it's just a little itch don't do it you're going to fail because for the other people out there where it's a burn they can't not do it they're going to rip your face off

And that I think is a very good question. And, you know, the other one, which I think originally came from, let me think about this now. Vander Holyfield's first coach told him that he could be heavyweight or at the time, a probably cruiserweight champion of the world. And he asked Evander if he wanted to do it. And he said, he didn't know. He had to ask his mom. So he went back, asked his mom.

Yes, I would like to do it. He said, well, is that a dream or is that a goal? Those are two very, very different things. So I think that if you feel like you can't not do it, or on the flip side, as I would probably approach it, if you can look at it as a short-term experiment where you're doing a phase one to see if you can develop any traction or get 10 friends to buy, whatever it might be,

and you can cap the downside. I always think about this first. I don't think about the 800 million I might make. How can I cap the downside? Then by all means, you're taking, in my opinion, the measured intelligent approach. Hey, yeah, throw a bunch on the wall and see if anything sticks.

Yeah, because that's not really like the trend, the fad, you know, that I mentioned. That's not really what it says. It's like saying, I mean, now we kind of have this emergence of like the grind, work hard, and now that's kind of cool, you know, the working 20 hours a week. Like that's kind of becoming like, you know,

Gary V. How you, you know, grind and... Oh, 20 hours a day, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can work. I think that you just have to be careful. What I would suggest everybody do, and I'm not sure if it's still on Wikipedia,

I believe it is. Study cognitive biases. Humans get themselves into a lot of trouble with cognitive biases. Whether it's sunk cost fallacy, you've put X amount of money or time into something, and therefore you continue to put good money after bad because you feel like you have to make it back the same way you lost it,

or the survivorship bias that I talked about. You have, there's a big difference between correlation and causation, things that happen at the same time and things that, for instance, and things that cause something else to happen. So you just have to ask, like, of a thousand people who do X, how many are going to get the outcome that is being showcased? And if the answer is, I don't know, then you should be really careful about assuming that A leads to B, right?

And for me, it also comes back to the adherence. So if I'm trying to coach 100 entrepreneurs, and if I'm talking to three entrepreneurs, it's very case by case, but if I'm talking to a class, which I did for a long time, class of high-tech entrepreneurs, 100 students, hypothetically,

I want the advice I give them to apply to the greatest percentage of people in the class as possible or to be usable. And if I say 20 hours a day, there might be one or two mutants, who can do that and sustain it, the rest are going to flame out. And for me, in that environment, it's about finding first the good program you can follow, as opposed to the best program that will knock out 99%.

But environment dependent. Now if we're in buds, okay, that might be a different situation. If you're training dogs for, say, military or police, utilization, probably a different story. If you are looking for athletes for ultra-endurance competition or 24-hour-plus competitions, you are looking for mutants, make no mistake about it. But if I'm trying to encourage the greatest number of people to attempt entrepreneurship and succeed, then I'm going to adjust my advice accordingly.

Hey, do you ever... I get a lot of sleep, for instance. People are like, oh, I got that fairest guy is a four-hour. You must get two hours of sleep at night. I've done all sorts of weird stuff with sleep deprivation. I've done polyphasic sleep where I've gotten whatever it is, two to four hours a night for ages on end. But my default is eight to nine hours a night.

I love sleep. I'm sorry, Jocko, but I do you love it? Hey, do you ever get, like, you know how entrepreneurship as like this, the trendy thing to do? Do you ever get annoyed when you see like posers? You know how they subscribe to all the things. And then they always want to talk about it. it and they use all the jargon, you know?

I would say, I'll tell you what annoys me more. I don't mind people who are blissfully unaware and extremely enthusiastic. Because quite frankly, well, I shouldn't speak for everybody, but I think everybody's been there. Like, I remember graduating in 99, oh my God, was I excited to get into tech and entrepreneurship? Because I remember this fact,

I kind of knew a friend of a friend who sold a company for some ungodly sum of money, $300, $400, $4 a million. I was like, what? that guy's smart but he's not that smart and it was a very exciting time and I don't think in that in that world that excitement can be undervalued

really I think it's the fuel I think it's a big part of the fuel the people who bother me are the B players who think they're Elon Musk or the or the once you're lucky

couldn't pull it off twice or an attempt. Like once you're lucky twice you're good, the people who had good timing and now think they walk on water. Yeah. Like the kind of they start like a course now, those kind of guys? Oh, there are a million different varieties. And I mean, I'd like, I'd love to see them all run off a cliff like Lemmings. I mean, they make me absolutely insane because the best of the best of the best. When you meet them, they don't act like dicks. Well, I should take it back. There are probably a few. But in general, they have nothing to prove. They have nothing to prove. Like, Marcelo Garcia, he doesn't walk around with invisible Latt syndrome.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, mean mugging people in the street. Are you kidding me? He could destroy all. He just doesn't, he's so far above it. He doesn't care. He's a nice guy to begin with. But, yeah, the folks who walk around with a lot of attitude and are acting,

here's the description, entitled. People who feel like the world owes them something, those people make me insane. And there's a lot of it in Silicon Valley. That's part of the reason I stopped all of my early stage tech investing two years ago. I was like, I'm out, I'm out. This is no fun anymore for a lot of reasons, but that was one of them. I was like, I'm sick of sitting down with people who have something sketched out on a piece of paper,

and now they're asking for $20 million or a $20 million valuation. I'm just like, what have you done? Hey, good on you. Great plan. I know you want to change the world like everybody I've talked to today with your photo sharing app. Fantastic. What have you built before? because you walked in here, like you're, you know,

levitating because you walk on water, and I appreciate the confidence slash arrogance, but what have you actually built? The entitlement is what I can't stand. And one of my favorite answers, I ask people a lot of the time, if you could put anything on a billboard, what would your answer be?

So there are a few favorites. Discipline equals freedom. That's one. Another is no one owes you anything. That's a good one. No one owes you anything. It's from a multiple time world champion. And, yeah, I think that by hooker crook,

a lot of the entrepreneurs and otherwise who feel entitled will get served humbled by, whether it's by competition or by the universe. So I don't have to do it myself. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think this even has anything to do with entrepreneurs. You just get people that are acting that way. Yeah, that's how.

That's just the way it is. Yeah. Yeah, it is interesting. Don't be that guy. Yeah. My brother, he goes to San Francisco from San Francisco. Sometimes he has a tech company. And he said it's interesting that it's this fad now.

Like you have like groupies of tech entrepreneurship. Like you have fanboys, you have posers to be a business person, you know? It's not like a rock star anymore. It's like, ooh, I'm a tech entrepreneur.

Oh yeah. It's a weird environment, but I'm very much of the opinion that as perverse as it might seem or as perverse as it is on many levels and weird. and unsustainable, there's good that will come from it. Yeah. The more entrance you have in the race,

it's just like the more freaks and mutants you're going to find, and those people are interesting. So I'm cool with it. I'm just going to wait until there's blood in the streets and the game's a little easier for me. All right. Echo. Yes.

Anyone wants to support this podcast? How should they do it? They do, by the way. If they do? Yeah, on Twitter and whatnot. They do. They do. And here's the way.

First off, support yourself, as I always say. If you don't know, Kim Farris, I know you know about this stuff, but I'm going to say it anyway. Supplementation. Talk about efficiency from time to time, I know. Shroom Tech utilizes oxygen more efficiently in your body. That's what Shroom Tech support is for. Understood. Did I already say that before?

You said it before. Anyway, On it has a bunch of stuff that's on it. That's the supplementation that you want to engage in because you don't want to. junk supplements so go onnet dot com slash jocco get 10% off and supplement your wallet as well and then of course the amazon click through christmas is coming up christmas is coming various birthdays i'm not going to say when mine is but it's soon if you shop on amazon click through our website you can support this podcast in that uh in that way if you're in the mood um so yeah you go to the website jocococodcast dot com click through and then do your shopping

regardless of what you're buying, whether or not you're buying Tim's book, tools for Titans, or duct tape, whatever, right? Yeah, you can buy some duct tape on there. You can buy tools of Titans. Yeah, you could actually use duct tape to make a handle and turn it into a kettle book,

as you mentioned. It's a big book. You can get Jocka White Tea, which is... When, though? It's... It's back. It's back.

We're there. By the time this podcast release, I think we'll be there. We ordered a ton this time. So you can get it. You can buy the book Extreme ownership. And if you don't have enough Jocko, Jocko does make a number of cameo appearances in Tools of Titans.

That is right. That is right. That is I am in Tools of Titans, which is awesome. And I appreciate you throwing me in there. Of course. And just a ton of other great information. I also got some mugs coming. You can buy mugs.

It was a good mugs. They say, I try to keep it simple. You know what they say on it? to get after it because that's pretty much their answer to everything, right? Yeah, and you can kind of tell like, because it's going to be knockoffs potentially. There's like an official. It's been approved.

Jaco approved. Cial approved. Some people if they get bumper stickers, which I might mention in a bit, but the envelope that comes, some of them are Jock approved. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah, these mugs, these are manly mugs. I could fit probably

yeah, my entire fist into this mug. If you get chased by a cassowary, you could probably crack its skull with this. It's very functional piece of porcelain wear or whatever this is made out of carbon fiber maybe. That's what we do. Multi-purpose. What else?

Well, of course, we have the store, Jocco store. If you like shirts, if you wear T-shirts from time to time, hoodies, winter coming up in the United States. Australia might be different, but, you know, they're the heavier hoodies. But yeah, shirts, if you like shirts and whatnot, check them out, see which one you like. And then if you buy one,

one of those that's a good way to support the podcast if you're in the mood to do so and as jaco said the trow uh the mugs hey i'm gonna change the the the travel mugs okay we're gonna improve them we we approve that there you go i like it there you go boom yeah but yeah go in there see what up subscribe to the podcast yeah you subscribe to tim ferris's podcast if you don't already you probably do most people do yeah check it out just past youtube oh i was just going to say just passed 100 million downloads. It's the first business interview podcast to do so. When are you going to start stepping up your game, though?

I know. Every day. I'm trying to step up my game. And the YouTube channel, which Echo has now begun to engage in, which is appreciated by all of us. Me over here, I'm appreciating it. So thank you for doing that. There's more videos coming out.

Excerpts. Yeah. So I do have to kind of disclose, disclaim, whichever. So I was going into a. through a camera transition phase. So the excerpts, there was a small delay on that. But the transition phase is over and we're good to go.

So we'll do more excerpt stuff. I want to make another disclaimer and disclosure, which is, for those of you see this on video, I apologize for shopping at Gap Kids for my shirt. These guys are fucking huge animals, and I wanted to feel more confident. Gap kids. I like it.

Anything else? That's it. Also, we did it, the extreme ownership muster in San Diego, California. It was awesome. If you want to come, and you're on the East Coast, you want to come, May 4th and 5th, 2017, Extreme Ownership, Muster, number two, in New York City, Marriott Grand Marquis. It's going to be awesome, and I'm going to tell you, I haven't said it yet on the podcast. because I wanted to give people the opportunity

that are already in the game and are tracking to get there, but it's going to sell out, it's selling really quickly. So if you want to come, buy now. Extreme ownership muster, you'll probably come to this one.

Yeah, it's in my backyard if I'm on the East Coast especially. You missed the first one, but it's all good. I don't hold it against you. I won't even get into the apology and the explanation. I'm looking forward to number two.

Awesome. Tim, you got any closing comments closing comment just to bring it back to the very beginning if you're feeling alone with whatever doubts challenges you might have you're not alone you're far from it and honestly at this point that if I've learned anything from interacting

with hundreds of thousands and millions of people on the blog through the podcast all humans have the same problems and at the very least you have a large brotherhood and sisterhood thousands of people at a minimum who are feeling going through the exact same thing that you are. So do not feel alone. And that's pretty much it.

I would say there's some samples up. People want to check it out from Tools of Titans. It's surreal for me, but Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote the foreword, which is incredible. He's in the book. And that's up. The introduction is up. How to use this book? So if you want to check that out, you can just go to Tools of Titans.com.

And if you want to continue this conversation, by the way, you can find all three of us out there on the interwebs. You can find us on Twitter, on Instagram. And you know you can even find us on that Facebookie boha. Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jockle Willink. And of course, Tim Ferriss is T. Ferris. Two R's and two S is on Twitter. Tim Ferriss on Instagram.

course, he's also on that Facebook. He's not hard to find. And to everybody that's listening, I want to say thanks to Tim. Thanks to Tim for coming on. Thanks to Tim for actually getting me to do a podcast. It was you and Joe Rogan. You, as soon as you pressed record on our first one, you press, you press stop. You looked at me and said, you need to do your own podcast. And I was pretty packed for time right then because the book was coming out. But as soon as Joe Rogan said it, Have you two tell me that? I was in. So thank you for making me do this podcast.

Thanks for coming on. Appreciate all the support that you've been given me and echo and the podcast and the book and everything else. Thank you. It's much appreciated. To everybody else that's listening, thanks to you for listening. First and foremost to the people out there in uniform,

military, police, firefighters, paramedics. by the nature of your very job, you are serving all of us. So thank you for that service, and thank you for the freedom and security that you provide us. And rest of the people out there, the troopers out there that have your own battles around the world, fighting against apathy, fighting against media.

And fighting like we all do sometimes fighting against the darkness to you all. Remember, remember that this isn't easy for anyone. Remember that anything worth anything is worth fighting for. Remember that the battle doesn't fight itself. You are the one that has to fight it. Remember that there's a price for victory. And that price is hard work and early mornings and late nights. And that price is unmitigated daily discipline in all things.

In those times when you can't remember everything, I just said, just remember this one thing to get out there and get after it. So until next time, this is Tim and Echo and Jocko. Out.