#382: Safi Bahcall — On Hypnosis, Conquering Insomnia, Incentives, and More

Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now it is kinda. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and the skeleton. S

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Tim. Well hello, my cute little magwai, ladies and germs. Boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to interview and attempt to deconstruct. world class performers to tease out the skills, the habits, the routines, all of those things. that help them to do what they do. And my guest today is a repeat guest, a very popular guest, Safi.

Becall. S A F I last name B A H C A L L at Safi Bakal on Twitter and Instagram. He is the author of Loon Shots, subtitled How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars. cure diseases and transform industries. And he's done at least two of those things himself. So he knows of which he speaks. Lunchots describes what an idea from physics he's a physicist among other things tells us about the behavior of groups and how teams, companies, and nations can use that to innovate faster and better. The book debuted number three on Wall Street Journal's bestseller list.

And you can listen to my first episode with Sophie at Tim.blog forward slash Sophie. In this episode. We talk about all sorts of things we haven't covered before, including hypnosis. He knows a ton about that. Conquering insomnia, thoughts on depression, optimizing incentives, and much more. But first, just a little bit more on Safi, if you haven't heard the first episode. Safi received his PhD in physics from Stanford and his undergrad degree from Harvard. After working as a consultant for McKinsey, Safe co founded a biotech company specializing in developing new drugs for cancer. He led its IPO and served as its CEO for thirteen years in two thousand eight.

He was named. Ernston Young's New England biotechnology entrepreneur of the year. In two thousand eleven, he worked with President Obama's Council of Science Advisors on the future of national research. He's a heavy. also a great guy. And related to this episode

is a documentary which I believe I mention in the conversation itself, but Trip of Compassion. Trip of Compassion is the most impactful documentary I've probably seen in the last five years. And I highly, highly encourage everyone to check it out. It's incredibly important. And uh the short link that'll take you there. I don't earn a penny from it. is Tim.blog forward slash trip.

Again, that's Tim dot blog forward slash trip. I encourage everyone to check it out. So Without further ado, here is The incredible Safi. The call. I

Safi, welcome back. Thanks, really glad to be back. And I thought we Could start. With a chapter of your life and a capability that I know nothing about, and that is hypnosis.

Where does hypnosis Enter the stage. And Why hypnosis? Oh man. So um

This is uh I don't think I've talked about that anywhere Uh in fact there I think a lot of people don't know that I studied that and um I'm glad this is just between you and me. So this doesn't get out there like oh he's the hypnotizing CEO or something like that. So nobody will ever use that phrase on me, ever. So that's good. No, it began about It started with a Thai food truck.

Okay. When I was in grad school, maybe I don't know, twenty years ago I was in uh at Stanford and the physics They they really didn't have any Good food.

Like an anything that was sort of edible around And uh kind of across the campus, there was this Thai food truck, which was awesome. It just like my mouth is watering still thinking about it was just like great. Thai food truck.

track a cross. And it was parked right outside the psychology building. And so on my you know, three or four times a week. I would try to one day I saw A a sign outside a door that said Hypnosis class.

I was like What's that? Like hypnosis is this like freaky thing with like You wave something and people go, you know. So why you know, it's Stanford and Cyclist. So I went in, uh at some point I just got curious. I peeked in.

And there are all these like really tall Big, super athletic looking people. Not what I expected peering into like a door that said hypnosis. And it turns out it was like half the Stanford football team. So I'm like now I'm getting curious, like why is half the Stanford football team Studying hypnosis.

So eventually after probably three or four more walks. Yeah, on Thai food lunches. I go in and I sit down. And uh it's being taught by uh physician from the Stanford Medical School who had written one of the classic books on hypnosis.

And he starts by kind of debunking some of the myths around it that oh this is kinda freaky thing. And it's actually a very natural Um state. And there's a very important evolutionary reason we have Developed. The state

to uh allow ourselves to be hypnotize. And what what hypnosis is, as he explained, is In ordinary life, there's something called the magic number seven. As you sit there, as I sit here Or as anybody sits down in your audience and

imagines the the world around them, they can kind of be aware of seven, roughly seven different things around them, plus or minus two. The famous article The magic number seven plus or minus two. Hypnosis is really the state of Bringing that down to one. You're just focused on one thing.

And it turns out everybody practically everybody has the ability to go into A hypnotic trance. Why? Why does that exist?

It was very interesting reason. evolutionarily why it makes Sense if you are being chased by a tiger And the tiger is you know, clawed a little bit of your leg and it's incredibly painful.

You really only want to be focused on one thing. Getting away from that damn tiger. You don't want to be focused on Oh look there's a nice bird or what did I have for lunch yesterday or what might be dinner tomorrow or oh my leg hurts. You just want to be focused. And that's what hypnosis is. It's just

learning how to focus on one thing. And in the case of I I got interested in it because I had trouble falling asleep. I would just have racing thoughts in my brain all the time and I'd end up like thinking about them for a couple hours. And I wondered, Oh, maybe I can a couple of hours. Well.

It felt like a couple hours. So Yeah. I if I I don't know if it was actually a couple of hours or it would feel like a couple hours. I would just have these racks and I was like, Well maybe this Is a tool, the self hypnosis. Uh. So I started getting curious about it and reading about it and uh taking this class from this uh physician. I actually forgot his name now. But um

And why were all these athletes there? Because That state of incredibly heightened focus is the same thing great athletes do. So if you are A baseball player.

And you are On the You've got your bat in your hand and you're looking at the picture. Everything is disappearing except that one baseball. And that baseball will seem

As large as a big pumpkin to you. That's a state of complete focus. Or if you're listening to music And Uh I mean this is why hypnosis and trans induction is so familiar, because we all go into this state of very heightened focus.

If you're listening to music or you're deep in a book and when s someone has to call your name a couple of times and then you just sort of shake your head and snap out of it, you were in a trance. You were completely focused on just that one thing. And that magic number seven plus or minus two in the world around you. I just narrow down to one. So what's hypnosis? Hypnosis is helping someone get into that.

One. And that's what a good hypnotherapist does. Is he induces that trance. And it's not with like a mat so I

learned how to do it and then started practicing over, you know, a year or two with friends and eventually for myself and discovered It's Amazing. Firstly, it's completely real.

It's Amazing what you can do with hypnosis. It probably changed my life. Firstly Develop some tricks it c you know Well okay. Uh let's let's let's talk about it.

The sleep and then then I'd love to talk about just induction. More broadly, but Sure. So the uh And uh

The masters of this are very good At identifying what forms of transduction work. With what? with different types of people.'Cause there's idea is, Oh, let's just do X, but that's actually not true. There are different personality types and different so

In and of itself, it's kind of a fascinating Exercise. And then You do it with yourself that I was most interested in self hypnosis to actually really Just to help me get to sleep.

So uh over the years I I I practiced it with friends on hypnotizing others And uh I mean really just for curiosity to see what it could do and how real it was. And it was just it was clearly very real. Um and then on myself it's kinda like experimenting

on myself, on my own mind and guiding your own thought patterns and identifying what little tricks work. And eventually found a couple tricks that um are incredibly effective for The question that I started with, which is how do you go to sleep quickly?

So There is the The Short and easy. Which works maybe.

Sixty, seventy percent of the time. And there's a sort of guaranteed home run, sort of the the big guns takes a little bit longer. But it works essentially a hundred percent of the time. So the uh

Short and easy. is um I've actually shown uh told a couple of people this trick and it's helped them a lot. It's kind of like a For those people who have a lot of racing thoughts, it's almost like a jujitsu move or I I studied a lot about keto, so it's like keto is you use your opponent's energy. Uh

Um So what you do is you close your eyes And Whatever comes, whatever visuals you see, you start to really

Get curious about them. You might s it doesn't matter what pattern you see. You might see some You might see it. What does that chair look like? What's its texture? Is it moving? Is it floating? Is it spinning around? Is there something on it? And

Because your mind is racing, that obje whatever that object is, it might be a chandelier, it might be just weird images. They'll start to change in your mind. And you just get curious. What's it gonna change into next? And the reason that's sort of like a jujitsu or I can wave is

All those racing thoughts, all those firing neurons. Get redirected to that object. Because it gets curious. Like Really what's it gonna change that's so wacky. Like what is it gonna change into And then

the object starts to take go from this like a morphous thing that's very far away to coming clearer and clearer and closer to your mind and sharper and sharper. And the sharper and sharper it becomes in focus. the more you're getting deep in trance. The more you're Letting the waking world go by.

And You just keep Asking, Well what's it gonna change into next? I have no idea. Let's follow it.

So that works. a good fraction of the time and it just calms you. It just takes all those racing thoughts and redirects them to that one object. And if you find yourself Straight your mind strength. Just redirect well where was that object? What's it gonna do next? Let's get really curious.

And there's so many things to add. What colours are it? Is it sparkling? What's its texture? Is it gonna morph into something, Oh my God, there's my father or there's you know and just watch it. And the more you watch it, the more it crystallizes, the more you're going deep into trance and you leave The waking world behind. If you are I'm a little more visual. If you have you're more auditory and you tend to hear kind of a

dialogue in the back of your head. There's trick number two. This is a little bit of a weird tri I actually haven't told Anybody this trip. Again, so glad it's just between you and me. Yeah.

I Ask. the audio generator in my brain, which is, you know, whatever Audio engineer is Popping forth that little audio in our dialogue.

to focus on generating a random double j digit number between one and a hundred. So why double digit? Well single digit is not a really difficult enough task. One, three, four. It doesn't really engage your auditory engineer very m in your auditory engineer very much. Double digit is just com you know.

just enough of a effort that your audio engineer can't play some Irritate and keep you awake dialogue and do that other task. It has to pick one or the other. And why random? Well if you just do twenty three, twenty four, twenty five sequence, it's kinda boring. And then your audio engineer can go back. to that really irritating voice that was keeping you awake.

So by asking your audio engineer to do this task of generate a random double digit number and then to keep the audio and the video engineers in your head that are generating this noise. Busy. You assign them the task of seeing those numbers. So I kind of imagine like a canon. Launching these numbers in the sky and watching twenty two

Seventy six. Fifty seven. But this actually really works. All the sort of inner erasing thoughts. You just take them away from their tasks that they were doing, which was keeping you up.

And you focus them on tasks that you would rather have them doing, tasks that are actually helping you to sleep faster. Wow. I love that.

Uh have you found anything else? Actually before we get to anything else that has helped your sleep besides hypnosis, what are some of the more common or more effective induction techniques. So if it's not swinging a pendant in front of someone. Which it could be. I'm not saying that isn't an option, but

what are some of the different induction techniques that apply to different people. Oh, there there's so many different uh induction techniques. There's a relaxation technique. Let us start by focusing on A part of the body. And saying notice this. How it's relaxing.

And then going up the body slowly and notice how that's slowly relaxing as we're talking about it. And then I want you to imagine a color. It's sort of green, maybe, and that as that color is spreading. up your body it's just getting more and more relaxed each part of the button. I want you to And then you go and walk up their body and especially around the neck muscles or the face muscles. And you need to acknowledge

if there's anything going on around them you acknowledge that and then bring them back to the relaxation technique. counting down from ten to one as you're walking down you know, a set of stairs or as you're floating into a cloud. And then there's the I want you to imagine you know, pick some place you're very comfortable, and as I count from ten to one, I want you to notice, you know, let's say you're on the beach, I want you to notice

The sand between your toes, I want you to notice what's around you and you just get them to that place. All of these are different induction techniques and they're they're pretty standard induction techniques if you look at any of the good hypnosis books. I actually found amazing is some people Can do it.

With just shaking your hand. It it's actually incredi really great. Uh mastered Therapist at this. You

Interrupt. A standard pattern like you go to reach across to shake somebody. You pull aside at the last second. And you

Interrupt them and you say drop. And they just Like some that you shock. You do some unexpected shock to uh interrupting a natural pattern.

drop them into a trance state. I I can't do that. But I've seen that it's just It's incredibly It's kind of m mind boggling to see. And it it really

Work so you practiced it a lot and you get good at it. uh you can help people go into the zone where they're totally focused on the one like a great athlete is to and that I mean, like I said, that's why athletes study it,'cause it helps them get into that. Zone and

When they are there, they're focused on your voice. Mm. So the hypnosis part is because at that point you can make suggestions. And they f and those suggestions become realized in their body. What are some of the best applications of

Hypnosis because there's there are It could be. nearly everything. There could be a smaller subset. It just makes me think of For instance, you've got to have platelet rich plasma injections, for instance, for

various types of soft tissue. pathologies and turns out doesn't appear to work uniformly well in different joints, even though in the the lay person's mind, in my mind, it's like okay, joint is kind of a joint. It's composed of the same stuff. Turns out in as it as it relates to outcomes, just not to be the case. There are certain types of pathologies that are really well suited to PRP.

What are some of the better applications or Uh. more effective applications of hypnosis. Yeah, that's a great question. I think there is that common view out there that you can use it to solve problems. Um or address pathologies.

And that is the case. I actually found The The far more interesting use of it and I'll I'll I'll give some examples. Actually

cute quick trick techniques for going to sleep quickly if you have a racing mind. But I'll give you the bigger gun one, which has Far broader. implications. Guiding your own thoughts.

being in charge of what's going on in your mind, taking control of what's happening in your mind. And These sort of tools give you the techniques to essentially create The way I think about it is Meditation.

Uh uh Meditation's like a volume control on a radio. You can dial down stuff. Learning to guide the thought patterns in your mind.

Is like creating a new station. your own inner playlist for your mind for whatever you think is of it. It's like creating your inner Pandora. So one thing is you just I think meditation is a is a very useful tool, but it's just a d a dial up dialed up, dialed down kind of thing. The other one is about creating a playlist.

So you can use it either to Optimize or uh become more effective or I think the most effective tool is In some ways to create inner peace or inner calm. And I'll I'll come back to that.

You asked about Uh a more something I hear about often which is um how to treat certain pathologies. And I think what people have found And this is where hypnosis or hypnotherapy kind of morphs with

C B T or cognitive behavioral therapy. For certain things like uh fear of heights or fear of Uh or certainly for quitting smoking, a really good master hypnotherapist can be incredibly effective for that.

Or Uh in some cases over in eating or basically bad habits. It just gives you a new set of tools and techniques. for going in and quickly

reversing a bad for example, creating an association. You always finish a plate of food. Why? And so I actually did this with did this a few times with the back then.

Why it turns out you really good hypnotherapist can go in there find out what association do you when you see a plate, what's the trigger? What happens? Well It turns out when I was a kid, my mom always told me to Finish the plate. So I always

You know. Finish a plate. Just let's twist that trigger around. Now when you see a plate, I want you to imagine it. Half

Full. And that's the end. And let's just replay that video all the time. So you you can in about You know, a thirty minute session. take control of your brain and just change a trigger. So for those kinds of

relatively quick fixes. uh hypnotherapy is very effective. It's not effective for serious biochemical disorders like depression or schizophrenia, that that it won't work. But for sort of more common sort of ingrained habits or bad habits or things that are very difficult to change. And can be very effective. Mm. The other one which I found uh even more fascinating is um

for achieving some level of inner peace. And I I'll give you an example. I was just fascinated the first few years Um it's been a long time since I thought about it. Well let's start with a going to sleep example. If if those quick tricks don't work for you this kind of approach gives you this sort of bigger gun approach will give you a sense of what I mean by taking control of your brain.

So if if those are the things that we're going to Tricks don't work, here's what you do. You personify Each of the thought patterns that are racing through your head. And here's what I mean.

Do you have Something about family that you are stewing about. So that's Mr. Family. You have something about finances.

Oh, should I have made this investment, oh should I have not made this investment, or I'm running low on this in my bank account, or what am I gonna do about this check that's coming up? Or is it something about work, Oh my boss said this to me today, let's do about that for forty nine minutes, you know? Or uh you know, my significant other said that is he or she really thinking this or really think let's do about that for another fifty seven minutes and replay that video day for fifty seven minutes. Or my parents this or my kids that let's worry about that problem and then cycle back to the finances and cycle back. And you give each of them a character. Whatever you want to name them. Now you put them around.

A table. And you are the chairman of that board. And you say You start by assuming positive intent. The

The work. You thank them for their thoughts and you say, Thank you for raising those things because that may be helping me and you may be playing that video tape because you want me to learn a lesson. So let's talk about and before I start

How many minutes do you think you need? I hear you that the reason you're replaying this video in my head Is it something happened today? And you're replaying that video and over. There's a very good reason that you're doing that and I appreciate that'cause you're watching out for me.

You want me to learn the lesson from that video. So let's do this. This is the inner conversation you have with that one character and then you're gonna repeat. How many minutes do you need? To explain the lesson.

Is is do you think you need thirty minutes? Well, not really thirty. About one. Well one is not enough. So then you end up with like let's take two minutes. And we're just gonna listen to it. You analyze the video say, Oh, here's what you're trying to tell me. It's this lesson. I said this stupid thing to my boss.

I really shouldn't do that. In this situation, here's what I should do. And then you ask. that engineer or that character who's playing that video, work video over and over and over where you said some dumb thing. Did I get the lesson right?

Yes. Is that good? Yes. Do you want to keep going, or was that enough for tonight? Do you think we should get some rest? Now we're done. Boom, sits down.

Then you go to the next, the one that's doing about what you happened with your significant other or spouse or whatever. Let's and you were playing some stupid video of some stupid thing that you did and shouldn't have done. Let's go through that. How many minutes do you need? You converge and agree and you go how many minutes? You give that character your full attention, you thank and you start by thanking it for

Watching out for you. Assume positive intent. Instead of making enemies with your thoughts and trying to suppress them. You become partners with them. Friends with them. And now you walk through one by one each of the three or four or five characters.

That were playing videos or or sounds or or or audio about stuff that happened that day that you are stewing about. And you just walk around the table. And as soon as you're done, as soon as the last person says, Okay, I'm done. You feel this like incredible calm.

And then you just go to sleep. Because these guys are done. Playing Video or audio in your head.

And they are done. And then at the end of that, when you've gone around the table. You say Is there anybody else? It feels like

They have something they want. And you actually strangely enough when you Oh, well, you know what? There was the email that I got. Uh there's Mr. E mail guy. About shit that I need to do.

Tomorrow. That's like replaying. Oh, don't forget this, don't forget this. And then you negotiate Okay, let's hear you. You let let's hear you out. How many minutes do you want? Well to And actually I'd really like you to write this freaking thing down so you don't forget it. Like okay, here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna take my little notepad here and get a notepad. I'm gonna write these things down. Does that Address your concern. Yes, it does. Do you need to raise it again? No, I'm done.

You can go to sleep now. And that's it. Then everybody in your head All those little and of course we're creating these character, but It's incredibly empowering.

to create those characters'cause then you can address them And instead of being in battle with your thoughts. you become in partnership with them because they are there for a reason. They are doing you good. They're trying to watch it. The only reason they're replaying those videos

And They're trying to improve you. They're trying to say, Hey, idiot. Learn the fricking lesson from this damn thing that happened today. And the reason they were playing it

You haven't heard them. And then they're just gonna repeat. until they get acknowledged. Once they get acknowledged Whoosh. You watch them sit down, shut up. They're done.

And it's amazing the first few times you do that, it's like magic. It's like Wait a minute, that video's not appearing in my head anymore. Oh. That's why he was doing it. He just wanted me to get the frickin' lesson.

And be acknowledged. Now that I got the lesson, it just like completely dissipates. Anyway, that's just I call that the chairman of the board. or the chairman of the mind routine. That takes a little bit longer.

It works a hundred percent of the time. So This I love and I wanna ask you Uh

to dig in a little bit because this I didn't dig in enough there? You did dig in. Okay. But I wanna get your opinion as we experience the background melody of fire sirens and so on. Uh The power of Making friends with your thoughts.

And bifurcating or trifurcating or identifying different characters or creating different characters. That represent this

the psyche that you're contending with, whether it's during insomnia or Because you are suffering with some type of debilitating conflict within your own mental experience of life. Right.

because uh versions of this have been one of the most valuable things I have incorporated into my own life in the last few years. I've not worked with this But whether it's Jack Cornfield

who's been very, very instrumental in helping me to recontextualize anger. For instance, which was a default of mine for a very long time. There are Exercises that that he prescribed or visualizations that are kinda close cousins of this.

But the the common ingredient Is View these different characters. Validating them. Thanking them.

And That Very often ends. Or at least temporarily interrupts. The pattern.

Right. And I'm curious what you as as a Yeah, as a very well trained scientist, what you The answer doesn't need to be scientific, but What does that say about the mind? Like what does that say about the ego and the mind that sort of splitting it up into these different

characters has such tremendous Power. Like why is it so effective? Well, I think I'm not going to be able to Our mind is a tool. to for survival.

And all of those that stuff that's going on in your head is about survival. It's about enhancing the propagation of the the collection of genes that's your body. And so The Thoughts that are going on in your mind. Are about learning lessons.

from stuff that's happened so that you can improve in the future and improve your probability of surviving. What's happened that's different in the last hundred years is the world has gotten more complex. There wasn't email and work job and spouse difficulties and you know, Oprah and you know, Letterman and Leno and Tim Ferrett, you know, all these things to l What's happened in the last hundred years that we have not evolved to

It's just the Flood of inputs. So our brain is fine. If all you have to think about is like running along the Sahara and finding

you know, uh a gazelle. Or whatever to Eat. Let's learn the lesson from yesterday's hunt and apply it to tomorrow's hunt. And so you have the videos of yesterday's hunt in your brain and you're like okay, I got that, I'm gonna apply that to tomorrow's hunt.

Fast forward. to now and we've got you know ten thousand different Input during the day. And our brain just hasn't evolved. And so this is Sort of a technique to keep pace.

with how to keep calm and how to keep centered and how to keep Sane. when you have such a flood of inputs, it's like All right. You the brain.

is trying to Improved survival. Which is a great Thank you for that. Flooding with outputs.

Because there's just so many. And that creates confusion and the reason It's suboptimal is just'cause our brain has not kept pace with the The evolution of our body and the evolution of our brain has not kept pace with the rapid evolution of

technology. So it's The technology is outstrip us. We have far more input that we are handling it. Keep it under

Control. Anger. Is a great example. So here's What I do with anger, I I think of Michael Jordan. I think of anger as a gift. Why?

I refrain it as a gift. Why? I think of a Michael Jordan example. Every time I get angry Michael Jordan in the later stages of his career I remember reading an interview or quote with him someone. said um

You know, how do you think about being kind of an older player he was in his I don't know if he was in it. He was in his mid thirties, I think. And you know, surrounded by all these younger players. How do you like And he says,

When I'm sitting on the bench before the game. I just think They say you are too old. They say you are too old. They say you are too old.

They say you are too old. And he has that sound he created that soundtrack. See, he's doing the same thing. He's diet he's tuning his brain. Is Creating anger. And then by the time the bell rings and he leaps off the bench, he is so

Bucking pissed off, he goes and he crushes the opponents. At age thirty five, and they're all ten years younger than him. Anger is a gift. You use it as fuel. So when publishers told me

This is You know, when you know, some agents or whatever like like wouldn't even bother returning my phone call when I talk to them about oh this mix physics and business and history and I had this and the you know, they kept doing this really irritating thing of like scheduling something and then like An hour before. Yeah, can we do that two weeks from now and then an hour before. Can we do that a week from now? Fuck you.

That really pissed me off. Like if you're not interested, just say you're not interested. I'm keep like I'm still angry. But you know what? I use it anger is fuel, and I sit down in the morning. I think about that. Fuck you.

I'm gonna make this the best goddamn book ever because of you, fuck you. Getting a little cow. You that's how anger is a gift. If I think of the Michael Jordan example, whether it's real or not. Mm. I'm not really like infinitely upset about that.

Maybe just. Yeah. But You use it as fuel, and then It's a gift. And you know what? I thank all the people who rejected me because they fueled me to make a better

story and that and work harder. So when I was training every Eve essentially training, it's like shooting you know, three point shots endlessly or shooting uh you know, free throws endlessly. It's feel like you imagine like They say you are too old. Fuck you, I'm gonna do a hundred goddamn free throws.

So I'm gonna read You know. every sentence of Nabokov and deconstruct everything what he what are those little t tricks or tips. Whether it's him or the Because fuck you.

And so anger When someone screws you over, it's a gift. And Your job. Your trick.

Is to figure out How is it a gift? What are they helping you? become better at. How are they providing you with fuel? They've just given you fuel.

How are you gonna use that fuel? That's your job. It reminds me of um Also Alexis O'Hanian is one of the co founders of Reddit and in the early days of Reddit They had some meeting with uh

executive at Yahoo, and I think it was I'm speculating here, but probably a fishing expedition on the part of Yahoo to figure out like how can we clone these guys if they're doing something interesting. But it was couched in some type of strategic Kind of highfalutin. And so they meet with this guy. Yeah, I assume it was a guy.

And at some point he says after looking at their numbers, he goes, Oh wow, you guys are a rounding error. And so Alexis and his team made a huge sign in the office that said, You are a rounding error. And put it on the wall. So they would see it every day.

But my question is. To you. Um then I I I do wanna ask you about depression in a minute because uh It seemed like

Hypnosis might not be the best tool. For that. So we'll come to that later. That's why I'm just planting the seed. But

I have used Anger is fuel. So I have done that. But it became My

Default. Right. So I looked for reasons to get angry to create the fuel to do things. How do you not slip into you know, becoming the the vessel full of acid that hurts itself more than anything it's brought up on. I don't so I

use that whenever I Feel a little incipient bud of anger. And then it just dials down the anger. So I'm There there are two ways to get fuel. One is

That anger As you say. But that in some ways I think that's only useful When you're already angry or you're feeling the incipient

Really, it's a trick. for not being consumed by the anger. It's for Whenever you feel an incipient bud, you turn it into an opportunity. My real motivation is um I have a phrase that I keep in mind when I started I

Uh got connected to a guy uh an author named Richard Preston who wrote If you know you brought The Hot Zone, which was his huge bestseller and then a number of other great books as a New Yorker writer. And uh We were talking, I was really

You know Safe, just make something beautiful. Don't worry about anything else. Really simple. And I I just like

Whenever random stuff comes up, hey, could you do this thing or could you write write that byline or could you do this interview or could you do blah blah blah, or all these distracting things, or is this marketing thing going well well, or is that I'm like you know what? Just My job is just to make something beautiful, not worry about anything else. And really the whole time I was writing I was I I kinda had that phrase, just make something beautiful, don't worry about trying to please anybody, don't worry about

how this might go and I didn't. I just was like Let's make something beautiful that I could be proud of at the end. And so what motivated me was this kind of Um

Kinda that phrase. Just make something beautiful. And that that's what kept me going. Yeah, the search for uh the s the search for or the recognition of beauty. Uh

for a lot of reasons in the last handful of years has become A much higher priority. It seems to Not necessarily be a solve all, but it Covers a lot of bases.

then it's it's difficult for me to put into words why that's the case, but You're talking about plausible evolutionary explanations for why. the ability to fall into a trance state seems to be nearly universal. And similarly it's like okay, well why why why is the recognition of beauty or even the concept of beauty

something that seems to be universal. We don't have to get into that. That's getting pretty pretty highfalutin. But um that desire to create or recognize beauty has become much more

of a driver. for meat in the last. five years I'd say in particular. And it's it seems to check off a lot of other boxes. So rather than trying to check off twenty different things that I need or solve twenty different problems if I have a compass that is pointing towards, right, creating something of beauty.

But however you end up recognizing that yourself, it it seems to really solve a lot for me. Um Let's talk about an experience of not being able to see beauty. Mentioned depression earlier. Uh

How do you think about depression? What do people get right or wrong about it? I don't know if you've suffered from it yourself. Uh And in all of your exposure to various types of treatments and methodologies and

Pharmaceuticals. What's out there? That actually seems promising. That uh You know, that that's a great question. I learned a lot about depression in the last few years that I knew nothing about.

Um You know, I'm very fortunate to not have had either depression in the family or experienced uh clinical depression myself. But what happened the last few years is uh I got to know somebody

you know, closely with depression. And Realized a lot of wrong things to do. That in fact. No matter how much I thought I n you know, either was self aware or

They're just So many traps. In fact, one big trap that's incredibly common to people like let's say you and me who really looking at improve. how we go about.

Oh. Life in the world. Let's find the things that you can do that will improve. Let's look on the bright side. Let's, you know, do this little cognitive Change and that, as it turns out.

is exactly the wrong thing to do with depression. And I remember I think I heard I think it might have been Tony Robbins on your show. Techniques that I use.

to help motivate people and do these great th which work phenomenal in that situation. You know, with these people who are depressed, we should just do the same stuff. It's you know Some variant of learned to look at the glasses half full. Look on the bright et cetera, et cetera. Good stuff.

And that's what I thought. Yeah, maybe That is a disaster. when you're dealing with someone with depression.

Why? It has Depression is a biochemical. It's essentially A diseased or broken organ. It's stuck. It's it's no different than

you know, you sprain your ankle, or you s or you have uh trouble with your liver, you're having trouble with your brain. It's a biochemical trouble with your brain. And little quick fixes not only don't help, They are Make it worse. Why? When you suggest to somebody with serious clinical depression

Hey, there's a glass. Why don't we let's talk about the where it's full. Let's talk about the water. Why do you just keep looking and talking about where it's empty, everywhere around?'Cause I look and I I can Take the exact same glass and talk about the water rather than the Yeah. So when you say that to someone who is suffering real clinical depression

A it invalidates their depression. It says what you're telling me is not valid because it's a real quick fix. And I should have known this quick fix which takes Fifteen seconds. And I've been fucking

around for however long, whether it's years or months or weeks. So it invalidates them. It tells them That they're weak in character. It's not a biochemical problem. It's not like you know, it y y you sprained your elbow or you have a liver problem or you have it you just have a weak personality.

That's your problem. See, I have a strong personality'cause I know I have to look at the glasses at full. And your problem is you have a a weak personality, you're kind of inferior. It's just the worst possible thing you could say. And third. They're unable to do that. They do have it's like telling someone who is

Uh an example I was told recently. It's like telling someone who is infertile, you know what, just think positive and you'll have a baby. How Frustrating and irritating is that to hear. Just think positive. You have a a physical biochemical problem that has nothing to do with how you're thinking about the world and is not a quick fix.

It's incredibly irritating. For all of those reasons. And it just makes you feel worse, like Not only Can you not do these things you've just been invalidated and told you have this inferior weak personality?

The person that you're talking to totally doesn't understand you. They are in a different planet. They think it's a simple quick fix. And they just don't Get.

That you are stuck in a deep Brown soup. And cannot There's nothing you can do to get out. It's like a disease that

Takes over your brain. Yeah. It just takes over. It's the depre when you see this stuff or you say this stuff, it's the depression talking. It's not you.

And it is really no different. than having any other damaged organ. It's just It's like with PTSD, I did get to spend some time with people with PTSD and like It's a damaged organ. And that's okay.

Everybody gets wounds. That's totally fine. It's totally normal. And what you could do for someone with depression is listen. And accept. And recognize.

But don't say, Hey, let's look on the bright side. That's literally the worst thing you can do. That's among the things that I've learned. So what can you do? In that case. I mean I I certainly as someone who has suffered from very severe depression. I mean almost off myself in college. So I have some

first hand thoughts as well, but what What have you seen to help. In those cases. Yeah. The last thing you want is your buddies or your friends saying

You know Here's some quick figs. Stuff. it just professional help because I mean there are people who spend their entire lives Researching whether they're

uh therapists or psychiatrists And For many. Із амазінг. Pharmaceuticals are.

Yeah, I'm in the drug discovery, drug development industry. I don't take a lot of drugs because um Yeah, they may have I just don't. There are a lot of things of like Oh, you know what, something aches I'll I'll get over it. No big deal. I don't really

But I've just seen firsthand like and I know for many people with depression, even small doses. of the right med. literally will trans you really do have a bio it's

It's a biochemical imbalance. It's like You know, your shoulder what happen what do you call when the shoulder falls out of the socket? Should subluxation. Right. That's what happens with your brain in depress it's just no amount of talking about you hey, just think positive and it'll go back in the socket. No. You just need somebody to go and y you need somebody to put it back in the socket.

And That's kinda what the med does. It's a little bit busted. And in some cases the right med and the right time and the right dose and the right combination We'll just put that

pop that shoulder right back and people will be like, Holy cow. All of a sudden the brown is dissipated and I see light everywhere. So there are many techniques and many m and there are more in development and there's more coming. But

Uh Meds Fortunately there's As you probably know, there's a handful of different therapeutic categories and so really experienced and very good.

Um Medical doctor. uh who specializes in this will figure out and different ones will work for different people and we don't know why. Yeah. We don't wanna why class A works for this person and class

uh but not for that person, but class B works great for so there these different drug categories So you really have to have someone who knows what they're doing. And is willing to and there's just very It's not even very little there's no way to know which one is gonna work for you.

But The odds that one of them will work. Is pretty good, or maybe even a combination. And then yeah, there is some cognitive behavioral stuff that you can do. Often in combination with the meds. And I think the the clinical studies have shown that in combination with the meds

That can really improve the response rate compared to just baseline meds alone. Yeah, I would I would also uh reinforce a few things you've said and then add Some some colour as someone who's Uh spent a lot of time

uh boots on the ground with this, both in the d undesirable Sense. of having uh suffered from it and people in my family have been sort of paralyzed um by depression. Uh but also having uh looked at different tools that are available, I would say that the It is true that you have

Genetic markers. And you can have different software. But different things. Output transcript:

Uh and that there are certainly seem to be sort of a gen genetic factors that predispose you to say bipolar depression. And when I when I sequenced my whole genome, that was one of two things that was highlighted for me. They're like, We don't have much to say. There are only a few things. Yeah, and and one is you seem to be from one to ten scale and eleven in predisposition to Uh, depression and then Alzheimer's. Same, same. And I was like, Okay, well

Looks like I have some research to do. Uh and that having been said, um Yeah, the Yeah. If you have flat feet as I do, for instance.

Uh the the flat flat feet lack of archers can cause a lot of pain. I've had pain since I was a kid. Much like I've had bouts of depression since I was a kid. But there are Without necessarily changing The flat foot. Directly. You could use orthotics.

And I and I say I think that there are There are certainly Pharmacological interventions. That that work for a lot of people. I know people who've had their lives changed.

Using SSRIs. for instance, as one class. Uh selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. No other people for whom SSRIs have had. No effect whatsoever.

Uh And Uh As an adjunct. Just for people who are

Wondering. What you might add to it. And I and I do think it's it's in a sense more helpful to have this self-directed than someone who is well lecturing you, like you said. But stoic philosophy, for instance, uh and sounds very dry, and it's thousands of years old. Uh, but there are some very

practical tools within that that have helped me, much like you trained yourself to become a better writer. to train myself to view the world differently. And uh that's true of say art classes, where suddenly you realize that you perceive concepts and when you try to draw a tree, you're drawing what you think a tree is rather than what you actually see. And I think that stoicism can teach you to look at things differently, not saying it's sufficient in and of itself, and there are other tools, CBT also.

Uh which is is in effect. heavily influenced by stoic philosophy. uh And then there are And feel free to

call BSME at any point, but there there are also tools out there. uh more recently explored say like ketamine. as as an example. And you know, one of the theories out there currently is that possibly the reason why ketamine can be so immediately effective with say intravenous administration for someone suffering from acute

uh suicidal ideation. Uh very often done in a sequence of five or six infusions. Sometimes intramuscular Uh I would discourage anyone who looks into ketamine.

I'm not a doctor, I don't play one on the internet, but nonetheless uh it does have An interesting capture profile from an addictiveness. perspective. So people can get hooked on ketamine. Um which is why I wouldn't say take lozenges home.

But the Uh you know one of the theories is that Part of the reason SSRIs take a few weeks to uh produce an effect for some people is that the They're

ultimately having an effect on, say, N MDA. where ketamine acts on it more directly. Ketamine is is also interesting to me. along with some other therapies like psilocybin, for instance, which is being studied at Hopkins for treatment resistant depression and elsewhere. uh which might go through phase three trials for that or

uh perspectively alcoholism. Uh what I find fascinating about these compounds and for anybody listening Uh don't try to DIY this. I mean psilocybin found in say Silosby mushrooms is is schedule one. So it's in the same class as cocaine and heroin. So the the legal side effects can be substantial and those are uh beyond debate. Uh but

The Mm. the prospect that you could have, say, a five or six infusion sequence of ketamine. or two to three sessions with psilocybin and have a duration of effect that is months long.

is really interesting. Because the half life of these compounds. Is Let's call it.

Well, in some cases it's gonna be the thirty minutes, depending on the route of administration with say ketamine and then Let's just call it four to six hours. or less with psilocybin, but nonetheless the durability of effect. Can be. On the range of months.

So I I don't want people to the and the reason I'm saying all this Understanding that I I'm not a uh Clinical psychologist, M D Or uh researcher is that having struggled with depression for so long

There can bia hoplessness. beyond the depression. And so I I I think it's At least What I wanna do is impart some hope to people who are listening as someone who

has struggled with very severe depression for decades, but not experienced any major depressive episodes in the last four or five years. that there are tools available that can help you to sort of put orthotics on your flat feet. And that

Uh It doesn't have to be a It's just self. Reinforcing pattern where you're depressed and then you're depressed, you're depressed, and assume you're a broken toy that can never be fixed, and therefore what's the point? There's this

Slippery. Uh sort of logically compelling with faulty assumptions. process that is really scary. that people can end up in. Uh

So for those people listening, I'll just say that um There are tools out there you should see a professional if you're suffering from age depression. uh which I have done in a somewhat unorthodox way, but I have And also to uh explore the tools that will supplement any type of

uh pharmacological intervention or prescription that you would use uh because there are resources that can help. And Uh Yeah. So so I'm I'm talking a lot, but I I just want to make two recommendations. The one is to uh

Take a look at a William Irvine book. Uh which is on stoic joy, which for many people seems like an Oxymoron. So William Irvine and his book on stoic joy, I think is worth taking a look at. There's also a book Uh

With a very clear but somewhat cheesy sounding title, which is How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie, which I've also found. To be Very Helpful. And it's it's not going to

change necessarily. Well I suppose it could, the in in some fashion, sort of the the composition of your It's not gonna change your genetics. But it it might change how you respond to your predispositions. So that it's not genetic determinism. You're not doomed to the same response.

say different attachment points on your like hamstrings and Achilles tendon. So you're not gonna be Usain Bolt. But you can get faster and you can train with subpar. attributes to develop. capabilities that no one would expect given where you started with your raw materials. So

In any case. I I think it's very hopeful that you And thank you for sharing all that. Um I think it's incredibly hopeful that you

Suffered. from severe depression, but have been free of a major episode. I mean just that fact alone. So I'm curious to what would you if you had to point to one or two Things. That made a big difference. may have been responsible for turning the corner there. What would you point to?

Yeah. Uh I would point to a few things uh and Uh Not all of which are things you can go get it right in or prescribed by your physician. Uh well I'll I'll give you a few pro and uh

These aren't necessarily rank ordered. Uh Once we get past pole position. But pole position is Sufficient supervised

administration in my case, right? receipt of psychedelics. to And this is one theory. sort of down regulate activity in the default mode network, which is related to rumination and self reference.

So I mean. uh also seems to be Uh to activity in the in the DMN. appears to correspond to Let's call it time travel.

So what happens in the future anxiety, what happened in the past, depression. And when that's subdued in some fashion what many people experience and it and this is one theory for why say psilocybin can have the effect it does on depression or end of life anxiety. is that it acts as a pattern interrupt where people can gain an observer perspective. on their behaviour without being stuck. like on the edge of the vinyl record that's spinning around at high velocity. When you have that perspective

It's difficult. As you said, when someone's like, just look at the glass half full and when you're in the middle of like I'm broken, I'm never gonna be better I'm depressed no matter what happens. I see I see the glasses half full and I still think life is shitty. What's the point? Right. People can see it. They can see the same thing. Exactly. And they can say, look, I know you are right.

And yet I can't fucking see it. And that's the problem. Right. When that audio engineer, as you put it. is sh it just has that one track of self loathing on repeat or that one track of acute anxiety related to the what if you're not gonna hear anything else. But when you can zoom out to thirty thousand feet.

See the bigger picture. It is very common that people come out. Somewhat. reformatted. It's not guaranteed. And I know I'm talking about things that are not readily available, which is part of the reason why I'm spending so much time and money

supporting research related to this. Uh because the underground doesn't scale. Uh That would be one tool.

Another would be Uh Trying to identify Coping mechanisms that actually Exacerbate.

the condition you're trying to avoid. In other words, like what are the if you can't fix depression, which is a big mountain to try to climb at once, and I don't think it's very productive to say, I want to defeat my depression. I You can You can look at the antecedents of depression or the ingredients. Right. And

tr potential triggers. So like when do you tend to get depressed? Is it when you're tired? Is it when you go to bed too late? and wake up too late and feel behind the eight ball. From the moment you get out of bed. And these are personal examples. Does it correlate to

Consuming too many stimulants. Which leads to the sleep and so on. Uh and

than try to compensate for that by consuming more stimulants. Does it correlate to social isolation? Uh is it inversely correlated to exercise? And this is another thing where people who are depressing say, Yeah, no fucking shit, Sherlock. Like I know these things, I just can't. uh deal with them. The time to deal with them is in practice when you don't need the safety net, right? So for me

Uh I I began to put in place, and this is in combination, I should say, with Meditation. And the most effective specific meditation tool.

that I would recommend to people, and I have no stake in this. Even though I gave him a nice quote because I think he deserves it is Sam Harris's app Waking up. And the reason I recommend that specifically is there is a progression and there is a skill acquisition. It isn't just the guiditation du jour that someone pulls out of a hat at the last minute. Because I think it might be popular and get shared on social media. It's a progression of skill development.

And the reason I say this that that people should uh use that app or something like it. concurrently with trying to interrupt These Antecedents.

or facilitate the inversely correlated the things that help, in other words I'm being fancy. is that if you don't have the awareness of your state in the moment, it's very hard to catch yourself. Whereas if you train yourself to Think of consciousness.

as the light that shines upon everything else that you are aware of. And this is getting a little abstract. In the training this becomes very, very uh understandable as a matter of direct experience. And you you begin to separate yourself from the emotion. Right. If I'm conscious and I can observe that I am hot.

Well it it's it's in fact the the observer is separate from the condition. So like I am experiencing heat is a way you can reframe that. I am angry. Well, let's reframe that and rephrase it since I mean sort of the our words are the limitations. of our world, like Wittgenstein paraphrase.

uh the words f are the phrase very important. So y you would then get to the point where you can say, I'm experiencing anger rather than I am angry or I am an angry person. And if if you feel then the lethargy and so on, you can recognize that that's leading you to a place that in the past Would be. be a double espresso, triple espresso at six pm, which is gonna end up keeping you up. Okay. I'm getting uh a a little all over the place, but can I inject a thought about a trick That I've found that is super useful for that.

I have this weird thing I do. I I somet I don't I haven't s experienced like those that I know the the the severe clinical depression. But it can especially late at night I will find myself wallowing in a deep brown stew of thoughts. And it's I recognize that As one friend of mine said, that's what's our life is like.

Twenty four seven. It may exist in a few moments for you, but that's what What I do is I have a weird trick. Which I I think it was like the mental hashtag. Where a thougbles up And let's say it's self criticism.

I just have I do Hashtag self criticism. Like oh. And as soon as I put the mental hash I do the little hashtag, I'm like

Oh yeah, that's what it is. And then like the power of it dissipates. Or Hashtag anxiety. Like I'm anxious about something coming up. I just do hashtag and oh that's what it is.

And then the power of it dissipates. And when I'm stuck maybe in that kind of rumination loop. where I'm being critical either of myself or or something going around me. And I realized why am I doing? I'm just like feeling mental I do hashtag

F T F F Filling time by finding fault. I tell you I don't remember anything unless there's an acronym. And I just

I get like some critical thought on like I'm getting angry, like this thing didn't work out or that person did this and And then I Why am I even and then I do hashtag FTFF Oh, that's what I'm doing. I'm just filling empty time. Because I haven't

taken charge of my inner audio engineer or my inner video and they're just playing this loop over and over. And then I And the way I visualize it, and this comes from a book that probably influenced me more than any other. on many of these aspects. And I'll I'll tell you what that it's called Joyful Wisdom.

And I've probably given that book to more people than I can Count. And І есенчили капчу з IDA.

of making friends with your thoughts rather than trying to suppress them. Making Understand it and I'll The example that's used there, the way I think about it is I um

On a boat going down a river. And the thoughts Or like the little trees. That I'm watching. Oh, there's an interesting thought. Let's hashtag it.

Boom, hashtag this thing. And then there's another one. Oh, let's hashtag that one. And it just I find that personally very calming. Because it does what you're saying in a very

'Cause I'm more I'm pretty visual. And so it just does that in a very visual way, that the thoughts are separate. And So one of the ways. that helps me just stay calm as the world is going nuts is I'm on that boat and like oh there's that thought gone.

Let me see what lesson I can take there's something useful I need to act on. If not, it just disappears behind my head. as I move along the river. The wonderful example that's used in the beginning of uh that book. It's by a Buddhist monk. I think of it.

I can't pronounce the name'cause I you know m the last it's Something brush. Ming po I Yeah. Ming blush. Suffix rush. Yeah. Yeah. And Uh Buddhist monk who um

I think that labeled like the happiest. Man and the planet or something. Um But he opens with a story. Uh, there's also a a very helpful lesson on death that I found.

Um Which we can eat to later if you want. But he opens with a story of uh villagers. Who were going between their village need to do an annual trip between their village and some

d distant neighboring village and they have to go through a forest each time. And every time they've been doing it, they've been doing it for years, they get attacked by these bandits. And it's like this some horrible thing and they get robbed and so forth and they go by the visit, and then coming back they get attacked by, you know, a different group of bandits and And you know, they're fighting and the bandits you know, get you know, injured or lose some lives and then they get to And then one day one of the villagers says As the bandits come and approach.

The villager walks out. And he says, you know, I Hang on. I got a suggestion for you. Instead of us fighting each time, why don't we make a

Come to an arrangement. We'll give you ten percent of everything we have, or whatever the number is. And you protect us as we make this journey. And all of a sudden they achieve the journey in peace. It's better for the bandits. It's better for the villagers.

The bandits don't have to lose any lives. They don't have to Uh take any risk. They get A steady income.

And so that's the metaphor for your thoughts. Instead of fighting them and trying to suppress them. How can you just turn that perspective around and say Oh. Thank you for being here.

Let's see how what you're doing is really helpful, and let's work together. You're trying to If it's something that says don't do this Thank you for being there. You're trying to protect me. Let's say you have two thoughts, Race. You know, one side is the you know Mr. Red.

On the other side is the Mr Green rest, it's don't do that, it's a very risky very Mr Green's like go for it, no risk, no no pain, no gain. And they're kind of at war. Sit them down around the table. Let's hear you out. Let's can you guys let's come to an agreement. You're absolutely right. You're trying to protect me.

You re and you are trying to say Listen, if you don't stretch a little bit, you'll never grow. Both are great points. Let's talk this through. And let's come to an agreement. And you know what? By doing that

Having that kind of inner dialogue. validating starting assuming positive attempt. Thanking them for what they're trying to do for you. You may come up with some brilliant let's say it's a Mr. Red and Mr. Green about m making some let's say it's personal life. Going ahead with this significant other.

Mr. Red says, No, no, no, no, I don't want to open up and be vulnerable. Mr. Green is like, Absolutely, that's the only way forward. And then you just don't know what to do. You're being pulled to two sides. Let's sit down. You might come up with some staged approach. Listen, where both sides agree, and then guess what happens? Inner peace.

Yeah. You can't. So that's the benefit of this kinda joyful wisdom approach or this inner dialogue or personifying Why?

It helps you achieve an inner peace. I can often see that on people's faces. So when I see somebody You know, where their face is sort of very tense and they're saying one thing, but their facial expression is indicating something else. Yeah, yeah.

And There's clearly an anxiety there. That's not resolved. They have a Mr. Red and a Mr. Green or Mrs. Reddit and Mr Green inside

And they haven't sat them down. And talk about it. So while they're talking to you Mr Red is saying one thing and that's coming out the mouth, and Mr Green is saying something else and that's on the face or the other way around. And you're just getting two different messages.

And that's why they have all this inner anxiety and stress. And so people who look calm Who project Calm. That have already made peace. Between the two.

They What are their motivating forces? What are those characters that personality What are their positive intents? They're both trying to get to the same goal, which is a better life for you.

Better, more safe, secure, happier life for you. Ultimately, it's the same goal. The same positive intent. Yeah. You just

Have a simple negotiation. You're valid. You're valid. Let's see if we can find a great compromise. And what happens when it's done? Inner peace.

Yeah, this uh this also reminds me of a few tools people can look into Uh seems to be at least uh have a p uh a component of this that's very similar. There's something called

IFS I was introduced to by Michael and Annie Mithofer. Uh who are involved. Uh with Many different things, experienced uh therapists and uh

Michael's also an MD, used to work in the ER, among other places, but uh is involved with uh phase three studies involving M DMA for PTSD. And it is MDMA assisted psychotherapy. And

Important to keep in mind together. Right, because uh You might find a magic bullet out there, but very often it's the context that is wrapped around that that is is critical to the outcomes that that you see, which can be really remarkable. And one of the

Tools IFS which I I believe r is internal family systems. It's a bit of a confusing name, but the gist of it, which people can look into is that you are examining and interacting with and making peace with through validating and thinking and

Many other things. The different components. of your psyche. And viewing. Many of them as protectors.

Right. So the label is protectors. And it is It is incredible what you can see. When Someone and I'll I'll personalize it when I

took that approach with say anger because I would get angry and then I would get angry at the fact that I was angry. Or I would be depressed. And I think for a lot of people who are depressed, and I can speak for myself It's it's not the feeling shitty and seeing darkness. everywhere or highlighting the negative.

That is the scary part. Mike. You know, ER was ER, but You are kinda made it through. It's the fear that it will never change.

that no matter how good things get, no matter which partner you're with, no matter how much money you have, you're always going to simply look at the negative and that this is something that you cannot escape. And I I would just say that to reiterate something I mentioned earlier for people. Wondering is that I had that belief. I was just like, All right, this is how it works.

I'm not hardwired to be happy, but maybe I can be really good at competition and like feel worthy by creating some type of value. And achieving a lot of things. That's just the hand I've been dealt, so I'll play the hand to the best of my abilities, but I'm not hardwired for this thing that other people refer to as like happiness, contentedness.

Sadly just didn't get it. If you look at my family. You see other examples of the same. That proved to be Incorrect. You can change and you mentioned a few things. IFS, I want to mention two more, and I know we're giving people a lot of books, and what I would recommend is

Just download them all on Kindle, read the first two chapters each one, and then whichever one grab you, just kinda roll with that. But two others I want to mention. One is Radical Acceptance by Tara Brock, which Yeah. Is Uh

cut from the same cloth as a lot of what we're talking about. It's very well written. And uh Tar. has been on the podcast. And and we've spoken about some of the content of the book. Uh Radical Acceptance was recommended to me. Again, it it might come off as a really cheesy title. fantastic book recommended to me by a PhD in neuroscience who is one of the most

Skeptical women. And I say that as a compliment I've ever met. allergic to anything remotely hand wavy or squishy. And uh this book had a huge impact on her and that is how it it found its way to me. The other is a book called Awareness, which came to me Not too long ago because

yet another guest on the podcast, Peter Maluk, who's involved in finance. mentioned it in passing and said, this book y generally gives me at least two weeks of of deep felt inner peace. Something along those lines. And then we moved on to other topics and I made a note of it and because it seemed so Odd. as a passing comment. And awareness

Uh is written by Anthony De Mello. D-E-M-E-L O and I and the the subtitle differs, whether it's paperback or Kindle, which is very confusing, but the one I like is something along the lines of the perils and opportunities of reality. I love as a as a as a subtitle. Uh

That book. also helps you to separate your responses and emotions, which are often the same thing. Two external factors from your identity.

And It's It's been truly stunning to see the before and after on some people. who are highly anxious or

prone to depression after reading this book Awareness. Does that include you? That does include me. Yeah, I read this book. This is one of the few books It goes so far beyond. Pathologies. Normal.

I e probably neurotic, like a high functioning neurotic or normal. and you want to get to super high functioning, I would also recommend this book awareness. I think it's It's a it's a huge

Uh Competitive slash unfair slash. worthwhile advantage. even if the only person you're competing against is the lesser version of yourself. Do you feel like you experience joy now?

Yes. And that wasn't the case a few years ago. I did not have access, uh there were moments of joy. I don't want to make it seem like I was Just this dull grey. You know, pan of

Like muddy glass at all times. That's not that's not the case. And also I should say now I still have hard days. But everyone has hard days. I feel like my hard days are are closer to normal hard days. than like, you know what? I wonder what it would be like to like jump off this balcony right now. Like would that be easier? I'm I'm not kidding. Like people have these thoughts and it's like you know what, like

Here I am, it's a beautiful like. And nonetheless I'm seeing the negative what's the point, right? Like these are the types of questions I asked myself for decades. Just didn't act on any of them. Came very close in college, like I mentioned, but didn't actually get to the finish line with that. Uh now my

Default calibration. is much higher. Like the baseline of contentedness. is much higher. Uh I do think the wear of happiness is another ingredient that I didn't mention. But like the people think of the how and the why. What should I do? Who should I spend time with the where of

Peace or contentedness is is an important thing. The where meaning the environmental factors. Right. So we're sitting here right now. In Austin. And it is a beautiful sunny day. Turns out it's sunny here most of the time.

I was in the Bay Area for eighteen years prior to that the East Coast New England where you get a lot of gray and a lot of rain and a lot of darkness. That was not helpful for me. And there are many ways that I could try to contort myself or go through

Months of mental gymnastics, which I did and can to increase my baseline or I can just spend more time somewhere at sunny. And uh exercise is another thing that is has become much more consistent. I always did my exercise at night typically or in the evening. I have since completely inverted that and I tend to do my exercise first thing in the morning. And I w I won't bore people with the

the many, many different effects and the cascade of effects that uh exercise can have on the brain, which is not limited to aerobic exercise, although there's a book called Spark that looks at brain drive, neurotrophic factor and all sorts of things. that are related to exercise uh Weightlifting resistance exercise can provoke very similar beneficial. uh responses.

And actually adaptations over time. Um but yes, so my default is much higher now. Uh if people want to see IFS in action although it's it's in Hebrew and not in English, uh there is a movie that I just helped put out. which is a is a documentary, I don't make a cent. I'm doing it for free because I think it needs to be seen as just sitting on a shelf after being broadcast once on television overseas.

Which is called trip of compassion. So if people want to take a look at how therapists work with someone, in this case under the influence of MDMA, but it can still be powerful by itself. Uh at interacting with the various pieces of themselves. maybe the emotions they haven't had access to as well, then trip of compassion, if you just go to Tim.blog forward slash trip, you can take a take a look at that or at least watch the trailer.

Um I will warn you in advance it's very intense. I mean you're you're seeing actual session footage of people who've suffered extreme trauma. But I think the payoff But yeah, I I never in a million years Safi thought I would be

Where I am now. That's I mean that in and of itself is incredibly helpful. Yeah. Yeah. I think anyone suffering

Uh From severe depression. Just knowing that is incredibly helpful. And also realizing

Doing what we do best, which is digressing all over the place. Just as genetics are inherited. So are Patterns of thought and behavior. I think this is really important.

Uh and I mean like you run into people who say, like oh yeah, my my whole family is big boned and fat. It's like well why are your pets fat then? Right. It's like there are behaviors and there are thought patterns. And Uh it's not to in any way invalidate the

software predisposition that you can But Uh for many of us. Certainly I'll I'll speak for myself.

You know, the the thoughts that I have in my head are not necessarily my thoughts. Right? Like the scripts that I'm running. The Audio Engineers Playlist. That's

Has been in I'll speak to the listener to in your head for years or decades. Maybe the playlist that your mom gave you, your dad gave you, your uncle gave you, your Teachers gave you, your friends gave you.

And You have the ability to edit that script. I think that's the most important thought is who's in charge of your mind. Yeah. You know what? You're if it's you know

As you say if that inner audio engineer playing that tape or the With the you know, video engineer showing that movie issue in the movie because They they're doing it for one of two reasons.

If you're not in charge. They're doing it of one of two reasons. One As you say you got it from your mom or your dad or your friend or whatever. And you just didn't realise that. That's a wake up call. It's like Oh, that inner energy engineer is just following my mom's orders.

Well let's see. Who's actually in charge of my brain? I am. But I Switch to a different station.

Or I create my own Pandora playlist. Let how about that? Sure, no problem. Yeah. Video or that's the

T. Because you didn't give them anything better to do. It's really easy to give them something better to do. You know, a simple trick to start with that is let's say you're s you know, we're we're playing some video. Just close your eyes and watch that video and switch it to black and white.

Yeah. Like Well. I didn't know I could do that, but guess what the emotional power is? Much less.

Then take that video if it's right here in front of your face. And zoom it back like it's on a on a T V set that's getting farther and farther away. Play the same video, guess what? Much less emotional impact. Like

I didn't know I could do that. But guess what? You can't. You know why? Who's in charge of your brain?

You. Those audio engineers, those video engineers. They all report to you. You know why they're showing that movie? This is because you didn't tell them anything to do. They're like, Well it's i you know, it's like eleven thirty, I got a

you know, forty minutes to kill until lunch. Let me just replay the same movie. For forty minutes where I barfed on my boss. I'm just gonna replay that. Over and over and over. Why?

Because you didn't give that video engineer any other task. Yeah. You're in charge of your brain. Take control of the audio, the video. Yeah, and they maybe as we said, they're different characters and they're each

You know, thank them. They're just idling. Yeah. Start to take. Control.

And realize that you're in charge and you can place the movie any way you want, you can turn it upside down, you can make it black or white, you can make it color. I personally found very powerful. Is to take something And just move it behind my head. Mm.

Then I'm like, Oh. Okay. It's gone. Yeah, I like that. I haven't I haven't tried that. And it's very you know, here's an i uh a fascinating thing I used to do this exercise all the time is you interv you ask people Who are on time. Just just a funny punctual. We're on time, punctual. Why you close your eyes and imagine your calendar.

Listen to the main and just take your hands and kind of move in empty space, like where do you roughly see your calendar for the day. And the people who are really punctual tends to be their calendar. happens to be like right in front of their head.

Now you ask the same question for your friends or people who tend to be late. Well, where's your calendar for the day? Oh it it's over here far on the left. What's over here in front of your face? Oh, you know what I need to do, you know, in my grocery list or this other thing or my cat or whatever, but my calendar is farther on the left.

Mm. And they're just not really The people are putting it the calendar is right there in front of them. And In a weird way. Optimistic people

Well tell me how you see the next day. Well it's on a Slope going up. And the a week from now, well it's up over there. Depress people more like oh it's down, it's going to the ground. It's very fascinating how

where you put things visually, especially if you're a visual person. People who live on the past, yes, some What's in front of their face? Oh well what I did last year. We're always talking about their past. What's in front of their face. It's sort of like last year, last month, whatever. People who are very f

I remember asking my dad one time when I got into this. He never he grew up in Street Fort Louisiana. Right. And uh Nothing. None of us would ever hear a peep.

about growing up in the south. We grew up in Princeton, New Jersey and you know as educated, very kind of elite Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. And Shreveport like never came up and I asked him, Oh, Dad, what do you think about when I close your eyes? It was down at his feet.

Very often people like for me pass to sort of to the left. center and what I need to do today and tomorrow and over the next year kind of in the middle and future sort of off there up to the right. But for him and So it's Who's putting it there?

As you say, it's the default thought pattern. Do you have to do the default op? I don't know. You're in charge. If you're always late, you know Just try experimenting with putting the calendar right directly in front of your eyes. When you close and just say,

That's training like riding a bike, you have to do it a bunch of times until it becomes ingrained and cemented and automatic. But those are the kinds of things that happen when you Realize that nobody else is in control of your brain. With the caveats that there are certain biochemical things. Yeah. That that doesn't help. But the things that you can control, those are the things whether your inu audio engineer, etc. Yeah, the uh the biochemical stuff and and feel free to s slap me down. Actually I'll I'll come to the biochemical in a second. I have a

A theory that I'd love to Allow you the opportunity to shoot down. related to that. But but first I wanted to say the note another tool that really helped me. That has made a very significant difference.

And it actually it does come from Tony Robinson. Uh Which is Related to How you how you change your thinking. I mean

So you recognize You're in charge of your thing. How do you change your thinking? And one of the approaches that I and many of my friends have found really, really effective. Is uh from Tony and it's identifying your

default question, like your primary question that you ask yourself. And for Depressed people, anxious people. It is often something very disabling. And it's a leading question.

Like What's wrong with you? Right. Exactly. That assumes something is wrong with you. Exactly. And if that's your search function for your brain. Your brain is gonna come up with answers. Exactly. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? That was my primary question for decades.

How could you not end up depressed? If that's your default question. I mean on some level. But it is uh certainly gonna grease the wheels. for negative thought patterns. That's what your inner audio engineer is playing over and over. That's right. If that's if that's your you yell across the room to your audio engineer and you're like, Hey, what's wrong with me? All right, coming right up and then like there goes the playlist.

And becoming aware and thinking about your primary question, your default question that you ask. And Then deciding on a replacement. Rines. And you you you do this, I think, naturally

Uh maybe you you Came um to use it more through these various books and resources, but the when you're angry, right? Like what can I use this as fuel for? Uh and so a replacement default question that you could use is something like what can I learn from this? as a which also depersonalizes the situation.

Wait, it doesn't matter. doesn't assume that you are the primary actor creating all of the problems. uh which is not at odds with recognizing that you're in charge of your thoughts. Yeah, I was giv that's a great, great example that I say there are two different kinds of anger. Like when you get rejected Whether it's you lose in a sport or someone's telling you you're too old and you can't play or you're That's

you know, an interesting fuel you can use if you choose to use that. I actually for a long, long time I th I think since I was a teenager. Because of one specific anecdote. Uh

have used I had never thought about it in this language. But anger to trigger a question that immediately diffused the anger. Mm. And I'll give you the example. So I was with a

Oh, we grew up playing competitive tennis. And uh in the juniors. And my friend uh Uh we were a few years older then.

Oh probably. Yeah, decade older. And we were sitting around and she was talking about And she had been a star, she'd been r we were both ranked and sh but she was, you know She'd done really, really well.

And had really stopped. And it just you know, not done any exercise and it clearly y you know, you can sort of see that And

I remember we were sitting around catching up and she was telling me With growing anger about her cousin's who would get in a car to drive two blocks. They were so lazy.

And it just really drove her angry. And she was like beside herself. Of course she was like lying sprawled out on the couch and like was getting help to just like reach over for a box of chocolates or whatever to put it. And I thought Okay. Cousins.

That would get in their car to drive two blocks to mail a letter rather than walk two blocks. Would it make me Would it be curious? Sure. But would it make me angry? No.

And I s kind of started to realize That it's Different cut. Triggered anger is. What is this anger?

Say about me. How does this anger identify maybe something in me that's kind of an unresolved issue? Mm-hmm. And so Probably sin, since I was a teenager, every time I would start to get angry in this way in an

Something that didn't seem rational. Um It pissed me off somebody. Always. I would say immediately

What is it in them That's triggering something about me that I'm not comfortable with. And it doesn't mean to be something that you're doing now.

I'll give you an example. When a friend of mine And um You saw somebody going who

A mutual friend of ours. who had said he was going to quit smoking, go outside to Have a cigarette. You know. And this was my friend had tried and had actually given up smoking.

And he said. That's so Pisses me off. the disguise said he quit and he broke it and he went back and it just I can't what a You know what a

Pussy really. Um I had the exact same reaction. Okay. He he tried to quit and he failed and now he's breaking his commitment.

But I'm not angry about that. Why is it Why are you angry? I didn't ask him. I was more inner. Why is he angry? And what I started to realize is not only an interesting trigger question They completely diffuse the anger.

Instantly for me. But it's also a really interesting mirror of whoever you're talking to. If they seem to be getting almost irrationally angry about something in somebody else. I

is set that completely aside and say What does that tell me about this person? That they're getting. So I saw that in myself. I remember when I was a grad student and there was uh Some guy who is a

You know, being Uh accused or you know, another grad student of like s sucking up to the professors too much. And whenever I would see him, it just would really piss me off. And then I had that same figure.

Why is that bothering me? Because that wouldn't bother Joe Schmo, but why is that so bothering me? And I'm like Oh. Am I worried that I'm speak'cause I was very friendly with a couple of really senior professors who are a generation or two older than me. Am I worried that I'm like acting different to them than I am to my friends? Cause I wouldn't like that.

And immediately all of my anger towards that other fellow grad student just completely dissipated. And People often ask me like you don't seem to get angry about anything. That firstly that's not true. Like when the X machine breaks, I get frickin' angry. Someone cuts me. So

Aside from the Xerox machine or the printer breaking at the last minute. I really don't get angry, and that's entirely attributed to this trigger question. I s I feel the bud of anger. I'm like Oh. There's something about me here.

Hm. That it's a mirror. And I may have solved the problem or not solved the problem, or I solved it years ago, like the quitting smoking thing the guy who did versus But Let me and then all of my anger dissipates.

Mm. Yeah. You should uh I'm gonna pick up joyful wisdom. I would love to hear your thoughts on this book, Awareness.

I yeah, because this I actually am writing these down. Yeah. It's uh the awareness really Helped me with exactly the type of reframing that you're talking about. Slightly different though. Uh Mm they

A little more conceptual. I think the trigger question is more actionable. Um but as a as a background sort of conceptual framework that is really helpful. Um Probably very fancy way to put it, but it's a good thing. In brief in awareness uh

it centers on and they're it's really a transcription, edited transcription of a number of short lectures. It's very easy to read, very fun. Actually the guy's h really hilarious. And uh focuses a lot on cognitive biases and confirmation bias, although it's not called anything super fancy.

And Uh A lot of looking at Acute responses like anger to situations. Come to

uh entitlement. Like what do you feel this is another angle, right? It's not exactly the same. But it's like what do you feel? entitled to receive right now? Or like what do you expect? Like how should the other person behave? And Is that completely unreasonable because you can't control

other people's responses and it's it's a way to kinda pick apart The Like the weaknesses in the scaffolding that is holding up whatever emotion. is about to drive you crazy.

Mathematical happiness equals reality minus expectations. So if you're very frustrated with somebody Is it because of the reality? Or is it because of the expectations? Yeah. And if you lower your expectations.

You can turn that into a positive. So I'm gonna I'm gonna give us a ninety degree turn here. Yes. Just before you did because it was so cool and so interesting, the MDMA stuff, in many ways the MDMA is a loon shot. It's something that's not a good thing.

people have dismissed as nutty or crazy that it could actually help therapeutic But actually may turn out to be incredibly important. Can I tell you another loon shot for depression? Yes, please. That I'm kinda interested in. Now it's It might be in a similar stage where you're There's a lot of very good, very interesting patient data.

Um Actually in this particular case it has been through phase three trials in a certain form. So this is Uh Something called RTMS.

Which is Transcranial magnetic stimulation. And what It has in common Is that it has this kind of vibe to it that sounds kooky.

Or sounds nutty. Or Jack Nicholson and one flew over the cuckoo's nest. Yeah. But so it's kind of a loon shot as well. Especially one flew over the cuckoo's nice blue shot. But it uh is actually based on a a very, very interesting

Observation. As it turns out, it has been through phase three trials and it is approved. And I spent actually quite a while Learning about it.

For no reason other than I just found it a fascinating story. A valoon shot. And a completely neglected idea, and in this case. I actually ended up talking to a bunch of my psychiatrist friends and there's a a center uh in i in uh Boston where I live. That's actually one of the world centers for it.

Creating some collaborations there with the group that I had met that was doing it really. novel twist on in California. But the bottom line is this. In

psychiatry today there's this Focus on what you might call If you're a physicist. You would call it Position space.

So I'll explain what I mean. And I'll explain Why This different approach. is what something in physics we call duality, which is two very different ways of looking at the same problem.

One way helps you solve it, one way doesn't. And So in uh psychiatry and TMS Uh

Oh f well first I'll start with what people do today. People do today MRIs to diagnose brain problems. And M R I's are, you know, trying to find magnetic rest and the chimney where in the brain Certainly. activity seem to be concentrated.

So that is what you might call position space, where in the position inside your brain are certain activities concentrated. But that's not what we did. That's a relativ relatively new in the sense of you know a couple decades. But if you fast if you go back even More to let's say the nineteen Late nineteen thirties, nineteen forties.

Uh There is a field of study with EEGs looking at the frequency. the frequencies that are issued by the brain. So in physics you have position space and you have frequency space and they're two different ways of looking at the same problem. They're equivalent. One lets you solve problems easier.

Certain problems easier. Uh the other. Doesn't and then for different problems it reverses. So E E G's It turns out it was discovered.

The bl the brain has a blinking rate. The average in the population in the US is roughly ten hertz. So ten times a second. That became a very interesting field of study for about ten or twenty years and then it kinda dropped off.

It uh was It's a very inexpensive tool. MRI was a fancier, more expensive tool and because if you want a big grant and want to be a big professor at a big Ivy League school, you want to use the latest, most expensive one that generates these fancy color images that other people can't do unless they have big grants like you. E's everybody can do. That's why I find it sort of sort of it's a little bit like MDMA because it's got this sort of reputation and uh

So As it turns out With depression, if you measure people's brains. The Blinking rate may be a little bit off.

And what TMS does There's really interesting physics about it, which actually one of the reasons I got interested of how it works. Essentially it creates it's an oscillating magnetic field. Th there's no surgery, there's no nothing. It's just It's like a shower. uh what do you call the the shower head that they put next to your

Oscillating magnetic field. Uh that kinda locks in the rate and sort of nudges it. If you're default blinking rate is ten hertz.

It just sort of nudges you back closer to ten hertz. So as it turns out that was approved, that was through phase three trials and got approved by the F J about five or ten years ago, I don't remember. Uh, in a certain format and technique. And actually turns out to work roughly about the same as Meds.

Not a much better response rate, not a much worse response rate. depending on the study and the population, roughly thirty percent. response rate in both. different side effects, you know, you don't have the side effects of taking a drug systemically.

Uh, but the side effects of TMS, you're not doing any surgery, you're not taking a drug. You're essentially it's like a refrigerator that's a little broken, you're sort of kicking the refrigerator and getting it kicking it back into gear. Um And uh The side effects are are um well you can read about them, but they're much, much less.

And it was approved. And It's kinda fascinating, but The younger psychiatrists who uh are trained to do this

recognize that this is a very effective tool. When you treat any therapy you you want a tool belt. You want a lot of different tools because you never know what will work with a different person. So this one has shown some efficacy and drug resistant depression.

So that makes it a very useful tool to have on the tool belt. Um Younger psychiatrist A really

understand the data and understand That it's effects Safe and effective and approved by the FDA and Technique that was approved. Protocol that was approved.

Older psychiatrists much more resistant. But both of them are not using it as much as it could be because of the Jack Nicholson effect. You just say, Oh, I'm zapping your brain and they think of like the tongue's gonna be hanging out, you're gonna be drooling and and your eyeball's gonna be rolling. Right. And so it's a little hard to get over. But they recognize that it's as effective or more. And then recently what's so fascinating is

Uh there is a a group or a few groups that have recognized Although the response rate is pretty good, in some cases it works phenomenally well. You zap the br you do the TMS session, you sort of kick the refrigerator and oh the refrigerator out of a sudden starts working. Guy was blinking at nine point five, should have been at ten You nudge him a little bit and boom. Now he's at ten and he's walking off happy.

Um In some cases you get that and in some cases you get nothing. Kinda like the drugs. But then what one group realized is it put measure probes in different part of the brain and realized

What's fascinating is You can tease out that you there's an average blinking rate. In the brain. But it's not the same for everybody. So your blinking rate might average

default blinking rate that you were born with might be eleven point two hertz. And mine might be eight point seven hertz. And the next guy might be nine point three hertz. It is true when you take the population mean it is Roughly ten. Here's the weird thing, the FDA protocol that was approved in phase three is treat everybody at ten.

That's weird. If your thing is if you're at eleven point two and I'm at blinking at eight point seven, I'm a little why should I zap you at ten? Why should I be nudging you to ten? Wouldn't that be the case that it would probably have no effect on you? And it would only really have effect on the small people whose

So there's a group that's realized that and is now doing what's called individualized alpha frequency TMS. And is seeing some really pretty spectacular results and even more than that They start to look at different regions of the brain and they see But wait a minute, it's not like your whole brain is brain just your front left.

Mm. So if I take Put eleven you know, let's say fifteen probes around your head. You know, twelve of them are right at let's say you know, Tim, your default blinking rate is eleven point two.

Then twelve out of the fifteen are at eleven point two. And these three here are just They're blinking at eight point seven. So what we do is we take the shower head and we stick it only there. And we nudge it back up to eleven. Now they're all in alignment. The interesting thing is when you take a patient

And some of these groups have been able to do that. And just do that. Probe in different regions of the brain. Without even talking to the patient, some of these physicians have been able to say well I think this person is depressed'cause he's a little too low in the frontal cortex.

I think this person's problem is mania because it's it's actually d turns out to be a little too high. Or manic depressive'cause it's high here and low there. So let's zap here and zap there. And

Some of those groups have seen remarkable results. For example with PTSD. It's PTSD. is a lot like manic depression. And when PTSD patients come in, it's like all over the map.

They've suffered some brain trauma. And you know, this region's low, this region's high. Yeah, they're out of control. You know, somebody drops as one Guy I know.

Described it. And he's like ready to fight and like pulling out a gun because he's like still Mentally on the battlefield. And he's like that's the main and then other times he can't get out of bed, he's so depressed.

Sometimes don't sleep. And I remember talking to one guy who hadn't been able to sleep. For more than Three hours at a stretch? For maybe seven years his family had left him and he would written a suicide date.

Mm-hmm. On a calendar. And he went and this was being a a clinical trial. in San Diego one of the VAs in the San San Diego area. Naval base in the base there. And he was like a last resort case.

And went in and got the this treatment that's invis individualized uh T M S treatment. Family move back in. Suit and tie.

Literally. When you got back from the first it sounds like one of these magic bullet things, but You know, it's Really when you've talked to these Um

Uh it it is in clinical trials. The the one protocol has already been approved. We're really talking about a variant protocol. Um It is kind of amazing when you talk to these people and their lives are like literally I had a Date on the calendar marked for suicide. And now I have a and my family had left me a long time ago. I hadn't slept more than three hours in seven years since I returned from Iraq.

And I got back home from the first session, I slept eleven hours. Yeah it's It's just amazing. Wild. So What we're talking about is loon shots. Yeah.

Moonshots of the future, are they proven? Not quite yet. Are they in clinical trials? Absolutely. Should we wait? Until the clinical tries out. That'll

I'm talk again, I'm talking for a variant of an established protocol, for an established therapy. So if you're interested in TMS, you speak with a psychiatrists preferably the younger ones are all over what I've Actually there was a meta study. Surveying. Uh

acceptance or interest in TMS as a therapy among psychiatrists and that study identified an age. difference that the older ones were less into it and the younger ones were all over it. Um So if if if you are intrigued by this Um

There are these uh TMS treatment centers kinda major cities all over. identify a psychiatrist, speak with your psychiatrist about it, talk learn about the pros and cons, see if it's something for you. It's just another tool in the toolkit. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. You could also uh would m maybe I'm trying to think. Uh if if the protocol for the individualized

studies are published. Yeah, they're they are in clinical trials. Uh you know kind of phase I think they're and I don't think that are yet in phase three. I think there's a bunch of phase and it's interesting who's sponsoring them. Firstly the army. There are you know statements by a number of sort of medical

that I've seen by medical um leaders In the army that It's an incredibly important uh potential therapy for them. So they're sponsoring

But also in Uh I have heard about insurance companies because For example, the the the one I I talked to a couple of vets who had done this therapy and they were on so many meds Um They went completely

after the therapy. couple of sessions a week for four we six weeks, eight weeks, and maybe there's follow up. They went completely off meds, completely off opiate. And it's very tough to get. off those. Oh for sure. And that's why the insurance companies are sponsoring'cause it's relatively low cost and can get you off meds and off hospitalization.

Yeah. I'm kind of excited about that. More to come clinical studies in the next couple of years. I'm super excited about TMS. Um T D C S also pretty interesting for other applications, but uh The uh do you know which team is doing the Research on the individualized

We could put it in the show notes and figure it out also. Yeah, I'll send you an email after and we'll get that. We'll put it in the show notes for people. Uh So there are tools. There are these are tools being researched. There it's another reason to be in addition to s you know, Tim Ferris sitting here living proof that experience joy. And turn your life around. And that's

One cause for hope and the second one is There's a growing toolkit of things That can help. And if the first one The the great thing about that is

it's different tools in that tool kit that will work for different people. And the bigger that tool kit, the more likely it is that something will work for you. And it's just that tool kit is just being added to and added to and added to. As we sit here. And the um Since I I alluded to it earlier and I'm gonna do the the right hand turn. after I mentioned this, but I I I I said I was gonna give you the shot to shoot something down.

Uh But this is this is uh not based on any type of literature review whatsoever, but my theory that I have. Uh

And I'm sure there are other people with with a similar view, but is that There may be bi directional causality with uh biochemical impellants. Associated or

Yeah, let's call biochemical imbalance associated or pathological sort of neurotomical activity. And the thinking that is assumed to be a byproduct of that. And to to put it maybe more cleanly,

Uh And again, th this is not But Almost everyone knows. at least a handful of people who are on antidepressants and still depressed.

Uh that could be because they develop tolerance. It could be for many, many different reasons. But Uh if If I were to be tasked. As uh

Sadistic. Uh Experimenter. to create. Some type of

biochemical change in the brain, let's just say high levels of cortisol. That would then affect sleep. That would then affect Uh Maybe other hormones. that would create

a a a measurable pathology in biomarkers. I think that could be done. Like you could you could you could im you could impose stresses on people. That might simulate some of the Um

environments in say warfare, right? Like whistling of bombs and mortars and so on. That would potentially create a state of depression or anxiety or feeling tired and wired, which is you know, when people try to go to sleep, but instead of getting a spike of cortisol in the morning, which would sort of liberate glycogen and Increase blood glucose, they get it at night.

And um You can measure that with all all sorts of devices if you're interested. So the the reason I'm bringing this up is that I I when I've observed myself and also family members who have used pharmaceuticals.

Different types of drugs too. Address The Manifestations of the depression. That

I tend to think that Not only can the imbalances Help. produce the thoughts and just make it easier, but that the thoughts can also in some way Affect.

The uh the biochemistry itself. And so I I just I curious if you w if you've any thoughts on sort of the plausibility of it being bi directional.'Cause it just it seems I feel like if I if if I were to like Tim, we're gonna give you ten million dollars if you can manufacture measurable imbalances.

But do it by like Forcing someone to visualize a past traumatic event or what could happen to their kids or fill in the blank. I feel like I feel like that I would take that offer. No.

I think it's been demonstrated. So the idea is that Biochemistry can influence thought patterns, but also the other way around. Thought patterns can influence biochemistry. And I think that's been proven. You read about, for example, these Um

Now monk. I I for actually forgot the guy's name. I think he actually started as a physicist Who uh suffered from some depression and had medical problems and psychological Issues, psychological disorders.

But eventually trained his mind. uh through a bunch of the meditation and some of the techniques that are used And they actually did a whole series of studies. There's actually a whole literature now of studying

Um Properties, the mental properties. Of These Buddhist monks who have practiced deep meditation. And you see clear biochemical changes.

So it clearly goes both ways. And we know that from so many systems in the body, it's almost never one way. It very often Almost every system in the body. there's a feedback loop. So thought patterns influence biochemistry influence thought patterns. And so absolutely I agree that there is

Uh Something there. I think very similar. We were talking about how there are sort of nudges or you get stuck And the way I th the reason it makes so much sense from a physics perspective And the re I actually mentioned duality, looking at the world from two different so in physics it's very common to look at

uh the simplest duality is position space and frequency space. There are a lot of problems you can solve by looking at position. Hey, where's some you know, up e electrochemical potential in space and How do you find the minimum of that and that's where you find your particle is located. You know, I think that's sort of simplifying a lot.

You solve that problem in position space. But you can look at it in frequency space and it's exactly the same problem. There's a simple mathematical transformation. You don't even need to know what those details are. All you need to know is that it's just looking through a blue lens or a red lens at the same world. the world is exactly the same, but you can just see different things.

There's no way to understand the properties of a metal. why metals conduct electricity. in position space. And I'll get to exactly what this means about the brain.

No way to understand a mail. It turns out when you make the transformation frequency it's almost easy to solve. The brain. F MRI is position space. Where is something broken in the brain? EEGs are frequency space.

What are the frequencies that my brain are firing at? And I think one of the things that's being Mist are often not talked about enough. In even academic psychiatry. Is

Why are we so focused on F M R I and position space? Let's go back I know EEG is an old technology. But maybe let's See if we can at least look at the problem, and maybe there's something there. Maybe these frequencies are a little bit off, and maybe there's something to looking at the same problem. In

Both ways. And when you look in position in frequency space In physics It is very common. that when you have something that's called a complex system, which means there's just a lot of interactions, especially as you just said, that go both ways.

Where people end up There's something called an egg crate model. And if you imagine where you end up at As you're like a little ball. That's where you are. You're s you might be stuck in one well of that egg crate.

But you really want to be in this is a kind of the healthy well. And you're just stuck. There. And that's what you see in frequency space when you have complex Oscillated complex.

Frequencies that are Connected. You get these sort of egg crate. Models. And

If you are in an unwell state. Stuck. In a local minimum. But which is not the global minimum. You really want to be in this other well of the egg crate. And that's what something like TMS does. I gave sort of jokingly the analogy of like bumping a refrigerator that's stuck, but that really is kind of what happens with a complex system. You're trapped in this local minimum and you need to get to the global minimum, but you have a little hill or a barrier.

And the TMS just sort of shocks you a little bit and whoosh. You go over the barrier. When I think of it the mental model I have is let's say some of these patients with severe PTSD they're stuck in this local minimum. and they're getting help because they just by themselves or even therapeutic can't get them over

That little barrier. to the kind of somewhat more well. State. So to answer your question, yes, I think it makes a lot of sense that it goes both ways. The brain is what's called a complex system where there are many interactions back and forth.

I think it would be an incredibly rare exception if it didn't go both ways. Thank you for answering that. Uh you also brought up Something I'm gonna use as a as a segue because it did promise people that we were gonna talk about in episode one. Uh I promised towards the end that we would talk about bringing a gun to a knife fight.

And Incentives. And possibly ch what a chief incentive officer might be. And we are gonna talk about that. And what I'm gonna use as my

A segue is something you pointed out, which is that the E G is an older tool. And that FMRI is this fancy, expensive tool and there may be incentives in the scientific world Whether it's related to grants, whether it's related to publication bias with newer tools, who knows?

uh that affect The science. And uh aside from the validity of the tools. I just have to pause it to say that's like a brilliant segue. I had no idea how you could possibly segue the discussion and hypnosis and depression and then brain science to like let's talk about teams and companies and incentive. Like there's no how the hell is this Is this guy gonna get from A to B and you just came up with like this segue like on the fly. Like good job. That's a really good say. Totally not forced. Yeah, I'm gonna do it. Totally natural. But it actually works, because you're absolutely right. Yeah. There's there are all sorts of incentives. And I'd love for you to just riff and you start wherever you like, because I think of incentives all the time. All the time. And when we were talking earlier, I'll I'll use another tie in.

About depression and what helped. Okay, so let's say you identify the things that you should be doing or shouldn't be doing that act as precursors to well states or precursors to depression. Okay. Knowing is one thing. How do you stop drinking so much coffee?

And in my case, what I ended up doing was not just deciding and making a resolution, but creating incentives, whether those are rewards or punishments. So maybe that is A betting pool with a friend about who can go the longest without drinking. Caffeine. Or it could be some type of reward. If I do X for Y period of time, then I receive

you know, reward Z, whatever that might be. And there are all sorts of different ways to set up incentives. And there are things you have to be uh cognizant of Like Uh

I think that Andy Grove used to do this, um, but for every incentive they created to hopefully m shape a behavior they wanted. They looked for the Inadvertent. kind of perverse incentive. That was paired.

with it. So I'm fascinated by incentives. And would love to Here you riff. On. Any aspect.

I mean, we can kinda come into it any direction. I just it's something I think about. all the time because I view my job in part through the podcast or other things. As Examining what works for behavioral change. Uh that that's really the crux of all of it.

Um So let's talk about it. This is uh A great example of um How you come across an idea in science.

'Cause we're t in another segue, which is we're talking about these little things that you see That don't seem to quite fit. Or that other people may be overlooking and you really want to focus on those, teasing out a bigger idea. So let me mention a couple What seems like odd paradoxes. Individually.

Ten people all love some crazy new idea. You bring them together, they reject it. Why? That seems kinda odd. Number two.

Odd paradox. We have this sort of myth of Oh, the big corporate guys are kind of a risk averse. If you're an entrepreneur, this is what you you often get to and when I was a early entrepreneur first starting, first time CEO, Uh, the first couple of years you got y with your friends for drinks, you're all

you know, young entrepreneurs emerging new company, and you pat yourself on the back and you say, Oh All the great ideas come from folks like us because we're The risk takers. We love, you know, we're the really entrepreneurial types.

And none of the good ideas come out of big companies because they're risk averse corporate types. And then as you grow up or as you mature as an entrepreneur, you realize you have to start working with them. You do partnerships with them or whatever. And you start Getting to know them as people. And then you go out for drinks with them or have a meal with them, and you realize

Hey. They're actually Exactly the same as me. They're really not they want the next new gadget or the next new idea or the next new drug or the ne Exact they wanna go home and tell their spouse or their kids or their loved ones or their families or friends that they worked on something big.

And in fact you hi eventually sometimes you hire them. And then all of a sudden the tie comes off, the jacket comes off and they're pounding the table. Just like you. They are you. So why this myth? That's

Weird paradox number two. And we are sort of seeming paradox number three. is all this emphasis and articles and books and management stuff that you and I have and almost everyone has read of about culture. And you see these interviews and these

Glossy magazines and these cover stories of these great You know, legendary CEOs and they're interview as you know to what attribute do you attribute your success Well it was you know, it was to our culture. We've built a great meaning, I built up a great culture, usually is what they're trying to say.

And uh And then two weeks later the same company's in the toilet. Well what what happened? Mike. Culture couldn't change overnight.

So what you know what happened Why does Why does the same company with the same people suddenly transform? Weird puzzle number three. And that's Usually the clue when you're doing science you see sort of unexplained things that don't quite fit. Conventional stories.

And so underlying all of those is incentives. And a new way to think about incentives and teams and companies and groups. They can help.

Explain all three of those. And that's ultimately what Actually Lunchots is about. And So let me explain what I mean. Whenever you put people

Together. Into a group. You create two forms of incentives. One is what we often think of oh The stake and the outcome.

So let's take a biotech company. Uh might be a ten person company. Your stake and outcome is Well, ten percent. If everything's divided, are you?

Just for sake for simplicity. And now you double that. Well now you're twenty percent now, it's five percent. It's kinda getting smaller. As it grows. Your stake and outcome is getting smaller and smaller.

So your incentives for stake and outcome in like you know, rolling up your sleeves and fighting hard to, you know, help that loonshot or crazy idea succeed. It's very high when you're a small company, but it's getting smaller and smaller as you get older. What's changing? There's a second incentive that you create whenever no matter what happens, whenever you organize people into a group.

With a mission. You create a second incentive, and that is perks of rank. Two forms of intent. Stake and out a a simple way to think of it is equity and cash. Equity and base salary.

But let's think about it even more. Broadly, stake and outcome and perks of rank. What does that mean? Are you the team captain or a team member? Are you the CEO or a VP?

When you're a ten person company Perks of rank is irrelevant compared to the stake because if you're the team captain Or the team member it might be a few thousand dollars difference. But if your project works or not, it's a few billion dollars.

Well as A few million dollars or whatever. But of course as it grows, it flips. All of a sudden perks of rank become more important. So when I s am talking about bringing a gun to a knife fight or a chief incentives officer. What I'm talking about is

People spend so much time focused on culture and psychology and empowering and group dynamics. There are literally thousands or tens of thousands of books and articles about it. We spend so much less time on structure. What are the incentives? How are we motivating the behavior that we want to see? And so for example, here's how it can help us

Think about it. that last one, why do groups suddenly change? Well As they grow big All of a sudden the balance between those those two incentives The balance between them shifts.

And as you grow bigger and bigger and bigger stake and outcome get smaller and smaller and perks of rank matter more and more and more. And at some point they cross. Boom. And that's when people start caring more about politics and promotion. And less about the success of their crazy idea.

And when you care about politics and promotion, what do you do? You try to shoot down other people's ideas. And that's when good ideas die. That's when the wisdom of crowd. turns into the tyranny of crowds. Underlying that.

Is what you asked. Incentives. So understanding that is very important to understanding, for example, that weird paradox of why companies suddenly turn. When you really understand that and you start to tease that out you can actually work out what are the control parameters.

So in science In physics you talk about a phase transition, that's exactly whenever you have two f competing forces. Boom, you will trigger A transition.

But more interesting than just knowing that is what are the parameters. Okay, so you can work that out mathematically. What are the parameters? There's temperature in water, but if you add salt, you lower the freezing temperature. So there's a degree of salt on water. Well, there's the binding energy between the molecular. If you lower that. You can also lower the freezing temper. So you can keep Something liquid much longer.

If you understand those forces. So the reason that it's important to understand incentives better For example, to have a chief incentives officer. is that it can help you control the transition between innovation

And Rigidity. When you embrace wild new ideas. And you reject them. It sounds like I'm speaking in a metaphorical sense, but actually you can

Sort of translate that in the way a scientist or physicist was into a sort of a straightforward mathematical model with two terms of you know cash and equity and then Calculate where is that transition, at what size company does it happen, and you get a number. It happens at this number. And that number is a function of four parameters. And here are those four parameters.

So as I dial those parameters, I can dial that number up. Oh, that's cool. I just created four things I can adjust. to create more innovative teams.

The larger teams that still embrace new ideas rather than reject them. That answer is kinda helps us understand But also helps us understand The one that I mentioned about the the myth of the big corporate risk averse guy.

What happens when I take a drop of When I take a Molecule of water. And I drop it into a glass of water. Well it slushes around with all the other molecules.

What happens when I take a molecule of water and I drop it onto a block of ice? Well it freezes. But it's the same molecule. And that's sort of the same thing with the group dynamics. It's If you take you take the same guy, but you give him the incentives

Oh, in the startup. Pretty innovative. The same guy in Give him the incentives. Where it's all about politics, he's gonna be shooting down new ideas.

So underlying that paradox as well. is incentives. So It helps us understand

These sort of strange or mysterious Puzzles. talked about is you take ten people who are

Love wild new ideas. You bring them together. Well, if their incentives are more about who's gonna be the team captain, they're probably gonna spend their time shooting down, you know, what gets me promoted, for example. In a large company. You have a the same new idea, let's say a new idea, new drug for new a promising new cancer drug gets re

e a whole small biotech company is super excited about it and they're all united about it and it stumbles and everybody rolls up their sleeve and save it, then it stumbles again, and they roll up their sleeves again. Imagine your ad Pfizer. You had a committee meeting, same drug, you same person. Well, you could pound the table after its first stumble. And say no, no, I think it's good so there's something good here, let's all fight.

Or Yeah, it's the success are low and the stake and outcome is not very high'cause it w how much is it gonna help your career if it works ten years down the road? Not very much. Or you can make sort of smart alec comments that are maybe funny about I think the science says this and then the latest meta analysis we see this and you know, and I went to this uh keynote uh speaker, Nobel laureate, and he's thinking that and I really think the industry is headed here and by Coincidence, that's what your boss thinks.

And that's what your boss's box who also happens to be sitting at the table thinks and they're nodding along and you know what they're saying? That young fellow's got a smart head on his shoulders. And If you keep doing that and playing politics and sending smart at meetings and kinda shooting down by pointing out at all the words and and playing it safe, like the next thing, the next incremental idea. Let's say you had the statin drug, let's make the the forty ninth statin drug. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I think that's a good idea. Everybody think that's a good idea. We all think that's a good idea. Good job, young man. you might get promoted. What happens if you get promoted?

You get a bump up of thirty percent in salary. So which do you want to do? You know, wait seven years and maybe move the needle of your company by one percent? Or do you want to s make smart ale comments and get promoted? Um Maybe next year for thirty percent.

Incentives. So that has how it helps you think about all three paradoxes why people individually who might like an idea When you put them in a group. You create the second incentive of perks of rank. They can outweigh.

So what do I mean by chief incentives officer? Companies today have a, for example, chief technology officer. What's the job of the chief technology? To make sure that everybody's got the latest gadgets and systems. Well

That's Pretty good. But how important is it to have motivated employees? Is that is maybe At least as important as everybody has the latest.

Apps and and you know, smartphones and And software. I would argue that it is As important or more important. How aligned are your incentives with individual

Goals. The job of a chief technology officer is to take a Is strategic. You get very highly paid experts, they're given a certain budget, your budget is X. With that budget I want you to optimize the quality of our tools. Same thing with the chief revenue officer.

you're gonna get a a fix a marketing budget, your marketing budget, your sales budget is X. With that I want you to maximize our revenue. Why not have a chief incentives officer? I'm gonna give you a certain compensation budget, your compensation budget Equity in cash is X.

I want you to take that compensation budget and maximise the motivation of our employees. Some motivation is financial. And some is not financial. That's part of your job.

What are the non financial things? that are motivating people. They're very different. Some people are, in fact. you know, financial considerations are very important. Some people intrinsic stuff like am I growing, am I developing? Am I contributing to a bigger cause? Am I getting recognized by my peers?

individual managers who are putting out fires and trying to do strategy and trying to get things done on time, on budget, on spec. Don't really have the bandwidth to sit around and say of the eleven people reporting to me, what are the different incentives? How can I design something to maximize

the return on investment we're giving For those incentives. It's much better handled if there is someone who that it's their first priority than if it's someone who is their ninety seventh priority. What happens today at the vast majority of companies, including big corporate companies For incentives.

Uh it's a good year everybody gets ten percent. Bad year everybody gets zero. How motivating is that if you're a you know, even a thousand person company? And we'll come back to small companies, but if you're a thousand person company and you're like four or ten thousand person company and you're five levels down from CO, you're working on your project, your design. How much do you influence if it's a company's Good year or bad year.

Not much. So how motivating is it for you? A wasteful resource.

In economics that's called the free rider problem. You might as well it's the same thing with stock options. The vast you know, the uh many companies you say, Well let's just give everybody stock options. Okay. You know, maybe that's great if you're a a five person company or a ten person company or a fifty person company and your project is the one project and if you help it then the value of

But suppose you're a a ten thousand person company, or even a thousand. You there are fifty different projects and your project might move the needle by one percent. Yeah, even in a smaller company, right? A hundred person startup and You're not deciding the strategic direction of the company if you're higher number one hundred. Exactly. Most likely. So what are your incentives? It's it's a free rider problem because You actually do better off if you can spend your time

Convincing your Boss. That you're incredibly valuable. Meanwhile, just twiddle your thumbs and if the company has a good year, bang, your options go up and if a bad year, whatever, you know, you spend your time looking for another job. I'd love to uh

get into maybe some specific examples of Or any examples of in s of common incentives or incentives that you see that are problematic and uh I'll just riff on on a few problems I've observed. I don't know exactly how to fix them, but Just as a reflection of how much I think about this, which d is not indicative of having all the solutions by any stretch. But for instance, uh firsthand experience, uh

Uh working on say books or Television projects. when there is a re uh regime change. New leader comes in.

says If this goes well, I'll get none of the credit with this catalogue of stuff that my predecessor approved. And if any of it goes wrong, I'll get all the blame. Therefore, it's all going in the vault, or whatever, or getting deprioritized, right? Super, super common because Well for the for the reason I just having more recently spent time in science and looking at where

There might be weaknesses, there might be Funding. deficits correlated to weaknesses. uh or funding pressure to perform science in certain ways. You see uh

a positive publication bias, right? So you could have a really well designed experiment. Intervention, let's just say in in in one case shows no effect. That's still potentially a valuable study. But there's a appears to be sort of a publication bias.

Um For positive. effects with interventions, right? So it's like okay, well how does that factor into a whole slew of different Yeah.

uh that scientists make. Mm. Um But whether it's in science, whether it's in for profit companies, what are some common sort of default

And or default. Compensation structures or Uh or offers that You think are problematic. I'll give you a

I'm I'll give you one example. I might be close to home, Uber. Yeah. And we'll talk about it. That'll be an interesting discussion. And I j just so we don't lose the thread. What does it mean bring a gun to a night? What do I mean by that?

That is if everybody is doing one thing in kind of a a twentieth century, like a fifty like hey, you know just reward bonuses. They're creating a free rider problem they are not optimizing their use Of incentives.

They're weak. If you wanna get a competitive advantage as a company. Why don't you bring a gun to knife, appoint a chief incentive officer whose job is to be more strategic. Where those companies are taking X amount of dollars.

Cat would you know translate the equity into dollars. They're taking X amount of cash and equity. And wasting it. Why don't you be strategic? Why don't you take that X, get rid of the f free rider problem, figure out what will better motivate and better incentivized and essentially

better align incentives and value created for the company. Individual managers don't have the time or expertise or training. You don't ask Every individual manager

to say I'd like you to come up with the best identify the best software tools and the best smartphone apps and the best hardware and the best middleware for your team and could you get that done by a week from now in addition to all your other response. No, you appoint a chief technology officer. That's his job. Same thing with incentives. So bring a gun to a knife fight. If all your competitors are doing this weak thing Why don't you just turn that into a competitive advantage?

Do it better. Use your resources more strategically to align incentives with value created better than your competitors. And you know what? You'll create a more motivated force. That doesn't mean that the cultural stuff doesn't matter. Mm. As a compliment.

Yeah. Culture and structure. So let's talk. But Uber for a second. This will be kinda interesting since you were such an early investor and

Uh So Uh One uh Uh

good friend of mine there, senior, who has been around at a lot of tech companies. Uh Don't need to mention any names in this conversation. Talked about the culture and the engineering group there, pre CEO transition before

Uh the transition with Travis. as everyone wanted to be captain of their own speed boat. Mm. And The

Uh It was problematic in the sense that Whenever you grow very fast. you accumulated technology Debit.

Their liabilities And assets. And when you grow this is actually b uh Bob Sutton. uh at Stanford was did a a great study on this on U Uber and Yeah I've been

And this is uh the way he described it, which I thought was very interesting. When you grow really rapidly, you accumulate a debit, which is all the little technology stuff that you sort of fast forwarded past. And really needs to Go back and get cleaned up if you want to scale. At Uber

Uh Everyone's What appeared to be the culture on the surface was that everyone wanted to be captain of their own speed, but they wanted to work on the next Uber thing. Uber eats or Uber delivery from hospitals of meds or uber this or uber flower or whatever. Rather than go back and fix

the technology debit all the stuff from growing hyper fast. It needed to go back and And that led to a lot of problems. Um So that sounds like a cultural problem on this doesn't it? Everyone wants to be their own speedboat, but let's

Go one level. beneath that. Yeah. What was the incentive system? So the incentive system

Uh at Uber at the time. And I Yeah, you can correct me if you have first hand knowledge. I just happen to Everybody has a base salary. Let's just for sake of argument call it a hundred. And let's say you have a bonus target thirty. Just for sake of argument, it could be very different. But let's say

That's The multiple. And There is a multiple of bonus that you get based on qu How your year went.

And at most tech companies in Silicon Valley. Anything less than point five, y you know, you're fired. Fifth cent, you might be fired. That's actually pretty normal. Seventy percent was not a great year, eighty percent but at a hundred percent is you hit most of your stuff. And maybe a hundred fifty, like Had a great year. At Uber it was eight hundred percent. It was uh

It was a huge multiple. So what did that structure Encourage. Encourage to go find their one project, push everybody else away. Compensated on the other.

Because if you could Demonstrate that you found some little niche. And you grew it. You could get You know.

Some huge multiple. So that led to the captain of the speedboat. Problem. CEO transition. It sounds like oh it was just a culture job.

Actually they change underlying incentives as well. The captain of the speedboat problem. Faded. And people started playing.

And fixing the technology debits that they'd accumulated from the hypergrowth phase. So Lesson. Sometimes things that look like culture.

Yeah. Sometimes structure. Drives culture. And that's why having a chief incentives officer is bringing a gun to a knife fight. It can give you a competitive advantage. If You're really busy hyper growing a company. Do you have time to think about the perverse incentives?

You don't you've got it's if you're a CEO or you're saying you got a board of directors, you got a you know, uh all you've got all these fires to put out, you got strategy, you got execution. You don't have time to think about But if you appointed a chief incentives officer and that's his or her job. they can catch some of these traps, they can optimize the use of that resources more effectively. So that's what I mean by Chief Incentive Officer.

Now, Uber. What are your You know, what is your own. Do not have the ground level First hand exposure to their

compensation structure, so I can't speak to that. I think I think it's it's a very valid example. Well as a It's a micro example of a macro phenomenon. Right, in the sense that at the very least, incentives are a large part of culture.

Right. for profit work world or business world for a moment. If you think of Culture, whether it's Japanese culture or American culture, or fill in the blank culture. What does that really mean? Like the word gets used a lot. What does that mean? Like culture and In my mind, uh

It is It's a sh it's a shared set of beliefs and behavior. I mean to a large extent. Like, okay, well Putting the beliefs to one side, like what dictates behavior. Certainly to a large extent. It's incentives. What are you rewarded for and what are you punished for? And what you're saying is in many ways just but structure can drive I think of culture as patterns of behavior.

And I think structure They're not mutually exclusive circles. They overlap and in in some and they interact,'cause structure can drive culture. Certain incentives can drive patterns of behavior. And by saying that structure can matter, it doesn't mean that you're saying culture isn't important, right? So For example having regular employee beatings. It's probably a bad idea.

I'm just putting that out there. Not that kind of culture where you flog people in eleven A. M. in the town hall. That's probably not gonna Do great for you. Empowering your employees, celebrating victories, that's probably good. Those are patterns of behavior.

So All right, here's a wacky analogy, but Um we talked about Nature versus nurture, genetic predispositions versus thing you This is a great segue.

genetic versus uh nature for center genetic predispositions versus things that you pick up from the environment. And I think that's a good example. There are genetic predispositions to diabetes. Mm-hmm.

Two gallons of Coke every day. Yeah. probably gonna accelerate diabetes. The genetic Predispositions to lung cancer. On the other hand, if you smoke two packs a day, you're probably gonna accelerate.

Both genes And lifestyle. Matter. And same with structure and culture. In a company Both structure and culture matter.

And I think One issue is that There's been so much focus on number two and not enough focus on number two. A hundred percent agree. So much focus on culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture. When I first started as a CEO, you probably the same thing. You know, I consumed those books as I wanted to learn how to be a better leader and after like The one hundredth book.

you know, that said more or less the same thing. Like Okay, I get it already, but Yeah. Is there any more?

Uh And then there were all these kind of funny little paradoxes that that Couldn't really explain. So it's not that those ideas and principles that there isn't stuff there that's useful. Evidence they get repeated.

Over and over. But people have not paid enough attention. to structure. Yeah. And that's why if you do it well.

Chief incentives officer It's springing gun to knife that you create a competitive advantage. But I think it's it's also an example of bringing a scientific mindset to something that has a lot of fuzzy logic and is full of paradoxes, as you noted, because It's like okay, well

If the culture is the variable. That is determining the success or failure of this company that's being put on magazine covers and then a month later It's it's a complete U turn. How does one explain that? And

On the incentive side also you have very discrete pieces that allow you to run experiments very effectively, whereas I think The culture discussion. Can get Very nebulous very quickly. It's like okay, you want to improve culture. First let's define culture. What are you talking about exactly?

Hard to get. Anyone to I'm uh not anyone, but It's it's often talked about for two hundred pages in a book without ever defining it properly. Problem number one. Problem number two, okay, you want to impact culture, how are you going to measure improving culture?

Is it in Top line revenue growth. Any number of other keyfore syndicators. Uh It's it's

It's not as cleanly Examinable or testable as incentives in a l in a lot of respects. And that's why for me I'll I'll give you an anecdote. And this this for people listening are like I don't run a big company. This applies to you. This applies to

For me the the culture would be like Just think more positive. Right. Culture is like Go lose weight.

Because you'll be happier. It's like, Okay, well the fact of the matter is I haven't been losing weight. For the last five years I've had that as my nearest resolution. Maybe it's time to shift and look at the structure. And I remember talking to somebody at at one point They were watching uh phobia's being cured on stage and there's some type of mentalist or someone who's doing work and

At one point. The uh This woman gets on stage and she's afraid of heights. And there's a ladder that's put up. And uh you know she she

She talks to the mentalist who's cures her of her phobia doing A, B, and C, and then she walks all the way up to the top of the ladder and comes down and he goes, How do you feel? And she goes, I feel great. My husband said he would give me a hundred dollars if I climbed to the top of the ladder. It's like structure drives babe. Right. Incentives, people. It's like it's the incentives stupid. Like sometimes It's like follow the money, it's the economy stupid. Yeah, well with human behavior, it's like it's the incentive stupid, like really, really pay attention to that, and you can rig the game so that it is more likely you'll get the outcomes you want if you think about that structure, right? If you think about the incentives. Yeah, and you know you touched on the thing, it's a more scientific approach. So It gives you actionable ideas that are sort of Surprising or starting points for discussion or different ways.

Two examples. So you can work out the mathematics of, you know, when you get this transition and And you get these Control parameters that are

And so here's one thing it tells you that you can do. If you want to build more innovative Which is Get managers out of the decision.

of bonuses or promotion. Just take them out of the decision loop. That sounds kinda weird. Your manager, it shouldn't you be deciding? I'll give you Company A and company B that do it.

the different ways and it'll be pretty clear why. So imagine You know, there is a uh let's call it some kind of client service consulting company, it could be a design company, architecture company, consult any kind of consulting. Here in Austin. And

There is uh the local office there's a global company and there's a local office here. And there are Three vice presidents. And there are Uh thirty associates.

in the Austin office. And a spot opens up. for a fourth VP. Now the In most companies

the local office is gonna decide on which of those thirty candidates is gonna make that, you know, get that promotion and become the fourth VP. And so what's gonna happen? Those thirty associates Are gonna be sucking up to those three VPs and politicking and stabbing each other in the back all year long. 'Cause they all wanna get that promotion.

Now imagine a different company and this is actually done ac i in many ways at Google and w was done at McKinsey and maybe at some other companies, but not very many. Local office, three VPs. Thirty associates. Spot opens up for a promotion. Three VPs.

Don't decide. They fly in somebody From Uh Yeah, Denmark.

specifically chosen 'Cause he or she doesn't know. Let's make it a she Colour. Uh Eleanor. From Denmark.

Flies in because she doesn't know the three B fees, doesn't know any of the associates, maybe from a totally different industry or field. But Same group. And her job is to spend A week, two weeks, three weeks interviewing.

Broadly, might interview ten, fifteen, twenty people. We'll certainly interview the three VPs. We'll interview many of the peers. of the candidates of the thirty will interview their customers. Any of you their internal customers, their external customers, up.

Down. And C Make a decision. on or make a recommendation to an independent committee. Now what happens? In the second situation

What are those thirty associates gonna do? Are they gonna be sucking up to the V Ps all year round? No,'cause the VPs aren't making that decision. Are they gonna be stabbing each other in the back? Not really because they're

the other associates are going to be interview on this decision. So what do you have? Everyone's kinda gonna focus on their job and doing good client work, because they're gonna be interviewing the clients and gonna be interviewing the internal people. So every kind of cooperating. What did we just do? We took the manager out of the decision. So

Where does this come from? Well if you work out. in kind of um the mathematical economic model, you can calculate something called return on politics. What's the incremental value. Incremental your promotion likelihood.

versus the incremental hour you spend on politics. When that variable or parameter return on politics. As high as it was with the first company. You really hurt innovation.

when that variable is low, as it was with the second company, you really improve innovation. So that just falls out. So you mentioned scientific that just actually falls out of the sort of a straightforward model of the incentives and these two Variables. return on politics. And so

It gives you a way of quantifying something that's sort of fuzzy. So if I tell you Or we're sitting around, we're talking, a friend of ours says, You know, this comp you know, I just joined this new company, it's very political It sounds like But actually there's a way to quantify.

My return on My expected value of return on politics is higher here than in my old company. And that sucks. Everybody every manager is different. Everyone is less suscepti more or less susceptible

But there's some average, and that's what you mean. And everyone's susceptible to incentives. And everyone's susceptible to So that's just kinda one example of Uh how you can think a little bit more scientifically of incentives. What are my incense are my incentives around politics and promotion, in which case It's not going to be a great place for innovation. Or my incentives pretty well aligned around the success of my idea.

Or my project or my team's project. Not just innovation, but am I going to be in an environment where I feel supported by my team by my peers, or is it gonna be like the hunger games. Right. Right. I mean, which certainly innovation is one thing that suffers. There are a lot of things that suffer. Right, and so designing incentives it's a complicated problem. It's not like I'm saying that there's an easy sh I'm just

I'm saying that the return on investment of spending more time and more energy making it at least as equal a function as your chief technology officer or your chief revenue officer is worth it. As best as you can with a fixed budget. Well

Don't you want to motivate your employees to work as hard as you can on the the best projects for you? Yeah. That's what this chief incentives officer should do. Isn't that just as important as motivating your customers, motivating your people? Yeah. So why don't we do that? Why don't we make it at least as good. And this this I this I should say I think s certainly also applies to very small companies, even one person shops. Because Whether or not you've designed them, you are responding to incentives.

Absolutely. it makes a lot of sense to sit down and to figure out like what you're responding to, what you're most motivated by. Positively and negatively. Savi Bakal. Loon Shots dot com.

That's right. At Safe S A F I B A H C A L L On Twitter. If anybody wants to wave hello. Yeah, the book is loon shots uh it's

It's a really fun read. And for someone like me who really learns best by example and story. Or the lesson.

It is Just shocked full. Uh uh stories that I I would have expected to have heard at some point in all of my reading and all of my

adventuring in the business and scientific worlds and yet I the the vast majority I'd never come across. Which made it uh not just a an actionable read, but a very, very fun read. So Thank you for that. Thanks for saying that. It means a lot. I really appreciate it. And do you have any any parting comments? Before

We wrap up. Yeah,'cause I I don't think we've we've spent enough time together and talked about enough ideas. So I yeah, I think we we we got another seventy two hours worth of material'cause we just it we it we've been so superficial. That's true. You know, not more than a s you know, a few seconds on each side. No, no, it's uh super fun to be here, of course, and uh I hope um Yeah, my hope with this book is that it uh the thing that's been most It's made me feel the most satisfied and you probably experience this with stuff you do as well.

Is That A lot of people, especially younger people, have come to me and said They just find it and Inspiring.

And Uplifting. And uh my hope with this is that It's an especially exciting thing for me that If it can inspire

People who have a crazy idea. Or People who Are being told that their idea is crazy. To just keep going a little while.

Because there is some gold out there. If you just persist through the stumbles. And that's not just The exceptional idea. It's almost every single important idea. So if you hit a bunch of rough patches

It may be because you're onto something really, really important. Dig it. Safe, thank you again for all the time. Uh it is time for us to go grab some food and for everybody listening. You can find links to everything we have talked about. In the show notes, as per usual at Tim.blog forward slash

Podcast and you can search. Loon Shots Safi. Safi's probably the best bet. S A F I, if you just search his name, all of the links will pop up in the show notes. And until next time, thank you 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 fourhourworkweek.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. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Hiring can be hard, really hard, and it can also be super, super expensive and painful if you get it wrong. I certainly have had that experience firsthand multiple times and I am not eager to repeat it. So I try to do as much betting as possible on the front end. And today, with more qualified candidates than ever, you need a solution. You need a platform that helps you to find the right people for your business. LinkedIn does exactly that.

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