The Tim Ferriss Show - #442: Tribe of Mentors — Naval Ravikant, Susan Cain, and Yuval Noah Harari

Starting point is 00:00:00 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would seem the perfect time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Hello boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode will feature some of my favorite advice and

Starting point is 00:00:31 profiles from Tribe of Mentors. Thousands of you have asked for years for the audiobook versions of Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors, and they are now both finally available at audible.com slash Ferriss. Today's episode will focus on my first chapter in Tribe of Mentors, as well as profiles of Naval Ravikant, Susan Cain, and Yuval Noah Harari. Just a few notes on the format before we dive in. I recorded the introduction myself and selected three fantastic top-ranked narrators to handle the rest. The short bios, which you'll hear at the beginning of each profile, are read by Cleo Griffith. Ray Porter reads my words as well as those of the male guests. The words of female guests are performed by Therese Plummer. Tribe of Mentors is the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure

Starting point is 00:01:15 book. It's a compilation of tools, tactics, and habits from more than 100 of the world's top performers. From iconic entrepreneurs to elite athletes, from artists to billionaire investors, their short profiles can help you answer some of life's most challenging questions, achieve extraordinary results, and hopefully transform your life as they have mine. I'm really happy with how this book turned out, and the universe helped me to pull off some miracles in Tribe of Mentors with guests like Ben Stiller, Temple Grandin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Yuval Noah Harari, who you'll hear in this episode, Ariana Huffington, Mark Benioff, Terry Crews, Dan Gable, and many, many more. It includes a lot of the people I grew up viewing as idols or demigods.

Starting point is 00:01:52 So thanks for that, universe. And if you only get one thing out of this book, let it be this. In a world where nobody really knows anything, you have the incredible freedom to continually reinvent yourself and forge new paths, no matter how strange. So embrace your weird self. There's no one right answer, only better questions for you. I wish you luck as you forge your own path. Please enjoy this episode. And if you'd like to listen to the 100 plus profiles outside of these examples from Tribe of Mentors, just check out audible.com forward slash Ferris. To all of my companions on the path, may you be a force for good in this world and see the same in yourselves. And remember, as Rumi once wrote, what you seek is seeking you. Introduction. The only true voyage would be not to travel through a hundred

Starting point is 00:02:48 different lands with the same pair of eyes, but to see the same land through a hundred different pairs of eyes. Marcel Proust. Albert grunted. Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions? Mort thought for a moment. No, he said eventually. What? There was silence. Then Albert straightened up and said, damned if I know, probably they get answers and serves them right. Terry Pratchett in Mort. To explain why I wrote this book, I really need to start with when. 2017 was an unusual year for me. The first six months were a slow simmer, and then within a matter of weeks, I turned 40. My first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, had its 10th anniversary, several people in my circle of friends died,

Starting point is 00:03:37 and I stepped on stage to explain how I narrowly avoided committing suicide in college. Truth be told, I never thought I'd make it to 40. My first book was rejected 27 times by publishers. The things that worked out weren't supposed to work, so I realized on my birthday I had no plan for after 40. As often happens at forks in the path, college graduation, quarter-life crisis, midlife crisis, kids leaving home, retirement, and so on, questions started to bubble to the surface. Were my goals actually my own or simply what I thought I should want? How much of life had I missed from underplanning or overplanning? How could I be kinder to myself? How could I better say no to the noise to better say yes to the adventures I craved? How could I best reassess my life, my priorities, my view of the world, my place in the noise, to better say yes to the adventures I craved. How could I best reassess

Starting point is 00:04:26 my life, my priorities, my view of the world, my place in the world, and my trajectory through the world? So many things, all the things. One morning, I wrote down the questions as they came, hoping for a glimmer of clarity. Instead, I felt a wave of anxiety. The list was overwhelming. Noticing that I was holding my breath, I paused and took my eyes off the paper. Then, I did as I often do, whether considering a business decision, personal relationship, or otherwise. I asked myself the one question that helps answer many others. What would this look like if it were easy? This could be anything.

Starting point is 00:05:09 That morning, it was answering a laundry list of big questions. What would this look like if it were easy? It's such a lovely and deceptively leveraged question. It's easy to convince yourself that things need to be hard, that if you're not redlining, you're not trying hard enough. This leads us to look for paths of most resistance, often creating unnecessary hardship in the process. But what happens if we frame things in terms of elegance instead of strain?

Starting point is 00:05:38 Sometimes we find incredible results with ease instead of stress. Sometimes we solve the problem by completely reframing it. And that morning, by journaling on this question, what would this look like if it were easy, in longhand, an idea presented itself. 99% of the page was useless, but there was one seed of a possibility. What if I assembled a tribe of mentors to help me? More specifically, what if I asked

Starting point is 00:06:02 more than 100 brilliant people the very questions I wanted to answer for myself, or somehow got them to guide me in the right direction? Would it work? I had no idea, but I did know one thing. If the easy approach failed, the unending labor-in-the-salt-mines approach was always waiting in the wings.

Starting point is 00:06:20 Pain is never out of season if you go shopping for it. So, why not spend a week test driving the path of least resistance? And so it began. First, I scribbled down a list of dream interviewees, which started as one page and quickly became 10. It had to be a list with no limitations, no one too big, too out of reach, or too hard to find. Could I get the Dalai Lama, the incredible Temple Grandin, my personal white whale, author Neil Gaiman, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali? I wrote out the most ambitious, eclectic, unusual list possible. Next, I needed to create an incentive to encourage people to respond, so I worked on a book deal. Be in my book might work. From the outset, I told my publisher

Starting point is 00:07:05 that it also might not work and that I'd return the advance if so. Then I started pitching my little heart out. I sent an identical set of 11 questions to some of the most successful, wildly varied, and well-known people on the planet with, answer your favorite three to five questions, or more if the spirit moves you.

Starting point is 00:07:25 After hitting send dozens of times, I clutched my hands to my excited writer's chest with bated breath, to which the universe replied with, silence, crickets. For 12 to 24 hours, nothing. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. And then there was a faint trickle through the ether, a whisper of curiosity and a handful of clarifying questions. Some polite declines followed, and then came the torrent. Nearly all of the people I reached out to are busy beyond belief, and I expected I would get short, rushed responses from a few of them at best. What I got back instead were some of the most thoughtful answers I'd ever received,

Starting point is 00:08:05 whether on paper, in person, or otherwise. In the end, there were more than 100 respondents. Granted, the so-called easy path took thousands of back-and-forth emails and Twitter direct messages, hundreds of phone calls, many marathons at a treadmill desk, and more than a few bottles of wine during late-night writing sessions, but it worked. Did it always work? No. I didn't get the Dalai Lama this time, and at least half the people on my list didn't respond or decline the invitation.

Starting point is 00:08:36 But it worked enough to matter, and that is what matters. In cases where the outreach worked, the questions did all the heavy lifting. Eight of the questions were all the heavy lifting. Eight of the questions were fine-tuned, rapid-fire questions from my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, the first business interview podcast to pass 100 million downloads, now at around 400 to 500 million downloads. These questions have been refined over more than 400 interviews with guests such as actor-musician Jamie Foxx, general Stanley McChrystal, and writer Maria Popova. I knew that these questions worked, that interviewees generally liked them, and that they could help me in my own life. The remaining three questions were new

Starting point is 00:09:17 additions that I hoped would solve some of my most chronic problems. Before taking them into the wild, I tested, vetted, and wordsmithed them with friends who are world-class performers in their own right. The older I get, the more time I spend, as a percentage of each day, on crafting better questions. In my experience, going from 1x to 10x, from 10x to 100x, and from 100x to, when Lady Luck really smiles, 1000x returns in various areas has been a product of better questions. John Dewey's dictum that a problem well put is half solved applies. Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask. After all, conscious thinking is largely asking and answering questions in your own head.

Starting point is 00:10:05 If you want confusion and heartache, ask vague questions. If you want uncommon clarity and results, ask uncommonly clear questions. Fortunately, this is a skill you can develop. No book can give you all of the answers, but this book can train you to ask better questions. Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has said that the stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. Substitute master learner for novel, and you have my philosophy of life. Often, all that stands between you and what

Starting point is 00:10:41 you want is a better set of questions. Now I'll list the 11 questions I chose for this book. It's important to listen to the full questions and explanations as I shorten them throughout the rest of the book. Special thanks to Brian Koppelman, Amelia Boone, Chase Jarvis, Naval Ravikant, and others for their hugely helpful feedback. First, let us take a quick pass of the 11 questions. Some of them might seem trite or useless at first glance, but lo, things are not always what they appear. Number one, what is the book or books you've given most as a gift and why?

Starting point is 00:11:17 Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? Number two, what purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months or in recent memory? My readers love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc. Number three, how has a failure or apparent failure set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure of yours? Number four, if you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions of people, what would it say and why? It could be a few words

Starting point is 00:11:57 or a paragraph. If helpful, it can be someone else's quote. Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by? Number five, what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you've ever made? It could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc. Number six, what is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? Number seven, in the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life? Number eight, what advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the so-called real world? What advice should they ignore?

Starting point is 00:12:45 Number nine, what are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? Number 10. In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? Distractions, invitations, etc. What new realizations and or approaches helped? Any other tips? Number 11. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? If helpful, what questions do you ask yourself?

Starting point is 00:13:09 Now let's take a look at each of these questions and I'll explain why they appear to work. You might ask, why should I care? I'm not an interviewer. To that, my response is simple. If you want to build or foster a world-class network, you need to interact in a way that earns it. All of these points will help. For instance, I spent weeks testing the order of questions for optimal responses. To me, proper sequencing is the secret sauce,

Starting point is 00:13:34 whether you're trying to learn a new language in eight to 12 weeks, overcome a lifelong fear of swimming, as I did, or pick the brain of a potential mentor over coffee. Good questions in the wrong order get bad responses. Conversely, you can punch well above your weight class by thinking about sequencing, as most people don't. For example, the billboard question

Starting point is 00:13:55 is one of my podcast listener and guest favorites, but it's heavy. It stumps or intimidates a lot of people. I didn't want to scare busy people off who might opt out with a quick, sorry Tim, I just don't have bandwidth for this right now. So, what to do? Easy, let them warm up with lightweight questions.

Starting point is 00:14:15 For example, most gifted books, purchase of under $100, which are less abstract and more concrete. In the following descriptions, my explanations get shorter towards the end of the 11 questions as many of the points carry over or apply to all of them. Number one, what is the book or books you've given most as a gift and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly

Starting point is 00:14:38 influenced your life? What's your favorite book? Seems like a good question. So innocent, so simple. In practice, it's terrible. The people I interview have read hundreds or thousands of books, so it's a labor-intensive question for them, and they rightly worry about picking a favorite, which then gets quoted and put in articles, Wikipedia, etc. Most gifted is lower risk, an easier search query, in other words, easier to recall, and implies benefits for a broader spectrum of people, which the idiosyncratic favorite does not. For the curious and impatient among you, here are a few books of many that came up a lot in this book. Man's Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankel.

Starting point is 00:15:21 The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. If you'd like to see all of the recommended books in one place, including a list of the top 20 most recommended from this book and Tools of Titans, my previous book, you can find all the goodies at tim.blog forward slash booklist. Number two, what purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months or in recent memory? My fans love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, et cetera. This might seem like a throwaway, but it isn't. It provides an easy entry point for busy interviewees while providing readers with something immediately actionable. The deeper questions

Starting point is 00:16:11 elicit more profound answers, but profundity is the fiber of knowledge. It requires intensive digestion. To keep marching forward in the meanwhile, humans, yours truly included, need short-term rewards. In this book, I accomplish that with questions that provide tangible, easy, and often fun answers. Scooby snacks for your hard-working soul, if you want to think of it that way. To get the heavier lifting done, these breathers are important. Number three, how has a failure or apparent failure set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure of yours? This one is particularly important to me. As I wrote in Tools of Titans, the superheroes you

Starting point is 00:16:52 have in your mind, idols, icons, elite athletes, billionaires, etc., are nearly all walking flaws who've maximized one or two strengths. Humans are imperfect creatures. You don't succeed because you have no weaknesses. You succeed because you find your unique strengths and focus on developing habits around them. Everyone is fighting a battle and has fought battles you know nothing about. The heroes in this book are no different. Everyone struggles. Number four, if you could have one gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions of people, what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. If helpful, it can be someone

Starting point is 00:17:35 else's quote. Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by? This one's pretty self-explanatory, so I'll skip the commentary. For would-be interviewers, though, the if-helpful portion is often critical for getting good answers. Number five, what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you've ever made? Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc. This is also self-explanatory, or so it seems. With questions like this and the next, I found it productive to give interviewees a real-world answer, an example. In a live interview, it buys them time to think,

Starting point is 00:18:13 and in text, say an email, it gives them a template. For this question, for instance, I gave everyone the following. Sample answer from Amelia Boone, one of the world's top endurance athletes, sponsored by Big Brands and four-time world champion in obstacle course racing, OCR. In 2011, I shelled out $450 to participate in the first World's Toughest Mudder, a brand new 24-hour obstacle race. Saddled with law school debt, it was a big expenditure for me, and I had no business thinking I could even complete the race, let alone compete in it. But I ended up being one of 11 finishers out of a thousand participants of that race,

Starting point is 00:18:50 and it altered the course of my life, leading to my career in obstacle racing and multiple world championships. Had I not plunked down the cash for that entry fee, none of that would have happened. Number six, what is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love i was first asked this when interviewed by my friend chris young scientist co-author of modernist cuisine and ceo of chef steps search jewel sous vide for more on that before responding and while sitting on stage at the town hall in seattle i said oh that's that's a good question. I'm going to steal that. So I did. This question has deeper implications than you might expect.

Starting point is 00:19:30 Answers prove a number of helpful things. Number one, everyone is crazy, so you're not alone. Number two, if you want more OCD-like behaviors, my interviewees are happy to help. And three, corollary to number one, so-called normal people are just crazy people you don't know well enough. If you think you're uniquely neurotic, I hate to deliver the news, but every human is Woody Allen in some part of their life.

Starting point is 00:19:55 Here's the sample answer I gave for this question, taken from a live interview and slightly edited for length. Sample answer from Cheryl Strayed, best-selling author of Wild. Here's my whole theory of the sandwich. Every bite should be as much like the previous bite as possible. Do you follow? If there's a clump of tomatoes here, but then there's hummus, everything has to be as uniform as possible. So any sandwich I'm ever given, I open it up and I immediately completely rearrange the sandwich. Number seven, in the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life? This is short, effective, and not particularly nuanced. It had particular application to my midlife reassessment. And quite frankly, I'm surprised I don't hear questions like this more often. Number eight, what advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the real world?

Starting point is 00:20:52 What advice should they ignore? The second ignore sub-question is essential. We're prone to asking, what should I do? But less prone to asking, what shouldn't I do? Since what we don't do determines what we can do, I like asking about not-to-do lists. Number nine, what are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? This is a close cousin of the previous question. Many problems of focusing are best solved by defining what to ignore. Number 10. In the last five years,

Starting point is 00:21:25 what have you become better at saying no to? Distractions, invitations, etc. What new realizations and or approaches have helped? Any other tips? Saying yes is easy. Saying no is hard. I wanted help with the latter, as did many of the people in this book,

Starting point is 00:21:42 and some answers really delivered the goods. Number 11. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? If helpful, what questions do you ask yourself? If your mind is beach balling, that's a nerdy Mac reference to when a computer freezes, nothing else matters much until that is resolved. Once again, the secondary if helpful question is often critical. Since any greatness in this book is from other people, I feel very comfortable saying that no matter where you are in life, you will love some of what is here. In the same breath, no matter how much I cry and pout, you will find some of what's inside boring,

Starting point is 00:22:21 useless, or seemingly stupid. Out of roughly 140 profiles, I expect you to like 70, love 35, and have your life changed by perhaps 17. Amusingly, the 70 you dislike will be precisely the 70 someone else needs. Life would be boring if we all followed exactly the same rules, and you will want to pick and choose. The more surprising part of all of this is Tribe of Mentors changes with you. As time passes and life unfolds, things you initially swatted away like a distraction can reveal depth and become unimaginably important.

Starting point is 00:22:56 That cliche you ignored like a throwaway fortune cookie, suddenly it makes sense and moves mountains. Conversely, things you initially found enlightening might have run their course, like a wonderful high school coach who needs to hand you off to a college coach for you to reach the next level. There's no expiration date on the advice in this book as there's no uniformity. In the following hours, you'll hear advice from 30-something Wunderkinds and seasoned veterans in their 60s and 70s. The hope is that each time you listen to this book, not unlike with the I Ching or Tao Te Ching,

Starting point is 00:23:28 something new will grab you, shake your perception of reality, illuminate your follies, confirm your intuitions, or correct your course that all-important one degree. The entire spectrum of human emotion and experience can be found in this book, from hilarious to heart-wrenching,

Starting point is 00:23:44 from failure to success, and from life to death. May you welcome it all. On my coffee table at home, I have a piece of driftwood. Its sole purpose is to display a quote by Anais Nin, which I see every day. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. It's a short reminder that success can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations we are willing to have and by the number of uncomfortable actions we are willing to take.

Starting point is 00:24:12 The most fulfilled and effective people I know, world-famous creatives, billionaires, thought leaders, so on and so forth, look at their life's journey as perhaps 25% finding themselves and 75% creating themselves. This book is not intended to be a passive experience. It's intended to be a call to action.

Starting point is 00:24:31 You are the author of your own life, and it's never too late to replace the stories you tell yourself and the world. It's never too late to begin a new chapter, add a surprise twist, or change genres entirely. What would it look like if it were easy? Here's to picking up the pen with a smile. Big things are coming. Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself.

Starting point is 00:24:58 You'll always know. Naval Ravikant. Twitter. At Naval. Startupboy.com Naval Ravikant is the CEO and co-founder of AngelList. He previously co-founded Vast.com and ePinions.com

Starting point is 00:25:17 which went public as part of Shopping.com. He is an active angel investor and has invested in more than 100 companies including many unicorn mega-successes. His deals include Twitter, Uber, Yammer, Postmates, Wish, Thumbtack, and OpenDNS. In recent years, he is the person I call most for startup-related advice. What is the book or books you've given most as a gift and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? Total Freedom by Jiddu Krishnamurti,

Starting point is 00:25:56 a rationalist's guide to the perils of the human mind, the spiritual book that I keep returning to. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. A history of the human species with observations, frameworks, and mental models that will have you looking at history and your fellow humans differently. Everything by Matt Ridley. Matt is a scientist, optimist, and forward thinker. Genome, the Red Queen, the origins of virtue, the rational optimist, they're all great. How has a failure or apparent failure

Starting point is 00:26:31 set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure of yours? Suffering is a moment of clarity when you can no longer deny the truth of a situation and are forced into uncomfortable change. I'm lucky that I didn't get everything I wanted in my life or I'd be happy with my first good job, my college sweetheart, my college town. Being poor when young led to making money when old. Losing faith in my bosses

Starting point is 00:27:01 and elders made me independent and an adult. Almost getting into the wrong marriage helped me recognize and enter the right one. Falling sick made me focus on my health. It goes on and on. Inside suffering is the seed of change. If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and why? Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. Desire is a driver, a motivator. In fact, a sincere and uncompromising desire placed above everything else is nearly always fulfilled. But every judgment, every preference,

Starting point is 00:27:46 every setback spawns its own desire, and soon we drown in them, each one a problem to be solved, and we suffer until it's fulfilled. Happiness, or at least peace, is the sense that nothing is missing in this moment, no desires running amok. It's okay to have a desire, but pick a big one and pick it carefully. Drop the small ones. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you've ever made? Every book I read that wasn't assigned to me or that I didn't read with a purpose in mind. The genuine love for reading itself, when cultivated, is a superpower. We live in the age of Alexandria when every book and every piece of knowledge ever written down is a fingertip away.

Starting point is 00:28:39 The means of learning are abundant. It's the desire to learn that's scarce. Cultivate that desire by reading what you want, not what you're supposed to. In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life? Happiness is a choice you make and a skill you develop. The mind is just as malleable as the body. We spend so much time and effort trying to change the external world, other people, and our own bodies, all the while accepting ourselves the way we were programmed in our youths. We accept the voice that

Starting point is 00:29:20 talks to us in our head all the time as the source of all truth. But all of it is malleable. Every day is new. And memory and identity are burdens from the past that prevent us from living freely in the present. What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the real world? What advice should they ignore? Advice. Follow your intellectual curiosity over whatever is hot right now.

Starting point is 00:29:53 If your curiosity ever leads you to a place where society eventually wants to go, you'll get paid extremely well. Do everything you were going to do, but with less angst, less suffering, less emotion. Everything takes time. Ignore the news, complainers, angry people, high-conflict people, anyone trying to scare you about a danger that isn't clear and present.

Starting point is 00:30:21 Don't do things that you know are morally wrong, not because someone is watching, but because you are. Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself. You'll always know. Ignore the unfairness. There is no fair. Play the hand that you're dealt to the best of your ability. People are highly consistent, so you will eventually get what you deserve, and so will they. In the end, everyone gets the same judgment. Death. What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?

Starting point is 00:30:59 You're too young. Most of history was built by young people. They just got credit when they were older. The only way to truly learn something is by doing it. Yes, listen to guidance, but don't wait. In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? I say no to nearly everything. I make a lot fewer short-term compromises. I aspire to only work with people who I can work with forever, to invest my time in activities that are a joy unto themselves, and to focus on the extremely long term., I have no time for short-term things, dinners with people I won't see again, tedious ceremonies to please tedious people, traveling to places that I wouldn't go to on

Starting point is 00:31:55 vacation. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? Memento mori. Remember that you have to die. All of this will go to nothing. Remember before you were born? Just like that. It all happened so suddenly and cinematically that it might defy belief. I remembered that actually I had always wanted to be a writer. So I started writing that very evening. Susan Cain Twitter at Susan Cain

Starting point is 00:32:34 Facebook forward slash author Susan Cain quietrev.com Susan Cain is the co-founder of Quiet Revolution and the author of the bestsellers Quiet Power, The Secret Strengths of Introverted Kids, and Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking,

Starting point is 00:32:58 which has been translated into 40 languages and been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than four years. Quiet has been named the best book of the year by Fast Company magazine, which also named Susan one of its most creative people in business. Susan is the co-founder of the Quiet Schools Network and the Quiet Leadership Institute, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications. Her TED Talk has been viewed more than 17 million times and was named by Bill Gates as one of his all-time favorite talks.

Starting point is 00:33:37 How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure of yours? Many, many moons ago, I used to be a corporate lawyer. I was an ambivalent corporate lawyer at best, and anyone could have told you that I was in the wrong profession, but still. I dedicated tons of time, three years of law school, one year of clerking for a federal judge, and six and a half years at a Wall Street firm, to be exact, and had lots of deep and treasured relationships with fellow attorneys. But the day came when I was well along on partnership track that the senior partner in my firm came to my office and told me that I wouldn't be put up for partner on schedule.

Starting point is 00:34:19 To this day, I don't know whether he meant that I would never be put up for partner or just delayed for a good long while. All I know is that I embarrassingly burst into tears right in front of him and then asked for a leave of absence. I left work that very afternoon and bicycled round and round Central Park and New York City, having no idea what to do next. I thought I'd travel. I thought I'd stare at the walls for a while. Instead, and it all happened so suddenly and cinematically that it might defy belief, I remembered that actually I had always wanted to be a writer. So I started writing that very evening.

Starting point is 00:34:57 The next day I signed up for a class at NYU in creative nonfiction writing. And the next week, I attended the first session of class and knew that I was finally home. I had no expectation of ever making a living through writing, but it was crystal clear to me that from then on,

Starting point is 00:35:13 writing would be my center and that I would look for freelance work that would give me lots of free time to pursue it. If I had succeeded at making partner right on schedule, I might still be miserably negotiating corporate transactions 16 hours a day. It's not that I'd never thought about what else I might like to do other than law,

Starting point is 00:35:33 but until I had the time and space to think about life outside the hermetic culture of a law practice, I couldn't figure out what I really wanted to do. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you've ever made? Seven years of time to write Quiet. I didn't care how long it took, and though I wanted the book to succeed, I felt good about the investment of time regardless of the outcome, because I felt so certain that writing in general, and writing that book in particular, was the right thing to do. I handed in a first draft after the first two years, which my editor, correctly, pronounced

Starting point is 00:36:11 crappy. She put it only slightly more delicately. She said, take all the time you need, start from scratch, and get it right. I left her office elated, because I agreed with her. I knew that I needed years to get it right. After all, I'd never published a thing before Quiet, so I was learning how to write a book from scratch. And I was thrilled that she was giving me the time. Most publishing houses rush books to market long before they're fully baked. If she'd done that, there would be no Quiet Revolution.

Starting point is 00:36:43 What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? I love sad, minor key music. I find it elevating and transcendent, and not really sad at all. I think that's because this kind of music is really about the fragility, and therefore the preciousness, of life and love. Leonard Cohen is my patron saint. Try Dance Me to the End of Love, or Famous Blue Raincoat, or pretty much anything else he's ever written, including, of course, Hallelujah, his best-known song, but really only the tip of the Leonard iceberg. Also, Hinak Yaffa, You Are Beautiful, by Idan O'Achel.

Starting point is 00:37:25 It's a gorgeous song of longing for the beloved, but really, it's about longing in general. My favorite word in any language is saudade, the Portuguese word that's at the heart of Brazilian and Portuguese culture and music. It means, roughly, a sweet longing for a beloved thing or person that will likely never return. Try the music of Madre Deus or Cesaria Evora. My next book is sort of on this topic.

Starting point is 00:37:54 What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the real world? What advice should they ignore? You will hear so many stories of people who risked everything in order to achieve this or that goal. What advice should they ignore? Just the opposite. You should set up your life so that it is as comfortable and happy as possible, and so that it accommodates your creative work. I often ask myself whether all those years of Wall Street law were a waste, given that what I was really meant to do the whole time was to explore human psychology and to tell the truth in writing about what it's like to be alive. And the answer is no.

Starting point is 00:38:44 It wasn't a waste, for many reasons. First, because I learned so much about the so-called real world that would have otherwise remained a permanent mystery. Second, because a front row seat at a Wall Street negotiation is as good a place as any to study the occasional ridiculousness of humans. But finally, because it gave me a financial cushion, when I was ready to try a creative light. It wasn't a huge cushion, as I hadn't saved that much, but it made a huge difference. Even once I started my writing life, I spent tons of time setting up a modest freelance business, teaching people negotiation skills that I could use to

Starting point is 00:39:24 support myself for as long as it took. I told myself that my writing goal was to get something published by the time I was 75 years old. I wanted writing to be a permanent source of pleasure and never be associated with financial stress or, more generally, the pressure to achieve. Of course, I'm not saying that the smart, driven college student in your question should spend 10 years in finance before striking out creatively. But they should be planning on how they're going to make ends meet. That way, the time that they do spend with their creative projects, whether it's 30 minutes or 10 hours a day, can be all about focus, flow, and occasional glimpses of joy. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

Starting point is 00:40:08 I love espresso and would happily consume it all day. But I only allow myself one latte a day and save it for when I'm doing my creative work. Partly because it jumpstarts my mind almost magically, and partly because this has trained me, Pavlovian style, to associate writing with the pleasure of coffee. It is likely that most of what you currently learn at school will be irrelevant by the time you are 40. My best advice is to focus on personal resilience

Starting point is 00:40:43 and emotional intelligence. Yuval Noah Harari Twitter at Harari underscore Yuval Facebook tim.blog forward slash Harari dash Facebook Redirect ynharari.com

Starting point is 00:41:01 Yuval Noah Harari is the author of the international bestsellers Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus, A Brief History of Tomorrow. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 2002 and is now a lecturer in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Yuval has twice won the Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality, in 2009 and 2012. He has published numerous articles, including Armchairs, Coffee, and Authority.

Starting point is 00:41:39 Eyewitnesses and Flesh Witnesses Speak About War, 1100 to 2000, for which he won the Society for Military History's Moncado Award. His current research focuses on macrohistorical questions. What is the relation between history and biology? What is the essential difference between Homo sapiens and other animals? Is there justice in history? Does

Starting point is 00:42:06 history have a direction? Did people become happier as history unfolded? What is the book or books you've given most as a gift and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I think it is the most prophetic book of the 20th century and the most profound discussion of happiness in modern Western philosophy. It had a deep impact on my thinking about politics and happiness. And since, for me, the relationship between power and happiness is the most important question in history, Brave New World has also reshaped my understanding of history. Huxley wrote the book in 1931, with communism and fascism entrenched in Russia and Italy,

Starting point is 00:42:56 Nazism on the rise in Germany, militaristic Japan embarking on its war of conquest in China, and the entire world gripped by the Great Depression. Yet, Huxley managed to see through all these dark clouds and envision a future society without wars, famines, and plagues, enjoying uninterrupted peace, abundance, and health. It is a consumerist world which gives completely free reign to sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and whose supreme value is happiness. It uses advanced biotechnology and social engineering to make sure that everyone is always content and no one has any reason to rebel. There is no need of a secret police, concentration camps, or a ministry of

Starting point is 00:43:47 love a la Orwell's 1984. Indeed, Huxley's genius consists in showing that you could control people far more securely through love and pleasure than through violence and fear. When people read George Orwell's 1984, it is clear that he is describing something dreadfully wrong, but you are hard pressed to put your finger on it. The world is peaceful and prosperous and everyone is supremely satisfied all the time. What could possibly be wrong with that? The truly amazing thing is that when Huxley wrote Brave New World back in 1931, both he and his readers knew perfectly well that he was describing a dangerous dystopia. Yet, many readers today might easily mistake it for a utopia. Our consumerist society is actually geared to realizing Huxley's vision. Today, happiness has become the supreme value and we increasingly use biotechnology

Starting point is 00:45:08 and social engineering to ensure maximum satisfaction to all citizen customers. You want to know what could be wrong with that? Read the dialogue between Mustafa Mond, the world controller for Western Europe, and John the Savage, who lived all his life on a native reservation in New Mexico, and who is the only man in London who

Starting point is 00:45:31 still knows anything about Shakespeare or God. What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? When going on an elevator or escalator, trying to stand on the tips of my toes. How has a failure or apparent failure set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure of yours? After I published Sapiens in Hebrew and it became a bestseller in Israel, I thought it would be easy to publish an English translation of it. I translated it and sent it to various publishers, but all rejected it out of hand. I still preserve a particularly humiliating rejection letter I got from one very prominent publishing house.

Starting point is 00:46:20 So, I then tried to self-publish it on Amazon. The quality was quite dreadful, and it sold just a couple of hundred copies. I was very frustrated for some time. Then I realized that the DIY method just doesn't work, and that instead of looking for shortcuts, I needed to do it the hard and long way and rely on professional help. My husband, Itzik, who is a far better businessman than me, took over. He found us a wonderful literary agent, Deborah Harris, whose advice led us to hire an outstanding editor, Chaim Watzman, who helped me rewrite and polish the text.

Starting point is 00:47:02 With their assistance, we got a contract from Harville Secker, a division of Random House. My editor there, Michael Chavit, turned the text into a real gem and hired the best independent PR agency in the UK book market, Riot Communications, to do the PR campaign. I make a point of mentioning their names because it was only thanks to the professional work of all these experts that Sapiens became an international bestseller. Without them, it would have remained an unknown rough diamond

Starting point is 00:47:36 like so many other excellent books that nobody has heard about. From the initial failure, I learned the limits of my own abilities and the importance of going to the experts instead of looking for shortcuts. What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the real world? What advice should they ignore? Nobody really knows what the world and the job market will look like in 2040.

Starting point is 00:48:02 Hence, nobody knows what to teach young people today. Consequently, it is likely that most of what you currently learn at school will be irrelevant by the time you are 40. So what should you focus on? My best advice is to focus on personal resilience and emotional intelligence. Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts, a period of learning followed by a period of working. In the first part of life, you built a stable identity and acquired personal and professional skills. In the second part of life,

Starting point is 00:48:40 you relied on your identity and skills to navigate the world, earn a living, and contribute to society. By 2040, this traditional model will become obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives and to reinvent themselves again and again. The world of 2040 will be a very different world from today and an extremely hectic world. The pace of change is likely to accelerate even further, so people will need the ability to learn all the time and to reinvent themselves repeatedly, even at age 60. Yet, change is usually stressful, and after a certain age, most people don't like to change. When you are 16, your entire life is change, whether you like it or not. Your body is changing, your mind is changing, your relationships are changing, everything is in flux.

Starting point is 00:49:45 You are busy inventing yourself. By the time you are 40, you don't want change, you want stability. But in the 21st century, you won't be able to enjoy that luxury. If you try to hold on to some stable identity, some stable job, some stable world view, you will be left behind and the world will fly by you. So, people will need to be extremely resilient and emotionally balanced to sail through this never-ending storm and to deal with very high levels of stress. The problem is that it is very hard to teach emotional intelligence and resilience. It is not something you can learn by reading a book or listening to a lecture. The current educational model devised during the 19th century industrial revolution is bankrupt.

Starting point is 00:50:42 But so far, we haven't created a viable alternative. So don't trust the adults too much. In the past, it was a safe bet to trust adults because they knew the world quite well and the world changed slowly. But the 21st century is going to be different. Whatever the adults have learned about economics, politics, or relationships may be outdated. Similarly, don't trust technology too much. You must make technology serve you instead of you serving it. If you aren't careful, technology will start dictating your aims and enslaving you to its agenda. So you have no choice but to really get to know yourself better.

Starting point is 00:51:27 Know who you are and what you really want from life. This is, of course, the oldest advice in the book, know thyself. But this advice has never been more urgent than in the 21st century, because now you have competition. Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the government are all relying on big data and machine learning to get to know you better and better. We are not living in the era of hacking computers. We are living in the era of hacking humans. Once the corporations and governments know you better than you know yourself, they could control and manipulate you, and you won't even realize it. So if you want to stay in the game, you have to run faster than Google. Good luck. In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to?

Starting point is 00:52:21 What new realizations and or approaches helped? I have become much better at saying no to. What new realizations and or approaches helped? I have become much better at saying no to invitations, which is a matter of survival because I get dozens of invitations a week. To tell the truth, though, I'm still quite lousy at refusing. I feel so bad saying no. So, I outsourced it. My husband, who is much better not only at business but also at refusing, does most of the hard work for me. And now we hired an assistant who spends hours every day just refusing people. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you've ever made? By far, the best investment of time I ever made was to do a 10-day Vipassana meditation, www.dhamma.org retreat.

Starting point is 00:53:14 As a teenager and later as a student, I was a very troubled and restless person. The world made no sense to me and I got no answers to the big questions I had about life. In particular, I didn't understand why there was so much suffering in the world and in my own life, and what could be done about it. All I got from the people around me and from the books I read were elaborate fictions, religious myths about gods and heavens, nationalist myths about the motherland and its historical mission, romantic myths about love and adventure, or capitalist myths about economic growth and how buying and consuming stuff will make me happy. I had enough sense to realize that these were probably all fictions,

Starting point is 00:54:00 but I had no idea how to find the truth. While I was doing my doctorate at Oxford, a good friend nagged me for a year to try a vipassana meditation course. I thought it was some new age mumbo jumbo, and since I had no interest in hearing yet another mythology, I declined to go. But after a year of patient nudging, he got me to give it a chance. Previously, I knew very little about meditation and presumed it must involve all kinds of complicated mystical theories. I was therefore amazed by how practical the teaching turned out to be. The teacher at the course, S. N. Gonca, instructed the students to sit with crossed legs and closed eyes

Starting point is 00:54:45 and to focus all their attention on the breath coming in and out of their nostrils. Don't do anything, he kept saying. Don't try to control the breath or to breathe in any particular way. Just observe the reality of the present moment, whatever it may be. When the breath comes in, you just know. Now the breath is coming in. When the breath goes out, you just know. Now the breath is going out.

Starting point is 00:55:17 And when you lose your focus and your mind starts wandering in memories and fantasies, you just know. Now my mind has wandered away from the breath. It was the most important thing anybody has ever told me. The first thing I learned by observing my breath was that notwithstanding all the books I had read and all the classes I had attended at university, I knew almost nothing about my mind, and I had very little control over it. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't observe the reality of my breath coming in and out of my nostrils for more than 10 seconds before the mind wandered away. For years, I lived under the impression that I was the master of my life and the CEO of my own personal brand, but

Starting point is 00:56:05 a few hours of meditation were enough to show me that I hardly had any control of myself. I was not the CEO. I was barely the gatekeeper. I was asked to stand at the gateway of my body, the nostrils, and just observe whatever comes in or goes out. Yet after a few moments, I lost my focus and abandoned my post. It was a humbling and eye-opening experience. As the course progressed, students were taught to observe not just their breath, but sensations throughout their body, heat, pressure, pain, and so forth. The technique of vipassana is based on the insight that the flow of mind is closely interlinked with bodily sensations. Between me and the world, there are always bodily sensations. I never react to

Starting point is 00:57:01 events in the outside world. I always react to the sensations in my own body. When the sensation is unpleasant, I react with aversion. When the sensation is pleasant, I react with craving for more. Even when we think we react to what another person had done or to a distant childhood memory or to the global financial crisis, the truth is we always react to a tension in the shoulder or a spasm in the pit of the stomach. You want to know what anger is? Well, just observe the sensations that arise and pass in your body while you are angry.

Starting point is 00:57:39 I was 24 years old at the time I went to this retreat and had probably experienced anger 10,000 times previously, yet I never bothered to observe how anger actually felt. Whenever I was angry, I focused on the object of my anger, something somebody else did or said, rather than on the physical reality of the anger. I think I learned more about myself and about humans in general by observing my sensations for those 10 days than I learned in my whole life before. And to do so, I didn't have to accept any story, theory, or mythology. I just had to observe reality as it is. The most important thing I realized was that the deep source of my suffering is in the patterns of my own mind.

Starting point is 00:58:32 When I want something and it doesn't happen, my mind reacts by generating suffering. Suffering is not an objective condition in the outside world. It is a mental reaction generated by my own mind. Since that first course in 2000, I began practicing Vipassana for two hours every day. And each year I take a long meditation retreat for a month or two. It is not an escape from reality. It is getting in touch with reality. At least for two hours a day, I actually observe reality as it is,

Starting point is 00:59:11 while for the other 22 hours I get overwhelmed by emails and tweets and funny cat videos. Without the focus and clarity provided by this practice, I could not have written Sapiens and Homo Deus. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? I observe my breath for a few seconds or minutes. 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?

Starting point is 00:59:43 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me? And would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. 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.

Starting point is 01:00:26 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.

The Tim Ferriss Show - #442: Tribe of Mentors — Naval Ravikant, Susan Cain, and Yuval Noah Harari

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