Life-Changing Insights From A Decade Of Self-Improvement - Tim Ferriss (4K)

Chris Williamson 0:00 Most people I think would look at you and assume that you're this hyper, productive, super optimized efficiency machine. How much truth do you think is in that?

Tim Ferriss 0:11 I think there's some truth to it. I think I'm more effective than I am efficient. So if you were to look at me day-to-day, part of the reason I don't really ever have journalists shadow me or do anything like that is because if you were to be a fly on the wall, (laughs) I think I look like I'm doing a whole lot of nothing a lot of the time, or I'm just futzing around. But I think the choosing what you do matters a lot more than how you do any one given thing. So I do think I'm good at picking, let's call it lead dominoes that tip over other things, so high leverage targets that tend to make other things irrelevant or a lot easier. So I'm good at that. But in the actual execution, I think I look like a drowning monkey a lot of the time. So I would say there is some truth to it, but I would probably replace efficiency with effectiveness. And then in the last 10 to 15 years, I think I've de-optimized a lot since for ins- if you're running a marathon, you're not gonna take a taxi from point A to point B. Sure, that'll be efficient, but that sort of defeats the purpose of the whole exercise. So there's a lot more that I would put in that process over outcome category, I would say.

Chris Williamson 1:11 Talk to me about the difference between efficiency and effectiveness.

Tim Ferriss 1:14 So effectiveness is... There are different ways to look at this. The way I look at it is effectiveness is what you do, efficiency is how you do something. But doing something well does not make it important or high leverage. Does that make sense?

Chris Williamson 1:25 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:25 So if you do an 80/20 analysis and you determine, say, in learning a language, that if you learn the thousand highest frequency words, you're gonna be conversationally fluent, choosing that subset of vocabulary and then studying it at a B- level is better than choosing the wrong set of vocabulary and studying at an A+ level. So the what matters more than the how, or the material matters more than the method. The task that you choose matters more than how you do any given task. That's how I tend to think about it.

Chris Williamson 1:56 You say being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.

Tim Ferriss 2:01 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:02 Why?

Tim Ferriss 2:04 I think it's very easy to mistake motion for progress, and it's, I think, counterintuitive for someone to measure twice and cut once. I think front loading a lot of thinking feels like doing nothing. It is doing nothing, physically at least, (laughs) in terms of motion. So the drive, I would say, for a lot of people is to engage in productivity theater, to do things that can pass to others or to yourself as something productive.

Chris Williamson 2:41 Look at how busy I am.

Tim Ferriss 2:43 Right, look at how busy I am. And it's not like I am a paragon of hitting home runs in this regard. I mean, there are plenty of days where just like everybody else, I pause for a second and I've been in front of a laptop for an hour and I have no idea what I've actually accomplished. Like, I've done stuff.

Chris Williamson 2:58 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 2:58 I've looked at a screen. (laughs) Could not tell you (laughs) what major projects I've driven forward in any meaningful way. So as long as you choose the highest leverage tasks, or if, as long as you have a system for choosing what is important, because that's gonna be subjective, then over time I think you can snowball your way into long-term success, again, as you define it. Having those definitions for yourself is important. Otherwise, you're gonna be flailing around or mimicking other people.

Chris Williamson 3:28 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 3:28 And I think that can end up leading you in a lot of conflicting directions.

Chris Williamson 3:35 So if what you work on is more important than how you work on it-

Tim Ferriss 3:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 3:41 ... what are the rules that you use to choose what to work on?

Tim Ferriss 3:46 Yeah. Broadly speaking, I've th- I've thought about this a lot, and both looking in the rear view mirror, but, uh, even at the time, say, if you look at my transition, it wasn't really a transition, there were parallel tracks, but incorporating angel investing around 2008, for instance, after the success or the initial success of the first book, looking at, say, the podcast in 2014, any of these various decisions, there are a few common threads. The primary one is asking the question, and I'm not the first person to do this, but how can I succeed even if I fail, or can I succeed even if I fail? What I mean by that is, if I'm looking at five possible projects or experiments, I tend to view them as experiments. So let's just say I'm looking at six possible projects/experiments that I could pursue in the next three to six months. Let's say three months. I really tend to focus in the short term, and it'll be clear why that works in the long term in a second. If I ask myself which of these will help me to develop or deepen skills, develop or deepen relationships the most, even if they fail by external metrics, I bias towards choosing that project. And then even if it fails initially by whatever external metric you might have or perception of the public, as long as those skills and relationships transfer, they persist after that project, those will accumulate over time. And so far my experience has been they lead to better success. I mean, if you look at, say, Jodorowsky's Dune, which failed, you have Giger and all these incredible people involved, and then they split off and created these masterworks. And you see many examples like this. So I don't view the failure of any given project as a failure as long as there are things developed that can transfer forward into other things. So that's how I tend to choose my projects.

Chris Williamson 5:43 This is like an inverse pyrrhic victory. Do you know that idea?

Tim Ferriss 5:47 Yeah. I mean, I know what a pyrrhic victory is, yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:49 But this is like an inverse of that.

Tim Ferriss 5:50 It's an inverse, yeah. It's like a successful failure-

Chris Williamson 5:53 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 5:53 ... however you would phrase that.

Chris Williamson 5:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 5:55 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:55 How cool.

Tim Ferriss 5:56 Yeah. And it really, at least for me and, uh, and, and also for others, I'm not the only one who's, who's thought about it this way, um...... it really does accumulate over time. So as long as you're looking at evaluating your, let's just say, accomplishment over a longer period of time, three years, five years, and you're viewing things as experiments as opposed to, like, closed loop success or failure-

Chris Williamson 6:26 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 6:26 ... binary outcomes, then it's all feedback.

Chris Williamson 6:30 Talk to me about this relationship between three months and five years.

Tim Ferriss 6:34 Well, I, I, my experience for most folks, myself included, is that if you were to ask me five years ago, "Could you have predicted everything that would have happened in the last five years?" Of course not. And my own experience has been that if, if I put my all into shorter term projects, let's just say three months, within that I have two to four-week experiments that I'm running of various types. Number one, that's kind of semantic insurance against psychological distress from, quote unquote, "failure."

Chris Williamson 7:06 Binary.

Tim Ferriss 7:07 Just framing it differently-

Chris Williamson 7:08 Yep.

Tim Ferriss 7:08 ... using different language-

Chris Williamson 7:10 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 7:10 ... to train your thoughts to sort of react differently. And furthermore, I would say that as you run these experiments, let's just say it's three months, if you were to try to set in stone some type of three-year plan, you're probably going to be creating blindness for yourself where you don't see very attractive doors that open that you had not predicted in advance.

Chris Williamson 7:36 Can you give me an example?

Tim Ferriss 7:38 Sure. Uh, me starting the podcast 2014. Uh, so I launched The 4-Hour Chef, which was a very difficult book. I mean, it was a three, four-year project that was crammed into a year, year and a half. It was a suicide mission of sorts.

Chris Williamson 7:52 (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 7:53 Got it done at incredible personal cost. Yay. Go masochism.

Chris Williamson 7:58 (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 8:00 And in the process of promoting the book, doing the launch, I always look for the uncrowded, high leverage channel which is increasing in impact and importance. At that time, that was podcasting. For the first book, it was blogs. So every time I launch a book, I'm looking for that, and I put all the chips into podcasts. And I had the opportunity to be interviewed on Rogan's show, and Nerdist, and many, many others, and that was when I became very interested in the format, and I saw how with some basic trends at play, so broadband proliferation, smartphone, uh, decreases in cost, and improvements in technology, that sort of audio as a secondary activity was just going to skyrocket-

Chris Williamson 8:43 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 8:44 ... via the smartphones. So I wanted to experiment. I never would've known that in advance if I had specced out... For instance, I only do one book deals. I've never done a multi-book deal. Why? Because I want to preserve my optionality. And in doing that with the f- say, The 4-Hour Chef, which was successful, but not as successful as I wanted it to be, since I'd only done a one book deal, when the podcasting became appealing as a break from writing, a means of recovery, deloading phase, but also as a way to, here's how I think about skill development, improve my ability to ask questions, reduce my verbal tics, refine my ability to interview, which would transfer to my future nonfiction books, which require a lot of research. I would also have the ability to deepen my relationships with my close friends.

Chris Williamson 9:36 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 9:36 Example, my first episode with Kevin Rose, because otherwise doing hours and hours of Google sleuthing on your friends is pretty creepy-

Chris Williamson 9:41 (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 9:42 ... (laughs) and having a one-way conversation for two hours is also pretty bizarre. But with the podcast, I would have the pretext that would allow that, and to reach out to people ultimately who I would want to get to know. It checked all the boxes, and I wouldn't have been able to take advantage of that very attractive opportunity had I already set down as a blueprint something fixed as a three-year plan, let's just say.

Chris Williamson 10:07 It seems to me that the people who are very good at long term plans, the only way that that can really come to fruition is if you don't have outlier events. But kind of all of us are hoping in some form for an outlier event. Like, we're hoping for the, you know, 99th percentile win. Like, maybe we're not optimizing for that, but we're like, "Yeah, like, really this could happen." And the same with you with the show, you know-

Tim Ferriss 10:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:33 ... even with all of the, the pieces in play, thinking to yourself, "Hey, over the next decade, this is gonna have a billion downloads and, you know, be maybe even better known than the books." Which was my thing, I was an author coming in, and now-

Tim Ferriss 10:46 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:46 ... I'm maybe best known as a podcaster.

Tim Ferriss 10:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:49 How, how are you able to, or maybe they compete, it... There's no way axiomatically to come into that, I think, and be like-

Tim Ferriss 10:57 Right.

Chris Williamson 10:57 ... "And this is, this is how it's gonna go." You just don't know where the chips are gonna fall.

Tim Ferriss 11:00 No, you have no idea. And I would also say that I think the, the sh- the short term experimentalism and the long-term planning are not mutually exclusive. But the long-term planning that I've seen executed really well is usually executed by people who are top 1% of 1% in a single field.

Chris Williamson 11:21 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 11:21 Whereas I don't have, as best I can tell, that degree of expertise. I'm more of a generalist. So I would say-

Chris Williamson 11:29 Is that because they've got this sort of linear progression through the-

Tim Ferriss 11:31 Yeah. They, they, they have a superpower, right? They are a LeBron James. They are a superstar 10X coder. They are a fill in the blank.

Chris Williamson 11:41 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 11:41 They have a very clearly identified superpower that can drive them through a pretty, I don't want to say linear path, but it allows them to plan with a higher degree of certainty how to take full advantage of that superpower. Whereas I think I am more of a generalist in the sense that I might be top 20% in a few things. When you overlap them in a Venn diagram that allow me to try to, try to, not, not always succeeding, be a category of one. So I'm t- I'm attempting to be the only and not the best.... it's a great book called The Blue Ocean Strategy that I recommend people read, as, as you think about this. And there's also a chapter in a book called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. It's a bit outdated in some ways, but the original version has examples, uh, of something they call the, the Law of Category, which is simply attempting to create new categories versus dominate crowded existing categories. And I think that's a helpful exercise, not just for branding and marketing purposes, but for positioning. And then when you think about positioning, you can work backwards from that and create the product.

Chris Williamson 12:48 Yeah. I s- suppose as well that if you have multiple intersecting domains or subcategories that you're in, you have no idea how these things are going to combine together.

Tim Ferriss 12:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 12:59 It's like, "Hey, this meal is made of steak. I can reliably tell you what it's going to taste like. This meal is made of 15 different ingredients, all cooked in different ways. What's the outcome going to be?"

Tim Ferriss 13:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:08 "I'm not too sure."

Tim Ferriss 13:09 Yep.

Chris Williamson 13:09 And I guess that that's where the outlier effect thing comes

Chris Williamson 13:12 from.

Tim Ferriss 13:12 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:12 So talking about from a daily ritual standpoint, what does a typical day look like for you? Morning routine, full works. What's a day in the life-

Tim Ferriss 13:22 Sure. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 13:23 ... of Tim Ferriss look like?

Tim Ferriss 13:24 It depends on where I'm located. I was, for instance, skiing for January and February, so it looked very much like a day architected around skiing. Uh, but I'll give you, I'll give you a few different examples. So here in Austin, it would be... (laughs) And now it sounds so cliched-

Chris Williamson 13:43 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 13:44 ... (laughs) but nonetheless, I've been doing this a long time. (laughs) It was in The 4-Hour Body in 2010. So there you have it. But I'll do cold immersion, so 40 degrees at, say, three to five minutes. Nothing, nothing too incredibly long.

Chris Williamson 13:57 Is that immedu- immediately upon waking?

Tim Ferriss 13:59 Yeah. Waking up, and then I'll-

Chris Williamson 14:01 No...

Tim Ferriss 14:01 ... I'll feed the dog, have some water-

Chris Williamson 14:03 Yep.

Tim Ferriss 14:04 ... and then cold plunge.

Chris Williamson 14:05 Yep.

Tim Ferriss 14:06 And then I'll go directly from that to hot tub for sort of hyperdilation. I find that just helps lower back issues and things along those lines.

Chris Williamson 14:14 How long?

Tim Ferriss 14:16 Ah, three minutes. Nothing, nothing too crazy. Uh, and, and this is really for state change. It's not for any complex biological cascade that I could list out. It's, it's really for a state change. And I'll, I will back up and say that one of the principles I learned from Tony Robbins, and I don't know if, if the attribution is originally f- to Tony, but it's something that I've found very, very helpful, which is a progression. The progression is, uh, state, story, strategy. So if you are in a, say, low energy state or a negative state, you're going to create a disabling story, right? Or a critical or cynical story, which will then impact in the sense that you come up with a subpar strategy. So I always start with state, and then you will have a more enabling story. Could just be from releasing (laughs) some norepinephrine because you're freezing your balls off.

Chris Williamson 15:12 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 15:13 And that will enable you to have a better strategy, at least for the day.

Chris Williamson 15:16 You've got an equivalent quote. "I think it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting."

Tim Ferriss 15:22 Right.

Chris Williamson 15:22 That seems to be pretty parallel.

Tim Ferriss 15:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:24 Okay, so we're in the hot tub.

Tim Ferriss 15:26 Yeah. Hot tub, get out. At that point, I might do a small amount of journaling, very, something very basic, right? Like five-minute journals. And it, the, the exact morning routine kind of depends on the day. It's not super highly variable, but there is some variation.

Chris Williamson 15:40 Oh.

Tim Ferriss 15:40 Right? So if I feel like monkey mind is getting the best of me, probably something like journaling, whether it's morning pages or five-minute journal-

Chris Williamson 15:46 Yep.

Tim Ferriss 15:47 ... is what I'll do. It's-

Chris Williamson 15:47 Shout out, Alex Ikonn.

Tim Ferriss 15:49 Yeah. It's very short. Or, uh, uh, The Artist's Way and Morning Pages, which are, are fantastic. And, uh, at that point, I will have already identified the night before or the evening before what's in my calendar for that day. And I will say that the daily architecture, just to make a, a 30,000-foot comment, is less important to me than the weekly architecture. So we can come back to the day, and I could talk about training in, say, Utah, but it's very skiing specific. Like, skiing was the one thing that I was focused on. So everything revolved around skiing. (laughs) Half the day, almost every day, that's it. So all the PT, all the prep, the Stuart McGill, pick three exercises that you're familiar with as well. All these things.

Chris Williamson 16:37 Hundreds, hundreds of hours.

Tim Ferriss 16:38 Right.

Chris Williamson 16:39 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 16:39 Beat extract and all these things, all optimized for skiing.

Chris Williamson 16:43 Making me less shit at skiing. (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 16:45 Oh. Yeah, exactly. And then the second half of the day, for a few hours, were reserved for the most important high-leverage business activities, often revolving around, on Mondays and Fridays, for instance, recording. So set days for recording, set times for recording, 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM. We can go into the reasons for them. But Tuesday, team calls. I find that weekly architecture, for me, and I'm not the only person who does this, there are some very well known tech CEOs who also do this, is scaffolding that is a little more helpful than having very tight parameters on a daily basis, because you're going to have unexpected events. Although I will say, if you have to res- reply to a lot of things within 72 hours and you have broken systems, like, you should revisit your processes and systems. So if you're getting a lot of interruptions that you need to handle yourself as firefighter, then you have a process or a policy.

Chris Williamson 17:42 That would include Slack, Instant Things-

Tim Ferriss 17:45 Anything.

Chris Williamson 17:45 ... email...

Tim Ferriss 17:46 Anything. If you are, if you are the, if you're the boss, let's just say, if you are the CEO or s- or a solopreneur, if you're making too many decisions, that is as fatal as making some of the wrong decisions. Too many decisions will also kill you. Um, so I would say that the morning generally, for me, the thread is do not feel rushed for the first hour.

Chris Williamson 18:13 And is that-

Tim Ferriss 18:14 If I feel rushed for the first hour, I'm gonna feel rushed for the whole day.

Chris Williamson 18:16 And is that, uh, you have related days in which the morning is rushed psychologically, emotionally, somatically to days that suck?

Tim Ferriss 18:26 ... yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:26 Downstream, it tends to be a bad day.

Tim Ferriss 18:28 Yeah. Even, even if from the outside looking in, you're like, "Hey, you put a lot of points on the scoreboard..."

Chris Williamson 18:31 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 18:32 "... and you didn't look stressed." But my internal experience was one of being very rushed.

Chris Williamson 18:36 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 18:37 Uh, and people might hear this and they have kids and they say, "Well, must be nice, you know." My (laughs) my four-year-old's jumping on my, jumping on my (laughs) solar plexus at 6:00 in the morning. And I would say, uh, I can't speak to that experience because I haven't. I mean, someday I hope to be able to speak to that experience. Uh, but, uh, there are people like Jason, uh, Gaignard who, who for instance, uh, started Mastermind Talks, who I haven't interacted with in a long time, but he just started waking up earlier. You know, wake up earlier, he does his meditation, a little bit of exercise. And, uh, there are workarounds. Uh, Extreme- Extreme Owner- Ownership by Jocko Willink is a good one to read. Um, so, so you can find ways around it.

Chris Williamson 19:18 Okay. So we haven't rushed the morning.

Tim Ferriss 19:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:20 You've planned the night before what the calendar, at least for that day, is going to look like. You also have a weekly rhythm and architecture, which I've, I've fallen in love with too, although, uh, stumbled upon as opposed to designed in advance.

Tim Ferriss 19:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:32 It's, uh, what about wha- when are you writing? When are you training? When are you recording? And why at those times?

Tim Ferriss 19:39 Yeah. I would say, uh, training is generally gonna be, uh, pre-lunch or after work, let's just say, before dinner. I like to train before meals, just like right before meals. And, uh, writing is not necessarily a daily activity. It probably should be. It might end up being.

Chris Williamson 19:56 I've just seen you finish, uh, 5 Bullet Friday (laughs) in the-

Tim Ferriss 19:59 Yeah. You saw me do 5 Bullet Friday. So I actually do write that myself. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 20:02 (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 20:03 That is not ghostwritten. That is something I do. It's the closest I'll ever get to having a diary. So I-

Chris Williamson 20:08 Yes, yes.

Tim Ferriss 20:08 ... actually enjoy doing it 'cause I can look back at any week.

Chris Williamson 20:10 Me too. But I mean, you, you convinced me, uh, God, I thought... This is so funny. Things that you take for granted about the world, uh, in retrospect you realize that you were still maybe early on things. So like you with podcasting, it kind of appeared perhaps obvious to you. You probably had an idea that you were a first mover for it. But I knew four years ago when I started my newsletter, God, it's the only thing that you own. Tim Ferriss says it's the only thing that you own, and it's the most valuable piece of real estate, and everything else is mediated by thing, and you can export that CSV, and you can move it anywhere else in the world. Oh my God, I'm so late to the party. And now I look back and I go, "I'm so glad that I started that four years ago."

Tim Ferriss 20:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:44 And I'm now that guy proselytizing-

Tim Ferriss 20:47 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 20:47 ... about like-

Tim Ferriss 20:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:48 ... "Dude, you need to get, get a lead magnet. Get a

Tim Ferriss 20:49 (imitates fast forward speech) So I know we're bouncing around a little bit-

Chris Williamson 20:52 Yeah, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 20:52 ... and I feel like I'm giving a disappointing answer, but there's a reason for the disappointment (laughs) . So, um, first thing, actually just to comment on that, when I started my podcast, many people told me it was too late. They're like, "Actually, that ship has sailed, man."

Chris Williamson 21:06 (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 21:06 2014. So people are always gonna tell you you're too late. (laughs) Now, we could talk about competition and differentiation separately, but the, the key takeaway from my very disappointing answer to what is my daily routine is that the exact boot-up sequence does not matter. What matters is having at least, say, three hours in a block of time, uninterrupted, where you can focus on one or two of your highest leverage tasks, which have been defined beforehand. And those highest leverage tasks could be the things that make you most uncomfortable on your to-do list, the things that have been punted week to week to week. Could also be the things that are most energy-in, the things that give you the most in terms of recharge, so that that can be applied to other things. So that's an unlock. And having uninterrupted blocks of time. That's it. If you can single task for two to three hours a day (laughs) , it sounds ridiculous, but you are gonna be ahead of 90% of the population. Because that's how low the bar has been set.

Chris Williamson 22:12 Because that's whatever you need to do-

Tim Ferriss 22:13 Whatever you need to do to do that. Just figure it out. If that's at night, if that's first thing in the morning, which it is for a lot of people with kids, who I know who are very, very productive.

Chris Williamson 22:21 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 22:22 For me, first thing in the morning just is not going to work. So it tends to be after cold plunge this, that, and the other thing, I'll probably have a very, very light bite to eat. If I'm writing, I'll write for two or three hours and then have a late lunch.

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Tim Ferriss 23:43 Busy work's usually Tuesday.

Chris Williamson 23:44 Right. Oh, so you've-

Tim Ferriss 23:45 So Tuesday-

Chris Williamson 23:45 ... blocked it off as an entire day.

Tim Ferriss 23:47 Yeah. Tuesday is team calls, one-on-ones, looking at one-on-one documents. I have like Tim's Weekly Briefing, which is a document that's updated with various subheadings. And I can run through those, uh, email are assigned or shared in various ways, and I'll process through that as needed. But, uh, the busy work creeps in here and there.

Chris Williamson 24:09 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 24:09 I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna try to-

Chris Williamson 24:12 No one's perfect.

Tim Ferriss 24:12 ... p- put on a show.

Chris Williamson 24:13 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 24:13 Right? There are things that, uh, you need to do that you aren't going to want to do. And I wish I could remember who initially told me this, but they effectively said, "Those are the... (laughs) That is the work. The fun stuff, doing the interviews, that's the upside of the job you chose, but the actual work that pays for that-

Chris Williamson 24:33 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 24:33 ... are all the little things you don't want to do. So just be grateful, because that is what allows you to do the things, at least for me, that I enjoy doing, which is having this type of dance.

Chris Williamson 24:41 Increasingly, I'm using a, uh, a term that I, I learned while reading a news story, which is the cost of doing business.

Tim Ferriss 24:49 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 24:49 So I think Facebook got a slap on the wrist with some huge fine for a data breach maybe, like, five or six years ago.

Tim Ferriss 24:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:54 And, um, uh, there was criticism because even though it's a huge amount of money, uh, to them it's half of one week of one territory's top line or something like that.

Tim Ferriss 25:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 25:05 Like, it w- it wasn't sufficiently big. And that, look, what you can do is you factor in this as the price of doing business. This is just the cost of operating. And I kind of see a lot of those things as like, oh, you want to have conversations with people that you, that interest you on the show.

Tim Ferriss 25:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 25:19 Oh, you want to be able to work flexibly and you want to earn your own money and you want to be able to sort of craft a narrative and do the blah, blah, blah. It's like, hey, guess what? These aren't bugs. They're features.

Tim Ferriss 25:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:29 Like, this is what comes along for the ride.

Tim Ferriss 25:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:31 Like, you're going to feel pressure. You're going to have public scrutiny. People are going to criticize you. There's going to be judgment. There's going to be security conc- there're gonna be b- uh, all of these things.

Tim Ferriss 25:38 You have judgment on YouTube? (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:41 I'm really trying to focus on you, but the moon, the moon has just appeared behind you-

Tim Ferriss 25:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:46 ... and it's slowly moving away from you. Um-

Tim Ferriss 25:48 I have a big head. You're gonna get an eclipse.

Chris Williamson 25:50 Well, it's kind of like two. It's kind of like two nice moon, moon shapes.

Tim Ferriss 25:54 Like a moon, a moon, or, and or, and or. Nice.

Chris Williamson 25:54 Um, okay. And then what about a wind-down routine on a, on an evening time? Uh, what does a typical afternoon/evening look like for you?

Tim Ferriss 26:01 Uh, afternoon is going to be some type of activity, so rock climbing, archery, you name it. Some, some type of physical activity, because my mind is like a border collie, right? You leave it inside too long, it's gonna chew the couch. So you got to get out and move the body in some capacity. So for me, it'd be some type of movement. I walk a lot also. I would say I walk, I try to walk two to three hours a day. If I'm making any calls, I try to do them walking. Zoom is an abomination. It's helpful for some things, but we've solved this problem about being fixed in one place. It's called the phone. (laughs) You can talk, walk while you are talking. We are evolved to walk. If you are compromising your walking, you are compromising your mental health, so not just physical health. So I walk a lot. Uh, that, that is something that I think is incredibly critical as a foundational piece of everything that I do. Wind-down routine, board games, watching Netflix (laughs) with friends, nothing super sophisticated. I like to do a pre-dinner, if I can, sauna, and then-

Chris Williamson 27:03 How long and what temperature?

Tim Ferriss 27:06 Honestly, hot as balls for as long as I can do it.

Chris Williamson 27:09 (laughs) What does that-

Tim Ferriss 27:10 Not to get too, not to get too scientific.

Chris Williamson 27:12 What does that end up being, do you think?

Tim Ferriss 27:13 Uh, it's probably 195 to 200 for 15 to 30 minutes. You know, my heat tolerance varies tremendously day to day.

Chris Williamson 27:20 Yeah, mine too.

Tim Ferriss 27:21 Uh, and I don't push it too hard. Uh, I will go as har- you know, as f- as far as I can without, like, feeling as though I'm gonna pass out. But I won't do two or three rounds. If I do two or three rounds, I will feel exhausted the next day-

Chris Williamson 27:33 Right.

Tim Ferriss 27:33 ... which is not from dehydration. A lot of people think it's from dehydration. It's, uh, uh, as best I can tell, it's not, because I've weighed myself before and after, and I'm only us- losing a few pounds of water, and I can, I can rehydrate that pretty effectively. Uh, I actually haven't talked about this. It's something else, and I know this because I participated as a subject in a heat exhaustion study at Stanford when I first moved to the Bay Area.

Chris Williamson 27:57 The most Tim Ferriss sentence.

Tim Ferriss 28:00 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 28:00 That, "I participated in a heat exhaustion study when I first moved to Stanford."

Tim Ferriss 28:04 Oh yeah, yeah. It was, uh, it was, it was something I would not necessarily recommend. They wanted to study this device which was called, nicknamed The Glove, and it was a cooling device, actually very clever. And it was effectively this, this large chamber that you would stick your hand into. You put your hand on this metal orb, and it was vacuum sealed around your wrist, and it would circulate very cold water through this metal, which is highly conductive. Your, your hands have a high capillary density. Capillary? Do you say capillary?

Chris Williamson 28:33 Yep.

Tim Ferriss 28:33 ... density. And then that cools the blood, which then circulates through your body. And they were experimenting with using this device-

Chris Williamson 28:39 Can a cold hand cool a hot body?

Tim Ferriss 28:41 Yeah. And they were experimenting with using this with very high-end athletes, boxers between rounds, et cetera.

Chris Williamson 28:45 Oh, wow.

Tim Ferriss 28:46 And, uh, at the time, this was also being studied by the military for possible use in-

Chris Williamson 28:52 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 28:52 ... in hot climates. And since part of the funding was from the military, I volunteered to be a subject. You go in... I'll try to keep this short, but it is pretty entertaining. And what they needed you to do is basically march to heat exhaustion. So you'd put on fatigues. There are a few things that have happened before this. Helmet, backpack with weight in it, and then you'd go into a sauna on an incline treadmill and just march until you basically collapsed. But in order to measure things correctly, they would put in an, an esophageal probe, which is about this long, and I have a video of this somewhere. You stick it in your nose and it goes all the way down your esophagus, down to be as close to your heart as possible. Uh, and this was what the Stanford researched, uh, researchers wanted. And you tape it to your nose, 'cause you don't want to swallow that thing. You can't swallow. Your epiglottis can't close. It's very uncomfortable. But then the military wants to have some redundant measurements, so you had to put in a, a rectal probe of equal length (laughs) to get as close to your core as possible. And with both of those things in you, then you march to exhaustion. And, uh, what I can say is it, water loss was, was not as much as you would expect, but I was a disaster for the next two days. Um, so to avoid that type of feeling, I'll do one round when I do sauna.

Chris Williamson 30:08 (laughs) All of that is to say you don't need to do two rounds in the sauna-

Tim Ferriss 30:12 All of that is to say-

Chris Williamson 30:12 ... or stick something up your ass, or deep throat a pipe.

Tim Ferriss 30:16 Yeah. I would, I would say on a daily basis, not necessary.

Chris Williamson 30:19 (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 30:20 I mean, un- unless that's what you're, kind of thing you're into though.

Chris Williamson 30:23 It's whatever, it's however you want to spend the evening, Tim.

Tim Ferriss 30:24 Go for it. Consenting adults have fun.

Chris Williamson 30:25 And how long... On a good day when, uh, you've got it right, how long are you spending in bed?

Tim Ferriss 30:30 In bed?

Chris Williamson 30:30 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 30:31 Eight to 10 hours?

Chris Williamson 30:32 Right, okay.

Tim Ferriss 30:33 Yeah. I, I like to s- I, I, I would say have-... pretty fitful sleep. Not all the time, but I have, ever since I was a little kid, had a lot of onset insomnia. That's actually improved a lot in the last, I would say, year, but, uh, particularly with some low back issues, I tend to have reasonably fitful sleep.

Chris Williamson 30:53 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 30:53 So I like to budget a bit of extra time. Uh, and I'm not a super sleeper. I'm not someone who wakes up four hours after going to bed and-

Chris Williamson 31:04 Jackal.

Tim Ferriss 31:04 ... feeling fully refreshed, yeah. I mean, there are genetic profiles that are predictive of this.

Chris Williamson 31:09 I heard that the likelihood of you having that genetic mutation that allows you to work on three or four hours sleep is the same likelihood as you being hit by lightning twice.

Tim Ferriss 31:20 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 31:20 That that's the-

Tim Ferriss 31:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:21 ... equivalent dice roll.

Tim Ferriss 31:23 It could be. A lot of the top endurance athletes that I've met, as well as the, a lot of very high level operators from the military basically get vetted to-

Chris Williamson 31:34 Have that mutant.

Tim Ferriss 31:35 ... have this.

Chris Williamson 31:35 It's the self-selection theory.

Tim Ferriss 31:36 Because the other people wash out.

Chris Williamson 31:38 How fun.

Tim Ferriss 31:38 Uh, yeah, I've seen that. I would say, if I am in deeper ketosis, then my total number of hours needed for sleep goes down, and I'll wake up after five or six hours feeling fully refreshed, and I will not be groggy in the morning. So if, if I have, let's just say, 1.5 millimolars or higher in terms of ketone levels as measured with something like a Precision Xtra, then I need much less sleep. It's just a pain in the ass to stay in ketosis. I like my tacos.

Chris Williamson 32:07 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 32:07 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 32:07 Yeah, we're in Austin. That's allowed. What did

Chris Williamson 32:11 you think would make you happy when you were younger but didn't?

Tim Ferriss 32:22 I would say the short answer is money, for sure. I grew up in a family without very much money, and there was a narrative that I heard a lot at home, "If only we had more money. If only we had more money." And a lot of problems were related to money, but I came to translate that into, "If I have success, which I need, I can prevent the pain and problems and friction and handicaps that we currently have in this family." And on some level, that's true, in so much as money is a vehicle for doing certain things, preventing certain things. But it doesn't fix the inner game, and it's an amplifier, just like alcohol, power, fame. It amplifies whatever is inside, the good and the bad. If you're generous, you're gonna be super generous. If you're a jerk, you're gonna be a super jerk. If you have anxiety, if you're hypervigilant, you worry about dangers, it's going to magnify all of that. And I was, I was certainly not prepared for that, and I wouldn't trade my trajectory. I'm really grateful for having been so fortunate, and I've had some exceptionally good luck and so on. But do I think it is worth striving to be financially stable and to have freedom and options to the extent that you can within whatever your constraints are? Absolutely. But I think I viewed money as a potential fix-all.

Chris Williamson 34:04 Exterior solution to an internal problem.

Tim Ferriss 34:06 Which it was not. Now, I will say, would I go back in time and tell myself that? Maybe not, because I think I needed some hope, even if it was not founded on (laughs) reality, to have something to strive towards, so-

Chris Williamson 34:25 Did you get to read, uh, Will Smith's memoir-

Tim Ferriss 34:28 No.

Chris Williamson 34:28 ... with Mark Manson?

Tim Ferriss 34:29 I haven't read it.

Chris Williamson 34:29 So, uh, Morgan Housel taught me about a line that's in that, and he said, "When I was poor and miserable, I had hope. When I was rich and miserable, I was despondent."

Tim Ferriss 34:39 Yeah, exactly. That is the, the best synopsis of what I have more clumsily said about many of the mega rich people I know who are very depressed.

Chris Williamson 34:53 "Where have I got to go?"

Tim Ferriss 34:54 O-

Chris Williamson 34:54 "I'm at the top of the ladder."

Tim Ferriss 34:55 Once that is, once the money as a goal is taken away as a surgical fix to whatever problems you feel are external but are largely internal-

Chris Williamson 35:05 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 35:06 ... it is, it can be very psychologically challenging. And yes, I mean, s- you know, small violin and-

Chris Williamson 35:11 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 35:11 ... everyone (laughs) , America weeps (laughs) for-

Chris Williamson 35:14 (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 35:14 ... the rich and famous-

Chris Williamson 35:15 (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 35:16 ... who are, who are going to therapy. I get it. Uh, but at the same time, it's, it's, it's worth being aware of. I think thinking of it as an amplifier is, is helpful. So on the way up, what I would have told myself maybe at 30 is, "Start working on some of the inner game," not from a p- strict performance perspective, because I'd been working on mental toughness training for sports and so on and so forth for executing as a machine, as an accomplishment machine. But working on some of the other things, uh, is probably what I would have advised myself at 30, 35.

Chris Williamson 35:54 Talk to me about your relationship with fame. What do most people not understand about fame and status?

Tim Ferriss 36:03 I should ask you that. You're fresh in it.

Chris Williamson 36:07 (inhales deeply) I'm definitely feeling it at the moment, um-

Tim Ferriss 36:09 What have you learned?

Chris Williamson 36:14 It's strange for the world to see you in a different way and, again, appropriate caveat, head is not getting too big, micro niche flame, almost no one knows me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but, um, you are the same person to you and you are a different person to other people.

Tim Ferriss 36:31 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 36:32 And it's like, have you ever seen those videos of swordfish moving through shoals?

Tim Ferriss 36:38 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 36:38 And the swordfish is the same thing, but the shore kind of bends around it?

Tim Ferriss 36:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 36:42 The reality distortion field is something that only you know, because only you n- know what the previous state that you were in was and how the world interacted with you, and you're now, "Well, people are treating me differently," and you're like, "Is this because of..."... they want something from me? How can I trust the people? Have they got my best interests at heart? Is this a compliment?" It kind of is, but then also it's, "Why is it making me feel sort of vigilant and uncomfortable? And, and I'm really uncertain about this." And, um, I mean, it's the m- the biggest champagne problem in the world, right? Like, how are you ... And again, it's the same as the America weeps for the rich and famous.

Tim Ferriss 37:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:20 Like, who is going to say, "Oh, boo-hoo person that has too much attention," or whatever. But look, I've said this before on the show, like, I'm, I'm really enjoying opening up about the process of going from being an absolute nobody to micro-niche fame, and laying the breadcrumbs behind me as I go, because you don't necessarily... I don't know what Dwayne Johnson's, like, ascension to fame was like, or Kevin Hart or whatever, whatever. And I'd want to know. Like, if I was a fan of a show like this, I'd want to know what it feels like to go through a very large change. Um, but again, almost everybody has less fame and money than they want, which means that the sympathy always flows downward, not upward.

Tim Ferriss 38:07 Thanks for answering, because you're, you're in the thick of it. I would say in, in my experience, first, I did write an, uh, a blog post that I would recommend people check out. Uh, I think it's 11 Reasons Not to Become Famous. And that's worth reading, because it could inform decisions that you make about your career, if you are tempted like a moth to the flame, to chase the followers and the likes and the downloads and the views. Which can be a great tool, but if it ends up directing major decisions, it's good to have some brakes installed so you can pause and at least examine those decisions. Espe- you don't want your life to be driven by algorithm changes. Uh, and you can also be shaped by your audience into a caricature of your most extreme beliefs and behaviors, and-

Chris Williamson 39:01 I'll send you an article, one of my favorite articles about that, The Perils of Audience Capture by Gwenda Bogle. It's outstanding.

Tim Ferriss 39:07 I've read it. That is an amazing article.

Chris Williamson 39:09 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 39:10 So p- everyone should read that.

Chris Williamson 39:11 Shout out, Gwenda.

Tim Ferriss 39:12 And stepping back then to talking about the fame piece, I will say that money, power, fame, people strive for these things. Money is, in a sense, the easiest for me to understand, because it's taking a life that can seem very abstract or nebulous and shaping it into something that allows you to put points on the scoreboard. So I understand that. And I'm also from New York, so coming from a place where you see a lot of finance and you meet a lot of people in finance, that is a, that's an animal that's easier for me to understand than, say, the power of DC or the fame of LA.

Chris Williamson 39:58 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 39:59 Those are archetypes that are a l- less familiar to me. All three can be corrupting. And on the side of fame, I will say that I was given advice. At the time, I wasn't aiming to be famous (laughs) , so I kind of tucked it away in the back of my head. But when I was in college, a friend of mine was the son of a very famous producer in Hollywood, and I went to stay with his family at one point, and this producer said to me, "You want everyone to know your name and no one to know your face." Now, you and I have ended up in a position where that is not the case. There is a lot of facial recognition. And my experience is fame helps with a few things. Occasionally, getting into a crowded restaurant or a better seat, and access to other people, but you can also get access to a broader network with the power or money. And I think those are, especially money, is in a sense a cleaner approach, because there are fewer downsides. And particularly if that money is not money for money's sake. This is not to malign anyone in finance, but for instance, if someone created a company to solve a problem they had and it turned into a huge company, let's take as an example Tobi of Shopify, and as a byproduct, they end up incredibly wealthy, and through that wealth and notoriety, they then have access to people. That is, I th- I think a cleaner route to more upside than downside.

Chris Williamson 41:33 I mean, Tobi Lutke could walk through here now and I don't know if anyone in the room would recognize who he was.

Tim Ferriss 41:38 Except for, yeah, except for me.

Chris Williamson 41:39 Except for you, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 41:40 Yeah, yeah. Uh, sweetheart of a guy too. Incredible, those guys are ... It's, it's really nice to see when the good guys win. He's an example of that.

Chris Williamson 41:46 Awesome.

Tim Ferriss 41:47 Uh, as are a lot of the Shopify guys. The, the trade-offs in terms of privacy and security are significant, even on a very micro level. I don't know if you've experienced this. I would imagine you've had some strange interactions or inbound.

Chris Williamson 42:04 I seem to attract a very unreasonably reasonable audience so far-

Tim Ferriss 42:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:10 ... but I also understand the law of large numbers.

Tim Ferriss 42:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:12 And I completely uncited, must once a week quote from your article, which says million to one odds happen eight times a day in New York City.

Tim Ferriss 42:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:23 Um, if you have any sufficiently large data set of people, you begin to get outlier events. And then as you scale that up toward a billion downloads, you know, whatever percent of the population are psychopaths, whatever percent of that percentage of psychopaths are sufficiently motivated, whatever percentage of da, da, da, da, da, da all the way down live within the region that you do. And it's like, hey, that's 200 people.

Tim Ferriss 42:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:42 Um, or whatever. You know, you pick whatever it is that you want, like the person that really needs something-

Tim Ferriss 42:47 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:48 ... and you're the guy.

Tim Ferriss 42:50 Yeah. And all of this is part of the reason why, particularly as I look forward to hopefully my next big adventure, which will be family, having kids and so on, have some pre, prereqs to check first, like girlfriend (laughs) -

Chris Williamson 43:05 That is usually an intermediary, but —

Tim Ferriss 43:07 Yeah, it doesn't have to be, but I'd, I'd prefer that to be part of the process. Um, so back, back on the singles scene, wink wink, ladies who are listening, uh, if you ski or snowboard, let me know. So, uh, part of the reason that I'm thinking about potentially not going to something new, but something old in the form of writing instead of emphasizing video, is for this reason.

Chris Williamson 43:30 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 43:31 I don't think I can fully put the toothpaste back in the toothpaste tube, but I do think with the churn rate of content and the sheer volume of video and audio that is created, the saturation, that the decay rate of fame is going to increase in speed, right? So the half-life of fame is gonna go down. In other words, 10 years ago, friends would send around a video and you would see that clip for a week or two.

Chris Williamson 44:01 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 44:02 It would make the rounds. How long is it now? 10 seconds? And I think that'll be true also for —

Chris Williamson 44:08 News cycle and fame cycle, both.

Tim Ferriss 44:09 ... notoriety, the fame cycle.

Chris Williamson 44:10 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 44:10 That's my hope, at least for me, because I don't want to sustain facial recognition. I would love for that to decay over time.

Chris Williamson 44:16 I think certainly from what I see, and I've taken this, uh, absorbed this vicariously from you, from Rogan, uh, from Douglas Murray as well. Uh, Douglas once sat me down a couple of years ago, and I was asking him about his dealings with fame too, and he said, uh, "One piece of advice, keep your private life private."

Tim Ferriss 44:34 Yep.

Chris Williamson 44:34 And, uh, Joe has done a phenomenal job as someone who's, you know, infinitely more scrutinized than I'll ever be. Uh, I don't know the name of his wife. I don't know whether they go for walks. I don't know, like, maybe he goes to restaurants, but it's never to do with that. I don't know the name of hi- his kids. I don't know what they're studying. I don't really know much about him. It's, it's, it's nowhere near... He, he, I think he almost purposefully, and this is the best way to do it, makes his, um, private life seem so boring. Like, he purposefully sort of avoids that and kind of glosses over it, that there's never enough hooks for Velcro to attach to it.

Tim Ferriss 45:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:07 And I think that that, that seems to be a smart, a smart process.

Tim Ferriss 45:10 Yeah, don't, don't dox your family or your close friends.

Chris Williamson 45:13 (laughs) As a general rule of thumb. Tell you what's interesting.

Tim Ferriss 45:15 It'll come back and bite you in the ass, because if you have motivated stalkers or the town lunatic happens to take an interest in you, and like you said, which is also something that I've written about, if you look at your audience size as analogous to a town size or a city size, it's like, okay, if you're in a, if you're in a town of 1,000 people, how many village crazies do you have? One or two? Okay. And you just multiply that out. Once you have an audience the size of yours or of mine, over time especially where you have transience, you're going to have some people who have infinite time and unreasonable curiosity about you.

Chris Williamson 45:54 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 45:55 Uh, and they may not have malicious intent. Sometimes they will. But there are going to be crazy people with a lot of time who are actually pretty smart. Like, their hardware is good, their software is bad. And for that reason, from a very early point, you should not, I would not suggest having your family anywhere online. There's just no upside.

Chris Williamson 46:18 Make the best.

Tim Ferriss 46:19 And they didn't often opt into this. So you are making decisions for people, and you should —

Chris Williamson 46:23 Correct.

Tim Ferriss 46:24 ... perhaps talk to them first.

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Chris Williamson 47:31 What have you learned about-

Tim Ferriss 47:33 All the ladies who were just considering me went whoop. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 47:35 No, that's incorrect. That's incorrect.

Tim Ferriss 47:38 You and your goddamn biceps.

Chris Williamson 47:39 I, I'm a bad skier and I'm bad at s- I'm bad at snowboarding. Um, what have you learned about choosing a good partner and the limitations of that? Is love something which is outside of being hackable and optimized?

Tim Ferriss 47:56 I, I think there are certainly X factors. I don't, I don't th- as best I can tell. I would have figured it out by now if you could reverse engineer it perfectly and just flip a switch. Uh, but I do think over time, as you have long relationships, and I've been really fortunate to have a number of long relationships, I mean, multiple relationships in the sort of three to six year range with amazing people, you learn what seems to work for you and what seems to not work, which is not automatically a judgment of the other person. It's a judgment of yourself and having a realistic evaluation of your strengths and weaknesses and so on. Uh, so I've certainly found that, to me, a lot of things are important. Number one, this seems obvious, but it's not always obvious because we sometimes gravitate towards our own strengths. And so if someone is analytical, they look for someone who is highly analytical. And I think there's a, uh, there are certain base requirements for a good partner. You want them to be good problem solvers. You want them to be resilient and so on. But I'm looking for a complement. I want someone with incredibly high EQ, which doesn't mean I have no EQ. And I've worked hard to develop it,... but I want someone who has that as a superpower. And I would say, like, my prefrontal cortex is a superpower for other things. And I do not want to date a long-haired version of myself.

Chris Williamson 49:20 (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 49:20 It's like, throw me off, throw me off a skyscraper now. No, thank you. Right? Um, and I also want someone, I've thought about this very carefully and, you know, I've dated a bit in the last year, uh, which is sort of the period of my dating so far, respect isn't enough 'cause respect is something that people can demand in a sense. It's not respect because I feel like that is given, it's admiration. If I go on two dates with someone, I want to be inclined to tell my friends about her and brag about some aspect of her, aside from, like, she has the best ass I've ever seen, right? It has to be something more than that. Nothing against great asses, I mean, those are fantastic too. But it's- it's I want to admire my partner. And if they're soft-spoken and we're at a group dinner, I want to say, "She's not gonna say this, so I'll say it for her," boom, and feel really good about doing that. And there's a lot more to it. I have thought about this. Uh, I mean, I could give you my- my sort of list of- of criteria, but it's- it's also fundamentally a... it's a feeling, which is why dating apps can be so incredibly time-consuming, because what you could learn, somebody please make a dating app where the sole purpose is to get people on a 10-minute video call.

Chris Williamson 50:51 Mm-hmm. (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 50:53 That's it. That's it. The stated purpose is just 10-minute video call-

Chris Williamson 50:56 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 50:56 ... and it's built intrinsically into the app. That's it. That's the only goal of the app because-

Chris Williamson 51:01 Like virtual speed dating.

Tim Ferriss 51:02 ... within two minutes, you know if there is some type of vibe.

Chris Williamson 51:05 Chemistry.

Tim Ferriss 51:06 You know if your spider sense is saying go or no go. And, uh, I would also say as someone who, in a sense, took my hypersensitivity offline because my senses are very sensitive. Like I am a very, not in a, uh, reactive sense, easily offended sense, but, uh, in the context of my- my senses being very high fidelity, I took that offline for a lot of my life due to childhood problems and so on. But bringing those back online was important, not just for dating, but also for navigating the fame stuff because as you have more notoriety, people are going to seek you out who you need to be wary of. And that's not all the time, it's not half of the people, but you will have people with ulterior motives. And so you want to be very tuned in, not to what your analytical mind is producing, but to what your pre-language evolved other means of assessment are telling you, what your body's telling you.

Chris Williamson 52:12 This is what I'm kind of obsessed by at the moment, that, uh, feeling feelings and integrating emotions is, um, I know it just seemed for a long time I had- I had a desire, I guess I still do, you know, to be seen as a- a legitimate thinker, like somebody who has intellectual horsepower and the capacity to be rational and do all the... and I, you know, went hardcore down the rationality movement and if- if only I can learn Shane Parrish's top 100 cognitive biases off by heart, then I, all of my problems, if I read- if I can recite Thinking Fast and Slow, all of my problems will be... Turns out that that doesn't particularly work. And one of the reasons it doesn't particularly work is that no matter how much you try to sort of clamp down on what's coming up, the thing that is coming up is the issue and papering over that crack over and over and over again results in you just playing emotional Groundhog Day and then having a- an increasingly, uh, complex cathedral of different architectures to try and... Hey.

Tim Ferriss 53:10 That was good.

Chris Williamson 53:11 Um, to try and, uh, architect a structure to account for it.

Tim Ferriss 53:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:14 And, um, I told you before, sort of big into this feeling feelings thing or trying to at the moment, and, um, yeah, finding not just being at the mercy of them, but not just totally being in cognitive horsepower mode and trying to integrate those together. And that's fundamentally what you're looking for with a partner as well. And-

Tim Ferriss 53:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 53:35 ... there's something in a relationship, uh, where you go, "Well, objectively all of the boxes have been ticked. Why can't I get my love attachments, lust side to trigger as well?" Like, look, the- all of the thing... I mean, if you look at the rating, the rating says-

Tim Ferriss 53:55 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:56 ... "You should be in a relationship with this person."

Tim Ferriss 53:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:58 And you go, "Yeah, but ultimately the heart wants what the heart wants." And you don't really get to reverse engineer that.

Tim Ferriss 54:07 Right.

Chris Williamson 54:07 And there can be an awful lot of shame and guilt. I've certainly felt this, an awful lot of shame and guilt around, um, having desires about being like, this is... the... I want a thing-

Tim Ferriss 54:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:21 ... who am I to want that thing? Who are you? Who are you to make demands of this? Should you not subjugate your desires in order to serve something which is safer or more peaceful or more familiar or more comfortable or whatever? Uh, and ultimately I think you are fighting a losing battle. Like your emotions are going to just rip you away from that over time.

Tim Ferriss 54:43 Yeah. If that X factor isn't there, it doesn't matter what you try to rack up in terms of spreadsheets.

Chris Williamson 54:48 (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 54:49 If it's not there, especially in the... it- it has to be there in the beginning.

Chris Williamson 54:53 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 54:53 You know, also-

Chris Williamson 54:54 Yeah. If the honeymoon period isn't good, like guess what? The- the marriage isn't gonna be good.

Tim Ferriss 54:57 And I'll also ask myself these days because it's what I'm looking for is, you know, in three to five years, could this person be my best friend? Let's say three years. And there's a lot that goes into that.And there's a lot that goes into that. So these are things that I think about. Uh, I am clear on my desires and what I want. I'm very clear on that. I don't have a-

Chris Williamson 55:19 Spreadsheet.

Tim Ferriss 55:19 ... I don't have too much, uh, co- conflict, I would say, about that.

Chris Williamson 55:25 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 55:25 I definitely have very specific things that I like, and that's important to be clear. I think where you get into trouble and where you end up being really unfair to people is if you are unclear on what you want.

Chris Williamson 55:36 Yep.

Tim Ferriss 55:36 And if you are unclear on aspects of yourself that you (laughs) ironically expect other people to understand when you yourself don't have a grasp of the basics of you yourself, uh, that's when you're unfair. But if, if you know what you like and you pursue what you want and what you feel that you need, uh, all the more power to you. I think clarity is power, and, you know, this is something I say for myself as much as anybody else, but, you know, life rewards the specific ask and punishes the vague wish. Like, you... Specificity. And you can leave the door open to serendipity, for sure, but are you in an environment, are you in a life that provides sufficient serendipity such that you can leave something like this purely to chance? I don't live in that life. I suspect you do not live in that life. You have a lot going on. So you have to have-

Chris Williamson 56:31 Intentionalism.

Tim Ferriss 56:32 ... you have to have some intention, and you have to... Well, "have to" is too strong a word, but have enough surface area, and I'm borrowing this from someone else, but surface area for luck to stick, but I think with some conditions so that you don't get seduced by the things that have led you astray in the past. Right?

Chris Williamson 56:50 Neil s-

Tim Ferriss 56:50 There are, there are certain archetypes that I'm very, very attracted to that I know are problematic-

Chris Williamson 56:54 Bad for me.

Tim Ferriss 56:54 ... from a compatibility perspective. It's not necessarily super unhealthy, but I know that it's not gonna be viable for me.

Chris Williamson 57:00 We've gone down this road before-

Tim Ferriss 57:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:02 ... unsuccessfully.

Tim Ferriss 57:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:03 Neil Strauss absolutely broke my brain last year where he said, "Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments."

Tim Ferriss 57:10 Mm. Yeah. Yeah, Clara Hughes-Johnson, uh, who helped build Stripe from, I don't know, a few hundred employees to 6,000 plus, she did basically every job, COO included, uh, she said to me recently... Well, she underscored the importance of making the implicit explicit. I just think so much pain can be avoided, so much can be achieved. Just make the implicit explicit.

Chris Williamson 57:34 Direct communication.

Tim Ferriss 57:35 Do not expect anyone to be a mind reader. When in doubt, spell it out. Easier said than done.

Chris Williamson 57:41 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 57:42 But, uh, I really try to live that.

Chris Williamson 57:44 I think so much, so much of that is habituated though, and it, it, it... The tone can be set, the rhythm can be set. In a friendship, you know, there will, there will be friends that you have, uh, family members that you have where you have a, a different cadence of, uh, communication and openness and honesty and, and everything than other people. Okay. So you can do it with some people. It is possible for you to set the tone-

Tim Ferriss 58:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:07 ... with particular people in that way. And again, this is something that needs to be very intentional, but it's kind of like a one-time, a one-time large decision that really sets the tone that you then just continue to top up. But if you start off from a place of the implicit being kept implicit, then when that changes, "Oh, this feels a little bit alien to me. This isn't really what I expected in the beginning."

Tim Ferriss 58:32 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 58:32 And, uh, yeah, I, I really think that the first two months of dating somebody are unbelievably important for setting expectations. "This is what we expect from each other. This is the way..." Like, "That's your,

Chris Williamson 58:48 uh, uh, January to, uh, March training window. That's the diet." You know? Like, the New Year's resolutions will be stuck to the best-

Tim Ferriss 58:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:55 ... and then you kind of have a... Hopefully coming to land at a nice appropriate level thereafter.

Tim Ferriss 59:00 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 59:00 One of the other things, uh, for better or worse that we're both, uh, familiar with is low mood.

Tim Ferriss 59:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:05 Um, what are the things that you do to pull yourself out of a funk? Or how would you advise people to better deal with depression and anxiety, a low mood?

Tim Ferriss 59:21 I really think an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure with this. So I, I try to prophylactically (laughs) have routines in place that seem to decrease the likelihood, including cold exposure, which for a long time was prescribed for melancholy, right? This is, this is not new.

Chris Williamson 59:39 What? Like medieval times?

Tim Ferriss 59:41 Uh, like 100, 200 years ago. Like, it was, it was a prescription cold baths for melancholy, AKA depression. So this is what (laughs) what is old is now new again. Uh, but, but certainly cold exposure. I would say without a doubt having a consistent exercise routine, and something's better than nothing. Like, the difference, the zero to one difference between no movement and some movement is (laughs) black and white. So even if it is just going for a 20-minute walk twice a day if you have a very packed day, schedule your calls around your walks. Social time, time with friends, which is where I disagree with some of the very strong denouncements of, say, alcohol, um, in the sense that, like, even one drink is terrible for you. That may be true from a strictly biochemical perspective, and I'm not advising you go out and get shit-faced five nights a week, but for instance, if one night a week I pre-schedule a group dinner on a Friday and I'm gonna cook with friends and that means we drink wine while we're cooking, if that alcohol acts as a super lube-, uh, a social lubricant and helps me connect with my friends, I think there's something to it, right? There are, there are social effects, not just biochemical effects. I don't drink very much, but, uh, the group interactions and scheduling those in advance. So on a yearly basis, I will block out-This is very important for me. And again, not obsessing on the daily routine, but thinking about the weekly, which we've dis- which we've discussed, thinking about the annual. So I block out multiple weeks every year to take trips with family and friends, and I have two that I'm organizing right now. These are week-long trips. There will be, let's call it six to 10 people in each group. Some will be slightly smaller for wilderness adventures, and those are blocked out for the year in advance. And this is really critical for a few reasons. It's not just about the experience. You have all of the group threads and excitement and training and prep and fantasizing and, you know, stupid dick meme jokes that guys swap or whatever in the WhatsApp groups (laughs) that lead up to the trip. Then you have the trip, and then you have all the memories and the shared experiences and the misadventures and the mishaps that you get so much juice out of these things, and those act for me as psychological safety nets. You always have something to look forward to if you-

Chris Williamson 1:02:23 That's a-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:23 ... have three or four of these a year.

Chris Williamson 1:02:25 ... that's a, a, and big part of the podcast I think for me. I think we're both kind of the same with this, that, um, the external accountability of someone being there, there is a time on the calendar someone is expecting you to be there.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:36 They are a guest. You probably respect them. You probably care about what they think about you. You probably want to perform well for them and also put them in a great light and, and, and be a springboard for them and their message because you're interested in what they've got to do. All of those things. It's like, you're not not showing up. I've never once... I've canceled, in my, my previous life as a club promoter, I would not show up for events, I would not show up for bits and pieces, 'cause I could always sort of work somebody else to go and do a thing if it was just me that had to do it. But as soon as o- even one other person was involved or 2,000 appearing at a nightclub, I'd be there and I would be there because there was accountability and there was, there was this expectation. I have never once canceled a podcast in 750 episodes, six and a half years, due to low mood. No matter how low the mood is-

Tim Ferriss 1:03:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:20 ... because there's, I, I, I, it, it gets taken out. It, it gets eroded away by my excitement to go and do the thing. And the same thing is true with a holiday, and the same thing is true with, uh, dinner with a friend, uh, the same thing. Like, it's the same reason why a training partner just makes so much sense when you can. Like, I'm... Every Saturday, for instance, in Austin, I do the same session, eh, with progressive overload, the same exercises with the same guy. We've done this for two years. It's one of my favorite days of the week. Saturday morning, I'm full of caffeine, it's shoulders, biceps, and triceps starting with calves. Best day of the week.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:54 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:56 (laughs) And I love it. And every single Saturday, no matter how shit the week's gone, no matter how bad I'm feeling, if we're available and we're both in the city, we both go and do it.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:03 So let me build on that and say another piece of managing or mitigating or preventing low mood for me is having some identity diversification, which means you're not just doing one thing. If you have your podcast, your startup, your job as the sole b- uh, barometer of your self-worth, there's so many factors outside of your control, or your investment portfolio, whatever it might be. If you are solely fixated on one thing, you're too vulnerable to black swan events or simply ups and downs due to variables that are outside of your control. So in contrast, if you have (laughs) your Saturday workout or you have your deadlift, you have rock climbing, you have archery, you have whatever it might be, in addition to your primary work, in addition to drawing, in addition to your relationship that you're trying to cultivate and deepen, if any one of those things is down, just like in a stock portfolio-

Chris Williamson 1:04:57 Correct. Correct.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:58 ... if they are somewhat uncorrelated, you can still have a good week. If you have a terrible week, but then you hit a PR on your Saturday workout...

Chris Williamson 1:05:06 We did it, baby.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:06 We did it.

Chris Williamson 1:05:07 Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:08 Pass.

Chris Williamson 1:05:08 Yeah, yeah. You're hedging, you're hedging your identity, you're hedging your sort of existential investment.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:15 Yeah, exactly. And that, that is very, very, very important to me that I have multiple tracks running at the same time, so that if, if one hits a roadblock, that it's, it's not just an existential spiral.

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Tim Ferriss 1:06:52 Yeah, I would say, uh, I would say one... I'll give, I'll give some that are perhaps more easily within reach of, of most people and easier to recommend. Honestly, group dinners. Three to four friends, group dinners, long group dinners. No alcohol. If I see low mood coming, then no alcohol, beca-

Chris Williamson 1:07:10 Because of the next day.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:11 Yeah. You're borrowing happiness from tomorrow as someone once put-

Chris Williamson 1:07:13 And there isn't much. (laughs) There isn't gonna be much tomorrow.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:16 ... as someone put it to me, and if you compromise your sleep-... for me, generally, low mood, if we want to call it depression, does not actually, it's not a first cause. For me, I would say it's, it's typically some type of anxious rumination, worrying about something. I compromise my sleep because I have onset insomnia. Then I consume too much caffeine, which further compromises my sleep. And then after three or four days, that's when the low mood/depressive symptoms show up.

Chris Williamson 1:07:44 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:45 So anything that compromises sleep, I try to avoid in that, in that period. Um-

Chris Williamson 1:07:50 Dinners, three-

Tim Ferriss 1:07:51 And there's some, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:51 ... three to four friends.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:52 Yeah, exactly. Dinners, three to four friends. I would say th- there are also a few other things which I'm very hesitant to mention because they come with a lot of caveats and a, a lot of people should be excluded because there are contraindications and risks. But I would say psychedelic-assisted therapies once or twice a year, and also something called accelerated TMS, which has been a recent discovery of mine. Although I've been familiar with the TMS technology for more than a decade, but the more recent iteration of accelerated TMS, which is-

Chris Williamson 1:08:25 What's T- TMS?

Tim Ferriss 1:08:26 TMS is transcranial magnetic stimulation. It's a type of brain stimulation. It's a type of brain stimulation. A- and this particular protocol has been pioneered by a number of people. One of the better known is Dr. Nolan Williams who's out of Stanford. And you're effectively taking traditional TMS where you might have 30-plus treatments over several months and compressing it into one week. So you're doing 10 treatment sessions a day for five days, so you're doing 50 sessions of brain stimulation over five days.

Chris Williamson 1:08:58 How long are they?

Tim Ferriss 1:08:59 They're very short. Uh, they're, in my experience, eight to 10 minutes. They're not painful. They can be uncomfortable for some people, but it feels like a m- a mild finger flick on the head. Very tolerable. And I will say that this right now is the technology and the intervention that has my interest very solidly, above and beyond psychedelic-assisted therapies, which I've focused on since 2015-

Chris Williamson 1:09:28 Wow.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:28 ... in a public, forward-facing-

Chris Williamson 1:09:30 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:30 ... supporting science type of capacity. Because the psychedelic treatments are not widely available, there are quite a few hurdles left to pass from a regulatory perspective and also from a scientific perspective. Let's just say that people with a family history of schizophrenia, BPD, borderline personality disorder, people who might have some h- some family history of leaning towards the chaos side of things as opposed to rigidity. Rigidity might be OCD-

Chris Williamson 1:10:01 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:03 ... chronic or treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, which I, I view, and I'm not a psychiatrist or a doctor, I don't play one on the internet, but as, as forms of thought loops and rigidity. Those seem to respond reasonably well in some people to psychedelic-assisted therapy. But there are also people, even though these compounds like psilocybin are not intrinsically physiologically toxic, you can still have intense psychological experiences and, say, if someone has very high blood pressure or cardiac issues, I think that many of them should not take psychedelics, even if they're physiologically well tolerated and normals.

Chris Williamson 1:10:38 Unless accelerated TMS is safer.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:40 Accelerated TMS has a, a much more favorable safety profile for people who would fall into a lot of these categories. It's still very preliminary. I would say there are a few hundred people, probably sub 1,000, who have been treated using accelerated TMS. But the results that I've seen, the effect sizes, the transformations in people directly that I've seen are pretty remarkable. And for me, the most durable reduction in anxiety, the most durable, dramatic reduction in all forms of insomnia has come after accelerated TMS, which I did for the-

Chris Williamson 1:11:17 One week.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:18 ... for the second time. I did two rounds. And the first round ended up, uh, using one particular device with more of a shotgun pattern. That didn't work for me because, f- for lack of a, a more technical way to put it, the on-off switch for the anxiosomatic target in my brain, um, are too close together, so they were hitting both the on and the off switch, so they basically canceled the effects out. And this is a theory. But with more precise neuro-targeting using fMRI and then, uh, this particular mapping technology, the second time around, it did work. And it's been, it's been pretty remarkable. You should not DIY this. There are lots of, there are-

Chris Williamson 1:12:00 (laughs) You mean I can't just get a car battery and-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:02 There, there are-

Chris Williamson 1:12:02 ... slap that sucker on?

Tim Ferriss 1:12:02 ... lots of videos online of people buying things off of Amazon and DIYing this. You can fuck yourself up in a big way. Do not try at-home brain stimulation. You're gonna win a Darwin Award. Don't do it.

Chris Williamson 1:12:17 Wow, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:18 Uh, but this is something that I see at the forefront of potential mental health interventions for treatment-resistant depression, for anxiety, for conditions like OCD, although OCD I think appears to be a little trickier. Uh, so th- those would be my truly in-case-of-emergency break glass, but what's important to note is that I have these things pre-scheduled, right? I'm not waiting until I'm in a really acute space.

Chris Williamson 1:12:48 Which is the time when you are least likely to be, to have the motivation to be able to book in a-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:53 Right. If we come back to state, story, strategy, right? What's your state? Terrible, depressive, personalized, permanent. This is, this is, "How could I be like this? I'm always like this. I'm never gonna be able to fix this." So what's your story? (laughs) "It's not worth even trying. Should I even continue..." ...you have this. So your strategy is gonna be-

Chris Williamson 1:13:13 Dog shit.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:14 ... dog shit or non-existent. Uh, I would say in very, very acute situations if someone has suicidal ideation, then I think-There is a place for intravenous or intramuscular ketamine treatment in clinics. But I will say, I've seen more high functioning people unravel in the last three years from ketamine than any other substance in terms of addiction. It is very, very psychologically addictive. And that has not had enough airplay.

Chris Williamson 1:13:44 Have you, uh, been exposed to this ketamine oxytocin nasal spray that is being —

Tim Ferriss 1:13:50 Yeah, I've seen it floating around.

Chris Williamson 1:13:51 ... floating around Austin? Yeah. I mean —

Tim Ferriss 1:13:53 Yeah. You should not have ketamine at home, in my opinion. It's a dissociative anesthetic.

Chris Williamson 1:13:57 You mean, in, in something that takes point one of a second to just ...

Tim Ferriss 1:14:01 Yeah. It's, it's being treated like hangover-free alcohol. And I hate to tell people, but there's no biological free lunch. And in the short term, you do not get automatically punished for using ketamine, which creates the illusion that there is no cost. In the long term, you can make yourself much more susceptible to depression, so it actually has the inverse effect of the —

Chris Williamson 1:14:21 So, it really is a break glass type —

Tim Ferriss 1:14:23 Acute.

Chris Williamson 1:14:23 ... scenario.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:24 Yeah. I don't, I don't plan on personally using ketamine myself. I do know a number of people who have had their lives positively transformed and have not succumbed to any type of addiction. In every case, that is supervised in-clinic use once or twice a year.

Chris Williamson 1:14:41 You mean my season in Ibiza in 2010 doesn't count?

Tim Ferriss 1:14:44 Yeah, the Camelback full of ketamine doesn't count.

Chris Williamson 1:14:47 What a shame.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:48 Yeah.

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Chris Williamson 1:15:37 in the show notes below or heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. Do you think deep thinkers are more lonely?

Tim Ferriss 1:15:56 Yeah, my knee-jerk response to that would be yes, for sure. I think anyone who is very heady and trapped in the song of me, me, me, in the sense of, like, recursive thought, is going to likely feel isolated. And I would say that there may be some argument to be made that with that superpower comes a secondary function, which is like a shielding function to not feel, to divorce yourself from certain bodily sensations, which is part of the reason, not to drag this back into ketamine, why ketamine is so seductive for type A, highly analytical males. And, uh, it's not to say that women can't become addicted, but from what I've seen, it is predominantly male who want to avoid feeling something. And that could be subconscious or it could be conscious, but it serves the same purpose as alcohol. So if you, if your family or you have ever used alcohol to take the edge off, you are susceptible to ketamine addiction, is what I would say.

Chris Williamson 1:17:04 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:05 Similarly, you are susceptible to basically viewing your consciousness and existence from the neck up. And I think both can have severe side effects in terms of social side effects, hmm, sort of psycho-emotional side effects, certainly.

Chris Williamson 1:17:23 There's a, a quote from Alain de Botton where he says, "Loneliness is a kind of tax we have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind."

Tim Ferriss 1:17:32 I don't know if I agree with that.

Chris Williamson 1:17:34 So I used to.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:35 I think it can be a tax.

Chris Williamson 1:17:36 I used to. Um, I... The position that I've arrived at now, especially since moving to Austin, which is kind of full of cultural psychological refugees from other places where they maybe didn't fit in in any case, uh, is that you just maybe need to work harder to find your tribe.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:17:55 That, um, your, uh, psychological, uh, non-typicalness, uh, will mean that you are out toward the edges of whatever bell curve of normal, of normalness you are. So it's gonna be fewer people are going to get you, but I actually think that that's fine because the people that you do find that you do like and do get on with you will also have that, like, oasis in the middle of the desert sensation that's like, "Oh, dude, you get me." Like, "You, you think about this too."

Tim Ferriss 1:18:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:18:26 And I, I, I think while, while I was still living in the UK, I was struggling to connect with people. I, you know, met a million people across my career of standing on the front door of nightclubs, and I had a handful of friends, most of whom I worked with in one form or another.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:18:42 That's not a fantastic friend exposure to conversion ratio. Like, my marketing funnel wasn't marketing, right? It wasn't converting. Uh, I should speak to Toby. And then I came to Austin, and I realized that, well, there is a bit more. Like, there, it's not been as hard. And maybe that's starting to self-select because people kind of are seeking me out, and obviously, you know, like, advantages of fame, I suppose, or at least of, like, being front-facing. Um, but I, I think that in the wrong groups, yes, loneliness can be a kind of tax you have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind.

Tim Ferriss 1:19:22 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:19:23 But it also offers you the opportunity...... like, the only way out is through. And through means working maybe a bit harder to find people that are like the people that you want to be around.

Tim Ferriss 1:19:34 Yeah, I also, I also feel like those who are good at thinking sometimes become hammers looking for nails. I know that's true for me, in the sense-

Chris Williamson 1:19:46 What do you mean?

Tim Ferriss 1:19:46 ... that we think, for instance, and this, this might not be explicit, but that we can cogitate our way into equanimity, inner peace-

Chris Williamson 1:19:57 You mean we can't-

Tim Ferriss 1:19:57 ... and there's-

Chris Williamson 1:19:57 I can't do that?

Tim Ferriss 1:19:58 ... and there's this fetishizing of independence, especially in the US-

Chris Williamson 1:20:01 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:02 ... where if you look for apes, monkeys, (laughs) certainly, historically, hominids who were lone survivors, I don't think you're gonna find them, right? We are interdependent, and as a species, we have evolved to co-exist. So for me, I used to view loneliness as a failure of self, like a failure of discipline, a failure of resilience, a failliance, uh, a failure of inner narrative, something like that. I think it's much, much simpler in the sense (laughs) that loneliness is usually a failure of group activities in your calendar. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:20:41 (laughs) You know, it's not-

Tim Ferriss 1:20:42 Just, just like you might be doing morning pages for an hour trying to figure out the riddles of your life and the complexities of your pain. It's like, no, you just need some macadamia nuts and a-

Chris Williamson 1:20:49 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:49 ... cup of water and a shower.

Chris Williamson 1:20:51 You haven't trained in four days.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:52 Yeah, yeah, you have low blood sugar. Go eat something.

Chris Williamson 1:20:55 Yeah, I think, uh, I tweeted this out the other day, 90% of problems can be fixed by a good night's sleep, a glass of walk- water, a talk with a friend, or a training session.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:05 Yeah, yeah, and I, I, I also will often say to my significant others, I'll just say, "Look, if I'm trying to, like, reason my way out of something and you just see me grinding the gears in my head at the table with a notebook, just tell me to go lift some heavy stuff for an hour."

Chris Williamson 1:21:22 Great success.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:23 Yeah, just like, "Tell me to go lift some heavy stuff for a bit."

Chris Williamson 1:21:27 Lots of people that are listening might

Chris Williamson 1:21:28 feel, uh,