The Tim Ferriss Show - #305: Daniel Pink — How to Make Better Decisions and Be More Creative

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Starting point is 00:02:45 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, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today is Daniel H. Pink, at Daniel Pink on Twitter. He is the author of six provocative books, including his newest, When, subtitle, The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. When is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, and Publishers Weekly bestseller. That's a lot of lists.

Starting point is 00:03:31 Pink's other books include the long-running New York Times bestseller, A Whole New Mind, and the number one New York Times bestseller, Drive and to Sell is Human. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into 37 languages at last count. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his family. You can also find his work, his various goings on at danpink.com. And if Facebook is your thing, facebook.com forward slash Daniel H. Pink. Dan, welcome to the show. Tim, thanks for having me.

Starting point is 00:04:02 It has been quite a while since we last. Several years. Several years. And I know we were talking about all things Japanese, most likely, at least in one of our recent conversations based on one of your books. And maybe you could tell people actually just as context a little bit about that book that we were chatting about in manga format or Japanese comic format. And we'll use that as a jumping off point. Yes, indeed. That was one of my best ideas that didn't go anywhere. So that was a book called The Adventures of Johnny Bunko. And as you say, Tim, it was written in the Japanese comic format known as manga. And as you know, as a Japanophile in Japan, manga, the comic format is

Starting point is 00:04:47 much more versatile and more widely used than it is here in the United States. So you have grown ups reading comics and it can be things about financial advice, things about love life, things about history. And so I did a fellowship in Japan with my wife and our three kids where I studied the manga industry. And I came back and said, you know what? I think it's time for manga to broaden its reach here in the United States of America. So I wrote a book called The accountant named Johnny Bunko. That was a fantastically concise description. And I wanted to also – you said in the beginning that it was the best idea that didn't go anywhere or something along those lines. And I wanted to bring up the book because it seems for those people it struck a chord with,

Starting point is 00:05:51 it struck a very deep chord. And I believe it was Kevin Kelly, arguably the most interesting man in the world, who was on this podcast. And he mentioned that that book was, at least at the time, his most gifted book. So I wanted to at least highlight the fact that if it's good enough for Kevin Kelly, it should be good enough for many, many other people. That's exactly right. Kevin did say that. And I actually think it's a good book. We did reasonably well with it.

Starting point is 00:06:19 It didn't blow off the doors. I think I was, you know, this is a common thing that happens in life and in investing and entrepreneurship and publishing and anything is that you could be right too early. I think that's what it was, that I actually think that this format of graphic novels and comics having a more expansive reach in the United States is probably going to happen. I might have been, as they would say in the world of politics, I might have been a little ahead of the voters. Or using a surfing metaphor, paddling a little too early for the wave, which- Right, right. Same thing.

Starting point is 00:06:56 Which sometimes means you don't catch a wave. In investing, it sometimes means you paddle right into the impact zone and then get smashed. Now you mentioned, you mentioned politics. I wasn't going to go here right away, but, and I'm going to get there in two hops, but so I'm looking at in front of me, the Yale law and policy review volume eight, number two, 1990. And it says at the top, this is like a, this is like a deposition now. What do you have, like Exhibit A? Did I say something 30 years ago that you're going to make me pay for right now? I'm auditioning indirectly, albeit for my role on TruTV as talent. But this won't go into any incriminating territory unless you volunteer something along those lines, which I doubt will happen. But it says on top, Editor-in-chief Daniel H. Pink. So how did fate intervene that you are not currently

Starting point is 00:07:50 in the legal profession? Oh my God. This is one area where I want to thank fate for her grace and kindness. Here's the thing. I went to law school and I went to law school largely because I was a middle class kid from the middle of America. And that's kind of what you did. And once I sort of saw the inside and it was a terrible decision and it actually helped me figure out how to make better decisions. It gave me some actually really good advice on how to make better decisions. But I basically went to law school without knowing what lawyers did or even what law school was. It was just something I did because that's what I was supposed to do. I found out I didn't really like it very much. And I and once I found out what lawyers actually did and God bless the lawyers listening to this. But once I found out what lawyers actually did, I was like, oh, you you hire somebody else to do that. You know, it's like, you know, it's like, I mean, it's like it takes skill to like plunge a toilet or, you know, that kind of thing.

Starting point is 00:08:54 Or, you know, mow a gigantic backyard. I mean, it takes skill to do that. It's just that, you know what, it's really not my thing. And so what I'd rather do is do something else and then pay someone else to do that kind of dirty work. And yet I found myself stuck. And because I was risk averse, I didn't I did leave for a little while. Actually, I dropped out for a little while, but I came back. And and so I went through law. So I went to law school. It wasn't a grad accumulated massive, massive, massive, massive student loans. But I was very fortunate in two dimensions in my law school trajectory. One was that my school had a very ahead of its time loan payback program, key to salary. So if you made less than a certain amount, they would offer assistance in repaying

Starting point is 00:09:39 your student loans. And that gave people much more. Nobody, not many people took it, but that gave you theoretically more career flexibility if you decided not to practice law. The other thing is that I met my wife in law school. So it's a decision that ended up having a profound positive effect on my life. How did it help you learn to make better decisions? Going to law school? Right, right. You said that. Well, here's the thing. Okay, you know, here's what it did. Here's what it did. Here's the thing. Okay, so there's this principle in social science. It has a fancy name, but it is something that we all do and something that we should do is the principle of surrogation. Okay, how do you make decisions? You use the

Starting point is 00:10:21 principle of surrogation and surrogation basically means find someone like you who made this decision and see what happened to him or her. That is, find out what it's really like. Again, this is a totally fancified way of something that is very commonsensical. You know, should I go to this restaurant? Well, let me check the Yelp reviews of 47 other people who've gone to this restaurant. And what I did, and it's amazing to me, Tim, when I think about this, and it's advice that I give to my own kids as well. I went to law school, literally having never spent a day, not a day, 10 minutes talking to a lawyer about what she did. I'm not, I mean, I'm embarrassed to say that, but that's absolutely the case. I went to law school having never sat in on a law school class. I mean, it's unbelievable to me in retrospect.

Starting point is 00:11:09 And so had I done those kinds of things, I might have approached it more skeptically. But I didn't do those things. And because that ended up being an incredibly expensive decision, even though it led to some, you know, it basically, I mean, it led to the most positive thing in my life, which is my wife, even though it led to something positive, it was a terrible decision. So now, I'm, I'm sort of a, a surrogation ideologue, you know, it's like, I believe in surrogation for everything. Largely, because I got bitten by that bad decision. Could you give us an example of at some fork in the road or some prospective decision where you've used surrogation or where you're planning on using it?

Starting point is 00:11:53 Okay. So I'll give you an example of it. So, um, yeah, it's, you know, again, we're not talking rocket science here. We're talking like basically, Hey, act like a reasonably intelligent grownup is what I'm is, you know, it's basically what I'm doing here. But let's go back to the let's go back to the Japan, I think. So I got a fellowship to go to Japan and I went with my wife and her and her kids, as I mentioned. But before I did that, I talked to, you know, six different people who had the same fellowship before I accepted six different people who had the same fellowship, what it was like like for their kids, what the work was like, what the living was like before I made

Starting point is 00:12:29 the decision. Now, again, that is not a monumental intellectual breakthrough, but it's something that I didn't do when I was much younger. Well, it's a best practice that can often get skipped, right? Whether that's something like this or something that should be very straightforward. If you look at, say, Atul Gawande's work in the Checklist Manifesto and checking various things to avoid bacterial line infections in a hospital, right? It's very straightforward, but if you neglect it over time, bad things are going to happen. But it's also the, you know, I think that as, as I've gotten older and gotten more experienced, I've actually become much more aware of the importance of intellectual humility. And like what, you know, when I was, when I think of when I was younger, I figured, well, I know what law school is like. How do you know?

Starting point is 00:13:23 Well, I just know because I thought about it once, and so I know. I know what lawyers do because, like, I met somebody who was a lawyer, and I know what lawyers do. And so there's a degree of arrogance in that of thinking that you know something when you actually don't. And so if you approach all kinds of decisions with a degree of intellectual humility and ask yourself, what don't I know about this? Where are my blind spots? Then I think you end up making better decisions. Definitely. Speaking of blind spots, I promised I would segue into politics. And that is somewhere I have very, very little confidence in any of my knowledge or expertise. How did you, so I was looking at what I believe to be one of your

Starting point is 00:14:03 first articles that really, I'm not going to say put you on the map, that's too much of an overstatement, but the Free Agent Nation article in Fast Company, which was at the end of 1990. 20 years ago. Yeah, 1997. or the byline rather of that article says until recently chief speechwriter to vice president al gore so where did you go from law school or dropping out of law school for a period of time to speech writing for then vice president al gore well when i graduated from law school i was actually very keenly interested in politics uh it was probably my deepest interest at the time and i said you know what i'm gonna go where i'm gonna work in politics. It was probably my deepest interest at the time. And I said, you know what, I'm going to go where I'm going to work in politics. Why was it interesting to you at the time?

Starting point is 00:14:50 A couple of reasons. Number one is that I thought it was a venue for for achieving something in the world and making a contribution to the world. The other thing is that I found the actual practice of it quite exciting and interesting in the way that sports is exciting and interesting. So it was a combo platter for me. And I'd been interested in it for many, many years. And I said, okay, this is what I want to do. So I got out of law school and I started working on political campaigns, which at the time I liked because political campaigns are totally interesting. I mean, again, it's like a sport in that there's a beginning and there's an end and there's a very clear outcome. And it's exciting and you're making decisions on the fly. And I find political campaigns more than other kinds of organizations and institutions fairly meritocratic because there's so much going on and so much crazy stuff happening that if you can do something, you will continue, you'll be asked to

Starting point is 00:15:46 do it again. And that's pretty much what happened to me. And that someone at some point asked me to write a speech, and I did it, and it was okay. And then they said, hey, that's okay. You want to do it again? And I did it again. And then I did it a third time, and all of a sudden, that was my job. And it ended up being something that I had a certain affinity for. And it's something that a lot of other people did not. And so just in the supply and demand of who has to do what, that's what I ended up doing. And I enjoyed it. I did it on political campaigns. I did it for a cabinet secretary. And then I ended up doing it for the I ended up doing it for the vice president.

Starting point is 00:16:26 The trouble was is that when I had spent all these years in the belly of the beast, it's sort of like, wow, I really want to work in politics. And all of a sudden, in a pretty kind of half-assed way, I was at a pretty good gig in the belly of the beast. I realized, hey, I'm not sure this is my thing. I thought this is my thing, but I'm discovering that this is not my thing. And what's even worse is that if I project out even further and look at, say, what I'm going to be like or what I'm going to be doing in 10 years or 20 years, I really don't like that picture because I see some of those people around me. Hmm. Now, is there anything besides the projecting forward, looking at the people who had been in the game, so to speak for a longer period of time and saying, wow, I could see myself filling their shoes. And I don't like what that looks like. Was there anything else,

Starting point is 00:17:21 any other indicators or moments that made you realize it wasn't for you? There were a few things. First of all, the amount of BS that was involved was startling to me. I expected some, but if you do a pie chart of BS and not BS, the BS slice is extraordinarily large, larger than you would imagine on a number of different dimensions. And here's the thing, Tim, I freaking lucked out too in who I was working for because my last two jobs, I worked for Al Gore, who's a very smart guy and a very good guy all around. And before that, I worked for the then labor secretary, I was a speechwriter for the then labor secretary, a guy named Robert Reich, who's a very smart guy and a good guy. So I had basically the best kinds of bosses you could possibly have. And so that was another

Starting point is 00:18:17 indication, like, I got the best bosses you could possibly have. And I still like, it's not the species of Reich or Gore I don't like. It's the genus of politics that is actually bringing me down, you know. And so and so among the things that I didn't like, let's go back to the BS. There was an enormous amount of enormous amount of time spent basically in the air and almost everything that was going on within the boundaries of the law, obviously, concern for basically pandering and fundraising. It was really quite remarkable. The other thing is that I also felt like a lot of the people who were good people, that they were so interested, they were so absorbed in the mechanics of things,

Starting point is 00:19:04 that I felt like I was losing sight over what we were so absorbed in the mechanics of things that they, I felt like I was losing sight over like what we were doing here in the first place. Right. Uh, what did we actually, what did we actually believe in that the, uh, and there was so much short term ism, so much short term, insane kind of posturing and, and, Ooh, let's get this slight advantage over the day. Um, and, um, and it was like, what's the point, you know, what's the point of all this? I'm working really, really hard. And I'm not sure this is, I'm not sure we're actually doing that much. And here's the scary part is like, that was 20 years ago. In retrospect, those are the good old days. Right. I mean,

Starting point is 00:19:41 you have, you have, I mean, you, you know, we were, I mean, I'm old enough. I mean, you have you have I mean, you know, we were I mean, I'm old enough. I did this long enough ago where I'd be I'd be pumped when something I wrote made it on to the the quote unquote evening news. I haven't watched the evening news for 19 years. You know, we weren't dealing with social media. The world was very, very, very partisan then, but nothing like the way it is now. So I remember devoting a couple of days in my office to some subpoena that was given to Gore's office for finding some document about some nonsense thing. And I'm like, and I'm like, really concerned about that, because I didn't do anything wrong. But it's like, Oh, my God, if I have an email that mentions x, y, or z, and I don't find it, and then someone else finds it. Like,

Starting point is 00:20:25 I'm going to have to hire a lawyer. And I didn't sign up for this garbage. So I finally decided to, I finally, so again, this thing that I thought I was deeply, deeply interested in, once I actually experienced it, I found myself far less interested in it than I would have suspected. If you had told me that when I left that job, if you had told me 10 years earlier, you're going to have this job and you're going to leave it because you're tired of politics, I would have been very, very surprised. If you look back at that experience, the skills you either had natively or developed, how do you prepare your speeches now? Or maybe if we take an example of a speech that you've given that has received very positive feedback or really, from your perspective,

Starting point is 00:21:17 engaged the audience, how do you go about preparing a 30-minute, 60-minute speech? What does that look like? Is there any example that you can give us? Yeah, I mean, it depends. I mean, actually, that experience writing speeches was actually extraordinarily useful in going out and being a writer and then going out and talking about what I've written about. I mean, it's extraordinarily useful. I mean, if for if for no other reason, Tim, it was because, you know, I spent a lot of time as a speechwriter watching audiences react, seeing what worked and what seeing what worked and what didn't. And that I think has that how to get better at it. Hey, that line works. Hey, that line's a dud. Hey, they're spacing out here. Hey, this, this person over here looks

Starting point is 00:22:31 confused. Um, wow, this went on too long. Wow. This could have gone on a little while. I've never had experience that could have gone on longer, but this, you know, this could have, seriously, you know, this could have, we could have could we could have we could have we could have cut it out there. And so so seeing audiences react just gave me I mean, it's hard. It's almost like we'm going to go basically walk up and down the streets of Santiago, Chile for a couple of years. I'm not going to do any talking, but I'm going to listen to everybody else talking. And it's like, whoa, you can learn some Spanish that way. It's not going to be you're not going to be perfectly Spanish, but you have a huge advantage of someone

Starting point is 00:23:23 if you do that and then go and say, hey, I think I'm going to learn how to speak Spanish. It also makes me think of a very useful feature for potential speakers, although it's probably not worth the labor for the TED organization, would be to take the camera C that's always pointed at the audience and give you the option of listening to TED Talks pointed at the audience and give you the option of of listening to ted talks while watching the audience respond that's an interesting idea that's an interesting idea i mean they they do cutaways on those kinds of things but the cutaways don't show people being bored um right right exactly that's actually that's actually more revealing than any than

Starting point is 00:24:03 anything else and i'll tell you like from the speech givers point of view, and it's interesting you raise this, Tim, because I haven't really thought a huge amount about it myself. But one of the things that I enjoy most about giving talks is seeing the audience's reaction and figuring out what's good and what isn't. So if I come up with, hey, I got this killer line, I just thought of this is going to totally rule. And then I deliver it. And it's like, whoa, that bombed. And in my head, I don't feel like, oh, I'm so sad that it bombed. But in the back of my head, I'm like, huh, that bomb, that's so interesting. I got to make a note of that, like that one bomb, you know? Um, and why

Starting point is 00:24:45 is, why did that one bomb? Did people not understand it? Was it, was it obnoxious? Um, and so I love that part of, and when you give speeches, when you do something in real time with people, they're really anything before an audience. So if you and I were talking before a live audience, we would be getting feedback on our conversation that I think would be really useful and interesting. And when you do things that are asynchronous, as we're doing now, or writing a book, which is asynchronous, you get that feedback much later. And so the feedback is less meaningful. So if I write something and someone says, you wrote this passage here, I just don't get it.

Starting point is 00:25:29 That's sort of a bummer for me because I don't have time to cure it. But if I say something before an audience and I get a bunch of blank looks, I immediately know, wow, okay, I didn't explain that very well. I got to go back next time around and explain it better. I have so many different questions I want to dig into related to what you just said. The first is actually connected to something we were talking about just before we hit record. And that was you having listened to the interview I did with Brian Koppelman, the screenwriter, filmmaker, co-creator of the hit show Billions, among many other things. And his penchant and recommendation for forensically studying film, watching films with a notebook in hand and taking notes on what worked, what didn't, his responses and so on. And you mentioned a number of different questions and cues that you might ask yourself while watching in your speechwriter days the audience while you're essentially your boss is giving a talk.

Starting point is 00:26:34 Would you be writing those things down? Would you be sitting there kind of with a notebook in hand recording this type of thing? What I would often be doing would be I would have, okay, so if it was a speech where there was a written text, which is not always the case. In some cases, for less significant things, it would be, say, a conversation and some talking points and some things like that. But let's say, a conversation and some talking points and some things like that. But let's say for a speech that was actually delivered, that is, a speech that was written out and then delivered behind a podium, I would almost always have the actual physical text of the speech, and I would mark up that physical text of it. So, so in some cases, because it was helpful for me in terms of

Starting point is 00:27:26 just relating to my own boss, let's say that he skipped a paragraph. I like, Hmm, I wonder why I skipped that paragraph, you know, maybe ask him about that. Or maybe I could even figure out why he skipped that, you know, he didn't even bother reading a paragraph or he skipped a line or he ad libbed a new version of the line. That was actually very helpful to me in terms of just dealing with my boss. Because again, what you're trying to do in writing a speech for somebody else is that you're trying to make that person sound like the best version of him or herself. And so it could be that the way I phrased something didn't sound like him, but he knew what I meant and he was able to phrase it in his own words.

Starting point is 00:28:05 And that actually was helpful for me in terms of doing the, the, the, the, the tactical craft of my job. Um, but so I would have the, I would have the text with me and let's say there was a joke, you know, I would say, I mean, it basically would look like plus, I mean, seriously, like plus and minus, you know, um, and say, Hey, that joke worked, that joke didn't work, that line worked, that line didn't work. And one of the things that it taught me was also is that you don't go based on, I'm getting in the weeds here a little bit, but you don't make permanent decisions based on one reaction. And I do that myself now in my own stuff. So if I say something, and it doesn't work the first time, I don't say I don't abandon it. Then I make a note of that and then I try it again because sometimes different audiences, different contexts, different things, it can work.

Starting point is 00:28:52 But so but but yeah, I would do that. It was just sort of, you know, and here's the thing. I don't want to make this sound like like I use the word forensic to talk about what compliment is doing. Mine was less forensic. It was more hygienic. It was to me. It's like that's just like good staff hygiene. You know, you know what I mean? I wrote a speech and this dude is delivering it. I should pay attention to like how it's going, you know? And if I do that, if I do that, I'm going to do better next time and he's going to do better next time. If I look at my own writing, the writing that I've done that has received the best response, we'll just keep it broad, nine times out of ten, it's something that I have tested and honed in some speaking format, whether it's a presentation or a class or something else, which is part of the reason why if, if I'm giving a talk or doing an interview in front of a live audience, I always ask them to raise the house lights because for whatever reason, a lot of

Starting point is 00:29:55 venues like to really dim it down, but then you can't see the response. So I always ask them to raise the house lights when you are testing out a speech or an article or a chapter on someone else, what types of questions – what are you looking for or what types of questions do you ask? You can pick any of those that you'd like. But what type of questions do you ask? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me take your simple question and complicate it. Let's go for it. Because I actually think that speeches and written words are different things. Okay. And so the way that I would convey an idea in a speech. Um, and so, um, so, so, so, so for me, um, like one of the most

Starting point is 00:30:52 important, like I have to say, it's a, it's a simple question, but, uh, and I find myself asking it all the time to people is this following question. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? Um, or what I've sometimes found an easier way to rephrase that is, this is actually, I think this is actually useful. A writing hack is what about that doesn't make sense? Yes. I think that people, I think that people are more likely to say, does that make sense? They're, you know, sort of out of politeness and also just out of self. Oh, of course that makes sense. Yeah. You know, but sort of what about that? So I converted a little bit. What about that? What about that doesn't make sense with when you give us when you when you

Starting point is 00:31:33 when you explain an idea to somebody or you're talking to an audience? I really think I mean, maybe I'm overestimating my own abilities, but I really think you can tell by the looks on people's faces. There are all other kinds of markers of that, too. So, for instance, you know, especially now, if you have slides, what are people taking pictures of? All right. What slides are they taking pictures of? What things are they writing down? So I look at those kinds of cues in talks. I think writing is more difficult. And I'll tell you what I do in writing, especially books. And this is a little bit insane. I mean, it's insane in the sense that it requires someone who is deeply devoted to you in a way that someone you truly love is devoted to you. So here's the thing about my books. Even though I just said

Starting point is 00:32:31 speeches and written words are different, for me, I actually improve my writing by listening to it, not because I listen to written words different from the way I listen to speeches, if that makes any sense. And so when I write books, so the latest book, I mean, you know, latest book and all the previous books. I have an office here behind my house in Washington, DC. It's a garage, refurbished garage. And for I will sit in my office and I'll give it, let's talk about the latest book. Okay. Just to give you an idea. So this is a book, I don't know, it's like 280 pages, something like that. I read every word of that book out loud to my wife at various stages. What's more, I read drafts, multiple drafts of chapters out loud to my wife in this office. But wait, there's more. My wife read every word of this book out loud to me, including drafts, because for me, that's how I process the written word. So for me,

Starting point is 00:33:42 I can tell what works in a speech because you have a large audience of people behind, you know, reacting to it. In terms of written words, like I don't know. It's just like, you know, after all these years, I know what's good and what's not when it comes to the written word. And I actually know what's not good really is what I know. And so I try to remove all the not good stuff. And the way I do that, and it's a very laborious way, is to read is, is that I am the worst person on the planet to be read aloud to because I'm a complete pain in the ass when it comes to, especially if you're reading my, my words. Oh, come on. You got to read with more expression than that. Oh,

Starting point is 00:34:36 come on. No, the emphasis is on that word. No. Um, my saintly, my saintly wife has done this for several books now. Wow. She's a keeper. I suspect this is more common than either of us might expect. the non-fiction writer also writes i think he still writes for the new yorker fascinating guy but i took a seminar with him in undergrad and he also explained how he reads all of his work i believe he reads not only his feature works but his articles out loud to his wife really i actually did not know that yep yep so this is yeah so i'm pretty good i'm in uh i'm in i'm in pretty good company you're in good company i started reading i started reading john mcfee when i was like a

Starting point is 00:35:31 like uh uh pretty you know like a young teenager and one of the best mcfee books i've read was a book you might have read it called levels of the Game. You know, it's so good. It's so, so good. Maybe you can just- I love that book. I read it again. I actually read it again about two years ago. But I read it as a kid. I got it out of the library. I spent a lot of time in libraries when I was a kid. And I don't know how some librarian or somebody told me about it. Because he has that famous book about Bill Bradley, A Sense of Where You Are. So I read that because I was a basketball fan. And it's like, oh, I was also a tennis fan.

Starting point is 00:36:09 It's like, oh, you read about tennis, too. And I read that book. And I didn't, you know, at the time, I guess I was I was saying, wow, you can actually write about sports in a way that's kind of more interesting than just sports. That's a remarkable book. I mean, I can explain it quick so it's it's a story about a match between a single tennis match between arthur ash uh who then was very young just out of richmond and a guy named clark gravener who was from a uh wealthier white guy wealthier family in i think it was like suburban cleveland and what he does is he basically describes the match but

Starting point is 00:36:43 throughout he pulls back and tells each of their stories of how they actually got to the court that day i think it was the u.s open a u.s open match and so he actually describes them playing a point and then he pulls back and talks about how arthur ash got there and he pulls back and talks about how clark gravener got there and he does it with such elegance and such concision. It's just a joy to behold. It's truly spectacular. And for those who haven't read McPhee, you should, if not for any other reason, that he can take any subject matter you can imagine and make a riveting book about said subject. It could be Oranges, Plymouth Rock.

Starting point is 00:37:21 Yeah. Well, Oranges' book is great. I read that when I was a kid too. Carved canoes, uh, geology. It just, you name the topic and he can turn it into a page turner, but levels, levels of the game is, is just spectacular. And one, one thing that McPhee is very, very good at is, and I think this is also shared territory with you, is asking questions. Given the nature of his writing, a very significant portion of his time is spent interviewing. And what about that doesn't make sense is a really powerful tweak on the maybe alternative that you mentioned, which is, does this make sense,

Starting point is 00:38:06 right? Or does this make sense or not? And I, this, this may be digging too far into the weeds, but I was really fascinated to read about an approach that you've detailed in one of your books called motivational interviewing. And I, and I hadn't heard of this before. But the example that stuck out to me, and you don't have to give this exact example, but was asking a student who is seemingly struggling with algebra a certain question instead of others. I don't want to butcher it, but I can certainly also, I have it in front of me so I can pull it up if need be. But can you explain for people what motivational interviewing is and maybe give an example? Yeah. So this is actually a, it's a therapeutic technique that actually I think has wider applications. And I heard about it from a fellow named Mike

Starting point is 00:39:00 Pantelon, who's at Yale School of Medicine, who used it in, I think, addiction treatment. And it's basically like this. So let's say that you have, let me think of a good example here of something that somebody typically isn't that keen to do. let's let's go to algebra let's say you have somebody let's say you're a parent and you have a kid who's in eighth grade and um he is uh has an algebra test and doesn't want to study for the algebra test isn't into it doesn't want to do it and so you know typical reaction from parents from anybody an authority figure is like what the hell is wrong you know you know start saying to sort of demanding, start demanding compliance and motivational interviewing is almost the reverse of that. So it basically, so let's say you have a kid named Bob, you can say,

Starting point is 00:39:54 you know, um, uh, Hey Bob, um, I see you're not studying for your algebra test. Um, let me ask you a question. I, you know, I see you have an algebra test tomorrow. On a scale of one to 10, how ready are you to study for your algebra test? How ready are you to start studying for your algebra test? All right. How much do you want to start studying for your algebra test? And Bob is totally unmotivated by it. Bob might say, I'm a three, right? A three out of 10. Now, again, our reaction as bosses, as parents, as people and figures of authority is basically is to say, what do you mean you're a three? You should be a nine.

Starting point is 00:40:28 But instead, you're more chill than that. And you say, OK, you're a three. Why didn't you pick a lower number? And that always that always wakes people out. So he says, I'm a three out of 10 in terms of my desire to do this thing. And you say instead of saying, oh, my God, you should be a nine. What are you crazy? You lazy ass. You say, oh, why didn't you pick a lower number? And what's interesting about

Starting point is 00:40:49 that is that is what it does to Bob is that Bob has to now say why he's not a two. And so he begins saying things like, well, you know, if I don't study for this test, I'm probably going to bomb the next test. If I don't master this material, it's going to be harder to go into later on. If I don't do well on this test, you might hassle me. And so what happens is, is that Bob begins articulating his own autonomous, intrinsically motivated reasons for doing something, they're more likely to endorse the behavior and they're more likely to carry it out. And so this becomes a way to surface Bob's own motivation for it through questions rather than through rather than through dictates. And it can be a very, very powerful technique. You can also turn it inward. You know, you say, well, how how how how ready are you, Dan, to finish this chapter? Oh, God, you know, I'm like a three. Then you say, well, Dan, and it didn't even occur to me that you could apply it to yourself and use it for journaling or something like that

Starting point is 00:42:12 to uncover or maybe rediscover the motivation that drove you to start it in the first place, even though you lost sight of it or it petered out or whatever the hell it might be. Yeah. I mean, you could use it for going to, you might be yeah i mean you could use it for going to you could use it for you could use it for you could use it for going to the um you know going to the gym or going to going to work out like how like you know how ready are you how how you know how excited are you about how motivated are you to work out right now i'm a two all right well i say it to myself well why aren't you a one well Well, you know, I know that probably I'll feel better if I work out rather than if I don't work out. I know that actually, um, um, if I don't do this aerobic exercise today, I probably going to, you know, might not have a chance to do it tomorrow, which means I'm going to feel like crap. Um, and so you can, you can turn it on yourself as well.

Starting point is 00:42:58 It's all about those surfacing, you know, you know, one of the things that we've done in terms in management and parenting and all, in all other realms of the things that we've done in terms in management and parenting and all in all other realms of life is that we have over we've overdosed on control um and control is not an effective way to motivate people for important things um because human beings only have two responses to control they comply or they they defy. And that's the history of humankind. It's basically human beings either complying or defying with control. And so we need to abandon control as a motivator and look for ways for people to summon their own autonomous motivation for doing things.

Starting point is 00:43:41 So we talked at the very top of this interview about johnny bunco and how you were ahead of the voters in a sense didn't quite catch you might have been a bit early with the manga format in contrast a whole new mind seems to really have resonated strongly and it did catch so i'd love to try to deconstruct why that was the case. And as one example, it appealed so much to Oprah Winfrey that she gifted, I want to say, 4,500 copies to the Stanford graduating class of 2008 when she did her commencement speech there. Why do you think that is? And the subtitle, I should just mention, it's a whole new mind subtitle, Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the future. Why did this one take?

Starting point is 00:44:31 Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's hard to say. I think a reason that it took is that it was fairly original idea conveyed in a way that was easy to understand and also had the advantage of probably being more right than wrong. So, so the idea in that book is the following, that I was arguing then, I still believe it today, that the structure of our brain offers a metaphor for describing the future of work. And all your listeners know there's been a lot of stuff written about left brain and right brain over the years. Most of it's just total garbage.

Starting point is 00:45:03 But one of what, um, one of, uh, what we know about our brains is that they're actually somewhat efficient. And then over time, they've, they've divided up tasks. So the left hemisphere specializes in one set of tasks, tasks that are logical, linear, sequential, analytical, the right hemisphere specializes in a different set of tasks, tasks that are about understanding context, about synthesis, and about simultaneous processing. And so that division of labor in the brain, I think, offers a very powerful metaphor for understanding what I thought was going on in the world of work, and it continues to go on in the world of work. But actually, to make sure I got the underlying science right, in a tearing a page from the Tim Ferriss playbook, I actually went to the National Institutes of Health to get my own brain economy, characteristic, it's a metaphor, characteristic of the left hemisphere, logical, linear,

Starting point is 00:46:09 sequential, analytical, spreadsheet, SAT abilities, those abilities are still necessary, but they're no longer sufficient. And its ability is more characteristic of the right hemisphere of the brain. Artistry, empathy, inventiveness, big picture thinking, those abilities are now the first among equals. And the reason for that is that is a very hardheaded reason that those kinds of abilities are easy to outsource, easy to automate, and that the left hemisphere abilities, sorry, the left hemisphere abilities, the SAT spreadsheet abilities are easy to outsource, easy to automate, and less valuable in iterating something new, in dealing with the demands for new that comes from an abundant world. And so, actually, maybe another reason that took

Starting point is 00:46:55 is that I basically came to a soft-hearted conclusion in a hard-headed way. There was a very clear economic argument for that. You know, the three A's, Asia, automation, abundance. Reductive left-brain work can be done cheaper overseas A's, Asia, automation, abundance, reductive left brain work can be done cheaper overseas. The other A, automation, it can be done faster by computers and now smart machines. And then finally, abundance, that our material needs have been satisfied and over satisfied, that there's a premium now in coming up with something utterly new and giving the world something it didn't know it was missing, which is a very much of an artistic ability. And so that's the argument in that book. And it's an argument, I think, that people resonated to because they were seeing

Starting point is 00:47:34 inklings in their own life, and they needed a way to describe it, categorize it, put words on it. Well, it seems like history has proven your uh prediction or description very accurate at this point for sure and it also would uh it also occurs to me that this is this is another place uh manga aside where you and kevin kelly the founding editor of wired magazine are very much on the same page you mentioned something in passing, though, that I can't let go because I have to hear the separate story. Why was your brain scan disappointing? Oh, because it, you know, I looked at my brain, I was thinking my brain would be special some kind, it looks like every other brain I'd seen. Like, I couldn't pick my own

Starting point is 00:48:19 brain out of a lineup. So that's what it was. I mean, it's sort of, I shouldn't say disappointing. It was, it's, it's, it's humbling, you know, like the idea that here's the, here's my, I got this brain in my head. All right. And, uh, leaving aside the, leaving aside the, the thorny issue of where does the brain end and the mind begin or vice versa. Um, my brain is, is brain is largely responsible for who I am. And yet when I see a picture of it, it's completely unremarkable and looks like every other brain that's being scanned that day. There's something kind of weird and humbling about that. Disappointing too. I don't know, I was expecting my brain would be cooler or something like that. I don't know. Looking, looking back at all of your books, do you find any commonalities or patterns?

Starting point is 00:49:12 And I mean, we can also forge all sorts of spurious correlations, but looking at the books that seem to have struck a nerve and those that for whatever reason didn't perform up to your hopes? Yeah. Um, I, you know, I don't know. I mean, I think that, I think that when it comes to actual performance of things, um, like how well a book does, that's something that's not fully, I mean, you know, this, I mean, anybody knows this, that's not something that's fully in our control. And, and I'm, and I'm actually, you know, I'm actually more or less OK on that.

Starting point is 00:49:49 I mean, it's disappointing when something doesn't do as well as you want. But to me, my criteria, my criterion is, did I write the best book I possibly could write? And once you put it out there, there's so many other variables. You just don't know whether it's going to take or whether it's not going to whether it's not going to take um so i mean i wrote a book you know my very first book was a book called free asian nation uh that was not a monumental that did okay but it was not a monumental hit it should have been because i think i was right um um but for whatever reason i think it came out like i think i i think it just came out – like I think it just came out at the wrong – I think it came out at the wrong time. It should have come out slightly earlier. And so on that – so to me, how well a book does, there's so much randomness in that. I'm not – I try not to lose any sleep over it.

Starting point is 00:50:38 In terms of actual – is there a through line among all the books? That's an interesting question. And I can say from the creation point of view, there is absolutely not a through line among all the books uh that's an interesting question and i i can say from the creation point of view there is absolutely not a through line um there is no intentional through line through through these kinds of through these kinds of books it's not as if i have mapped out somewhere on a whiteboard here in pink ink world headquarters in washington dc this like grand scheme to create the pink oeuvre in a certain fashion, in a certain timetable with certain things covered like that. Far from it. I just go from one thing

Starting point is 00:51:13 to another. I just like figure out what I'm going to do next. And as you know, Tim, I mean, writing a book is so difficult. It's so hard. It's so time consuming that if you're not in love with the idea, if you don't love working on it, you're going to it's going to be miserable for you. So so I just pick the next topic based on what I'm really interested in and what I want to spend a couple of years, a few years working on. So I think it's possible that people can detect a through line. That readers could detect the through line, maybe they're seeing something that I'm not, but if there's a through line, it's visible only retrospectively. It's not something that was intentional. What was, speaking of difficulty and writing process, what, if there is a, if you had to pick one, what has been the most difficult book for you to write and why?

Starting point is 00:52:00 I think it was this, I think it was the last one, the last book that I wrote, believe it or not, you would think it would get easier over time, but it didn't. So this last book, When, about the science of time, that was the most difficult book to write, partly because I went into that book with – so I started writing A Whole New Mind, having done some research and saying, hey, I think there's something going on here. I think we're moving to this world. you know, and sort of I had a theory of the case with drive. I had a book about motivation. I looked at a lot of the research in motivation. I said, well, wait a second, people are missing like a huge story here. With when I went in totally with questions rather than with any kind of theory of the case, I basically said, hey, I'm making all

Starting point is 00:52:45 kinds of timing decisions in my own life. I'm making them in a totally half-assed way. I'd like to make them in a better way. Could somebody please give me some guidance? And I started looking around for guidance and it didn't exist. And then I started looking at the research and I realized that across all of these domains of research, literally dozens and dozens, from the hard sciences of molecular biology to endocrin, from the hard sciences of molecular biology to endocrinology to the social sciences of economics and social psychology to many, many domains, these scholars are asking very, very similar questions. What's the effect of time of day on what we do and how we do it? How do beginnings affect us? How do midpoints affect us? How do

Starting point is 00:53:21 endings affect us? And so I went in saying, wow, how do I make better timing decisions myself? But I didn't have a theory of the case. And so the volume of research for this one was so monumental. There were so many studies out there and there were so many different in so many different fields and fields that like molecular biology is not a subject that is at my fingertips. All right. I had I spent so much time. I mean, I basically would read those papers. I would read them through and I would write down all the words that I didn't know the meaning of. And then I would look up those words and then I would read it again and I would read it a third time. And so very painstaking. And then also because I didn't have a theory of the case,

Starting point is 00:53:58 I just had questions rather than even a kind of skeleton or a shape of what I wanted to write, I had to figure that out. So I probably did, I don't know, 17, 18 different outlines of that book. So that was, you know, you would think it would get easier, but it actually got harder. 18 outlines. What would such an outline look like? How long is it? What's the format? the right word because I'm a, I, I'm a firm believer when it comes to speeches and when it comes to books, I'm a firm believer in structure and shape. Um, I think that those are what makes some things work. I think it's true for television shows. I think it's true for podcasts. Um, I think that structure, I think that structure and shape are very important. All right. Um,

Starting point is 00:55:07 no, so here's the thing, Tim, I think your podcast, they don't necessarily have a structure, but they have a shape. There's no question they have a shape. All right. And so it's, you know, it's just, it's a difference between, you know, we can have, you can have sculptures, beautiful sculptures that have right angles and you can have other beautiful sculptures like a Henry Moore, that has no right angles at all, but it has a distinct and memorable and identifiable shape. Right. But I'm a big believer in structure and shape. And so what I'm doing there is that it's basically just my search for how do you organize the ideas and what's the shape or the structure of the final product going to be? Because once I see the shape, I can do a lot better work.

Starting point is 00:55:48 But for this other book, you know, it's like I'm reading through 700 studies on all this kinds of stuff. And I'm like, good God, how do I even make sense of this? What do I put where? I started thinking about organizing it. Do I organize this book about timing? Do I organize it basically the way that we organize time so do i write about you know the hour the day the week the week the month the year the lifetime and that's a really bad way to do it but i ended up why is that why is that bad how did you decide that was a bad approach

Starting point is 00:56:20 because um um for a couple of reasons number one um the material didn't organize itself cleanly in that way number two uh that's that struck me more as a uh like a handbook like a farmer's almanac rather than uh an intelligent book of science journalism with takeaways um and more important that's not a book i would want to read. And, you know, and so, so I, so I abandoned that, but I did, but did I really abandon it? Because I actually ended up writing a whole chapter in this book about the day. So I ended up cleaving off some of that and, and keeping it for, and keeping it for, for, for other things. And so, um, so it took me a long time to, it took me a long time to

Starting point is 00:57:06 find the shape. And the way I find the shape is I basically write it down on either what I call big ass stickies is giant post-it notes or, um, or, or on a whiteboard that I have in my office. But I went through many, many, many iterations. And on that, I have a somewhat social view of that. And that what I'll do is I'll, I'll run it past people to see what they think and say, hey, what do you think if I organize the book that way? Does that make any sense coupled with the fact that the amount of research was so massive, it was, it was actually, it was actually, um, it was actually the hardest book I've had to write. Well, you're doing the research as you're writing the book, right? In effect, it sounds like because you're coming into it with questions, but then you're having to digest all of the information that might lead or might not lead to answers while you're writing it.

Starting point is 00:58:06 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Very, very hard. And that's hard to write. Exactly. You're so right about that. That's hard to do, too. And a lot of people, I mean, you know, as a writer, it's messier than that. There's this notion that I'm going to do my research. And then when my research is done, I'm going to do my writing. All right. Yeah. And so it never works that way. But but when you have more questions and you have when you don't know the shape yet and you still have a lot of questions, what happens is I'm going to do the research. Now I'm going to try to write down something about it. Crap. You know what?

Starting point is 00:58:38 Now that I write it, I realize I'm missing a whole thing here and I got to do more research. So let me go back and do that. So it's less of this kind of, you know, um, you know, happy March from, you know, uh, happy jump from here's I'm going to go from this lily pad to that lily pad and happily jump from each one to another, like a delighted frog. There's a lot of tasks switching. I, that's exactly why the four hour chef for me was also by far the most difficult book, among other reasons, to write, is that I came into it intending to try all of these experiments, ask all of these questions, and write the book somewhat chronologically as I'm getting answers. And that was a very punishing way to approach things. But to look at the content, so going past the structure and looking at the content and the findings of when,

Starting point is 00:59:33 I was looking at an NPR interview that you did and teasing out some potential ways that I could apply the content from this book into my own life. And I'm going to read a quote. You can feel free to correct it. But this is what I have as one very clear example. And I'd love to, basically, I'm going to ask you what types of decisions have changed for you or easy ways that people can think about making changes related to timing. So here's one. And I'm going to truncate it a little bit. But quote, in a lot of this research and big data, you see systematically poor performance in healthcare settings in the afternoon. Example, the incidence of hand washing inside of hospitals dramatically drops in the afternoon. And that seems like a bad thing to me. That's my voice, not yours. You look at colonoscopies,

Starting point is 01:00:17 endoscopists find half as many polyps and colonoscopies in afternoon exams versus morning exams, even with the same population. Doctors are more likely to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics in the afternoon compared to the morning. And this seems, this is very, very actionable, right? If we are to trust the data, if the patterns, if the correlations hold, then you are certainly better off, it would seem, if you want to miscriticate, I'm not sure that was English, risk mitigate, I think I swapped the first two letters. That has a fancy psychological term. It's called in linguistics a tip of the slung.

Starting point is 01:00:53 A tip of the slung. Yeah. Exactly. And you might come back to your undergrad and linguistics, but what are other examples related to the when, the timing that people might be able to implement? Oh my gosh, there's so much stuff. I mean, the good news about this is that when I did finally wrestle the research to the ground and figure out how to structure it, it yielded so many great, great takeaways for readers. So take a step back. What we know from a mountain of research, it took me a while to figure this out, was that we tend to move through

Starting point is 01:01:32 the day in three stages, a peak, a trough, a recovery. Peak, trough, recovery. Now, most of us move through the day in that order. People who are night owls, people who have an evening chronotype, they move through the day in the reverse order, recovery trough peak. But what we know is that we know a few things about human performance over the course of a day. The most important thing, and I wish somebody had told me this before I was 50 rather than once I was 50, is that our cognitive abilities do not remain the same throughout the day. Our cognitive abilities change during the day, and they can change in some dramatic ways, and they change in predictable ways. But how we perform depends on what we're doing, right?

Starting point is 01:02:20 So what we know about the peak, which, again, for most of us is the morning. For night owls, it's later in the day. What we know about the peak is that the peak is when we are most vigilant. And what does vigilance mean? Vigilance means we're able to bat away distractions. And so when we're vigilant and can bat away distractions, that makes it the best time for analytic work, work that requires heads down, focus, writing a report, analyzing data, that kind of work. Piles of research tell us that we should be doing our analytic work during the peak, right? The trough, that's the early afternoon and early to mid afternoon. As you mentioned from the data on healthcare, a lot of bad stuff happens then. I mean, you have standardized test scores for students go down in the afternoon. You have,

Starting point is 01:03:04 if you look at auto accidents, once you control for cars on the road, obviously there are going to be more accidents when there are more cars on the road. But once you control for that, the most dangerous time to drive is 4 to 6 a.m. The second most dangerous time is 2 to 4 p.m. During that midday trough, we should be doing more of our administrative work. We should be answering our routine emails. We should, I mean, you've talked in the past, Tim, about batching. We should be batching our routine emails and answering them during the trough. We should be filling out our TPS report. We should be filling out our expense report, whatever. That kind of stuff that we have to

Starting point is 01:03:42 do during the course of a day that doesn't require a lot of major cognitive power. Now, the recovery period, again, because this peak trough recovery is a pattern of mood that also is a pattern of performance. The recovery period is actually really, really interesting. During the recovery period, we have elevated mood. Our mood is better than during the trough, but we're less vigilant than during the peak. And so it's really important to think about that combo platter here. That is, you have higher mood, but less vigilance. That makes it a good time for things like brainstorming, for things like insight work, where if you're too locked down and focused, you're not going to be that creative.

Starting point is 01:04:31 And so that degree of looseness coupled with the elevated mood makes that recovery stage better for what are called insight problems, brainstorming, things that require iteration. And so what we see is that if we recognize that our cognitive abilities don't stay the same over the course of a day, that they change in predictable ways, and that what we do, that when we do something, it depends on what we're doing, we should be moving our analytic work to the peak, our administrative work to the trough, and our insight and creative work to the recovery. And it's that simple. And what the research tells us also is this, I mean, is that time of day explains about 20% of the variance in how people perform on cognitive tasks. So if you think about that, that's a big deal. Like we can explain the very, like if Fred, if we have two people, Maria and Sally, and they perform differently on cognitive tasks, how do we explain that? All right. We say, how do we explain that variance in how people perform, you know, Maria, Sally, and, and, you know, 18,000 other

Starting point is 01:05:30 people perform on cognitive tasks. We say, oh, some people are smarter than other people. Some people are more conscientious than other people. Some people have more social advantage than other people. But what the research is telling us that 20 percent of that variance is time of day. And so and so so what we should be doing is and what we're not doing is we should be making our when decisions in a strategic way rather than in the lazy, haphazard way with which we tend to make our when decisions. And so and you see this most glaringly and this is my rant of the of the of the year is you see this most glaringly, and this is my rant of the year, is you see this most glaringly with meetings in organizations. When we schedule meetings in organizations, the only criterion we use is availability. That's it. Who's available? We don't say, what kind of meeting is this? Is this a meeting where people have to be analytical? What kind of meeting is this? Is this about travel voucher policies? What kind of meeting is this? Are we brainstorming? Who's going to be there? Are they

Starting point is 01:06:28 going to be morning people? Are they going to be intermediate people? Are they going to be evening people? We don't even ask those questions. We just say, who's available? And it's causing, it's one of the easiest things organizationally to fix. And it's something that at the unit of one, individuals can be a lot more systematic and intentional about moving the right work into the right time slots. What time of day do you generally wake up personally? I wake up a little after seven. What does the first two hours of your day look like? Do you have any particular routines?

Starting point is 01:07:04 Can you walk us through what that day look like? Do you, do you have particular, any particular routines? Can you walk us through what that, uh, I don't, I don't have the detailed routines that, um, that you have, that you have written about that you actually have experimented with and, uh, you know, things like, like, uh, journaling and meditation or anything like that. Um, here's what I do. I wake up. All right. I, I take a shower, a shower helps me wake up. So I take a shower. Um, I go downstairs and I feel better if I see a member of my family. So whoever happens to be awake, I might, I have two kids in college now, so I don't see them, but I have another kid who's still, still around. So I see him. Uh, I see my wife and, um, I like to have

Starting point is 01:07:42 some protein for breakfast. Uh, if that's a ritual, and caffeine. Protein and caffeine is my preferred breakfast. What's your go-to protein? You know what? I probably eat more hard-boiled eggs than almost any other person in America. I am keeping the hard-boiled egg industry in business. I think I'm single handedly responsible for the advent of hard boiled eggs for sale and individually wrapped packages in airports. I really think so. Because once they once they introduce that, I bought them all and they go, oh, my God, there's such demand for these hard boiled eggs.

Starting point is 01:08:19 So I was actually saying to my wife, I eat so many eggs. It's ridiculous. So so I don't have a cholesterol problem, fortunately. So hard-boiled eggs or peanut butter. And then what I do is when I'm in my writing day, and this is actually something I did better having read this book. When I'm on writing days, I will go to my office, which, which again is behind my house, and I will not bring my phone with me. I will not turn on my email and I will give myself a quota. And that quota is usually is a word count. So call it 700 words. I'm a fairly slow writer. So you got these people out there who are like,

Starting point is 01:09:03 I can write 3000 words a day. And it's's like i don't think i've ever done that um um and so i'm very very slow i'm probably i may be slower than you are even yeah well here's the thing i'm slow and basically i'm basically slow in every um in every domain of my life i'm like just such a, I'm a slow runner. I'm a slow reader. I'm a slow writer. I like, I, I, I really heavily scrutinized my 23andMe report to see if I had some kind of like tortoise gene in me somewhere that somehow like one of my ancestors in Latvia somehow mated with a tortoise at some point. Um, and so, um, and so, um, and so, so. But what I will do, though, is I will come in and give myself that quota and I won't do anything until I hit that number. And then then I'm free to do other kinds of things. And then what I'll do is I always I'll have lunch and then I will I like to do I have

Starting point is 01:10:01 done a good job, especially after like this, this book changed the way that I organize my day because I do my analytic work better in the morning. So this book basically, this book impelled me to clear out my mornings to do that analytic work, which for me is writing. Uh, I stuff the administrative stuff often to the, um, uh, to the, to the midday and the batched emails and that kind of garbage. And then I like to do interviews. Um, especially when I'm interviewing, like for book interviews, I like to do those later in the day because I'm a little bit more, um, I like, I like the interviews to be a little bit more freewheeling. I'm not doing, I'm not an investigative reporter. I'm not conducting a deposition. I just, you know, want to hear people's stories and what they think about stuff. And so you're not quoting the Yale Law and Policy Review, volume eight, number two, 1990. No, no, no. And so I'm not, I'm not, you know, so I want that to be a little bit more iterative. And then I, and then I actually end up exercising later. I end up exercising later in the day and in the early evening because I find that that works best for me.

Starting point is 01:11:05 You said on a writing day when you were on book deadline. How many what is your week weekly structure tend to look like? Do you do you is every day a writing day? Yeah. When I'm writing a book. Yeah. Because I'm I'm also I'm also a momentum player. So so for me, writing every day is hugely important.

Starting point is 01:11:26 Um, when I'm, when I'm working on a, when I'm working on a, when I'm working on a book or working on a long article. So I try to do that. I try to do that every single day, like, like seven days a week. And do you have, do you have set periods of time between books? Do you decide in advance? I'm going to take X period of time until I investigate another book what is what is your macro planning look like macro planning boy my macro planning is neither macro nor planned I think that needs to be on a motivational calendar somewhere. Yeah. Like for, um,

Starting point is 01:12:08 I don't know. Uh, put it, put it another way. If that question sucks, which it might, uh, because it's also making a bunch of assumptions. Uh,

Starting point is 01:12:16 how do you decide when to take on new projects or new books? If, if that's a better question. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I sort of go in,

Starting point is 01:12:25 I sort of go in cycles. So I'm actually heading to that cycle right now. So I've spent a lot of time writing this book and try to make it as good as good a book as I can, in terms of actually spreading the word about it. I try to do that with, you know, give the cliche, not leaving anything on the sidelines and doing everything I possibly can being everywhere, being strategic about it all trying new stuff, trying cool stuff, uh, trying to get some momentum behind, behind the book. And then, you know, when that, and when that sort of white hot center dissipates, um, um, and the book we hope has some momentum of its own, uh, then I'll go back and figure out the next project, whatever that project might be. And the way I do that is,

Starting point is 01:13:01 I know this will shock you, Tim, in a slow, laborious way. So what I do is I have – I'm a sort of a – I use – I'll give you my mechanisms here. So I use – believe it or not, I use a lot of paper folders and I have a labeler. I use paper folders and a labeler to label my folders uh because i i i was like a getting things done guy before getting things done was cool um the uh i met i met david allen like in 1997 um and you know i bought a labeler like shortly after that i was gonna ask if he's if he's sending you your customary 5% royalties for the brainpower. You're like the guy who invented rollerblades or the gal 40 years before they became cool.

Starting point is 01:13:52 Oh, yeah. No, no. I'm a GTD devotee. I'm not hardcore. I'm not orthodox, but I'm not reformed. I'm not reformed either. I'm sort of like in the middle. And so anyway, I have these paper files with labels. orthodox, but I'm not reformed. I'm not reformed either. I'm sort of like in the middle.

Starting point is 01:14:11 And so anyway, I have these paper files with labels. And so when I read stuff or make notes to myself, I throw stuff in those files. I use Evernote and I also use Dropbox. And I just throw ideas in there. And then what I do is every six months or so, I go through those ideas of like, hey, this would be a cool television show to do. Hey, this would be a cool article to write. Hey, this would be a cool book to write. And as I look at those ideas, maybe revisiting them every six months or so, I realize that most of them are just god awful ideas. One of my beliefs about the human brain is that or creativity is that in order to have good ideas, you have to have a lot of ideas. And so I have a lot of bad ideas, which I think is the only way for me to surface any decent ideas. So I'll revisit those ideas and then when it comes and I'll call. And what often

Starting point is 01:14:55 happens when I call is that a few ideas end up just staying there over and over again every six months cycle. And then when I get to this point now, I will go back to all of those files and look more carefully and say, hey, I sort of have in my mind die right now, three possible projects. And and so I'll and I'll more heavily vet those projects, read a lot more, talk to people, bounce them, bounce ideas off of people. And and I, and I like bouncing ideas off of people about which more in a moment. And, um, and then when it comes time to write a book, uh, I will actually write a book proposal. Um, even if I have the deal already done. So I have a two book deal. Like I have to, I have to write another book. Um, but I'll still write a proposal for this next book,

Starting point is 01:15:40 maybe 40 page proposal, uh, which allows me to figure out, is there a there there? Is this something I really want to work on? You know, I think, I think a lot of things sound really good when you're just shooting the breeze. They sound less good if you have to say, can I can I explain this? Can I explain this idea? Who's going to buy it? Why it's cool? Why it's original? Why no one else is doing it? Can I explain that in a coherent written document? That's a tougher order. And so not everything lends itself to that. And I will bounce ideas out of people.

Starting point is 01:16:11 So actually, it's funny. You mentioned Kevin at the beginning of the show. I had this one idea where I went out and I made the pilgrimage to, what do you call his town? Pacifica. Pacifica. Yeah, and made the pilgrimage to kevin's house and said i got an idea i want to run past you uh for a book and kevin was one of

Starting point is 01:16:32 the people who said that's not a very good idea and and uh and unfortunately he was not the only one who said that. And more fortunately, depending on how you look at it. I mean, if he's yeah, no, no. Actually, fortunately, you're right. Fortunately, he was he was not the only one who said that. So I abandoned I actually ended up abandoning that idea in part because he was another brick in the wall of people saying no, no, no. Let's pause there for a quick second.

Starting point is 01:17:02 Do you mind sharing? I don't thinkvin would care at all on what he or other people made his arguments against you pursuing this idea and you can tell us what the idea was where you can yeah yeah i'm gonna be i'm gonna be i'm gonna be skittish about the idea um uh but let's just say it had to do with morality. I wanted to write a book dealing with morality. And Kevin, who is a person of religious faith, who is extraordinarily well-read, and among people who are very well-read and very intelligent,

Starting point is 01:17:37 I think there are a dearth of people who have strong religious faith. It's just an observation. It's not like a judgment one way or the other. And so I thought he would be an especially good person to run this idea past. And I guess he and others, the theory of the case that I had, he and others had two criticisms of it. And they are not insignificant criticisms, Tim. the first criticism was you're wrong okay all right to begin with yes you're wrong all right and the second part the second criticism was you're right but it's not interesting so those are two pretty like that's those are like those are significant critiques right um

Starting point is 01:18:28 so um so so that's so so that's how i so that's that's that's generally that's generally how i do things when i came up with this idea for when uh it was an idea that was kicking around there and one of the one of the ways that i knew it was a good idea were two things. Number one is that when I was writing the proposal, first of all, I was looking at the research, and I found myself wanting to do more research, which is always a good sign. It's like, holy crap, is that true? Well, what about Babadiba? And I go look at Babadiba. Oh, my God, Babadiba. And so I found myself wanting to do more research.

Starting point is 01:19:02 That was one thing. And then when I started writing the proposal for that, it was like, for me, it doesn't happen very often, but there were portions of it that were just like butter. I could just explain it so clearly, like, here's what I'm going to try to find out, and here's why it matters. And it was like that scene in Jerry Maguire where he writes all night. I'm taking the goldfish, minus the goldfish. I was doing handstands against the wall and everything like that. And that's sometimes a good sign. I think that lack of or overabundance of energy I think is undervalued, uh, how much the project actually gives you more fuel tank.

Starting point is 01:19:55 And I think that's a big, I, you know, here's the thing. I think a lot of writers, I think a lot of people who come out as journalists and before I started writing books, you know, post-speech writing sort of, sort of as a, you know, and even the first time I was writing books, you know, post-speech writing sort of, sort of as a, you know, and even the first time I was writing books, I did a lot of magazine articles, a lot of magazine writing, long form magazine writing, which I, which I, which I like. And I found a lot of journalists who would write an article, the article would do well, and they would get a book offer and they would do the, they would, they would not pop, they were not properly vetted about whether they want it. Cause there are a lot of ideas that you maybe want to go out

Starting point is 01:20:26 on a few dates with, but there are very few ideas that you want to go steady with, let alone marry and have kids. I think that books are basically you're marrying and having kids. That's a very, very, very high bar. There are a lot of great articles that should stay

Starting point is 01:20:42 articles and make very mediocre books. uh you know be potentially i suppose not vice versa it's very rare that you go in the opposite direction but oh that's uh it's so i mean it's so off i i read i read um i i want to say the name of i read one of those this i mean send it to me a blurb i read one of those um uh this weekend where somebody had an article. It did really well. They got a book deal.

Starting point is 01:21:07 They turned it into a book. And it's like, okay, you know what? This thing has so much more impact as an article rather than as a book. I want to dig in a little bit on this tickler file that you review every six months. Because one of the most frequent questions I am asked is, do you pick projects how do you vet projects and you mentioned revisiting every six months with a few mundane questions in within evernote do you have a specific notebook that is tickler file or something like that how do you keep track of all these these ideas? Um, I, um, I, I can actually look that up right now. I could, what I do is I categorize them. Um, so, uh, so I have, so what I have is I have a giant file called

Starting point is 01:21:57 misc. All right. I'm just like shards. Okay. But then I'll go through that and say, wait a second. Let me think of an example here. Um, wait a second. Um, wait a second. Uh, I, um, wow. I I'm collecting a lot of articles about, um, here's a book. I'm not going to like, it could be interesting at one point. I said, God, somebody should write a book about courage. All right. Like what about courage? What do we know about courage? All right. I'm not going to do that. If one of your listeners wants to go out and do it, God bless you. I think it could be really interesting. Um, so I could go into the MISC file and say, Ooh, the MISC notebook, I guess that it's called, um, is, uh, what do we know about courage? Uh, and I said, well, I would go into the MISC notebook and I'd say, wow, I got a lot of articles about courage.

Starting point is 01:22:36 That's going to, they're going to, that's going to birth a separate notebook on courage. Uh, and then it organized it that way. Um, so I'll have, uh, I'll have notebooks of misc and I'll have notebooks of, of particular ideas that, um, that, that I have, um, that end up being fuller because it's like, Ooh, this, this one has stuck around for a little bit longer than others. And you mentioned during these reviews, you might say, Oh, here's a cool idea for this, a cool idea for that. Oh, this could be really interesting. That could be really interesting.

Starting point is 01:23:08 I would imagine even after the second glance and noticing that some of these ideas are coyote ugly, and you're way, you could drown under the weight of these kind of cool ideas. You have many things that could be interesting. How do you then, what are the parameters or thought processes, questions, anything that help you to get down to the three finalists? Um, okay. So, so what do we, so, um, it would be, um, uh, what, uh, it's, it's really like, what would I want to spend a couple of years on? And so if I really sort of like, like maybe courage would be an example of that. It's like, I'm sort of interested in that. Um, but it'd be like, I would, I would rather read a good book about courage than write a book about courage.

Starting point is 01:24:14 I'm serious. Like, you know what I mean? And it's like, and so when you, when you go face to face with that and you start saying, do I really want to do this? Then I think your, your soul at some level tells you, Hey, this is the, you're into this. You're not, you're not so, you're not so into that. Um, and so that, I think that's the, I think that's the initial cut. Um, but it's also the one reason why I, so to get to the three finalists is actually really kind of intuitive in a, in a,

Starting point is 01:24:41 in a way. And there's no match number to three, it could be four, you know? Um, and, um, and, and so, but this is one reason why I will write, uh, uh, book proposals. Um, because it just forces me to, it forces me to reckon with the idea and actually like make it real. And, and there's this principle that I learned in college at a writing course in college. Um, and I actually ended up giving a commencement speech around this idea. I'll spare you that for now, but the idea was the idea was following. It was a revelation to me when I was whatever, 21 years old. So I had this, so it was this writing is this essay writing course, sort of higher level essay writing course. And I had a draft of an essay or something like that. I went into the professor, his name is Charlie Yarnoff. He still, I went to Northwestern. He still teaches at

Starting point is 01:25:31 Northwestern. And, um, so Charlie, um, gave me some feedback and I said, I was like all insistent, okay, I can fix this. I can move this part over here. Maybe I do another piece over here. Maybe I knew another piece over here. And he's like, no, no, no, no, Dan, that's not your problem here. The problem is that you don't know what you think. That's, that's why this essay sucks. This draft of the, you don't know what, you don't know what you think. He didn't say suck, but that's why this essay, that's why this essay, that's why this essay stinks. And then he said something to me and I, and I don't want to, I don't want it to sound glorified or sound like something that is confected where a swell of music will come up behind me and this. But what he said, he said, but it's words I've never forgotten.

Starting point is 01:26:11 Truly, he said, sometimes you have to write to figure it out. Sometimes you have to write to figure it out. And that was a revelation to me because at the time I was in this mode, very kind of traditional schooling mode where, sort of like we were talking about before, you do your research, then you write. You make your outline, then you write. And what he was saying to me is that, you know, the real writers are, it's more dynamic than that. Sometimes you have to write to figure it out. And that was transformative for me. And so that sort of gave me permission to say, oh, I don't know. Like, I can change my mind in midway writing something.

Starting point is 01:26:49 I can start writing without knowing fully exactly what it is I'm going to say. And to me, that's why I write book proposals, is that I write to figure it out. And a lot of times what I figure out is this is not a book or this is not a book i want to write so i had this one moment not met a few years ago where a while ago now actually 10 years ago even more where uh my my i sent it was like winter like late second half of december and i asked i said to my wife and and i said hey why don't you just take our guys our kids three kids just go see your parents just go for a week right uh or two weeks or something like that you know go and like i just i got to get a book you just take our guys, our kids, three kids, just go see your parents, just go for a week, right? Or two weeks or something like that, you know, go and like, I just I got to get a book proposal done. I just I'm distracted. It's like if you guys when you guys when my family leaves,

Starting point is 01:27:34 like I live like an animal, you know, I mean, like a raccoon that got into the house. No, truly. I mean, it is raccoon like, and that I literally eat out of containers, you know? So like my, my family leaves, I eat out of containers, don't shave and basically work around the clock, except for a few ESPN breaks. That's basically what I do when my family is gone. And so I will, um, so I, so I started, so I said, I'm going to write a proposal for this next book. And after about seven or eight days, I called Jessica at her parents' house. I said, Hey, I got some good news and some bad news. Uh, the good news is that you can come home now.

Starting point is 01:28:11 The bad news is that I realized this is not a book. Um, but it was only writing to figure out that, that allowed me to do that. So I actually wrote, uh, uh, basically one and a half proposals before writing the wind proposal, uh, because I had a couple ideas. And I said, Okay, this is sort of interesting, but let me write to figure it out. And what I realized in, you know, two very important things. One, it's not a book, maybe it's an article, or two, it's not a book that I want to write. There's, there are a few, raccoon behavior aside, that I want to follow up on. The first is just to highlight something for people listening, and that is how liberating it is to think about writing as something you do not when you have your ideas ready, but something you do to figure out your ideas.

Starting point is 01:29:03 Absolutely. When did you learn that? have your ideas ready, but something you do to figure out your ideas. Absolutely. Because when did you, when did you learn that? I, it's been, I would say reiterated. It's something that is easy to forget, particularly if you have, or something that you will willfully forget if you have a perfectionist streak and a penchant for procrastination. So if you want to wait until all your ducks are in a row so you can go to the debutante ball pristine and blow everybody's socks off, it's easy to forget this. But it sounds like the cat came back the very next day. I don't know if you know the song, but Kevin Kelly, just to incant his name again.

Starting point is 01:29:41 Yes, indeed. He emphasized this to me, uh, he's, he's such a prolific writer and emphasize this to me a number of years ago. And, uh, I want to say it goes back probably to McPhee, uh, who is also much like you obsessed with structure. And, uh, if there's a book, I think it's called draft number four, uh. Yeah, it just came out. It has some really fascinating explorations of this for those people who really want to get into the weeds. He'll also do it graphically. He'll draw out diagrams of what the structure looks like, which appeals to me. But trying to stay on track here, I would say Kevin is the most – well, you are the most recent person.

Starting point is 01:30:23 But a number of years ago, Kevin emphasized that to me and probably before that McPhee. So it's really liberating, number one, to embrace that, even if you're not fully convinced it's the case. And I also want to give a little bit of context for people who may not be familiar with book proposals. So book proposals in the world of nonfiction books, I suppose I should take a further step back and say, in the world of nonfiction,

Starting point is 01:30:51 so novels and fiction are totally different. In many cases, you need to finish that puppy before anyone will tell you if your baby is ugly or not, which has to be terrifying. It must be. In nonfiction, you create a book proposal before you write your book and the book proposal and feel free to interject at any point, but the book proposal is in effect a business plan and an overview

Starting point is 01:31:19 slash executive summary for your book. And there's, there's a lot you find with the best book proposals and the best startup pitches, which take the form of a deck, say a PowerPoint or something like that. Very often they're, they're exceptionally similar. The, the, the, the ingredients that make a good startup pitch and the ingredients to make a good book proposal are very similar. I'd love to actually know what the structure of your book proposals look like. I know what ingredients I would potentially include in a book proposal. What does the table of contents look like for one of your book proposals?

Starting point is 01:32:01 Yeah, I'd have to go back and look. I think they vary a little bit, but they probably have some core design elements. One of them is – and it's a question that I want to ask myself, which is what is this book? What's it about? Pretty simple question. I think the more important question is why does it fill a need that hasn't been filled yet? Which is basically very similar. I use the same business plan analogy that you do on, on proposals, but it's sort of like a business.

Starting point is 01:32:34 Like why, why is it providing a, uh, why is it filling a need that hasn't otherwise been met? Like, like where, like basically if you draw a map of the marketplace um what part of the marketplace of ideas is does this uh does this cover that hasn't been covered all right is it this you know um so that so it's it's you know and i don't even mean it in i sometimes will use the high concept um i sometimes will use the high concept pitch of it's x meets y which i actually think is actually a very useful heuristic in figuring out ideas so for instance i pitched a whole new mind as um um uh future shock meets seven habits of highly effective people um which i thought it was pretty good pitch and so, very common in pitching films also just to,

Starting point is 01:33:25 just to highlight, it's really useful. It's a heuristic. And it basically, to me, it says, if you think about a map of the territory, if you think about a map of ideas out there, um, why is no one over here on this part of the map? All right. Like, or show me, show me where, show me, show me where on the map your idea is. All right. And let's make sure that someone hasn't gotten there first. Uh, and then tell me why someone hasn't gotten there first what are they missing um and so in the case of when for instance i say well the reason they're missing is everybody thinks science that timing is an art but it's actually a science oh okay got it that's why no one is there um and um and so let's talk about what's it about? Where does it fit into the marketplace of ideas? Why is it original? And this is also really important. Who is it for? All right. And the big mistake that that everybody writing a book and if there's one takeaway in their pitches, is when they say, who's it for?

Starting point is 01:34:25 Who's the audience? Who's the customer? They always want to say everybody. And it's not. It's never everybody. All right? And what I try to do is I have included a section of who is not going to buy that book. You have a section on who isn't the customer.

Starting point is 01:34:43 Right. Who is not going to buy this book? Because I think that that's the only way to think carefully about, because books are not a mass medium. And even media products in general are no longer mass medium, mass media. They're no longer mass. And so I'll have bullets and they're saying, who is not going to buy this book? And that helps define the audience too. And also I try to, you know, and that's all that, you know, that's really all that it is. But if you know what the book is about, where it fits into the marketplace of ideas, why it's different from anything else that came before it, and who it's for, I think those components are really essential. But that fourth component is, and I say this to writers too, tell me who the book is not for. Tell me who's not going to buy this book. And people have a hard time saying, oh, everybody will buy this book. Somebody pitched to me an idea. Somebody

Starting point is 01:35:41 came to me once with an idea of a book about, um, uh, uh, somebody who's giving, asking advice on it. It was a book about, um, I hope I don't, I don't, I think the book might've gotten published. I, I don't want to reveal the name. Uh, it was a book about the history of yoga in America, right? The history or maybe the history of yoga. Yeah. I think it was the history of yoga and it's like, Oh, okay. That's, that's cool. So I think a lot of people, um, who do yoga might be interested in that. And she said so i think a lot of people um who do yoga might be interested in that and she said well i think people who don't do yoga are going to be interested in this and i said no they're not like people who don't do yoga don't care about the history of yoga

Starting point is 01:36:17 all right there are a lot of there are a shitload of people in america who do yoga like that's a pretty good audience right there but don't tell me me every, you know what I mean? And so, you know, you know, so, so, so for me, it's like, you know, for me, it's like, like my books, like, okay, I know that the, the, like this book about the science, this book about the science of timing, I know that certain people in my neighborhood in northwest Washington, D.C., who read or of a certain age and read only literary fiction and 700 page biographies of founding fathers, they're not going to read this book. They're not going to read. They might be my neighbors. They're not going to read one of my books. And so I think that's really, really important about who is the book not for? Well, it's also an indicator of focus and logical slash rational thinking in a sense, right? Because if you're, for instance, just to digress for a

Starting point is 01:37:18 minute, but if you're in the world of investing, where I spent a long time with early stage startups, 17 years or so, if they say everyone is my And if there is a 80% off deal for something like shopping mall circulars or something, that they would jump on that and piss away all their money. And certainly, I think a lot of books fail, and this is true of presentations too, from too much miscellaneous information, not too little, if that makes any sense. Absolutely. It's a matter of, it's really just a matter of, it's really just a matter of focus. And I, going back to the speech thing, I mean, one of the, one of the pieces of advice, the extent that anybody ever asked me for advice on giving, on giving speeches and whatnot is, you know, and it sounds a little like a,

Starting point is 01:38:26 it sounds like a Zen koan-ish sort of phrase, but basically my point is, say something important rather than say important things. And like, I find a lot of times people say something important rather than say important things. And because I think a lot of times people like to try to stuff within the skin all the things they found out, all the things that they know, and they end up not saying anything important.

Starting point is 01:38:49 And so, you know, I, yeah, so. So that's, that's the reason for doing that. So anyway, you get the idea. Yeah, no, it is. And there are so many comparable examples. If, for instance, you look for this vetting of ideas by putting together a short synopsis of some type. Yeah, yeah. And there's one example, for instance, and I believe this is true. I've certainly heard it and read about it a few times, and I know a fair number of people who work at Amazon, but they'd have to confirm. But I think Ian McAllister,

Starting point is 01:39:29 who used to at least be a general manager at Amazon, talked about this as working backwards. And for new initiatives, the product manager who would be in charge of developing, say, a new product has to write an internal press release which announces the finished product, right? And that has to focus on effectively exactly what, what, uh, what you said. And I'm quoting here from a medium piece, but quote centered around the customer problem, how current solutions,

Starting point is 01:39:56 internal or external fail and how the new product will blow away existing solutions. And, uh, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. If you can't write that press release, how on earth are you going to navigate the decision tree of getting to a product that finds its feet? I mean, it could be very difficult. Not to say you don't iterate, but it's a good filter through which you can at least catch the detritus that shouldn't make it to step two. Oh, man. I have to say, I am your hallelujah chorus on the press release technique. I've literally done that. I think it's helpful for nonprofit groups that I'm involved in. So a nonprofit group wants to do a big project, but they're all over the place. They don't know exactly what they want to do.

Starting point is 01:40:44 And I literally did this. I said, I'll tell tell you what here's what i think the project is let me write a press release from two years from now um and they'll send it around and it ended up being a i got the idea from amazon too it ended up being it ended up being this thing that was really really focused so the the blah blah uh group uh announced today that it was doing blah blah blah blah blah and it's like you know and then it had quotes and things in it and it ended up being this this focal point on for for the whole organization on what are we actually trying to accomplish here so i'm a i'm a i i second that emotion there big time and just to return to another thing that you

Starting point is 01:41:21 said which i'll paraphrase here as if everyone's your customer, no one's your customer. Another filter that or question that I use or have used, I'm not really in the startup game anymore, but have used a lot with startups because they'll ask me to review it based on my pair of eyes and my perspective and my particular problems. I can try to empathize and put myself in other people's shoes, but I have to know whose shoes to put myself in. And so I'll ask them, if you could only have a thousand people sign up for this, who would they be and why? Like describe for me, and this isn't a politically correct exercise like what is like gender uh race if that matters maybe it doesn't like where do they live what magazines or websites do they read uh what is their household income like really get granular about what these people have in common right like do you want all the readers of people magazine do you want

Starting point is 01:42:23 the right 2 000 people who attend ted do you want all the readers of people magazine? Do you want the 2000 people who attend Ted? Do you want something in between? Like really describe that. Right. And only once that's been done, can I actually give feedback on modifying any of the features or copy or messaging on a particular page? Uh, so that's, I mean, it's, it's these, these principles really transfer to a lot of different areas. Well, I, I, let me ask a, uh, just a handful of additional questions and then, uh, maybe we can do a round two sometime, but the, we've been talking a lot about the decisions you've made, the routines that you have. And although you're very self-effacing, I mean, someone could look at your bio and be very intimidated and assume that you step up to the plate and hit home runs more often than not. Could you tell us about maybe a specific, if you're open to it, difficult period that you've gone through or a down period, challenging period or failure, it could be any

Starting point is 01:43:22 of those things and what you did to get back on your feet or the decisions you made that helped you then kind of get back on firm ground if if anything comes to mind sure sure sure there are all kinds of things so I mean I hate to keep going back to the, I hate to keep going back to the law school days, but, um, but I, um, I did leave law school after my first year. Uh, and I hated it so much that I went to India instead. And, um, I traveled around, I traveled around India, which was a incredible life-changing experience because I was a young guy, you know, whatever old I was like 25, 26 years old. And, you know, at the time it was, you know, it was a while ago. So at the time,

Starting point is 01:44:10 India was even cheaper, well, much, much cheaper than it was. So if you're like a 25 year old dude traveling on your own with a tiny little bit of money in your pocket, you can make it go very, very, very, very far. And so, um, so at the time, I guess I felt like, cause I didn't do very well in my initial foray into law school. I didn't really like it. I was pretty miserable. I felt I had made a terrible decision and I at some level just tried to escape. And, and the way I got back into it was, um, um, essentially saying, okay, if i'm going to do this then um i'm going to try to figure out what are the one or two things that i can find valuable in this experience and just try to power my way through and i guess that's i guess that's all that i i guess that's all that i i guess that's

Starting point is 01:44:58 all that i did to to overcome that but i felt pretty bad about how i didn't do very well i didn't i didn't really like it i thought i had it like, I felt I had made like a ruinous decision about, about how my life was going to go. And when I sort of kind of woke up and matured a little bit, I said, okay, some people make like bad things actually happen to people. And I think going to India was actually helpful in that regard too, because like, okay, I'm not living in a tar paper shack with filthy water right i'm just i'm not i'm not self-actualizing fast enough for a 25 year old middle class person that's not a real problem um and so i think that sort of putting the problems in perspective and just trying to find some um some goodness in what you're doing next. And also, I just like really deriving specific lessons from

Starting point is 01:45:49 these kinds of failures. And I think that's another part that's really important to me, is that rather than simply allow this hazy notion of what you learn, again, I'm a big believer in writing things down writing things down. I'll give you I'll give you a better I'll give you a better example of that. And this is I don't want to call this like a major failure because it's not that that's not that significant. But so I did a TV show for National Geographic and I work with a TV series and I work with some really great people and we put on a really freaking great show and it didn't get picked up for a second season. And and so it was disappointing, but it's not like a massive failure. It's not like anything real like in life. But at that time, what I did is I said, you know, I basically created a file and said, OK, here's what I learned from this.

Starting point is 01:46:37 Here are the things that I learned from this experience. Like one, I like working with really talented people. They have people who help me perform better, too. I don't like to be involved in projects that I don't have full creative control over. Three, working with people in traditional television can be very perilous because they're subject to all kinds of pressures that are out of their control. And so you have this experience where things didn't go the way you wanted to. But if you actually literally write down the lessons, I think you can get something positive out of it. And was the writing down of these lessons more of a cathartic exercise? Or

Starting point is 01:47:18 these would you go back and revisit that? You know what I like like like for me, a lot of times what I will do is for me, it's sometimes certain writing things down is simply the act of writing it down is enough to solidify it. So I'll do the kind of thing where before a talk or something like that, I will like write an outline, like like basically I'll know what I want to do and then I'll take notes and write an outline of the speech and the points I want to hit. And then I will literally will not look at it. Like I sometimes won't even bring it up with me. I'll forget to bring it up with me because the act of the act of actually memorializing it is really what gives it it's it's it's oomph. This is a, but what I don't want, what I'm trying to say in a somewhat ham-handed way is that when you want to, you don't want those kinds of lessons to be hazy too much.

Starting point is 01:48:15 You want to actually, what specific thing did I actually derive from this? And I think that's really useful. There's also a great technique that Tina Seelig has used. Tina Seelig, who's at Stanford, has used where she talks about she writes a failure resume. So she has a resume of all of her failures and then with each one what she learned from it. When would she use something like that? I mean, she keeps it for herself, but she would use it. Oh, I see. It's an ongoing working document, just like a regular resume. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:48:47 Yeah, an ongoing working document that basically—so you can look at it and say, okay, boy, I made a lot of mistakes, but here's what I learned from it, and don't make the same mistake a second time. I don't mind making mistakes. What I don't like is making the same mistake twice. With the two questions on India, why India? And then second, how did you decide to find the compelling, I suppose, benefits of continuing with law school versus changing course? Um, let's see. Um, uh, you know what I think, okay. So on the second one, I think it was too risk averse to change course fully.

Starting point is 01:49:36 Um, I think that would, I think that would have been too much, excuse me, too much of like a narcissistic injury just to like leave altogether. Uh, I probably would have, I probably would have felt like an abject failure. So I don't even think that was in the cards. Um, so on, on the why India, a couple of reasons I'd always been fascinated by it. Um, I knew that, that I could get around, um, that, that I, that I, uh, the previous summer I had been to Southern Africa and, you know, um, and it was the first, I had never to Southern Africa. And, you know, and it was the first I had never been out of the country until I was 23 years old, never been. And so the first time I left the country, I went to Southern Africa, on a I got to raise some money to do this, to do a project there.

Starting point is 01:50:20 And that was a revelation, like, holy crap, this world is a lot bigger than I thought. And so I wanted to go to someplace that wasn't, you know, Europe or someplace that was a little bit different from a little bit more different from the United States. Um, and so India was a place that always been fascinated by it spoke English and it was cheap. That's, that's a compelling combination for someone leaving law school for a period. Yeah. When you're 25 years old or however old I was and you have a little money in your pocket, but you can go so far on so little money. It was unbelievable to me,

Starting point is 01:50:55 especially if you're willing to take overnight trains rather than pay for a place to stay or go to sleep in these places where there's just a row of beds on a balcony and then mosquito nets over each one. So travel is one of those gifts that keeps on giving in a sense. I would put books in that same category. Yeah, I agree.

Starting point is 01:51:21 You've written a lot of books. You've read even more books. Besides your own, and I'll just segue into a lot of books you've read even more books uh besides your own and i'll just segue into a couple of short questions what what books are there any books that you've gifted often to other people or people oh yeah um uh so uh they're probably books that you're i mean it might have been books that you've covered in this in your show here. So one of them is bird by bird by Anne Lamont. Um, one of the greatest things ever. Um, I come back to that advice so many different times. It's the saying, even in the

Starting point is 01:51:57 pink household, uh, where like, we'll just say like, like one member of my family will say to the other who's struggling, okay, bird by bird, bird by bird. Um, and so, um, I am a huge, and I stumbled into this book. I remember I got, I remember where I got this next book. I got it in the airport in San Francisco, uh, in, in the, uh, the bookstore in the San Francisco SFO. Um, and for some reason, uh, I picked it up because it had this really weird cover. But one of the first editions of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield had this kind of silvery cover to it. And I bought that book in the, I think it was the Compass Bookstore in SFO. Just because it's kind of cool. It's a silver cover and it's really short. And I got it and it's like, oh my God, I can't believe how good this book is.

Starting point is 01:52:45 And so I even have a little sign on my desk here that says beat the resistance. So I've given that book out a lot, too. So Pressfield and Lamont and then. Man, I have to say, Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning is up there, too. It's less I give it to be. I've given that out less, but that's a hugely important book for me. Yeah, that's one of those books I really need to reread. And I think you've actually spoken about, let me get this right. I was about to say Animal House, but that is not right. Animal Farm. Oh my God, Animal Farm is one of the greatest books ever.

Starting point is 01:53:28 And how you, it's a completely different experience as a book at different points in your life. Absolutely right. And the last time I read Man's Search for Meaning was probably, I would say, seven to ten years ago. And a lot has changed in my life in that period of time. Uh, I think that that is worthy of a reread. Uh, and have you,

Starting point is 01:53:50 it sounds like you've reread each of these books also bird by bird, the war of art man search remaining yourself. You've read these more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have. I've read it more than once.

Starting point is 01:53:58 Yeah. And, uh, but I'm not, I'm not like a chronic rereader. I'm like, there, there are some people who are regularly,

Starting point is 01:54:08 there are relatively few books that I have that I have reread. But but those those I those I absolutely have. And once I had another experience in college, I get the only thing I remember in college are shards of things that professors said, like basically one liners. But I had a professor once in college who in an American studies course, he assigned us to read the adventures of Huckleberry Finn. So you're at a, you're in college and your professor assigned you to read adventures of Huckleberry Finn. People are like, Oh, you know, because like everybody read that book in high school. And, and he said something, he said the following words, he says, I know you've read that book, but you haven't read that book, meaning the person you are today.

Starting point is 01:54:48 And that ends up being true. So when I've read, I read Animal Farm at different points in my life and had a different view on it. I read Great Gatsby at different points in my life. I have seen the play Death of a Salesman before I don't know probably seven times and each one feels a little bit different to me I had a completely different view of death of a salesman once I became a father versus before I became a father I had I had another view of death of a salesman uh uh before i knew about uh uh you know knew you know had read about psychopharmacology and mental illness and after i did um and so you know i i i think that that experience i think those kinds of experiences are really fascinating animal pharma was like oh

Starting point is 01:55:40 this is really cool it's about the soviet union power corrupts and blah, blah, blah, blah. And now I read the book. It's like, okay, this book is basically about organizational dysfunction. This book, who cares whether it's supposed to be about the Soviet Union? This book is about the Acme Widget Corporation and how screwed up human organizations are.

Starting point is 01:55:57 Like this, I think that Animal Farm should be in every organizational behavior class in an MBA program. That's another one I need to reread. Not a long book either. I mean, I read that in sixth grade or something. I mean, completely unequipped. You'll see it completely differently.

Starting point is 01:56:15 That's a great book. I've read 1984 multiple times too. Also a very timely book to read these days. Oh, well, I have on that front i i read uh uh the handmaid's tale for the first time i'm sort of 30 years late to it that i read and i love that book um i have a whole i'm not joking around and if you want validation i'll send you a photograph of it i i basically have a stack of books right here that is that's basically dystopia books that includes philip roth the plot against america um an octavia butler book um sinclair lewis it can't happen here

Starting point is 01:56:53 um another sci-fi book called uh elliot by elliot pepper called cumulus another one called infomocracy by malcolm alder i have a whole i'm basically i have a whole pile of dystopian works. Why is that? I want to understand the current moment more clearly. This might be an appropriate next question. It doesn't have to be related to what you just said. But if you could put a short message on a billboard, metaphorically speaking, to get a word, a quote, a question out to millions or billions of people, what might you put on that billboard? Well, it's interesting because I think it is related to what we were just talking about. Or maybe the fact that you asked it in this context made me relate it. But one of the things that I would write would be assume positive intent.

Starting point is 01:57:52 That would fit very nicely on a billboard. Assume positive intent. And I've changed my view on this, Tim. I've actually in some ways become – um, I've sort of gone the reverse, like, like basically the general view is that people are idealistic when they're young and cynical when they're older. And I've actually become less cynical as I've gotten older. Uh, and, um, the other thing is basically on, on politics, like, you know, like there's this old line in politics, like everybody dies a Republican. Right.

Starting point is 01:58:29 You know, because like as you get older and you have something to conserve, you become more conservative. I find myself going actually the opposite direction as I understand more about the more about the world. But the point is a point of all that assumed positive intent is that I think it goes to our politics right now is that a lot of times I don't you know, I just think like your defaults. You know this already. Our default settings are so important in any realm of our life. And I think a lot of times, if your default setting is that people have, everybody you deal with has negative intent, that's going to lead you down one pathway. There's no question about it. And here's the thing. I don't think that's true. I really my experience as a human being is that some people obviously have negative intent, but most people do not. Most people actually have positive intent. So my view is that if you assume positive intent on the part of others and let them disprove that, that's a better way to go than to assume negative intent and say, I'm going to assume that you have negative intent, Tim Ferriss, until you prove that you actually have positive intent. I think just doing the reverse is better.

Starting point is 01:59:34 Assume positive intent. I'm not Pollyanna here. I don't think everybody has positive intent. But I think most people do. And if you just make that your default setting, you're going to have better interactions with people. You're going to learn a lot more. The default setting, default state as you put it, in this case, creates a completely different experience of reality. Absolutely.

Starting point is 01:59:57 Whether it's guilty until proven innocent, as you look at everyone and anything around you, or innocent until proven guilty. And I remember you were talking about these one-liners, these shards that, that stick in the mind. I remember I can't, I can't recall who said this to me, but they said, if you go out one day, you walk around and you meet an asshole, that person is an asshole. If, on the other hand, you go out and everyone you meet is an asshole, you're the asshole. And if you assume that everyone has negative intent, you yourself become that which you loathe. Nice point. That's a really good point. That's actually a really good point.

Starting point is 02:00:41 I love that. Assume positive intent. It also fits on a billboard. It does. That's the other thing. I was that. Assume positive intent. It also fits on a billboard. It does. I was actually taking that thing very literally. I was literally picturing in my head what could fit on the billboard. Well, I think that's a great place to wrap. I mentioned a few things at the top of the show.

Starting point is 02:01:03 DanPink.com, at DanielPink on Twitter, Facebook, Daniel H. Pink. Is there anything else that you would like to mention as closing comments, request, and ask of the audience? Anything else you would like to say? No. I mean we've covered a lot of ground, and if people have listened this day so you may recall ages ago lifetimes ago i think it was at south by southwest actually which is timely since i now live in austin texas you inscribed uh you signed a copy of that book for me which i still have i've carried it with i i remember where we were sitting yeah yeah i do so i appreciate it and i still have the book and it's really been nice to

Starting point is 02:02:07 reconnect and catch up a bit uh indeed yeah yeah it's been fun you know obviously it's been fun to watch uh all the great things that all the great things that you're doing and just how this is massive audience that you've built and just you know i've gotten so much i have a my dog ear you know it's too bad we're not on video but i could could show you my dog eared copy of Tools of Titans, which is a which is a which is a great book title, by the way. agonizing, agonizing sessions of brainstorming and picking one of the titles among many that I felt dissatisfied with, Tools of Titans, for whatever reason, thanks to the universe or whatever powers that may be or luck that may have happened upon me. But that is one that just kind of came and I was like, oh yeah, no, that's the title. And that i didn't i also didn't realize that you were in austin how did you end up in austin or why did you end up in austin yeah it's uh i i have felt a gravitational pull to austin for

Starting point is 02:03:12 a very long time i in fact wanted to move here right out of college but i didn't get the job at trilogy software i made it to a final made it to a final round of interviews which brought me out to austin really fell in love with the town uh the the baseline of friendliness and warmth here neighborly feel is higher than just about any other place i've experienced and then instead of getting a job here i got a job in the bay area which took me to san jose and mountain view and san francisco for the better part of nearly 20 years, which I loved for that period of time. But much like with books, I think that you visit places and your experience of those places changes over time. And what attracted me to the Bay Area, I think, has morphed into something else.

Starting point is 02:04:04 And I have also morphed into something else. And I have also morphed into someone else. And it felt like a good time for me to experiment with a new location. Also, I found myself within the very almost inescapable conversation of tech to be just drinking the Kool-Aid a little too heavily or believing my own bullshit, maybe not necessarily bullshit, but getting caught up in a lot of platitudes that are thrown around so often in Silicon Valley to have become part of the daily vernacular. And that scared me quite frankly, that I was like, wait a second. If I look back at the last five to six months, how many conversations have I had that don't include the following 12 words or 12

Starting point is 02:04:49 expressions? I was like, wow, I can actually count them on, on both hands. Interesting. Interesting. And, um, interesting. Yeah. Where did you grow up? I grew up at the very end of long Island and, uh, was born a, a townie in the Hamptons, which is a very odd thing. Uh, for anyone, for anyone who's seen the affair, I have not, but I've heard that the affair of this TV show that is, is apparently quite popular. A lot of it takes place in this restaurant called the lobster roll, which is in Montauk. And I used to be a bus boy at the Montauk. Oh wow. Nice. Yeah. So Long Island is, is, is where this, this, this whole thing started. Weirdly, I remember from

Starting point is 02:05:32 four hour work week, I think that you described yourself as a hellion, hellion. A little hellion. Good memory. Which is a great word. It's which is a great word yeah it's such a great word yeah yeah so i i but i but i realized i didn't have any geographic sense of where you uh where you where you grew up yeah that's interesting i think the use of hellion is actually in the dedication to my parents and my mom i think that's right i think that's right you know why and one reason i remember that is that i listened to part of – I got part of that book on audiobook.

Starting point is 02:06:07 And I remember at the beginning – because you read that book, I'm almost certain. It was Ray Porter who has a voice that is easily mistaken for my various mannerisms that I've developed now via podcasting. So that was Ray Porter who did a great job. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But I'm pretty sure that I, but I know it's just a great word. It is a good word.

Starting point is 02:06:32 It is a good word. It's a great word. And I'm going to try to use it in the next 24 hours. When I hear a good word, I try to drop it in the next 24 hours just because it helps reinforce it for me. Well, I'm going to try to use surrogation, and I'm going to try to eat more hard-boiled eggs in the next 24 hours. You're golden. Your life will change markedly if you start employing the principle of surrogation while eating hard-boiled eggs.

Starting point is 02:07:01 The sun will come shining up, the sun will will burst out from behind the clouds and unicorns will scamper across your front lawn well my my dog will love that and dan this has been this has been a lot of fun thank you thanks a lot for having me i appreciate it it was a lot of really interesting and for everybody listening, as always, you can find links to everything, including Dan's social website, the new book, When, and much more in the show notes, which you can find at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, thanks for listening. Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off.

Starting point is 02:07:42 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 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.

Starting point is 02:08:26 So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.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 WeWork. I love WeWork. I haven't had an office in many, many,

Starting point is 02:08:46 many, many, many years since 2000 or so when I had my last real job, I suppose, in quotation marks. But when I moved from San Francisco to Austin not long ago, I decided, you know what, I'm tired of working at home. I'm tired of working at coffee shops. So one of the very first things I did was to get a space at WeWork. I could not be happier with this change in my life. WeWork is a global network of workspaces where companies and people grow together. The idea is really simple. You focus on your business and WeWork takes care of all the rest,

Starting point is 02:09:19 including front desk service, utilities, refreshments, and more. I also often have been shipped from Amazon and elsewhere to my office at WeWork. Here in Austin, I've been completely blown away by the members-only events, special offers, and perhaps the best cold brew coffee on tap that I've ever had. It's been amazing. It's been a real, real change in my life and improved my quality of life. And there are also dog-friendly WeWork locations all over the place. How fun is that? WeWork caters to everyone from entrepreneurs and freelancers to startups and even large enterprises, including GE, Salesforce, Microsoft, MasterCard, Samsung, Spotify, Pinterest, and Red Bull, among many others.

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Starting point is 02:10:23 where people can connect and create meaning together, right, and after all, if you are someone who has built a business modeled on the principles of the 4-Hour Workweek or elsewhere, it can be a lonely road sometimes. Even though you're digitally connected, it can feel very, very isolating. So in these spaces, you can connect with real humans and all the while, use space more efficiently and cost-effectively which makes you and your business better equipped to face the challenges of today and tomorrow we work now has more than 200 locations so you can find great spots all over the world so head over to we.co forward slash tim that's we.co co we.co forward slash Tim to become a part of the global WeWork community. At the very least, I encourage you to check out pictures of some of the locations around the

Starting point is 02:11:11 world. There are some incredible spots. So check it out, we.co forward slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. You might remember Four Sigmatic for their mushroom coffee, which was created by those clever Finnish founders. And when I first mentioned that coffee on this podcast, the product sold out in less than a week. It lights you up like a Christmas tree, which can be really useful. However, recently I've been testing the opposite side of the spectrum, a new product, and that is their reishi mushroom elixir to help me end my day, to get to sleep. As you guys may know, long-time listeners at least, I struggled with insomnia for decades.

Starting point is 02:11:50 I've largely fixed that, but still shutting off my monkey brain has never been easy, still isn't easy very often. And I found reishi, which I've been fascinated by for a few years now, has been very, very effective and calming. Their old formula, however, Four Sigmatic's old formula included Stevia, and I like to avoid sweeteners, all sweeteners, for a host of reasons. And I then just pinged them and asked,

Starting point is 02:12:15 hey guys, I would love to experiment with this and maybe actually suggest it, but I'd like a version without sweeteners if you'd be open to it. If too much of a headache, don't worry. And they are always game for experimentation. So they created a special custom version without the Stevia, without sweeteners. Now it is part of my nightly routine.

Starting point is 02:12:35 Their Reishi Elixir comes in single serving packets, which are perfect for travel. And in fact, I'm about to leave the country right now. And I have a packet in front of me that's just going to sit in the end of my carry-on bag. You only need hot water and it mixes very, very easily. Here's some recommended copy that they put in the read. So I'm going to read it and I'll give you my take. Quote, a warning for those in the experimental mindset. Reishi is strong and bitter in parentheses like any great medicine. So if the bitterness is too much, I recommend trying it with honey and or nut milk, such as almond milk, end quote. So I'm going to say, no, you should suck it up and you should drink the tea because it's not that bitter.

Starting point is 02:13:17 And maybe you should take the advice of all Chinese people when they're criticizing young when they say, which means you're not able to eat bitterness. Bitter is in many cases, an indication of things that help liver detoxification and so on. Not saying that's the case here, but I've tested this ratio lecture on family members, on friends. Everybody has liked it. It's a little bit earthy. It's not that hard. So I would just say, suck it up and no, don't put in honey or nut milk or any of that shit. Just drink the goddamn tea. It's a little bit earthy. It's not that hard. So I would just say suck it up and no, don't put in honey or nut milk or any of that shit. Just drink the goddamn tea. It's delicious. I think, right? If you like pu-erh, that kind of stuff, that type of tea, you're going to dig it. So just try it.

Starting point is 02:13:55 Okay. Back to then my read. If you'd like to naturally improve your sleep, both onset and quality, I think naturally, you might just enjoy this Reishi Elixir without any sweeteners. It has organic Reishi extract, organic field mint extract, organic rose hips extract, organic Tulsi extract. And that's it. No fancy stuff, no artificial whatchamacallit anything. So check it out. Go to foursigmatic.com forward slash Ferris and get 20% off this special batch.

Starting point is 02:14:25 I don't know if they're going to be making much more of this since it was made specifically for you guys. So do me a favor and try it out so that they continue to be open to experimenting with me to create products for you guys specifically. Check it out. Four Sigmatic. That's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-R-I-S-S. And get 20% off the special batch. And you must use the code Ferris to receive your discount. F-E-R-R-I-S-S. So again, go to foursigmatic.com forward slash Ferris. And then use code Ferris for 20% off of this rare, exclusive, limited run of Reishi Mushroom Elixir

Starting point is 02:15:06 for nighttime routines without any screeners. Enjoy.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #305: Daniel Pink — How to Make Better Decisions and Be More Creative

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #305: Daniel Pink — How to Make Better Decisions and Be More Creative

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.