The Tim Ferriss Show - #561: Rich Roll — Reinventing Your Life at 30, 40, and Beyond

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Starting point is 00:04:01 Optimal minimum. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. The Tim Ferriss Show. And that is by reading a tweet. I don't really do this. I don't know if I've ever done this, but this is a tweet from October, 2018. And I think Rich is probably going to see where this is going.

Starting point is 00:04:50 Just before his 52nd birthday, here's the tweet. I didn't reach my athletic peak until I was 43. I didn't write my first book until I was 44. I didn't start my podcast until I was 45. At 30, I thought my life was over. At 52, I know it life was over. At 52, I know it's just beginning. Keep running, never give up, and watch your kite soar. Then there's actually another tweet within context. So I've retweeted this for people

Starting point is 00:05:14 who want to see it. They can also find it, of course, at Rich Roll, R-O-L-L. I want to mention one more thing before we get to more of the bio, and that is related to your first half Ironman. So this is an outside magazine, and here's the quote. In my first half Ironman, I barfed during the swim. By the time I got off my bike, my legs were so cramped up that I ran 100 meters for you yanks like me. That's about 300 feet and just stopped it was dnf that means he did not finish my beginnings in triathlon were very humble but i loved it all right so i'm gonna give this in drips and drabs but let's start with paragraph one so now zooming out to present day a little bit of retrospective at age 40 rich roll as, at Rich Roll on Twitter, made the decision to overhaul the sedentary throes of overweight middle age. And I might, I may or may

Starting point is 00:06:10 not be in that place just right now. Walking away from a career in law, he reinvented himself as a globally recognized ultra distance endurance athlete, bestselling author and host of the wildly popular Rich Roll podcast, which I highly recommend, one of the world's most listened to podcasts with more than 200 million downloads. And I'm going to modify the next paragraph a little bit. Rich has been named one of the 25 fittest men in the world by Men's Fitness and the guru of reinvention by Outside Magazine. He's written a best-selling memoir, Finding Ultra, and has co-authored the cookbooks slash lifestyle guides, The Plant Power Way and The Plant Power Way Italia with his wife, Julie, is it Piat?

Starting point is 00:06:53 Piat. Damn it. I knew I had a 50-50 chance there. It's a common thing. You're not alone. This is showing where the, and how the sausage is made because a professional would have asked, and in fact I highlighted her last name to ask you before we started recording

Starting point is 00:07:08 but you know, we live in a worry and Just to get a few things mentioned and we'll mention them again at the very end Richroll.com you can find all things rich related rich roll on all social including twitter instagram and youtube except for facebook Which is rich roll fans Rich welcome to the show on all social, including Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, except for Facebook, which is Rich Roll Fans. Rich, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me, Tim. It's really an honor to be able to join you for this, and I'm really looking forward to the conversation to come. So thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. Me too. And for those of you who can't see video, at some point, maybe you should check it out because we have the perfect yin-yang color template here. You have a rather disheveled Tim Ferriss in tan

Starting point is 00:07:51 with white background and rich looking like a handsome devil with black clothing, black background. It's actually very striking. I should request that guests do this in the future. It will help viewers to keep them separate. So let's really dive in here. And I want to establish just a bit of background for folks, and we're going to go all over the place. So at age 40, right? So you make the decision to overhaul dot, dot, dot, but let's get granular. And maybe we could focus on one piece of this life puzzle, which is alcohol. And could you speak to the role that alcohol has played in your life? When it entered your life, when you really realized that you had a problem? Let's begin there if you're open to it. It entered my life near the end of high school and the beginning of college. Prior to that, I was a very studious, highly motivated person who was very goal-driven. And that grew out of, I think in

Starting point is 00:08:56 retrospect, looking back on my life, on a deep insecurity that I had. Because as a young person, I was very much an introvert. I had a lot of difficulty connecting with other people and making friends. I certainly hadn't demonstrated any kind of athletic talent or ability. I was the typical, like, prototypical kid who gets picked last for kickball and was very awkward and self-conscious. And at some point along the way, I discovered the sport of swimming and we could talk about that if you like, but that was the one thing where I kind of felt comfortable and showed some level of acumen at an early stage. And when you're a young person and you experience just a little bit of encouragement or success, you're going to kind of

Starting point is 00:09:43 double down on that. And that's what I did. And I think there was something about being underwater in almost a metaphysical sense or a psychological sense where I felt protected, like it was almost like this womb where I was insulated from all of the confusing emotions that I had as a young person. And so swimming really became my focus.

Starting point is 00:10:02 And I realized early that I wasn't the most talented kid, but I had this capacity to suffer and to work hard and a willingness to go the extra mile. And with that sensibility, I was able to bridge the talent deficit gap to some extent to the point where by the time I was a senior in high school, I was one of the better swimmers in the Washington, D.C. area where I grew up. And the discipline that I learned in the swimming pool trickled into my academic pursuits. So I was able to go from a kid who really had trouble learning and was sort of a sit-in-the-back-of-the-class kind of guy to being a good student and ultimately getting into a bunch of fancy colleges. So at 18, I really was in a

Starting point is 00:10:46 situation, a very privileged situation where the world was very much my oyster and anything was possible. I ended up going to Stanford University. I went to the opposite coast and I'm sure there's some psychological reasons why. I flew 3,000 miles away to go to college and the reason to go there was twofold. I mean, first of all, Stanford is Olympic champions and world and American record holders and the like. And the opportunity to be a member of that team was like a dream that I couldn't even imagine for myself. So here I am in this incredibly privileged situation where anything truly is possible, but enter alcohol. And alcohol was something that I first was introduced to when I was doing recruiting trips and traveling to colleges, which is what you do when you're an athlete and trying to consider where to go to school. And I had some experiences there that

Starting point is 00:11:56 really anchored in me from moment one that this was going to be a thing for me. I had that sensation that you hear about with recovering alcoholics where from the very first drink, it was like this warm blanket that I could wrap myself in and all my troubles and insecurities and fears and insecurities just sort of vanished. And for the first time, I felt comfortable in my own skin. And I just remember thinking, this is the way that I want to feel all the time life, this young person who felt like everybody else had a perfect roadmap for how to live. And suddenly, those answers that eluded me were being provided in the form of this substance. And so, when I got to Stanford, very quickly, well, quickly and gradually, but I would say that I got more and more progressively more interested in like, where's my next good time? Then how am I going to create a foundation for a happy, successful life?

Starting point is 00:13:11 And a lot of those aspirations that I had about athletics and academic excellence soon became secondary to, you know, where's the party tonight? And it was just a situation where over an extended period of time, my life began to degrade. So it wasn't a situation in which I created cataclysms out of the gate that derailed me because I could function. And it's easier to do that when you're younger, but I could function. I could comport myself in a way where I could still get good grades, show up for class, still, you know, go out partying until two or three in the morning and show up for 6 a.m. swim practice. But over time, like this is not a good recipe for living. And, you know, I lived that way for a very long time until ultimately things got really dark and scary. And, you know, I hit that bottom that

Starting point is 00:14:01 you hear about with people in recovery. What did any of the bottoms or dark moments look like? If we could paint a picture of any example that comes to mind. First of all, I would say that there was nothing like cool or rock and roll about any of it. Like it's just lonely, sad and kind of pathetic and deeply embarrassing. You know, just, you know, I would drive drive drunk and wouldn't remember where I parked my car and would have to wake up the next morning and try to figure out where my car was when I was living in San Francisco when I was fresh out of law school. One time, I woke up one day, didn't want to go to my law firm job and flew to Las Vegas and lost my wallet and woke up not remembering anything that had happened and trying to figure out how I'm going to get home.

Starting point is 00:14:46 You know, stuff like that. That's just, you know, I was the guy who, you know, was the last to leave the party. And when you're in college, you know, maybe it's cute, but when you're 25, 26, 28, you know, nobody's living that way anymore. And you have to find other people to do that with what they call lower companions in the parlance of recovery until ultimately there's no one left and you're just alone.

Starting point is 00:15:11 And I was a guy who would drink alone in my apartment or wake up in the morning before work and have a vodka tonic in the shower. Like it was all very leaving Las Vegas. And I was only 31 at the time, but my disease had progressed to such a state where there was really only a couple things that were going to happen. Either I was going to kill myself, kill another person, or end up in jail or some kind of institution. And that's really

Starting point is 00:15:37 kind of what ultimately led me to getting sober. And when you say kill yourself, do you mean via alcohol poisoning or a car accident or via some deliberate suicide? What do you mean by that? I was never suicidal. I didn't have suicidal ideation, but my life was getting smaller and smaller and more lonely. So if I was able to maintain that lifestyle over an extended period of time, I'm certain that I would have reached a level of desperation where that would have seemed like a good idea. Why did you choose law? Why did you choose to pursue law? Right out of college, I moved to New York City and got a job as a paralegal in a big law firm in New York called Skadden Arps. And that was a situation that should have told me immediately that maybe this wasn't the right path for me. But I think that I chose it not out of some kind of deliberate idea that

Starting point is 00:16:35 it would be something I would be interested in or show some proficiency in, but more as a reaction to social and familial pressures. This idea of not really knowing what I wanted to do, but hey, I can always go to law school and society will smile upon that. And I can put a nice suit on and have nice lunches and have interesting conversations with people and make a good living. I mean, my self-inquiry

Starting point is 00:17:00 really didn't go any further than that. And there was nothing about my interests that would have indicated that law was a good path for me. But I was so disconnected from myself that even asking myself that question at the time was anathema to who I was. But I'm a good student, and I actually enjoyed law school. I enjoy the intellectual pursuit and all of that. But the practice of law is very different, at least in the corporate law firm context, very different than the law school experience. Yes. Very knowing many people who went to law school. I can, through secondhand stories,

Starting point is 00:17:38 say that that seems to universally be the perspective that people end up with. Yeah. And if you love it, if that's your thing, then more power to you. But I just remember walking the halls of the various law firms that I worked at, being confused that there seemed to be certain people that enjoyed it, because I was just gritting my way through it, thinking, I'll just apply these tools that I learned in the swimming pool about suffering and pain tolerance. And I just thought everybody was having that internal experience. I'm sure many were, but there seems to be some people that seem to enjoy it. But I just know that the more that I kind of looked around, certainly with respect to the partners,

Starting point is 00:18:16 that it was clear to me that I didn't really want that life. And yet I felt very stuck in that career path and unsure about how I could ever get out of it and do anything else. We're going to spend, just for people listening and also for you, Rich, so you don't think that we're going to spend too much time in these waters. We're going to spend a lot of time talking about turnarounds, techniques, pattern matching, all sorts of things. But I do want to spend a little bit more time on this chapter or maybe the chapter shortly after this point in time. What were the straws that broke the camel's back with respect to alcohol and seeking help? Well, there were a couple important inflection points, one of which was getting two DUIs essentially in a row with ridiculously high blood alcohol contents, looking at jail time,

Starting point is 00:19:07 my boss finding out at the law firm and being on the precipice of getting fired. That's a whole rabbit hole, you know, sort of chaotic disaster that I weathered. Another one was a marriage, or I should say like a wedding that went awry. I got married and that relationship ended on the honeymoon, which is a whole crazy story that is inextricably linked to, I mean, I was sober at the time, but it's very much linked to my alcoholism. So there's big events like that. But I think those situations created such a deep level of shame inside of me that I wasn't able to shake alcohol in the wake of those experiences because I didn't have the emotional tools to process them. So I continued to drink for a while. I mean, the wedding was really the nadir of the whole thing,

Starting point is 00:19:58 and a reasonable person would have woken up and gotten sober at that time. But I needed to medicate myself through that emotional shitstorm until one day I basically woke up and I was hungover, but it wasn't like I had reaped any kind of chaos the night before. But it's just that moment of realizing I've had enough. I can't live this way anymore. It's just so lonely and desperate, and it only leads in one direction. And I think that's what it takes for anybody who has experience with addiction, particularly substance addiction. You have this sense, like you asked me earlier on, Tim, like, when did I know I had a problem? Like, I knew I had a problem very early on in my drinking career, but that's very different from the willingness to do anything about it. Like I harbored this notion that this was a problem for me, but you're also protecting it

Starting point is 00:20:50 because you want to be able to keep doing it. And that's what leads to this sort of double life where you're hiding your behavior from other people and diluting yourself into thinking that they don't know what's going on. But ultimately, you realize everybody knows what's going on. And on some level, it's a process of stripping away those layers of denial until you can really face the objective truth of what you're doing. And that's a very terrifying thing. And so that's kind of what was going on inside of me until this day in 1998, where I was like, okay, I've had it. I'm ready to really take this seriously and do something about it. How old were you roughly then? My math is going to fail me at

Starting point is 00:21:32 this moment, but 1998? Yeah, I was 31. 31. All right. And because it struck me as a curveball, if you don't want to get into it, that's totally fine. But in my mind, I envisioned this honeymoon just going down as a fireball due to some catastrophe that was alcohol-induced. But you said you were sober. Yeah. Are you willing to expand on that at all? And if not, that's fine. Yeah, no.

Starting point is 00:22:01 It's so hard to describe this and have it make sense. But essentially what happened was I had been drinking quite a bit. I got engaged to this woman. I was living in San Francisco at the time. She was living in Palo Alto and is from Palo Alto. But in the kind of lead up to this wedding, because we had gotten engaged, I had taken a job in Los Angeles. So we were living in separate cities. And I think during that interim period, when she got distance between me, she realized like, maybe this isn't the guy I want to marry. And I had come clean with her about the DUIs. And I think that was very scary to her. So

Starting point is 00:22:34 even though I had been sober for a number of months and told her that I was committed to this path of sobriety, I think in her heart of hearts, she really wanted to get out of this relationship, but she was unable to muster the strength to break it off herself. And I think that she wanted me to break it off. And so there was so much energy behind this impending wedding that was happening that it just kind of transpired without anybody hitting the brakes. And I was trying to be conciliatory and say, because I knew she was off and not present and something was wrong. And I would say, are you okay? What's going on? How can I make you feel comfortable with all of this? And it's a much longer story. I go into detail about it in my book,

Starting point is 00:23:15 but essentially she permitted the wedding to go through, but then didn't want to sign the marriage certificate. That's a red flag. Cause for pause. Yeah. And the night of the wedding, when we went back to the honeymoon suite, that did not go well. I'm surprised that we even went on the honeymoon. But I think in my mind, I was thinking, I'm going to try to make this right and it's all going to work out. That was its own level of delusion. And while we were on this honeymoon on a Caribbean island, it was clear that this relationship had no future. And ultimately, we were able to have a conversation about it. And she ended up leaving early. And at that moment, I was left with myself with no tools and having been sober for six

Starting point is 00:24:01 months, but unable to really process the emotional devastation of having just basically had everybody that I cared about in the world with like 12 groomsmen in this wedding in Palo Alto bear witness to a marriage that clearly wasn't gonna work out. And it was really devastating to me. So I ended up getting drunk on that island and really struggled to get sober again for quite some time after that.

Starting point is 00:24:31 And then, so thank you for sharing that. 1998, 31, I've had enough. How do you seek help? What are your next actions after that? So prior to that, I had been court ordered to Alcoholics Anonymous. So I had been to meetings, but I wasn't doing it because I wanted to get sober. I was doing it because I was compelled to do it. And I think that's an important distinction, especially for people who are struggling or have people in their lives that are struggling with a substance issue. You want to help them. You want to intervene. You can create interventions and things like that to get people into treatment. But ultimately, if that person is resistant to it or isn't interested in getting sober,

Starting point is 00:25:17 that's going to be a very tough hill to climb. So willingness is crucial. So when I was attending those AA meetings, I lacked that level of willingness. It was more like, I just need to get people off my back so I can go back to living the way that I want to live. And why is everybody bugging me? But in the wake of that wedding experience, when my drinking got more and more dire, my parents had reached the level of their tolerance threshold with me and basically my dad said listen we love you but we just can't continue to watch you destroy yourself like this and we can't have anything to do with you but if you're ready to get sober we're of course here from you but until then we're not available to you. However, because they were so terrified

Starting point is 00:26:07 of all of this, they had found an addiction medicine psychiatrist in Los Angeles. And they said, we have this guy. It might be great if you go and see him. So I started seeing this addiction medicine specialist. And he just rang my bell immediately and was like, here's the deal, dude, you're an alcoholic and you need to go to treatment. Until you do that, nothing's going to change and your life's going to continue to be terrible. And I would try to negotiate with him and say, well, I think I can do it in AA. So I was kind of in and out of AA doing my own self-experimentation with trying to get sober. But every time I would crawl back into his office and I was honest with him and I said, yeah, I relapsed again or this happened. But at some point I made a deal with

Starting point is 00:26:49 him because he was like, are you ready to go to treatment? I was like, let me try one more time. And he said, okay. And to his credit, I think that's a really interesting approach. You have to back off a little bit and allow people to have their process. It's like inception. They have to come into this awareness on their own. You cannot compel somebody to see themselves as they really are. And of course, I relapsed, crawled back into his office. And because I considered myself such a man of my word, I said, well, I made a deal with you. So, okay, now I'll go to treatment. I called him after this one bender and I said, I'm ready. And he got a bed for me. And I immediately go online and I'm researching treatment centers and I'm looking for the spa resort one that has really nice accommodations.

Starting point is 00:27:35 He's like, no, no, no. Here's where you're going, this place in Oregon. I got a bed for you. Get on the plane today. And that's basically how it began. What do you think people tend to miss about this story? Whether they hear you telling this story or they read about it, are there things that are important that people gloss over or that elements of this story, whether we've heard them today or not, that stand out to you as particularly important, sort of on the road to recovery, initiating recovery. I think about this type of question a lot. What do people tend to glom onto as the really important parts? What do they tend to maybe neglect to their detriment if they're aiming for recovery themselves?

Starting point is 00:28:26 Does anything come to mind when I say all that? You're talking more broadly about addiction in general, not my personal story? I think I'm talking about I'm weaving into it through your personal story. So it could be your personal story, but it could also be addiction in a broader sense. Because part of what is so interesting to me about you and your story is you've not only had the experiences that you've had, but you have no doubt witnessed many people try to emulate the turnarounds of various types. And you've seen some people succeed spectacularly. You've seen some people fail spectacularly. And then there's a whole spectrum in between, right?

Starting point is 00:29:09 So that I think is extremely interesting and potentially instructive. So you could answer this in any way you like. It could be from your personal story. It could be from what you've seen or learned more broadly speaking about addiction and recovery. There's a lot that I can say about this. I mean, first, with respect to my personal story, if you Google my name, there's a lot of misguided narratives out there that me adopting a vegan diet is what got me sober. Or that ultra-endurance training is what got me sober or keeps me sober. And those are all wildly inaccurate. I mean, I was sober for almost 10 years before I made these lifestyle shifts. I had a whole chapter in between where I created a foundation of sobriety. So,

Starting point is 00:29:59 sobriety and addiction stand outside of those things and those other things have a role in my life, but addiction and recovery are a very separate thing. And that's the way that I kind of think about it. And I think in terms of addiction and recovery more broadly, I think it's important for people to understand that for somebody who is addicted and who's behaving poorly or all of the stuff that addicts do, it's not a referendum on moral character. It's like they're suffering from an illness that wants to kill them. And when they get sober, we think of drugs and alcohol or gambling or whatever behavioral addiction that someone might have as the problem that has been eradicated. But in truth, the behavior or the substance is the

Starting point is 00:30:52 solution to the problem. There's a level of psychic pain within a human being, and they search out a substance or a behavior that gives them some level of solace. Like the substance or the behavior is the solution to the problem because it allows them to feel okay so that they can function in the world. And it works for a while. If it didn't work, people wouldn't do it. But what they miss is that it is solving a problem for them. Of course, it progresses and then things go sideways

Starting point is 00:31:26 and it's no longer the solution, but that's how it begins. And when you remove those behaviors and substances from those people, they don't know what to do with themselves. They're like a live emotional wire without any kind of tools for addressing the underlying problem that has fueled the addictive behavior for so long. And the process of recovery is really about providing tools, some tactical, some strategic, some practical, and some very ephemeral, spiritual spiritual that can be guideposts in helping people create new neural pathways and emotional relationships with how they engage with the world. And that's a very slow, nonlinear process. And that's why so many addicts and alcoholics have a lot of relapses in their story. And relapses are always treated as failures, but ultimately they're learning experiences because you're trying to reorganize your entire life in accordance with new ways of living that are very foreign to somebody who has been engaging in a behavior or addicted to a substance for so long. So there's a saying in recovery like your emotional development gets stunted from the moment that you begin to use.

Starting point is 00:32:54 And when you remove the substance, you're left with that young person at that stage of life. And you have to treat that person with that in mind because they lack the tools that other people, normal people take for granted. And I think the more that we kind of understand this, it allows us to have a little bit more compassion for the people that suffer and a way to kind of hold them in our hearts and a little bit more lightly when they slip up and do the thing. Because for people

Starting point is 00:33:27 that don't have direct experience with this, it defies logic. How could you do that? After everything that's happened, you went and did that thing again? It's so difficult to understand. So I think to the extent that we can peel back the layers of the onion and really understand what's fueling that behavior to begin with allows us to kind of be more compassionate to those people. It's really well put. And it brings to mind for me something that a doctor named Gabor Mate said in a conversation I had with him, which was, I'm paraphrasing here, but he said, don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. Very much in line with what you just said. What is the addiction being used for? And it makes me imagine, and I'm going to take a leap here, but

Starting point is 00:34:16 I'll go in this direction. I imagine that a lot of the questions you get about addiction are, how did you stop? How did you stop? How did you stop? How did you quit? How did you negate, subtract something? But if that subtraction leaves a void of sorts, or it leaves an unaddressed need or unhealed wound, a few questions related to that. If that resonates with you, what was it that you ended up needing to address and what were some of the tools or resources or realizations that you found particularly helpful for that sort of additive piece? First on the subject of Gabor, I had him on my podcast and he flips the table on you and suddenly it becomes a

Starting point is 00:35:06 therapy session, which is like amazing. You know, like it's like, that's exactly what you want, right? And he was very helpful to me in addressing that underlying trauma piece and my resistance to really go there because I love my parents and I don't want to blame them. And he was helpful in helping me understand this idea that it's not their fault. They're good people. They parented you with the tools that they had, but that doesn't mean just because you weren't homeless and impoverished or abused in any particular way, it doesn't mean that you didn't suffer some kind of trauma that ultimately is related to the behavior that you pursued later

Starting point is 00:35:46 in life. And I think to your other point of tools, certainly, yeah. I mean, I wasn't able to stay sober when I was a tourist in Alcoholics Anonymous because I was sitting in the back just waiting to get my court card checked. That's very different from engaging with the true process of recovery. And, you know, I'm a 12-step guy and the whole Alcoholics Anonymous thing is shrouded in anonymity for a reason. So I don't want to get too specific about that other than to say that the steps are the steps for a reason. And it really is this incredible roadmap for unpacking a lot of that underlying pain and providing you with tools to redress it in a meaningful, practical way that alleviate that burden and that shame and allow you

Starting point is 00:36:38 to mature into somebody who can look somebody in the eye and show up when you say you're going to show up, et cetera. And a big piece in that is, there's lots of pieces, but one of the crucial pieces is doing an inventory, which is the fourth step, where you literally go through your life and you itemize out all of your resentments towards people, institutions, et cetera, so that you do a resentment inventory. You do a fear inventory where you itemize everything that you're scared of. And you do a sexual inventory where you hold yourself accountable for how your sexual energy has created havoc in your relationships. And I think the more comprehensive that inventory, the more clear the picture is of how you have conducted your life. And from that, themes emerge where you see these recurrences of like, oh, when I'm in this situation, I always behave this way or this type of person always makes me feel resentful.

Starting point is 00:37:40 And you can kind of go behind that and you get a better understanding of your fundamental blueprint, which is revelatory, frankly. But that inventory is only helpful to the extent that it then allows you to itemize all of the people to whom you owe amends because you're carrying around with that shame, this psychic burden of knowing that you have wronged people or screwed up situations or created chaos in other people's lives and reckoning with that and then addressing it by going to these people and figuring out how to make those wrongs right is a huge relief that is like a pressure valve release on a lot of that shame and the more that you engage in this process you kind of emerge from it where you can make peace with your past and it no longer holds all of that power over you and you can talk about it freely without it creating all of those challenging emotions that are so inextricably related to the errant behavior itself. So that's a huge piece, and that's something that I continue to practice all the time. It's something that you

Starting point is 00:38:52 return to constantly, including the 10th step, which is basically like a daily 10th step where you do a daily inventory of how you've conducted yourself, where you might have gone wrong, if you have to make any kind of minor amends or adjustments in your life. And then on top of that, meditation is a step in the 12 steps. So daily meditation is super important as well. And there's a lot more in there, but I would say those are kind of like the fundamental tools. 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 Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably AG1 by Athletic Greens. If you're

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Starting point is 00:40:17 I found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com slash Tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com slash Tim. I am so endlessly fascinated by 12-step programs and I guess multi-step programs, AA specifically, the story of Bill Wilson. I find all of it just incredible. Also, the sort of decentralized nature of AA itself. Are you aware, and I'll be honest that I did just a very cursory search. I didn't do a really dedicated search, but are you aware of any good books or

Starting point is 00:41:15 documentaries that dig into the history, the tools of AA? Are you aware of anything that comes to mind? Yeah, I'm sure there are those things that exist. I don't know any offhand. I know there was that movie that James Woods did a while back where he played Bill Wilson, but I don't know that I would recommend that one. I'm sure there are, and there's plenty of ancillary books around recovery. There's a book called A New Pair of Glasses that sort of practical applications of the 12 steps for people that are suffering. I don't know that there's the definitive history of Alcoholics Anonymous or the definitive documentary. But I think your point on decentralization is so fascinating. It was blockchain before blockchain. The way that

Starting point is 00:42:06 it's structured is truly remarkable that these guys like Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob knew that they had to decentralize it in order to immunize it from any kind of external corruption or power dynamic that could capsize the whole thing. And the fact that it has not only sustained itself, but grown over the many, many years that it's been around is truly miraculous. And I think a case study- It's bonkers. Yeah, it's amazing. It's really incredible. It's a case study for how to structure an organization that's trying to do something good and not fall prey to the lowest common denominator of human power dynamics that tend to fell even the best intentioned people who are trying to create something good and it's it's

Starting point is 00:42:58 interesting that it hasn't been replicated to my knowledge in any other scenarios because I think there's so much to be learned about how it was formed and how it's continued to not only survive but thrive. The primary reason I ask is that it just seems like this very obvious jewel in plain sight, if that makes sense. And maybe it's the decentralized nature that makes it invisible to a lot of potentially direct study. I don't know the reasons for it, but it's just knowing a lot of people who are part or have been part of AA and just being introduced through casual conversation to some of the facets of how it works. I am really, really fascinated by it. And also for people listening who are thinking to themselves,

Starting point is 00:43:48 God, we're spending a lot of time talking about addiction and recovery. What does this have to do with me? I would just take a moment and say, you know, when people ask me, what do you do? I always kind of flub and don't really know how to answer it. But I view myself, I guess, first and foremost as a student, not necessarily expert, but student of behavioral change. And if you look at alcoholism, if you look

Starting point is 00:44:12 at other types of substance use slash abuse, if you look at workaholism, if you look at eating disorders, I mean, certainly now being over the last several years involved in a lot of scientific study related to different conditions, nicotine addiction. I don't want to say this too glibly, but they're very overlapping. So studying behavioral change in the context of something like addiction to alcohol, I think transcends that and applies to many things in the same way that the training and discipline and pain tolerance that you cultivated through swimming then was applicable to your studying, right? So let's talk about the physical turnaround, because as you mentioned, people tend to... If I could just interrupt you, can I just interrupt you?

Starting point is 00:45:05 Sorry to do that. But I think there's one kind of final important point that I wanted to make about addiction. I think you're correct. Like a lot of people might be listening and saying, well, I'm not an alcoholic or a drug addict and I don't know anyone in my life that is either. How is this relevant? But as somebody who's been kind of steeped in this world for many, many years, and like yourself, I've had many guests on my podcast to discuss this subject matter, I've become increasingly more and more convinced that we are both very cavalier in how we define addiction. Like, I'm a chocoholic or I'm a shopaholic.

Starting point is 00:45:42 It's a throwaway phrase. But at the same time, we're also very rigid in how we define it in that addiction is like heroin addiction or opioid addiction and alcoholism. But I think I'm becoming convinced that addiction lives on this incredibly broad spectrum. And it's a spectrum so broad that almost anybody can find themselves somewhere along the line. So on the one hand, you have the guy who can't pull the needle out of his arm, but on the very far other side of the spectrum, you have people who find themselves repeating the same tired, self-defeating narrative about their life and can't get outside of themselves to see an objective truth about themselves, or the person who is repeatedly in the same bad relationship time and time again, or the

Starting point is 00:46:32 person who is addicted to whatever it is, like video games or social media scrolling. I mean, the social dilemma has really foisted this conversation onto mainstream audiences in a way that I think is allowing us to really think about addiction more broadly because of the devices that we all have in our pockets. And so with that, I think it's helpful to people to understand that there are tools available to help you decouple from whatever that thing is that is holding you hostage or creating that obsessive compulsive behavior that you can't seem to transcend despite your best efforts. And the 12 steps, yes, like they are crucial and instrumental in helping people get off

Starting point is 00:47:20 drugs and alcohol, but they're very helpful to anybody, you know, just to be able to do an inventory of your life and to see yourself more objectively and to understand that you can redress these shameful incidents in your life because we all have them on some level, I think is really profound. And to the extent that we are talking about addiction in this broader context right now, I think is super helpful because, you know, this is an era in which, you know,

Starting point is 00:47:49 more people have been become addicted than ever before with substances and behaviors. And so to have a conversation about this, I think is super important. Yeah, I'm really happy we're doing this. And also the broad applicability of concepts from the 12-step programs or a in this case like for instance i'd never heard this term but i wrote it

Starting point is 00:48:14 down lower companions yeah i mean it's just such a perfect phrase perfect phrasing for what we all kind of intuit on some level, but having a simple label for it, it makes it much easier to wield kind of conceptually, right? And thinking about your life. We're going to get to the physical piece because I have just selfishly many questions about that. And I'm sure a lot of listeners will be interested in that and it's related. Let me throw out another mnemonic of sorts, but it's a very short phrase that I'd love to hear you speak to in any way that makes sense. Mood follows action. Yeah, I love that one. That was something that my first sponsor said to me very early on in sobriety. I think I was complaining to him about some commitment I had made to sweep the floors or make coffee or something along those lines or something that had happened to me that day that I was annoyed with and I couldn't see my way through. And he just said, mood follows action. And what he meant by that is you can't think your way into the mood that you seek or the state of mind that you aspire to inhabit. Action is the only thing that can trigger that change state. And I literally think

Starting point is 00:49:41 about this every single day. And it was validated recently in a podcast that I did with Andrew Huberman, who I know has been on your show, where he studied the neurochemistry of this and realized that behavior has to come first and thoughts, perceptions, emotions follow from that. And when you think about that in the context of our daily lives, like let's just use running, for example. Like if you wake up in the morning and you're supposed to do a run because you're training for some race and you don't feel like doing it, we all resort to that state where we think, well, I don't want to do it right now. I'll just wait until I feel like doing it and then I'll do it then. And when we engage that way, we end up never doing it, right? Like if you're waiting until you feel like doing something, chances are you're probably never going to get to it. But to take the action despite how you feel about it is the thing that catalyzes the state change. And in my case or anybody who's a runner, they'll tell you when they finish the

Starting point is 00:50:43 run, they're always glad that they did it. They don't generally regret it. And then they feel better. And I think that that example is applicable to all areas of life. So when did you turn, I mean, of course, in the bio it says at age 40, why did you decide to turn the ship around physically? So, after getting sober at 31 and emerging from that treatment center where I lived for 100 days, which is a pretty long time to be in a treatment center, and being told by the counselors that you have a very serious case of alcoholism, the kind of case that we typically only see in lifelong drinkers like guys in their 60s, it was impressed upon me that I really needed to get this right or I was going to die. That point was made to me very clearly. And I was able to hear it and take it seriously.

Starting point is 00:51:35 And so, I was super dedicated to creating this foundation of sobriety because my life truly did hang in the balance. And so that became my main priority for many years after that experience. So I returned to Los Angeles. I was going to multiple meetings a day. I was doing all this stuff and building a new community of friends because I needed new people. I couldn't hang out or go to the places that I had been going to before. And with that was also unpacking the shame that I had about being this person who had all of this potential and all of these opportunities that I had squandered. And I felt compelled to repair all of that and get back to becoming that person that I was before I started drinking. And I did that with blinders on. In my mind, the best way to do that was to go back to the law firm

Starting point is 00:52:33 and work my ass off and become a partner and get all the stuff so that the world would smile upon me and my parents would think that I was safe. Alcoholics Anonymous is a spiritual program and I was developing spiritually, but I had not yet reached the level of maturity where I could really look inward and ask myself those fundamental questions about what it is that I actually wanted to do rather than thinking, what is society expecting me to do? But what is unique to me? What gets me excited in the morning? What do you think that you're here to express that is uniquely you? That just was not part of my mental process in any way. And so a lot of those addictive personality traits,

Starting point is 00:53:19 although I was not using substances anymore, were channeled into workaholism and in turn, some pretty unhealthy lifestyle habits. So basically, 80-hour weeks working as a lawyer and hitting the fast food drive-thrus on the way home and Chinese takeout for late nights at work and the like. And really, despite the fact that I'd been this swimmer in college, not exercising, just not really attending to or taking care of myself physically. And so over a 10-year period, that accumulates, such that by the time I was 39, I was about 50 pounds overweight. Never like an obese person or anything like that, but just kind of like a heavy guy who looks like he works too much in a law firm and subsisting on junk food and just feeling

Starting point is 00:54:05 progressively worse and worse, lazier, not energized, not enthusiastic about my life. And I think in the back of my awareness was this percolating existential crisis because I knew that this career path that I had chosen was really not for me. And I could will myself into doing it, but ultimately, it was not only not making me happy And I could will myself into doing it, but ultimately, it was not only not making me happy, it was making me more and more miserable, like this square peg in a round hole kind of thing. But I was too afraid to really look at that or think about how I could change that trajectory. I guess what I'm saying is there was a confluence of poor health on the one side and this spiritual existential crisis that I was harboring on the other hand.

Starting point is 00:54:50 And they essentially collided with each other shortly before I turned 40 when I had this specific moment of walking up the flight of stairs to my bedroom after a late night at the office. And I had to stop halfway up a flight of stairs. I was too winded to just walk all the way to the top. And I had tightness in my chest. And I had that sweaty pallor on my face from a flight of stairs. And thinking I'm like this person who had swam at Stanford and would look in the mirror and see that person reflected back to me, I realized that I was harboring a whole other level of denial that I needed to look at. And it was a scary moment because heart disease runs in my family. My mother's father had been a champion swimmer and captain of the University of Michigan swim team in the late 1920s and early 30s, and a guy who had an American record, and he's's a guy that I'm named after and in many ways

Starting point is 00:55:45 like my doppelganger, but he had died of heart disease at a young age. And I had this flash where I realized if I didn't course correct how I was living, that I was likely headed in his direction and would meet my demise probably sooner than he had because there was no McDonald's and Jack in the Box when he was kicking around. It was sort of like a second bottom that was very reminiscent of the day I decided to get sober, like this very crystallized moment in time where it's almost like a window of opportunity presents itself, like a crack in the door or a line in the sand. And you have this opportunity to harness it, take advantage of it, and take contrary action or not, right? And because I was so aware of how that simple decision of going to that treatment center had changed my life so dramatically

Starting point is 00:56:40 that I was being once again visited by just such a moment, I realized that I needed to take action swiftly because if I didn't kind of grab onto it immediately, I knew it would just pass and become ephemera. And so that was really the moment that catalyzed kind of everything that followed. And even the fact that I'm talking to you today, it all tracks back to that very specific incident. What year are we talking? More or less, do you recall? 2006. Okay. Did this coincide with something I've read you describe as complete financial dismantlement, which sounds brittle? It doesn't sound pleasant. Was that around the same time before or coinciding? That started a little bit later. It was sort of precipitated by the crash in 2008. And it continued through years after publishing Finding Ultra. It was a very extended period of

Starting point is 00:57:54 time of being challenged to even put food on the table. I have all these cheat sheets in front of me, of course. And one of the questions I like to ask, as you well know, what is the best or most worthwhile investment you've ever made? Could be time, money, energy, et cetera. And I give various examples of this, but it could be Warren Buffett talking about his best investment being investing in Dale Carnegie speaking classes or anything at all. You have a couple here.

Starting point is 00:58:23 Three, decision to train for 2008 Ultraman, stepping back from the law to write Finding Ultra, and then starting your podcast. So we could focus on the first one. I want to, if it's okay with you, and feel free to redirect, look at the second one, stepping back from the law to write Finding Ultra. When was that that you stepped back to do that? I started writing it in late 2010 or early 2011. Okay. So the reason I ask, there seem to be these inflection points. And inflection could go multiple directions, not only up, but there seem to be certain decisions that in retrospect just really make a lot of difference in direction. How did you decide to step back from the law to

Starting point is 00:59:11 write this book given the complete financial dismantlement and all of these various things going on at the time? And was it an easy or hard decision? I think it was a little bit of both. At that time, I had already been scaling back on my law practice. I was balancing training for these crazy races, which we can talk about, and becoming less and less interested in being a lawyer. And at that time, I was self-employed as a lawyer. I had made the step of getting out of the big corporate law firm hustle and had a couple different incarnations of my practice, being solo, being with a couple partners, et cetera. So I had flexibility over how I was allocating my time. And the four-hour work week was actually really helpful at that time in helping me wrap my head around how I could straddle these both

Starting point is 01:00:06 worlds and still get things done. So the truth is, I had already begun to take my foot off the gas a little bit on the law practice. But the opportunity to write this book was such a remarkable occurrence that I could have never predicted happening in my life. And I just felt so grateful to even have the opportunity. That was an inbound email or outreach of some type? It's actually a really interesting story. So what happened was I had been doing these races and getting some notoriety for it and some press. And an article came out in the Stanford Alumni Magazine, and it had mentioned what I was doing.

Starting point is 01:00:46 It had also mentioned that I had had this struggle with alcoholism and had been sober for a while. And somebody who I only knew very tangentially sent me an email and said, I read that article. I'm recently out of a treatment center, like he was an alumni. I'm recently out of a treatment center, he was an alumni I'm recently out of treatment center and I'm the CEO of this company my board doesn't know like I need somebody to talk to like can we just talk and so I struck up a phone relationship with this person and was just trying to help him and you know guide him to make good decisions about how to conduct himself in early sobriety. And at some point, he said, hey, I know this book agent. You have such an amazing story. Let me introduce you to this person. And at that time, I hadn't thought of writing a book. It wasn't on my list of things

Starting point is 01:01:37 that I was thinking of doing. And that conversation with that book agent basically made me feel comfortable giving it a stab. And it was kind of a charmed thing where I wrote a proposal. I worked really hard on it because I recognized the unique and amazing opportunity it presented. And that led to getting a book deal really quickly. And so suddenly my life priorities changed because I was able to recognize that this could be a lever that would propel me into an entirely new universe of opportunities and trajectories with my career. the most important professional commitment that I made at that time and really created the foundation for me being able to do kind of all the things that I do now. You do quite a few things and quite well, I will add. You're welcome. I should say, can I just say like really quickly,

Starting point is 01:02:40 sorry to interrupt you, but like you have no idea how much that means to me, Tim. It really is meaningful that you said that because I look to you and the example that you've set and all the things that you have done in the world in such a remarkable fashion. And I aspire to your level of impact and influence. So I wanted to thank you for that. And thank you also for being a support to me. When the book came out, you let me do a guest blog post for your site. I think I pestered you until you finally relented. But that was extremely helpful to me at the time. And you have no idea how much I appreciate that.

Starting point is 01:03:22 Oh, thank you, Rich. Well, it was my pleasure. And I will say that a compelling story is a compelling story. So I really appreciate the kind words and you're doing a hell of a job, man. I mean, I really admire the work that you're doing in the world. And it's fun for me to be sitting here asking you for very thinly-filled advice. I've been very indirect so far, but thank you for that. And I figure just as a way of, and we can go anywhere we want to go, of course, but we're recording this around the turn of the new year. I am in the next year,

Starting point is 01:04:07 going to turn 45. And I've realized just in the last few years, really, that because I used to, not at your level within this kind of dynastic famed team at Stanford for swimming, which we might come back to at some point, but had competed as an athlete. And when I competed, I found it very easy to motivate for a lot of reasons, right? I mean, but there's a lot of positive and negative reinforcement involved when you compete. And then in the last, let's just call it four or five years, I have continued to train, but in a pretty lackadaisical ad hoc way. Lots of travel, going to gyms, kind of figuring out what I'm going to do when I get to the gym.

Starting point is 01:04:59 No real programming to speak of. And what I've realized in the last few years is what I was able to pull off for, let's just say, 10 years of decent, kind of mediocre to high mediocre training is just not going to cut it moving forward metabolically or otherwise. And I've trained before and having competed before, and I have found a lot of shame around and judgment around having let it slip, if that makes any sense. And nonetheless, I have really decided, all right, 2022, this is the year that I want to make some significant changes. Given the book,

Starting point is 01:05:47 given your podcast, you have no doubt observed many people try to emulate what you've done to differing degrees of success. What advice would you give to someone in my shoes? It could be advice to me, but someone who is considering this sort of doing a reboot given the sort of the sample set that you've observed over time or just from your direct experience yeah well i mean i guess the first thing i would ask you tim is like why what is going on what's beneath the kind of surface level aspect of this that you just shared what What is it that you feel is lacking that would be fulfilled by you pursuing some kind of fitness goal?

Starting point is 01:06:31 Is it just like, oh, I'm starting to feel lazy or I've slipped off or I don't feel the way that I'd like to feel right now? Or like, I always like to ask that first because people are very casual and cavalier about saying, I wanna do this goal, like I wanna do this goal. I want to do this race or whatever. And I'm always like, why? Why is that important to you? So that would be

Starting point is 01:06:51 the first thing I would ask you. Yeah, I have answers. So the first, I think overarching answer is mood follows action. So I know that when I am training consistently with a purpose of some type, not just going to yoga a few times a week, I can do that. I can lift weights two or three times a week. But training with a purpose, I find, just leads me to a better mental, psycho-emotional state more often than not. It is the most reliable intervention, so to speak. So that would be part one. Part two, and we'll see where this goes, but I really, really miss the camaraderie of being on a team or striving towards a similar goal.

Starting point is 01:07:42 Probably, it doesn't have to... I've never had that experience in a co-ed capacity, so it doesn't necessarily have to be all men. But that experience, which I found challenging to replicate outside of sports, would be another reason. I stopped doing judo and jujitsu and so on quite a while ago just because of the number of injuries. I'm okay intermittent injuries they just take a lot longer to heal from now than they did when i was 16 to 22 or whatever so those would be top of the list and i think that related to the first answer this like mood follows action i think think that self, and we could probably pick this apart, I'm sure, but like self-image also follows action. Like I just have, I feel better about myself when I am

Starting point is 01:08:32 training with some degree of focus and a goal of some type, you know, especially if it's time bound, I just do very well with that. And I haven't, you know, over COVID and everything else, not to make excuses, but I have, I have been very bad at doing that. And still like I'm training a couple of times a week, but I've realized I'm barely skating by kind of like look fit with clothing on fit, which is not enough for me at this point. I enjoy, I should also say, I just, I really, I do enjoy pushing myself physically. You know, maybe not to the point, like when I was much younger, I would like go for training runs for, or sprint workouts for wrestling or whatever. And I would run until like the blood vessels would burst in corners of my eyes. Like,

Starting point is 01:09:21 I don't need to do that anymore. I think that's kind of silly for me at this point. But that's a long-winded answer to your question. Yeah. Well, I think that's a great answer. And just knowing enough about you to know how important structure is to you, like setting really measurable, tangible goals and benchmarks. That's kind of how you operate. And that's the easy part for you. But I think the harder part is figuring out what is the character of the actual pursuit, right? And I would start with curiosity. What is it that is something you're interested in learning or exploring that might be something new that sits a little bit outside of your comfort zone, but is intriguing enough for you to want to explore it. It's easy to say, well, you should do this race or you should try this or you should join a team. But I think

Starting point is 01:10:15 curiosity is really the most important piece. Because if you're not interested in it, if it's not something that's going to get you excited and have some ability to retain your attention and enthusiasm, chances are you're going to get bored or you're going to drop off. So starting with that, I think, is important because I could tell you, you should do this, but only you know what that might look like. But I would suggest that spending time with that curiosity and then figuring out how you can pursue that learning curve in a challenging fitness context that also involves community or team building on some level, because that's the other piece that you feel like you're missing.

Starting point is 01:10:57 And I get that. I miss that too. And I do most of my training alone. And when I do group runs, I'm like, I should do this more. This is so fun. And yet I don't do it. So I relate to that deeply. But I think those would be good starting places. Things that come to mind for me is some kind of adventure race or something where it involves other people and lots of different types of skill sets that come into play that is kind of scary, but also experiential and potentially very fun.

Starting point is 01:11:29 Yeah. Or orienteering, something like that. And I should also say that the team piece is also, it could be a partner piece. And I think fundamentally for me, what that is, is an accountability piece, right? Because, and I'm sure you experience this quite a bit too. It's like, it's not the pursuit of bad ideas. I mean, it could be, but it's not the pursuit of bad ideas or worthless tasks that will drown you it's like saying yes to too many cool ish things not a handful or one truly great thing does that make sense right so this is like this is like my major malfunction these days like like i am dying death by a thousand cuts these days because of like cool stuff that i want to do and say yes to, you know, too frequently. Yeah. So you can just drown in that stuff. And if I don't have, this is going to sound really bad. I know a lot of- An anchor. You need an anchor. An anchor. I need an anchor. There needs to be a consequence to me being like, eh, I'm doing this bullshit on my laptop at 4 p.m. and I'm going to push off this workout that's

Starting point is 01:12:40 scheduled for 4.30. I want there to be a consequence to that. And there are a lot of ways to set up stakes and consequences, but a very easy way to do it is just train with somebody, which is part of the reason why one of the most consistent forms of exercise I've been able to get in the last, say, six months is rock climbing, because I'm going with a belay partner. And if they show up and I'm not there, it's just a real dick move. So adventure racing, I was thinking orienteering possibly, although I say that really knowing very little about it. Are there any other characteristics that you've been able to spot amongst just patterns of people making attempts at this over and over again.

Starting point is 01:13:27 The other thing I would point out is the tendency to indulge in a little bit of analysis paralysis. You could spend the next year trying to figure out what mountain it is that you want to climb or how you're going to get there. And I have a sense that maybe this might be a thing for you. And I think there's a lot of value in not overthinking things and just saying, this is something that's interesting to me. I'm just going to decide right now I'm going to do this thing. And it's like six months from now and it's in the calendar and I have no idea how I'm going to get there, but it's there. And I think that compulsion to want to know all the answers and how it's going to play out and all the steps you're going to need to take to get there can prevent us from moving forward in our lives.

Starting point is 01:14:12 And I think these situations, in my experience, are rigged such that you're not supposed to know all of those answers because you're rewarded for actually getting into action. It's tangential to mood follows action. The bricks get laid only two steps in front of you and you're not allowed to see the whole thing, right? Use Ironman, for example, or triathlon. What bike should I get? Well, you can go around that merry-go-round forever, but ultimately the best bike is the one that's sitting gathering dust in your garage. Just go do a race with that and you'll figure out all that stuff as you go. And it becomes, the more you do it, the more emotionally engaged you get with it. And then these things tend to develop a life of their own.

Starting point is 01:14:59 All right. I have a very specific question for you. It came up before we started recording. And I thought, you know, this is something I know very little about. So you can safely assume that I can be a very effective stand-in for anyone in the audience who doesn't know what this is. Zone 2 training. Could you share your thoughts, recommendations, cautionary tales, anything related to Zone two training, perhaps beginning with a definition, because this is something that, as you know, Dr. Peter, Tia has

Starting point is 01:15:31 spoken quite widely about. What is zone two training? First of all, like your conversation with Peter on the subject matter, and then Peter, I know, has done like AMAs where he's dove very deeply into this topic, are fantastic listens, and everybody should check that out if they're interested in this subject matter, because my version of explaining this will be a very layperson's experiential version of it compared to Peter's very scientific and eloquent. Encyclopedic. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm a huge, huge proponent of zone two training. And I believe that my fidelity and adoration of the zone two philosophy is a cornerstone in how I was able exercise that essentially is the state in which you are

Starting point is 01:16:32 exerting yourself at essentially a conversational level. You are in your aerobic zone where your body can make use of one of two sources of energy, glucose or fat. And it is the level of exertion that lives and breathes just beneath where you cross a certain threshold and go into a more anaerobic state, which is dependent more or exclusively on glycogen stores for energy. In endurance training, zone two, I think is absolutely crucial for success because it is the best way or the methodology that you leverage to create efficiency, which is something that Peter has talked about. So most people, when they go out for a run, let's say they go on a run, a 45-minute run like three or four times a

Starting point is 01:17:26 week or something like that. Most people will go out and they will exert themselves so that they feel like they had a vigorous run. They'll run as fast as they can for that period of time so that when they're finished, they feel like, oh, I got something out of that. Zone two is a level of output that is quite a bit beneath that level of exertion, because when you're doing that kind of mindlessly, like I'm just going out for a vigorous run, most typically you are in what is called the gray zone. You're going too hard and too fast to really develop that aerobic capacity and engine and efficiency, but you're not going hard enough to develop speed and the anaerobic kind of capacity that you're looking for for those

Starting point is 01:18:13 really fast, shorter bursts. And in that gray zone, which is where most average people live and breathe, you can get to a certain point, but you will very quickly plateau and really never go beyond that. Zone two is a certain kind of discipline because it's asking you to hold back. Zone two is the level of output where basically you can get up and do it every day. And quite often you complete the workout and you feel like you didn't do anything and you have this impulse to want to go faster, so you have to hold back from doing that. But essentially what it does is it, as Peter talks about, helps you develop a greater mitochondrial density in your muscles. And in ultra endurance,

Starting point is 01:18:58 this is absolutely crucial because there's nothing about ultra endurance that is fast. It has nothing to do with threshold power or speed or any of that. It's truly the ability to efficiently persist. So the prize doesn't go to the fastest guy, it goes to the person who slows down the least. And when you live in this zone two place where you're training for long periods of time, developing this capacity, what you're doing is you're building this foundation of endurance from the ground up. I'm on a bike and I get my finger pricked as the watts go up and you get this heart rate zone and this watt zone wherein you understand like this is the level of exertion required to like be right in the sweet spot of all of this when I began training for these races my zone to pace when I was running was like 10 minutes a mile or 10 30 or something like that. But by rigorously adhering to this without doing any interval training or any tempo work over a two-year period, I got to the point where I could

Starting point is 01:20:11 run seven-minute miles at the same heart rate. So the same amount of energy output, but that level of increase in speed, not by doing any speed work, but by literally creating efficiencies and developing that mitochondrial density. And ultimately, what you're also doing is training the body to metabolize fat for fuel, which is your all-day source of energy. You literally will never run out of it. So in my experience, training the body to metabolize fat for fuel is really been, it's an N of one and experiential experience that I've had, but it's really much more about how you're training than what it is that you're eating or when you're eating it. Like I've just found this training to be the best way to get into that place of the body,

Starting point is 01:21:03 learning how to metabolize fuel in that way so that you can literally continue to go for as long as you want. And there are, and certainly I'll link in the show notes to the conversations with Peter Atiyah that go probably deeper than that. I don't know. I think it's great. It's great. It's great.

Starting point is 01:21:26 It does get technical, but Peter knows his stuff. I'll provide some links to that for people who want to dig in. I would love- You chopped it out and then put it at the end and I went immediately to the end

Starting point is 01:21:36 to listen to all of it. Right. So for people who haven't heard this episode, basically the first, maybe it was the first question and we launched into the cellular metabolism involved with zone two training and mitochondrial density. I thought, you know, maybe that 20 minute appendix should be put at the end as an appendix, just so that we can get people in the door. So we're not having people do calculus on their way

Starting point is 01:22:01 into the club, maybe on the way out. But it is a great section. So we'll link to that in the show notes at tim.blog.com. Question for you, and this may be a dead end, but I'm just curious. Have you explored using ketone meters as you have adapted and increased your mitochondrial density through zone two training? And the reason I'm asking is I'm wondering if you've noticed, for instance, this is something I track, but without the zone two training in the case of say a two or three day fast, how quickly my body will go to, will shift over to say, you know, 0.7 millimolars or something like that. Get to the point where I feel like I am in ketosis, just subjectively through cognitive sharpness, mental acuity generally. Have you played around with that at all or seen a faster switchover? No, I haven't. I haven't. Yeah. I don't have

Starting point is 01:22:56 any experience with that. It would make sense though. It would make a lot of sense. How frequently is it necessary to do zone two training? I'm sure it's highly individual, but just painting with a broad brush to begin to accrue some of the benefits that we're talking about. Yeah, I think Peter answered this question and I believe he gave a window of something like three months or something like three to six months. I would say that this is not like the way to hack yourself to success because it requires a significant investment in time. You have to play the long game to reallyarner the full buffet of what it was availing me for a lot. It took two years, basically, is what I'm saying. The longer you do it, the more efficient you become. And then the longer you can go, the further you can sustain a certain level of effort and these adaptations are like not overnight. But I think it's like when you're looking at like, it's not like, what are you going

Starting point is 01:24:11 to do this year? But like three years, if you're on like a three-year plan, I think really doubling down on this philosophy, there's so much benefit to it. But it depends on what your goal is too. I'm in the process of figuring that out. I have to dig into that curiosity we were talking about earlier. And certainly part of that will be know thyself. Still working on that. I think I've been in the gray zone, side note, for like two years, which is probably some explanatory power. So there are three things, at least three things,

Starting point is 01:24:42 but three things I would love to hear you speak to. And I'll let you, you mentioned buffet. So I'll throw out three and then you can pick whichever one you want to tackle first. So one is sleeping in a tent. Two is taking a full month off the grid every year. And then number three is your daily architecture. So not committing to certain things or focusing on certain things up to 12 noon. Which one of those would you like to dig into? I mean, we could go any direction you want. I mean, we could start with the tent. Let's start with the tent. Yeah. So I I've been sleeping outside in a tent for a couple years at this point, I think a little over two years, and I absolutely love it. It's really been beneficial to my sleep, and it's something that started from a frustration over my increasing inability to get restful slumber. And the impetus,

Starting point is 01:25:49 like kind of original impetus was my wife likes the bedroom warm. I like the bedroom cold. I'm sure a lot of people can relate to this relationship dynamic. And no matter how much we would try to compromise to make it good for both of us, Julie would always be bundled up under a ton of covers and I'm sleeping on top of the covers like sweating. And then neither of us sleeps and we get up and we're not happy. We have a flat, you've been in my house, I have a flat roof on my house. And one summer evening, we did a sleepover on the roof with the kids and we have a flat wall where we would project movies and we're like eating popcorn. And we all just kind of slept on the roof that night

Starting point is 01:26:29 and in sleeping bags. And I woke up the next day just feeling amazing, like from the outdoor air and the cool like desert air of Los Angeles. And I was like, I can't remember the last time I slept so well. So I told Julie, I was like, I'm just going to sleep on the roof again tonight. And it really began from there. And I just fell in love with being out. There's something about being outdoors that just agrees with me and the kind of cool evening air. But I would wake up covered in condensation, like completely wet. So I was like, all right, I got to get a tent. So then I got a tent. The tent was on the roof. Then it got windy. I moved the tent to the ground, but I've really just enjoyed it. And as I get older, I'm so protective of my sleep. And it's so important to me that I get those eight hours because I know what it feels

Starting point is 01:27:18 like not to get them. And it still eludes me quite often. I really struggle with this, but it's been a huge benefit in the quality of my sleep and I enjoy it. People always ask, well, they think I'm having some kind of fight with my wife or something like that. We have our quality time, I promise you. Everything is fine. In my marriage, we've been together for a very long time. It's all good. And I also think it's been a cool kind of stoic practice because I live in a really nice house and I have nice things, but I actually prefer to sleep in the tent.

Starting point is 01:27:58 And there's something about that where it gives me comfort. Like if everything went terribly wrong and I lost everything, like I know that I'm happy sleeping in a tent and I don't really need that much ultimately. And that's been really kind of nice in cultivating a little bit of a minimalist sensibility about how I live. So you decided being blown off the roof while you're sleeping is probably not a good idea. I second that. Do you have mountain lions around those parts? We do. And I go running in all the trails all around where I live in the Santa

Starting point is 01:28:38 Monica mountains. I know they're there. I've never seen one, but they're definitely there. Our property is fenced, so I feel okay being in the center. But they're there. They're real. But I don't know. We'll see. I remember this experience in Northern California up by Napa. I went on this hiking trip, and everybody at the same time got the feeling that they were being watched. And I was like, yeah, we should probably pay attention to that. There are mountain lions everywhere. Forgive me, but A, I want to know. B, my listeners will be annoyed if I don't ask. So you did a lot of trial and error with tent and setup and everything else. What does your gear look like currently after two years of trying it out? Yeah. Well, I'm actually at a turning point with all of this.

Starting point is 01:29:25 I've been sleeping in like a North Face tent that I've had for a while, but these tents tend to only last maybe four or five months at most because the sun just beats them up and then they turn into like tissue paper. So I'm constantly getting new tents. And finally, I was like, this is ridiculous.

Starting point is 01:29:41 So I just bought like a proper canvas, like glamping tent. And we haven't constructed it yet. I'm having a deck built and I'm going to make it like kind of like a cool outdoor structure. So that's the next chapter in all of this. But for the last two years, it's been a series of, you know, basically, you know, small tents in the backyard. I have a mattress in there, so I'm not sleeping on the ground and tons of blankets blankets, which is part of the appeal. There was frost when I woke up this morning. It was great. I slept fantastic last night. But a key thing that I have been using for a couple

Starting point is 01:30:14 years is a gravity blanket, which I absolutely love. I don't know if you've had any experience. I have. Yeah, I have one upstairs. So, what is the gravity blanket and why do you find it helpful? Gravity blanket is a weighted blanket. There's different types of them, but essentially they're quilted with like, I don't know, sand in them or different types of heavy materials. And they come in different weights. So I think mine is like a 25-pound blanket. So imagine that experience of being at the dentist and you're getting an x-ray and they put that like lead mat on your chest and think, is that a pleasant experience for you or an unpleasant experience for you? And when I think about that, I kind of like it. Like there's something about it. Swaddling clothes.

Starting point is 01:31:02 Yeah, it's like being protected. You know, it's like telling my sympathetic nervous system that i'm safe and i believe i could be wrong but i believe that that was the original use case for the gravity blanket to treat people with autism who have trouble calming down and it had this impact of like soothing them. And that's certainly, you know, been my experience using it. And I, I love it. And you use it at night. Yeah. Put that on top of your blankets. All right. So tent check. Any other modifications that you've made to your tenting experience

Starting point is 01:31:40 that come to mind? No, I mean, I wear an, I have an eye mask. What type of eye mask? Of course, the Tim Ferriss. I forgot what podcast I'm on. I gotta ask. The Mindfold. I like the Mindfold. Oh, Mindfolds are great. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Check. All right. Now, thank you for indulging that. Inquiring minds want to know, of course. And for people who want another example of this type of stoic practice, different type of timeframe, but Kevin Kelly, who's been on the podcast at least two times, arguably the world's most interesting man, he will sleep in his living room in a sleeping bag, surviving on, as I recall, instant oatmeal and instant coffee for maybe a week a year, two weeks a year, just as a little reminder that all is well, everything's fine. But I like the idea of sleeping outside a lot more personally. So daily architecture or weekly architecture, just schedule-wise,

Starting point is 01:32:49 seems like you rarely schedule certain types of things before noon your time. Could you speak to that and perhaps just tell the genesis story? Like how and when did you begin doing that? Because that is contraindicated if you begin doing that because that's quite a uh that is contraindicated if you're doing 80 hour weeks right so there's a there was a transition yeah of course yeah that that didn't really become a possibility until i was self-employed and i think i start started practicing it originally when i was writing Finding Ultra because I needed quiet hours before work began to just be focused on that important thing. And I've just built upon it from there. So essentially,

Starting point is 01:33:33 I'm early to bed, early to rise. I go to bed like around nine and generally get up around five, five, between five and six. And the early hours are really protected as my own time. So morning meditation, journaling, writing, creative projects, no meetings, no phone calls. Like certainly like we're doing this podcast this morning, so I'll make exceptions like we're doing this in the morning. But as a general rule, I try not to commit to anything outside of those practices for that initial phase of the day. And so after I finish those practices, then I do my training in the morning and I try to get that done before I go into the workday. how frequently would you say you succeed? If you, and I'm not to ever expect it to be a hundred percent. I'm just curious what you would say it looks like. And when you get something,

Starting point is 01:34:33 cause we were talking about the death by a thousand cuts earlier, when you get really tempting stuff, what do you do? Right? Like sometimes you make exceptions, but if you, if you made all the exceptions, then the schedule wouldn't work.

Starting point is 01:34:44 Right. Because I'm sure you have people pitch stuff earlier in the day. So, so what's your, what would you say your hit rate is and how do you contend with the, the temptations? I would say outside of situations where I'm traveling, my hit rate's about 85%. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty good. Yeah. and also the people that i generally work with like all know this now so it's less often that i'm asked to do things during those hours because they know and i've gotten much better at just not agreeing to do stuff conference calls zoom calls and stuff like that during that period of time but if somebody's in the uk or in an you know a very erratically different time zone, there's situations where

Starting point is 01:35:25 it's like, okay, am I going to be the huge pain in the ass or am I going to just make an exception? Make them do the Zoom call at 11 p.m. Yeah. I'm too much of a people pleaser for that. And that's the war that I'm always waging. The healthy boundary versus the desire to be liked is the battleground in my head. And so I'm pretty good about that. The death by a thousand cuts shows up in other areas of my life, particularly regarding stuff that isn't due or isn't going to happen for a long period of time. If it's far enough out on the calendar, I'll pretty much agree to anything.

Starting point is 01:36:04 And then that day arrives and you're like, what am I doing? I'm never doing this again. And then the following week, you're reaping the same thing. So that's like my Mount Everest right now. And listen, these are problems of abundance. They're the result of working very hard

Starting point is 01:36:22 to create something that is interesting to people. And so you get offered cool stuff and I want to take advantage of all the cool stuff. Like I know what it's like to not have people interested in having me involved in cool stuff, but at what cost, right? And it's really hard to do that. It's like, do you want to go do this amazing thing?

Starting point is 01:36:42 You're like, 100% I do. But what are you really trying to accomplish? Where is your focus vested? And calibrating those opportunities against the things that are most important in your life. And I have four kids. I have other responsibilities outside of my professional responsibilities

Starting point is 01:37:01 that are important to me. So I'm not always great at making those decisions, but I think I'd like to think that I'm getting a little bit better. Well, 85% hit rate's really good. That's just for the pre-noon thing. That's not for like fielding all incoming stuff. Still, that's a good protected zone.

Starting point is 01:37:20 That's a good protected zone. You know, I'm no surprise to anyone, just fascinated by how people think about scheduling and time. I know that you've been doing some workouts at Laird, Hamilton, and Gabby Reese's place in the pool, XPT and all that, which is... Side note on sleep, I have probably never slept better than after a really long workout with weights in the pool my god it's incredible it's just amazing and they have such unique lives and the way that they live their lives fiercely independently and they came to mind also because i was thinking about Rick Rubin,

Starting point is 01:38:06 the legendary music producer who's been on this podcast, who also, I'm not sure where he is now, but often spends time with them and has his little corner in the pool where he does his workout. But Rick, as far as I can tell, basically doesn't schedule, like 99% of life is unscheduled. It's kind of like, yeah, like ping me and if it works, it'll work. And I really admire his ability to do that. I haven't been able to ace that at this point. So hence the questions about all of this. A month off the grid every year. Let's go to the Genesis story for this. How and why this is a priority? So you mentioned earlier on this extended period of financial dismantlement that we

Starting point is 01:38:53 endured as a family. And it was a very painful extended period of time where I really struggled to figure out how to provide for my family in a meaningful way. And it's now all solved and everything's great. But I think there was a significant amount of PTSD that I experienced from that because it was very emasculating and scary for me. Once things started functioning properly and working, a lot of my workaholism tendencies kind of came to the forefront. And I became so focused on building this thing and protecting it and making sure that it was providing for my family that I started to kind of overlook the principles that put me in the position to create

Starting point is 01:39:42 it in the first place. The adage of like all this wellness is making me sick. Like I was so, you know, like I was just working my ass off, right? And as you know, doing this show and doing other things in your life, like it's a lot more work than people think. Like it's a grind and you can lose yourself in it. And a couple of years ago, I started tiptoeing up to burnout. And instead of being excited to have conversations with my guests, I wouldn't say I was dreading it, but I was moving in that direction. And that's not a relationship that I wanted to have with this thing that you and I both do that we obviously really care about. It should be a joyful experience. And

Starting point is 01:40:23 I hadn't taken a single vacation in like five years, like no break. It should be a joyful experience. And I hadn't taken a single vacation in like five years, like no break. It was insane. So I was due for it. And so I ended up taking a month off and I went to Australia and it was incredibly nourishing. And I was able to come back from that experience with a renewed and refreshed perspective and relationship with what I do. And I just decided that this was going to be an annual thing. So I'm getting ready to do it. I'm taking January off this year and I'm really looking forward to it. I need it. And I think it's important to understand in a performance context that you have to periodize your life just like you would periodize your training. You need those fallow periods to recharge the battery. And you have to

Starting point is 01:41:13 live your life if you're going to have anything worthy to say about the human experience. If you're just constantly engaging in your profession and focused on what it is that you do and you're missing out on the other experiences and the richness of life, then you're not really going to be carrying a meaningful resonance or vibration that's going to be helpful to other people. Let's go to pre-Australia for a moment because no vacation in five years. And then I took a month off and it was great. I feel like we're skipping a few steps. What did the preparation slash self-talk logistics anything look like leading up to Australia? And if you want to mention this first, we can mention this part first, which is what did off really mean? Off didn't mean completely leave the phone at home. I wish I could tell you that that's what

Starting point is 01:42:09 I did. I didn't do that. That is an ambition for this experience though, which is terrifying, what I'm excited about. So what are you asking specifically? Yeah, what type of preparation was required now if this current example meaning january coming up is a better case study to take a look at i'm just wondering what the preparation looks like right so you have all of these various plates that you're spinning of different types and i literally just got back a few days ago from about three weeks off the grid. So I'm fresh having just returned where I was in Antarctica. So I literally had zero cell or Wi-Fi signal, which was great because the possibility of backsliding is basically

Starting point is 01:42:59 removed entirely unless you want to sit in a tent by yourself with a satellite phone and try to make that work, which some people did, but I did not. So I'm wondering what prep is going into taking a month off. I'm much more interested in your experience in Antarctica, but- Yeah, well, we can talk about it. We can talk about it. I mean, that's amazing. Like, what were you, why did you decide to go there and what was that about? I have a friend, Matt Mullenweg,

Starting point is 01:43:30 who, very close friend, he's been on the podcast once or twice. He runs a company, this makes it all the more impressive. So he runs a company called Automatic, M-A-T-T-I-C, which has something like 2,000 employees at the moment. He had gone to Antarctica, I want to say, I might be getting the numbers off, but five or six years ago,

Starting point is 01:43:52 and had heard that a trip was being planned, which would put a small group in Antarctica for the totality, the solar eclipse at the Empire Penguin Colony, which had never been observed before in this year, so end of 2021. And that was the purpose of this trip. He grabbed a number of seats, made a reservation for a handful of seats, five or six seats, and then invited me some time ago and asked me if I wanted to go. And I said, yeah, I absolutely want to go. I mean, when am I next going to have such an invite? And ended up landing in Chile, spending a decent amount of time in Chile. They're very, very, very strict with COVID. So you're getting daily COVID tests. You install an app and you're legally

Starting point is 01:44:45 required to identify your location and answer surveys every day. You carry a mobility pass, which is a QR code to go into any establishment that interfaces with a database to indicate whether you are green or red. So very, very involved, which it has to be because if you have an outbreak in Antarctica, the whole operation is done. And then off we went. It had been a while, been a couple of years since, well, certainly since COVID hit that I had spent multiple weeks completely off the grid, which I try to spend at least two to three weeks per year, 100% off the grid. Meaning if there's an emergency, someone can contact someone who contacts someone who can find a way to reach me, but there's really

Starting point is 01:45:31 no contact with the outside world otherwise. And so in my case, I love these experiments because, and hence my interest in what you're up to also, because you're forced to look at all of your systems, right? Like if you're gone for a week, you can come back and firefight. You can kind of allow things to go towards entropy and balls to get dropped and then fix it when you get back. But with the amount that is going on, I imagine in your life, certainly in my life, if you try to do that with three or four weeks, it's just going to be a catastrophe. So you have to set up systems and policies and update things and take a really close look at like, okay, well, how are wires

Starting point is 01:46:14 being approved? How are these following things being handled? Oh, they're being handled in this really labor-intensive ad hoc one-off way. Let's make a policy for that. What should the policy be? And all of those, or many of those things, outlive the vacation. That's an additional argument, in addition to the periodizing of life, right? The fact that you are a biological system that does not have infinite amounts of neurotransmitters and cortisol. It's a good idea to phase in and phase out. The other argument for me, and there are many others, of course, enjoying your goddamn vacation would be a great one too, but is it in the case of someone who's self-employed, or maybe even if you are employed, you develop and refine systems that then have durability and persist once you get back. So I'm just getting back in the saddle after multiple weeks. Literally, I've only been in the US for a handful of days.

Starting point is 01:47:12 Wow. What an amazing experience. Yeah. So I'm on the other side. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I think now I get where you're coming from. I mean, it's certainly been a situation of putting systems in place and stress testing them. I mean, it's certainly been a situation of putting systems in place and stress testing them. I mean, I have this amazing team right now. When I went to Australia, the team looked a little bit different. It wasn't as mature as it is at this point. But now I've really invested a lot of time and energy in creating structure, which was not easy for me as a sort of control freak who wants to do everything

Starting point is 01:47:45 and be the bottleneck in every decision and every problem. Like I've lived in that. That was a big part of what was leading me towards this burnout was my refusal to kind of loosen the reins and empower people around me. And that's been an education that I'm happy to say I'm now very much more on the other side of, which feels really liberating and having systems in place so that I can go away and I've got these people here who have their eyes on the prize and can take care of a lot of that stuff. But it took many years to get to this place. I had to learn a lot of rocky lessons along the way. Yeah. Yes. And you definitely will make mistakes. I think part of the calculus for me has been also expecting that you're going to allow small bad things to happen. Being okay with it,

Starting point is 01:48:41 right? Because you're never going to get to 100% risk mitigation. Shit's going to happen. So being okay with that. The art of letting small things, small bad things happen to get the big good things done. Let me ask just a few more questions because we're coming up on two hours shortly. And certainly we can go anywhere we'd like.

Starting point is 01:49:06 And I'm not in any rush. I wanted to mention one thing also when we're talking about, or when you mentioned committing to things that are five, six, nine months out and then having the day of reckoning when you look at your next month and you're like, oh, for fuck's sake,

Starting point is 01:49:19 what did I do to myself? I want to say it's Esther Dyson, who's a well-known investor. I want to say did cosmonaut training also later in her life in Russia, but she uses this heuristic. I think I'm getting the attribution right, where she'll ask herself, if this were next Tuesday, would I want to do this thing? And if the answer's no, don't commit to it six months from now either I think Kevin Kelly actually borrowed that from her as well so question, this is one that

Starting point is 01:49:52 you've heard before and know I ask a lot if you could have one billboard anywhere with anything on it, what might it say? what might you put on it? image, quote, question, line, just metaphorically getting something out to many, many, many millions or billions of people. I've been thinking about this because I know that you asked this question, and my original thought was, who are you? But I've modified that. I think a better question is, who are you becoming?

Starting point is 01:50:29 And that's a question that I resisted asking myself for too long, and as a result, led me down some dark pathways or distracted me from actualizing in a healthy way. And I think our culture is set up to distract us from that kind of self-inquiry. And the reason that I add the word becoming is I think that it speaks to the fact that none of us are static. Like in every moment, we are shifting and we are changing. And every decision that we make, every interaction that we have, every word that comes out of our mouth is either moving us towards a better, more authentic version of ourselves or away from it in the same way that that process is, as an alcoholic, either moving me towards a drink

Starting point is 01:51:18 or away from a drink. So I think in the context of becoming, we're always on our way to becoming something. Are you becoming a better version of yourself or are you becoming somebody who is moving away from what I would characterize as your true essence? And I think the more that we can inhabit that sensibility, if we're in the habit of thinking about these things, I think it anchors us more in the present moment and allows for more conscious decisions about how we're investing our energy and how we're conducting ourselves or relating to the world or responding or reacting to the world around us. I love that. Could you repeat it one more time? It was not who am I becoming, or is it what type of person am I becoming? Who are you becoming?

Starting point is 01:52:07 Yeah, who are you becoming? That's a really good modification. I mean, it sort of leads you to telescope out, looking at whatever the current decisions and behaviors are. It's like, what does this look like in a year? What does this look like in three years? What does this look like in 10 years? Good time for me. I'll put that on my mirror as my wake-up reminder. That'd be a good one to add.

Starting point is 01:52:32 What are you most excited about for the next year? Or what are you excited about? It doesn't have to be the most, but is there anything that comes to mind or looking forward to in the next year? I mean, I'm looking forward to my break for sure. We have another edition of Voicing Change coming out in the new year. So there's practical things that I'm excited about, but I think what I'm most excited about is this evolving, shifting relationship that I have with the work that I do. And this is something you've talked about a lot, Tim, which is overcoming or transcending this disposition to make everything hard. You asked this question, what if it was easy? And that's a very bitter pill for me to swallow because my whole life has been premised on this idea that if I haven't suffered to create this thing, that I haven't worked hard enough or that it doesn't hold value. systems and people here at the podcast, but in other areas of my life to hold the things that I care about more loosely and to approach them from that perspective of what if it was easy?

Starting point is 01:53:53 I don't have to suffer to create. That is an illusion or a construct that I have created in my mind and affirmed over many years, but deconstructing it, I realized the fallacy of it. And so trying to recalibrate my relationship to the world in which I am able to navigate it more from a perspective of grace and joy and allowing rather than gripping on really tightly is so counterintuitive, yet also so liberating while also being terrifying. So I haven't emerged from the woods on this yet. This is definitely a hill I might die on, but this is what I'm committed to. And this is part of the intention that I'm bringing into this month that I'm taking off. And I hope to emerge from that a little bit more consolidated around that idea and in a place where

Starting point is 01:54:51 I'm ready to practice it in a way that's more meaningful than what I have been able to do historically. That is a good intention. There is a book that I've been revisiting my Kindle highlights of, which is Effortless by Greg McKeown, which is the second book following Essentialism, also by Greg McKeown. But it's a very nice reminder along the lines of what you're describing. Because certainly my, I shouldn't say defaults, it's probably conditioned, but my sort of out-of-the-box programming is very similar to yours. It's like, if I'm not suffering, if I'm not redlining, then clearly I'm not applying myself enough to whatever X happens to be, which is just so self-defeating in so many ways. So it's a constant challenge. However, I have found that to be a very helpful book. So I have a tab open actually on this

Starting point is 01:55:56 browser right now on top left to my Kindle highlights of that book. So speaking of books, your books include your best-selling memoir, Finding Ultra, the cookbooks and lifestyle guides, The Plant Power Way, and The Plant Power Way Italia, which you co-authored with your wife, Julie Piat.

Starting point is 01:56:20 Piat. God, 0 for 2. Piat. Piat. Good Lord. I'm sorry, Julie. Forgive me. People can find all things Rich Roll at richroll.com, on Twitter at Rich Roll. Are you most active on Twitter, Instagram? Do you have a preferred social media? I'm probably more active on Instagram than Twitter, but I'm on both.

Starting point is 01:56:43 Yeah. At Rich Roll on Instagram as well. We'll link to all of those, but I'm on both. Yeah, at RichWall on Instagram as well. We'll link to all of those, YouTube, Facebook, et cetera, in the show notes, TimDotBlogs.com. Is there anything else that you would like to say? Any closing comments, asks, or requests of this audience before we wrap up? I mean, first of all, thank you for having me. It really is a privilege.

Starting point is 01:57:06 And I've been doing a lot of thinking around how divided the world feels right now and how broken it can feel. There's just so much contention out there. But when I think about kind of what we do, like having these long form conversations, it just feels to me like there's never been a better opportunity

Starting point is 01:57:27 to contribute in a positive way. And I just wanna encourage people to find a way to kind of transcend the predominant media narrative that seems hell bent on pitting us against each other and to be more conscious about not just your media choices, but how you carry that sensibility into the world and the manner in which you interact with other people.

Starting point is 01:57:52 Because in my experience, and I'm sure this is shared by most people, when you go out into the world, it doesn't feel like what we're seeing on social media and on the national news. People are fundamentally good and we share so much more than what appears to divide us right now. And I don't know, I despair of the way that I hear these narratives being spun online. And so to me, it's almost a reminder to myself to remember that what you see there isn't necessarily a reflection of the best medications is the abstaining from these inputs that are very much designed to polarize, right? Very much designed to upset. So that's an incredibly good reminder. And I really appreciate you taking the time, Ben. I've been looking forward to this. It's landing, this conversation is landing at the perfect time for me having just come back from

Starting point is 01:59:06 this time off the grid with pages and pages of notes on what i hope to be big picture changes or additions or subtractions that of course are great in theory fantastic well done chap you put it all down on paper but you gotta translate to translate it somehow. So this, I think, will be a nice push for me. You have a very inspiring story. You also have a very human story. You have not just the highlights, but you have the lowlights and the difficult times, as we all do. And you've been very vulnerable and forthcoming in sharing that full picture with the world. And I think it's such a service. It's such a gift that you do that. So thank you very much for doing what you do, Rich. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Matt. I appreciate that. And, you know, I think vulnerability is something that we can all use a little bit more of in this world. And when I hear other people being vulnerable, it gives me permission to be vulnerable. And I think there's real strength in that. So, I appreciate that. And I am happy to be somebody to hold you accountable for this next chapter. I'm excited to see how this is going to manifest. But I would encourage you

Starting point is 02:00:25 to just figure out something to latch on to so that you can get into action and not just ruminate and make more notes. And if you need somebody to hold your hand to the flame on that, I'm happy to be that guy.

Starting point is 02:00:41 Right. So don't spend the next year deciding which bike to ride. I will do my best. So getting something on the calendar for me, if it's not in the calendar, it's an, and if somebody else doesn't know about it, it's, it's probably made up. So I will, I will, I will get something on the calendar and I'm looking forward to it. I'm really looking forward to it because I know, I know it can be done, right? It's not the first time out of the gate

Starting point is 02:01:07 actually putting something together. I'm just out of practice, right? And hot damn, you know, stakes and consequences, if people prefer the term, incentives, great. They really do work wonders. So I'm looking forward to it. And I've really enjoyed this conversation. So I'm looking forward to it. And I've really enjoyed this conversation. So thank you very much, Rich. To everybody listening, we will have links to

Starting point is 02:01:31 everything that we've discussed in the show notes at Tim.blogs slash podcast. You can just search Rich Roll and it'll pop right up. You can find him again at richroll.com. And until next time, be safe out there, experiment often, be kinder than you think necessary. And thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is

Starting point is 02:02:10 basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog.com slash Friday.

Starting point is 02:02:54 Type that into your browser, Tim.blog.com slash Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. My God, am I in love with Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. More than 30% of Americans struggle with sleep. And I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades, tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, putting them back on and

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #561: Rich Roll — Reinventing Your Life at 30, 40, and Beyond

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