The Tim Ferriss Show - #204: Tools of Titans: Josh Waitzkin Distilled

Episode Date: November 28, 2016

Josh Waitzkin is an endlessly fascinating person who gets mentioned a lot on this show for good reason (and he's been a guest not just once, but twice). He was the basis for the book and movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. Considered a chess prodigy, Josh has perfected learning strategies that can be applied to anything, including his other loves of Brazilian jiu-jitsu (he's a black belt under phenom Marcelo Garcia) and Tai Chi push hands (he's a world champion). These days, he spends his time coaching the world's top athletes and investors, working to revolutionize education, and tackling his new passion for paddle surfing (and nearly killing me in the process). I initially met Josh through his incredible book, The Art of Learning, which I loved so much that I helped produce the audiobook (download here on Audible). This episode is a highlight reel of sorts -- lessons I've learned from Josh and shared in my new book Tools of Titans. Please enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. I reached out to these Finnish entrepreneurs after a very talented acrobat introduced me to one of their products, which blew my mind (in the best way possible). It is mushroom coffee featuring chaga. It tastes like coffee, but there are only 40 milligrams of caffeine, so it has less than half of what you would find in a regular cup of coffee. I do not get any jitters, acid reflux, or any type of stomach burn. It put me on fire for an entire day, and I only had half of the packet. People are always asking me what I use for cognitive enhancement right now, this is the answer. You can try it right now by going to foursigmatic.com/tim and using the code Tim to get 20 percent off your first order. If you are in the experimental mindset, I do not think you'll be disappointed. This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and now has more than $2.5B under management. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it's all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they'll show you for free the exact portfolio they'd put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Well worth a few minutes to explore: wealthfront.com/tim.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

optimal minimal at this altitude i can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking can i ask you a personal question now what is the appropriate time what if i did the opposite i'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton this episode is brought to you by ag1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins,

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So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out. Tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely

that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, my little magua this is tim ferris and welcome to another episode of the tim ferris show where it is typically my responsibility to distill expertise or i should say rather habits tactics tools etc from world-class performers those things that you can test in your own life apply to to your own life, whether they are from the world of, say, entertainment, sports, military, or in this case, chess, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and tai chi push-ins. But this episode is going to be an experimental episode. I want to try a few things that are adapted from, share a few things that are adapted from my new book, Tools of Titans. You can find it on

barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, everybody. They should be available. And it's also a highlight reel in effect that you guys, many of you, thousands of you have asked me for. And we're going to invite back one of my favorite people on the planet, Josh Waitzkin, endlessly fascinating guy, Josh Waitzkin. You can find him at joshwaitzkin.com, was the basis for the book and the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher. He was considered a chess prodigy, but he has perfected learning strategies that can be applied to anything by anyone. And I really mean that, including his loves of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He's a black belt under, I think he was the first black belt,

under Phenom Marcelo Garcia. We'll talk more about him. And Tai Chi Push Hands, in which he was a world champion. These days, he spends his time very quietly coaching the world's top athletes and investors, working to revolutionize education. We've partnered on a number of things there. And tackling his new passion of paddle surfing. And in the latter, very often, nearly killing me in the process. I first met Josh after reading his book, The Art of Learning. And as I think I've mentioned, we've become very dear friends. Empty Space Josh has no social media, does no interviews, except for my podcast, for which he very often says to me or texts me, you fuck, after all, he is from New York City, and avoids nearly all meetings and phone calls. He is perhaps the best I've met. Actually, there's one other,

Rick Rubin, who's been on the podcast as well, legendary music producer. He minimizes input to maximize output. And as Josh would say, quote, I cultivate empty space as a way of life for the creative process, end quote. So you might ask yourself, how are you creating empty space? How are you creating the slack necessary to connect dots that perhaps you haven't connected before or come up with original ideas? Josh is an expert here. I cultivate empty space as a way of life for the creative process. Learning the macro from the micro.

Josh really focuses on depth over breadth in everything. He often uses a principle nicknamed learning the macro from the micro. This means focusing on something very small in a field, whether that's in chess, martial arts, or elsewhere, to internalize extremely powerful macro principles that apply everywhere. And I'll give you a few examples. This is also sometimes combined with beginning with the end game. And I will illustrate that. For instance, when Josh gave me a beginner's tutorial on chess, he didn't start with opening moves. Memorizing openings is natural, of course, and nearly everyone does it. But Josh likens it to stealing the test answers from a teacher. You're not learning principles or strategies. You're merely learning a few tricks that will help you beat your

novice friends. Instead, Josh took me in the complete reverse, just as his first teacher, Bruce Pandolfini, did with him. So he took off all of the pieces, empty board, and he added three back in an endgame scenario where he would usually finish the game, king and pawn against king. So in this case, through the micro positions of vastly reduced complexity, he was able to force me to focus on the macro principles like the power of empty space, opposition, or setting an opponent up for zugzwang, which is a situation where any move he makes will destroy his position. So by limiting me to a few simple pieces, he hoped that I would learn something limitless, high-level concepts that I could apply anytime against anyone. I've seen Josh do this himself to many things, including, for instance, jiu-jitsu, where he can cover nearly all of the principles of jiu-jitsu, the main tenets that will help you compete at a high level by focusing on a single submission,

again, the end game, called in this case the the guillotine, or specifically the Marcelo teen from Marcelo Garcia. And after he gave me this tutorial in chess, which was actually part of it was recorded, and there's an extended scene that's available in the TV show I did called the Tim Ferriss experiment. I went to Washington Square Park and lasted about 10 times longer than I ever have before competing against these street hustlers. And that was literally from practicing no openers, no nothing aside from these high level principles with three pieces on the board. Pretty cool stuff. If you're studying my game, you're entering my game. Josh and I spent a lot of time discussing and in some cases, hanging out with or training with Marcelo Garciacia five-time

world champion in brazilian jiu-jitsu with whom josh owns the marcelo garcia academy in new york city which i highly recommend if you have a chance they have a very strict no asshole no bully policy and it's probably also the cleanest and certainly one of the most competitive jiu-jitsu gyms in the world so marcelo who's marcel? Marcello is arguably the best grappler of the last hundred years. He's considered the combined Mike Tyson, Wayne Gretzky, and Michael Jordan of his sport. And whereas most competitors are very secretive about their training for competition, their competition prep, Marcello does the opposite. He routinely records and uploads his exact sparring sessions. In other words, his exact training for major events, which all of his competitors can watch.

Josh explains the rationale. When he was competing in Abu Dhabi's submission grappling world championship and Mungo's, which is the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world championship, we were streaming his sparring sessions every night. So he was basically showing his competitors what he was about to use against them in two weeks and three weeks and four weeks. And his attitude about this, which is completely unique, is if you're studying my game, you're entering my game, and I'll be better at it than you. I often share exact under the hood details of how, for instance, I've built the podcast or put together Kickstarter

campaigns and so on. I do this really for two reasons, and they are reflective of two core beliefs. So let's talk about those. Belief number one, it's rarely a zero-sum game. In other words, if someone wins, someone else must lose. That's just not the case. It's rarely a zero-sum game in something like podcasting. And the more that I help people with details, the more detailed help I receive in turn. Belief number two, if it is competitive, I'm simply offering people the details of my game, right? My attention to detail will scare off half of the people right off the bat who would have tried. So now we're down to 50% of the people who have heard it or read it or observed it. 40% will try it and be worse than me because it's my game, right? I'm capitalizing on my strengths with my particular strategies and so

on. But 10% will try it and be better than me. Now, is this a problem or is it not? And I would just say, see belief number one, that 10% will often reach out to me to teach me exactly what they learned and did to get better results because they are grateful for what I offered in the first place, which was transparency. So call it karma, call it anything that you might like. I call it very, very useful. And plus, it's just a more offensive and not defensive way to live and to perform in a professional arena for me. Remember the last three turns. I remember when I went skiing with Billy Kidd, who, as you might recall, was one of the great downhill racers

from back in, I think, the 60s Olympic ski team. Awesome dude. Now he's out in Colorado I think, the 60s Olympic ski team. Awesome dude. Now he skis out in Colorado wearing a cowboy hat. Just a timeless guy. Brilliant dude. And, you know, he was saying to me years ago when I first skied with him, Josh, what do you think are the three most important turns of the ski run? And, you know, I've asked that question to a lot of people since.

And most people will say the middle because it's the hardest, the beginning because they're getting momentum. Billy describes the three most important turns of the ski run are the last three before you get in the lift. And it's a very, very subtle point. And for those of you who are skiers, you know that that's when the slope is leveled off, there's less challenge. Most people are very sloppy,

then they're taking the weight off the muscles they've been using. They have bad form. The problem with that is that on the lift ride up, unconsciously you're internalizing bad body mechanics. As Billy points out, if your last three turns are precise, then what you're internalizing on the lift right up is precision. So I carry this on to the guys who I train in the finance world, for example, ending

the workday with very high quality, which opens up, for one thing, you're internalizing quality overnight. Thanks to Josh, I now always end training sessions on a good rep per se, whether that's acroyoga, you can definitely learn more about that by listening to my episode with Jason Niemer, gymnastics, check out Coach Sommer, archery or other. For instance, even if I have 60 minutes budgeted for a workout if i hit a fantastic pr in other words a personal record at say 45 minutes or do something new particularly well in gymnastics i pack it in that's the end of the workout in the case of archery which is a new passion of mine i also use what's called blank bail practice and a bail like a hay bale they

would use that you would put a target on and aim for a blank bale is where i start and end all sessions with five to six arrows shot by feel alone eyes closed into a target that is a mere 10 feet away so i'm not aiming at anything and this is similar in many senses to dry firing with firearms or handguns, for instance, to try to minimize any type of flinching that you might have in anticipation of the shot. And you're able to then kinesthetically incorporate the fine motor control that will ultimately aid you in other circumstances. One of Josh's favorite writers, Hemingway, had a practice of ending his writing sessions mid-flow and mid-sentence. This way, he knew exactly where to start the next day, and he could reliably both end and start his sessions with confidence.

To turn it on, learn to turn it off, and vice versa. Marcelo Garcia, who we were talking about, one of my most beautiful memories of him in, you know, World Championship, right before going into the semifinals, raucous bleacher, everyone's screaming, yelling. He's sleeping. Sleeping in the bleacher. You wake him up. He sort of stumbled into the ring.

You've never seen a guy more relaxed before going into a World Championship fight. And then he can turn it off so deeply. And, man, when he goes in the ring, you can't turn it on with any more intensity than he can. And his ability to turn it off is directly aligned with how intensely he can turn it on. So his ability to turn it off is directly aligned with how intensely he can turn it on. So training people to do this, have stress and recovery, undulation throughout their

day. The little things are the big things. We're talking about, Marcelo talking about, or embodying the principle of quality in all these little ways. These little ways you could say don't matter, but they add up to matter hugely. Oh, I think the little things are the big things, right? Because they're a reflection. I mean, this might sound cliched, but it's like how you do anything is how you do everything, right? It's such a beautiful and critical principle. And we don't, most people think they can wait around for the big moments to turn it on. But if you don't cultivate turning it on as a way of life in the little moments, and there's hundreds of times more little moments than big, and there's no chance in the big moments.

Just go around for life. I mean, lateral thinking or thematic thinking, the ability to take a lesson from one thing and transfer it over to another, I think is one of the most important disciplines that any of us can cultivate or ways of being. And it's something that Jack and I have from a really young age. We began to cultivate this from when he was really small around this principle of go around. We would initially, it was like, the first time it happened is that he was trying, it was really tiny. He was trying to get in, we were in a little cottage, a single little cottage on Martha's Vineyard, a tiny little cottage in a big field. And he was trying to get in one door and he couldn't, but he could get in the other door.

And I said, Jack, go around. And he looked at me and then he went around. And then go around became a language for us physically. If you can't go one way, you go around to another way. But then it became a language for us in terms of solving puzzles and in terms of any way, the time you were running into an obstacle, go around. And then working with the metaphor of go around opened up this way that we would just have dialogue around connecting things, right? Taking away a principle from one thing and applying it to something else.

And we've had a lot of fun with that. Embrace your funk. That's a term my buddy Graham, who's a dear friend of ours who comes on our surf adventures with us um he's a brilliant thought partner um embrace the funk could you explain that yeah we have to embrace our funk we have to figure out what you know you think about the the entanglement of genius and madness right or brilliance and eccentricity understanding that entanglement is always a precursor to working with anybody who's trying to be world-class at something because that entanglement is fundamental to their being. And they have to ultimately embrace their funk,

embrace their eccentricity, embrace what makes them different, and then build on it. Who do you pick when your ego seems threatened? It's very interesting to observe who the top competitors pick out when they're five rounds into the sparring sessions and they're completely gassed. The ones who are in the steepest growth curve look for the hardest guy there. The one who will beat them up. Or who might beat them up. While others will look for someone they can take a break on. The importance of language on a rainy day. One of the biggest mistakes that I observed in the first year of Jack's life, or year or two of Jack's life, that I observed with parents is that they have this language around weather.

Weather being good or bad. And whenever it was raining, they'd be like, it's bad weather. You'd hear moms, babysitters, dads talk about it. It's bad weather, we can't go out. Or it's good weather, we can go out. And so that means that somehow we're externally reliant on conditions being perfect in order to be able to go out and have a good time so jack and i never missed a single storm every rain storm i don't think we i don't think we've missed one storm other than maybe one when he was sick but we i don't think we've i don't think we've missed

a single storm rain or snow going outside and romping in it and we've developed this language around how beautiful it was and so now whenever there's a rainy day jack says look that had such a beautiful rainy day. And we go out and we play in it. And I wanted him to have this internal locus of control, right? To not be reliant on external conditions being just so. Hey, guys. This is Tim again.

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