The Tim Ferriss Show - #159: How to Optimize Creative Output — Jarvis versus Ferriss

Episode Date: May 13, 2016

This episode is a conversation/debate/trading of ideas between Chase Jarvis (@ChaseJarvis) and yours truly. We discuss a little bit of everything, including: Optimizing creative output Systems thinking Quota setting Celebrating the small wins Success for type-A personalities Meditation techniques Absurdity The details of the struggles of creating a high level And much, much more... If you enjoy this conversation, we invite you to check out CreativeLive.com/30DaysofGenius where you can get incredible videos from people like Richard Branson, Seth Godin, Brene Brown, and many more. It's free. Sign up now. If you sign up by Friday, May 13th at 11:59pm PT, you are entered to win a mentorship from me, Chase, and 3 other high-level performers for a year. We will pick 1 winner on May 15, and I hope it's you. This podcast is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks is a bookkeeping software, which is used by a ton of the start-ups I advise and many of the contractors I work with. It is the easiest way to send invoices, get paid, track your time, and track your clients. FreshBooks tells you when your clients have viewed your invoices, helps you customize your invoices, track your hours, automatically organize your receipts, have late payment reminders sent automatically and much more. Right now you can get a free month of complete and unrestricted use. You do not need a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month, go to FreshBooks.com/Tim and enter "Tim" in the "how did you hear about us section." This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast.***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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Show, where it is my job, typically, to deconstruct world-class performers of various types and various worlds to tease out the tactics and so on that you can use. By popular demand, though, we are turning the tables, switching it up, mixing things about a bit. And this episode is a conversation, sometimes a debate, a trading of ideas between Chase Jarvis, world famous photographer, and yours truly. It really focuses on overall how to optimize creative output. And there is a URL mentioned, which is creativelive.com forward slash 30 days of genius, all spelled out creative live.com and then forward slash three zero days of genius, where you can get incredible videos from people like Richard Branson, Seth Gooden, Mark Cuban, Brene Brown, Jared Leto goes on and

on and on one video per day. That is always going to be there. But if you sign up, which you can do at that URL, there is a sign up for free button. You'll see by Friday the 13th, that is May 13th, Friday, before midnight, PST, then you could win direct mentorship with yours truly with Chase Jarvis and three other incredible folks. The episode itself focuses, like I said, on creative output. And we touch on systems thinking, how to use the question, what would this look like if it were easy? We have, how can I set my quota lower so that I can feel like I'm winning? And using that as a precursor for winning, how to celebrate the small wins, even if you're not good at it. Lionel Richie anecdotes, can't do anything without that.

Have we succeeded despite or because of type A personalities? We have a discussion on that and how it pairs up with meditation techniques and practical tactics for dealing with the real world and the edge that you might create for yourself. Absurdity is a synonym for creativity and a lot of very nitty gritty discussions about the struggles, the battle, even at a high level, perhaps, especially at a high level, you just trade up in the types of problems that you have. How do you contend with those? How do you balance achievement with appreciation? It goes on and on. So I hope you enjoy this episode and the URL again, not to miss, you should check it out is creativelive.com forward slash 30 days of genius.

And without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Chase Jarvis. All right, buddy. Again, welcome to the show. See if we can not botch that. And we're just going to hold each other for, welcome to the show. See if we can not botch that. And we're just going to hold each other for the rest of the show. So, how are you? I'm well. You good?

I'm doing great, man. We're in San Francisco. Sunny San Francisco. It's 80 degrees today. I'm wearing a sweater because we were wearing the same outfit before we started. I end up with the same outfit as my guests all the time. How are you? You good? I'm fantastic. Yeah, I'm really fantastic. The podcast is crushing. It's funny how that as a side project, as a stress release valve turned into the main focus. The thing.

I mean, it was really intended just to be a creative outlet. I remember I was guest number either two or three i was you pitched it to me as an experiment like this is going to be weird it might be bad it might be bad quite probably will be bad but i was so burned out after doing the last book for our chef i just wanted something different and i also along the lines of what scott adams the creator of dilbert has talked about before to focus on focus on systems thinking in his language, which is planning projects that even if they are viewed as a failure

by the outside world, give you skills or a network, something that helps carry over to your next project. So for me, I was like, well, even if the podcast fails, I'll get better at asking questions. And I'll get better. That's funny. At eliminating verbal tics, I say, as I sound like Porky Pig. Work in progress, folks.

But yeah, it's just been a blast. And it's one of those rare cases where the thing that is now driving a lot of the creative ship for me is what I most enjoy doing. So I'm thrilled. Yeah, go figure. But is there a, well well not is there i know the answer the answer is yes you engineered that but did you engineer it so carefully like did you know it was going to be this perfect or this magical when you started or did you just start like give us a little bit of your thought process because baked in there is the answer but i want yeah it was told it was not a disaster when it started but if if you go back and listen to episode one with Kevin Rose, I was nervous.

You start with your friends. I start with my friends, and I was still nervous. Yeah. And I remember a couple things happened in that first interview. Number one, I was just, I was throwing out the questions that I had borrowed from other people I had seen interview. So one of them was like,

if you could be a breakfast cereal, what would you be? And Kevin's like, oh, it's going to be one of be one of those interviews and i'm like oh stop shaving my balls i'm already nervous and then uh i was nervous and drinking wine and so when i flash forward like three quarters of the way through i sound and i was completely drunk so it's like right out of the gate i embarrassed myself well this is gin this is gin. This is gin. We should be very clear. But what, what I did do is, uh, interviewed or really just reached out to podcasters before starting to ask them a series of questions, which is what I do anytime I try to learn about anything, even if I don't launch, even if I make the decision to abort. And in this case, it became clear that almost everyone who

launches a podcast quit after, say, three episodes. You look on iTunes, 300,000 podcasts, let's just say, and the vast majority of three episodes, and then they go silent. They go dead. And it's because people get overwhelmed with editing. So I made the decision to do long form, long conversations, next to no editing. And just that decision alone, I think, has allowed me to get to where I am in a necessary but not sufficient manner. Like those small decisions that are made, and we were chatting about this before we started recording,

but in response to the question that I've been asking myself more and more, which is what would this look like if it were easy? Like, yes, you can try to make it perfect over here, but that might mean that you quit after three attempts. So like, what would it look like if it were easy? And part of the answer was next to no post-production. I love it. Well, to, to, uh, describe a parallel track, Chase Jarvis live, this particular show is five or six years old now, and the original 50 episodes were only in Seattle, 100-person live studio audience, live only, no pre-recorded, also the same long format.

And it was hard. And even then, I'd made some decisions, some aesthetic decisions, one of which was making it black and white. Primarily, that was intentional so that it would be reductive and you're just focusing on the two people in the conversation. But then it was also like, oh, well, that saves all kinds of other problems because we can use mixed light and natural light and artificial light and we don't have to solve for all this shit. So I kind of tried to do it then. And this, what we're living right now, is an even easier version of that.

And it's weird how when you take out these things that are the blockers, how you can steamroll through something. And not only that, but what I've come to realize, maybe a little later in my life than I would have liked, is that... You're like 26. What do you mean later? That's true. 26. I've been doing a lot of roids. That explains the lost hair. That's a joke, folks. Not a very funny one.

But the point I was going to make is that I think for type A personalities, I put us both in that bucket. Dangerously. It is easy as a default to assume that if you don't feel like you're burning the candle at both ends, you're not doing a good job. And what I've realized is, yes, there's a place for hard work if you've chosen the appropriate place to put it. However, if you're really focused on your unique abilities, right, and really just honing in on the things that you are best at, and it doesn't mean you're best in the world, but just of the things that you do, you are best at this small piece. It's not, it shouldn't feel really, really hard and forced. And I think that that, that leads some people who are really driven to veer away from what they're good at, to incorporate all this complexity that is comprised of things that they're mediocre at,

or just so, so at. And I've just realized for myself, and the podcast is really was the wake-up call for me, that it doesn't have to be so hard. And yes, there are times when you grind. Yes, there are times when I'll batch record the podcast, which is another thing I do to make it sustainable. So I'll record, say I record on Mondays and Fridays, just decide it as a policy. I'm going to record on Mondays and Fridays. Then I'll do two or three on a Monday, two or three on a Friday. That's a month and a half of long form interviews. And then I have the shorter ones and all of that is intended to make it sustainable and consistent. And it allows me to focus on the pieces that I'm best at. Whereas if, if I had made other decisions

based on what the crowds were doing, right. And I was told this when I started blogging, you have to blog at least a half a dozen times before noon or nobody's going to pick up on your blog. It's not going to become huge. You have to do this. It has to be this length. It has to be this. It has to be that.

And when you ask those folks for the evidence or any supporting data, well, how do you know that? Even just that question, you don't have to be abrasive about it. How do you know that? And they're like, because so-and-so Bill, Bob, and Harry, and Jane told me that it

was true. And it's like, oh, you realize just because something's been repeated that often doesn't make it true. And you find the same thing in podcasting. You have to do this, have to do this, have to do this. And just to give one example, since I'm all fired up on green tea, is the audio quality. So audio quality is important in so much as for 99% of the people listening, they're going to be in a subway, in a car, cooking. It has to be intelligible, and it has to be loud enough. And make it stereo, or rather mono, so that you don't have one person's voice in one ear and one person's voice in the other.

As long as you do that, everybody except for audio engineers will be happy. But people will kill themselves who know nothing about audio visual with like preamps and all of this gear. And they'll become so overwhelmed, none of which I use, uh, that they quit because they're like, this is too complex for me. It's like, what would this look like if it were simple, if it were easy. So let's extrapolate just to some really concrete stuff. Like what is the universal lesson? If it's, if you simplify it, it's easy, but presumably there are folks out there who are writers and photographers and designers. And is there a maxim that transcends just make it easy? Uh, well, there's, I think there are compatible maxims. If there's something to transcend it, transcend might not be. Am I making this hard? Am I making this harder than it needs to be?

For instance, one of the best pieces of advice just to get out of podcasting and look at writing, which I find infinitely harder than podcasting, although... We're podcasting right now. We're podcasting right now. I'm not even trying. Are you trying? I'm not trying. Although I had so much mushrooms before we started. No, I'm kidding.

You did hours of prep for this. I did hours. Hours of prep. The blank page is very intimidating for a lot of people. Unless they happen to be trained journalists who can churn out 1,500 words a day and have them be good, that's not me. But one of the best pieces of advice I got was from someone who told me this lesson in the context of IBM back in the day, when IBM was just the behemoth. It was an 800-pound gorilla

across several different industries, and their salespeople were known as being incredibly, incredibly effective. They smashed quotas. Now, how did they do that? One of the lessons that was taken away from IBM was that they made the quotas really low. That's pretty odd. Why would they make the quotas low? Because they wanted the salespeople to not be intimidated to pick up the phone. They wanted to just build that sales momentum, and then people would overshoot their goals.

Translated to writing, I was told at one point, your goal should be two crappy pages a day. That's it. If you hit two crappy pages, even if you never use them, you've succeeded for the day. And alleviating that performance anxiety about putting down like 10 pages of good material, which inevitably, I think, you're going to fail at least once or twice a week, allows you to overshoot that goal and continually succeed and sort of build that confidence and momentum. So that would be an example of rigging the game

so that you can win it. It applies to diet. It applies to exercise. It applies to writing. It applies to podcasting. How can I make this easy? How can I set, in a way, the goal lower, the objective smaller, so that I can feel like I'm winning? Because I feel like the feeling that you are winning is a precursor to winning on a very large scale. Yeah, to actually winning.

The way I talk around here is CreativeLive, for example, has a ton of momentum right now. It's like it's just growing. It's exceeding our expectations. I mean, we have very high expectations, but you can't underestimate the power of momentum. And two becomes four. Just think about compounding interest. There's like, you're leaning into it and it's accelerating and the,

uh, maybe even the accelerating law, a lot of accelerating returns. That's what I'm trying to think of. So is that a, um, I don't know. Are you,

do you apply it to every part of it? Cause we just touched on like writing and like, I do, I apply it to any type of behavioral change. And if you want to be more creative, you want to make more money, which then has many different component behaviors.

If you want to sleep better, longer, deeper, whatever it might be, set of behaviors you need to change. Whenever I'm looking at behavioral modification, I think B.J. Fogg at Stanford has done a lot of interesting writing in this department, where if he's trying to get someone to floss, it'd be like, start with your

front teeth. It's like, don't worry about the whole mouth. He's just like, I want you to floss like you're, you have enough time to floss your front teeth before you go to bed. And eventually you just be like, wow, I'm such a loser. I can't believe I'm flossing my front teeth. I'll just floss my whole mouth. And then you do it. And before you know it, boom, you're flossing your teeth. Right. So, uh, but, but rigging it in such a way that you don't put it off, right? So, oh, you want to pick up an exercise habit, five minutes on the treadmill. That's it. And it's like, if you get in there and you're like, I'm not feeling it. You want to jet after six minutes. Great. You're done. You succeeded. You win. If you want to stay, you're

feeling great. Feeling a little froggy as my, uh, gymnastics coach currently would say, it's like, great. Then stay on for another 30 minutes. But understand, that's bonus points. You already won. And I think another way, a very close corollary to that for creatives, particularly people who are like, I need to win, I want to be number one, I want to fill in the blank, like aggressive goal. I know you have none of that hardwiring,

is celebrating the small wins. I think I've been very bad of that hardwiring, is celebrating the small wins. I think I've been very bad at that historically. Yeah, me too. And my ex-girlfriend helped me develop a habit, which I think is a great habit. I have this jar, and it's going to sound super cheesy, but she labeled it the jar of awesome. And it's a big mason jar, and it's just like when something really cool happened you're not going to remember it like three months later and have that perspective to give you gratitude it's like write it down on a little piece of paper like every night like write down the things that were awesome that happened that day however small they might be fold it up put it

in the jar of awesome and then when you get into a funk when you're feeling down when you're feeling uncreative whatever it might be go through and read these pieces of paper, these little like self-made fortune cookies of goodness from this jar. It's a really easy habit that I think allows you to not only be creative, but understand that most people, and I know this isn't exclusively focused on creativity, but why do people want to be creative? Because they want to do good work. Why do they want to do good work? Because this, this, this. Why? Because they want to feel good about themselves and be happy. It's like, well, you can give yourself small doses of that throughout the process. You don't have to postpone that reward that you think you're going

to get at the end. Because guess what? If you don't celebrate the small things, you're not actually going to be very good at celebrating the big things either. Yeah, there's, I don't remember, it's come up in this series of talks, the, somebody was talking about, was it, I think it was Neil Strauss talking about interviewing Lionel Ritchie. It's like Lionel Ritchie, he just had a, I mean, had an epic year, you know, it had to be like 1983 or something like that, but it was an epic year. He won the Grammy, sold a million albums, blah, blah, blah. He considered himself climbing his way to the top

of the music industry and when he got there, you know what he told Neil was up there? Fuck all. There's nothing up there. It was just there was no one else on the mountain

and so it's just obviously the takeaway is that it really is the journey. It sounds trite, like you said, like an awesome jar or a jar of awesomeness but if you can't actually celebrate your wins along the way, what do you got?

Yeah, the anecdote that I still remember to this day, and it just puts a lot in perspective, which was from Thich Nhat Hanh. So this is a Buddhist monk who's nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King Jr., Vietnamese Buddhist monk. And he's done quite a lot of writing. I think the first was Pieces Every Step or something like that, which was intended for internal use only. It was a guidebook to new monks who were attending his retreat center or monastery in Vietnam.

But the point being, the anecdote that he talked about was thinking about this peach. So you really want this peach at the end of the day. And this is like your reward for a hard day's work, whatever it is. But if you're, say, washing the dishes, and instead of being mindful, and I don't want to get too woo-wooing out there, but this does have a lot of practical applications. Instead of being present with washing the dishes

and doing it in a very conscious way, you're thinking about the peach you're going to have afterwards. When you're eating the peach, you're not going to be able to enjoy the peach either. You're going to be thinking about your inbox or whatever the hell it is that you're going to do after the peach. And so it's like really honing that. And I actually owe you a debt of gratitude, and I've said this before, but for introducing me to Transcendental Meditation and getting me to bite the bullet with that. And there are many different types of mindfulness practice that work very well. I think things like Headspace are very helpful as apps.

Yeah, great app. Calm, Headspace. Calm, also very good. But celebrating the small wins. And mindfulness is one of the constituent attributes that you can develop that helps a lot with that. I love that. I'm going to go to the meditation thing.

I think you provided the bridge now that you're a professional interviewer with the podcast and everything. Natural bridge. I'm going to take it. One of the things that I'll tell a short story here, which is, I don't remember where we were. We were in Seattle somewhere, or maybe not, but we were doing something. And he said, dude, you're killing it, and yet you seem really chill.

What's going on? What's different? There's something different. I was was like oh wow it's interesting you said that i can't really think of oh actually come to think of what's different is i started meditating about you you know six months ago or something and i think you were like hmm are you okay i think you checked my pulse you made sure that i was still alive and and then we sort of yeah i don't remember if we laughed about it or were, there was a few minutes of introspection around, what does that mean? Is it the thing that has got us to where we are,

any amount of success that you could say either one of us has had? Is it because we're hardcore type A grinder, like going to not fail at any cost type of people or is that something that's actually been an anchor all along right you were worried about succeeded despite it and not because of it yeah and you asked me like well don't get all soft on me jarvis do you feel like you did are you losing your edge yeah so talk to me about not we'll get into meditation in particular in a second but how about the mentality or the fear that some people who are

hardcore or hard charging consider themselves that type of a person tell me or the people who are listening and watching how that's not the case or how it wasn't the case for you or how you sort of played through that this is this is something I haven't fully answered for myself, to be quite honest. And I was just having an exchange while I was talking on my podcast with Tara Brock about this, who wrote a fantastic book called Radical Acceptance. Terrible title, great book that I think is a very digestible and approachable presentation of how you can implement a lot of what we're talking about. I feel like in the very worst case scenario,

when I'm meditating consistently, and for me, tell me if this is true for you, but for me, let's just say I haven't been meditating at all. Whatever, I'm just being an idiot or life intervenes, I'm just not meditating for like two weeks it takes me about five to seven days for there to be like a phase shift like you meditate i can meditate consistently it's kind of like eh what am i doing okay that session was eh meh meh meh and then you drop in and then you kind of shift gears and things become very, very different. When I get to that point, in a worst-case scenario,

I feel like I have half the anxiety and unnecessary stress in a very stoic sense. I talk about stoic philosophy a lot. I read tons of Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, et cetera, repeatedly. So I'm not allowing external factors to provoke an excessive emotional response. So like 50% less of all the negative manifestations of that stress, anxiety, uh,

Tony Robbins. I remember it said at one point he said, stressed is, is sort of type a language for fear. That's like, that's pretty good one. Uh, and secondly,

I'd say I would, I get 80% as much done. That's a worst case scenario. So it's I'd say I get 80% as much done. That's a worst-case scenario. So it's like a 50% decrease in all the negative and at least 80% of what I usually get done. So that's at the low end. Yeah, yeah. That's like a worst-case scenario.

A worst-case scenario. Trying to look at it with slightly rose-colored glasses on, I would say that meditating helps me to be more effective, not just more efficient. Meaning, much of what I do when I don't meditate, I think, is reactive, compulsive, dodging of bullets or putting out fires. It's like, okay, great. Maybe you cleared 50 additional email that day. Were those email important to clear at all in the first place? Maybe not. And I think that with meditation, I'm able to, or mindfulness practice, just because meditation is like a total brand. It's got so much baggage. We'll go there. Yeah. But it allows me to step back where

I'm like, okay, no longer am I on like front lines in a trench having grenades lobbed at me. I'm actually the general looking at the battlefield and the map of the territory being like, okay, let's make some high-level decisions. These guys shouldn't even be fighting over here. What the fuck are they doing over here? No. All right, go over here. Call these guys out. We need more troops here.

And objective-wise, we should be going after this, this, this. No. Like, all right, go over here. Call these guys out. We need more troops here. And objective wise, we should be going after like this, this, this. Great. Everybody, deep breath, execute. So that's a bit of a winding answer. But I feel like, especially at this point in my life, I do feel like I could have benefited tremendously from it previously. Even if it were just for the benefit that I find myself less likely to engage in addictive behaviors like stimulants. So I have always loved coffee. I mean, tea at the weakest, right? When I was a high school athlete, I got hooked on pre-workout supplements, you know, Phedra and caffeine, aspirin, all that stuff. And I think I did a lot of physical damage to myself by taking that stuff consistently because it was sort of self-medicating, but also just really put me on like level 11 in spinal tap parlance. But when I meditate, I don't need those things as much,

nor do I want those things as much. So I think it could have been very helpful just from a health standpoint if I had started earlier. And these days, you know, I'm 38, I feel like I want to pick my shots. It's like I'm no longer the athlete I once was. I'm not going to go out there like Joe Frazier and just throw hooks all day long. It's like, no, I want to have very surgical strikes.

And to do that, you need to, I think, have just that general level awareness and not be a foot soldier. Yeah. I just actually read a great quote from Maya Angelou, something about creativity. And for some reason, this is a tie-in to meditation, which is creativity is an infinite resource. The more you spend, the more you have. And I find that there's this sort of compounding thing. You alluded to it in your meditation sort of recount right there, where it's just like it's compounding day one day two day three it's like three three three and then all of a sudden it's four five six seven eight on a scale of one to ten and I find that if I'm in it boy it's an accelerating sort of experience

an effectiveness not efficiency for sure it is clarity the way Jordan talks about basketball like he sees the game in slow motion that That's what makes him different than most of the other players. I think that's the one that I've used on why I think meditation is powerful because I tend to see my life in slow motion as opposed to the hyper-caffeinated, like, got to run from here and I'm late to this in five minutes and how busy feels so powerful because you're always doing and, oh man, I'm so awesome. No, I agree. And the creativity being an asset that grows the more you use it, the more you spend, I think is a very interesting concept. And what I've been focusing on personally in the last, say, three to six months really trying to focus on is seeking out and creating creating the absurd so i think that there's so much absurdity in life and as adults we've kind of inculcated ourselves to be very serious we're so serious and mature and i think that is kryptonite for creativity i really think that is kryptonite for creativity. I really think that taking life

and yourself too seriously is just... It's dangerous. It's like waterboarding your creativity. It just absolutely nullifies or at least decreases it dramatically. So for me, I've been trying to not only seek out absurdity, which I think

quite frankly is in many cases a synonym for creativity or creative. It's like just if creativity is too nebulous and people are like, I've read six books on creativity. I'm still not sure what the hell it means. It's like go for absurd. Like try to find the absurd and create the absurd. And on that note, Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers. Incredible.

Hilarious writer also. Incredibly deep philosophical thinker, but it's embedded in this humor like Cat's Cradle. It's like, no cat, no cradle. Doing things just for the hell of it, for no good reason whatsoever, and making them as absurd as possible. I've created some very interesting opportunities for myself, some very unexpected

opportunities for myself just by doing things on a lark and doing things, uh, because they're absurd. Could be, could be, can you give us an example? I'll give you an example. So on Instagram, like I try to put up, uh, at least a handful of photos a week that are just completely absurd with minimal explanation just to see how the world would respond. So it's like me testing out my, my dog's new dog bed, you know, with like little to no explanation or like yesterday putting up this photo of myself with these ridiculous things called sun stashes, which got sent to me. And it's of myself with these ridiculous things called sun stashes which got sent to me and it's like sunglasses with these little bunny ears with like a chain that hangs down with like a bunny mouth over my mouth so i do this photograph of myself with a save

ferris shirt on holding a kitchen knife and a bottle of wine and just put that out there and i was like let's see what the world does with that. And, um, how was it received? It was received. Uh, I mean, as to be expected with the internet, like a lot of people who don't know how to take anything non-literally, which,

and I'm not sure how you would even take that literally. Uh, it was great. It was just like scratching my own itch to be absurd and just, uh, stir things up a bit. And can we use the word play? Play for sure.

And I think that another, and I know we're going all over the place here, but I think that I've also revisited a lot of mythology in the last year or so. This is not, we haven't talked about this, but I've become fascinated by... Minotaurs and shit, or what do you mean? Yeah, potentially minotaurs,

but a lot of animal-related, say, Native American mythology. Looking at the coyote and the raven, or like these different trickster gods. I mean, I used to be a D&D head in all Fairness Dungeons and Dragons.

For those who have not played with the graph paper. The 20-sided die. Oh, so good. I still have all of my dodecahedrons and all that goodness. But go gray elf. Anyway, the point being that I think that the masks people wear, and this is someone else's quote, but often tell us more about who they are than the truth.

And the stories that persist for hundreds or thousands of years can tell us, even though they're fiction, more about our sort of existential condition in humanity and human nature than any nonfiction book written on the subject. And that's something I've been trying to explore, like to discover truth through what people would consider non-truth in the form of mythologies. And it's specifically for me focusing on these kind of trickster, prankster gods who are very, I mean, very

interesting characters because they're viewed on one hand as creators and one hand as destroyers, but they, in many cases, kind of walk the line between this ordinary reality of human beings and this other world of the mythology surrounding the gods and whatnot. But as off the reservation as all of that sounds, I think there's a lot of truth to be gleaned by looking at stories that have just persist think there's a lot of truth to be gleaned by looking at stories

that have just persisted for hundreds of thousands of years. And that's informed a lot of my behavior. Yeah, there's a play component embedded in that for sure. Like it's make-believe, and it made me, as you were talking, I reflected on my own life, and I have a list of ten habits that I do every day, and I put

there's actually two words that I put in one habit, and it's play or make. I consider myself, where do you put that? I put it in an app called Habit List that I track 10 habits. It's not a free app, so you have to be prepared to pay $1.99, which I've literally said, yeah, check out this app. I'm like, oh my God, it's $1.99. Literally, you paid twice as yeah, check out this app. And they're like, oh, my God, it's $1.99. Like, literally, you paid twice as much for your coffee this morning.

So get off your ass and fork up the $1.99 habit list. It's a good one. So you put, now, make or play, are those two separate habits? Or do you put them in one line? One habit. And that's the part that I think is interesting. We were talking about, like, creativity is sort of making something out of nothing. And then you've got to be careful not to take yourself too seriously.

And that led us into play. What are some of your other habits? Sorry. I'm holding back to protect this family program. No, this is great. I'll get to those in just a second. Let me put a bow on this point. But the fact that play and make, for me, are interchangeable, I look at making as a playful activity, even though basically the only job I've ever had is as a professional creative.

And a reflection on someone you introduced me to, Charlie, who used to work for you, helped you launch the four-hour work week, May 4th for Body, his book Play It Away, which is about finding some relief in your day, 30 minutes to just go hit baseballs or take a walk or goof off, basically, and how that stimulates creativity. So I put those on the same thing, on the same level, and if I make something, say this show, or I will take some time out and actually go take some pictures every day, that making or goofing off,

I lump those in the same thing because it makes me a better human. You want to know some other habits? I do. Make sure to drink 64 ounces of water every day. 64 ounces. Which is not an incredible amount. It's just like...

Eight glasses. Yeah, roughly eight glasses. And Kelly Stratt's got me salting that water, of course. Oh, yeah. Kelly does that. Another one is eight hours in bed. I don't require eight hours of sleep of myself, but generally there's a strong correlation with...

If I'm in bed. Bedtime and sleeping. It's weird how those go together, right? I do the same thing with napping. It's not sleep for 20 minutes. It's lay down for 20 minutes because that, again, like rigging the game so you can win, if you lay down, you're like, fuck, I need to get to sleep. I only have 20 minutes.

Sleep. Come on, sleep. You, I need to get to sleep. I only have 20 minutes. Sleep. Come on, sleep. Like, you're never going to get to sleep. But if it's just like lay down, you're going to get 80% of the benefit if you just close your eyes and just relax for 20 minutes. Then you actually will oftentimes fall asleep. There you go. So that's my eight hours in bed. Eat clean.

And clean, I have sort of an operative whatever whatever clean is right now sometimes it's paleo sometimes it's just no fake foods like nothing with preservatives or whatever and i is you know that i eat clean today or it should be cleanly but uh what else what other i'm questioning what else is on my list here um well this isn't about me it's you asked the question you're now a professional interviewer as we do this. This is about us. Meditation a.m. and meditation p.m. So I give myself 20 minutes every morning and 20 minutes every evening.

And I don't hold myself to the 20 minutes. That's why it just says meditate. Sometimes when I come out of it and it's been 11 minutes, I allow myself to, I'll usually just sit there for another four or five. What time do you meditate at night? I try and meditate before dinner. Okay. Because I almost never meditate in the afternoon or evenings.

I just kind of throw in the towel with that early on, but I do the mornings consistently. So before dinner. Yeah. And I track this behavior so I can tell you exactly what my percentage is for PM meditation. I'll do that right now. In the week of 327 in March, I was at 57% of the time. So not all the time, right? Versus the week of 313.

Almost a passing grade. 71%. Yeah, I know. But again, the point is that I set the habit to just do the thing. Yeah. And see, I'll give you the rest of them. Zero to one glasses of red wine. Zero to one.

That's a lot of self-control, sir. It is. And I've been doing this basically since, I mean, I think you probably know me as someone who parties reasonably hard. I'm not afraid to drink ten drinks. Yeah. And starting in January 1st, I just said, you know what, I did the Janu-wagon, basically didn't drink anything in January. It felt amazing. And my sleep was completely transformed.

I was sleeping in a really different and much deeper way uh and then january or february i said okay well i'll just have a couple drinks here and there and now i've been on this thing and i love it so i'm probably drinking 90 less see so i i don't do moderation very well Some other binary on or off. So I haven't done any booze this month. At all? No. And I have to eliminate I'm not very good at moderating. Well, we'll go have a drink after this.

Visualizing gratitude. Visualizing gratitude. I already said player make and move my body. How does gratitude manifest? Immediately following my morning meditation, and I put those things, I put gratitude and visualizing gratitude. So I visualize some of the things that I want to happen in my day and in my life. And I usually

do that immediately after. So when I'm coming out of meditation, I look, okay, great, I got my 20 minutes. What are some things I want to manifest? And these are just pictures that I think in pictures, as most people do. And I just picture some of the things in the process of happening, whether it's a great interview with Tim Ferriss. I picture us sitting here laughing, talking. Oh, this is so great. We love it. And then I'll picture some success with CreativeLive

or some success with my wife, Kate. But I'll just, you know, whether it's personal or professional, like what are some things I want to have happen? And then I'll be like, oh, that was awesome. What are some things I'm grateful for? And it's usually a little bit of a reflection on what I just wanted to have. Man, I'm really thankful for all the things that Kate's taught me in my life. Or I got an elderly cat, Dexter. He's in his sort of end-of-life

horizon. I'm really grateful for every day hanging out with Dexter if I'm at home. And that guy, he's done a lot for me. And five or 10 things. And I sometimes write those down. Sometimes just say them to myself, depending on what kind of time I've got. There you go. Yeah, I have a similar routine in the morning. Give me the Tim Ferriss morning routine. All right. Bullet points.

I'll bang through it. So wake up. I have, this is my current morning routine. So wake up. Have the supplements that generally are absorbed on an empty stomach better than not. Feed the dog with some sardine oil on top of kibble. Molly. Molly. Awesome. She's so precious.

She's great. She's getting big. And then sit down, meditate for 20 minutes. Usually sit for 21 minutes because I want to have 20 minutes, but I usually fidget and fuss with my legs and kind of crack my back and so on for the first minute. Then I'll have a three minute decompress after that where I just focus on the sounds and so on around me. Get up, set tea, I have a Breville tea maker of sorts, 185 degrees. Then I will make tea with generally pu-erh or oolong tea plus turmeric and ginger. I will sit down with that, put some coconut oil, usually two tablespoons of coconut oil, which is about 60 to 65% medium chain triglycerides for some nice

ketones to the brain. Just keep in mind I haven't really had breakfast yet. Sometimes I'll have a whey protein when I first wake up if I'm training that day or if I just trained the night before. Then sit down with something called the five-minute journal or morning pages, and I will journal, and I'll hit the gratitude points, a few things that I'm grateful for that day. Being sure to pick one that is a very small thing. I picked this up from Tony Robbins, which is like the cloud outside my window right now. Or like the cup of tea or something very small so that they're not all large things.

Again, coming back to the celebrating little wins. And that will help me also prioritize for the day. Or just get my thoughts on paper so that the monkey mind isn't rattling around in its cage all day long. I can actually get something done. Then I will usually do some type of gymnastic warm up just for the joints really a few minutes of like scapular circles, wrist stretches, a handful of like maybe planche le, and they're called cat camels, for those people who want to look this kind of stuff up, and some rotational stuff, and then I'm off to the races.

How long does that take for you? Because people are like, oh, shit, I've got three kids. This is totally undoable. Yeah, wake up earlier. Wake up earlier? That's the same thing I say. I mean, look, it's just like I am a lazy bastard. And look, to state the obvious, I'm in a very fortunate position where I have a lot of flexibility in my schedule. But it's like, you look at the person who wrote The Kite Runner, Khalid Hussaini, I think his name is.

Full-time doctor, brutal schedule. He woke up an hour earlier, and he put pen to paper for like 45 minutes every morning. And he wrote a book that turned into a massive iconic bestseller and a movie and everything else like you make the time you're not going to find the time you make the time and i should also say it's like i know people with three four five kids like leo babauta zen habits i know people who have like real jobs people in finance people who have like nine to five, uh, you know, non-managerial entrepreneurial CEO jobs who make it work really, really, really well. Uh, and you have to make time. And I think that I don't remember the, I think it was, I might be getting W H Auden, A U D E N. I want to say this is the quote, the right attribution, but the routine, in the intelligent man,

routine is a sign of ambition or something like that. And of course it applies to men and women. Routine will save you. It's like if you're trying to reinvent the wheel and reorder things every morning, you're dead in the water. It's not going to work, especially with kids. As a creative, I used to fight any system. Like, oh, it's just meant to keep me down.

And then you realize that it actually makes your life that much better. Have a recipe. So that's why when you ask me what my morning routine is, I'm like, this is exactly, this is the algorithm. What's an algorithm? We use this word a lot now. Journalists use it a lot. What is an algorithm? Algorithm is, and computer scientists, you can rip me apart here, but it's a series of steps intended to produce a replicable result, right? And it's a recipe, in effect. And it's like,

you need that in your routine. For like my evening routine, I mean, same thing. It's like lockdown. I have a very particular evening routine. It's like my hot bath with Epsom salts, with ice bath alternating. This is going to sound weird, but I've been on your bath. It does sound weird, but yes. It fits a few people. It's not like we're not laying on top of each other in a standard issue bathtub, gazing into each other's eyes. You have an awesome tub. It's great. The rose petals were nice. Yeah. I'm kidding. No rose petals. Routine will save you. The crazier you are, the more neurotic you are, the more important routine is. Speaking of someone who I think is both of those things.

Me? No, no, no. Me, me, me. You too. You just keep it under wraps better than I do. I do a little bit better. So evening routine, without going into detail, I just think it's interesting.

I spent some time with Arianna Huffington. She's a really huge sleep advocate. And this sort of end-of-day routine, how powerful that has been. She does the same thing. You take a bath and turn down all screens, hide those things 30 minutes before you need to go to bed. I recently did a little video that's not out yet, but about eye mask, earplugs, stuff like that. I'm not a good sleeper. It's a game changer.

And less drinking, for me, has been a really powerful thing. Any, what couple, sprinkle a couple things. Yeah, other tweaks that I find helpful. Oh, I left Make My Bed out of the morning routine. game changer and less drinking for me has been a really powerful thing. Sprinkle a couple things. Yeah, other tweaks that I find helpful. Oh, I left make my bed out of the morning routine. I always make my bed in the morning. I got that from some former Navy SEAL commanders as well as Don Dupani, former monk. It really sets the day off on the right foot.

Yeah, you accomplish a little thing. It's like a minute. I don't tuck it. It's not Four Seasons. I have a large blanket that kind of covers the whole thing. It makes it look fine. But at night, and I bring it up because the night triggers thinking of the maid bed. Because when you come back in, if you've had a difficult day,

you come back in and your bedrooms just can complete disarray. I find that psychologically uh unsettling it's just yeah it's it's not a good bookend to your day versus you come into a space that's so a couple of things i have uh i think it's called the dom d-o-h-m i want to say it's a spelling white noise machine that is very, and if you search sound machine in my name, it'll probably pop up, but I don't make it. But it's a small device about yay large, and you can adjust the airflow. And it just provides a consistent background noise for sleeping. That's not so much my routine as the sleep setup. I also have a sleep mask. I think it's called the Sleep Master. Cheesy name, but

it wraps over the ears as opposed to behind, like on top of the ears, which I find very uncomfortable. And it has Velcro and it also basically buffers sound additionally. I have these disposable, which I tend to reuse at least a couple of times, 3M construction ear plugs. The orange ones? Yeah, orange or yellow. they're really really same that's what they're great they're powerful they're really powerful and uh in terms of evening routine i'll just throw out two things so the first is uh definitely less screen time and if you're going to use screen laptop let's say and then you use an app like flux which will change the wavelength of light that is emitted from your screen so that's matt you use that don't you matt's behind the camera right there like flux yeah he's like what's his orange green

yeah oh yeah so yeah tip for people like ceos uh don't let your designers work on stuff if they're using flux past a certain hour because the colors will be um this happened to a number of people i know but, but great app. And then the two pieces I would say is Hot Bath with Epsom salt is just a must-have for me. And I will very often listen to podcasts. Every night, Tim? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, if I'm at home every night.

And I will usually sit down and listen to a podcast or an audio book. And I'll listen to Hardcore History. I'll listen to Here's the Thing with Alec Baldwin, which is short. Or I'll listen to any number of audio books. So let's talk about the content of the audio book or TV show or book. Here's where I'm going. I find it, for me, I have experienced lifelong onset insomnia. And this seems to be hereditary. And males in my family almost all have onset insomnia. Meaning, they won't necessarily wake up in the middle of the night, but it takes them forever, me included, to get to sleep.

Typically, because I'm running through the things I didn't do, the things I'm going to do tomorrow, the problems I'd like to solve, the creative stuff I'd like to figure out, and I just can't turn off those hamster wheels. They're just constantly going. The way you turn those off is not by reading, say, a business book before you go to bed. That's just going to pour gasoline on the fire. The way that I can hijack that process and enable myself to sleep is by focusing on fiction. So watching, say, a great TV series that I just finished binge-watching,

which is Black Mirror. It's a little dark, maybe not the best pre-bed stuff for everybody, but Black Mirror, or a book like The Baron and the Trees, which is a short story by Italo Calvino about this young boy who gets in a huge argument with his father and goes up into the trees and never comes down

for the rest of his life. And it's a great fiction book, and it will pull you into this sort of surreal space of storytelling that temporarily disables this problem-solving apparatus, and then I find it easier to get to sleep. Interesting. Yeah. Speaking of sleep, and you said it a couple times, this problem solving apparatus and then i find it easier to get to sleep interesting yeah uh speaking

of sleep and you said it a couple times i might i put a thumbtack in it a while ago and i want to come back to it now which is the voice is in your head they never stop they never stop okay but let's let's talk about controlling them for a little bit because you know bernie brown is a mutual friend of both of ours uh talks about them as the gremlins. Ariana, who I already mentioned, talks about that annoying, is it annoying? What's the roommate?

What does she say? Obnoxious roommate. That's always sort of back there. And I think for both, I find it almost a universal. People are at one end of the spectrum, high performers, high degree of self-confidence, maybe even actualized.

That's just a beat them up all the time. And on the other end, people who have low self-esteem, they're like, you're not good enough, you're not this, you're not that. And it's weird how we're all on this together because regardless of where you are in your human journey, there's this voice inside of so many people's heads. I found that really interesting, and it does in part parlay into the meditation conversation we already had,

but you undoubtedly have voices in your head, and the reason I'm bringing this up, because the people at home, Tim is so successful. He's got it made. He's got all his number one New York Times bestsellers. He's got millions of people that pay attention to him. We love his podcast. I can't believe that he has voices in his head, too.

Sorry. It's funny, but it's true. No, the voices in my head just told me this great joke. No, I struggle a lot. I think that it's part of the human condition. And if people want a real snapshot of what a day of, say, a bottom looks like for me, well, there are two posts. One is called, if you search for anything along these lines, it'll pop up,

but productivity hacks for the neurotic, manic, depressive, and crazy, and then in parentheses, like me. That gives a pretty good snapshot. And then there's another one, which is, it's going to sound very morbid, but I think it's just practical thoughts on suicide. And it has a very dark story from my past that I, and I think that blog post is arguably, me at least the most meaningful and important thing that i've ever written period uh so i've had some very deep struggles so but but we can separate between like the deep dark downward spiral uh set of voices in the head uh which is like an angry mob that chases you down like corners you in an alley. That's one type. But then there's the obnoxious roommate who's just tapping you on the shoulder

while you're trying to do anything and who's telling you that you're not trying hard enough. You're not thinking big enough. You're not doing this. You're not doing that. You're not doing this. You're not doing that. Now, it's not always a negative thing. So I think that the ego, for instance, and I don't want to get

too esoteric, but it's like, oh, ego's bad, ego's bad. I'm like, well, I'm not convinced it's 100% bad. I think that the dose makes the poison and that having some type of drive, and we're primates, you can read Chimpanzee Politics if you want a real look into this. It's a great book. A lot of politicians read it, I'm not kidding to like learn how to navigate the senate and congress and stuff but the uh the way that we function in the world is positionally and so if you look at like positional economics we're constantly comparing and contrasting so to some extent you're always going to have that voice in your head you know even if I'm sure, and they might not admit it, but if we were to track down the best known Zen slash Buddhist slash mindfulness teachers, I'm sure part of them is like, God, La Rinpoche is so much better at meditating than me. God, that guy, look

at his robe, it's so clean and orange or whatever. We all have it. And so I think that one refrain that I've been saying to myself, very literally, to my own obnoxious roommate is, because I think there's like the observer, there's like me, then there's the obnoxious roommate, if that makes sense. I mean, we could talk about the id and all this stuff. Waking Up by Sam Harris is actually a great book that delves into some of this, and I'm not saying, what I am saying is reflective of Sam's writing. But what I have tried not to do is what I would call retreating into story. And retreating into story, me is I do something. Let's, let's think of a, of a good

example. Uh, not known for my patience. I'm a pretty impatient guy. I like, like I'm, I'm very, very aggressive. The trains run on time. Yeah. Trains run on time. Like on time means on time. It does not mean five minutes late. Like on time is late. You know, I'm like one of those stern dad types with myself and with other people. And so let's say that someone doesn't meet my expectations and I've hired them or contracted them and I don't fly off the handle, but I have a very curt, abrasive conversation or send off this missive via email that is just clearly 20% unnecessary prickliness. And then it turned, then like their feelings get hurt or they come out throwing haymaker like counter punches. And I'm just like, God, I always do this. Okay. And then I retreat

into story and it's like, I, oh, I always do this this remember the time i did this and did that i'm i am this i am that like that is a point for me to pause like i always or i am is i've learned to kind of time out that's trigger for you to go okay as much as possible i'm not perfect but i'll be like wait a second. Am I retreating into my story? Am I taking that old record off the shelf that is like Tim's pessimism regarding self-image and anger? And it's like putting that on and just rocking out to that. It's like, no, no, no, no, no.

You can choose the record. No, no, no, put that record back. And if you're getting, I remember I read this. It's like if you're pissed off, rather than saying, oh, no, put that record back. And if you're getting, I remember I read this, it's like if you're pissed off, rather than saying, oh, I'm pissed off, it's like, no, you're doing pissed off. You're playing pissed off. You're playing the role of pissed off.

And retreating into story could also be like, oh my God, so and so, they always blah, blah, blah. And I was listening in my bath, and this isn't quite nonfiction, but it was this old recording by Wayne Dyer. And he said... Wayne's awesome. Yeah, it's just an incredible delivery also. And one of the things he said, I think it was like no limit, becoming a no limit person.

It's kind of like a cheesy old recording, but I like those cheesy old recordings sometimes. And he talked about, in effect, people behave the way you teach them to behave. People treat you the way you train them to treat you. And so taking the step back and using the I always, I am, they always, they are as a cue to help me to pause and be like well wait a second their reactions are outside of my control but what can i do to train myself or them to minimize

this stress that i'm experiencing but yeah the voices i mean look i think i think that the to come back to the original question though that i struggle as much as the next person, but I'm trending in the right direction at getting better at not necessarily eliminating those voices, but recognizing them as the obnoxious roommate. I don't think those voices ever go. Maybe if you're a monk, they go away. But just being able to have a set of tools. And that's really what I'm trying to tap into here for the folks who are listening or watching, is like, hey, you're not alone. These things happen to even wildly successful people. Totally. And here's a toolkit to not solve all your problems, but to get you moving in the right direction. It's very helpful. Sweet.

Now, I want to talk about, we've talked before about various books. We're not going to talk about your books. We're going to talk about your podcast. I'm tired of talking about my books. As someone, you mentioned just sitting on the front lines of Ryan's book, and you said the front lines a couple of different times on a couple of different things. I got to sit front lines on your podcast. It was one of your original early guests, as we talked about. Kevin was your first guinea pig. I might have been your second or your podcast. It was one of your original early guests as we talked about. Kevin was your first guinea pig. I might have been your second or your third.

You've become really good at it. Are you having fun? Thank you. I'm having a blast. I'm having a really great time. And there are many points at which that is an engineering decision because complexity will invite itself to your table every week.

But you could do this. You could try this. And there are five people out of a million who are complaining very loudly about this. And you could do this. And there's so many temptations. As I think I'm probably a, what is it, like a maximizer and not a satisficer, I think it is,

in The Paradox of Choice, which is another book, I'm a perfectionist. And so my inclination is to be like, well, I know no one else is going to notice, but I'm going to notice. And so I want to put in the last 2%. It's 98% there, but the last 2%. And that's going to require another 10 hours a week.

That's my inclination. And there's a place and a time for that, but it's less and less compelling to me. So the enjoyment almost always, if I do the podcast and I find myself, for whatever reason, a little down or lacking in energy related to it that's a problem and I I call an audible sit down I'm like all right what is causing me stress right now what's going on and it's like if it's sponsorships it's like okay well like I'm happy to lose half of the sponsors just like change the terms if there's a term in our agreements that's causing problems change it and if they're like we're gonna walk it's like okay and the you know the general rule in negotiating is like, he who cares the least wins. And so, or she, right?

But it's like, okay, then walk. And they're like, oh, shit, just call their bluff. Like, okay, we'll take your turn. Or if it's the programming or the scheduling, it's like, all right, well, maybe I'll use some type of meeting software. Like, I think there is ScheduleOnce or something like that where people pick their own blocks that you could use to simplify the guest recruitment process. Maybe it's like, well, we're constantly answering the same questions and that's becoming a huge drag on time. Let's put together a guest prep sheet. Exactly. FAQ. I didn't send

you yours, by the way. I'm sorry. You didn't have to prepare. It has been a lot new yards, by the way. I'm sorry. You didn't have to prepare. That's okay. It has been a lot of fun, but to allow it to continue to be fun as it grows requires some architecting. Fair. Let's talk about your specific, some of

your favorite questions. You've had some great guests. Don't you just drop a couple of your favorite guests? Do you not want to just drop a couple of your favorite guests? Do you not want to do that? No, I'll totally do it. The Tim Ferriss Show's been a work in progress, and part of what keeps it fun for me is having a wide spectrum, right?

For sure. Jamie Foxx as an entertainer is, the guy's just amazing. Hilarious. So incredible. So we did that episode in his sound studio at home with impromptu music and imitations and impersonations. It was just incredible. All the way to the opposite end, and this is an episode that actually has not come out yet,

but did an interview with B.J. Miller. So I like doing interviews with people that the audience will almost certainly not know. I did one with Patrick Arnold, who's the world's most famous black market drug designer. Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, he was the guy. And B.J. Miller is a triple amputee who runs the San Francisco Hospice Project, or the Zen Hospice Project, excuse me, based in San Francisco Hospice Project, or the Zen Hospice Project, excuse me, based in San Francisco. And he's helped roughly 1,000 people die.

And he's a young dude, but he's gone through some just incredible trauma himself. He was electrocuted at Princeton, actually, in an accident, lost three limbs. And that interview is deep, and there's a lot to be gleaned from it uh so that would be one that i really enjoyed and i'm just naming a few along the spectrum because there's my favorite thing about is uh there's a philosophy that's the same as mine some people really fancy and famous that you can like oh what's it like to be that that's sort of

weird people that everybody knows and then people that no one would know but you like i know you're gonna find this person fucking fascinating yeah yeah exactly so it's like you have like the arnold schwarzenegger everybody's gonna know arnold uh but what do you mean hopefully i get some stories out of him that people haven't heard which which was the case but then you'll have somebody who say very well known in a tiny subset not tiny i mean he's well known anyway but like kevin ke, who's extremely well-respected in the tech world, an incredibly gifted writer, has an Amish beard, an incredible family. Like, I really look up to him because he's not only, he's designed an incredible life for himself,

and he's one of the most astute, accurate technology predictors and forecasters. Like, as a futurist, I've ever seen anywhere. And I'm in Silicon Valley. There are very few people. Like maybe Ray Kurzweil in a number of capacities. Kevin Kelly's right up there. And so I think he's the world's most interesting man. I like the real version.

So I did two or three part series with him. Wow. Derek Sivers, another one, like the philosopher king of kind of PHP programming, although he did a bunch of Ruby on Rails stuff, who built up CD Baby, sold it, gave it all to a music charitable trust for music education,

and then disappeared and now lives in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand. It's like, okay, let's talk to Derek. One of my most popular episodes to date. And what's been really reassuring to me or life affirming is that those episodes, there's still a place, if you put out good content, good art, good craft, good work is the best SEO in the world. It still works. People are like, oh, it's too crowded. There are too many podcasts. There are too many of this,

too many photographers. There's still a place if you put out really good work. And I'm not putting this all on me, but it's like when I have a guest who really performs, meaning they just deliver super detailed tactical stories, anecdotes, routines,

things that my listeners can use. It's like a Derek Sivers or somebody who has zero next to no recognition recognition compared to say jamie foxx can do as well it's nuts in terms of the downloads and the listens like that stuff spreads and uh that's another thing that's just made me excited again to get back in the game of kind of creating some type of editorial or work is that. To see, like, there's still a place. Like, I was told when I started podcasting, whatever it was, a year and a half,

I think it was actually, I don't know, one or two years ago, ah, it's too crowded. It's done. No, you can't. It's too late. And you're going to hear that all the time. When you do anything. Anything.

I want to do this. Ah, it's too late. It's too late. That shit be sailed. And it's like, no, you just have to be different and you have to be better in some capacity. If you do that and you stick with it and you screw up like I did in the beginning, you get too drunk on multiple occasions in like your first three episodes because you're so nervous and it's super sloppy. And people are like, dude, it sounds like your wine bottle has a separate mic on it. Like tone it down. Uh, and you keep it fun for yourself. Like make it fun for you and you will find an audience has been the other thing I've learned. Like if I want to

throw like chimpanzee screeches in the middle of a podcast as a transition, just to see what the hell people do. And you know, going after the absurd again, like this one listener actually said she freaked out. She was in a retail store, and she took her bag and threw it across the store because it was so loud. Still working on my levels. It's like, I can do that. You know, if I want to make like weird mogwai noises in the beginning of an intro.

What is a mogwai noise? Mogwai is like, you know, gremlins. But the gremlins are the bad guys. The mogwai are the good guys. So like gizmo. Yeah, gizmo. Gizmo noises.

Then I can do that. And it's just like, it's given me such a sense of freedom. Because with the books, and maybe you feel this way, maybe you don't. But like, I have so much work out there as a writer. Number one, I've developed like tropes or tricks or frameworks that I've become a little reliant on as crutches. They work really well. Like I know how to get people to pull through a chapter and enjoy it with stories, even if there's dense material. But like, I feel like I'm getting a little stale, which is why I'm doing a writing workshop this summer, in fact,

as a student. But the podcast is such a different element. It's like, okay, well, you've been a skier, but now you're going to be a swimmer, or you're going to be an acroyogi. Okay, now you can start with beginner eyes again and fuck around. Sorry, I'm dropping the F-bomber. No, bring it. Long Island. Bring it, sorry. And that freedom to play, to make, to experiment,

then infuses everything else that has kind of grown stale or less interesting to you. So it's like now my writing is more playful. It's great, man. I'm having a lot of fun with the podcast. Those things are connected, by the way. Like the amount of enjoyment and play that you're having is a correlation, at least for me and many people I know, to great work. Totally.

Um, so one of the things you said is great stories that maybe they haven't heard on some other podcast version of them. So tell us a story here that is that you really haven't told somewhere else. It doesn't have to be, doesn't have to be horrible. I don't know. I'm going to, I'm going to ask you a refining question related to that while I answer your other question

about questions that I ask on my podcast. Great. So I'll give a couple of questions. So these were two distinct things in my mind. We'll let them be. No, no, no. I'm going to, because I'm going to buy you time. The question I'd like to ask is, what type of story?

Give me some categories. Yeah, some creative constraints. Some categories. Creative constraints. Sure. So some of the questions I like to ask on the podcast, while you're just stating on that, are, if you could have a billboard anywhere, what would you put on it?

And I'm sure I borrowed this from somebody else. Like, I'm not making all these things up. Oh, for sure. We're all... What advice would you give your 20-year-old self, 30-year-old self, say 40-year-old self? But not just... The refinement I made to that, which I think is important, is place us somewhere. Like, where were you, what were you doing, and then give me the advice.

Because it's so contextually dependent. There are some other ones that are hit or miss that I borrowed from, say, like Peter Thiel, roughly. Like, what do you believe that other people think is crazy? That's his classic interview question. Interview question, right? And so I borrow from many, many different places. When you think of the word success, who's the first person who comes to mind? And why? These are some standard questions. What book have you gifted the most to other people? So that's a question I came up with. I'm glad you didn't have many of these questions

formulated when I was on your show because a lot of them are hard. They're hard. Some of them are hard. And the gifted is important because if you ask someone what is their favorite book or favorite books, there's a primacy and recency effect, meaning they'll tend to remember the most recent books they read. And especially if they're caught on their heels, they'll just pick something that they read in the last year or two. Whereas if you ask, what book have you gifted the most to other people? Usually it's an extremely short list of two to four books that are their go-to gift books.

So those are a few. So stories I haven't told. Stories you haven't told. Tell me a story you haven't told about a struggle with writing. Because I feel like there's a lot of glamour. I'm just continuing to name drop other people here uh bernie brown talks about gold-plated grit like oh there was this time shit got so hard

it was so real but then i made it made it through it everything is awesome they go back to the awesome story again yeah and so you're just like it's like oh i'm so vulnerable for like a quarter of a second and then i go back to so i I believe that people think of you first and foremost as an author in the sort of the guinea pig way that you framed yourself, but clearly you've had a lot of hardship in there. And so talk to us about something that people wouldn't know about that time period that might reveal something about you. Oh, God.

There's a story that comes to mind. I'm not sure what it reveals would be very good i'm not looking for good i'm like this is this might be the closest i've come to like double leg drop kicking someone uh i just pictured that in the last like like lucha libre style yeah in the last few years, so this was probably 2011, because this was just like, I felt like I was at the breaking point, like really physically, mentally, emotionally just at the breaking point. I was at the last like 30% of The 4-Hour Chef.

It's like a 700-page book. It's a monstrous book. That was nuts. Thousands of photographs, hundreds of original illustrations. You did that class, The 4-Hour Life, but it was really in the launch of The 4-Hour Chef on CreativeLive. We should link to that somewhere around here.

Yeah, it was a really difficult time for me. It was a very complex project. It was a three-year project in effect that had been compressed down to a year and a half. I'm very happy with how it came out. We pulled it off, but there were some really big hiccups along the way.

And one of the biggest challenges was publishing is still very archaic in a way. There are not fantastic digital tools for providing fast edits to really complex layouts. I know there are some options for like website review and things like that, but it's, it's, it's too labor intensive compared to say pen and ink on paper. Uh, if you're going to be making hundreds of edits, like line edits and whatnot. So what would happen is I would get shipped these printouts or they would get, actually we would print them out in San Francisco or

wherever I happen to be, these two page spreads. And then I would go through and I would hand edit, like I'll make hundreds of hand edits, copy it because you do not want one single point of failure with one copy, send it back. They would then incorporate those changes into the InDesign doc and then repeat the process. Now, I had a really tough experience with this book packager who was hired to help with this. And when I would get the next round of edits, very often only about 70% of my changes made it in. I would

notice that. How are you tracking? So now what do I have to do? I have to take out both versions and I have to go through line by line. This is a 700 page book and compare each to see what got missed. And I had to do this dozens of times. To the point where my girlfriend at the time didn't believe me, and I showed her a couple pages, and she's like, I feel like a sixth grader would do a better job with this.

I can't believe you're having to go through this. Yeah, that book publisher is listening to this. No, no, and it wasn't the publisher's fault. I mean, the packager. The packager, hey, look, at least I'm not mentioning you by name. So you should thank your lucky stars for that, because it was a fucking disaster.

And I found myself at one point, I'd committed to, so keep in mind, my job as a writer has become somewhat more complex as things have gone on because when I wrote the four-hour work week, that's all I really had to do. I mean, I was running my company at the time,

but it was a few hours a week. And now, four to be precise, and then the four-hour body, it's like, okay, now Tim's starting to do a lot of angel investing, make other commitments, advising, et cetera. The four-hour chef, it's like, okay, now the doors have been blown wide open. I have like a hundred times more inbound than I did during the four-hour work week. So I had made a commitment, this is getting to a story, made a commitment to speak at some event in Southern California like a year

before it actually showed up. It's funny how those come back and back. And so I get back like 50 pages printed out and I realize half the edits haven't been made. And at that point I'm probably running on like four or five hours of sleep for a week.

And now I have the speaking engagement to go to. And so I go down to Southern California. I do my speaking gig. That's fine. You know, I put on a smiley face and get it done. And, you know, be a good soldier. Knock that out. Then I have to go back and basically pull an all-nighter to work on these edits.

And I'm at this kind of run-down hotel. The hotel room is tiny. It's just like the desk isn't big enough for me to spread stuff out to work on the various spreads. So at that point, too, I was still using kind of like ephedrine, caffeine, aspirin stuff to keep the engines running, which is really horrible for you. It's so bad for your adrenal system and everything, which makes you extremely grumpy. And so I'm like running on nothing except for like the ECA stack. And I've just finished my speaking gig. It's like two in the morning and I'm working

on all this stuff. And in the lobby, I remember very clearly the lobby in this hotel, really high ceilings. And it was a, it was a rundown kind of shoddy place. And the the lobby, I remember very clearly the lobby of this hotel, really high ceilings. And it was a run down kind of shoddy place. And the one light, there's one light on the ceiling that landed on one table. And I was doing all my work and the light goes out. And it's like 2.30 now. And I'm just like, oh my God, I'm not even close to done. I'm like 40% there.

My God, God, I'm not even close to done. I'm like 40% there. Oh my God. God. Okay. So I get up and I walk in the length of the lobby, which is a pretty big lobby, a couple hundred feet to the front desk. And there's like one poor guy who's working at three in the morning, the night guy. And there's somebody checking in who's clearly like been traveling all day, really run down, not looking happy, something like bedraggled, traveling salesman or whatever, getting checked in. And so I'm kind of like standing off to the side, like 20 or 30 feet away. I don't know why I'm telling this story. And the guy who's getting checked in, the guest, I was like looking down at his phone. The employee behind the counter looks at me and he's like, gives me this like, yes, sir, kind of head nod hand wave, which the guy checking in didn't see. So I say, well, actually there's just one

problem. I'm going to have to pull it all in. I'm working on this thing. The light is out. Now the guy getting checked in now looks up and he's like, who the fuck is this guy? And he goes, Hey, Hey. I'm like, yes. And he goes, fuck you. And I was just just like i didn't know what to do i was just like i do this do i kill this guy like this the devil like he doesn't look good at sprawling like should i should i just like firemen's carry him into the coffee table and i didn't know what to do and i was like old tim would have attacked this person like new tim hopefully like needs tm hadn't done it yet would would do something and i didn't know what to do so i went kissed him and i just said like blew him a kiss and i was like i'm not going to attack him but i hope he attacks me right now because i will like literally it will

be like discovery channel like hyena tearing apart a carcass and uh then that'll be like the end of my career. Or who knows, the start of a new career. Maybe Charlie Sheen style. And so ultimately the guy was thrown off. I didn't know what to do. And then the guy behind the counter is like, oh shit, what do we do here? I don't know how to manage this.

So I was like, and so I just walked back and sat in the darkness. Looking at all this undone. This is a sad, sad scene. You asked about a struggle. I just like sat in the darkness, like trying to cool off. And I'm just like, let me let that guy leave. So there's no homicide. And I'm just sitting there looking at all these, all this undone homework and thinking to myself, like, never again will I do it this way. It's like, never again will I sign up to do this this way. And that's, you haven't. And I haven't. Like, and that's, that was, you know, 2000,

late 2010, 2011, book came out 2012. And I'm very, I'm very proud of the book, but it's just like, man, that was kind of the last nail in the coffin with respect to how i relate to a lot of big business stuff and uh meaning meaning like having a publisher who owns rights that inhibit your ability to do certain things with your own work that's one of my favorite things about this show a long time ago starting it up just there's no rules. No one owns it. I can do whatever I want. There's no holding to no one. Like you said, sponsor doesn't want to play. Okay. You're done.

And now that you've clearly built yourself an amazing platform, you've built some freedom in your own world. Yeah, and the blog, I have complete freedom. And the podcast, the podcast was the first art project I have complete freedom. And the podcast, though, the podcast is really,

was the first art project, which is really how I view it, in a long time for me. The first new art project where I could do whatever I wanted. People are like, I'm trying to listen to this with my kids, and you say the F-bomb.

You need to clean up your language. I'm like, you need to find a new podcast. Sorry, this has to be fun for me me and i'm not going to censor myself to like suit the mr rogers program it's just like not this is not how this works how important is that for you uh freedom artistic freedom folks home so the freedom is uh it's a tricky term. The ability to do whatever I want, let me rephrase it. The ability to play in any way that I want, I enjoy. Having certain constraints, however, I think is necessary for me to actualize my highest creative potential.

What's a constraint you put on yourself for the podcast? So constraint could be, well, okay, you have an hour and a half. And if somebody can only do 30 minutes, you have 30 minutes. Constraints might be a form of training or practice. It's like, okay, for my first, say, 20 episodes, 30 episodes, they were mostly over the phone. Why? Because I could have all of my notes in Evernote. I could have all my questions in front of me. I could have a notebook for taking notes about things I wanted to come back to. You do that in person, it's not quite the same. It's very disruptive

sometimes to do that. If we're talking, I have a laptop here, it throws off the entire dynamics. So practicing, deciding, okay, the next 10 episodes are all going to be in person. What are you going to do? You're going to have to change your method. You're going to have to figure out a new approach. You're going to have to maybe memorize more or not memorize anything, depending on who you talk to. Like Neil Strauss does a incredible amount of preparation for his Rolling Stone or New York Times interviews. Tons of review, tons of research, and then he folds it up and he never looks at it during the interview, right? So like testing different approaches. I might try his approach, then I might try someone else's approach. But constraints would be, for instance,

ensuring that I talk about there's something sensitive. It's not a gotcha show, but let's say there's a sensitive subject that I think will produce an answer or a story that will be valuable to my listeners. It has to be valuable. For sure. Value is the key. How do I navigate the conversation and ride the wave to get to that? That's a constraint. It's a requirement.

It's weird. I do the same thing. What's the one risky thing that I'm going to go to yeah and uh so i know we're going to talk a lot about masturbation later um the the the uh or something like that right so it's kind of like right meow like like super troopers like so so i decided i wanted to say masturbation which i just did twice and so i've checked that box three times in this conversation three times fantastic there is a thing with threes. So, uh, but the, with writing, for instance, just the form factor itself, it's like you have, you have to use words. And

in the four hour chef, I changed that and I allowed myself to use visuals, but I would enjoy going back to text only. It's like, okay, like a John McPhee. John McPhee is one of my favorite writers, M-C-P-H-E-E, Pulitzer Prize winner, staff writer at the New Yorker. And where someone else might resort to a bunch of different diagrams, his thinking and his writing is so precise and so beautifully elegant, it's just unnecessary. In fact, it would detract because he's allowing the reader to create much higher resolution, impressive, meaning impressing on the memory, imagery than would otherwise be possible on a printed black and white page.

So it's like that would be a very strong constraint. It's like, no, you can't use visuals, only words, right? Or if I'm writing, sometimes I will notice that there's a word I use as a crutch or a phrase that I use as a crutch. That having been said is one of my crutch phrases. That having been said, comma, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. You're not allowed to use it. Not allowed. Dashes. I like to use dashes i love a dash oh they're so nice i love it like m dashes yeah i just love m dashes so it's like all right you're not allowed to use dashes like you can't use dashes and you can't use parentheticals clean up your fucking writing you know it's like okay that would be another that would be another uh type of of of parameter

or well there's a million. myself to do when i was speaking is if i said pretty because they would sometimes slip out and i'd be like oh there it is again i'd have to say fucking after that so you'd be like oh yeah she's pretty fucking interesting and uh after you do that like seven or ten times over like a two-hour dinner you're like all right all right your brain just like cauterizes pretty right out of the conversation um so i love positive constraints, creative constraints, because it's just like in dance, for instance, in tango, to improve your technique, you can take an arm away. So it's like, all right, you're used to being here. It's like, what happens when you take this arm away? All these other components that you're able to fudge because you had this crutch, now got it now they're glaring yeah problems

or you take away this arm all right now you have to use your chest you have to really change your signaling related to say lead and la marca right so uh i love those kind of constraints yeah and they're i think self-imposed constraints with whatever sort of your medium is whether it's photography or design or uh i talked to stefan sagmeister one of the top designers in the world about an impetus there's a there's a style for this i don't remember what it's called but oh you got to solve a problem like you want to design a new drinking glass well what is a what is the way that you can take some other unrelated object and you design a drinking glass through the lens of this thing like a tennis shoe oh what would a drinking glass look like

if you thought about as a tennis shoe oh would it have a different kind of soul here on the bottom would it be lifted or that's a constraint that can add fuel to your creativity actually i think that's a pretty powerful and i think that just using the tango example of like taking away an arm or the writing example of taking away a word or the podcast example of uh for instance, I've done this as well. Like everybody always asks this guest about this, this, and this. I'm not allowed to talk about any of those. Once you use a constraint to do more with less, only then can you do more with more, I think.

I like that. And that's how I've approached it. Once you are really good at bleeding the stone with very little, then you can make use of all of your resources. But until then, I think it's just going to be a scattershot waste of energies sent in like one millimeter in a million different directions, as opposed to just like, you know, and being really good at picking your shots and using

maximum leverage with all of your gifts. The way you do that is by taking these tiny components and be like, all right, I know you have these a hundred things. I want you to do everything with this. That's it. That's all you're allowed. Um, it's a fun exercise too. That was the original, uh, idea behind the iPhone for me as someone who was traveling all over the world with a hundred person crews doing gigantic things like what can I make with this one camera that's with me all the time. Yeah. And like I'm doing that right now on the blog where I'm experimenting with, well for me, shorter form stuff. So it's like, all right, all right. Yeah. You write 23 page long blog posts that are hopefully evergreen and you get traffic for years and years and years but like what if you only have 500 words i can suck it up you don't have time

to give your pharisee and preamble like no you're not allowed two pages to like say hello no like get to it cut to it uh and that's that's that's another exercise for me so get with this ninja shit i'm about to pull here we're at 90 90 minutes, which is one of my constraints. Yeah. But that being said, I want to just finish with a couple of rapid-fire questions. So one is, if you could put a billboard up anywhere, where would you put it and what would it say? I would put it on a footpath outside of the largest college or university in the U.S., and it would say you're the average of the five people you associate with most. Yeah, that's the first that comes to mind. And what's the book you've gifted the most?

Not bought for people or bought for yourself. What's the book you've gifted the most? Not bought for people or bought for yourself. What's the book that you've gifted the most? You know, you see how this is happening. Yeah, probably, I see where this is going. Yeah, the probably

the Penguin Edition Letters from a Stoic, which is a collection of Seneca's letters. I'm going to be making my own. Actually, I don't think I've even announced this, so. There we go. Exclusive. Nice. I'm going to be making my own. Actually, I don't think I've even announced this. There we go.

Exclusive. Nice. I've had original artwork and calligraphy done over about six months, and I'll be putting out at some point an edition of Seneca's Letters that's illustrated, which is, the artwork's amazing. Wow. It's so good.

When are we going to see this? I'm not sure. I'm just kind of like, I want to do it right. Sure. Of course you do. Yeah, so I'm not in a rush right now, but it's going to be good. So probably, though, if I was gifting it, Letters from Stoic. I just recently bought ten copies of The Baron and the Trees,

that fiction book I was telling you about, just to have at my house. So when friends come over or are visiting out of town, if they're looking for something to read, I'm going to give them that book. Surely you must be joking, Mr. Feynman, about Richard Feynman, physicist, safecracker, bongo player, Nobel Prize winner. Amazing. I like that you threw bongo player in there. Oh, well, he's a polymath and he's a playful trickster, but very smart and a genius teacher. So surely you must be joking. Mr. Feynman is definitely up there.

Those are the first few that come to mind. What's a thing that people don't know about you that they'd be very surprised if they found out in this podcast? Very surprised. Very surprised. Maybe let's all put a constraint on it. Something that you like that no one would think that you'd like. Something I like. That's a good one.

That's a good one. I'm trying to think of a surprise. Japanese antique saddles. A few years ago, I had a chance to go to Japan and study with the Ogasawara family, Yabusame, which is Japanese horseback archery. Side note, the superstar of that family is a young guy, very handsome, super smart. And his jacket, which was like a cheesy kind of like eighties bowling jacket, like that shiny material with like the, like the tapers down to the nylon cuffs. Yeah. The nylon cuff, but the back said, since 1157, I was like, Oh my God, I want that jacket so badly. The point being, uh, when you are doing horseback archery,

the saddle is not designed to be sat upon. It is just hardwood. And the sole purpose of the saddle is to hold the stirrups. And then you basically are in a squat, let's just call it. Hovering over the saddle. And that's when you like pull off the arrows and shoot at these targets at full gallop while no rains, like the horses just let to let to sprint. And these saddles are gorgeous as a result because they're not covered. They're very,

very minimalist. I mean, like you could pick it up with one hand like this five to 10 pounds. And I have, uh, so that was was i think the four hour body after the four hour body my promise to myself was when i finished i would allow myself to buy something japanese that is at least 100 years old at auction and i don't buy a lot of artwork at all and i then i thought i was like well i'd like to get some armor and i was looking at armor and swords and then i said you know what actually i'm, I'd like to get some armor, and I was looking at armor and swords, and then I said, you know what,

actually I'm more interested in the saddles. I was at your house once and you had a teepee in the front room. Do you remember that? Yeah, I do. I do still have a teepee. I have a, I have,

yeah, like a, Is that related to the saddle? Is it a leather and wood thing? No, no, no, it's like,

I do like earth tones. There you go, you do. But no, the Japanese saddles are gorgeous, so I have two, I have two of those. Beautiful. Beautiful.

Anything else I should ask that I haven't before we go? Anything you should ask? Nothing immediately comes to mind. We've covered some ground. We've covered a lot of ground. I would implore people to watch so people talk a lot about commencement speeches and uh there are some great commencement speeches out there but i suspect for a lot of people watching yes the steve jobs commencement at stanford is fantastic we've most i think in

this certainly region of the world we've seen the commencement. It's a very good speech. But for people who are fighting the good fight with anything they consider art, and that's up to you to define. I love that. But whether it's a show like this, whether it's Creative Live as a company, whether it's writing and that just daily battle, podcasting, oil painting, anything. Dance, doesn't matter.

My favorite commencement speech is Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman. Amazing speech. Which is, I try to watch at least once a week. It's amazing. And spoken also and delivered from someone who walks the walk. Just a master of many crafts, who is just incredibly gifted, incredibly warm. I had the chance to meet him very briefly here at the Castro Theater. He did a live performance.

Just an incredible human being, and I would part, I suppose, on that note. That's awesome. I suggest, on that note. That's awesome. I suggest everybody check that out. Everybody. Yeah, if they like podcasts, I also have one of those. It's a Ferris show. Good, definitely.

Anything else, any other coordinates? You're basically slash T Ferris with two R's, two S's. Yep, so at T Ferris on Twitter, 4hourworkweek.com. Are you Snapchatting? I'm not Snapchatting yet. I might eventually. Yeah, you should. It's fun.

I have a little bit of social media fatigue. I'm Instagramming. You're picking your nose. Move your finger. There we go. It does look like I have. Now I look weird.

Sorry for those folks. There we go. We're Snapchatting. So, yeah, at tferris on Twitter and then Facebook is timferris, 2RS2S's Instagram, Tim Verris, 2RS2S's. But I think if you really want to dig deep, currently what I'm putting the most energy

into is the podcast and the blog. Super fun. Yeah. Super fun. Thanks, bud. Yeah, man. Thank you, sir. All right.

Hey, guys. this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And five bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering

over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the, uh, the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.