The School of Greatness - 909 Work It Out, Write It Out

Episode Date: January 31, 2020

“Exercise allows you to diversify your identity.”Tim Ferriss is a stand out entrepreneur, author, consultant, athlete, bio-hacker, and life-hacker.If you haven’t heard of him yet, who knows where you’ve been. But in this past episode of the show, I wanted to learn some things about Tim that I and most people don’t know. I asked him about what habits have made the biggest impact on him - and his answers were super insightful. I am featuring that clip of our conversation for this 5 Minute Friday episode - enjoy!If you enjoyed this episode, check out the video, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/909 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes

This is Five Minute Friday! Special guest, his name is Mr. Tim Ferriss, and he's 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. best investment i've made in myself would be any time 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. Exactly. Which is exact. It's completely the most counterproductive

decision to make yet. It is a sin that I commit repeatedly. So I have to, uh, but I do catch myself and that would be, that would be an incredible investment. Anytime that I do that. And you say recording it, though, you say that's like the second part of it is right tracking it. So writing it down, not necessarily recording the video tracking, 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, 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. 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 work with charities like Build where I've taught entrepreneurship classes to at-risk youth in Oakland 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. Uh, I think the, the books are that, that lever for me. So I'd say, uh, I, I view the books I don't write for me, the books I write for, for that purpose explicitly. I want them to be a guidebook that help the readers to be,

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, um, 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 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 there would be no four hour at the beginning of the title. There you go. A different chapter.

Very different from my previous books. Okay. Very different. What do you think is the number one skill or asset that everyone should have that will always further them in life? If you could say there's one asset and skill that you need to have in your life or business, relationships, whatever it may be. Being a good writer. Good communicator in the written word. Yep. And I don't think it's hard to improve that. And I don't think it's hard to improve that. I think that a regular practice of writing, it could be journaling in the morning for

five to 10 minutes with something like morning pages. People can Google that. 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 gonna 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 is a lawyer or a lawyer lawyers are very good at 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 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 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 because people can answer it asynchronously. Then you need to be a compelling communicator. Hey guys, if you enjoyed this inspirational clip from a past episode of the show, then you'll love the free book I'm giving away right now. It's called The Millionaire Morning. It includes some of my best tips for starting off your day with a millionaire mindset. Get your free copy at themillionairemorning.com and just pay shipping. Again, check it out right now, themillionairemorning.com. you