Jay Shetty PodcastTim Ferriss: The #1 Reason You Feel Stuck (It’s Not What You Think)
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
115 min read · 23,476 words- 0:00 – 1:05
Intro
- TFTim Ferriss
If you just get off of social media for two weeks, it will do the same amount of good for a lot of folks as ten years of therapy.
- JSJay Shetty
What advice has made you the most money?
- TFTim Ferriss
Don't aim to be the best. Aim to be the only.
- JSJay Shetty
What's something that the top one percent obsess over that most people never even think about?
- TFTim Ferriss
The absolute sacredness of [beep] .
- JSJay Shetty
Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. Today's guest is someone that I've been waiting to re-interview for nine years. I'm speaking about the one and only Tim Ferriss, one of the most influential thinkers in personal development and performance of all time. Tim's the best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, host of the Tim Ferriss Show with over a billion downloads. If you're someone who wants to learn how to make better decisions, overcome fear, and design a life that actually works for you, you won't want to miss this. Please welcome to On Purpose, Tim Ferriss. Let's dive in because-
- TFTim Ferriss
Let's do it
- JSJay Shetty
... there's so much to extrapolate today with you, and I wanted to start off by asking you
- 1:05 – 7:58
A Life Designed with Intention
- JSJay Shetty
like what's a thought that reappears in your mind often today? Or what are you fascinated by today that kind of steals your attention and gets you excited? Because you've done so many things, you've accomplished so many things. You, you're so active in so many ways. I wonder what fascinates you now.
- TFTim Ferriss
I can tell you. I literally was getting some texts on the way here from a few people I've been [chuckles] interacting with a lot. Uh, one is Tommy Wood, Dr. Tommy Wood, who's a neuroscientist, also a phenomenal athlete. Interesting combination. Uh, looking at, and we'll probably get into this more deeply, but different fuel sources for the brain and extending your cognitive runway. So in life, if you, as I, for instance, have a lot of neurodegenerative disease in your family, whether that's Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or otherwise, what can you do now? Assuming a lot of these conditions take decades to fully develop, how can you intervene early? So that's a question that's occupying my mind and have found, I think, some very, very compelling options that are not new to me. But if you go through the scientific literature and you talk to people on the front lines, you do find some interesting options. So we can talk about those. I would say bioelectric medicine, which ties into this. In other words, microchips and electricity over pills. A lot of medications have off-target effects.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
So you have a problem or you want to prevent a problem, you take a drug. Very often, it is not as specific as we would like. There are side effects.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
There's a burgeoning field of bioelectric medicine that can be applied a million different ways. Uh, we, I, we probably should talk about it, but I'll give you an example. Here's a crazy example. There's a technology called TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation, that has existed for decades, and it's basically using a magnetic field to affect brain activity. So they put a paddle close to your head. There are different ways to do it. It might be a cap with a few other things. And you can either excite or inhibit different parts of the brain. Slightly more complicated, but let's just assume that's the case. And a scientist named Nolan Williams out of Stanford, along with others, developed something called the SAINT protocol, which is an accelerated version. So instead of taking, let's just say, TMS treatments that you would do once or twice or three times a week over five months, they compress it all into one week, five days. And you're getting zapped ten times a day on the hour, every hour, each of those five days. And what they end up seeing in many instances, and there's good published, peer-reviewed studies people can look at, seventy percent remission of treatment-resistant depression that is durable. You start to see impacts on things like OCD, generalized anxiety disorder. But one thing that I experimented with recently, this is maybe four months ago, because I have diagnosed pretty severe OCD, which I think can be a superpower, but can also be a super handicap. Uh, also, just look at my family. Uh, who knows how much of it is nature versus nurture, but generalized anxiety disorder, pretty high. And that can be a helpful monkey on the back for getting a lot done, but there's a hell of a lot of collateral damage, right? So I wanted to see if I could dial back both of those. Would I lose my edge or would I actually improve my edge? I just wouldn't be holding onto the blade of the knife, right? [chuckles]
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I went through this experimental protocol, which is one day. So instead of taking a week off of work, one day where you preload, and there's science behind this, with something called d-cycloserine. It's an antibiotic that used to be used for tuberculosis, among other things. Put in a lozenge in your mouth, and then an hour later, you start these stimulations. You do one day, three-minute stimulations on the hour, and I have gone from basically like an eight or nine out of ten severity with generalized anxiety to like a zero or a one.
- JSJay Shetty
For how long?
- TFTim Ferriss
For f- four or five months now. You cannot-
- JSJay Shetty
From that one day?
- TFTim Ferriss
From that one day.
- JSJay Shetty
Wow.
- TFTim Ferriss
It is incredible. Does it help? Does it hurt? The dose does matter, right? You can overdo it.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
But this is a combination of pharmaceuticals to help with neuroplasticity and then brain stimulation. So I've been looking very closely at bioelectric medicine. I think this is... And if-- I try not to do it too much, but pat myself on the back a little bit. Say you look at The 4-Hour Body and then the subsequent ten, 15 years, a lot of that played out and ended up being very, very highly reinforced by science. I th-- I, I'm placing a lot of my bets attentionally. And then on the more philosophical side, but intensely practical, I don't think-- Phil-philosophy can be inert and kind of flaccid if you choose the wrong approach. But ultimately, if you're trying to decide on values, you're not gonna do a randomized control trial on that, right?
- JSJay Shetty
[chuckles] Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
You have to find your way. And fortunately, people have been attempting to do this for millennia. AndI would say that in the last few years especially, uh, there's a great book called, uh, Already Free, I think it is, by Bruce Tift, that discusses, uh, kind of two complementary approaches, which are the, let's just say, developmental achievement approaches that Western psychotherapy might take or self-help broadly. How do I improve myself?
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
How do I change my circumstances? But then on the opposite side, a perhaps let's call it more Buddhist approach, although it's not unique to Buddhists or Buddhism alone, the acceptance piece.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? Recognizing what is, allowing what is.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And it's a balancing act to do both. But I've been so, I would say, for decades, most of my life focused on the achievement piece.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And there's a lot to be said for it, a lot of upside. But paying also attention to the approaches, the practices that cultivate the other side, because guess what? None of us have as much control as we might like to think. [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs] So well said, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Especially once you add in other humans.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Sorry, guys.
- 7:58 – 13:48
Rethinking How We Use Our Energy
- JSJay Shetty
What do we currently do or what do we currently know that we use for cognitive fuel and then the new approaches that you're looking at, how are they so different? As you said-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... they have less side effects. We're talking about potentially-
- TFTim Ferriss
In terms of fuel, first a caveat, not a doctor, don't play one on the internet. So talk to your physicians. Uh, however, what I will say is it's helpful to think of the brain like you would think of musculature.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? The mind, bo- body separation duality is, is a complete falsehood. So everything's really, really tightly interrelated. What I, what I will say is that if we look at the extremes to inform the mean, this is something I like to use as a heuristic, right? You can learn a lot by studying the extremes, in athletics, in business, the best and the worst outcomes, and that tells you a lot about the middle, but not the other way around. Like if you study the average this, the ideal customer, the A, B, or C in the middle, it doesn't actually help you solve the edge cases. All right. So if we look at, let's just say Alzheimer's, right? Some people, some scientists, some doctors refer to Alzheimer's as Type III diabetes. Why? Because the brain, and there are many factors that go into this, can end up in a state where it's very bad at utilizing glucose. Insulin insensitivity, you're basically diabetic in your brain, and I'm simplifying here. But, for instance, and I have done this with relatives of mine with Alzheimer's, you give them an exogenous ketone supplement of the right kind, give them a little shot, and I'll do it with them so they're not freaked out. Within twenty minutes, their sentences are longer, their rate of speech is faster. In some instances, there's something called the clock test, for instance, where you can look at the severity of Alzheimer's or other conditions by having someone attempt to draw a clock, and they just can't do it. And boom, like some type of stage magic, thirty minutes later they can draw a clock.
- JSJay Shetty
Crazy.
- TFTim Ferriss
So what's going on? Ketones are an alternate fuel source. And if you ever fast, if you ever experiment with intermittent fasting, which we can also come back to, another thing that has my attention, if you cultivate your ability to use ketones, suddenly you have this very compelling alternate fuel source. I'll give you a third one, though-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... that is new to me, even though if I look back at my experience in life through sports, I'm like, "Ah, okay, that helps connect some dots." [laughs] Lactate. If you ever have done a bunch-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... of cycling or you go in the gym and you get that burn, all right? Well, a big part of that is lactic acid or lactate.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Turns out the brain can really use that, not only as a fuel, but it's also a signaling. It's almost a, it's a s- it's a signal or a messenger that can produce all of these changes in the brain. And, uh, there is, for instance, Tommy Wood introduced me to this, the Norwegian four by four. People can look this up. Norwegian four by four is effect, uh, in effect doing, it's VO2 max training, and we can explain what that is.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
But it's not really important right now. Basically, four minutes of incredibly hard, let's say, stationary biking. Uh, you're getting up to eighty-five, ninety percent of your max heart rate. Like in the last f- in the last minute of those four, you don't think you're gonna make it.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? Basically, you're running away from wolves.
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay. And then you take three to four minutes off, and you repeat that again, and you do four cycles. So you're doing f- four minutes on, let's just call it four minutes off, four minutes on, at da ta, for f- four rounds. If you do that, uh, there was, there was a study conducted three times a week, and I think it was for six months. The effects on your brain, which includes some, uh, plausible volumetric changes, like certain structures in your brain like the hippocampus actually grow, right? One of the primary areas affected by Alzheimer's.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Those effects extend out for five years from six months of training three times a week. What is going on?
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. What is going on?
- TFTim Ferriss
The VO2 max is just an indicator of the work that you're putting in. Okay. Well, why does that kind of work matter? Because steady state aerobics, walking for long distances, doesn't do it.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And there are people, credible people, who focus on this who think that lactate is-
- JSJay Shetty
Is the reason
- TFTim Ferriss
... the main driver.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
So for instance, this morning before I came here, I was like, "Well-"I'd like to have a little bit of extra energy. So I did a weight training workout where each of my sets with leg press or leg extension or whatever, large muscle groups, I just turned on a music track that lasts four to five minutes, and I was like, "All right. I can't stop for four to five minutes, and it's gonna be really painful." And that's it. Uh, because I, I think that the cycling itself doesn't necessarily have any magic to it. Like, you could use rowing-
- 13:48 – 18:30
Reimagining How We Fuel Ourselves
- JSJay Shetty
felt like when I came to this work, I had a really strong mind because of my previous work, but I hadn't really worked on my body.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
And it was when I married my wife, who's a nutritionist and a dietician, that-
- TFTim Ferriss
Good choice. [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
That... Yeah, yeah. Very useful. Extremely useful for many reasons. Uh, but, but the body became a part of the conversation because she was so much about physical health as well as mental and emotional health.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
And I think I was so in the mental-emotional sphere that I kind of disregarded the body to some degree-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
...only to realize how much I was limiting myself-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
...based on this fuel point, and even to speak to a very recent occurrence probably a few years back, I was experiencing fatigue and low energy, although I was positive and living my purpose and felt-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
...meaning in my life and had beautiful relationships, but I was just tired.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
And I remember getting my biomarkers done and everything, and it turned out to be something really basic. But they were just like, "Your vitamin D-"
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
..."is at a 10."
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- JSJay Shetty
"It should be at a 60 to 100 id- like, you know, for the optimal. But you're at a 10."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
Like, how did I not understand that something as small as this could be affecting my energy? It wasn't just about meaning. And I think you're so right. People are journaling really hard.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
They're trying to find their purpose. They're trying to do this thing mentally, and half the time it's like you're not giving yourself enough fuel to even be able to have that breakthrough.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. It doesn't matter how good you are at driving the race car if no one's done an oil change, no one's checked the tires. [chuckles]
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
No one's put proper fuel in the tank, et cetera, et cetera.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, so I, I think that those levels are important to check, right? Like you mentioned the vitamin D. In a lot of my, my friends who have complained about anxiety or depression or fatigue, they might do a micronutrient test and realize that they're deficient in trace minerals, very common, whether it's copper, selenium, or other. And it's like, "Okay. Here. Try, like, eat, eat a handful of Brazil nuts [chuckles] once a day for a week and let me know how it goes." And they're like, "I have energy." I'm like, "Well, yeah. Okay, great. Well, then, then you can check off the selenium." So which I think can be very reassuring for folks, right?
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Because if they've been banging their head against the wall trying to, quote-unquote, "figure out X" and they're just not making progress, it's not necessarily because your brain isn't working, you're not smart enough. Well, maybe it is because your brain isn't working. But you can f-fix it holistically through looking at your mind and body as one thing.
- 18:30 – 28:57
The Mind-Body Connection
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. I, I, I find, I find that East-West connection, like, so fascinating and the, how the science is being able to prove these ancient techniques.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
I remember when I was talking to someone else on the show, it was that idea of them talking about circadian rhythms and looking at the sun first thing in the morning, et cetera, which of course-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... you've talked about as well. And I was talking about how in the monastery in India, it was always about sun salutations.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh-huh.
- JSJay Shetty
So Surya Namaskar-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... is the Sanskrit version of sun salutations.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
And that was the practice. You woke up in the morning, and you paid respects to the sun-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... which meant making, you know, eye contact with the sun and allowing-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
... the sun rays to enter. And I'm like, th- all of these tech- they didn't have the language that we have.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- JSJay Shetty
But the technique existed far back then. Talk to me about the, uh, did you call it the bioelectric?
- TFTim Ferriss
Bioelectric medicine.
- JSJay Shetty
Medicine, yeah, because you were talking about chips versus pills.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, chips or electricity versus pills.
- JSJay Shetty
So explain to me what you mean by chips.
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, just microchips. So actually using a device which could be, in the case of, uh, I think it's Setpoint Medical, for instance, has a, an implant which is the size of a omega-3 capsule. I think it's called Setpoint Medical. Uh, they were on the cover of The New York Times for this, and it just got approved. It goes in the neck. It's actually p-a very fast procedure, and it app- it applies stimulation to the vagus nerve, which runs right along the carotid arteries, basically. And it is used for s- rheumatoid arthritis. It gives some people incredible relief, where they might have been incapacitated, laying on a couch, can't get up, have to elevate their legs, can't walk more than a few steps. They get this implant and then boom, like two months later, they're running upstairs on a tour through Europe with their husband. I mean, that's a real example.
- JSJay Shetty
It doesn't solve it. It doesn't reverse it. It just provides-
- TFTim Ferriss
This is-- That's a very good question. I, I shouldn't speak to that because I don't know enough about-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, right, right
- TFTim Ferriss
... rheumatoid arthritis and what it looks like in terms of development over long periods of time. What I, what I will say is that broadly speaking, this is controversial, but it's, um, it's not that controversial with a few scientists I interact with who look at this very closely. I think a lot of our psychiatric disorders, depression, anxiety, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, some of them, you may be predisposed to those things genetically. But I believe a lot of those chronic conditions start with acute infection, much like long COVID or long Lyme disease. There's some acute immune system insult, often an infection, that leads to then chronic neuroinflammation. And when you address that neuroinflammation, a lot of the symptoms can abate.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Which is why there have been studies looking at just giving people who are depressed anti-inflammatories.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I'm not saying, by the way, anyone listening or watching, that you should go gobble anti-inflammatories. There are side effects. Don't do that. Uh, but maybe there are other ways to address excessive inflammation, and it turns out vagus nerve stimulation could be one of those. There are other approaches. I can't recommend any current device out there. I'm interacting with this Scandinavian researcher who's amazing. I'm hoping that at least in the US, maybe in the next six months, something will be available that people can grab. Uh, I'll come back to that in terms of ancient insight being corroborated by science because there's a really cool tie-in. Uh, breathing, do breathwork. There are different types of breathwork that absolutely seem to have an effect on the inflammatory reflex. And that's actually part of the reason why I think folks often see benefits from meditation practice, especially if they do it twice a day, like 10 to 20 minutes per session, after about two weeks.
- 28:57 – 34:24
How Do You Actually Build a New Habit?
- JSJay Shetty
A lot of what you spoke about, you talked about, you know, doing the, the lactate, and it was like six months to unlock. You talked about the, of the four, four, four, four, like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... four on, four off, four on, four off, three times a week.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
Six months. And then you spoke about the idea of, uh, you know, two weeks of meditation twice a day to feel-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... the benefits. What I find more and more fascinating, even in myself, and what to speak of our community and the audience that tunes into shows like this is, we know that everyone struggles with that initial discomfort.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
Like you said, you have to do it for two weeks to start feeling the benefits and-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... noticing that, that calm or letting things settle, or you have to do something for six months. What have you found to be the best startup strategy to a new habit to unlock its potential when it may-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... take two weeks to unlock its benefit?
- TFTim Ferriss
This might sound like a simplistic answer, but it's telling people that.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Do you know what I mean?
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Because in many cases, it's like-
- JSJay Shetty
You're so right
- TFTim Ferriss
... it's like, hey, study a language and you'll learn the language. But there, you're setting someone up for failure in that example, and I use that just because most people are like, "Oh, God," so much PTSD about learning languages, right? But if you tell them like, "Hey, here's what the graph looks like. As you... You're gonna have this type of experience and then once you add this new grammatical construction, like you're gonna have a bit of a trough of sorrow. Don't worry about it, right? You're gonna plateau, but you're not actually plateauing. Your mind is adjusting-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... to involve this additional complexity. And then da, da, da, da, and you kind of explain what like the stock chart of your brain is gonna look like, then people don't freak out and the abandonment rate's gonna be less.And so I think with something like meditation, saying you may see benefits sooner, but experience seems to indicate that a s- a switch is flipped around two weeks.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
So commit to two and a half weeks-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... and do less than you think is necessary. Do less than you think you can do. This applies to any new habit as far as I'm concerned. If you think you can do twenty minutes, but that's pushing it into redline territory, do ten.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Do less than you think you can do because that is going to contribute to endurance and longevity and enthusiasm.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Don't bleed the stone.
- 34:24 – 37:39
How to Create Momentum Without Burning Out
- TFTim Ferriss
to fool yourself. Setting things up so it's very hard for you to fool yourself-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... or to bias.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. So I like that. Yeah. Underset expectations and do less than you think. That's a great one. Uh-
- TFTim Ferriss
Do less than you think. Absolutely.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. Do less than you think is a brilliant, brilliant method, and I think we're so scared of saying that to our friends or people we love because we know everyone wants instant change.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
And so because people want instant change, we wanna say, "Do this today and it will calm you down."
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
And we know that isn't true because-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... it's gonna take a practice and a discipline and it might, but...
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. I mean, there are some, there are some very fast returns and then other things take-- seem to take more time. I interviewed, uh, years ago someone named, uh, John Krystal, who I believe is the chair of psychiatry at Yale, or he was at the time. And he did a lot of, along with his colleagues, a lot of the seminal work on ketamine as an antidepressant in humans.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I think it was point five milligrams per kilogram over X period of time, and it showed these amazing effects. But now the point five milligrams per kilogram has become this religious dogma among a lot of practitioners, including some scientists who are like, "This is the protocol."
- JSJay Shetty
Wow.
- TFTim Ferriss
And it's like, well, is it? It's one protocol.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was tested in that way.
- TFTim Ferriss
But it doesn't mean that is the-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... end all be all.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
I would say also just on the ketamine front, very risk compound. High likelihood of addiction. Listen to that episode or just do some real deep dive before you ever consider having certainly any ketamine at home.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Whether that's through Johnson & Johnson esketamine, Spravato or through a clinic, my recommendation is do not have lozenges or anything like that at home. If you're gonna do-- If you're gonna pursue that for different applications, I think it's very interesting for suicidality.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's one of the few things that I've seen if someone is acutely at risk of hurting themselves, in some cases with an infusion or an injection, a few hours later they go from, "I'm gonna kill myself today," to, "I don't know what I was so upset about." That's crazy.
- JSJay Shetty
That big?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.I've seen that multiple times and so have other clinicians. It's-- That's one of the few interventions I would say for that particular type of catastrophic scenario that's pretty interesting.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- 37:39 – 41:45
The Cost of Overthinking Everything
- JSJay Shetty
did you make that-- Was that ever a turn you needed to make?
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, yeah. I mean, that's why I did the, you know, antibiotic plus accelerated TMS. Oh, yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
What helped you make that turn?
- TFTim Ferriss
A few things, right? I, I think there's a degree of pain that especially over long periods of time you want relief from and for some of us that is just the looping ruminative mind that is turning on itself. So whether that's-- could be any number of things, right? Could be-- And in terms of OCD, like my mom's makes me look like a cakewalk with her OCD, but I'm not flipping light switches. I'm not washing my hands.
- JSJay Shetty
No, no. Mm-mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Um, which is not denigrate any of that stuff. It's like people have different ways of it manifesting. For me it's all internal.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's all internal. What if this? I should've said that. Loop, loop, loop, loop, loop. Imagining outcomes, et cetera. Perseverating on some conversation that I wish had gone a different way. And it's exhausting.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's really exhausting. And, uh, you know, rest in peace, Nolan Williams unfortunately passed away, but I was introduced to him through the topic of psychedelics because he pioneered at Stanford also, he was a real polymath, a l-lot of very compelling research related to ibogaine. So ibogaine is an alkaloid derived from, uh, iboga tabernanth, which is a psychedelic plant. In this case the Bwiti tribe and others are using the root bark for these very long, super intense Mount Everest of psychedelic-like experiences. It, it is not to be trifled with. There are some very significant cardiac risks for certain people. You can die taking this unlike most psychedelics. And he was the first to really put under a fine scientific lens some of the neuroanatomical changes specifically in veterans. And so [laughs] yeah, ibogaine is-- it's a pretty remarkable compound in the sense that it effectively reversed the brain age of these veterans and specifically in cases of traumatic brain injury. That's strange.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
This is [laughs] this is not really something you see.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's not something that people had ob-observed with other drugs including other psychedelics and it seems to relate to something called glial derived neurotrophic factor. But suffice to say I connected with him about that and then it turned out this guy's not a one trick pony. He also is one of the world leaders in brain st-- non-invasive brain stimulation and accelerated TMS and I started looking at the literature and the results and I'm like, "You gotta be kidding me." I mean this reads like science fiction number one. Number two it seems unbelievable like a total scam but I know it's not a scam. Like these are very, very top tier scientists and when I realized that it could be applied to-- Well a few things. Backstory, I always had self-described as someone who struggled with depression. When I actually was able to address it most successfully I realized that the depression was born of fatigue which came from anxiety which interrupted my sleep.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
So the domino to tip-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... was actually the anxiety piece.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Much like the-- kind of like, this is not the greatest comparison but like the VO2 max. It's like that's the-
- JSJay Shetty
Right. Yeah, yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... that's the output you can point to.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
But the catalyst was actually the anxiety and I was like well YOLO let's try it. The safety profile looks really appealing. The actual stimulation is relatively sp-speaking pretty low power. It's been around for decades. It seems like mostly upside potential.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
There are some risks involved people should be aware of and people can search accelerated TMS and so on to find those. But all in all attractive for someone who's experiencing in my case the amount of chronic mental anguish.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
That's what kicked it off.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- 41:45 – 44:30
Exploring New Frontiers of Healing
- JSJay Shetty
How, how accessible is that now?
- TFTim Ferriss
So TMS itself, let's just say conventional TMS, is actually, uh, quite accessible much like ketamine clinics there are fly by night operations.
- JSJay Shetty
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
So caveat emptor.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
You gotta do your homework.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
But TMS is very widely accessible.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And often reimbursed by insurance.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Accelerated TMS as far as I know is not reimbursable by insurance at the moment.
- JSJay Shetty
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
So it is available at certain clinics. Uh, there's one that I've used called Acacia Clinic or Acacia Clinics in Sunnyvale, California. But it's expensive.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's expensive. It's expensive for the five day. My hope and also part of the reason why I volunteered to be like one of the first 60 monkeys shot into space with the, the d-cycloserine, this very low dose antibiotic and the one day is that if you compress the five days into one day suddenly theCost should be much, much lower
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, of course. Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... dramatically lower.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And it's much more accessible because not that many people can take a week off of work, completely off of work-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... because your brain will be exhausted.
- JSJay Shetty
Absolutely.
- TFTim Ferriss
When you have this treatment, [laughs] I remember going in for my first day of stimulations, got like nine hours of sleep. I was feeling like a million bucks. I could do jumping jacks all day. Had my first eight-minute stimulation, and I felt like I had just pulled three all-nighters studying for a test. I was so mentally tired. So if you do it, do not have any delusions of cranking out fifty minutes of work in between these stimulations. Ain't gonna happen.
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
But the one day, man, it's, it could be the future for-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... a lot of people.
- JSJay Shetty
Wow.
- TFTim Ferriss
And that is not widely available, but people can do some digging.
- 44:30 – 52:30
Hustle vs. Balance: Finding the Middle Ground
- JSJay Shetty
Tim, I wanted to switch to some of the philosophical aspects you mentioned there-
- TFTim Ferriss
Sure. Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... earlier, like the, uh, things that you're fascinated by right now, and I was thinking about even as a society, how we seem to kind of oscillate between this work-life balance to then hustle culture, and it seems that that just takes over the conversation for that period in time.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
So rewind back probably five to 10 years, and hustle culture was the thing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
Work-life balance has kind of made its comeback now, and then you could look back twenty-five years, and we were talking about work-life balance when it first kind of probably entered the zeitgeist, and it was preceded by this hustle intensity culture, whatever it was called then. And you're kind of talking about this idea of this achievement mindset that you had-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- JSJay Shetty
... and it's been useful, and then now looking at this acceptance mindset that, you know, you're almost looking at the value of both, and I think that's even this whole conversation. We're talking about the value of both or this and this, or, you know, the connection between old and new and being curious, and I find, I find that with work-life balance and hustle culture or achievement-- Let's call it achievement because hustle culture just sounds like working hard without maybe any direction.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
But achievement culture and acceptance culture, which feel like together they're so synergistic, yet we tend to just go between one or the other-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... in different phases of our life.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
Where are you at with making sense of that for yourself and thinking about it for others?
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, I'll say something that might surprise people. So the first thing, as the guy who wrote a book called "The 4-Hour Workweek," like, I have no problem with 80-hour workweeks if there are good reasons behind it.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
So let me-- I'll just let that settle for a second, and I'll add something that normally I wouldn't add to that, which is, like, read the Serenity Prayer, the actual-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... Serenity Prayer. Acceptance across the board for everything is effectively becoming a cow standing in the rain, right? That's just complacency-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... passivity. And then completely unrestrained achievement is just a greyhound running around a track chasing a rabbit.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And those dogs can't run very long. [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, but they can sprint.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
So number one, if you can't control or affect something, that probably lands in the acceptance bucket, right? Which is why I've not had social media on my phone for three or four years. Doomscrolling, not helpful for a million different reasons. I know people probably agree with this at face value. Nonetheless, [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Like, let's look at behavior, right? Like, show me what you do, not what you say kind of situation. It's like my friends, even some of my most accomplished, achiever friends, these are, like, mega stars within business. I know one guy in particular, such a smart guy. He's so good. He's got a wonderful family, and he took X off his phone a few years ago, and it's like he went through twenty years of therapy, right? It was like a month later, like, everything's better.
- 52:30 – 56:26
The Danger of Living in “The Simmering Six”
- JSJay Shetty
what do you think is the biggest thing people come up against when they're trying to do on and off? Like, what's the hardest part of that? Your friend, for example, who quit X-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... felt the benefit, saw the growth, and then gets pulled back in.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, I think he had too much time on his hands.
- JSJay Shetty
Right. Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
He's a rep- post-economic and-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... Border Collie.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
He has a lot of time for u- unusual, rare reasons.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? But I would say that if you do not have a primary project-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... or mission, and it doesn't mean your job has to be something you love twenty-four/seven. Like working to live and just having a job that you can tolerate that you're good at, great. Like I actually think that's fine.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
But if, on the other hand, let's just say you're an entrepreneur and you're kind of floating around. Like maybe you have a few cool things you're pursuing, but there's no hell yes, you know, kind of along the lines of Derek Sivers.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
You're gonna be tempted to wander.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And that's how you end up sitting on the toilet looking at Instagram, and you're like, "I can't feel my legs. Oh, I've been here forty-five minutes."
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Like that's how that, that's how that happens. And I've been there.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And it means you don't have a big enough yes.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes, yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
You need a bigger yes.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, and I would say that the avoid the simmering six, though, is unhelpful in so much as it's telling you what not to do.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
But that doesn't really give you a whole lot of direction. So another way to frame it is actually quoting a friend of mine, Chris Sacca, phenomenal, incredible guy, just like one of the best investors I've ever met. His story is nuts. And his question is effectively, like, are you living offense or defense? Right? So if you're responding to everyone else's agenda for your time in email-
- 56:26 – 1:00:01
Why Relationships Matter More Than Success
- TFTim Ferriss
night.
- JSJay Shetty
So how have you managed to change yourself to a morning person?
- TFTim Ferriss
I don't think I am a morning person.
- JSJay Shetty
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
I would say that there, there are a few things. So one is recognizing relationships are the m- are the, the meat of life.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
If, if [chuckles] you're vegan or something, it's the, the sustenance of life.
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
I wrote this blog post, just went up like five days ago. I spent so long putting it together, called, you know, "The Self-Help Trap," like what I've learned after twenty-plus years of, quote-unquote, "optimizing myself."
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Talking about some of this, but basically reorienting Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which by the way, Abraham himself never made a pyramid, and he, he added an update to that. People are accustomed to thinking about sef- self-actualization at the top.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
He actually added self-tran-transcendence later. And th- and it was always something that was moving and shifting.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
But I have recognized for myself, for quality of life, for the experience of time dilation, just getting more life out of your years, right? Not just adding more years to your life. We could talk a lot about that.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Relationships, close friends, family. It sounds so self-evident, but how many people do we know, maybe you look in the mirror and you see them, who at the end of a year, if you ask them, "Did you spend as much time as you would've liked this last year with your ten most important relationships?"
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Almost everybody's gonna say no.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
So really taking that on as a challenge means if I'm sacrificing twenty percent of my output because I'm forcing myself [laughs] to pretend to cosplay as a morning person-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... that's fine.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? Now, one could make the argument, and it's not totally, uh, off base, uh, that, well, that's convenient for Tim to say 'cause, you know, he's had decades of, uh, putting things out that have-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... luckily done-
- JSJay Shetty
Achieved, yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... done well enough. But I d- I don't think... That does hold some water, but it doesn't, it doesn't really hold all the water. [chuckles] That's, that's not, I don't think, a real expression. But the point is I have, through sprinting, right? But not ending up at The Simmering Six over many decades, right? Or like The Simmering Seven or Eight, which is even worse. Uh, you're running hot. I have burned out so many times that coming back to the meditation, right? Do less than you think you can do. If I dial back, let's say I lose l- quote-unquote, "lose" twenty percent and I don't burn out, well, that's like playing sports and not getting injured, right? If you get injured and you're out for two months-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- 1:00:01 – 1:05:21
Learning to Be Fully Present
- JSJay Shetty
going back to what you were saying about doom scrolling and screen doom, I've had-- I mean, this sounds, again, so basic, but, but it is the stuff we all struggle with.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh-huh.
- JSJay Shetty
Like I had to really make a commitment that if I was on a screen-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- JSJay Shetty
... that I was only on one screen at a time.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
Because what I would find was sometimes my wife and I would sit down to watch a show in the evening.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
And I'm like, there's v- there's very little TV that gets my attention enough to really commit.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
And, and I'm not someone who generally loves using their time to do that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
But at the end of a long day of work, and it's been busy, and we've had dinner together, we've connected, and you just kinda wanna zone out. I don't have the energy. I'm, I'm more the other way. I have lots of energy in the morning. In the evening, I can hang out with friends or family, but I don't do creative work in the evening. I never have.And so mine's the opposite, where I have less energy at that time, and so kind of switching off is kind of nice. But switching off and feeling like I wasted my off time-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- JSJay Shetty
... is not a fun feeling.
- TFTim Ferriss
No.
- JSJay Shetty
Like, I don't enjoy that feeling.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
So we'd watch a show and I wasn't committed, and then I'd be on my phone or I'd kind of be on my laptop too, and now I haven't achieved anything at work.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
I haven't doom-scrolled well enough, and the screen is boring me, and now I'm feeling like I'm wasting days, like, i- in the evening. I'm, like, adding all these hours up and going, "God, I wasted, like, three hours in front of the TV and I didn't do anything."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
And all of a sudden, A, there was a show selection problem, so we sorted that out, where I was like, "Okay, let's find something we actually care about watching." But the other part was just, okay, I'm going to leave my phone in another room where I just can't get it. I don't work at this time, so the laptop can't be near me, and, and I have to do this old school thing [chuckles] of, like, sitting in a theater in my own house. Like saying, "Okay, I'm at the movies now."
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
Like, what does it feel like to go to the movies-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- JSJay Shetty
... and watch a movie, which we all used to do, and go to the theater without any other distraction, and actually enjoy our experience in? It's, it's been huge for unlocking presence and enjoyment and entertainment, even, even from a stillness point of view.
- TFTim Ferriss
For sure.
- JSJay Shetty
Because I feel like we're not even doing rest properly, which is why we can't work properly.
- TFTim Ferriss
[sighs] Oh, God, we could go so many directions here.
- 1:05:21 – 1:11:39
The Practice of Acceptance
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Talk to me about the acceptance piece. Like, what's been the, what's been the hardest thing to wrap your head around with acceptance, the idea of acceptance?
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, I'll give two examples. Uh, the first is that personally doing any type of meditation that involves observing rather than f- suppressing or fixing, right?
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
So if you have frustration coming up, restlessness, aversion, just labeling it and allowing it to be, like a mother consoling a crying child, that's hard.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's hard.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
But I think it's a valuable practice. So, and that, that's something that I've explored. There are lots of good apps out there.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
You know, I'm involved with The Way, so-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... and I used it b- prior to getting involved with Henry Shukman, but there are many good options, right? There's Calm, there's Headspace, there's lots of different options. But I would say that specifically exploring something that cultivates your ability to observe things that you would call uncomfortable or negative without trying to change them-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... is valuable. All right, the second, in terms of acceptance, is relational. Humans are crazy, man.
- JSJay Shetty
[chuckles]
- TFTim Ferriss
And, like, every human's nuts. Like s- like irrationality is just table stakes.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Like, we're not... Which is why any of the mar- like the, the, the, the, uh, efficient market theory stuff, where it's like we're all rational agents acting in our own best interest, I'm like, "Have you met-- Have you actually walked out, economist, and met humans?"
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Like, what are you talking about?
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, so in relationships, uh, I, I, I'll, I'll give a resource. There's a audiobook, there's no print version, called Fierce Intimacy by Terry Real, who is an amazing therapist. You should have him on the show.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
That guy's incredible and very opinionated, very... He does-- He's not one of those therapists who just echoes questions back and forth, and you're like, "Terry, uh, you know, what do you think?" He's like, "What do you think?" Like, he doesn't do that. He's like, "Let me tell you, like, you're being an idiot for these reasons, and, like, you need to grow up because of these reasons."He's not exactly like Dr. Phil or anything, but he's, he's very, very good at what he does.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And Fierce Intimacy, along with his other materials, and he's not the only person. You know, the, um, Gottmans are pretty interesting as well.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
But Terry Real specifically has a number of principles that undergird his entire approach, and one of them is when it comes to relationships, objective reality doesn't exist. So for instance, right? [laughs] He gives this example. I'm gonna butcher it. It's very funny when he tells it. He's like, all right, let's say husband and wife are out to dinner. Waiter comes over, takes the order, walks away, and the husband says to the wife, "Honey, you don't need to yell." And she's like, "I wasn't yelling." And he's like, "Yes, you were." And d- you see where this is going, right?
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 1:11:39 – 1:15:20
Navigating Conflict and Emotions
- JSJay Shetty
That highlighting and that connectivity that you just put together, but the main piece on how the objective reality is what we always debate is fascinating because it's The Simmering Six of relationships. Like, it's, it's the distraction. It's the focal, focal point that steals everything away.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
Because that's all we ever think is the thing to solve is objective reality when if you accept that that's how that person felt in that moment-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... regardless of whatever objectively you experienced or you think objectively you experienced.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
And that's really hard to do because-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... we're so wired to be like, "But this is the truth."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
And, and in relationships, there's almost very little truth.
- TFTim Ferriss
If perhaps, like me, it sounds like, like you, you didn't-- you grew up in a household where, like, conflict haymakers were modeled really well.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
But, like, resolution was not modeled well.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, I think his name is Marshall Rosenberg. Might be getting the name wrong, but Nonviolent Communication.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm. Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Read, read the book.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
It... Yes, it is schlocky in the sense that there's a format and it can feel a little, uh, repetitive, but guess what? In the beginning, if you're coming at from a, an upbringing that didn't teach you anything helpful [laughs] on the conflict resolution side, you need a format. You need a template, and it's incredibly, incredibly helpful. If only for... There, there, there's a whole process to it. People can just look it up. I'm sure ChatGPT or anything else will give you a good overview. But at the end, make a request.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Don't just bitch and moan-
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... about how you feel, what your partner did.Have a request. [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right?
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Don't just tell them what not to do.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
That's actually not helpful. And I really had this driven home. Part of the reason I like exploring all these weird different nooks and crannies is you realize how much you can copy and paste to other places.
- 1:15:20 – 1:16:56
Communicating Without Creating Distance
- JSJay Shetty
the productivity with that, sometimes I find, like I'll say to my wife, like, "I've got a crazy week coming up."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
"So just in advance-"
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... "I'm just letting you know that this week I may not have the same space and stillness that I usually have, or presence that I usually have to, to deal with something," because I can preempt how I'm gonna feel-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... b- based on, you know.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
And, and luckily, you know, I have a partner that understands that, where I'm like, "Hey, I'm traveling this week. I'm only literally back home for like three hours."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
"And then I'm back out." And it's like just people being aware of what your week even looks like, 'cause you-
- TFTim Ferriss
Um
- JSJay Shetty
... we kind of walk around thinking our partners should know.
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, what does this sound like?
- JSJay Shetty
Go on.
- TFTim Ferriss
This sounds a lot like what we were talking about with how do you get someone to do the two weeks of meditation.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Setting expectations.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
You can have almost anything that you want in life if you manage expectations early.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes. Yes, exactly. And, and I think we assume that we know our schedule and that our partner should somehow know that we have a busy week this week.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Right.
- JSJay Shetty
Because we're coming home like huffing and puffing or we're like-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
... you know, whatever it is. We're on our phone and we're like, "Oh God, I gotta d..." You know, it's, it's almost like we're trying to send all these cues without just spelling it out-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... and just saying, "Hey, this is what my week looks like," and-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... you know, "What does yours look like?" And I, I try and do that a lot as well. It's fascinating, you said that we've been asking these questions about life and relationships and philosophy for like, you know, thousands of years.
- TFTim Ferriss
For forever. [laughs]
- 1:16:56 – 1:19:04
The Questions That Change Your Life
- JSJay Shetty
I wanna ask, what are the questions that are worth answering?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
Because I feel like we ask a lot of questions.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
And now with AI, we're asking more questions than ever before.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Which by the way, I think is better than the answer generation that we grew up in, which was having the answer was smart.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
When we both know that asking the right question is smarter.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
Which hopefully AI can help us get better at, because we all have to get better at asking questions. But what are the questions that are worth asking?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
Because I just feel like we're distracted by a set of questions that are not valuable.
- TFTim Ferriss
The questions that I keep returning to, a lot of them I've borrowed from different sources, right? And I pointed out, you know, the book right behind me.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Letters From a Stoic, Seneca the Younger. That's the Penguin's classic edition. I've probably given away 100 copies of that book.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Stoicism Bud- and, and Buddhism also, a lot of parallels.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Lot of overlap.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
One would be, and this is actually borrowed from politics, someone who co-ran the war room for Bill Clinton put this in one of their books I bought. I, I was on a road trip, and I just grabbed it from his bookstore. [laughs] But the question stuck with me, which I think they got from Newt Gingrich, and it's like they all sort of diametrically opposed to Newt politically, but they were like he was ruthlessly efficient and effective, uh, at gaining control of the House and blah, blah, blah. And the question was, "Are you hunting antelope or field mice?" And the story behind it is effectively like if you're a lion, sure, you can keep yourself alive by hunting field mice-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... and just eating like 100 a day.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Or you could put in the energy and the focus to kill an antelope.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And then that lasts you a day or two or three or whatever the number might be. And that's a metaphor f- for, in effect, coming back to what we're talking about, like are you doing a bunch of little micro projects, putting out fires, living on defense, juggling 10 different kinda cool projects instead of one big yes? If so, you're eating field mice.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And it's like that's no way for a lion to live.
- 1:19:04 – 1:31:06
Are You Chasing Field Mice or Antelope?
- TFTim Ferriss
field mice?
- JSJay Shetty
Do you ever hear people who just say, "Whoa, Tim, Jay, I don't wanna be a lion," you know?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
"You guys like being lions. You wanna be lions. You wanna go chase antelope."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Like, "I don't wanna be a lion. I just wanna chase field mice."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Like, you know, like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... and what do, what do you say to that? Because I always find it interesting. I feel like, again-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... mentally as a society, we go between-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... you know, type A winners, this, this, this versus, "Hey, I just wanna have my lo- in life and be happy."
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm glad you actually a- you're asking about this, 'cause I think lion, okay, king of the jungle, et cetera, it implies almost that the person using the metaphor might want to be an apex predator, king of the hill-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... whatever.That's an unfortunate side effect maybe of the picture that it paints. But the point is coming back to people falling apart when they have too much free time, right? This is a huge reason why most retirements fail and people have their health go off a cliff as soon as they retire in many cases. It's about knowing what your big thing is.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Having a focus.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And-
- JSJay Shetty
That's just what we need as humans plain and simple
- TFTim Ferriss
... psycho-emotionally, philosophically, humans are in the meaning-making business. You can't do that with triaging email. You cannot fool yourself into thinking that that is deeply meaningful. There's a part of you that will know it is not, and you will suffer accordingly. So, uh, that's how I would answer it.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's just-
- JSJay Shetty
No, I'm glad you, I'm glad you went there because I think sometimes achievement mentality gets mixed with meaning-making-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... in that people assume that, oh, you just-- there-- and there are some people who just wanna win, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
And that's not even to do with meaning.
- 1:31:06 – 1:34:35
Breaking Free from the Noise
- JSJay Shetty
and everyone can find them at?
- TFTim Ferriss
Tim.blog is, is the website. There are literally thousands of pages of free stuff. Uh, if you go to tim.blog/17-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
...however you wanna spell it, the number or spell it out, and that, there's a PDF with, like, 17 of these questions.
- JSJay Shetty
Amazing.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I use them all the time.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
I still use them all the time.
- JSJay Shetty
When you say all the time, do you have a regimen of how often you use them or just whenever it feels right? Like...
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, it's, it's more when they feel right.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
So I would say most-
- JSJay Shetty
It's a bit more fluid
- TFTim Ferriss
...most frequently, it's like if, if I'm starting to grind my teeth or just wake up and I've got the, like, "Ah," type of groan.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's like, eh, probably time to break out the toolkit.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Something is not... Something's chafing. [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, or on, on the flip side, for instance, I have, uh, one or two startups th-that I'm gonna be getting involved with, and they're gonna be very exciting, big commit projects.
- JSJay Shetty
Oh, wow.
- TFTim Ferriss
And it's like, okayThese are gonna be very fast-moving, very competitive
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
Let me test a whole bunch of assumptions about these industries, because I'm advising typically-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... to, to be helpful. And I will pull these questions out.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
I like, "What does everyone say you need to do?"
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay. Is there anything to support that? Or like science, i- is it just that somebody did that first and then everybody else copied and they're like, "Well, that's just how it works"?
- 1:34:35 – 1:36:02
The Power of Subtraction Over Addition
- JSJay Shetty
good at o- if you can figure out the process of doing one thing well-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... that process usually helps you do multiple things well.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, it's all the same.
- JSJay Shetty
Right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, as far as I can tell.
- JSJay Shetty
Don't, don't you feel that way? Like, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
For sure.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And it's, it's easy to lose sight of that, right?
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's like I was, uh, just in New Mexico doing, um, a short meditation retreat, which I, I find helpful.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
I mean, nothing like what you've done, but, you know, short.
- JSJay Shetty
No.
- TFTim Ferriss
Short.
- JSJay Shetty
No. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Short little check-in with-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... with some teachers.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And one of the meditation teachers, Valerie at Mountain Cloud in Santa Fe, New Mexico, used to be a, a very high level, like, world-class flute player.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
She and I were comparing notes on, in her case, flute, and then I used to compete in archery, and we were comparing notes, and I realized, holy shit, I totally... I was having some challenges with meditation. I was having a really hard time at this retreat. I was just, like, really frustrated a lot of the time. And I thought to myself, "Oh, wow." [laughs] Her discussing flute made me think of archery, and there are all of these things from archery that I can just copy and paste directly into meditation.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes. Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And then, um, uh, literally right after that, the next three sits, totally different world.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I was like, wow, how funny it is that even at this point, after making a career of drawing parallels between fields, I had sat there and I'm like, "I need to get better at meditating," and hadn't even looked in other areas of my life to copy and paste.
- JSJay Shetty
Literally, yeah. I love that.
- TFTim Ferriss
I was like, "Dummy. God."
- 1:36:02 – 1:38:54
Thinking Differently to Win
- JSJay Shetty
was, I was, uh... This-- Recently I got... I, I mean, not that I-- I'm not even sure if I'm gonna do it for real, but it was like I got sent an audition for an acting gig.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
And it was interesting. The role was interesting.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
And I was like, "Oh, this is a bit of flattery. This is a bit of fun. Like, let's see." And then, like, all the, like, fear came in around, like, "Oh my God, what if I do it and I fail?" And like, "What if I send an audition tape and I look like a fool?" And-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... "What if someone, like, sees this and then thinks all my other stuff isn't..." You know, whatever, all the stuff that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
And, and I was like, "Wait a minute, like, why am I..." And I was like, "Oh, of course I'm scared," 'cause I haven't got a coach.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
And I haven't done any classes to see if I even enjoy it or like it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
And I haven't even done the scales version of, like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- JSJay Shetty
... you know, making different faces or... And then a s- and then I got a coach, and it was, like, within hours-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- JSJay Shetty
... I was like, "Oh, I could do this well. I could give it a go if I wanted to." Like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... I could give an audition, not saying I could get the role. I could do the audition-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... with a little bit of confidence-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... because now I had a system and I had tools, and the coach would talk about how, like... He was like, "You know, if you're doing theater, you gotta be able to, like, be big."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
And he goes, "So I always try and get everyone to be a 10."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
And so you start at a 10, and then for TV, you roll that emotion back down to a two.
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm so introverted. This is, like, my nightmare.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, literally.
- TFTim Ferriss
I re- well, I remember doing a little bit of TV way back in the day, and they're like-
- 1:38:54 – 1:44:52
Questions from the Audience
- JSJay Shetty
lives. I wanted to end with two segments.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yes.
- JSJay Shetty
One of them is a bunch of questions that we just got from our audience that we love that I wanted to, to throw at you.
- TFTim Ferriss
Sure. Yeah, yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
Um, and-
- TFTim Ferriss
You want me to keep my answers short, or what do you, what do you want?
- JSJay Shetty
No, these ones you can flow a bit.
- TFTim Ferriss
Just riff? Okay.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, you can riff a bit. Uh, these are questions, kind of what you were saying, questions that you ask repeatedly. There are certain questions that we found our audience loves knowing the answer to from-
- TFTim Ferriss
Right
- JSJay Shetty
... different people. Uh, and so we throw them out to you. Uh, so this one is: What makes a good friend?
- TFTim Ferriss
What makes a good friend? That is a damn good question. [sighs] I would say it's, it's someone who says what they mean, means what they say, who's reliable. You know, someone you can share your joys and sorrows with-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... over time. I mean, that's about it. I would say that over time, this applies across the board, intelligence, in quotation marks, because what does that even mean, has become less and less important to me.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Like, trustworthiness and reliability-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... come way before that now.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Not to say my friends [chuckles] are stupid. Like, my friends-
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... tend to be te- You know, they tend to be pretty smart.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
But I'm not sorting first by that.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. I love everyone who's made it now is wondering, "Wait a minute." [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
No, no, I love it. That makes sense. What's the difference between being efficient and cutting corners?
- TFTim Ferriss
I mean, what comes to mind for me is cutting corners implies aiming for short-term gain, but long-term side effects or consequences, right? Cutting corners implies you're not doing something you should do. And I would expand that further just to say that I do not focus on efficiency as much as people think. Efficiency, and I'm borrowing from Peter Drucker here, also "The Effective Executive," everybody should read that.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm. Yeah, great book. Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Holy cow, what a great book. But Peter Drucker, paraphrasing, "Effectiveness is doing the right things, and then efficiency is doing things right."
- 1:44:52 – 1:47:05
What Sets the Top 1% Apart
- JSJay Shetty
Like, what is the allure? Is it people-pleasing? Is it distraction? Is it busyness? Like, w- what have you found to be the allure?
- TFTim Ferriss
I think those are all good answers, right?
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
So I think there's FOMO because m- everything in modern marketing is intended to foster fear of missing out.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
But if you only have one good idea or one good chance, you're screwed.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
You, you need to develop, and you only do this through experimentation and time on the field, the confidence in your ability to generate or capitalize on opportunities.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? This is incredibly important. And, uh, I, I, I mentioned angel investing a bit. For people who don't know, that just means investing in, in my case, in companies very, very early.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? So when it's two people and an idea on a napkin, investing in those people. If you don't have the ability to say no, you run out of money, you're dead, game over. [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
That's, that's the end of your angel investing-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... right? Because most of them are gonna go to zero.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I would say that that seems like something that doesn't apply everywhere else, but guess what? You can make more money later. You ... As far as we know, you can't create more time later.
- JSJay Shetty
Hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Back to Seneca-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... on the shortness of life. And people are really burning-
- JSJay Shetty
Hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... time-
- JSJay Shetty
Hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... in ways they will realize are pretty terrifying. But FOMO is a piece of it. People-pleasing is another, which generally is short-term nice, long-term mean.
- JSJay Shetty
Hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
You always end up paying the piper with that one.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] It's like you're gonna have to have an uncomfortable conversation.
- 1:47:05 – 1:54:17
The Balance Between Growth and Acceptance
- JSJay Shetty
of constantly trying to improve yourself?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] The emotional cost of constantly trying to improve yourself in a vacuum-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... without the acceptance piece is that you always think you're broken.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And that is too high a cost for anyone to pay. It's an expanded discussion in the, the Self-Help Trap blog post that I wrote.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
By the way, I think it's probably now ... Within 24 hours I knew it was gonna be my most popular blog post of the last 10 years probably.
- JSJay Shetty
Wow.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's wild. I didn't know if it would resonate but-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... holy shit. So the, the cost to constantly improve yourself, almost by definition you have to constantly be looking for ways to-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... fix yourself-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... which means you're looking for ways you're broken.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And that means you're always in the red.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? There's always one more problem. And so the feeling of peace eludes you by one more workshop, one more book, one more retreat, one more psychedelic, whatever it is. You're always going to be one step behind if that's the only lens through which you're looking at things.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
The achievement, self-improvement side.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
If you have the acceptance side, then you can start to balance out the wobble board.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
So I would say that's, that's what comes to mind.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. It's almost like the old idea of climbing the mountain and pausing to look at the view and then climb some more and looking at the view and-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
You know, it's like you'd, you'd never go on a hike and not stop and look at the view.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- 1:54:17 – 1:58:39
Tim on Final Five
- JSJay Shetty
end every episode with a Final Five. These have to be answered in one sentence maximum.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay. Got it.
- JSJay Shetty
So these, these are short. Uh, so Tim, these are your Final Five. Question number one: What is the best advice you've ever heard or received?
- TFTim Ferriss
Don't believe everything you think.
- JSJay Shetty
Question number two: What is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?
- TFTim Ferriss
You need money to make money.
- JSJay Shetty
Question number three: What did you used to value that you don't value anymore?
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm. Achievement without acceptance.
- JSJay Shetty
What did you never value before but that you do deeply value now?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Emotional experience. [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Really?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. I mean, I thought emotions were just lim- limbic system liabilities for a long time.
- JSJay Shetty
What changed your mind on that?
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, a few things. I mean, I realized you just can't get around it. Like, who are we kidding, right? Like, [laughs] you can't. Like, we're too-
- JSJay Shetty
No, but I think it's a really good conversation 'cause, 'cause-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. That, that, that's, that's one, right?
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
You just can't get around it.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
So coming back to the serenity, bro, it's like, [laughs] yeah, good luck with that, Ferris.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Uh, and even if you could become Spock, you're gonna interact with people who are not Spock.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
So we're right back at square one.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And, uh, that, that's one. And secondly, there's quite a long story behind this that I won't get into, but, um-
- JSJay Shetty
You can if you want. If you want.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, yeah, I would just say that to experience the full richness of being human, you have to embrace being human.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And a very large part of that-
Episode duration: 1:58:39
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