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  • Tom: Hey everybody, welcome to Impact Theory.

  • You're here because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless but you know

  • that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it.

  • Our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that

  • will help you execute on your dreams.

  • All right.

  • Today's guest is the king of self optimization.

  • A man who is constantly learning and testing new theories in the real world so that he

  • can improve his skill set and do more.

  • His ridiculous list of accomplishments is proof that if you approach the world as a

  • student there's no such thing as the impossible.

  • Here are just a few of the seemingly unreal, albeit, entirely true highlights from his

  • resume.

  • He's a former MTV break dancer in Taiwan, the one time national Chinese kickboxing champion,

  • the first American to hold the Guinness world record in tango, a horseback archer, Princeton

  • University guest lecturer, and angel investor who has racked up a serious string of entrepreneurial

  • maga hits, including Uber, Facebook, Twitter, and Alibaba.

  • He is an unparalleled, self experimenter, professional note taker, and would be ninth

  • grade teacher, but you probably know him better for his best selling books "The 4-hour Work

  • Week", "The 4-hour Body", and "The 4-hour Chef".

  • Or perhaps you're more familiar with his number one iTunes TV show, or his unbelievably popular

  • podcast, which has been downloaded more than one hundred million times.

  • But even if you don't know him from any of that you're certainly going to know him for

  • his most recent book, "Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires,

  • Icons, and World Class Performers."

  • He's been called the Oprah of audio and the Indiana Jones for the digital age, please

  • help me in welcoming the New York Times best selling author multiple times over, the man

  • behind the Tim Ferriss Show.

  • The human guinea pig himself, Tim Ferriss.

  • Tim: Hey man.

  • Tom: Awesome my brother, how you doing?

  • Tim: Good to see you again.

  • Tom: Good to see you as well man.

  • Tim: It's all downhill after that intro.

  • Tom: I'm not so sure about that.

  • The sheer weight of this bad boy ... Tim: I know.

  • Tom: ... Tells me that it's not gonna be all downhill from here.

  • Tim: It was supposed to be one sentence a page.

  • Maybe a little check out book in the aisle.

  • I can't help myself.

  • Tom: Yeah I saw that.

  • If you had to boil it down to one sentence, what was your purpose in writing it?

  • Tim: The purpose in writing it was to create the ultimate cliff notes for myself and then

  • I got about halfway through it and one of my friends was taking a look at it and he

  • goes, "This is exactly what your readers would want.

  • Why don't you just publish it?"

  • And that led ultimately to the book, which is about half new material.

  • I would say 50 to 60% brand new.

  • Some brand new recommendations from past guests, new guests that people haven't met yet like

  • Jack Dorsey, who's a very impressive cat, and Cheryl Strayed and many others but the

  • six to 10,000 of pages of transcripts got boiled down to about 350 pages in here and

  • the vetting process was choosing what I had had a chance to apply myself or something

  • my close friends had applied at the highest levels.

  • Tom: Some of the people that you've interviewed in the book, Peter Thiel being the first one

  • that comes to mind of just mega producers or Reid Hoffman.

  • I mean it is absurd the number of people that you've come in contact with that are just

  • absolute apex predators in the world of whatever it is that they do.

  • I mean it's really, really incredible.

  • Tim: So Amelia Boone, I don't know if you've ever met her.

  • She's so tough.

  • My god, she's a three time World's Toughest Mudder champion.

  • She is full time attorney at Apple.

  • Tom: Woah.

  • Tim: She, in the 2012 Toughest Mudder, which is a 24 hour race.

  • You have to complete a course of obstacles for as many repetitions as you can and she's

  • done more than 90 miles in that case but it's like climbing ropes and carry-

  • Tom: 90 miles of obstacles?

  • Tim: Of obstacles and in eight weeks of after knee surgery more than 1,000 competitors,

  • 90% plus of which are men, she came in second place.

  • Tom: Oh my god.

  • Tim: Out of everybody.

  • Tom: What do you think drives her?

  • Like that's crazy.

  • She's super successful but you don't do 90 miles in a 24 hour period without some intense

  • thing pushing you forward, if you had to guess.

  • Tim: If I had to guess I think it is pretty simple.

  • Now with endurance, ultra endurance athletes, one of the common questions is are you running

  • towards something or are you running from something?

  • Tom: Yeah, for sure.

  • Tim: Two things I really like about Amelia.

  • Number one, what would you put on a billboard if you could put anything on a huge billboard?

  • Tom: I love that question.

  • Tim: "No one owes you anything."

  • [crosstalk 00:04:56] That's her answer, so great, and then her other quote which I had

  • to put right on the top of her chapter was, "I'm not the strongest, I'm not the fastest,

  • but I'm really good at suffering."

  • Tom: Yeah.

  • Why does that resonate with you?

  • Because that sits at the core of my being, that very notion.

  • Tim: Out endure.

  • You can train yourself to out endure other people.

  • Tom: It really ... So when I think about what gifts, you've talked about this before.

  • Like everybody has a superpower and one of my superpowers is the ability to suffer.

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: And it's one of those things that you say and you know it's kinda tongue in cheek

  • and a little bit funny but at the same time it's my fucking super power.

  • Like people look at me and say, "Okay, well how have you been able to do this?"

  • Because truly you spend enough time with me you will know very, very quickly I am not

  • the brightest person and I don't pride myself in that so that's not like, I don't ... I'm

  • not torn up about it.

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: Not the brightest person.

  • Didn't have any extreme advantages or anything growing up.

  • Certainly not physically more impressive than the next person but my willingness to suffer

  • is absurd ... Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: ... And when you direct that at something that you care about, my whole thing is the

  • way that I think about it is I'll outlast anyone, right?

  • On a long enough timeline I can accomplish and when people really start to look at that

  • but then it comes back to the next question, which I want to know from you is what is the

  • driver?

  • What's that thing that makes you be so willing to suffer?

  • Tim: It's the promise of that crack hit for me, which is the aha moment.

  • Tom: In you or in you and other people?

  • Tim: It's both and the reason I get such a high from it is if I can crack the code in

  • the sense that I find something that saves people hundreds of hours or myself hundreds

  • of hours in the learning curve for a particular skill or a particular type of recovery or

  • fill in the bank, just an elegant or non-obvious solution to a longstanding problem, I'm like,

  • "Okay, I can't wait to see how people are gonna respond when I provide that to 1,000

  • people and I see, for most of them, the vast majority just go holy fuck."

  • If you take someone for instance I didn't learn how to swim until I was in my 30s.

  • I think we may have talked about this.

  • I grew up in Long Island but I was deathly afraid of drowning because I had some near-drowning

  • incidents and some lung issues.

  • Now at this point I was taught by this gentleman named Terry Lockland something called total

  • immersion, which I first learned from a book which I was introduced to by Chris Sacca who's

  • a billionaire investor in this book oddly enough.

  • But you can take someone, which I did with Terry at one point for the Tim Ferriss Experiment,

  • the first TV show I did.

  • This mother of two I think, Sarah, who had never been able to swim, couldn't even put

  • her head under water in the pool comfortably and four days later open water swimming 500

  • meters in the ocean in like 40-foot deep water freestyle and when you show someone an impossible

  • like that, it's not only possible but that they can crack it really quickly, that's my

  • drug of choice.

  • I just get such a high out of it.

  • The other thing, why am I willing to suffer?

  • I'm willing to suffer because I guess much like you I feel like I have my deficiencies.

  • I have plenty of weaknesses.

  • To go to the extreme is partially present because I feel like the most interesting things

  • happen at the fringes first.

  • Tom: Reading the press kit for your book, I had that overwhelming sense of holy hell,

  • what you've just spent the last however many years collecting are all of those gems that

  • either other people just haven't aggregated or they haven't distilled or they haven't

  • been willing to look at.

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: But now exists in one place, which is incredibly exciting.

  • Now one of the promises in the press kit was that you could test the impossible in 17 questions.

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: What are some of the questions?

  • Tim: So the questions are actual questions that coincided with milestones or inflection

  • points or just a fork in my own life.

  • It's actually laid out these questions, about 12 of them, coincided with exact points that

  • I can remember.

  • Some of them would be, for instance, what if I did the opposite for 48 hours?

  • This is a question that I ask myself when I had my first job out of college.

  • Talk about suffering.

  • I mean my desk was in the fire exit.

  • It was completely illegal.

  • I slept under the desk, the whole nine yards and don't regret a minute of it but I was

  • a technical sales guy.

  • Outbound sales guy, so we had inside sales and outside sales and my job was to close

  • deals with CTO's and CEO's for multi-million dollar data storage systems.

  • At that point storage area networks fiber channel and what I realized at one point was

  • that all of the seasoned sales guys, who were doing far better than I was doing, were making

  • phone calls between nine and five.

  • Those were the office hours and I said, "Well, I'm clearly not doing an effective job mimicking

  • them.

  • What if I did the opposite for 48 hours?"

  • It's a very recoverable experiment.

  • If it doesn't work, then I can always go back to what I was doing.

  • Doing the opposite meant making the calls between let's just say 6:30 and 8:30 and then

  • 5:30 to 7:00, 7:30 and it was just a hypothesis.

  • Maybe I can get a hold of the people I need to get a hold of more effectively when the

  • gatekeepers aren't there and that's exactly what happened.

  • I started booking more meetings and closing more deals than the majority of the guys in

  • the company and it was just from asking that question.

  • What if I did the opposite for 48 hours and you can apply that to many, many things.

  • Some of the others would be, well, this is one I asked in 2004.

  • If I had a gun against my head and could only work two hours per week, what would I do?

  • I know it's impossible, what would I do?

  • And that type of ludicrous question was necessary to break my thinking patterns and stress test

  • my own assumptions of what was possible and you find that that is a learnable skill.

  • Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize, who's really good at these types of questions.

  • I mean he's attempting to solve some of the biggest problems facing humanity in very innovative

  • ways.

  • He would ask, for instance, start ups who come to him for angel investment.

  • He'll say, "What would you have to do in the next six months," I'm paraphrasing here.

  • Tom: Sure.

  • Tim: "... To 10X the economics of your business?"

  • And if they say it can't be done, he's like I do not accept your answer.

  • Literally he just says, "I do not accept your answer, try again."

  • What's very important here is to realize the expectation is not that you'll magically in

  • 10 minutes come up with a plan to achieve your 10 year goals in six months but that

  • you may get halfway there, right?

  • Tom: And largely just to shift your paradigm, right?

  • I know Peter very well and his whole thing is if you're ... Naturally we think linearly,

  • right?

  • Until you break out of that and start thinking exponentially, you're never going to get the

  • kind of breakthroughs that you want.

  • There's two things I think that people don't understand about being an entrepreneur.

  • Number one is there's a ton of mundane stuff that you're gonna have to do, like this set.

  • My wife and I were hand painting it, which is stupid by the way.

  • It should've been done and sprayed but we found ourselves in a situation where that

  • shit had to be hand painted.

  • As I'm going through, literally at 3:00 AM, painting this set I thought this is the part

  • of being an entrepreneur that people don't see coming.

  • Tim: That's not on the magazine covers.

  • Tom: Yeah exactly, so it's like and do you right your willingness to suffer?

  • Do you gut check?

  • Do you get through?

  • And then the other thing is how do you break out of your dogmatic linear thinking to get

  • through to the big aha moment?

  • The I have a gun to my head, I only have two hours which then becomes the four-hour workweek

  • because of a Google test and they thought that it was ridiculous that it'd be two hours.

  • Nobody's gonna believe that.

  • I love that story, which then obviously has massive paradigm shifting changes in people

  • and what I find so fascinating about asking what is it that I would need to do or what

  • would stop me from executing a 10 year plan in six months is it forces you to sort of

  • abandon all hope of clinging to what you already know.

  • That's the only time that you're gonna do something differently is you have to approach

  • the problem from a radically different way.

  • Take Uber for a second.

  • Uber was one of those few ideas that the second I saw it, I was like, "Oh my god, that's so

  • brilliant," but I had never stopped to ask the question, "What would it take?"

  • Riding in a cab stressed my ability to suffer, right?

  • That's how much I fucking hated riding in cabs.

  • It's just such a bad experience.

  • Drivers are horrible to you.

  • The cars are disgusting.

  • If you call them and have to wait, I mean it's a joke right.

  • All of it is just terrible terrible but I never asked the question.

  • What would it take to revolutionize this?

  • Getting down to asking these wildly divergent questions, and I love your question about

  • what if I did the opposite, because by definition it shatters the dogma.

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Even if you don't think it's gonna work, what if I do the opposite for 48 hours?

  • Even if I'm almost 100% or 100% sure it's not gonna work or be beneficial, as long as

  • you cap the downside in someway right?

  • Tom: Do you red team blue team?

  • Tim: I do, oh yeah.

  • Red teaming, for those people that don't know, this comes from military.

  • It could be in any division of the military where they'll take, let's just say, five guys

  • blue team, five guys designate them red team and the job of the red team is to either,

  • say, get into a building that the blue team is supposed to protect, defeat defenses that

  • the blue team has created, or you can do this in a corporate setting and Marc Andreessen

  • who's another billionaire and just fascinating guy, incredible engineer also.

  • They'll red team ideas.

  • They will create what he would call a counter veiling force.

  • If we're in a venture capital general partner meeting and you come up with what you think

  • is a great thesis or a great company, even if I think it's a good idea I will and I'll

  • take several other people and we will attack it and try to tear it to death, tear it to

  • pieces and he calls it the torture test.

  • That is also a form of red teaming, so I'll do that with all sorts of things.

  • Tom: I also find that red teaming, like being on the red team itself, sharpens your own

  • thinking.

  • One, it's just a good exercise to be able to put yourself in the other side so you don't

  • have to have other people always to red team.

  • You can actually flip over.

  • Tim: Yep.

  • Tom: Back in high school I used to do speech and debate and in debate you had to take both

  • sides of the argument.

  • You had to be able to go back and forth.

  • It made you so much more compelling because you knew the weaknesses of both sides because

  • you got used to playing that.

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: And so like in the military where in that moment you are investing everything into

  • getting into that space, right?

  • I'm going to break the US defenses.

  • I'm going to get into this room.

  • I'm going to show them that I'm better, right?

  • If you can, and we do that here at Impact Theory, is to put yourself ... Even if you

  • don't end up debunking it, practice being able to put yourself on the other side.

  • Tim: For sure.

  • Tom: Because one of the things, dude, I fear this more than I can tell you which is getting

  • trapped in my own dogma because I need to codify the world.

  • I need it.

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: Which is why this book is so fucking interesting to me because it's basically a

  • bunch of codifications that are instantly powerful.

  • They have that punch, you follow it up with their own contextual stuff, which I think

  • is brilliant by the way, but you're giving the codifications but in codifying the world

  • it tends to calcify for me, right?

  • Tim: Sure, sure.

  • Tom: And when you look at genius being a young man's game it's like I didn't get enough done

  • in my youth youth to be okay with that.

  • I have done nothing that is going to earn my a Nobel prize, let's start with that.

  • Tim: Oh me neither, for what it's worth.

  • Tom: To continue to do profound things, it's like you have to reinvent yourself.

  • We just had Michael Strahan on the show and his business partner Constance, who's just

  • an unbelievably talented woman and she has every 10 years forced herself to do a totally

  • new career.

  • Tim: Cool.

  • Tom: Which is amazing and he was saying that's basically what makes her so effective because

  • she's not drawing on the moment, she's drawing on all these different angles of attack onto

  • her core skill set.

  • Tim: Right, so one of the questions that you can also ask, just like what if I did the

  • opposite for 48 hours, I'll give you another question that I think you'll really like.

  • It's one of the 17.

  • What can I learn from the people I hate the most?

  • Tom: Wow.

  • Tim: Now this does two things.

  • It forces you to separate your morality from your search for effectiveness.

  • It also helps you to develop some degree of empathy and those two are very powerful.

  • What can I learn from the people I hate most is a very, very useful practice.

  • I'll journal on that very often.

  • In terms of patterns, we were talking about some of the things I've spotted, meditation

  • or journaling are performed by close to 100% of the people that I interview.

  • The question, just to come back to that that I thought you might enjoy is, and this is

  • an example of taking something from someone I disagree with on almost every level.

  • Newt Gingrich.

  • One of the questions that Newt would ask himself and others is are you hunting antelope or

  • are you hunting field mice and the story he would tell is that of a lion in the Serengeti.

  • He's like, "If you're always chasing field mice as a lion, you'll get a snack.

  • You might even survive but you might end up starving because you're getting these little

  • Scooby snacks."

  • That's not his words, mine.

  • "That make you feel good and give you the allusion of accomplishing something real,"

  • and for me that's translated into are you being busy or are you being productive?

  • Tom: Yes.

  • Tim: Right?

  • Tom: Yes.

  • Tim: And that was a question, I want to say it was about five years ago or so, this antelope

  • versus field mice.

  • Just the story, the parable and the metaphor was so strong for me that I put that up where

  • I would see it everyday.

  • Tom: All right let's take a hard right.

  • There's some interesting stuff in here about creativity.

  • What are some of the most interesting and useful lessons about creativity you pulled

  • from the book?

  • Tim: The first that comes to mind is setting really low expectations and this-

  • Tom: Not what I was expecting you to say.

  • Tim: Well not what a lot of people expect and when I spoke to, say, Paulo Coelho, who's

  • sold 100 million plus copies, The Alchemist, et cetera.

  • You talk to Rick Rubin.

  • Let me give his example first.

  • When he has a musician who's stuck, great musician but they've developed performance

  • anxiety about song writing for whatever reason, he will say, "Do you think you could get me

  • one sentence or maybe two words that you like by tomorrow?

  • That's it, two words.

  • Can you do that for me?"

  • He gives them a micro assignment.

  • Best writing advice that I probably ever received, and I've received a lot of good writing advice,

  • but I can get myself really wound up because I expect perfection to flow from my fingertips

  • like magic and that never happens so then I beat the hell out of myself and that makes

  • me less likely to put pen to paper in the first place.

  • I'll procrastinate, which is why if you write two crappy pages per day you've won the day.

  • That's a successful writing day and that does a few things.

  • It helps you to maintain enthusiasm because you're constantly winning and of course on

  • many days you'll write more than two.

  • You'll get to two then you'll go to five or to 10 but if you're on an off day you write

  • two crappy pages.

  • Even if you never use it, it's a successful day and that I think for longer term projects

  • and extended creativity is really important.

  • The story that this writer told me with that tip, he said, "Okay this is where this comes

  • from.

  • Did you know that IBM, when it was the 800 pound gorilla it was an undefeatable sales

  • force?

  • Do you know what one of their rules was?"

  • I was like, "No."

  • He says, "Well what do you think their quotas were?"

  • And I was like, "Well I'm sure it was really high because they wanted to motivate their

  • guys to get after it."

  • He goes, "No their quotas were the lowest in the industry."

  • Tom: Wow.

  • Tim: And the rationale was we don't want our sales people to be intimidated to pick up

  • the phone.

  • We want them to feel like they're gonna pass their quota quickly, which they did and then

  • they shot well past it and clobbered the competition.

  • Tom: That's interesting.

  • Tim: The counter intuitive pairing of low expectations leading to higher performance

  • is really odd, right?

  • Tom: So let's ask the obvious question then.

  • As somebody who's had a lot of employees at the height I had, over 1,000 employees, that

  • feels dangerous.

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: And it feels dangerous and I think I have my own answer but it feels dangerous

  • because some people, especially when an organization gets that big, they're looking for a place

  • to hide and you give it to them.

  • Tim: Yeah I think that the winning combination is selectively low quotas on a daily basis

  • with high expectations for metrics on, say, a quarterly or annual basis.

  • You're tracking the numbers.

  • You want them to hit home runs but it doesn't have to be one at-bat.

  • I think it's also very context and role specific but if we're talking about creativity in particular,

  • right, so not necessarily work output, the approach ... There are a number of prolific

  • writers who have said, Neil Strauss said this, "There's no such thing as writer's block,"

  • which drives me crazy.

  • I'm like come on.

  • You might be a mutant like X-Men of writing but for the normal humans, come on.

  • Give me a break.

  • He goes, "No, no, no.

  • Hear me out."

  • Number one, he is a trained journalist and journalists tend to have writing block beaten

  • out of them because their boss is like, "Oh you can't find the right prose for your 500

  • word article?

  • Get it in by five o'clock asshole," and they're just like, "Oh wait, this isn't school," and

  • they're like, "Yeah deadline, that's your incentive.

  • Writer's block my ass," and he's like, "Oh okay."

  • But he said and what they learn is, he said, "There's no such thing as writer's block."

  • He said, "What that is is performance anxiety that you've imposed on yourself because your

  • expectations are too high."

  • He's like, "Just lower your standards.

  • Lower your standards until you get started."

  • Tom: Can I back you up here for a second?

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: Oh god this is embarrassing but I've at least admitted it before.

  • When I first started doing Instagram I was like I want to really up Instagram's game,

  • right, so I'm gonna make these posts really mean something and I want to actually impact

  • somebody and if you read one of my posts you're going to be impacted.

  • Then there was one day, nine hours later I had lost my entire Sunday writing this Instagram

  • post and I thought, "This is not scalable.

  • Like, you cannot write a nine hour Instagram post."

  • Because like the comments would be like, "It's long but it's worth the read."

  • So I thought, "Wait, people actively don't want to read this shit.

  • Their friend has to convince them to do it and I just spent nine hours writing it.

  • This is madness."

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: So I said, "Okay, I'm gonna write this stuff in 20 minutes, like, simple as and they

  • get what they get in 20 minutes and it is what it is," and I started getting better

  • reactions.

  • It was like oh my god.

  • It's hilarious.

  • Tim: Oh it is hilarious and I give you another example which is Ed Catmull, president of

  • Pixar.

  • Pixar, I mean for god sakes, I mean Pixar and he said to me, "The early versions of

  • our movies," and I'm paraphrasing of course but, "They're all crap."

  • And he talked about a few of my favorite movies.

  • He said, "Oh yeah, they're all crap.

  • We have to just toss them out and start over."

  • I said, "Wait a second."

  • I backtracked and I said, "So you just mean the movies when they start are really rough

  • drafts and then you have to refine them?"

  • He's like, "No, no, no.

  • That's the misconception.

  • They think the early version of the movie is just a rough draft of the later one."

  • He's like, "No it's completely different.

  • We literally scrapped it and started again from scratch and then those starting from

  • scratch stories became some of the most popular successful movies."

  • Tom: Wow.

  • Do you find that a lot?

  • Because when I write I will often hit that point where I'm like this is so bad that trying

  • to just continue to make it better is the wrong idea.

  • I need to start over and then if you can put words to this next emotion you will be my

  • hero.

  • You get into this dark place, right, the writing is not going anywhere.

  • You're not able to get it out for whatever reason.

  • That concept that you can feel in your mind, you can't articulate and get it on paper and

  • then you get this moment.

  • For me a lot of times I just get angry enough that that then becomes that energy that I

  • need and you talk about putting one song on repeat.

  • I've used this song a lot, is the song 'Faint' by Linkin Park.

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: Which is hyper aggressive.

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: And I'll put that on over and over and over to keep that energy because if I get

  • angry enough at my shit writing, I get this breakthrough moment where I can start from

  • scratch and all of a sudden I can feel my brain speed up and then I can write but it

  • took like that however much time of getting fed up.

  • If you can put words around that moment.

  • Tim: Well I'll put a phrase to that moment.

  • Tom: Perfect.

  • Tim: "What makes you angry," was one of the key pieces of advice that I was given by a

  • writer named Po Bronson.

  • When I asked him what do you do when you have writer's block, he said, "What makes you angry?

  • Just write that."

  • And that was also the advice that I was given by Whitney Cummings and a few other stand

  • up comedians.

  • How do you develop material?

  • What makes you angry?

  • Write about that.

  • I think anger, as opposed to just labeling it a bad thing, can be very useful fuel.

  • So what makes you angry and let's just say you're writing about something that doesn't

  • require or seem to require anger.

  • Well, if you can't get started it doesn't matter, so write about something else.

  • Write about what makes you angry and either you'll be able to sort of parry that into

  • this other subject once you get going or you'll end up writing something completely different

  • and it'll end up better in the first place.

  • Tom: And what does it mean to copyright your faults?

  • Tim: Ah yeah, this is a great one.

  • Copyright your faults, this is from Dan Carlin.

  • Dan Carlin is the host of my favorite podcast.

  • It's just incredible.

  • 'Hardcore History'.

  • Tom: Yes.

  • Tim: And anyone who hasn't heard it should start with Wrath of the Khans.

  • If you have to buy it, buy it.

  • Trust me but copyrighting your faults.

  • Dan was a radio guy before he was a podcast guy and he was constantly getting criticized

  • because he would go into the red.

  • He would shout and he was really loud and he'd go up and he'd peak and drive all the

  • audio people crazy and then he'd get really low and whisper and they're just like, "Dude,

  • come on.

  • You're killing me here.

  • Making my job really hard," and his supervisors at the time they're like, "Look kid.

  • What people want is this deep dignified baritone voice for the radio."

  • I don't have voice for the radio so I can't do it but-

  • Tom: Says the guy with 100 million downloads by the way.

  • Tim: Yeah right, right.

  • Exactly.

  • Tom: Which is terrible timing, I've been meaning to tell you.

  • Tim: Oh thank you.

  • It's time to do the reveal now.

  • Tom: Right.

  • Tim: But that's a whole separate story, the accidental podcast but later on he had such

  • a distinctive voice that people started complimenting him and he's like, "Okay."

  • Now this so-called weakness that he was unable to fix so he didn't fix it, not only that

  • but he avoided fixing it by having the intro guys, the guys who'd be like, "Please welcome

  • or please enjoy blah blah blah, Dan Carlin," and he'd say, "He shouts, he whispers," or

  • something like that.

  • He had the intro guy do a caveat so that he didn't have to change his personal style,

  • which later then became this huge asset and his term is copyright your faults.

  • Now if someone imitates me, that's my jam.

  • That's my shtick.

  • Copyright your faults and of course there are weaknesses you should address but then

  • there are flaws that can be converted into strengths.

  • I think that's another way to catalyze creativity or just creating anything is to realize that

  • some of your biggest flaws may in fact be assets.

  • Tom: Right.

  • Tim: And so that could be a question you ask, right?

  • How might some of my biggest weaknesses be strengths or assets?

  • I think that's a very useful question to journal on which I tend to do just about every morning

  • is freehand journaling in what are called 'morning pages'.

  • Okay we're talking about creativity, morning pages we should talk about.

  • Julia Cameron describes them as spiritual windshield wipers and the way I would translate

  • that is when you do morning pages, and you might just be complaining.

  • Like your lesser self, your worse self coming out on pages.

  • Just bitching and moaning is you get that out of your system for the day so you don't

  • have it ricocheting around your head like a stray bullet for the rest of your waking

  • hours interrupting everything else.

  • You just trap it, you freeze it on paper and that practice has been tremendously liberating

  • not only from a well being standpoint but from just freeing up my CPU so that I can

  • focus on things that are more important.

  • If I have all that, "That guy and that and that.

  • I should say bah," all that bouncing around all day.

  • It's like you have anti virus software just slowing down your, "Why is it so slow?"

  • It's like yeah because you're thinking about these stupid grudges that you're holding against

  • people for trivial bullshit.

  • Like who cares if the guy at Starbucks bought the last of cashews you idiot.

  • Tom: Sounds deeply troubling.

  • Tim: Yeah like, "Ferriss pull it together."

  • If I get it on paper though I'm like okay I've dealt with that.

  • Tom: Now in the book you encourage people to bounce around.

  • What's one thing that you hope nobody skips?

  • Tim: The book's broken into three sections.

  • You have healthy, wealthy, and wise which is a nod to Ben Franklin.

  • I mean they're all interdependent, right, because they're sort of the three legs of

  • the stool.

  • Healthy, wealthy, and wise.

  • I do think you need all three.

  • Derek Sivers is this programmer monk philosopher king start up entrepreneur who started CD

  • Baby, which was the largest marketplace for independent musicians at the time.

  • Sold it for I think 24 million dollars but he and Seth Godin I think are two examples

  • of people who are very good at genuinely in real life following contrarian rules that

  • work exceptionally well.

  • Derek has a couple of one liners that I think are really fantastic.

  • I'll give you a few.

  • One is, "If more information were the answer, we'd all be billionaires with six pack abs."

  • That's a good one.

  • Tom: Yeah.

  • Tim: Just absorbing, not even absorbing, just reading and watching and listening to more

  • isn't enough.

  • You have to apply it.

  • You have to use incentives.

  • You have to have rewards and punishments set for yourself so you actually get things done,

  • timelines, et cetera.

  • That's one.

  • Another one is, "Don't be a donkey."

  • He says that to himself all the time.

  • "Don't be a donkey, don't be a donkey," and the reason is there's a, I want to say, it

  • might be a philosopher's paradox but I don't think it is.

  • I think it's just a parable about burdens ass.

  • Burdens ass, about a donkey- Tom: Good name.

  • Tim: Yeah, my favorite porn.

  • No that's not it.

  • It's about a donkey ... Sorry, too much caffeine.

  • It's about a donkey who is thirsty and hungry and there's water on one side a few feet away

  • and hay on the other and he can't decide rather to do the hay first or the water, the hay

  • or the water, and he dies of thirst at the end of it.

  • He couldn't do them sequentially.

  • Tom: Right.

  • Tim: This is Derek's recommendation to his younger self and really to any 20 or 30 something

  • but it applies to everybody, which is in effect you can do almost everything you want in life

  • but you can't do it at the same time and if you can just dedicate yourself to one thing

  • for even a year and then the next thing for a year you can do those 10 things but if you

  • try to do all 10 at once you're gonna be burdens ass.

  • "Should I do this or should I do this or should I focus on this or should I focus on this?"

  • Don't be a donkey.

  • The other one that, for me, was so helpful to hear is I think he calls it, it's like

  • 95 versus 100%.

  • He tells this story of moving to around Santa Monica and his friends getting him into biking

  • on the bike path, so up and down the boardwalk right on the water.

  • And so being a type A personality he would get a stop watch and he'd start it and he'd

  • huff and puff and race as hard as he could all the way down to wherever and he would

  • time himself and everyday, no matter how hard he did it, 43 minutes.

  • 43 minutes, just wouldn't improve.

  • 43 minutes.

  • And this thing that should've been enjoyable became painful in his mind.

  • He started to avoid it.

  • He'd be like, "Ah, there's other things to do.

  • No instead of bike riding I'll do this other thing," and he realized at one point, "This

  • is really pathetic and this is really bad that something that should be enjoyable I

  • am avoiding because I've made it so painful.

  • I said why don't I just go for a bike ride and enjoy it?"

  • He goes for a bike ride and it's just a leisurely cruise.

  • He's chilling, he's riding around and he's seeing dolphins in the water.

  • He's standing up, looking around, noticing things he hadn't noticed before.

  • At one point, this is Derek, he goes, "At one point I looked up in the sky and there

  • was a pelican and I said wow pelican and it shit in my mouth."

  • I was like, "Ahh."

  • He was like, "It was the best bike ride ever."

  • I was like, "Okay."

  • He's having a great time, pelican shit in the mouth not withstanding and he gets back

  • and he looks at his watch and I think it was 45 minutes.

  • And he's like, "Wait, what?"

  • All that huffing and puffing, all that sweating and leg cramps and pain was for an extra two

  • minutes off the clock?

  • That's outrageous.

  • He started applying that to his entire life.

  • He's like when it starts to get ... Now look.

  • There are exceptions to all of this but he said, "When I start to get really stressed

  • out I just stop because I realize 95% is enough for getting almost all the results that I

  • want and making it sustainable," and this comes back to the creativity right?

  • It's like if you always try to crank 100%, you're like, "I need to get 2,000 awesome

  • words out today," that's like trying to hit 43 minutes every time and huffing and puffing.

  • Tom: Right.

  • Tim: And you're gonna start putting things off.

  • "Oh I need another cup of coffee.

  • Oh my god my shoes are so dirty.

  • I need to fix my shoes before I can go out and write."

  • Tom: Possibly let that stand.

  • Tim: And you'll do anything to put it off because it becomes this intimidating task.

  • So yeah, sort of the 95 versus 100% is another one.

  • Oh I've got another one, I have to share.

  • Tom: Please.

  • Tim: This is one of my favorites.

  • Shaun White ... Two things that are very interesting about Shaun White.

  • Well there are a lot of things but he holds the all-time record for medals at the X Games.

  • He has, I think, two gold medals at the Olympics and two things worth nothing for him and this

  • comes back to the high expectations thing.

  • I asked him, "What is your self talk when you come out of the gate for a gold medal

  • run at the Olympics?

  • What do you say to yourself?"

  • He thought about it and the short version is who cares.

  • The short version is, "Who cares, I think this is a really big deal.

  • Snowboarding, going down snow on this contraption but at the end of the day I'm gonna go home,

  • I'll see my family," which he borrowed from Agassi.

  • When Agassi sort of had his comeback that was how he took the pressure off in very,

  • very high pressure situations was to say, "Who cares?"

  • Which is effective when you put in the training.

  • If you put in the training you don't need to stress in that last minute.

  • The other thing I took away from Shaun is when he has a really serious goal, like a

  • gold medal at Sochi or whatever it might be, he also has a completely absurd goal to offset

  • how stress inducing that can be.

  • At one point it was, "I want to wear American flag pants on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine."

  • That was the other goal.

  • He has some ludicrous goal to offset the serious stuff.

  • Tom: Wow that's cool.

  • Tim: I've started trying to incorporate that in my life.

  • [crosstalk 00:38:58] Tom: What's an absurd goal that you have right

  • now?

  • Tim: Okay, so this is an exclusive.

  • This is breaking news.

  • Tom: Here we go.

  • Tim: And we'll see where it goes.

  • I'm a little hesitant to even share this but I'll give a teaser, I'll give a teaser which

  • is sufficient.

  • Goal, I want this book to be everywhere.

  • I want everyone to read this.

  • Like a friend of mine said, "I bought 4-hour Workweek for a few people who really needed

  • it for changing chapters in their lives or starting a company.

  • I've given 4-hour Body to people who want to lose weight.

  • This one I would give to everybody."

  • I have very big goals for this.

  • I have some other plans, which I can't go into huge detail with right now, but to create

  • a fragrance for men.

  • Tom: Really?

  • Tim: And I mean fucking look at me.

  • I'm from Long Island.

  • This is like a tuxedo for me.

  • Don't really wear cologne or anything.

  • Occasionally smell like I've been chased by hyenas or something if I'm sweating a lot

  • but I was like how funny would it be if I came out with a Tim Ferriss fragrance?

  • Oh my god.

  • Tom: That would be amazing.

  • Tim: How hilarious would that be?

  • Tom: What would Tim Ferriss smell like?

  • Tim: That I can't disclose but I do- Tom: Oaky?

  • Tim: Oaky, like tequila.

  • I think it'd be like a rough night.

  • [crosstalk 00:40:22] Tom: That could be the name.

  • Tim: Yeah, tequila and pine needles.

  • It's like what happened?

  • Tom: Tim Ferriss: A Rough Night.

  • Tim: Yeah, that's right and it'd be like a rough night by Tim Ferriss.

  • I want to have the cheesiest advertisements.

  • You know, like the unbuttoned dress shirt with the fancy watch looking like Blue Steel.

  • I just want to make it as ludicrous as possible but it will actually be ... I'm talking to

  • some of the best of the best people in that world right now.

  • Tom: Wow.

  • Tim: It's like one part complete spinal tap and then one part serious I actually want

  • to make something cool but that to me is just a psychological release valve so that when

  • I'm getting really wound up about this for whatever reason, I can think about that.

  • It just makes me laugh my ass off.

  • When I have two glasses of wine, I chill out.

  • Always pairing one serious with one absurd goal I think is brilliant.

  • It's so smart.

  • I've been doing that since he first told me about it and it's really improved the quality

  • of my life and my results.

  • I also don't feel like I have all my eggs in one basket.

  • I'm diversifying my identity in a way, which I think is very important.

  • Tom: All right, last question.

  • What is the impact that you want to have on the world?

  • Tim: The impact that I want to have on the world right now would be creating a benevolent

  • army of super learners who test the impossibles and teach other people to do the same.

  • That's it, so whether it's 100,000, a million, people who have mastered meta learning acquiring

  • skills who are also willing to test the impossibles, test the assumptions, and have the uncomfortable

  • conversations that I think this country is largely dodging, that gets me all excited

  • and if they're able to then impart that to more people.

  • My goal is to make me obsolete as quickly as possible.

  • I think the goal of any really good personal trainer should be to make themselves obsolete

  • and unnecessary as quickly as possible.

  • That's my goal.

  • Tom: That's awesome man.

  • Tim, thank you so much for coming in the show.

  • Tim: Yeah thank you.

  • Thanks for having me.

  • Tom: Absolutely.

  • Guys, you are going to want to get this book talking about the toolkit to build that army

  • of super learners who are out there, actually making an impact in the world.

  • I have a feeling that this is gonna be the book, I'm not kidding when I say that I have

  • not been this excited to read a book in a very, very long time.

  • It's the kind of book where you're gonna go in and no matter what it is that you're facing

  • right now in your life, whether it's in healthy, wealthy, or wise categories, there's gonna

  • be something there from somebody who's living it.

  • They've done the kind of thing that you want to do and they're giving you the real world

  • advice from right there, that minute in their life which is incredibly exciting and there's

  • two things about it that I like.

  • One, the elements that they give you are very punchy.

  • They're short.

  • They're succinct.

  • It's easy to remember.

  • The good shit sticks.

  • It's gonna be a lot of stuff that really sticks and will resonate with you, will echo through

  • your own mind, but he also allows them to give their own context.

  • It's not word in the abstract, it's actually, take Jamie Foxx for instance.

  • It's not just Jamie's quote about how there's nothing beyond fear, it's actually explaining

  • what that means and being able to put it in the context real world for him at that moment

  • and getting that allows these phrases to have depth.

  • I can't tell you how obsessively I collect those codified nuggets of wisdom.

  • My Evernote is bogged down.

  • I swear my iPhone is actually heavier from the number of those kind of nuggets that I've

  • collected and if you look at this tome, it comes with the promise of that kind of stuff

  • in it.

  • If you're like me and you've read everything that this man has written, you've listened

  • to all the podcasts, you know he is not for play and what he delivers always is usable

  • and that usability is my obsession.

  • Join me in getting that copy.

  • I'm gonna be buying an absurd number in the name of Impact Theory and we're gonna be doing

  • some kind of big giveaway.

  • Yeah, if you haven't already read it go out and get it.

  • It's available now.

  • Dive in.

  • Tim I cannot thank you enough for being on the show my man.

  • Tim: Thank you.

  • Tom: It is a pleasure.

  • And of course Tim, we have to ask though.

  • Tim: Yeah.

  • Tom: Where can they find you online?

  • Tim: They can find me just about everywhere.

  • They can find me @tferriss, with two R's and two S's at Twitter.

  • Tim Ferriss on Facebook.

  • Tim Ferriss on Instagram.

  • Doing some fun stuff on Instagram these days and for sample chapters and all sorts of other

  • goodies, ToolsofTitans.com would be the place to check it out.

  • Tom: Awesome, well guys he's got some of the best goodies and giveaways and just ongoing

  • value add stuff so be sure to check it out.

  • Toolsoftitans.com.

  • All right guys.

  • Until next time, be legendary.

  • Take care.

  • Hey everybody.

  • Thanks so much for joining us for another episode of Impact Theory.

  • If this content is adding value to your life, our one ask is you go to iTunes and Stitcher

  • and rate and review.

  • Not only does that help us build this community, which at the end of the day is all we care

  • about, but it also helps us get even more amazing guests on here to share their knowledge

  • with all of us.

  • Thank you guys so much for being a part of this community and until next time, be legendary.

Tom: Hey everybody, welcome to Impact Theory.

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