#412: Josh Waitzkin on Beginner’s Mind, Self-Actualization, and Advice from Your Future Self

Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. So another personal question. Now it's in the time. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal empty skeleton. S

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Slash Tim. Check it out. Well, hello, boys and girls, ladies and gents. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers to tease out the thoughtes, the best practices, the influences, and so on that you can hopefully copy and paste into your own life in some fashion to test out. The toolkits.

of people who are the best at what they do. My guest this episode is a return guest. Josh. Waitskin. He was in fact the second ever guest in episode two of this podcast. We've known a long time. Josh Waitskin is author of The Art of Learning. He is an eight time US national chess champion, a two time world champion Tai Chi Pushhands, and And the first Brazilian jujitsu black belt under nine time world champion Marcelo Garcia, widely believed to be the greatest scrappler who has ever lived, at least in the world of BJJ. For the past twelve years, maybe thirteen, maybe fourteen now, Josh has been channeling his passion for the outer limits of the learning process. towards training elite mental performers in business and finance, or finance, if you prefer, and to revolutionizing the education system through his nonprofit foundation, The Art of Learning Project.

Josh is currently in the process of taking on his fourth and fifth disciplines, paddle surfing and foiling, which we will discuss at some length in this episode. Josh is always a fantastic thought partner. He is constantly pushing back at anything that I say which reflects sloppy thinking or imprecise thinking or consensus thinking. And he's a lovely guy. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with none other than Josh Wait skin.

Joshua. Good day, sir. Timbo. Good to see you yet again.

And we've had a chance to spend a bunch of time together. And all sorts of questions have come to mind that I've wanted to ask you and all sorts of discussions. have come up over meals and wine. And Cold plunges.

that I've wanted to explore with you. Let's talk about if you're open with uh open two rather starting here. Uh some some recent explorations of learning. And specifically Some insights related to Someone you introduced me to

Quite a few years ago. Uh Maurice Ashley. Yeah. Maurice it was a um I mean, as a dear friend and we became very close when I was eleven years old playing chess.

And Between the ages of around eleven and twenty three, twenty four, we Study chess five, six hours. A week together, sparred together, traveled around the world competing together against one another and as a team

It's training partners. And it was actually really cool. He came to visit us uh a couple weeks ago and it was a really unusual life opportunity because Maurice and I haven't talked about chess in About twenty years. So imagine going

It's all in Just deep dive with someone for thirteen or fourteen years in an art. not talking about that art for twenty years growing in different directions and then coming together and a lot of what we were exploring Um Or questions around, for example, what were our assumptions or our shared constructs

Twenty years ago. That we now Don't believed to be true. And for context, I mean Maurice was a high level chess player. Oh yeah. How would you how would you for people who don't know the chess world, how would you describe

He's a strong grandmaster. Um and we I mean we grew up Mm kind of He's older than me, he's about I think ten, eleven years older than me.

And um He's a beautiful soul and we we're I mean, back in the day we were just brothers, very similar to my relationship with Dan Caulfield that had today in in martial arts and now foiling. Maurice was my sparring partner in in the chess world. And um I think that the

I think what you're referring to in terms of what we were exploring was was fascinating because I mean a lot of what I think about today is the emptiness of mental models or the or the the relativity, the non absolute nature of any kind of ideas or or constructs or networks of ideas that we have. Things that we believe today will likely see as somewhat flawed five years from now. And so I work on seeing them as flawed today and seeing their the holes in them. And so

W what was Really interesting to explore with Maurice for what were the things that we believed as pretty strong chess players back in the day. that we just no longer believe to be true, uh individually and collectively. And what came up? A lot came up. Um What came up for you?

Well, But Well one of the the the direction of thought that I found most interesting it's not just what were our false constructs twenty years ago, but what are the common root structures to my current constructs and my false constructs twenty years ago.

I see. So in other words, what did what do you now disagree with In terms of beliefs you held twenty years ago. That nonetheless sprouted from sort of roots or seeds. That

current beliefs share. That I may or may not be present to. And then you may not. And then part of the challenge is to be be present to them. And then examine their Emptiness today. Mm-hmm. differences between Maurice and me twenty years ago is that

When Marie studied chess he was extremely idealistic. Um fancyful. It so much Somewhat to a fault competitively. So there were moments where for example Maurice would be playing a beautiful chess game and he would make a mistake. as we all do. And he would su kind of lose interest in the game because of like the poetic

perfection or something of what he'd been creating. had been marred. And and His idealism was obviously so beautiful to me, but also was sometimes a little bit a little bit frustrating when we were training together. And that frustration, you know, we both learned from and it was really interesting to explore. So it was an example that came to mind for me.

Where there was a moment I recall viscerally when I was probably twenty two years old. We were studying a a variation of the Nidorf Sicilian. And we saw a there was a position that would come after three incorrect decisions. So in other words, in this complex opening that we were studying, there would be three mistakes that we made and it led to this fascinating position. And Maurice was like, We should study that position.

And I thought that was completely impractical. Um I was like, dude, w what are we gonna study this for? It's imprecise. Right, we should spend our time setting up position we might actually see. And it was an example of of me feeling that Maurice was being kind of overly fanciful or idealistic in the training in the moment of training and Marie's just being fascinated by something and seeing it would be cool and interesting to learn from.

Potentially. So in that moment I had a lot of confidence that he was Barking up the wrong tree. And when I think about that now twenty years later, I was absolutely wrong. I think that studying that position So much of what learning is at a high level to me today is conceptual learning, thematic learning. It's not about anything local.

And so that position had so much Dynamism to it. So like the convergence of different kinds of dimensions. And it would've we would have learned so much from studying it. We actually did end up studying it. We didn't learn learn so much from it. But when I think about it, it's not a little bit more. Today, like that was a massive blind spot.

for me. So there was so then w how do I deconstruct that into a common root structure today? Well I think that I have a if you look at the way my buddy Dan and I um studied martial arts together for a lot of years, we took on Tai Chi push hands together starting in two thousand in training camps for the two thousand two and two thousand four world championships, and then we transitioned to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. reached high levels in that art and then took on now we're taking on surfing and foiling together, really all in on foiling. And one of the differences between the way Dan and I approach Learning is that

I would argue that he's a much more gifted athlete than me. And I'm much more of a deconstructive learner. than Dan is. So I I tend to decon early in the learning process around something, I'll tend to deconstruct it down to the component parts. Which might be technical or often will be thematic. Um, and then I'll internalize those component parts and then I'm ready to just to go all in on chaos. Dan likes to just throw himself off a cliff.

And then he he reaches his technical clarity. By just jumping right into Like the chaos. And so we have different paths to a similar place and we've learned to navigate that together. So the interesting thing is that

There's a little bit of a of an identity or a stiffness in my approach there. So The early stages of learning a new

part, for example, of foiling. For example, we've recently started dialing in Toe foiling. Um whipping on a jet ski, whipping someone in on like the lightest possible high performance foil board And um riding big waves. Can you describe for people who may not have heard our last conversation together, what a foil board is. So foiling is you're on a surfboard and then beneath the surfboard is

a two and a half to three foot mast, which is sort of like a big guillotine. Yeah. And then beneath that is a wing, which can be a big giant razor blade. Yes. Exactly. It's a really safe part. And um the wing is once you're in a wave, the wing is what you're riding. So the wing is is interacting with underwater wave energy. So you get lifted off the board is lifted off of the surface of the water for people who are going to be able to do it. crazy'cause it's frictionless, it's incredibly fast. It's so dynamic. It's awesome. I mean I've never been more in love with an art in my life. And the purpose, if if I am getting this right, of using a foil, aside from the different Kinesthetic experience and aesthetic experience is to be able to move faster.

Um Bigger waves. Or two. Is is that how foiling came about as a Is it technology?

That's a part of why it came out. I mean you're above the surface chop. So when it can be choppy weather and if you're on a foil, you're just above it all. So you're frictionless. So sur conditions that are unsurfable are foilable. Um because the surfwood would be chattering on all this surface texture and the foil is above it. Um I think that You know, so much of how I personally relate to it is is frictionlessness. I I think of of learning as

unobstructed self expression. So friction is a form of obstruction. And what's fascinating is foiling your your you're just It's such a powerful physical embodiment of that principle. And d I know we're gonna hop around'cause we both had a lot of coffee, but uh so we we were talking about these sort of labels and in flexibility, so we may come back to that, but

One thing that has really impressed me that you and Dan share in common is Uh I I suppose you probably focus on this perhaps more, you correct me, but The use of technology

And Training to Really. accumulate focused repetitions. Right. So for instance, you have a foil board and then you have an E foil. Right. So so how would you use

And e4. So we we took on four so the way I took on foiling was I got an e foil um I spent a About two months flying

Around two thousand miles on flat water. So I learned foil dynamics just first of all working on On flight. So an e foil is A foil with a prop on it with a lithium battery.

And um and I was flying in flat water at between fifteen and twenty five miles an hour just getting used to flight dynamics'cause it's being on a foil board, it's really it's micro, micro recalibration. If you back weight, you fly up. If you front weight you could go down. If you overweight you crash into the floor into the water or fly or the if the wing comes out of the water you're you're catapulting. So I worked on flight dynamics and I worked on breakfalls, which is a hugely important part of it, which I don't see a lot of foilers do. Which is

Really training in the art of falling. Which something that Dan and I did of course for many, many years in the martial arts. Um and it's not just Learning how to fall when you want to fall. It's actually turning a fall that's out of control into a breakfall.

So it's it's really learning how to prepare for the moments you haven't prepared for. And um and being good at brake falls opens like when I took on one wheeling, right, which is an electronic skateboard with a big wheel one wheel in the middle around New York City. You know, I had a lot of falls at twenty five miles an hour into New York City pavement. And if you don't know how to brake fall, you're gonna get hurt. But if you do, you can just roll out of it and be fine. So I think that being comfortable falling it's a really important

principle I would say. And we could talk about designing the learning process around principles as opposed to around techniques. So like the technical arsenal of breakfalls. Like the It would fall under the principle of just being comfortable falling. And then you can take a lot more risk than you can take otherwise because the fall will be something that's part of your domain. That

I've never heard anyone. else discuss. But y you've achieved world class levels and multiple arts. That in and of itself is very uncommon.

With foiling specifically, we won't spend an hour talking about Only foiling, but it I think it's uh I wanna highlight for people that this is a discussion of learning and principles using the example of foiling. Using an e foil to go through boils over and over and over again. Is that Principle based, is that technique?

And uh Perhaps you could you could just paint a picture of of what a boil is. And why that's the same. Why you chose to practice in that way. Right. Okay, so zooming out for a moment.

The way I think about taking on these arts It's understanding what are the component parts and doing lots of reps. in them so that you're comfortable with them and then putting them all together. So my learning process won't look great in the first

Um and I'm not concerned about that. And I think that one of the interesting parts of it is like people I think that a lot of what's happening in surf culture or foil culture is people have these Instagram accounts and they're always posting videos of what they're doing and they have to look cool. And so there's this group thing that I observe around what looks cool. And what the

Microculture will approve of. And so you can't really do things outside of that. And so for example, going through boils, when you're on Big wave faces on a reef. That were like you know, if the water interacts with

A sh a shallow spot or a ledge or a a big rock, you'll have a boil that's just like a big shooting up of water pressure from the mock. It looks like boiling water. It looks like boiling water. And when a wing hits that or when a cor or a piece of a wing hits that a foil wing. You just can get s thrown. So you have to learn to absorb it. So you have to learn how to w w w to either weave around it, weave through the boils, or absorb them. And so one of the things the e foil opened up was the ability to To really seek out boils and learn how to you know. lowering level a little bit, so you know the top of your wing when uh of your mast when you enter it. And then there's learning what the boil does if you hit it. If you hit the wings straight on, on the corners, lots of falling. But for example, putting on a palmet, putting on an impact vest, those things don't look cool on Instagram.

And so you can't do those things if you're gonna be posting on Instagram every day. Right. Living Kind of a bizarre hermit life. Thank you

I guess I do. And and not doing that kind of thing. You guess, I can confirm. You can look I mean U embracing

Yeah. looking absurd in certain moments is is a very interesting hack. to what others might not be taking advantage of in the learning process. And so I I I spent I mean I I went over hundreds and hundreds of oils on the e foil and learned how to absorb them and had incredible crashes, but then I learned how to dial in those crashes and then I learned how to hit the boils at different speeds and absorb sometimes I us I mean I got thrown off at mid thirties miles an hour.

On a off the jet ski on a four pound foil board the other day and this boil just erupted me and I went flying. I mean it it's an ongoing process. Um at different speeds. But

But yeah. I was just gonna say I remember the first time we spoke about this Because it coincided With A week later.

And we talked about this, me going to volunteer at something called Zendo. At A c a festival called Lightning in a Bottle. Which I

I had wanted to attend specifically not because I'm a concert or festival goer, but because it's effectively like a mini burning man that skews to younger ages. And for people who don't know, Zendo is a peer supported harm reduction volunteer outfit that helps people who are going through difficult drug experiences generally or oftentimes psychedelic experiences.

that do not require medical intervention. So there's medical triage for people who have who have done something that could be physiologically dangerous, but otherwise For me it was the equivalent of You're going through boils. Because if, for instance, and I'm not a facilitator, I do not uh I do not uh

have have not chosen as a career supporting people going through psychedelic experiences, but I wanted to develop a level of confidence that if I were in an environment where I was called upon to handle a worst case scenario that I would at least have a certain degree of comfort. an exposure to that, but it's really uncommon.

that you would get That would in fact mean that you would in some way be manufacturing these terrible conditions. So So one of the few ways to do it, it was to volunteer at Zendo, where you get these kind of red line cases and you get put in the crisis tent over and over and over and over and over again. And uh we had a really uh

Rich conversation about that. About this type of deliberate practice with D. edge cases that are nonetheless really important to Develop a degree of comfort around.

And I think that you can do it thematically, i or or non locally. You don't have to do it specifically in the thing. So for example One of the beautiful things that the e four opened up to me and Dan was the ability to just And we just

it would just mound up into this super steep ramp that just kept on going. And it was actually two converging ramps and we call it ramps. And this wave was it was sort of like the drop that you'd make surfing that would last a second. It would that that drop would last forty five to sixty seconds. And a a buddy who who sort of said said it would we should call it aneurysms'cause it felt like you're having an aneurysm that lasts for sixty seconds. But we did so many thousands of those waves, then it it it's like you get used to the aneurysm. And then the aneurysm becomes mellow, and then it and it's just a mellow place to be. And then that then you translate that over to foiling in on like the lightest, most high performance board possible. the drop you might down you make down a steep face

Before a bottom turn. We've just done so many of those that lasted for so long that these sections that would have felt super critical to us before, um You can do cold plunges. So if you do if you're cold plunging in thirty three degree water, your body's gonna go into that same Freak out fight or flight place.

And then learning to breathe through that and come out the other side. I mean cold plunges are in a non local way a great way to train at making steep drops, surfing or foiling. Yeah, it's controlling it. Or control it may not even be controlling a panic response, but becoming familiar with the physiological response to panic, right on some level. And and uh the y those people listening obviously can't see what's going on here. But uh you have a You have a richness a smorgasbord of cold plunge options here. And thirty three degrees is n is is not a uh

A grand exaggeration because I unplugged one of the coal plunges a few days ago because it was turning into an entire ice block. Uh so for the last few days we've been getting inside and being surrounded by ice. Uh and Yeah. The I I think Uh the idea of kind of non local practice.

Um applies also to what what I was mentioning, right? Because I've done I've accompanied doctors on ER rounds. For similar reasons. Right.

more comfortable. With an environment that seems out of control. And

Uh Another option within the realm of say psychedelic harm reduction would be uh engaging or facilitating in large Breath work groups. Where you will have people

Uh whether it's holotropic or something else. respond and really exaggerated Um outwardly expressive ways. in these groups and you have to keep them from say flailing and hurting themselves or hurting someone else.

Uh How do you uh What types of practice have become more important to you if you're looking back at your uh say competitive career in chess or your practice of jujitsu. What types of practice or thematic practice have become more important? Have you learned to value more?

Or less. Does anything come to mind? Conceptual practice. Thematic practice. I think that That for example, building on what you just said. I would say that the tension one feels

As a chess player. the build up of tension w both psychologically and technically on what's happening between the chest pieces. is very similar to It might be difficult for people visualizing people sitting at a chessboard.

But it's very similar to the feeling one has dropping down big waves. You feel it's the it you feel the desperate urge to release the tension. And similar in cold water. Right. And so the the the the path that I've worked with so initially it's pain, it's red alert get me out of here. Then it's Becoming at peace in that pain and then learning how to enjoy it.

And so like the great chess players Like someone like Magnus Carlson W one thing that's unique that fairly unique about him is he seems to really enjoy Tension. Right. And I've I've trained in my li I never got there as a chess player.

Um But I I have gotten there another thing, is learning to just completely love chaos. Um so the tension isn't isn't grinding on you. You're not a tectonic plate moving toward eruption. You're Um You're getting stronger as the tension builds. And and that's something that I think is beautiful to train at

Something like cold water is just s something you can replicate every day to do it. The E four will open that up in drops. Foiling. Right. Um

So I think to answer your question Conceptual learning. has been Wha w when you learn a technique, you're learning one thing. When you're learning a principle that embodies A technique.

y you might be learning a thousand things. And so Designing a learning process around the meta. Um this is part of the reason why I think my approach in to

Surfing and foiling. has looked so strange to somebody's who are lifetime surfers. Because I'm not approaching it technically. The tech I'm approaching I'm working on internalizing certain core Concepts, principles.

the like the tree beneath the principle. But so meta training. I think would be the most important answer to that question. You're also coming into foiling with a Huge.

disadvantage slash advantage, which is you have not spent decades surfing. Right. Right. So you you're looking at things very differently. And uh just to to give one example And uh as background, s before we began recording this, you let me You encourage me to read through a Slack channel that you have with your team where you're bouncing different ideas.

Uh off of one another. And they're stress testing your ideas also, asking you to clarify things, define things. And you mentioned at one point Front side turns. Not to get too Deep in the weeds.

But front side turn. Different from backside turn. And Then Realizing that you could

practice that on an e foil by just effectively if correct me if I'm wrong, but what I read was kinda going in circles. Yes. Spitting in super tight circles. And you're doing just hundreds and thousands of repetitions that would be impossible to replicate Except over an extremely long I mean weeks, months, oh years, years on a surfboard. And so you you were able to See that where I think. Uh perhaps others might not.

Um Certainly some would, but um that struck me as a huge advantage that you have that you're seeing things with beginners' eyes and you're already Technologically enabled. So you have just a a greater buffet of options. I think it's really important for me to be clear. I I'm just a beginner. In the surf and foil world, right? I mean most of the people who are foiling have been surfing for

twenty or thirty years, th their whole lives.'Cause foiling is is super hard. It's surfing much faster with an extra vertical dimension. Um The interesting thing about it is is I'm learning how to surf and paddle surf through foiling. The lines that I can draw foiling are much better than the lines I can draw Paddle surfing. What's fascinating is I went out surfing I'm I'm right now foiling

You know six days a week maybe in surfing, paddle surfing one day a week. I went out. Paddle surfing yesterday. Um'cause the foil that the soil dissipated a little bit and it wasn't great foil conditions.

Where we go. And I um I was amazed at the breakthroughs I've made. Surfing just from It it's really interesting. So I I'm coming at this in every way's

In every way backwards. I approached I l I'm taking on The art of Surfing and paddle surfing. I started in my late thirties.

Not as a six year old kid. And so that also speaks to some of the things that Dan and I Who This is this relates to Dan as well. Things we need to do.

Like we haven't gone sideways forward. Like being in a surf stance, moving forward at high speed, sideways is a very simple idea, right? If you're skateboarding or you're surfing or snowboarding, you're like in a sideways posture and you're going forward very fast. We haven't done that a lot in our lives. So things like the one wheel, which Dan and I both did, and then the E foil. Like that just gave us a huge amount of reps. And then the amount of waves we've been able to take E foiling.

We've been learning about Surfing waves. Through those reps. Um And so and you're right, I think it I so it's a disadvantage in a lot of ways that we that we're coming at it so late, but it's also a wonderful advantage'cause we're not socialized.

by any of the assumptions that a lifetime surfer would make. Similarly, in like the Chinese martial arts, taking on the Chinese martial arts, there's lots of Things that Chinese martial artists who are lifetime aficionados will not consider. That coming at it as an outsider from the chess world I could take advantage of. Similar in the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world. Um we could have conversations about those. I think we actually have spoken about those over the years. But but all of these arts have their blind spots. Let me just go back, just just finish the circle one time,'cause we began speaking about this exploration I was doing with Maurice real after the chest and the common root structure between false constructs. So just to close that loop. I think that

So what I'm exploring now is that like so what was the the essence of that That thing I was too tight about with Maurice. I was being a bit a little bit too local. and too tight in the early stages of the learning process of something, which in that moment was a chess opening. Uh a branch of the Night of Sicilian.

I'm explor I was that word just to spell for people? Noddorf. N Nidorf. Uh Miguel Nydorf was a was a brilliant chess player, N A J D O R F and there's a ver it's Sicilian Defense is a chess opening. So it's a Nidorf variation of the Sicilian Defense. It was just Sounds like something from the Princess Bride. Continue. Okay. Um Yes, chess openings have have funny names sometimes, but Yeah. So I was

So the interesting question is Is that tightness, is is there a shared root structure? Yeah. relative to that tightness in the learning process today and it for you. For me. Mm-hmm. Right.

And I mean there was a moment where Dan and I were whipping into a big um a a big wave uh Um called w called mo we call mobs here. Where um to to left on foil. He was on a jet ski, I was behind it, and he came

Okay. You know, he was whipping into it and there's a big bear rock that that bear that just it gets sucked out and there's basically a big dry rock on the whip in And it was interesting'cause this was the in the first few days of us taking on Um toast toe foiling.

And In that moment. Like I there was a tightness in me. Right. We come close to r that rock all the time, e foiling.

Um We I think we'll be very comfortable playing Right there soon. Um toe foiling. But in that moment I was in the early stages of a learning process, and it was very similar because in that moment, there was an improvisational nature to that moment, it was playful, it was

actually not such a big risk relative to what we do all the time. Um but there was there was a a s a tightness in me because I w we were learning something new technically. In that moment I wanted to work on Toe foiling.

Like That kind of thing. So I I do think that it's interesting for me to explore is there some identity in the idea that I need to deconstruct first. Um similarly

questions like parallel learning, lateralization, I would say one of my biggest strengths as a learner has been the ability to translate Yeah. It's interesting to invert that. Are there ways that might be holding me back? Mm-hmm. Is the idea of lateralizing or parallel learning.

Um impeding my learning process anyway. So these are these are assumptions that I might have that I might hold I don't know. to take our assumptions and examine them, flip them upside down, rip'em apart. May I ask you about one

Potentially backwards approach that I want to know more about it. Yeah. And that is a quote that also one of your team members asked you about. So the internal spirit is the teacher or myself twenty years from now. I'm most interested in the last part of that. We could talk about the whole thing. But

What does that mean? Or myself twenty years from now. Yeah, that came out of me a few months ago when I was trying to explain to a buddy of mine in the surf world This bizarre way that that I'm approaching this stuff.

Um'cause it looks like Really strange. Two people. Sometimes. And

And and what I was saying was sort sort of in a In a Thematic way. It's as if myself twenty years from now is my teacher. And and what I mean is f first, there's two ways of looking at it. One is that

I know myself decades into arts. Like I know myself decades into chess and into the martial arts. And so I have a feeling for what I am like when I'm in the realm of virtuosity within an art. Um, and so in a sense that person is like that's a beacon that I'm moving toward.

Right? And I'm nowhere near that realm as a surfer and a foiler. I'm But But I've been there. And so so

So qualitatively in terms of some like abstract platonic Realm of quality. And there's the other part of it, which is that no one will know me better. Than myself twenty years from now.

And if my goal is unobstructed self expression or self actualization within an art Then The person who is teaching me should be the person who knows me most deeply. twenty years from now is also a a helpful visualization.

In In being the person who would understand what my false constructs are today. And yesterday. And a year from now. And it's very easy to get stuck in the mindset We

I didn't know before, but I I know today. It reminds me there was this funny moment years ago when I was first studying Tai Chi. Um, and I was in William C C Chen's Tai Chi studio. This was back in I think I think it was 1988. 1998, 1999.

And there was this guy who'd been studying for decades. And he was telling a story. And he was sort of holding court within his knowledge of wisdom within this domain. And he said, You know, when I studied Chai Chi for a year, I thought I knew what I was doing. And I thought I was really s starting to understand it. But after two years I realized everything I thought after a year was wrong.

It was just wrong. But now I understood. And then after four years I realized everything I thought after two years was wrong. And he went on with the story in this pattern, but now I understood. Then when after eight years

Same thing, everything I thought after four years was wrong. And now I've been training for sixteen years. And everything I thought after eight eight years was wrong, but now I I I finally understand. And I remember thinking at the time, man, you got it, but you didn't get it. Like the point is you don't know now either. Right? Like after sixteen years you've been going through this repetition. What about after thirty two years? So I so part of that visualization is designed to help me No that I don't know. Yeah. Right.

And And um which is so important. It's so easy to think that we were in the dark Y yesterday, but we're in the light today. But we're fucking in the in the in the dark today too. So I've I've a question about the self twenty years from now. Because

Part of What I enjoy about these these conversations with the mics is that with the we get to hopefully edge into some stuff that we haven't talked about. 'Cause we talk all the time. And I don't think I've ever told you about the piece of writing I lost That

Pained me the most. And the piece of writing that I lost was the following. I was uh for some reason maybe feeling under the weather or had an injury, something like that. I was unable to join some friends skiing. And I was very Upset about this.

Uh I I love skiing. And I was sitting in a lodge, lovesky lodges, so that's the upside. And there's beautiful fire. So on got some hot chocolate'cause that's what I do when I'm feeling moody and want to stuff my emotions in a ski lodge. And I

I had paper and I wrote this This long story. About A guy, AKA. Young young Tim.

wandering into a ski lodge, sitting down and having this older gentleman about twenty years older kind of sit across the a table near the fire by him and striking up a conversation. And I only realized later this that this is very close to a story by uh I think it's uh Jorge Luis Borges, but ended up being this surreal interaction between My younger self and my older self.

and asking my older self for advice on all these various topics. over the course of a few hours of sitting there in the ski lodge. And I looked at the advice after I had been writing all this for five to ten pages. And the advice made sense. A lot of the advice seemed like Very probably it w it could be the advice that a twenty Europe.

uh older self would give me with some detachment from the emotions of the current situation. And somehow, some way I ended up losing it. And that re it bothers me to this day because I thought it was uh there was so much there that I felt was really insightful and actionable. And it's wild that it came from the same head that it created so much confusion around those same situations.

So beautiful. Why don't you rewrite it, man? Uh I so I have actually not rewritten it in exactly that same way, but I've asked myself For instance, there are a bunch of decisions that I'm trying to make right now. What would you think? My

I'm forty two right now, forty seven year old or fifty year old self tell me to do right now as it relates to these decisions. There's a lot less turbulence, right, around uh Lot less kind of cloud cover. when looking at it with a bit of detachment that way. I'm curious if you ever kind of take it that literally or have Tried to look at your current

decisions or situations through the lens of an older self in that fashion. You know. Just a quick aside before I go there. I I think it's a really interesting question to ask people. Wha what Like

How would your twenty year older self guide you today because it gives you a window into somebody's ability to perspective take and to think conceptually. In other words, like think about the the old David Foster Wallace, This is water. Um a story of you know two fish are

swimming in the water and two young fish and an older fish come by comes by and says, How's the water, boys? And they look at one another as they swim by and like, What the hell is he talking about? Water, right? Most people can't see the water. Because they're just used to the water. Um but

it's very different to actually be able to see our mental models, our frames. So people are usually looking at the world through their frames. There you know, we can also cultivate the ability to look through the frame, but also see the frame. And And I spent a lot of my life working on Examining the frame.

itself. Right. You know, years ago w we did one of these these chats together and I described the drowning experience I had where I made some errors in um in breath hold work. We've already gone there. We don't have to do this all over the the thirty second version. Oh.

You can do it. You can do it, Josh. The thirty second version is that I was doing um some Wim Hof inspired breath hold work. I made the mistake of doing it. During um multiple Um l lots of reps of underwater swims, fifty meter swims at a pool in New York City, and on my like eighth or tenth rep I blacked out in a bliss state and I spent four minutes in the bottom of the pool after blacking out from oxygen deprivation.

Um this old guy pulled me out. And um And which I'm And I basically drowned all the doctors said after forty five to sixty seconds I should have been brain dead or dead, but it was four minutes.

um on the bottom of the pool and that my training saved me. Like also you could say Put me there, but that's a whole other conversation. So that we we've discussed that whole experience at length, we don't have to go there in in depth. Um but But I think that that that inspired aversion.

of this this thinking. I and it led to a lot of the life decisions that living the life we live today, which is very much off the grid. Um because I emerge from that experience just with

I mean I I was someone who filled with a lot of love a and a an appreciation for doing what one loves. But that went into overdrive and I just decided that I would devote my life to living as fully and deeply And

making as large a positive impact on the world as I could. And that was just all that mattered. And I um And we uprooted our life and changed everything. So I think that The that mortality experience.

Um And I and I um I mean that that was the most powerful catalyst for that kind of thinking. And I should just

Uh Note that Thankfully I've not had that experience. But about a year ago. At a retreat.

Uh Group retreat. There were a number of writing exercises. that we were instructed to do. And one of them was to respond to a prompt. And the prompt was

Pretend as though or imagine that you are going to die exactly two years from today. You will die in perfect health. Just Clock will run out two years from today. You will die.

What will you do in the next two years? What are the things that you would do? And I realise that's somewhat different. from having a near death experience and then reprioritizing but

It does apply a certain pressure. and a certain sense of urgency that I think you would get from either. Mm. And

That's That prompt and what I wrote afterwards gave me a tremendous amount of clarity. About certain things. that I wanted to do. And another prompt was if you were going to die in two years.

In perfect health. What Left undone, what would you most regret not doing? So s so similar question but slightly different wording. That also

Provided me with a tremendous amount of clarity. About certain things. Uh that I've followed through on. So it can be

Simulated. In that way. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that you know, I I I we we've over the years discussed this term firewalking. That I use for

physiologically embodying something we're trying to learn. Um so for example if you're training in the martial arts and you overextend your arm and you get arm barred and you're like Elbow gets broken or your shoulder gets ripped up. for example, in a world championship, you're less likely to overextend your arm next time. Right? To say the least. But if you watch someone else do it on a video, y it's hard to learn that lesson. But if you like if you learn how to physiologically embody

the experience that you're watching someone else go through or that you're thinking about in the abstract, right? Then we can save ourselves a huge amount of How does it be a little bit more Do that. How have you? Uh or how have you coached someone to do that effectively, whether it's chess, jujitsu

Investing otherwise. Well I think intense visualization. get it it's really training at visualization, which one can do through meditative experience. Um I think biofeedback training is really useful to help learn how to put yourself in a different physiological states.

At Will. Um'cause you can actually use biofeedback to observe what state you're in. If you just don't sense it so quickly introspectively. Um

Harnessing triggers for I was w I was with my uh with a my wife and a bunch of friends the other day and and um I haven't watched the Oscars in years, but the Oscars was on and Eminem's performance of Lose Yourself came on. And I it's funny, lose yourself was the song that I used

in the two my training camp for the two thousand four world championships In so for the three months of the last of every day of training I listened to it before every fight of the world championship in two thousand four. In between the semis and the finals, and in between the finals and the sudden death.

When I've been in the wildest State. That song is such a deeply Fucking burned in trigger.

I was mil I had my my eight year old son in my lap. We were watching the Oscars My three year old was sleeping on my other shoulder. And Lose yourself came on. And m my body was ready to fight fifteen dudes. Like it was unbelievable what happened to me. I had to just leave and I took a walk for ten minutes like

Unbelievable how powerful triggers are. whether it's all factory triggers with smell or music um connecting triggers different physiological states. I'm not suggesting that one one should should have something that I mean that's that's a pretty intense one. Yeah, maturion candidate stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean that I was it was kind of amazing to feel how powerful that was so many years later, just just right there. So I think that that learning how to put your I mean

Learning how to put yourself into an attain intense physiological state through visualization. Um for example cold plunging your body will go into an intense physio physiological state. You can attach a trigger to that. then you can go into that kind of fight or flight. State if you choose to.

So for example, one of the things you do cold plunging is you get into, say, freezing water. And then you learn to breathe yourself. It takes a while initially, but then pretty quickly into a state of calm. Like your heart rate goes very fast, you're hyperventilating a little bit, then you just chill it out and you're in a calm state. You can also choose not to go there. You can choose to get in the water and not

Breathe to that state of calm. And then you can ex sit in that state of alarm and that can become a state that you could use as a trigger for certain kinds of visualization. So there's lots of things that you can do if you're creative about firewalking. What are some of the ways that you build outside of foiling? Because I know that's a a main focus, so I I have to Kind of grab you by the hair to pull you out of foiling, but And you do for well a lot.

Uh What are other ways that you've built feedback loops into your life? Well feedback loops are. Alright. Everything.

It's funny, I was talking one though one of the funny things about my conversations with Maurice 'cause I really left the chess world behind. And it was fascinating just talking to him about how it's evolved. So much. And one of the questions that I was asking him is how present are world class chess players today to the networks of cognitive biases.

Th what's interesting is that many of the great chess players today actually Don't even know what cognitive biases are. And one of the reasons that they're able to do that is because Today.

You just have such unlimited accurate feedback loops because you've got computers that are much stronger than humans. analyzing the position by your side. So any decisions you make, you can look over and see if it's right or wrong. And the computers are so strong that they're gonna be right. And so y y you can basically have a feedback loop whenever you want. And so you just if you have unlimited feedback loops and you're training six, eight hours a day. You just learn to feel when your thinking is good and when it's bad. So just to clarify

In other words. cognitive biases, right? This is a we we w we won't go too broad, but an example of that would be something like sunk cost fallacy. Right. So players back in the day would have some conceptual understanding of how to define sunk cost balancing, what that means, but today it's more A intuition built upon

thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of near immediate feedback loops. Right. So the way Sun Cost fallacy could operate consciously for chess player is that you're studying a chest position, you've invested twenty minutes into it. And you're starting to sense it might you might be barking up the wrong tree, but you put so much time into it, you wanna keep on going. Right. Or that could just manifest without any consciousness of The bias.

And just that your thinking doesn't feel good. or you're in the moment you're thinking starts to feel a little bit less present or less on it, then you just go the other way. Right. Or

Like you can have a confirmation bias where you're You you can think, okay, right now, am I or am I not searching for proof of something that I've for a decision I've already reached. Right. Um or you can just

not be subject to confirmation bias because you've had it burned out of you by so many reps of feedback loops. Just Beating the shit out of you whenever you get it wrong. Right. So in arts Where You have

massive amounts of natural accurate feedback loops. You don't have to be as conscious about these things. On the other end of the spectrum, something like investing. it's very, very hard to have accurate feedback loops because

the decisions you make today if you're a long term investor, the decisions you make today And you could have had good process and still have bad outcome. Well you could have bad process and still have good outcome. So you have to so it might not be an accurate feedback loop, even if You do have the feedback loop. And so in realms like that, you have to be really creative. And I would argue that a lot of what defines the learning curve of of

Someone in a field like investing where accurate feedback loops are Yeah. Is how creative you are in creat in in manifesting them. For example you can have

Somatic feedback loops. You can use biofeedback to Understand when you're Performance state. is at a high level of quality or a lower level of quality. What does it correlate to physiologically? Exactly. So when you're thinking, well, what does that mean

What is the biofeedback saying and then you learn to feel physical signature. What's the signature of those good decisions? Right. Which we use biofeedback for initially but then we learn to we learn from the biofeedback how to sense, how to feel it, right? Um so a lot of what I you know, when I'm training people in like elite mental performers, a lot of what we're doing is being extremely creative in Designing

accurate feedback loops in places where it's not so So I'm asking me about myself. Oh. It's it's I mean you told me not to speak about foiling because but it but it's difficult because like that's what I'm all in on now. So I'm training in paddle surfing and foiling. And so

I mean I'm I'm gonna go. Kind of SWAT that deflection aside. I mean,'cause that's what I'm all in on, yeah, right. And so w what I So I mean I have I've learned that feedback works for me sometimes and other times I don't want it.

So for example, I have a buddy who who um does drone footage of us once or twice a week. on a cadence relative to the swell but also relative to where we are in the learning process. Usually I'll study video very closely.

And then I'll spend four or five days training without video feedback at the thing that I'm working on and then I'll Then I'll have drone footage again. I will have video feedback at a pace that feels appropriate to my learning process. That you you want to internalize You wanna work on what you're feeling internally without an external eye. Yeah, totally. And then sometimes you want the external eye. And I honor that. I really trust that.

Similar to in in for example the in let's just say you're training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and you've got a tournament coming up. your repertoire tightens, right? Your y it condenses down to what you're best at. But then you have a period of time where after the tournament, where may say you're not gonna compete for two months, you might have an experimental um repertoire that you're playing with. Things that by definition you're not very you're not as good at.

But that you you're you're expanding your you're investing in loss a little bit. You're Getting beaten up by some people who you couldn't beat up with your best repertoire. But you're you're working on things. So in that moment, if you're studying video in that period You might reject what you're doing because it's not as good as you can be. Yeah. So that's an interesting period to just work on somatically dialing in something and feeling your way into something. I think I just wanna underscore that because I think it's really important, and that is it's not always true that more feedback is better.

Absolutely. And uh if I look at a lot of the best teachers in gymnastics, in skiing. For instance. They're very one of the terms or one of the phrases that that that I heard a lot in gymnastics was like the first three reps don't count.

Right, because if someone's trying something brand new, their first few reps are gonna suck. They're gonna be terrible, right? But they're going if they have a a bit of awareness in other techniques or other practices, they're going to be getting a feel for it over those first few repetitions. And if you're just hitting them with twenty different sets of instructions, every rep it's gonna be counterproductive. Right. that you're internally generating based on how you feel and how you observe you look on video or something.

And then there's feedback that a coach or a trainer might be giving you. For a coach or a trainer to give you feedback, they have to they For you to let that feedback in, in my view, they have to know you very deeply. So there's a lot of trainers, for example. who can't get outside of their own conceptual scheme. So they tell you what you should do based on what they would do or what would work for them or what they would want to do if they were in your shoes in that moment. But that's very different from what you need to do in your learning process or you're ready to stretch for in your learning process. When when I when I'm working with people in a training capacity,

You know, I have ways of observing Um my core partners in training, um like professionally, you know, through their journals, through their brainstorms, through their biometrics, through lots of different things. And And I will

It's ninety nine point. Nine And I will might see something. That I would like to get feedback on or that I think I might

Make you know give some feedback on and then all Observe it sometimes for weeks or months, or even years. Until the moment is right. Or I will have a hypothesis that I'll test and then I'll think about what would be the way to explore this that would be most helpful and not lock somebody else up, right? So so much of what most coaches that I observe

live with is their own ego pattern. The ego pattern in they're stuck in their conceptual schemes, but also They want to have the egoic satisfaction of telling you you're doing something wrong. Or Or

Or making you better. will actually coach without e someone even being aware that they've been coached. Question for you on Stress testing your own thinking.

So I read the Slack channel. Which is comprised of interactions uh mostly Your sharing of ideas and thoughts and then the

asking for clarification by your teammates, right, who are employees. How else do you stress test your thinking or positions on things. Do you have a proactive way of doing that? Does it just happen naturally in your interaction with various friends? Uh. Because you have

You have physically somewhat isolated yourself. Right. Uh How y how do you think about

Stress testing the integrity of your thinking and positions. Yeah, great question. So I mean I I've physically isolated myself as you point out, but also somewhat technologically isolated. I mean I'm I'm not on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or any of those things. But I should stay off. Yeah, that's the game plan. Um But I have I have a really wonderful network of close friends and thought partners, yourself included.

Who I I am in dialogue with. And who I really trust. And I don't have a lot of dialogue with people who I don't think highly of. Um And so

I mean, for example, around what I'm working on actively in my training process. Dan Caulfield, who I'm I'm you know, we're out there on the water four or five hours a day together. He knows me You know, as intimately I mean our friendship was born in fighting one another for thousands of hours, literally. That's a hell of a way to begin a friendship.

Um as sparring partners and then w we still spar quite a bit out there on the water. And and and so like I mean we're always stress testing things together. Um Emily Quok who is just an awesome woman who's been my right hand human for about a decade. Um she's a Brazilian jiu jitsu. Um black belt women's world champion two times over.

She's my chief of staff and runs our whole operation. Um she's the boss of our whole thing. And she's I mean, Emily one thing that Emily's really brilliant at is ha is I mean, we have a shared consciousness. She understands Um, me very deeply. And she is very good at pointing out to me when I'm speaking in a shorthand that other people aren't.

um for dialogue within the team and you know, more broadly. Um is there a risk that if You are of the hive mind together that you have the same blind spots and therefore are at risk of missing

Flaws in thinking. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. I mean

But I'll have dialogue. But I have dialogue with I mean I have I have a I'm not sure how many different

Channels of dialogue open with with um you know I have clients who I work with who are I think some of the best thinkers in the world who I'm talking about ideas with but I think to just to dig in to dig into your point. I think that Absolutely yes. And so you need to have people in your ecosystem who push against you. And I in our surf and foil ecosystem, I mean

It' Dan Dan and I have this kind of a abstract, bizarre way of going about things. And almost everybody else who we're in dialogue with we've a group of I mean, Three of them think we're just completely crazy. The Jackson Pollocking World. Pushing back on everything we're doing relentlessly, which is awesome. And I'm sure some things they're absolutely right about. I I think that we need to build

Pushback. against us resistance is a huge part of everything we do. Now the one thing that makes it a lot easier in a competitive discipline, like Jujitsu for example, or chess, is that if you get something wrong, you get your ass kicked. Yeah, right. These arts where it's not so e I'm the wave can kick your ass, but but in terms of Other th it's much more abstract. So there's a lot more room for people to bullshit themselves.

Well to give a to give a current example for myself and Some of the conversations we had. and are having. We don't have to get into the the super specifics of positions and stuff, but as it relates to investing. Right. I would say something to you.

As I did yesterday. I want to give you a statement. And I want you to try to tear it apart. Right. And I find that Extremely helpful.

Right. Even if you happen to agree with it, right, just to say like all right, I want you to try to I'm gonna share my current approach or what I'm thinking and I want you to Really Try to tear it apart. As a as someone with uh

A very uh Powerful. So the CPU. Within your head.

Uh I find that to be really valuable for me. to proactively solicit that kind of feedback. Okay. Uh

I think cultivating Uh uh A close ecosystem of people who you can trust, to be honest with you. And their pushback is really important. 'Cause a lot of people w a lot of people are surrounded by yes men and yes women who will

Not do that. D do you find And I mean this is such a maybe cliched example, but it's a good example nonetheless. I mean if you look at the partnership between Buffett and Munger, right? The the a lot of the discussion I've seen about their partnership is how complementary and different Their

thought processes are in some respects. In the investing world, do you find as an example that people who might self identify as value investors tend to just hang out with other value investors? Or are there people who are Are some of the better performers you meet, do they deliberately expose themselves to people who have A different playbook.

Two Sure. Push at the edges. Of their Assumptions.

Well, first of all, it's important to note that like I I I don't spend time with Like most with a lot of investors. Like I I spend time with a very small group of investors who I think are awesome people and who I think approach things in a very unusual way. So I can talk about How these people who I know very deeply

operate around this question, but I don't but I think it's pretty unusual. I mean in in my observation, the people who are really operating at a world class level who I'm aware of in the investment world Are engaging Surprisingly little with other investors.

Mm-hmm. The they're separating themselves. Um so they're not susceptible to groupthink. I mean, often their interactions with other investors will be mostly as contraindicators as opposed to indicators. And and just to push back a little bit on uh I mean or to speak to the other side of what you just said, I agree wholeheartedly that it's really important to stress that's what we're doing. But I think that there's also something a little bit crazy and messianic about certain people who become really, really great at things. And like I think about Marcelo Garcia, for example, who

we've talked about a lot over the years, who's my partner in the school we own together in New York, the Marcella Garcia Jujitsu Academy. He's nine time BJJ world champion and Abu Dhabi world champ. Um I would argue maybe. I mean pound for pound, probably the greatest grappler to ever live.

If you Which is an opinion a lot of people hold. Yeah, for sure. Um if you just like YouTube or whatever, look at Marcella Garcia. I mean you you'll be check out the Marcella team. Yeah, he does a lot of amazing sh amazing shit. Um And what's interesting is if you when Marcello was competing

If you went with him to competition and you felt him in training camps. You know, I've been in a lot of training camps with him and we've sparred a lot in training camps and I felt him in that in that physiological state. Which is like you're fighting an ape. It's a really simian physical intelligence is wild.

I mean his lats are like hands in the precision of how they close around your neck. It's it's pretty amazing. Um But there's a confidence that he goes into things and it's the kind of thing where you can walk into a room where no one believes in you but yourself. But your self belief is so profound. That you're unstoppable.

And the the way I relate to that if you try to deconstruct it is that Like that kind of sense of inevitability of success comes from self expression. Yeah. And you build everything around the uniqueness of who you are. And like but you there are moments I remember when Marcello was there's one moment when Marcello was in a Munjal's and he was fighting on this guy Kalasans, there's a

Just brilliant, brilliant fighter on his own right, and Carlos Hans went for a wrist lock. And Marcello pulled out and then Marcello put his hand right back into a wristlock. Look Carlos Sans right in the eye and let him try. And just stared him in the eye while Carlisle tried to close a rip. And he just So he didn't avoid the technique. He just tried to break this man by putting himself into the thing and saying, You will not Like you can't break me.

And you can break someone by being unbreakable. And there's something about that kind of self belief. that is really powerful. And there's something about approaching things in really unorthodox ways. that you don't really know if it's gonna work until it plays out. I mean I'll give you like a

A very basic, much more simplistic example of that. The idea that Dan and me training in the e foil stuff was going to translate over to the Foil stuff. Was something I had tremendous confidence in, but I mean

pretty much everyone who I spoke to in the surf and foil world thought we were dead wrong and thought we were just barking up the wrong tree. And if you look at the footage side by side of those two different tools I could see why someone would conclude that. For sure, because the E4 is way heavier. You're on like a seventy pound instrument. Um And your You know, it's got a different dynamics, but you're foiling and you're foiling fast and you're getting tons of reps. And the E foil I would argue is much harder to learn than a than a a lighter foil in that

y it's more high consequence. If you get hit by it, it's bad, you're dealing with a machine. Um, you can die, lots of things. But But the thing is that it's but it's an amazing creation and You get so many more reps. So learning on the thing.

You just get I'm not sure if it would be early on hundred X, five hundred X, the reps. And so if it might be harder to learn on some level, it's actually much easier to learn because you can dial it in, but the belief that it will translate over comes from sort of a deeply intuitive thing. So if I stress tested that with by talking to other people in the foil world. I would have rejected it.

But I I and and what's interesting is that when when we translated over to being whipped in on the lightest, most high performance board possible on foil It all translated right over. No. I want to push back on one thing. Do it. And that and that is if you had stress tested it, you would have rejected it. I'm going to I'm gonna offer

that it's entirely possible for you to get to get a lot of contraindicating feedback and still hold your position. Oh, for sure. You're right. And uh And I did. I mean a lot I was getting a lot of that. Yeah. So I I think you're right.

You just have to handle the stress testing correctly. Now those is as I've I've read you put it. in your private journal. Those were reps hidden in plain sight, right? Or there are reps hidden in plain sight, like the front side turns just by going in circles. As opposed to being on a wave at all.

Like A front side turn, let's just say you're riding a wave, you drop down the face of a wave and then you do a bottom turn. So me uh means you're like turning on the bottom of a wave, uh like you go into the flats in front of a wave and you're bottom turning back up. back up into the wave. That would be like a front side turn. You're turning on the side you're facing on the board, right? Meaning like your belly button is facing away from the wave when you turn, just for Right? No, your belly button is facing toward the wave. Oh, it is. That's a front turn. That's a front side turn. Yeah, that's confusing.

So like I realized that my my cutbacks, my back side turns on on a going on a on a right on a front side wave. I know it's a little anyway. My my front side turns were were lacking. So what was a I was able to do on the e foil, it's so ridiculous. I put on a I big front wing and a very, very small tailwing, which allows you to the small tailwing allows you to have maximized turn

Yeah. And I just started to spin in circles under power. And I was using a folding prop. So if a wave came, I could enter the wave, the prop would fold and enter the wave. So in between sets, I was spinning in circles. So I would be spinning in these tight circles for Two minutes at a time. Just countless. I mean, uh if you were to add up the amount of turn time that I got in that one session to how many frontside turns you'd have to make. I mean it

I don't know. thousands and thousands and thousands of waves front side turns, right? Then whenever a a wave would come, I would just drop into it and work on that same body mechanic, and then I'd go back to spinning in circles. I look like a total madman. If anyone would have been watching me, they would it was like the ultimate like like what the hell is this ridiculous human doing? Looney tunes. But I made such huge growth in that moment. Can you think of other places in other arts, whether it's Chess, BJJ, push hands, investing, anywhere. Where you might find reps hidden in plain sight, or a way to do that type of deliberate practice that is uncommon. Well I think I think yes, everywhere. So we could get into a technical of reps hidden in plain sight, like the front side turn, which is technical, right? Which is

I think a fairly obvious one. I think that where the really Potent, low hanging fruit. Um Yeah, hanging in plain sight.

Um Like The thematic. Right.

Breaking down the learning process into the core principles or themes we wanna work on and doing reps of those. Those are just invisible to people in plain sight. Right. So you mean uh this is an example, maybe I'm But the learning the macro from the micro, say with the practicing of the end game in chess. With just a handful of pieces on the board.

Would that be an example? Or is that not a Yeah, so that that would be an example of that's a great example of reps hidden in plain sight, where you're you're basically setting king and pawn against king to get a feel for the essence of the king and the essence of the pawn. Then you're setting rook and pawn against learning about the essence of the rook. So you're getting tons of reps of the rook. Then you study chess tactics with rook and pawn tactics, and you get in tons of reps of those things. So that's an example of Of ways that you can get reps of individual pieces.

Right. Um so that's a those a that's a great example the way I would say of of When I'm thinking about conceptual or thematic reps in plain sight It's more around I mean

For example, surfing and foiling, one of the things that That we did that was strange was that you know I was much more comfortable in big waves

than small waves initially because I was comfortable with breath holds and I was comfortable. with intensity And Small waves in some ways are much more technical.

And I I just simply Like I hadn't um and And so I made the decision early on to to to surf and foil big wave bigger waves before I really took on Smaller waves. It might be a strange idea.

But But the kind of rep that I had to get Get Was Glide. Getting used to moving fast forward sideways, right? So for example, the one wheel, the E foil.

These were getting tons of reps in just the i in in the idea of glad. Learn to feel what Glide was like. Right. And just as an example that might be parallel, and I uh please tell me if I'm I'm not getting this right, but in terms of deconstructing and taking one

Theme like that. Uh Um So I am visiting you with my girlfriend.

And she's new to water in the in the capacity of surfing, paddling, et cetera. And rather than take a bunch of surf lessons, which was the Kinda knee jerk.

Uh idea that both of us had. Like, Oh yeah that's what you do. Take some surf lessons. And and your recommendation was to consider taking out a boogie board and just getting used to the sort of force and dynamics of the wave movement. Yeah, when I watch how people approach

Surf teaching, I think for the most part it's crazy. Uh people for the most surf teachers mostly teach people to surf by just going out and surfing. Like let's go out and surf. And they get their ass kicked because you have to learn to read the water, how to pop up on the board, how to where to enter the where to enter a wave.

Then how to turn. Um where to stand on the board, how to shift your weight on all this stuff. I mean in my opinion Like what we did w with with um your girlfriend is we went out and pushed her into a bunch of waves boogie boarding just learned to feel what glide was like on on the water. Also not traumatize her

and then learn to feel what different parts of the wave, the energy in different parts of the wave, and the last wave she got on her first day was actually in the pocket of a wave. I pushed her in right where it was breaking, right where she'd surf it. And she was so stoked. And she had a great positive first experience and she felt glad and it was awesome. As opposed to Like just getting super frustrated in the beginning. And I I think that deconstructing it is r is really important. You know, an interesting example of thematic deconstruction relative to reps hidden in plant sight. would be, for example, this idea around being at peace and chaos.

Or being learning to be okay internally or even to thrive internally when your body is in alarm. Right,'cause if you don't train at that, then when your body goes into alarm, you're just alarmed. But if you do train at that, for example, you can train at it like we discussed through cold plunging or different things that put that controlled ways of putting your body into that state and breathing through it. then you've trained at that meta theme. Right.

of being at peace in physiological alarm and then working through it. Then when you're in a in In a For example, a surf moment where you're in a total shit show.

then you've trained at that most important part of it, how to breathe through it. Right. You've learned the how to literally technically breathe through The alarm. Right, as opposed to trying to do that when you're also trying to read the water and figure out if you're about to hit a rock and you're in the middle of a hold down and you you you you've got one breath you could take between the next set. And everything's freaked out. You don't know what the hell's going on. Right. So I think that that that's an example of how to deconstruct things down to component parts and work on them. And I think it's actually

it simplifies the learning process in a lot of ways, because then when you put it all together You've learned the critical component parts, the thematic component parts. Yeah. Like reading the water. I mean that's something that I think should be done independently of just going out to learn how to surf. Mm-hmm. Um but very few teet some do, but very few surf teachers actually just work people with people on Reading the water when they're not surfing. Yeah. And the the the best teachers I've run into on water, for instance, uh

Good friend of mine, Kelly Starrett, incredible Uh Performance coach, physical therapist. All around hilarious guy. Also former

World class. Kayaker. And We spent time on Grand Canyon together. With his family.

And That's exactly what he did. Before Attempting anything technical. before learning any new skills. He's like, I just want you to move with me and I want you to watch the water.

And he would explain it once and we'd get to the next set of rapids and he'd go, Okay. What do you see? Where where's the tongue? Where would you go? Right? It's hypothetical before just throwing me in with Twills to try to

juggle simultaneously. But that takes empathy as a coach. Yeah. He's a he's a he is a he is an exceptional, exceptional coach. Yeah. Technique of expedient means or liberative technique, depending on on how it's translated. Of of Teaching uh of being aware of what the student is ready to stretch for.

And going there. That's taking yourself outside of your own conceptual scheme as a teacher and understanding what the the student needs. Right. I mean that's I think that's at the very

Like Principle one oh one. As a teacher. But very few p people really internalize it. Yeah, Kelly and you are both very good also at ensuring that the first few experiences Or

At the very least non threatening. Right. So th they may not be orgyastic celebrations of joy, but at the very least they're not gonna be traumatizing. Right. He's very good at that.

whether it's Olympic weightlifting or kayaking on what can be very, very scary rapids at different points. Ensuring that Yeah. the first few experiences as you're just getting a toe hold on the basic sensations of a new skill.

are non traumatizing. I've learned that I I think if you some people in my my Past might not say that was a core strength. Well we're uh We're coming up on a very exciting afternoon here, so I know we we don't have uh

Maybe in closing. About Robert Keegan, am I getting the pronunciation? Yeah. Who is Robert Keegan? Why is he interesting to you? So

Our friend Graham Duncan First turn me on to um To Keegan many years ago and I read his work, but I've been In the last couple of years just becoming increasingly impressed with certain

He's just a brilli a brilliant Adult developmental psychologist. And a lot of his work is around the the transitions in The human mind from an opportunistic to a socialized to a self authoring Um to uh

Self transformative. And and if we just zone in mostly around the transition between the socialised mind and the self authored mind, which is hold that thought. May I ask, does Graham find this Is he focused on this mostly in the context of talent acquisition or finding

Good talent. Is this is this sort of part of his filter in doing that? Yes. Mm-hmm. I think that that that was how he initially was drawn into it, and I think now it's just You know, part of his world. Yeah, just a lens. And it's one of many very interesting lenses. I I don't tend to have Like, think that one lens has got it all. But I one the thing that I'm intrigued with with Keegan's work, which I have a huge amount of respect for

is the exploration of the limitations of the socialized mind. Sometimes we can just will somebody to be able to perspective take. to release their perspective and take on someone else's perspective. Or the ability to hold me Multiple mental models. That are competing with one another.

And be at peace with that tension between them. Right. We can just want people to do that. But there are certain developmental hurdles to that. And I think that that's an area that Keegan has really explored brilliantly. And I I do encourage people to read Keegan's work Um how do you spell his last name K E G A N I Yeah.

I think It's important To be empathically present. to the developmental

That We All might have. Around what we can and cannot do. Conceptually.

I mean, it strikes me that we're all blind. It's just a matter of A accepting that we're blind and trying to figure out How we might be blind. Or what we might be blind to, perhaps is a better way to put it. Keegan. Yeah, and for those interested, Graham.

Graham and I had a a really fun conversation on the podcast as well. So I will create a short link to that. Graham's a brilliant dude, a dear friend, I love him. Uh and and one of I mean he's The best mind I've ever run into in the world around Um the hunt for

deconstruction of Like potential world class talent out there in the early stages. Best hair in the business also. Absolutely. Severe folcle envy of Graham. So for those people interested, you can f uh I'll create a short link to that interview, that conversation at Tim.blog forward slash Graham G-R A H A M. Joshua, anything else you would like to to mention, discuss? Disabuse me of Before we wrap up.

Nope. Uh A woodpecker is right now trying to put a hole in my office.

I think that's a great place to close. Uh so Josh, where can people find you? I feel like your answer is the same as Laird Hamilton in the Pacific Ocean. Yes. Well until next time. Uh thanks for hanging, man. Thanks brother. And uh recording something for posterity to be continued. Hey man, this was fun. And everybody listening for show notes for links to everything, Robert Keegan, et cetera, that we've discussed. Uh there's also an incredible video that I'll try to track down of Maurice Ashley.

Uh with me playing chess hustlers. which is just fantastic entertainment in New York City. So I will link to that in the show notes. Just go to Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And uh until next time, thanks 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 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,

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