The School of Greatness - 3 Tim Ferriss on Meta Learning and Living the Good Life

Episode Date: February 5, 2013

In the third episode of The School of Greatness I interview a hero for most entrepreneurs, Tim Ferriss. It was five years ago when I was introduced to Tim's international bestselling book The 4-Hour Work Week. My brother gave it to me for a Christmas present while I was recovering from surgery due to a career ending football injury, […]

Hello everyone and welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes. I'm an author, lifestyle entrepreneur, former pro athlete, and world record holder in football. My goal with the School of Greatness is to share with you stories from the most inspiring business minds, world class athletes, and influential celebrities on the planet to help you find out what makes great people great. So please leave us a review over on iTunes and join us on the web at schoolofgreatness.com to be notified of each episode when it comes out. Now let's get after it. So we're into the third interview for the School of Greatness, and I wasn't sure what it was going to be like actually launching this. I was a little bit nervous and a little bit timid

to launch this podcast, but the responses have been great, and I'm really appreciative of all your guys' feedback. And it's been an amazing ride so far, so I look forward to continually giving you great interviews like the one you're about to hear today from Tim Ferriss. Now, what can I say about Tim Ferriss? This guy is a best-selling author on lists like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. is a best-selling author on lists like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. He's an investor or advisor to Facebook, Twitter, Stomalapon, Evernote, and Uber. He holds a Guinness Book of World Records for the most consecutive tango spins in one minute. He won the 1999 USA WKF National Chinese Kickboxing Championship at the 165-pound division. He speaks six languages and in 2008, Wired Magazine called Tim the greatest self-promoter of all time. The way I was first

introduced to Tim was through his number one New York Times bestselling book, The 4-Hour Workweek. Now, Tim has had a huge impact on my life as well as many other entrepreneurs in the world. And in this interview, I discussed the impact he's had on my life as well as cover many of the topics in his latest book, The 4-Hour Chef. Now, the School of Greatness probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for the positive influence of successful entrepreneurs like Tim. So let's dive in. Tim is over here like working away on his own computer for typing away. I'm getting edumacated. We're here in New York City at, I won't say the hotel, for privacy issues.

We're here at a pretty cool little spot in Tim's penthouse. Living the dream up here. Tim's getting loose over here. I did my old man calisthenics. Awesome. Well, with that, I'm going to go ahead and start it off. So thanks again, everyone, for coming on with the man, the myth, the legend, Mr. Timothy Ferris.

Mostly the myth. Mostly the myth. Now, Tim, for those of you who don't know, is the number one New York Times bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek and also number one with The 4-Hour Body and soon to be number one, hopefully, knock on wood, with The 4-Hour Chef. He is an investor in Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Evernote, Uber, et cetera. He's the ultimate lifestyle designer and I'd say lifestyle entrepreneur. He's traveled all over the world pretty much lives his life the way he wants on his terms and builds

cool businesses on the side so with that Mr. Tim Ferriss thanks for coming my man are you kidding I am not the man you could dismantle me at will this is enormous physical specimen of, like, Yvonne Drago.

But I'm really happy to be here. We'll do plenty of Q&A at the end, and I will do my best to stick it through. I've had a very exciting few weeks, needless to say, with the 4-Hour Chef. We'll talk about that in just a minute. But I'm very excited to be here. So how should we man the hardware? I'll go ahead and start it off. And I want to share a quick story with everyone about kind of my personal story

and how I got introduced to Tim, just so you guys get a little background of who he is in case you have no clue who he is. But I remember it was 2007. I had surgery on my wrist. You can see the scar right here. Surgery on my wrist playing football, arena football. And I remember being completely depressed because I had to retire after that surgery. I was in a cast for six months on my sister's couch with three credit cards.

And I remember trying to figure out what I was going to do next with my life. And I know a lot of you members in our audience are always trying to improve your business and trying to grow. So I think you guys will appreciate this. I remember I got probably the best Christmas presents I'd ever received. And granted, I never read ever. So for me to be able to complete a book is pretty impressive. But I got the four-hour workweek that Christmas from my brother. And I remember him super excited about it, telling me how he read it on a trip to China or something for one of his gigs. And I checked it out. I was pretty skeptical of the cover, but I checked it out.

And I read it in three days. And for me, that's extremely fast, being able to never really read that fast. So I was obsessed with learning how to really follow kind of the systems that Tim had created by, you know, the four-hour work week. And granted, for the next three years, I probably worked 14 hours a day, but I really learned how to set up my lifestyle the way I wanted it to, and it was that that really inspired it. So it's kind of helped me get here where I am today. So it's pretty exciting to have him on, and I hope you guys are excited as well. Yeah.

Number one. Let's go into it. I think the most important thing to realize is that The 4-Hour Chef is a bit of a confusing title because it makes it appear to be a cookbook for food whereas it's really a cookbook for learning and this is the book that my readers have been asking me for for four or five years.

The book on accelerated learning. But I needed a context. I needed the proper storytelling. And very much like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, this book is using my adventures in food and flavor and taste and all, looking at these experts around the world to show you how to become world-class in any skill and record time. Because you're not an expert chef before you started this job. I was not only a non-chef, I was an anti-chef. I was

of the opinion that I worked to make money so that I could, among other things, afford to go out and not have to cook. Which is a fair position to take. The point being, the kitchen is the perfect,

and I didn't realize this at the time, but the perfect dojo for maximizing human potential because it is one of the few places where you use all of your senses. So when you actually, even if you take a week to experiment with food, we'll get to the next point actually. This one? Yep.

If you take a week to experiment with cooking, even if you never make another dish again, you will start to hear things and taste things and see things that you've never experienced before. And what I took away from that was, if I take a short period of time to experiment in the kitchen, my experience of eating goes from hd to imax in a million colors really right and that has been really incredible to me uh how much that

has transferred to other areas of my life so improving my visual acuity my hearing everything and of course this translates to whatever skill you might want to learn uh the and all the skills that my readers have asked me about most often are in this book. So how to learn a language in 8 to 12 weeks, how to tackle sports, like weird ones like Japanese horseback archery or Chinese kickboxing, or just shooting a three-pointer in basketball or learning to swim, two things I was unable to do for a very, very long time. Number three, you will get into the best shape of your life. People who read The 4-Hour Body or have

seen The 4-Hour Body blog posts such as The Slow Carb Diet will find that without even realizing it, every recipe in this book is slow carb diet compliant with the exception of cheat meals, which are awesome

because I love chocolate and alcohol and all this. I love the Vermonster. Oh, yeah, the Vermonster. I don't mess around. Yeah, so I compete, actually, against a mutual friend of ours to eat 14,000 calories of Vermonster in 20 minutes. I don't want to spoil the punchline, but there are ways to do that without getting fat.

So I go into not only how to learn all of the principal skills of culinary school in the shortest period of time possible, which is actually a small portion of the book, but without trying to follow a diet or anything else, you will get into the best shape of your life. I really think number four, it doesn't take much to be impressive. All right. So here's the deal. You do not need to memorize a thousand recipes to be better than 75 plus percent of the U.S. population. You could learn how to make something like, for instance, the very first recipe in the book, which blows people away because they expect it to be complicated, osso bucco. Usually with veal shank, $30, $35 on a menu in any Italian restaurant.

It's thought to be very complicated you know italian grandmas are like i could never give you my secret recipe okay here it is i'll tell you what it is so preheat the oven to 350 okay get a dutch oven it's just a big pot right you throw in a bunch of carrots that you've kind of scrubbed and broken in half all right easy enough that takes like 30 seconds then you dump in a can of tomatoes, just a can. It's like 14 ounces. That's just a can of tomatoes. Then you put in however many lamb shanks you want, like three people, three lamb shanks,

four people, four lamb shanks. Then you pour in like three quarters of a bottle of white wine, a bunch of pepper, a bunch of salt, throw it in the oven, you're done. Come back two and a half hours later. It takes less time to prepare this dish than to make scrambled eggs properly for one or two people. When you have that in your

pocket as your go-to meal, you can blow people away. When I first made this ossobucco dish for Michael Ellsberg, mutual friend of ours, he goes, dude, you need to open the Tim Ferriss restaurant. This is amazing. And Michael's been to a really good restaurant. And I told him how simple it was. And he looked at me like I was telling him Santa Claus is real. It was ridiculous. All right.

Cooking is the mating advantage. I won't spend a ton of time on this. I get into it in the book, and I talk about different recipes for seduction and whatnot, whether it's the first date or the person you've been married to for 10 years, 15 or 20 years. But cooking for men or for women is the ultimate manning advantage. Whether, not to be too blunt about it, but like whether you want to catch and keep the one or just get laid a lot more, cooking is the absolute best investment you can make. And it just takes one or two dishes. Like one week, you're done.

And then last is because it's fun. It's really, really fun to take something from me that had beaten me many times in the past. So part of the reason that this book only happened now, if it were up to me, if I had all the resources, all the contacts, the experiences that I have now, I would have written The 4-Hour Chef first because it is about how to learn anything faster. It is the bedrock upon which everything else lies. Life takes its course. I had to wait until now

to realize that the best way to teach someone how to learn to be a world-class learner is to perhaps take something that kicked my ass many times in the past, cooking cooking and go from start to finish and show them the entire process and then explain different principles. So those are the six reasons to read the four hour chef.

Even if you have zero interest in cooking, which I did for 34 years of my life. All right. The menu. So the menu is the breakdown of the book, the various sections of the book. And there are five sections. Meta is meta learning. So that covers all of the crazy experiments I've done and takeaway lessons, immediate actionable items that I've learned with accelerated learning. accelerated learning that goes from smart drugs to language learning to swimming to meeting the world's best power lifters so forth and so on that's meta learning that gives you the bedrock

then you have domestic which takes uh you know i'm not going to give you all too much information because i think we're going to go to each in turn. So domestic, which is the domestic, in the kitchen. Okay, wild, which is everything outside of the kitchen. Scientists, I won't give away the punchline with that. And then professional, those are the main sections. Hopefully this will be useful in some fashion. We'll do Q&A afterwards. All right, so meta or meta-learning is very simple.

Meta, this term means up and above, effectively. So if you have, let's say, meta-analysis, that is doing analysis of different analyses. It's studying the studies, right? So meta-learning is learning how to learn. So if you think about it, you go to school, you're given math.

You're given English. You're given this. You're given that. You're never taught how to read properly. You're never taught... I learned the wrong way. that. You're never taught how to read properly. You're never taught how to learn properly. So this section follows me as I travel around the world from India to Japan to South Africa to the U.S., all over the place, the U.K., to find the world's fastest learners, people who learn a language in seven days well enough to be interviewed on TV, people who can memorize 10,000 numbers, people who go from being unable to swim to being one of the top swim coaches after age 35, people like this,

and then trying to discern what their recipe is. What is the blueprint that these people use? What is the process? And it turns out that it is effectively this DIS framework. And so that's the basis of meta learning. So you have D, which stands for deconstruction. So what are the Lego blocks that you start with? How do you break a complex skill down into little pieces? And then how do you test the assumptions? So for instance, I couldn't swim, very embarrassing, having grown up on Long Island, until a few years ago.

And it started with a question, how can I learn to swim without kicking? Because I found that that exhausted me. It didn't propel me. It was a very frustrating aspect of swimming. So that's deconstructing. Selections, what are the 20% that I should spend my time on to get 80% of the results? This is an 80-20 analysis that you've seen for our work week, for our body.

It's the same principle. So the good news is if you've read either of my two previous books, you have the toolkit already built in, and you'll make a lot more progress. All right, sequencing. This is something I haven't talked about in depth before, but in what order do you learn those different blocks? So the difference between someone who becomes fluent in, say, Spanish in eight weeks

and the person who still struggles to speak after eight years is putting things in the proper order. So I talk about that. It's true for golf. It's true for handball, I'm sure. It's true for all sports. Like you move your hip when you should move your foot first. Game over. So sequencing is really key.

And then the last S is stakes. So how do you create the carrot or the stick so that you'll actually do what you say you're going to do? I think this is the big one. Yeah, stakes is huge. And if you take like Tracy, for instance, from the 4-Hour Body, lost 120 plus pounds, 40-something, mother of two. She didn't lose that weight because she had some new amazing program she got from women's fitness. She lost that weight because she put together a betting pool with six of her coworkers for $100 apiece. She didn't want to be embarrassed.

Exactly. She didn't want to be embarrassed. She didn't want to lose the money. There's something to lose and there's something to gain. Yeah. And there are ways that you can create this very easily, like the website stick.com, S-T-I-C-K-K.com, where you can basically put your money into escrow and it goes to an anti-charity. Like a charity or a nonprofit you hate could be pro-life, pro-choice, doesn't matter,

if you don't do what you say you're going to do. That's big. Super profitable. I mean, if I had a choice between establishing really good steaks or giving you the perfect diet for fat loss, I would choose steaks. More than half is taking

action. Economics is the study of incentives. People respond to incentives. Whether it's rats, monkeys, humans, we respond to incentives. Set things up so you whether it's rats, monkeys, humans, we respond to incentives. So set things up so you can win.

That's the game of stakes. All right. Domestic, and don't you love the cross-stitching? It's so pretty. All right. So the domestic

offers you the building blocks of cooking. This is the ABCs. All right. You're in a kitchen at home. What are the ABCs

that can take you from Dr. Seuss to Shakespeare? Well, it's technique. It's not memorizing recipes. Recipes, recipes, recipes. That's all you ever hear about in cooking. And most books are organized to provide you with the deluge of recipes. They don't teach you technique so that you can cook without recipes. So my goal was let me put together 14 core lessons, no more than 20 minutes of preparation each. The average is actually nine minutes. It's literally the four-hour chef in this case that will give you all of the most versatile techniques

of two years of culinary school that will enable you to cook thousands of dishes. Four hours. Four hours of total prep time. Two years of how much is culinary school? Oh, God, cook thousands of dishes in four hours four hours of total prep time two years of how much is culinary school oh god it's got to be what i mean 50 to 100 000 it's super expensive it's two years of your life and the fact of the matter is when you study people who haven't gone to culinary school people who have you're able to pick out the best of both groups right and you can embed them into these lessons.

It does not need to take a lot of time. And all of these recipes also have four or fewer ingredients. Wow. So it's very, so you're cutting down on grocery shopping. You're cutting down on the cooking time. You're cutting down also or eliminating completely the cleanup. I hate cleanup. I hate cleanup. Everybody hates it.

So I try to remove all those failure points so that people can make it through the first few weeks at which point now they love cooking. It's actually a study of behavioral psychology more than anything else. And that's where a lot of books fail, including most good books.

The wild. So the wild is let's get out of the kitchen. Let's connect firsthand with ingredients, foraging, hunting, you name it. All right. This section is intended, keep in mind the subtitle of the book is for our chef, the simple path to cooking like a pro, learning anything and living the good life. This is more than a cookbook. And it is intended in this case, this particular section to make you very uncomfortable, to push you past and outside of your comfort zone. And this will go through survival gear, reclaiming the manual arts,

learning how to build things, learning how to survive. The rule of three is, which applies to water, I'm sorry, shelter, water and food, among other things. This section is very funny. When I was writing this, I had certain friends who thought I was crazy and paranoid for some of the stuff I was going into, just basic disaster preparation or preparedness, and then what happens?

Hurricane Sandy. And then none of those friends are almost all in New York. They're not laughing anymore. They're asking for a chance to copy my book. Because you want to be self-reliant. those friends are almost all in New York. They're not laughing anymore. They're asking you for advanced copy of the book. Because you want to be self-reliant. That is the goal of Wild. To be self-reliant

and then to be self-fulfilled. We'll get to that later. You have to understand what the worst case scenarios can be and have at least some form of cheap insurance policy that applies against that. That could be water. It could be food.

It could be a shotgun. I'm not going to get crazy. But I started looking at all of these different aspects and talking to hedge fund managers, talking to survivalists, talking to preppers, talking to police officers and fire departments. Have you talked to Bear Grylls? I haven't talked to Bear Grylls. I've talked to him over the interview. He interviewed Bear. Nice. His favorite phrase is, I love it. and i haven't talked to bear drills i've talked to you with an introvert he interviewed bear nice

um his favorite phrases i love it i love it he's the perfect uh very enthusiastic i'm all for it all right so scientists the scientist is where you re-enter willy wonka and this is really intended to resurrect your childlike curiosity. You find that after childhood this playfulness goes away in a lot of cases. Speaking personally, for instance, I always wanted to be a comic book

penciler. I wanted to be an illustrator. I was an illustrator for two years in college. I paid my way through college by bouncing and illustrating. You left five-five bouncers. I know. Sure. I'm tiny.

I know. I'm like a little impugned, which was why I would always be the one who had to fight because it would be like two huge people that couldn't fight and then like little me. And so every drunk, like ice hockey player would be like, I'm going to fuck you. Pardon the French. We're learning how to apologize. But the purpose of this section is to bring you back to that childhood-like curiosity, asking what if, why not, really playing around with food.

Like what if you made spaghetti out of arugula? What if you wanted to make homemade Nutella and turn it into a powder? What if you want to play around with cheesecake? What if you want to create like a beet foam that you can serve and serve in shot glasses this is where you learn some really really cool science without ever being intimidated by the science not like high school science simple it's even sophisticated science but i make it very digestible and bite-sized so people do not will not realize how much they're learning as they play around. The professional.

The professional is the finishing touch, the finishing school, and looks at how the best in the world become the best in the world. And hearth and linea are two examples. Linea at the time was the number one ranked restaurant in the United States. I spent three days or so there.

And we go through the classics like what are you missing from your repertoire the most important fundamentals let's fill those in then avant-garde like how do we push everything how do we push taste texture appearance the entire sensory experience and then drag force uh chaconne I won't spend too much time on, but I have a handful of so-called impossible recipes at the end, which are real recipes for people who are just masochistic who want to test themselves. And then I won't spoil the conclusion in the appendix. I'll leave that to you guys. But that is the outline.

That's the outline of the book. Nice. And those are the primary sections. It's intended really to be the third part of a trilogy. And some of my heroes include Seneca. A lot of people know that. Richard Feynman, an amazing physicist and professor, incredible teacher, and Ben Franklin.

Now, Ben Franklin had healthy, wealthy, and wise, and I've taken that very seriously for the last 15, 20 years of my life. And you have healthy for our body, wealthy for our work week, wise for our chef. This book is intended to give people the ultimate Archimedes lever to get the most out of life for them, the people around them, for their kids, a double, tripling, quadrupling learning speed. And not only achieving more, but appreciating more.

And that's another reason I chose food. It's not enough to just rack up the points in this game that we call life. You have to actually reflect on what you have and appreciate what you have. Otherwise, it's a completely hell of a victory. So that is the rough outline of the four hours of the game. Very nice. And I want to get into – we're going to get into Q&A here in just a second. But I actually got an advanced copy a couple days ago,

and I've never seen a book this beautifully designed in my life it's it's big first off it's perfect for either your kitchen um or right on your countertop to be honest because it's like you can just go through and go to any page and it blows your mind on how beautifully designed and how detailed and how researched everything is it's pretty amazing piece of art if you ask me. So we really want to support him in getting to number one on Amazon. Can I explain why that's important? Yes, go ahead.

Alright, so what's important, the reason this is important, or I'll just say important to me, I'm not saying important to everyone, but this is the first major book through Amazon publishing, and as a result, the book is being banned, being boycotted by almost every bookstore in the United States. That includes 700-plus stores through Barnes & Noble, which makes it effectively the most banned book since Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1928, D.H. Lawrence.

D.H. Lawrence. And the reason that I view this as a very watershed moment, as a very important case, almost like the Supreme Court, now that sounds very dramatic, is that what Barnes & Noble is trying to do is make an example of me by saying, if you try to innovate, if you try to do something that does not benefit our model, does not profit our model, we will punish you. And I take issue with that. That pisses me off. And I was eager to experiment with Amazon because I knew they would do different things.

Number one, Amazon actually cares about their end user. They have relationships with their end users. People like Barnes & Noble typically do not. They do not have any direct connection to their end user. Now, they're good for some things. I appreciate that. However, when they start punishing their end user and punishing content creators, I take real issue with that.

And so at the very least, what I'm trying to do this week, the book is, I think, the best book I've put together. I have some of my most cynical friends who say, you know what, I hate to say it, but this is your best book. I really think this is your best book. And I'm extremely confident in the book, and I want to get it to number one. Book scan, I won't bore you with the details, but number one book scan is just for all the people in the industry, I want to send the message that there are different ways to do business. You can innovate. You shouldn't be afraid of these big incumbents.

Okay. So let me go into Q&A really quickly. We'll spend the next, hopefully, 30 minutes, and then if Tim gets wind up more, then maybe a couple minutes more. Carolyn says, is Tim cooking? For Lewis right now? He's not my type. I like the guy.

But to answer Carolyn's question, I do cook a lot now, actually. Lewis right now? He's not my type. I like the guy. To answer Carolyn's question, I do cook a lot now, actually. I almost treat it like I thought I needed the food for the calories, much like people think they need tea for the caffeine, whereas sometimes they just need the tea ceremony. I actually

use cooking as almost a moving meditation now. Things that really intimidated me me terrified me before like knife skulls i actually use to relax just kind of wow right so here's a question from mike how would you use um your form of metal learning to learn an internal martial art like tai chi or i don't know yeah shingy so the uh you could absolutely use it. The same process applies. I'm very good friends with a brilliant guy named Josh Waitzkin, who was the subject of the movie and the book Searching for Bobby Fisher,

about a child prodigy. This is Josh Waitzkin. So he's an incredible guy, and he's also a world champion in Tai Chi push-hands. So I can say that the mental learning disc process can be applied to that without a doubt. Absolutely. We've got a question here. Nelson Chow is saying, how do you something if you don't know where to start? Yeah, deconstruct.

Okay. Talking about? Yeah, the beginning of deconstruction is finding anomalies who are good at what you're trying to become good at, who shouldn't be good at it. Whether that means he became good at it in a short period of time, what, uh, or that means they are, let's say physiological oddities, like 250 pound people who run a hundred mile races. You identify those people as process for doing so.

And that is a starting point. Nice. Uh, MT Smith says, do you still stand by your recipe for starting an online business outlining for our work week or would you alter it in line social media i do stand by the recipe i think uh social media is overrated is a short answer i just think that um you have to understand what your metrics are and direct response marketing and advertising helps you to focus very clearly on cost per acquisition, average revenue per user, things of that type. Social media can be used to tremendous effect. So social media can be used to tremendous effect,

but I think there are more people than not who are simply doing a lot of hand-waving and not delivering any measurable results from the initiatives they have in social media. So I wouldn't change it all too much. What I would add is that things like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook allow you to market test very effectively for an extremely low cost. So those are perhaps some of the revisions that I would make. Dan is saying, have you personally applied your process to learning any instruments?

Yeah, I have. I have. And there are a few I want to tackle, but I have applied it to instruments. And I consider myself a very non-music person in general, but the Irish flute, of all things, was one that I got really into. I'll tell you why. Because I wanted to be able to practice it whenever I had time to practice. You can stick in your pocket and,

uh, it's like a recorder. So you can actually practice in those empty moments that you have, as opposed to, for instance, a guitar, which is more challenging. Or the one instrument that actually struck my fancy in college was the drums.

Five, five piece drum kit. Forget it. Like it's, it's too cumbersome. challenging or the one instrument that actually struck my fancy in college was the drums five five piece drum kit forget it like it's it's too cumbersome so for learning the language of music i found the irish flute to be really really compelling and plus it gave me another excuse to drink alcohol and like stomp my feet on the ground listen to the fiddle irish bar music is just amazing pub music incredible, incredible. Yes. Pavel, I think it is, is saying, Tim, what's your next book going to be about? What else are you busy with these days?

Pavel or Pavel? I know Pavel's taught to lean, so I'll say Pavel. I don't have any plans for a next book. I have no plans. Right now, honestly, it's about getting this message out, and then I'm going to disappear and probably go to Southeast Asia or Indonesia for a month or two or three and get off the grid because I need to recharge a bit. Christina says, when researching for the book, what surprised you the most? What surprised me the most is

how the best in the world whether it's cooking swimming basketball or otherwise we're able to simplify their craft so you had let's say out of 100 people the best person one person who is best is extremely good at simplifying what they do. And they don't make it seem intimidating. They explain it in terms of fundamentals. They make it seem very approachable. When you get into like the top 5% of the people, then there's a lot of acting involved. A lot of people who want to make it as complicated as possible, as unapproachable as possible.

But the best of the best of the best are really good at simplification. Right. Interesting. How do you change careers at 56, says Ed? Well, there's dozens of ways to do that. I would look at Colonel Sanders. He started Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was something like 60 years old. Really? It's never too late.

Wow. Interesting. I'm already a good cook, says Renee. How much of the book is about learning itself? The entire book is about learning itself. But I would also say even if you consider yourself a good cook, I mean, I'm dealing with people like Grant Ackett of Alinea, Mark Bucanora of Hearth, an entire army of James Beard Award winners

and people who are absolutely top of the top of the top. So even if you take a handful of tips from them, whether it's putting a peeled clove of garlic on the end of a fork to use for sauteing or using surgical lint-free hot towels instead of potholders or fill in the blank, If you pick up even a handful of tips from these guys who are really, really impressive, it will make you a far better cook. But the entire book is about learning. What's the number of people that you consider

as a good base to consider a marketable tribe? 1,000. 1,000 true fans, right? 1,000 true fans by Kevin Kelly is a free article. You can find it out there. Kevin Kelly is the founding editor of Wired Magazine. Read 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly. It's a free article. You can find it out there. Kevin Kelly is the founding editor of Wired Magazine. Read 1,000 True Fans. If you could only read one article about marketing for the rest of your life,

that would be a lot to read. Cool. So Doug is saying, are all the recipes slow-carb compliant? I'd say 90% of them are. But, I mean, a big part of the slow-carb diet, here's the thing. I love Anglo body fat. Great. Having wonderful sex and blah, blah, blah, fantastic.

But here's the thing. This is after three glasses of wine, too, so the sex came in out of nowhere. But the point being, you can have low body fat, but you really need and I think should enjoy what you eat. So the cheat meal options are probably 10% of the book. So I do view that as a really valuable pressure release valve. And it's the highlight. It's fun. It's something to look forward to for the entire week.

So I'd say the book is 90% slow-term compliant. There's plenty. Chris Johnstone is saying, if you had 60 days to make a hundred thousand dollars and had to start from zero, what would you do? So a little riddle trick question. Yeah, this is a very common form of question. Here's what I'd say is there are many elegant solutions. There are no immediate silver bullets.

And at the end of the day, you have to test. I cannot give you the answer. But $100,000, what was it, six months, something like that? Yeah, no, two months, 60 days. All right. Call it like that? Yeah. No, two months. 60 days. All right. Call it six months. Yeah. I mean, put on your best shoes and start selling door to door. Right.

But ultimately, I think that doing a good self-assessment, identifying what your unique abilities are, if you have any, or if not, developing those abilities, then identifying the thousand true fans you can sell to and developing product, whether that is a service or a course or coaching of some type, or that demographic would be your best investment time. Yep. 60 days?

Who knows? I mean, will it happen in two months? Hard to say. You have to throw a lot against the wall before you can do a proper 80-20 analysis. You cannot do an 80-20 analysis and determine the 20% of things, 20% of customers, 20% of activities that produce 80% of the results that you want until you have tried a lot of things and determined where your weaknesses and strengths are. Yeah, and I'll give you a quick example for that.

It took me about two years before I made my first dollar trying a lot of different things. I was hosting events and doing different stuff online, trying to figure out how to sell the products I was creating, writing books, etc. But I really wasn't making any money until I did my first webinar. I did my first webinar, and then it was that kind of my aha moment that this is all I need to be focusing on. The majority of my time are webinars because this is what's selling the most of my sales for me. So, again, finding out what really works for you, but it might take some time. Joseph Kladik, I think, or Kladik, I don't know, from Prague, says, Hey, guys, the current book, is this connected to the four-hour body at all?

My brother lost 25 kilograms based on Tim's diet, so I wonder if you could benefit from this new book. Yeah, it's very much connected. So the 4-Hour Body is effectively built into this new book. So if someone has followed the slow-carb diet and they're looking to expand their vocabulary of flavors, increase the variety of the meals that they have, then this is the book. Nice. So it's both in. Larry, how much of the book is about learning theory and how to learn?

Almost zero is about learning theory. All of it is based on empirical data from the field in learning how to learn different skills. Dickie's got a question. Which book would be the best for a 35-year-old ADHD son who struggles with almost every aspect of life? I would say both, but you can... Yeah. I mean, I would say both.

Honestly, I mean, this first step here, and this is I'm not a medical doctor, but first step is remove grains, honestly. It's just to remove grains, try to minimize any autoimmune issues, remove white stuff and grains from the diet, whether you get one book or the other. Nice. Bruno says, Tim, congrats on the book. Just purchased mine now. Do you have plans to invest for startup businesses in Brazil?

I'm open to investing in Brazil. I'm fascinated by Brazil. I've spent a lot of time there probably, well, as far as guests go in your country. Maybe three or four months total in Brazil. I'm a big fan. It's an incredible economy and an incredible country. I do have friends who

invest very heavily in Brazil. Ryan Malo says, do you discuss smart drugs in the book? I you discuss smart drugs in the book? I do discuss smart drugs in the book. I have a piece coming out in Wired Magazine I think hitting tomorrow, which will be about smart drugs as well. But the smart drugs I find, and I've used them all, I've tried everything, produce side effects long term.

So I try to focus on things that are scalable and sustainable. But I do talk a little bit about smart drugs. Ryan says, Tim, you do a great job simplifying and distilling learning. How do you go about becoming one of those teachers you talk about as being the best of the best? How do you distill teaching? Well, I study the world's best teachers. And, I mean, my goal ultimately is not to be the best writer. I don't think I am the best writer.

But there's a difference between having clever terms of phrase and compelling prose and being a good teacher. And I want to focus on being the best teacher. So I certainly aim to be in the top 0.001% as far as teaching goes. And teaching to me is evaluated not just by how clearly you explain a technique or a principle, but how effectively you get people to take action. There's a big difference between the two. Naraj, I think it is, says says how would you apply meta learning to investing uh meta learning to investing easy uh you you look for the anomaly so whether that's

looking at joel greenblatt for event-based uh investing which is typically manifested in his case in hedge funds looking at some of the more uh consistently effective investors like warren but i actually talk about warren buffett a lot in his principles in the four-hour chef some of the more consistently effective investors like Warren Buffett. I actually talk about Warren Buffett a lot in his principles in The 4-Hour Chef. The process is the same, absolutely the same. Knowing what you're good at, knowing what you're bad at, knowing where you have, let's say, an informational or behavioral or analytical advantage, and then ignoring all the rest.

Chris said, do you use LinkedIn to make connections for your book interviews or any suggestions on making a good first connection? And I know you talk about this in your blog about reaching out to busy people and for our work week. Yeah. I don't use LinkedIn specifically for book interviews. At this point, I use predominantly publicists and pitching people I know personally.

But in terms of a good first connection, I find that in the tech world, I can only speak to my experience in the tech world, the least crowded channel is meeting in person. So I go to events, right? You know what I'm talking about? I mean, it's just the person who is getting pitched.

If your goal is to pitch needs to trust the messenger before they can trust the message. And that is something that is lost. It does not matter how good your pitch is, how good your story is. If they think that you may embarrass them later by being some idiot, then the message is absolutely valued to zero. And there's a way to connect with people by building rapport through their friends and a number of other ways to do it at events, like you said, meeting in person. It allows you to connect with people better. How many skills should you work on at once?

As Patrick, for example, I want to write a book, create a muse, learn a language, get super fit, and find the right girl. And, again, this is probably a good question. If you figure I have to do all that at once, then I want to talk to you. That's a good question. Yeah, I would say one or two. One or two max. I mean, I tend to focus on one mental and one physical role at the same time.

You do three to five, it's probably going to be tougher than anything, right? Too much, too much, too much. Yeah, you're not going to get anywhere. You'll be too scattered. Doug Bertram says, what do you have to say about the 10,000 hours to be an expert? Turn that on here. Yeah, I disagree with it.

I mean, I think it has to do with the specificity of defining expert or world class. I define world class as top 5% in the general population, and I think that for almost any skill, you need six months or less to reach that point, if you approach it intelligently. So here's a personal one from Allison. Why are you still single? How about being an expert in relationships? Are they still different from other skills you've learned?

All right, so this is three different questions. I'm not single. I've been dating a wonderful girl for a year and a half. How about being an expert in relationships? I don't feel confident saying that I am an expert in relationships yet. Are they so different from other skills? Yes, they are very, very different from other skills. You're dealing with logical and illogical aspects of a partner. So relationships are, I think relationships is too broad. I'd have to get very specific, but I've been dating a great girl for the last year and a half. And we've had, as everyone, we've had our challenges.

We've had our downs. I think it's been a very healthy relationship as a whole. But I am in no position to lecture anyone on the world. He's also been writing a book for the last year and a half. Yeah, so my girlfriend's put up with a lot of BS, in other words. Jamie just said, just ordered three books. Hey, Tim, what's your favorite parrilla in Buenos Aires? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, parrilla, parrilla, like a grill house.

I would say, oh, that's tough's tough man i've had a couple of favorites i don't want to say or just see you i don't want to say because that is la vista is the one in the same area it's in uh puerto pu I think, in Capital Federal. So La Bisteca is the one, but there's also a fantastic place. It's not a steak place per se, but I think it's Gran Bar Danzon. So Gran Bar Danzon, D-A-N-Z-O-N, which is amazing. Nice. Patrick Moore says, for writing a book, should you start small and get e-books or Kindle?

On Kindle or go to the top for a publisher? Look up a conversation between me and Ramit Sethi, S-E-T-H-I, on self-publishing versus traditional publishing. Tara says, other than self-measuring activity to do an 80-20 analysis, any suggestions for good apps, websites, or services to monitor and analyze? I like RescueTime. RescueTime.com. Never thought about doing a

Tim Ferriss movie, Michael. Probably not a Tim Ferriss movie, but I've been approached by screenwriters to do adaptations of some of my books to movies. I'd be up for it. I mean, I like the visual. I think it'd be fun to do, but I'm not in any rush. Dave said, what's your feedback on your CreativeLive event?

It was great from my end. Did it meet your business expectations? I had a great time with the CreativeLive folks at CreativeLive.com. I really enjoyed it. I haven't even, because I've been right in the middle of the launch, I have not even looked at the business ROI of doing it at this point, to be honest. Right. Tim, how do you measure how effectively you're getting readers to take action if you can even do so?

There are a few different ways I can do that. One is by doing something like the recent four-week campaign on dietbet.com to actually look at the average pounds per week lost by readers following slow carb diet. The second is simply watching the feed. I mean, keeping an eye on Twitter, Facebook, et cetera, or having my assistants give an eye on Twitter, Facebook, et cetera, although I tend to do it a lot myself, to look for the social proof of someone losing 120 pounds, 180 pounds, 200 pounds, whatever it might be, with four-hour work weeks,

certainly seeking out those case studies, soliciting those case studies. Those would be a few ways I'd go about it. Nice. A bunch of people were asking, what's the name of the author of the 1,000 True Fans article? Kevin Kelly. Paul says, can Tim expand on that 20-80 rule, 80-20 rule in this? Yeah.

So choosing the minimum effective dose. For instance, in languages, you could have several hundred thousand vocabulary items, but how do you choose the highest impact 1,000 or 1,200 so that you can really focus your practice and be perceived as, and in fact, be fluent in eight to 12 weeks? That would be an example of applying the 80-20 analysis. If you want to apply the 80-20 analysis to marksmanship, you can do the same thing. 80-20 analysis to basketball, you can do the same thing

in terms of focusing on shot line, eye dominant, et cetera. And the process is to apply that lens to each of your skills so that you're looking for the highest leverage, few activities that you can use to produce the greatest results. I guess it's kk.org? Yeah, yeah, yeah. KevinKelley.org is kk.org. Okay. Dan is asking, how do you choose between several options in business and in personal life?

I'm not sure exactly. Big question, Dan. You have to put together – when people don't have time, it's not that they don't have time. There's plenty of time to do all the things you want to do, so they don't have priorities. So you have to define your priorities very, very carefully. All right. Let's do two more questions. Do you still run your own supplement company? Nope. I sold that in 2009. So I'm done with that. Did you get that or no?

Yeah. So I instead advise and invest in between 25 and 30 companies. So I'm definitely not just sitting at home staring at a wall all day. Troy says, Tim, you're always on point. Never seen someone that sharp. From random episodes to creative live to South by Southwest. And even when my buddy asked you if you experimented with pot at midnight in Austin two years ago, I love this one, a long question. Is it sheer intelligence, drugs, diet, exercise, or combo of all?

What's the secret? You know, I think the, Troy, the secret, if anything, is not fearing loss. So I am comfortable expressing my opinion because I've learned to be attached to only those things that cannot be taken away. And that is learned from primarily Stoic philosophy with focus on Seneca and letters from a stoic. So I really use stoicism and letters from a stoic as my operating system so that I feel comfortable standing up and not hedging, not hesitating and expressing my opinion or stance on a certain thing, whether I'm right or not, because I recognize that the potential downsides are so few and so minimal. Let's do one more question.

I just saw Darren saying, Louis, thanks for this. Tim was great as always. And Omar Adams says, what kind of personal development do you do? Benny. What kind of personal development do I do? I follow Eleanor Roosevelt's advice, which is every day do one thing that scares you. That's it. I think that is the ultimate simplistic approach to self-improvement and personal improvement.

That's powerful. Other than that, I want to say thanks to Tim. So, Tim, I'm going to let you finish it up with the final word. I want to say thanks to Tim. So, Tim, I'm going to let you finish up with the final word. All I would say is that if it were up to me, I would have written this book first. And I'm 35 now, and I've unfortunately had the experience of watching and experiencing a number of my close friends pass away, whether by accident or by disease.

Life is short. Life is really short, and it's getting shorter every day. And I would just emphasize that all the things you could do, all the things you could read, buy. Where you should focus is, I think, increasing your learning potential, increasing your human potential. And by doing so, you are not only squeezing the absolute amount of life from your years that you have remaining, but you're able to convey that and teach that to the people around you, the people you care about, the people you love. And so I would just say that whether it's through this book or other tools,

focus on turning yourself into a master learner. And when you become a master learner, you become a master teacher. And you can spread that to other people. So I view really almost nothing else as high leverage as doing that, turning yourself into a master learner. And I will close with that. Life is short. Make the most of it. Very powerful. Tim Ferriss, thanks, my brother. Yeah. Thanks, everyone, for coming on. And go out and grab the book.

I'll tell you what, I always enjoy getting to hear Tim speak and like the man says, life is short. So focus on becoming a master learner. I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation and make sure to support Tim and head over to four hour chef.com to pick up a copy of his book. Also check out his extremely popular blog at four hour workweek.com. Hope you guys are enjoying the school of greatness and make sure to head over to school of greatness.com to be notified of our next episode.

And please, please, please leave us a five star review review on itunes until next time thanks for listening and do something great ស្រូវតែរាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពី Outro Music ស្រូវាប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប្រូវតែរាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពី Outro Music