The School of Greatness - 170 Become Superhuman at Any Skill with Tim Ferriss

Episode Date: April 29, 2015

"You don't need to be superhuman to get superhuman results." - Tim Ferriss If you enjoyed this episode, check out the full video interview (bonus clip included!), show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/170.

This is episode number 170 with number one New York Times best-selling author Tim Ferriss. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. What is up, everyone?

Thank you so much for joining me today. On today's episode, we've got a very special guest. His name is Mr. Tim Ferriss, and he is a three-time New York Times bestselling author, an incredible human being, extremely intelligent. And for those that don't know him yet, I don't know where you've been because we've had him on here a couple of times before. This is his third time on, and he has done some incredible things in the business world, the entrepreneurial world.

He's an investor, author, now TV show extraordinaire host. He's got a show out called The Tim Ferriss Experiment. We're going to have it linked up at the show notes over at lewishouse.com slash 170. Make sure to check it out, but you can go over to his blog forourworkweek.com and see The Tim Ferriss Experiment right there. You can get it all on iTunes right now. We did something different for this episode. I took questions from all of you. I asked you guys on our online program, School of Greatness Academy, I asked you guys, you know, what are the questions that you really want to know from Tim that you haven't heard anywhere else on any other interview? And we dive into a lot of those things today. Again, some pretty interesting questions that we had submitted and we asked, and Tim really

gave some insights that I feel like he probably has never shared before, and he really dove in deep on a lot of these things. So I hope you guys get a lot out of this. Also, we've got the full video interview over at lewishouse.com slash 170. Also, we've got additional video clips where Tim and I go head to head in a staring contest and rock, paper, scissor. And I'll give you 20 points for who can ever guess what happens at the end of each one of these competitions. Again, pretty cool. Make sure to check out the show notes over at lewishouse.com slash 170. And also check out the Tim Ferriss experiment over on iTunes. And let's go ahead and dive in, guys, with the one and only Timothy Ferriss. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast.

Very excited about today's guest. We got my man Tim Ferriss on the show. What's up, brother? Hey, man. Good to be back. I'm very excited. This is your third time on, I believe. And we've talked about pretty much everything that I could ask you to ever kind of think of. I've talked about on the show. We just had lunch. We talked about a lot of stuff. I've been wanting to ask you for a while as well, off the show, off the record. And so I asked the

School of Greatness members, listeners, what are the most important questions that you have for Tim that you think would be really interesting, not just for our work week type stuff but something that um you know you don't think you've ever heard him talk about before so we've got a list of questions you know we're gonna kind of see where this goes um but also before that i want to talk about what you've got going on you've got uh something you want to promote that's coming out it's not a book it's not a book for the first time in a lot of ways yeah uh after many years of effort the tv show that i did 13 episodes uh is going to by the time people hear this uh should be available on itunes and on your website and on my website, people search for the Tim Ferris experiment. So that was basically the, the video equivalent of the four hour body. So each

episode features me doing some type of crazy experiment where I try to tackle parkour or golf or drumming was one of them, drumming professional poker in a week. And I go from zero to hopefully close to hero with the help of unorthodox teachers and then in a few episodes i actually am one of the teachers to show that it's not me it's a toolkit so we take other beginners for say uh someone who can't swim try to turn them into an open water open ocean swimmer in the span of you know four or five days they can't swim a lap in a pool but can we get them to swim like a mile in the ocean and like 50 foot deep water in a week type of experiments. And it was shot and edited by the team that does all of Anthony Bourdain stuff.

So it's very cinematic, very, very gritty and I'm really proud of it. So it's, it's been a long time coming to get everything lined up, but now you're in a half, two years now, at least started.

Yeah, at least. And it's, there's a lot of bonus content too. So on iTunes, if people get the season pass, they probably get a couple of hours of additional content. That's cool. And let's talk about that for a moment before we get into questions. What is the task that you took on or the challenge you took on that you thought was going to be the easiest challenge that was actually the hardest challenge that you're allowed to talk about right now. Yeah. Oh, I can talk about all of them. I think that I severely underestimated. I thought they were all going to be difficult. I didn't expect

any of them to be easy because I would defeat the point of the show in a way. I want people to see me sweat. I want people to see me risk failing. And I will say that I don't succeed in all these episodes. Like people get to see me crash and burn in a few. Wow. And I severely underestimated how physically punishing parkour would be. That I will just, I still have injuries to this day from that episode. Travis Brewer lets you get beat up. Well, Travis is bulletproof. He's a ninja and very almost immune to injury, it seems.

But I have a lemon-sized cyst inside my right knee right now from impact damage from that episode still today. Whoa. So that was a super intense episode. What happened in that? Surfing with Laird Hamilton was also pretty insane. That's pretty cool. Which was awesome and terrifying because I didn't learn to swim until I was in my 30s, which is embarrassing to admit, but it's true. Did you get up on a wave?

I did. Or was that a cliffhanger? I did. I did. I did get up on a wave. Did they film it? Is there a record of this? There's a lot more falling.

Right. But the point of this show, I mean, the premise is that you don't need to be superhuman to get superhuman results. You just need a better toolkit. So I wanted people to see in real time, not just in retrospect. It's for our body. It's like I do this stuff for months and years and then I write about it after the fact. This is where people get to see in real time, like how am I adapting? It's like if I tear my arm and I can't use my left arm for something and then I have to do a drumming episode, like what do I do? How do I adapt? What do i jury rig together um the iver

style so yeah it's a very very very uh fun show to put together so i hope people enjoy it if they go to i think it's just itunes.com forward slash tim ferris or they can just search the first experiment there you go or on your blog for our work week.com right yeah exactly and one of the questions in here i'm trying to find it right now reminded me of this about, and I can't find it, but I remember them asking, you know, what's the one superhero that you connect with the most and why? Because you're talking about these superhero results. Yeah, I would say growing up, the superhero, one of the superheroes that I, most of the superheroes I connected with were tortured in some way. Really? Yeah.

Most of the superheroes I connected with were tortured in some way. Really? Yeah. So Wolverine, I mean, I was a serious comic book collector and nerd for a long time. I still have probably 10,000 polybagged cardboard bags, comic books at home at my parents' place from my first, I suppose, business in a way. I collected comic books. But I was a fanatic about Wolverine, Punisher, Punisher War Journal. And I liked these, I wouldn't call them anti-heroes necessarily, but these extremely impressive superheroes or characters

who were also very fallible human beings. They had these internal conflicts. Because I can't identify with, say, a Superman, although I'm sure he had some conflict. Right. But these sort of pictures of perfection that some superheroes ended up being represented as in these comic books, I couldn't identify with. And I much preferred the characters who overcame their own internal struggles and hardship

and doubt and self-loathing to do incredible things. So the fact that like Wolverine would get his ass kicked and granted he has adamantium claws and some pretty amazing regenerative capabilities, but he would screw things up and then he'd have to fix it. Same thing with, uh, with, I guess it's Frank Castle and the Punisher. So, so which one was your, would you connect with the most? You say Wolverine? Yeah. Yeah. He's just a badass. Yeah. And I was i was so worried when uh the x-men movie was coming out that they were going to screw up the casting yeah and then um q jackman just nailed it perfect yeah he's so good perfect casting yeah uh speaking of uh overcoming your own inner battles and

adversity what were what was like the biggest challenge you were facing internally growing up for the reason why you were able to connect with that message of being tortured? I think that I spent a lot of time alone. It was by choice at a later point, but I was a rut growing up. I was really small until about sixth grade. I got my ass kicked a lot. And I escaped into books, whether that was comic books or Dungeons and Dragons or marine biology, I was really fascinated by sharks and all sorts of fish. So I would sit outside, I remember even in first grade with this book called Fishes of the World.

And I would stay away from recess because I didn't want to get wedgied or punched in the face or whatever. And I would read. So that was my escape. wedgie it or punch in the face or whatever and i would and i would read so that was my escape but i think spending a lot of time alone gives you time to uh meditate on the good and the bad and i think in excess isolation uh can be detrimental and poisonous you just end up chasing your own tail a lot more beating yourself up so in lieu of having other people beat myself beat me up i would beat myself up you know why wasn myself up. Why wasn't I stronger? Why wasn't I faster? Why wasn't I bigger? Why couldn't I go out and stand up for

myself, et cetera. And, um, you know, eventually wrestling was a huge tool that allowed me to overcome some of the types of self-doubt because it was weight class based. I could actually, I could actually win. Whereas if I was a bigger bully, yeah, if I was getting picked for a kickball team or a football team or something like that there was no way that i would be able to shine i would just get decimated yeah and then when i finally had a massive massive growth spurt i think it was after my fifth grade year and i i grew i'm not i'm not exaggerating the span of three months uh grew something like five inches and gained like 50 pounds of muscle and came back. And needless to say was, was, uh, I'd been fueled by Punisher comic books. So I was, I was ready to exact, I was ready to exact retribution on every bully in the class, which was a pretty splendid. I'm not going to lie. Wow. That's cool. Um, can you tell

me about this? Another question from our listeners. Can you tell me about one of the people has been the kindest in your life the kindest well someone who's like just always been so kind loving and generous and maybe never really expected anything in return uh the the first people come to my parents but i don't want to give the the expected answer uh that that would definitely be in first place but you know hopefully for most people that's a given for them as well. I would say there were three people who come to mind immediately. And there are many more, but the first was a wrestling coach named John Buxton

at St. Paul's. That was the second high school I went to. In Jersey? I was, no, that was before Jersey. So I was in New Hampshire. Okay. And Mr. Buxton produced very cohesive teams In Jersey? wrestling coach. He was an English teacher. He was also in charge, at least in part for raising an incredible endowment. I mean, he grew it from like 50 to $500 million or something like that.

And is now the Dean of Culver Academy. And the, if you look at the kids who came out of his program under his guidance, it's pretty astonishing to see how well a lot of them have done, even compared to everyone else in in the same class same school sure so my wrestling partner for instance was for uh for a good period of time probably a year he graduated before i did but charles best who went on to be the founder of donors choose.org that's pretty cool first non-profit ever to be on the the cover of fast company for their most innovative companies you wrestle with in high school he's my partner yeah he beat me by like one or two points every time until he graduated,

which was really frustrating. His long, lanky legs. And I'd say I could focus on that. Two other names. There are a bunch of other people who come to mind. I've been very fortunate to have mentors who've helped guide me away from big mistakes and towards better paths. I'm not particularly religious, but a reverend, actually, Richard Greenleaf, because I went

to an Episcopal boarding school for the second half of my schooling in high school. He was my resident advisor, my guidance counselor. And even when other teachers didn't believe in me or didn't think i could say get into princeton which i ended up getting into uh he was always there to support me and give me that extra bit of confidence when i was lacking it myself yeah and uh what you have to realize is in and i looking back it's very obvious you know my my my college guidance counselor at this school, St. Paul's, it's a very well-known school, but he was incentivized to be able to say to parents, you know, 80% of the students that I advise got into their first choice college. Okay. game that if you're just a normal human being, not a bad person, but if you want to be able to say that the easiest way to do that is to get students to drop their, their sites from really, really tough to get into schools to B B-class schools or C-class making that their first

choice to make that their first choice. And so that's what he tried to do with me. Interesting. And I politely left to that first meeting. I never had another one. But Mr. Greenleaf was really there to be like my backstop so that I wouldn't start listening to those voices that this guidance counselor had planted in my head. You know, no, this is going to transfer. You took a year off to go to Japan. I think your reach school should really be or your backup school should be your first class your first choice schools and then mr. Rutgers yeah mr. here if it's just like what he that's ridiculous like there's no harm in applying yeah Chris so those those are two I could keep on going I've been very fortunate

with those two people who come to mind that's cool and and I should point out though that it was there I think there are two types and this is not something that I came up with myself but there there are two types of love and support and you could typify them as sort of motherly love which is unconditional and then there's the fatherly love which is conditional like you have to uh you have to earn it by doing something yeah and i think you need both one is not better than the other you need both types in life and the u the US I think is very prone culturally for political correctness and other reasons to just giving everyone a pat on the head, no matter what. And I don't, I think ultimately in the longterm, that can be very detrimental.

That's the only type of support you give someone. And so Mr. Buck said, it's like, if you needed to go and puke in the corner into a bucket and then keep working out, it's like, all right, we'll get your puking done because we're on a clock right then come back and keep training because I know you can sure and So it wasn't always fun, but it was exactly the medicine that I needed. Yeah, and looking back. It was hugely formative for me Yeah, that's pretty cool And would you say you're a pretty introverted person then from coming up from this being alone when you're a kid? I would say that I am hardwired as an introvert so i find it very draining to be in big groups for a long period of time sure uh conferences

i find very very exhausting yeah uh small conversations or alone time i find recharging so i can i can perform i can teach and i enjoy teaching so i can get on stage and become what people would perceive as an extrovert to accomplish that. But it's very, very draining. It's draining. Yeah. I'm an introvert. And one of the questions to follow that is what's your best method for working with opposite minded people? So maybe working with extroverts or people that don't think the way that you think about things, what's your best method for working with them? Well, I, uh, cause I would say you're very unique the way you think and the way you do things. There's not many people that work and think like you. Oh, and sometimes, sometimes people work and think a lot better than I do, uh, or there are different ways to skin the same cat. And I really

don't know where that came from it's such a brutal expression but there are multiple ways to skin that cat uh and and i would say that the most important lesson i've learned and repeatedly learn is that setting expectations so whether you're dealing with someone who's more say artistic and less operational someone who's operational and less creative or chooses to be less creative, right? Because they're interested in the execution of, of a very ambitious plans,

right? Whether you're dealing with a left brain person, a right brain person, or someone who has a different Myers Briggs, making sure that the, the expectations, if it's a professional relationship, sort of the,

the goals are agreed upon, the methods are agreed upon the methods are agreed upon uh what decisions they can make autonomously are agreed are agreed upon right um how progress is going to be measured say on like a monday and a friday like okay we're gonna you're gonna give me an update on the kpis on you know this performance indicators i.e the numbers you want to move on monday and then on friday you're going to send me a recap of how we did for that week yeah and you know what went wrong what went wrong, what went right. I think setting expectations, and this goes, this applies to intimate relationships as well, personal relationships.

Yeah. I think as long as you, you do your best to set expectations upfront and do that in writing so that there's no subjective. He said, she said later that, uh, via email. So you can recall back to it via email. And if you have conflicts and I'm very aggressive and very impatient and I don't,

I don't think that's always a good thing. Yeah. I can't, I think it has helped me to accomplish a lot. I wouldn't have otherwise accomplished. Sure. And I'm glad that I have a streak of perfectionism in me, but it can make working with me very, very difficult. I'm not going to lie. I mean, I'm not,

I'm not the easiest guy to work with if you don't have that hard wiring yourself. Sure. And so the other thing for me is that like, if I'm pissed off, and again, this is just me. How does someone get back on your good side when you are pissed off? If I'm pissed off, it's, if you make a mistake, you have to own up to that mistake yeah a lot of people don't and it's just it's surprising to me that pisses you off even more oh for sure uh but i i would say that i if i get upset what i've learned is don't send the email just because everyone has to learn this lesson i've done that so many times like if you're pissed and you've had a bad day and you're short on sleep and you've had too much cup of fear, I eat coffee, don't send the email. Like nothing good will result.

If it's true in that moment, it's going to be true the next day. So let it sit and like put on your calendar to write it tomorrow or give them a call and get on the phone. And this is one of those lessons that I need to repeatedly learn. And remind yourself. Yeah. But certainly like if you're pissed off and you, the lesson or I should say the mantra that again is not something I invented, but I forget the attribution was do not, do not ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. So it's like if someone did something, don't assume they did it to like get you because they don't respect you or because they wanted to cause a problem or they're like trying to screw up your plans for some reason just assume they're disorganized or they're overwhelmed first. And depending on the assumption that you make the tone with which you read their email is totally different.

Yes. Right. Oh man. Why do sometimes I just assume and take everything personally when I feel like someone's just that idiotic? You're like, oh. Sure. And it's very, very tough.

And so that's a continual meditative practice for me. Yeah, okay. Another question from a listener. What would Tim tell his younger self if he could go back and change anything about the past or tweak it to make anything better? Is there anything that you would do or anything you'd do differently? This is a question I struggle a lot to answer because... Because you're so successful with everything that's happened. It's not that I'm... I mean, we all have our own... Well,

I shouldn't speak for everyone, but I mean, i certainly have my own neuroses my own weak points and there are things i feel like i need to work on personally i've been very fortunate in the last however many years seven eight years uh to have had some tremendous opportunities and some tremendous success and i think a lot of that uh can be explained through probably just coincidence and serendipity and and and luck i think there's timing and yeah there's a skill component hopefully a competence component but uh the i would be if i'm quite happy with where i am in life yeah and i would be afraid of tweaking anything sure because the butterfly effect and the the ripple effect of that i think is completely unpredictable could change everything could change everything yeah and i'm quite happy with where butterfly effect and the ripple effect of that, I think is completely unpredictable.

Could change everything in your life. Could change everything. And I'm quite happy with where things are. But if I had, let's rephrase it. If I had to, I would probably, I think that I would probably go back, not to necessarily my childhood, but go back to when I was really cramming and just working 24 seven prior to writing the four hour work week after graduation. And I would mandate that I spend 30 minutes a day outside barefoot on the grass, just during that time. Yes. Just get outside barefoot, be grounded, get out of rubber soles, spend a little bit of time outside every day. I think that would have, I think that I don't think that would have sacrificed anything and it would have improved my mental wellbeing and I think just general quality of life.

Well, would you still be taking phone calls on the grass? It doesn't matter. Just at least on the grass, just get on the grass. I could still be working or whatever. I mean, these days, for instance, in San Francisco, I'll batch people who've read the four hour work week know that I like to batch similar tasks together whenever possible. And I will batch phone calls in such a way that I can go for a one to three hour walk through San Francisco. Sure. And you're making the phone calls.

And if you don't need a visual reference in front of you, you might as well be walking outside, getting some exercise. And I think walking is also very, very underrated. We've made a lot of evolutionary trade-offs to be able to walk extraordinarily long distances. Even compared to other, say, grazing mammals. Like we can go for a very long time. And that's by evolutionary design, for lack of a better word. So I feel like we

should exploit that and utilize it. I like it. What is it? What do you feel when you get a bare foot on the grass? What does that give you? I think it, it, what it does for me among other things is, uh, there, there are people who talk about grounding and the effect of getting out of rubber soles that, that I think is up for debate the sort of scientific basis for that but uh it helps me to feel grounded in a more perhaps metaphorical sense and that is feeling connected to the earth not disconnected as some type of robot who's been programmed to reply to emails so just like getting outside and being like you know what nature am i allowed to curse sure uh but it's just like you know and being like, you know what? Am I allowed to curse? Sure.

But it's just like, you know, this, this, whatever bullshit I happen to be obsessing about, like it really doesn't matter. I mean like a year or two from now, like if that guy

who didn't reply to my email and I feel slighted. Right. Probably, like who knows, his grandmother probably died. Get over it, get over yourself.

Like at the end of the day, it's, it's so trivial. Yeah. And for whatever reason, being in nature and having that connection with the rest of the world and feeling not separate from it and cloistered in some type of office, uh, is, is medicine has a medicinal effect for me.

Yeah. That's cool. Another question here. I'm, I'm interested to hear this answer. Someone said, I've listened to nearly every podcast Tim's done. And Tim rarely, if ever, talks about being spiritual or having a spiritual life. So do you have a spiritual practice or do you believe in a spiritual practice or is that not something you're really into? Well, let me unpack this because this is a good question. And, uh, I would say that I, I generally

don't talk. There's, there's a, sorry, there's a second part of this question I missed. In fact, he frequently uses the semi negative term woo woo to describe anything remotely close to it. So maybe he's speaking all that. Sure. All right. So there are a few different ways to look at this. Sure. All right. So there are a few different ways to look at this. I'm not particularly religious. And I think what I like to, I like to define terms whenever we get into potential touchy territory. Of course. thing you're probably saying well spirituality and religion aren't exactly the same thing and we'll get there but when when i get into very touchy territory whether that be politics or religion or otherwise people tend to have very very strong opinions coming into a conversation that they are not going to change yes and particularly if they're emotionally vested and haven't reasoned themselves into a decision doesn't have to be religious related it could be

anything uh they're you can't reason them out of that position. There's no open-mindedness. Right. Exactly. And I don't find those conversations productive. So part of the reason I don't talk about, say, religion much, although keep listening to my podcast, there are some coming up that do touch on this. It's mostly because I want to have a productive conversation where people take can borrow routines and habits and so on from these people one could argue i think and it depends on how they define spiritual i don't use the word spiritual or spirituality because i feel like it is so overused as to be uh undefined, I don't think most people who use the word have a consensus of usage.

And I avoid that like the play in the same way that I would avoid the word sort of toning and exercise. I'm like, what is toning me? Let's talk about exactly what that means before we debate it. Sure. Uh, do I have a spiritual practice?

I don't have any type of organized religious practice. Uh, I do meditate on a daily basis one I think could argue that is a spiritual practice of some type or a transcendent practice we called if we're looking at those is the same if you look at or listen to for instance my episode with a PhD named James Fadiman we talked about the use of psychedelics for therapeutic and mystical purposes. And obviously I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on the internet, but that I think touches on a curiosity and interest of mine. And you could call it a belief that there's

a lot more out there than we perceive normally with our senses, with our two eyes, our two ears, and so on. I have had experiences that lead me to believe there's just a lot more going on around us and inside us than is immediately observable. Is that remote viewing related? Is that some inherent aspect of multiple dimensions and string theory? Is it a grand creator of some type? The short answer is I have no idea. But that is a long

answer to a short question. Do you have a more, do you have a belief as to which one you lean towards or which one you want to believe in or? I don't i don't and uh i mean i have what you might call sort of karmic guidelines that uh i choose to believe because i find them uh i find it helpful for me rebounding from challenges in life and for making moral decisions so i tend to believe that what goes around comes around and yeah yeah if you good things, good things will return to you. You do bad things, bad things will return to you. Uh, but the, those are hard to empirically prove. Uh, and as someone who spent so much time in the world of science and science is really just a, a regimented way of testing your own assumptions. Uh, it's not sterile. It's, it's a It's a way of thinking that I find very helpful

for avoiding confusion and delusion. Having spent so much time in that evidence-based world and manner of investigation and thinking, I try not to accumulate too many beliefs that I can't show evidence for. Because I think that it's a slippery slope and you can very quickly get bugs in your software that way. But have I had experiences where I have, I feel like I have touched on things that are very, very hard to explain or even entities that I have, I cannot after the fact prove exist whatsoever. Yes, I have had those experiences. And I'm very curious about these things. But I just don't accept.

I like to investigate controversy and test it whenever possible. And I'm a big fan of direct experience. But if someone tells me that the flying spaghetti monster visited them last night i'll be like that's fascinating like tell me more and uh hey if if there's if there's a way we can replicate that i'm all for it but right um very very long-winded answer to the question but uh i i definitely think there is more to our reality than than meets the eye. And I think a lot of physicists would agree with that. I think that certainly any type of, for lack of a better description, spiritual practitioner would agree with that, whether they be a priest in the Vatican or a shaman in Tarapoto in Peru. I think that they would both agree. The difference, however, I think is that

most people who are listening to the priest do not have a direct experience of which the priest is referring to. Whereas you might have more of a direct empirical experience with the latter, but it's all subject to debate. But I tend not to talk about this stuff too much because people get very, very upset. And quite frankly, I've had death threats when I, when I've, I, when I've publicly talked about this before, uh, mostly from very deeply, uh, religious people. And, uh, there's, so the risk benefit for me of talking about this stuff is just generally, it's just generally not there. Yeah.

And then you could just debate forever yeah it's like look i have i have tons of friends who are deeply religious but i surround myself with people of all sorts of diverse opinions and backgrounds but what they share in common is an open-mindedness yeah and that's important like we can sit down and i can completely disagree with say how someone behaves in their marriage. But if they're willing to like come to bat and defend it, but they're still open-minded, like, okay, I'm open to being convinced that there are other ways to do things. And I take the same open-mindedness. Great. It's a cool conversation.

Exactly. Yeah. That's cool. Another question. What are you afraid of most? And what's your brain's mechanism for handling that fear or any fear? What am I afraid of most? And what's your brain's mechanism for handling that fear or any fear? What am I afraid of most? Afraid of getting eaten by sharks.

Because you live on the ocean right now. I live on the ocean and I've spent a lot of time studying sharks. That's why you haven't gone to the ocean. And I have, well, you know, I don't think I've told you this. When I was in South Africa at one point in Cape Town, my brother and I were going to go surfing. And we called it off at the last minute and literally about like 15 minutes later a guy 500 feet down the beach was bitten in half no way by a great white by 16 foot great white shark and one of my fans actually saw it live and we did

he's like holy shit just saw a guy get bitten in half by great white shark my gosh yeah and this he was in chin deep water so that's that's one that it's good I do have a persistent fear of being eaten by sharks, but if it happens, man, is that why you haven't gone in? Uh, part of the reason, quite frankly, there are a good number of sharks around here, including, uh, Manhattan beach in particular, but, uh, especially when you see dolphins going over and seal, I mean, where there are seal, there are generally predators that like to eat seal. So I, uh, so how do you handle that then?

Well, in that particular case, I'm going to go swimming, but I'm going to do it when there are other humans further out who might be more sitting ducks than myself. Use your bait. Use your bait. But that's not something that's a persistent fear. I think that I worry, and maybe that's the same thing, about watching my parents get older and about getting older myself. I don't worry about death. I worry about the descent before death. Do you mean not being able to do certain things or as you get older, to be physically active? Exactly. Just the decrease, the slow decrease and descent into sort of senescence and being non-functional.

And just be like, well, it's my time. Physically or mentally. It's coming soon. And I watched both my pairs of grandparents with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. So tough. And so I worry about that more than the end, so to speak. Do you think it's, I mean, I think I listened in your episode with Peter Thiel where he talked about his mission is now to like figure out how to extend life

basically or how to like live longer. He's like, I feel like most people either accept it or whatever, but he's, he doesn't accept it. He said something like that, right? Do you believe? He doesn't accept it. Yeah. And, uh, and there are a number of very fascinating, uh, thought leaders in Silicon Valley and elsewhere who are getting very strongly involved financially and otherwise in backing technologies and companies they think have a shot at extending functional lifespan. I haven't publicly announced this yet. I'm getting very involved with one of them. Wow. And I'm doubling down and tripling down in a very serious way

the news on that will come out shortly i'm sure but i'm not sure i think that it's up in the air as to as to the future of some of these technologies and how quickly they will be safely applicable yeah to a a even a even a small subset of the population yeah and uh but i'm curious to see it you know i think that ai and autonomous cars and all that that that is going to come a lot sooner than people expect and with that i mean hopefully we're gonna be we're gonna people think when chris wilde talked about you know nanobots in the blood 10 years ago 15 years ago people thought it was it was crazy talk it was just nonsense and i think we'll be there very, very shortly. And now the, what effect that will have on aging per se, which is really a combination of many, many different factors that kind of go sideways.

Sure. Um, who knows? I think, I think we, we like to believe we understand the human body better than, than we actually do. It's very complicated. Yeah. The body is very complicated. Yeah. It's like if you can't solve cancer, how are you going to prevent people from dying? Right. Exactly.

I mean, how many billions, trillions maybe have been spent on cancer research? That's true. That's true. Now, if you could take something that would extend your life for another 100 years safely and in a healthy way, would you? Probably. Just because, I mean, this is going to sound really, really morose and depressing, but I mean, if I could always Hemingway myself, if I was like, you know what, I'm done with this, right? We're going to be boiling in our skin because we didn't take care of these following

environmental issues. I suppose it's easier to end it than to extend it. So yeah, sure. Why not? Sure. Okay. Nice. Okay. Someone asked about lucid dreaming experiences. How can you replicate for clarity on vision and capacity for carrying out life goals in lucid dreaming experiences? And have you done a lot of lucid dreaming yourself? I have. Yeah. Lucid dreaming, I think is an incredibly underrated tool. And this actually comes back to the spiritual mystical experiences because you can have some very unusual experiences in lucid dreaming that make you question whether or not you are really dreaming in a lot of ways. But lucid dreaming for those who are not familiar

is becoming conscious of the fact that you're dreaming while you're dreaming. And most people have had this experience like, oh, I'm dreaming Weird. And then they wake up. What you can learn to do over time, and there was a professor, I think it was a professor at Stanford named Stephen LaBerge, who wrote a very good book, which is a good primer on this, called Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. And actually, if people Google Lucid Dreaming 101 and my name, I wrote an article on this. There are very pragmatic ways you can initiate and extend the duration of lucid dreaming. And I got to a point in high school, late high school and college where I could experience three or four different sessions of lucid dreaming that roughly coincide in one night, which roughly coincided with my periods of REM sleep.

And I would use those for instance, to, this is sounds nuts, but since I could extend the duration, I would actually, I was training for, uh, for nationals and wrestling at that point in high school. And I would train with an Olympian named John Smith in my dream on low leg attacks and it's very specific types of techniques with him in my lucid dream to get additional training time that I would hopefully take onto the mats the next day. And it transferred pretty well, which is insane. That's cool. But if you think about the benefits of visualization, well, if you, if, if you take the documented performance benefits of different types of guided visualization and you translate that into lucid dreaming. Well, now you have a full century kinesthetic reproduction.

Wow. Not just visualization. It's like you actually experienced it. Yeah. You're basically. Exactly. In your dream. That's powerful.

Yeah. So that is just one of many different applications. I think of lucid dreaming. That's cool. We talked about it. You talked about visualization in the previous podcast, one of the previous two we did. So I'll have that linked up as well for people to hear that one. Yeah.

But lucid dreaming, I'd encourage everybody to, to check out. And, uh, it's, it's a very meditative practice. Also when you, the way that you get good at lucid dreaming i won't drag on too long with this but you have to get very very astute at distinguishing between a dreaming state and a waking state and there are ways to do that like looking at uh the direction of that bricks are laid in a floor pattern for instance and if you look away and look back if it's a dream the orientation will very often change or a digital watch display or any type of writing, you look away, you look back because your mind is recreating the landscape constantly, the writing will change. And when you get good at this type of observation, you become very calm because you're generally doing

what are called reality checks several times per day of that type. And it's like hitting pause and checking in with yourself and your surroundings. So it's a very, it's a very meditative practice. I find the benefits of lucid dreaming training to be very similar to meditating twice a day. Very similar. That's cool. So just talking about it makes me want to get back. That's cool. And someone, someone asked another question about dreams asking, uh, you know, you speak many languages. What language do you dream in? Usually English.

I have had dreams in other languages, but almost always in English. Yeah. Okay, cool. I wanted to ask the question. Someone asked a question about being lonely. You talk about how being lonely is often a big downfall of being a writer. So how do you deal with loneliness? Being an introvert as well. Yeah. You know, it's a constant challenge for me because I want to recharge on my own,

but it's easy for me to fool myself into thinking that that's what I need when in fact, I need to get out. And we've talked about acro yoga but doing some type of of communal activity whether that be joining a pickup or i shouldn't say pickup but like a club a club sports team of some types like soccer or uh you play once a week dance lessons i think physical contact not I mean, it could be sexual, I suppose, but some type of, of physical contact. And this comes back to the, the feet on the grass,

just like getting back, getting out of the prefrontal cortex and doing something that is very, uh, sort of gratifying on an ape like level, uh, dancing, acro yoga, playing.

Yeah. Jiu Jitsu, something that has some element of physical play and touch, I think is hugely restorative. Sure. So I try to do more of that. It's a lot easier where we are. I mean, right now we're in Southern California. Yeah, it's a lot easier than in some places where you're freezing your ass off. Or even in San Francisco, where it can get really chilly. I like to do it outside. So it's been part of the reason that I'm spending more time here in Southern California is for that reason. I think when people think of becoming happier or I'm not convinced that that alone is a great goal.

But for people who want to increase their quality of life, they think a lot about what to do, who to spend time with. The where of happiness I think is very underappreciated and underexamined. So the location in which you plant yourself often dictates a lot of those other elements, right? So it's kind of the lead domino. And so for me, I've been experimenting with that type of sort of geographical focus and yeah, SoCal is pretty hard to beat. It's pretty sweet here. I'm curious, two questions, I guess this might be a trick question for you. What's the best investment you've ever made in yourself? And then what's the best investment you've made in someone else? That's a tough question. Best investment I've made in myself

would be anytime I schedule and record workouts consistently. That is just the scaffolding that allows me to do everything else more effectively. So anytime I get serious about training, all the other pieces fall into place. But despite that fact, it's very easy for, I think, everyone to drop that hat as soon as things get a little hectic. They're like, no.

I don't have time to work out. Exactly, which is exactly, it's completely the most counterproductive decision to make yet. It is a sin that I commit repeatedly. So I have to video tracking it but having a system for determining progress or lack thereof planning etc it just gives me positive feedback in a very concrete way that compels me to continue doing it and i also think that exercise allows you to diversify your identity a bit so what i mean by that is if you have all of your eggs in the one basket that is the book you're working on or the startup you're working on or fill in the blank. Or your family. Or your family. If you have all of your eggs in one basket, if anything takes

a turn for the worse, and it could be for factors outside of your control, you can become depressed and your self-esteem can take a huge hit. you can feel like a failure. I find it helpful not to scatter your focus, but to have a couple of buckets or baskets, maybe even two, but where if you have a good day or a good week in the gym and you know it's good because you've been tracking it and you put 15 pounds on your deadlift or whatever it might be, even if other things go sideways, you can feel like you succeeded for that week. Yeah. I like that. Um, in terms of the best investment in other people, I mean, I view my books as an investment

in other people and maybe that's a cop out, but I do one-on-one work with a lot of startup founders, for instance. And I do, uh, work with charities like build where I've taught entrepreneurship classes to at-risk youth in Oaklandland and i've done that type of thing but if i'm looking for the archimedes lever that allows me to not just help other people but provide them with a toolkit that allows them to hopefully be far better than i am at whatever i'm teaching i think the the books are that that lever for me so i'd say uh i i view the the books I don't write for me, the books I write for that purpose explicitly. I want them to be a guidebook

that help the readers to far exceed whatever I've done with the tools that I'm sharing. Do you have an idea for a future book? I always have ideas for future books because it's infliction. And I write the books because i only write books when i feel like it's easier to write the book than to keep it in my head as this nagging voice if if the book has to be written then i'll write it but i write i find i find writing very

very difficult so there are a couple of ideas i'm kicking around nothing that i'm prepared to share just yet but they would uh there would be no four hour at the beginning of the title. There you go. And it would be very different from my previous books. Okay. Very different. What do you think is the number one skill or assets that some, that everyone should have that will always further them in life? If they could, if you'd say there's one asset and skill that you need to have in your life for business relationships, whatever it may be being a good writer, good communicator in the written word. Yep. And, uh, I don't think it's hard to improve that. I think that, uh, a regular practice of writing, it could be journaling in the morning for five to 10 minutes with something like morning pages. Uh, people can Google that. Uh, you can actually Google what my journal looks like. So what my

journal looks like literally, and then my name and some examples will pop up. But having a regular writing practice, and it could be just an assignment that you give yourself once a week, and you're going to write three to five pages, and then you're going to pay someone to edit it or to review it. And that could be a teacher at a local college who does, say, creative writing classes, or it could be a friend who's a lawyer at a local college who does say creative writing classes, or it could be a friend is a lawyer or a lawyer. Lawyers are very good at it. Not, not all of them, but they're, they're very good at spotting sloppy language or sloppy thinking words that are unnecessary

words that are easily confused. And, uh, just that practice of tightening up your writing will tighten up your thinking. And so if you want to improve your thinking, the most concrete, tangible way to do that, that is easy to manage is having a regular writing practice of some type. And the goal isn't to become a better writer. The goal is to become a clearer thinker. And no matter what you are doing in life, you are going to have to, especially in a digital world where, where email is going to remain King for the foreseeable future. And if not email, it's going to be text. There will be a text component, uh, because people can answer it asynchronously. Then you need to be a compelling communicator. And, uh, there's a book called on writing. Well, that I think is a very good investment for people. And there's a book called On Writing Well that I think is a very good investment for people. There is a book called Bird by Bird, which is hilarious and very, very good for dealing with some of the neuroses that writers have, particularly if you're interested in're, they're two. So written and verbal communication. Written and verbal. Uh, there's a program called secrets of power negotiating by, I think it's Roger Dawson. And the audio version is exceptional to listen to because you, you are able to pick up the nuance of the intonation and the delivery. Uh, and then you role play that. And I mean, really you, I'm blanking on my quotes here. Arculocus, I think it was a, it must've been a Greek of some type, general perhaps,

let's just say as a general. But his quote, and I'm paraphrasing this, was something along the lines of, we do not rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. And you have to practice. You can't expect to read a book on negotiating, walk into a huge negotiation that you're nervous about and knock it out of the park. You have to role play it. You have to practice.

So I think the one asset would be honing your clarity of thought by some type of regular writing practice. Sure, I like that. As two guys sitting here, former bullied elementary school kids here, what do you think are some good ways to increase confidence for anyone? Or what are some ways that you did to increase confidence along the way? And what are some things other people can do? Increase confidence for people in general or for kids? In general. Let's say adults, people listening 18 and up. I, I really think that I think that positive thinking is overrated.

So what I mean by that is, uh, or let me phrase that a different way. I think positive thinking is necessary, but not sufficient. So what I've noticed, and this is very common, for instance, in the meditation world, you'll see people, I mean, I've met some tremendous meditation teachers and some of them defy this description, but they're outside of the action, right? So they're at a monastery, they're somewhere very, with minimal inputs in there the the picture of patience and calm and so on but i've seen some of those traffic all day long exactly when you throw them into the front you know onto the front lines and people are telling them to fuck off and they're honking behind them they lose their shit and i think that you need to make yourself

uncomfortable so if you have a, and that's why in the four hour work week, these comfort challenges are so important. I mean, and they seem silly, but there's a, there's a very, there's a very, uh, transcendent, uh, or important benefit that you get from say, going into a Starbucks and laying down on the floor for 20 seconds and not saying anything to someone and then just getting back up. And that's a comfort challenge. Most people do not want to do it and they'll do that and they'll get up and they'll be like, wow, I was so nervous about that and nothing bad happened. Exactly. And when you expand your sphere of comfortable action by doing things that make you marginally uncomfortable, you get better at asking

yourself and answering the question, what's the worst that could happen? And you realizeally uncomfortable, you get better at asking yourself and answering the question, what's the worst that could happen? And you realize, not much. Like really, I've done all these other things I thought were going to be these horrible experiences and I was totally fine. Sure. Great. So let me try A, B, or C that I am worried about or was previously worried about. So I think that you have to inoculate yourself against fear by exposing yourself to fear. It's the only way it's the only way you can do it. Yeah. When I was, uh, I think it was 15 or 16 in the summer going to like junior year of high

school, I was really, I was starting to like get into my body and I was terrified of women still like I could talk to them, but I couldn't go up to strangers. Right. And, um And I remember being like, I'm sick and tired of not being able to talk to girls because this is pissing me off. When all these other guys are like able to talk and just go up and have fun, I couldn't do it. So I gave myself this challenge and I wish I would have read the book. The book would have came out, you know, 15 years ago, I could have done it. But I gave myself the challenge of every time I see a girl that makes my heart flutter or that I'm like nervous by, I have to go up to her and ask her for a number and start a conversation with the intent of asking her for a number. Yeah. And I'll tell you what, man.

At the end of the summer, I was really good. It was so terrifying the first week. Yeah. Because I was like, what's going to happen? They're going to reject me. They're going to laugh at me. They're going to talk about me. But it wasn't that bad.

Yeah. Even when I did fail, I was like, oh, well onto the next girl. Right. Exactly. And I really believe in that. It's a practice. It's a practice. You can't, I don't think you can, your subconscious is really, really on point and honest in a lot of ways. And you can't fool yourself into being confident just by repeatedly telling yourself to be confident. You've got this. You've got this. You have to incrementally do things that make you routinely uncomfortable.

Yeah. I like that. So it's like one that actually in the TV show, in the Tim Ferriss experiment, so one of the episodes is on building a business. And so Noah Kagan and I of- AppSumo. AppSumo. I love Noah.

Yeah. Tutored this woman. I'm not going to spoil all of the details, but, uh, absolutely. I love Noah. Yeah. Tutored this, this, uh, woman, I'm not gonna spoil the, uh, all, all the details, but he was building a business. And one of the things he had her do like right on the spot, she had no, no prompting for it. He's like, all right, go inside and get a coffee and ask for 20% off and see if you can get 20% off of your coffee. Just, just, and, uh, so download the episode to see what happened. Yeah, exactly. Oh, there's a lot more. 20% off of your coffee. Wow. Download the episode to see what happens. Yeah, exactly.

There's a lot more. Yeah, you want to talk about comfort challenges. There's a lot in that episode. Wow. But just the act of doing these little things that make you uncomfortable. I like that. Hugely, hugely valuable. I like that. Very cool.

I want to get to a few last questions. One that you ask, I think sometimes I've heard you ask this at the end of your episodes is I think you say the question like, I'm going to ask you something and then you just give me the first response. And one of them is punching someone in the face. I think that's a question you ask, right? Whose face comes to mind when you think of the word punchable? So who is that for you right now?

Oh, man. You know, and I realize why this is a tough one to answer because people don't you know there's another expression friends come and go but enemies accumulate and uh let me think about that i'll give you a real answer so um i'll give a general answer and uh but it's true and this this is i've've really, I feel like I've aged 10 years just fighting this battle internally. Pretty much every kind of mid-level big company bureaucrat who's tried to veto creative decisions of mine makes me so furious. It's hard to even verbalize how angry that makes me. game they've never had they've never had to stand on stage and risk getting booed they've never had to put out something and risk uh not even getting booed but just getting crickets they've never they've never had to like stare down the barrel of the gun and potentially bite that bullet they've never had to do it yeah and so for them to veto or interfere with any creative decision my part just makes me fume and uh. And I'm not saying it's helpful

for me to fume, but that's my response. So definitely makes me want to punch. Wow. Okay. And kick and elbow and knee and stomp in the hole. So far, haven't acted it out. Another question, if you were given, let's say $50 billion right now, handed to you, and someone said, the only thing you can do is use this to help the world. What would you do to help the world with that money? You couldn't use it for yourself, but you had to use it for- $50 billion. First thing that comes to mind is focusing on the global literacy XPRIZE or something very closely aligned with that. So determining how to create a software program that is open source,

that can be put onto smartphones, any type of say Android device and beyond that allows children in any country in the world to develop basic literacy and numeracy skills without a teacher. So software that they can pick up, figure out, that will take them through the teaching of these things in some type of compelling way

that competes well against all the other things they can access. I think that that would be the first place I would focus. But quite frankly, I would get a bunch of people in the room who are smarter than I am, who have had to make decisions like this. Uh, maybe not with 50 billion, but, uh, with billions certainly. And I would sit down and be like, okay, what's, what's, what are the biggest mistakes that people make when they're put into this situation? And, uh, but I think the, the,

the building, I would basically take my goals that I have already with the books and for our chef and with the Tim Ferr 4-Hour Chef and with the Tim Ferriss experiments, TV show, all of these are aimed at providing people with a superior toolkit that makes them world-class innovators and problem solvers. And if you can take hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people who currently do not have the capability to be far-reaching problem solvers because they don't have basic literacy and numeracy. And you provide that to them. It also helps prevent, I think, a very large percentage of them from becoming problems. And they become contributors

instead of just pure consumers. So that would be where I would focus, at least offhand, that's the first thing that comes to mind. Okay. I consider you probably one of the most elite problem solvers out there. And yeah. And besides the, the not having a solution of living forever, what's the one problem you have yet to solve that eats you the most eats at you the most. Uh,

how to do side splits like van damme between two chairs that is pretty sweet although i don't think you could do that it's been on my to-do list for 30 years but uh i think i may just have to give up on that i there isn't really any pragmatic benefit to me doing that but i've always fantasized about being able to do it okay blood sport style but the uh other problem that i haven't been able to solve well i'm working on it but uh quite frankly and this is not something i expect people to sympathize much with but um i'm good at saying no i have to get 100 times better i mean i say no to 99 out of 100 things that come my way yeah but i have to get to the point where i'm saying no to 999 out

of a thousand things yeah i mean i saw your email yeah backlog it's just even with all the filters all the structures uh the assistants the gatekeepers even with all the responders even with all of that the volume is is incredible and i think that so how do you solve that i have to create systems and i also have to i think ultimately upset a lot of people. And I'm not used to that. Uh, I I'm accustomed to being able to sort of politely decline a lot of things and some people will take it personally, but it's going to have to get to a point where, uh, nobody on my team even acknowledges receipt of 99% of what we get and people will get very upset by that. Wow. And, uh, it's, it's, it's an interesting, it's an interesting transition for me. I mean,

there's a great book written by Derek Sivers. I think it's Anything You Want. I could be blanking on the title. It's very, very short. Derek Sivers is a fascinating guy who built up a company called CD Baby, sold it for, I think it was 24 or 27 million, gave most of its charity, as I understand, and just like a philosopher king of the first class, a really fascinating guy. And one of his chapters, which I think started as a blog post, but he talks about it. He talks about the few situations he's been in and then saying no, if it's not a hell yes. So if it's not a hell, like an enthusiastic hell yes, it's a no. I like that. There's nothing in between. It's not okay. Ping me in two months. It's not maybe, why don't we talk about it next quarter? If it's not like, oh my God,

I have to do this right now. It's a no. It's a no. And that's interesting that you end up having to throw out a lot of very cool opportunities. If you take that lens, it's not a hell. Yes. Right. And particularly when, let's say I get a cool opportunity to come to me or even an email introduction from somebody i know yeah but it's one of 999 other such introductions if i even reply oh my gosh uh it'll turn into another two or three emails yeah very oftentimes no because people have been taught to be persistent and i will tell you with busy people being overly persistent is not a good thing. You have to hear the message. And in retail, it's location, location, location. With reaching out to busy people, it's timing, timing, timing. Like wait until the timing is right. And how is the timing right? For instance, like if I want to reach out to a A-list celebrity to be on my podcast,

I am going to try to figure out through back channels or their managers or whatever, when they are going to be doing press junkets to promote something they're doing, because that is when they'll be scheduling all of this stuff. And I will not waste my breath and infuriate the team by trying to be insistent outside of those pockets of time. Because they are just as busy, if not more busy than I am. Yeah. So that was a long, long answer. But the saying no, I have to get much better at. And I think I'm going to have to publish pretty soon a couple of sort of public declarations of email bankruptcy. I'm taking a startup vacation for the next six months.

Like, don't send me any email intros, et cetera, et cetera. And if you emailed me in the last six months, I'm not getting back to you. Sorry, I can't get back to you. Yeah. Amazing. And it's going to piss off a lot of people. But I think at the end of the day, there is a point where you have to choose between your own sanity and pleasing everyone else and pleasing everyone else. And even if you try to please everyone else, you can't. So it's really no choice at all. You please yourself. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Or just save yourself as a starting point. Um, yeah, I think, but was it Warren Buffett who said the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no, almost a hundred percent of the time. Yeah. He said that. And then also I think it was Steve jobs who said, uh, Oh God, it was, and I'm, I'm, I'm misquoting, but it's something along the lines of, you know, to, to do anything great, you have to say no to a thousand things and say no, say yes to one thing. Yeah, exactly. So that's something that I think I'm very good at. I'm better than, I think the vast majority of people I've bumped into, uh, generally, and that's by training, not by any innate ability. It's just through training, but I have to get better. Yeah. Okay.

All right. A couple of quick questions left. One is if all of your books and all of your writings were deleted, everything you've ever put out there on a blog post, it's the last day of your life, 150 years from now, because you've extended it and everything's deleted. And you had three truths about life to write down and pass on to your family and to the world. What were those three truths? Jesus, man. All the information you've learned, all the stuff you've written,

the millions of books you've sold, what are the three things that you would say are true about life as you know it? Yeah. That is a very large question, Lewisis i said it was a quick answer yeah uh long pause followed by a short answer it doesn't have to be perfect but what comes what comes up for you i'll give you two so the first two that come to mind are you're the average of the five people you associate with most like that you know financially physically emotionally and if someone tells you you have to do something or should do something ask them ask them for the evidence ask them what evidence suggests that and uh the underlying theme

being test assumptions you have to test assumptions i have to do this or this really like what evidence do you have that suggests that that I'm limited to those two options and if they can't answer you they don't then you shouldn't take that advice all right there's a lot of speculation and just just making up of the rules as we go along and I think that people people get trapped in prisons of their own making because they accept limitations that other people place on them or that they place on themselves just as often. So if you or someone else says you have to do X or you should do Y, ask what evidence is there to support this.

Okay, that's great. Do you have one more that came out the top of your mind? One more truth? Treat health is number one because without it, everything else will fall apart. And with it, everything else becomes easier. I like that.

Very cool. Three books you'd leave behind. If you could only leave three besides your own, what would the three books that you would recommend if, you know, you couldn't even have three truths and no writings, but you're just like here, family and friends,

three books is all you get. What would that message be? It's toughy. The first three that come to mind, I mean, I'm a book lover. There are many, many books that I love, but the first would be Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. The second would be Zorba and the Greek, or I'm sorry, Zorba the Greek, excuse me, Zorba the Greek, which is a novel with a lot of similar messages, I feel. A close cousin to that would be Vagabonding. So I'll give one.

What you gave to me I have over here somewhere up on the shelf. It's a great book. So Letters from Stoic by Lucia Seneca, which is 2,000 plus years old. Then Zorba the Greek. And then last, just one for, I suppose, business career purposes, the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

That's a good one. Yeah. Very cool. I think those will take people pretty far. Very cool. I like it. Well, okay. Let's wrap it up.

Again, make sure to go to your site but also to itunes and get the show yeah definitely definitely so the tim ferris experiment you can search for it on itunes or it should be available if you go to itunes.com forward slash tim ferris also very cool but when in doubt you can just search search the tim ferris experiment it should pop up somewhere it's on your blog as well yeah and what what is a question you want to ask for the listeners that they will answer on the comments of just about any question you may have? Yeah, for sure. Well, sort of in the, in the spirit of the show, trying to show people that they can do a lot more and much in very short periods of time than they ever thought possible. You know, if, if you could become world class at any skill in the next six months what would

that skill be and particularly if it's something that you dreamed of and dreamed of and put up on a shelf and gave up on right what is one skill you'd like to become world class at in the next six months which means top five percent in the general population in the world you know so it's if it's tennis you don't have to win the you you'd have to win. Right. It's not, don't measure yourself against professionals, but like top 5% in the general population, what is one skill in the next six months? Because I think that's plenty of time to accomplish that type of thing. And that's what the show is about for you. That's right. Teaching that. And that's cool. So answer in the comments below. I'll tell you guys what that link

is here. Uh, before I ask the final question, which you've answered a couple of times, you know, I don't think people acknowledge you enough. So I want to acknowledge you for a moment for, you've changed so many people's lives. You've inspired so many people through your books, through your writing, through your information, through everything you put out there. And you've definitely been a huge inspiration for me. I can honestly say that everything around me, being here, what I'm up to in my life right now would not happen without you, Tim. So I want to acknowledge you for being so committed to greatness in your own life

and educating others how to do it for themselves because it comes through in your work and it's definitely a lot of people who have benefited from it. And a lot of friends that I know have read your books and read your blog and listen to your podcast. It's changed their lives. So I want to acknowledge you for being an incredible human being and giving us great tools to be great as well. So thank you, Lewis. It's humbling and certainly an honor to hear that. And you've really done an incredible

job of passing on your learnings to your audience. So keep up the great work. Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, final question. What's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness in the moment in the moment is, uh, trying to be just a little bit better inch by inch millimeter by millimeter uh whether it's the next day or the next week and not beating yourself up about it if you fail for an entire week for an entire month uh just get up and sort of brush the dirt off and and get back to it it's it's not a straight line. It's a very jagged, intimidating, uh, sometimes exhausting experience. Uh, nobody who does huge things just, just, uh, takes off like

one smooth rocket shot. It's, it's a roller coaster. And, uh, I think people should keep in mind that whether it's the biggest names you can imagine, you know, the billionaires and the icons and the rock stars, all of these people have self-doubt. They have moments where they want to give it all up and quit and just sleep under the covers and not get out of bed for the day. So my definition of greatness is recognizing that's part of the human condition. You're not a failure if you feel that way. I certainly feel that way quite a bit. And we were talking even today. I mean, I'm really worried about the, uh, and anxious about the TV show. I've been fighting for this show for longer than I've worked on, uh, on a book. And I, it's,

uh, it's very intimidating and I don't think that goes away. Um, but in face it's, it's not overcoming your fears all the time. It's facing your fears and being like okay i'm afraid but i'm gonna keep on plugging away anyway so you know facing your fears and not necessarily worrying about always overcoming them but just being confident enough or not even confident enough uh having taken the leap of faith to at least stand up and face your fears i think is my definition of greatness. Tim Ferriss, thanks for coming on, brother. My pleasure.

Thank you for having me. And thank you guys again so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Again, make sure to check out lewishouse.com slash 170 to check out the full notes from this episode and all the extra video footage from me and Tim facing off head to head in a battle of the fittest. Really just a battle of staring contest and rock, paper, scissor, but it was a lot of fun and I can't wait to do more competitions with Tim in

the future. Again, please guys, share this out with your friends. Again, lewishouse.com slash 170. Get the word out. I think a lot of people who know Tim have never heard and seen this side of him and heard these answers before. So I really think your audience is really going to enjoy it. Make sure to share this out over on Twitter and Facebook and obviously tag Tim everywhere online to let them know you're listening to the School of Greatness podcast and that you appreciate him coming on.

Again, thank you guys so much for joining me today. Super blessed and grateful for Tim to come on and share his wisdom. We've got some great guests coming up. Make sure to share this one again, lewishouse.com slash 170. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Wait.