The Tim Ferriss Show - #306: Discipline, Sex, Psychedelics, and More — The Return of Drunk Dialing

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Starting point is 00:01:14 drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers. And it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and

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Starting point is 00:02:30 subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out, if the spirit moves you. Why hello there, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This is Tim Ferriss, and it is typically my job to share the habits and routines of world-class performers of all different types, as well as try to spot the patterns amongst them and talk about that. This episode is a rare exception to the rule, and unlike my usual long

Starting point is 00:03:25 form interviews, this is a drunk dialing Q&A with you guys, my listeners. So what does that mean? I've done this a few times in the past, including for the celebration of the 100th episode of this podcast. We're at more than 300 now, so it's been a while. And here's how it works. In preparation for this episode, I went on the social media and pointed people to a Google forum where they could input their phone numbers and so on. And those people, our listeners, wanted to receive a call from me. Then I said, hey, from this time to this time, I'm going to be making phone calls. And I started drinking and dialing, answering your questions and getting a little frisky

Starting point is 00:04:02 along the way. Tequila will do that. And we covered a lot in this episode. I cover all sorts of things, including how Jocko Willink has made me more disciplined. My thoughts on sex as a doorway to higher perception. That was not a topic I expected to get into. And you name it, we cover it. We talk about past addiction to stimulants that I've had and how I've weaned myself off of said stimulants or at least prioritized abstinence from stimulants. How I determine if a project is working or not.

Starting point is 00:04:37 Put another way, how do I decide when I should persevere or quit a project, stop something and move on. And after all, the fastest way to complete something is to leave it undone forever. So that is one topic that we dig into. How I think about teaching, and much, much more. So, I'll leave it at that. Without further ado, please enjoy this tequila-fueled Q&A with you guys. And thanks for being game.

Starting point is 00:05:03 Here we go. Hello? Hi, this is Brendan. Is this Tim Ferriss? It is Tim Ferriss. Good evening. Why? Oh, my goodness.

Starting point is 00:05:16 This is crazy. Oh, man. Where am I finding you? I'm doing great. Where are you right now? I'm actually probably about three hours north of where I assume you are. I'm in Dallas, Texas. Oh, nice. It's a fine town. It's a fine town, Dallas.

Starting point is 00:05:31 Yeah. Have you been through here much or not? I've been here. I've been here. I've been there. That's the alcohol talking. Excuse me. I have been there a handful of times as well as Fort Worth, but I've always spent more time in the Austin area. Yes. Understandably so. It's a fine community. I was

Starting point is 00:05:50 just actually down there yesterday. Very nice. For South By, or what were you down here for? No, I just went down to go to the Honor Academy, and then to get a little workout in, and synchronistically enough, you released that podcast with Aubrey just yesterday. I was down there, so I listened to that on the drive back.

Starting point is 00:06:07 It's a great, it's a great gym. So I tell you what, I've got a bunch of phone calls to make, a bunch of booze to drink. So how can I, how can I attempt to help? What type of questions might I take a stab at? Good, good, good question, because I know you collect them. So I actually took a little bit of time once I saw that tweet, I was expecting this phone call. So, um, an easy one that I just wanted to ask because it's been one of the biggest things that you felt me with of all the people that you've introduced me to

Starting point is 00:06:36 for all your work is juggle willing. So I wanted to know just from your perspective, has having him around in your life made you more disciplined? That is a fine question. Yes. So having Jocko around in my life, which I will say is also virtual, even though I know Jocko very well. I just spoke to him yesterday on the phone. But simply knowing that Jocko exists in the universe makes me feel like I have a very benevolent yet strict guardian angel who will most certainly give me an occasional pat on the back but more often a kick in the ass to actually do what needs being done.

Starting point is 00:07:22 So Jocko, I think exemplifies for me, at least the importance of deciding to embody a given attribute as a means to developing that attribute. So of course, Jocko is well known for saying, if you want to be tougher, be tougher, simply meaning in that context that if you want to be tougher, it's not a six-month plan. It's not a two-year plan. It's not a progression. It is, do I choose the stairs instead of the elevator when I get up from this table and I need to go to another floor? And it can be a small decision. It can be a big decision. But you want to immediately start making decisions that reflect the characteristic

Starting point is 00:08:05 you want to develop. And that, that I think is very powerful. And also, quite frankly, the simplicity of Jocko's approach to many things, including physical fitness and training, which... Yeah, I got his book after listening to your podcast. And some of it is like even the beginner workouts in there, they're so simply put together, but, like, you know, difficult to execute with correct form and, like, at the cadence, the proper cadence and, you know, everything like that. Right. I think that his principles simple from extreme ownership, you know, it's like, just don't overcomplicate things, and I think that, in a way, simplicity is like, you know, an expression of elegance.

Starting point is 00:08:47 It is, absolutely. And also the fact that Jocko does not accept excuses in his own life and certainly doesn't accept them from other people. And as one example, if he's traveling, and you know this from having read the last book, but if he's traveling and he wants to do pull-ups and he doesn't have any pull-up bar nearby, let's say in a hotel, he will take a towel, go to the parking garage, find something from which he can hang effectively using the towel, like throw it over a bar or something like that, and he'll do pull-ups. Yeah, or a pipe or like even whatever. Exactly, uh and those for those of you who don't have the context jaco willink is a legendary former or i should say retired navy seal commander he was in charge at

Starting point is 00:09:33 one point of all west coast training for navy seal teams which are certainly realistic hyper realistic one might even call psychotic he's a black belt in brazilian jiu-jitsu and can do last i heard 67 strict pull-ups at a body weight of somewhere between 215 and 230 so the guy is an absolute animal he's a monster he's a monster and then like just a mental monster too you know like the way he approaches life is just so like it's it's a different kind of like inspiration and motivation it's like a really like self-examinatory like look at yourself and like, just be realistic about how many hours you're willing to put in the day.

Starting point is 00:10:08 You know, like a lot of people, if they, if, if, you know, they could be night owls and they might stay up till four 30 or, you know,

Starting point is 00:10:15 so long as you're putting in work between like midnight and like 6am at some point, you're still ahead of most people, regardless of if that's before you go to sleep or if you like, right when you get up. Yep. still ahead of most people regardless of if that's before you go to sleep or if you like right when you get up yep so if you want to also see the most hilarious uh twitter q a is imaginable you can follow jock jocko welling on twitter okay so enough enough jocko i love jocko but yeah i know i know i didn't want to just plug it but yeah yeah he's a great dude he's been one of the most he's been one of the most influential of all the people you've introduced me to actually i just want to

Starting point is 00:10:44 wrap up with one thing. Do you remember? Oh, you know what? I should say, I apologize just to interrupt. I will say if people want to get to know Jocko, the very first interview he ever did publicly was on my podcast. So you can just go to Tim.blog forward slash Jocko. Yeah, you said a month to lose.

Starting point is 00:11:03 Producing like the video he came out with just a day or two days ago, it's about the clock running out. People should check out his YouTube channel because it's two and a half minutes or something. It's amazing. Yep. So I've helped to create

Starting point is 00:11:15 or rather just really unleash on the internet a monster known as Jacques Oueling. So enjoy. Okay, so what's next? One quick one. Are you drinking Malbec, or what are you having? I'm drinking Casa Dragones Sipping Tequila, in this case

Starting point is 00:11:31 100% puro agave azul. It's from San Miguel de Allende, and it is tequila blanco. It's nice stuff all right cool so um well the last question is uh like actually we met did you did you do you know that do you remember that it was a cross campus la you did your you did like a

Starting point is 00:12:00 like like basically like a meet and greet. Oh, I remember Cross Campus. Yeah, so I flew up from Dallas actually that time and got to kind of interact with you a little bit. It was pretty cool. Yeah, I think I met you in this hallway space. It was way in the back of the room behind the main stage, kind of on my way to get a drink and go to the bathroom. I think I actually, you kind of stepped in front of a few people and I met you there, if I remember correctly. Yeah, it was that. And then there

Starting point is 00:12:28 was also you getting swarmed by people. Like, I remember at the very beginning, you were like, yeah, please, like, I'm not taking startup, you know, pitches right now. And it was just like, as soon as there was a break for coffee, like you went to go for the coffee and it was just like, swarmed with people asking about like, oh, would you check this product out? Like this guy from Soylent was there. And like, it was like all these people and they were just swarming in. And then I remember I got a second to talk to you and I was just like, I just want to say thank you. And I still do want to say thank you today, man. I'm really grateful for everything that you've really led me towards in my

Starting point is 00:12:55 life. Like I basically, you're like one of the best decision-making or content filtering algorithms that I've ever found. Because if you vet something, it's already like so much of the legwork is done. And I just trust you on like, you know, you're driven for research and helping people. So thank you, Brandon. Yeah. I hope to hope to never betray that trust. I mean, I do, I really work hard to not succumb to the temptation to loosen that filter. It's,

Starting point is 00:13:27 it's very, it can be very challenging. It's very expensive. But yeah, I, I know how valuable that is to me. I have friends who act as filters, certainly.

Starting point is 00:13:39 And it's, it's, it's largely thanks to the value that I've derived from them that I want to try to serve the same function for people in the wider world. That I can hopefully try a thousand things and a lot of bullshit and distill the two or three that are actually worth a second look. Well, thank you so much for calling. I want to be respectful of everybody else on your list, too. I could talk to you Yeah, man. Well, thank you so much for calling. Like, I don't, I don't want to be respectful of everybody else on your list, too. You know, like,

Starting point is 00:14:07 I could talk to you forever, man. You've been a huge inspiration in my life. Just thank you so much. My pleasure, man. Any requests for the podcast? Types of people? Specific people? Or anything else?

Starting point is 00:14:18 Oh, well, what I want to do after, like, having been introduced to your work in 2011, I was, basically, i grew up in hospitality and as a chef um for many of the last years and was just unable to kind of sustain like a healthy lifestyle and like work like you know there's no such thing as work-life balance if

Starting point is 00:14:38 you're like a true chef cooking real food like in a high pressure fine dining environment like where everything's made from scratch like it's just i know you know that from your research and you know going through with the four-hour chef but like it's a pretty widespread like unknown issue in the states right now that there's not enough skilled labor in kitchens um not just kitchens restaurants in general so i don't know i mean like i want to make a difference in that industry on like a bigger scale so i mean i want to put together like a website and like i have like to make a difference in that industry on, like, a bigger scale. So, I mean, I want to put together, like, a website and, like, have, like, a ton of ideas in the realm of trying to help people in that specific genre of, or, well, I should say niche of, like, the workplace. But because I have so much experience, like, I grew up in a restaurant when my mom was, like, you know, raising me. I was basically always in a restaurant. And then coming down to Dallas, Texas, there's just so much opportunity down here

Starting point is 00:15:26 and I got a real sense for the labor market and kind of did some research. And it's not just the Dallas labor market. I'm sure anybody listening in any city right now that has anything to do with restaurants can attest to the fact that it helps harder to find than ever because the market's oversaturated

Starting point is 00:15:41 and it's easier to get loans to open restaurants and whatever the case may be, macroeconomically. But I just want to make a difference, so if anybody's interested, they can get at me on Twitter, it's at MuppetG27, or however you want to. I just want to start a bigger conversation around this,

Starting point is 00:15:56 and put out content to help people in restaurants. All right. Hear, hear. Well, good luck, and I'll see you on the internet maybe in texas absolutely yeah yeah man if you ever want to come up to dallas just hit me up and i'll probably show you some some parts of the city that you didn't see all right man well i will i'll see you on the road and take it easy absolutely man peace bye hello uh hi is this diana yeah this is diana i was hoping i would get? Yeah, this is Diana.

Starting point is 00:16:25 I was hoping I would get the pronunciation right. This is Tim Ferriss. Good evening. How are you? Whoa, hello. I can't believe I made it. You made it. You were the second person to fill the form out,

Starting point is 00:16:36 so you were very, very fast on the draw. Awesome. Thank you for calling. My pleasure. What question or questions can I tackle for you? Well, I have a couple, and I want you for coming. My pleasure. What question or questions can I tackle for you? Well, I have a couple, and I want you to choose. Do you want an easy question? Do you want a hard question?

Starting point is 00:16:53 I want whichever question you would be most disappointed not to have asked. Okay. So my biggest interest right now is what states of higher perception can we cultivate through training? And what's coming to me is sex, because sex seems to be a doorway in some cultures or some philosophies. Like I'm thinking Tantra, I'm thinking Taoism, I'm thinking Kama Sutra, and, you know. So I've heard different things, and I'm trying to put them together. For example, abstaining from sex, like you were talking to Jack Kornfield, or withholding orgasm as a training,

Starting point is 00:17:41 or multiple partners and open relationships and let's have a lot of sex, guys, as a way of learning how to deal with your internal stuff. So I'm curious to know, what is your experience, if I can assume that you've experimented with all of this? And what do you think? Is that a doorway to higher perception, either of these techniques or all of them or what? What do you think? Is that a doorway to higher perception, either of these techniques or all of them or what? What do you think? Yeah, big question. Let me try to take a stab at it.

Starting point is 00:18:12 So there are many different components to that question. In general, my experience has been whenever you take an act or a daily habit, let's just say, such as eating, and you make previously automatic or subconscious decisions conscious, that you can very deliberately change perception. And that can lead many interesting places that could take the form of, and I will get to sex, but that could take the form of intermittent fasting or fasting, in which case you notice how much of your day is structured around three

Starting point is 00:18:57 scheduled meals, whether or not you are hungry. And that brings to you a new appreciation of your automatic behaviors that may or may not be justified. And secondly, gives you a greater appreciation for, in this case, the thing you may abstain from for a certain period of time, which is food. And sex is very similar. I do think that, and I don't know if this is physiological or psychological, but I have engaged in a number of different practices and schools of training where the accepted best practices involve abstaining from sex and furthermore abstaining from orgasm or ejaculation for a period of time, whether that is two weeks or four weeks or a longer period of time. And when you remove any compulsive behavior, and I will just go out on a limb and say, I think that masturbation for men in particular can be a compulsive behavior and tool for procrastination, to put it mildly.

Starting point is 00:20:13 Women maybe also, but I think particularly men. And that when you remove that as an option, and you have, for instance, a trip plan where you're going to be engaging in some type of physical practice or exposure to psychedelics or whatever it might be. And it is clearly, it has been clearly expressed to you that your, your gains will be 3x, 4x, 5x greater if you abstain from this behavior, that is the petri dish, the period of abstinence that can allow you to observe how you react to that, right? And observing the impulses and the resistance that surfaces, I think is really valuable. So I do think that whether or not there is some type of physiological basis to the regeneration and recirculation of chi, for instance, which may or may not be the case, right? I'm very,

Starting point is 00:21:19 very skeptical of a lot of this new age woo-woo stuff, even though I've read, you know, the, I believe it's the multi-orgasmic man, Montauk Chia, and I've looked at those exercises and I have experimented with withholding or postponing ejaculation. In some cases where you can use, say, or have a partner use fingers in the perineum with pressure to prevent that from happening mechanically,

Starting point is 00:21:44 which I don't actually think, and this is subject to great debate, but it doesn't strike me as the healthiest approach. I mean, it's just like sticking a potato in an exhaust pipe or something. It doesn't seem structurally. You have the mood immediately. Yeah, exactly. And it also doesn't seem just very structurally prudent to do that if you, for instance, to ejaculate and focusing on say breathing patterns or visualization that lets you to allows you to extend the duration of intercourse i think is

Starting point is 00:22:34 tremendously valuable and it also transcends the bedroom i think it goes other places right that's my question actually related to creativity and to see if there's a correlation between... I get the discipline and the interrupting of the habitual patterns. I understand that. But I don't know, I haven't experienced personally, does that translate into, okay, then I'm more able to perceive nature or be more creative in my writing or be more aware or more present because I'm not giving my energy into this activity. Yeah, I think it's energy. I think it's also cognitive load.

Starting point is 00:23:17 The degree to which any given activity is an interruptive thought. And when you remove something like that for a period of time, it ceases to be static in the mind. And therefore your signal to noise ratio improves. And ostensibly you should be able to, in my experience is that you can, you can operate at a higher level when it comes to almost all of your other activities, which is why very often when I'm abstaining from one thing,

Starting point is 00:23:45 for instance, sex, I'll also abstain from alcohol. I will also abstain from caffeine. And I tend to layer those things on top of one another. How long have you been able to abstain from, say, all the stimulus that distract you from a certain project? Yeah, I did it earlier this year for almost eight weeks which is which is a long which is a long time for me uh i know it's been six months and i'm like dude can i do this yeah it's a long time but i found it very very worthwhile and it proved to me also that i could do it and if you wonder whether or not you are addicted some to something you should try to go without it. And

Starting point is 00:24:25 you will potentially suffer physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms. And your willingness to contend with that will give you a very accurate read of how addicted you are to whatever it is you're abstaining from, whether it's a thought, whether it's... My question doesn't come from addiction, it's more about commitment. It's like, I've been experimenting with the undulation shower, waking up early in the morning, and man, it's hard to commit to it every single day. It's more the discipline aspect that is exciting to me because I know that if I tackle that, then I'll get a way bigger picture. Yeah, well, when I say addiction, I'm not talking about addiction to nicotine or caffeine necessarily. I'm also talking about compulsive thought patterns. So for instance, I mean, if you're interested in abstinence of any type or experimenting with that, my recommendation would actually be if you really want to see very clear return on investment quickly, I would just Google 21 day no complaint experiment and look for a blog post that I wrote about a 21 day no complaint experiment. And this translates very quickly

Starting point is 00:25:32 to multiple domains. When you remove certain patterns of phrasing and not only speaking, but therefore thinking, the way that you relate to the world and the selection bias you use for seeing the good or seeing the bad changes very dramatically. So I would recommend taking a look at that as well. Totally. Yeah, thanks so much. That's great. Yeah, no problem. So if you have, my dog is whining, so I have to take Molly out to pee. But if you want to give me a quick question, she's looking straight and

Starting point is 00:26:06 gazing into my eyes as I record this. So I have to get her outside. But what is, if you have one more question that I can potentially answer quickly, I'm happy to take a stab at it. I have a quick, I don't know if it's a quick question, but another thing in my mind was, I know that you are experimenting a lot with psychedelics and how they can be used to treat certain ailments or, you know, for healing. And I'm just curious as a person, you know, I went to college for anthropology and I work right now with individuals optimizing their performance through different tools. And I'm thinking, when is it a good time to encourage somebody to tap into that? And how can you guide them safely if you don't have a personal experience of it?

Starting point is 00:27:00 I can't recommend that you use psychedelics. You live in the United States, and currently the classical psychedelics are under schedule one which is in the same class as heroin so if we're considering side effects you also have to consider the legal ramifications and potential side effects what I what I can suggest is that you investigate something called holotropic breathwork H o L o-L-O-T-R-O-P-S-A. Right. So there are, psychedelics are one tool in the toolkit for creating a non-ordinary state of consciousness that can provide insights and realizations and also reprogramming that can be applied to

Starting point is 00:27:43 different domains, really across the entire spectrum of human experience. But it's not the only tool. It just happens to be a very powerful tool if you want to strap yourself or encourage someone to strap themselves to the front of the icebreaker. But they're not without risks. They're exceptionally powerful and can be used irresponsibly. phase three trials along with a handful of other people who are working very very tirelessly on this so that they can be administered with medical supervision and trained therapists

Starting point is 00:28:31 i don't think this is that far away if the stars align in in certain sense and if anybody wants to join me in supporting that they should check out a few organizations, USONA, U-S-O-N-A for psilocybin, which is where I'm spending a lot of my own capital and attention. MAPS, maps.org for MDMA, which is effectively there from a funding perspective for phase three trials. And then if they want to really come to bat, I'm actually, I haven't talked about this publicly, but I'm going to be, I am committing a million dollars of my own capital to this over the next several years. that anyone pursue psychedelics with the legal ramifications that exist and also the difficulty in finding responsible, trained ethical therapists who can support this work. It's just the,

Starting point is 00:29:33 the benefit, the risk benefit ratio is really unappealing for most folks. But what I was going to say is if anybody wants to come to the table and believes as I do, based on both the data and experience that they have the potential to change and even save lives say in treatment resistant depression and other conditions then then people can go to tim.blog forward slash science you know if if you really have some capital that you'd like to bring to bear on this

Starting point is 00:30:02 so i'll say that but at this point, I would explore other tools for helping shepherd people through the process. That was exactly what I was, sorry to interrupt, but what I was looking for is where to go to support this research, because I don't just want to fall into the hands of whatever, whoever. You know what I mean? Like you just said, it's hard to find responsible guidance. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:28 If you're not in, in the, yeah, in the know, but I know the potential for healing and I totally get it. That is a work in progress and I totally support it. And yeah, you're right. The holotropic breathing is great. It just taps into something, but you don't fully, I haven't been able to fully, fully get the same result. And maybe it's a matter of just time and continuous practice. Yeah, I'd say keep practicing.

Starting point is 00:30:55 And also don't forget the slow and steady reliable methods at your disposal, which would include, for instance, meditation. Sam Harris has a fantastic new app, which will be coming out shortly. The waking up app. I would encourage people to take a look at that. There are other options like calm and headspace, but when you start to layer these things on top of one another, you also very often see effects that are disproportionate and not additive. In other words, you take meditation, one unit, holotropic breath work, one unit, and then, say, hot and cold work,

Starting point is 00:31:30 say sauna and ice bath, one unit, and you add those up, and instead of being three, you get a five or a six or a seven. So I would encourage you to responsibly experiment. All right, Diane, I've got to run because I have a list of 20 people to call that I'm going to try to get through. Oh, go ahead. Thank you so much. I hope we can at some point connect again. And it was amazing to share this time and space with you. Thank you

Starting point is 00:31:53 so much for doing this and everything you're putting out there. It's amazing. No problem. My pleasure. And hasta la proxima. Thanks for taking the time. Hasta la proxima. Okay. Ciao, Tim. Bye-bye. This is Robin. Hey, Robin. This is Tim Ferriss. How are you? I'm doing so well, Tim. How are you doing?

Starting point is 00:32:16 Oh, splendid. Couldn't be better. And I am excited to be on the phone with you. So how might I help? We'll see. I could fabricate an answer and attempt to be helpful. I can't promise it'll be of any value,

Starting point is 00:32:29 but what's on your mind? What can I potentially help with? Yeah, thank you. A delight to be here. I've admired for, what, 10 years now, your work and your sharing your work with people like us who sort of follow along um in that same time I've built two somewhat successful businesses a cafe in

Starting point is 00:32:56 San Francisco and an annual conference but the thing that you've done so successfully that I really am just kind of in awe of is continually hitting success after success in a way that appeals to the same target audience. So I know you've talked about it not always being a success. So for our chef, for example, not doing quite as well as you'd wanted, or even I remember, what was it, Rust and Iron, the little YouTube show that you did about other people. Sure, or multiple TV shows that I've attempted on cable and elsewhere. For sure. And yet you continually spring back. So I look at 4-Hour Workweek through to this podcast that appeals to people like me.

Starting point is 00:33:45 I'm a white male living in the extended Bay Area. I actually just left San Francisco after 10 years, but still in the extended Bay Area in 31. You're able to create content that appeals to that same audience and then seemingly grow that audience over time. Um, I, I understand starting niche, but personally and, and in terms of, I guess, professionally finding the next hit and then the next hit after that, what do you think other than maybe luck has contributed to that sort of ongoing growing success of teaching essentially people like you. Cool. This is a good topic to explore, and hopefully my answer isn't underwhelming.

Starting point is 00:34:32 I'll try to fuel it with some more tequila to make it more interesting. Let me ask a few clarifying questions, if I could. First of all, I mean, you have a shot here, so you might as well mention it. What is your cafe, and what is the conference? Thank you. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:49 I founded it two years ago. It's called Robin's Cafe that 17th and Shotwell in the Mission in San Francisco. And then the conference is about how we work in the 21st century called Responsive Conference. And I bounce back and forth every year between San Francisco and New York. It's responsiveconference.com happening September 24th and 25th in New York this next year there we go all right cool and what uh this is this is all going somewhere but how did you first come in to contact with me or any of the the the content that i've put together whether it be writing audio or otherwise how did you find your way to that totally i think i would have come to it

Starting point is 00:35:32 eventually regardless um whether through four hour work week or maybe when i came into contact with your material originally i think it was time just after you had published uh four hour body um but like i've come to know Jenny Sauerkline is a dear friend, the co-founder of Acro Yoga. She's great. You've known a little bit. Um, Chris Fussell, the coauthor of team of teams was one of my speakers. So like I've been peripheral to your work, maybe very peripheral, but sort of circling around for a lot of years. I think the first thing of yours I saw that really hooked me was early on in the Shopify competitions. You had a little video about building online businesses.

Starting point is 00:36:11 And at the time I was dabbling with Shopify, trying to sell digital content for parents, kids with autism, which was a career of about five years that I had there. And something about your authenticity via video. That then led me to your first TED Talk. That then, funnily enough, led me to 4-Hour Workweek, and I've really been following along since that. Very cool. I appreciate the context.

Starting point is 00:36:38 All right, so let me try to tackle this, and I'll edge into it a few different ways. missteps and so on, the ratio of successes to failures that make their way onto the internet or my podcast or into the books still presents a very skewed misperception that I succeed a disproportionate amount of the time. And what that does not mean, however, that I am continually failing and then just highlighting the one or two successes. What it means, I think, if I'm trying to look at it as an observer, is that number one, I increased the likelihood of success by doing one thing very reliably. I'm not even going to say well, but one thing very reliably, and that is try to support and create products or chapters that scratch and itch I have. So it's a very simplistic model.

Starting point is 00:38:09 It doesn't always work, but I assume that if something really grabs my attention, that it will grab the attention of at least 10,000 other people on the planet who speak English. And that you start really narrow. And for me, I stick with what I know. And what I know is my daily experience of the things I want, the daily experience of the things that bother me,

Starting point is 00:38:38 the daily experience of things that are a huge pain in my ass. The simple path I have found to be most reliable for reaching 10 million people, reaching 100 million people, is starting with the thing that you fucking know the best. And that is your daily experience of pain or desire for pleasure or problems or solutions and sharing that.

Starting point is 00:39:03 And really not fucking yourself by overthinking it and getting too sophisticated. Really focus on what you know as an individual and identify the primary pain points. And if you can find solutions to those for yourself, generally speaking, that will really transcend any type of category that you fit neatly into and will affect a lot of people. That's been my experience. So that's a very, I can't believe how

Starting point is 00:39:31 fucking long that was. Oh my God. So hopefully that's helpful in some capacity. But the reason that I've had the success I've had in say investing is because I have set very strict rules, which I sometimes violate to my detriment. But for the most part, I've stuck with very, very simple rules for investing in things that fix a personal problem that I am willing to pay money to fix, right? And that excludes a lot of companies that have done spectacularly well that I have missed,

Starting point is 00:40:08 and it doesn't matter. Because it's not about how many you miss, it's about how many you actually get right. And that's true for entrepreneurship, as it is for investing. And I've just tried very, very hard not to outsmart myself. And it makes me think of a quote from Charlie Munger, who's the right hand investing partner of Warren Buffett. And it is something along the lines of, you know, it's incredible how far you can go by trying to not be consistently stupid. So you're not trying to outsmart everyone. You're just trying not to be consistently stupid. And what I would put into the consistently stupid category is really trying to project and hypothesize too much when it comes to entrepreneurship or investing. Focus on what's right in front of you, and it can take you really far. So I apologize for how long that took. But this is something that I feel very strongly about because the results are so clear to me when people pay attention to it. So there you have it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:41:16 Nice. I'm reminded of what I think it was Warren Buffett who told you at the shareholder meeting of, like, if you have money to invest, invest it in the stock market and get back to work. Yeah, invest it in the S&P 500 and get back to work. It's like the most disappointing answer from a hero ever. But in retrospect, it made a lot of sense. Hey, if this isn't your game, if this isn't your stock picking game,

Starting point is 00:41:43 then you shouldn't play because you get your face ripped off. So it's like, put your money in the s&p 500 and get back to work yeah uh and then psychographic um so regardless of of what a person looks like or sounds like or where they live uh the focus on specific problems that i as an individual have. Um, and, and who do I want to help those people like me become, whether they look like me or not, uh, doing that consistently and showing up again and again and getting back to work. Yeah, totally. And let me ask, let me add a few things also, because I don't want this to seem too high concept, 30,000 feet. And that is, I avoid a lot of big failures by failing quickly with a lot of low cost tests. And that means, for instance, rust and iron, you mentioned,

Starting point is 00:42:39 which is this, and who knows, maybe it'll be resurrected, but it didn't get nearly the kind of attention that I would have hoped given how excited I was about it. Right. So some of these don't work. And for those who don't know, this was a very short video series. I put up a few of them on YouTube. So youtube.com forward slash Tim Ferriss, which were tours of gyms. Think, so think cribs for gyms. Right? Endlessly fascinating to me. Turns out most of the world doesn't give a single shit about it.

Starting point is 00:43:12 And I did a few of these and they were, you know, I filmed them on, actually one of them was just with an iPhone with Kelly Starrett and then a handful of others with Mark Bell and so on were with much nicer cameras. But those experiments cost a few hundred dollars a piece, maybe a little bit more. And I decided for myself what the max allowable cost was. So how much am I

Starting point is 00:43:39 willing to sink into this to arrive at a decision as to whether to continue or not. It was like, okay, a few thousand bucks. I'm willing to put that in. And depending on where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, that might be 80 bucks. It might be $0. It might be, if you have much more to play with in terms of capital, it might be a million dollars. But in this case, I was like, you know what?

Starting point is 00:44:00 This isn't a revenue driver. It's really just for fucking shits and giggles to see if people respond to it well or not. I'm going to put in a few thousand bucks over a period of two months and see what happens. And what happened was fucking crickets. And I was like, okay, well, we're not going to do any more of those unless I receive some type of information that directly and powerfully in some meaningful way contradicts this like F plus grade that I just got in this experiment. So, so if you don't mind going into the specifics, how do you determine, like, I just launched a tiny little podcast called Xander strong, my last name being Xander. And again, it was crickets, but like, I know I could ask everyone I know to leave a review on

Starting point is 00:44:42 iTunes for that project, right? If you direct your audience again and again towards a couple of videos, those videos will explode. If you wanted to get sponsorship, I think you probably could. So how do you determine crickets and that your audience, your psychographic was not interested in Russ and I? Yeah, so there's, all right. So if we're looking at, just to digress, but not really digress into a related topic.

Starting point is 00:45:07 If you look at investment pitches from startups as a venture capitalist or angel investor, you will, surprise, surprise, see the same graph in a lot of them. Wow, it looks like a hockey stick up and to the right. Fantastic. And the question that any investor should ask among others is, what percentage of this growth is represented through organic growth? And what percentage of this growth is represented through paid acquisition? Because founders being incentivized as they are, will very often go into the dark arts and take some of their pre-existing funding or whatever money they might have through cash flow or other means and invest

Starting point is 00:45:55 it in artificially boosting the numbers right and you can do this in an attempt to trick yourself as well. And I think it's Richard Feynman, who said, physicist, anyone who wants to read a fantastic book should read surely, I think surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman, one of my favorites. In any case, he said, rule number, and I'm paraphrasing all these, but rule number one is you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. So I really try to, A, focus on real metrics versus vanity metrics. And I would put in vanity metrics almost every fucking buzzword du jour that you can imagine, like engagement. I think it just does not fucking matter for the most part. I will look at, and I cannot say this applies to everyone.

Starting point is 00:46:46 I can tell you how I will evaluate these things. Okay? So I'll look at the, I will look at the, and it's partially to determine whether something is dead on arrival with no hope of revival, or if I'm performing an experiment and it's 10% off, and if I tweak that 10%, it could explode, which is sometimes the case. So if we look at Rust and Iron specifically,

Starting point is 00:47:13 I'm not just looking at the view count, I'm looking at the comments. And this is a subjective, not even going to say science, art, but it's a bit of a gestalt pattern matching type of process that i'll go through where i will look for intensity of feedback so if i look at the 30 people who love it people who hate it right i will look at the 30 and i'll primarily look at the people who love it because it doesn't matter how many people don't get it it matters how many people do get it right you can have 90 of the people in a given city hate your fucking business more than anything on the planet. But if 10% of San Francisco loves your cafe, you are fucking set. You know what I mean? Like you are set. It doesn't matter. Like you, you are going to have a super

Starting point is 00:48:00 mega home run on your hands. It doesn't matter how many people don't get it. It matters how many people do get it. So I'll pay attention to the positive feedback. And if the positive feedback is along the lines of, oh my God, this would be the best thing I've ever seen in my life. I really loved A, B, and C, but it'd be great to have this and this. If I see that type of feedback over and over again, I will test again. And this is also related to my editing process for books. When I edit books, I will ask people which, for instance, and these are almost always friends of mine who are writers that I asked to do this, although lawyers are very good at editing because they can find sloppy thinking and words that shouldn't be there or ambiguous wording and thinking.

Starting point is 00:48:47 I will ask them to identify the 10% they would absolutely keep if I had to cut everything else and the 10% they would cut no matter what, or the 10% they would cut if they had to. Right. And if so, it takes only one person to love something more than the other 90% for me to keep it in the book. But it takes more of a consensus for me to cut something. Does that make sense? If somebody absolutely loves something, even if nobody else mentions it, it stays in.

Starting point is 00:49:21 Because my assumption is there are at least 10,000 more people who care about that. And I don't want to live in the comfortable middle ground, which is the gray of I like this, because that is where you die. And if you make something you think everyone will like, you're going to make something no one will love. And I try very hard then to straddle that and not deliberately create things that people will hate, but in the process of selecting for things that people love, the side effect will be that in this pendulum of public opinion, you will have people who hate it almost by definition. So that is how I would look at something like Rust and Iron. And I didn't have a overwhelmingly strong response, even from a minority. They did not offer, and this is an indicator of liking something and feeling highly

Starting point is 00:50:22 invested, I did not get a lot of quality constructive feedback. In other words, hey, this car is fantastic. It's a Ferrari, but the front suspension is fucked. If you fix that, it would be a home run. I didn't get that type of feedback. And that's part of the reason why I shelved it. It's not dead forever, but it might be. Whereas in the podcast case, and here's another layer that I would add to it. It's not just what other people think. In other words, with the podcast, I was willing to slog through some fucking awful first episodes. And they weren't all terrible, but some of them were, let's be honest. I mean, I've done 300 now. Hopefully it's better.

Starting point is 00:51:07 But some of the original episodes were really rough, and I slogged through it. Why? Because I was developing additional skill sets, the ability to ask more refined questions. Right. I was developing additional skill sets, the ability to let silence do the work, the ability to ask follow-up questions, which default follow-up questions yield a lot of fruit, such as how did that make you feel? What did you learn from that? How have you implemented that later? Et cetera. Developing deeper relationships with people I knew, as well as people I didn't know as well, acquaintances or even strangers.

Starting point is 00:52:00 If you want to have a really funny slash frustrating experience, you can listen to my first ever podcast interview with a stranger, someone I'd never spoken to before that point in time, which is Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar. I was really, really nervous. And I went, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, like a thousand fucking times. It drove people nuts. Anyway, I was developing skills and relationships or deepened relationships that would transcend that given project. So I cared less about, or I waited less, weighed, maybe waited, weighed less the public opinion of those early episodes. Does that make sense? Yeah. Because unlike, say, Rust and Iron, where I was producing new content but not really developing new skills,

Starting point is 00:52:38 there was a value to the practice of the podcast in and of itself. And that is true of a lot of what I do. I really try to select whenever possible for what will help me to develop skills and relationships that will transcend that project in part because I can really effectively ignore the early feedback. And I don't ignore it, but it is 10% of my consideration. Yeah, you're not dependent on the early feedback to determine the success of the project right and that's another litmus test perhaps or another set of criteria that i've used consistently to increase the odds of each subsequent project success.

Starting point is 00:53:27 But it's in some ways laughably simplistic. And it's really hard to keep something simplistic. It's intellectually difficult to keep something simplistic because you want to demonstrate to yourself that you're so fucking smart. You start to add in additional criteria and use spreadsheets and all this stuff. And it's not to say that that stuff isn't warranted, but if you meet with a founder and you're like, fuck, this guy gives me the heebie-jeebies, it doesn't matter how good your goddamn spreadsheet is, you should listen to that very primitive intuition. It's probably telling you something that over millions of years of evolution is more sophisticated than whatever you put into Excel that afternoon,

Starting point is 00:54:10 right? I've tried to really, really, really, really revert to the simple, and if you want to give it a nicer name, the elegant than the sophisticated or complex, which is not to say there isn't a place for the complex and the sophisticated. If you're a growth stage or late stage private equity investor, and you're thinking about taking over a company and replacing the management and improving operational efficiencies, you better really know your numbers. But that's not the game that I play. That is not my power zone. And I will get annihilated if I try to compete against people who are good in those spaces, just not my sandbox. So for me, I really try to target areas where I have a really, really basic advantage. and that is that I can stick to simplicity and a real pared-down set of criteria

Starting point is 00:55:14 when other people are tempted to go to complexity and succumb to complexity. And I don't have many advantages. None of us, I really want to go as far as to say, none of us have that many fucking advantages. So figure out what is easy for you that is hard for a lot of your friends, and start there,

Starting point is 00:55:36 and then look at your personal pains, look at your personal desires, and use that as a starting point. If you're trying to create content or products that you hope will ultimately impact billions of people. And guess what? A lot of these products like Duolingo, right? I was in their first, as best I can recall, their first round of financing at the time because it was the first language learning software that made sense to me, that solved a lot of pain points for me personally

Starting point is 00:56:05 as a language learning student. And now, as best I know, it is the most widely used free language learning software on the planet, right? 100 million plus users. But it didn't start by thinking about what those 100 million people needed. It started with asking myself, does this or does this not scratch the itch, solve the pain that I experienced myself? So I hope that helps, but that's, that's partially how I think about this kind of thing.

Starting point is 00:56:39 Thank you. No, I really appreciate your time and taking the time to share. Yeah. Hopefully that wasn't too drunk. Cool. Well, good luck with everything. And if I ever make my way back to the Bay Area, I will check out your cafe.

Starting point is 00:56:57 Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for 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

Starting point is 00:57:22 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. 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.

Starting point is 00:57:57 This episode is sponsored by Sotheby's and Sotheby's Wine, which offers a selection of the world's best wines for every palate and occasion. Many of you know I do like my wine. I do love wine. Must be the Malbec from Argentina when I was down there, or maybe it's the Zinfandel from California, but I like it all. I like lots and lots of wine. Sotheby's, as many of you may know, is a global auctioneer. They auction off many, many, many different types of things. They're also a retailer of fine wine with locations in New York, London, and Hong Kong. They recently created an online store where you can buy wine directly. You might think, well, that's for millionaires and billionaires. I don't go to auction houses, but the wines that they sell

Starting point is 00:58:41 range from $14 per bottle all the way up to $25,000, let's say. Sotheby's allows you to sort by region, great producer, or you can search for a particular bottle or by your budget, which is probably where I would go. If you're gifting wine, Sotheby's suggests Champagne, Red Bordeaux, Burgundy, or Californian wines. And if you want my opinion, I would say, you know, try a Zinfandel if you haven't tried a Zinfandel from California. But in any case, just one restriction at this time, Sotheby's can only ship to New York,

Starting point is 00:59:09 California, D.C., New Hampshire, and Idaho. So I'll say that one more time. Now put it a different way. If you are in or shipping to New York, California, D.C., New Hampshire, or Idaho, check it out because that's where the wine can currently be shipped. So visit Sotheby's wine.com. That's S O T H E B Y S Sotheby's wine.com and use the promo code Tim to get 10% off of your first order. Again, that's Sotheby's wine.com and use promo code Tim for 10% off of your delicious wine. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. And I'd heard about Peloton over and over again,

Starting point is 00:59:53 but I ended up getting a Peloton bike in the whole system after I saw my buddy, Kevin Rose. I've known him forever. Some of you know, and he showed up at my gate at my house a while back and he looked fantastic and I asked him I said dude you look great what the hell have you been up to because he's always doing a weird diet or another but it only lasts like a week or two so he always regresses to the mean after like 75 beers and he said I've been doing Peloton five days a week now that caught my attention because Kevin does nothing five days a week. And you know I love you, Kevin. But it really piqued my curiosity, ended up getting a system,

Starting point is 01:00:31 and it's become an integral part of my week. I love it, and I really didn't expect to love it at all because I find cycling really boring usually. But Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home. You don't have to worry about fitting classes into your schedule or making it to a studio with some type of commute, etc. New classes are added every day, and this includes options led by elite New York City instructors in your own living room. You can even live stream studio classes taught by the world's best instructors or find your own favorite

Starting point is 01:01:03 class on demand. And in fact, Kevin and I rarely do live classes and you can compete with your friends, which is also fun. Kevin, I'm coming after you. But we usually just use classes on demand. I really like Matt Wilpers and his high intensity training sessions that are shorter, like 20 minutes. And I think Kevin's favorite is Alex, and everyone seems to have their favorite instructor, or you can select by music, duration, and so on. Each Peloton bike includes a 22-inch HD touchscreen,

Starting point is 01:01:35 performance tracking metrics. I think that, along with the real-time leaderboard, are the main reasons that this caught my attention when cycling never had caught my attention before. It's really pretty stunning what they've done with the user interface to keep your attention. The belt drive is quiet and it's smaller than you would expect. So it can fit in a living room or an office. I actually have it in a large closet, believe it or not, and it fits with no problem. So Peloton is offering all of you guys, listeners of the Tim Ferriss show,

Starting point is 01:02:06 a special offer. And it is actually special. Visit OnePeloton, that's O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N, OnePeloton.com and enter the code TIM, all caps, T-I-M, at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. Now you might say, accessories? Wait, I don't need fancy towels or whatever other supplemental bits and pieces. No, the shoes you need. You need the clip-in shoes and those are in the accessory category. So this $100 off is a very legit $100 off. So if you want to get in your workouts, if you want a convenient and really entertaining way to do high-intensity interval training or anything else, or you just want to get a fantastic gift for someone, check out Peloton. OnePeloton.com and enter the code TIM.

Starting point is 01:02:56 Again, that's O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N.com and enter the code Tim at checkout to receive $100 off any accessories, including the shoes that you will want to get. Check it out. One Peloton.com code Tim.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #306: Discipline, Sex, Psychedelics, and More — The Return of Drunk Dialing

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #306: Discipline, Sex, Psychedelics, and More — The Return of Drunk Dialing

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