#299: How to Secure Financial Freedom, Maximize Productivity, and Protect Your Health

Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. So now I'll do this one question. Now it is seen. My cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and the scale. Sure

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Check it out. Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. This episode is going to be a bit of an anomaly, an experiment, and instead of my usual long form interviews where I deconstruct world class performers to tease out their habits, routines, favorite books. and so on, I will share some details from my own life and decision making and so on, based on questions that have been upvoted by Subscribers to Five Bullet Friday. What is Five Bullet Friday? Five Bullet Friday is a free newsletter that I send out. Every Friday.

that includes the five coolest things I found or explored that week. It can include what I'm reading, books, articles, gadgets, uh tech workarounds, any type of experiments that I'm doing, favorite purchases, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And this newsletter has proven to be very, very popular. More than a million people subscribe. It has more than a sixty percent open rate. For those of you in the email world, you know that is absolutely astonishing. Uh so people do look forward to this. It's free, it will always be free. So if you want to check it out, and there are also exclusive meetups, opportunities to ask me questions and so on. Check it out at Tim.blog forward slash Friday. Tim.blog forward slash Friday. And it's super short. five bullet point email with lots of fun stuff. Every Friday. Something to

Help you get a little bit more. Morsel. to chew on for your weekend. So let's just jump right into it. Question number one.

Hi, Tim. What are the top five health markers to check and watch regularly? This is a very tough question to answer because so much of it would be predicated on your personal situation, biochemistry, family history, and so on. I'm not gonna totally dodge, but I will say, and I'm paraphrasing here. the words of much wiser doctors that I work with. However above the age of forty or so, I want to say with a seventy percent or greater likelihood you are going to be killed or you are going to die from one of four things. Cancer, stroke, heart attack, or neurodegenerative disease or complications thereof. Looking at family history, you can pretty quickly out

which are the primary candidates. In my case, it's heart attack. And neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer's and so on. Therefore, many of the things I do both track and preemptively or preventatively treat Are gonna be related to heart attack, cardiovascular disease, or neurodegenerative disease. All right. So that would d dictate, say, the use of curcumin, like uh I think it's called theracumin, something like that, for instance, or

on the heart attack looking at other things. But I want to refer everyone to Tim.blog forward slash ATI. A T T I A. This will take you to episodes featuring doctor Peter Tia. who is one of the best MDs I know, and I know a lot of MDs. He works with many, many name brand folks, as a concierge doctor you would recognize, has very credible uh background. He is exceptionally evidence based. Also former.

Ultra endurance athlete swimming twenty five plus mile. swimming races and things of that type. So he understands and appreciates the implications and also trade offs of say longevity versus performance, which are very often at odds. Does that mean you want a hundred percent of one and none of the other? Probably not. So how do you navigate that blend? In any case, specifically if you go to Tim.blog forward slash Atia. Look at episode sixty five, because he answers this question

in great detail. And I may be getting some of this wrong, but I'm looking at the show notes and here's what I see listed under medical terminology. Uh A P O E genotype. All right, this can be indicative of your predisposition to things like Alzheimer's LDL particle number. All right. Particle number is a critical piece of this. L P little A. Then next we have OGTT, that stands for oral glucose tolerance test. Then you have IGF one, insulin like growth factor one.

Uh desmosterol and a few other things are listed here. And uh very frequently if you're talking with, say, Peter, uh at least the way that he and I often do things using either intermittent fasting or extended periods of fasting, say three contiguous days per month, and then longer periods a few times per year as a purge fast as discussed In my episode with uh Dr. Dominic DeAgostino, who was introduced to me by Peter. Uh this can be used as a Uh A plausible preventative measure

to counter cancer, which is not one of my most likely candidates to kill me personally, although it certainly is for a lot of folks. And going between phases of, say, hypertrophy meaning muscle building and performance optimization. Uh Alternating that with periods of autophagy Uh which you can help trigger

this type of cellular self cleaning through things like fasting, among others. Uh exercise certainly plays a role. All right. So Long story short. I defer to Peter Tia, go to Tim.blog forward slash Tia, check out episode sixty five specifically, and this question is answered as his first question from y'all. All right. Next.

I'm going to answer How do you manage all of your contacts? You know so many people and how they are all interrelated. Do you have a specific system or software to help you? And I'm going to answer this with a non answer, which is no, uh, because I don't want to make it seem like I have all the answers and that I'm selectively picking those I have great answers to, which will create that illusion. So no, I do not have software for this. I wish I did, but simultaneously I am Mm nervous, I suppose, creeped out would be another way to put it by the amount of data Google, Facebook, and so on have, Apple included, and what they're able to correlate without any input from me. For instance, auto correcting names I've been texting with or that I have off of what I perceive to be the Apple platform in my phone.

Uh or for instance, uh Facebook In some way. uh correlating based on the app use on the phone people I've just added to contacts or been texting with or names I've mentioned with their suggested people you should know on Facebook. All these things creep me out. So I don't think I put in enough data

uh or detail into my contacts to make this uh it's easily solvable by software because even if you were to poll by area code, say I'm traveling to Texas, so I want to know Who has a five one two area code, let's just say, so that I can

physical addresses change more often than their phone numbers. Uh so that is not an accurate indicator. So the short answer is no. What I try to do with my contacts, because rightly I meet you have I suppose inferred by the question that I know thousands and meet thousands of new people Every single year. I try to simply know one or two people who are very strong in each given field, and through those people I can get to anyone I might need. In other words, I'm focusing on just in time introductions and contacts, not just in case contacts.

And this is a corollary to something that Kathy Sierra taught me long time ago, which was to focus on just in time information. In other words, knowing how to find the information you need when you need it, as opposed to just in case information. Good example of that would be reading business books, say on how to sell your company when you're running a startup. In the early stages Because you're

Going to take notes. promptly forget everything and then have to reread that book at a later point in time if you ever pick it up again. And that is a sum cost. So just in time information instead of just in case information and just in time contacts vis a vis one or two highly competent people in each field. versus collecting hundreds and thousands of business cards and figuring out what to do with them, which is a more reactive way to go about it. Next question.

Any strategies. to prevent or minimize binge eating during periods of stress. Yes. And the last two weeks have been very stressful for me. I've had many crises pop up at the same time. And it has been very challenging. And I will tell you that

The First rule is to eliminate from the home Anything that you would binge. Eat. And

This really underscores my belief that your systems trump willpower. You should rely on proper systems And restrictions. environmentally speaking, versus this thing that we like to think of as discipline or willpower which is very fallible. And case in point

Uh I have come home from late dinners or say two glasses of wine during this period of high stress. Landed home, gone into the pantry, deliberately looking For things to snack on. Any bit of chocolate. Any bag of potato chips.

anything that might remotely qualify as a cheap food and instead I find mustard, M C T oil, athletic greens, protein powder, canned beans not interesting whatsoever as late night cheat foods and therefore I don't end up binging. When I violate that, for instance, uh about six days ago. I was visiting a consumer packaged good company and they gave me three amazing bags.

Uh I'll say potato chips, but they're really tortilla chips made from different types of uh root vegetables and so on. Delicious. And came back one night and what did I do? I had these three bags that are never in my pantry and I promptly Eight.

All three bags, twenty one hundred calories of these tortilla chips. And they were delicious. Did I regret that? Yes. Did I feel guilty? Yes. Did I think less of myself for having done it? Yes. So keep it out of your house. If you have anything that is a cheap food in your house, Removed from your house. That is system overwhelm power number one. Number two is get your breakfast right. So if you consume

For instance. What I would Consider perhaps a an ideal breakfast for many people. Thirty grams of protein within thirty minutes of waking up, which means you wake up, you have breakfast, and that could be Uh say three eggs, three whole eggs. This is what Gretchen Rubin does as well, by the way, for those of you who heard her on the podcast some time ago.

Three eggs? Some spinach. Could be microwaved. Doesn't make a difference to me, but let's just say a little bit of spinach. So you have that fiber, and then you also have some type of black beans or lentils or pinto beans. Some type of beans, right, Steve? Three eggs. Uh lentils or beans and then some spinach.

the composition of that meal, the macros, so to speak, the protein load. Plus the fiber content will help to stave off Any type of uh binge inclination for the rest of the day. And there's a very, very good chance if you just fix that meal. If you just dial in that as your new default breakfast that you will consume, say, fifteen to thirty

percent fewer calories for the rest of the day. This is very, very common. And is also why if you have a hundred pounds, hundred and fifty pounds, two hundred pounds to lose And many people have done this on the slow carb diet, and you can search how to lose a hundred pounds slow carb diet for free case studies and instructions on how to do this. With photographs. Uh I will

First ask that they do nothing other than change their breakfast. Why it is a lead domino that then has many downstream effects that you could treat as independent decisions otherwise, but that would lead to decision fatigue. So why not look at all these decisions and ask yourself, which of these if made or done correctly would make the others automatic. irrelevant or easier. And the answer is fixing breakfast. And there are other guidelines, but really those are two of the primaries.

Alright, next question. What's next for you now that your book is launched? Uh The book that is referred to in this question is tribe of mentors. Well tribe of mentors

And thanks to all of you. Thank you very, very much. Ended up number one New York Times, number one Wall Street Journal. And It is In orbit. So it has reached escape velocity and it is always my job just to get the flywheel and if the book is any good, it sticks. If not, then it doesn't. But this one appears to have stuck.

And at this point I view my job as saying no to a thousand things and And creating space to listen. This is along the lines of what Tim O'Reilly has shared on this podcast. And if you haven't heard that episode, I highly recommend you check it out. If you're asking yourself Tim Who

all the more reason to go check it out. But creating space to listen, to really just exist. and uh develop a higher level of perception. So I am focused on All manner of things to assist that. uh such as testing a beta version of the Waking Up app by my friend Sam Harris, who's also been on this pod before.

who manages to somehow speak in fulmose paragraphs or blocking out time, whether that is, for instance, this weekend when I will be going to an Airbnb way out in the country here in Texas with no Wi-Fi, no reception whatsoever. Or say more extended trips of two to three weeks with my family, which I do twice a year after reading The Tail End, an essay by Tim Urban on Wait but Why, which put the remaining number of hours as a percentage of the total that I'll spend with my family before they die, my parents specifically into perspective. Or

Uh blocking out an entire month. to hopefully go off the grid. without using any social media or electronics, which I'm in the process of planning. Now why would I want to do this? I mentioned this in brief earlier, but Yeah. developing a higher sensitivity and ability to perceive.

This can be helpful. Whether you are doing some explicit type of work, such as Cal Newport's deep work, say. Which requires extended periods. of uninterrupted time, blocks of time, or If you are simply

Trying to be more aware. and develop an awareness of how you feel, how you think, how you react in perhaps a vipassana meditation. Respect. uh so that your ability to parse life And be less reactive.

Is uh developed over time. Which is something certainly I'm paying a lot of attention to right now. especially given the number of crises that have hit in the last Uh week or two.

Which has proven to me the value of this type of training and deliberately creating space to listen a la Tim O'Reilly. And that is O Apostrophe. R E I L L Y for those of you who want to check it out. Alright, next question is

About EDC. Everyday carry. What do you keep on your person as part of your EDC? How do you carry it? How does it change during travel or other activities slash events? Bonus points if you do a pocket dump. All right, short answer is I have a very unimpressive EDC when you consider my pant pockets. I don't like keeping things in my pant pockets, so I don't have much. I do use a Patagonia lightweight fleece vest oftentimes.

As my Walking. Uh portable. bag that I wear on myself. But the backpack is is really the standard for me and it travels with me almost everywhere that I go. And I have a number of different packpacks, including one made by Datsu Sara, D A T S U. S A R A made out of hemp, which was or is, I should say, a company created by a

Reader. After going through the four hour work week, which is fun. Uh and In that backpack there are a number of things that Uh I travel with at all times.

including the Rubs Ball R U B Z ball looks like a golf ball with little prongs on it. And uh that was introduced to me by Amelia Boone, four time world champion in obstacle course racing for use, say before flights, after flights. uh during any period of travel and it alleviates tightness and pain not just in the feet, but all the way up through the legs, the posterior chain, the hips. It unlocks more than you would expect. Uh so that always travels with me. A headlamp. I always have a headlamp in a side pocket, very often black diamond. sprayable zinc for bolstering the immune system and melatonin typically three milligram uh

Tablets, uh and everyone from Art Devaney to Dominic D'Agostino are fans of Melatonin use at different points, voodoo floss for self-care, different types of joint issues. Created by Kelly Starrett. You can Google that for more. A journal.

of some type. Very frequently the five minute journal or morning pages, but the morning pages paperback is exceptionally heavy, so I often ditch that earplugs. Uh most frequently Max silicone putty earplugs, so you can sleep on, say, your side without having foam poke into your inner ear. And then an eye mask. of some type. And the Sleep Master eye mask is one I use very frequently. It also covers the ears and the outside as opposed to digging in with an elastic strap.

The only caveat is that it can be very warm, so I also collect I masks from various flights and so on. If you were to look at what I carried some time ago, for instance when I was riding the four hour chef and got really into Prepperville and all of that, I would have had a multi-tool in my wallet. It would look like a metal business card with little nooks and crannies for a Phillips at screwdriver. Say Saw Edge. Et cetera. that was recently confiscated by the T SA, surprise, surprise. Uh I would also have

uh potentially a shore fire Uh flashlight, tactical flashlight. in my bag and then I would have a paracord wristband or bracelet of some type. If you're wondering what you could use paracord for, the answer is almost anything, including bow drill, which is is bit of an edge case for all practical purposes, but you can look up bow drill if you want to see how to make fire using something like Paracord that is woven into a bracelet. And you could also look up Tim Ferris Experiment, Las Vegas Escape to see

some of the training I did with On Point Tactical and Kevin Reeve, where we looked at getting out of zip ties, getting out of handcuffs, and all sorts of other craziness. So you can check that out at your leisure. But these days I don't have a whole hell of a lot. Uh in terms of EDC. I suppose now that I live in Texas, I could go get my concealed carry and uh that would add a whole new layer to paranoia, danger, and um potential offense. So there you have it. Slash defense. All right. Next up we have most valuable skills freedom and being better with money, question mark. This is a super dicey question. Uh so I'm going to add a very important

preamble, which is I am not a professional investment advisor, nor do I play one on the internet, so this is For informational purposes only, uh a lot of people take everything I say literally and that is dangerous. So don't do that. Use your own brain. And much like the question of what are the five top five health markers to check and watch regularly, most valuable skills for financial freedom and being better with money. is highly personalized. But what I would say is that if you are in debt, if you have a substantial amount of debt

Uh I have found, for instance, or I've I've certainly heard from hundreds of uh listeners and readers that Dave Ramsey is very helpful. Uh some people are very big fans of Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Kiyosaki. and the quadrant pr in particular in that book, uh, is something that many have found useful. Uh Ramit Seti, good friend of mine. Uh R A M I T S E T H I.

is uh very adept and I think very smart in this particular arena. And if you want to look up Automated finance system. Ramit, R A M I T, and then Tim Ferris. Uh he has a guest blog post on my blog. uh that is very, very popular, has been very popular over the years and is worth taking a look at. So I I do think that If you are in debt, those three

Places are good places to start. Beyond that. I can really only speak from personal experience, but Financial freedom can entail a lot and can mean many things to different people. That could mean lack of debt. It could mean being able to do whatever you want, in which case, uh the the sky is the limit. Perhaps you need tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars if you want to buy that jet. It could mean financial freedom. that you are free from financial worry.

It no longer occupies twenty percent of your RAM at all times. And being better With money. All right. I would divide. Being better with money. into

two different categories and uh keeping in mind that for me a good investment is one that increases your quality of life. Why otherwise would you invest? So if you say are invested in crypto and the percentage gains are very attractive, but you're a complete Crackhead compulsively checking the charts every fifteen minutes, is that a good investment? Well, that's a question for you to sit with, but if it

progressively worsens your quality of life or consistently creates more anxiety than you had beforehand is the marginal utility of the dollars you are gaining. as reflected in that percentage enough to offset that. with some type of lump sum payment of happiness or improved quality of life at the end. Maybe not. But this is something worth considering. Coming back to what I was saying though, I tend to think of money As

Uh getting rich, staying rich. So there are different tools in the toolkit for getting rich, different tools than in the staying rich category. And Uh I would say if you're looking at beating the market, so Alpha. I I don't do that. in hands off styles of investing. Uh I I have that very much on one side of my barbell. So I personally, uh partially by choice

And partially by fate. Uh barbell. looking. Asset distribution. And if you were to look at what I have, you're gonna have highly volatile, what most people will consider highly risky.

Class. of investments. namely startups and cryptocurrency. That's gonna be more than fifty percent of my total assets. Uh and then you have real estate and cash or cash like equivalents. And that's pretty much it. So on opposite ends of the spectrum and we could debate

whether or not real estate is risky, we could debate the benefits of cash if uh you also have to contend with inflation. But let's just keep it simple for the sake of this this discussion and say that you have uh highly volatile what most people would consider high risk, high reward categories like privately held startups and cryptocurrency on one end of the barbell, which is where I create my alpha. And then you have real estate, cash, cash like equivalents and

Things like for instance, uh Muni Bonds and so on, where you would then preserve that alpha. Okay, so you create alpha, take it off the table, and then preserve alpha. No.

Forget about the question of converting crypto into fiat or keeping it in crypto. Let's just keep it simple. Uh so that is Uh currently what my say asset allocation Would look like that is m very, very likely to change over time. And I should address a couple of questions that likely come to mind. One would be why on earth do you have more than fifty percent

of your net worth in startups and crypto. And it is not Because I had a hundred units of assets and decided To put

fifty plus percent of those units into crypto and startups. That would be complete insanity, I think, for almost anyone. It's because I started off with a very reasonable allocation. Some of you might remember that um many years ago, two thousand eight or so, I created for myself a real world MBA rather than going to a Stanford GSB or one of these graduate school programs of business, I decided to take the same amount of money over two years. At that point it was sixty thousand dollars a year for two years. and invest that into

The Tim Ferris fund. in quotation marks to try my hand at startup investing. In the very beginning piggybacking and co investing with people who knew what they were doing. And I assumed the network built, the skills developed, the knowledge acquired over that two year period of time would uh benefit me more than the hundred and twenty thousand dollars, which I assumed I would lose. The assumption was much like tuition, that would be a sunk cost. And that then set me on this accidental career of being and early stage tech angel investor and advisor.

And that tiny sliver of my total pie chart at that time due to uh lucky slash good investments and Company selection. Has swollen to a a gigantic percentage of the total pie chart with companies like Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba, and so on. Uh crypto very similarly uh has has not

uh necessarily risen as it would have had I gone in early with something like Ethereum. Uh, but has nonetheless doubled and so on over time, more than doubled. So compar if you look at my cost basis, it was a very rational, well, semi-rational decision at the t at the time to allocate what I allocated, but due to growth,

uh they now represent a very, very large percentage of my total holdings. And the crypto can be freely traded. The startups are locked up. All right, so I am unable to decrease my positions and balance those, uh, for the most part. And that is why my portfolio looks the way it does. I would not recommend my uh asset allocation.

to really anyone. Um now this comes back to Uh The question of Financial freedom, getting better with money. If we're looking at the

the getting rich part, the building wealth for a less crass way to put it. Uh building wealth, preserving wealth. Sounds a lot fancier, much more Uh Rockefeller than Nouveau Reach. So let's stick with that. All right, building wealth, preserving wealth.

The way that I have Uh if we're assuming there's some aspect of skill involved. Uh lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, which could be the case. Right. If you have a thousand orangutans flip coins long enough, as Warren Buffett would say. Well actually Warren Buffett wouldn't say this, the uh efficient market theorist folks would say this. You have a thousand monkeys flipping coins, eventually you're gonna find one or two monkeys who flip, you know, fifty heads in a row and then end up writing books about how to flip coins and so on. So maybe I'm that monkey. But

Uh if we assume there's some element of skill, the way that I've thought about it is number one Uh capping downside. first versus evaluating upside and looking at the minimal downside. And this is borrowed from a lot of folks, including uh some uh famous names you might recognize. Warren Buffett, for instance, uh, who's a would be considered, I think, by most a value investor, although Charlie Munger has certainly informed their their Later investment styles. Uh Paul Tudor Jones.

Yeah of hedge fund fame. Uh and this is actually a Quote Tony Robbins book Unshakeable.

Uh, which is which is very good. Or money master the game also very, very good. Is this truly the hard trade? This is from Paul Tudor Jones paraphrasing. Is this truly the hard trade question mark, meaning something others can't easily replicate. Does this really have asymmetric risk reward? Is it a five to one or a three to one? That means for every dollar he is risking, is there the potential or expectation of a three or five dollar? RY What's the entry point? What are your stops? These are all really, really

Good. Questions. And The downside risk, capping the downside risk is also something that, for instance, Richard Branson does when he started uh Virgin Atlantic, uh negotiating a lease with Boeing so that he could return the plane or planes if it didn't work out. So even these people who are viewed as inveterate risk takers, people who throw caution to the wind are in fact determining how to limit their downside right up front and then looking for asymmetric risks. So in the startup world

uh that check the box. You can put in twenty five K. Max. you know your maximum that you can lose because you're not using leverage or anything else. Twenty five K is the maximum you can lose. And yet there is the potential. If you

Uh focus on an unfair advantage, and we'll come back to that, that you could have a hundred to thousand X return. and uh the startup world much like Uh publishing book publishing, music, these are hits driven businesses. Uh and uh you are betting on

companies or books or musicians or albums that you hope will return the fund. They will return all of the other losses that you will incur. Uh with your other bets. And uh

I do very well with those types of decisions. They are binary. They are not day trading. They're certainly not uh considering buying or selling. on a regular basis. uh at which point you become very susceptible to Mr. Market. If you want to look it w up Warren Buffett, Mr. Market. Uh that is who I am in the public markets. So I do not play much with public Equities, for instance, even though that might be part of my portfolio later. Uh instead, I like to do a ton of research up front, make a binary decision. Am I in, am I out, and then I'm stuck.

And that being stuck is actually a benefit. It is a constraint that works for me in this case because I can't make cell decisions at the wrong time. It is out of my hands. Uh that does not suit everyone's intestinal fortitude. It just happens to suit my weird psychology. Uh the unfair advantage I mentioned I would come back to. is really only playing with a stacked deck. Uh so I Do not make investments in startups where I cannot materially impact directly the value of that company. Or from the selection standpoint, when I have

Uh unless I have a significant informational advantage. And when I lived in Silicon Valley, I was there for seventeen years. I lived in the middle of the switchbox and I made every effort to ensure that I was in the hub of information flow. So I knew about things. uh weeks, months, in some cases years in advance. And that enabled me to make better.

decisions uh as to where I should allocate the Tim Ferris fund in the first two years, certainly, which worked out very, very well. And had some great teachers who have all talked about their approaches for investing on This podcast uh Naval Ravacant. incredible. So you can go to Tim.blog forward slash Naval. You can go to Tim.blog uh forward slash, let's see. Actually it might not be a forward slash, but if you look up Mike Maples, M A P L E S, he's another one who's been very, very consistently good. And so on and so forth. All right, so this is a long answer, but for financial freedom Uh first understanding how to get out of debt.

or how to manage debt. Uh I use very, very little debt in my life. Uh some people are very comfortable with that. I am not. And being better with money is in part not being afraid of money. And also uh learning how to take small steps and moderate actions with limited downside rather than being paralyzed by

uh any insecurities or fears you might have about money. So book that I think holistically can help with that is how to stop worrying and start living by Dale Carnegie. Has nothing directly to do with money, but it does have everything to do with how you might interact. with money. Uh the last thing I would say is uh coming back again to financial freedom. is uh to correct a misconception about

the spectrum between full time employed an entrepreneur. There is the erroneous belief, the false dichotomy that that these things exist completely separately. In other words, that you c you're either A nine to fiver or work for someone else or You quit that job

and f chase your dreams and you're a full time entrepreneur. Uh I don't recommend in most cases that you make that black and white leap. In fact, it makes much more sense to side gig on, say, the weekends or Saturdays for a period of time so that you can

both assess and evaluate your ideas for a company uh but also assess and evaluate your own abilities as an entrepreneur. to, for instance, structure time that is otherwise unstructured, to set your own rules and policies instead of having them set by someone else or some type of company environment. Uh and not everyone is suited

to the uncertainty that you face as an entrepreneur on an ongoing basis. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's it comes down to accurately assessing your strengths and weaknesses, which certainly applies to investment. And guess what? It's all investment. Investment of money, time, energy, attention. These are all investment decisions. All right. I covered the asset allocation and why you should never copy me. And uh let's go to the next. Alright.

Hi Tim. I know this is a bit out of your normal focus, but I'm curious, do you have a philosophy about having or not having children? This is one of the undecided categories. Uh so hopefully my my somewhat non-answer will be reassuring to people who are in a similar place. But uh I'm conflicted about this. Uh because on on one hand

If we're talking about investing and betting, let's just say If I look at the divorce rates in the United States And the damage that can be done, certainly based on talking to my friends who are the the children of divorced parents by divorce Uh

I wouldn't bet on marriage the institution uh to support Uh or rather to have a fantastic outcome. If I were betting on Uh

On partnerships. the way that I would bet on startups, I wouldn't bet on partnerships, period, uh long term, whether they're within the confines of marriage or have some other arrangement. Uh so so there's a lot of hesitancy on my part for all those reasons. Uh the There are other ways to look at this, of course. There are there are friends of mine who are either

divorced or are probably headed towards divorce and I would ask them Uh If the only way they could have their kids was to get married, knowing they would absolutely get a divorce, would they still have their kids? And the answer is invariably yes. Now, is this confirmation bias at this point? Probably. It would be very hard for any parent with a heart to say, absolutely not, I would unwind the clock and not have my kids. I've yet to meet anyone who has said that. Um

And then there are folks Uh, for instance, Jersey Gregorek, the Olympic weightlifting champion who's sixty three right now, I believe, and I would consider one of my mentors, he's in my Ted Talk, if you're interested to learn more about him, uh Tim dot blog forward slash Ted. But uh he has said to me Uh privately. I don't think he would mind me sharing this, but he's like uh I asked him how I should think about kids and he said, Well, you know

If you're a guy, you get past the age of X, I think he was saying like forty five, fifty, and you don't have kids, he's like, That's just weird. So he has a very direct he's like you just go crazy inside your own head if you don't have kids by that point. And uh I I think the simplicity of that is actually really profound and that the fact of the matter is I may get to a point where my biological imperative, the sort of Darwinian evolution that has led me to this point, being alive on this planet. in this particular period in time.

uh to want to have kids or n feel the need to have kids Uh despite any Arguments. to the contrary. And uh At that point I might say, Fuck it.

And um pull the trigger and have kids, although I recognize that it's not always that simple. And a lot of men assume that the fertility uh piece of the equation is problematic if the woman has problems, but I will tell you right now, given the trending that I have seen in morphology, motility In Uh

decreases in testosterone and everything else due to factors we can cover another time, uh that it's never quite or very often not as simple as people would like to think. Uh and that the fertility problems experienced by couples are very much uh are very often attributable to the men and not necessarily The women. All right.

Next. You often ask your interviewees for their advice for a younger person. Or a younger version of themselves. What advice have you distilled from your guests or your own experience that would be appropriate for those over 40? And I'll keep this super short. Uh this answer, or I say this question and the assorted answers from guests. are most represented in my last two books, Tools of Titans and especially Tribe of Mentors, where you see many, many, many, many different options.

And With rare exception. the advice that would apply to those over forty is exactly the same advice that these various guests would give to younger people. With the exception of

Uh perhaps risking it all in some capacity because you You don't have mortgages, you don't have kids. apart from the hey kid, you should try the crazy stuff because you have no mortgage, no kids, no real responsibilities. Aside from that advice, which is really a small subset, maybe ten to fifteen percent of the answers. All of the rest of the advice applies.

Uh the reason I ask what would you What advice would you give your younger self or what advice would you give a high school senior or a uh college senior is that the people I'm interviewing feel qualified to give that advice. Whereas if I said, What advice would you give to every forty year old and they're thirty five or they're forty five or maybe even sixty, they will be more reserved in Mm. in the prescription of advice.

for those older groups than they than they will be with the younger groups. And so it's it's really a tactical decision on my part also just to get a more relaxed, less edited answer from these people. All right, next question. Do you think people who are Introverted should practice, develop, learn to be more extroverted, or just embrace being introvert. You can do both. I would consider myself an introvert uh at least as defined by someone who is recharged by being alone or with very, very few people.

And Uh, I've never taken the Myers Briggs test, but I'm constantly told I'm an INTJ. Second most frequent Uh I suppose what would the precise term diagnosis would be INTP, but uh certainly I would consider myself an introvert who has trained himself to for short periods of time be an extrovert uh and get up on stage and give speeches and so on. But I avoid

Large groups. nearly all of the time. And even if I go to a large dinner party, I will frequently take five minute breaks every half hour or so just to recharge and gather my bearings. So I take a lot of bathroom breaks when I go to group events or conferences or anything like that. Uh, so you don't need to be more extroverted at all. It depends a lot on your goals, but there's certainly very introverted

Um high performers with exceptional careers both inside of companies as employees or entrepreneurs and then outside of companies or in their own companies as entrepreneurs and even CEOs. You do not need to be a flamboyant P T Barnum Steve Jobs type to be an effective executive at all. So it's it's really uh dependent on your objectives, I will say that I agree with Warren Buffett uh that Public speaking.

is one of the best investments you can make. Some type of training course uh believe that he was part of Toastmasters, uh or it may have just been a course he took in public speaking. But when you take the ability to communicate messages effectively to groups of people and layer it on top of almost anything else, you automatically yourself into rarefied company. Uh so public speaking, I do think is a useful skill, uh and in fact even a necessary skill. uh depending on where your decision tree takes you in life. So that would be one addition. Uh even if you are introverted, I would suggest getting better at some type and practicing public speaking. All right. Next question. Uh how do you arrange the interior of your home?

Uh example given layout items displayed versus stored furnishings, et cetera, to optimize your mental state and effectiveness. Is this a consideration? Yes, this is a major consideration for me. And uh I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I do spend a lot of time at home. And I would say just a few things. are are particularly important to me. I d I dislike clutter in any of my living spaces, like a living room, for instance. I'm in my living room right now. I have artwork up that elicits very positive Emotions for me and I have books.

Up that illicit. positive enabling emotions or memories for me. So for instance, I have up on the wall, I have a photograph that Matt Mullenweg, my buddy, CEO of Automatic, uh one of the lead developers of WordPress. Uh took when we were traveling in Vietnam. And that is up on a shelf to remind me of that particular trip where I was able to say no and take time off the grid without any

side effects or negative consequences that I can recall. Then I have A book from Jocko Willink. That is the uh discipline equals freedom field manual. Uh because I'm a fan of Jocko and whenever I'm being a complete wimp uh with any decisions I need to make, ownership I need to take. or uh discomfort I need to face than Jocco's on the shelf yelling at me there. I have the ketogenic Bible, a book

called Less is More, which is an anthology of writing on minimalism. I have the Essential Rumi poetry, a book called Berating Sweetgrass. The novel Musashi uh two books on Musashi actually. Uh Miyamoto Musashi, who is thought to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest swordsmen in Japanese history.

Uh a book called The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera, which I have a lot of positive association with. Uh Ray Dalio. Principles. And then go boards and other things, uh wood block prints. And I'm I'm listing off a few things here just so you have an idea. A photograph of uh an Olympic weightlifter in a training hall doing clean and jerk with several hundred pounds.

The Nameplate. In effect, it's a piece of fabric that was stitched into the back of my judo uniform when I competed in judo as an exchange student in Japan at age fifteen. So I unstitched that from my judo gee when I was fifteen and I've carried it with me ever since with my name and my school name underneath that. Uh, and so on and so forth. A lot of wildlife, a lot of uh scenery. So I have panoramic shots of waterfalls and ponds in the Pacific Northwest, like Oregon. I have a photograph of a gigantic grizzly bear coming out of the water. I think it's called Majesty Rising, which is a photograph by Paul Nicklin. a National Geographic photographer who's just incredible and one of the few people I follow, one of the few photographers I follow.

On uh Instagram. Christina Mittermeier as well would be would be high up. But yes, I think A lot about What is placed around my home and what type of emotional states The prompt. Uh so that is short.

Answer to that. Alright. Next question. Uh productivity for non-type A people. Much of your advice and that of your guests seems to be aimed at people who thrive with setting and maintaining routines. Do you have advice for those of us who are ambitious but see routines as an undesirable daily grind?

Uh yes, I do have advice and it is not avoid routines. It is to refrain Routines. as something enabling. It is a positive constraint that allows you to avoid dis decision fatigue and allocate your brain power and the creative competitive advantages to the things that actually matter, which is not choosing what to have for breakfast in the morning or deciding

Which coffee shop to go to, et cetera. Uh routines, and I think this is W H Ouden, if I'm getting the name correct. uh should be seen as a in the intelligent man be seen that's of course people in general seen in the intelligent man as a sign of ambition. Uh so instead of seeing routines as an undesirable daily grind, uh to reframe routines Rituals, if you prefer that word. As

scaffolding around which you can craft your best life. Without that Every day is a free for all and it's it's effectively an unwritten script that you have to write every single day before you can even think about how to perform the script best. You have to write it, and that draws upon your very limited resources in an incredible draining way, in my experience. So My answer is not to get rid of routines, not to avoid routines, but to reframe them as the scaffolding, the reliable scaffolding around which you can

Then build. Your best life. Every day. And uh Utilise your

unique strengths. in the least wasteful way possible. Alright. Uh next question. And uh only have four or five left here. Alright, so the next question.

Is how's life in Austin? Have you designed or chosen a new house according to any changes you've wanted to make in your lifestyle? Uh I'll answer the first piece. Uh Austin's great. I've um living in Austin has made me fall more in love with the city. than uh simply visiting. And that was a concern. I wasn't sure what it would be like living here as an Austinite. Uh, but it's absolutely spectacular and I'm exceptionally, exceptionally bullish on Austin. Uh so I've doubled and tripled and quadrupled down on this town. Uh very, very, very big fan. I'll keep it short. But if you haven't visited at the very least Live music capital of the US. Fantastic barbecue, friendly people. It's it's a great town. So I encourage everybody to check it out.

Next questions. Uh what questions should a person ask themselves to determine their where of happiness. I've talked about where of happiness and how I ended up at Austin for myself. Uh the easiest way to determine And just as context, people think about the what, what should I do, the who, who should I spend time with, the why, et cetera, of determining their Optimal happiness. What job should I do? And the where

is very important. The geography, the city or state place in which you put yourself determines a lot of these other things. Uh my recommendation is to do an 80-20 analysis of your last calendar year. So I'm recording this in late February. But it doesn't really matter. Go back and look at your calendar for the last year. This should only take an afternoon, really. You can do it On a Saturday, for instance, or a Sunday. Yeah.

And go through and uh y you will fill in two columns. The first column is the twenty percent of people or activities that produced Uh peak positive. Emotional states. Most of the time. My peak.

Positive. the the twenty percent of say people in activities that produced eighty percent of the joy, so to speak. On the other side, you're gonna have the twenty percent of people or activities that produced eighty percent of the negative.

emotional states, the irritation, the frustration, the annoyance. Uh the anger, etc. And you're gonna make A list in that column, that's gonna be your not to do list. All right. Uh then you're gonna look at the positive.

And you're gonna look for uh different locations that have a high density slash ease of encountering those things. So for instance, I noticed in my own calculus that acro yoga correlated to a high degree of happiness. For me, if I practice acro yoga a few times a week, and you if you want to see what the hell that is, just look up acro yoga. like acrobatic yoga, acro yoga, Tim Ferris on uh the YouTube's. Uh you can also go to youtube.com forward slash Tim Ferris and you'll see some video of this, including me putting uh Jimmy Fallon up on my feet. And

Uh I then looked on Facebook at different cities and the Acro Yoga community in Austin, Texas is gigantic. It's larger, at least based on Facebook, than the acro Yoga community in the Bay Area where it was created. Which blew my mind. So that was than one of the positive checkboxes when I was looking for density slash ease of things based on a calendar audit. that have created

Uh a reliable. degree of happiness and improved uh quality of life. through doing that exercise. So that's what I would do. Next up, if for some reason or another you could record only one more podcast, who'd you interview and why? They can be dead or alive. Uh I would interview my parents.

uh because I would want to have that record really just for myself of having a long form conversation with them and capturing Their story and their wisdom. Uh I don't think I would share that. uh for public consumption, but just for me, which is actually a recommendation that I received from A name that I mentioned earlier in this podcast, Matt Mollenwig, one of the sweetest, smartest guys I know.

uh who's also been on this podcast talking about building companies uh automatic. His company's worth more than a billion dollars at this point, I believe. And has a distributed architecture for five hundred employees. It's really fascinating. In any case, he made that recommendation to me and this is a good reminder to get on it. So thanks for that, Matt, and thanks for this question to remind me. Next question, what are the pros cons of a silent retreat? Uh the pros.

would be similar to some psychedelic experiences. Uh not that I would recommend those in any illegal context or in unsupervised fashion whatsoever. But when you do a ten day silent retreat, which I made significantly harder for myself by fasting during so I I fasted for about seven days two prior to ensure that I was keto adapted, five during Uh, for the first half of my ten day silent retreat.

Mm. That type of experience shows you the breadth and depth. of experience possible through meditation. So you will see the best, you will see the worst, you will be listless, then you will be Uh y you will be not fatigued, you'll be restless. You'll want you'll be bouncing off the walls with no real clear explanation. Uh you will have profound moments of peace

And Uh and thouglessness where your ego seems to dissolve, and then you'll have times when, like me, right before I broke my fast, the only two thoughts in my head were fried chicken, calamari, fried chicken, calamari, fried chicken, calamari for like three hours. And then the next day it was like Ass, porn, ass, porn, just thinking about porn basically for three hours, which this might sound reasonably good. It was awful. Uh Particularly when you're trying to focus on your breathing or do something else other than think about such things. Uh so it will show you the breadth and depth of the experience possible through

meditation and that can then inform your later practice. So when you have these perhaps rare, or at least intermittent experiences of profound peace. and feeling at ease with yourself and everything in the world. And perhaps even the dissolution of the self.

in the sense that you feel connected to all people, all things, that can be a very tantalizing Epiphany. Uh beautiful. Uh experience that then motivates you to meditate later. Uh

similar to the effect that psychedelics had on Sam Harris PhD, who I mentioned earlier. Uh who then uh has has passed on psychedelics, no longer uses psychedelics, but uh used that experience, that promise, so to speak, the light at the end of the tunnel, having the first hand opportunity to do that through psychedelics.

uh to then drive his meditation practice, which is now very, very well developed and a lifelong for him that is available at any given moment. But Uh so those are a few of the pros. of the silent retreat cons. All right.

and not unlike a powerful psychedelic experience. Uh I would say out of a hundred people, ten to fifteen percent. are going to have a as close to a psychotic break as one can imagine or an actual psychotic break. And That is terrifying. And I was in that ten to fifteen percent in the silent retreat. And I think I had a uh a longer conversation about this with

Uh Dan Harris. on his podcast ten percent happier and also on a an episode of this podcast which should be out by the time you hear this or it's coming up uh very, very shortly th uh after this episode with Jack Cornfield, uh who was In fact, the person who saved me and allowed me to return to having my feet on the ground well enough to leave the silent retreat after that ten day silent retreat at Spirit Rock in Woodacre, California. So I would encourage you if you want more details on that.

Uh oh. You didn't expect to be in that ten to fifteen percent, which you weren't even told in advance, but Congratulations slash uh oh, you are in that ten to fifteen percent and you can really be destabilized. in a very serious way by such an experience. Uh so I'd encourage you to check out Dan Harris' podcast with me for more on that. Or

Uh even better perhaps is to listen to my very uh in depth conversation with Jack Cornfield about exactly this. Alright, two more questions. Why have you not illustrated or sketched in your books? You've mentioned a few times that you dreamed of being becoming a sketch artist. Why not experiment in your books? And this is true. I was actually an illustrator through uh much of high school and part of college for paying my expenses

And then I just stopped. I was also the graphics editor. of the Princeton Tiger magazine at Princeton when I was there. Uh and have designed all of the covers of my books with the exception of Tools of Titans. Uh then have had professional illustrators slash designers come in to do the production versions, but I have drawn out all the covers of my books, uh starting with four hour work week. Uh The

Uh so there's no reason I couldn't do a sixty second sketch each day for, say, Instagram, but the books are the are after the polish. I don't want to serve up my trial runs in a book. Uh, but many of the illustrations that you see in say four hour chef were in fact originally sketched out by me and then uh the polish was thrown on for the production. by uh someone who actually does that as a full time job. But if you guys would like to see me do a say a 60 second sketch each day or I don't know, sixty second Sunday or something like that, where I throw up one drawing a week. Uh, that would be a a a good way for me to get back into it. So maybe I'll do that. Let me know what you guys think.

Okay, and the last question. Tim, I'm a huge fan of how you constantly experiment and challenge yourself. So I'm asking you to push me and your other listeners to do a thirty day challenge. I am happy to do that, and in fact it's the same challenge that I am assigning myself, and it's one that I've done before. This is not a thirty day, make it easier. The twenty-one day no complaint. experiment and you can put this in your calendar. Certainly there is an overabundance of negativity complaining and criticism on the internet and we lose fact of We lose

sight of the fact that it is really uh positive reinforcement and applauding what you want. Uh and not exclusively punishing or criticizing what you do not like or want that elicits change. You do need certainly at least both and positive reinforcement. And that goes for yourself and your inner monologue. your inner voice as well. So you want to improve your life, and this has already been tested by tens of thousands of folks.

via the blog. If you want to tip the domino. Like we discussed earlier. that affects many, many other dominoes and increases your quality of life. Uh doing a twenty one day no complaint experiment is

a really, really effective way to go about that. And it also uh very quickly just how often most of us complain without any Type of outcome or action. So Check it out if you go to Tim.blog forward slash complaint. I created redirect. So Tim.blog forward slash complaint. That will take you to a blog post, which uh you will see is a little dated, so don't mind the discussion of switching to the Mac. That was some time ago. But the headline is real mind control.

And then subtitle the 21 day no complaint experiment. And uh it takes you right through exactly how to do it and exactly how I'm going to be doing it. Uh starting All right, meow. So check it out. Tim.blog forward slash complaint. That is the 21 day challenge that I would recommend to everyone. And that is it. That is the last question. Uh so

With Out. dragging this out too long, I would say if you'd like to ask me questions directly, if you would like to see what I am finding most interesting in any given week, whether that's articles, gadgets, new apps. Uh elegant tech. fixes and workarounds that a lot of my friends share with me, new investments.

Uh You name it. really anything cool that I am experimenting with that I've found that I'm pondering, I send out five short bullets every Friday in five bullet Friday. And You can sign up for free. It's always free and it's fun. People love it. More than a million subscribers, sixty plus percent open rate.

uh on average it's a lot of fun for me to put together and people seem to be enjoying it. So check it out. You can sign up at Tim.blog forward slash Friday. That's Tim dot blog forward slash Friday. And as always, until next time, thank you so so much for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off. for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourourourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out. And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

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