TimFerris.mc

Transcript for [Tim Ferriss On Solving Problems With People And Using Stoicism To Make Better Decisions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnw5BdPfPWs) by [Merlin](https://merlin.foyer.work/)

 stoicism helps you to conserve and best
 deploy your limited resources it's out
 of your control trying to allocate as
 few calories as few minutes as few
 dollars to that as humanly
 possible you know all this is your fault
 right because so so I had this crazy
 idea Samantha and I had this crazy idea
 to do this bookstore thing uhuh and you
 know when you have you have a crazy idea
 most people are like oh yeah that sounds
 great you should blow up your life to
 become a yoga teacher or whatever you
 know like it sounds amazing and so I was
 like I felt like everyone was telling me
 what I wanted to hear and so I was like
 you know what I'm going to call Tim Tim
 will tell me if this is a terrible idea
 or not because you always do and and
 also I felt like what you really want in
 those situations you want
 disconfirmation not confirmation so I I
 was like Tim will tell me not to do this
 and then I probably won't do it because
 I felt like you of all people would be
 like you know you're I I take your
 philosophy to largely not largely but a
 big part of it is like how do you
 understand the life you want how do you
 avoid unnecessary entanglements
 obligations overhead you know the things
 that sound fun on paper but actually
 turn out you like you just bought
 yourself a prison cell you know so I was
 like I'm going to I'm going to ask Tim
 and he's going to tell me probably not
 to do it and for a bunch of smart
 reasons anyways I call you and you're
 like I think it sounds like a great idea
 and you're like but only if you think
 about it like this and what you said is
 don't see yourself as opening a
 bookstore forever see yourself as doing
 a 2-year experiment running a bookstore
 M so decide you obviously that would
 sort of change how you would do some of
 the stuff but your point was think about
 it as an experiment and and you said
 you'll only know if you want to run a
 bookstore how you said how else will you
 find out if you really want to run a
 bookstore than by opening a bookstore
 and so you gave me permission to do it
 in a way that I could actually trust and
 that I didn't feel like you
 were you know uh fluffing yeah your
 passion yeah ex that's EXA exactly what
 it is name of my new podcast by the way
 and then we're I think this is the
 three-year mark But at the two-year mark
 it was like hey we actually do really
 enjoy doing it we can settle into it a
 little bit more now and and it's a I
 think the idea of seeing doing crazy
 thing as an experiment or as an
 iterative process as opposed to this is
 permanently my identity you know I can
 never go back and then being either
 intimidated by it and not doing it or
 being locked into it forever if it's not
 working totally and if I remember
 correctly and I could be manufacturing
 this but I get a lot of these calls as
 you might imagine and there are people I
 call with my own situations where I'm
 like am I stupid tell me actually I'm
 going to force you what are the five
 ways if you had to steal minute that
 this is a terrible decision yes I just
 take that side of the debate table MH
 but I believe that also when we chatted
 I
 said all right let's look at the fixed
 costs like what are the
 actual investment sort of capital
 outlays we're talking about and if it
 doesn't work can you hit undo like what
 are the costs like what's the carrying
 cost sure and I'm making this up right
 these are not real numbers but if we
 land at well worst case scenario I think
 I'll be 50 to 75k in the red after all
 is said and done if I hit undo and have
 to sell everything after 3 years I'm
 like okay well would you pay 20 x th000
 a year to know once and for all if this
 is something you enjoy doing and then
 you're like oh okay that's actually from
 a life tuition perspective something you
 can wrap your head around and then you
 can think about opportunity cost or the
 cost of taking advantage of an
 experiment like this you think that life
 tuition experiments that's how you think
 about it because I remember when you
 decided to be an angel investor you
 looked at the cost of going to business
 school and you said okay it's
 $200,000 why don't I just spend $200,000
 investing in companies and I'll end up
 at the same place which is I'll know how
 to invest in things and with one I'll
 have a degree and a piece of paper and
 the other I might have valuable sakes in
 a bunch of companies or it fails in both
 cases I'll have just $200,000 that I let
 on fire but I'll have learned something
 either way yeah I'll have learned
 something I look at it and this is not
 unique to me this is something that Mark
 andreon has talked about this is
 something although he every once in a
 while just deletes everything he's ever
 written so I'm not sure what the current
 status of that is and Scott Adams has
 certainly spoken and written about this
 he has an entire book I think dedicated
 to effectively I can't recall the title
 but how to win even if you lose m
 how to fail bigly perhaps
 and the generalistic is choosing
 projects based on the skills you will
 develop and the relationships you will
 develop whether those are new or
 pre-existing yeah such that even if you
 don't get the outcome public or private
 that would be the objective marker of
 success let's say in the case of
 investing making more than you put in in
 the case of a bookstore maybe you could
 say all right if you're trying to
 compare bookstores you would look at
 annual sales and this and that and
 revenue per employee blah blah blah
 outside of that
 though what are some of
 the more abstract or less common line
 items that you could think about those
 could be skills those could be also
 skills that transfer relationships that
 transfer to other areas right so if I
 look at my collaborations that I've done
 in various projects like for our Chef
 which was from an objective perspective
 if we look at the bestseller lists a
 failure compared to my other books yes
 but it led directly to the podcast yeah
 and for that reason it has been my most
 profitable book by far if we look at
 that as an antecedent to the podcast
 right by far yeah and you can't or at
 least you shouldn't I shouldn't evaluate
 the podcast in isolation because the
 prerequisite was the ex the set of
 experiences and the launch which relied
 heavily on this new thing relatively
 speaking called podcasts
 yes so that's how I think about it and
 it it takes a lot of also
 unnecessary stress or pressure out of
 the situation
 mhm well it's funny though because now
 it the advice was very helpful and it
 feels like it worked out but for the
 first year it seemed like the worst idea
 in the entire world because this we were
 talking in maybe January of 2020 and so
 it got serious about it you know like we
 started the construction the first week
 of March 2020 so for for the first year
 it wasn't even a bookstore it was just
 an enormous albatross around my neck an
 empty building filled with books you
 know it was it was a series of bills
 that I was paying but it was there was
 no there was no nothing coming back the
 other direction but I remember I wrote
 this little note card to myself speaking
 of stoicism I said this is a test will
 make you a better person or a worse
 person right and so
 the idea was yeah maybe this turns out
 to be an experiment that goes poorly uh
 from a business perspective but how did
 I grow as a result of it what did I
 learn right did I learn to not do crazy
 things did I learn actually to do crazy
 that I can do crazy things that I can
 absorb failures you know like reframe
 crazy things by looking at them from a
 different perspective yeah right uh you
 know what what do you what do you take
 from it so you can win either way way
 right and the perspective shifting is
 really important I mean this is also
 looking at this bust right behind you
 and Marcus yes yeah reframing and
 thinking about labels very carefully
 thinking about expectations very
 carefully which tie into language is
 super important so in the case of say
 Angel
 Investing almost anything you would ever
 read or hear about Angel Investing
 States something that is at face value
 very obvious and that is high risk super
 high risk even if you're successful 80%
 of them the investments will go to zero
 yeah yada yada y but the way that I
 folded the Angel Investing into a meta
 level plan to develop relationships and
 learn skills was not risky yes at all
 you were going to get that whether the
 company was hugely successful or usually
 unsuccessful and in fact you may get
 those things more on a investment that
 didn't work than one that did work
 totally and that certainly ended up
 being the case not to which is not to
 say they all they're called experiments
 not guarantees for a reason yeah there
 are there are plenty that don't turn out
 the way that I would like them to turn
 out but as long as I hold it lightly as
 an experiment and not Tim Ferris is
 final exam for his selfworth yes then
 you can roll with the punches and it's
 not always easy well like when a
 scientist has an hypothesis and then
 they do an experiment and then the
 hypothesis turns out to be wrong they're
 not like angry and like you're such an
 idiot why did you think that the whole
 point of the hypothesis was that it
 might be wrong MH and the point of the
 experiment was to find out if it was
 right or wrong not whether you're uh a
 genius or an
 idiot yes and there are human elements
 in science of course and people have
 confirmation bias and there's a positive
 publication by and there are all these
 things and plenty of politics uh you
 know Henry Kissinger rip right said he
 left academics because he couldn't take
 the politics yeah at one point so there
 was all of that but the good really
 really good scientists including man a
 lot of people have passed in the last
 year Roland Griffiths who I knew really
 well out of
 Hopkins would say that's a hypothesis
 worth disproving I mean that's the
 wording that you would sometimes hear
 right I like that so looking for
 disconfirming evidence yeah right right
 to counterbalance the very human
 inclination to look for what you want to
 see well you mentioned uh Mark andreon
 sometimes he tweets like huge if true
 you know like he'll take something and
 be like that's interesting if it's true
 and the idea of like that so what that's
 another way of saying uh that's a
 hypothesis Worth disproving or proving
 one way or the other yeah totally I
 agree yeah it's uh your point though
 about like okay so you're going to do
 this thing how do you mitigate or
 minimize risk or or just how do you
 define what those risks are to me that's
 the essence of sism it's also what
 you've called fear setting because
 sometimes like you think okay I I want
 to do this thing and then you're like it
 could work it could not work it's high
 risk low you know it's a highrisk thing
 potentially but actually it it might be
 high risk of success or failure but um
 what is the actual downside and
 sometimes something could be high risk
 but the downside could be very low right
 so like like often times in our head we
 exaggerate the downsides of things right
 like I remember when I dropped out of
 college obviously upsides High uh if if
 it worked out the downside I thought was
 was I could end up living under a bridge
 somewhere but actually the downside was
 and I discovered this when I went to
 fill out the paperwork to drop you up
 owning a bookstore no the the downside
 was like she was like yeah just come
 back like you're just pausing your like
 so in my head I was making up that I was
 making this irrevocable life altering
 decision and my that's certainly what my
 parents thought and that's certainly
 probably what most people think but in
 fact it was like a piece of
 administrative paperwork and I found it
 I found the other day it was $60 I it
 was I have the receipt it was $60 to
 effectively pause you know my enrollment
 at College of which I had 10 years to
 reenroll yeah that's amazing and and so
 what fear setting is and I think with
 the stoic this is the so called this a
 discipline of perception it's this
 practice of going yeah I'm intimidated
 by it I'm scared of it I don't want to
 fail but if I actually did fail what's
 going to happen and you I think you you
 very regularly find not much of anything
 that's going to happen it's not as bad
 as you think it is and in a lot of cases
 it's reversible in the case of you know
 the $60 prepayment for the optionality
 and not to belabor the point but the
 language you use matters a lot right so
 if you think about some of the commonly
 used language right this is a decision
 like there's a there's a fork in the
 road and you have to choose a fork
 implies that going backwards is going to
 be very difficult whereas a lot of these
 things at least the way that I try to
 view them and I don't do it perfectly is
 more like walking into a closet and
 choosing which sweater you want to put
 on yes you don't like it put it back on
 the rack right go back to the one you
 were wearing before I mean in a lot of
 cases it's it's a it's a much
 more uh it's a it's a much more
 appropriate way to view things and that
 is like a pause or it's just really a
 temporary experiment that you can you
 can Zig and zag with yeah the the
 language you're right is very important
 and and it can cut both directions so
 yeah we say I'm dropping out of college
 versus I'm taking a semester off or yeah
 we say I'm quitting my job or one of the
 phrases you have in the four-hour Work
 Week a mini retirement like one feels
 empowering and the other feels uh
 dangerous or irresponsible and so the
 language like so when I called you and I
 said hey I'm thinking about doing this
 bookstore and you said oh that's a cool
 experiment that was is a totally
 different way phrase for what I was
 considering doing all of the language I
 was using felt so permanent so
 life-altering
 so you
 know enormous and what you did with your
 you shrunk it down to this small
 decision then like you're saying if
 someone going to their closet and
 they're picking out clothes that feel
 that's an ordinary metaphor versus you
 know shoot for the moon or something
 like something you know like you're
 thinking big are you thinking big or you
 thinking small and sometimes you want to
 think big sometimes you want to think
 small but just that the the way you're
 looking looking at it the words you're
 using determines like how large it's
 going to loom totally over you and also
 I re I recently reread and it's it's a
 little schlocky because it was written a
 long time ago but I still find it
 helpful there's a book by Dale Carnegie
 who a lot of people know for uh How to
 Win Friends and Influence People I
 believe it was and he has a lesser known
 book that is still sold millions of
 copies called how to stop worrying and
 start living which includes a lot of
 stoic is tenant M and is very it's a
 very fun read because there are many
 many different case studies and
 historical references a lot of them are
 out of date when he talks about
 Neuroscience don't pay a lot of
 attention however the the general
 principles and examples are really
 helpful and he talks a lot about
 incomplete information like and
 improving your sort of visibility into a
 given situation by adding more
 information and that it is somewhat
 pointless if you can easily add that
 information to worry about it beforehand
 yeah and the reason I bring that up is
 that in a case like opening a
 bookstore right open a
 bookstore is this big kind of macro yeah
 abstracted decision in reality it's a
 whole lot of different decisions little
 ones little ones such as looking into
 the actual costs yeah looking at what's
 available looking at the
 current let's just call it borrowing
 rates Etc and so you could say yes I'm
 going to pursue this experiment but only
 the next X steps like I'm not committing
 to three years but I am committing to
 Gathering more information so I can
 determine if I want to
 take the sort of 10 steps after those
 preliminary steps so I I'll do that a
 lot as well where it's like okay do I
 want to write a next book well how would
 I decide what what types of mini
 decisions could I make what types of
 information could I gather that would
 help me to have a higher degree of
 conviction around whether I want to do
 it or not okay let's take a week and do
 that
 first look at the landscape talk to
 agent or agents talk to authors look at
 ABC D and E I mean of course look at
 subject matter and so on and then you
 have much better footing for considering
 if you want to keep pushing forward but
 breaking these big heavy heavy sounding
 macro decisions into smaller steps
 also I think highlights the fact that
 it's not you're not firing a gun right
 if you get to C and then you want to
 stop and not continue to D you very
 often have the ability to do that when I
 wrote The Daily sto 8 years ago I had
 this crazy idea that I would just keep
 it going the book was 366 meditations
 but I'd write one more every single day
 and I'd give it away for free as an
 email I thought maybe a few people would
 sign up couldn't have even comprehended
 a future in which 3/4 of a million
 people would get this email every single
 day and would for almost a decade if you
 want to get the email if you want to be
 part of a community that is the largest
 group of stoics ever assembled in human
 history I'd love for you to join us you
 can sign up and get the email totally
 for free no spam you can unsubscribe
 whenever you want at Daily stoic.com
 [Music]
 yeah it it's
 um I remember when you when I was
 talking to you about starting a podcast
 you gave me advice similarly you were
 like don't do a podcast do six episodes
 of a podcast right do and and if you
 think about it it's like don't open a
 restaurant open a popup right like so of
 course there are there's a reason that
 the economic incentives and life wants
 you to make big permanent commitments
 it's it's usually cheaper like you know
 what I mean like to go uh they want to
 lock you in for a long period of time
 they want you to be more invested and
 you have to understand that what you're
 purchasing is a certain amount of
 optionality by by not fully committing
 and so so going hey I'm going to do six
 episodes that can feel harder in some
 ways but it's easier in in that it
 allows you to just do the thing not
 overthink it get started on it and then
 hopefully the feedback either gives you
 momentum in One Direction or the other
 about what you should shouldn't do what
 it also does is it gives you a graceful
 exit so when people ask me about
 podcasts this is true for a lot of
 things I'm like limited time only that
 is the key phrasing or at least concept
 that you put forth so that you don't
 succumb to the
 very kind of chimpanzee politics
 inclinations that we all have I'm going
 to be embarrassed it's going to look
 like a failure I can't stop because of
 the following uh types of perceptions
 but if you just say up
 front I'm doing
 a single season of a podcast six
 episodes 10 episodes if it goes well and
 you extend it everybody's happy versus
 saying I'm going to have a podcast
 implying indefinite and then stopping
 after six or 10 episodes psychologically
 it's much more difficult for the person
 in the driver's seat in this case you or
 me to make that exit and so to preserve
 the
 flexibility I do that all the time
 and the optionality is important now
 infinite optionality is a problem then
 you have decision fatigue and so on but
 I was given a book at one point I can't
 even remember the title I can't remember
 anything about the book other than it
 was related to financial management
 and the line I remembered from
 it because there was a section that
 talked about how people who have some
 degree of financial success spend like
 10 to 20 years accumulating and then
 they realize this is a mess I have
 so much clutter so many obligations so
 many
 ongoing uh headaches that now I'm going
 to divest myself and then they spend the
 next like 10 to 20 years trying to
 divest themselves of these things and in
 that context which applies in a lot of
 circumstances even if you're not wealthy
 per se
 by top 1% kind of Standards Rich enough
 to rent yeah and I was like huh I was
 like Rich enough to rent and that means
 try it before you buy it basically try
 before you buy it which means you might
 try it in definitely try it without
 buying it in the sense
 that I love mountains and rivers I spend
 a lot of time in the mountains all over
 the place
 and the the advice that I received from
 a lot of friends who know me super well
 was oh you should buy a place yeah and
 the fact of the matter was the the
 handful of places I looked at I felt
 very confident we going to do well in
 the real estate market I could be wrong
 I could be right so far I've been right
 and I don't actually don't think the
 logic is that hard to follow but when I
 looked at the costs I'm like okay where
 have I underestimated costs energetic as
 well energetic time cost not just
 Financial cost in the past because I do
 own some real estate it's like all right
 well you think about the closing cost
 and the monthly cost it's very this
 sounds stupid but it's it's sometimes
 easy to forget like oh wait a second HOA
 dues oh wait a second yeah property
 taxes oh wait a second the sink broke
 and the downstairs flooded and now you
 have to replace it yeah right it goes on
 and on and if you have an exterior just
 gets I mean look I'm talking to the guy
 with Nigerian dwarf coats and a lot of
 property so you get it and when I looked
 at these locations I very quickly
 realized I could
 rent the most absurd opulent place for a
 few months a year well beyond anything I
 would ever buy yeah I could do that
 probably for a
 decade and I would not approach my first
 and seconde costs of buying something
 right now the sort of homeowner Equity
 argument has some rationale to it uh but
 there are trade-offs yeah it's not all
 upside yeah and so for me to reduce
 psychic drag I'm like okay first of all
 you don't need to be an investor in all
 categories yeah a good Financial
 investor and in fact you can make money
 doing other things you don't have to
 make money in everything you do I would
 take it a step further which is
 sometimes it makes sense to quote
 unquote lose money in a very consciously
 aware way in certain categories so that
 it frees up your mental and psychic
 bandwidth to make money in a category
 that's more aligned with your zon of
 Genius like real estate is not my zon of
 Genius you know you're talking to the
 guy whose first house he bought
 adjustable rate mortgage in 2007 oops
 got my face ripped off yeah
 immediately and I have made a lot of
 mistakes in say like public markets yeah
 like once you get fancy fancy gets
 broken like as as soon as you try to get
 clever at least in my case I get I get
 swiftly kicked in the balls by the
 universe this has happened over and over
 again so I've I've als I've realized not
 only do I not need to make money in
 certain categories but to uh there can
 be I can make nominal sacrifices
 financially in some areas that free up a
 bunch of energy and resources that I can
 allocate somewhere where it matters a
 lot more so you said something to me one
 time in regards to that you said
 something like what do you do with your
 money right and I was like what do you
 mean you're you're like do you like buy
 speedboats or like you know what do you
 you're like what what are your like
 expensive hobby right and I was like I
 don't really have any and then you're
 like okay so make your career and
 business decisions accordingly right
 that might have been related to the
 bookstore no no this is well before I
 remember I was in I was walking around
 in New York City I just started my I
 think my first company your point was
 your point was if you don't need lots of
 money yeah don't optimize your life
 around earning lots of money right
 um I guess what you're saying is like if
 you don't need it why are you trading
 this is a very stok idea why are you
 trading your most precious resource
 which is your life or in my case like my
 Creative Energy why are you trading that
 to get a thing that you don't
 necessarily need right you weren't
 saying like money is not important you
 were just saying if money is not your
 number one priority make sure that
 you're not doing things for which the
 statement is money is my most important
 priority yeah right look year calendar
 right yeah yeah don't tell me what's
 important like SLE year calendar I'll
 I'll tell you what's important to you
 one thing I what I like about this is
 okay so often times when people think
 about stoicism they think about it as a
 philosophy that is resilient it's about
 dealing with adversity it's about
 dealing with difficulty and it's true I
 mean epicus is a slave right Marx cus
 lives in a plague um the stoics lived
 hard lives but it's also a philosophy
 for success I don't mean it's a
 philosophy that will make you successful
 the idea is the stoics are saying that
 that everything is an opportunity to
 practice the stoic virtues and by that
 they meant you get your arm cut off you
 know uh pandemic happens you get thrown
 in prison on unjust charges these are
 opportunities to practice sism but it's
 also a chance to practice stoicism when
 you find yourself the emperor it's a
 chance to practice stoicism if the
 company that you invested in becomes
 worth billions of dollars right or if
 you become successful as an author or as
 a whatever you do like I think less
 explored because it's slightly less
 relatable most people are dealing with
 hard things philosophy is also stoicism
 is also a philosophy designed to help
 you with abundance or success in life
 would you agree yeah absolutely yeah how
 how has sism helped you at I mean you've
 you've done very well you've done lots
 of interesting things you've been at the
 top of author game the podcast game
 you've been a great investor how how do
 you how do you think of stoicism in that
 sense as something that helps you deal
 with what we would call champagne
 problems or too much of a good thing you
 know like stoicism is also there see the
 YouTube thumbnail now Tim Ferris on
 champagne problems uh there there are a
 few things that immediately come to mind
 so the first
 is I do a lot of things that I know are
 perceived by many people to be high-risk
 that I don't consider high-risk at all
 because I've run through exercises and
 journaling and so on that lean very
 heavily on stoic practices yeah and have
 come to the definitive conclusion that
 this is not holistically high risk I see
 in the long game yeah right like the the
 real world MBA where I traded Stanford
 Business School for the the Cru of Angel
 Investing that's right the the in theory
 Tim Ferris fund of Angel Investing that
 I deployed over two
 years and yes there was a risk even the
 expectation it wasn't even just a risk I
 expected that like tuition that money
 would vanish and I was like okay let's
 assume the money vanishes how can I
 approach the Angel Investing in such a
 way that my skills and relationships
 developed over that period of time far
 exceed what I am expecting to lose
 yeah and so I pulled the trigger now the
 timing was also yeah incredibly Lucky in
 retrospect at the time it wasn't obvious
 but in
 retrospect uh it was it was was very
 lucky but it there was some there was
 also some deliberation around it in the
 sense
 that and I think this is compatible with
 it might not be verbatim reflective of
 stoic writings yeah
 but thinking about competition very
 carefully in other words
 so this is very senica is not the only
 who has written about this but in terms
 of competing with your peers and yes
 keeping up with the Joneses keeping up
 with the Joneses oh you want to wear a
 purple tunic do you H let's talk about
 that you you think you're a success that
 person has more than you yeah right
 right you feel like you need to go to
 the Banquets and you need to do this and
 you need to do
 that when I find an area that is crowded
 or competitive I look at that as an
 opportunity to find something that is
 very uncrowded oh sure so that has also
 help me for instance I'm coming up on
 the 10th year of the podcast and
 podcasting has be become incredibly
 competitive yeah
 and there was a long time when I felt
 like I was category of one and if I'm
 being honest with myself that's no
 longer the case there's some very very
 good interviewers out there yourself
 among them and the production quality
 has gone parabolic
 yeah it is it is going to be harder to
 build a business
 and to fight for successfully fight for
 attention in this particular
 format
 and I love doing my podcast I'm going to
 continue doing it however because I
 would pay to have these conversations
 Anyway by and
 large I'm taking a moment to say all
 right wait a second when I did Angel
 Investing from say 2008 to 2015 it got
 crowded I felt like it went from single
 deck Blackjack where you can kind of
 count the cards to like you know five
 deck and then the
 the the table Stakes got a lot higher
 yeah because the terms got weird there's
 a lot of money coming in from places
 like China and Sovereign wealth funds
 and I was like oh man this is going to
 get very now the risk is real for me
 financially sure so I stopped for a
 while and I've done that over and over
 again right stopped the books for a
 while and in this particular case I'm
 like all right I may not find an answer
 but it would be a mistake not to look
 for an answer like what's neglected and
 that's not necessarily something new for
 instance I think text is neglected I
 think writing is neglected yes and text
 isn't dead it's just not surfaced by the
 algorithms it's just not favored at the
 moment
 but the most perennial of the mediums
 it's the most perennial and it's the
 hardest so if I'm looking
 at differentiation and competitive
 Advantage you have this too right you
 can write writing's hard yeah writing is
 very very hard at least for me and
 for that reason I'm like all right well
 maybe it's just the return to Basics in
 that sense maybe it's fitting something
 old into a new
 vehicle etc etc let's come up with a lot
 of bad ideas to see if there's maybe one
 or two good ideas we can test and so I
 to come back to your question though I I
 think that that is a way of avoiding
 comparison with
 others that can lead directly
 to outperformance if we're talking about
 success in financial terms but it's also
 it's also very compatible with success
 on your own
 terms right I think Kevin Kelly's a
 great example of this right has really
 forged his own life there are other
 people for sure
 but he's very good at questioning basic
 assumptions yeah that are common right
 they're so common that it's it's it's
 taken to be fact but but in most
 instances you can kind of negotiate
 reality around a lot of these
 assumptions I was thinking of other sort
 of success problems that socialism helps
 with like haters is probably one or
 people who don't like you or negative
 attention on top of yeah I mean the more
 especially if you're if your version of
 success or what you're pursuing is going
 to make you
 more public
 yeah you are going to have to deal with
 all sorts of things that at least at
 current you have not faced this
 magnitude of negative attention yes and
 I've seen people Buckle under that if
 they don't have the toolkit uh and the
 toolkit doesn't have to be sophisticated
 by the way like rule number one don't go
 looking for it yeah sure it's kind of
 like all right if you're going to like
 do Shuffle sprints on top of like broken
 floor boards you're going to stub your
 toe all the time and then if I mean I'll
 admire you if you have the best stub toe
 fix but maybe you just shouldn't run
 across the floorboards barefoot but
 which is what a lot of folks do when
 they're kind of hunting for comments but
 being human ending up fixating on the
 one or two people who are awful I
 remember one time you said something
 like Okay so let's say how many people
 know who you are right like the first
 part of your career as a creative person
 really any even anything that relies on
 the public is you want lots of people to
 find out who you are you your first
 problem is a lack of awareness and then
 you get the awareness now a certain
 percentage of those people are not going
 to like you they're going to had a bad
 experience or you're going something or
 they're going to be nuts yeah right so
 so like you know Dy sto has let's say 3
 million Instagram followers so let's say
 10% of those people are just not fans
 that's hundreds of thousands of people
 who just play Don't who know who you are
 but don't like you whereas in normal
 life you know if 10% of the people you
 meet don't like you those people could
 fit in a small SUV you know what I mean
 like it's not it's not that many people
 but so as and also like 20 years ago
 they're not enabled with the ability to
 they can't reach all the other people
 yeah right and so so it's I think that's
 a very key so Mark has to come to terms
 with the fact that he's the emperor of
 Rome some people don't even like that
 there's an emperor some people don't
 like him for good reasons some people
 don't like him for bad reasons but the
 point is you're not going to please
 everyone and in fact part of the job is
 just putting up with the fact that a
 bunch of people hate you
 and having to come to having to come to
 terms with the fact that one it's
 outside your control you can't make
 everyone like you
 and two if you try to make those people
 who don't like you like you or you spend
 your time obsessing about them what
 you're doing is making yourself
 miserable and not servicing or serving
 the people and things that do like you
 that you are good at yeah totally I was
 wondering I don't know if you know this
 this is a pretty sort of Arcane fact to
 ask for but do you have any idea what
 the greater not the Roman Empire but the
 greater Rome area let's just call it
 just like you have the Greater Austin
 area what or or Rome Central do you have
 any idea what the population was around
 Marcus aurelius's day so the the Empire
 I know because I looked it up for
 something is like 50 million people so
 let's say Rome is 10% of that right
 there's still millions of people right
 um where I was going with that is like
 more people may dislike you yes and me
 individually yeah then hated Marcus
 aelius sure at his Peak as the last of
 the great Emperors of Rome yeah yeah
 totally kind of hilarious to think about
 or to think there's there's probably
 more stoics now than have ever existed
 before in history right there may be
 more there may be more people who know
 about socialism but don't like me
 specifically than have ever been
 interested in stoicism ever right like
 you know the the numbers get really big
 really fast because that's what
 technology allows for when you live in a
 world of eight billion people technology
 allows you to reach lots and lots of
 people and it's not healthy or uh
 realistic for humans to be subjected to
 that but we are subjected to it right
 like so you think success is going to be
 amazing and it is in a lot of ways but
 it's subjecting you to a fundamentally
 unnatural uh really difficult thing
 which is like you have to wake up and
 deal with the weight of the fact that
 like lots of people like hate you like
 they hate you and and if you don't have
 the sort of fortitude and the and the uh
 confidence to just sit with that and to
 not let it eat at you or make you swerve
 off what you think you're supposed to be
 doing like you're going to get eaten
 alive yeah you'll e alive and you'll eat
 yourself alive you'll eat yourself alive
 and I
 think
 stoicism and reflecting on applications
 of stoic like thinking right because I'm
 not
 a stoic fundamentalist right I'm not
 like this is yeah this is the scripture
 this is the end all be all well well
 let's like extend that right exactly so
 like let's extend let's expand all
 right what other ways could this type of
 thinking
 apply and I think that extends to 8020
 principal Richard Kosh type stuff I
 think it extends
 to it's really about the number of
 people who get it not the number of
 people who don't get it Kevin Kelly
 1,000 true fans type of thinking blue
 ocean versus red Ocean Blue Ocean
 strategy kind of stuff these are all
 highly compatible and I would go further
 to say there are a lot of people who at
 this point they've probably heard the
 word stoic yeah at least in the modern
 sense yeah lower case but they're not
 familiar with the Canon of stoicism yet
 if you if you look at anyone who has
 thrived in what most people consider
 high stress
 environments they're going to walk the
 walk I I just I I think that there's
 such a selection bias there's a Sur
 survival bias
 towards anyone who indirectly or
 directly has put into practice these
 principles on a regular basis that if
 you look at and you know this is just
 these are hypotheticals I haven't asked
 these people like anyone from a bob Iger
 to a hedge fund manager
 to an exceptionally good athlete who has
 had
 Longevity if you were to sit them down
 and walk them through Marcus aelius and
 so on for the first time they be like oh
 yeah oh yeah yeah yeah no that's how
 live my life yes yeah you have you have
 to because look the chief task in life
 the S would say is like finding what's
 in your control and what's not in your
 control now this is going to shift
 depending on who you are and where you
 are in the world right like uh
 epicus his understanding of what was in
 his control and what's not in control
 it's going to be fundamentally different
 than Marcus Rus they're living a
 generation apart one's a slave one's the
 most powerful man in the world one has
 slightly more things that are in his
 control than the other other but still
 fundamentally they're limited by gravity
 right they're limited by uh the weather
 they're limited by mortality you know
 they're limited by the fact that most
 people don't care what they have to say
 or think you know like the the the the
 unpredictable nature of human beings
 like so so yeah it changes a little bit
 but more things remain outside your
 control than in your control and that
 fundamentally dealing with stress high
 performance success whatever whatever
 you're dealing with is coming down to
 this B really basic almost so basic it
 doesn't feel like it could be ancient
 philosophy but is is like hey what part
 of this can I influence and what part of
 this do I have to accept and just deal
 with and find a way to adapt and get
 comfortable with and I think
 stoicism as I think about it you're much
 more familiar of
 course you're you are uh very much um
 familiar with the Canon and the figures
 and thinking and the latest sort of
 modern examples but from my perspective
 stoicism is good
 for survival and self-preservation for
 the same reason it's good for Success
 yeah however you might Define that but
 let's just say being an outlier in some
 type of
 performance it is because sto stoicism
 helps you to conserve and best deploy
 your Limited resources yeah so for
 instance if you are
 and humans are humans right so you're
 going to slip you're going to make
 mistakes uh at least certainly I do so
 it's a a lot of this is work in progress
 but if you are easily offended you're a
 poor resource allocator yeah and if you
 look at the most successful CEOs of all
 time in a book interestingly enough
 called the outliers as one example like
 one of the key characteristics is
 they're very good capital allocators but
 what that comes down to is limited
 resource allocators yeah so time energy
 attention capital in this case I think
 that the tenets of stoicism help you to
 be a better resource allocator coming
 back to what you said
 by pausing a lot yeah to say or think
 about what is in your control and what
 is out of your control if it's out of
 your control trying to allocate as few
 calories as few minutes as few dollars
 to that as humanly possible yeah and
 sometimes It's tricky sometimes it's
 hard sometimes there are gray areas and
 so you have to make your best fast
 decision with the information that you
 have but I think that the the tools are
 the same the tools are the same
 and there are plenty of things I folded
 into my own life that are I think highly
 compatible with
 stoicism that you might not find in the
 pages of of some of um the classics but
 it's a mistake to think about stoicism
 as a
 joyless toolkit for preventing pain and
 ensuring survival there's a lot more to
 it it's a more flexible toolkit yeah my
 wife's been saying that like the the key
 skill in life we think about this with
 young kids like that she says the key
 skill in life is the ability to deal
 with frustration yeah right or that
 basically at the end of the day it comes
 down to can you regulate your emotions
 and so whether you're dealing with a
 catastrophe
 or what Tennessee Williams calls the
 catastrophe of success right which is
 its own catastrophe like it basically
 comes down to emotional regulation can
 you regulate extreme Elation can you Rec
 can you uh regulate extreme Despair and
 can you figure out how not to be
 overwhelmed by the situation you're in
 but figure out okay what am I going to
 do about it what what am I being asked
 to do here what's the best thing to do
 here what's going to get me in more
 trouble it's going to give you Les you
 know you're you're trying to figure out
 how do you how do you integrate address
 respond not be corrupted by you know
 whatever the moment that you're in and
 that's the same at and either end of the
 extremes and you can you can really
 extend the scope of
 Regulation at least I do to think about
 a lot of different factors and
 also a compatible and I think
 complimentary word which is repair right
 so I have a very
 hypervigilant system right from we don't
 have to spend time on it but had some
 awful things happen to me as a kid and
 my
 my sympathetic nervous system goes into
 overdrive very easily yeah and I have
 tried a million in one
 tools for preventing this from happening
 but the reality is that there are many
 instances in any given week this week is
 actually a very good
 example actually texted a friend can I
 curse on this podcast where I was like
 cuz he knows what's going on and I was
 like so I putting quotation marks I was
 like surprise it's time for your
 surprise semester exam from the universe
 yeah and I was like okay sure you're
 doing all this meditation reading all
 the stoicism yeah let's see what you got
 yeah and this week was one of those
 weeks and there are there have been
 times when I'm like my God like my my
 resting heart rate is at like 120 yeah
 and then it's about repair and the tools
 are the same the tools are very similar
 right thinking about like sitting down
 doing a little serenity
 prayer
 and also thinking about the worst case
 scenario uh testing
 assumptions and the repair is incredibly
 important and also thinking about not
 just what thoughts are you going to have
 what questions are you going to ask what
 exercises are you going to do in your
 head that will help in these moments
 whether it's preventive or repair but
 also thinking about the conditions that
 lend themselves to disre regulation too
 much caffeine too little sleep alcohol
 before bed
 and a lot of the times like you don't
 need to sit down you're having a really
 rough day and you're like wow I need to
 figure out my life what am I going
 to do when I grow up I'm lost it's like
 no you have low blood sugar and you
 didn't sleep like you need some
 macademia nuts and a cold shower and a
 nap and don't you think repair one
 taking care of yourself so self-care
 working through it but this is something
 I definitely think the stoics didn't
 talk about enough and so I don't think
 the Stokes are are flawless or perfect
 in any way but it's also repair to the
 person you yelled at cuz you got upset
 or the person you were frustrated with
 because you were anxious or you know any
 or the person you neglected because you
 were consumed by this thing right like
 stoicism isn't never freaking out never
 going into a down downward spiral never
 being overwhelmed by your emotions it's
 hopefully catching yourself before
 you've done something terrible as a
 result of those things and hopefully as
 you get better ratcheting sooner and
 sooner how fast you can do it but it's
 what you do after you've done it right
 after you have the awareness to go okay
 I didn't live up to my standards here I
 did something I shouldn't have done I
 understand and empathize with the
 consequences that had on you and I'm
 sorry right like that that that that
 stoicism isn't just being this
 invulnerable
 disconnected you know yeah autonomous
 being but you exist in society and you
 exist in relationships and and that the
 repair isn't just to yourself but to
 those people too other other practices
 that uh I mean I I do sometimes I'll be
 honest skip some of the very esoteric
 uh cosmological like care about the
 stoic physics not so much generally so I
 skip a lot of that but there are a few
 things that I feel like I've indirectly
 taken from that that
 are uh very much along the lines of some
 of the chapters in 4,000 weeks by Oliver
 Berkman which I think is a great book I
 really enjoyed this book and there is a
 chapter I think it's
 called Cosmic insignificance therapy but
 really zooming out and looking at your
 goals problems Hang-Ups Neurosis in a
 broader and broader context of the world
 and history and the universe and this
 sounds very handwavy but it ends up
 being very very therapeutic and I've had
 a number of people who I have
 interviewed who have arrived on their
 own to some type of similar exercise
 yeah people who are who have supervised
 thousands of deaths in Hospice Care
 memory Champions uh military leaders
 astronauts astronauts who all do have
 done some version of this and the reason
 I bring that up is that it's another way
 to take the magnifying glass off of some
 of your issues yeah right like reflect
 on the
 problems like this week five years ago
 what were you worried about can't
 remember yeah exactly right right right
 right well I I was just thinking about
 this because so two different times in
 meditations Mark stros talks about
 taking the view from above at pl's View
 and so I was thinking about that I was
 like well how tall could you get in Rome
 so Marcus has this column they erect
 this column as a monument to his
 victories and it's like aund something
 meters tall so like if Marcus could get
 to the top of this column which we don't
 know if he did or not that's like 300 ft
 and I think the tallest mountain in Rome
 at that not at that time of all time is
 like 15,000 ft or something like that
 and he never climbed that but the point
 is in Marcus's time that's as high as
 you could phys physically get right and
 now you could get that on a Southwest
 flight for $99 double that right you can
 get 30,000 ft and look down at you see
 enormous you know plots of land States
 you know you all of a sudden you see it
 and and you see how small it is and
 astronauts call this the overview effect
 like you think about humans did not see
 the earth a human being did not see the
 Earth from not on Earth until like
 1972 like the Blue Marble photo and how
 what a PA Paradigm perspective shifting
 piece of information that was right like
 America is the most powerful country on
 Earth at that time we have no all this
 stuff and then you see us as just one of
 the the green continents on a on a
 little marble that's mostly ocean and
 all of a sudden it shrinks way down to
 sign and you think about all the people
 who had all these problems in each
 individual pixel on that photo yeah and
 it shrunk down to that exact Cosmic
 significance and the astronauts that
 have been there they talk they're like
 all you feel two things you feel total
 insignificance and you also feel
 complete and total
 interconnectedness because all the
 borders and boundaries and distinctions
 that separate us as human beings go away
 when you get that big also I really
 recommend people at least read this
 chapter you should read the whole book
 4,000 weeks it's a great book The Cosmic
 insignificance therapy if you search
 that in my name I I liked that chapter
 so much that I reached out to Oliver and
 got an excerpt so that chapter is
 available on my blog and people can read
 it so I I really do suggest that another
 thing came to mind you can tell me if
 this is somewhere in the in the the
 stoic in the stoic
 writings and this has come up a lot for
 me over the years and has come up very
 recently also which is the belief that
 and I'm borrowing here this is definely
 attributed to somebody else but never
 let a good crisis go to waste
 yes
 [Music]
 and
 really deeply believing and this could
 be self-deception but it's enabling
 self-deception it's it's it's very
 beneficial self-deception in a sense
 that if you're really
 experiencing
 a seismic shift of a problem or
 something that is is is a very non-trial
 problem to to look at that problem and
 to really sit down and ideally write
 out how the problem is based on your
 assumptions that you have about how
 things should work or how you should do
 things and I think it's Dan Sullivan who
 uh I've never had any direct
 interactions with but he runs something
 called I think it's the Strategic
 coach and he talks about how the problem
 isn't the problem it's how you view the
 problem yeah that is the problem and
 I've been it's not our it's not things
 that upset us it's our opinion about
 things the stok say yeah exactly and to
 to figure out like why is this a problem
 yeah is it because your five friends
 handle this problem in this way and they
 have established this as a priority
 because it is a problem for them is it
 something you should be doing in the
 first place yeah is there a way to
 remove this entire category of Problem
 by stopping something by hiring someone
 by firing someone Etc yeah and I'm doing
 a lot of that right now uh it's it's a
 it's a good time for us to have this
 conversation because it's a good
 reminder for me on a lot of levels and
 I'm having to pull out all the tools in
 the tool kit I I gave a talk to Live
 Nation last week and so I was like
 trying to think like what's like a music
 story I could tell and um so I I told
 the story of of Taylor Swift so like in
 2019 Taylor Swift's Masters are sold
 from her first five albums they're
 actually bought by scooter Bron she's
 very upset by this scooter Bron reads
 the daily stok so I I I make make no
 judgment he's cool with me but uh she's
 her Masters are sold right and and she
 decides that this is a problem she's
 very upset by it right and can't argue
 with the fact that she doesn't like it
 right like you could say this is just a
 part of how the music business Works uh
 and that he didn't do anything wrong but
 she didn't like it right to her it
 represented this kind of betrayal um and
 she was really pissed off that now
 somebody else controls the master of her
 music so she funny enough she she sees
 this tweet Kelly Clarkson tweets about
 it like two musicians helping each other
 I guess and she goes why don't you just
 re-record all your Masters and put out
 new art right which seems like a crazy
 idea like why would anyone do that but
 that's what she did she spent the whole
 pandemic re-recording every song plus a
 bunch of bonus songs and shooting new
 art for her first five albums right so
 people think like Taylor Swift is now
 unequivocally the biggest artist in the
 world maybe the biggest raises so many
 questions for me about the how you can
 even legally do that also well I know
 copyright is the expression yes but
 there's a two tier there's two kinds of
 intellectual property in music which is
 interesting which I don't fully
 understand either but the point is when
 when people see like the ays tour like
 which is not just the most successful
 concert tour in history it's earned more
 than the first the second and third two
 tours have combined like even the the
 movie about the tour has made over $100
 million right so it's the biggest thing
 in the history of Music probably the
 history of the entertainment business uh
 a singular artist doing a singular thing
 it's it's actually a result you want to
 talk about the obstacles of the way it's
 a result of this seemingly terrible
 thing happening to her right so the
 thing happens to her her Masters are
 sold but how she responds to it what she
 her decision not to waste it and to use
 it to channel that energy into some
 productive end is what creates what's
 possible now right because it it seems
 like she's always been this big and she
 has always been big but the process of
 releasing five consecutive albums plus
 two that she record two or three that
 she recorded just of all new music
 during the pandemic makes her like this
 Powerhouse in music because she's it's
 like every day there's a new song every
 month there's something new from her so
 she's just been the recipient of just
 endless amounts of media attention she's
 been rediscovered by a whole generation
 of people right and and then it sets up
 going on this tour where she says I'm
 going to play music from every era of my
 life right and so I was just I I think
 it's such an interesting example like
 when you when we say never let a crisis
 go to waste crisis isn't you know your
 whole family is murdered in front of you
 right crisis is also just like something
 that you didn't want to happen happens
 to you and then you are defined by what
 you do in response to that and it can be
 a springboard for things that not only
 you didn't think were possible but like
 nobody thought were possible for artists
 typically re-record their music and it's
 just this like kind of technical legal
 thing that manifests itself in The Fan
 Experience in basically no noticeable
 way but the way she did it and the way
 she set it up set about this
 transformational Transcendent series of
 events that have made her what she is
 and that all comes from this thing that
 if you had asked her in that moment do
 you want this to happen to you she would
 have said not on my life you
 know I would rather die than that happen
 and that's what we have the ability to
 do and so I think when we think of
 stoicism as this philosophy of
 resilience and creativity and and and
 it's she's a very privileged person when
 this happens to her she's already
 extremely successful it's not just for
 you at your lowest moment but you can
 you can transform things that happen to
 you into that if you want yeah I mean on
 a on a much smaller scale I mean what
 everything is on a smaller scale
 scale 4our Chef right that that was a
 book that completely burned me out I
 burned myself out sure it was three
 probably threeyear very complex book
 very very detailed very involved my
 first four-color book I decided it would
 be a great idea if I did like 40% of the
 photography myself even though I'm not a
 photographer great idea also just you
 wanted to learn a thing you didn't know
 how to do that was like right also just
 the the the content of the book itself
 like the ideas was not easy yeah I so
 this is this was a an incredibly
 difficult book I'm very proud of how it
 was executed but crammed something it
 should have been three or four years
 into a year year and a half and just
 flamed out yeah and at the time again I
 would have said I absolutely would never
 have wanted this outcome yeah but when
 you have an experience like that or when
 Taylor has an experience like that I
 can't speak for her but I imagine
 yeah what an experience like that does
 is it allows you it gives you permission
 to take time to step back yeah and to
 pause and to look at things with fresh
 eyes in a way that you often disallow
 yourself from doing if you are chugging
 along keeping the trains running on time
 yeah following your daily weekly routine
 whatever that might
 be and it doesn't always work out but in
 my case without that
 window also without that extreme fatigue
 I would not have I do not think I would
 have possibly experimented with the
 podcast I I was just writing about this
 uh kind of pine tree and I'm forgetting
 what it's called exactly but I have one
 of the pine cones in my office as a
 reminder but basically so it's like any
 other pine tree drops a pine cone pine
 cone has the seeds in it right that's
 how the new trees come but these pine
 cones like you know if you ever see a
 pine cone that hasn't like done that yet
 it's still like the green it only
 unlocks
 when it is subjected to temperatures
 that weather alone cannot reach so it's
 only forest fires that allow it to do
 what it does so the thing that is the
 worst thing in the world for the tree
 which is a fire which burns down the
 forest is also what allows a new stand
 of trees to come in its place right and
 so like it's funny I was I was looking
 at the tree I was like this doesn't look
 burned like how did it how how did she
 get it to open I bought it on Etsy well
 she puts them in a train then she puts
 it in the oven like she gets them she
 puts in the but the point is it only
 does what it does when subjected to
 extreme you might even say unnatural
 amounts of stress or adversity and there
 is something that to me that's the
 essence of what sto philosophy is like
 Marcus aelius is a student of philosophy
 then he becomes Emperor and then
 basically everything that can go wrong
 goes wrong for the next 20 consecutive
 years right there's the antonine plague
 there's floods there's 's uh a coup
 attempt there's war right he he buries
 multiple children right like it's like
 everything that can go wrong goes wrong
 but that's when he becomes Marcus Reus
 like he would have been a his
 predecessor antoninus his his model in
 all things basically nobody knows his
 name and nobody thinks about him at all
 because he got 20 years of peace and
 prosperity like everything that could go
 right goes right for him and he's
 basically forgettable everything goes
 wrong for Marcus and he becomes
 the person that you read about in the
 pages of meditations right and so it's
 this idea I think that you want things
 to go the way you think you want them to
 go and then it's only when they don't go
 that way that you figure out what you're
 really capable of and you do the things
 that really you're only capable of in
 those
 moments it makes me think I haven't
 thought about this in a long time but I
 was either an Muro who's a very
 well-known investor Tech investor or
 Mike Maples also they work together
 investor I think it was one of the two
 but apologies if I'm misattributing guys
 which is something along the lines of
 sometimes you need life to save you from
 what you think you want yeah exactly
 and that has been I think a real key for
 me are those mints or nicotine you want
 a caffeine mint oh caffeine mint no I'm
 good not a sponsored by the way I'm
 [Laughter]
 just uh yeah you you you think you want
 it to go a certain way and of course it
 doesn't I I I was just reading this
 story about Hemingway so Hemingway is
 this aspiring novelist he's uh living
 with his wife in France he's in
 Switzerland and he's meeting with this
 famous journalist and his wife he he
 like telegrams her to come meet him he
 wants to introduce her to her but she
 basically she takes she's like oh he
 wants me to bring all his work to show
 off to this guy so she gets everything
 he's ever written in his life she
 gathers it is going she gathers it all
 up
 puts it in a briefcase gets on a train
 head toward heads towards swiland she's
 in a train station in like lions or
 something and uh she gets off to get
 like a coffee she comes back to the
 train car the briefcase is gone oh God
 was it stolen did she lose it did she
 said it we don't know but it's gone
 everything he has ever written
 disappears and Hemingway is of course
 devastated and feels like his whole life
 is ruined I don't know how a marriage
 would possibly recover from this it does
 not right but but um he writes this
 letter a few weeks later to Ezra pound
 and he goes I know what you're going to
 tell me he's like you're going to tell
 me good start over but he's like I'm not
 there yet you know and I love that too
 because it's easy to be flipping about
 this like Taylor Swift did not the next
 day after her master cell go I'm going
 to re-record all my albums and it's
 going to transform me into the
 stratosphere right like it's okay to
 feel sorry for yourself for a while it's
 okay to be pissed too and I
 don't think there's I don't you look you
 think about all the things Marcus realis
 goes through there's got to be days he
 does not get out of bed right he must
 have been devastated and pissed off but
 it's after you accept it and then you
 get to work on it that you can turn it
 into that thing and and what happens is
 basically like a forest fire all the
 underbrush for Hemingway is cleared out
 and he has to start over and he invents
 his new sort of writing
 style as a result of basically in his
 mid-20s losing everything right and we
 so it's in retrospect we know this is
 what happens like when you look at any
 phase in your life where the worst thing
 that could happen to you happened to you
 now you have integrated it in and you
 see how it helped you get where you're
 going yeah by the way with the podcast
 like it wasn't obvious on day one it
 wasn't even obvious on the anniversary
 of year one probably not even year two
 yeah right it was it was not clear and I
 also want to State for the record that
 not all crises turn into these Willy
 Wonka golden tickets right A lot of them
 are just things that you need to weather
 yes but I've tried to cultivate the
 habit of at least looking
 for the
 possibility that there is an angle from
 which I can see something that I would
 miss if I were just singing the wo is me
 song well it's like sometimes the
 disaster or the crisis presents in
 advance opportunity to advance
 professionally or you know from a profit
 perspective like sometimes hey this this
 thing closes this door and it opens this
 crazy window that you never would have
 gone through and that turns out to be
 the best thing that happens to you I
 think it's important like when we say
 the obstacles away obviously I wrote a
 book on this but like I'm not saying
 that everything is that right because
 how does a cancer diagnosis become that
 or like the death of your father become
 that or a pandemic where millions of
 people die like happens that's just
  terrible right that's life and
 it's important that we're not dismissive
 of the profound pain and anguish that's
 a result of that the stoics would still
 say the opportunity and I don't think
 they would use the word opportunity
 because it feels again insensitive but
 they would say that's still demands of
 you certain character tra it's still an
 opportunity for what they would call ER
 or Excellence like you still have to be
 a person inside that and you have to
 weather it endure it be of service to
 your fellow human beings you know what I
 mean so it's not it's not always like a
 chance to just like make more money or
 you know build your brand like it's not
 always great for your career but it can
 always be that's why I wrote during the
 pandemic I wrote that note I didn't say
 like this is the chance for you to
 like make a killing in real estate or
 like this is this is a chance for you to
 this is a chance for you to really take
 a lock on the independent bookstore
 market like I was looking out over this
 bookstore that was looking like it was
 going to be the biggest failure of my
 life and go it can make me a better
 person or a worse one right like it can
 also cost me my marriage it could also
 cost me my creative en it could I could
 make it worse if I wanted to I could
 also be improved by it right I could
 become more aware of my capacities I
 could learn from the mistakes my
 relationship could better my connection
 to human beings could get better I could
 realize hey in the big scheme of thing
 none of this matters
 you know there's so many things you
 could take from it to emerge as a better
 person almost all of which are not
 related to money or success in really
 any way I have a question about sosis
 for you all right I figure given where
 we are this is the right venue
 okay of this is a big question so if
 nothing comes to mind immediately choose
 whatever floats to the surface of the
 all the
 stoic writing that you've digested all
 all of the stoic writing that you've
 done all of
 the lessons and case studies that you've
 researched there are certain things that
 people glom on to in a not negative way
 positive way there's things that are I
 would say predominantly memorable right
 this is true for my books as well
 there's certain things that people tend
 not to miss yes right so like in the
 4our work week the funny enough one of
 the things that people always remember
 is the guest chapter by AJ Jacobs about
 Outsourcing his life with virtual
 assistance but they tend to miss and
 this is going to lead into my question
 the filling the void chapter because
 they're like oh good problem to have
 haha yeah yeah yeah I'll I'll worry
 about that when I get there and then
 people really it up badly and can
 end up in existentially pretty diff
 difficult places what are some of the
 things that are really valuable that you
 wish people paid more attention to O
 that's a great question by the way I was
 I was sitting out in front of Newark
 Airport like maybe a year ago just
 smoking your corn cob pipe no just
 sitting there just not waiting inside
 the
 airport and uh I'm sitting there and
 like a car pulls up and AJ gets out with
 his whole family I was like what the
  is this what have a chances and I
 go what are you working on he's like oh
 I'm pretending I lived during colonial
 times like he was SP he spent a year of
 his life dressing like George Washington
 like oh no yeah he was living living by
 the Constitution that's what he was
 doing the most patient wife in the world
 yeah like the Year of Living biblically
 yes uh also an amazing book so good he's
 amazing um but uh okay so I I wouldn't
 even fault the audience for this
 necessarily I would fault myself my
 initial read on like we see what we want
 to see when we're looking for stuff
 right or we see what we need to see at
 that point in our life and so my early
 takes on the stoicism on stoicism I
 would say were primarily about what it
 could give me right how it could make me
 more resilient how it could make me
 stronger how it could make me uh smarter
 you know how it could make me more
 success like I took I I was looking at
 stoicism at at through what it's been
 for lots of people for thousands of
 years which is a form of self-help right
 um and of course I understood that he's
 talking about virtue he's talking about
 common good and all these things but I
 would say it it wasn't until
 later that I understood so the cardinal
 virtues of STM are courage
 self-discipline Justice and wisdom but
 if you really think about it the key
 virtue is Justice because it renders it
 decides whether any of the other ones
 were worthwhile or not right so like
 courage I can't wait to hear this
 courage in pursuit of the wrong thing or
 a cruel and selfish or whatever thing
 right courage and pursuit like courage
 or discipline or was it like if it's not
 rooted towards like making the world
 better or doing what the S call the
 right thing right their their
 understanding of Justice isn't like the
 legal system it's like what kind of
 person are you and what kind of code or
 values do you have I think I came later
 than I than I I I came later to a a more
 full understanding of what stoicism is
 asking of you as opposed to what it can
 provide you does that make sense yeah
 and I'm just finishing this book now on
 Justice will be the third book in that
 Series so I've been thinking a lot about
 it more but like like almost all the
 Stokes were active in politics almost
 all Stokes wrote books to share what
 they learned like there was this sense
 the diff the fundamental difference
 between the epicurian and the stoics
 Senus say is that an epicurian basically
 withdraws from the stresses and
 complications of life into the garden
 where they have fun and enjoy themselves
 and hang out with their friends and a
 stoic is involed evolved in the polus
 like in public life and so I I feel like
 my writing has changed and evolved and
 my focus on that thing has changed and
 evolved more so I I can sometimes tell
 when a fan is upset with me because
 they're at an earlier place in the
 understanding of stoicism which I once
 was and they're hearing from me now and
 they don't get you know what I mean like
 they want for them to sort reconcile the
 two or or maybe just to take on both at
 the same time it's like they're like I
 wanted you to give me advice on how I
 could be a better sociopath you know
 what I mean and you're you're telling me
 that I'm not supposed to be a sociopath
 right and and uh I I that that's the big
 one to me I mean I think I I've seen
 this in your work and I've always
 admired this is something I was going to
 ask you you from the beginning like
 before your books were successful you
 were donating like a percentage of the
 profits of the 4our work week to you've
 always been I focused on not just
 capturing value for yourself
 but I would describe you as a generous
 person thanks appreciate that and and to
 me that like a really key stoic virtue
 right or it's that's part of that virtue
 of justice but it it's um talking about
 that feels kind of judgy or
 self-righteous do you know what I mean
 it's easier to go like seven stoic
 strategies to be more
 productive yeah it it is and I think
 there's I mean I've seen this with some
 of my writing as well because it tends
 to be
 prescriptive non-fiction and I think
 that one could
 make to to speak in the defense of the
 people who are focused on improving
 themselves that people and the borrowing
 from Ariana Huffington at least I've
 heard her say this that you should put
 on your own mask before helping others
 you got to start there right totally
 like put on your own oxygen mask first
 and at the same time
 or not at the same time to to just add
 something to the the donation so since
 the first book you're right that a
 portion has been donated to different
 nonprofits or causes yeah I mean a lot
 of money at this point and yeah 5% of
 the royalties of the 4-Hour Work week is
 not a small amount of money yeah it may
 have been it maybe 10 maybe more than 10
 oh yeah it was 10 yeah yeah and that's
 been true for other books as well uh
 I've I've far exceeded that but the
 point that I was going to make is part
 of the reason I did that and maybe this
 is a very Stoke
 thing is you could say there are a few
 different motivations for that one is to
 do the right thing and to help things
 that I think are worth helping not just
 to help them financially but to draw
 attention to them sure in ways that may
 exceed my own Financial contribution
 that's how I heard about donors choose
 yeah like it was because it was you were
 saying I'm not donating 10% of this to
 charity you said a specific charity and
 what charity is that
 so that's that's that's one the next is
 that I have just noticed as a pattern
 and this could be false uh false
 causality but it's correlation at least
 people who tithe in some way seem to be
 generally happier yeah now you could say
 Well they're probably
 also in most cases highly religious so
 couldn't it be caused by something else
 it's like saying well people who do yoga
 are so much healthier and have better
 teeth and you're like yeah but they also
 tend to be of a higher sense you can
 class so they can pay for better Dental
 Care Etc so I understand the confounders
 here but I will say that from a personal
 experience so let's make this the the
 third thing is that if you give some
 amount of money away it's almost like
 you've created a deliberate hole in the
 boat that is your finances and what that
 does for me at least is it loosens my
 White Knuckle grip on this thing called
 financial success yeah because I've I've
 created an automatic release valve where
 some of it is
 disappearing
 and as a practice I think that has
 you're not so precious with the resource
 yeah yeah like I am I am assuming from
 the outset there is enough there is a
 sufficiency not saying abundance
 necessarily but there's there is a there
 is there's a sufficiency instead of a
 scarcity such that it I
 can absolutely Ely afford to give 10%
 off the top to other things and that
 that will be a net life quality
 multiplier or at least positive for me
 as opposed to negative and certainly
 that's been my experience well this is a
 chance we can test the theory of
 Aristotle so Aristotle says virtue isn't
 this thing that you are right that you
 were born as he says virtue is like
 playing the flute or uh building houses
 you become a house Builder by building
 houses you become a flute player by
 playing the flute and his point was like
 you become a courageous person by doing
 Brave things and he says you become
 generous by doing generous acts so do
 you think generosity was something you
 learned was it like a skill that you
 acquired or do you think it was just
 naturally always what you were or it was
 easy like do you feel like you've gotten
 better at it oh yeah yeah I've gotten
 better at it and I'm also
 uh I try to be very surgical with it
 right in the sense that I don't diminish
 automatically feel good let's just say
 philanthropy I hate that word let's call
 it um cause giving the reason the reason
 I don't like philanthropy is
 because it
 implies right like biophilia like Phil
 loving yeah anthropy right like
 anthropology loving humans yes and I
 don't actually I wouldn't say default
 love humans I think as as as a species
 we're kind of a disaster and in and is
 preserving the environment driven by
 your love of humans or is it actually
 the opposite so if I'm working on say
 with Amazon conservation team which is
 one nonprofit I've vetted and feel very
 good about from a like Capital
 efficiency operations
 standpoint uh that is nothing to well I
 shouldn't say it doesn't have nothing to
 do with humans but it's also like
 preserving
 ecosystems but where I was going with
 this is I've become better and better at
 investing in good vehicles for
 accomplishing things in a nonprofit
 capacity just as I have in the for
 profit investing sure world the way I
 look at them is really the same I also
 do some feel-good stuff where
 it's very individual it is not
 attempting to scale which is sometimes
 important but more often this word
 that's thrown around in a somewhat
 casual way to justify all sorts of yeah
 uh s of oftentimes greedy behavior on
 the part of rich people who don't want
 to donate
 money like scroe McDuck kind of stuff
 Montgomery Burns if you
 prefer and
 uh I I do think that from a young age
 and I turned this off for a long time
 but like a very deep feeler like a very
 sensitive kid yeah so from a very young
 age and I I don't know if my parents
 encouraged this maybe I was just
 traumatized by like commercials with the
 kids with like the Flies and their
 eyeballs uh but from a very young age
 and my family I I don't come from money
 right like my family didn't have very
 much money and we had to make a lot
 of uh yeah we we can get into it but
 like we did not have a lot of money
 suffice to say uh and I I gave even when
 I was really young and by Young I mean
 like I don't know
 679 like a part of my wow if I got like
 a little bit of allowance or something I
 would give a little bit away yeah
 because it it felt like the right thing
 to do U but then there was a large
 period of time where I didn't do any of
 that and I was like hey you got to take
 care of number one first the Gordon
 gecko let's let's let's solve this
 problem first and then I can do good
 later yeah and then for for a host of
 reasons I started to question that logic
 both for personal fulfillment and for
 impact right like these sure your net
 worth might be scaling but is it
 scaling inflation adjusted at PACE with
 the the problems that are also
 compounding maybe not so I think in a
 lot of cases the answer is early
 intervention with less money is better
 than late intervention with more money
 certainly if that's true in medicine
 it's very true with lots of the problems
 we see in the world or just causes that
 we want to further so for me I wrote
 this blog post god ages ago back when I
 had hair it was probably 2007 or eight
 it's hard to believe that they're
 thousand plus blog posts I mean it's I
 forget about that sometimes that was an
 important bridge between the the book
 and other things that I sometimes forget
 about in terms of connective tissue but
 wrote this piece called the something
 like the karmic capitalist yeah or
 principles of karmic capitalism where I
 laid out some of my early thinking on
 this uh so I took a long Hiatus from
 that type of
 thinking and
 uh have come back to it but it is a
 practice it is a practice and uh I found
 your comment on justice as sort of
 the this isn't going to be the best
 phrasing but the sort of Master
 determinant of virtue or lack of virtue
 when you're right the sort of parent
 virtue above others in a sense uh I've
 been thinking quite a lot about
 uh mother qualities right so for
 instance like what is the rate limiter
 which is slightly different than what
 you were saying but if you talk to like
 pav tulan about physical fitness so he
 popularized kettle bells in the United
 States and really knows his stuff and
 for him it's like strength first like
 strength if you look at Longevity if you
 look at Health span if you look at your
 ability to execute other things he's
 like before you worry about flexibility
 before you worry about Mobility before
 you worry about endurance strong first
 that's the name of his company in fact
 and I was like okay that's very it even
 if it's inaccurate I happen to think
 it's
 accurate it's helpful to sit and think
 about that for a second and interrogate
 that concept and uh so to give you a
 window in right I do five bullet Friday
 it's newsletter every Friday goes out to
 a couple million people
 and I capture things as I'm out in the
 world that are going to later make it
 into five Friday so as we're recording
 this something that I'm working on are a
 few quotes that are compatible that all
 touch on the same thing which is laying
 out a hierarchy of Virtues and they word
 it very eloquently Maya Angelou is
 one and she talks about courage as yes
 the mother virtue because all of their
 virtues at their testing Point yes right
 yeah and that quote that it's all I
 think there's a CS Lewis version of that
 same quot see that it's it and it's true
 and I think I said this in the book I
 did on Courage that courage is the
 essential version because you can't do
 any of the other things without courage
 and it's true it's just it the absence
 of Justice or the absence of it being
 the right thing immediately renders
 whatever it is yeah worthless if you win
 the Medal of Honor for the Confederacy
 you know it's like there's something
 Hollow about like there's a there's a
 Lord Byron quote who says is the cause
 makes all that Hallows or degrades
 courage in its fall like what it is in
 pursuit of like there's so many lonely
 stands you could take those oldtimers
 love their Rhymes you got to start
 rhyming more well that's a poem so but
 that was from a PO but the point is like
 there's a lot of lonely stance you
 doesn't mean you can't do some stoic
 spoken word stuff anyway if if you're if
 you're taking the lonely stand but it's
 wrong you know what I mean or it's Ina
 like it it's it's rendered worthless
 both of these are interested I mean
 it's I'm glad that you brought up
 justice piece because now I can think
 about both of side by side yeah right
 yeah and if you have a common failure
 mode right it's like if something dis
 regulates you if there are certain
 issues that seem to repeat if you have
 certain patterns with your significant
 other it's like okay right is this and
 because Justice can also
 be hijacked by The Righteous Mind of
 course you know what I mean right so so
 I but but it helps to have a list like a
 checklist to run through anyway just
 wanted to say it's it's uh I I'm really
 glad you brought it up cuz now I have a
 completely different lens on a list that
 I might have automatically ordered with
 courage at the top interesting in a
 sense I'll I'll send you the book I just
 sent it into the publisher like three
 days ago but you know what I'm going to
 I'm going to let people in on a on some
 inside baseball so part of the reason
 it's done yeah it's done it's finished
 it's finished 100% 100% okay all right
 then maybe I can take a look at it
 because and we've had this experience
 before you've who sent me finished books
 with Pages ripped out you're like delete
 this page delete this page yeah if I get
 set a manuscript part of the reason that
 I'm just like I don't read manuscripts
 is because I cannot turn off editing and
 so I will I will do a full book
 edit that takes a an absurd ton of
 time because I can't turn it off and I
 actually I I'm not going to be an editor
 but I think I'm a better editor than a
 writer uh I'm there's lower Stakes when
 you're lower Stakes right I'm just like
 yeah we should definitely take out the
 appendix yeah you don't really need your
 left toe we can take that off cuz I
 don't have to actually deal with the
 consequences but that level of
 Detachment which I have with very few
 things
 uh I it's helpful right like when I'm
 looking for editors I try to embolden
 them to be willing to say yeah we should
 lose your left toe yeah well that I mean
 you always you whenever you've sent me
 your stuff you always say something like
 what what's your least favorite chapter
 what chapter would you cut right where's
 it too long you had to cut a chapter
 you're never like what do you like you
 know no I'm like if you had to cut 20%
 what would you cut so so to go back to
 generosity the other thing I think would
 point out because again it can feel very
 sort of first worldly where it's like we
 associate generosity and money but of
 course there's many ways to be generous
 right like can you be uh just like I
 think we talked about competition
 earlier it's so easy to live in a world
 where you think things are zero some
 right and that if somebody else gets
 ahead it means it's coming at your
 expense in some way and I think even
 there I've I've had to grow and I feel
 like I've changed which is like I
 now feel in some ways more excited when
 I help someone else succeed uh or if I
 open a door for someone than I do with
 like with my own stuff right like and
 the idea of just exp that that's but
 that's a result of having helped people
 and
 experienced how wonderful that felt
 right you know what I mean before you do
 it it feels like stupid we can we can
 also paint it in a very uh maybe helpful
 self- serving way which is
 let's put generosity aside for a second
 although it is one way to describe some
 of these
 behaviors if you for instance well let
 me just put out an observation first
 which is I think that generosity is
 inversely correlated
 to wealth in the first world as as a as
 a percentage of what you possess I
 actually believe that from what I've
 seen like the more money people have the
 better they are at the money
 accumulating game the less they want to
 part with it sure and that's probably
 how they accumulated in the first place
 right yeah and I think look I'm I'm sure
 I'm guilty of that on some level yeah
 right like you have to Value money to
 accumulate a bunch of it unless you're
 just okay fine like you got drunk and
 bought bought the Power Ball and there
 you go you have a few hundred million
 sure that doesn't usually last very long
 right if that's the case but I'll put it
 this way if you and this is something
 we've been talking
 about a little bit earlier directly but
 mostly indirectly and that is if you go
 into Starbucks tomorrow and you buy
 you're paying for your coffee and you
 give the Barista 20 bucks and you're
 like I'm paying for the person or two
 behind me yeah that
 act implicitly says I have more than
 enough yeah that is a very
 uncommon
 perception of reality in say the United
 States yeah in a go go go sure
 accumulate capitalist Society
 yeah it it's it is just I think very
 uncommon like I have more than enough
 yeah that is what that act says I have
 extra I have extra not only do I have
 what I need I have extra is what that
 says can you afford forget about 20
 bucks can you give like five bucks and
 say like hey whoever comes in under five
 bucks yeah if you can afford to go to
 Starbucks to buy your VY Frappuccino
 with God knows what diabetes fuel in it
 then your breakfast milkshake yeah if
 your breakfast milkshake you can
 probably afford to pay for someone's
 like next small black coffee and that is
 a non-trivial act yeah as a sort of
 statement of self-appraisal yeah sounds
 silly but it's like reinforcing it the
 actually the beneficiary of that is you
 because try it tomorrow you are you are
 not just saying that you have enough you
 are acting as if you have like as they
 say act as if you are acting as if you
 have enough and then it becomes truer to
 you at a more like cellular level and
 then so when yeah you hear about some
 natural disaster or somebody your
 employee asked for your raise or
 something you can go like I don't need
 to approach this from a scarcity mindset
 which is the default setting I think of
 the human spe I mean we come from a
 place where there was never enough food
 right there survival was
 we always teetering on the edge of
 survival and then depending on where you
 come like more recently you know your
 grandparents grew up in the depression
 or you grew up as an immigrant in a poor
 country like depending on what that is
 it's even compounding just the
 biological urge of like never enough
 save some store winter is coming right
 and you're so you're practicing and
 teaching yourself you're developing The
 Virtue as Aristotle says by doing the
 thing yeah like and and practicing
 gripping it lightly right and by the way
 that small Act of paying for somebody
 behind
 you as an easy example like that
 transcends money yeah right uh which is
 why I
 think uh well I tend to do better in
 crisis than I do with like the small
 paper cuts in life yeah yeah me too so
 my like my work to
 do is with the little annoyances MH
 often very often human factors
 yeah this is where Justice gets me in
 trouble it's just the principle of the
 thing you know that's oh boy now Tim's
 about to really punish
 himself
 uh but the to the extent that I've made
 progress on the crisis side and to the
 extent that I've made progress on the
 paper cut
 side I think it's through these little
 things and those things compound and
 they become a habit well it's important
 you know and it's a habit of Thinking by
 the way yes it's the habit of action
 leads to a habit of thinking and vice
 versa and vice versa you can probably
 give me the attribution you're so much
 better at this than I am but like it's
 easier to act your way into into a new
 way of thinking than to think your way
 into a new way of acting this would be
 an example I I think potentially have
 that they're not mutually exclusive but
 that would be that would be an
 example it's funny right the obstacles
 way which is from this quote from Marcus
 realis he does talk a lot in meditations
 about how like difficult circumstance is
 obstacles or fuel whatever but
 specifically that quote I truncated like
 I shortened it I didn't include some of
 the beginning and I cut out some of the
 middle but that Fuller quote is about
 Annoying obnoxious people it's about he
 says it's about the people who obstruct
 us right and I mean he opens meditations
 with he he was clearly perpetually
 annoyed with human beings and he would
 have had to interact with lots of them
 probably many of the worst of them right
 as his job what was what was what was
 this line was like when you leave the
 house today expect that you will find
 people ungrateful rude entitled he's the
 opening of meditations right like that
 that is for he he to his credit the
 first book Is All About gratitude but
 then when he gets to the actual book
 itself but I still have a few things to
 say about really else sucks like these
 20 people who help me are awesome but
 everyone else sucks but even the
 rest of that quote you know he goes like
 we're made to work with each other he's
 like these people don't know what
 they're doing he's like he's like uh
 he's like they can't implicate me in
 ugliness and he's like my job is to put
 up with them and work with them like it
 it's funny like the famous part is like
 how shitty everyone is That's what
 everyone remembers but he catches
 himself halfway through that paragraph
 and it ends on a very positive note to
 be patient and generous and
 collaborative you know so it it's funny
 like we see what we we see the
 confirmation of like yeah people are
 that way but what we kind of
 conveniently ignore is what he saying we
 have to do with those people which is be
 good to them I have a uh top secret
 stoic life hack
 oh giving some wording for the
 thumbnail this is borrowed from a friend
 of mine I'm not going to name him
 because the way that he phrased it was
 would actually be much more offensive
 but he he he's been I've observed a a
 visible difference in his state of ease
 in the world and I was like what's going
 on like oh basically I've just decided
 when I go out in the world that I'm
 going to treat everyone as if they have
 a debilitating disease that affects
 their like mental and emotional
 regulation yeah and it just makes it so
 much easier to deal with everybody it's
 like you're not going to get angry at
 somebody if they're handicapped yeah
 right like how insensitive would that be
 so when you go out it's
 just there you go folks the
 philosophical way I've heard that
 expressed is act as
 if no one else has Free Will and only
 you do which is which is like they are
 being they are they are programmed
 there's some person pulling puppet
 strings making them do all the things
 that are bothering you frustrating so
 they're utterly blameless and can't be
 held responsible for their decisions and
 actions except for you you you do own
 what you do and and there is something
 about that that that I think I think
 there's a there's an element of Truth to
 that or it's like um you know act act as
 if Adam Smith said uh you know again we
 think of Adam Smith as this like
 ruthless practitioner or philosopher of
 capitalism but he also wrotes a book
 called a theory of moral sentiments
 about like how we should be good people
 but he basically says like act as if
 there's an impartial Observer following
 you everywhere just going you know like
 to everything that you do like little
 hall monitor with a exactly clipboard Ju
 Just Like could you justify it to that
 person you know and a lot of time like
 they're not God or anything he's just
 saying like they're just watching like
 how how much would you do how much
 differently would you act if other
 people were watching and and it it does
 kind of I think keep you honest you
 would you're you tip a little more you'd
 you'd be a little bit more patient you
 know you do all the things that you want
 to do but you think you can get away
 with not doing here's another lead
 Domino let's call it just to get fancy
 that if tipped over tips over a lot of
 other things and I will likely be doing
 this in the next year probably in the
 next quarter and it's so straightforward
 and I haven't tracked the author so I
 don't know if they've been embroiled in
 Scandal or something there's no reason
 for me to expect that but like just in
 case because I don't want yeah I mean
 you talked about Scott Adams earlier
 people just like not be awful so I can
 use your work which I like yeah just
 just for for this snapshot in time but I
 think it was Will Bowen might be the
 pronunciation BN in any case it's the
 30-day no complaint experiment yes mhm I
 think this is the first blog post you
 ever read very early blog post and if
 you want to change your life you put a
 bracelet on could be a rubber band and
 every time you complain you switch to
 the wrist it's might be 21 days but it's
 three or four weeks
 and if you make a concerted effort to
 not complain at
 all for and you achieve a solid let's
 call it even two weeks yeah without
 switching that bracelet your quality of
 life will change completely uh if if you
 have some improvement let's just say
 that can be gained which I would say is
 true for most people and it it's a
 forcing function for a lot of The Stoke
 practices it should be a rubber band and
 then instead of switching you just have
 that I wonder yeah you know I I suppose
 you could do it a whole bunch of ways
 you could get like an opus Day cat of
 Ninetales might be a little awkward in
 said Starbucks of suddenly it's
 Sam Samantha and I found that so like
 obviously we work together and so but
 we're not always together so we would
 like get home in the afternoon or the
 evening and we'd be like talking about
 like work stuff right and we realized
 like our kids thought we were fighting
 because like we weren't mad at each
 other but we are both complaining SL
 venting about stuff right and if you're
 a kid you don't really understand what's
 happening you're like why is Dad talking
 negatively to Mom and why is mom talking
 negatively to Dad it none of the Animus
 or the frustration was directed at each
 other but it's the person we were
 communicating it to and so it was like
 we realized
 one we just shouldn't well like first
 off it's like okay let's not talk about
 work around the kids if that's how we're
 going to do it and then second it was
 like this shouldn't be the everything's
 going great you know what I mean like at
 at the end of the day we're actually
 quite happy with everything but we're
 just like picking the end of we're
 picking to end the day by like
 ruminating on and complaining about all
 the things we don't like right we're not
 setting aside going this happened well
 and this happened well and what about
 this we're we're just using our Limited
 time together mhm to
  hurl garbage at each other yeah
 ex it's a very it's a very human thing
 it's a super human thing
 and I I'll give just one tip if people
 pursue this exercise read the blog post
 because I I thought about it much more
 completely when I wrote that uh the no
 complaint experiment my name and it'll
 pop right up and the book is great I
 really really found the book incredibly
 helpful what is a complaint becomes
 important to Define this but before you
 embark on this experiment you need to
 have some some rules of play and I would
 say one of the
 critical one of the critical details
 that I at least implemented in my life
 because there are going to be times when
 you have to discuss
 something that
 is negative that sucks that is just bad
 that is a problem but how do you prevent
 that from being categorized as a
 complain you talk about what you're
 going to do about it I'm not complaining
 but yeah yeah that doesn't work that's
 that's that's yellow card switch your
 band uh you talk about what you're going
 to do about it yeah right right and you
 talk about like next actions who's going
 to own it how you're going to prevent it
 in the future if you don't if you don't
 have that addendum it is complainant do
 not pass go restart well I I'm glad you
 said that because like sometimes I'll
 talk about like you know the stoics were
 were tried to be dispassionate they
 tried not to complain you know they try
 not to lament they try not to be angry
 and people go why don't you tell that to
 the Civil Rights Movement or something
 you know like like the there's they
 weren't Martin Luther King wasn't
 complaining right like protesting in
 Injustice and then activating a large
 group of people for redress of those
 grievances is is that's not a complaint
 right he wasn't like tweeting like this
 sucks it's not fair right like
 he it was so much more profound than
 that so there's a difference between um
 objecting to something or trying to
 change something and then complaining
 about and that's really the stoics are
 are and and the complain challenge it's
 really about the it reveling in your
 impotence is the problem you know what
 I'm saying that's the title of my next
 book middleaged Man's Guide to Life
 yeah like like it is and it's important
 that we see the stoks as people who led
 social movements people who ran for
 office people who you know like acronyms
 for books cuz the titles along so you
 this one could be
 Rip r YP but you could shorten it you
 can get fancy with some old timey
 capitalization make it a little pseudo
 German anyway but you know what I mean
 like there's a there's a difference
 between doing something about a problem
 and just you know lamenting a right and
 this so this no complaint experiment
 with the the qualifier that I just
 mentioned yes will force you to think
 very carefully about what about what is
 in your control and what is not because
 if it's out of your control and you
 start to talk about it and it's negative
 guess what you're now you have to
 switch your band and start over yes so
 it's it's a it is very much a forcing
 function the other the other Pro tip
 I'll give if you're going to try this
 delete Twitter from your phone I would
 just whatever you're doing right now
 just delete Twitter from your phone like
 you just said quality of life yeah
 improver right there it doesn't matter
 what what your resolution is for the
 year just start by doing that because
 it's not improving your life in any way
 and by the way it wasn't improving your
 life like a year ago and now it's like a
 thousand times worse and more toxic so
 it's just not good for you as a person
 yeah um no that's yeah if you want to
 control your outputs control your inputs
 totally um be very careful about what
 you put into your mind and if you want
 to see what it can do to you just see
 what it's cost to the richest man in the
 world yeah like it's not good for your
 soul it's not good for your reputation
 it's not good for your mind I I would
 say too like on the complaining thing
 one of one of the things I try to work
 on is like like if you run a company or
 business it's not quite complaining but
 it's close to like you kind of have to
 have a policy or you have to communicate
 inside your culture like don't come to
 me with problems right because that's
 also a form of complaint like this is
 wrong it's like okay but you should have
 sat with it for five more minutes and
 come to me with what we're going to do
 about it because otherwise like imagine
 a imagine especially a big company like
 imagine someone has a thousand employees
 a thousand employees come to one person
 with their problem that person is just
 going to kill themselves yeah or if they
 come to multiple people it just beames
 this game of problem Hot Potato yes and
 that's a huge waste of everyone's
 resources yeah what are you going to do
 about the problem what what is the
 problem presenting us as far as options
 and they might all be bad options but
 you can't it it can't just be like
 here's negative information
 do with it what you will yeah I have a
 Google document that is like the
 Commandments of sort of TF which like
 Tim Ferris Enterprises right which is
 not the real name of my company but it's
 just easy
 Shand and one of them is at the very top
 is if there's a problem come to and it
 needs to be discussed you need to have
 you need to have at least two options
 that are ranked order yeah and you can
 explain why you've chosen your top
 option what are the other Commandments
 or what are some of them some of them
 relate
 to Tactical basic procedural things like
 calendaring right so this is going to be
 put it in like it doesn't exist if it's
 not in the
 calendar yes but it's more specific so
 for instance this is going to be very in
 the weeds but people might find it
 helpful so if someone or if I offer say
 make this up and reviewing annual blood
 work with a doctor's office and you send
 them two times for a potential call yeah
 they might take a few days to get back
 to you yeah yeah but if you live in a
 world where a lot is a lot is scheduled
 constantly you need to block out those
 potential times yes and in the entry and
 say Google Calendar I would put have
 people put a question mark at the
 beginning of the entry that just means
 it hasn't been confirmed it's blocked
 but it hasn't been confirmed and and if
 there is not a
 very unbend if there's if there's not an
 immutable policy for doing that things
 are going to get double booked things
 are going to get lost and it's going to
 get very messy and then you just create
 a lot of work you create more work for
 more people yeah so there would be say a
 commandment in that there's actually a
 separate Google doc which is just
 calendar rules yeah like tactical this
 is how I like calendar rules uh but what
 are more what are some general like like
 philosophical Commandments then let me
 think about this because I I know that
 we have like two or three pages but it's
 been a long time since I've been in that
 document I have two if I let's hear
 yours yeah um I wrote down because I'm
 going to do a whole list but uh my my
 two they they seem related but they're
 separate so one there's a sign in the
 kitchenet per se it just says a sense of
 urgency yeah which I've seen it it was
 in the 4our Sha yeah uh and so like that
 you have to do things quickly and and
 related to that my other rule is start
 the clock so like um let's say it's
 going to take someone else like at a
 different like to get back to us or
 process something or manufacture it's
 going to take a month right so if we
 take two weeks around thinking
 about it it actually takes six weeks
 right like part of it we control is when
 we start the clock like when we hit the
 ball back into their court and it's
 their problem so I I I am continually
 frustrated with and appalled by the
 waste of like okay if we like a bunch in
 there because we're doing it for
 Christmas bunch of signed books if if we
 don't get the books packaged and signed
 by Saturday at 9:30 a.m. cuz the
 shipping deadline is 10:00 a.m. for the
 post office here then we might as well
 not do it until Monday at 4
 which is the next shipping deadline
 right so we got to start like we're
 adding two days to that clock by not
 starting it here right and so I find
 myself repeating what like start the
 clock don't if if something if a video
 editor has to work on something um
 we want them to have as much time as
 possible so start the clock by giving
 them the materials the outline all the
 things they need to start the clock so
 that's one of my big things is just and
 that's how I think about life is like I
 don't procrastinate I start the clock a
 book's going to take a year I don't
 spend you know a bunch of time wondering
 if I'm going to do it when I'm going to
 do I start the clock MH well what's your
 current when do you write typically now
 the mornings like 9 uh like sorry like
 8:45 depends on school drop off but
 let's say 8:45
 if I'm still riding by noon that's like
 a long day of writing so it's like it's
 a very short concentrated windows and if
 you do it day in and day out it adds uph
 so but so if you start the clock it adds
 up if you don't start the clock it
 hasn't started adding up so uh I have a
 a Commandment that relates to starting
 the clock and it really just relates to
 making faster
 decisions when you have and which is
 very often the case incomplete
 information or information that might
 change yeah it's like if if you if it's
 reversible or if it's an acceptable cost
 yeah I.E acceptable loss just book
 multiple things right if you think if if
 you think I might fly at this time and
 this time but it's going to take like a
 week or two yeah don't try to hold that
 in your head yeah just book both and
 then you can cancel one and pay the fee
 yeah exactly just just
 just if it can be reversed or canceled
 at minimal cost in some cases it's at
 full cost I'm willing to Bear the brunt
 of that sure in other cases it's free
 and it was just it was a dichotomy in
 your head that you couldn't do both yeah
 yeah then then I want people to move
 quickly in part because working memory
 is so faulty yeah and even documentation
 can be very clumsy right with like a
 million Google Docs scattered all over
 the place or notes and people lose track
 of things I mean do have basic
 infrastructure and tools that we rely
 upon like AA and so on but that would be
 another one uh effectively setting rules
 for people to make faster
 decisions and explaining what types of
 decisions would fall into that category
 yeah is one I have one it's h you better
 have a reason and so by by that I mean
 like like let's say I see someone they
 they made an editorial decision or they
 made a Content decision or they made a
 business decision or whatever
 and I disagree and that's just a fact of
 life like you can't preemptively weigh
 in on every decision the whole point of
 life is you have to delegate decisions
 right and so people on your team make
 decisions and I accept that I'm going to
 disagree with a lot of those decisions
 where I get upset or where I uh will
 come to not be able to work with a
 person is when I go okay so you sent
 this out at this time or you did it this
 way and I go why and they're like oh I
 don't know or you know like it's just
 how it came or whatever right and if
 they if the decision even if it's really
 bad even if it costs a lot of money even
 if I totally disagree if it got a lot of
 people upset if they're going well what
 I was thinking was and then they have
 logic behind what they did then we can
 have a conversation and be like okay I I
 I totally see that here's why I disagree
 here's how I want it to go forward but
 what you can't do if you're making
 decisions that ultimately reach lots of
 people as like a media company does is
 just unthinkingly do right and so
 one of mine is like I'll respect your
 reason I may disagree and I may correct
 that reason and I may override that
 reason going forward but you have to
 have a reason for the decisions that you
 make which you think it would be
 everyone would always have a reason for
 why they do things but welcome to life
 they don't yeah yeah totally there's a
 there there a bunch I mean this is
 another procedural one but it saves a
 lot of time which
 is with rare exception because there are
 exceptions uh but with rare exception if
 someone requests a
 meeting with me yeah or a call number
 one for me Zoom yeah number one Zoom has
 introduced more problems than it has
 solved for me like phone calls on a cell
 phone are great yeah I can walk I can be
 driving exactly I do not need to be
 sitting in my uncomfortable chair
 staring at a screen any longer than is
 necessary so there's a hierarchy in
 terms of what I will and won't do but in
 addition to that if someone requests a
 call the first thing is generally as a
 response will be Tim would love to do
 this he's currently heads down on some
 deadlines could you please just shoot
 over a couple of topics or questions to
 get the ball rolling via email yeah and
 then if that leads after I've reviewed
 that probably on a one-on-one call with
 said employee if that has been raised to
 my attention and there are criteria for
 that then if we book a call almost
 always it's going to be 30 minutes yeah
 what's the smallest you have like a a a
 maximum or like a normal unit of time
 right like so I think people are too
 casual with hours right it's like hey
 I'd like to meet and they go okay and
 then they set it in the calendar for an
 hour and you just said it's going to
 take an hour I mean if someone has
 requested a meeting with you which is
 what I deal with more than the
 opposite if you do if you have a 30-
 minute block there's a good chance they
 can go to 45 if need be but block it out
 on 30 I pref refer calls that are used
 for decision making not problem defining
 yes
 so pretty much always an agenda even if
 it's just a few bullets will be
 requested because Tim likes to be as
 prepared as possible something like that
 yeah sure uh these seem basic but man do
 these little things add up over time
 yeah
 and very small repetitive tasks done
 inefficiently
 can you as an individual contrib
 contributor especially if you are trying
 to block out extended periods of time to
 do things yeah so another yellow red
 flag would be and this is not verbatim
 what's in the document but let's just
 say that three things come up in a given
 week in a similar category like of a
 similar type that need to be turned
 around that week yeah that were not
 predicted a system is broken like there
 needs to be a process fixed sure there
 that that that pattern of related fires
 yeah that that urgency solve it further
 Upstream should be solve further
 Upstream that then comes to
 and I mean it it might seem strange
 hopefully it doesn't seem strange but
 like a lot of the stuff in the 4-Hour
 Work week I still lean extremely heavily
 on and the basic framework I would
 modify a little bit although the acronym
 you'll see in a second is is a little
 less appealing but in in the 4our work
 week you have you have deal right oh how
 clever deal that works okay definition
 elimination automation Liberation in
 this case I would say it's definition
 elimination automation delegation
 unfortunately that spells dead but the
 idea is you need to be very clear if
 you're going to be trying to determine
 say with 8020 analysis which I still use
 all the time's law to identify the few
 inputs that produce the
 disproportionately large outputs yeah
 you kind of need to know what targets
 you're aiming for yes you really need to
 know and that's definition and there's a
 lot more to definition being very CLE if
 you're not clear on what you want the
 the likelihood of the universe
 delivering that to your doorstep with a
 bow on top is very low yeah uh so you
 know I've said before and I I remind
 myself of this a lot
 that you know the world rewards the
 specific ask and punishes the vague wish
 and definition then is step one then you
 have elimination which is like what
 what what what golden feds or less than
 golden feds do you have that
 are hindering you from efficiently
 trying to reach those objectives or
 address those those things that you have
 defined what are the activities right
 the if we're doing an 8020 analysis
 right the 20% that produce the 80 well
 that means hypothetically you have 80%
 of that pie chart left that you should
 trim yeah okay elimination getting rid
 of as much as possible because a lot of
 people skip that step and
 this we we're seeing it right now on
 steroids with chat GPT like people doing
 a lot of meaningless very
 quickly yeah and like doing something
 quickly or efficiently does not make it
 important yeah so eliminating as much as
 possible especially if you're going to
 have a very lean team which I would
 suggest anyone should aim for even if
 you have a thousand employees right so
 definition elimination automation so
 this will be using technology how do you
 do it more than so you'll do it once and
 it get you get yeah setting a set a
 system or a policy which could be very
 simple by the way it could be having a a
 a a virtual assistant or an assistant or
 an employee or maybe yourself where you
 have a recurring calendar reminder to do
 this thing so that it doesn't pop up in
 the middle of your week unexpectedly oh
  property taxes are behind oh wait a
 second some guy showed up at the farm
 saying that I'm whatever yeah if you're
 sitting down and writing out your
 mortgage check each month you up
 it should be automated right like that's
 something that can be automated so
 automation can be a something that is
 implemented manually yeah right like a I
 have a reminder every morning which is
 like do do these three low back
 exercises so I don't need to think about
 it you're automating the willpower and
 the the the contemplation right so then
 there's the Automation and automation
 also by the way I was looking at some of
 the tasks that I've assigned to
 assistance in the past we don't need to
 get derailed here
 but I track a lot of the AI developments
 pretty closely and I do experiment with
 these tools and I took the language that
 we had put in several Assa tasks for
 people to manually do yeah and I looked
 at their response then we loaded the
 exact more or less like
 95% identical language from that Assa
 yeah task into chat GPT to see what the
 output would look like and it was like
 90% there wow and it was instantaneous
 yeah no NOS overhead wow and there are
 drawbacks I'm not we don't have to get
 into them right now but the technology
 is evolving so quickly as soon as that
 stuff is really easily elegantly
 seamlessly integrated with Open Table
 integrated
 with kayak or directly with Airlines or
 the systems underlying reservation
 systems with say coner Services have
 access to it they don't need to they're
 not calling all the airlines
 individually to negotiate on your behalf
 once those Integrations are there I I
 really feel like two of the places are
 going to be massively
 disrupted and suffer economically from
 AI are and there will be benefits but
 will be as two examples India and the
 Philippines call centers virtual
 assistance it's going to be it's going
 to be very challenging
 but that's an example of some degree of
 leveraging Technology yeah and reducing
 interpersonal overhead and then at the
 very end you have delegation yeah right
 yep
 and uh that process is something that I
 try to instill also in my employees in
 my team like think these through in this
 order yeah you don't need to be doing
 everything just everything needs to get
 done that's your attitude towards them
 and that should be their attitude
 towards tools systems yeah and if you're
 if you're thinking about if you're if
 you're doing a lot of stuff because I am
 not going to keep an eye on all the
 balls that are being juggled if there
 are certain things that are being
 repeated come to me with a suggestion
 yeah for a
 system yeah so we've made a bunch of
 systems improvements in the last six
 months and I think we will continue to
 do
 that the most neglected step in all of
 that is
 elimination for a lot of reasons well I
 would say the most neglected stat
 actually maybe at the top of the funnel
 to yeah to me and people miss it about
 the 4our work we why it's such an
 important book and why I do think it's
 relationship to stoicism is so important
 the the subtitle of that book about
 lifestyle design right like what do you
 want your life to look like because
 maybe I mean maybe for some people they
 do like to do that stuff but if you
 don't think about senica's thing is like
 if you don't know where you're sailing
 no wind is favorable if you don't know
 what you want your life to look like
 then you can't do any of that stuff like
 for me like like I've said this I just
 hired a new assistant and I was like
 look my ideal day is there's nothing in
 this calendar not like I'm not working
 there's nothing in the calendar than I'm
 working all day on things I actually
 like doing I'm living my life and and so
 I now know from experience I don't like
 meetings I don't like phone calls I
 don't like things that take me away from
 what I like doing right and and that's
 family and work and
 so you've got to start with like what do
 you want your life to look at what what
 are you trying to design for what are
 you optimizing for and then there's all
 these great Frameworks for being
 optimized but you got to know what and a
 great a great a great forcing function
 for systems if you're if you don't have
 a lot of practice talking about
 practices
 right if you're trying to sort of change
 your mode of thinking your way of
 pattern recognition your way of problem
 solving by acting first consider doing
 mini retirement yeah like and that's
 minimum three ideally like four weeks
 Off the Grid or which doesn't mean you
 have to be on like in a can in a canoe
 on the Amazon it take everything away
 yeah it just means you are not allowed
 to fight any fires yes if you just go on
 a onee vacation or even a twoe vacation
 you can let things turn into a blaze and
 come back and try to fix it three four
 weeks very difficult so typically that
 will force you to put in place policies
 rules
 systems and ongoing types of Delegation
 that will then persist past the point
 that you return that's the whole
 intention so that that would be another
 recommendation for folks if they seem to
 do a lot of ad hoc things they're very
 busy and they suspect maybe these things
 could be eliminated maybe these things
 could be systematized but they never
 seem to have the time to do it because
 they're just CAU up in the day to-day
 and I end up there too by the way then
 look out over the next 6 months or year
 plan a mini retirement that will force a
 lot of things to happen yeah we spent a
 month in La this year and so we had a
 pet sitter like while we're gone at the
 house and then it was amazing right cuz
 so I mean no no one died everything got
 taken care of and we were like oh wait
 you could have this while you're home
 too you know what I mean and you could
 just have the fun part right and and so
 so you got to step away and come up with
 something that operates while you're
 away and then you can go okay what part
 of this structure or infrastructure am I
 keeping because what's the point of the
 success if you're a miserable mess all
 the time right yeah dude this is amazing
 yeah thanks so much yeah super fun
 thanks very
 much