The Tim Ferriss Show - #213: Fasting vs. Slow-Carb Diet, Top $150 Purchases, Balancing Productivity and Relaxation, and More

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Starting point is 00:03:36 So we're going to hit a few of those. And so you know how I select these. I go through and look at questions that A, I can answer in a few minutes or less, B, that will help more than the person asking, and C, that will not immediately be irrelevant because I'm doing this in a podcast format where thousands or tens of thousands of people are listening. So I will avoid questions like, if you had $100 in six months, how would you turn it into $10,000 or $100,000, etc., etc.? Or if there were one particular home business opportunity where I could make $2,000 additional per month, what would you suggest? Now, if there were a magical answer to any of those, A, keep in mind if it were something like how do you turn $100 into $100,000, I would use that information for myself, not to be a selfish prick, but that would be case A.

Starting point is 00:04:30 And that belies an informational advantage, which is also the issue with the second aspect. And that is, if I were to give you a piece of information, or if Barron's were to give you a piece of information, and you were to make investment decisions or business decisions based on that, you now have a very crowded bet. You have 10,000 or 100,000 or a million other people who just got the exact same piece of advice. And so it ceases to be very useful, at least advantageous. All right. So let's jump into it. First question is from Sean Clayton on Facebook. Can you talk about intermittent fasting and slow carb? Is it okay to skip breakfast and get 30 grams of protein at lunch instead of within 30 minutes of waking? So there are a few ways to think of this question. The short answer is you should be getting regular DEXA scans or body composition analysis, and you can track how your body fat, how your muscle mass responds to different types of testing.

Starting point is 00:05:28 So that which gets measured gets managed and you have to measure. The other metrics that you might use are energy level and other zero to ten kind of subjective scales. So yes, you can absolutely do it. I think that it's important to realize, well, I'll make a few observations. The first is that the people who practice intermittent fasting, who seem to do well with it and get body recomp, I'm assuming that's one of the main goals, to really accelerate are generally not just skipping breakfast. They are having one primary meal or window of say four hours of eating around dinnertime. Furthermore, they're doing that after some type of weight training. So they're skipping breakfast, they're skipping lunch during some type of weight training, and then they're eating

Starting point is 00:06:14 dinner or having a few hours of feeding window. Okay. So that's point number one, just as an observation. The second point I would make is that very often, and people are going to get their panties in a twist about this, but many of those people who are pushing intermittent fasting are doing two things. They are consuming a lot of stimulants. That could be caffeine. It could take other forms. And very often using, and these are some of the figureheads, and I know this for a fact, using anabolic steroids such as Dianabol, which are oral and very nicely curb appetite.

Starting point is 00:06:53 So you need to dig very deeply to make sure that the person you are emulating is following a protocol you are willing to follow. In my case, for the last, I'd say, 10 days, I've been experimenting with exactly what I mentioned first, which is fasting until dinner, having a primary meal after a resistance training workout. But you have to test it. And I will say that very frequently what I find is if you're trying to go from a standard American diet or a diet that's completely out of control and you haven't developed the routines and default meals for a better diet like slow-carb, you're better off doing that first before experimenting with a lot of fancy fasting. That tends to deliver better results per capita. If we're looking at the success rate, the adherence per 100 or 1,000 people, I think

Starting point is 00:07:45 slow-carb is higher, which is also why I recommend using that as a gateway drug, so to speak, into more regimented and controlled forms of eating before someone go to ketogenic diet or ketosis. Generally speaking, I recommend slow-carb first for that reason. That would also apply to strict veganism or strict paleo. The abandonment rate is going to be extremely high per hundred, per thousand people if you're trying to go to the extreme end of any of these ranges. And so I recommend something like slow-carb or an alternative, whatever it might be, as step one. There's no huge rush. And I think that people tend to abandon the good system they'll follow in search of the perfect system that they will quit. And that is a mistake. So long answer, but intermittent fasting, fascinated by it. I do

Starting point is 00:08:38 a lot of fasting of different types. You can read all about that in Tools of Titans or listen to the conversation between myself and Dom D'Agostino about this, a very well-published researcher. But is it okay to skip breakfast and get 30 grams of protein at lunch? Sure. You just need to test what works for you. And I would say, on average for most people, getting not just the protein, but also the fiber that comes with, say, lentils or legumes is going to deliver the best bang for the buck. Okay. Next question. This is from Jason Land. How do you deal with compassion when living a stoic lifestyle? I'm struggling with finding the balance of feeling empathy while remaining emotionally neutral is talked about via Seneca.

Starting point is 00:09:21 All right. So I don't think that stoicism is mutually exclusive with compassion at all. And it depends on which writing, which teachings you have studied. But I will read you one quote from Marcus Aurelius. This is from Meditations, which I read every morning during my last book launch. And this was to prime me to have greater empathy throughout the day, which would not just, I suppose, benefit me from an altruistic standpoint. That wasn't the practical consideration. It was really making myself less reactive. If I can be non-reactive and I would take that to be the objective,

Starting point is 00:10:06 at least in my mind, more so than being emotionally neutral. I do think those are two different things. You can consider sort of aggressive responses or strong reactions without acting on them impulsively. All right. To that point, I read this quote. This is from Marcus Aurelius, and I'll read the whole thing. It'll only take about 20, 30 seconds. When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself, the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil, but I've seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and I've recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own, not of the same blood and birth, but of the same mind and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in

Starting point is 00:10:50 ugliness, nor can I feel angry at my relative or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him, these are unnatural. And there you have it. And there are many other, I would say, excerpts like that, whether from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, or otherwise. So that is my response to the perhaps, and this is a common, it's not unique to this gentleman who asked the question, false dichotomy, as Matt Mullenweg would say, that is easy to trap yourself within. If someone says you can choose A or B, always look for C or ask why there isn't a C. And you will very often find more than that. And in this same thread, Jason added, I'd like to hear how

Starting point is 00:11:42 Tim handles friends or family going through an emotional situation. Short answer to that is I would suggest checking out nonviolent communication and Neil Strauss. So you can Google both Neil Strauss, S-T-A-R-A-U-S-S. Let's try the spelling today. Not so strong. I could get you started at least with that. Although some of his stories, I don't know if this applies here, are not suitable for work. So be forewarned. All right. Next is from Hendrix Vieira.

Starting point is 00:12:12 Do you ever think about asking high performers what their rooms look like, clean or dirty? That's part one. I haven't, but I'd be open to it. Next is how do you deal with the ambition but the wise portion of your teaching? An example, and this is what I'll answer, working hard towards a goal and then finding out it doesn't bring the right satisfaction you had thought. So there are a few things I would say, a being aware of the ladder. That is that what you're putting on a pedestal as the reward that will redeem all of

Starting point is 00:12:42 the effort or pain or failure or saving or being in a job that you don't like, whatever it might be, almost inevitably will not bring the right satisfaction or as much satisfaction as you have thought. And this has been written about in a great book called Stumbling on Happiness. It might be stumbling upon, but I think it's Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, who's a professor at Harvard and has been discussed also in the four-hour workweek. I talk about many retirements precisely for this reason. If you are contemplating dedicating five, 10, 20 years of your life to a given career, a given track, the partner fast lane, whatever it might be, getting tenured, then perhaps you should, at the very least, test drive what the retirement in mind

Starting point is 00:13:28 looks like. For instance, if you imagine yourself sailing on a boat around the world for the rest of your life, or the Caribbean, or the Dalmatian coast, whatever it might be, then it would make sense that you allocate and really put a lot of planning into setting aside time and negotiating for time off, whatever it might be, so that you can get on a boat perhaps for at least three days, ideally a week or two weeks to test if that is in fact the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that you want to chase. And in doing so, live a deferred life plan of one form or another. Stumbling on happiness is a very good read to that end. And what I've realized for myself, this came after reading a book called Spend Happier, which I'd give a seven out of 10. There are parts of it that I don't like,

Starting point is 00:14:15 but the general idea being, at least one facet of it, that the anticipation is the reward. So I am going to schedule multiple things each year, ideally two extended trips. I talked about this in the last podcast episode, two extended trips with family or friends of several weeks each that allow me, say, in any given six-month period to, with great anticipation, look forward to something. And I found that the anticipation is the reward. It's really 90% of the gift to other look forward to something. And I found that the anticipation is the reward. It's really 90% of the gift to other people or to yourself. And that is where I will stop that thought. So there you have it.

Starting point is 00:14:56 All right, next is Daniel Newland Wee, I suppose it is. 21 upvotes. We spend a lot of time talking about success, but how about discussing tactics for rebounding from failure? Have you ever dedicated a tremendous amount of time and resources to something that didn't pan out? Short answer, yes. Many, many times. How do you choose your next direction and what enabled you to succeed once you took that step? All right. In terms of next directions and things of that type, I think that fear setting is an exercise and you guys can look it up. It'll pop right up. My name and fear setting is very useful not only for engaging with new ventures or having uncomfortable conversations or making decisions that you've put off, but also rebounding from mistakes, accidents, and what would encourage you to read, you could certainly look up systems versus goals or losers have goals. And the name Scott Adams, Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert has written a lot

Starting point is 00:15:50 about this and in his book as well, his latest book. But the basic idea is that if you are engaging and focusing on systems thinking, and I'm going to simplify this here, you are choosing, and I do this all the time. I'm choosing projects, and long-term listeners will know that I don't have five or ten year plans. I generally look at my life as six-month projects and two-week experiments within those projects, and I choose those six-month projects in such a way that even if they fail by the most objective metrics we might use, or in the eyes of those people who see me attempt a given project, that I develop relationships and skills that persist past that project. This is very, very critical. project fails or not, I can succeed regardless because I am accumulating skills and relationships that transcend and last much longer than the project itself. And if you do that,

Starting point is 00:16:56 then just via snowball effect of skills and relationships over time, you will succeed on a meta level. And very often when I ask my guests on the podcast what their favorite failure is, what their favorite failure meaning, a failure that actually sowed the seeds for later huge success, they look back and almost always, either accidentally or on purpose, they chose projects that helped them develop relationships and skills that applied later. And if you're always looking at your selection of projects or opportunities through that lens, then you can do very well. And that would, I'll come back to this, but that would also relate to Derek Sivers, who's a very incredible entrepreneur and philosophically minded fellow. I would highly recommend anyone who hasn't heard my episodes with him listen to all of my episodes with Derek Sivers in order. But he would say, and this is one of his directives when he's distilled down hundreds of books to these single lines that are rules for his life.

Starting point is 00:18:00 And one of them is, and I'm pretty sure I'm getting this right, the best option is the one that creates more options. And systems thinking, as Scott Adams defines it, is very much compatible with that. Okay. Next one is Taj Al-Miller. And this got cut off, but I will do my best here. If you wanted to improve your life exponentially within one month in health, knowledge, and behavior, first, what are the top three items you would buy that are all within $150 for each area you want to change? Second, then I got cut off. All right. So this is generally the question that I dislike asking this type of question because it's looking for a miracle answer in my mind, unreasonably short period of time. However, I'm going to give you an answer because exponentially probably doesn't apply here,

Starting point is 00:18:51 but you never know. It could health knowledge and behavior. All right. So here's what I would do. If we're talking about a month, I'm going to expand it to a quarter within three months, but could, could happen within a month. A lot of connective tissue changes take a hell of a lot longer than that. But let's go with it. All right. So $150 in three categories, health, knowledge, and behavior. So within health, I would buy two kettlebells. And, Taj, I'm assuming you're a male, but it doesn't really matter that much. Assuming you're not in terrible, terrible, terrible shape,

Starting point is 00:19:24 you would get one 35-pound kettlebell and one 53-pound kettlebell. And you would focus on two-handed swings and maybe goblet squats and a few other things. But just to keep it simple, because goblet squats also bring up all sorts of silly controversy, let's focus on a two-handed swing. That's it. And you can look at, if you search my name and kettle one of my defaults when I am time starved, but eager to stay in shape or get in better shape. Kettlebell swings, two-handed high rep sets. And you can Google that. So two kettlebells, less than 150 bucks, you're done. And if for whatever reason those are too expensive, you can look up T-barettlebell, the letter T, T-Bell Kettlebell, which allows you to use about, I'd say, $10 with basic plumbing supplies that you can get at Home Depot or elsewhere, Lowe's,

Starting point is 00:20:33 to build a plate-loaded kettlebell. Then you have to buy the plates, which generally are about a dollar a pound, let's say. And there you have your adjustable weight kettlebell. All right, next we have behavior. 150 bucks, what would I do? I would apply that $150 to something like coach.me, stick.com, S-T-I-C-K-K.com, or something like dietbet.com. Now, why is that? It's because most people don't

Starting point is 00:21:07 fail to change their behavior because they don't understand in some abstract way the benefits. It's because they have insufficient incentives. You need a sufficient reward or punishment if you don't change this behavior. You should also start very, very small. You can look up BJ Fogg, F-O-G-G, for that. Suffice to say, I've talked about this before, but I would apply the $150 to a betting pool where you will have extreme loss aversion if you do not reach your particular goal, which is related to a changed behavior. I would utilize when possible embarrassment, humiliation, if you can, or guilt.

Starting point is 00:21:46 These are all very useful emotions if channeled and applied in the right way. For instance, having an anti-charity on stick where the money goes into escrow. And unless you hit your goal, which is verified by judges that you can use on the platform, then your money goes to a non-profit that you would rather nuke than donate money to. And I've had, say, Jewish friends do this with the American Nazi Party as an example. And very, very powerful. All right, next we have knowledge. I would say, I'm going to keep this short, buy Tools of Titans and then spend the remaining,

Starting point is 00:22:28 whatever it is, $130 on additional incentives, meaning betting or coach.me, stick.com, et cetera. All right. Next, we have Ben Stein. So this is tangentially, or I would say partially related to a question that came up a lot related to Lyme disease. So here we go. Can you talk about the use of science versus experience? And I don't think those are mutually independent. I think that they can be one and the same, but let's come back. To Ben, have you ever found yourself in a situation where a method or technique works well, but there's no science that can thoroughly explain or back up your results?

Starting point is 00:23:08 Your answer could be related to anything, but my question comes from thinking about your fitness-related shows, which I really enjoy, and the loads of self-experimentation that you've done. Thanks for your time. Okay. And there were a bunch of questions about Lyme, so I'll answer that here because it's an example. So to reiterate, have you ever found yourself in a situation where a method or technique works well, but there's no science that can thoroughly explain or back up your results? Yes and no. So I would say that just because you lack the scientific means or data to explain something does not mean that they can't be explained scientifically. You may just lack the tools, data sets, experimental findings to explain it. But in the case of, say, Lyme disease, I don't know why exactly ketosis and going into ketosis for an extended period, two to four weeks, let's say, after my rounds of doxycycline and so on, seemed to remove all of my at least cognitive symptoms,

Starting point is 00:24:01 as well as, for that matter, joint pain-related issues associated with Lyme disease. I don't have a fantastic explanation. Now, I have hypotheses, all right? So you can still apply the scientific method and scientific thinking to these types of situations. And they would include plausible mechanisms or explanations that I can't prove at this point in time, but that might explain it. So we could look at, for instance, at least in the case of the joints, ketones can have a profound anti-inflammatory effect. All right, well, maybe that explains why my knees went from being the size of bloated softballs to back to normal, let's say. That could be one.

Starting point is 00:24:46 Second could be the diuretic effect of a ketogenic diet when you remove carbohydrates. That could be a secondary factor. Then cognitively speaking, maybe, just maybe, and I have no idea, but the changes were so profound and so immediate as soon as I hit, say, 1.2, 1.5 millimolars. That's a measurement of beta-hydroxybutyrate, a type of ketone body in the blood, which you can measure with something called the Precision Extra, XTRA from Abbott Labs. The change was so immediate that leads me to think maybe, much like Alzheimer's is sometimes thought of as brain diabetes, and the reason being that the brain's ability to metabolize and utilize glucose is very severely impacted. Perhaps Lyme disease in some fashion affects glucose metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism. And therefore, much like when you, in some cases, supplement Alzheimer's patients with, say, coconut oil or MCT oil or exogenous ketones, meaning supplemental ketones,

Starting point is 00:25:51 you see a dramatic change in their cognitive ability for the better. Maybe that is the answer, that I was not able to use glucose effectively for whatever reason and could be mitochondrial dysfunction or otherwise. And therefore, when I introduced ketones in the case of, in my case, going on a ketogenic diet and pulling it from my diet and body fat, my brain was able to use this alternate fuel source. Okay. So you can see that, and I highly, highly recommend either reading the book Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, who's a doctor, which teaches you how to not only not get tricked by bad science, but also think scientifically. Or you could read a few of the excerpts that I put at the back of the 4-Hour Body. And you could check that out, which were pulled with permission from Bad Science and talk about how to not only read science well, but think about science. Not as something that requires a white lab coat, but just requires proper sets of questions and a thinking framework.

Starting point is 00:26:56 All right. Next, Eric Andrews. And I was looking for women, guys, but are not, not that many in the most top voted here, which I think is a by-product of my audience being 85 or so percent male. But let's actually jump to a female one here, which is decently up, upvoted, but I don't know if I'll have a good answer for it. Andrea Jona, Kais Schaefer. Do you find intimacy difficult? Do high performer personality types find it harder to accept the flaws in themselves and others? So let me answer those first.

Starting point is 00:27:29 Do I find intimacy difficult? I don't find intimacy difficult per se across the board. There are aspects of it, however, which is your second question, that do relate. So for instance, do high-performer personality types find it harder to accept the flaws in themselves and ants and others I think the answer is yes, so that would be I think a very straightforward answer Next part of it. What are some of the drawbacks of being a high performer compared to the more average bloke or lass? I think that dissatisfaction generally and lack of ability to appreciate the small things is a huge drawback and handicap when it relates to type A driven

Starting point is 00:28:07 personalities, which is why I suggest things like the five minute journal and morning pages, as well as stuff like the jar of awesome, which you can Google. I'm sure it'll pop right up that help you to train that in a systematic way. Next question is Eric Andrews. How do you feel about random chance and statistics when it comes to all of these quote high performers and quote you talk with? You must know how many millions of others are sincerely trying their hardest to accomplish what all of these businessmen and other people have accomplished in their lives, but most will not get even close simply because they did not get lucky. Thoughts.

Starting point is 00:28:46 I do have thoughts on this. And let me start with a reading. This is a slightly edited version, I think, of the commencement. It's not really a commencement. It's a talk given at Columbia University in 1984 by Warren Buffett, commemorating the 50th anniversary of security analysis, which is a dense read, but certainly viewed as the Bible of value investing by a lot of folks written by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, D-O-D-D. That was later popularized with the ideas there and were popularized in The Intelligent Investor, another book.

Starting point is 00:29:29 So let's jump into that. And I'm going to have to scan a little bit because the font is small. Now, you'll be missing a little bit of context, but you'll get the idea pretty quickly. And for those who are looking for a great MBA at bargain basement prices, you should find the annual letters from Warren Buffett to the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. There's a lot of gold. But here we go. Before we begin this examination, this is Buffett speaking. I would like you to imagine a national coin flipping contest. Let's assume we get 225 million Americans, that's the population at the time, up tomorrow morning and we ask them all to wager a dollar.

Starting point is 00:30:04 They go out in the morning at sunrise and they all call the flip of a coin. If they call correctly, they win a dollar from those who called wrong. Each day, the losers drop out and on the subsequent day, the stakes build as all previous winnings are put on the line. After 10 flips on 10 mornings, there will be approximately 220,000 people in the United States who have correctly called 10 flips in a row. They will each have won a little over a thousand dollars. Now this group will probably start getting a little puffed up about this human nature being what it is. They may try to be modest, but at cocktail parties, they will occasionally admit to attractive members of the opposite sex, what their technique is and what marvelous insights they bring to the field

Starting point is 00:30:41 of flipping. Assuming that the winners are getting the appropriate rewards from the losers, in another 10 days, we'll have 215 people who have successfully called their coin flips 20 times in a row and who, by this exercise, each have turned $1 into little over $1 million. $225 million would have been lost. $225 million would have been won. By then, this group would really lose their heads. They would probably write books on how I turned a dollar into a million in 20 days, working 30 seconds a morning. Worse yet, they'll probably start jetting around the country attending seminars on efficient coin flipping and tackling skeptical professors with, well, if it can't be done, why are there 215 of us? By then, some business school professor will probably be rude enough to bring up the fact that if 225 million orangutans had engaged in a similar exercise, the results would be

Starting point is 00:31:32 the same or much the same. 215 egotistical orangutans with 20 straight winning flips. I would argue, and this is the key paragraph or two, I would argue, however, that there are some important differences in the examples I'm going to present. And I should say also as context, this is Tim talking, that Warren Buffett, I believe, was addressing efficient market theory or efficient market theorists with this talk. All right, back to Buffett. For one thing, if A, you'd taken 225 million orangutans distributed roughly as the US population is, if B, 215 winners were left after 20 days, and if C,

Starting point is 00:32:12 you found that 40 came from a particular zoo in Omaha, which is where Warren Buffett is based, you'd be pretty sure you were onto something. So you would go out, you'd probably go out and ask the zookeeper about what he's feeding them, whether they had special exercises, what books they read, and who knows what else. That is, if you found any really extraordinary concentrations of success, you might want to see if you could identify concentrations of unusual characteristics that might be causal factors. Okay, I'll read one more. Scientific inquiry naturally follows such a pattern if you're trying to analyze possible causes of a rare type of cancer with say 1500 cases a year in the united states and you found that 400 of them occurred in some little mining town in montana you would

Starting point is 00:32:57 get very interested in the water there or the occupation of those afflicted or other variables you know it's not random chance that 400 come from a small area. You would not necessarily know the causal factors, but you'd know where to search. All right. Now he goes into other examples and it's a great read, but I'm not going to give you the whole thing. The point I wanted to make is that luck chance. These are factors in everyday life. These are factors in the lives of every person. But I don't think that it is as easy to dismiss success as pure luck as some might believe. And there are a few things. And of course, what we're talking about in the Buffett example, and there are other principles at work here. But survivorship bias. Survivorship bias would also be illustrated through, for instance, looking at the ads that run in something like a Barron's.

Starting point is 00:33:52 And you have these amazing mutual funds that did something approximating the same thing, but didn't pick, in this case, luckily, let's just say, don't have either no longer exist or don't have the money to advertise in Barron. So you're only getting a survivorship bias selection of these mutual funds. And that poses all sorts of problems. Now, when you're looking, however, at concentrations of success, which is one of the things that I do, I might look at, say, Silicon Valley versus other places in the United States for certain types of anomalies. And those could be what we call unicorns in startup world or otherwise. And what I'm most frequently looking for are a concentrations of success and then replicable anomaly. What does

Starting point is 00:34:52 that mean? That means that if I find a strength coach, let's just say like a Mark Bell at super training in Northern California or a Barry Ross in Los Angeles, who's trained a number of world champions, including Alison Felix, who went from high school track to professional track directly, I believe. I want to know not only if they have incredible results themselves, say as an athlete or a former athlete, but have they been able to replicate those incredible results? And furthermore, you have to distinguish between babysitting mutants, i.e. if you have a successful gym, much like if you are Warren Buffett in Omaha, you're going to attract prodigious talent who may have succeeded without your

Starting point is 00:35:38 intervention method or help regardless. And you want to separate those people out. For instance, you have celebrity trainers, or I should say well-known trainers, who are very good at simply recruiting already incredible athletes to be their clients. Then they take credit six months later when they do all sorts of amazing things, versus those who are able to take someone from, say, zero to 60 very quickly, or help someone steepen the learning curve most dramatically from 0.0 to six months later. Now, there are examples of this. You could make the counter arguments, certainly. But if you look at, say, the PayPal mafia, there are other examples of these concentrations of success where people then go from once you're lucky to twice you're good to three times you're incredible.

Starting point is 00:36:30 And I am doing my best to use these filters to study those to whom it is incredibly difficult to attribute their success solely to luck. And I'll leave it at that. Luck is a factor, but I would suspect that successful people tend to under appreciate the value of luck and unsuccessful people tend to over appreciate the value of luck. And the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. All right, there we go. Next is Bill Worthington. And here we go. Tim, this may be a huge question and requires some thought, but I was wondering how someone that is bound to a contract, i.e. active duty military, implement habits and tactics associated with the four-hour workweek. I love the notion of mini-retirements, but that doesn't work for folks on active duty in law enforcement or the fire service. How would you recommend 10Xing a life and build passive income

Starting point is 00:37:34 for someone that is not in a position to become an entrepreneur? Thank you for your time and consideration. All right. Now, I chose this question, was upvvoted number one, but number two, because I wanted to point out, there are a few embedded assumptions in this question that I would not let pass without some examination. So the first is that for instance, many retirements can't be used by people on active duty. Now, if you're on 24,7, 365 active duty, that may be true. But frequently, there are exceptions to this, whether it's in law enforcement, fire service, or otherwise. So I would study those exceptions, whether or not it's in your state, out of your state. Try to find the anomalies and study those anomalies, which is exactly what I do.

Starting point is 00:38:22 The edge cases. If there is even one exception, then you should look at that exception. If there are five or 10 or 20, then you should certainly look at the commonalities across those. But the main points I wanted to respond with, how would you recommend 10Xing a life, building passive income, et cetera? Passive income, we're not going to get into right now in depth, but I will say that do not assume that your choices are fully employed or full-time employed or full-time entrepreneur. This is a very common binary, artificially binary selection that people make. And it leads them to do things that I think are very often irresponsible, not always, but very often irresponsible where they will have all sorts of financial obligations. They'll quit their nine to five job and then try to learn to swim when they're thrown into the deep end and generate income through entrepreneurship.

Starting point is 00:39:12 That is not the approach I recommend. using your evenings and weekends while you have your job to test different types of business concepts, business models, and so on, muses, if you will, for those who've read the 4-Hour Workweek. And once you have demonstrated some traction, more specifically, people not just willing to buy, but handing their cash in some form over to you to buy your service or product only then once you have supplanted your current income in some respect or supplemented in such a way that you can take that jump with a high degree of confidence that it will succeed. Then and only then should you consider potentially the jump to full-time entrepreneurship. And that's point number one. The second is that coming back to Derek Sivers, the best option is the one that creates more

Starting point is 00:40:13 options. And that can be applied in the case of this moonlighting that I discussed and many others. But the tactics and habits from the four-hour Workweek apply to a lot more than you would expect. Certainly, you can take some of the high-level frameworks or principles like the 80-20 analysis and apply that to what you do. I have many friends who are either active military or were active military at the time that they read the 4-Hour Workweek who were able to apply 80-20 analysis, Parkinson's law, and so on to what they did. I would recommend as a compliment to the four-hour workweek, and this might seem odd, but Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, retired Navy SEAL commander, whose first ever public interview was on this podcast. I will leave it at that. Next up, and I apologize for the noise in the background, guys. I'm in a very cold house in the Pacific Northwest, and that's the heater. All right. Next question we have is, I'm going to get this name incorrect, probably.

Starting point is 00:41:16 DeHero, that's with N-D. I'm guessing the N is silent. S. Basimia. Let's see. I'll read this quickly. What are your thoughts on maximizing muscle growth versus optimizing the body as it relates to age specifically with research showing that to maximize muscle growth, one needs to maximize mTOR activation. And for those people wondering what mTOR is mechanistic target of rapamycin, generally, some people say mammalian, but David Sabatini, who was shortlisted for the Nobel prize, who's on this podcast. We did a long talk about mTOR. All right. So back to the question, I'll rewind specifically with research showing that to maximize muscle growth, one needs to maximize mTOR activation, but with research now suggesting from a few MDs that mTOR activation is correlated with speeding up the aging process

Starting point is 00:42:00 by advancing cell turnover rate, as well as speeding up development of cancerous cells, question mark. In other words, training with the goal of hypertrophy can be bad in the long run as you get older. It's clear. This is a good question. It comes up a lot. That's why I'm reading the entire thing. It's clear that training as an athlete while giving great performance doesn't necessarily translate to longevity, but what are your thoughts on an optimal style of training that would promote both longevity and retaining the attributes you lose when you age, strength, flexibility, et cetera. When factoring types of training, like running Olympic powerlifting, CrossFit, gymnastics, swimming, et cetera, question mark. All right. This is a very, very big question. I will say much like Dr. Dominic D'Agostino has observed in

Starting point is 00:42:40 a number of his episodes on this podcast. And if you haven't heard his stuff, I would recommend everybody listen to at least the first episode I did with Dominic D'Agostino. And by the way, he's not just a scientist. I mentioned this at the beginning, but he's done 500 pound deadlift for 10 repetitions after a seven day fast. So he's not only a very well-published researcher, but he is a beast of an athlete. He would be the first to point out that the goals of hypertrophy and muscle gain are generally, let's call them the inverse of what you would want to do for longevity, at least based on the data that we currently have. So if you are trying to, as you pointed out, I'm going to say to hero, if you are trying to improve both longevity while retaining the attributes you lose when you age, strength, flexibility, et cetera, I would focus on strength over hypertrophy and mobility. Certainly as defined by coach summer, the former national gymnastics team coach, would be the ability to exhibit,

Starting point is 00:43:45 unlike flexibility, you can have passive flexibility. Mobility would be the ability to demonstrate strength at the end ranges of your range of motion for, say, a pike stretch, right? Reaching down and touching your toes with your legs completely straightened together, something like that. I don't view that as far as I know, in any way, conflicting with longevity practice. So I would focus on strength over hypertrophy. So you're looking at developing relative strength, maximal strength over muscle size. And there are many different ways to do this. You could do it with something like the Barry Ross protocol that I describe in Effortless Superhuman chapter of For Our Body, which I also talk about in Tools of Titans at one point. It is a

Starting point is 00:44:32 deadlift-based protocol, pulling to the knees, dropping, so no lowering, no eccentrics. This is to remove or minimize likelihood of hamstring injury. And you're doing two to three reps of very high weights with a bit of plyometrics and a long rest in between sets, two to three work sets per workout generally of at least the deadlift. And this can produce phenomenal strength gains. I mean, we're talking in some subjects, 80 to a hundred pound plus improvements in, say, three rep max over the span of three to four months. And these are not purely untrained subjects, I should note. They're also not national champion powerlifters, but somewhere in between, with very frequently less than 10 pounds of muscle mass gain. So the return on investment for strength compared to the increase in hypertrophy

Starting point is 00:45:28 is really astonishing. So I would say strength over hypertrophy. Strength can also be developed with gymnastic strength training, GST, along the lines of Coach Sommer, S-O-M-M-E-R. And so if you're interested in that, I would certainly listen to the two episodes, in fact, of this podcast. If you're interested in strength over hypertrophy, I would listen to the two episodes, in fact, of this podcast. If you're interested in strength over hypertrophy, I would listen to the Coach Summer episode, S-O-M-M-E-R, which is one of the most popular of the entire podcast, more than a million downloads, certainly by far. And Pavel Tatsulin, so P-A-V-E-L. I would listen to his first and second episodes on the podcast. And you could offset potentially some of the mTOR activation with intermittent fasting and what you might call purge fasts, which are these three or four times per year, five-day or longer fasts that Dominic D'Agostino and I've talked

Starting point is 00:46:26 about. And the longest chapter in Tools of Titans talks about his thoughts, my thoughts, my schedule, et cetera, as it relates to fasts. So I'm not going to belabor it here. But that is my current take. And that is actually the mix that I am currently using, all those things I just mentioned. Do not do extended fasts or fasts of any type without medical supervision, boys and girls. So don't be dumb and kill yourself. Next, we have Emma Finley. All right. This is a really good question that comes up a lot with type a personalities. Emma Finley, uh, who has a cool thumbnail photo also, uh, looks like a dancer perhaps. How do you balance productivity slash achievement with relaxation and what does relaxing look like to you? Relaxing in quotation marks, such a type a

Starting point is 00:47:20 way to phrase it. All right. How do you balance productivity achievement with relaxation and what does relaxing look like to you? I personally have trouble actually relaxing in the little downtime I find for myself and I'm constantly taking on so much that all seems important to me. So I wonder how you manage that in your time. So you aren't constantly overworked or tensed. I'm going to dissect this a little bit. And much like when I'm writing, one of my predispositions that I try to fix when I edit is having a single sentence that tries to do too much. When you want to ask yourself or other people questions, make sure your question isn't trying to do too much. In this case, we have quite a few things embedded. All right. So I'm going to, I'm going to tease out this a little

Starting point is 00:48:04 bit. I personally have trouble actually relaxing a little downtime. I find for myself part one, and I'm constantly taking on so much that all seems important to me. Those I think are related, but not the same. So I constantly take on so much that all seems important to me. Those are also two different things, taking on a lot and all seeming important. I would say number one, if you don't have, if you feel like you don't have time, you don't have clear priorities. And the book I would recommend you read, which is short, is The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker. Probably the best book I've ever read, or certainly top three for effectiveness, which is much more efficient, much more important, excuse me, than being efficient.

Starting point is 00:48:45 So if effectiveness is doing the right things, efficiency is doing things the right way, but doing something well does not make it important. And it's very critical that you focus on the, oh my God, let's have some more caffeine, Ferris. You focus on the critical few and not the trivial many. So the effective Executive, number one by Peter Drucker, you should read and reread and reread and reread. That's number one. Number two is that I would encourage you as a driven person, a type A personality to replace the label relaxing or relaxation with recovery. So you don't view it as wasted time,

Starting point is 00:49:28 which it is not. So much like in strength training, where I'm talking about taking five to six minutes or more, 10 minutes in some cases, rest in between maximal work sets. Why am I doing that? I'm doing that because I need to regenerate creatine phosphate and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There are all sorts of systems that need to recover and ideally hypercompensate. So what does that mean? Hypercompensate means that let's say you train, you push yourself to a near breaking point. There are different ways to train, of course. Then you take a sufficient period of time off so that your body hypercompensates because the body doesn't adapt to stress as perfectly. That would be a very dangerous way for us to evolve and to adapt. You hypercompensate with the expectation that the next stressor could be greater than the last.

Starting point is 00:50:23 If you strain yourself lifting 100 pounds, you get to near failure or failure. Then next time around, if you wait sufficiently to recover, then you should be able to lift say 105 or 110 pounds. This applies to your endocrine system. This applies to neurotransmitters in your brain. This applies to a lot more than strength training. It applies to everything. You have finite biological resources to work with, and your body has to regenerate these things. So think of relaxing as recovery. What might that look like? If you really want to drive yourself crazy, and Dr. Dan Engel talked about this,

Starting point is 00:51:03 if you're super type A, you could try flotation tanks, which can be thought of in some cases as a legal alternative to psychedelic dosing or certainly microdosing. And you could look into different ways that flotation tanks are used. Joe Rogan, of course, is a big proponent of this. And that is option one. Option two would be doing something completely, in your mind, probably unproductive, but in my experience, very helpful for, say, insomnia and other things, is reading fiction. And if that makes you crazy, I think it indicates in corresponding amplitude and importance that you should try it. And I would suggest Zorba the Greek.

Starting point is 00:51:50 Specifically, if that is too long, you could try short stories. You might consider the literature of ideas or good science fiction like Ted Chiang, C-H-I-A-N-G. And I believe it's Stories of Your life or story of your life and others, which is a great collection of short stories. Now I'd read those before bed. So try those, but think of relaxing instead of relaxing, since that implies almost to people who are used to obsessing on goals, wasting time. Think of relaxing as recovery because it very much is. Next question is by Jasky Singh. For people looking to break through the noise with their own products or product out of all the various marketing strategies you've tried over the years

Starting point is 00:52:37 for all of your books, what one would you say has helped you cut through the noise more than any other? What one could people replicate who don't have a large audience? Let's dive into that. I would say a few things here. So the question is breaking through the noise for a product and building a large customer base slash audience. That's how I'm going to translate this. And there are a few words I want to I want to underscore here so you said out of all the various marketing strategies which has helped me the most I'm going to answer this differently and in fact argue that marketing is not where to focus if you want to break through the noise with your own product or products

Starting point is 00:53:22 that I separate marketing and positioning. And we're going to talk about positioning. I think positioning is more important. I would additionally say you asked of all of your books, I would expand that because I've worked with 75 plus startups at this point, including some of the fastest growing startups in the world in their early stages when they had next to no customers or audience per se. I was, have been involved with Uber since they had three cars on the street, for instance, and actually even prior to that when they were prototyping the user interface

Starting point is 00:53:59 and so on. Now they're ubiquitous. They did not start out that way. And in fact, even something such as Uber was laughed at in the beginning by a lot of folks who couldn't quite grasp the fact that you can expand a market with your product. You don't have to tackle the defined size of an existing market, but that is perhaps a separate conversation. All right. So what tactics, what strategies, what principles have I used most effectively to break through the noise?

Starting point is 00:54:31 Which one? If I had to choose one, it would be encapsulated in Kevin Kelly's 1,000 True Fans. And he wrote a revised edition of that famous essay, his most popular, I believe, for Tools of Titans. But it can be found on his website now as well, kk.org. So 1,000 true fans. And this relates to positioning and starting small, which Seth Godin in, I believe it is our second episode. The second episode of Seth Godin on the podcast talks about this at length. So if you were interested in breaking through the noise, I would encourage you to also listen to the Seth Godin episode, both Seth Godin episodes for that matter.

Starting point is 00:55:15 But the basic idea is that you should own a category instead of thinking about how to develop a brand. And I'm going to expand on this in a minute. Another option, there are two options really, more than two certainly, but two that have helped me in terms of resources. The first is the Law of Category chapter in the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. If you own Tools of Titans, it's already in there with a slightly edited and updated version and blue ocean strategy. There's a book called blue ocean strategy. I would say that somewhere between 30 and 40% of it, I found very, very helpful. And I read this, uh, before the four hour body for our

Starting point is 00:56:02 chef and tools of Titans. So I read that in the period between the publishing of the 4-Hour Workweek and the rest of the books and found it very helpful. And I will hit a few birds with one stone because I do get a lot of questions about branding. How do I create an incredible brand? How do I create an amazing personal brand, which is not something I ever really think of? And I will give you my three rules of branding. And that is a bit tongue-in-cheek since I dislike the word branding, generally speaking. Number one, and we just talked about this a bit. Instead of fixating on the often nebulous brand, in quotation marks, think of how you can quote, own a category end quote, in the minds of

Starting point is 00:56:46 1000 diehard fans who can then act as your strongest marketing force. This is really critical. And much like, I suppose, the GE way, I believe the book described Jack Welch, and how he rebuilt GE into the Titan that it became under his leadership. If you can't be number one or number two in a category, so whether that's Uber for X, whatever X is, imported light beer, low-cost airline, whatever, you need to find or create another category. My preference has always been to create another category since by definition, you then own it, much like lifestyle design for four-hour workweek and so on. Instead of fixating on the often nebulous brand, think of how you can own a category in the minds of 1,000 diehard fans who

Starting point is 00:57:31 then become your strongest marketing force. Number two, don't make a product for everyone. If everyone is your market, no one is your market. If everyone is your customer, no one is your customer. Don don't make a product for everyone or every man or every woman. It's too broad, particularly with the first versions of your product or service. It is better to have a thousand people who love you. Even if many hate you, it's better to have a thousand people who love you than a hundred thousand who think you're kind of sort of cool. Great to a thousand of these edge case nerds, for instance, and I use that in the most loving way possible, beats good to a hundred thousand of anything else, everyone else, every time.

Starting point is 00:58:13 In a social media and a social sharing driven world, cultivate the intense few instead of the lukewarm many. Really focus on the intense few instead of the lukewarm many and make a product for those people. You can always expand later. It is very difficult and very painful to go from broad to narrow later. Start narrow, then go broad. Number three, forget branding altogether. Forget branding. Forget it.

Starting point is 00:58:41 Forget it. Forget it. At least in the way that the very ambiguous way that is usually used. I would suggest thinking about consistently over delivering one or two benefits to your customers, users, fans, right? So think about consistently over delivering one or two benefits to your 1000 true fans. That's it. Branding is a side effect of consistent association. Your brand is what people think of most often when they hear your name, see your logo, whatever it might be. That's it. It's a

Starting point is 00:59:11 side effect of consistent association. So consistently over deliver one or two benefits to your 1000 true fans. Don't put the cart before the horse, put good business first and good brand, whatever that is, we'll follow. It's a side effect. And I think that is what we are going to cover for today. So if you guys would like more of this type of Q and a, I have quite a few pages left with things I've selected that I can answer. Let me know if you'd like more of these. You can let me know on the Twitter at T Ferris, T F E R R I S S on Facebook, Tim Ferris, Instagram, Tim Ferris, or you can go into the show notes for this episode and every other episode. If you want links to the books and so on that I mentioned in this episode, just go to fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. You can find everything there. And if you have read tools of Titans, I would love a,

Starting point is 01:00:05 and very much appreciate a short review. It makes a world of difference. And I do pay attention. I do read reviews. I love to hear what you guys have thought of it. So if you did read the book, please do review. You can leave a review at Amazon,

Starting point is 01:00:18 BNN, wherever you may have found your book. That would mean a lot to me. So thanks for listening guys. And until next time, keep on experimenting. I'll talk to you soon. 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.

Starting point is 01:00:45 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 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.

Starting point is 01:01:12 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. This episode is brought to you by 99designs. When your business needs a logo, website, business card, thumbnail,

Starting point is 01:01:35 any other design, I recommend checking out 99designs. I use them myself. I've used them for many years. I use them to create book cover prototypes for the four-hour body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller. I've also used them for banner ads, illustrations, and much more. With 99designs, you get a variety of original designs from designers around the world. Give your feedback and then pick your favorite. Your happiness is guaranteed. So check out some of my competitions and designs and some of your competitions and designs from fellow Tim Ferriss show listeners at 99designs.com forward slash Tim. And right now you can get a free $99 upgrade on your first design. So check it out. 99designs.com forward slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by Trunk Club. There are two types of men out there. You know who you are. Guys who love shopping for

Starting point is 01:02:25 clothes but are short on time, category A. And those of you who hate it, category B. I am in the latter category. My fashion sense is also probably somewhere between homeless and confused with a dash of lazy added in. Either way, you can take heart. And I've used Trunk Club now and have found some of my favorite pieces of clothing that make me look a lot better than I would be able to handle on my own. And there are many reasons for that. But you can get clothing that fits perfectly and looks amazing without ever stepping into a store again, thanks to Trunk Club. And they make it very, very easy. And the clothing is handpicked by a personal stylist,

Starting point is 01:03:06 your own personal stylist. All you have to do is go to trunkclub.com forward slash Tim, type in your measurements, share your likes and dislikes. They'll pick your clothes from more than 80 top brands and ship them right to your door. You keep what you like, you send back what you don't. If you don't like any of it, send it all back. It doesn't matter. And Trunk Club is not a subscription service. This is what appealed to me among many other things. I didn't want to constantly be getting dinged by things or have to deal with the headache of constantly getting boxes. It's not a subscription service.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #213: Fasting vs. Slow-Carb Diet, Top $150 Purchases, Balancing Productivity and Relaxation, and More

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #213: Fasting vs. Slow-Carb Diet, Top $150 Purchases, Balancing Productivity and Relaxation, and More

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