The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep. 13: "Productivity" Tricks for the Neurotic, Manic-Depressive, and Crazy (Like Me)

Episode Date: June 13, 2014

This is a short audio essay "inbetween-isode" of <15 minutes -- enjoy! Let me know what you think: @tferrissPura vida, Tim***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another edition of The Tim Ferriss Show. This is an in-between-isode. It is a short audio essay as opposed to the longer-form interviews that I tend to do on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Those usually run about one to two hours. This will probably be less than 15 minutes total. I did have some complaints after my last episode, which featured some editing.

I had bleeped out some profanities. So today's leading wisdom, the quote that I'll start us off with is, you's a fine motherfucker, won't you back that ass up. All right, now that we've covered that, feelin' frisky, folks, I'm going to move on to today's essay, which is intended to give you some tidbits, some food to digest, something to feed your brain over the weekend or the week, and ideally to give you some tactics and tips that you can really apply to your own life to increase your productivity or your perceived sense of well-being. And the essay today, which shall not be edited, partially because I don't know how, secondly because I am namakemono-dayo, namakemono, that is lazy bastard, a sloth in Japanese,

namakemono-da. This essay is called, and some of you may have come across this, it was making the rounds a while ago, became very popular, productivity, in quotation marks, tricks for the neurotic, manic-depressive, and crazy like me. And this essay is really intended to perhaps remove a few illusions that people have about those they aspire to be like, or those they look up to, and hopefully it's very empowering. So here it goes. Productivity tricks for the neurotic, manic, depressive, and crazy like me.

I originally wrote this essay months ago, but I've been too self-conscious to publish it until now. The following quote convinced me to put on my big girl pants and get it done. Quote, the moment that you feel that just possibly you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, End quote. And that is from Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite writers, from a commencement speech that he gave at the University of the Arts, which you can find on my blog if you want to give it a search. So here goes with the essay, and I hope it helps at least a few of you. Part one, reality check.

A few months ago, I had a birthday party. It comes every year, of course. A dozen friends and I gathered for several days of wonderful sun, beach, and catching up. On the last day, however, I didn't get up until 11.30 a.m., knowing full well that the last remaining friends were leaving at 12 noon. I was afraid of being alone. Seems kind of silly, right? Like a child, I hid my head under the covers, literally, and hit snooze until reality couldn't be postponed any further.

But why am I telling you this? What's the point of the story? That leads us to part two. The dangerous myths of successful people. And successful is in quotation marks here. We all like to appear successful, a nebulous term at best. And the media like to portray standouts as superheroes. So there's a survivorship bias.

You always see the rock stars, the people on top of the world on the covers of the magazines. Sometimes these dramatic stories of overcoming the odds are inspiring. More often, however, they lead to an unhealthy, knee-jerk conclusion from people who are reading these magazines, seeing the TV profiles, and so on. And that is, well, you know, maybe they, entrepreneur, artist, creator, painted as a superhero, can do it, but I'm just a normal guy. I'm just a normal girl. How could I possibly do that? And this essay is intended to give a behind the scenes look at my own life. Though I've occasionally done profiles like A Day in the Life with Morgan Spurlock's crew, which was

really fun. You can check it out online. I rarely let journalists follow me around for a normal day. And they always ask, let's follow you around for a standard day, a normal day. Why don't I do this? Well, to start off, I'm no superhero. I'm not even a consistent normal. To give you an idea, in the last three months, I've cried while watching Rudy. I've repeatedly hit snooze for one to three hours past my planned wake time because I simply didn't want to face the day. I've considered giving everything away and moving to Montreal, Seville, Iceland. The location depends on what I'm trying to escape. I've seen a therapist for the first time as I was convinced that I was doomed to lifelong pessimism. I've used gentlemanly websites to, let's call it, relax during the day when I clearly have urgent and more important

shit to do. I've taken my daily caffeine intake, read self-medication so high that my resting pulse was 120 plus beats per minute. That's nuts. Eight to 10 cups of coffee per day, minimum. I've worn the same pair of jeans for a week straight just to have a constant, something to cling to during weeks of chaos. Okay, that seems pretty dysfunctional, right? It does not really seem like the picture of effectiveness, efficacy, and efficiency and so on that you might expect me to be. Well, that's true. But in the last eight weeks, I've also increased my passive income 20 plus percent, bought my dream house. I've been meditating twice per day for 20 minutes per session without fail.

This marks the first time I've ever been able to do that consistently. I've cut my caffeine intake to next to nothing. That's in the last four weeks, usually having pu-erh tea in the morning and green tea in the afternoon. I've had no more than one cup of coffee per week. I'll probably elaborate on this in a future essay or post. With your help, we've raised $100,000 plus for charity water for my birthday. We've raised $250,000 in 53 minutes for a startup that I'm involved with.

I signed one of the most exciting business deals of my life, certainly of the last 10 years anyway. I've added roughly 20 pounds of muscle after learning the pain and joy of high rep front squats and topical DHEA courtesy of Patrick Arnold. You can check him out. He's a fascinating guy. I've transformed my blood work, realized once again that manic depressive symptoms are just part of entrepreneurship, and I've come to feel closer to all of my immediate family members. Okay, that's quite the laundry list, quite the mouthful. But that leads us to part three. The point, what's the point of all this? Most superheroes are nothing of the sort. They're weird, neurotic creatures who do big things despite lots of self-defeating habits and self-talk, right? I'm no exception. That's me

too. Personally, I suck at efficiency, doing things quickly. That is, here's my coping mechanism, an eight-step process for maximizing efficacy instead, doing the right things, okay? Because hard work doesn't solve impotent goals and unclear priorities. It actually magnifies and multiplies all the problems. So I focus on efficacy, doing the right things. What are my eight steps? Number one, wake up at least one hour before you have to be at a computer screen. Email is the mind killer. Number two, make a cup of tea. I like puer tea and sit down with a pen or pencil and paper. Number three, write down the three to five things and no more that are making you most anxious or uncomfortable. They're often things that have been punted

from one day's to-do list to the next, to the next, to the next, and so on. The stuff you put off. Most important usually equals most uncomfortable. There's oftentimes some chance of rejection or conflict. So if you don't know what's most important, ask yourself, what is making me most uncomfortable? So for each of these three to five things that you've written down, I used a post-it note typically because it's constrained. There's a limited amount of space. For each of these items, ask yourself, if this

were the only thing I accomplished today, would I be satisfied with my day? Okay, I'll repeat that. For each of these items, if this were the only thing I accomplished today, would I be satisfied with my day? And the second question you ask is, will moving this forward make all the other to-dos unimportant or easier to knock off later? So is this thing a force multiplier, right? If I handle this one thing, will it make all the other to-dos either irrelevant or easier to do? Step number five, look only at the items you've answered yes to for these questions, okay? So that should narrow your list of say three to five down to maybe two, probably one. Then step number six, block out two to three hours to focus on one of them, one of them for

today. That's it. Let the rest of the urgent stuff, the less important stuff slide. Okay, you pay some penalties. A few people get pissed off. Who cares? The world will not end. It will all still be there tomorrow. So block out two to three hours and focus on one of those items for today. Step number seven, to be very clear, block out two to three hours to focus on one of them for today. This is one block of time, right? Cobbling together 10 minutes here and there to add up to 120 minutes does not work at all. It's a single block of time. And you might be able to spare the time for these interruptions, but you can't afford the distraction of being pulled in and out of trying to focus, right? So one single block of time,

two to three hours. Step number seven, if you get distracted or start procrastinating, don't freak out and downward spiral, which is what I used to do. Just gently come back to your one to-do item. Meditating regularly helps with this not freaking out and just coming back to that one to-do item. Those are the eight steps. Congratulations. That's it. You are now a master of productivity. This is the only way I can create, personally, big outcomes despite my never-ending impulse to procrastinate, nap, and otherwise fritter away my days with bullshit. If I have 10 important things to do in a day, it's 100% certain nothing important will get done that day. Okay? So if I have 10 important things to do in a day, I have zero things that are going to get

done that day. You can't. If everything's important, nothing is important. On the other hand, I can usually handle one must-do item and block out my lesser behaviors for two to three hours a day. Really, if you can do it for two hours, that puts you in a rarefied company. You are in the top, top, top 5% of people in the United States, certainly, I think. It doesn't take much to seem superhuman and appear successful to nearly everyone around you. In fact, you just need one rule, and that is this.

What you do is more important than how you do everything else. And doing something well does not make it important. I'll repeat that. What you do is more important than how you do it, and doing something well does not make it important. If you consistently feel the counterproductive need for volume and doing lots of stuff, working harder, harder, harder, harder, but perhaps not with clear priorities, put the following bullets on a post-it note. Bullet number one, being busy is a form of laziness, lazy thinking, and indiscriminate action. Being lazy, I'm sorry. Being lazy is a form of busyness. That's not true. Being busy is a form of laziness. Lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Bullet number two, being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but

uncomfortable actions. Okay. Being busy is a form of laziness. Following up on that. And when, despite your best efforts, you feel like you're losing at the game of life, remember this. Even the best of the best feel this way sometimes. No one is 100% all the time. I haven't met them at least. When I'm in the pit of despair, I recall what the iconic writer Kurt Vonnegut said about his own process. And this is an absolute icon, a hero in the world of writing, one of the most famous of the most famous. And this is what he wrote. Quote, when I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. End quote. Okay, so if the best of the best feel that way, you're allowed to feel that way too. Don't underestimate yourself. Don't overestimate the rest of the world. You are better

than you think, and you are not alone. Okay. In closing, if you struggle with this, and we all do, if you occasionally struggle like me, there are resources and articles that could help you rebound. So you can go to, for instance, my blog, which is just fourhourblog.com, F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com, and search for The Prescription for Self-Doubt or Harnessing Entrepreneurial Manic Depression. And you can also read other pieces by people, friends of mine I respect greatly, like Brad Feld, who's a world-class venture capitalist. He wrote a piece called Two Root Causes of My Recent Depression, which is fantastic. So I hope this is helpful. If you'd like access to other essays like this, longer form interview pieces, check out the podcast. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com

forward slash podcast, all spelled out. So F-O-U-R, fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. And if you'd like some of my favorite snippets from these podcasts episodes, some of my favorite segments, you know, two to three minutes long, you can go to YouTube, youtube.com forward slash Tim Ferris, two R's, two S's. Thank you for listening. Please let me know what you think at T Ferris on Twitter, two R's, two S's, and look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for listening.