#306: Discipline, Sex, Psychedelics, and More — The Return of Drunk Dialing

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Why hello there and welcome to another episode of the Tim Verris show. This is Tim Ferris, and it is typically my job to share the habits and routines of world class performers of all different types, as well as try to spot the patterns amongst them and talk about that. This episode is a rare exception to the rule. And unlike my usual long form interviews, this is a drunk dialing Q and A with you guys, my listeners. So what does that mean? I've done this a few times in the past, including for the celebration of the hundredth episode of this podcast. We're at more than three hundred now, so it's been a while. And here's how it works. In preparation for this episode, I went on the social media and uh point people to a Google Forum where they could input their phone numbers and so on.

And those people are listeners who wanted to receive a call from me. Then I said, Hey, from this time to this time, I'm gonna be making phone calls and I started drinking and dialing, answering your questions and getting a little frisky. Along the way. Tequila will do that. And uh we covered a lot. In this episode I cover all sorts of things, including how Jocco Willink has made me more disciplined. My thoughts on sex as a doorway to higher perception. That was not a topic I expected to get into. And uh

You Name it we cover it. Uh we talk about a past addiction to stimulants that I've had and uh how I've weaned myself off of said stimulants or at least prioritized abstinence from stimulants, how I determine if a project is working or not. Put another way, how do I decide when I should persevere or quit a project? Stop something. And move on. And after all the Fastest

way to complete something is to leave it undone forever. Uh so that is one topic that we dig into. How I think about teaching and much, much more. So I'll leave it at that. Without further ado, please enjoy this tequila fueled QA with You guys. And

Thanks for being game. Here we go. I Oh? Uh hi, this is Brendan.

Is this Tim Farrell? It is Tim Ferris. Good evening. Oh.

Why? Oh my goodness, this is crazy. Oh man. Where am I f Where am I finding I'm doing great. Where are you right now? I'm actually probably about three hours north of where I assume you are. I'm in Dallas, Texas. Oh nice. It's a fine town. It's a fine town, Dallas. Yeah, have you been through here much or not? I've been here I've been here. I've been there. That's the alcohol talking, excuse me. I have been there a handful of times, as well as Fort Worth, but I've always spent more time in the Austin area.

Uh Uh understandably so. It's it's it's a fine fine community. I was just actually down there yesterday. Very nice. For South By, or what were you down here for? No, um I just went down to go to the R Academy. And then to get a little workout in and synchronized the

Synchronistically enough, you released that podcast with Aubrey just yesterday. It's a great it's a great gym. So I I tell you what, I've got um A bunch of phone calls to make, a bunch of booze to drink. So how can I How can I attempt to help? What type of questions Might I take a stab at. Good.

Good question because I know you collect them, so I actually took a little bit of time once I saw that tweet. I was expecting this phone call, so Um, an easy one that I just wanted to ask because it's been one of the biggest things that you've helped me with of all the people that you've introduced me to so all your work is So I wanted to know Just from your perspective, has having him around in your life made you more disciplined? That is a fine question. Uh yes. So having Joko around

In my life, which I will say is also virtual, even though I know Jocko very well. I just I just spoke to him yesterday. on the phone. But simply Knowing that Jocko exists in the universe. Uh Exactly.

Very benevolent yet strict. Uh guardian angel who will Most certainly give me an occasional pat on the back, but more often a kick in the ass to actually do it. So Jocco I think exemplifies for me at least.

the importance of deciding to Embody a given attribute. as a means to developing that attribute. So of course Jocco is well known for saying if you want to be tougher, be tougher. Simply meaning in that context that if you want to be tougher, it's not a six month plan, it's not a two year plan

It's not a progression. It is do I choose the stairs instead of the Elevator. when I get up from this table and I need to go to another floor. And uh It can be a small decision, it can be a big decision, but you want to immediately start making decisions that reflect

the characteristic you want to develop. And uh that that I think is very powerful. And also, quite frankly, the simplicity of Jocko's approach to many things, including physical fitness and training. Which Yeah. I got his book after listening to your podcast and Like even the beginner workouts and that are so simply put together, but like

you know, difficult to execute with correct form and like at the cadence, the public cadence and you know, everything like that. Like I think that his his principle simple from Um extreme ownership, you know, it's like just don't overcomplicate things and I think that

In a way simplicity is like, you know, uh expression of elegance. It is, absolutely. And also the fact that Jocko does not accept excuses in his own life and certainly doesn't accept them from other people. And as one example, he if he's traveling, and you know this from having read the last book, but if he's traveling and he wants to do pull ups and he doesn't have any pull up bar nearby, let's say in a hotel, he will take a towel, go to the parking garage, find something from which he can

hang effectively using the towel, like throw it over a bar or something like that, and he'll do pull ups. Exactly. Right. So uh in those f For those of you who don't have the contact, Jocko Willink is a uh legendary former or I should say retired Navy SEAL commander. He was in charge at one point of all West Coast training for Navy SEAL teams. Which are certainly realistic, hyper realistic, one might even call psychotic. He's a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and can do Last I heard sixty seven strict pull ups at a body weight of somewhere between two fifteen and two thirty. So the guy is an absolute animal. He's a monster. He's a monster. And then like just a mental monster too, you know, I like the way he approaches life is just so

Like it. It it's it's a different kind of like inspiration and motivation. It's like a really like self examinatory, like look at yourself and like just be realistic about How many hours you're willing to put in a day? Yeah, like a lot of people.

If they if if you know, they could be nine hours and they might stay up till four thirty. or you know, so long as you're putting in work between like midnight and like six A. M. at some point. You're still ahead of most people, regardless of if that's before you go to sleep or if you like right when you get up. Yep. So if you want to also see the most hilarious uh Twitter QA's imaginable You can follow Jocko Willing on Twitter. Okay, so enough enough Jocko. I love Jocko but just plug it, but he's a great dude and he's been one of the most he's been one of the most influential of all the people you've introduced me to.

Actually I just want to wrap up with one thing. Do you remember I we actually know what I should say? I apologize, just to interrupt. I will say if people want to get to know Jocko, uh the very first interview he ever did publicly was on my podcast, so you can just go to Tim dot blog forward slash jocko and Yeah, you said you said a month to lose. It's about the clock running out, like people should check out his YouTube channel'cause it's it's like two two and a half minutes or something. It's amazing. Yep. So I've Help to create or rather just really un unleash on the internet. A monster known as Shacko Willing, so enjoy. Okay, so what's next?

Um well um one quick one. What do you s are you drinking Mobe? I'm drinking Casa Dragones sipping tequila, in this case One hundred percent puro agave azul. Made. And um it's From San Miguel de Aende.

And it is tequila blanco. It's Nice stuff. Órale, órale. Okay. Cool. So um well the the last question is

Uh like actually we met. Do you do did you do you know that? Do you remember that? It was a club. I guess it's like LA you did your you did like a I like Basically like a meet and greet. I remember Cross Campus. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so I I flew up from Dallas actually that time and got to kinda interact with you a little bit. It was pretty cool. Uh, I think I met I think I met you in this hallway space. It was behind the main stage, kind of On my way to get a drink and go to the bathroom, I think I actually you kinda stepped in front of a few people and I met you there, if I remember correctly. Yeah, well there was that and then there was also you getting swarmed by people like but I remember at the very beginning you were like Yeah, please like I'm not taking setup you know pictures right now and it was just like as soon as there was a break for coffee, like you went to go for the coffee and it was just like

swarmed with people asking about like oh would you check this product out like this guy from soil it was there and like it was like all these people were they were just swarming in and then I thought I got a second to talk to you and I was just like I just want to say thank you and I still do want to say thank you today, man. I'm really grateful for Everything you've really led me towards in my life, like I basically you're like one of the best decision making or content filtering algorithms that

I was ever found because If you vet something it's already like So much of the legwork is done and I just trust you on like You know. You're driven for research and holding people, so

Thank you Brandon. Yeah, I I hope I hope to do it. Hope to never betray that trust. I mean I do I really work hard to not Succumb to the temptation. to loosen that filter. Uh it's it's very it can be very challenging. It's very expensive. Uh, but yeah I um I know how valuable that is to me. I have friends who act as filters, certainly. And it's it's p it's largely thanks to the value that I've derived from them that I want to

Try to serve the same function. for people in the wider world, uh that I can hopefully try a thousand things and a lot of bullshit and distill the the two or three that are actually worth Um thank you so much for calling. Like I I I don't I know I want to be respectful of everybody else on your list too, you know, like I I could talk to you for ever. You've been you've been a huge inspiration in my life. Just thank you so much.

My pleasure, man. Any any requests for the podcast types of people, specific people? Or anything else. what I wanna do after like having been introduced to your work in two thousand eleven Um I was Basically I grew up in hospitality and as a chef, um for many of the last years.

and was just unable to kind of sustain like a help your lifestyle and like work like you know, there's no such thing as work life balance if you're like a true chef cooking over food, like in a high pressure find out any environment like where everything's made from scratch. Like it's just I know you know that from your research and

you know, going through with the four hour chef, but like So pretty widespread, like unknown issue in the States right now that there's not enough skilled labor in kitchen. Mm-hmm, not just kitchens, restaurants in general. So I don't know. I mean like I wanna make a difference in that industry on like a bigger scale, so

I mean I wanna put together like a website and like have like a ton of ideas in the realm of trying to help people in that specific genre of Or well, I I should say niche of like the workplace, but because I have so much experience, like I grew up in a restaurant when my mom was like You know. Uh raising me. I was basically always in a restaurant, so

And then coming down to Dallas, Texas, like there's just so much opportunity down here and I got a real sense of the labor market and Kind of did some research and it's not just the power slavery market, I'm sure. Yeah, and you listening in any city right now that has anything to do with restaurants can attest to the fact that Good helps.

harder to find than ever because the market's oversaturated and It's easier to get loans to open restaurants and Whatever the case may be macroeconomically, but I just wanna make a difference, so if anybody's interested, um they can get at me on Twitter, it's at Multi G twenty seven. However you want to.

I just want to start a bigger conversation around this and Put out content to help people. in restaurants. So All right. Here, here. Well, good luck. And appreciate it.

I'll see you on the internet and maybe in Texas. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, man. If you ever wanna come up to downs, just hit me up and I'll uh probably show you something. Some parts of the city that you didn't see. All right, man. Well I will uh I'll see you on the road and take it easy. Absolutely my please.

Hello? Uh hi, is this Diana? Yeah, this is Diana. I was hoping I would get the pronunciation right. This is Tim Ferris. Good evening. How are you? Whoa, hello. I can't believe I made it.

You made it. You were the second person to fill the form out, so you were very, very fast on the draw. And Awesome. Thank you for coming. My pleasure. What question or questions can I think? Tackle for the third.

easy question, do you want a hard question? I want whichever question you would be most disappointed not to have asked. Okay. So um My biggest interest right now is

What states of higher perception. Can we cultivate through training? And what's coming to me Es

Sex. Because sex seems to be a doorway in some cultures. or some philosophies like I'm thinking Tantra, I'm thinking Taoism, I'm thinking come sutra and you know So I

I've heard different things and I'm trying to put them together. For example Um abstaining from sex, like you were talking to um Jack Cornfield. or withholding orgasm as a training.

Or multiple partners and open relationships and let's have a lot of sex guys as a way of le learning how to deal with your internal stuff. So I'm curious to now, what is your experience, if I can assume that you've experimented with all of this and uh

And what do you think? Is is that a doorway to higher perception? either of these techniques or all of them or what? Yeah. What do you think? Yeah, big question. Let me try to take a stab at it. So there are many different p components to that question. I would say that

Uh In general, my experience has been whenever you take An act Or A

Daily habit. Let's just say, such as eating. Yeah. And you make previously automatic or subconscious decisions conscious

That you can very deliberately change perception. And uh that that can lead many interesting places. That could take the form of and I will get to sex, but that could take the form of intermittent fasting. or fasting, in which case you notice how much of your day is structured around

three scheduled meals, whether or not you are hungry. And that brings to you and new appreciation Uh Your

Automatic behaviors that may or may not be justified and secondly gives you a greater appreciation for in this case the thing you may abstain from for a certain period of time, which is food. And sex is very similar. Uh I do think that Uh and I don't know if this is physiological or psychological, but

I have engaged in a number of different Practices and uh schools of training where The accepted best practices involve abstain from sex and furthermore abstain from

orgasm or ejaculation for a period of time, whether that is two weeks or four weeks or a longer period of time. And uh when you remove any compulsive behavior and I will just go out on a limb and say I think that masturbation for men in particular can be a compulsive Uh

behavior and tool for procrastination. Uh to put to put it mildly. Women maybe also, but I think particularly men. And uh that when you remove that as an option and y you have uh for instance a trip plan where you're gonna be

engaging in some type of physical practice or exposure to psychedelics or whatever it might be, and it is clearly it has been clearly expressed to you that you're your gains will be Three X, four X, five X. greater if you abstain from this behavior.

Uh that is The Petri dish. the the period of abstinence that can allow you to observe how you react to that. Right. And

uh observing the impulses and the resistance that surfaces, I think is really valuable. Uh th I I do think that whether or not there is some type of physiological basis to the regeneration or recirculation of qi, for instance, which May or may not be the case, right? I'm very, very skeptical of a lot of this new age woo woo stuff. Even though I've read, you know, the I believe it's the multi-orgasmic man, Montauk Chia, and I've looked at those exercises and I have experimented with

uh withholding or postponing ejaculation in some cases where you can use say Or have a partner use fingers in the perennium with pressure to prevent that from happening mechanically, which I don't I actually think and this is subject to great debate, but doesn't strike me as the healthiest approach. I mean it's just like sticking a potato in an exhaust pipe or something. It doesn't s seem structurally. Yeah, it does. And also doesn't seem just very structurally Yeah.

Uh that If you for instance as a male, uh and I mean male and female physiology are of course very, very different uh when it when it comes to sex in multiple respects, but as a man Uh Certainly learning to

to when you're about to ejaculate and focusing on, say, breathing patterns or visualization that lets you to allows you to extend the duration of intercourse I think is tremendously valuable and it also transcends the bedroom. I think it goes other places. Right. That's my question actually related to creativity and to see if there's a b uh a correlation between

I get I get the discipline and the the the interrupting of the habitual patterns. I understand that, but I don't know having experience personally, do does that translate into Okay, then I'm more able to perceive nature or be more creative in my writing or be more aware or more present because I'm not

giving my energy into this Cognitive load. Uh the the degree to which any given activity is an interruptive thought. And when you remove something like that for a period of time, it ceases to be

Static. in the mind and therefore your signal to noise ratio improves and ostensibly you should be able to in my experience is that you can you can operate at a higher level when it comes to almost all of your other activities, which is why very often when I'm abstain from one thing

for instance sex, I'll also abstain from alcohol, I will also abstain from caffeine. And I tend to layer those things. How long have you been able to abstain from Okay, all the stimulus.

That distract you from a certain Project. Yeah, I did it earlier this year for almost eight weeks. Uh which is which is a long which is a long time for me. Uh six months and I'm like, dude, can I do it? Yeah, it's a long time, but I found it very, very worthwhile and it proved to me also that I could do it. And if you w wonder whether or not you are addicted to some to something, you should try to go without it. And you'll you will

Potentially suffer physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms. And your willingness to contend with that will give you a very My question might come from addiction. It's more about commitment. It's like I've been experimenting with the undulation shower, so Yeah. Waking up early in the morning and man, it's hard to

commit to it every single day. It's more the discipline aspect that is um exciting to me'cause it's my I know that if I tackle that then I'll get a way bigger picture. Yeah, well when I say addiction, I'm not talking about addiction to nicotine or caffeine necessarily. I'm also talking about compulsive thoughts. Uh so for so for instance, I mean if if you're interested in abstinence of any type or experimenting with that, my my recommendation would actually be If you really want to see very clear return on investment quickly, uh I would just Google twenty-one day no complaint experiment and look for a blog post that I wrote about

a twenty one day no complaint experiment, and this translates very quickly to multiple domains when you remove certain patterns of phrasing and

uh the way that you relate to the world and the selection bias you use for seeing the good or seeing the bad changes very dramatically. So I would I would recommend Taking a look. That Uh as well. And that can be very much.

Yeah, no problem. Uh if you have my dog is whining, so I have to take Molly out to pee. Uh but if you want to give me if you wanna give me a quick question She's looking straight into gazing into my eyes as I record this. So I have to get her I have to get her outside, but what is if you have one more question that I can potentially answer quickly, I'm happy to take a stab at it. I have a quick I don't know if it's a quick question, but another Another thing in my mind was I know that you're you are experimenting a lot with psychedelics.

And um And how they can they can be used to treat certain Ailment or or you know, for healing. And I'm just curious as a person, you know, I went I went to college for anthropology and I work right now with individuals optimizing their performance through different tools. Um

And I'm thinking When is it a good time to ex encourage somebody to tap into that and and how can you guide them safely if if you don't have a personal experience of it.

Well I can't recommend that you use psychedelics. Uh you live in the United States and currently the classical psychedelics are under schedule one, which is in the same class as heroin. So if we're considering side effects you also have to consider the legal ramifications and potential side effects. What I what I can suggest is that you investigate something called uh holotropic breath work. H O L O P S

Psychedelics are one tool in the toolkit for creating an А non ordinary state of consciousness. that can provide insights and and Realizations and also reprogramming. that can be applied to different domains.

Uh Yeah. the really across the entire spectrum of human experience. But it's not the only tool. It just it just happens to be a very powerful tool. if you want to strap yourself or strap or encourage someone to strap themselves to the front of the icebreaker. But they're not without risk. They're exceptionally powerful. And

uh can be used irresponsibly. And uh that is why I'm lobbying very strongly to Uh shepherd these compounds, specifically MDMA and psilocybin, through phase three trials along with uh a handful of other people who are working very, very tirelessly on this so that

uh they can be administered with medical supervision and trained therapists. Uh I don't think this is that far away. Uh if the stars align uh in in certain sense. And if if anybody wants to uh join me in supporting that sh they should check out a few organizations, U Sona, U S O N A for Solocybin, which is where I'm spending a lot of

my own capital and attention. Maps, maps.org for MDMA, which is effectively there from a funding perspective for phase three trials. Uh and then if they want to really come to bat, I'm actually I haven't talked about this publicly, but I'm gonna be I am committing a million dollars of my own capital. uh to this over the next several years and will be really

Directing a lot of my attention at this field. Because I cannot recommend at this point that anyone pursue psychedelics. with the legal ramifications that exist and also the difficulty in finding responsible, trained, ethical uh therapists who can support this work. It's just the the bene the risk benefit ratio is really

unappealing for most folks. But what I was gonna say is if anybody wants to come to the table and believes as I do, based on both the data and Experience. that they have the potential to change and even save lives, say in treatment resistant depression and other conditions, then they then people can go to Tim.blog forward slash science uh

you know, if if you really have some capital that you'd like to bring to bear on this. Um so I'll say that. But at this point I would I would explore other tools. for helping Shepherd people. So sorry to interrupt, but I was what I was looking for is were to go for

to to to support this research because I don't just want to fall into the hands of whatever whoever you know what I mean, like like you just said, it's hard to find responsible. Guidance.

Yeah. Um if you're not in in the yeah, in the know. But I know the potential for healing and I totally get it. um that is a work in progress and I totally support it. And yeah, you're right, the holotropic breathing is great. It just taps into something but you don't I haven't been able to fully, fully Um

get the same result and maybe some matter of just time and continue. Practice. Yeah, I'd say I I'd say keep practicing and uh you know, also don't forget the slow and steady uh reliable methods at your disposal, which would include, for instance, meditation. Sam Harris has a fantastic new app which will be coming out shortly, the the Waking Up app. I would encourage people to take a look at that. There are other options like Calm and Headspace, but when you start to layer these things on top of one another, you also very often see effects That are disproportionate and not additive. In other words, you take meditation one unit, holotropic breath work one unit, and then say hot and cold work, say sauna and ice bath

one unit and you add those up and it's instead of being three, you get a five or a six or a seven. So Uh I would encourage you to responsibly experiment. Uh All right, Diana, I gotta run'cause I have a list of twenty people to call that I'm gonna try to get through, but I hope we can some at some point connect again and it was amazing to share this time and space with you. And thank you so much for doing this and everything you're putting out there. It's amazing. No problem. My pleasure.

And hasta la próxima. Thanks for taking the time. Okay. This is Robin. Hey Robin, this is Tim Ferris. How are you?

I'm doing so well, Tim. How are you doing? Oh, splendid. Couldn't be better. And I'm excited to be on the phone with you. So how might I Help. We'll see. I could fabricate an answer and an attempt to be helpful. I can't promise they'll be of any value, but

What uh What's on your mind? What can I what can I potentially help with? Yeah, thank you. Uh I'm a delight to be here. Um I've admired for what?

Ten years now. Your work and and you're sharing your work with People like us who sort of All along. Um in that same time I

built to Somewhat successful businesses, a cafe in San Francisco and an annual conference. But The thing that you've done so successfully

that I really am just kind of in awe of is continually hitting success after success in a way that appeals to the same target audience. Um so I I know you've talked about it not always being a successful uh for our chef. for example, not doing quite as well as you wanted or

Even I remember what was it? Russ and Iron, the little YouTube show that you did about other shoes. Sure. Or or multiple T V or multiple T V shows that I've attempted on cable and elsewhere. Mm-hmm. For sure. Uh and yet you continually spring back. So I I look at four hour work week through to this podcast that appealed to

People like me. I'm a you know white male living in the extended area. I actually just left San Francisco after ten years. Um, but still in the extended bay area. Mm-hmm. And thirty one. Um

And you're able to create content that appeals to that same audience and then seemingly grow that audience over time. Um I I I understand starting niche, but personally and and in terms of I guess professionally finding the next hit and then the next hit after that.

What do you think other than maybe luck has contributed to that sort of ongoing growing success of teaching Essentially people like you. Mm-hmm. Cool. Uh this is a good this is a good topic. to explore and hopefully my

answer isn't underwhelm. I'll try to fuel it with some more tequila to make it more Interesting. Uh let me a let me ask a few clarifying questions, if I could. Uh First of all, I mean you have a shot here, so you might as well mention it. What is your cafe and what is the conference? Thank you. Yeah.

Uh it's I founded it two years ago. It's called Robin's Cafe that seventeen couldn't shot well in the mission in San Francisco. Mm-hmm. Uh and then the conference is about how we work in the twenty first century called Responsive Conference. I bounce back and forth every year between San Francisco and New York. It's Responsive conference dot com happening September twenty fourth and twenty fifth in New York this next year.

There we go. All right. Cool. And what uh this is this is all going somewhere, but w how did you first come in to contact with me or any of the the the content that I've put together, whether it be writing audio or otherwise. How d how did you find your way to that?

Totally. I think I would have come to it Eventually regardless, um, whether through four hour work week or maybe when I came into contact with your material originally, I think it was a time Just after you had published Uh four hour body. Um, but like I've come to know Jenny Sauerklein is a dear friend, the co founder of Acro Yoga. Yeah, she's she's great.

Um Chris Fussel, the co author of Team of Teams, was one of my speakers. So like I've I've been peripheral to your work, maybe very peripheral, but sort of circling around for A lot of years. I think the first thing of yours I saw that really hooked me was early on in the Shopify competitions, you had a little video about building online businesses and at the time I was

Babbling with Shopify. Uh trying to sell uh digital content for parents of kids with autism, which was a a career of about five years that I had there. Uh and and something about your authenticity via video? Um, that then led me to your first TED talk. That then funny enough led me to four hour work week and I've really been following along since that.

Very cool. Uh Appreciate the the context. So let me try to tackle this. And Uh I'll I'll

So the first The first thing I would say as a caveat is that Even if I Make a very over

attempt to talk about my failures and the ratio of successes to failures that make their way onto the internet or my podcast or into the books. still presents a very skewed Miss

I succeed. a disproportionate amount of the time. Uh And

What that does not mean, however That I am continually failing and then just highlighting the one or two successes. What it means I think If I'm trying to look at it.

As an observer. Yeah. I increase the likelihood of success. By

doing one thing very reliably. I'm not even gonna say well. But one thing very reliably, and that is Try to support and create Products.

Or Chapters. That scratch and itch I have. Right.

It doesn't always work, but I assume that if something really grabs my attention that it will grab the attention of at least Ten thousand other people on the planet who speak English. And Uh that

that you start really narrow And for me I stick with what I know, and what I know is my daily experience. the daily experience of the things that bother me, the daily experience of things that are a huge pain in my ass, the simple path I have found to be most reliable.

Fruit. Reaching Ten million people, reaching a hundred million people. is starting with The thing that you fucking know the best.

And that is your daily experience. Of pain. Or desire for pleasure. or problems or solutions and sharing that and really Not fucking yourself by overthinking it.

and getting too sophisticated. Really focus on what you know as an individual and identify the primary pain points and if you can find solutions to those for yourself uh, generally speaking, that will really transcend Any type. of category that you fit neatly into. And will affect a lot of people. That's been my experience. So that's a very I can't believe how fucking along that was. Oh my God. So hopefully um

Hopefully that's helpful in some capacity, but the reason that I've had the success I've had in say investing. is because I I have set very strict rules which I sometimes violate to my detriment.

But for the most part I've stuck with very, very simple rules for investing in things. that fix a personal problem that I am willing to pay money to fix. Right. And

that excludes a lot of companies that have done spectacularly well that I have missed and it doesn't matter because you it's not about how many you miss, it's about how many you actually get right. And that's true for entrepreneurship. as it is for investing. And I've just tried very, very hard not to outsmart myself. And it makes me think of a quote from Charlie Munger, who's the right hand investing partner of Warren Buffett. And it is something along the lines of

You know, it's incredible how far you can go by trying to Not be consistently stupid. So you're not trying to outsmart everyone, you're just trying not to be consistently stupid. And what I would put into the consistently stupid category is is is really trying to project and hypothesize too much when it comes to entrepreneurship or investing. Like focus on what's right in front of you and it can take you really far.

So apologize for how long that took, but uh this is something that I feel very strongly about because The results are so clear to me. when people pay attention to it. Uh so so there you have it.

Yeah. Nice. I'm reminded of what I think it was Warren Buffett who told you. Uh at the shareholder meeting. of like if you have money to invest, uh invest it in the stock market and get back to work.

Yeah, invest it in the S P five hundred and get back to work. It's like the most disappointing Answer from a hero ever, but in retrospect it made a lot of sense. Yeah. Hey, if this isn't your game. Yeah, if this isn't your stock picking game, then you shouldn't play'cause you get your face ripped off. So it's like put your money in the S P five hundred and get back to work. Yeah.

Uh and then psychographic. Um, so regardless of uh what a person looks like or sounds like or where they live Uh the focus on specific problems that I as an individual have.

Um and and who do I want to help those people like me become, whether they look like me or not. uh doing that consistently and showing up again and again and getting back to work. Yeah, totally. And let me ask let me add a few things also, because I don't want this to seem too high concept, thirty thousand feet. And that is

I avoid a lot of big failures. by failing quickly with a lot of low cost tests. And uh That means

For instance, Rust and Iron you mentioned, which is this and and who knows, maybe it'll be resurrected, but it it didn't get nearly the kind of attention that I would have hoped given how excited I was about it. Right. So some of these don't work. And uh th for those who don't know, this was a very short video series. I put up a few of them on YouTube. So YouTube.com forward slash Tim Ferris. Which were

Uh Tours of gyms. Think so think cribs for gyms. Right? Endlessly fascinating to me. Turns out Most of the world doesn't give us a A single shit about it. Uh And I I did a few of these.

And uh they were uh you know, I filmed them on actually one of them was just with an iPhone with Kelly Starrett. And then a handful of others with Mark Bell and so on. But those experiments cost a few hundred dollars apiece, maybe a little bit more

And I decided for myself what the max allowable cost was. So how much am I willing to sink into this? to arrive at a decision as to whether to continue or not. It was like okay, a few thousand bucks, I'm willing to put that in and depending on where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, that might be eighty bucks. It might be zero dollars. It might be if you're If you have much more to play with in terms of capital, it might be a million dollars. But in this case I was like, you know what? This isn't a revenue driver. It's really just for fucking shits and giggles to see if people respond to it well or not.

I'm gonna put in a few thousand bucks over a period of Two months. And see what happens. And what happened was fucking cricket. And I was like, Okay. Well We're not gonna do any more of those.

unless I receive some type of information that directly and powerfully in some meaningful way contradicts this like F plus grade that I just got in this experiment. So so if you don't mind going into the specifics, how do you determine like I just launched a tiny little podcast called Vander Strong, my last name being Vander. And again it was cricket. But like I know I could ask everyone I know to leave a review on iTunes for that project.

Right, if you direct your audience again and again towards a couple of videos, those videos it'll explode. If you wanted to get sponsorship, I think you probably could. So how do you determine crickets and that your audience, your psychographic was not interested in Rust and I Yeah, so there's Alright, so if we're looking at Just to digress, but not really digress into a related topic.

If you look at investment pitches From startups. As a Venture capitalist or angel investor. You will, surprise, surprise, see the same graph in a lot of them.

Wow, it looks like a hockey stick. Up and to the right. Fantastic. And the question That any investor should ask, among others, is what percentage of this growth is represented through organic growth and what percentage of this growth is represented through paid acquisition.

Because founders being incentivized as they are Well very often go into the dark arts. And uh Take some of their pre existing funding or whatever money they might have. uh through cash flow or other means and invest it in artificially boosting the numbers.

Right? And you can do this in an attempt to trick yourself as well. And I think it's Richard Fe Richard Feynman who said physicist, anyone who wants to read a fantastic book should read Shirley I think surely you're joking Mr. Feynman, one of my favorites. In any case, he said uh you know rule number and I'm paraphrasing all these, but rule number one is you must not fool yourself and you're the easiest person to fool. So I really try to A focus on

Real metrics versus m vanity metrics. And I would put in vanity metrics almost every fucking buzzword du jour that you can imagine, like engagement. I think it just does not fucking matter for the most part. I will look at the and I cannot say this applies to everyone, I can tell you how I will evaluate these things. Okay. So I'll look at the I will look at the And it's partially to determine.

whether something is dead on arrival with no hope of revival or If I'm performing an experiment and it's ten percent off. And if I tweak that 10%, it could explode. Which is sometimes the case. So if we look at rust and iron specifically

I'm not just looking at the view count, I'm looking at the comments. And this is a subjective Not even gonna say science. art, but it's a bit of a gestalt pattern matching type of process that I'll go through where I will look for intensity of feedback.

So it i if I look at the thirty company people who love it, people who hate it. Right. I will look at the thirty and I'll primarily look at the people who love it, because it it doesn't matter how many people don't get it, it matters how many people do get it. Right. Ninety percent of the people in a given city hate your fucking business more than anything on the planet. But if ten percent of San Francisco loves your cafe, you are fucking set.

You know what I mean? You are set. It doesn't matter. Like you you are going to have a super mega home run on your hands. It doesn't matter how many people don't get it, it matters how many people do get it. So I'll pay attention. And if the positive feedback is along the lines of Oh my God

This would be the best thing. I've ever seen in my life. I really loved A, B, and C But It'd be great to have this and this. If I see that type of feedback over and over again, I will test again.

If I and this this is also related to my editing process for books. When I edit books I will ask people Which For instance, and these are almost always friends of mine who are writers that I asked to do this, although lawyers are very good at editing because they can find sloppy thinking and words that shouldn't be there. Uh

Or ambiguous wording and thinking. I will ask them to identify the ten percent they would absolutely keep. If I had to cut everything else and the ten percent that they would cut no matter what. Or the ten percent they would cut if they had to, right? And uh

If so it takes only one person to love something more than The other ninety percent for me to keep it in the book. But it takes more of a consensus for me to cut something. Does that make sense?

If somebody absolutely loves something, even if nobody else mentions it, it stays in. Because my assumption is there are at least ten thousand more people who care about that. And uh I don't want to live in the comfortable middle ground, which is the gray of I like this.

Because that is where you die. And uh If you make something you think everyone will like, you're gonna make something no one will love. And uh I try very hard then to straddle that

And not deliberately create things that people will hate, but in the process of selecting for things that people love, y the side effect will be that uh in this pendulum of public opinion, you will have people who who hate it almost by definition. Um So that is how I would look at something

like Rust and Iron and I didn't have a overwhelmingly strong response even from a minority. Uh they they did not offer and this is an indicator Of

uh liking something if you like high investment, I did not get a lot of quality, constructive feedback. In other words, hey, this car is fantastic. It's a Ferrari. But the front suspension is fucked. If you fix that, it would be a home run. I didn't get that type of feedback. And that's part of the reason why I shelved it. It's not dead forever, but

It might be. Uh whereas In the podcast case, and here's here's another layer that I would add to it. It's not just what other people think. In other words, with the podcast I was willing to slog through some fucking awful first episodes, and they weren't all terrible, but some of them were, let's be honest. I mean I've done three hundred now, hopefully it's better.

But some of the some of the original episodes are really rough. And I slogged through it. Why? because I was developing Additional

Skill sets. The ability to ask more refined questions. Right. I was developing additional skill sets. The ability to let silence do the work, the ability to ask follow up questions. Which default follow up questions yield a lot of fruit.

such as how did that make you feel? What did you learn from that? How have you implemented that later, etc. Uh as well as developing deeper relationships with people I knew uh as well as people I didn't know as well, acquaintances or even strangers. If you wanna have a really funny uh

You can listen to my first Ever podcast interview with a stranger, someone I'd never spoken to before that point in time, which is Ed Catmell, the president of Pixar. I was really, really nervous. And I went, Mm, mm-hmm like a thousand fucking times. It drove people nuts. Anyway, uh I I was I was developing skills and relationships or deepened relationships that would transcend that given project. So I cared

less about or I waited less weighed, maybe weighted weighed, less the public opinion Of those early episodes. Does that make sense? Uh yeah. Because unlike say Rust and Iron, where I was producing new content but not really developing new skills

There was a value to the practice of the podcast in and of itself. And That is true of a lot of what I do. I really try to select whenever possible for what will help me to develop skills and relationships that will trend transcend that Project.

in part because I can really effectively ignore the early feedback. And I don't ignore it, but I I it is Ten percent of my consideration. Uh yeah, you're not dependent on the early feedback to determine the success of the project. Right. And

That's another Mm litmus test, perhaps, or another set of criteria that I've used Consistently. to increase the odds of each subsequent project success. Uh

But it's It's in some ways Laughably simplistic. And uh uh it's really hard to keep something simplistic. It's like intellectually difficult to keep something simplistic because you want to demonstrate to yourself that you're so fucking smart.

you start to add in additional criteria and use spreadsheets and all this stuff And it's not to say that that stuff isn't warranted, but if you meet with a founder and you're like, Fuck, this guy gives me the heebie jeebies, doesn't matter how good your goddamn spreadsheet is. But you should listen to that. very primitive intuition. It's probably telling you something. that over millions of years of evolution is more sophisticated than whatever you put into Excel that afternoon, right?

I ch I've tried to really, really, really, really revert to the simple and if you want to give it a nicer name, the elegant than the sophisticated or complex. Which is not to say there isn't a place for the complex and the sophisticated.

If you're doing If you're a uh a growth stage or late stage private equity investor And you're thinking about taking over a company and replacing the management and improving operational efficiencies, well, you better really know your numbers. But that's not the game that I play. That is not my power zone and I will get annihilated if I try to compete against people who are good in the space. It's just not my sandbox.

Uh so for me I really try to Target areas. Where I have a really, really basic advantage, and that is

that I can stick to compli I can stick to simplicity rather. And a a a real pared down set of criteria when other people are tempted to go to complexity and succumb to complexity. And I don't have many advantages. None of us, I really want to go as far as to say, none of us have that many fucking advantages.

So figure out what is easy for you that is hard for a lot of your friends. and start there. And then look at your personal pains. Look at your personal Desires.

And use that as a starting point if you're trying to create content or products that you hope will ultimately impact billions of people. And guess what? A lot of these products like Duolingo, right? I was in there first as I as as best I can recall, their first round of financing. At the time because it was the first language learning software that made sense to me, that solved a lot of pain points for me personally as a language learning

student and now As best I know, it is the most widely used free language learning software on the planet. Right? A hundred million plus users. But it didn't start by thinking about what those hundred million people needed.

It started with Asking myself. Does this or does this not? Scratch the itch, solve the pain that I experience myself. So I hope that helps. But that's that's partially how I think about this kind of thing.

Thank you. No, I really appreciate your time and and taking the time to share. Yeah. Hopefully. Uh

Cool. Well good luck with everything and uh if I ever make my way back to the Bay Area I will check out your cafe. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite. of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourourourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

This episode is sponsored by Sothabes and Sothabee's Wine, which offers a selection of the world's best wines for every palette and occasion. Many of you know I do like my wine. I do love one. must be the Malbec from Argentina when I was down there, or maybe it's the Zinfandel from California, but I like it all. I like lots and lots of wine. Sotheby's as many of you may know is a global auctioneer. They auction off many many many different types of things. They're also a retailer of fine wine. with locations in New York, London, and Hong Kong. They recently created an online store where you can buy wine directly. You might think, well that's for millionaires and billionaires. I don't go to auction houses, but

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If you are in or shipping to New York, California, DC, New Hampshire, or Idaho, check it out because that's where the wine can currently be shipped. So visit SophiebeesWine.com. That's S-O-T-H-E-B-Y-S. Sotheby'sWine.com and use the promo code TIM TIM

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And I'd heard about Peloton over and over again, but I ended up getting a Peloton bike in the whole system after I saw my buddy Kevin Rose, I've known him forever, some of you know, and he showed up at my gate at my house a while back and he looked fantastic. I asked him, I said, dude, you look great. What the hell have you been up to? Because he's always doing a weird diet or another, but it only lasts like a week or two. So he always regresses to the mean after like 75 beers. And he said, I've been doing Peloton five days a week. Now that caught my attention because Kevin does nothing. five days a week and you know I love you Kevin but it really piqued my curiosity ended up getting a system and it's become an integral part of my week. I love it and I really didn't expect to love it at all because I find cycling really boring usually. But Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home.

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when cycling never had caught my attention before. It's really pretty stunning what they've done with the user interface to keep your attention. The belt drive is quiet and it's smaller than you would expect, so it can fit in a living room or an office. I actually have it in a large closet, believe it or not. and it fits with no problem. So Peloton is offering All of you guys, listeners of the Tim Ferriss show, a special offer, and it is actually special. Visit OnePeloton, that's O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N. OnePeloton.com and enter the code Tim. All caps T I M at checkout to receive$100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. Now you might say, meh, accessories? Wait, I don't need fancy towels or whatever. other supplemental bits and pieces. No, the shoes you need. You need the clip-in shoes and those are in the accessory category. So this$100 off is a very legit$100 off.

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