#408: The Random Show — New Year's Resolutions, 2010-2019 Lessons Learned, Finding Joy, Energy Management, and Much More

Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. So then I also do post some questions. No, it's in the time. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal empty skeleton. No

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Okay. Hello friends. This is Kevin Rose. I'm here with Mr. Tim Ferris. Welcome to episode number nine hundred and forty seven of the Random Show. You're losing your flare, man. What?

I'm just busting your balls. It was good, but you looked off to the side like Rainman, which I liked on the video. Oh, did I? Yeah, yeah. But I like that. Oh shit. I had my uh ten year meetup anniversary with Daria last night. Um is our t official ten years together uh From our first date, I should say. Yeah. And uh yeah, had some wine. I hate wine. Yeah, you know, this is it's a love hate thing. So tell me about tell me about it. First of all, congratulations because ten years is no joke.

That's huge. Yeah. It is huge. It has been a crazy ride with Uh lots of lessons learned. Um, you know

Kids, all kinds of insanity. Now it's appropriate that you would have I'm not sure if you're willing to go into this, I don't see why not, but It's appropriate that you guys would have wine last night because maybe you could talk about one of your first dates and how wine played into that. Yeah, I mean I w basically walked into this bar. I I had Well I should back up.

Here's here's the the quick I don't wanna like spend an hour on this, but here's the quick little overview. I met Daria through Twitter of all places. Yeah and we met on Twitter because I was very fortunate enough to talk Ev Williams, the then CEO, to add me to the suggested user list. This is when Twitter had like fifteen people on the suggested user list. So I was one of the default recommended people to a lot of of different folks. So This is before they used algorithms for all that stuff. So anyway, Darry ends up following me. She retweets me on on something that I'd mentioned Doctor Andrew Wil. She retweets that I see her little twenty by twenty icon. I'm like, Who's this little sexy little icon? Yeah, the green the green cut off shirt, probably back in the day. Probably. That sounds about right. And so I I clicked through on it and you know, she says she's into wine, into food. Um, you know, she's a neuroscientist. I'm like, check, check, check. That sounds amazing. Uh, we should go hang out. And so we ended up DMing her. Uh, we met up at a bar I walked in, saw her.

was blown away and immediately realized I needed uh a substance to kind of like my nerves a little bit. Oh I thought you were gonna say to dumb her down so she would succumb to your charms. Yeah pretty much I think a little bit of both actually So I ended up just walking up and bought a whole bottle of wine and brought it back to the table. And apparently she thought that was a pretty ballsy thing. She's like, Who just buys a bottle of wine? But I don't know. I just felt like we were just gonna sit there for a while and I knew we had a lot of overlap and if even if we were just friends, like we'd have a lot to talk about. Yeah. So you know, that was the first date. And I say dumb her down because for people who don't know, Daria is razor sharp and extremely intellectual, very well read and uh a scientist. So she's she's extremely, extremely strong in the hardware brain department. Yeah, she's really good at calling me on my bullshit, which is great. It's important. Super important. It is.

Think that's what good friends do too sometimes. Yeah, no doubt, dude. Yeah. Uh Yeah so what are we gonna do on this episode? You had mentioned you want to reflect back on the last ten years, right? Well I was thinking we could talk about resolutions. we could talk about for twenty twenty or anything that we've thought about for twenty twenty, and also look back over The last ten years are just crazy. for me to even contemplate. I was looking at some of the landmarks along the way.

And it simultaneously seems Not long ago at all and a hundred years ago. Well, dude, I would love to continue this little theme that we started on, because I know your fans always like to hear this stuff is like Talk to me about your last 10 years of relationships. No, I know that's tough, but like a lesson lessons learned. Like for let me just start off with a 30 second version. My lessons learned are find someone that you're always on the same team with. So knowing that you're together in this versus fighting someone or having to like you know, have your own side is a big one. And the second thing for me was therapy. Like therapy and what got me here today in a very happy, positive relationship is Darry and I at multiple times went to a therapist and sat down and had a third party kinda analyze and help us work through some of his issues so that we could figure out how to be on the same team. But I'd love to hear like I mean I've known you personally for a long time, so I've seen you th through all k types of ladies

Oh yeah, we have we have mutually assured destruction on this one if we if we go if either of us know go nuclear. Uh, we have seen we've watched each other with many different relationships and trials and tribulations and learning learning moments, teachable moments. I would say that Looking back. There are a few things that are very present for me now that Mm.

Uh and also just just kinda mileage, right? I mean you you start to realize better what you need over time also. Yeah. Polarity, number one, I would say, is extremely important. And what do you mean by polarity? Yeah, we can spend a lot of time Discussing various ways to consider polarity. But what I mean by that is let's just say you have

a sliding scale. And this is probably gonna get me in all sorts of trouble. So for people listening, I don't care if you're Martian, US, Japanese, male, female, trans in between they're There are different types of polarity. And uh I'm gonna use probably heteronormative language, so if you wanna crucify me, go for it. But let's just say you have a slider that goes out this way. And right in the middle you have Not as related to

An anatomy but rather characteristics what Let's arbitrarily call like pure Androgyny in the center. Okay. And then you have feminine characteristics and let's just assume for the sake of argument that each person's gonna decide for them what that means, but feminine characteristics this direction, masculine characteristics this direction. So you have sort of and then

What I have observed for myself and also in a lot of my friends is that it's it's sometimes very helpful to find someone who is equally far away from that middle Point. in the opposite direction, right? So if you have Sone who is maybe hyper excessively

developed in terms of masculine traits, however you want to look at that. Uh very often they're gonna pair well. From what I've seen with someone who is as far in the opposite direction, and likewise. Like this, right? And there are there are books that discuss that discuss this. I read The Way of the Superior Man a hundred years ago by David Data, which talks a lot about this. I don't agree with everything in that book, but I do think

polarity, maintaining polarity, enhancing polarity, which can be done through any number of of different practices or uh reframes that I think is is very important for maintaining a relationship where there is Uh intense attraction and Um healthy a healthy sex life for for instance, right? I think that's very important.

So that's one. Two would be And this relates to what you said, having structure. for cultivating the relationship. That could come in the form of therapy. It could come in the form of having it say a date night once a week. Having A couple's day once a quarter, which I do with my girlfriend, where we spend a day talking very candidly about

The things we like, the things we're afraid of, sort of fears, desires, boundaries, negotiating new things, testing new things, et cetera. And we spend an entire day doing that. It's blocked out and it's known in advance that's gonna be once a quarter. We have different types of Say systems, if you want to call it that. Four Uh Cultivating the garden before it's in trouble.

All was well until there was a code read and things would devolve, people wouldn't say things they needed to say, resentment might build, and then something would explode. And then everyone is firefighting, trying to figure it out. And by that point emotions have run so high Elbows coming out. And it

And it doesn't mean both sides, but uh very often elbows would come out. From someone. Uh and It would just devolve very quickly. How do you handle when you when you have these

'Cause everyone has disagreements and they have these little things that may rub them the wrong way when you're in a relationship. And there's this balance between You know, taking everything personally and just You know, constantly responding back to your partner being like, I didn't like this, I didn't like that, I didn't like this. And then it becomes this like little nitpicky type of relationship. versus, you know, some of it you may want to just bundle up and discuss at a later point in time. Like how do you know when something reaches a certain threshold to where you bring it up with your significant other? Yeah.

I have uh and and I don't I don't mention my girlfriend's name because the internet's fucking crazy, so I like to try to protect her. You guys are both public figures, so it's part of the game, um in a sense uh f for you guys, but in any sense. Um Or in any case I should say uh that's why I'm referring to my girlfriend as my girlfriend. But Uh she and I generally will batch. And I think that's

In large part because I'm very sensitive. I'm a sensitive guy in a lot of ways. And I don't use sensitive. I used to view that word In a very negative. Light? Very negative connotation because we think oh he's so sensitive meaning.

He or she takes everything personally. But I had one of my closest friends. Who you've met actually before. Uh asked me maybe two years ago, he said, When did you know that you were really sensitive?

And i the question really confused me, and I'm gonna get back to the relationship and timing question. What I realized is my instrumentation in certain ways is just very, very sensitive. It's almost like a scale. It just has more decimal points for certain things. And I find a lot of Stimulation overwhelming. Yeah for that reason. So At a young age I learned how to turn that off or numb that sensitivity.

But I don't want to do that in a relationship, I'll so over time. На ластен єрз also лент да терніоф. Or compartmentalizing emotionally. is short term effective, long term very destructive. T.

Coming back to the timing question, so I'm still very sensitive to having Things I might perceive as criticism or suggestions that require me to make decisions Coming at me at like three PM on a weekday if I'm in the middle of some type of Phone call or project or writing, whatever it might be.

And there are s there are S timing solutions to that. They're also structural solutions, right? So my girlfriend tends to work at home and I work downtown. I have a separate place that I use for work. That in and of itself solves a lot of problems. And right, and it's and it's and you don't have to figure it all out being within twenty feet of each other at all times. Like that is a perfectly valid answer. Right. So that's one. Number two is that uh we will block out time. So we'll block out two hours or three hours on a given night. I'm

I'm making this up, but let's just say once every two weeks where we'll do batching. And the format of that Yeah. Not what we test in the beginning, which was like let's voice all of our

Complaints? Uh but when we started with that. In other words, this like litany of charges against each other in the beginning. It it poisoned the well and and turned into a very unpleasant

Uh experience for both of us that we didn't look forward to, right? We kinda dreaded doing it. And uh My girlfriend suggested a much better format. Some like

Good news takes care of itself. Let's just like tell me the bad news. But that turns out that's also pretty. Uh Counterproductive in a lot of cases. Uh so we start with what we think the other person is doing really well since the last batching session. And what they're paying attention to.

And what we like. Then we will Talk about what we think we are doing well. personally as a partner. And then what we would like more of. And the phrasing's really important, right? It's not what you're fucking up, it's what I would love more of. So it's sort of positive reinforcement if we're thinking about it like dog training, right? You're trying to shape a behavior. Instead of whacking the dog with a newspaper you're giving a little Scooby Snack to

Right. Direction when they get something approximately right. And So we do that and what's important to us at least, maybe important to me, important to both of us is we take notes. So if there are commitments

That are made. We have something that we can then refer to. Before the next packaging session and we can see your homework wasn't done. Yeah.

And If something's really powerful just to have that. I mean that I like the way that you structured that'cause I could see very quickly how that could just be a negative kind of bitch fest if you don't have that structure around it. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm and I'm extremely lucky that my girlfriend's a very clean fighter. That's something I've also learned is extremely important. Because the good times are the good times. But Uh I I've I've heard someone, I don't remember who said this, but the quote is not that adversity builds character, but adversity reveals character. And

You really want to know that your partner can navigate rough emotional waters when things are difficult. And not Immediately pull out a gun and Sho you in the face. You know? Yeah. I'm I I'm very fortunate there too. That's something that Daria has taught me a lot, is that it just Where are you coming from in this discussion? Like where if in it's if it's a from a place of

I want us to be stronger and better together and we are on the same team trying to solve the same problem. Yep. Then it's uh it's it's very constructive versus it being about tearing down someone. Yeah, there's a there's a framework that the conscious leadership group uses Jim Detmer, Diana Chapman. And so on. that I like quite a lot. I was introduced to their book, which I think is a fifteen

Commitments of conscious leadership. Uh by Dustin Moscowits uh long time ago, a couple years ago. And they have this concept of being above the line or bel below the line, and I'll let people look it up if they're interested, but it it's a very easy way to check in with yourself or with someone else to see How they are engaging in

a conversation or how you're engaging in a conversation and if it's likely to go sideways or if it's more likely to be constructive. Uh and I

I've found all of these helpful, and I think in part What I'm trying to say is that what what's important is not that you use exactly someone else's system or someone else's habits, but that you think about developing and using systems or structure of some type. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. I mean so many people out there, and I was one of these people as well. Just believe that if you find the right person

Everything will be fine. You know, I was always like looking for that perfect person and it just it just doesn't exist. You know, like we're unique creatures. And so, you know, the second you can realize that and then you realize, well, I do need a framework for this. You're just gonna be in such a better place. resources or practices have you found helpful in your relationship aside from the therapy. And when you were doing the therapy, when you found it most impactful, how often were you doing it? How long were the sessions? Was there a particular type of therapy?

What did that look like? Yeah, basically on the therapy side, it was about an hour long session and we would go once a week And we did that for a couple months, and really that was Um, her position is like I'm not a mediator here. I'm here to give you and teach you tools. So that you can go off and do this on your own. Um, you know, this isn't about uh

you know, the chiropractor method where you just g have to keep coming back for one more session. Your back will be fixed, you know? So she was she was actually Daria's in there right now. I'm tell I'm like keep telling her, Stop going to the chiropractor. Um not, you know, adjusting you in a week and then putting it back to how it was the next week and then just racing and repeating. Exactly. But um you know, once we had those skills and I and I think a lot of it came down to the language we use with each other and then also just Stopping before the conversation even begins.

And realizing and both acknowledging that The conversation we're gonna have is so that we can figure out the best path forward because we both deeply love each other. And we wanna find a solution to this. And so that kind of just like Just starting up from that, if you can both get in that mindset, it just really defuses things right off right off the bat. And that's that's like ninety percent of it. Yeah language

I am embarrassed how long it has taken me as someone who is supposedly a writer. to pay close attention to the language I use with my partner. And I've always been semi aware of the language that I'm using, but I've I've very often become impatient And wanted to cut to the chase in conversations.

Where that is Kinda like lighting your hair on fire and then looking for the fire extinguisher. It's it's backfire is more than it helps. And nonviolent communication. has uh been uh a door that opened a lot to me in the sense that there there's a framework for nonviolent communication people can look this up. The audio book

of the same name was recommended to be by Neil Strauss initially and what it made clear to me is that if you phrase things such that you are taking full responsibility for your experience and your emotions it really disarms people and helps to avoid A lot of headbutting and defensiveness, for example.

one of the phrases that my girlfriend uses a lot. There are two things she does that I think are very Remarkable. Uh at least That's that's that's how I felt. And how I still feel. Number one is she will very often Preface.

Any type of criticism With The story or something that's bothering her. S she'll say the story that I'm creating in my own head. Is That you

Dot dot dot. Right, you did X because you wanted me to feel Y and therefore it hurt my feelings. But it's fundamentally different. From uh Saying you did X to make me feel Y. Right.

My response to the to the first is very soft and I'm engaged and I listen versus the second. The second thing she does Which I think is very Mature. And that I've copied is there are times when I'll ask her a question.

Maybe we've had an argument or Or maybe simply it's been a difficult day. I might ask her. What's wrong? What's on your mind? And she'll say

Mm, I have a lot in my mind, but I'm gonna spend some time processing it. I'm I'm I'm I'm feeling a little tired or a little upset. And I feel like if we talk right now, I'm just gonna make a mess of things. So let's talk later. So she will veto

my attempt to engage if she feels like she is emotionally in a place Where the content or tone of the conversation might take us sideways. And then Next morning she'd be like, Great, can we sp can we put some time on the calendar? to talk. Maybe we can go out to dinner and and get in the calendar and then she's in a better place after

And I have As someone who has often Been in a rush to rip off the band aid with everything. found that very wise and really, really effective. So I've applied that not just in my interactions with her, but with other people also. Right? If they call me for a big conversation about something that's sensitive and I'm exhausted, maybe I drank too much coffee, I'm a little

Twitchy then I will use Effectively the exact same phrasing. to reschedule. Yeah, that's brilliant. I I've never

thought of that and it's it's like it's it makes complete sense. I mean just hitting pause for a moment. To to recalibrate. And I think sleep plays a big role in a lot of this stuff. Like I will feel completely different about a subject the next morning when I've I've woken up and had a good night's sleep, you know? Oh yeah. Yeah, well that's that's on my So my my list of things. That's certainly uh you know I have all these lists in front of me, but

How have you been thinking about Either. Twenty twenty. The last I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this.

What is anything that comes to mind in terms of looking forward to twenty twenty or looking back from two thousand ten to two thousand twenty for you. Yeah, I mean I think when I look back, I try to think about A couple things. What were some of the big aha moments that I had? That

Um when I look at I'm like gosh, wish I would have done that sooner. But you know, there's not much you can do'cause they happen when they happen, and that's fine. Um, and then you know, what's worked well and I what do I want to continue forward with and the continue to bring forward into you know this new decade. And then also What are some of the things that

I totally missed the boat on that I need to go and especially now give my age, now that I'm you know Well into my well, not well into my forties, but I'll be forty three this year. Um What do I want to address to set me up for the long term? And so that's that's how I've kind of been putting these things into buckets.

What what do you have in any of those categories? I'm particularly interested in the last one, but uh I'm interested in all of them. Any any Any examples that you can give? Yeah, I mean I think that um I I I wrote down a handful of things when I was when I was kinda doing my prep for the new year.

Um Looking back on the last decade, the one thing that I didn't do soon enough was admit to really to myself and to others that You know, I didn't know certain things. And I think the the quicker you are to come forward with the fact that there is a hole in your knowledge

Um the quicker that hole will be filled. And I think that, you know, oftentimes I tried to cover that up because, you know, you get in certain situations You know, when I was working at let's say as a partner over at Google Ventures or you know, and you're working with people that that um seem to be a little bit more well rounded than you in certain areas. And there's this kind of like

uh fear of, oh, maybe they'll find out that I really don't know as much as they think I do. Or, you know, and you have these little holes and it can be in all different I've kind of like given up on that in the last couple years and just been like screw it. Like if I don't know something, I'm going to come out and just say so. And just try and pick it up. from from mentors. So turning people rather than treating them as like someone that's gonna judge me is to someone that I can learn from. And that has been just something that in, you know, probably

The last few years I've gotten a lot better at, but uh earlier in the decade I just really avoided and and hid from people. So that was you've always been really good at that though. You're you're the master of learning new things and and admitting when you don't know something. Oh thanks for saying that. I uh that is I mean I've got plenty of Plenty of weaknesses, but I I do think Is that

I am uh for whatever reason very good at very quickly saying I have no idea what that is or who that is Yeah, and uh I think the podcast has helped, quite frankly. Because people bring stuff up and I'm like if I pretend and nod along like I know what's going on, this could this could get really ugly. So if they're like, Do you see this movie, I'm not gonna be like, Oh yeah, great movie And then I'm like oh I'm gonna get called on this. So I've I've become faster at saying I have no idea who that person is. Where do you think your holes are right now? Like if in in in your kind of like I mean,'cause I know you have dabbled in so many different things and we share that common interest. Like, where do you think like, gosh, I really wish I was a little deeper in this given area?

Well, it's an area that I've spent a lot of time studying and focusing on in the last six to nine months, which is saying no and creating rules and policies that allow you to say no. Easily. Or more qu and or more quickly.

Right. Uh so I I think I've over You've been practicing that for a while though, because you you've been saying no to investing for a very long time. I haven't been able to get you to invest in a deal in like Ten years. Yeah, it's and that is and the result of that, or I should say the reason that is something I've been able to do is that I set a policy and made a public announcement in I wanna say two thousand fifteen that I was stopping startup investing. And so you c you can analyze

very easily actually why it's easy for me to do that versus say no to some other things. And A commitment that I've wanted to make for twenty twenty and beyond. This was informed by a Seth. uh Goden blog post actually that I that I put in my newsletter in Fible Friday about um Not trying harder, but creating better systems and rules instead.

There are a number of anecdotes in that that really drive the point home. It's a very short piece, people can find it. It's one of the most popular on his entire blog of his ten million posts that he has. So I've been looking for and I know you're a fan of the book Essentialism and Greg McEwen was on the podcast not that long ago. Uh I the filter that he uses that I'm trying to also use more is where can I make one decision that removes or a thousand or ten thousand decisions.

So the start up retirement is a great example. It's public. Something I can point to. It's accountable. Or I can be held accountable. It's not personal, right? It's been depersonalized. And That has removed so much stress in my life, it is it is hard to overstate.

How what do you think but where did that come from? Because when I think about the things that I've seen you say yes to in the past. They have been these epic things like adventures, travel. like new different types of, you know, things from doing sauna and ice training or you name it, like you've done so many crazy body hacks. It's like that was all because you said yes to everything. Like so where are you saying no to now? Yeah. It's

Well I should say that The what's important to note there Is I thought you were going to mention startups. But it applies in the same way.

the there's a survivorship bias in the sense that What I say yes to is visible. Or my friends at least might be aware of it. But behind the scenes I'm saying no to almost everything. And I'll give you an example of something that I've I've been thinking about. So first I I have an announcement already

on the blog and so on, which says I do not do uh book blurbs. Blook blur blur blow. Book blurbs. And That was a decision I made because I didn't want to have to pick and choose among friends, which could create all sorts of bad blood and and drama that I didn't want in my life, and therefore I decided on a blanket nobler policy. Uh nonetheless I still get sent

dozens of books every week by publishers who have put me on their spam mail lists. Uh I have Dozens of unsolicited books that get sent to me and I have many books. I get the same thing. I don't know how to turn it off. It's like spam. It is. So I I'm going to maybe do some some public shaming with these publishers. So publishers, if you're listening, please take me off your mailing lists. I have not asked ever to be on a single one. But I won't hurt the authors, don't worry about that. I'm not going to shame the authors because I don't think you random books like unsolicited not to fucker. Such a fucker. The what I realized is I'm

The the no blur policy isn't enough. It's not Upstream enough to to tr to try to address tons of books. And if you do the math, right, you read The Tail End by Tim Urban, you realize I might only be able to read

I don't know. A few hundred Books. Before I Bite the dust, let's just call it. Uh if we're looking at good books that take a long time to digest, uh some of the classics, let's say.

You do not have the luxury of reading Books that you are not in full stoke about and Uh part of finding books that are more likely to invoke full stoke is looking at books that have stood the test of some time. It doesn't need to be a hundred years, but it could certainly be five years, ten years, something like that. So one of the commitments that I'm making

And this is This is the first time I'm talking about it. For twenty twenty is I'm not gonna read any new books. And new books means no books published in twenty twenty. I'm not gonna read any books published in twenty twenty. And that will immediately I I'm gonna write a post about that. It will be public and I'll speak Hey.

That's the policy. So for whatever reason Once making that announcement, I will be ridiculed and called a hypocrite and given unending shit from my loving audience because that's what they should do. If I betray that. thoughtful about making that type of decision. But that

remove so much of like the FOMO, the neomania, the keeping up with Mentality. That Yeah, I think that could really Really, really return a lot of dividends. So that's one blanket.

The thing I uh the reason I like talking about this is like we we know each other pretty well and I I I like to like poke in a little bit further. But Um poke away. You Um

And and correct me if I'm wrong or what what y how you feel about this, I'll I'm curious to see. Oh god, that's a lot of a lot of soft balling up. I When I think about you, you have when I first met you. Um You were

relatively unknown in that you didn't have a big following. That's right. Uh you had your your book coming out and You know, people were excited about that, but you know, nothing compared to what you have today. No, my mom and a few friends read my blog, that was about it. Right. So I'm curious, like

I when I hear you th say things about like, you know, publishers are sending me too many books, like Uh and I I I want to make sure not to do blurbs and things like that. It feels to me like you've been bombarded. Yeah. With like too much to where you feel overwhelmed. Yeah. It's like everybody wants something from Tim. Like the number of times that people that have like pinged me and been like, dude, you know Tim, can you send him this thing? Blah blah blah blah. It must just be

Anxiety provoking in to some sense in that you're being pulled in so many different directions. It's like In a way, I mean you're not like celebrity like you know, you walk down the street and I'm sure people do recognize you, but not to the sense that not like a a Brad Pitt a massive movie star Brad Pitt or something like that, right? But does that Is that true and is that starting to like does that bother you? Does that get under your skin a little bit?

It feels like it's a lot for you to handle. It's a lot. I As someone who is also taking the armor off of a lot of these sensitivities, because I want to cultivate them instead of Pushing them underwater. It's a challenge to do that while simultaneously. being bombarded with so much stuff, for sure. I mean I was I was pulling up my phone just to look at

Uh Unread email six hundred and eighteen thousand nine hundred and fifty two. Holy crap. Right. Then I have two hundred and seven two hundred and eighty seven unread text messages.

Right. So Uh I'm Ninety nine notifications on Asana. It goes on and on. But the the point being I

don't expect much sympathy because these are Taxes that I pay. For Also a wide range of different types of access and so on that I do have from

Yeah, no private jets. No private jets. No private jets. I'd like to use yours. When it's idle, I'll take your private jets. Uh I'm happy to cover the the beverage cost. Uh The But It it it is it's it is challenging from an energetic management perspective, right? So I find as I get older and looking back at the last decade and looking forward to twenty twenty

That time management is important. But time management doesn't matter unless you have attention management. Right, because you can stare at a screen and have blocked out two hours and if your mind is wandering all over the place and you're getting hit with push notifications and you can't focus, it is rendered useless, let's say. So you've time management, attention management, and then If you even have I'm sorry, you have time, attention, and then even if you have attention and these are related, but if you are lethargic, you haven't slept well, or you ha have been depleted from making too many decisions.

Mm-hmm. Poor decisions or the likelihood of making bad decisions is really high. And I've Well there's also prioritization of things at that point, right? Because you need to know how to prioritize certain things. Otherwise you could spend Time on the wrong things and attention on the wrong things. Right. So I mean it could be a Zen uh Zen, well. Well it could be Zen, but it could be a Venn diagram with, say, five or six interlocking circles, and you're looking for that sweet spot. And uh a big part of that is energy management. The only or one of the best tools I have found for that is

looking at your inbound and your projects in terms of categories looking at as I did Just recently, my last year, looking at energetic peaks and energetic troughs, like what rob me of energy, the types of things. Not single things. Single things can be helpful, but the types of things. Were they speaking engagements? Were they long conversations with lawyers? Were they

You name it. Spending too much time in cities. Taxes. Taxes. K one. K one. Oh K ones. Love the love those K ones. Hurting cats. Uh All of that. What are the categories of things that have depleted your energy and what are the categories of things that have given you energy and So what were those for you? I'm curious, especially on the giving energy side. Giving energy side extended time in nature, for sure.

So you like the forest bathing stuff and Yeah. I just spent two weeks in Utah and spent almost that entire time With at least an hour or two in the mountains every day. And uh it was Incredible. I mean incredibly recharging. I was getting a lot of activity every day.

because that is certainly interrelated with Sleep quality, sleep onset, and so on. Lots of activity. exposure to sun and so on. made a huge difference and I came back to I love Austin, but it it's funny how These these shifts can be so relative. If I go to New York City and then I come back to Austin

I I get off the plane, let out a huge sigh of relief. I'm like, oh, thank God my blood pressure drops 20 points, and it's extremely relaxing. But going from Of Utah to downtown Austin. around rush hour I found completely overwhelming. Uh so I've been very, very tired for the last few days since I got a cave in Utah.

Yeah. So I that that's one that I find very energizing. Number two would be Creative work before problem solving or Or Managing Anything or anyone blocked out.

in the morning to do some type of creative work. It doesn't have to be writing a long blog post or a chapter. It doesn't have to be a painting. It could just be Taking a photograph on a hike to share on Instagram, right? But something that is productive in the most literal sense. Like it's producing something that

in some fashion uses a creative muscle. I find that sets an emotional tone for hours afterwards or the entire day afterwards. It's really More important than I would have expected. To have that.

Uh there are there are lots of other things, but uh what about yourself? Okay. Yeah, I mean for me, um Well and you mean just mean in terms of things that energize me? Yeah, we're thinking about

twenty twenty, things you want to do more of versus uh or things you want to do less of. Yeah, I've I've picked some very specific things. Um, one of them is no BPA or plastic this year. So I'm not I will not drink a beverage out of any type of tin can. They're all lined with BPA on the inside. Um so and no plastic containers.

So I'm using all glass for anything that I drink out of Um and so that's been a big thing for me. I just kind of wanna get away from plastics in general. Um Aside from that core strength, I th I've thrown my back out as as old and lame as it sounds a couple times over the last six months, probably carrying kids too much. But I I um so I've been getting more into I've been doing PTs, some physical therapy around that.

Also um getting back into Plotties. And then uh Peter Tia, who you've had on the show multiple times, he recommends um a system called uh dynamic. A neuromuscular stabilization. DNS. DNS. And so Have you heard about this at all? Uh you know, I have read of it. That's that's a tough acronym to choose for the internet, but yes. Yeah, that's right. So so that's something that Peter's been into over the last, you know probably year plus and uh I'm starting to get into as well. So uh really excited about kind of building that foundation. You know, Peter has this thing where he talks about the uh centenarian Olympics, like what do you wanna be able to do when you're a hundred? Like you wanna be able to get out of a pool without like you know climbing steps and like

So I I really I think now is the time in our life where we could set ourselves up for that that future. So I I really want to start taking that seriously. Um, the next thing is a big one for me, and that is um really tracking Um both uh well mostly my my drinking over time. So I want to be very mindful about how much alcohol I'm consuming. And so one of the things I did is um I worked with the folks over at Zero, um the intermittent fasting app that that I started a couple of years ago. Um, there's a whole team around that now and they built an app uh uh called Less L E S S.

And so that just launched on January 1st. And it helps you, it's completely free. There's no ads or anything like that, but it just allows you to tr track all of your alcohol consumption. And you can set maximum amounts of drinks per week. You can see your week over week, month over month progress. Um, and it's just a great kind of like beautiful little calendar um to track uh and eventually compare with friends. Uh so we could be able to have, you know, of like a friend group and see who's drinking what. But it's there's something uh there's some accountability there that could be pretty interesting. So Uh, they started off by me and a buddy my buddy Mike Maser just tracking all this stuff in a spreadsheet and we just had it in a Google sheet, but it was a pain in the ass to kind of put in new new figures every day by opening up a spreadsheet. So now we have it in a little app form. So that's uh a big piece of it. Also, I've been getting into home automation a lot for my house. So I really have finally think that home automation is is is here and not in the way I thought it was gonna be, but I I've been starting to mess around with a lot of that stuff just to set up routines for my house to consume less energy and and really just uh

coordinate different things around the house. Get get bring more music into my life. And so part of that is just making it super simple to kind of like play and automate throughout the house. Yeah, I uh I was thinking about This call and this conversation.

And uh took all sorts of notes. And uh When I look over it, I mean a lot of this All comes back thematically to Energy awareness and energy management.

Uh and looking for At least in my case, some of the Energy drains that you're simply or I'm simply unaware of or have been unaware of for a long time. Right. And

Uh. I had Jerry Colonna, you may know the name. The uh Coach with the spider tattoo, I believe was the name of the podcast, but he he's uh does exec coach work with all sorts of CEOs and so on. And he had a series of questions that that really struck me

that I've revisited a lot since my conversation with him and I did over New Year's And I'm still looking very Closely and I'll paraphrase these aren't gonna be perfect. But roughly the questions are how am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? Mm-hmm. Right. So how am I actually

Very Perhaps subconsciously, but nonetheless very actively creating the conditions that I bitch and moan about. Right. That's one.

The other is Or there are three others. You know, what needs to be said that isn't being said? And another way to phrase that would be what am I not saying that needs to be said? That's actually a huge one for me and I'll I'll come back to that. What's being said that I'm not hearing, I think that's very helpful. For me at least in the context of a relationship. And what am I saying that's not being heard? I don't I don't uh

feel too focused on that one. But what needs to be said that isn't being said I think that uh from a very young age For whatever. reason or a number of reasons I have uh protected a lot of people who have inflicted

Harm on me. And that The goal is not to make twenty twenty the year of vengeance. Uh but rather to recognize, at least for myself, I've had I've had a number And by a number I mean probably six to eight very uncomfortable conversations in the last

Two weeks are these relatives or friends or what what are you talking about here? across the board. So these could be people I've worked with for a long time, could be family, could be close friends. And by uncomfortable I don't mean confrontational necessarily. So some of these are Talking to people about episodes or issues or Old wounds that

were never fully cleared. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. And trying to do so in a way based on all the wonderful schooling I've had from my girlfriend, and I mean that uh very sincerely in communication doing it in a way where everyone comes away from the conversation, ideally feeling better. But doing it first and foremost to Say what you feel you need to say. And recognizing that you cannot

control the response of the other person. So not going in with any hope or expectation of how someone will respond, but simply to Clear the air. And do you think that's because you're feeling the burden of that? A hundred percent. Like you have these things that are unsettled, basically, and you're like, I need to like just like have this uh the release it, basically. I mean you release that by having a conversation with the Yeah, and some of these things are months old, some are years old, some are decades old. And it could also be Uh on the flip side, things that are very positive. But for instance, reaching out to mentors who I never properly thanked, you know, people who really helped me and s kind of saved me in a way during high school years.

reaching out and if I get voicemail leaving a really Heartfelt. Thank you for all the help that they gave me that at the time I was just too Young I don't want to blame it on you though. Self absorbed maybe? Caught up in my own shit. to realize just how valuable they were and how much

Thought. They put in. to Helping me, that type of thing. Um and it's been so freeing, I have to say. Uh so so those

questions or questions that I want to pay. In addition to other questions, a lot more attention to in twenty twenty. Because there's been such a process for me of unburdening. And um I don't know if you've had this experience, but

Let's just say you have a backpack and it's full of shit that you've been carrying around For Months, right? There's just stuff that sits in there. Could be like oh yeah, the ball I think I'm gonna roll my feet out on and the extra battery and the this and the book and the notepad and the this and the that. And then one day you're like well I'll take a new backpack and you just stick in like what you need, like a laptop and you walk around and you're like Oh my god, now my back doesn't hurt.

And you just didn't realize because the new normal was carrying around all that bullshit. That sudden became your new Basis. uh reference points. So for me having these conversations

started off as an experiment. And I say that's the big takeaway, or one of the big takeaways from the last ten years for me is the value of viewing things like this as short term experiments. But I didn't expect these conversations to have the

Huge exhale and relief of tension. And the persistence of that feeling. uh that ended up being the case. It's been it's been really remarkable. I've been uh very uh impressed and relieved with that. So that's awesome. And d do you ever do any of this um

Well, I'll give an example. A friend of mine sent me a really nice note uh a couple months ago that was a handwritten note that He spent the time to to thank me for something and I just read it. I was like, wow, that was like a really thoughtful thing to do. Um, you know, and also I know there's also power in even writing notes to people that are no longer here. You know, if someone's passed away and you have something you want to say. Um doing that as well. Have you done any of that, or has this been mostly just like in person coffees and phone calls and things like that? It's been mostly voice. Uh and in part because I've had

I think fear and hesitation around using voice. So I've wanted to face that. To hope. Why was there fear around using voice? I I would think there would be fear around writing something down that I would post on the internet if you sent it to me. Well, there's that too, which is which is why I send you fewer love letters than I used to. I find

It allows a certain degree of predictability. You can hone your message. And Yeah.

Can be asynchronous, right? You don't have to respond in real time. And I think that with saying what needs to be said Uh In many of these cases I wanted to see and feel the responses.

From these people. Whether I was thanking them and Expressing gratitude or Perhaps Making clear that something that was done or something that wasn't done. for me was not okay. And that it's had

repercussions in that it's something I've suffered through and that I'm not looking for any resolution. I'm not looking for a response, but it's weighed very heavily on me. That I have kept this to myself and felt like It was a secret. Uh That's

I alone needed to carry. So it's it's really. And I make that really explicitly clear too in in a lot of these conversations that I'm saying it just because I want to feel free after having said it. There's no expectation of A solution, a resolution. Behavioral change.

None of that. And that I'm just looking for an opportunity to voice something. Uh. So I've done almost all of it via voice. That's great. Yeah. It sounds like it's such a freeing thing. Like if you can how how many of those did you have to do? Do you still have more to go through or is it Uh there are it's it sounds like Arya Stark's list. Exactly. It's it's not a long list. It's it's really uh

In certain moments, whether it's like Taking a bath or going for a long hike. I will have these moments of clarity where I'm like, Oh Yeah, that thing. There was never any resolution. Right. It doesn't have to be a big deal. It doesn't have to be a big deal. It's also not like

You know, I'm hunting down the guy five years ago who cut me in line at Starbucks to send in the confession. I'm not doing that. I'm looking for the The the the anchors that I At some point

Uh Never never was able to reel in, if that makes sense. Right. It's like there was something that was never completed. There was a sense of

No resolution. And By resolution, just to make it super clear, I don't mean solution. I mean Closing the loop.

Mm-hmm. From an emotional standpoint. Yeah, I think we can all think of One or two of those that we all have. Like I I I have one at the top of my mind where I'm like huh, I should go back and and close that loop. Also apologies. I've also uh issued a Issued apologies and giving apologies to folks. So it could be apologizing for something you did that at the time you felt you were in the right in doing and looking back you're like

That was stupid. Even even perhaps you were in the right. But the tone and the delivery you used was really Aggressive or Unnecessarily heavy handed. That's that's a closed loop.

Uh or a loop that you sh that you could benefit from closing. Well. And uh it's it's been a it's been an an exercise for me. And Uh

Jerry's questions. have been really important because they it for me they tie together. Yeah, let me explain. So Let's take what am I not saying.

That needs to be said or that should be said. And then you have number one on my list, you know, how am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? Well If by not speaking truth in some Fashion. I have developed resentment towards someone.

Right. Whose fault is that? One could argue that it's my fault. Because I kept that inside. In which case I'm complicit.

In creating This sort of emotional terrain that breeds resentment. Like I am complicit in creating those conditions. So Well and oftentimes sometimes those are in your own head. Like you've made up the story of why this person is this way, and then you have the conversation you're like, Oh, I'm actually the asshole. I d I misunderstood where they were coming from. Absolutely. And Uh I will say also that in almost every instance whatever I expected in these conversations to happen, whatever I thought the most likely response was, was not the response.

And that has been fascinating. Right? I'm like well that person is this type of person. When I say X they are likely to respond with A, B, or C. And when you use very thoughtful

Delicate language. like the story I've created in my own head is Suddenly people you think you know really well can surprise you. And Uh that has opened up

a whole new level of depth in many relationships in my life having these conversations. That's been the icebreaker that's been months or years overdue. It's been uh it's been uh really really quite profound. Uh I'm gonna name a couple of other things real quick that were realizations.

I had when looking back over the next ten years and The next ten years, well. Time traveling. Back to the future. The last ten years. 'Cause I have four books, right? For our body, for our chef. Tools of Titans, drive mentors, then got the T V and got all these different projects. Couple of things.

We're getting out of the Maybe hyperemotional stuff, happy to go back. But for our chef, since that was an experiment in distribution where Amazon publishing was boycotted by everyone, Barnes and Noble, Indies, big box retailers. Uh and this was reiterated for me with some of my television Experiences.

is you need to really understand or ideally control distribution. And Uh the only way that you're gonna do that very often is by uh financing and owning whatever you produce. Yeah. Full stop, that's it. Like if you are not paying for it, you are not going to have

If you are a per snickety perfectionist. like me, the degree of control that you will want, particularly when it comes to choosing distribution. Uh because I've I've had these These projects that have to be a little bit more. ended up being things I'm extremely proud of.

But they're locked in a vault somewhere. from a from a distribution standpoint. That's been very, very painful. So I've had to learn that lesson over the last ten years multiple times. And uh also This seems so childish. It's embarrassing to admit, but

You're gonna laugh. Get everything in writing. Uh if If someone's tell you via email or this or that, yes, we're planning on this type of A B C D and E

It needs to be in the contract. And one thing that I really liked is a frame for agreements which only came up recently with Gary Keller, who's a huge real estate magnate, innovated a lot in that space, based here in Austin. He said you should you should view every agreement as a disagreement because it's most Important function is to tell you what happen what happens and what the options are if there's a disagreement. Right. Right. Um so that's been something I've learned repeatedly. And then the other question that I still pay a lot of attention to

That led Me from for our chef to years later, because I took a long break for me at least from books to Tools of Titans was what might this look like if it were easy. That's become a really

Important go to question for me. Um because I because I think that I pride myself on being able to handle complexity, and sometimes that results in me coming up with uh somewhat ridiculously unnecessarily Complex

Solutions to things. Where the the easiest solution, like rather than spending the next year figuring out the perfect wordsmithing so that I can manually reply to everybody who asks me about books And doing this and promoting on the newsletter and doing the podcast. Maybe I just do a blog post that's two hundred words long that says I'm not reading any new books published in twenty twenty and twenty twenty. Like that is how I got to that. Was by asking this question.

So those are Uh I I'm curious, one one question I had about your kind of this new decade going forward. Um You know, when in looking at your career arc like over time and knowing you since the four hour body and seeing the focus and emphasis on

biohacking and and wellness and health and nutrition and cooking and then moving a little bit more into, you know, mentors and and interviewing other folks and then your experience with psychedelics. And it seems like the last like, you know, three to five years has been really focused on um emotional well being and improvement there. Going where do you when do you eventually or are you still involved in the kind of biohacking stuff and do you see that like what's what's the next decade look like for Tim, you know, before you know you read your books and it's about like optimizing testosterone and like, you know, certain things in there that like you know, m masturbating with your offhand or whatever it was that you get like the You don't talk about the these little hacks to get like just offhand boost. Yeah. Yeah, that was that was actually your ebook on masturbating on the offhand. That was a great experiment. Little side hustle. I maybe I got the wording wrong, but you know what I'm talking about.

Uh I'm just curious, like what what um you know, what do the next ten years look like for you on that front? Is that something where you've kinda said, Screw it, I take like vitamin C now and that's it? Or like what are you what are you doing there? Yeah, on the body hacking front, I've I've dramatically simplified for a the host of reasons. Number one is The foreign body at its time, I think, was

It was, just given the reception and the success of the book. It was a c it was a bit of a a category killer, right? It it was a very different book. But uh there are many people who picked up that torch and ran with it. Who do all sorts of crazy experiments, uh things that I would not necessarily do. So I feel like there is a there's a wealth of Self experiment. Self experimentation.

And and many different folks who are continuing to biohack. Uh I have continued to Do experiments.

What does your regimen look like today? I'm just curious. Like what do you wake up and take? Supplements I take very, very few supplements. Uh, I take Uh right now the basics are magnesium. Uh getting old man sleep. Yeah, well magtein specifically, so magnesium L three and eight.

Uh which is recommended by our our friend earlier, Peter Tia. And Otherwise I've really tried to minimize Supplements. And that's not because I think they are bad. I think it's like saying drugs. There is a very wide spectrum of drugs. And generally speaking, the greater the effect, the greater the side effects. And if you don't know what the side effects are

and it has a very high amplitude effect, then you're just the sucker at the poker table who doesn't realize he's the sucker because there are very rarely free lunches in Biochemical enhancement. Usually Dude, I'm in I'm blown away by that because as someone that's been in your house and seen your medicine closet, Or c cabinet back in the day. Oh yeah. You had a pharmacy hundreds of bodies. Like you could you could have sold out of there. I would have pushed some. Like you had you had everything. Timmy's bodega. Yeah. So I and I and there's still a time and a place for that. Right. So if I were optimizing for a particular type of competition. And really

really focusing on, say, endurance development. at altitude or something like that, then I would have a particular regimen. I do supplement with Protein at this point. Uh I mean there's sponsors of the podcast, but I vet everything I mean t I've turned down millions of dollars worth of sponsorships from supplement companies, but Ascent Protein made the cut. So I use Ascent Protein. I use athletic greens just for for covering my bases, especially if I'm traveling.

Uh to help mitigate. Sickness when For instance, I did a Grand Canyon trip. Actually more recently I did a Two hundred and fifty or two hundred and eighty mile.

Uh bike track, mountain bike track on the Hayduk Trail. From uh 'Cause we started in I wanna say Grand Junction. Might be getting that roughly off. Yeah.

Uh I took two days off. 'Cause I was so destroyed. But the point being where we were staying at the front end and the back end. This is basic airport. hotel food. And I will use supplementation more

when my whole food options are sub optimal. Right. But I do think supplements can become a crutch for people who are not paying sufficient attention to their whole food, to their sleep. To

other parameters, right? It becomes a A band aid to cover other bad decisions. So But from a from a biohacking standpoint, I'm still extremely interested in it. What I'm But I've shifted my focus a bit. So if you look at, say, for our body, right, we're talking about hormones, right? Testosterone and so on, growth hormone and there are chapters on

Doing all sorts of wacky things with different hormones. And Vertical leap maximal speed. Uh relative s uh uh relative strength improvement with deadlift. All this craziness, right?

Then you have four hour chef, which was very much cognitively focused. And got into different smart drugs and using vasopressin to enhance short term memory and all this. All this crazy shit. Then If you look at the last

Let's just call it five to six years for me. The fact of the matter is I'm still very interested in biohacking, but it it starts to get into some very Very fascinating alien terrain. That

Western medicine, uh and really no No single medical system or scientific system explains very well, and that is use of compounds. As one example, classical psychedelics. Like mescaline, psilocybin, and so on, but not limited to those. You could also include in that. Group.

M D M A For PTSD. Compounds that seem to Exert an effect.

With Mm. Rapid onset. and extremely long duration. Uh

Affects. Meaning In the cessation of smoking studies that have been done, so nicotine addiction studies that have been done at Hopkins, you have people who six I want to say six or twelve months later, eighty percent of the subjects are still non smokers. After two or three sessions. With

Silicide then. combined with psychotherapy, but nonetheless you're looking at Three sessions, each of which lasts let's call it four to eight hours. And the half life of these drugs is Very well known.

None the less these These Paradigm, and I do rarely use this word, but sort of paradigm shifting. mental reorganization. And the sort of

Reformatting. of the belief systems and stories these people use to govern their realities have changed so fundamentally that their behaviors remain changed even in the face of extremely addictive compounds like nicotine. Six or twelve months later. So one could argue that I'm still very much in the biohacking game.

I'm just going from the knowns. Right. If we look at testosterone, like testosterone, whether that's naturally produced or The injectables, testosterone cipionate or any any type of uh means of administration or H C or whatever, these things are all very well understood. Right? Aspirin. Yeah. Very well understood.

Uh some of the smart drugs, like hydrogen, very well understood. And uh at least very well studied. So I'm moving from these known Into this Area of unknowns with psychedelics where we could, unlike

the use of testosterone, at least at this point. With The technology we have access to F M R I and otherwise. Uh

much tighter study design now than say in the fifties. We are in a position to to discover fundamentally new ways of looking at the mind and consciousness and therefore reality as we experience it. And

That to me is the money shot. Right. Everything else. That seems like a slight refocus though, right? Because that's more of a focus on brain and mental health and rewiring that's done there versus, say, longevity. Uh well I mean yes and no. Right. So there's there's longevity. I do think that psychedelics actually uh could

Offer. plausible mechanisms of action for extending cognitive function. Yeah. Uh That's a whole separate conversation, but I have Alzheimer's and Parkinson's on both sides of my family. So my initial interest as an undergrad in neuroscience was purely self defense.

I wanted to learn as much as possible to Help my parents my family and yours truly to At the very least delay the onset of Are you a three four? Yeah. Oh you are? Okay. So you you have the genetic marker that gets you what your

Like four or five times more likely to get Alzheimer's than the average person. A software perspective. Right. Yeah. Uh

I'm coded. higher predisposition to certain types of neurodegenerative disease. Uh and That it's it's

That is the hand I've been dealt. So the question is How will I play that hand? And Looking at uh say Hopkins where all of this is led, especially as a nascent, what I would consider still a very nascent field.

the ability to put in relatively small amounts of money. Although I mean I've committed a lot for me. Uh about three million or four million dollars now to scientific research related to

Uh psychedelics. And I should say that psychedelics are tools in the toolkit, but really what I'm looking at is Novel treatments. Potential novel treatments of what are considered intractable psychiatric conditions. Right? Mm-hmm. Anorexia, highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder.

Uh miserable track record in terms of effective treatments. Uh Treatment resistant depression. end of life anxiety, say due to terminal cancer diagnosis.

Nicotine addiction. Uh Opioids. So at Hopkins there are a number of studies that will be uh getting underway at the first center for dedicated center for psychedelic and consciousness research in the US, which is is going to be based there, looking at Alzheimer's, looking at opioid use disorder. Which I mean is opioid addiction, effectively. And uh

So my my shift has been a shift, but I would argue That And this is gonna be a a fortune cookie slash cliche that I'll use, but it's not about how many years I can put into my life, but also about how much life I can put into my years. So I think it's important and it for anyone who's seen My TED talk

On fear setting. or read my post on uh titled Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide, I almost offed myself in college. And there are many people who live a long time but are trapped in these endless loops of self recriminating thoughts. They're trapped in the past in depression, they're trapped in the future in anxiety. And I would argue that that is not Living, at least not as I would like to experience it. That is surviving.

Right. That is being a physical form that is not dead, but that is not the same as thriving. If we look at the staggering. growth of, say, opioid use in the US. uh particularly synthetic opioids. If we look at

the veteran suicide rates, many of which are are comorbid with opioid. uh use disorder, but if you look at, say, the the number that I've heard, it may or may not be statistically defensible, but something along the lines of twenty-three veterans per day committing suicide. If you look at the rates of depression and substance abuse among teenagers say. There's c there are

To my mind are clear. societal factors at play. That А the perfect Soil.

Four Producing these types of coping mechanisms. And uh so so for me Yes, the biohacking has shifted. But the same toolkit that I applied to

Trying to optimize sex drive. Or testosterone or Whatever it might be. Yeah. literature review and research that I had to do there. Has been

much improved and refined over the last five years in particular. To look at Uh psychoemotional health. And

I am really, really, really optimistic, and that's coming from someone who thought he had problems that were sort of personalized and permanent. Unfixable. Let's put a bullet in the head instead. Bad.

Which is something many people feel. And I I am now at this point extremely optimistic about some of these new novel treatment procedures. Ketamine is very interesting, has its own challenges. Uh both Silocybin and MDMA have been granted breakthrough therapy designation by the FDA to expedite the the review process. So I'm I'm

cautiously optimistic, but have seen such a difference in my own life. Uh and you've you've known me for a long time, man. I mean you've known me since two thousand seven. I feel like fundamentally a different person today than I did Six or seven years ago. Yeah. And I mean I can definitely see it in you. I can tell a difference for sure. Yeah.

Just the way that you carry yourself. Even when you came over to our house like a couple months ago, Dario was like Tim just like he just carries himself differently. You're just like a lot more Relaxed. At ease. At ease. At ease. Yeah. And That's why I actually had trouble preparing for this conversation because looking at twenty twenty, I was like, Man, well I guess people are gonna expect me to have like a million resolutions. But

I don't And I I have a handful of things, but What I've realized is that for me at least Okay. Peace.

is not found through understanding. Right. Peace is not found through More striving. Peace is not found through more achieving. Peace is found through greater acceptance. That's what I've found for myself.

And what does that mean? It doesn't mean accepting shitty things. And allowing Bad behavior and Awful. Atrocities or

trends to continue, it just means Taking time to recognize that in Most circumstances. You are okay. Things are okay.

And allowing yourself to kinda bask in that. Does that make sense? Yeah, it totally makes sense, dude. I get it. You know, and I I feel like you have also, especially in the last I wanna say two years, and I don't know Two or three years. How much of that is kids? How much of it is Going through programs.

Uh Uh you did Is it Michael Singer? Um the the un what the untethered soul. But the surrender that's phenomenal. Surrender, but I've noticed that you Still get a lot done.

Right? You're still Very engaged with creative projects. But you seem to me I was very impressed with this and I mentioned it to my girlfriend last time we're at your place. I said it's really nice to wake up, go upstairs, and see Kevin just sitting with his kids, drinking a cup of tea or cup of coffee. Completely unrushed. Yeah. It's funny, that that's on my list of uh of things that I had to talk about today. I wrote down, Not everything has to be done today, patience. Yeah.

And I think that When you think of things having to be done today and everything has to be done today then you're anticipating the feeling of completion. And when you're anticipating that, it's not You're not enjoying what's happening right now.

Yeah. Because you're thinking like I'll feel so much better when my to do list is done. I'll feel so much better when I complete this project. Yeah. And the thing that I I've realized over the last couple of years, I uh more than anything has been That I have over the last, you know, ten years or even you know, in founding Dig in two thousand four and and staying with that for seven years

Um I never enjoyed it. Yeah. I never was able to'cause it was just like Oh, I gotta run, I gotta do this, I have to make this, I have to launch this, I have to grow faster, I have to do all this. And I I look back and I'm like, wow, there was no joy. I mean, there was little wins, and of course certain things brought me joy, but it was so rushed that I was never here, I but my head my brain was always Focused on tomorrow. Yeah.

And so, you know, just having that patience and Just being able to exhale. And realize that dude we're gonna miss all of life if we don't enjoy the day to day dance of it all, you know? And that that's that's what I strive to do. I don't always do that, but that's that's been my f uh uh hopefully that is something that I will focus on over the next, you know, five to ten years is just really taking it all in and smiling, you know, and spending and I think kids helps with that. That's why I I've been pushing you to have kids. Yeah, I know. You and I have been trying and trying. It doesn't doesn't seem to be working. It's not working.

Damn it. Uh the The uh The focus on not rushing is one I think is very important, at least for me. And that you know, for me Luxury in a way.

More than anything else. is the feeling of being unrushed. Right. As a goal of sorts. As a litmus test.

Is ha has Many, many ripple effects. That are beneficial. Which come out of that. Uh and there's a book I'm I'm uh reading right now, I'm not done with it yet, but called Already Free, which I suspect is probably quite similar to some of Michael Singer's work. Uh I don't know the date. It was recommended to No I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding because you were not supposed to do anything from this. Already free.

And it combines Western psychotherapy with Buddhist practice. And concepts from Buddhism. Which If you told me ten years ago

what I just said, I would have vomited a little bit into my mouth and said, Yeah, I've been to those bookstores too. With all the crystals and the dream catchers and there are thousands of those books and I just don't have time to sort through. what is bullshit and what might have validity. But this book was recommended to me by a top tier therapist who has She would never say this, but she's saved the lives of hundreds or maybe thousands of people. She's she's incredibly adept and she recommended this book to me. Uh because she has found it.

Compelling. And I'm gonna butcher it. But do you do you have the name of the author? Up in front by the way. Tift ma Lumped.

Oh wow. It could be. If you just search for Bruce Tiff, but already free. is is the title of the book. And I I've found this book to be very actionable and very compelling. And one of the apologize to the author if I'm misremembering this, but one of the the the practices or steps that he will often take with clients

is is the f something along the lines of the following. If they complain that say Yeah. Their boss never recognizes them. Therefore

They have struggles with self worth and this, this, this, this and this. And that is a Complaint that they have Something they'd like to fix that comes up. continually in therapy.

is he will try to get to them to the point Where They Are willing to accept that they could have that feeling for the rest of their lives unresolved.

And We'll guide them through. Thought exercises and hypothetical scenarios. So they get to the point where they are willing to accept that is a possibility. They will never get rid of that. And

what often seems to happen, and I've noticed this for myself is that they're then able to let out this big exhale. Because it's no longer mandatory that they Mm-hmm. And all of a sudden their experience changes.

Mm-hmm. And that at that point They become to think they become able to think more clearly And Respond less reactively.

Because they've accepted that If that were to happen, they're going to survive, there will still be moments of joy, they can still build other valuable relationships. And it just reframes the whole thing. So I've found

That to also And it it is a close cousin to a lot of the fear setting, but I I think that that type of reframe can be very Very powerful. And

For me a lot of it comes back to good questions, right? Which is why I collect questions, why I enjoy asking questions, why I enjoy borrowing questions from from other people. Uh And

Uh. I would say also looking back at the last ten years, you know, for my entire life I viewed Self love, I think. As self indulgent. in the sense that I felt it would be narcissistic and selfish and

Unproductive. Two feel or embrace or cultivate self love in any way. And that in fact the way to drive myself was to constantly pick apart everything I was or did in uh very brutal

Fashion. in terms of internal monologue and Uh I think that That is

part of what drove me so close to the edge in college. is that incessant abusive inner voice. And I got a lot done. You know I did a lot of things.

At the end of the day, who the fuck cares? Really, right? Like in two hundred years we're all dust. No one's gonna remember us. It doesn't matter. Right. So great. I got A better grade on my junior term paper. Who the fuck cares, right? At the end of the day, that voice almost drove me to extinguish myself. So What I've also found is that

looking back at the last ten years, like how you treat yourself Affects it it in some way influences how you treat other people. violent and angry towards yourself.

There will be an element of violence and anger towards other people, whether it comes out really obviously or it comes out in the form of like resentment and complaining and passive aggressiveness. It's going to manifest. So Spending time with Jack Cornfield has had a a huge impact on me. This was a few years ago when I first met Jack. He's a very famous meditation teacher. Wonderful human being. Uh

Walks the walk. Uh, there are a lot of posers in the mindfulness meditation uh world uh a lot of people who really are of the Do what I say, not what I do.

School if you look under the hood. Is so adept. And as such an incredible toolkit also is a clinical psychologist for helping veterans that adolescents were c self harming and cutting He's very skilled.

And Yeah, we had a we had a conversation at one point and um He said something that stuck with me and I'm gonna paraphrase it because the exact words are important, but the gist is, and that is if your compassion doesn't extend to yourself, it's incomplete. And that seems so obvious. Right, but I do think that a lot of people who pride themselves on being achievers

spend the vast majority of their time Whipping themselves. And what do you think? Yeah, I mean I think everyone has that internal dialogue and some Days it can be more intense than others in terms of being critical.

Um or for me it's it's not so much critical of myself as it is just um ruminating on certain thoughts and like over and over again. I I've had a lot of that Um How did you break out of that? Like what was

And is it something that you still struggle with today? Like if if someone's listening to this and they're like, Oh my God, that describes me to the T, like I have all these I'm I'm constantly so harsh on myself. What are the steps that someone would take? Well some are easier to recommend than others. Uh I've done a lot of really wild stuff, uh and some very, very aggressive stuff. Um and it's not to say

That's all tools will will work for all people, but I do think That There are certain books that have had a large impact on me that have helped other people. And in fact

Now that I think about it. I believe that one of them, Radical Acceptance, by Tarabrak, was recommended to me by Daria. Which s which surprised the hell out of me because Daria is very sharp, scientifically minded Very skeptical.

And at least back in the day, my experience with Dario was that anything remotely woo woo or hand wavy, she was just like psh. Talk to the hand, not interested, right? So when she recommended this book Very generic title. And the subtitle I can't remember at the moment, but Radical Acceptance by Tara Brock and I thought Oh my God, like ha has Daria

had a had a frontal lobotomy like what happened? I don't know how this book would make it through her filter. And it was incredibly helpful. So Radical acceptance. Self acceptance.

Uh making peace with parts of us, aspects of ourselves, emotions we have grown to believe are negative or Unwanted. You know, reconciling, re

Integrating yourself in a way. Mm-hmm. Is is a worthy goal. And I I I think I've largely succeeded. I still have my moments where I've beat myself up, but It is less than

five percent of what it was five or six years ago. Uh I feel like this could be a good book for you, honestly. Oh it I I've already been. I have a Scrivener file with hundreds of thousands of words already put together. Oh really? It's not in book form, but I this this this is the book. That I want to work on. Uh

And this is the book I talked about in my episode with uh Greg McEwen. as the thing that I I feel I need to do. And For twenty twenty.

and I started this already at the end of twenty nineteen, but I'm getting back to writing regularly on the blog for that reason. It's sharpening the south so that when I really sit down I want it to be As good as possible. And uh th this is definitely

This is definitely uh a calling. I feel called to do this. In part because I've seen the effects, uh, not just through using books, but certainly Practices I think that's Uh Byron Cady's the work.

Can be very helpful. It can be also a little confusing. But Byron Kate used the work as a means of testing assumptions and stories that you tell yourself. kinda stress testing them. And uh as an exercise being forced to come up with evidence or examples that

Counter. Your Statement. is really can be very eye opening, especially when done in a group context. Then you have

Uh certainly meditation. With without a doubt. Uh especially in my case when conf combined with either entirely cutting out caffeine or dramatically cutting out caffeine. Mm-hmm. I th I that is that is non trivial.

For me. That's that's tough to do. I I did that uh about a month and a half ago. I I wanted to go one month without caffeine and I I was weaning myself up a little too aggressively. Yeah. And I started getting those horrible caffeine headaches. But but I was able to do it and then I I I actually just switched to decaf coffee. Which has a tiny trace amount of caffeine, but uh that stuff is horrible. There's no good decaf coffee out there. If somebody out there that's listening and knows of some, please let me know somehow. Just tweet at me. I'd really appreciate it.

Yeah. It's it's uh I tend to use my time in nature or Time fasting, which I'll often do in nature, but my t if I'm spending a lot of time in nature, let's just take this last Utah trip as an example. Unlike a day like today, where I am Mostly sitting inside.

If I'm mostly sitting inside, I have an oral fixation and I'll just drink iced tea and coffee all day because it's sitting in front of me and I'm looking for a fidget, just like I fidget with my Whereas if I'm in Utah and I want to get to fresh powder and I'm waking up early, I'll have a cup of coffee in the morning, but then I'm on the slopes or outside for at least a few hours when I am consuming nothing but water. And what I realized after a few days of that is that I feel like I've been meditating twice a day for a month.

But And perhaps being outside and skiing and so on is a form of meditation in and of itself. But Suffice to say, often I've thought to myself You can either meditate once or twice a day.

For two weeks. Or Just Cut your caffeine consumption down to one cup of coffee a day. And the results are very often the same. If you comb if you combine them.

All the better. But I've never heard of anyone obtaining enlightenment via Less caffeine. There's always a first. There's always a first. I'm happy to be the first non caffeinated monkey shot into space on the quest to enlighten enlightenment through abstinence. But pff Uh

And I I don't like making a recommendation with the following but It would be the elephant in the room if I left it out. Psychedelics. Респонсибол супервіз

facilitated sessions with psychedelics. Have provided a reset slash reformatting that is very I don't think it's impossible. But it's very challenging. And

I simply have no way. I have theories, but no way to explain quite how profound and lasting the changes can be or how they're produced. It's still very poorly understood. What we do know is that In some cases, say with suicide and the toxicity is exceptionally low. I mean is it is far less than say acetominophen.

Tylenol and many other things. So Uh I do not take this stuff every afternoon. It's not a I I try not to be a hammer looking for a nail. I do not think these Drugs are panaceas. I do think there are significant risks.

possible risks for those uh who say have a family history of schizophrenia. And uh you can make very poor Decisions. You can make dangerous decisions while under the influence, which Uh underscores the importance of uh facilitated

Supervised Sessions. Uh but these compounds have been integral to providing enough slack in the system and different perspectives from which I can look at myself as an observer. Right. It's uh

It can be very difficult to see your own stories. Right. Because like your entire reality, like what we look at, what we hear Is is not the only reality. Right. It's like we're br our brains are interpolating and filling in a lot of gaps as we use generic concepts and stories

to interpret and make sense of everything around us. So And I'm not the first person to come up with this metaphor, but it's it's like trying to look at the lens of your own eye. As your looking through the lens. You just can't do it. But Uh psychedelics in proper setting with supervision.

can in some instances provide you the ability to sort of rotate out or above and really do A radical self assessment. that shows you where your blind spots are. And it shows you where your stories and your software are out of date. Uh but I do not recommend people break the law.

Um If we want to talk about side effects, the legal side effects. Can be I mean you can you can go to jail for a long time if you

uh possess or distribute these compounds. They are currently schedule one. And uh This is why I'm dedicating I've dedicated more capital and energy to psychedelic research than anything else. in the last few years and it is

I wanna see. At least uh It is close to Or more than All of the capital I've invested in startups over

Whatever it was. A Yeah. Almost ten year period. So if if this when this becomes a legal form of therapy Are we gonna see Tim Ferris branded psychedelic pop up shops uh around the country? Tim Ferris psychedelic treatment mall kiosks.

Yeah, exactly. Buy it directly from Five Bullet Friday. Why travel sober when you could? Would you ever be involved in anything like that though? Like I mean all all kidding aside, or is that you're just more interested on the research side? It's not just a a question of interest. It's a question of Maintaining a neutrality.

So I can be more effective. And I don't I don't want people to question my motives. Which is the same reason, by the way, I I did not invest in or create any supplement companies before For our body. I could have made tens of millions of dollars doing that. Easily and I knew that because

As you know, I mean I used to own sports nutrition companies. So I know how those businesses work. I could build one very easily. I have access to all the right people and I didn't do it because I didn't want people to question my motives. I wanted to be as objective as possible. And for people to Vie as

Objective. or as objective as possible. And in the world of psychedelics, I don't want to place any bets in a for profit capacity that would lead me to even subconsciously exert bias. in who I help or what I help.

Yeah. Even if I could make a for profit bet. that would not affect my objectivity. It would affect the

How others perceive me. in the fields. And that would inhibit my ability. to Move the needle and

A number of different ways. And last I will say and this is this is This is uh also Vocabulary. These are phrases that Yeah, Tim of fifteen years ago would just be disgusted by

But he didn't know. Didn't what he didn't know. This is a very Uh Sacred.

space. This is this is very s uh in some ways very sacred work. It's it's Incredible when you witness. What can transpire. for someone in a four to six hour session. And how completely

their conception of themselves and relationships, problems, addictions can change. you feel like you're witnessing something very special. And you are witnessing something very special. Something very unusual. that many people hope their whole lives for. And never get. And to that extent.

You and I have been very fortunate. Uh and we've had all sorts of advantages. We've also had, you know, certain disadvantages and we've Made uh lucky bets and we're in a position where We don't have to make

Compromises. We don't have to make compromises. to generate income. Right. Like we're not worried about how to pay the rent next month. And for that reason I like having

This entire field To be For me. A A capital off limits, a money off limits area in my life.

That makes sense. Like it's just a f it's just a A complication That I don't want and don't need. And uh For that reason I would be very surprised.

I'd be very surprised if there was any Tim Ferris branded airport saga to like kiosk. Uh there there may be Outfits that I assist in some way. But I can't imagine that I would ever tie

financial incentives or financial return to anything that I do in this space. I would be disappointed in myself unless something very very significant changes and I just can't imagine quite what that would be. Yeah. And let's say I did something, who knows? Let's just say Some gigantic pharma company said, Will you advise us on Blah blah blah blah blah.

And this this would be a long shot, but let's just say I was able I and my advisors were convinced that they weren't just doing this to sort of whitewash their sins and provide a human uh riot shield. For whatever they were going to do. And they wanted

advice of some type and they were offering advisory Compensation. All of the funds would have to go to funding other types of research or to Uh Some other recipient besides myself.

Right. Perhaps it goes into a foundation and then gets funnel directly into Some related cause that I care deeply about. Yeah. It'd be be interesting to see how you could think through that a little bit further to kind of figure out if there is an opportunity there that you could just roll it into a complete nonprofit so that you could participate in some of the upside because obviously there are going to be

when this stuff does all finally come around and it is Um you know, stamped with the whatever it may be, FTA or whoever has to stand th all the way through to actually launching something as a as a therapeutic product for the consumer. There'll be b multi billion dollar businesses built on the back of this in some capacity, right? There could be so there there definitely could be. I think it's I think it's gonna be a lot trickier than folks expect. And I hope that The current means of administration meaning

Let's just call it two or three sessions. Uh Two or three active sessions. There may be placebo sessions, but let's just call it two or three active sessions. with long term persistence Effects.

I hope that that does not get corrupted and replaced with Some type of Analog that is or Close cousin.

that is then turned into a maintenance tool. In other words, I hope that's not a the business priorities of drug developers. Do not affect the beautiful elegance of how these tools can be used.

in such a way that they get converted into something that needs to be used three times a week. Just to get by. And I I I absolutely expect there will be people who attempt to do that. Uh but I would not want to

I certainly Don't want to. Encourage that. Uh but there could be a lot of money and uh there there are possibilities. Uh yeah, my only point was that I would rather see those funds flow into someone's nonprofit like your own that would then go right back into research than than have it go to someone else. But you know,'cause I I I didn't tr wouldn't trust you with that those

Those funds to do the right thing. Yeah, I I and there are things I want to do. You know, one idea that I had for twenty twenty That I thought could be fun. uh which is not the same as a for profit business that's um then provides upside that could be funneled into a nonprofit, which is entirely possible. I mean that's what I'm doing with my foundation right now. But

Uh I've been I've been a high end art auction. And I know people have done this in the past, I believe that uh

I wanna say Leonardo DiCaprio has done a very good job of this. Don't know Leo, personally, but The Concept would be getting Pieces donated.

And I don't know if they're not going to be able to do It's unlikely to me that a Sothobees are uh Uh Christie's or someone would Uh would do this, they might

But to have incredible pieces of artwork donated by extremely famous artists Uh and to take the proceeds and donate them to psychedelic research or scientific Oh dude this you can have this happen in two seconds. I know a ton of the auction folks through my time at Hodinki. Okay, great. So if you if you want to talk to any of the Christies or Sotherby's or Phillips folks, like I mean this is

This happens already. Like, for example, there's a an auction each year that's called Only Watch, and every one of the high-end watch manufacturers will create a special one off limited edition. watch or not limited edition, but just one off. And they raise, you know, tens of millions of dollars for um Uh, I can't remember i it's muscular dystrophy or what what the actual cause is, but it's a it's a wonderful cause and it it happens every year. Uh this could be that for psychedelics. Yeah. So that excites that excites me, right? Because it could be

paintings, but it could also be watches. It could be anything. And what's so nice about that is People are bidding. Uh there are certainly tax advantages for people who are buying these items, I would imagine. Maybe, maybe not, but nonetheless, I mean they're going to a good cause. They are paying for one of a kind, or at the very least, h uh highly sought after

Scarce items. That have value, sustained value. So you're not just Kind of begging for money with

And what's so incredible about The psychedelic research space right now. is that for for ten or twenty million dollars, I mean, you can potentially bend the arc of history.

It's so nascent and so much can be done with so little. That What would be considered a drop in the bucket for cancer research Or any number of other conditions. Could actually

lead to Fundamental breakthroughs. Yeah. an entirely new field. And not just breakthroughs as it relates to a specific compound, but breakthroughs and how

We begin to understand. how the mind and the brain work. Right? Where is where is the seat of consciousness? Does such a thing anatomically exist? I mean there are some these are real questions that people are investigating, and I I don't think we fully appreciate the implications of figuring some of that out. I mean it's it's incredible. Oh that's so cool. And There's so many artists, as you know.

Who Suffer from Absolutely. Depression from anxiety. That's why it's a no brainer. Like you have people that s suffer with something like that. I mean, where's you m you must know Banksy at this point, right? I don't I would love to if you have a connection, I wanna I would love to connect with Banksy for a million reasons, but I do not yet know Banksy. I did go to his hotel in the Middle East, which was Amazing and uh pretty incredible. But I've I've I've studied him, I know of him, I'm very familiar with his work, but don't know him.

I feel like if we can get him to commit a piece. Yeah. That's a good place to start. That would be a great place to start. I mean and and there that would be a great place to start. There are there are a number of artists I find absolutely Incredible who uh you know, were they willing to participate would

Uh they would act as the lead domino that tips over everything else, right? Yeah. Because you you don't need you really just need that first tenant. Right. Uh And

You know I haven't reached out to anyone at this point, but one of my favorite artists in the world is David Hockney. He's so, so incredible. You should check him out. Uh and uh there's there's a f wonderful documentary about him called I want to say learning how to see or the art of seeing That you should check out. And uh

Such a Just seems like such a beautiful human being, very well spoken, very humble. And You know, you uh it should be doable, right? This does not strike me as insane. Let's talk offline because I I have some people you should talk to. I think we can make this happen. That sounds really cool. All right, amazing. Amazing. That's so exciting. The other thing that um this is this is jumping around topic wise, but the other thing I wanna start doing this year is something that I spoke with Uh Nick Thompson ages ago about

And that is Hiring. Top tier writers. At say I think the I think the uh I think the rate he suggested was maybe two dollars a word or something like that, but really paying top dollar.

uh for good long form journalists to write pieces on my blog. Like to inv to investigate topics. They would otherwise not get. Investigated.

Right. I mean, I'll give you an example. About a week ago, about How The preceding two days felt like two or three weeks. A lot of things had happened. We've we'd moved locations a lot. We were spending a lot of time in backcountry doing really strong

Um Yeah. Physical exertion. And We both notice that the last the preceding two days seemed

It's like oh my god that happened two days ago, it seems like three weeks ago. And yet there are also weeks that go by Where you're like, what the fuck did I do this week? Like I know I was sitting around doing stuff, but like it just went by like that. So investigating, let's just say as one example, like investigating The Expansion of time. Right.

What does the science say? What do you think Uh if you want someone to pitch in on that, I I will I'll throw some cash towards that article too. Okay, cool. Yeah. I've always been fascinated by this. I would love, love to go in deep on that one. It's like so let's get someone who puts out Just stellar, stellar long form pieces that they can take some time on, right?'Cause I don't need this tomorrow. I'd love to have it tomorrow, but if it takes two months, if it takes three months, like

So be it. I care more about the quality, but to have like Let's just say the f have five of those at any given time in motion. I I it just seems like a an excellent use of money. And uh Or there are certain people. I I would love to have profiles, right? Like people who are doing incredible weird things.

That are never I don't I don't think would ever make it onto the radar of some of the larger publications I respect, but they're just it they they ha already have, I would imagine, an an abundance of wonderful ideas. And I

I have some A leads and B suggestions. That could really help people. gain access to folks who otherwise

Wouldn't be accessible or otherwise would never get covered. Right. I mean, It's uh that kinda thing. It's like all right, let's do a human interest story and Do you have people in mind right on the writer side that you would use?'Cause I I know we could probably reach out to Evan Medium. I'm sure he's got a bunch of great independent writers that you could hire. Yeah, I I spoke with Nick about this. I there are few writers I've worked with in the past who I have found to be really

Really sharp. And also very ethical. Uh Those two don't always go together. As we know, which is a a huge bummer. Um that's another thing I've learned in the last ten years is like hire for

uh reliability and trustworthiness. And attitude first. Uh lots of skilled, smart people out there. Whew. Uh

may not have the best So you have to really guard against that. Uh there are there are a number of writers I've worked with who have uh Done fantastic work. And uh they're they're on the short list. They're kind of the

Uh There are so many there are so many great writers out there. It should be possible to get someone since I would be the editor, so to speak, right? And I've no Uh

delusions of thinking I'm David Remnik of the New Yorker or anything. I I I do not think that I am the best editor in the world, but nonetheless it's my blog, so I have to look at this stuff. And I'm pretty good. Like I think I'm a very fair Uh I've edited a lot of my friends' books. Um Because I can't not edit if they give me something to review. But I would be bringing these people in because they're

I mean uh almost certainly better writers than I am. Uh so that's really exciting to me. Just to just to kick the tires and try it. You know? Yeah. That's awesome. Uh and it's it's also one of those examples of like one decision. That removes a lot of decisions. Like let's just

Time is a non renewable resource. uh I'm very confident I can make money back if I need to. Let me just place some bets and let people run. Yeah. Yeah.

Then it's like oh. Lo and behold, like three months later, an email comes in, got a first draft or got a third draft, whatever it might be. Uh That would be very exciting to me. Uh Yeah, what else if what else have you

Uh put on your list of things to remember for twenty twenty, pay attention to, or just notes from the last Last decade. I've got one. But I'm gonna I'm gonna hold on to it'cause uh We can talk about it in a little in a little bit. Not that we have to go for five hours, but

Um Anything else that comes to mind that you'd like to mention? Yeah, I mean I think that one of the The things that we're going to do. Um I look back on

That I'm I feel that I did quite well over the last ten years was my track record of investing in the public markets. And I think that's very good. I appreciate that. Um

I I've I think I know. I have kinda like put my formula down on paper so I I have a sense of of what I how I am able to take big risks without them feeling like big risks. And I think that's key for me not to freak out and and sell things off. So

Essentially What I've Figured out as my mixture. of investments and for me You know, you've always heard that.

Well, I mean, there's that saying that I guess most people think is is bullshit, which is probably true, which is to hold your age in bonds, right? Like the the old saying is if you're forty years old, you should have forty percent of your net worth in in bonds. And I Have always liked having some security like that. Um I think that that is not a wise strategy for young investors'cause I think they are too heavily weighted and safer investments when they should be taking the most risk up front. But

Um, now that I am into my forties, I don't think of it as just bonds, I think of it as What are some safer investments that I can have that forty percent in? So that could be you know, higher yield bonds, it could be dividend paying stocks that are blue chip um, you know, dividend stocks that I that I I hold in a a basket or an index. But the thing that that's the exotic animal farms.

Exactly. But that there's nothing That's all you can re pick that all this kind of stuff up in any investment book. What I have done that is different. is that I've said that twenty percent of my net worth, whatever that may be, is going to go into ultra risky investments, but only ones that kind of soup to nuts, I understand at a very, very deep level. So that means

These really risky Tech investments for me. And um that has lead to you know, early investments in Bitcoin. early investments in in Apple. You know, I remember when Apple came out with

uh OS ten, the first version, and I was just blown away and I knew this was such a brilliant new direction for the company that was in 2001. The stock back then was trading at a dollar sixty or so a share, which is just insanity. Um more recently in the last few years that would be you know the Shopify's and the the uh Teslas and things like that. But um you know Also avoiding stuff I didn't understand, I think is like the saying no. Like, for example, everyone was jumping on Netflix, you know, five years ago. Um I didn't understand it. I didn't understand how this wouldn't become just like the music business.

And how it would be the margins would be ultra thin. I had no idea about creating original content, what those costs what the cost structure for that would be. It was something that a lot of my friends were making. Fantastic returns on. But something that I ended up not buying. And I I missed out on that one, but that's fine because

I was able to concentrate my bets on things that Products not only that I use and enjoy, but under Understood completely. And um That for me, taking that that twenty percent of my investments and focusing them on things that I believe that could truly have

you know, twenty five to fixty uh fifty X returns over the next couple of decades. I think has been key in kind of growing my my net worth over time. So we're talking about or you're talking about My decisions. Right, how do you decide

What's your framework for deciding when to sell things? If you have one. And it could be any category or all categories, but You're somewhat famous for Telling me.

What you're going what you're going to buy and then not telling me six months later when you sell it all. Yeah, I mean I think that the the thing is has the underlying no that's true. And then eighteen months later I'm like, oh man, tough tough order on you're like I sold that a year and a half ago. Like oh you fucking bastard. Well well I I think like have the underlying

uh fundamentals of the business changed, you know, and I think that If the answer is yes, then I consider selling if the answer is no, but you're seeing a decline due to other market turbulence, then that's actually when I buy more. So if I see a big massive dip and it has nothing to do with the company, but it was just something that came out of Trump's mouth, like I'm going to double down and pick up some more stock on sale, right? So Um

You know, and then also working with your tax accountants so you know when you could take some gains off the table and tax wise it make sense for you. But I would say that um You know, I I am even more skeptical and scared of stocks like Netflix today because I look at all the other entrants in the market over the that, you know, are both coming and have recently launched, whether it be Apple TV's streaming services or um, you know, the new Disney Plus. Or, you know, peacock which is coming out, there's gonna just gonna be so much competition for that five to ten dollar a month kind of Cable plus plus

that uh it it's it's a little frightening. But Um You know, so It's that's how I you know when I look at shop well also I think there's there's a couple of things. One

What's the total addressable market of this business? So, you know, how big Is the is the the Tam there and do they have room to grow? So Shopify today You know, I I can't I'm not sure where they're at fifty some billion dollar company, they were Around five early on and any well, actually, dude, Shopify was the one that you're probably killing yourself over. Yeah, I am. I made a terrible terrible, terrible decision. Well, you know that I am

I have a history. No, I've I have improved, but You were an advisor to them before they went public. When they had eight employees. So I was with them from day not day one, but very early And I panic sold. I panic, Sold. And uh that was maybe right after lock up expired. So this would be like

Whatever that is, six months after I PO and I just made a terrible, terrible decision and sold a bunch of it. I'm curious, what was the underlying reason though with the talking about when to sell? Yeah. Like the b the business was was having great numbers quarter over quarter. Like if you looked at all the fundamentals there, look I mean, granted they they're not Profitable. But but revenue is increasing, um, you know. cost of acquiring customers was going down. What was it that that you freaked out about? I don't I mean I don't think that freak outs are generally a

rational decision. I'm not like well if A and if B and therefore C and one two three four five freak out You know it's not like that is at the end of a long deliberation. Uh I think that the Gain. since my cost basis was effectively zero, right, my gain was such that the absolute number of dollars was enough to

At the time. move the needle for me and provide a level of security That I didn't want to risk. Yeah.

Does doesn't mean that there were a bunch of risk. I just didn't know and I You never Know what you don't know. Do you know what I mean though? I was like, you know. Oh, dude, th there's there's that first wave of I wanna take care of myself, pay off my bills, pay off my house. This is like something that's gonna secure my future that you would just be fuel uh foolish not to take. And I I get that. That sounds like that's what you were doing. Yeah, that's what I was doing. And and the the challenge has been

And we don't have to spend a lot of time on this because I I think we're getting into rarefied. But Updating that. Script. Right? Because I it's not the only example of me panic selling.

And I panic sold other things. I mean panic sold is very dramatic, but I emotionally sold. Other things. Alibaba, you know, I was I invested early in Alibaba. There were but pre IBO and All sorts of companies that I sold once they got once they went public. It has taken a lot of reflection and training and planning. That's that's number one for me. P Have a plan, right? Don't go into a fight with no plan, then get hit and try to figure out your game plan.

Have a plan going in. So I've I've done that in the last few years and I've not Uh I've not panic sold or emotionally sold. Anything. That's a lot easier to say, of course, now that I have more security, but the point is even after the point that I had more security I was still

I had not updated my OS, right? My operating system was still like Windows ninety five Like panic, panic, crash, panic, crash. And I had to become aware of that before I could change anything. Does that make sense?

Yeah. You are a hundred times better than I am in the public markets and you've been very comfortable. in the public markets for a very long time from from my perspective, at least what I've seen. I mean you're you're you're a very rare breed of investor because you are successful across

Many Different. Classes and many different assets. Uh So you can go.

super early stage. I mean white paper early or back of the napkin early, all the way up to mature public. And I've seen you hit home runs in almost every Every uh Every band of

Of investment in terms of size and also in terms of technology. It's it's been uh it's been very impressive. To watch and I have to first admit to myself, lest I get my face ripped off that I'm not you. Right? Like I just have a different Different way of approaching this stuff.

Uh Yeah, I mean, dude, the you'll you'll laugh at some of the grammar I write you in emails so we all have our strengths and weaknesses. Like some of some of the things that I produce on other fronts are are laughable. So you know, I think it's just kind of knowing what those pieces are and and and playing to your strengths, you know? Yeah. Yeah, play you can you can you can fuck up. A lot As long as you play to your core strengths and make a few good decisions. I mean once a year, once every few years in the startup investing game, right? Like you can

If if you hopefully they're not all predicated on luck, but if you if you have a decent process, right, like you said, you missed out on Netflix. Doesn't matter. Right, like if you hit a home run, you can strike out If you hit

a few home runs that are real home runs, right? Which you have You can strike out a whole lot. And that is Well and you expect to, you know, it's like Or better yet, miss out again. You can miss out. That's a better way to put it. Like you can pick, you can wait for the fat pitches. And if you have rules and certain systems, which I've seen you use, which has been the impressive part, right? If someone's just consistently lucky, I can't model that.

Right. And I know those people too. You and I both know those people. Where it's like Yeah. Right. That article paints them as a genius, but we all know that they like they like flipped a coin after drinking a bottle of tequila and then like here we are. So uh I can't model

That type of dumb luck. And there are some people who just seem to like pot of gold falling out of the sky into their lap every two years. I just don't know what that's about. And then there are the people who have rules and they have systems and they have criteria. And uh

I think you've done really well with that. So that's that's something I've always watched with with admiration. And that is something that I've tried to model. But not by duplicating all of your rules, but simply having rules.

Certainly helps. Helps a lot. Yeah, and I mean I think that the the one thing I wanna emphasize on that last little piece that we talked about on the investing side, the reason why eighty percent of my stuff is in you know, standard boring index funds, bond funds, things like that is because I know how risky

the rest of it is and uh you know I expect to lose a lot of it. So I would never advocate well, first of all, I'm not I'm not in the even in the position to give investment advice. I'm not legally allowed to, but I wouldn't um I wouldn't advocate, you know, investing more than you can lose because you n you never know because there's so many other factors you can have the best company on earth And you could have a downturn in the market that's gonna last a decade and you're still gonna be underwater. And so it's you know, you always have to factor that in as well. Yeah. I'm still I would consider myself super conservative. And I and I also want to emphasize

Or Maybe clarifies the right word. That's You talk about ultra risky, right? twenty percent ultra risky.

And it's true that each of those bets you place independently. Could be considered ultra risky. But you maybe you could speak to this, but I mean you also have a portfolio approach And

certain advantages, right? Informational advantage and so on. I'm not talking about uh any public stuff, but with with these super early stage companies. with different types of Yeah. I mean cryptocurrencies and and uh blockchain and and whatnot, that you have You think about portfolio

construction and you think about Allocation. Bet sizing. Right. So that These individually ultra risky bets.

When viewed. In total. Uh Underscore the possibility that each of them could say return the fund. So to speak.

Even though it's an ultra risky it's a it's a collection of ultra risky assets, the way that you approach it, while still risky, certainly. Uh stands a very high likelihood of success. Right. That's right. Yeah. I mean that's a c classic venture rule that, you know

It depends on w whose math you're looking at, but you know eighty eighty eighty plus percent of the deals that you do will go to zero. You know, but the ones that do make it. you're hoping are are the massive, you know, thousand X kind of fun makers. that that you that you can find, especially at the really early stage. But

Um Yeah, that's that's part of part of getting comfortable with all that is is saying goodbye and not taking it, you know, when when things don't work out and and not taking it personally, just realize it's the the riskiest thing that you can do and some of the biggest mistake I see angel investors make without a doubt. Is they go out and do two deals. They go out and do three deals.

You know, they'll say Uh I would much rather and this is how I started out in the early days. I went out and placed five to ten thousand dollar bets. Which on from an angel's uh point of view is is really minimal dollars because you know, most Silicon Valley angels are doing twenty five to a hundred K. You know, chunks.

uh when they invest in a startup. I didn't have that kind of money. But I knew the math, and the math is that most of them are gonna go to zero. And so if that's the case rather than have two companies at twenty five K a piece and say I'm done. I'd rather, you know, go out and have a whole dozen of them at a much lower, you know, five to ten thousand dollar kind of range and have a greater chance that I will find one of those crazy unicorns that's going to return all the

the the rest of them. Sorry. So or cover for the rest of them. So that um Whenever I meet someone that's looking to get into that side of investing on the angel side, it's always uh do more at at uh with less dollars in and then if you have the opportunity to buy up in the future with with Pro Rata and you do see something that looks like it's gonna win, um you could because you're already on the cap table, you can you know, go in and and purchase more shares um in future rounds of financing.

Yeah, we're getting we're getting into the the nitty gritty here. But yes, tha that could be a whole separate conversation on reserving a portion of your sort of annual budget for follow on. with the Prorrata and all that, but we won't we we we can save that for For our next random show. Yeah, one thing that I a last little thing I will say that I think is is more broadly applicable is you mentioned like how do you decide when to sell. And this could be applied to to public market investing, which most people are comfortable with.

You know, when your allocation in that in that risky, ultra risky category outpaces and outgrows where all of a sudden that was twenty percent, but now it's actually forty percent of your portfolio, then you need to rebalance and that's that's when you can do that. Yeah. The most fun is when you're ultra risky has you locked up so all of a sudden you're at like ninety percent you can't sell a goddamn thing. That's always a really stress free experience. Uh Very important. That is an important point. And uh

What should we close with? Any last thoughts? I mean one one takeaway that I've had from the last ten years and I have actually become much better at this. Uh much better at following my own advice. I remember Sam Harris once I think he said to me or Maybe you wrote it somewhere but that you know wisdom is

Largely taking your own advice. Yeah. There's a quote and I can't remember the attribution. Somebody on the internet can certainly Tell us and I'll put it in the show notes, but That living well is the best revenge. that quote has really been important to me in the last few years and it comes back to

What what we were discussing or what I was saying much earlier about Treating myself with anger. And trying to really replace that with more acceptance and understanding and compassion.

Uh which I always focus outward. I never really focused it inward. And a byproduct of that. meaning being less angry with myself was trying to cultivate directing less anger at other people also. And I was never a yell and scream, throw plates against the wall kind of guy, but I would feel intense anger uh when I was wronged or felt wronged, right? And I mean if you've been in the business world long enough, or if you've had enough relationships, like you've been

Fucked at some point. And I would get very I would get very upset. And I would uh fantasize. I wouldn't always actualise, but I'd fantasize about the kind of eye for an eye. Type.

Retaliation. And the reality was that that I I very, very rarely indulged in that. But you r rarely took eyes? I very rarely took eyes, uh as Colonel Hackworth what's his first name I'm blanking what's that sometimes it is entirely appropriate to smash A mosquito with a sledgehammer, something like that, or smash a fly with a sledgehammer. I think there is a time and place for that, don't get me wrong. But You know, one doesn't want to set precedent in some unfavorable way. But the the point being that I've been I've become much better and I'm not gonna mention

this person by name, but very well known person has As a reminder on his screen saver on his laptop. Let it go. And this is a very accomplished person. I actually consider him to be very Zen and emotionally resilient and calm. Nonetheless, he has that reminder. Let it go.

On his Desktop. And I have Realized Tying in the sort of energetic management.

That Like living well is the best revenge. If someone's really fucked you and they're that person, chances are they're not very happy, right? Uh that's not always the case. There are some Super aggressive doctor evil narcissists. Uh Assholes who are quite happy. I hate to tell people out there, but they do exist. Nonetheless

a lot of the people who do awful things or break their word or whatever are pretty miserable. And like letting them wallow in their own misery And not engaging because it will contaminate your experience. Uh has been really key for me. Letting it go.

Uh to the extent possible. Right. And and just like living well as the best revenge has has really stuck with me. Right? Like the best thing he can do is Yeah, live your life. I think what you just said was is really It's i it's interesting and th the way I've always looked at it is If someone is being very verbally aggressive with you or angry or or trying to

push their energy onto you. If you take that and carry it on and then release it to other people. You're just furthering their agenda of spreading that that energy and It's it's letting it go is just the ability to actually set them free in a way. You're releasing that negative energy and you're just like letting it dissipate. Yeah.

And it's such a freeing thing. Yeah. You know, it's a beautiful thing if you think of it like that. Yeah, you you've taught me a lot. uh with this in certain instances I remember I got attacked by some some troll, as trolls will do. Uh many years ago. This is a long time ago. Yeah, I remember. And I think well let's see, you might have a different example, but w and you said Something like

Uh. Tim, do you r do you really want to engage in a fight with someone with infinite time? And I was like No, I don't. When you phrase it that way, like absolutely not. And You've given me uh because of course coming out of coming out of dig and sort of early days You had far more mileage.

With online. Yeah. I don't know if you remember this, but I think I told you also that I was like, when was the last time you've left A negative comment on somebody's blog. I've been like, fuck you on somebody's blog, and like anonymously. And it's like, uh, I don't think I've ever done that. Yeah, because you're not that kind of person. Yeah, right. Like think of like the type of person that's engaging with you here, and you don't need to it's just the the one thing people don't realize about the internet, and that I learned through a school of hard knocks is that Just like in society, if you were to go and put 500 people in a room, there are gonna be some assholes in that room. Some like completely dicks that are mean spirited people that want to see other people in misery.

The internet is no different. Like you get a group of people of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and there are groups of very evil people. Like you can do if you know that, then you can just be like, Oh, that's just one of those evil people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's you know, when you walk by them. On the sidewalk you may not Noticed, but they're there. And Uh you know another quote that is kind of stuck with me and I'm blanking on the attribution. This is a very famous quote.

Uh but the paraphrase is you know don't wrestle with pigs because it just makes it makes you filthy and it makes the pig happy. Oh interesting. And it's like yeah, like there's there's there's there's nothing to be There's very little to be to be gained from engaging with that. Um So Yeah, so my final quote for the day, uh on my side, since you gave yours. Um is from that Michael Singer course that I took on Surrender, which I think is a phenomenal video course, but he says something in there that stuck with me.

Um where he says serve the moment. Which I thought was really interesting. Um just this idea of Being so present that you are just serving that moment in time. Uh it's just a beautiful thing if you can pull it off.

How do you how do you use that? I like I like the I like the sort of connotation of that, but did you use that with yourself? Yeah, I just think like where's my head right now? You know, am I really giving

My So focus and attention and brain space to What's going on right now? My serving Does people around me

To the fullest. At this Point in time. And that can mean simple things from paying attention to my daughter when she's playing and engaging with that versus being on my phone. Yeah. Um, you know, to th worrying about something or thinking about something in the future that may or may not happen, to You know, wanting to gouge somebody's eye out, like we mentioned, like th those aren't that's not serving the moment. That's

It's serving in the imaginary land, you know. Yeah. It's fighting with sock puppets. Yeah. Uh and I I I I really meant it earlier when I said I was I was really struck Because uh you've seen me through many chapters, I've seen you through many chapters over many years. And there have been times When I've I've seen you and this is the contrast, right? I've s there were there was a time when

If you were sitting down with sort of nothing up no project to work on, I would see you on your phone. And when I was home with you, I came up and you're just sitting there sipping tea, looking at your daughter, playing with blocks or whatever she was doing. unrushed and fully paying attention and

That might sound quaint, it might sound simple, but if we look at the technological forces. And the financial incentives and the funding And market caps of these companies and the armies of PhDs who are attempting To make that impossible.

It becomes all the more noteworthy, I think, in all the more valuable To have practices and reminders that help you to have those kind of moments. Yeah.

Absolutely. Uh I'm happy for you, man. It's uh it's been really nice to see you. Same, dude. I mean I didn't notice I we didn't say this on the show earlier, but I'm really stoked um who with your Girlfriend now that shall go unnamed. Uh she's she's amazing. I got a chance to hang out with her and meet her, you know, when you're out here and It's uh it's really cool to see you happy and and uh

It's it's been fun it's uh I'm excited for you to have babies soon. So that's all I'll say. Well, you know it may not be that far off. We shall see. We shall see. But um Nice to uh see your face and hear your voice, brother. As always. Uh please give uh give my love to the fam.

And um You wanna share any Any Particular resources or point people. Anywhere if they'd like to

Learn what you're up to. Or see what you're up to. Most of the stuff I I publish, uh I do on Instagram. So I'm just Instagram at Kevin Rose. Um and then yeah, definitely check out the uh the IOS app less, L E S S, Less Drinking. Uh I think it'll help use uh those of you out there that uh wanna be a little bit my more mindful about the beverages you consume. Um it's just a fun little little project we're working on. One zero two for intermittent fasting. We got dude, we hit I don't even think I told you this, we hit one point three million

monthly fasters now. Not fasts, but people fasting. People. Yeah. Yeah, we we added three hundred thousand people this last uh uh thirty days. Wow. So it's it's it's nuts. I need your help with my email list. Uh that's incredible. Congratulations. And uh

I'm excited for twenty twenty. I'm really excited about it. And Uh Yeah, I don't I don't have uh much everybody can find me at Tim.blog. And uh

Check out the writing. I'm gonna be doing more writing. Certainly love the podcast. I'm gonna continue to do that, but In service of eventually getting to the point where I'm working on this Healing and psychoemotional dynamics in a very concrete way. I mean it's not gonna be high fluid and conceptual. There'll be like

In the trenches. with some crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy fucking stories. I mean if you imagine kinda for our body, but for Mind and emotion. Yeah, it's it would be like that, but much crazier. Much Are are you using four hour in it anyway? Yeah. I think I'm retired the four hour jersey.

Yeah. I I it's like I still get joy out of it whenever I see four hours somewhere. Like I remember when I saw the four hour cleaners in San Francisco and I sent you a photo of it. I remember that. It's on Lart or whatever. Yeah. Well, you know we we we think we think we know what we're doing and then we're like oh my God. The blessing and the curse that will chase me forever. Here it is. Exactly. Uh but you know, they're they're certainly far, far worse. Far worse prefixes, so I'll take it for now. Love doing the random show, man. Let's do more of these.

And uh Let's um let's meet up in person. Before too long. Let's do it. Sounds good. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share

the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off. for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. These days, as you know, the million messages per minute. Not enough hours in the day, how do you really catch people's attention?

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So try for yourself. LinkedIn is offering a free$100 LinkedIn ad credit to launch your first campaign. Simply visit linkedin.com slash TFS, as in Tim Barrish show. Again, that's LinkedIn.com slash TFS. Terms and conditions apply. This episode of the Tim Ferris Show is brought to you by Calm. I once asked LeBron James, you've probably heard of him, what is the single most important element of his training regimen? And I may have edged into it slightly differently, but in effect that's what I was asking. And uh You know what he said? He did not say windsprings. Cryotherapy maybe? Egg white omelets with a side of butternut squash, no. No, and although it sounds delicious, no.

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