The Tim Ferriss Show - #498: Josh Waitzkin and Tim Ferriss on The Cave Process, Advice from Future Selves, and Training for an Uncertain Future

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

Josh Waitzkin and Tim Ferriss on The Cave Process, Advice from Future Selves, and Training for an Uncertain Future | Brought to you by Wealthfront automated investing, Vuori comfortable and durable performance apparel, and Tonal smart home gym. More on all three below. Josh Waitzkin, author of The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance, is an eight-time national chess champion, a two-time world champion in Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands, and the first Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under nine-time world champion Marcelo Garcia.For the past 13 years, Josh has been channeling his passion for the outer limits of the learning process toward training elite mental performers in business and finance and to revolutionizing the education system through his nonprofit foundation, The Art of Learning Project. Josh is currently in the process of taking on his fourth and fifth disciplines, paddle surfing and foiling, and is an all-in father and husband.Please enjoy!*This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost. Smart investing should not feel like a rollercoaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to Wealthfront.com/Tim and open a Wealthfront account today, and you’ll get your first $5,000 managed for free, for life. Wealthfront will automate your investments for the long term. Get started today at Wealthfront.com/Tim.*This episode is also brought to you by Vuori clothing! Vuori is a new and fresh perspective on performance apparel. Perfect if you are sick and tired of traditional, old workout gear. Everything is designed for maximum comfort and versatility so that you look and feel as good in everyday life as you do working out.Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at VuoriClothing.com/Tim. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but you’ll also enjoy free shipping on any US orders over $75 and free returns.*This episode is also brought to you by Tonal! Tonal is the world’s most intelligent home gym and personal trainer. It is precision engineered and designed to be the world’s most advanced strength studio. Tonal uses breakthrough technology—like adaptive digital weights and A.I. learning—together with the best experts in resistance training so you get stronger, faster. Every program is personalized to your body using A.I., and smart features check your form in real time, just like a personal trainer.Try Tonal, the world’s smartest home gym, for 30 days in your home, and if you don’t love it, you can return it for a full refund. Visit Tonal.com for $100 off their smart accessories when you use promo code TIM21 at checkout.*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. I also love reading the reviews!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.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.

Well, hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the thought processes, the best practices, the influences, and so on that you can hopefully copy and paste into your own life in some fashion to test out the toolkits of people who are the best at what they do. My guest this episode is a return guest, Josh Waitzkin. He was in fact the second ever guest in episode two of this podcast. We've known each other a long time. Josh Waitzkin is author of The Art of Learning. He is an eight-time U.S. National Chess Champion,

a two-time world champion in Tai Chi push hands, and the first Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under nine-time world champion Marcelo Garcia, widely believed to be the greatest grappler who has ever lived, at least in the world of BJJ. For the past 12 years, maybe 13, maybe 14 now, Josh has been channeling his passion for the outer limits of the learning process towards training elite mental performers in business and finance, or finance if you prefer, and to revolutionizing the education system through his non-profit foundation, the Art of Learning Project.

Josh is currently in the process of taking on his fourth and fifth disciplines, paddle surfing and foiling. Josh is always a fantastic thought partner. He is constantly pushing back at anything that I say, which reflects sloppy thinking or imprecise thinking or consensus thinking. And he's a lovely guy. So please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with none other than Josh Waitzkin. This episode is brought to you by Tonal, T-O-N-A-L. I'm super excited about this one. And I was skeptical of it in the beginning. Tonal, quote, Tonal, T-O-N-A-L. I'm super excited about this one, and I was skeptical of it in the beginning. Tonal, quote, Tonal is the world's most intelligent home gym and personal trainer, end quote. That's the tagline from their website, folks, to give you the one-sentence summary.

And this device, it's really a system, is perfect for anyone looking to take their home workouts to the next level or someone who just wants to get maximum bang for the buck in a tiny, tiny footprint of space. Tonal is precision engineered to be the world's most advanced strength studio and personal trainer. It uses breakthrough technology of all different types to help get you stronger, faster. I was introduced to Tonal by three different friends. All of them are tech savvy. One of them is a former competitive skier who's doubled his strength in a number of movements using Tonal, even though he has a long athletic background. And I'll paint a picture for you. By eliminating traditional metal weights, dumbbells and barbells, Tonal can deliver 200

pounds of resistance, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's actually, it feels like a lot more at the high end, in a device smaller than a flat screen TV. And you can perform at least 150 different exercises. And these different technologies are exclusive to tonal. And you can dial weights up and down with the touch of a button in one pound increments using magnets and electricity. So the movement is extremely smooth. And even though I have a home gym already in my garage, I'm still getting a tonal installed. I've used tonal for multiple workouts now to do things I just cannot do in my home gym, such as the chop and lift exercises from the 4-Hour Body, all sorts of cable exercises that would usually involve much, much bigger piece of equipment. Eccentric training. For instance, you can do, to give a simple example, bicep curls where you are lifting, let's just say 20 pounds in each hand up, and then Tonal will automatically increase the weight because you can lower more than you can lift to say 25 or 30 pounds on the

way down. And I do kettlebell swings. I do all sorts of deadlifts, this, that, and the other thing. And after one workout on Tonal, focusing on pulling, I was blasted for a full week. It's really incredible what you can do with eccentrics. They also have all sorts of other really, really cool advantage that you can apply to any of your favorite movements. Tonal learns from your strength and provides suggested weight recommendations for every move with detailed progress reports to help you see your strengths grow. Tonal also has a growing library of expert-led workouts by motivating coaches from strength training to cardio. So you can do really just about everything. Every program is personalized to your body using artificial intelligence and other aspects of the

engineering and smart features check your form in real time, just like a personal trainer. So check it out. Try Tonal, T-O-N-A-L, the world's smartest home gym for 30 days in your home. And if you don't love it, you can return it for a full refund. Visit www.tonal.com, T-O-N-A-L.com. And for a limited time, get $100 off of smart accessories when you use promo code TIM21 like I'm ready for my first drink at checkout. That's www.tonal.com, promo code TIM21, T-I-M-21. Tonal, be your strongest. This episode is brought to you by Viore Clothing, spelled V-U-O-R-I, Viore. I've been wearing Viore at least one item per day for the last few months, and you can use it for everything. It's performance apparel, but it can be used for working out. It can be used for going out

to dinner, at least in my case. I feel very comfortable with it. Super comfortable, super stylish. And I just want to read something that one of my employees said. She is an athlete. She is quite technical, although she would never say that. I asked her if she had ever used or heard of Viore, and this was her response. I do love their stuff. Been using them for about a year. I think I found them at REI. First for my partner, t-shirts that are super soft but somehow last as he's hard on stuff. And then I got into the super soft cotton yoga pants and jogger sweatpants. I live in them and they too have lasted. They're stylish enough I can wear them out and about. The material is just super soft and durable. I just got their clementine running shorts for summer and love them. The brand seems pretty popular, constantly sold out. In closing, and I'm abbreviating here, but in closing, with the exception of when I need technical outdoor gear, they're the only brand I've bought in the last year or so for yoga running loungewear that lasts and that I think look good also. I like the discreet logo. So that gives you some idea. That was not intended for the sponsor read. That was just her

response via text. Viori, again spelled V-U-O-R-I, is designed for maximum comfort and versatility. You can wear it running. You can wear their stuff training, doing yoga, lounging, weekend errands, or in my case, again, going out to dinner. It really doesn't matter what you're doing. Their clothing is so comfortable and looks so good. And it's non-offensive. You don't have a huge brand logo on your face. You'll just want to be in them all the time. And my girlfriend and I have been wearing them for the last few months. They're men's core short, K-O-R-E. The most comfortable lined athletic short is your one short for every sport. I've been using it for kettlebell swings, for runs, you name it. The Banks short, this is their go to land to sea short, is the ultimate in versatility. It's made from recycled plastic bottles. And what I'm wearing

right now, which I had to pick one to recommend to folks out there, or at least to men out there, is the Ponto Performance Pant. And you'll find these at the link I'm going to give you guys. You can check out what I'm talking about, but I'm wearing them right now. They're thin performance sweatpants, but that doesn't do them justice. So you got to check it out. P-O-N-T-O, Ponto Performance Pant. For you ladies, the women's performance jogger is the softest jogger you'll ever own. Viore isn't just an investment in your clothing, it's an investment in your happiness. And for you, my dear listeners, they're offering 20% off your first purchase. So get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet. It's super popular. A lot of my friends I've now noticed are wearing this, and so am I. Vioreclothing.com forward slash Tim,

that's V-U-O-R-I clothing.com slash Tim. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but you'll also enjoy free shipping on any US orders over $75 and free returns. So check it out. vioreclothing.com slash Tim. That's V-U-O-R-I clothing.com slash Tim and discover the versatility of Viore clothing. living tissue of a metal endless galaxy. The Tim Ferriss Show. We have beautiful Osa, Dutch Shepherd of small stature next to us, growing quickly. We have Josh Waitzkin, polymath of medium stature. This is the Tim Ferriss Show. I'm Tim Ferriss.

And Josh Baby. It's good to see you again. That's an interesting label. Polymath of medium stature. Like that. Timbo. That's good. I like it.

I've got excellent coffee. Strong. To fuel our conversation. I feel good about this whole thing. Me too. I'm going to turn the tables on you a little bit. Yeah, let's get into it. So our plan here is for me to interview Tim a little bit, open up some questions. We've been having a beautiful few weeks of dialogue over meals and ice plunges and saunas. The last bunch of days have been really intense conversation.

One of the patterns that I find really powerful in our dialogue is that when we talk about ideas and potential projects, you consistently have the ability to ask gating questions that frame the discussion differently. And I tend to think I'm pretty good at that. But what I find surprising is how, and one thing I love is that when I bring ideas to you, you take it to another level. And it's consistently jolting. And after our conversations, I often look at something quite differently. And I love that. And so how would you deconstruct your relationship to gating questions? How do you approach them?

Let's do a deep dive. First, could you define or describe for me what a gating question is? If we're talking about an idea, or let's just say someone were to approach you with a project that they're thinking about, you tend to go at it with first principles, and you have a way of approaching the subject with a different framing. I observe your approach exposes like in the David Foster Wallace, this is water, right? People, a fish isn't aware of its water. You are very good at showing people what their water is. And you have a way of, of tackling the subject that they've been thinking about for days

or weeks or months or years, and very quickly showing them angles of it that, that they haven't considered. And I've watched you do that with a lot of people. I think it's one of your power zones. And I just thought it would be really cool for you to talk about how you approach it. Yeah, this is fun. I don't often talk about this, or I suppose even think about it explicitly. When I talk to folks who are presenting an idea, a plan, a hope, a goal, I think the first thing that I do, and this is probably honed over many, many, many years of getting pitched hundreds of times with startups, is there are a few stock questions. So I think I cheat in that respect. I have a handful of triage tools that I use on the intake. So if somebody comes in, it's kind of like, are you having trouble breathing? Let me check your pulse. Let me check your vitals.

And there are a few questions like that that I use repeatedly. One would be asking someone what assumptions they are making to see if they're even consciously aware of the assumptions that are being made, which is also a really good test to see how rigorously they've examined other aspects of whatever the plan or goal might be. What makes this attractive? What are the aspects of this that you assume to be true that make this attractive if it's an idea or something like that? The answer they give or don't give, it's kind of like the Sherlock Holmes, the case of the dog not barking. Sometimes it's the answer they don't give that really says a lot and removes the need for a lot of follow-ups. Another one that I ask all

the time, and I think this is in part because I get asked a lot about writing books, I'm thinking about writing a book, or I'm about to start writing a book, or I'm going to be selling a book. And I've talked to dozens of friends about this. And the way I pose it, and this will sound familiar, is I'll ask them, if it takes twice as long and you get half the rewards or a quarter of the rewards and it's not a bestseller, is this still a no-brainer for you? And the wording there is really important. The no-brainer part is important.

It's not, is it still a good idea? Because a good idea could be pro and con list and you come to the conclusion 51% good, 49% bad. Yes, it's a good idea. That's different from a no-brainer, right? If it's a whole body, yes. So this question is, is fishing for how intrinsic the motivation is? It's fishing for how intrinsic the motivation is. It's also fishing for a few other things. So the first might be worded a different way. In the case of books, like, is it easier to write the book than to not write the book? For me, I rarely, and there are different motivations for writing books, there are different catalysts.

But for me, usually I can't find something I'm looking for and it bothers me so much that I just have to write the goddamn thing because I'm not going to have it otherwise. And in that respect, it's easier for me to write it than to not write it because it bothers me so much that it's not written in some way. The other is taking into account all of the things outside of our control. You could put the perfect plan into motion. You could write an outstanding book, just a genre-defining, category-killing book, and then 9-11 happens the week of your book launch and nobody ever sees your book in effect because it's crowded out. There's so many things outside of our control. I mean, certainly the last year has highlighted that. And so I want to know, are you going to, in some sense,

find reward and gratification and edification through the process in case a curve ball hits you square in the face? Because it's not a black swan event. I mean, it's very common that this happens if you just come out in the wrong week in the case of books. So those are two questions. And then for me, I think in the last handful of years in particular, thinking of energy management over time management has led me to think of experiments that can be done that might be alternatives to what people are considering that allow them an easier termination clause, if that makes any sense. I'm using that metaphorically. But it's sometimes very easy to get into plans and then you have employees or you have a company

or you have your identity potentially wrapped up in something that has gone out and now you feel like you can't remove yourself or shut it down because it will be viewed as a failure and so to mitigate against all those things, I'm constantly looking for cheap, fast ways to test. How can you test your assumptions? How can you test your assumptions about the upside? How can you test your assumptions about the downside? How can we find comparables? Have you spoken to any of the people who are at the helm of X, Y, and Z at those comparables? I really don't view myself as a risk taker, even though at points I've had that label or reputation, but I view myself as first and foremost, like a massive risk mitigator. I do a lot of testing.

So those are a few things. So if you were to invert that, if you think back onto all those conversations you've had with people pitching you on something, if you were to take their perspective, what do you think the patterns would be in what those people said about the insights they gained from the conversation? Not the tactics, but the insights about themselves and how they relate to their project. So I look at everything with an editorial eye, which is part of the reason why I almost never read friends' manuscripts, because I can't just give them a paragraph of feedback. I'll end up copyediting the whole goddamn thing.

So when I look at a deck, like a pitch deck, and then I go down a level deeper and I look at the bios of the people involved. I spot weaknesses and red flags that would turn off oftentimes other investors they want involved or the types of investors they would want involved. So I get to see, I'm answering this somewhat indirectly, but I get to see also how founders in the case of startups, but this could apply to almost anything. This could apply to books also. Book ideas could apply to any idea. How people respond to constructive criticism. And what's really interesting about not just startups, but book ideas, business ideas, career switching ideas that people have is very often people around them feel like support means giving positive feedback so they their baby even if it's ugly never gets

called ugly and then i come in and i'm like well first thing i noticed is uh you know on the first page of your deck you misspelledpelled profile. It might seem like a minor thing, but I would fix that. It's low-hanging fruit. It's easy to fix. And that's not a massive correction, but I get to see how people respond to that. The other question or another question, there are a lot of questions I like to ask, but this is a question I was asked in the last year, I want to say. I can't recall the source, but it's not mine. I mean, I borrow most of what I use and ask. the company has failed, what went wrong? What is the most likely reason the company will have failed? Also, if it's due to an incorrect assumption, which assumption do you think is most likely to be wrong? And if someone can't answer that or is unwilling to answer that because they're getting a lot of adulation and they have more, say in the case of a startup, they have more demand,

in other words, investor interest than supply, that's definitely a red flag for me. So what people get to see then, if they really take those questions seriously and assuming someone else hasn't asked those questions, is they very often find blind spots that are real risks. They're risks that they have not accounted for. Like most authors think, or potential authors, if I get the right publisher, if I have the right distribution, and I write an amazing book, it is inevitable that the book will do well if I follow a few guidelines for launch, if I'm on a big show. And that's just not true. Yeah. So building on this, one of the themes that I spend a good deal thinking about is the entanglement of genius and eccentricity. I think that most of the great performers that I've known or competed against or worked with in different fields have just had this beautiful connection between their areas of dysfunctionality and brilliance.

Sometimes the very thing that helps them excel in their professional life or their artistic life or their competitive life is something that in their personal life can be a little bit awkward. Or sometimes very awkward. Or sometimes very awkward. And it can be extremely subtle, and it can be fascinating. Like the recent study of Usain Bolt's stride and the fact that it's uneven. People might want to normalize it, but then you can think about how the unevenness of his leg length or spinal construction

might actually be part of why he is so fast. And you can think about this, I think about it a great deal with Marcelo Garcia, and he and I have been having a fun conversation about this theme over the past few days. Yeah, so for people who don't know, just a sentence or two on Marcelo. Well, we've spoken about Marcelo so much.

Yeah, so Marcelo is the nine-time submission grappling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion. He's probably, I would argue, pound for pound, the greatest grappler, martial arts grappler to ever live. And he's a dear friend of mine. We own a school together in New York and I've trained with him for a decade plus. Really exquisite learner and a really interesting eccentric learner. And anyway, this theme of the entanglement of genius and eccentricity is one that I find to be liberating for people because there's a big pressure to normalize oneself. How does that show up for Marcello? Or why'd you bring him up after

Hussein Bolt? Well, I think Marcello is in a similar league in terms of dominance of his field. And he's someone who's really built a game around his idiosyncrasies in a beautiful way. I mean, he's both physically, he's physically small, short, short limbs, has built an incredible technical repertoire that really revolutionized the Brazilian jiu-jitsu world based on his body type. And the idiosyncrasies of his personality, the way his mind works, his incredibly overdeveloped somatic intelligence versus his many years ago, lack of conceptual relationship to what he was doing. For example, one of the remarkable things about Marcelo is the way he repeats mistakes less than anyone I've ever known. It's incredible. Whether it's a technical mistake, a psychological mistake,

and I've observed this, I felt this with him. I mean, when he and I have, you know, we've spent hundreds of hours grappling, sparring, fighting on the mats. And like you catch Marcelo with something one time and you don't catch him with it again. And that's just not true about people. It's incredible. Usually it's the opposite.

Yeah. You've exploited weakness. It's like when I got guillotined 77 times in a row. Right. At your school. We had a good time with that one. But the amazing thing about, for example, how that manifests in Marcelo's life is that, as he's told me in really powerful moments of conversation, he experiences pain really

viscerally. He experiences pain and his body never forgets it in his life. And it's true on the mats. And so there's an area of, that could really make life painful, right? But that is incredibly powerful in his life. And I think about this a lot relative to myself as well, this entanglement.

But I was curious to open up with you. When you, you know, people obviously, you have a public life and you and I mostly interact outside of your public life in just the eccentric nature of our friendship, meeting up in the jungle for weeks at a time and having great conversations. And I have my own perspective on this, but I'm curious how you would talk about, you're so admired in the world and people think a lot about your brilliance and your ability to deconstruct and how much insight you have. How would you describe the underbelly of that? What's the shadow of it? How does that brilliance manifest

in your personal life? Where are the areas of eccentricity or dysfunctionality that people might not see? Yeah, I think the word, I'm glad you used the word dysfunctionality because sometimes eccentricity can be used as a substitute, a nice substitute for crazy when somebody is successful in a given field. So it's true, but different adjectives sometimes apply to the same thing depending on how well someone has done by luck or design or both, it shows up a lot. It shows up a lot in many, many different ways. And I've thought about this quite a bit because there have been times when I've wanted to, and there still are times, I think, warranted times when I want to fix certain dysfunctionality. And there is occasionally a fear that in attempting to snuff out those areas of dysfunction or those exhibitions of eccentricity that I'll also snuff out whatever the pixie dust is that allows me to

do certain things. This is very true, I know, for a lot of comedians, for instance. Some comedians don't want to get therapy. They don't want to fix the pain because they feel like the gift that that pain provides is a certain degree of insight or cynicism and also wittiness that leads to what they're able to do, which is a really tough position in a lot of respects to find yourself in or to put yourself in. So I'd say on the more amusing side of things, a good example would just be my, as I mentioned, the editorial eye. Well, let's take that same editorial eye. Well, that seems like a huge gift

when you're reviewing a manuscript. But when you look at a countertop, and I'll give a friend of mine a nod here, I won't mention his full name, but Popey, let's call him Popey. Popey. And I remember I was... He's a character i was with uh i was with poppy in panama at one point this is a very long time ago 2004 so for those who have read the four

hour work week this is before right before i went to argentina and had the entire saga of tango unfold. I was in Panama. And it was actually a friend of his, initials JM, Micho, who said I had to go to Argentina. But backing up to the point I was going to make, I would sit there and I would write and I was working on various things at the time and I was running this sports supplement business. And I had all of my notebooks and all of my pens and everything laid out almost like an unboxing photograph or like a pack trip photograph that you'd see on Instagram. Like everything was either parallel or perpendicular. I mean, it was like, it was like it was set up by, you know, some type of Japanese artist on graph paper. I mean, it was perfectly organized to my liking and hope he would come over and he would just, he would just like very slowly. He'd look at me kind of like a cat,

kind of like your cat Loki. And he'd look at me and he just with his index finger like push the edge of one pen to knock it off knock it off angle like 10 and then he would just go back to whatever he was doing and i knew he was trying to fuck with me so i would leave it i'd be like i'm not gonna succumb i'm not gonna succumb and i'd leave it and i'd be like, I'm not going to succumb. I'm not going to succumb. And I'd leave it and I'd leave it. And then I'd just be like, I can't do it. And I would fix it. And after like a half hour of this, he came over and he's like, Tim, you're behaving like American psycho. And so this monk like sensitivity, especially visual sensitivity can be really problematic, right? And that can certainly lead to domestic strife. And that's on me, right? That's on me. I should note, no, by the way, we're having this conversation in front of my desk and I have the

exact opposite dynamic of Tim. So entering my world, it's just pure chaos created consciously. It is chaos. He's functioning quite beautifully without a single thing in a straight line. I'm not even going to mention the stuff underneath the desk. It's chaos. He's functioning quite beautifully without a single thing in a straight line. I'm not even going to mention the stuff underneath the desk. It's terrible. Anyway, if we take it as true for the moment, which I think it is, that hyperfunction and dysfunction are often right next to each other. I think another way to think about that is that your superpower is very often right next to your wound, like your biggest wound. Yes. And I think that that's an interesting way to reflect on it or journal on it or think about it

is how did this possibly develop if it developed through a wound or traumatic event or challenge of some type in my life, right? And many of these things are fed by innate qualities. And I think that Usain Bolt, doesn't matter how many coaches he has for sprinting, if he's built like me, it's going to be, the story turns out differently. Nonetheless, I think that the superpower

being right next to your wound is very, very often the case. And I mean, they're often two sides of the same coin. And I think it is possible to work on the areas of dysfunction, whether they're minor or major, without subjugating and muting your superpowers. I do think that's possible. You have to track it. I'm not saying it's always possible, but in my experience so far, I think that it is very possible. You have to track it. I'm not saying it's always possible, but in my experience so far, I think that it is very possible. And I'll just say another thing,

which is a phrase that I used to use a lot and I hear a lot of my type A friends use a lot when it comes to considering meditation, therapy, fill in the blank, is that they're afraid of losing their edge. I just don't want to lose my edge. I'm afraid I'm going to become complacent. I don't want to lose my edge. Lose my edge. This phrase is used a lot. And in my experience, the edge that they have in mind almost inevitably cuts both ways. That intensity and that edge that they view as a pure advantage, which helps them most often professionally, usually has a lot of consequences personally.

So those are some of the ways that I relate to it, but I definitely agree that they are side by side. You know, this framing of yours around the wound is really beautiful and really powerful. And I relate to it. I've, in the last stretch, I've been writing about training. And one thing that I'm very careful about is for anyone who's trying to convey something to be able to see their context. Because any kind of teacher or coach or writer

or anyone who's not aware of their own context can be trying to impose something on somebody else that doesn't fit them. And so I'm trying to be explicit and introspective about my context. And my context relative to training comes from a wound, which was, in a nutshell, I started playing chess when I was six years old. When I was seven and eight, I became, at that point, I was the top rated player in in the U.S. for my age, and so I was the target. My whole childhood from age seven until my 20s, I was the target. And as a kid, that means that not only were other kids focused on beating me, because I would be the person to beat in the tournament, but their coaches who were adults, who were masters, international masters, grandmasters.

So every weakness that I showed would be seen very clearly because the adult coaches were much stronger players than me and would be focused on and exploited. And any strength that I had would also be, I had to refine it or else it wouldn't work, right? And so as a child, as a really young child, I had this experience, it was almost Pavlovian, of not taking on an error led to pain. Taking on an error or refining a strength led to flow, pleasure, love of the game, winning, all those things. So now as an adult, what I'm aware of is that not taking on a weakness is almost outside of my conceptual scheme unless I really consciously try. Josh, can you just make a mediocre turkey as one friend recommended? Josh,

try not to make the best turkey in the world. Just make a mediocre fucking turkey for once. Our friend Jim Detmer, who's a brilliant man who Tim interviewed recently, has been saying to me for a long time, Josh, just try to cook like shit. Just practice mediocrity. And it's a beautiful, wise piece of counsel, given my madness. It's something I grapple with, and that is really important for me to see. And it's a core of strength of mine. But of course, it can lead to complexities in interpersonal relationships and in my own life. And so I have to be able to see it. Yeah. As we're talking about this, it makes me think of a story in the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown, which I'm very fond of. I think it has a lot of gold in it. And I'm going to paraphrase here. I'm not going to get it exactly right,

but it tells a story of, I believe it's a man in his 30sies or forties who, who flames out completely professionally. Like he, uh, he, he just kills himself through overwork. And at the end of the story, his advice to others is something along the lines of, okay, you're a type A hard charging competitive winner in life. He's like, all right, you want to try something hard? He's like, something hard is not working seven days a week. He's like, try going home in the middle of the day and taking a nap. He's like, you want to prove how tough you are? Like, try that. Cause that's the harder thing for you to do. So let's keep exploring this relative to you. So let me throw out two themes and see where you go with them. One is efficiency. So you're a master of efficiency. You're also an athlete and you've had, you've had

identity as an athlete your whole life, but you have a very specific physiological dynamic relative to your lungs that could lead somebody to really need to take on the art of being crazy efficient. So what do you think about that dynamic and how it might have informed where you've become incredibly overdeveloped? Maybe talk about. Yeah. So for people who are not aware, I have a number of very obvious scars on me. You can still see that one on the wrist, which looks like a cigarette burn, but it's actually where I was intubated. I have another one on the left side where my left lung collapsed when I was born or probably collapsed possibly before I was born or in the birth process.

And I was preemie in the NICU, a neonatal intensive care unit, for a really long period of time. So I have issues with, in particular, thermoregulation is how that shows up. So if people, and that may or may not be related to the lungs, but I do have some pulmonary complications. The, if you've ever seen a dog pant, that is to dissipate heat. Dogs don't really dissipate heat through sweat very much. So in my case, I overheat very easily. I've been hospitalized for heat stroke a few times. And what that meant from an athletic perspective when I was wrestling, which was given how small I was up until sixth grade, it was really one of the only or the only sport where I could compete and possibly win because you have the puniest of the puny competing against the puniest of the puny. I developed an approach to wrestling that compensated for

my tendency to overheat and therefore generally lack of endurance. So I think that led to thinking about efficiency, although at the time I don't think I would have labeled it that way. And then much later with language learning and Japanese and so on when I was 15 also led me to think about efficiency a lot. So I think those were the two sort of seminal chapters, the wrestling and then the language learning that led me to think about effectiveness and efficiency both. I think that even though it gets talked about less, I think about effectiveness, that is choosing the right things, choosing material, so to speak, 80-20 analysis style, more than efficiency. Because doing something really well doesn't automatically make it important.

But I do think about both. And to use your phrasing from earlier, the shadow side of that is that in the case of wrestling, I identified weight cutting and Greco-Roman upper body techniques as places where I could really shine. And if you continue to kind of chunk down, chunk down, chunk down so that you get to a place where instead of using, I'm making up these numbers, but a hundred techniques, you're using 10 techniques and they're very shoulder dependent. And then on top of that, you're cutting, in my case, I was cutting from my senior year in high school, 178 to 152 twice a week, which is insane. That's crazy. It's insane and it's very dangerous.

I don't recommend it. I ended up having and still have chronic shoulder issues. Yes, Osa, I know. Take care of their shoulders. Oh, I think Osa's letting out some wicked dog fog mist also. In any case, I digress. So I do think that striving for the sort of minimalist 80-20 analysis in the physical realm can be quite dangerous because you can end up with overuse syndrome and dislocating shoulders. And in my case, having reconstructive shoulder surgery and so on. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Did you know if you missed 10 of the best performing days after the 2008 crisis, you would have missed out on 50%, 5-0% of your returns.

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investment gains. Their newest service is called autopilot and it can monitor any checking account for excess cash to move into savings or an investment account. They've really thought of a ton. They've checked a lot of boxes. Smart investing should not feel like a rollercoaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to wealthfront.com slash Tim and open a Wealthfront investment account today and you'll get your first $5,000 managed for free for life. That's wealthfront.com slash Tim and open a Wealthfront investment account today, and you'll get your first $5,000 managed for free for life. That's wealthfront.com slash Tim. Wealthfront will automate your investments for the long term, and you can get started today at wealthfront.com slash Tim. I think more and more these days about how I can change things in my life so I don't need to think or I'm not inclined to think about efficiency.

Same with competition. I think more about that. I think we, as humans, gravitate to what we are good at in general. I think that we all like the validation, intrinsic and extrinsic, or perhaps otherwise, that comes from feeling good about doing something well. And I'm really good at figuring out process improvements. I'm very good at demming, manufacturing world, Toyota and so on. I'm very good at identifying steps, looking at a process, figuring out which steps can be removed,

which steps should be removed, which should be inverted. I'm very good at that. And I'm also, we could talk at length about this, but in certain ways, a good competitor. Like I'm very driven by competition. I find it exciting. I like stakes. I do well when there are consequences, usually. And I'm almost always able to perform better in competition than I am in training. But I think competition, much like positional economics, in other words, someone is inclined, if they make $75,000 a year, let's just say, to feel much better about that if all their friends make $50,000 a year versus if all their friends make $100,000 a year, even though their life and

quality of life may not change at all objectively at that $75,000. It just depends on the peer group, right? So competition, I feel like, has value in certain areas, certainly, and it's been incredibly valuable to me. But if you default to efficiency and competition, that you can make yourself miserable, depending on who you feel you're competing with. And you can focus on doing things really well, whether or not you should be doing them in the first place, whether or not they are in fact the piece of the puzzle that makes a real difference. So those are a few of the things that I'm shifting and thinking about a lot right now in my life. I mean, the last six months has really been, the last six months, especially the last three months has been a hitting of the

pause button. Like the pause button is currently on for me. And this is the awkward part. Not so much think about these things, figure these things out, but to sort of watch the conditions of my life and see if I notice anything that pulls me in a different direction or that kind of compels me in a different direction or draws me in a different direction. So, I mean, you and I have spoken about this a bit, and I'm probably mangling your intention of what you said, but rather than doing something right now,

trying to slightly change the conditions to see what emerges from that new set of conditions or to set the correct conditions. But right now, the question for me would be correct for what? I don't know, because the what is the next step. And right now that's a void for me. I just don't know. And so I come here to the jungle to spend time with you. It's like, all right, let's have a shift of a couple of variables, create some space, and see what emerges from that. And it's a beautiful entry into this idea of when we talk about the entanglement of strengths and weaknesses or genius and eccentricity or dysfunctionality, however you want to frame it, it opens up the discussion of how much we should be focusing on our strengths and how much we should be focusing on our weaknesses, right? And I tend to believe that in life we should really embrace our funk and we should, an overdeveloped power zone is incredibly powerful, potent.

On the other hand, we do need to acknowledge our weaknesses and one thing i've really come to admire about you is how you do that for example what you're saying right now you're a person who really loves to get shit done but you've hit pause and the pause button is revealing some things the theme of control is also quite interesting like when you speak about a power zone of yours is risk mitigation right trying to think about how things can go wrong on projects. You also have a very interesting relationship to control. Yeah, and hypervigilance. And hypervigilance.

That would be another example of something that in excess kind of becomes its opposite, right? Like an obsession with security breeds a feeling of insecurity. And that's actually, I'm glad you brought that up because that would be probably the most crippling, in a sense, like emotionally, psychologically crippling of the wounds slash dysfunctions right next to superpowers.

And in some ways, I would think as your friend, and I'm just putting this out as a question, that you're grappling with those dynamics as part of what's led you to this incredibly powerful work you've been driving in the world around psychedelics. Maybe speak to that relationship between control and what your medicine journey has opened up. Yeah. Well, I thought you put it really well a couple days ago or weeks ago. Time changes in the jungle.

I can't even remember when you said something along the lines of, I find it very interesting that as someone who is controlled so much and focused on control so much, one of your primary focuses, if not your primary focus right now, is compounds that create experiences that are not controlled. And they can be safe. But if you think you're going to take a mega dose of psilocybin or an NDMT or LSD or any of these things, and then write the screenplay of your experience and live that out line by line, you're going to be very disappointed. Maybe more like Ulysses strapped to the mast. And I think there is a tremendous, I experience a tremendous relief when I can completely let go of control or attempt to let go of control and feel the beauty of floating downstream instead of trying to swim upriver against the current, right? Because I think most of my life, I have prided myself on being, you know, the fastest salmon, right? Just fucking thrashing like mad, like making it up the rocks,

dodging the grizzly bear, and being willing to suffer more than other people. You could dress that up and say, developing a pain tolerance or compete. But ultimately, I think if we're honest with ourselves, and I'm not saying there isn't a place for this, right? But I think certainly I have to be very careful about assigning too much dignity and profundity to out-suffering people. I think if we

lionize that and really put it on a pedestal, you can paint yourself into a really nasty corner. So with the medicine experiences, and let me rephrase that just because that lingo might not make sense to people. But in these transcendental, sometimes certainly transcendental or transpersonal, meaning that you experience ego dissolution, right? The concept of I and Tim and time and space dissolves, which is kind of like sex. It's really just not going to make any sense unless you've had an experience of this type. So I won't belabor the description. You know, it's kind of like if some guy's never ejaculated and you're like, well, it's kind of like sneeze in your balls. And they're like, I think I get it. But, you know, you can't really quite wrap your head around it. But I digress.

The point is having these experiences where I'm not trying to out-suffer. I'm trying to out-surrender. Not out-surrender. I'm trying to surrender. And also, lots of people have said this, but I think that experiences of anxiety, depression, are very often me-focused. They're, in some respects, very self-absorbed, right? They're very me, me, me focused.

And they're also, in the case of depression, often past-focused. In the case of anxiety, very future-focused. And if you take five grams of potent sloss of the mushrooms, maintaining any type of me, me, me centric focus in the past or the future is going to be next to impossible, right? So you're given a reprieve. And once you experience that reprieve, you know that it's possible. And then you can begin to look for avenues for extending the effects into normal, everyday, sober life and looking for other modalities or tools to find those spaces. And so for me, it's just been a revelation in that respect. Beautiful.

So a pattern that I hear you speaking to is that your previous relationship, for example, to efficiency or control is evolving increasingly into an exploration of setting the conditions for success or for X, being downriver, surrender. Yeah. So this is just in the exploration of the entanglement of overdevelopment and underdevelopment.

And you talked about people, friends of yours who've said, but I don't want to lose my edge. So as you feel yourself making that movement, which is really a deep exploration of these core themes. Do you feel like it's taking away your edge or adding to it? I think it's multiplying my edge. And this is going to be maybe a really, seem like a really mundane or odd example, but he's been on the mind because he just stepped down to CEO Jeff Bezos.

And I'm not comparing myself to Jeff Bezos, just to be very clear. But one of the massive advantages that Bezos has had for so long, and still has, is his time frame. He somehow managed to convince and persuade Wall Street to give him different time horizons than everyone else being judged quarter by quarter. Now, Amazon is still judged on quarterly results to some extent, but for the longest time, the growth of Amazon, I mean, was in, if you read the shareholder letters, and I encourage everybody to look at these collected PDFs of the Amazon shareholder letters, he just had a longer time horizon. And when you

have a 10, 15-year, 20-year time horizon, you can think about making decisions in a very different way. You relate to feeling rushed or pressured in a very different way. And I feel like, now I have to be careful here to also recognize that my circumstances have changed a lot in the last 10, 15 years. So I might be inclined to say, well, I can just wait for fat pitches and I feel like I have more of an edge. And that may be also a byproduct of my changing circumstances. So I don't want to attribute that solely to this ability to wait. But my experience is now that the way that I've heard other people describe the shift that I'm trying to embrace is being patient. But I don't think about it that way. It might be that, but patience to me, I think can sometimes, I have a

bit of an allergic reaction to patients just because I think it's used so often as an excuse for complacency or laziness. So the word is not my favorite to apply here, but paying attention, right? Like really paying attention to things around me and the feelings around me. And let's just say, you know, the dog that's laying right next to us, you know, like Osa and Zeus at mealtime, like whether they need water or not, like I'm constantly tracking all that stuff, but it's a very light tracking. And when I cultivate that, I feel like I have less, it still comes up occasionally, but less fear of missing out because I have a confidence that I am going to see things that most people are going to miss

simply because they are rushing. It's interesting how universal this theme is. And if you think about it in a multidisciplinary way, there are of course always exceptions, but almost always when you watch, for example, an athlete over the years and over the decades, their progression is from doing more to doing less, being more, just getting more done. And with one of the fascinating and kind of mystical looking things about really superb virtuoso fighters, martial artists, is that they can move much slower and always get there first yeah yeah and it's it's gorgeous to see and it's beautiful to really work on embodying and it's not because they can't move quickly they can move like lightning but they can move slower and get there first yeah i remember

thinking that with i don't know if this name is going to mean anything because this is dating me. When I was in Japan when I was 15, that's when I really... I had always had an affinity for martial arts and had trained in various schools as a kid, real, hard-hitting fighting in the sense of MMA, which didn't exist as it does now, but Sogo Kakutogi in Japan, seeing Pancras and so on, but also K-1 with the big guys. And there was a fighter way back in the day named Peter Ertz, the Dutch lumberjack, huge guy and gigantic. I mean, just a mountain of a guy. And he had such impeccable timing, which is certainly in part very fast perception, and also acute perception that even though he wasn't the fastest fighter, he almost always got there first and he was a huge guy, but he was just able to read the ring and the opponent and the space so perfectly. It was amazing to watch. Yeah. It's a beautiful principle and I think it really manifests everywhere. Yeah, and one of the mantras that I've been repeating to myself a lot recently is from, well, trying to apply that to different types of training, trying to apply that to decision-making also, right? Which is why I give almost always if,

just as a rule, if someone tries to rush my decision-making, it's just no, the answer is no, automatically, right? As one example, that's part of what I'm revisiting as within this pause period. So in this pause period where you're really sitting, and I've been watching you sit in an empty space without rush, what's surfacing? And what are some of the core tension points or areas that you're aware of being torn? Massive tension points. I mean, every fiber of my programmed being, right, like my socialized self that has been rewarded for so long by doing things, it can be very hard to sit with empty space. And it makes me think a lot, and I've been thinking about this in the last few weeks a lot. A quote from Tara Brock, who's a mindfulness and meditation teacher, I mean, she's much more than that, but wrote an amazing book

called Radical Acceptance that I recommend to everyone. And she has this, I'll just call it an expression. It's probably a story in one of her books. But she says, you know, a famous sage once said, there's only one important question. And that question is, what are you unwilling to feel? And I think for a lot of people, maybe the majority of people, maybe all people, I don't know, many of our compulsive behaviors are to mask or override things that we don't want to feel. So if there is something you feel you need to focus on,

something you feel you need to do, if there's a pack of cigarettes you need to pick up, it ties into what Gabor Mate, who I recommend people check out, he's been on the podcast as well, will sometimes talk to with respect to addiction. He says, you know, people ask why the addiction? They shouldn't ask why the addiction.

They should ask why the pain? Because the addiction is a consequence of the pain and trying to mask the pain. Although I'm paraphrasing. So bringing this back down to earth, sitting here with empty space, a lot of uncomfortable feelings come up. And it's been challenging to sit with them and not immediately try to fix them. Fears, feeling a lack of direction, feeling a lack of security, fears, anger has come up a lot. Although I think that's probably in part due to a therapy session a few days ago where I talked about the childhood trauma, which really is dangerous. Yeah, it's tricky terrain to navigate and can have a lot of after effects if I revisit it. A lot of emotions. And there have been great days. Yesterday was a great day. And there have been some really hard days where I'm just like, what the fuck am I doing? What the fuck am I not

doing? And why am I not doing? Am I actually going to figure out anything? Because I just feel like I'm sitting by the pool staring at trees. Am I expecting some lightning bolt from the heavens to come down and give me this miraculous epiphany that will solve all my issues. Like, what am I doing? And so it's been really challenging and super challenging. Not every day. And I'm very fortunate that we've been able to spend time together and I've been able to spend time with your family and with a number of our friends who are here in strict isolation lockdown. So that's been gorgeous. And I've had so much fun. And when I'm by myself and it's quiet, law comes up because I normally have so many other activities, many of which are great, many of which are productive, many of which are in some way contributing, whatever the adjective we might want to use

that allows me, also encourages me to do those things. When you take all of those away, yeah, a lot of stuff can come up. To the state you're in, it's a version of what so many people are feeling right now. This is such a painful time in the world. So many people are alone and in pain in different forms. Sometimes so many have are alone and in pain in different forms sometimes they've some so

many have lost loved ones so many are forced into isolation or a lack of socialization and it's there's a lot of heartbreak out there and and just so i you speaking about your own journey here is powerful i'm curious just given where you're at i often go with people who i'm kind of exploring with do something we call a cave process, which is essentially... I was going to ask you about that. Yeah, disappearing and the way I... First thing written down in my notebook. There it is, the cave process.

What the hell is the cave process? Essentially, sitting in a space that is empty enough to get away from the inertia or reactivity. The inertia of where we're coming from or react the inertia of where we're coming from or reactivity away from where we're coming from. You're in a version of that state right now. And last time you and I jammed, we talked about this framing that I play with sometimes of how would your future self guide you?

Because no one will know you more intimately than yourself 20 years from now. And odds are yourself 20 years from now will be less attached to the things that you're extremely attached to now. So just given your intuitive sense of the direction you're going in life, what do you think or feel that your, say, 20-year future self would say to you? How would he guide you today? I will answer that. First, I want to ask you, with the cave process, how do you implement that with people you're working with

or people you advise? Is it a physical relocation to a place of stillness? Is it blocking out the calendar so they have space to remove themselves from the bombardment of stimuli? What does that cave process look like? Well, I think it can take many forms. As you pointed out earlier, there are some people who are in a state of privilege where they can really disappear from the world for three or four months and reflect. And there are other people who just can't do that. Maybe they've got families, they've got a job, they're putting food on the table,

they can't just disappear. And so I think there's micro ways of manifesting it. For example, waking up first in the morning and journaling is like a mini version of this. Just creating empty space where we can tap into our unconscious is really powerful. I've gone through three, four, five month periods with people where they truly stepped away from everything and reflected and tried to blue sky where they wanted to go in life as opposed to getting caught up in the execution concerns. Is it a structured reflection? Do you have prompts, questions, et cetera, that you provide or practices, or is it really just empty space? Let's see what emerges. I think the stillness comes first and then the structure can be layered in but the structure as you know like i would structure differently for every person

who i'd be interacting with because we're all different that that's how i honestly relate to that that question but i i think that the the principle of getting away from reactivity or inertia is powerful for relationships almost everyone moves from one relationship to the next, right? They rebound. But sitting in space post a relationship is really powerful. Post a love relationship or post a friendship that falls apart. I just think that we have the impulse to fill space the moment it empties, but sitting in emptiness can be really powerful.

Thank you for that. So I'm going to take a stab at your question. I will say as a preface that, and I don't know if I've ever mentioned this to you, the piece of writing that I somehow lost that made me saddest was a piece of fiction. And I never write fiction, but it was a story I wrote, I think I was on a train ride and I asked myself this question sometime ago. I was like, what would an older version of me say to me now? This was a long time ago, 10 years ago, something like that. So I wrote this story of a fiction story of me going

skiing, taking a break, going to a ski lodge, sitting by the fire, having some wine and having this older gentleman sit down next to me. And this is before I read any Borges because this is like straight Borges. And struck up a conversation and about like 10, 20 minutes into it, realized that it was an older version of myself. And so we had this conversation about what he'd learned, what advice he would give me. And it was just like 10, 12 page document. And it was just an incredible exercise. And then I somehow lost it. Go figure.

If you're writing that story today. Yeah, if I were writing that story today, I think the core piece that comes to mind if I'm not overthinking it, if it's just whatever kind of pops into my head, which I'm trying to pay a lot more attention to, that first flash, which is very different from the number crunched analytical flash, which isn't really a flash. It's more of like a squeezing out of the sponge. But that first flash

is that he would say, focus on enjoyment and fun and pleasure, like the things that give you those feelings. And the justification, not that there's one needed. I mean, I think those are all very good things by and large. And assuming that there's no collateral damage, I just have so much more energy when I feel one of those things. And my lifelong battle since my teens has been with chronic fatigue. And that led to abusing ephedrine, caffeine, aspirin in high school, which was introduced to me by an upperclassman for wrestling. And then, uh-oh, now I'm using it two, three times a day. That was a mess for a decade plus. And I had severe Lyme disease a few years ago. This happens all the

time on Long Island. I mean, to the extent that in the ER in the summers, they just have a sign that's like, do you have Lyme disease? Like, hey, fill out this survey and get a free Amazon gift card. I mean, it's everywhere. So I had severe Lyme and the blood test came back and the doctor said well you are positive you have an acute infection but you're aware you've already been infected and i as more and more people now would recognize with the serologic testing you know i guess it's igg might be getting that wrong i think it's igg instead of ign but the long-term antibodies for lyme were present and I've just had this incredible fatigue since I was in my teens. And that persists to this day on some level.

And so I think that deepening my relationships, thinking about family, I think moving from a deep feeling of obligation and responsibility, which I think has driven a lot of my behavior. There's the competitive drive. Then there's also a feeling, especially after almost committing suicide in college, that I'm just operating on borrowed time and I owe a lot. And then I have a moral obligation to do A, B, C, D, E, all the way to C. And not to say that's run its course entirely. Maybe there is a place for that. And I don't think I'm at risk of becoming totally irresponsible. I just don't think that it's likely that the pendulum would swing back that far. And I think if I have a family and I have an embraced fun and joy and taking time and taking attention for the small pleasures, that will really, if my kid will receive or kids

will absorb that type of orientation to the world where it is responsibility, where it is obligation, and it will have a very sterilizing effect and muting effect on them. And so right now, I found myself, say years ago, thinking, well, when I have kids, I'll change A. When I have kids, I'll change B. When I have kids, I'll change D, E, and F i've i've come to the conclusion that that i think is very naive like you better start becoming the parent you want to be now before game time right like

you're not going to just step in the ring and be like okay now that i'm here with mike tyson i'm going to learn how to box that's a terrible idea and then the beautiful thing is all that preparation you'll do, then you have a kid, and the kid just kicks your ass anyway. Yeah. And teaches you how to parent that kid. Right. Now, just to be clear, it's not so much learning how to be a parent. It's becoming the person you want to be, trying to train yourself and instill the habits and the changes in perspective that you want to have when you are a parent. So it's purely, it's within your locus of control. Yeah. And then you get a kid who kicks you in the nuts and like, okay, now you got to change your strategy. But it's not a parenting strategy. It's more a way of thinking about

the person I want to be when I'm holding a child in my arms for the first time versus who I am now and working on that now. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. I think you're going to be a hell of a dad. I can't wait.

Yeah, thanks, brother. It'd be so fun to have our little ones. Little rugrats. Duking it out together. I love it. Yeah. Okay, we have about 11 more minutes. Let's. Little rugrats. Duking it out together. I love it. Okay, we have about 11 more minutes. Let's pick up the pace.

Let's do it. I want to hit you with, let's be a little more tactical about these. Tactical. So this one is- Tactical practical. This is not such a tactical question, but it's slightly, it's relatively tactical. So I personally have this feeling that I observe so many people yearning for a return to normal, right? I don't personally think that normal is necessarily returning so quickly. And I feel that we're entering an age in human history where a core theme will be a radically accelerating pace

of change. So destabilizing events of different forms will become the new normal versus the return to normal that so many people are craving. And so I'm not really suggesting we debate that idea, but just roll with me on that idea. And if you just were to play with that framing, how do you think that people would best prepare for the world that we might be entering over the next 5, 10, 15 years if that theme has some validity? Yeah, well, turns out you're asking Mr. Hypervigilance.

I have thought about this a bit. We've talked about it a little bit. So I think the assertion's right. I mean, certainly with technology and sort of exponentially ramping technology, global interconnectedness, I mean, all of that is going to continue to, the curve of all of that is going to continue to steepen

for a million reasons that we won't get into right now. So I'll say two things. Number one is, I think you have to, have to is a strong phrasing, but I'm going to use it for simplicity because we're doing a lightning round. You have to focus on meta learning and meta skills, or you're just going to be toast. You need to be able to learn to do things that machines have great difficulty doing. And then by machine, I include software, most software right now. And to embrace your humanness, right? I think Kevin Kelly is actually a great person to read up on for identifying kind of opportunities moving forward.

He's, you know, a lot of people try to predict technological advances. The big difference with Kevin is that he's very often right. And so he's given a lot of thought to, say, AI and humans and the next 10 to 20 years. So I think meta-learning skills, I think your book, The Art of Learning, should be required reading. I think there are aspects of meta-learning that are explored in For Our Chef, which confusingly is not just a cookbook. It is, in fact, a book about accelerated learning that can make you not just resilient, but anti-fragile in the sense that the vast majority of people you might ever compete with, if you end up competing,

will not have this toolkit. So when there's a shock to the system, like COVID, when there is a shock to the system, like some designer epidemic or pandemic that is designed using CRISPR and released easily out of some basement, when there is a disaster like fill in the blank right i mean there's so many technologies 3d printing you know blockchain decentralized social networks or even assassination marketplaces i mean miniature drones where like the cost of defense is a million times higher than the cost of offense i mean these like i mean the the kind of dystopian possibilities for cheap destabilizing events with many players, we've talked about this, right? Not like one or two or three or four players who are state actors, but tens of thousands of people who could implement certain attacks that could be really destabilizing. He or she who is the most adaptable wins, I think, in many respects. So meta-learning. And then really understanding, I do think for all of his eccentricity, I think Taleb and Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, read those books.

If you are not on a very basic level, and you do not, I never took calculus. I'm not a mathematician by any stretch, but learn to understand probabilistic thinking. It's so fucking important. Just start to read Fooled by Randomness and Black Swan, get a basic understanding of how probability affects your decision-making in life. Beautiful. Your point about meta-learning is so powerful. I mean, one way to just very simply think about this is that people tend to think about technique, tactics, technique.

But if you focus your learning on the principles that house the techniques, then you can throw all the techniques away and reinvent new techniques quite easily, as I've experiment experimented a lot with a lot so the techniques are just the external husk the meta the principle is the thing to really focus on learning and it's it's really remarkable how they can be manifest in in new places quite quickly i think the meta learning and adaptability are so intertwined okay so you sent me a doc of some questions from some of your listeners and i want to hit you with a few of those, if you don't mind. Let's do it. So Andrew T. asks, what's the single most important attribute you look for when debating if you'll bring a new person into your circle of friends?

Okay, the first one. So I used to debate a lot more in my head than I do now. The first thing, honestly, is just gut feeling. Like, does the animal in me move forward towards that person? Does it stay where it is? Or does it pull back even a quarter inch, even a millimeter? I love it. That's a beautiful answer.

Yeah, that's number one. And number two is just trustworthiness, discretion. Intelligence is dime a dozen. I care less and less about what we consider intelligence. Every time I've overruled my intuition about someone, it's bit me in the ass. Yeah. Every time. Yeah. And pay attention to Molly. Pay attention to my dog. Yeah. Because even if I'm, I've had two drinks and my spider sense is off, if Molly doesn't like someone, pay very close attention to that. Yeah. Yeah. Russell W., do you ever worry you're mistaking noise for signal with learning from successful

people? Survival bias and all that jazz. It's an interesting question. I think about it a lot. I think this is a very smart question, very observant question. You need to keep it in mind. So for me, the first thing with world-class performers is, A, can they repeat whatever I admire about them? In other words, once you're lucky, twice you're good, right? Three times you're world-class if it's something really outrageous. First, can they actually repeat what is their claim to fame? Let's just figure that out first, because if not, keep looking. Number two is, can they teach it? Are there any examples of disciples, which you can see certainly in the investing world, right? You see these rollouts.

And then also the question of, are they succeeding because of X, whatever X is that you're looking at, or are they succeeding in spite of X? And those two things are very often confused where people are like, this works because I use tough love and I kick my employees in the face every time they fuck up and I run a tight ship and that's why it works. And it's like, actually, Jesus, it would be 10 times better if you didn't do that. So you're succeeding in spite of that, in which case you can ask people around them or who have had exposure to them. Yeah, beautiful answer. So Ricky sent two questions I liked,

one of which of course is quite personal to me now because we've got a beautiful puppy. What have you learned about yourself and the world now that you've had a dog for a while? I've learned that we project a lot of our shit on everyone and everything, including dogs. Dogs are just, I mean, there may be exceptions, but dogs are just so tabula rasa. I mean, they come obviously pre-installed with all their gray wolf DNA and canid quirks. But when I was raising Molly and training Molly in the beginning, looking back, I'm so

embarrassed by how upset I got at points when she was not being disobedient, not understanding my training because I wasn't training well. I wasn't clear. And it's so easy to anthropomorphize our animals and assume that they have some internal agenda or that they're doing A, B, and C to annoy us and so on, which ends up being such a mirror for what our wounds are, our fears are, what our compulsions are. So I think Molly is incredible and dogs are an incredible mirror. They really show you, I think, your strengths and your weaknesses. And I think Molly has really taught me how to love also as a result of that. I mean, just to love an animal so deeply and unconditionally, I think that it's really

opened up a lot in me and removed a lot of armor that would have been difficult to remove otherwise that's so beautiful and i see that in you i see the way you interact with osa and with zeus my brother um lights dog zeus just the way you bring love to these these big pups who've got a whole lot of energy they just just love you. There's no bullshitting in that. Sorry about making out with Osa that first night. That was something to behold. I came in just for people who are not in the joke. I was like, may I give Osa a little treat?

He's like, sure. This is the first night I'd arrived. There's the alarm that says I need to go get my COVID test, which is kind of on theme. Oh, no, leave it. Yeah, yeah. And so that's the alarm saying, I need to go get my COVID test,

which is appropriate because I just arrived. And he's like, sure, you can give Osa a treat. And I put a little piece of chicken in my teeth and Osa grabbed it. And Josh was like, you can give my fucking dog COVID. I'm just going to give my whole fucking family COVID. It was pretty great.

It was pretty great. We had a fiery start. That was a good start to the whole thing. Hey man, this has been a lot of fun. Yeah, it's been great, man. So good to see you and so good to jam and to be continued, brother. Love you very much.

Love you too, man. 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? 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

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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 Viore Clothing, spelled V-U-O-R-I, Viore. I've been wearing Viore at least one item per day for the last few months, and you can use it for everything. It's performance apparel, but it can be used for working out. It can be used for going out to dinner. At least in my case, I feel very comfortable with it. Super comfortable, super stylish. And I just want to read

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That was just her response via text. Viori, again spelled V-U-O-R-I, is designed for maximum comfort and versatility. You can wear it running. You can wear their stuff training, doing yoga, lounging, weekend errands, or in my case, again, going out to dinner. It really doesn't matter what you're doing. Their clothing is so comfortable and it looks so good. And it's non-offensive. You don't have a huge brand logo on your face. You'll just want to be in them all the time. And my girlfriend and I have been wearing them for the last few months. They're men's core short, K-O-R-E, the most comfortable line athletic short is your one short for every sport. I've been using

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