The Tim Ferriss Show - #129: Recommendations and Resolutions for 2016 - Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss

Episode Date: January 3, 2016

This episode is ~99% serious recommendations and resolutions for 2016. But I am joined by tech entrepreneur and investor, Kevin Rose, so it's at least 1% shenanigans. The conversation is also a new experiment for The Random Show. O-tanoshimi dane! For all previous episodes of The Random Show, including the infamous China Scam episode, click here. ### This episode is brought to you by Headspace, the world's most popular meditation app (More than 4,000,000 users). It's used in more than 150 countries, and many of my closest friends swear by it. Try Headspace's free Take10 program -- 10 minutes of guided meditation a day for 10 days. It's like a warm bath for your mind. Meditation doesn't need to be complicated or expensive, and it's had a huge impact on my life. Try Headspace for free for a few days and see what I mean. This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last 2 years and now has more than $2.5B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it’s all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they’ll show you—for free–exactly the portfolio they’d put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, boys and girls. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. This is a special episode with Kevin Rose, Revisited. Kevin is a very close friend of mine. He now lives in New York. He is a well-known entrepreneur, venture capitalist. He's an advisor to Google Ventures, also now CEO of Hodinkee. He was formerly involved with Watchville and is now in the luxury goods market that is being disintermediated and disrupted with technology. Very interesting fellow. And we often do a video show together called The Random Show, or we used to when we

lived in San Francisco together, but he's now in NYC. I am usually in SF and we have not done many of these shows. So we decided to give audio a shot. And please let us know if you enjoy this. And here we go, The Random Show with Timbo and KevKev. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss. And this is Kevin Rose. Welcome to a brand new edition of The Random Show. Happy 2016. Happy 2016. Happy New Year, man.

It's going to be an exciting year. I can feel it in my bones, my old man bones. What did you do? What did I do in 2016 so far? No, just like, what did you do for New Year's? I want to know where you were, what you did. I decided to bring my parents and brother to the Bahamas

because they had last been 36 years ago when I was two years old and had always reminisced and spoke of the Bahamas fondly and pined after returning. And I just decided or observed that none of us are getting any younger and decided to bring everybody here for Christmas and New Year's, which I'm in a very fortunate position to be able to do, of course. But what I realized,

because this is the second time I've taken my family on a trip for Christmas and New Year's, is that when you set plans, say early in the year, or even halfway through the year, you get at least six months of anticipation and talking about it and dreaming about it and brainstorming things you're going to do with your

family. And it's at least half the benefit is just being able to put it in the calendar and have the benefit of that anticipation. It's kind of like as a kid looking forward to Christmas, but you just have to schedule your own Christmas. Uh, since generally as an adult, you're not running down the stairs and you're a PJs to tear things open. But that's what I did. What about yourself? Uh, I was, uh, just here in New York and it was pretty, pretty relaxing. But for Christmas, I actually went out to Las Vegas of all places. Uh. My family's based out there. So I had my wife's family and my family get together at a resort, the Red Rock Casino out there. And we actually watched Star Wars

and just kind of chilled and had some good food. And yeah, it was awesome. Do you have any particular routine or ritual just before New Year's or on New Year's or after New Year's? I mean, every year we talk about New Year's resolutions. I don't really stick to them, but I definitely have that ritual of the very next morning, like just starting things anew and trying to track what it is I'm trying to achieve this coming year. So I did that this year as well. I've got another list of things you're not going to follow. Yeah, exactly. Although,

you know, I have done, you know, me, I've done a few things in the past. Like for example, um, I haven't had a soda. This marks my 16th year without having soda, which is kind of kidding. I didn't know that actually 16. Wow. That's great. Yeah. It was just one of those things where it was new year's 2000. it was just one of those things where it was new year's 2000 everyone was was telling and sitting around and talking about the resolutions and i was like you know i've kind of wanted to give up soda it's one of those things where it's just for me it was um it was something i would consume a couple times a day you know back then i would crack open a dr pepper or coke or whatever and i didn't do any of that

that diet crap i just went full full sugar um or I guess it would be full corn syrup, which is even worse. But I was doing that, and then I had to get off of it. I was like, gosh, I've got to start really watching my health, and this was kind of the first step in that direction. And so I gave it up, and I weaned myself off initially. The first few months were extremely difficult. And I was able to do it by actually using a substitute. So for me, that was juice. I was waiting for heroin. Exactly. Yeah, it was crank. And I just got really addicted. No, but seriously, I started doing juice and juice would give me that kind of

sugar high that I was used to getting from soda. Still not ideal. But then from there, I was able to slowly kind of dilute my juice down, consume less sugar. Listen, sugar addiction and soda addiction is a real thing. No, I was just imagining you with a t-shirt on that says dilute my juice. You need to start a t-shirt company. I don't know why. I do. My buddies and I were just pulling these weird combinations of words that came up in conversation after a few glasses of wine. There was another one called Journeyman Palooka. The Palooka, apparently,

I should look this up, but a Palooka, I think, effectively, it's like the Jimmy Jones of professional wrestling. Those guys with real human names whose sole purpose is to get thrown around and destroyed by the guys who have the cool names like The Rock. Someone

who's continually, here we go, a mediocre or inferior boxer that's it a palooka is a person p-a-l-o-o-k-a although there's uka also is the guy they bring into the training camp to make the champ feel good when he's training so he just gets to like body shot them and knock them down right totally that's a Palooka. So someone who is basically forever a career Palooka is a journeyman Palooka, but not sure how we got onto that. There's a great t-shirt out of that. Yeah. You know, I've been thinking about doing t-shirts for a while and I've chatted with the guys at a T spring for instance, who are fantastic. And I don't know why I haven't pulled

the trigger. It's one of those things that I need to review. And what I was going to say is for the last four or five years, the habit that I've gotten into before setting any type of resolutions is to do a complete review of the previous year. So I go through a couple of different things. I look over quotes that I've collected. For instance, I look over, I go through my entire iCal or calendar week by week. And I note down, basically do an 80, 20 analysis of my emotions, the emotional extremes. So the things I loved and the things I hated, and I make a list of the things that I loved and the things that I hated and don't want to spend more time, energy, resources on. And then I review two other journals, the five-minute journal, which people have heard me talk about, and then the morning pages. And I go through and I figure things out or try to

identify things like, why haven't I followed certain resolutions and followed others. So I realized, if I looked back at, say, my resolutions for 2013 or 2014, I had no more startups. And I also had no more interviews. Now the startups... You were serious about this. When you say startups, you mean starting a startup or you were actually talking about investing in startups?

That's right. I was talking about no more investing in new startups. And I was able to pull more investing in new startups. And I was able to pull the trigger on that this last year, 2015, and wrote a long post on all of my reasons for taking a startup vacation, but why, in broader terms, it's important to say no and how to go about doing it. But then you look at no interviews, right? No media interviews. I haven't been able to stick

with that and so i'll sit down and i'll try to figure out i know this isn't generally pleasurable for me i know it can backfire when you get misquoted why do i continue to do media interviews right but it's important for your relevance though you know that but i don't i'm not convinced that it is at this point because i've spent so much energy putting out 600 plus blog posts and writing and putting out the podcasts and so on. I feel like for me to justify spending an hour on the phone with someone when they're going to pull out one or two quotes,

probably misquote me and slide it into a big article. It's like I have to ask myself if that time would not be better spent doing something either I enjoy, which doesn't have to be productive, right? Like binge-watching Archer, which I've been doing while on the island. It's so fantastic. Oh my god.

And then, or doing something like working on my own content, right? Because I feel like I get a better ROI. So that's the type of review that I've been doing. Uh, and, uh, the only other habit aside as I'm reviewing, uh, I'll also make a list based on the things that I loved in the last year or other ideas of the fun stuff to schedule. Because what I've realized about myself, and I think this is true for a lot of people, is that if they don't pre-schedule the fun stuff,

like week-long trips to ABC, or pack trips, whatever it might be, and I have a list of stuff for 2016 that I'd like to do, the work or some type of frivolous bullshit, like just sitting on social media, will swell to fill the void. It'll expand to fill that space. So that's sort of where I'm going.

Do you have anything in particular that you want to do? Not just resolutions, because we're going to talk about that, like behaviors, but any new types of trips or experiences? A lot of that was this last year. At some point, my wife and I, Daria, are going to have kids. We've talked about this, Tim. I think that you kind of want to prepare for that and get a lot of these experiences and things that you want to do while you're still young and kidless out of the way.

I've spent a lot of time trying to knock out that list travel-wise. So anytime I can do something for work travel-wise, I tend to tack on a couple extra days so that Daria can go along with and so that we can have fun together as a couple. So for example, in a couple weeks I'm heading off to Geneva, Switzerland for a conference that I need to attend. I'll be there for three days, and then we're going three days early so we get a weekend time, and then just kind of make that a thing, make that a mini vacation.

And then honestly, one of the things that I did for the first time this last year that I will do again this year is take a few days. And typically I do this with a holiday weekend where you have already baked in three days off. And add on a couple days on top of that, you can get a full week and do a staycation where you just stay at home and really focus on the stuff that you really, really want to do but never actually have time to do. I'm not talking about chores, but more just personal improvement stuff or things that you just, every single week, it gets pushed to the next week. What are those things for you?

Oh, gosh. For me, it's around organization and little dumb things like cleaning off my desktop on my computer. That feels so good. Getting to inbox zero on one of my personal accounts. Just little things like getting into the sauna or starting something new. I'll talk about the Wim Hof method, which I know you've interviewed him on your podcast. I'm now going into week four on that. And that was something I started during my staycation. So yeah. Very cool. Yeah. I want to ask for some help from folks.

So a couple of things on my list. Seven to 10-day water-only fast. I already did that, which I'll hopefully have some reports on for folks. Did you talk about that anywhere on any of your other podcasts? No, I haven't really gone into detail. So I did a 10-day water-only fast. Yeah, we've both done fasting in the past. The most I've ever done is 24-hour fasts.

I did a juice fast of three days, just juice only. But I'm really curious, can you give us the quick little rundown of why and what it felt like? Yeah, the rundown of why is easy. There's quite a bit of data to suggest, both clinical in the scientific literature and just empirical from friends of mine who do a lot of work with fasting, a lot of which is unpublished at this point. But talking to people like Dominic D'Agostino, Dom D'Agostino, for anyone interested in fasting or preventing cancer, ketogenic diet, that's the podcast to listen to. We cover everything. It appears to be a very effective way to purge precancerous cells. So if you're over the age of say 35 or 40, I think the number I've heard is something like 70% of people have cancerous cells

that could become potentially problematic later, right? And it's not so much a problem that you have mutations that have caused cancerous cells. It's when they grow out of control or become malignant or metastasized that you get yourself into trouble. So fasting, at this point, my personal protocol is I'm trying to do one full day a week, intermittent fasting. I've been doing intermittent fasting for the last 14 days or so, because there's a lot of the Bahamas are not known for being slow carb or keto friendly. So I'm having rice for my evening meal, but, uh, I'm fasting until about 12 or one P 12 PM or 1 PM. Um., and then eating in, say, a six-hour, six- to eight-hour window.

But the protocol, if we're looking at strict fasting, not the, just say, 12- to 18-hour fast, I'm looking at 24 hours a week, one three-day fast a month, and then one seven- to 10-day fast per quarter. Now, I've actually only stuck to the longer fasts once every six months or so, because you do pay a productivity penalty. Um, you, you, the, the trick, if you're doing a

longer fast like that and you should never do it without medical supervision, um, I've realized there, there, there are some kind of ketoacidosis as a diabetic is not the only thing that you would have to worry about. There are other things that can go sideways. So you really want to ensure that you have medical supervision if you're doing a longer fast of any type. But I'm going to have some data to share on this, but I really want to look through it all. Based on DEXA scans and bioimpedance and all sorts of stuff that I tracked, I didn't lose any muscle mass over, it was effectively a nine and a half day fast. And there are a bunch of tricks that you can use for that. But one of the most important aspects of threading that needle is getting into ketosis where your body's using

body fat as fuel as opposed to glucose, blood sugar, is getting into ketosis as quickly as possible. Because what a lot of folks will do is say juice fast, or they'll just go full starvation and won't expedite the process of getting into ketosis. So they have three or four days where they're effectively eating muscle tissue and that's being broken down into amino acids that the liver then converts to glucose through something called gluconeogenesis. So I'm doing a lot of experimentation with this. Uh, Dom D'Agostino is the guy that I rely on. So people should definitely listen to that, that podcast. As far as how I felt there, uh, I was able to, uh, work as much or as little as I wanted. I did light exercise and there were really only, I would say two days out of the nine where I was just a whiny little bitch who wasn't getting

anything done. And it was a good thing that I, I, I set parameters for myself so that I wouldn't send off a bunch of really bitchy emails to people and create a mess for myself. Right. Yeah, so anyway. Yeah, I've done a handful of these fasts in the past, and I will tell you that I tried, like any rookie does when you first get started with this stuff, I tried a juice fast as my first one. And that was a horrible experience. Yeah, it's the worst.

You're right, you don't get into ketosis. I had to run to the bathroom. You probably know why. Just because your gut just explodes into the toilet. Yeah. If you're consuming that much fruit juice, you just get disaster pants all day. It's terrible. It was really bad. But then I would say, you were talking about it a little bit too. And I remember Hugh Jackman had an interview on 2020 where they asked him how he gets so ripped to play the role of Wolverine. And he said, well, The Rock actually gave me his secret. This sounds really silly, but it was intermittent fasting.

He said, I intermittent fast. He goes, I go 16 hours fast every single day when I'm shooting the movie, and then I eat for eight hours. And that's what he did. So I started trying that. I probably did intermittent fasting. I would say, um, I don't know, maybe two months out of last year and it gets you shredded quick. Uh, so that was a lot of fun. Um, and it, and it is a nice little kick in the pants to get you into keto faster. Um, so, you know, I'm, I'm excited to try the, one of the other things that I saw that I don't know if you've seen the study that came out here a couple of weeks ago, or maybe it was about a

month ago was this thing called mimic fasting. Have you heard of that? Yeah. The, the, uh, fast mimicking diet. I think that's right. I want to say that's, uh, Longo's based on Longo's research. Why don't you explain for people what that is? I have some reservations about it, but there are definitely people who are following this protocol. Yeah, so there was a paper that came out about it that essentially, you know, they talk about some of the really big benefits. And I'm not just talking like a flat stomach, but more of the stuff that Tim was talking about along the lines of anti-cancer and some other things kicking in as you get into the kind of longer duration fast. So, you know, so once you're day two, three and, and on. And so, um, it's really difficult though, as anyone will tell you when you do these really long fast. So this, the idea was that they could

mimic fasting by serving you things like, um, really lightweight broths and soups. So you are still consuming some calories, but it's not a ton. And you have a couple of these little tiny kind of broth-based meals per day. Your body still goes into the fasting state, but it's not as brutal as the traditional full-on just water fast. It's something like four to, I want to say it's less than 400 calories a day or something like that. Something like that. That's right. Now, I will say there is awesome data, if you want to get technical about it, that would seem to indicate that pure fasting still exceeds the benefits of low

or severe caloric restriction in terms of lowering IGF-1 and so on. Now, one could then debate whether lowering IGF-1, in fact, extends longevity in the same way that you could argue about whether lowering homocysteine decreases inflammation. And there's a lot of debate about both of those. But that's the first thing on the list. I already knocked it off. I was going to do that in 2016, but I did it towards the end of 2015, and I'll do it again. One thing I'd love recommendations from for people listening is I'd like to create some short films. I need to do more things just for the fuck of it. And for instance, hiring people or paying creatives just to make cool shit without any profit motive whatsoever. So if I can find high endurance creatives to help make, for instance, short films, I eventually want to do some feature film stuff. And when I was chatting, I think it was with Robert Rodriguez, I got the idea of,

or I did, maybe he gave me the idea of making a few short films. And I think Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen also said this, so that I could go from start to finish in a micro sense from drafting up the screenplay, so to speak, doing the storyboarding, working with a full team, director, et cetera. And so I think that's something I'm going to do. Maybe make a couple of five to ten minute short films. And if anyone has any particular recommendations for that, I am all ears. So please just hit us up

on Twitter, hashtag random show. While we're at it, Kevin, what's your Twitter handle? At Kevin Rose. And I am at T Ferris, because I'm an idiot and didn't get Tim Ferris, but at T F E R R I S S. Uh, other things that I would love recommendations on. Uh, I've never been to Montreal and I've been dying to go to Montreal. So if people have recommendations for when to go, what to do, hashtag random show, let me know, Montreal.

Okay. So I'm focusing on body weight exercises and gymnastics training. There's a very interesting guy. I think it's Chris Summers with gymnastics bodies, gymnastic bodies, which I follow on Instagram. And I've pinged a couple of my buddies, like Max Shank is another one who's very interesting to check out and I want to focus on doing two moves and you can google these because it's a bit of a hassle to visualize. A planche, you know what, fuck it, I'll take a stab at describing it. So planche push-up is where you're flat on your hands or on your fingertips and your legs are spread, you're in a push-up position and your feet are off the ground. What that means is you have to lean forward so that your shoulders are way ahead of your hands. So I want to get to the point where I can do a comfortable planche or planche push-up and also something called a front lever, which is

kind of almost the upside down version of a planche in a way, but you're hanging from a bar and your body is completely parallel to the ground like you're levitating. But of course, you're connected through your arms to the bar. So people have recommendations for any particular exercises that have helped them with quantum leaps in progress with either of those, hashtag random show. Let me know. Would love to hear about it.

I'm looking at the plan to push up right now. There's no way in hell you're going to pull this off. You're way too big. I'm optimistic. It's like little tiny dudes doing this. Yeah, they tend to be a little small, but there are beefier dudes who do it. And I'm optimistic. So I'm going to, I'm going to

give it a shot. I might have to like cut off my legs at the knees or, or lose a lot of, uh, quadzilla size in my legs, but I'm optimistic. So I'm, uh, working on that. It definitely does not help if you have a lot of extra weight in your legs to do either of those things. So is this one of your new year's resolutions or just something you want to do in general yeah i would say it's a new year's resolution i want to get to those are two movements that i'd like to stick i would also like to do uh to be to get to the point where i can do a slow i'm gonna fuck up the terminology here sorry for the cursing guys uh i got criticized because some people listen to these with their with their kids but alas from Long Island. I apologize. I'd like to be able to do a slow handstand from standing with legs together, knees locked, where I just slowly go down to palms on the floor. And then I guess that would be in a pike position, just go straight up to a handstand and I can like lower my feet down, tap the toes, come back up. I'd like to get to that point. That sounds doable.

Yeah, it looks more doable than the planche. Yes. Uh, so I told you what I've been doing for my core strength, right? Did I, did I mention this to you? Uh, lots of Pilates thing. That's good. Uh, no, you didn't mention it. So it's been three months of Pilates twice a week for me. No, listen, you can laugh all you want. No, I like Pilates. I just... Hold on. Yeah, I'm ready. So...

I hate you. It's good for your pelvic floor. Are you doing kegels? You go to the gym and I walk by the Pilates studio and yes, it doesn't typically tend to be very many guys in there. It's kind of like core strength and all the guys are out there hitting the iron and I get that. But I have always had a really crappy core. I just can barely – and for me as a guy, I feel a lot of other guys are like this. It's like the one thing – I would say legs and kind of core are two things that typically get overlooked. and for me as a guy, I feel a lot of other guys are like this.

It's like the one thing, I would say legs and kind of core are two things that typically get overlooked. A lot of guys go to the gym, they hit upper body, they hit shoulders, they hit chest. So I always had a really weak core and I knew that. So I started to have some kind of back issues this last year and so I was like, now is the time to really get serious about my core. And I did what anyone else would do is you do those leg lifts at the gym. And then I'm just like, well, I'm not, I'm really not getting the results. This sucks. I don't feel motivated. It's the last thing I do. I always kind of like do half the reps that I want to do. And so, um, you know, I tried a Pilates class and I didn't try the group class. I went to an instructor so I could get the full-on experience.

I found a semi-reasonable instructor price-wise, and I go twice a week. It's been amazing. I would say that I can do things with my abs I never thought possible. Granted, they're still not showing due to beer and pizza and things of that nature. Underneath those ripples of fat, you're shredded. It's like nine-pack. Seriously, though, it's a lot of fun because Pilates is one of those things that if you have an instructor, there's so many exercises

that it doesn't feel like you're doing the same thing every time. It's something like 30 different moves. She's constantly changing it up, having me do different things. She started me right at the correct pace in that I wasn't killing myself. At the end of every session, I'm definitely sweating. I just feel stronger.

It's been a fun practice for me to add into my year, the tail end of last year. I think Pilates strict, technical, classical Pilates is fantastic. I mean, it's very similar in a lot of ways to gymnastics training, actually. And with a tremendous amount of focus on pelvic tilt

and becoming comfortable in different positions and understanding pelvic tilt, and then something called the transverse abdomininis. So people can think of that as a corset muscle that sort of runs horizontally across, this is simplified obviously, but across your abdomen. And if you cough or laugh really hard and you get sore in the midsection, that's a transverse abdominis. And when people have really lax or weak transverse abdominis, you notice a lot of things. And if they have tight hip flexors because they, for a whole host of reasons, like not sitting enough, not stretching hip flexors, not having strong muscles around the pelvis, you see people who have low body fat but look fat when they're just standing there in clothing because they're, they have the hips kind of pouring forward and that makes their gut stick out. And then they, they, uh, they, they have a protruding belly because they have weak transverse abdominus.

So the, the Pilates is great for that. I, I get asked a lot by women, for instance, you know, what should I do for exercise? I want to look like this person, look like that person. And they point out very athletic, say, dancers or celebrities, et cetera. And inevitably, if they want to keep it simple, and this could apply for guys too, but I do get this question specifically from women a lot. It's Pilates and two-handed kettlebell swings. And if you do Pilates and very classical, technical, unforgiving Pilates and kettlebell swings, and let's just say you did that twice a week, right? Like Monday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Monday and Friday, you did the kettlebell swings. Wednesday, you do the Pilates or vice versa. And you can alternate

weeks even. So it'd be like Pilates Monday, kettlebell Wednesday, Pilates Friday, kettlebells Monday that way. Uh, you'd be, you can get in fantastic, incredible shape and all you would need to do is moderate carbohydrate consumption with something like slow carb, um, or paleo or whatever, uh, which I still think is for a lot of people more sustainable than intermittent fasting i did light up the internet accidentally uh did a little bit of internet arson uh inadvertently because i put up a post on facebook and twitter saying most people who do intermittent fasting are just getting smaller not lean, meaning they're losing muscle mass. And that was based

on data from a friend of mine who runs a DEXA scan facility, which gives you a very good idea of exactly what's happening with your body composition, body fat and muscle. And she said, most of the, a lot of the guys, uh, the vast majority, and they are guys that tend to be who come in and do an experiment with intermittent fasting, lose a lot of muscle mass. Uh, so they lose weight. They're looking at the scale. I think they're doing a good job. And in fact, they're, they're, they're backsliding because their body fat percentage is going up and, uh, the internet freaked out about that. But I think ultimately when you're looking at resolutions or making changes in the new year, uh, the, the good plan that you'll follow is better than the perfect plan you're going to quit in two weeks. So there you have it. Another thing that I would like feedback on from people

is I'm considering doing live podcasts and traveling around the country. I'll probably do some tests in LA maybe first, uh, then San Francisco and New York. And then I'm thinking about hitting a bunch of, uh, lesser known or lesser traveled places like hitting up like Montana and going on a road trip and actually going around the country. What are your thoughts on that? You've done, you've done more live live shows than I have. I've certainly done a lot of live shows back in the day with Dignation. I think that it really comes down to, when you say live, do you mean audience or no audience? I mean audience.

Oh, you mean audience. I mean actually meeting people, yeah, and just traveling around the country. Now, I would obviously test this first in a few places where I'm comfortable and know I can fill seats, like LA, SF, New York. But then I'd be doing live audience. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's chaotic. It's just, you have to, obviously, I think that if you would hire a person or two to help out, to help manage some of the chaos and then certainly very directional microphones so that you don't pick up the entire crowd. But you know, it's, it's, it's a lot of fun, and it's good to vibe off of the audience

and feel the energy when they laugh at certain things that you're talking about. And you can always take live questions or things like that. So why not? Why not experiment? Do it. Yeah, I think I'll do,

I think I'm going to do it in LA first in January or February. So that's coming up soon. So keep an eye out, folks. If you have any thoughts, let me know. If you have any thoughts on venues for 500 to 2,000 people, and Kevin, is there a sweet spot of audience size for you? Yeah, I mean, I've always enjoyed the slightly more intimate shows.

When you get going into the bigger venues, one, they ask you for more money and they charge, whereas you can go and find nice bars with a small stage and say, hey, if you're going to fill this up with people, I'll just give you the space for free. Beach Chalet out in San Francisco was one of my favorite spots, and We used to do shows out there. It's right up by the beach, by Ocean Beach.

They can hold probably 500 people. I just picked a slow night. I'd do it on a Monday or Tuesday night or something. They'll just give you the space. They set up speakers for us and it was just completely free because they knew they would sell more beer. Cool. beakers for us. And it was just, you know, completely free because they knew they would sell more beer. So cool. So you mentioned an app to me that you were finding useful. I don't know if you want to hold that back for later, but no, I'd like to hear more about it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so along with new year's resolutions comes the need to track all this stuff. You and I are both very quantified people.

Last year, I tracked my alcohol consumption in a Google spreadsheet, which was great. Every single day, I would color-code it. I wrote a little script so that based on what I would type in, it would change it to either green, orange, or red. Just to be clear for folks,

he was trying to beat 30 drinks a week. That was green. Yes, I was trying to beat 30 drinks a week. That was green. Yes. I was trying to go for at least 50 to 60 drinks per week. No, it was really eye-opening because I think that you tend to just think like, oh, I got this event tonight. No big deal. Let me go have three drinks. Oh, there's an event two nights from now. Yeah. My wife wants to crack a bottle open. And you don't realize not only how many drinks you're having, but just the sheer amount of calories you're putting into your body and consuming all this alcohol.

So it was eye-opening for me, but it wasn't something that was easy to do on the go, and especially when you start layering in other things. So why don't we do this? I'll give you my quick little 30-second rundown of all the stuff that I'm trying to track. The name of the app that I'm using that I found is called Way of Life. I think by far it is the best habit tracking app out there. It's really simple to set up. It creates beautiful charts and graphs out of the data. You say yes, no, or I skipped

it. You can set up things that are also negative. For example, one of the things I have is, did I drink over three drinks? If I say yes to that, it'll actually turn it red instead of green. I'll give you my quick little list. Number one, well, these aren't in any specific order, but watch a TED Talk every day. That's going to be easy. I subscribe to the TED video podcast on iTunes, and I'm going to watch one every single day for the entire year.

Sauna, three times a week. I want to get serious about heat. I've already done three times this week. I'm going to skip today, but I'm going to go tomorrow. I alternate cold bath and sauna. I found a great place in New York, the Turkish and Russian baths. The cold is and sauna. I found a great place in New York, the Turkish and Russian baths. And the cold is extremely cold. And I go in there and I can talk about the Wim Hof method later and what I'm doing to stay in there for long periods of time. The third one is two or less drinks. So

I'm trying every single day to consume two or less drinks. Then I'm tracking my Pilates. I'm also tracking meditation. I'm tracking weightlifting, trying to do that three times per week. I'm tracking no alcohol. So those are days I take entirely off drinking. I want to know how many days I'm doing that per month. And you can see month over month progress with this app. It's wonderful. Tracking no sugar.

Tracking tea consumption. So out of the last seven days, I've had tea four days. No coffee. I am trying to just do tea only for a few days. I've had tea four days. No coffee. I am trying to just do tea only for a few days. Coffee has been a crutch for me for a very long time. So I'm trying to just slowly wean myself. I don't inherently think that coffee is bad for you. There's a little bit of data on if you drink more than two cups, it can increase your homocysteine levels, which I have elevated, but that could be because I have that motherfucker gene. You know what I'm talking about? The MTHR. MTHFR gene, yep. Yeah, but that could be because I have that M-motherfucker gene. You know what I'm talking about, the MTHR?

MTHFR gene, yep. Yeah, so that could be why. And then also slow carb. I'm living the Tim Ferriss lifestyle. Living the Vita Ferriss. When I say slow carb, though, I tend to mean a little bit more on the keto side. Obviously, that's also slow carb-ish. I do a modified keto

that is a lot more veggie-forward. Veggie-forward? Sounds like a wine. Mmm, broccoli on the tongue. Exactly. So that's everything I'm tracking. And this app is phenomenal. That is a lot to track, man. Are you not worried that you're going to flame out because of too many variables? It seems like you spend a lot to track, man. Are you not worried that you're going to flame out because of too many variables? It seems like you'd spend a lot of your time with inputting data. So the beautiful thing about this app

is it's not about typing a ton of notes. Yes, there's a section for that, but it's simply yes or no questions. Like, did you have alcohol today? And you tap yes or no. And then it goes on to the next one. And it's all done in a straight, like a vertical list of things

so you don't have to view any additional screens. Seriously, it sends me a text every night at 10 p.m. because I set that up in the app. Then I go in there and it takes me all of, I'd say, 30 seconds to input all the data. I'm going to do it all. This is the fun thing. Every first of the month,

so come February 1st, I'm going to tweet out my results from last month. It creates a little tiny spreadsheet for you that you can tweet out, like a little tiny graphic. So yeah, it's going to be fun. Yeah, if you force yourself to do that. Although now people know. So if you get to the second of the month, anybody listening and you remember, and you see that Kevin hasn't put out his numbers, you should remind him on Twitter. So I wanted to underscore something here about resolutions, goals in general, behavior change. And that is, if it's not in the calendar,

and if you don't have some type of consequence or stakes, you're not going to do it. So if you're saying, for instance, I've seen a number of New Year's resolutions lists online from fans and they often say, I want to meditate more. I want to drink less alcohol. And that's not, not only is that not specific enough, you want to make it measurable. you want to have some type of quantified goal uh but there's no reason there's no punishment or real reward for not following that behavior if that makes sense so two things get it in the calendar right so if you say meditate more and let's say you decide that means i'm going to meditate three

times a week for one minute in the morning or five minutes in the morning or before bed, put it in the calendar or it'll get crowded out. And second is have either an accountability partner or put together a betting pool with a bunch of friends. And I talk about this a lot in the, uh, the four hour chef because it's about accelerated learning. So I will, if I'm going to put up an excerpt from that chapter for free for people to check out, which is just, I'll put it at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash stakes, like tent stake, S-T-A-K-E-S. So 4hourworkweek.com forward slash stakes, and I'll put that up. But you need to have some type of reward or punishment, and punishment generally beats out reward. I know that sounds

funny, but the, the, the prospect of losing say a hundred dollars in the betting pool will motivate you more than the possibility of winning a hundred dollars. And this has been very well researched, uh, or some type of public embarrassment, uh, works very well also, or being humiliated because you didn't live up to your side of the bargain. If Kevin doesn't put out his numbers and then people give him a bunch of shit on February 2nd or March 2nd, that will be a motivator for Kevin.

Oh, it's a huge motivator. I'm going to expose all of my drink data and everything else directly online. So I'm excited for that. It keeps me motivated. The other thing, too, I'll add on top of that is I was reading a post, I believe it was a study that was done, that talks about when you're. The other thing, too, I'll add on top of that is I was reading a post, I believe it was a study that was done, that talks about when you're trying to form a new habit,

try combining it with something you enjoy doing. Have you heard this at all? So, for example, if you're going to the gym and getting on the treadmill for the first time, bring your favorite new series, Archer, whatever it may be, and put it on your iPad and watch that while you're working out. You're doing something that you're enjoying. For me, I get through serious treadmill sessions at insane inclines. Granted, I'm walking, but I can play...

Two to three degrees? Yeah, right. I'm talking like eight plus degrees, but really slow. I'm just drenched in sweat, but I'm playing a tower defense game that I love. That's my time to game, but also get my exercise. So, you know, if you're going to meditate, do a shot of whiskey before you combine like that. But, oh, actually one thing I do to you, if I can make it on a streak for three days in a row with no alcohol at all, I go to the Kava bar and I have a full bowl of kava.

Yeah. No, I know you've told me, you've texted me. I don't know enough about kava to know whether it's better or worse for you than going without alcohol for three days straight. So let me, let me give everyone a 30 second rundown on this. Basically there is, um, a herb called kava. They, I mean, you can go to Whole Foods or any grocery store almost and buy it in kind of tea form. And actually, there's one, Yogi Tea makes one on Amazon that has five-star reviews, I guess almost a solid five stars with like 5,000 reviews. So use a couple of those tea bags, soak it for 15 minutes, and then you just drink it like tea. And it puts you in a very relaxed state.

So it's almost like you've had a couple glasses of champagne, but without drinking. So they actually have bars that are popping up over New York that don't serve alcohol. They just serve kava. And you go in, and they give you a bowl full of kava. It tastes like dirt. And you just kind of down it and then within 15 20 minutes you just feel like sinking into your chair and just kind of you're totally mellowed out so um get it while it's legal uh side note for folks smoking like a hookah pipe is not uh risk-free it's actually, you can down the equivalent

of a pack of cigarettes very easily sitting at a hookah bar. So that is not without its risks. Speaking of chilling out, I want to recommend that people consider picking up the practice of meditation because it is a very cumulatively powerful habit to begin. It doesn't have to be super woo-woo or new agey. I was looking at Twitter yesterday, actually,

and we both have a friend, Bobby Good Latte. Is it Good Latte? Is that how you say his last name? No, it's just Good Latte. Jesus Christ. Good Latte? I've never really known because I always hear his first name. But Resolutions for 2016, number one, stick to Tim Ferriss' excellent slow-carb diet for as long as I can bear. He's used it before, so it's not that hard.

Number two, use Headspace or meditate regularly. So there are a couple of different approaches you could take for getting started with meditation. One of them was recommended to be my Kamal Ravikant, very, very smart and good friend of mine. And it was very simple. Choose a song you like. So this actually comes back to your gaming while you're on the treadmill, right? So people don't want to meditate,

but pick a song that puts you in a good mood. For me, it was, I'm going to party like it's 1999 by Prince because it's hard to take yourself too seriously or be in a bad mood with that song. And you're simply going to sit on a cushion or on a couch with your back against the back of the couch or the wall. And you're just going to focus on your breathing to the extent possible for one song. That's all you're going to do. And you just get into the habit of doing that. And you do it just in the morning, once in the morning, and it's whatever it is, three minutes long. If you want to go a little bit further,

and even people who meditate regularly without any tools, use, for instance, Headspace. You used Headspace, didn't you? Yes, for a long time. I'm actually doing Wim Hof's meditation stuff now. I love Headspace. I was just on the phone with my sister last night. She was looking to get into meditation.

And the first thing I do is always recommend Headspace. They have this 10 days for 10 minutes a day. It's called the Take 10 Challenge. If you get through those 10 days, you'll be sold. It's amazing. And to that point, just broadly speaking, one of the things that I do when I review my, say, calendar for the year and I make my list of the things that have had the greatest positive and negative emotional impacts over the year and I kind of look at them as categories, usually what you end up with is a set of challenges or things you'd like to change in the following year. And one of the questions that I've tried to start asking is, what if it

were easy? What would that look like? So with meditation, people feel on some level, or working out. So even the term working out is, I think, a disservice to a lot of people because they go to the gym and they want to push themselves as hard as possible after doing, say, no exercise for six months. And so they try to go to the gym for an hour a day for five days. They miss one of those days and they feel like a failure and then they quit. Right. And it's like, well, you're, you're setting the bar too high. What would it look like if it were easy? Right. One set of kettlebell swings twice a week, start there or getting on the treadmill for five minutes, right. Meditating for three minutes, uh, that because ultimately it doesn't matter how effective something is. it doesn't matter how effective something is.

It doesn't matter how efficient something is. If you don't adhere to it, it doesn't work. Uh, so for another great one is just 10,000 steps a day with a Fitbit, you know, if you're really, if you're really out of shape and you're just looking to, you know, you can actually lose weight that way. I know a bunch of people that have set these 10,000 step a day goals and just use a Fitbit to track it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it's important to realize, I remember Oprah Winfrey said this at some point, she said, I always felt like if I weren't stressed out, I wasn't trying hard enough. And she doesn't feel that way anymore. And I've realized, especially after conversations with guys like Derek Sivers, he has this story about biking, going for this bike circuit,

and I think it was Santa Monica, and he would like huff and puff and try to break his time record every day. And it was 43 minutes. He could never break 43 minutes. It was this long, 10 mile track or whatever, making up the distance, but something like that. And then one day he's like, you know what? I'm bummed out. He know, he wanted, he started wanting to skip the ride because it was just too intense and wasn't enjoyable. And he's like, I'm just going to kind of cruise and enjoy myself this time. And he took the same route and he came back and it was 45 minutes instead of 43. And he's like, what? He's like all that discomfort, all of that, like grunting and groaning and just feeling miserable. And the, the only gain was like two minutes out of 45. That was the only

improvement. I feel like for a lot of the things that we do, whether that's managing investment or exercise or, you know, I have a list here, right? I actually did this exercise a couple of days ago where it's like, okay, podcast excerpts, audio books, book publication, body weight training, investing, getting entertainment guests on the podcast, crowdfunding, dog training, waking up early. Like what if it were easy? What would that look like? And actually writing it out. And it's incredible how many problems you can solve just by not creating problems for yourself in complexity. But what type of health goals do you have for 2016? Any particular health goals or changes? Well, I think that in listening to and getting into Dr. Rhonda Patrick's

podcast, the role of micronutrients in our overall health is just fascinating to me. And I had always been one of these guys that grabs a couple slices of pizza, and yes, Tim, I did have some yesterday, but that was my last day. You say that every time. No, I'm serious. It was my cheat day, too. I never do this.

Oh my God, I never do this. What I'm saying is I would always, in my head, I would rationalize it saying, well, I'm taking my multivitamin. And that just doesn't get the full spectrum. It doesn't really get what you need. In my head, I would rationalize it saying, well, I'm taking my multivitamin. That just doesn't get the full spectrum. It doesn't really get what you need. In watching her podcast and understanding a little bit more about what we need to consume to be healthy,

I've really upped my vegetable intake. I'm doing a whole wide spectrum, wide range of colors in my vegetables and just having one massive salad per day. I've been doing that for a couple months now. And I certainly feel a lot better. And my skin actually even looks better too. It's healthier. You look pregnant. You have that glow.

I have that glow about me. So do I. It's kind of an oily sheen. I've been eating sardines every morning, having a can of sardines, the wild planet sardines that I've talked about before. And I will just tell people, so the way that I use it, and I think I've mentioned this once before, though, is I'm traveling. My dog doesn't like to eat dry kibble. Yours doesn't either. But if I bring the origin, is the type of kibble that I brought, I don't use the foul for reasons I can explain another time, but I think it's the red, uh, the red

label. It sounds like Johnny Walker, uh, origin is that I'll, I will open the can of sardines and then pour the oil on top of the kibble and then eat the sardines myself. So the, so Molly, my dog is gettingble and then eat the sardines myself. So Molly, my dog, is getting the olive oil and the sardine juice. And she was having some dry skin issues, like brittle hair issues, and I couldn't pinpoint the issue.

Within three days of starting to add the sardine oil, just one meal a day, and I'm feeding her twice a day, perfect coat, skin, everything completely fixed after three days. And you have to assume on some level, being mammals as we are, that there's some type of corresponding effect in humans. I wanted to mention a book that I recently read that people might want to check out. And I picked it up, I believe it was mentioned and recommended to me by one of the podcast guests I've had on because it was on this running list of books to pick up. And it's called

Happy Money, The Science of Happier Spending. And the authors are Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton. So let me just read the description here. Two professors combine their fascinating cutting edge research and behavioral science to explain how money can buy happiness if you follow five core principles of smart spending. Now, there are a couple of caveats here. The first is that this is not a perfect book. There are very few perfect books out there. I think that one of the things that you should always keep in mind when you're reading any type of pop science book is asking yourself, whenever they say, whenever they have an assertion, asking yourself, is this causation or could it just be correlation? And for those of you who have the four-hour body, there's an appendix on good science, bad science, and spotting the

difference. And that's a worthwhile chapter to read. But the example I'll give, and you see this in the media all the time, where people will say something like, people who practice yoga have lower blood pressure, a new study finds. And then they continue to say, therefore, you should start doing yoga, and it only takes 10 minutes a session, three times a week, right? But if you were to actually dig into the data and you ask yourself, well, wait a second, is it causation? Is the yoga actually causing the blood pressure or could it just be correlation? Meaning they're just happening at the same time. So for instance, maybe they're comparing the blood pressure of people in like, I don't know, a hospital in the Bronx. I'm just making this up like a sedentary population.

And then they're checking the blood pressure of people in the West village who are going to yoga class. And it's like, well, okay. Right. And they're also eating wild salmon several times. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like what, like there's one, there's one group eating at like Mickey D's and fast food and the other people are eating at Whole Foods. It's like, okay, well that could be an issue that's confounding everything. And in this book, there are quite a few places where I think that they, they, uh, make arguments of causation where it's, it's probably correlation. However, that having been said, there are, uh, principles and also stories illustrate the principles like paying for things in advance. Like I mentioned, committing to this holiday Christmas trip with my family, you know, six months plus in advance, right?

So you can benefit from the anticipation. So prepaying for certain types of experiences as opposed to possessions. And they walk through what types of experiences tend to give the greatest emotional and psychological ROI. And they talk about different types of behavioral psychological studies that someone like, say, Daniel Gilbert might talk about stumbling upon happiness and how you can use them to your advantage. And it's not only for people with a ton of disposable income. One could argue that the less income you make, the more important this becomes because you have fewer, uh, absolute number of dollars to spend at, at Liberty as it were. And the sort

of the pain of misspending is, is even greater. So, uh, I, I found this book very useful for this particular point in time, meaning New Year's resolutions, because you can then, say, take these different questions that they arm you with and go through your credit card statement and actually make categories of things that you want to start to eliminate, minimize, or add in. And I found that to be just a very useful exercise because there's tons of information out there about how to invest your money. But every time

you make a purchase, you are investing in some respect, right? You're trading money, this wampum for an experience or a possession that you think is going to give you something. And it's very fast read. It's also available on audio. I got it on very fast read. Uh, it's, it's also available on audio. Uh, I got it on audible by the way. I just downloaded it. Yeah. And it says 226 pages, but most, I'd say the last 70 pages are, uh, notes and references and whatnot. So it's really only about 150 pages long. You could read it in, uh, in a day or two. It's a. It's a very, very fast read. So I thought I would recommend that one as well. Any favorite books from 2015 that you would recommend people check out? Oh, gosh. I'd have to go back and look at my list. I've got it all on Audible.

But one thing before I forget, and this is the random show, so we're allowed to jump around a little bit. You were mentioning canned fish just a few minutes ago. So next time you're in town, I want to take you to a place in New York. It's called Maiden Lane, and it is unbelievable. Basically what they've done is they've created a wine bar that serves nothing but extremely high-end canned fish, and they have them stacked on the wall. And so you can walk over there and pick out what canned fish you want and they pair a wine with it and give you cheese with it and it is phenomenal i go over there and i get cod livers um which sound disgusting but are obviously really nutritious for you i have cod liver with some

cheese and a really dry white wine and it's just like a fun place to hang out is that is that after your pilates or before your blood i know you would love it what's funny is that you act all tough here but if i down you'd be like god liver i love this are you kidding i know totally i'd wear my like i'm trying to decide what type of turtleneck and skinny jeans I'd be down, man. I'm totally down for the canned fish. It's easy to travel with also. So if you go to a location, and a lot of tropical places are like this. I shouldn't say tropical.

I should say island cultures have very mediocre food because aside from the fish, they have to bring everything in. And it's very expensive. They're often very onerous in excise and import taxes. So the food quality tends to be pretty low and sort of in a best case scenario, highway robbery. So traveling with Kansas sardines, I thought it would be difficult and maybe I'm just an outlier,

but made it through with no problem whatsoever. Have you read, have you read radical acceptance? Yes. What do you think? Because Daria also, I think Daria was actually one of the first people to recommend it to me

by Tara Brock. Yeah, I'm looking here right now. I'm looking at Audible. I got about, oh, you know what? I didn't read it. I ended up watching her TED Talk. That's the danger of TED Talks

is you're like, let me just, let me just. So I think the book is very worth reading. Tara was on the podcast. She's a Buddhist teacher. And I'm very skeptical always of people who are self-described teachers of different faiths or aspects of spirituality because there's a lot of nonsense out there. Tara is absolutely the real deal. Her Dharma talks are incredible, but this book, Radical Acceptance, was recommended

to me not only by Daria, who is about as non-woo-woo as you can get, I mean, PhD in neuroscience, but at least one or two other scientists recommended it to me, which I thought was very unusual for a book in this genre. And it's in effect about how to stop beating the shit out of yourself or carrying around anger and resentment. It's very, very good. And I'm just going to read a couple of highlights. So I'm looking at my Kindle highlights on laptop, and I have 68 highlighted passages. But here are just a few. So one of the lines, and I tend to highlight things that either I want to remember or review or lines that have nice turns of phrase and wording, but here we go. So here it is. I knew I would never treat a friend the way I treated myself without mercy or kindness, right? So one of my resolutions that I'm going to then put into sort of a measurable

form that I can assess somehow is to treat myself the way I would treat a very close friend. And because I do think that I have a habit to really kind of smash my head against a wall and to be very unforgiving to myself. Let me find another one. As a friend of mine put it, and I know, Kevin, you can attest to the fact know, as a friend of mine put it, and I know Kevin, you can, you can attest to the fact that there are a lot of, uh, successful and unsuccessful, but very successful people in Silicon Valley who could, uh, identify with this. So as a friend of mine put it, quote, feeling that something is wrong with me is the invisible and toxic gas. I'm always breathing and quote. And I, I just think that this, is extremely helpful for walking people through the thought processes and making subconscious judgments conscious so that they can deal with them, so that they can somehow fix them.

So let me find one more. Okay, so this is, I'll give one more example here sorry guys i'm scrolling through so this is this is also this is a story about a tiger that was in captivity and in a zoo named mohini that was rescued from a sort of an animal uh sanctuary and mohini had been confined to, I think it was a 10 by 10 foot cage, just a con with a concrete floor for like five or 10 years. So they, they finally released her into this big pasture with excitement and anticipation.

They released Mohini into her new and expensive environment, but it was too late. The tiger immediately sought refuge in a corner of the compound where she lived for the remainder of her life. She paced and paced in that corner until an area 12 by 12 feet was worn bare of grass. Perhaps the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns, right? So this is where the review of 2015.

Okay, we're back after a Bahamian internet connectivity interruption. Power has been going out intermittently for the last three days across the entire island. So the story wasn't that interesting. So I will leave it where it got cut off and we'll continue. Mr. Rose, over to you. Yes, so I just have one last thing to say. You asked me about book recommendations earlier and I couldn't recall it right off the top of my head, but I pulled up my Audible account. Shit. I lost you, buddy. Can you hear me?

I can hear you. Yes. Okay. You're back. Okay. Forge ahead. Maybe we should just call it a show. I'd say we're getting close to that. We're getting close. Okay, so the last thing I wanted to say was just my book recommendation that I have for the episode.

It's called The Good Gut. Have you heard of it? No. Is it like wheat belly? No, no. This is all about gut bacteria and how they influence your overall health. So this is a pair of scientists that wrote this book that actually Rhonda had on her podcast as well. Really fascinating stuff about how gut bacteria influences health,

how animals bring in healthy bacteria. So actually having a dog could potentially be a good thing for you. So, you know, letting them lick you on the mouth is not that horrible. It's a good thing I make out with my dog so much. Yeah, exactly. But there's really interesting data around C-sections

and how not passing through the vaginal canal could potentially harm the baby and that they're not getting a lot of their mother's bacteria, and they're actually getting a lot of the bacteria from the nurse's hands, which is really not a great way to set the stage for your bacteria when you're born. So it's really data dense, packed with good information and it cites a bunch of studies. I just found it fascinating because I've always had a weak stomach and recently started supplementing with probiotics, the VSL-3 that Rhonda recommends. Yeah, VSL-3 is good stuff. And it's been a world of difference. So I highly recommend the book. It gets a little technical.

If you don't know if you'll like it, watch Rhonda Patrick's podcast first. But yeah, it was eye-opening for me. Cool. My last share will be just a couple of quotes that I've been revisiting because I think they'll have applications to my life in 2016. And I will share some of them. So the first is from Henry Ford. Here's the quote.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs. So really breaking things down into, to use GTD parlance, the next physical action. All right. The next is from George S. Patton Jr., U.S. Army General. A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week. That's another one that I think will apply to my life a lot in January specifically, trying to sort of ready fire aim in effect. Next is Charles Bukowski, controversial but popular writer. Unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. And I think this applies

to me as far as writing. People have asked me, if you hear something crunching in the background, that's my dog eating a bullpizzle. Yeah, Toaster's also running around because our dog just got home, so he's like, you hear his leash and collar. But that's okay. Bullpizzle aside, which is just bull penis for those people wondering.

And you actually consume that as well, which is odd. Yeah, you know, if I don't have jerky on hand, bullpizzle, bull penis will do, uh, this, this applies to me because I get asked a lot. Are you working on a new book? And for me, I don't choose to write a book and then write a book. Uh, I write a book because I have to get it out of my head. Like it gets to a point where there's such an incessant obsession with something that if I don't get it out of my head, it's unhealthy. And that's when I write a book, when I can no longer

keep it inside of me. So there it goes. That's the Bukowski. Next is, and I'm sure somebody who's listening can give the original here, but this is actually a quote from Jennifer Aniston, but she's quoting someone else. She says, somebody once said, quote, everything you want in the world is just right outside of your comfort zone, end quote. And I thought that was also very appropriate to a bunch of decisions that I'm nervous about making in the next few months that I shouldn't be nervous. These are great to start the new year. I love stuff like this. Very inspirational. James Cameron is next, who has not only been an incredible filmmaker, but has really been a groundbreaking

technologist in the filmmaking world and outside of film. So Avatar, Terminator, etc. And some of his mistakes, actually, like Abyss. So the Abyss was a failure commercially, but they developed

the technology that was then used in Terminator 2. So, quote, if you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success. I thought that was a good one. Can you hear me, Kevin? God damn it.

I'm going to finish without Kevin. Fuck it. And then I'm going to call him back. So, we're back again. Thought this was going to be easy, relaxed, but now I'm going to finish without Kevin. Fuck it. I'm going to call him back. We're back again. I thought this was going to be easy, relaxed. Next time, three quotes instead of ten. Now I'm going to have to edit this goddamn thing. Just a few more because I'm going to push it. Bruce Willis, I think we...

If I drop, just finish without me. I almost did. Happy New Year, everyone. Keep going. The next is Happy New Year, everyone. Keep going. Yeah, exactly. So the next is Ray Bradbury, 256. I keep these paginated. And here it is.

Don't worry about things. Don't push. Just do your work and you'll survive. The most important thing is to have a ball, to be joyful, to be loving, and to be explosive. Out of that comes everything and you grow. So end to be explosive was the reason I included that. I think that massive action, not action, is often a difference of degree that makes all the difference. Two more and then we're done. 283. Kurt Vonnegut Jr., one of my favorite writers

of all time, I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over out on the edge. You see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. So that's similar to what I've talked about before, sort of the, uh, the extremes informing the mean, but not vice versa. And the last one is, uh, a philosopher named Daniel Dennett. The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them, especially not from yourself. That's it. So become a documentarian of your own life. Keep track of those mistakes and share them so you can at least help someone else. But by showcasing your mistakes and analyzing them, I think that's how you very often avoid repeating them. So that's it, man. That's all I got. Love it. Good stuff. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to everyone out there.

And we'll see you again soon on a random show.