The Tim Ferriss Show - #330: The Return of Drunk Dialing Q&A: How to Ask Better Questions, Take Better Risks, and More!

Starting point is 00:00:00 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed the perfect time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take

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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 I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else.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. Hello, you crazy kids. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my want to investigate the habits and routines of world-class performers to try to tease out the various details that you might apply to your own life. This episode is a very different format. It is an odd one that has proven surprisingly

Starting point is 00:03:26 popular for reasons that sometimes I don't quite understand. And that is a drunk dialing Q&A with all of you guys, which I've done a few times in the last few years. And here's how it works. I solicited phone numbers from listeners on Facebook and Twitter who wanted to receive a phone call from me, which they put into a Google form. Then I told people who the first, say, 10 to 20 were going to be by posting it on social media. And then I started drinking and dialing, answering questions and getting a little frisky along the way. In fact, this one, I came in hot. It started after a few preliminary drinks with friends on a weekend, so it's double trouble. I ended up covering topics including how to reassess

Starting point is 00:04:13 existing projects, specifically ones which you've put a lot of capital and time into using 80-20 analysis and other tools, how to learn to care less about what people think, social perception, and how to minimize herd mentality. Not saying I'm perfect in that regard, but I'm pretty good and have approaches for sort of decreasing the perceived pressure around all those things. A framework for thinking about entrepreneurship, risk-taking, and how to cut your teeth as a business builder or creator. How to learn to ask better questions, whether in dating or sales, and how to let the silence do the work, and so much more. And all that preamble out of the way, please enjoy this tequila-fueled Q&A with all y'all.

Starting point is 00:04:59 This is Danny. Hey, Danny. This is Tim Ferriss. Hey, Danny. This is Tim Ferriss. I dropped Danny. This is Tim Ferriss. I dropped my mic. How are you? I'm doing well, man.

Starting point is 00:05:08 How are you? Oh, I'm clicking into sixth gear, which is sloppy gear. So you're catching me at a good point. This is just in the transition to probably 20% too much alcohol. How are you doing? I don't know, man. Relative to you, I'm not quite sure. How many glasses of wine are

Starting point is 00:05:25 you in right now? Oh, no, we're dealing with straight tequila. So I would say I'm four or five glasses in, which is, I'd say a pretty good spot. It's not completely haphazard, but it is well lubricated. Where are you at the moment? I am currently in Salt Lake City, Utah. Are you in Texas at the moment? I am. The fine city of Austin in the Republic of Texas. Big fan of SLC, though. It's a good spot.

Starting point is 00:05:58 So how can I assist this evening? What questions might you have? Yeah, I kind of have a two-part question. And so essentially what it is, aside from fear-setting, which I've gone over multiple times, is what process or system do you use or have you used in the past to essentially or effectively stop caring about what other people's opinions are about you, your endeavors, things like that? And then how do you go about building a world-class support system? These could both go for a while. So I will try my best to provide a non-bullshit answer to either or both. In terms of getting to the point where you care less or not at all about what other people think, let me drill into your personal case. So what is there that you might want to do where caring about what other people think is inhibiting your ability to execute, whether

Starting point is 00:07:02 for yourself or for the world at large in some capacity? Yeah. So for myself, it would just be entrepreneurship as a whole, just because I grew up, oh, I'm an immigrant. So came to the States when I was four from Germany, family immigrated to Germany from Yugoslavia in the early nineties with all of the war and genocide going on. So the immigrant narrative is you're nobody unless you get a college degree. So naturally I'm competing against all of my family members and cousins who are all electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, et cetera, et cetera. So regardless of what ideas, ambitions, or anything else in that regard,

Starting point is 00:07:40 capacity that I have, as long as I don't have a college degree, nobody values it. And then I got you just kind of spinning your wheels and wasting your time. Got it. Okay, so you're not then concerned about what prospective customers or people in the marketplace think of whatever you're starting. It's more of a question of family members. Correct. Just essentially getting out of the herd mentality, right?

Starting point is 00:08:03 And just being able to effectively break away from that and not be bogged down with just some of the things that are going to happen within my own circle. This is tougher. This is tougher than the marketplace. I would say tougher, but not impossible. I would recommend a few resources. This is not something that I've personally experienced, but it's something that a lot of my friends have experienced. It's very, very common, as you know, with immigrant families.

Starting point is 00:08:32 A lot of my friends are first generation raised in the U.S. from India, for instance. Exceptionally common. If you are not an engineer, lawyer, or doctor, or fill in the blank, then all of your motives and future prospects are suspect. What I have observed is that if you experience a degree of success in entrepreneurship, then all sins are forgiven. and ultimately people are very proud of what you've done. A few resources that I might recommend that I've found helpful in navigating maybe somewhat similar psychic space and that I've seen other people benefit from and that have come up a lot in interviews on the podcast, for instance, as it relates to some similar life experiences. One would be Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The second, which has come up a lot, is The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz.

Starting point is 00:09:39 Both of these books are quite short. I want to say both are certainly no longer than 250 pages and maybe less than 200 each. So you could, you could read each in an afternoon, uh, or certainly a single day. And, you know, aside from that, I would look for people who have done what you are trying to do, namely succeed as an entrepreneur, as the child of immigrants who have a security-focused mindset, if I could be so bold as to assume that's the case, right? That is the case, yeah. I'll confirm.

Starting point is 00:10:19 Yeah. And there are many, many, many such people to look to, whether that's may not exist any longer, but it was certainly a major entity when I was first getting to know the Bay Area with nothing to my name, aside from really a piece of shit, hand-me-down green minivan. And I've always found those stories to be exceptionally inspiring, but also to serve as proof of concept for you to see that it can be done. And that in fact, those people then end up not just being reconciled with their family, but very respected and honored and talked about by their family at the same time. So I think studying historical cases is very useful in a situation like this. Fear setting, certainly we already talked about it. You already talked about it.

Starting point is 00:11:30 I'm not going to belabor that. Otherwise, I do think that, and Richa Chadha, who's an Indian actress, certainly more than that, but talked about this in Tribe of Mentors when she, I asked her what she did when she felt overwhelmed or unfocused. And she would ask, so what? So you really, you write down your fear, and this is different from fear setting, but she would ask, so what, five to eight times, let's just say, and you'd write down your fear, this happens, so what? And then you write the consequence or the preceding generative fear. And then so what?

Starting point is 00:12:07 And then so what? And then so what? And by the time you really get to the bottom of one or two pages, you realize that the teeth just aren't there. Ultimately, I'm making this up. This may not be true for you. But ultimately, like, your family will love you no matter what. They're just busting your balls about this particular thing. Right? Right. your family will love you no matter what. They're just busting your balls about this particular thing, right?

Starting point is 00:12:30 Or if you fail in entrepreneurship, you can always go get a job. It may not be in electrical engineering, but if you wanted to and had to, you had a gun against your head, you had to go find a job that your parents would approve of or your siblings would approve of, you could do that, right? Or you could at least get on a path that would lead to one of those jobs and therefore in and of itself be respectable to your family members. So that's another tool in the toolkit potentially. But I think that any modicum of success forgives all sins. The problem is getting to the initial one, right?

Starting point is 00:13:06 Yeah, it is. But look, I am not... My grandfather was the first of his family born in the United States on one side of my family. And I never dealt with having parents who were first-generation immigrants at all. But certainly my parents have been unable to explain to anyone what Tim does for a living for a really, really long time.

Starting point is 00:13:34 I mean, it was very, very hard to explain. And once I had a label like author or podcaster that could be used, it made things a whole lot easier. And they were very supportive. I don't want to say my parents weren't supportive. They were. But the labels and the success combine to give your parents or siblings a story that makes sense for them and that they can convey to other people. And you can help them to develop that narrative, if that makes sense.

Starting point is 00:14:10 No, that really makes sense. And you can also help them to develop that narrative by introducing them to documentaries or books or stories or articles about immigrants who have become entrepreneurs. Yeah. Well, the irony in all of that is that like my dad and uncles and everybody else that came over here first generation

Starting point is 00:14:27 were all entrepreneur immigrants but for them college is still the number one priority for all things so it's an interesting paradox. Yeah,

Starting point is 00:14:36 I would say yeah, and here's another thing I would say. It doesn't make you weak to care about what other people think. It makes you human.

Starting point is 00:14:46 As a species, Homo sapiens would not have created, I mean, arguably destroyed also, but what we have created without a concern for social perception and hierarchy. That is just part of the programming that we experience as a human being. And it serves a lot of productive purposes. So I wouldn't judge yourself too harshly for caring what other people think. You just have to equally care about what you think. Right. Yeah. And a good way to learn to care about what you think is to take it out of your head and to put it onto paper, whether that's through fear setting, through the five minute journal or something like that, morning pages and so on. I really find that I cannot grapple productively with my own thoughts until I have trapped them on paper in some fashion. That makes complete sense. I appreciate that.

Starting point is 00:15:41 Yeah. So hopefully that helps. If it doesn't, I apologize. But what else do you have for me? I guess I don't know if you necessarily answered that within the initial question, but just going about building, I guess, a world-class support system or just getting in the right network or group of people. You were in Silicon Valley around a bunch of angel and VC and kind of that tech industry,

Starting point is 00:16:04 which initially helped open a lot of doors for you and kind of broke down a lot of barriers to help you get your foot in the door and, you know, become as successful as you are or work in that field. Let's get specific. So what do you need a support system for? What are you trying to achieve? What do you think you need one for? Right.

Starting point is 00:16:22 And so I guess it just ties into going into just my ambitions of entrepreneurship and branching out and just essentially doing my own thing. Okay. Which is totally fine. But entrepreneurship is very, very broad. Right? Right. I mean, that could be...

Starting point is 00:16:41 I apologize. No, no, no. You don't have to apologize. It's very common that people want to man their own ship and carve their own course, but it will help me to think about the question if we have some degree of specificity. And if you're trying to pick, and this is something I've mentioned before, but the five people with whom to associate with most, whether they're in the form of books, in-person mentors, or otherwise, you do need the specificity to help you target. Whether that's a skill set or certain types of characteristics that you want to develop. So what do you want to do in the world of entrepreneurship?

Starting point is 00:17:27 I mean, who are the people you aspire to be like? What are the projects that you would love to be a part of? And where are you in that journey also? I mean, do you have a company with 10 employees? Do you have a company with one employee, namely you? Do you have no company, but you're thinking about starting something? Where are you at the moment? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:17:45 Yeah, I mean, so for context, essentially, I look at individuals such as yourself, like a Gary Vaynerchuk, John D. Rockefeller, Steve Jobs, obviously not aiming to hit those heights just because there's so much luck involved in that. But those are the people that I bring to the forefront often and think about often. And as far as pulling the trigger on doing something, I've always gone to the point of building something, building up the systems, essentially having everything set up on my end, but then just never pulling the trigger and going live. Right now, I work at a small startup that's San Francisco-based, actually. We have an office in Utah, the sales operations analyst, and do a lot of building and sales for us.

Starting point is 00:18:28 But essentially, I'm just trying to branch out, do my own thing, and in the realm of social and tech or some sort of hybrid between the two. What do you want to get? What do you think you might get through entrepreneurship that you don't get through your current job? Kind of being the captain of my own ship, I've never sat well with me kind of being that guy where I say,

Starting point is 00:18:52 okay, here's your job, here's your role, here's what we think you're capable of, and here's your pay relative to what we think your skill set is and what you can handle, and then go ahead and plan your life accordingly to that. I'd essentially just like to have more autonomy, able to join my own life my own agenda on my own calendar do whatever i want to do um at my will and then i'm also recently married i'm coming up on two years in may and trying to start a family in the next couple of years so essentially giving them a one-up or better foundation than what I had started on. And I just love the game of business. If you had to start a business tomorrow, you got fired, and you need to start generating

Starting point is 00:19:31 income within, let's just call it eight weeks. You have eight weeks of severance. We can make it 12. Let's be generous. You have 12 weeks of severance. You have health insurance for a year, let's just assume. Right. What would you do uh i'd go into e-commerce and build something on shopify and do whatever market research necessary and just get

Starting point is 00:19:54 something going what would you sell probably apparel apparel why would you sell apparel? Now you're drilling me. I feel like I could find some sort of niche to fill as far as people identifying with some sort of group or industry, whether it's just doing things out there for the sake of doing things out there. But whether it's apparel that's geared towards entrepreneurship, I've seen a lot of things trending where it's like crypto investors and Bitcoin and stuff like that. I know it's trendy. It's not going to be long term, but something that would effectively just help me get from point A to point B in the meantime. Okay. So here's what I would suggest as a framework for thinking about entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is not mutually exclusive with employment. And truth be told, I think the best way to cut your teeth

Starting point is 00:20:58 as an entrepreneur is doing so while you have a paycheck. Even though people might think of me as a risk taker and someone with a high tolerance for risk, I don't think of myself that way. And for the record, I've interviewed people like Richard Branson, for instance. They do not think of themselves that way either. First and foremost, they're looking at how to mitigate risk. So I would suggest that if that is what you would do as an entrepreneur, that you spend, say, every Friday night and Saturday for the next eight weeks developing that business. Or Sunday afternoons and evenings, whatever it might be, so that you have the security of the paycheck you're receiving you are fulfilling your obligations to your employer while simultaneously cutting your teeth and testing the assumptions that are underpinning your belief that apparel and e-commerce could be the business that provides you with the freedom you seek and right uh there no right answer here. I should also

Starting point is 00:22:07 emphasize in the sense that for better or for worse, the American dream and the media machines that exist in our country highlight the entrepreneurs who seemingly throw caution to the wind, bet the farm, and win big. That is not how most entrepreneurs succeed. And in fact, that is not how most humans achieve a life of fulfillment and financial security and contentment. There is no shame in determining that you are a really, really, really good lieutenant or general who can execute on orders and take something that would overwhelm other people in complexity or fill in the blank perimeter and turn a plan into reality. That is an incredibly powerful gift. And if you do that within the confines of a company, that is in no way indicative of a lower value than being an entrepreneur staring off into space and trying to figure out what the fuck to do. So I just, even though, I mean, I am an entrepreneur because I am a shitty, shitty, shitty, shitty, shitty employee, basically.

Starting point is 00:23:29 And I'm proud of that in some capacities, but I'm also ashamed of that in other capacities. I mean, there are severe personality and interpersonal deficits that make my entrepreneurship a necessity and not an option. Does that make sense? Right. Yeah, I mean, and furthermore, I am not a good manager of people. I'm very good at figuring out systems. I'm very, very, very good at figuring out processes. I am not a good manager of people. I have certain Achilles heels, including unreasonable impatience and perfectionism and other things that lead me to be very difficult to work with and very difficult to work for, certainly. And I don't wear those as a badge of honor. I think those are handicaps in many respects, and there's no way that I could possibly be the CEO of, say, a publicly traded company.

Starting point is 00:24:27 I wouldn't pass go in a situation like that. So I have my sweet spot. Other people have their sweet spots. And you are going to have your sweet spot. And I wouldn't judge yourself harshly at all if that ends up being sort of a special purpose weapon inside a company for doing X, Y, and Z, right? But the way you test your assumptions related to entrepreneurship is by doing so in a moonlighting capacity. So I would take what it is you think you could do when you quit your job and do that now. I wouldn't test those assumptions when you've already cut the umbilical cord and you no longer have the financial security of a paycheck.

Starting point is 00:25:13 So I would do that now. And I've seen a lot of really, really, really, really good companies started that way. But for the sake of your sanity and financial security and also the security of your family to be, if you're considering moving on that, I would absolutely moonlight. What that's going to mean is you're going to have to put in extra time in addition to your job, whether it's on evenings or weekends or otherwise. And guess what? That is what you're signing up for if you choose to be an entrepreneur. If you're currently working eight hours a day for at least the first six to 12 months, you're going to be working 12, 14 hours a day.

Starting point is 00:25:55 And almost without exception, that is a foregone conclusion. So you might as well get used to that in terms of additional hours per week and see how you handle it psychologically, physically, and otherwise, because that is par for the course for at least the first six to 12 months without any necessary guarantee of success in the longer term. Those are a few possibilities to consider, but I would absolutely make sure that you moonlight and test your entrepreneurial chops and develop your entrepreneurial skills while you still have full-time income. I think that's a very cautious but ultimately intelligent way to approach things. I appreciate your insight. All right.

Starting point is 00:26:46 Anything else? I appreciate your insight alright anything else I know that probably hopefully that's not completely underwhelming as recommendation but I would really just fucking get to it like if you're going to be an entrepreneur you don't have to wait until you quit your job like start now start tonight, start this weekend

Starting point is 00:27:02 just fucking get on it set up your shopify start doing your market research to determine exactly what you're going to test first and what you can dry test before you do any manufacturing or are there options like teespring or otherwise that enable you to begin to kick the tires and see if what you think is going to resonate and sell will actually resonate and sell, so on and so forth. No, and then, I mean, I hope I'm not including on your time, but I have one more question that's not necessarily business or entrepreneurship related,

Starting point is 00:27:36 and hopefully it's not a long-winded answer either. Go for it. I'll try to keep my inebriated ass to a few sentences. Go for it. There you go. So how would you, or have you kind of found a foundation on how to balance a caloric surplus, like heavy, intensive hypertrophy, regimen routine, but also mix in intermittent fasting or ketogenic? Or is it just kind of, you know, they're binary. You're either doing one or the other.

Starting point is 00:28:04 Or have you found a way to mix the two, you know, to some capacity? Yeah, I would say you're doing either, at least in my case, you're doing one or the other. So right now I'm in tequila, chocolate chip cookie, like bullshit caloric surplus mode because I've been having a tough week. So I've been just completely blowing every rule and yeah, basically aging and dying as quickly as possible while getting fat in the

Starting point is 00:28:32 process. So there, there, there's a beautiful ending. Yeah. There's kind of that like garbage mode, which is what I'm in right now. I try not to do that too, too often, but I'm, I'm currently there cause I've had a motherfucker of a couple of weeks. And, uh, then you have the programmatic hypertrophy, uh, likely high insulin growth mode, which is very much performance focused and not longevity focused. And I will schedule periods during which I achieve ketosis. And that is very frequently through fasting. So I will schedule periods during which I achieve ketosis, and that is very frequently through fasting. So I will, and this is something that should be done with medical supervision, but I will

Starting point is 00:29:13 do, generally speaking, a minimum of three contiguous days of fasting per month. And then I will do five to 10 day fasts at least once per year, ideally three to four times per year. And that is something that you should speak with your doctor about. But otherwise, I do not generally sustain long periods of ketosis because I find it so dietarily boring as all fuck. It's awful. It's really, really boring. And this is particularly true if you remove dairy, which I've tried to do because my lipid profile goes sideways if I consume cheese and dairy while in ketosis, which is something that I've identified, which is not that uncommon, in fact. So I treat the, I would say, performance-focused periods as quite separate from my longevity-slash-autophagy-focused periods, which could involve fasting, it could involve going hypocaloric, it could involve intermittent fasting, it could involve fast mimicking diets a la Victor Longo or any number of other things. I don't currently use anything like metformin or rapamycin, but at some point

Starting point is 00:30:33 could incorporate one or both of those and so on and so forth. But I do treat those as quite separate, much like looking at bodybuilders going through, say, bulking and cutting phases, although that's mostly aesthetically focused, certainly reflects a certain caloric load and macronutrient ratio that I tend to alternate between. I don't try to achieve both at the same time. That makes sense. No, I mean, that's it, man. I really appreciate the time. I was freaking out and ecstatic that I made the short list.

Starting point is 00:31:11 I appreciate you giving me a call and devoting your time to helping me out and trying to help me get started and going. The only thing I'm just curious to know is when can I take you to lunch sometime when you're in Salt Lake? Well, you know what? I might throw it up on social when I'm next there, so you can keep an eye out for that. But I can't make any promises beyond that.

Starting point is 00:31:31 However, I would like to ask that you just fucking get after it. So we're recording this on a Thursday. So I'd say this weekend, you are now an entrepreneur starting right now. So don't quit your job and get started on testing the rest of it in your off hours. Awesome. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. Of course. My pleasure. Have a great night. Good night, man. Hello. Hello. This is Joseph. This is Joseph.

Starting point is 00:32:02 This is Timothy. This is Timothy. Good evening. How are you, sir? I'm doing well. I am all yours, so please fire away. What can I help with? What can I answer, if anything? First, like most people, I'm sure, I want to thank you for everything. I found your book through the Barbell Shrug guys. Yeah, yeah yeah good crew yeah and because of them I found podcasts and I found you and I found your books

Starting point is 00:32:33 and I've become one of your what thousand true fans as Kevin Kelly would say so thank you thank you for listening thank you for doing what you do. So, um, so I know you, you have a lot of projects and you always, um, you got a shit ton of balls in the air. Um, you know, and I consider myself kind of a Jack of many trades or a dilettante

Starting point is 00:33:01 in training, if you will. And, um, that comes, like, I have a diverse group of interests and things I like to do. I'm always trying to pursue something different. And you've talked several times about the advice that you were given when it comes to picking projects that you only have, like, six rounds or bullets a year to pull the trigger on. And the more that you try to, if you try any more, it pulls you in too many directions. So how do you pick projects? And how do you know what to pull the trigger on? And what to let go? Because I'm constantly trying to always look the next shiny object. So this is a good question. It's very timely for me as well, because quite frankly, I've taken on

Starting point is 00:33:45 too many projects and also realized that many of the projects I'm working on currently are legacy projects. In other words, the reasons for starting them seemed valid a year ago, two years ago, six months ago. And now with new information, with the ability to test those projects, some of which have underperformed, some of which have overperformed, there's an inclination to continue doing those things we've invested a lot into due to sunk cost fallacy and so on. And I'm at a point right now where I'm reassessing not only the projects that I might do, new projects, but really putting under scrutiny a lot of my current projects. And the way that I'm going about that right now is, number one, doing a lot of hypothetical journaling. Or it's actually real journaling, but based on hypothetical questions.

Starting point is 00:34:53 Namely, if I stop doing X, what might be the upside? How might it be a good thing or a great thing? Projects that I've put a lot of energy, time, capital, resources into, right? And forcing myself to write out a full page of bullets or a full page of sentences for each of these projects that is consuming a disproportionate amount of my time primarily. So if we're looking at 80-20 analysis, which is something I come back to repeatedly, Pareto's Law and so on, for our work week and elsewhere that I've written about it. Where I'll ask myself, what are the 20% of projects right now that are consuming 80% or more of my time? Or what are the 20% of projects or relationships that are currently producing 80% or more of the phone calls, conference calls, email, and other types of, in most cases, noise, right? And those go on the chopping block for consideration for elimination. And really what I've realized for myself and what I'm going through right now is recognizing that it's always easier to look at the shiny new project versus looking at your current roster and deciding which children to kill as it relates to projects. So I'm trying very hard not to say yes to new things until I've streamlined my current operations, right?

Starting point is 00:36:09 If you're 10% from the breaking point at all times and you take on more projects, it's a foregone conclusion that eventually that's not going to work. And, uh, so currently I literally just did this last night. I sit down, I'm spending time on morning pages, as I've written about before. So Julia Cameron, morning pages. And I'm also doing an 80-20 analysis on the positive side. And that applies on a few different dimensions. Number one is financial, right? So I'm looking at where the income is actually coming from. And what are the handful of projects or activities, in my case, let's just say podcast and a handful of other things that generate the vast majority of monthly annual income. And then looking at ways to streamline that. And the question that I would ask there,

Starting point is 00:37:05 which is something I've wrote about, I believe in Tribe of Mentors, was what might this look like if it were easy, right? So the way I'm answering your question may be somewhat dissatisfying, but the point being that it's, what I've learned over time is that you really need to basically

Starting point is 00:37:24 put your current projects in front of the judge and jury for possible execution before you even consider what to say yes to in the new category. On the new category, what I might look at are projects or tasks that make the other possible projects and tasks either irrelevant or much easier. For instance, I'm looking at, say, I'll give you a list of projects that could be on my plate. One would be doing another book similar to Tribe of Mentors, where I have 100 to 200 experts of various types weighing in, answering the same set or similar set of questions. The next could be I work on a feature film screenplay that I then intend to produce and direct, or at least produce, to have some creative control over. Then I could put on that same list, I want to, from soup to nuts, start to finish,

Starting point is 00:38:29 beg, borrow, and steal to get Robert Rodriguez's attention to, from the first word of the screenplay to the finished product, work on a handful of short films, and so on and so forth. And if I look at those three, I might decide that it's in my best interest to not do the feature film first, because I would learn so much through the process with Robert before doing that, that it would behoove me to tackle a handful of short films, or even one or two, so that that will better inform the decisions I make with the higher stakes project, which would be the feature film. I may further decide that it makes sense to do another book where perhaps I invite the 20 to 50 figures in entertainment and feature film and so on, who I might later want to collaborate with to contribute in some fashion, right? And in that sense, I think about the logical progression that will make each subsequent project easier. And I remember I heard it said at one point, this might have been from Tony Robbins, but I may be misattributing it, that we could have been, who knows, any number of people in any case,

Starting point is 00:39:41 in effect, that we overestimate what we can achieve, say, in a day or a month, but we underestimate what we could get done in three to five years or 10 years. And for me, it's come down to realizing that you can actually do everything, just about everything. You just can't do it at the same time. So you have to figure out the logical progression that puts you ahead. And when in doubt, choosing projects that help you to develop skills and relationships that transcend any single given project. Because you might look at, for instance, a single project like The 4-Hour Chef, which was a tremendous amount of work. It was a huge investment of time. It was a suicidal schedule, very proud of the

Starting point is 00:40:25 outcome. But ultimately, from a commercial standpoint, because it was the first major acquisition through Amazon Publishing, it was boycotted everywhere. And the sales were quite disappointing to me, certainly, because we didn't have the distribution necessary. And you could look at that as an abject failure. But in doing that for print distribution, I got to know the people at HMH, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which then went on to publish Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors, both of which ended up being number one. So I developed the relationship with those people, was able to kick the tires, learn their strengths and weaknesses, while also developing

Starting point is 00:41:05 other skills than later informed bigger projects, arguably speaking. So that's a long answer. But I would encourage you to also pick up a book. It's very short. I've read it dozens of times called The Effective Executive. In fact, saying it right now makes me realize that I should reread it myself. But The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker would be one place that I would also turn to as a resource when trying to make decisions about your time, which ultimately every decision or almost every decision comes down to. So those would be a few guidelines that I would suggest, at least as having been helpful for me in the past. So just to basically figure out what you're doing that's sucking all the energy that you could be using on something that you would care more about and get rid of those. And then go back and when you're picking new projects, figure out what your end goal is and figure out the best project

Starting point is 00:42:06 that will get you the skills to get you the end goal, even if it doesn't take you directly there. Right, the progression of projects that will get you to one longer-term objective, even if it's just a placeholder. That may totally change, but as long as you're amassing skills and developing relationships,

Starting point is 00:42:27 those are more adaptable than is important the report card for any single project, at least if you're thinking longer term. So that would be my recommendation. All right, if you have one more that's short, I'll take a stab at it, but otherwise we can decide how to move on.

Starting point is 00:42:49 You always talk about your five people. Who are your five people? Yeah, this is a good question, and the five people change. I would say that very often they are almost always close friends of mine, just by virtue of the question, you know, who are the five people you associate with most? And for those people who don't have the context, I and many other people have said, you know, you're the average of the five people you associate with most, whether it's physically, emotionally, psychologically, whatever it might be. Remotely, I still spend a lot of time with close friends of mine who I admire and aspire to be more like in certain ways. Naval Ravikant, Kevin Rose, Matt Mullenweg would all be on my list.

Starting point is 00:43:33 Then looking at, say, people closer to me geographically now, since I live in Austin, Texas, you would have Robert Rodriguez. I think Aubrey Marcus, CEO of Onnit, actually has a lot figured out and not only figured out, but implemented in a very systematic way that is hard to appreciate until you've actually spent a lot of time around him and so forth and so on. I would say Ray Dalio is also on that list. I don't spend as much time with him as I would like, but certainly from a reasoning and planning from first principles perspective, one of the more impressive guys that you'll ever come across. So those are a few folks on my list, and they all have a lot of writing and recording out there.

Starting point is 00:44:17 So it's possible to learn from them, even if you don't know them directly. All right, my friend. Well, I'll tell you what. I need to keep drinking and keep dialing. So you have a wonderful night. And I appreciate the questions. I know. Hi, is this Regina?

Starting point is 00:44:36 Oh, my God. Hi. Yes, this is Regina. This is Tim Ferriss. I'm looking at your area code. It is late as hell where you are. I'm not going to. It's, yeah, I, yeah, it's late, but it's okay.

Starting point is 00:44:54 You know, you are my last call of the evening, so I appreciate you being awake. Are you game for a short conversation? I am, yeah. All right, perfect. Well, I guess, I guess it's, what is it? It's probably like two 30 in the morning or something like that where you are, maybe one, one 30 in the morning. In any case, uh, I am well warmed up and happy to try to answer any questions that you might have. I, I can't make any quality guarantees, but I will certainly give it a shot. So how can I help? So first, thank you for calling. My pleasure. And I guess my first question is, since I am the last call, I would say, five moderate glasses of tequila and soda.

Starting point is 00:45:50 So I'm very much, I'm not going to say levitating, but I feel light on my feet, which I think is more a reflection of the alcohol than anything else. But I'm not completely incoherent. So it's a good middle ground, I would say. Fair enough. Well, that's decent then. I guess my question for you would be a good one because I always have a hard problem with this. How do you come up with questions to ask people to ask the right questions, to be a good interviewer so that you are getting to know them very well or getting the right answers or the answers that are interesting for your listeners. The way I approach that is not thinking of my listeners at all, quite frankly. I ask the

Starting point is 00:46:37 questions that relate to personal pains or personal goals or dreams that I have. And I assume that that will apply to some percentage of my listeners, but it's a very personal journey for me. And there's a bit more planning to it in the sense that if I'm talking to someone who is very, very frequently interviewed, who has a lot of public exposure, then I will try to avoid questions that are frequently asked for the first, say, 20 to 30 minutes of the interview.

Starting point is 00:47:12 But if we're looking at the overarching approach, I would say it is intense curiosity and a focus on my own personal needs that drives the questions I ask. Okay. Well, that makes sense. You've been asked quite a lot of questions and you've told us quite a lot. Um, I guess over the years about, um,

Starting point is 00:47:36 things that probably already had questions for, um, I would like to know the answer to it. Cause I struggle with that just in general, personally, cause I'm more of a listener than a talker so um even amongst like someone I'm dating or a friend or something like that I find it hard to come up with questions that make the other person feel like I'm interested because I'm usually the type of person that's like anything that I'm told or how things just

Starting point is 00:48:02 unfold naturally is how I um I, I guess I feel comfortable learning about someone. The questions don't have to be, yeah, I mean, the questions don't have to be sophisticated at all. In fact, one way to ask questions is just to be quiet. So I was told by Cal Fussman who wrote the What I Learned column for Esquire for decades, primarily wrote that column and interviewed everyone from George Clooney to Gorbachev to President Bush and so on, and every single celebrity in between. He told me at one point, let the silence do the work. You don't have to ask questions per se to be a good conversationalist, but there are also very, very short questions that you can ask

Starting point is 00:48:50 following almost any statement from someone else, such as, you know, what did you learn from that? Or how did that make you feel? There are very, very short questions that you can ask that can then prompt someone to talk for two to five to ten minutes uh it doesn't have to be anything groundbreaking or particularly innovative and in fact if you try to come up with really clever questions it very often comes off as disingenuous or artificial uh so simple tends to work really

Starting point is 00:49:26 well in my experience. Okay. Um, well, I guess like to piggyback off of that, my other, um, thing is that I always feel like I'm asking a question that might be a little too personal. Do you ever feel that way? Like when you're thinking of things or following with a conversation, like, can I ask this question or is this too much? What would be an example of a question you might ask that would be too personal? I don't know. Sometimes, I guess it's for me, I'm the type of person that I grew up, like, as a child when I was younger. I grew up with a lot of, like, my family members being older than me because I'm the youngest.

Starting point is 00:50:04 So I was always in that situation where it was, like, you know, a child's face in a child's place. You don't ask that question or, you know, you only talk when spoken to kind of thing, like when I was younger. And it's kind of rolled over. asking anything like how to know which questions asking about the past or asking about, you know, past people they've dated or things like that. Like how, you know, what happened at the end of the last relationship? Like sometimes I feel like that question might be a little too personal for someone. Just asking them off of that. And I kind of wait for that conversation to be brought up by them so that it's brought up in a way they're comfortable with. So I guess that kind of stops me from asking a lot of the questions that I am curious about because I don't want to come off too forward. Well, I don't know if the questions are too personal. They might just be too early.

Starting point is 00:50:57 Right? So in a context like that, you don't want to jump from like the intellectual equivalent of like a pat on the shoulder to like heavy petting and 10 seconds flat, right? You don't want to just emotionally sideswipe someone where they're like, holy shit, like this woman's asking me about like my most embarrassing, humiliating moment of my life and we barely got drinks already, right? Okay, this is too much for me to handle. Is that the only context or are there other contexts? Is it primarily in a dating context that you're concerned about this or are there other contexts where this affects you? Well, for the past year, I'm still learning how to be a travel agent. So, you know, like in sales, it's just asking the qualifying questions, asking the right questions, asking questions that build rapport. So sometimes, you know, like you're reading someone

Starting point is 00:51:51 and some people tell you things that you may not have even wanted to know, but they just kind of roll along with the conversation and they let themselves, like they just talk. And that's kind of where I feel more comfortable. But then when it's an instance where you have someone who you want to try, because I'm kind of an introvert, so it's a lot easier for me to listen to someone else talk when it's for me to try to facilitate that conversation, to make it flow so that it does seem natural. Like I'm having a conversation with someone, but also getting the information I need to give them the product that they're looking for, because they don't know necessarily what they're looking for. That's why they've come to us. So I have to ask them the questions to get those answers to provide them something that makes them feel like I understand. Yeah, totally.

Starting point is 00:52:34 So first and foremost, being an introvert is not a handicap. I am very much, I would view myself as an introvert who can pretend to be an extrovert for limited periods of time. Don't get fancy. So for instance, when someone's telling you something, you can just say, tell me more about that. Really give me an example. Could you tell me more about that? How does that make you feel? Why is this important? I mean, there are questions like that, which are very, very simple, that keep someone talking. And eventually they're going to give you that nugget of information that helps you to better design a solution for them or find the answer to a specific need they had that, which they couldn't articulate. If you simply ask them, what do you need? They wouldn't be able to give you

Starting point is 00:53:31 the right answer. Uh, so I, I mean, if you really just had five to 10 of these follow-up questions noted down on a piece of paper in front of you, you would be able to pick and choose, which by the way, is exactly what I often do or did at least for the first hundred podcasts that I had on this show. So it's, it's, there's no shame in that. I think that it's very, very helpful to have a go-to portfolio of follow-up questions, which are very, very short and very, very simple to keep people talking, uh, in, in at least a sales context. And that's true for, in my experience for dating as well. If you didn't want to ask about how their last relationship ended, right. You could ask them like, well, how did you end up using Tinder? Like how, how long have you been doing da da da what

Starting point is 00:54:26 led you to that right you can ask questions which get them to the same end which out with without coming off as like the psycho who's going for the jugular right away do you know what i mean and like trust me i've i've been there i've been that person right like i get it but it's like you can kind of tiptoe around it while leading them to the story of what brought them to where they are today without being exceptionally direct about it. And for instance, if I'm interviewing someone who's dealt with a scandal, and my podcast isn't about scandals. It's not about gotcha, but maybe I want to explore the emotional terrain that reflects how they reacted to some very difficult set of circumstances. If I ask them directly, how did you respond to this event that happened when such and such person accused you of such and such thing, they're going to shut down. That is a non-starter. But if I asked them,

Starting point is 00:55:31 and I know something happened within the last three years, and I asked them, could you tell me people listening to this podcast will think based on your bio, based on all the successes you've had, that every time you step up to the plate, you hit home runs. And I feel like that is inspiring on one hand, but very intimidating on the other. So I'd like to try to humanize you a bit. Can you tell us about a really difficult situation or circumstance in the last handful of years and how you responded to it. Right? Framing it that way opens the door to allow them to introduce it without hitting them

Starting point is 00:56:14 with a full frontal assault that is going to make them defensive. Okay. Right? That makes sense. Yeah. So that's an indirect way to approach something that allows someone else to feel like they're taking the initiative and introducing a topic that may be uncomfortable to them. like, oh, she knows she's not a good conversationalist, or she doesn't care to ask anything about me because she never asks any questions that are deeper than the typical questions.

Starting point is 00:56:51 So I can ask indirect questions that makes the conversation start flowing and gives them control over what they tell me. Furthermore, I would recommend that you practice when it doesn't matter. So don't just practice with sales prospects. Don't just practice with people you're dating you have the hots for and that you want to have babies with.

Starting point is 00:57:13 Don't do that. Wait. Actually, you know what I mean? Where you're like, oh, my God, this one could be the one. That's not the time to practice. The time to practice is when you're talking to to like fucking joe blow and lying at starbucks you're like i don't give a shit what this guy thinks like that's the time that's the time to practice and it's this it's the same skill set it is the same toolkit is the same portfolio of

Starting point is 00:57:38 go-to questions that you can utilize on a regular basis. So you develop a level, a baseline level of comfort with this repertoire so that you can then as second nature, use it for naturally when it matters. So that would be my, one of my recommendations is practice when it doesn't matter, right? Whether that is negotiating a pickup line, a follow up question,

Starting point is 00:58:08 a simple way of bridging one topic to the next, really go out of your way to practice when it doesn't matter. Yeah, that makes, that makes sense. So then my other question would be to follow up from that. Um, how I actually don't have a lot of situations where i could ask those

Starting point is 00:58:27 questions where it doesn't matter because i pretty much just go to work go to the gym and then come home yeah um so i mean well actually i guess i've kind of already been doing that um because i crossfit so it's you know like eight people um, the classes, the times that I go to, and I've kind of already been trying to, um, talk more with people at class as opposed to just like going to class, going to the shower and leaving. Um, and I've kind of already been doing that, but I guess I can start making a set list of,

Starting point is 00:58:58 of followup questions that help move the conversation along to get to know people that I'm talking about. Um, that definitely helps having things set already because I work better that way when I kind of already know how I'm supposed to do things. Yeah. I mean, you have, right, get an index card, write down the five questions and just make it happen. You're not going to find time to do it. So you have to create time to do it. And that could be, you know, the boyfriend watching the dog while his girlfriend's doing some God awful, you know, Francis CrossFit workout or whatever.

Starting point is 00:59:35 That's all right. That's the guy that you're like, all right, that's my dude. That's the guy I'm practicing on. You walk over like, Hey, what's your fucking dog's name? Oh, cool. Really? Like, how do you choose that dog? Oh, wow.

Starting point is 00:59:47 What's the story behind that? Right. That's another good question. Like what's the story behind X? Huh? How'd you decide on why? Huh? That's interesting. That's interesting to me. Tell me more about that. Right? Like, tell me more about that. It's such a lazy, useful statement. How do you decide that? How did that make you feel? That that sounds crazy i don't know how i'd respond to that okay boom then you have another three you just bought a three to five minute story and just practice that stuff you have to you're not going to find time to do it so you have to make time to do it if you make it a priority it will serve you if you don't make it a priority it's not going to help you so that would be in my drunken stupor, a Yoda-like line that may or may not help.

Starting point is 01:00:30 I think that was a very coherent answer to my question, given the fact that you've had five. Fantastic. Well, I should let you get some sleep, and I should probably also take my dog out for a walk and do the same thing. So I think thank you for calling, Tim. My pleasure. And good luck. This stuff, honestly, listen to my first few podcasts, especially the first one when Kevin Rose is busting my balls. It's rough. It's really, really rough. This is a craft. This is something you can learn and practice. And I really believe anyone can get's not difficult or it's not complex. You just have to put yourself out there and endure a small amount of discomfort with the uncertainty of how

Starting point is 01:01:33 someone will respond. And if you're willing to do that, you can get a lot better at this in a very, very short period of time. 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 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.

Starting point is 01:02:15 It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #330: The Return of Drunk Dialing Q&A: How to Ask Better Questions, Take Better Risks, and More!

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