The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep 42: Rolf Potts (Part 2) on Travel Tactics, Creating Time Wealth, and Lateral Thinking

Episode Date: November 4, 2014

Part 2 of 2 "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Rolf Potts Rolf Potts is the author of Vagabonding (hear the audio book sample here), one of my favorite books of all-time. It was one of just two books (the other was Walden) that I carried with me around the world from 2004-2005. Those adventures led directly to The 4-Hour Workweek. In this often hilarious conversation, Rolf and I dig deep into travel tactics, creating time wealth, "managing success," and much more. It's a fun romp through every imaginable topic, from business to poetry, and from Wall Street to psychedelics. Show notes, including all links and resources: www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast***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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in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the Tim Ferriss Show. What you're about to hear is part two of a multi-part conversation with Rolf Potts, author of Vagabonding, world traveler extraordinaire, one of my favorite people.

If you didn't catch the first part, you might want to do that before venturing in. But if you don't mind your stories as more of a jigsaw puzzle, then by all means, keep on listening. We bounce around a lot. It's a very eclectic conversation, so you could certainly listen to these things out of order. This episode is brought to you by 99designs. You can check out a bunch of my competitions that I've run at 99designs.com forward slash Tim and Ex Officio. And if you want to see some of my favorite pieces of travel gear, as well as a video on rapid ultra light packing, then you can visit XOfficio, XOfficio, XOfficio.com forward slash Tim. And I almost forgot, of course, there are a ton of resources and links and websites and books

mentioned in this episode. All of it can be found in one place in the show notes. So you just have to go to fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, forward slash podcast, fourhourworkweek.com, forward slash podcast. You can find the show notes and resources and links for this episode, as well as every other episode like those for Peter Thiel, Tony Robbins, Mike Shinoda, you name it. So you don't need to scribble furiously unless you want to, but fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast is where you want to go. Without further ado and further Porky Pig imitations, please enjoy part two of the Tim Ferriss Show with Rolf Potts. What are some of your favorite books or commentaries on writing? Well, this is funny because I teach writing in various contexts.

I teach at a summer writing program in Paris, and then I've been doing a class at Yale the last couple years. And so I've been reading a lot of craft books recently, and I realized that I had crossed my carrying capacity, that I needed to there's some journalistically minded books, uh, like Roy Peters Clark has the writer's toolkit, I think it's called. Uh, and Philip Lopate, uh, has a book called a collection of, of, of essays about the writer's craft called to show and to tell, I think, uh, cause you know, the old adage goes, uh, show don't tell, but he's a believer in the idea of strategic telling, and he's a brilliant essayist himself. How do you spell his last name? L-O-P-A-T-E. Got it. came up from New York to talk to my Yale students in person earlier this year. And his kind of writing is very different from what you and I do,

and he might sort of frown on it to a certain extent, that he's really about that old going back to Montaigne high art of the essay. But he really has some good advice on writing. And jumping back to screenplays, the breakthrough for me in my writing, when I took my first vagabonding trip and thought I was going to be the new Jack Kerouac and tried to write about it and realized that one chronological retelling of what I did was not going to work regardless of how beautiful the sentences were, was stumbling into screenwriting 20 years ago and learning the importance of structure. And so those classic screenwriting tomes like the Sid Field screenplay book or Robert McKee's story, which is actually ridiculed in the movie adaptation. Right. Yes, it is. Ryan Cox actually plays Robert McKee in that movie. I think that those are useful because

they go back to the very core of how we communicate as humans, how we tell stories. And you can get tired of a three-act screenplay structure or the needs of the audience. But the audience is damn important. And I'm a big believer. I'm not a believer in cultural hierarchy. I think that high literature is important and good. But, I mean, I just wrote a pulpy B movie. Uh, I think that, uh, that it's good to know how Raymond Chandler structures his narratives in the same sense that it's good to know how

Montaigne structures his narratives as well. So I would say if people are looking for writing craft books, don't be afraid of any kind of book that, um that just talks about how to tell a story. And I think that movies are great metaphors for how to tell a story. And there's crappy movies out there. And adaptation is sort of a lampoon of how we invariably tell stories in movies. But just because you learn a very basic and formulaic way of, say, telling a cinematic story doesn't mean that you have to use that every time. It just means that you understand the rules. And then within the structure of those rules, then you can shine as a writer. I very much concur. I have an

embarrassing confession, which is I've been agonizing over a screenplay for several months now. And I think partially because I've loaded the expectations and the burden so large on my shoulders. It's roughly an adaptation of the four-hour workweek and a lot of the backstory, and it's intended to be comedic, but instill or at least convey a lot of the backstory and it's intended to be comedic, but instill, or at least convey a lot of, uh, sort of philosophical takeaways that hopefully will, will spur viewers to do, uh, interesting things in their lives and make big changes, blah, blah, blah. Uh, but I've been agonizing over it. The one thing that did help me to at least get started, and I have quite a lot on paper was, uh, save the cat. I thought that was, I don't know if you've seen this book, but I found it so helpful

because I also read, I took McKee's story seminar, actually, which was quite an experience in and of itself. I mean, the portrayal and adaptation is not far off the mark. Interesting. But a fun experience nonetheless. I really found Save the Cat to hold your hand and walk you through at least getting things down on wouldn't consider what I have a first draft,

but a skeleton structure down that I can use to fill in the blanks with all these random ideas that I have. Totally agree. I think that I've become recently interested in Joseph Campbell, had a passing familiarity with Joseph Campbell, watched a few documentaries, but the hero's journey and the monomyth, I find very interesting just as a way of getting started if you can sort of lay out these markers for different stories that you're considering telling. But another thought that I had, which we don't have to go too deep into unless you have thoughts on it, but is that that beginner's mind that you mentioned, which is achievable through travel or vagabonding, uh, is also, I think one of the primary benefits of, uh, what you might

consider therapeutic use of, of psychedelics. Um, and that's, uh, I mean, part of the reason that people often describe with the right set and setting a psychedelic experience as one of the best experiences of their lives is I think the same reason that many people would describe their first vagabonding experience as one of the best experiences of their lives. And that's the present state awareness and the beginner's mind and the appreciation that both of those experiences tend to catalyze. But yeah, yeah. Well, I touched on that a little bit in Vagabonding. I sort of gently dissuade readers of the necessity to say smoke marijuana when they travel because reality is giving you this present state awareness. If you allow yourself to be bored or if you allow yourself to be lonely or just if you allow yourself to have experiences by accident, then suddenly you're discovering things in a vivid way

that don't need artificial enhancement. Definitely. One of the pieces of advice that you gave, I'm pretty sure that you gave this advice, feel free to correct me, but was getting lost, the benefit of getting lost and heading out of your housing, whatever that might be, and just walking off in one direction, maybe with a map, maybe without a map, and just walking and taking random turns for a few hours. And I have found that so invaluable, not only while traveling, quite frankly, but even in San Francisco and places where I've lived or live, uh, exploring by foot,

um, a terrain that you might otherwise for the sake of, use taxis for, for instance. And it's been, I think, a major priority for me when I travel, not for business, but for this type of experiential reflection and exploration to try to catalyze discomfort whenever possible. And that doesn't mean a pebble in the shoe, but for instance, to purposefully go out of my way to encounter language difficulties. And one of my favorite ways to do this, I'm typically a night owl, like I mentioned, but when I travel, I try to switch it up. So I like to try to wake up in some cases very early. And I did this in Greece, my first trip to Greece, I was traveling with a close friend and I started waking up really early. I would just leave the blinds open and I'll wake up as early as possible. And my habit was to, to go for a walk and just hand wave and try to

ask the locals. These were on some very small, where I could find a cafe or a bakery. And inevitably, I would go to these bakeries or coffee shops, and there would be a small group of really old Greek guys sitting outside debating whatever old Greek men debate. I would imagine it's probably complaining about politicians and so on and so forth, much like every other sort of gaggle of old men early in the morning everywhere else in the world. And then I would just proceed to kind of sit down and try to have a conversation with these guys. And it was always hilarious and extremely fun. And I ended up being basically the court jester for these guys for, for a period of time in the morning. And they always got a kick out of it. So, uh, I think that, um, I mean, I've said that, that,

that seeking out of, uh, mild discomfort or uncomfortable situations, I think is, is really one of the main, um, values, um, uh, and benefits that I've taken away from, from travel in the last, certainly in the last 10 years or so. Yeah, this ties into a lot of ideas that are really close to my heart and that I've sort of embraced even since I discovered vagabonding. And it's funny that you talk about the old Greek guys, because as a travel writer, one of my um biggest strengths and it could be an accidental strength as a person who wanders out with the purpose of getting lost is that whatever town i'm in inevitably the town weirdo finds me like the most eccentric guy and if you read my second book marco polo didn't go there like one third of the stories are about me with a really strange dude in Lebanon or Burma or someplace.

And it's sort of connected to the idea of the old Greek guy sitting there is that they see each other every morning. But the chance for an American to stumble in and sort of have a semi-comical exchange with them is the most exciting thing that's happened to them all week. You know, it's like their wives have stopped listening to them. Their children have stopped listening to them. And so they can take you under their wing and just the things that you learn from these guys is amazing. Um, and so that, that's funny that that's, that's very relatable because I feel like for whatever reason, I don't know if I's my Midwestern tendency to talk a little bit less and maybe listen a little bit more or something, that I always meet these guys who just have the weirdest view of the world. But you were talking about walking out and getting lost. In Vagabonding, I talk about how, if in doubt, just walk until your day becomes interesting.

And this is sort of tied into a concept that I've discovered since then. And as a concept that I teach in my Paris classes, because we're in the city where it was invented, and it's the idea of the flaneur. Are you familiar with the flaneur? The only reason I'm in passing, I want you to expand on the only reason I recognize that word is because a friend of mine named Nassim Taleb, who's very famous for having written The Black Swan and a number of other books, describes himself that way. Yeah. And so maybe you could expand on that because I would love to hear more. Quite frankly, I don't know much about the term. It's a wonderful idea that, in a sense, when I was walking until my day became interesting,

I was being a flaneur before I knew what it was. But it goes back to Baudelaire over 100 years ago in Paris. And it's connected through French ideas, through the situationists of the 1960s. And the idea is that, and flaneuring is something that I use in travel, but it was really invented as a concept in your own hometown. And the idea is that you become so used to and inured to your hometown

that you're not seeing it anymore, that it's become a purely utilitarian space. And between point A and point B, you've ceased living, that in your routine, you're not really living your routine. You're just sort of, and this is a paraphrase, but you're sort of zombie walking through your day. And so being a flaneur, a flaneur is not someone who walks through his own city in a utilitarian or pragmatic way. A flaneur is someone who goes out

in search of experience. And there's someone, it's also tied into the idea of psychogeography, that instead of walking through a city with the idea that you're going to say, see tourist attractions, or that you're going to go to visit your friend on the other side of town, is that you're going to walk through the town psychogeographically and you're going to collect the color red and you're just going to see how many forms the color red can can take or you're going to look for every parking meter in town or you're going to look for license plates with the letter q on them cool or you're going to look for every immigrant restaurant and that that is going to organize your day that's psychogeography the being a flaneur is even less structured in that you're just

wandering. And it's a wonderful, it was invented to be done in your hometown to break out of your own habits. It's a great thing. It's a great way to break out of your tourist habits where you go to a city and there's a hundred thousand things you can do at any given moment. And you do the obvious thing, which is go to the tourist attractions and i'm not going to knock that there's a reason why they're tourist attractions but people talk about how oh there's the beaten path everything's been discovered everything has already been done and it's like actually that's not true you know paris is the most touristed city in the world but you wander for 10 minutes and pretty soon you're going to be finding something that's unique to itself even along

the champs-elysees even near the champs-Dumars where the Eiffel Tower is. If you just embrace the idea of the flaneur and walk until something catches your eye and stay open to experience instead of your plans, then you're going to be living in a way where you previously had only been consuming those moments. And flaneur is F-L-A-N-E-U-R, is that right? That's right, with a little hat over the A. Got it. Of all the languages I've attempted, although this one very half-heartedly, I just cannot seem to get a grasp on French because I panic when it starts to erase any of my Spanish

or confuse anything else that I've studied. But Paris, what is it like to teach in Paris? And what type of students are you teaching? Well, I teach at the American Academy. I'm actually the course director and it's sort of become my baby. I've been running this writing workshop for the last 10 years on Rue Saint-Jacques in Paris. And my students are like age 18 to age 70. And it's just, it's a large number of people. I mean, some people are there because of, they know Vagabonding or my writing,

or they know some of the other writers who teach there. I have two, one other nonfiction teacher and two fiction teachers. So they can, it's not just travel writing. They can study poetry or screenwriting or short stories. And so a lot of people have just, it's sort of a bucket list thing for them is that they want to come to Paris and be a writer for a month. And it's one of the exciting parts of the program is that

it delivers. You're there on the left bank, you're in the university district of Paris, and you're firing on all cylinders, that you're writing all the time, you're interacting with writers, you're reading a lot, and you're being a flaneur. And it's funny that I discovered the flaneur in the context of Paris, even though I'd already been doing it. And even when I'm not teaching travel writing, the flaneur is such a great creative exercise for my students who might be writing a poem rather than a travel story. And Evelyn Waugh talked about how a city like Paris is sort of like a house that's been wallpapered over so much that the only thing holding it up is the wallpaper, is that there's

no, everybody's written about Paris. And so you have to find a way that is against expectations. And the only way to find that is to get out and wander and find your own interests. And I've had students who have brought their skateboard and through skateboarding in Paris have discovered sides of it that nobody else is seeing. And they've discovered, you know, the French skateboarding culture. And so yeah, my students are just there for the romance of Paris. And the great thing is that it's a great, you know, July in Paris is a romantic place to be, but it's a great place to deliver. You know, you can walk outside of a classroom and in 90 seconds, you're where Victor Hugo lived when he was 11 years old. Um, and, and so there's this huge, I, and, and, and in three minutes you can go to a place where Hemingway got shit faced, you know, we're literally, we're on the street,

you know, that he describes, you know, in a movable feast. And so I think that energy, I mean, it's like we could teach the same thing in North Dakota and it would still be very professional. I'm very proud of what our teachers are doing, but there's, it's almost like a catalyst. Paris puts people in a mental state, almost like an athletic performance thing is that people are in Paris and they're not going to blow it, you know, that they don't live in Paris. They're going to come to Paris and they're going to do something special. Um, and it creates this energy that, that amazes me every year of people just uncorking some really, um, some really good stuff and, and just having some going back to time wealth, just an experience that is, that and very Parisian, but very unique to themselves.

So I've really loved my association with that city. That sounds amazing. How many students are in the course? It varies from year to year. We've been averaging about 24. It's capped at 32. And so probably anywhere from 18 to 32 students. God, I feel like I should take the course. It sounds amazing. I, uh, I fantasized, uh, fairly frequently about, uh, going to graduate

school or, uh, attempting something like an MFA for creative writing because I really haven't ever explored fiction outside of elementary doing some exercises in elementary school what do you find of of the students who take this course uh what are the character what are the shared characteristics of the people who get the most out of it and i'm going to leave that open-ended on purpose but i think it's it's an earnest desire um to do their best combined with sort of a humility, almost a beginner's mind type humility towards writing. And sometimes I can get a very young and brilliant college student who will come in sort of a leg above maybe sort of a mid-career professional. But because the college student has not quite cultivated, it's a strange thing to think,

but there's a sort of confidence and self-assuredness that college students have that like a mid-career professional doesn't have. And that can get in the way of the beginner's mind. And so that sort of, know it all is a wrong word, but like the overconfidence of a brilliant college student might impede his or her advancement where like someone who's 35 or 45 and is just there to soak in everything and work as hard as they can. I think it's the person, going back to the beginner's mind, it's the person who's willing to embrace the beginner's mind and work hard and synthesize the creative aspect with the parts of Paris that you can't overlook. You can't just come to Paris and sit in your room and write all the time any more than J.P. Morgan should have been reading

teletexts the whole time he was in Egypt. That interactive going out and having fun and having a bottle of wine by the Seine and flaneuring through the city and discovering things by accident is going to feed what's happening when you're alone in your room. And so I think it's the students who can find that balance. And the students, I think to a big extent, it's the students who have been almost like vagabonding, who've been saving their money. And this means something, you know, that they're not just gathering from their limitless pool of resources to pay for their month in Paris, but they have earned this with their sweat. It's like a chapter in Vagabond. I talk about how the work you do

makes your travels meaningful. I think it's the people who come in and know the value of what they have in Paris, that this one month is a special time that can catalyze them into a new creative state. Those are the people who are going to get things delivered for them. And you mentioned MFAs. I got a mid-career MFA. And I don't know, there's some advantages of that sort of thing, but I think there's an extent to which that creatively a one-month program like this can cover a lot of those MFA bases without compromising two years of your life. Right. Agreed. I mean, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I mean, my basic feeling is that the benefits would be, and I mean, it's, it's maybe sounds ridiculous that

I feel very isolated writing a lot of the time. And it's, it's, it's sort of odd that I'm, you know, have access to more people than I've ever had access to in my life. Yet. I spend a lot of my time feeling quite isolated and lonely. And, uh, there's, and I don't know many writers in San Francisco. I just, that's not in my social sphere, uh, which maybe is a good thing. Maybe it's a bad thing, but the idea of being in a group of people going through the same experience, having that sort of shared study experience, I'm sure with some degree of commiseration every once in a while with a structure that actually facilitates experimenting with new types of writing is

very appealing to me. So maybe the month, maybe that's, maybe that's a great solution as opposed to two years, like you said, which I don't, I don't think I could, I think that will remain a fantasy, uh, in my head. I think they both, they're both good for that social, um, that community of writers situation. Um, just like this, the friend that I'm swapping houses with who lives in Brooklyn is a grad school friend. And I just, you know, in my late thirties, I was able to make very, very dear friends through my two years of grad school. But there's an extent to which I, that, that like MFA programs aren't really designed for 38 year olds who are already successful as writers. Um, and that, and then that,

that a month program, I mean, obviously I have a vested interest in my own one month program, but a one month program can deliver both the community and a more concentrated spark of, uh, of inspiration, uh, without having to go through a two-year cycle that isn't necessarily, um, tailored to someone in your situation. One thing, a two-year program can give you is, is structure like monthly deadlines. Um, but if you've already written a book, I think there's an extension to which like that exposure to poetry or fiction or screenwriting and just 30 other people who are gung-ho and are locked in on that similar creative openness that that one month catalyst can be more youthful

useful in both senses than than a more extended certificate program that last two years you know it's i i i am happy that you misspoke for a second and said youthful, because in a way, I think it's almost appropriate, because like you said, the charge of a group in Paris recognizing, for most of them, that it's a very unique opportunity that required a lot of sacrifices to make happen, would charge it with a certain youthful energy, which I'm trying to re-infuse into a lot of what I do because, uh, and I don't think this is purely a function of age. Maybe it's exposure to just the doom and gloom of just general internet bullshit. Uh, but, uh, But I'm trying to beat back my own cynicism with a club and really try to prevent myself from becoming apathetic. That's a very strong word, but there's a lot of instability and craziness in the world if you go looking for it or if you're spending a lot of time on social media, for instance. And I want to combat that with a positive and charged, youthful energy. So this is very interesting. Well, I think that that goes back to the idea of success versus lack of success

and that a certain kind of success is more meaningful when you're 30 than when you're 40 because you have a different relationship to that success after you've been steeped in it for a while. So finding the screenplay that you can bang your head up against or embracing poetry or any or, you know, samba dancing or, or anything else with that, that vulnerability, that beginner's mind, uh, that youthfulness. I think that that, that is so useful to use the right word this time, uh, in, in rejuvenating your relationship with yourself. Just like when I started as a travel writer, there were certain bylines that were really important to me that aren't now, you know, and by bylines, you mean publications and credits?

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to write for the San Francisco Chronicle. I'm going to write for National Geographic Traveler. Good publications, they do good work. But I realized that once you took away the thrill of that initial success of having a major publication acknowledge the quality of your work, then it shifted, you know, what I was doing with the content, I guess, transformed a little bit. And so now I'm writing a screenplay with zombies in it, not that I'm going to become a B-movie screenwriter now, but it brings me joy, you know, sort of that childlike joy in the creative process that doesn't exist anymore with what I've already become professionally successful at. And so I think you get into that pattern and it sounds like you're experimenting

with this already, um, that you become successful in a certain manner of, of creative expression and, and, and a certain manner of expertise. Then I think a way to keep yourself fresh is to try activities that you might fail at. I think if you aren't failing at something fairly substantial once a year, then you're not pushing yourself enough. Of course, travel is a great venue for inviting failure and mild humiliation. But sure, I think it's great that you're bashing your head against a screenplay that might not work out.

Ten years ago, or maybe eight years ago, I sort of had my vagabonding screenplay, where I was sort of expressing the philosophical ideas of vagabonding through a coming of age story. And it didn't quite work. Maybe I'll go back to it, but it was a good thing to have tried and not quite succeeded at. And I'm not saying that that's where your screenplay is going, but that process, I think, is important for keeping yourself sharp and keeping a perspective amid certain jadedness to other kinds of success. Definitely. Uh, the, the, so the, the adjective, well, the adjective successful has come up a couple of times when you think of the word successful, who's the first person who comes

to mind and why? Oh man, I don't know if, I don't know if a person comes to mind. I think when I was 28, I may have been able to name a travel writer that I wanted to be, like know, that, that the hunger to be like Pico or Tim played itself out in a very, in a great way. It became a part of the energy that made me a travel writer. And so now I don't think, you know, it's funny. I, I feel like our backgrounds are fairly similar. I'm from Wichita, Kansas. You're from Springs, right? That's right. Bullseye middle-class families, it feels like. That's right. And you had your Ivy League experience right out of high school. And I didn't. I taught at Penn and then Yale for a couple of years really recently. And that became, a part of me felt like I needed to measure myself against that standard. And it was a great experience. But now that has also been folded into my idea of success.

And so I think this might be a little bit tied into talking about the creative process. And sometimes it can be difficult. That my notions of success are slightly different. It has a different energy. So I'm not thinking about someone I want to be necessarily, but it's back into that. I think it's more about appreciation. Like my role models,

and I'm still blanking on who I might point out, are not achievement people, but appreciation people. People who have found the success and are synthesizing it in sort of a good life kind of way. Definitely. I think, um, this is, uh, just somebody who can't, who comes to mind. Uh, I've, I've asked this question of a lot of folks and, uh, more, uh, more than a few times, Steve jobs comes up, but he's, he's actually not, uh, inary based on what you just described. And I think Steve Wozniak,

his co-founder very much is. I've met Woz on a number of occasions and I even gave him a little tango class prior to his dancing with the stars experiment. And he really savors and loves life and has built, uh, has built a life for himself where he is able to enjoy or, uh, experience the joy of discovery and, uh, is a genuinely happy human being. Um, and this is going to sound funny, but despite all of his material success,

because I think that the material success, not to say that that's a bad thing, I think that it enables more than it disables, but it can make people very defensive where they spend the vast majority of their time managing the protection and growth of their assets as opposed to the growth in other areas of their lives. And I've certainly, I mean, I don't have hundreds of millions of dollars or anything like that, but I've been very fortunate to have enough success with publishing and elsewhere

that I don't have to worry about where the next month's rent's coming from. But I've witnessed that in myself. And I think that there's a possibility, and maybe this isn't true, but I'd be curious based on your observations, if you've noticed this, coming from a very middle-class background where there were many, many times when money was tight in the family and we weren't able to take certain trips or get certain birthday presents or whatever it might be, go out to certain restaurants, that my inclination is to focus on the defense and protection of assets more than perhaps those people I met, for instance, at Princeton who grew up as bluebloods, where money is a known quantity.

It's an element that for multiple generations the family has become comfortable with. So I'm not sure if that's worth exploring, but that's something that I try to be very cautious or aware of, because I think it's a terrible inclination that I have. Well, you touched on a couple of things, a couple of new concepts I've come, I've sort of wrestled with very recently. And it actually made me realize who my role models are going to be to your earlier question. But yeah, like teaching at Yale, for example, which is such a good institution. You know, I came into into Yale in my early 40s. And my excitement at being at this institution, after all these years, you know, after being a person when I was 17, at the at the college fair in Wichita, Kansas, I remember looking at the Yale table and feeling sorry for the guy who had to come to Kansas and not even going there, you know, just because I came from a family that, that, um, that you don't spend money

on an Ivy league education. There's, there's more practical ways to get your education. It wasn't an expectation, but me sitting as a teacher in a class at Yale, and this is very recently, who's excited about being at this institution in a way that the 18-year-old student isn't. You know, the 18-year-old student is just relieved to be there because they've been expected to be there for years. And it's a part of their socioeconomic status. And they didn't have to go to their safety school sort of situation. And so in a way, that's sort of a gift of middle classness is that you're not, you don't have those expectations.

Nobody's going to be disappointed if you don't end up at Yale. And then you can actually have this beginner's minded experience of being a 42-year-old who's over the moon about being a Yale professor all of a sudden. And actually, the other thing you asked about when you think of success, who do you think about? Actually, I've been really fascinated just like in the last couple couple months of the stories of Dave Chappelle and John Hughes. Dave Chappelle being the comedian who had turned away $50 million and society sort of said, oh, what's wrong with him? And then John Hughes, who in the 1980s made all of the best teen movies ever, and then just sort of disappeared to become a quiet person and did he make home

alone or am i making that up he made home alone he made all of those brat pack teen movies he made home alone this is doubtfire did he also make that one he may have been involved as a screen i might be making that up uh but yeah he he had involvement with movies through the 90s and then just sort of stopped doing that all together in the 2000s. And I'm still in the process of researching this personality type because I'm really interested in the relationship that these guys have to success. And they were both judged sort of harshly. And I think that these are guys who are really trying to wrestle with the idea of who they were versus who their success dictated they were supposed to be. Right. And so Dave Chappelle, we live in a society where you have to be insane to turn down $50 million. People were questioning Dave Chappelle's mental health.

Yeah. That was a very prominent feature of the whole discussion. Yeah. Whether or not he had gone literally insane. When in fact, it could have been, and again, I'm still researching these guys, that could have been a radically sane thing to do. A friend of mine, Rachel Kadzi-Gonza, who's a great up and coming journalist, wrote a piece, a profile of him for The Believer, where she went to his hometown in Yellow Springs and talked to his, Yellow Springs, Ohio, talked to his mom, who's a professor, and actually ran into him in a coffee shop, but sort of wanted to respect his privacy sort of thing. And Dave Chappelle is a fit, happy guy living on a farm in Ohio,

hanging out with his friends. And it feels, again, I need to do some more research, but it feels like he's a guy who decided what would make him happy and he realized that $50 million and getting locked into a show wouldn't. And similarly, John Hughes is a beloved guy. And these are two examples. There's other examples that one could throw in,

but he was beloved for his teen movies. But I think there came a point at which, especially by people of my generation, there came a point at which that he didn't want to be beholden to The Breakfast Club and 16 Candles anymore. He's a family man and a guy who was passionate about his creativity. I think he chose being happy in a city that he loved, Chicago, with family members that he loved over making, you know, the Breakfast Club three and making another $10 million. And so while I wouldn't say, while these guys didn't pop into

my head as examples of success, they're guys that have sort of captured my attention because I think the sort of public perception of, oh, here are these guys who have disappeared with these two examples. These guys aren't disappeared. They're not people who disappeared, but they, they returned, they realized that they had, they had the, the structure in place to live the lives they wanted to live. And they quietly have been doing that. I love it. It makes me want to immediately start researching both of them. But if you're on the job, then given that I enjoy your writing so much, I'll probably just wait. Well, actually, it's funny that I'm not researching it from a writing point of view. So go ahead and take it. It's just like from an intellectual point of view, you know, that we're at all points that

Heraclitus said, you never step into the river, the same river twice, because it's a different river and you're a different man. And that's probably not a direct quote, but you're always trying to make sense of, of how you're living and how other people are living. And suddenly this is just a random intellectual thing that I probably wouldn't have thought about in the context of success until you brought it up. And here's two guys that I think, you know, we're crazy like foxes, you know, that, that said, no thanks, American idea of success. We're going to take real success. We're going to take time wealth and live in ways that make us happy instead of trying to live up to artificial ideas of success. So I would actually, you can

have it, Tim, and I want to read this. I want to read this book or article on the uh on success management you know success management i like it it feels like an important topic yeah yeah i i agree especially because it's such a it's such a nebulous term that i think there's a there's a lot of insidious potential for such a heralded, pressured, nebulous term in particular. Interesting. All right. I'm going to – I'm sure that seed will just sit in my head and not go away, so I might have to scratch that itch. Well, I mean, there's so many ways of looking at perspective and success, but in dental terms, we're all more successful than the kings of Europe 500 years ago, you know? Right. So there's that, the keeping up with the Joneses

idea of success, you know, that comparing yourself to other people idea of success is useful to an extent, but it's also toxic. And so it's part of this idea of success management, which is a phrase I only just now said. But it feels like it's the other half. There's a million books about how to become successful. But perhaps the idea of how to manage one's success in an enriching and life-enhancing way is something that more thought needs to be addressed uh, you know, addressed on that topic. Definitely. Uh, well, this, this is, uh, this has been a fantastic conversation. I have just a few more questions I'd love to ask. I want to be respectful of your time, but, um, I think I'm, I'm, I am very hopeful that, uh, people will enjoy this and they they should definitely let us know if they want a round two at some point if you're up for it.

Because this has been a blast. Absolutely. But the questions I have, so there are a couple of rapid-fire questions. You walk into a bar. What do you order from the bartender? What are your drinks of choice or drink of choice? I have turned into a whiskey guy a whiskey guy and I'm actually giving myself a little vacation from whiskey. Um, just because almost like with internet

connectivity, it became too easy to like have a nightcap, um, that, that compromised my morning productivity. And, you know, being the middle-class guy I am, you am, I love Woodford Reserve. And I'm talking about the bourbon-y types of whiskey. But Evan Williams' Black Label makes me happy. But I'm taking a little vacation from it because it became my booze version of the internet, where it just became unnecessary for me to be having another Evan Williams. And I like the single malts and stuff like that too. But as, as far as something like I needed a freedom app for my bottle of Evan Williams, just duct tape over the mouth. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Like an anti

booze pacifier. I should sell one of those. Exactly. And it's, and it's not, it's not alcoholism because I've been on my whiskey fast for about two weeks now, and I never think about it. I just need to get my monkey brain off of my whiskey nightcap because it was delightful and unnecessary and completely counter to my own creative life. It was a very lazy – it was like checking my Facebook feed for the third time in 20 minutes. Anyway, eventually I will return to whiskey with pleasure, but I'm on a little mini retirement from whiskey. I understand. I just recently took a month off of booze entirely for similar reasons. Do you have a favorite documentary or documentaries? Yeah, I understand. I just recently took a month off of booze entirely for similar reasons. Do you have a favorite documentary or documentaries?

What popped into my head is Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man. Oh, boy. Have you seen this? I've heard of this. This is the one with the – I think part of the reason I may have avoided it with a horrific epilogue, if I'm not mistaken. Is this the same movie? The epilogue? Well, let me rephrase that. Are people eaten by bears? Yes.

It's about this eccentric fellow named Timothy Treadwell who spends 13 summers, I believe it's 13 summers, in Alaska with grizzly bears. And the 13th summer he's actually eaten by a grizzly bear. And it's something, this is not a spoiler because you know that from the beginning of the movie. And one reason I like it is that it's such an interesting experiment in storytelling. And I use this as an example with my students about how you infuse narratives with mystery, with the idea that you're going to get certain information later on in the narrative. And Herzog gives us the answer to the mystery almost immediately, which is the what. What happens? Timothy Treadwell gets eaten by a bear.

But then it's like the how, it's answered, but then it's the who. It turns into this, who the hell is this guy who would hang out for grizzlies for 13 summers and and i'm not saying it's not my favorite or it's not one of my favorite documentaries from the standpoint of like sort of life-changing model for how i want to live or even how i want to make a documentary but it's such a brilliant that um use of narrative vernerner Herzog is just so good. Literally yesterday, I was looking at these spoofs of Werner Herzog reading Curious George, which it just killed me. It was so funny.

If you've seen Grizzly Man with his sort of Germanic voiceover, and then you hear this spoof of him leading Curious George, was a curious monkey. It's so uncanny. Anyway, that's sort of an aside. He's another one of these role models of someone who is so brilliant.

He's sort of unreplicatably brilliant in the way he uses narrative. It's such a subtle and simple and brilliant way of telling the story of Timothy Treadwell, mostly through Tim Treadwell's own video, that it's just a fantastic documentary. and existing resources for telling a really, really profound story about human nature and the people who sort of go against human nature and nature itself and the assumptions of nature. It's just fantastic. And yeah, a guy gets eaten by a bear, but it's less macabre than you might think. This is a random one, but we mentioned adaptation earlier if uh if nick cage came to your house for dinner what would you cook him oh god well i'd probably i'd probably go to aldi's and find some cheese bratwursts um just because that's sort of how i roll you know it would be the same if you showed up at my doorstep or any number of friends or celebrities

um that that's an interesting guy and this is another complete aside but i'm a little bit obsessed with the movie con air okay that requires some elaboration okay because i saw it on a bus in syria and that movie like if you took, if a computer took every action movie cliche and turned it into an algorithm and spit out a movie, it would be Con Air, you know, with a bus full of Syrians, and they didn't have any of the snarky, self-aware, judgmental, hipper-than-now attitude towards it. And they cheered at the end, and then they cheered in the middle. And that became a part of my emotional experience of Syria, and this has been 14 years ago, which is this amazing place. And it's become this heartbreaking place because, um, I know that the people I met there and who were so wonderful are, are living hard lives now. Um, and so I want to write an essay about this at some point about my emotional relationship to con air that is somehow tied into the experience of travel along with, for like the helplessness of seeing what's going on

in Syria. And sorry for this to take a serious turn, but it's one of those limitations of travel, for all of the beauty of humanity that I experienced in Syria, which was such a wonderful place years and years ago, that I have this dumb Nick Cage movie tied in to my emotional experience of the Syrian people. You should absolutely write that. I think that'd be,

I think that'd be a fascinating piece. Roger that. So, so cheese bratwurst. That's it. Come on over. Sign me up. What, what is the, the most gifted or the few most gifted books in your life? Meaning aside from the books that you've written. And of course people who followed me for a while know that I've given away hundreds, if not thousands of copies of agbonic, but and thank you for that.

Of course. Yeah, of course. I think it's, I view it as, as a, as a must read. Of course,

you know that aside from your own books, what books have you gifted to other people the most? Well, you could probably guess, um, Walt Whitman's leave of grass. Um, and, and, and this is, this was especially a young adults to mid thirties gift. And this is going to sound funny, but I, I probably gave it to every woman I dated for like six to 10 years, not because I was some sort of jaded pickup artist, but because I felt it was so true to my own, you know, joyous attitude towards how I wanted life to be and just sort of the openness, like this 19th century gay dude, you know, capturing these, uh, Rolf straight guy emotions towards, you know, the joy of life. And so I apologize if I sound

jaded to my ex-girlfriends, but, um, there's a point at which that I felt so connected to that book, you know, that I would give it to people I was falling in love with, you know? Um, and so that continues to be a book that, especially for young people who are just sort of coming into wrestling with what's in store with them for life, Leaves of Grass is this great reminder that joy and openness to experience and inclusivity is something that is going to be that catalyst that makes every, every experience more exciting. I love it. Uh, any, any others? Uh, what do you, what have you been gifting to your, uh, your, your girlfriends for the last while?

Let me think, you know, I've, I have so many writer friends now, um, that um like we i have really good friends from my grad school program who are poets and like you're you have a poetry bestseller if you sell 150 books of poetry right right uh and so i've been buying a lot of poetry uh by my friends or even just by poets i respect simply because that one purchase and handoff is meaningful to them in a way that other people might not be. And this is something we haven't touched on, but poetry is useful for non-poets in the way that it uses language. You know, there's nothing more pure and distilled in the way that every single word operates in poetry. And so my friend Eli Burrell just came out with a book. I've been buying that for friends.

My friend Heather Dobbins Combs had a book that came out with poetry. And I think poetry is a good, and hopefully my friends who are receiving these books or reading them, is just a good reminder about how important language is and how much you can do on a single page with language. And so that would be, I guess, leaves the grass as poetry too. So somehow I'm this prose writer who's besotted with poetry for the last 20 years. That's a big thing too.

Definitely, I need to read more poetry. I've never been much of a consumer of poetry, partially, I think, because I dealt with a lot of holier-than-thou liberal arts majors at Princeton who seemed to imply that if I insisted on understanding the poetry, that it was above me, that I was lacking the intellect, or somehow if I couldn't appreciate what I considered to be nonsensical prose that I just didn't get it. And that, I think, gave me a bit of an allergy to poetry that I should probably revisit. Besides Walt Whitman, any other poets that you would recommend to the intrepid reader of poetry?

Well, actually, a guy who speaks most every summer in Paris is a guy named Stuart DeShell. How do you spell his last name? D-I-S-C-H-E-L-L. It's very dude-like poetry. Is it like a country song about the pickup and the dog? Or what are we talking about? I mean, he's from Jersey. He's from Atlantic City. Okay.

And it's not dude-like and bro-like poetry. But it's just like if you're a straight male who's encountered bigger questions in life, there's something very relatable about it. Got it. Penguin publishes him. Also a guy who was born in Kansas and who is sort of out there and his poetry is really infused with a lot of pop culture is, is Michael Robbins who wrote a poetry book called alien versus predator. That's just sort of a trip to read. In fact,

yeah. It's a fun book to just read by and read out loud to your friends because there's so much, he's like using this, these strange meters and rhymes with poems about axl rose you know you know rhyming axl rose with something else really interesting guy um who's also published by penguin so those are a couple of dude poets that i think would be accessible or at least appealing to people who aren't usually vested in poetry

right um billy collins being another example. These are all men. Actually, there's a woman named Amy Natsuku Matadal. N-E-Z-H-U-K-U-M-A-T-I-T-I-L. Great woman. I've spoken with her at a writing and environment conference and very accessible and beautiful poetry. One recommendation I might have for people who are interested in poetry, which I would imagine for your and my audience, both is maybe not a huge priority of people who will read our books. Um, just get an, get an edition of best American poetry any, any time in the last 20 years and read through the poems and the ones that you don't like, forget about them. And the ones that are appealing, find other poems by those authors. Um, and that's found some of my favorite poets. That's great advice. And I just

wanted to raise also one other poet. And this is one of the rare poets who broke through my my probably unfounded bias against poetry, Naomi Shihab Nye, S-H-I-H-A-B-N-Y-E, two words. Her father is a Palestinian refugee and just really enjoyed, have enjoyed her poetry and kept it quiet. This is so stupid, but it just goes to show how early bruising can affect how you behave as a supposedly mature adult.

Right, right. I enjoy her poetry because I understand it. It's beautifully written, but I get it. There's sort of a message being conveyed or a point or a description of something concrete. And, uh, I suppose I was based on the, uh,

condescending, uh, lectures that I would get from people at Princeton who were probably very similar to the guy in the bar in Goodwill hunting, who's reciting, uh, you know, plagiarized classics.

Uh, just like imagine that dickhead and multiply it by a couple hundred people. Uh, I, I, I guess I've never really talked about it, but Naomi, she have nigh,

uh, is a poet that I've, I've come to really appreciate. Uh, so I need to, I need to read more poetry. I'm glad that you, you're sort of lighting a,

lighting a fire for that. And those poets are out there. A major Jackson is another guy that occurs to me, African American guy from Philly, um, who actually taught at the MFA program. I didn't study poetry, but he was there. Great guy. And for every completely abstract poem that's playing with language in a way that is almost meant to be pretentious, you have poetry that's very soulful and accessible and great. And people and, uh, people might bag, well, people deeply vested in poetry might bag on the accessible stuff, but there's a lot of it out

there. And again, the best American series or other anthologies might be a good way to find it, or even just going to poetry daily and ignoring the poems that seem completely inaccessible and following up on poems that seem to really be, um, delivering something relatable. Donald Hall is another great one. He's, he's in, he's pushing 90 now, but he's a wonderful, wonderful poet based up in new England. Well, Rolf, I want people to, uh, to continue exploring, um, your thoughts. How can they, what is the best way for them to, to learn more about you, find you online, et cetera? Uh, my author website is rolfpotts.com. Uh, that links to all aspects of my travel writing career. And also my career as a journalist and an essayist, if they want to

know more about vagabonding, Hey, they can buy the book. They can also go to vagabonding.net, which I can should probably, uh, remind them has resources that go in tandem with the vagabonding.net, which I should probably remind them has resources that go in tandem with the Vagabonding audiobook that you published and are also more updated than the print book that came out 11 years ago. So vagabonding.net slash resources will allow you to follow up on a lot of the stuff that we've talked about today, a lot of these websites like Boots and All. And then finally, anyone interested in my Paris course, which takes place in the month of July every summer, is pariswritingworkshop.com, which is also linked from my author websites. But pariswritingworkshop.com will give you all the basics about that. And Twitter is at Rolf Potts. So there's many ways to find me.

And that is Rolf with an F for those people who might be wondering what the spelling is. With an O and an F. With an O and an F and an R and a couple of Ts as well. Yeah, so Rolf Potts. And for you folks who are interested in the book club, so I do have a book club. And Vagabonding was the very first book used to launch that book club. So I do have a book club and Vagabonding was the very first book used to launch that book club. And you can hear a sample of the audio book and check it out at audible.com forward slash Tim's books. So you can get a scope on some of the books that have had a huge impact

on my life. And I'll thank you once again, Rolf, because Vagabonding certainly hit me at a very important time in my life where I could have gone many different directions. And I feel like it steered me in a very positive direction. And if I hadn't read Vagabonding, quite frankly, I don't know if the four hour work week ever would have been written. So, uh, so thank you once again for, uh, for, uh, having that impact on me and many, many thousands of other people as well. Well, I appreciate that. And I appreciate you championing the book too, that I've really, it's really gotten to people who may not have found me otherwise. So it's a great synergy happening there. For sure. And I will continue to champion it. So Raul, thank you so much for the time. And I would love to continue this sometime, uh, when you're, when you're available and not taking a sabbatical from electronics.

And until next time, thanks so much for taking the time. All right, thanks for having me, Tim. Talk soon. Thanks, y'all. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you for supporting the sponsors of this show, 99designs, which is your one-stop shop for all things graphic design related. Go to 99designs.com forward slash Tim to see the projects that I've put up, including the mock-ups and drafts of the book cover for The 4-Hour Body.

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As always, you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and you can find all of the links and resources from this episode as well as every other episode by going to 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. Spell it all out. Or you can go to 4hourworkweek.com and just click on podcast. Feedback. If you have feedback, I would love your thoughts. Anything at all.

Who you'd like to see on this show. Ping me on Twitter at T Ferris. That's twitter.com forward slash T F E R R I S S or on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash Tim Ferris with two and two S's. And until next time, thank you for listening. you