The Tim Ferriss Show - #408: The Random Show — New Year's Resolutions, 2010-2019 Lessons Learned, Finding Joy, Energy Management, and Much More

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

Technologist, serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, self-experimenter, and all-around wild and crazy guy Kevin Rose (@KevinRose), rejoins me for another episode of "The Random Show." In this one we explore the language of relationships, polarity, energy management, difficult conversations, finding peace and patience, the importance of self-compassion, the search for palatable decaf coffee, panic-selling, serving the moment, and much more!***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests.For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 of the Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Calm. I once asked LeBron James, you've probably heard of him,

what is the single most important element of his training regimen? And I may have edged into it slightly differently, but in effect, that's what I was asking. And you know what he said? He did not say wind sprints, cryotherapy maybe? Egg white omelets with a side of butternut squash? No, no. And although it sounds delicious, no, what he focused on, what he said was sleep, whether you're an athlete, programmer, or student, healthy sleep, that is restorative sleep is essential to peak performance. It strengthens your immune system, improves cognitive function,

like problem solving and decision making. It gives you creativity and energy, or at least certainly fosters all those things that you want to bring into your day. And I've suffered with sleep, or I should say poor sleep, for a very long time. And have sought out different tools to help me optimize and improve, not just the duration, but the quality of my sleep. And as a lot of us know, there's a common problem. Sound sleep is a rare thing. And this is particularly true when you're hyper-caffeinated, hyper-connected, hyper-stimulated in a modern digital world. But there is a place to get rest, and that is Calm, the number one app for sleep, downloaded by more than 60 million people. It's really easy to download. Just download Calm and you'll find a whole library of programs designed to help you with healthy sleep, like soundscapes, guided meditations,

and more than 100 sleep stories narrated by soothing voices like those of LeVar Burton and Nick Offerman. Right now, listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show, that's you guys, get 40% off a Calm premium subscription at calm.com slash Tim. That's C-A-L-M.com slash Tim. To quote LeBron himself, you want to seize the day, you got to sleep the night. Check it out. Go to calm.com slash Tim. Get calm and get better sleep. Time to restore. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. These days, as you know, with a million messages per minute, not enough hours in the day, how do you really catch people's attention?

This is where LinkedIn can help. With LinkedIn ads, you can catch the right professionals, the right people at the right time. And I'll tell you how I'm using them personally in a minute. LinkedIn ads can drive traffic to landing pages, for instance, engagement, and for many of you, most importantly, conversions, whether that's registrations for an event, downloads of white papers and eBooks, or other important metrics. Me, personally, I'm going to be testing LinkedIn ads to drive signups to my free newsletter, Five Bullet Friday, which I've realized drives just about everything else. With precise targeting through LinkedIn, entrepreneurs, startups, and SMBs,

it's small, medium-sized businesses, can better and more cost-effectively reach the people who matter to them specifically. With more than 62 million decision makers on LinkedIn, you're able to connect with the business leaders or just the target audience who are most relevant to your company and deliver a clear call to action. That's always where I focus a lot of my energy, obviously, headline and call to action. LinkedIn ads allows you to cut through the clutter and ensure your messages are getting through to the people you most want to target. So huge, medium-sized, and small businesses alike are all making the most out of LinkedIn ads. Entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, you name it. So try it for yourself. LinkedIn is

offering a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit to launch your first campaign. Simply visit linkedin.com slash TFS as in Tim Ferriss show. Again, that's linkedin.com slash TFS. Terms and conditions apply. 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 This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients.

In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1,

the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. Hello, friends. This is Kevin Rose. I'm here with Mr. Tim Ferriss. Welcome to episode number 947 of The Random Show. You're losing your flair, man. What? What happened? I'm just busting. Wasn't that good? I'm just busting your balls. It was good, but you looked off to the side like Rain Man,

which I liked on the video. Oh, did I? Yeah, yeah. But I like that. Oh, shit. I had my 10-year meetup anniversary with Daria last night. It's our official 10 years together from our first date, I should say. And yeah, had some wine. I hate wine. Yeah, you know, it's a love-hate thing.

So tell me about it. First of all, congratulations, because 10 years is no joke. That's huge. Yeah, it is huge. It has been a crazy ride with lots of lessons learned, kids, all kinds of insanity. Now, it's appropriate that you would have, I'm not sure if you're willing to go into this, I don't see why not, but it's appropriate that you guys would have wine last night, because maybe you could talk about one of your first dates and how wine played into that. Yeah, I basically walked into this bar.

Well, I should back up. I don't want to spend an hour on this, but here's the quick little overview. I met Daria through Twitter, of all places. We met on Twitter because I was very fortunate enough to talk to Ev Williams, the then-CEO, to add me to the suggested user list. This is when Twitter had 15 people on the suggested user list, so I was one of the default recommended people to a lot

of different folks. This was before they used algorithms for all that stuff. Anyway, Daria ends up following me. She retweets me on something that I had mentioned, Dr. Andrew Weil. She retweets that. I see her little 20 by 20 icon. I'm like, who's this little sexy little icon? Yeah, the green cutoff shirt, probably, back in the day.

Probably, that sounds about right. And so I clicked through on it, and she said she's into wine, into food. She's a neuroscientist. I'm like, check, check, check. That sounds amazing. We should go hang out. And so ended up DMing her.

We met up at a bar. I walked in, saw her, was blown away, and immediately realized I needed a substance to calm my nerves a little bit. Oh, I thought you were going to say to dumb her down so she would succumb to your charms. Yeah, pretty much. I think a little bit of both, actually. So I ended up just walking up and bought a whole bottle of wine and brought it back to the table. And apparently she thought that was a pretty ballsy thing. She's like, who just buys a bottle of wine? But I don't know. I just felt like we were just going to sit there for a while. And I knew we had a lot of overlap. And even if we were just friends, we'd have a lot to talk about. So that was the first date.

And I say dumb or dumb because for people who don't know, Daria is razor sharp and extremely intellectual, very well read, and a scientist. So she's extremely, extremely strong in the hardware brain department. Yeah, she's really good at calling me on my bullshit, which is great. It's important. Super important. It is. I think that's what good friends do too sometimes.

Yeah, no doubt, dude. So what are we going to do on this episode? You had mentioned you wanted to reflect back on the last 10 years, right? Well, I was thinking we could talk about resolutions. We could talk about for 2020 or anything that we've thought about for 2020 and also look back over the last 10 years, which is crazy for me to even contemplate. I was looking at some of

the landmarks along the way and it simultaneously seems not long ago at all and a hundred years ago. Well, dude, I would love to continue this little theme that we started on because I know your fans always like to hear this stuff. Talk to me about your last 10 years of relationships. I know that's tough, but lessons learned. Let me just start off with a 30-second version. My lessons learned are find someone that you're always on the same team with, so knowing that you're together in this versus fighting someone or having to have your own side is a big one.

And the second thing for me was therapy. Therapy, what got me here today in a very happy, positive relationship is Daria and I at multiple times went to a therapist and sat down and had a third party kind of analyze and help us work through some of the issues so that we could figure out how to be on the same team. But I'd love to hear like, I mean, I've known you personally for a long time,

so I've seen you through all types of ladies. Oh yeah. We have mutually assured destruction on this one if either of us go nuclear. But we have seen, we've watched each other with many different relationships and trials and tribulations and learning moments, teachable moments, I would say that looking back, there are a few things that are very present for me now that may have come through some really bad decisions in the past. And also just kind of mileage, right? I mean, you start to realize better what you need over time also. Polarity, number one, I would say is extremely important. What do you mean by polarity?

We could spend a lot of time discussing various ways to consider polarity. But what I mean by that is, let's just say you have a sliding scale. And this is probably going to get me in all sorts of trouble. So for people listening, I don't care if you're Martian, US, Japanese, male, female, trans, in between, there are different types of polarity. And I'm going to use probably heteronormative language. So if you want to crucify me, go for it. But let's just say you have a slider that goes out this way. right in the middle you have not as related to an anatomy but rather characteristics what let's arbitrarily call like pure androgyny in the center okay and then you have feminine characteristics and let's just assume for the sake of argument that each person

is going to decide for them what that means but feminine characteristics this direction masculine characteristics this direction, masculine characteristics this direction. And then what I have observed for myself and also in a lot of my friends is that it's sometimes very helpful to find someone who is equally far away from that middle point in the opposite direction. So if you have someone who is maybe hyper excessively

developed in terms of masculine traits, however you want to look at that, very often they're going to pair well, from what I've seen, with someone who is as far in the opposite direction and likewise, like this, right? And there are books that discuss this. I read The Way of the Superior Man 100 years ago by David Data, which talks a lot about this. And I don't agree with everything in that book, but I do think polarity, maintaining polarity, enhancing polarity, which can be done through any number of different practices or reframes, I think is very important for maintaining a relationship where there is intense attraction and a healthy sex life, for instance, right? I think that's very important.

So that's one. Two would be, and this relates to what you said, having structure for cultivating the relationship. That could come in the form of therapy. It could come in the form of having, say, a date night once a week. Having a couple's day once a quarter, which I do with my girlfriend, where we spend a day talking very candidly about the things we like, the things we're afraid of, fears, desires, boundaries, negotiating new things, testing new things, etc. We spend an entire day doing that and it's blocked out

and it's known in advance that it's going to be once a quarter. We have different types of systems, if you want to call it that, for cultivating the garden before it's in trouble. Does that make sense? I think that for a long time, all was well until there was a code red and things would devolve. People wouldn't say things they needed to say. Resentment might build and then something would explode. And then everyone is firefighting, trying to figure it out. And by that point, emotions have run so high, elbows are coming out. And it doesn't mean both sides, but very often elbows would come out from someone and it would just devolve very quickly.

So how do you handle when you have these, because everyone has disagreements and they have these little things that may rub them the wrong way when you're in a relationship. And there's this balance between, you know, taking everything personally and just, you know, constantly responding back to your partner being like, I didn't like this. I didn't like that. I didn't like this. And then it becomes this little nitpicky type of relationship versus some of it you may want to just bundle up and discuss at a later point in time. How do you know when something reaches a certain threshold to where you bring it up with your significant other?

Yeah. I have, and I don't mention my girlfriend's name because the internet's fucking crazy, so I like to try to protect her. You guys are both public figures, so it's part of the game in a sense for you guys. But in any sense, or in any case, I should say, that's why I'm referring to my girlfriend as my girlfriend. But she and I generally will batch. And I think that's in large part because I'm very sensitive.

I'm a sensitive guy in a lot of ways. And I don't use sensitive. I used to view that word in a very negative light, a very negative connotation because we think, oh, he's so sensitive, meaning he or she takes everything personally. But I had one of my closest friends who you've met actually before ask me maybe two years ago, he said, when did you know that you were really sensitive? And the question really confused me. And I'm going to get back to the relationship and timing question. What I realized is my instrumentation in certain ways is just very, very sensitive. It's almost like a scale. It just has more decimal points for certain things. And I find a lot of stimulation overwhelming for that reason. So at a young age, I learned how to turn that off or numb that sensitivity. But I don't want

to do that in a relationship. So over time, in the last 10 years, I also learned that turning off or compartmentalizing emotionally is short-term effective, long-term very destructive. Coming back to the timing question. So I'm still very sensitive to having things I might perceive as criticism or suggestions that require me to make decisions coming at me at like 3 p.m. on a weekday if I'm in the middle of some type of phone call or project or writing, whatever it might be. And there are some timing solutions to that. There are also structural solutions, right? So my girlfriend tends to work at home and I work downtown. I have a separate place that I use for work. That in and of itself solves a lot

of problems. And you don't have to figure it all out being within 20 feet of each other at all times. Like that is a perfectly valid answer, right? So that's one. Number two is that we will block out time. So we'll block out two hours or three hours on a given night. I'm making this up,

but let's just say once every two weeks where we'll do batching. And the format of that is not what we tested in the beginning, which was like, let's voice all of our complaints. But when we started with that, in other words, this litany of charges against each other in the beginning, it poisoned the well and turned into a very unpleasant experience for both of us that we didn't look forward to, right? We kind of dreaded doing it. And my girlfriend suggested a much better format because I'm like, hey, good news takes care of itself. Let's just like, tell me the bad news. But it turns out that's also pretty counterproductive in a lot of

cases. So we start with what we think the other person is doing really well since the last batching session and what they're paying attention to and what we'd like. Then we will talk about what we think we are doing well personally as a partner and then what we would like more of and the phrasing is really important right it's not what you're fucking up it's what i would love more of so sort of positive reinforcement if we're thinking about it like dog training right you're trying to shape a behavior instead of whacking the dog with a newspaper you're giving a little scooby snack to push them in the right direction when they get something approximately right. And that's the format. So we do that. And what's important to us, at least, maybe important to me, important to both of us is we

take notes. So if there are commitments that are made, or important points that are brought up, we have something that we can then refer to before the next backaching session and we can see where homework wasn't done. And if some- That sounds really powerful just to have that. I mean, I like the way that you structured that because I could see very quickly how that could just be a negative kind of bitch fest if you don't have that structure around it. Yeah. And I'm extremely lucky that my girlfriend's a very clean fighter. That's something I've also learned is extremely important because the good times are the good times. But I've heard someone, I don't remember who said this, but the quote is not that adversity builds character,

but adversity reveals character. And you really want to know that your partner can navigate rough emotional waters when things are difficult and not immediately pull out a gun and shoot you in the face you know yeah i mean i'm very fortunate there too that's something that daria has taught me a lot is that it just where are you coming from in this discussion like where if and it, and it's, if it's from a place of, I want us to be stronger and better together and we are on the same team trying to solve the same problem, then it's a, it's, it's very constructive versus it being about tearing down someone. Yeah. There's a,

there's a framework that the conscious leadership group uses Jim Detmer, Diana Chapman and and so on, that I like quite a lot. I was introduced to their book, which I think is the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Dustin Moskowitz a long time ago, a couple of years ago. And they have this concept of being above the line or below the line.

And I'll let people look it up if they're interested, but it's a very easy way to check in with yourself or with someone else to see how they are engaging in a conversation or how you're engaging in a conversation. And if it's likely to go sideways or if it's more likely to be constructive. And so the phrasing they use is above the line or below the line. And I have found all of these helpful. And I think in part, what I'm trying to say is that what's important is not that you use exactly someone else's system or someone else's habits, but that you think about developing and using systems or structure of some type. Yeah. I mean, so many people out there, and I was one of these people as well, just believe that if you find the right person, everything will be fine. I was always looking for

that perfect person, and it just doesn't exist. We're unique creatures. And so the second you can realize that, and then you realize, well, I do need a framework for this, you know, like we're unique creatures. And so, you know, the second you can realize that, and then you realize, well, I do need a framework for this. You're just going to be in such a better place. What, what resources or practices have you found helpful in your relationship aside from the therapy and when you were doing the therapy, when you found it most impactful, how often were you doing it? How long were the sessions? Was there a particular type of therapy? What did that look like?

Yeah, basically on the therapy side, it was about an hour-long session, and we would go once a week, and we did that for a couple months. And really that was her position is like, I'm not a mediator here. I'm here to give you and teach you tools so that you can go off and do this on your own. Um, you know, this isn't about, uh, you know, the chiropractor method where you just have to keep them back for one more session, your back will be fixed, you know? So she was, she was actually Daria's in that right now. I'm like, keep telling her, stop going to the chiropractor. Um, yeah, you gotta make sure they're not adjusting you in a week

and then putting it back to how it was the next week and then just re-inviting and repeating. Exactly. But once we had those skills, and I think a lot of it came down to the language we use with each other and then also just stopping before the conversation even begins and realizing and both acknowledging that the conversation we're going to have is so that we can figure out the best path forward

because we both deeply love each other and we want to find a solution to this. And so that kind of just like, just starting up from that, if you can both get in that mindset, it just really diffuses things right off the bat. And that's like 90% of it. Yeah, language. I am embarrassed how long it has taken me as someone who is supposedly a writer

to pay close attention to the language I use with my partner. And I've always been semi-aware of the language that I'm using, but I've very often become impatient and wanted to cut to the chase in conversations where that is kind of like lighting your hair on fire and then looking for the fire extinguisher. It backfires more than it helps. And nonviolent communication has been a door that opened a lot to me in the sense that there's a framework for nonviolent communication. People can look this up. The audiobook of the same name was recommended to me by Neil Strauss initially. is that if you phrase things such that you are taking full responsibility for your experience and your emotions, it really disarms people and helps to avoid a lot of head-butting and

defensiveness. For example, one of the phrases that my girlfriend uses a lot, there are two things she does that I think are very remarkable. At least that's how I felt and how I still feel. Number one is she will very often preface any type of criticism with the story or something that's bothering her. She'll say, the story that I'm creating in my own head is that you dot, dot, dot. You did X because you wanted me to feel Y and therefore it hurt my feelings. But it's fundamentally different from saying you did X to make me feel Y.

My response to the first is very soft and I'm engaged and I listen versus the second. The second thing she does, which I think is very mature and that I've copied, is there are times when I'll ask her a question. Maybe we've had an argument or maybe simply it's been a difficult day. I might ask her, what's wrong? What's on your mind? And she'll say, I have a lot on my mind, but I'm going to spend some time processing it. I'm feeling a little tired or a little upset. And I feel like if we talk right now, I'm just going to make a mess of things. So let's talk later. So she will

veto my attempt to engage if she feels like she is emotionally in a place where the content or tone of the conversation might take us sideways. And then next morning, she'll be like, great, can we put some time on the calendar to talk? Maybe we can go out to dinner and get in the calendar. Then she's in a better place after a good night's sleep, some exercise, and then we talk. And I have, as someone who has often been in a rush to rip off the bandaid with everything, found that very wise and really, really effective. So I've applied that not just in my interactions with her, but with other people also, right? If they call me for a big

conversation about something that's sensitive and I'm exhausted, maybe I drank too much coffee, I'm a little twitchy, then I will use effectively the exact same phrasing to reschedule. Yeah, that's brilliant. I've never thought of that. And it's like, it makes complete sense. I mean, just hitting pause for a moment to recalibrate. And I think sleep plays a big role in a lot of this stuff.

Like I will feel completely different about a subject the next morning when I woke up and had a good night's sleep, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's on my list of things that certainly I have all these lists in front of me. But how have you been thinking about either 2020 or the last decade? Because I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this. I'm not done thinking about it. But what is anything that comes to mind in terms of looking forward to 2020 or looking back from 2010 to 2020 for you? Yeah, I mean, I think when I look back, I try to think about a couple of things. What were some of the big aha moments that I had that when I look at, I'm like, gosh,

wish I would have done that sooner. But you know, there's not much you can do because they happen when they happen and that's fine. And then, you know, what's worked well and what do I want to continue forward with and continue to bring forward into this new decade? And then also, what are some of the things that I totally missed the boat on that I need to go and especially now given my age, now that I'm well into my – well, not well into my 40s, but I'll be 43 this year. What do I want to address to set me up for the long term? And so that's how I've kind of been putting these things into buckets. What do you have in any of those categories? I'm particularly interested in the last one,

but I'm interested in all of them. Any examples that you can give? Yeah, I mean, I think that I wrote down a handful of things when I was kind of doing my prep for the new year. Looking back on the last decade, the one thing that I didn't do soon enough was admit to, really to myself and to others, that I didn't know certain things. And I think the quicker you are to come forward with the fact that there is a hole in your knowledge, the quicker that hole will be filled.

And I think that oftentimes I tried to cover that up because you get in certain situations when I was working at, let's say, as a partner over at Google Ventures, and you're working with people that seem to be a little bit more well-rounded than you in certain areas. And there's this kind of fear of, oh, maybe they'll find out that I really don't know as much as they think I do. Or, you know, and you have these little holes and it can be in all different aspects of life. And I've just, I've kind of like given up on that in the last couple of years and just been like, screw it. Like if I don't know something, I'm going to come out and just say so and just try and pick it up from mentors. So it's turning people rather than treating them as like someone that's going to judge me,

as to someone that I can learn from. And that has been just something that in probably the last few years I've gotten a lot better at. But earlier in the decade, I just really avoided and hid from people. So you've always been really good at that, though. You're the master of learning new things and admitting when you don't know something. Oh, thanks for saying that. I've got plenty of weaknesses,

but I do think that I am, for whatever reason, very good at very quickly saying, I have no idea what that is or who that is. And I think the podcast has helped, quite frankly, because people bring stuff up and I'm like, if I pretend not along, like I know what's going on, this could get really ugly. So if they're like, do you see this movie? I'm not going to be like, oh yeah, great movie. And then I'm like, oh, I'm going to get called on this. So I've become faster at saying, I have no idea who that person is. Where do you think your holes are right now?

Because I know you have dabbled in so many different things, and we share that common interest. Where do you think, gosh, I really wish I was a little deeper in this given area? Well, it's an area that I've spent a lot of time studying and focusing on in the last six to nine months, which is saying no and creating rules and policies that allow you to say no easily and or more quickly. So I think I've over... You've been practicing that for a while, though, because you've been saying no to investing for a

very long time. I haven't been able to get you to invest in a deal in like 10 years yeah it's and that is in the result of that or i should say the reason that is something i've been able to do is that i set a policy and made a public announcement and i want to say 2015 that i was stopping startup investing. And so you can analyze very easily, actually, why it's easy for me to do that versus say no to some other things. And a commitment that I've wanted to make for 2020 and beyond, and this was informed by a Seth Godin blog post, actually, that I put in my newsletter in Five Below Friday about not trying harder, but creating better systems and rules instead. And there are a number of anecdotes in that that really drive the point home. It's a very short piece. People can find it. It's one of the most popular on his entire blog of his 10 million posts that he has.

So I've been looking for, and I know you're a fan of the book Essentialism, and Greg McKeown was on the podcast not that long ago. The filter that he uses that I'm trying to also use more is where can I make one decision that removes 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 decisions? So the startup retirement is a great example. It's public. It's something I can point to. It's accountable or I can be held accountable. It's not personal, right? It's been depersonal things that I've seen you say yes to in the past, they have been these epic things like adventures, travel, like new different types of things from doing sauna and ice training, or you name it.

Like you've done so many crazy body hacks. It's like that was all because you said yes to everything. So where are you saying no to now? Yeah. Well, I should say that what's important to note there is, I thought you were going to mention startups, but it applies in the same way, is that there's a survivorship bias in the sense that what I say yes to is visible,

or my friends at least might be aware of it. But behind the scenes, I'm saying no to almost everything. And I'll give you an example of something that I've been thinking about. So first, I have an announcement already on the blog and so on, which says I do not do book blurbs. And that was a decision I made because I didn't want to have to pick and choose among friends, which could create all sorts of bad blood and drama that I didn't want in my life. And therefore, I decided on a blanket no-blur policy. Nonetheless, I still get sent dozens of books every week by publishers who have put me on their spam mail

lists. I have dozens of unsolicited books that get sent to me. And I have many books. Dude, I get the same thing. And I don't know how to turn it off. It's like spam. It is. So I'm going to maybe do some public shaming with these publishers. So publishers, if you're listening, please take me off your mailing lists. I have not asked ever to be on a single one. But I won't hurt the authors. Don't worry about that. I'm not going to shame the authors because I don't think... I'm going to start sending you random books like I'm solicited now. Such a fucker, such a fucker. But what I realized is the no blurb policy isn't enough. It's not upstream enough to try to address the problem because I'll still get tons of books.

And if you do the math, right, you read The Tail End by Tim Urban, you realize I might only be able to read, I don't know, a few hundred books before I bite the dust, let's just call it. If we're looking at good books that take a long time to digest, some of the classics, let's say, you do not have the luxury of reading books that you are not in full stoke about. And part of finding books that are more likely to invoke full stoke is looking at books that have stood the test of some time. It doesn't need to be 100 years, but it could certainly be five years, 10 years, something like that. So one of the commitments that I'm making, and this is the first time I'm talking about it, for 2020 is I'm not going to read any new books. And new books means no books published in 2020. I'm not going to read any books published in 2020. And that will

immediately, I'm going to write a post about that, it will be public and I'll speak, Hey, that's the policy. So for whatever reason, once making that announcement, I will be ridiculed and called a hypocrite and given unending shit from my loving audience because that's what they should do if I betray that. Right. So I have to be very, very thoughtful about making that type of decision, but that removes so much of like the FOMO, the neomania, the keeping up with mentality. I think that could really, really, really return a lot of dividends. So that's one blanket note. One of the things I want to call out, and I'm curious to, you know, we can, the thing I, the reason I like talking about this is like, we know each other pretty well,

and I like to like poke in a little bit further. Poke away. The one thing I've realized with you is you, and correct me if I'm wrong or what, what, how you feel about this. I'm curious to see. Oh God. Oh God. That's a lot of, a lot of softballing up. It's not, it's not bad, but I, when. But when I think about you, when I first met you, you were relatively unknown in that you didn't have a big following. That's right.

You had your book coming out and people were excited about that. But nothing compared to what you have today. No, my mom and a few friends read my blog. That was about it. Right. So I'm curious, when I hear you say things about publishers are sending me too many books, like, and I want to make sure not to do blurbs and things like that. It feels to me like you've been bombarded with too much to where you feel overwhelmed. It's like everybody wants something from Tim. Like the number of times that people that have like pinged me and be like,

dude, you know Tim, can you send him this thing, blah, blah, blah, blah. It must just be anxiety provoking in some sense in that you're being pulled in so many different directions. It's like in a way, I mean, you're not like celebrity, like, you know, you walk down the street and I'm sure people do recognize you, but not to the sense that not like a massive movie star or Brad Pitt or something like that. Right. But does that, is that true? And is that starting to like, does that bother you? Is that get under your skin a little bit? It feels like it's a lot for you to handle. It's a lot. I, as someone who is also taking the armor off of a lot of these sensitivities because I want to cultivate them instead of pushing them underwater,

it's a challenge to do that while simultaneously being bombarded with so much stuff, for sure. I was pulling up my phone just to look at unread email, 618,952. Holy crap. Right? Then I have 287 unread text messages. Right? So I'm 99 notifications on Asana. It goes on and on.

But the point being, I don't expect much sympathy because these are taxes that I pay for also a wide range of different types of access and so on that I do have from the size. Yeah, your private jets. No private jets. No private jets. I'd like to use yours. When it's idle, I'll take your private jets. No private jets. I'd like to use yours. When it's idle, I'll take your private jets. I'm happy to cover the beverage cost. Nice.

But it is challenging from an energetic management perspective. So I find as I get older and looking back at the last decade and looking forward to 2020, that time management is important. But time management doesn't matter unless you have attention management. Because you can stare at a screen and have blocked out two hours. And if your mind is wandering all over the place and you're getting hit with push notifications and you can't focus, it is rendered useless, let's say. So you have time management, attention management. And then if you even have, I'm sorry,

you have time, attention, and then even if you have attention, and these are related, but if you are lethargic, you haven't slept well, or you have been depleted from making too many decisions, you are going to make poor decisions, or the likelihood of making bad decisions is really high. Well, there's also prioritization of things at that point right because you need to know how to prioritize certain things otherwise you could spend time on the wrong things and attention on the wrong things

right so i mean it could be a zen zen well well it could be zen but it could be a ven diagram with say five or six interlocking circles and you're looking for that sweet spot and a big part of that is energy management the only or one of the best tools i have found for that is looking at your inbound and your projects in terms of categories looking at as i did just recently my last year looking at energetic peaks and energetic troughs, like what robbed me of energy, the types of things. Not single things. Single things can be helpful, but the types of things.

Were they speaking engagements? Were they long conversations with lawyers? Were they, you name it, spending too much time in cities? Taxes. Taxes. K-1s. K-1s. Oh, K-1s.

Love those K-1s. Herding cats. k1 oh k1s love the love those k1s herding cats love those k1s yeah and all of that what are the categories of things that have depleted your energy and what are the categories of things that have given you energy and so what were those for you i'm curious especially on the giving energy side giving energy side extended time in nature, for sure. So you like the forest bathing stuff? Yeah, I just spent two weeks in Utah and spent almost that entire time with at least an hour or two in the mountains every day. And it was incredible.

I mean, incredibly recharging. I was getting a lot of activity every day because that is certainly interrelated with sleep quality, sleep onset, and so on. Lots of activity, exposure to sun, and so on. Made a huge difference. And I came back to, I love Austin, but it's funny how these shifts can be so relative. If I go to New York City and then I come back to Austin, I get off the plane, let out a huge sigh of relief. I'm like, oh, thank God.

My blood pressure drops 20 points and it's extremely relaxing. But going from these secluded mountains of Utah to downtown Austin around rush hour, I found completely overwhelming. So I've been very, very tired for the last few days since I got... You're going to be in a cave in Utah. I might be in a cave. Yeah, so that's one that I find very energizing. Number two would be creative work before problem solving or managing anything or anyone.

So having time blocked out in the morning to do some type of creative work. It doesn't have to be writing a long blog post or a chapter. It doesn't have to be a painting. It could just be taking a photograph on a hike to share on Instagram, right? But something that is productive in the most literal sense, like it's producing something that in some fashion uses a creative muscle, I find that sets an emotional tone for hours afterwards or the entire day afterwards. It's really more important than I would have expected to have that. There are lots of other things, but what about yourself? Yeah. I mean, for me, well, and you may just mean in terms of things that energize me. Yeah. We're thinking about 2020, things you want to do more of versus,

or things you want to do less of. Yeah, I've picked some very specific things. One of them is no BPA or plastic this year. So I will not drink a beverage out of any type of tin can. They're all lined with BPA on the inside. And no plastic containers. So I'm using all glass for anything that I drink out of. And so that's been a big thing for me. I just kind of want to get away from plastics in general. Um, aside from that core strength, I throw my back out is old and lame as it sounds a couple of times over the last six months, probably carrying kids too much. But I, I, um, so I've been getting more into, I've been doing PT, some physical therapy around that also, um, getting back into Pilates. And then Peter Attia, who you've

had on the show multiple times, he recommends a system called Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization, DNS. DNS. And so, have you heard about this at all? You know, I have read of it. That's a tough acronym to choose for the internet, but yes. Yeah, that's right. So, that's something that Peter has been into over the last probably year plus, and I'm starting to get into as well. So really excited about building that foundation. Peter has this thing where he talks about the centenarian Olympics. What do you want to be able to do when you're 100? You want to be able to get out of a pool without climbing steps. So I think now is the time in our life where we could set

ourselves up for that, that future. So I really want to start taking that seriously. Um, the next thing is a big one for me. And that is, um, really tracking, um, both, uh, well, mostly my, my drinking over time. So I want to be very mindful about how much alcohol I'm consuming. And so one of the things I did is, um, I worked with the folks over at Xero, the intermittent fasting app that I started a couple of years ago. There's a whole team around that now. And they built an app called Less, L-E-S-S.

And so that just launched on January 1st. And it helps you, it's completely free. There's no ads or anything like that, but it just allows you to track all of your alcohol consumption. And you can set maximum amounts of drinks per week. You can see your week over week, month over month progress. And it's just a great kind of like beautiful little calendar to track and eventually compare with friends. So we could be able to have, you know,

like a friend group and see who's drinking what, but it's, there's something, there's some accountability there that could be pretty interesting. So, uh, they started off by me and a buddy, my buddy, Mike Mazer, just tracking all this stuff in a spreadsheet and we just had it in a Google sheet, but it was a pain in the ass to kind of put in new, new figures every day by opening up a spreadsheet. So now we have it in a little app form. So that's a big piece of it. Also, I've been getting into home automation a lot for my house. So I really have finally think that home automation is, is, is here and not in the way I thought it was going to be, but I I've been starting to mess around with a lot of that stuff just to set up routines for my house to consume less energy and, and really just, um, coordinate different things

around the house, get, get, bring more music into my life. And so part of that is just making it super simple to kind of like play and automate throughout the house yeah I was thinking about this call and this conversation and took all sorts of notes and when I look over it I mean a lot of this all comes back thematically to energy awareness and energy management.

And looking for, at least in my case, some of the energy drains that you're simply or I'm simply unaware of or have been unaware of for a long time. Right. that you're simply or I'm simply unaware of or have been unaware of for a long time, right? And I had Jerry Colonna, you may know the name, the coach with the spider tattoo, I believe was the name of the podcast, but he does exec coach work with all sorts of CEOs and so on. And he had a series of questions that really struck me that I've revisited a lot since my conversation with him and I did over New Year's and I'm still looking very closely and I'll paraphrase. These aren't going to be perfect wordings, but roughly the questions are, how am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? Right? So how am I actually very, perhaps subconsciously, but nonetheless, very actively creating the

conditions that I bitch and moan about, right? Mm-hmm. That's one. The other is, or there are three others, what needs to be said that isn't being said? And another way to phrase that would be, what am I not saying that needs to be said? That's actually a huge one for me, and I'll come back to that. What's being said that I'm not hearing? I think that's very helpful, for me at least, in the context of a relationship.

And what am I saying that's not being heard? I don't feel too focused on that one. But what needs to be said that isn't being said? I think that from a very young age, for whatever reason or number of reasons, I have protected a lot of people who have inflicted harm on me. And that the goal is not to make 2020 the year of vengeance. But rather to recognize, at least for myself, I've had a number, and by a number, I mean probably six to eight very uncomfortable conversations in the last two weeks. Are these relatives or friends or what are you talking about here? Across the board. So these could be people I've worked with for a long time, could be family, could be close friends. And by uncomfortable, I don't mean confrontational

necessarily. So some of these are talking to people about episodes or issues or old wounds that were never fully cleared. Does that make sense? And trying to do so in a way based on all the wonderful schooling I've had from my girlfriend, and I mean that very sincerely in communication, doing it in a way where everyone comes away from the conversation, ideally feeling better, but doing it first and foremost to say what you feel you need to say and recognizing that you cannot control the response of the other person. So not going in with any hope or expectation of how someone will respond, but simply to clear the air. And do you think that's because you're feeling the burden of that? A hundred percent.

So you have these things that are unsettled, basically, and you're like, I need to just release it, basically. I mean, you release that by having a conversation with them. Some of these things are months old, some are years old, some are decades old. And it could also be, on the flip side, things that are very positive. But for instance, reaching out to mentors who I never properly thanked, you know, people who really helped me and kind of saved me in a way during high school years, reaching out. And if I get voicemail leaving a really heartfelt thank you for all the help that they gave me, that at the time I was just too young, I don't want to blame it on youth though, self-absorbed maybe, caught up in my own shit to realize just how valuable they were and how much thought they put in to helping me,

that type of thing. And it's been so freeing, I have to say. So those questions are questions that I want to pay, in addition to other questions, a lot more attention to in 2020, because there's been such a process for me of unburdening. And I don't know if you've had this experience, but let's just say you have a backpack and it's full of shit that you've been carrying around for months, right? There's just stuff that sits in there. It could be like, oh, yeah, the ball I think I'm going to roll my feet out on and the extra battery and the this and the book and the notepad and the this and the that. And then one day you're like, ah, yeah, okay, well, I'll take a new backpack. And you just stick in what you need, like a laptop, and you walk around, and you're like, oh my god,

now my back doesn't hurt. And you just didn't realize, because the new normal was carrying around all that bullshit, that suddenly became your new basis, right? It became your new reference point. So for me, having these conversations started off as an experiment, and I say that's the big takeaway, or one of the big takeaways from the last 10 years for me is the value of viewing things like this as short-term experiments.

But I didn't expect these conversations to have the huge exhale and relief of tension and the persistence of that feeling that ended up being the case. It's been, it's been really remarkable. I've been very impressed and relieved with that. So that's awesome. And do you ever do any of this? Well, I'll give an example. A friend of mine sent me a really nice note a couple months ago that was a handwritten note that he spent the time to thank me for something. And I just read it and I was like, wow, that was like a really thoughtful thing to do. You know, and also I know there's also power and even writing notes to people that are no longer here. You know, if someone's passed away and you have something you want to say,

um, doing that as well, have you done any of that? Or has this been mostly just like in-person coffees and phone calls and things like that? It's been mostly voice. Uh, and in part because I've had, I think, fear and hesitation around using voice. So I've wanted to face that to hope. Oh, interesting. To hopefully prove to myself that. Why was there fear around using voice? I would think there would be fear around writing something down that I would post on the internet if you send it to me.

Well, there's that too, which is, which is why I send you fewer love letters than I used to. Right, right. internet if you send it to me well there's that too which is which is why i send you fewer love letters than i used to right but uh the writing i find is a viable option it allows a certain degree of predictability you can hone your message and it can be asynchronous, right? You don't have to respond in real time. Right. And I think that with saying what needs to be said, in many of these cases, I wanted to see and feel the responses from these people. and expressing gratitude or perhaps making clear that something that was done or something that wasn't done for me was not okay and that it's had repercussions and that it's something I've suffered through and that I'm not looking for any resolution. I'm not looking for a response, but it's weighed very heavily on me that I've kept this to myself and felt like it was a secret

that I alone needed to carry. So it's really, and I make that really explicitly clear too, in a lot of these conversations that I'm saying it just because I want to feel free after having said it. There's no expectation of a solution, a resolution, behavioral change, none of that. And that I'm just looking for an opportunity to voice something. So I've done almost all of it via voice. That's great. It sounds like such a freeing thing. How many of those did you have to do? Do you still have more to go through or is it up? There are, it's, it sounds like Aria Stark's list. It's, it's not a long list. It's, it's really, uh, in certain moments, whether it's like taking a bath or going for a long hike, I will have these moments of clarity

where I'm like, oh, yeah, that thing. There was never any resolution, right? It doesn't have to be a big deal. It doesn't have to be a big deal. It's also not like I'm hunting down the guy five years ago who cut me in line at Starbucks to send him a confession. I'm not doing that. I'm looking for the anchors that I, at some point, never was able to reel in, if that makes sense. It's like there was something that was never completed. There was a sense of no resolution. And by resolution, just to make it super clear, I don't mean solution. I mean

closing the loop. From an emotional standpoint. Yeah, I think we could all think of one or two of those that we all have. I have one at the top of my mind where I'm like, huh, I should go back and close that loop. Yeah, it's like, did you do something? Also, huh, I should go back and close that loop. Yeah. It's like, you know, did you do something?

Also apologies. I've also issued apologies and given apologies to folks. So it could be apologizing for something you did that at the time you felt you were in the right in doing and looking back, you're like, that was stupid. Even perhaps you were in the right, but the tone and the delivery you used was really aggressive or unnecessarily heavy handed. It's like, okay, then that's, that's a closed loop or a loop that you, that you could benefit from closing. Right. And it's, it's been a, it's been an exercise for me and a very valuable exercise.

I'm not saying it applies to everyone, but for me, Jerry's questions have been really important because for me, they tie together. And let me explain. So let's take what am I not saying that needs to be said or that should be said? And then you have number one on my list. How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want?

Well, if by not speaking truth in some fashion, I have developed resentment towards someone, right? Whose fault is that? One could argue that it's my fault because I kept that inside. In which case, I'm complicit in creating this emotional terrain that breeds resentment. I am complicit in creating those conditions. And oftentimes, those are in your own head.

You've made up this story of why this person is this way and then you have the conversation like, oh, I'm actually the asshole. You're like, Oh, I'm actually the asshole. I misunderstood where they were coming from. Yeah, absolutely. And I will say also that in almost every instance, whatever I expected in these conversations to happen,

whatever I thought the most likely response was, was not the response. And that has been fascinating, right? I'm like, well, that person is this type of person. When I say X, they are likely to respond with A, B, or C. And when you use very thoughtful, delicate language, like the story I've created in my own head is suddenly people you think you know really well can surprise you. And that has opened up a whole new level of depth in many relationships

in my life, having these conversations. That's been the icebreaker that's been months or years overdue. It's been really, really quite profound. I'm going to name a couple of other things real quick that were realizations I had when looking back over the next 10 years and the next 10 years, well, time traveling back to the future, the last 10 years, because I have four books, right? For Our Body, For Our Chef, Tools of Titans, Tribe of Mentors, then got the TV and got all these different projects. A couple of things, we're getting out of the maybe hyper emotional stuff, happy to go back. But For Our Chef, since that was an experiment in distribution where Amazon Publishing was boycotted by everyone, Barnes & Noble, Indies, big box retailers.

And this was reiterated for me with some of my television experiences, is you need to really understand or ideally control distribution. And the only way that you're going to do that very often is by financing and owning whatever you produce. Yeah, I was just going to say that. Full stop, that's it. Like if you are not paying for it, you are not going to have, if you are a persnickety perfectionist like me,

the degree of control that you will want, particularly when it comes to choosing distribution. Because I've had these projects that have ended up being things I'm extremely proud of, but they're locked in a vault somewhere from a distribution standpoint. That's been very, very painful. So I've had to learn that lesson over the last 10 years multiple times. And also, this seems so childish. It's embarrassing to admit, but you're going to laugh. Get everything in writing.

If someone tells you via email or this or that, yes, we're planning on this type of A, B, C, D, and E, it needs to be in the contract. And one thing that I really liked is a frame for agreements, which only came up recently with Gary Keller, who's a huge real estate magnate, innovated a lot in that space based here in Austin. He said, you should view every agreement as a disagreement because its most important function is to tell you what happens and what

the options are if there's a disagreement. So that's been something I've learned repeatedly. And then the other question that I still pay a lot of attention to that led me from 4-Hour Chef to years later, because I took a long break, for me at least, from books to Tools of Titans was, what might this look like if it were easy? That's become a really important go-to question for me. Because I think that I pride myself on being able to handle complexity. And sometimes that results in me coming up with somewhat ridiculously, unnecessarily complex solutions to things.

Where the easiest solution, like rather than spending the next year figuring out the perfect wordsmithing so that I can manually reply to everybody who asks me about books and doing this and promoting on the newsletter and doing the podcast, maybe I just do a blog post that's 200 words long that says, I am not reading any new books

published in 2020 in 2020. Like that is how I got to that was by asking this question. So those are a few things that have come up for me. I'm curious, one question I had about this new decade going forward. In looking at your career arc over time and knowing you since the 4-Hour Body and seeing the focus and emphasis on biohacking and wellness and health and nutrition and cooking and then moving a little bit more into mentors

and interviewing other folks and then your experience with psychedelics. And it seems like the last three to five years has been really focused on emotional well-being and improvement there. When do you eventually, or are you still involved in the kind of biohacking stuff and do you see that like what's what's the next decade look like for tim you know before you know you read your books and it's about like optimizing testosterone and like you know certain things in

there that like you know masturbating with your offhand or whatever it was that you get like the you don't talk about these little hacks to get like testosterone boost. Yeah. That was actually your ebook on masturbating on the offhand. That was a great experiment. Little side hustle. You had stuff like that in there, but maybe I got the wording wrong, but you know what I'm talking about. I'm just curious, like what, what, um, you know, what are the next 10 years look like for you on that front? Is that something where you've kind of said, screw it, I take like vitamin C now or like, what are you, what are you doing there? Yeah. On the body hacking front, I've, I've

dramatically simplified for the host of reasons. Number one is the four-hour body at its time, I think, it was, just given the reception and the success of the book, it was a bit of a category killer, right? It was a very different book. But there are many people who picked up that torch and ran with it, who do all sorts of crazy experiments, things that I would not necessarily do. So I feel like there's a wealth of self-experimentation and many different folks who are continuing to biohack. I have continued to do experiments. What does your regimen look like today? I'm just curious. What do you wake up and take just on the supplements side?

On supplements, I take very, very few supplements. I take, right now, the basics are magnesium. You're getting old, man, for sleep. Yeah, well, magteen specifically, so magnesium L3 and 8, which is recommended by our friend earlier, Peter Attia. And otherwise, I've really tried to minimize supplements. And that's not because I think they are bad. I think it's like saying drugs.

There is a very wide spectrum of drugs. And generally speaking, the greater the effect, the greater the side effects. And if you don't know what the side effects are and it has a very high amplitude effect, then you're just the sucker at the poker table who doesn't realize he's the sucker because there are very rarely free lunches in biochemical enhancement.

Usually... Dude, I'm blown away by that because as someone that's been in your house and seen your medicine closet or cabinet back in the day, you had hundreds of bottles. You had a whole pharmacy. You could have sold out of there.

I would have purchased some. You had everything. Timmy's bodega. That's right. Yeah, and there's still a time and a place for that. So if I were optimizing for a particular type of competition and really, really focusing on say endurance development at altitude or something like that, then I would have a particular regimen.

I do supplement with protein at this point. I mean, they're sponsors of the podcast, but I vet everything. I've turned down millions of dollars worth of sponsorships from supplement companies, but a scent protein made the cut. So I use a scent protein. I use athletic greens just for covering my bases, especially if I'm traveling to help mitigate sickness. When, for instance, I did a Grand Canyon trip. Actually, more recently, I did a

250 or 280 mile bike trek, mountain bike trek on the Heyduke Trail from, I guess we started in, I want to say Grand Junction. Might be getting that roughly off, ending in Moab. I took two days off to ride in the service truck because I was so destroyed. But the point being, where we were staying at the front end and the back end, this is basic airport hotel food. And I will use supplementation more as it's intended to supplement when my whole food options are suboptimal. But I do think supplements can become a crutch for people who are not paying sufficient attention to their whole food, to their sleep, to other parameters, right? It becomes a band-aid to cover other bad decisions. But from a biohacking

standpoint, I'm still extremely interested in it what i'm but i've shifted my focus a bit so if you look at say for our body right we're talking about hormones right testosterone and so on growth hormone and there are chapters on doing all sorts of wacky things with different hormones and vertical, maximal speed, relative strength improvement with deadlift, all this craziness, right? And then you have 4-Hour Chef, which was very much cognitively focused and got into different smart drugs and using vasopressin to enhance short-term memory and all this crazy shit. Then if you look at the last, let's just call it five to six years for me, the fact of the matter is I'm still very interested in biohacking,

but it starts to get into some very, very fascinating alien terrain that Western medicine and really no single medical system or scientific system explains very well, and that is use of compounds. As one example, classical psychedelics like mescaline, psilocybin, and so on, but not limited to those. You could also include in that group MDMA for PTSD. Compounds that seem to exert an effect with rapid onset and extremely long duration of effects, meaning in the cessation of smoking studies that have been done, so nicotine addiction studies have been done at Hopkins, you have people who, I want to say six or 12 months later, 80% of the subjects are still non-smokers. After two or three sessions with psilocybin, combined with psychotherapy, but nonetheless, you're looking at three sessions, each of which lasts, let's call it four to eight hours. of the belief systems and stories these people use

to govern their realities have changed so fundamentally that their behaviors remain changed even in the face of extremely addictive compounds like nicotine six or 12 months later. So one could argue that I'm still very much in the biohacking game. I'm just going from the knowns, right? If we look at testosterone, like testosterone, whether that's naturally produced or the injectables, testosterone, cipionate, or any type of means of administration or HCG or whatever, these things are all very well understood, right? Aspirin, very well understood. Some of the smart these things are all very well understood. Aspirin, very well understood. Some of the smart drugs, like hydrogen, very well understood.

And at least very well studied. So I'm moving from these knowns into this area of unknowns with psychedelics, where we could, unlike the use of testosterone, at least at this point, with the technology we have access to, fMRI and otherwise, much tighter study design now than, say, in the 50s, we are in a position to discover fundamentally new ways of looking at the mind and consciousness and therefore reality as we experience it. And that, to me, is the money shot. Everything else.

That seems like a slight refocus though, right? Because that's more of a focus on brain and mental health and rewiring that's done there versus, say, longevity. Well, I mean, yes and no, right? So there's longevity. I do think that psychedelics actually could offer plausible mechanisms of action for extending cognitive function. That's a whole separate conversation,

but I have Alzheimer's and Parkinson's on both sides of my family. So my initial interest as an undergrad in neuroscience was purely self-defense. I wanted to learn as much as possible to help my parents, my family, and yours truly to at the very least delay the onset of... Are you a 3-4? Yeah. Oh, you are? Okay.

So you have the genetic marker that gets you, what, you're like four or five times more likely to get Alzheimer's than the average person? Yeah. So if we're looking at it from a software perspective, I'm coded to have a much higher predisposition to certain types of neurodegenerative disease. And that is the hand I've been dealt. So the question is, how will I play that hand?

And looking at, say, Hopkins, where all of this is led, especially as a nascent, what I would consider still a very nascent field, the ability to put in relatively small amounts of money, although I've committed a lot for me, about $3 million or $4 million now to scientific research related to psychedelics. And I should say that psychedelics are tools in the toolkit, but really what I'm looking at is novel treatments, potential novel treatments of what are considered intractable psychiatric conditions. Right? Anorexia, highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. Miserable track record in terms of effective treatments.

Treatment-resistant depression. End-of-life anxiety, anxiety say due to terminal cancer diagnosis nicotine addiction uh opioids opioids opioids yeah so at hopkins there are a number of studies that will be getting underway at the first center for dedicated center for psychedelic and consciousness research in the US, which is going to be based there, looking at Alzheimer's, looking at opioid use disorder, which is opioid addiction, effectively. And so my shift has been a shift, but I would argue that, and this is going to be a fortune cookie slash cliche that I'll use, but it's not about how many years I can put into my life, but also about how much life I can put into my years. So I think it's important for anyone who's seen my TED talk on fear setting or read my post titled Some Practical

Thoughts on Suicide, I almost offed myself in college. And there are many people who live a long time but are trapped in these endless loops of self-recriminating thoughts. They're trapped in the past in depression. They're trapped in the future in anxiety. And I would argue that that is not living, at least not as I would like to experience it. That is surviving, right? That is being a physical form that is not living, at least not as I would like to experience it. That is surviving. That is being a physical form that is not dead, but that is not the same as thriving. So if we look at the staggering growth of, say, opioid use in the U.S., particularly synthetic opioids, if we look at the veteran suicide rates, many of which are comorbid with opioid use disorder, but if you look at, say, the number that I've heard, it may or may not be

statistically defensible, but something along the lines of 23 veterans per day committing suicide. If you look at the rates of depression and substance abuse among teenagers, say. There, to my mind, are clearly societal factors at play that are the perfect soil for producing these types of coping mechanisms. And so for me, yes, the biohacking has shifted, but the same toolkit that I applied to trying to optimize sex drive or testosterone or whatever it might be, the same literature review and research that I had to do there has been much improved and refined over the last five years in particular to look at psycho-emotional health. And I am really, really, really optimistic. And that's coming from someone who thought he had problems that were

personalized and permanent, unfixable, let's put a bullet in the head instead, bad, which is something many people feel. And I am now at this point extremely optimistic about some of these new novel treatment procedures. Ketamine is very interesting, has its own challenges. Both psilocybin and MDMA have been granted breakthrough therapy designation by the FDA to expedite the review process. So I'm cautiously optimistic, but have seen such a difference in my own life. And you've known me for a long time, man. I mean, you've known me since 2007. I feel like fundamentally a different person today than I did six or seven years ago. Yeah. I mean, I can definitely see it in you. I can tell a difference for sure.

Just the way that you carry yourself. Even when you came over to our house a couple months ago, Dario was like, Tim just carries himself differently. You're just a lot more relaxed. At ease. At ease. At ease. And that's why I actually had trouble preparing for this conversation

because I was looking at 2020. I was like, man, well, I guess people are going to expect me to have a million resolutions, but I don't. And I have a handful of things, but what I've realized is that for me, at least, peace is not found through understanding, right? Peace is not found through more striving. Peace is not found through more achieving. Peace is found through greater acceptance. That's what I have found for myself. And what does that mean? It doesn't mean accepting shitty things and allowing bad behavior and awful atrocities or trends to continue. It just means taking time to recognize that in most circumstances,

you are okay, things are okay, and allowing yourself to kind of bask in that. Does that make sense? Yeah, it totally makes sense, dude. I get it. You know, and I feel like you have also, especially in the last, I want to say two years, and I don't know, two or three years, how much of that is kids? How much of it is going through programs like you did? Is it Michael Singer? Yeah. The Untethered Soul. Yeah, he has one on surrender that's phenomenal.

On surrender. But I've noticed that you still get a lot done, right? You're still very engaged with creative projects, but you seem to me, I was very impressed with this, and I mentioned it to my girlfriend last time we were at your place. I said, it's really nice to wake up, go upstairs, and see Kevin just sitting with his kids, drinking a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, completely unrushed.

Yeah. Right? It's funny. That's on my list of things that I had to talk about today. I wrote down, not everything has to be done today. Patience. Yeah. And I think that when you think of things having to be done today and everything has

to be done today, then you're anticipating the feeling of completion. And when you're anticipating that, you're not enjoying what's happening right now. Because you're thinking, I'll feel so much better when my to-do list is done. I'll feel so much better when I complete this project. And the thing that I've realized over the last couple years, more than anything,

has been that I have, over the last 10 years, or even in founding Dig in 2004 and staying with that for seven years, I never enjoyed it. I never was able to, because it was just like, oh, I got to run. I got to do this.

I have to make this. I have to launch this. I have to grow faster. I have to do all this. And I look back and I'm like, wow, there was no joy. I mean, there was little wins and of course certain things brought me joy, but it was so rushed that there was no joy. I mean, there was little wins, and of course, certain things brought me joy.

But it was so rushed that I was never here. My brain was always focused on tomorrow. And so just having that patience and just being able to exhale and realize that, dude, we're going to miss all of life if we don't enjoy the day-to-day dance of it all. And that's what I strive to do. I don't always the day-to-day dance of it all, you know? And that's what I strive to do. I don't always do that, but that's been my... Hopefully that is something that I will focus on over the next five to 10 years, is just really taking it all in and smiling and spending.

And I think kids helps with that. That's why I've been pushing you to have kids. Yeah, I know. You and I have been trying and trying. It doesn't seem to be working. It's not working. Damn it. The focus on not rushing is one I think is very important, at least for me. And that, you know, for me, luxury in a way, more than anything else, is the feeling of being unrushed. And I think that that, as a goal of sorts, as a litmus test, has many, many ripple effects that are beneficial, which come out of that. And there's a book I'm reading right now, I'm not done with it yet, but called Already Free,

which I suspect is probably quite similar to some of Michael Singer's work. That just came out this year, right? I don't know the date. It was recommended to me. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding, because you were not supposed to be reading from this year.

Oh, yes, it did not come out this year. It was recommended to me. What's it called again? I'm going to look it up. Already Free. And it combines Western psychotherapy with Buddhist practice and concepts from Buddhism, which if you had told me 10 years ago what I just said, I would have vomited a little bit into my mouth and said,

yeah, I've been to those bookstores too with all the crystals and the dream catchers. And there are thousands of those books. And I just don't have time to sort through what is bullshit and what might have validity. But this book was recommended to me by a top tier therapist who has, she would never say this, but she's saved the lives of hundreds or maybe thousands of people. She's incredibly adept and she recommended this book to me because she has found it compelling. And I'm going to butcher it, but do you have the name of the author up in front by any chance?

Yeah, it's Bruce Tiftma Lumft. Oh, wow. Is that who you're talking about? Could be. If you just search for Bruce Tift, but already free is the title of the book. And I found this book to be very actionable and very compelling. And one of the, I apologize to the author if I'm misremembering this, but one of the practices or steps that he will often take with clients is something along the lines of the following. If they complain that, say, their boss never

recognizes them, therefore they have struggles with self-worth and this, this, this, this, and this, and that is a complaint that they have, something they'd like to fix that comes up continually in therapy, is he will try to get to the point where they are willing to accept that they could have that feeling for the rest of their lives unresolved. And we'll guide them through thought exercises and hypothetical scenarios so they get to the point where they're willing to accept that is a possibility. They will will guide them through thought exercises and hypothetical scenarios. So they get to the point where they're willing to accept that is a possibility. They will never get rid of that. And what often seems to happen, and I've noticed this for myself,

is that they're then able to let out this big exhale because it's no longer mandatory that they push this boulder up a hill and fix the problem. And all of a sudden their experience changes. And that at that point, they become able to think more clearly and respond less reactively because they've accepted that if that were to happen, they're going to survive. There will still be moments of joy. They can still build other valuable relationships. And it just reframes the whole thing. So I have found that to also, and it is a close cousin to a lot of the fear setting. But I think that that type of reframe can be very, very powerful.

And for me, a lot of it comes back to good questions, which is why I collect questions, why I enjoy asking questions, why I enjoy borrowing questions from other people. And I would say also looking back at the last 10 years, for my entire life, I viewed self-love, I think, as self-indulgent in the sense that I felt it would be narcissistic and selfish and unproductive to feel or embrace or cultivate self-love in any way. And in fact, the way to drive myself was to constantly pick apart everything I was or did in a very brutal fashion in terms of internal monologue. And I think that that is part of what drove me so close to the edge in college, is that incessant, abusive inner voice.

And I got a lot done. I did a a lot of things and at the end of the day who the fuck cares really right like in 200 years we're all dust no one's going to remember us it doesn't matter right so great i got a better grade on my junior term paper who the fuck cares right at the end of the day that voice almost drove me to extinguish myself. So what I've also found is that looking back at the last 10 years, like how you treat yourself affects it, it in some way influences how you treat other people. So if you are violent and angry towards yourself, there will be an element of violence and anger towards other people, whether it comes out really obviously, or it comes out in the form of resentment and complaining

and passive aggressiveness, it's going to manifest. Spending time with Jack Kornfield has had a huge impact on me. This was a few years ago when I first met Jack. He's a very famous meditation teacher, wonderful human being, walks the walk. There are a lot of posers in the mindfulness meditation world, a lot of people who really are of the do what I say, not what I do school. If you look under the hood, Jack is so adept and has such an incredible toolkit also as a clinical psychologist for helping veterans, adolescents who are self-harming and cutting. He's very skilled. And we had a conversation at one point and he said something that stuck with me and I'm going to

paraphrase it because the exact words are important, but the gist is, and that is, if your compassion doesn't extend to yourself, it's incomplete. And that seems so obvious, right? But I do think that a lot of people who pride themselves on being achievers spend the vast majority of their time whipping themselves. And what do you think, I mean, I think everyone has that internal dialogue, and some days it can be more intense than others in terms of being critical. Or for me, it's not so much critical of myself as it is just ruminating on certain thoughts

and like over and over again, I've had a lot of that. How did you break out of that? Like what was, and is it something that you still struggle with today? Like if someone's listening to this, they're like, oh my God, that describes me to the T. Like I have all these, I'm constantly so harsh on myself. What are the steps that someone would take? Well, some are easier to recommend than others I've done a lot of really wild stuff and some very, very aggressive stuff and it's not to say that all tools will work for all people

but I do think that there are certain books that have had a large impact on me that have helped other people. the hell out of me because Daria is very sharp, scientifically minded, very skeptical. And at least back in the day, my experience with Daria was that anything remotely woo-woo or hand wavy, she was just like, talk to the hand, not interested, right? So when she recommended this book, very generic title, and the subtitle I can't remember at the moment, but Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. And I thought, oh my God, like, has Daria had a frontal lobotomy? Like, what happened? I don't know how this book would make it through her filter. And it was incredibly helpful. So, radical acceptance, self-acceptance, making peace with parts of us, aspects of ourselves,

emotions we have grown to believe are negative or unwanted, reconciling, reintegrating yourself in a way is, is a worthy goal. And I think I've largely succeeded. I still have my moments where I beat myself up, but it is less than 5% of what it was five or six years ago. I feel like this could be a good book for you, honestly. Oh, I've already been, I have a Scrivener file with hundreds of thousands

of words already put together. Oh, really? It's not in book form, but this is the book that I want to work on. And this is the book I talked about in my episode with Greg McKeown as the thing that I feel I need to do. And for 2020, and I started this already at the end of 2019, but I'm getting back to writing regularly on the blog for that reason. It's sharpening the saw so that when I really sit down to put together prose, I want it to be as good as possible. And this is definitely a calling. I feel called to do this, in part because I've seen the effects, not just through using books, but certainly practices.

I think that Byron Katie's The Work can be very helpful. It can be also a little confusing, but Byron Katie is the work as a means of testing assumptions and stories that you tell yourself, kind of stress testing them. And as an exercise, being forced to come up with evidence or examples that counter your statement, like your belief, can be very eye-opening, especially when done in a group context. Then you have certainly meditation, without a doubt, especially in my case when combined with either entirely cutting out caffeine or dramatically cutting out caffeine.

That is non-trivial for me. That's tough to do. I did that about a month and a half ago. I wanted to go one month without caffeine and I was weaning myself off a little too aggressively and I started getting those horrible caffeine headaches. But I was able to do it and then I actually just switched to decaf coffee,

which has a tiny trace amount of caffeine but uh that stuff is horrible there's no good decaf coffee out there if somebody out there that's listening and knows of some please let me know somehow just tweet at me i'd really appreciate it yeah it's it's i tend to use my time in nature or time fasting, which I'll often do in nature. But if I'm spending a lot of time in nature, let's just take this last Utah trip as an example. Unlike a day like today, where I am mostly sitting inside. If I'm mostly sitting inside, I have an oral fixation and I'll just drink iced tea and coffee all day because it's sitting in front of me and I'm looking for a fidget, just like I fidget with my pen and flick my pen around. It's a fidget. Whereas if I'm in Utah and I want to get to fresh powder and I'm

waking up early, I'll have a cup of coffee in the morning, but then I'm on the slopes or outside for at least a few hours when I'm consuming nothing but water. And what I realized after a few days of that is that I feel like I've been meditating twice a day for a month. And perhaps being outside and skiing and so on is a form of meditation in and of itself. But suffice to say, often I've thought to myself, you can either meditate once or twice a day for two weeks, or just cut your caffeine consumption down to one cup of coffee a day. And the results are very often the same. If you combine them, all the better. I've never heard of anyone obtaining enlightenment via less caffeine.

You know, there's always a first. There's always a first. I'm happy to be the first non-caffeinated monkey shot into space on the quest to enlightenment through abstinence. And I don't like making a recommendation with the following, but it would be the elephant in the room if I left it out, psychedelics. Responsible, supervised, facilitated sessions with psychedelics have provided a reset slash reformatting that is very difficult to achieve via other means. I don't think it's impossible, but it's very challenging. And I simply have no way, I have theories, but no way to explain quite how profound and lasting the changes can be or how they're produced. It's still very poorly understood. What we do know is that in some cases, say with psilocybin, the toxicity is exceptionally low. I mean, it is far less than, say, acetaminophen, Tylenol, and many other things. So I do not take this stuff every afternoon.

It's not a—I try not to be a hammer looking for a nail. I do not think these drugs are panaceas. I do think there are significant risks, possible risks, for those who, say, have a family history of schizophrenia. And you can make very poor decisions. You can make dangerous decisions while under the influence, which underscores the importance of facilitated, supervised sessions. But these compounds have been integral to providing enough slack in the system and different perspectives from which I can look at myself as an observer.

It can be very difficult to see your own stories. Because your entire reality, what we look at, what we hear, is not the only reality. It's like our brains are interpolating and filling in a lot of gaps as we use generic concepts and stories to interpret and make sense of everything around us. So, and I'm not the first person to come up with this metaphor, but it's like trying to look at the lens of your own eye as you're looking through the lens. You just can't do it. But psychedelics in proper setting with supervision can, in some instances, provide you the ability to sort of rotate out or above and really do a radical self-assessment

that shows you where your blind spots are. And it shows you where your stories and your software are out of date. But I do not recommend people break the law. If we want to talk about side effects, the legal side effects can be significant. I mean, you can go to jail for a long time if you possess or distribute these compounds. They are currently Schedule 1. And this is why I'm dedicating... I've dedicated more capital and energy

to psychedelic research than anything else in the last few years. And it is, I want to say, at least it is close to or more than all of the capital I've invested in startups over whatever it was, an almost 10-year period. So when this becomes a legal form of therapy, are we going to see Tim Ferriss-branded psychedelic pop-up shops around the country? Tim Ferriss psychedelic treatment mall kiosks. Yeah, exactly. Right next to it.

Buy it directly from Five Bullet Friday. Yeah, right next to Express Spa in the airport. Why travel sober when you could? Would you ever be involved in anything like that though? I mean, all kidding aside, or is it you're more interested on the research side? It's not just a question of interest. It's a question of maintaining a neutrality so I can be more effective. I don't want people to question my motives, which is the same reason, by the way, I did

not invest in or create any supplement companies for our body. I could have made tens of millions of dollars doing that easily. And I knew that because, as you know, I mean, I used to own sports nutrition companies. So I know how those businesses work. I could build one very easily. I have access to all the right people. And I didn't do it because I didn't want people to question my motives. I wanted to be as objective as possible and for people to view me as objective or as objective as possible. And in the world of psychedelics, I don't want to place any bets in a for-profit capacity that would lead me to even subconsciously exert bias in who I help or what I help. And even if I could make a for-profit bet that would not affect my objectivity, it would affect how others perceive me in the field.

And that would inhibit my ability to move the needle in a number of different ways. And last, I will say, and this is also vocabulary. These are phrases that Tim of 15 years ago would just be disgusted by, but he didn't know. Didn't know what he didn't know. This is a very sacred space. This is very, in some ways, very sacred work. It's incredible when you witness what can transpire for someone in a four to six hour session and how completely their whole lives for and never get. And to that extent, you and I have been very fortunate, and we've had all sorts of advantages. We've also had

certain disadvantages, and we've made lucky bets, and we're in a position where we don't have to make compromises. We don't have to make compromises to generate income, right? Like we're not worried about how to pay the rent next month. And for that reason, I like having this entire field to be, for me, a capital off-limits, a money off-limits area in my life. Does that make sense? It's just a complication that I don't want and don't need. And for that reason, I would be very surprised. I'd be very surprised if there was any Tim Ferriss branded airport psychedelic kiosk. There may be outfits that I assist in some way, but I can't imagine that I would ever tie financial incentives or financial return to anything that I do in this space. I would be disappointed in myself unless something very, very significant changes.

And I just can't imagine quite what that would be. Yeah. And let's say I did something. Who knows? Let's just say some gigantic pharma company said, will you advise us on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. As long as I could be convinced, and this would be a long shot, but let's just say I was able, I and my advisors were convinced that they weren't just doing this to sort of whitewash their sins and provide a human riot shield for whatever they were going to do. And they wanted advice of some type and they were offering advisory

compensation. All of the funds would have to go to funding other types of research or to some other recipient besides myself, right? Perhaps it goes into a foundation and then gets funneled directly into some related cause that I care deeply about. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see how you could think through that a little bit further to kind of figure out if there is an opportunity there

that you could just roll it into a complete nonprofit so that you could participate in some of the upside. Because obviously there are going to be, when this stuff does all finally come around and it is stamped with the, whatever going to be, when this stuff does all finally come around and it is stamped with whatever it may be, FTA or whoever has to stamp all the way through to actually launching something as a therapeutic product for the consumer,

there'll be multi-billion dollar businesses built on the back of this in some capacity, right? There could be. There definitely could be. I think it's going to be a lot trickier than folks expect. And I hope that the current means of administration, meaning let's just call it two or three sessions of – two or three active sessions. There may be placebo sessions, but let's just call it two or three active sessions with long-term persistent effects, I hope that that does not get corrupted and replaced with some type of analog that is, or close cousin that is then turned into a maintenance tool.

In other words, I hope that the business priorities of drug developers do not affect the beautiful elegance of how these tools can be used in such a way that they get converted into something that needs to be used three times a week just to get by. And I absolutely expect there will be people who attempt to do that. But I would not want to – I certainly people who attempt to do that. But I would not want to, I certainly don't want to encourage that. But there could be a lot of money made and there, there are possibilities. Yeah. My only point was that I would rather see those funds flow into someone's

nonprofit like your own that would then go right back into research then, then have it go to someone else. But you know, cause I, I didn't, wouldn't trust you with those funds to do the right thing. Yeah, and there are things I want to do. One idea that I had for 2020 that I thought could be fun,

which is not the same as a for-profit business that then provides upside that could be funneled into a nonprofit, which is entirely possible. I mean, that's what I'm doing with my foundation right now. But I've been thinking about doing a high end art auction. And I know people have done this in the past. I believe that, I want to say Leonardo DiCaprio has done a very good job of this. Don't know Leo personally, but the concept would be getting pieces donated. And I don't know if they, it's unlikely to me that a Sotheby's or a Christie's or someone would, would do this. They might, but to have incredible pieces of artwork donated by extremely famous artists and to take the proceeds and donate them to psychedelic research or scientific.

Oh, dude, you could have this happen in two seconds. I know a ton of the auction folks through my time at Hodinkee. Okay, great. So if you want to talk to any of the Christies or Sotheby's or Phillips folks, this happens already. For example, there's an auction each year that's called Only Watch. And every one of the high-end watch manufacturers

will create a special one-off limited edition watch. Or not limited edition, but just one-off. And they raise tens of millions of dollars for, I can't remember if it's muscular dystrophy or what the actual cause is. But it's a wonderful cause and it happens every year. This could be that for psychedelics. That excites me.

You have to do that. That's a no-brainer. Because it could be paintings, but it could also be watches. It could be anything. And what's so nice about that is people are bidding. There are certainly tax advantages for people who are buying these items, I would imagine. Maybe, maybe not. But nonetheless, I mean, they're going to a good cause. They are paying for one of a kind, or at the very least, highly sought after scarce items that have

value, sustained value, right? So you're not just kind of begging for money with your hat out. And what's so incredible about the psychedelic research space right now is that for 10 or 20 million dollars, I mean, you can potentially bend the arc of history. It's so nascent and so much can be done with so little that what would be considered a drop in the bucket for cancer research or any number of other conditions could actually lead to fundamental breakthroughs in an entirely new field. And not just breakthroughs as it relates to a specific compound, but breakthroughs in how we begin to understand how the mind and the brain work. Where is the seat of consciousness?

Does such a thing anatomically exist? These are real questions that people are investigating, and I don't think we fully appreciate the implications of figuring some of that out. I mean, it's incredible. Oh, that's so cool. And there's so many artists, as you know, who suffer from depression, from anxiety. Absolutely. That's why it's a no-brainer. This is like a perfect match. You have people that

suffer with something like that. I mean, you must know Banksy at this point, right? I don't. I would love to. If you have a connection, I would love to connect with Banksy for a million reasons. But I do not yet know Banksy. I did go to his hotel in the Middle East, which was amazing and pretty incredible. But I've studied him. I know of him. I'm very familiar with his work, but don't know him.

I feel like if we can get him to commit a piece, that's a good place to start. That would be a great place to start. There are a number of artists I find absolutely incredible who, were they willing to participate, they would act as the lead domino that tips over everything else, right? Because you don't need, you really just need that first tenant, right? The first person who says, I believe in this.

And I haven't reached out to anyone at this point, but one of my favorite artists in the world is David Hockney. He's so, so incredible. You should check him out. And there's a wonderful documentary about him called, I want to say, Learning How to See or The Art of Seeing that you should check out. And such a, just seems like such a beautiful human being, very well spoken, very humble. And it should be doable, right right this does not strike me as insane let's talk offline because i i have some people you should talk to i think we can make this happen that sounds really cool all right amazing amazing that's so exciting the other thing that uh this is this is jumping around topic wise but the other thing i want to start doing this year

is something that i spoke with uh nick thom Thompson ages ago about, and that is hiring top tier writers at, say, I think the rate he suggested was maybe $2 a word or something like that, but really paying top dollar for good long form journalists to write pieces on my blog, like to investigate topics that would otherwise not get investigated. I'll give you an example. I was having a long conversation with one of my closest friends about a week ago about how the preceding two days felt like two or three weeks.

A lot of things had happened. We'd moved locations a lot. We were spending a lot of time in backcountry doing really strong physical exertion. And we both noticed that the last preceding two days seemed like, oh my god, that happened two days ago.

It seems like three weeks ago. And yet there are also weeks that go by where you're like, what the fuck did I do this week? I know I was sitting around doing stuff, but it just went by like that. So investigating, let's just say as one example, investigating the expansion of time. What does the science say? If you want someone to pitch in on that,

I'll throw some cash towards that article too. Okay, cool. I've always been fascinated by this. I would love to go in deep on that one. And it's like, so let's get someone who puts out just stellar, stellar long-form pieces that they can take some time on, right? Because I don't need this tomorrow.

I'd love to have it tomorrow, but if it takes two months, if it takes three months, so be it. I care more about the quality. But to have, let's just say to have five of those any given time in motion, it just seems like an excellent use of money. Or there are certain people I would love to have profiles, right? Like people who are doing incredible, weird things that are never, I don't think would ever make it onto the radar of some of the larger publications I respect, but they're just, they already have, I would imagine, an abundance of wonderful ideas. And I have some, say, A, leads, and B, suggestions that could really help people gain access to folks who otherwise wouldn't be accessible or otherwise would never get covered, right? I covered. It's that kind of thing. It's like, all right, let's do a human interest story. Do you have people in mind on the writer side that you would use? Because I know we could probably reach out to Evan Medium.

I'm sure he's got a bunch of great independent writers that you could hire. Yeah, I spoke with Nick about this. There are a few writers I've worked with in the past who I have found to be really, really sharp and also very ethical. Those two don't always go together, as we know, which is a huge bummer. That's another thing I've learned in the last 10 years

is hire for reliability and trustworthiness and attitude first. Lots of skilled, smart people out there who may not have the best ethical compass, so you have to really guard against that. But there are a number of writers I've worked with who have, uh, done fantastic work and, uh, they're, they're on the short list. They're kind of the, the, the, the first list that I have, but, uh, there are so many, there are so many great writers out there, right? There should be, it should be possible to get someone since I would be the editor, so to speak. right? And I have no delusions of thinking I'm David Remnick of the New Yorker or anything.

I do not think that I am the best editor in the world, but nonetheless, it's my blog, so I have to look at this stuff. And I'm pretty good. I think I'm a very fair... I've edited a lot of my friends' books because I can't not edit if they give me something to review.

But I would be bringing these people in because they are ostensibly, I mean, almost certainly better writers than I am. So that's really exciting to me, just to kick the tires and try it. Yeah, that's awesome. And it's also one of those examples of one decision that removes a lot of decisions. Like, let's just, time is a non-renewable resource. I'm very confident I can make money back if I need to. Let me just place some bets and let people run,

you know? And then it's like, oh, lo and behold, like three months later, an email comes in, got a first draft or got a third draft, whatever it might be.

That would be very exciting to me. Yeah, what else have you put on your list of things to remember for 2020, pay attention to, or just notes from the last decade? I've got one, but I'm going to hold on to it because we can talk about it in a little bit. Not that we have to go for five hours, but anything else that comes to mind that you'd like to mention? Yeah. I mean, I think that one of the things that I look back on that I feel that I did quite well over the last 10 years was my track record of investing in the public markets. And I think that I know why.

You're very good. I appreciate that. I think I know, I have kind of put my formula down on paper so I have a sense of how I am able to take big risks without them feeling like big risks. And I think that's key for me not to freak out and sell things off. So essentially, what I've figured out is my mixture of investments. And for me, you've always heard that, well, I mean, there's that saying that I guess most

people think is bullshit, which is probably true, which is to hold your age in bonds, right? The old saying is, if you're 40 years old, you should have 40% of your net worth in bonds. And I have always liked having some security like that. I think that that is not a wise strategy for young investors, because I think they are too heavily weighted in safer investments when they should be taking the most risk up front. But now that I am into my 40s, I don't think of it as just bonds.

I think of it as what are some safer investments that I can have that 40% in. So that could be higher yield bonds. It could be dividend paying stocks that are blue chip dividend stocks that I hold in a basket or an index. But the thing that- Exotic animal farms. Exactly. You know my investment types. But there's nothing, that's all, you can pick

this kind of stuff up in any investment book. What I have done that is different is that I've said that 20% of my net worth, whatever that may be, is going to go into ultra risky investments, but only ones that kind of soup to nuts, I understand at a very, very deep level. So that means these really risky tech investments for me. And that has lead to, you know, early investments in Bitcoin, early investments in Apple. You know, I remember when Apple came out with OS X, the first version, and I was just blown away. And I knew this was such a brilliant new direction for the company that was in 2001. The stock back then was trading at $1.60 or so a share, which is just insanity. But more recently in the last few years, that would be the Shopify's and the Tesla's and things

like that. But also avoiding stuff I didn't understand, I think is like the saying no. For example, everyone was jumping on Netflix five years ago, maybe even longer. I didn't understand it. I didn't understand how this wouldn't become just like the music business and how the margins would be ultra thin. I had no idea about creating original content, what the cost structure for that would be.

It was something that a lot of my friends were making fantastic returns on, but something that I ended up not buying. And I missed out on that one, but that's fine because I was able to concentrate my bets on things that products not only that I use and enjoy, but under understood completely. And that for me, taking that 20% of my investments and focusing them on things that I believe that could truly have 25 to 50x returns over the next couple decades, I think has been key in kind of growing my net worth over time. So we're talking about, or you're talking about, buy decisions. How do you decide, what's your framework for deciding when to sell things? If you have one, and it could be any category or all categories, but you're somewhat famous for telling me what you're going, what you're going to buy and then not telling me six months later

when you sell it all. Yeah. I mean, I think that the, the thing is, has the underlying, no, that's true. And then 18 months later, I'm like, oh man, tough order, huh? You're like, I sold that a year and a half ago. I'm like, oh, you fucking bastard. Well, I think have the underlying fundamentals of the business changed. And I think that if the answer is yes, then I consider selling. If the answer is no, but you're seeing a decline due to other market turbulence, then that's actually when I buy more. So if I see a big massive dip and it has nothing to do with the company, but it was just something that came out of Trump's mouth, I'm going to double down and pick up some more stock on sale. And then also working with your tax accountant

so you know when you could take some gains off the table and tax-wise it makes sense for you. But I would say that, you know, I am even more skeptical and scared of stocks like Netflix today because I look at all the other entrants in the market that are both coming and have recently launched, whether it be Apple TV streaming services or the new Disney Plus or Peacock, which is coming out.

There's going to be so much competition for that $5 to $10 a month cable plus plus that it's a little frightening. That's how I look at shop. Also, I think there's a couple things. One, what's the total addressable market of this business? How big is the TAM there and do they have room to grow? Shopify today, I'm not sure where they're at, 50-some billion dollar company. They were around five early on.

Actually, dude, Shopify was the one that you're probably killing yourself over. Yeah, I am. I made a terrible, terrible, terrible decision. Well, you know that I have a history. Now, I have improved, but- You were an advisor to them before they went public. When they had eight employees. So I was with them from day, not day one,

but very early and I panic sold. I panic sold. I panic sold. And that was maybe right after lockup expired. So this would be like, whatever that is, six months after IPO. And I just made a terrible, terrible decision and sold a bunch of it. I'm curious, what was the underlying reason though

with the talking about when to sell? Like the business was having great numbers quarter over quarter. If you looked at all the fundamentals there, granted they're not profitable, but revenue was increasing, cost of acquiring customers was going down. What was it that you freaked out about?

I don't think that freak outs are generally a rational decision. I'm not like, well, if A and if B and therefore C and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, freak out! It's not like that is at the end of a long deliberation. I think that the gain, since my cost basis was effectively zero, my gain was such that the absolute number of dollars was enough to, at the time, move the needle for me and provide a level of security that I didn't want to risk. It doesn't mean that there were a bunch of risks. I just didn't know. And you never

know what you don't know. Do you do you do not do you not mean though i was like you know oh dude there's there's that first wave of i want to take care of myself pay off my bills pay off my house this is like something that's going to secure my future yeah that you would just be feel a foolish not to take and i get that it sounds like that's what you were doing yeah that's what i was doing and and the challenge has been, and we don't have to spend a lot of time on this because I think we're getting into rarefied air here, but updating that script, right? Because it's not the only example of me panic selling. And I panic sold other things. I mean, panic sold is very dramatic, but I emotionally sold other things. Alibaba, I invested early in Alibaba. They were pre-IPO. And all sorts of companies that I sold once they went public.

And it has taken a lot of reflection and training and planning. That's number one for me. Have a plan. Don't go into a fight Have a plan, right? Don't go into a fight with no plan and then get hit and try to figure out your game plan. Have a plan going in. So I've done that in the last few years and I've not panic sold or emotionally sold anything

in the last few years. That's a lot easier to say, of course, now that I have more security. But the point is, even after the point that I had more security, but the point is, even after the point that I had more security, I was still, I had not updated my OS, right? My operating system was still like Windows 95, like panic, panic, crash, panic, crash. And I had to become aware of that before I could change anything. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So you are a hundred times better than I am in the public markets. And you've been very comfortable in the public markets for a very long time from, from my perspective, at least what I've seen. I mean, you're, you're, you're a very rare breed of investor because you are successful across many different classes and many different assets. So you can go super early stage, I mean, white paper early or back of the napkin early, all the way up to mature public. And I've seen you hit home runs in almost every band of investment in terms of size and also in terms of technology.

It's been very impressive to watch. And I have to first admit to myself, lest I get my face ripped off, that I'm not you. I just have a different, different way of approaching this stuff. So. Yeah. I mean, dude, you'll, you'll laugh at some of the grammar I write you in emails. So we all have our strengths and weaknesses. Like some of the things that I produce on other fronts are laughable. So, you know, I think it's just kind of knowing what those pieces are and, and, and playing to your strengths.

Yeah. You can fuck up a lot as long as you play to your core strengths and make a few good decisions. I mean, once a year, once every few years in the startup investing game, right? Yeah. Hopefully, they're not all predicated on luck, but if you have a decent process, right? Like you said, you missed out on Netflix. Doesn't matter, right? Like if you hit a home run, you can strike out.

If you hit a few home runs that are real home runs, right? Which you have, you can strike out a whole lot. And that is- Well, and you expect to, you know, it's like- Or better yet, miss out, right? You can miss out. That's and that is well and you expect to you know it's like or better yet you can miss out that's a better way to put it like you can pick you can wait for the fat pitches and if you have rules and certain systems which i've seen you use which has been the impressive part right if someone's just consistently lucky i can't model that right and i know those people too you and i both know those people where it's like, alright, that article paints them as a genius, but we all know

they flipped a coin after drinking a bottle of tequila and then here we are. So I can't model that type of dumb luck. And there are some people who just seem to be hardwired for incredible luck. I don't know what that's about. We both know a few of those too where it's just like pot of gold falling out of the sky into their lap every two years. I just don't know what that's about. And then there are the people who have rules

and they have systems and they have criteria. And I think you've done really well with that. So that's something I've always watched with admiration. And that is something that I've tried to model, but not by duplicating all of your rules, but simply having rules certainly helps a lot. Yeah. And I think that the one thing I want to emphasize on that last little piece that we talked about on the investing side, the reason why 80% of my stuff is in standard, boring index funds, bond funds, things like that is because I know how risky the rest of it is. And I expect to lose a lot of it. So I would never advocate,

well, first of all, I'm not even in the position to give investment advice. I'm not legally allowed to. But I wouldn't advocate investing more than you can lose. Because you never know. Because there's so many other factors. You can have the best company on earth and you can have a downturn in the market that's going to last a decade and you're still going to be underwater. And so you always have to factor that in as well.

Yeah. I'm still, I would consider myself super conservative. And I also want to emphasize or maybe clarify is the right word, that you talk about ultra-risky, right? 20% ultra-risky. And it's true that each of those bets you place independently could be considered ultra-risky. But you, maybe you could speak to this, but you also have a portfolio approach and certain advantages, informational advantage and so on. I'm not talking about any public stuff, but with these super early stage companies with different types of currencies and so on, meaning cryptocurrencies and blockchain and whatnot, that you have, you think about portfolio construction and you think about allocation.

You think about bet sizing, right? So that these individually ultra-risky bets, when viewed in total, underscore the possibility that each of them could, say, return the fund, so to speak. Right? Right. So even though it's an ultra-risky, it's a collection of ultra-risky assets, the way that you approach it, while still risky, certainly, stands a very high likelihood of success. That's right. That's a classic venture rule that

it depends on whose math you're looking at, but 80 plus percent of the deals that you do will go to zero. But the ones that do make it, you're hoping are the massive thousand X kind of fund makers that you can find, especially at the really early stage. But yeah, that's part of getting comfortable with all that is saying goodbye and not taking it when things don't work out and not taking it personally. just realize it's the riskiest thing that you can do.

And some of the biggest mistake I see angel investors make without a doubt is they go out and do two deals. They go out and do three deals. You know, they'll say, I would much rather, and this is how I started out in the early days. I went out and placed five to $10,000 bets, which from an angel's point of view is really minimal dollars because most Silicon Valley angels are doing 25 to 100K chunks when they invest in a startup. I didn't have that kind of money, but I knew the math. And the math is that most of them are going to go to zero.

And so if that's the case, rather than have two companies at 25K a piece and say, I'm done, I'd rather go out and have a whole dozen of them at a much lower $5,000 to $10,000 kind of range and have a greater chance that I will find one of those crazy unicorns that's going to return all the rest of them or cover for the rest of them. So whenever I meet someone that's looking to get into that side of investing on the angel side it's always do more with less dollars in and then if you have the opportunity to buy up in the future with pro rata

and you do see something that looks like it's going to win because you're already on the cap table you can go in and purchase more shares in future rounds of financing yeah we're getting into the nitty gritty here. But yes, that could be a whole separate conversation on reserving a portion of your

annual budget for follow on with the pro rata and all that. But we can save that for our next random show. Yeah, one thing that, a last little thing I will say that I think is more broadly applicable is you mentioned like, how do you decide when to sell? This could be applied to public market investing, which most people are comfortable with. When your allocation in that risky, ultra-risky category outpaces and outgrows where all of a sudden that was 20%,

but now it's actually 40% of your portfolio, then you need to rebalance. And that's when you can do that. Yeah, the most fun is when you're ultra risky, has you locked up. So all of a sudden you're like 90%, you can't sell a goddamn thing. That's always a really stress-free experience.

Very important. That is an important point. And what should we close with? any last thoughts? one takeaway that I've had from the last 10 years I have actually become much better at this much better

at following my own advice I remember Sam Harris once I think he said to me or maybe he wrote it somewhere that wisdom is largely taking your own advice. Yeah. There's a quote, and I can't remember the attribution. Somebody on the internet can certainly tell us, and I'll put it in the show notes, but that living well is the best revenge.

That quote has really been important to me in the last few years. And it comes back to what we were discussing or what I was saying much earlier about treating myself with anger and trying to really replace that with more acceptance and understanding and compassion, which I always focused outward. I never really focused it inward. And a byproduct of that,

meaning being less angry with myself, was trying to cultivate directing less anger at other people also. And I was never a yell and scream, throw plates against the wall kind of guy, but I would feel intense anger when I was wronged or felt wronged, right? And I mean, if you've been in the business world long enough, or if you've had enough relationships, like you've been fucked at some point and not in the good way. And I would get very upset. And I would fantasize. I wouldn't always actualize, but I'd fantasize about the kind of eye for an eye type retaliation. And the reality was that I very, very rarely indulged in that.

But... You very rarely took eyes? I very rarely took eyes. As Colonel Hackworth, what's his first name? I'm blanking on stuff. Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to smash a mosquito with a sledgehammer, something like that, or smash a fly with a sledgehammer. I think there is a time and place for that, don't get me wrong. But one doesn't want to set precedent in some unfavorable way. But the point being that I've become much better, and I'm not going to mention this person by name, but very well-known person has, as a reminder on his screensaver on his laptop, let it go. And this is a very accomplished person. I actually consider him to be very zen and emotionally resilient and calm. Nonetheless, he has that

reminder, let it go, on his desktop. And I have realized, tying in this energetic management that living well is the best revenge. If someone's really fucked you and they're that person, chances are they're not very happy. That's not always the case. There are some super aggressive, Dr. Evil, narcissist assholes who are quite happy. I hate to tell people out there, but they do exist. Nonetheless, a lot of the people who do awful things or break their word or whatever are pretty miserable. And letting them wallow in their own misery and not engaging because it will contaminate your experience

has been really key for me. Letting it go to the extent possible. And just living well is the best revenge has really stuck with me. The best thing you can do is, yeah, live your life. I think what you just said is really, it's interesting in that the way I've always looked at it is, if someone is being very verbally aggressive with you or angry or trying to push their energy onto you, if you take that and carry it on and then release it to other people, you're just furthering their agenda of spreading that energy. And letting it

go is just the ability to actually set them free in a way. You're releasing that negative energy and you're just letting it dissipate. And it's such a freeing thing. It's a beautiful thing if you think of it like that. You've taught me a lot with this in certain instances. I remember I got attacked by some troll, as trolls will do, many years ago. This was a long time ago. Yeah, I remember this. And I think, well, let's see, you might have a different example. And you said something like, Tim, do you really want to engage in a fight with someone with infinite time?

And I was like, no, I don't. When you phrase it that way, absolutely not. And you've given me, because of course, coming out of Digg and sort of early days days you had far more mileage with yeah online well i remember yeah i don't know if you remember this but i think i told you also that i was like when was the last time you've left a negative comment on somebody's blog i've been like fuck you on somebody's blog and like anonymously and it's like uh i don't think i've ever done that yeah because you're not that kind of person yeah right like think of like the kind of person that's engaging with you here and you don't need to it's just the the one, I don't think I've ever done that. Yeah, because you're not that kind of person. Think of the kind of person that's engaging with you here. And you don't need to.

It's just the one thing people don't realize about the internet and that I learned through a school of hard knocks is that just like in society, if you were to go and put 500 people in a room, there are going to be some assholes in that room. Some completely dicks that are mean-spirited people that want to see other people in misery. The internet is no different. You get a group of people, thousands, hundreds of thousands, and there are groups of very evil people. If you know that, then you can just be like, oh, that's just one of those evil people.

Yeah, exactly. When you walk by them on the sidewalk, you may not notice, but they're there. And another quote that has kind of stuck with me, and I'm blanking on the attribution. This is a very famous quote. But the paraphrase is, don't wrestle with pigs because it just makes you filthy and it makes the pig happy. And it's just like, yeah, there's nothing to be, there's very little to be gained from engaging with that. Yeah, so my final quote for the day on my side, since you gave yours, is from that Michael Singer course that I took on Surrender, which I think is a phenomenal video course.

But he says something in there that stuck with me, where he says, serve the moment, which I thought was really interesting. Just this idea of being so present that you're just serving that moment in time. It's just a beautiful thing if you can pull it off. How do you use that? I like the connotation of that, but did you use that with yourself? Yeah, I just think like where's my head right now? Am I really giving my focus and attention

and brain space to what's going on right now? Am I serving the people around me to the fullest at this point in time. And that can be simple things from paying attention to my daughter when she's playing and engaging with that versus being on my phone. Yeah. Um, you know,

to worrying about something or thinking about something in the future that may or may not happen to, you know, wanting to gouge somebody's eye out. Like we mentioned, like those are, that's not serving the moment. That's,

that's serving the imaginary land. Yeah. It's fighting with sock puppets. Yeah. And I really meant it earlier when I said I was really struck because you've seen me through many chapters. I've seen you through many chapters over many years. And there have been times when I've seen you, and this is the contrast, right? There was a time when if you were sitting down with sort of nothing, no project to work on, I would see you on your phone, and when I was home with you, I came up, and you're just sitting there sipping tea, looking at your daughter, playing with blocks or whatever she was doing, unrushed and fully paying attention. And that might sound quaint, it might sound simple, but if we look at the technological forces

and the financial incentives and the funding and market caps of these companies and the armies of PhDs who are attempting to do just about anything to make that impossible, it becomes all the more noteworthy, I think, and all the more valuable to have practices and reminders that help you to have those kinds of moments. Right? Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy for you, man. It's, it's been really nice to see you same dude

we didn't say this on the show earlier but I'm really stoked with your girlfriend now that shall go unnamed she's amazing I got a chance to hang out with her and meet her when you're out here it's really cool to see you happy and

I'm excited for you to have babies soon. So that's all I'll say. Well, you know, it may not be that far off. We shall see. We shall see. But, um, nice to see your face and hear your voice brother, as always, uh, please give, uh, give my love to the fam and, um, you want to share any particular resources or point people anywhere if they'd like to learn what you're up to or see what you're up to?

I'd say most of the stuff I publish I do on Instagram so I'm just Instagram at Kevin Rose and then yeah definitely check out the iOS app Less Less Drinking I think it'll help those of you out there that want to be a little bit more mindful about the beverages you consume. It's just a fun little project we're working on.

One, zero, two for intermittent fasting. Dude, we hit, I don't even think I told you this, we hit 1.3 million monthly fasters now. Not fast, but people fasting. People. on zero. That's incredible. We added 300,000 people this last 30 days.

Wow. So it's nuts. I need your help with my email list. That's incredible. Congratulations. And I'm excited for 2020. I'm really excited about it. And yeah, I don't have

much everybody can find me at tim.blog and check out the writing I'm going to be doing more writing certainly love the podcast I'm going to continue to do that but in service of eventually getting to the point where I'm working on this book on healing and

psycho-emotional dynamics in a very concrete way. I mean, it's not going to be highfalutin conceptual. It'll be like in the trenches with some crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy fucking stories. I mean, if you imagine a kind of four-hour body, but for mind and emotion, it would be like that. But much crazier. Are you using 4-Hour anywhere? Yeah. I think I'm retiring the 4-Hour jersey. You're retiring the 4-Hour?

I'm retiring the 4-Hour jersey. Yeah. It's like I still get joy out of it whenever I see 4-Hour somewhere. I remember when I saw the 4-Hour cleaners in San Francisco and I sent you a photo of it. Yeah, I remember that. It's on Lombard or whatever. I want you to be known for that forever.

Yeah, well, you know, we think we know what we're doing and then we're like, oh my god, the blessing and the curse that will chase me forever, here it is. But, you know, there's certainly far worse prefixes, so I'll take it for now.

But love doing the random show, man man let's do more of these and uh let's uh let's meet up in person before too long let's do it sounds good hey guys this is tim again just a few more things before you take off number one this is five bullet friday do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found

or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. These days, as you know, the million messages per minute, not enough hours in the day. How do you really catch people's attention? This is where LinkedIn can help. With LinkedIn ads, you can catch the right professionals, the right people at the right time. And I'll tell you how I'm using them personally in a minute. LinkedIn ads can drive traffic to landing pages, for instance, engagement, and for many of you, most importantly, conversions, whether that's registrations for an event, downloads

of white papers and eBooks, or other important metrics. Me, personally, I'm going to be testing LinkedIn ads to drive signups to my free newsletter, Five Below Friday, which I've realized drives just about everything else. With precise targeting through LinkedIn, entrepreneurs, startups, and SMBs, small, medium-sized businesses, can better and more cost-effectively reach the people who matter. To them, specifically. With more than 62 million decision-makers on LinkedIn, you're able to connect with the business leaders or just the target audience who are most relevant to your company

and deliver a clear call to action. That's always where I focus a lot of my energy, obviously. Headline and call to action. LinkedIn Ads allows you to cut through the clutter and ensure your messages are getting through to the people you most want to target. So huge, medium sized and small businesses alike are all making the most out of LinkedIn ads, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, you name it. So try it for yourself. LinkedIn is offering a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit to launch your first campaign. Simply visit linkedin.com slash TFS as in Tim Ferriss show.

Again, that's linkedin.com slash TFS. Terms and conditions apply. This episode of the Tim Ferriss show is brought to you by Calm. I once asked LeBron James, you've probably heard of him, what is the single most important element of his training regimen? And I may have edged into it slightly differently, but in effect, that's what I was asking. And you know what he said? He did not say wind sprints, cryotherapy, maybe egg white omelets with a side of butternut squash. No, no. And although it sounds delicious, no. What he focused on, what he said was sleep. Whether you're an athlete, programmer, or student, healthy sleep, that is restorative sleep, is essential to peak performance. It strengthens your immune system, improves cognitive function,

problem solving, decision making, it gives you creativity and energy, or at least certainly fosters all those things that you want to bring into your day. And I've suffered with sleep, or I should say poor sleep, for a very long time and have sought out different tools to help me optimize and improve not just the duration, but the quality of my sleep. And as a lot of us know, there's a common problem. Sound sleep is a rare thing. And this is particularly true when you're hyper-caffeinated, hyper-connected, hyper-stimulated in a modern digital world.

But there is a place to get rest. And that is Calm, the number one app for sleep downloaded by more than 60 million people. It's really easy to download. Just download Calm and you'll find a whole library of programs designed to help you with healthy sleep, like soundscapes, guided meditations, and more than 100 sleep stories narrated by soothing voices like those of LeVar Burton and Nick Offerman. Right now, listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show, that's you guys, get 40% off a Calm premium subscription

at calm.com slash Tim. That's C-A-L-M dot com slash Tim. To quote LeBron himself, you want to seize the day, you got to sleep the night. Check it out. Go to calm.com slash Tim. Get calm and get better sleep. Time to restore.