How to Quiet the Ruminative Mind and Avoid The Traps of Self-Help — Tim Ferriss

1. 0:00 – 0:41

   Preview.

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      You wanna play soccer, but first you're gonna read all the textbooks and get a master's degree and PhD in soccer, and then you're gonna practice dribbling and penalty shots and so on by yourself, and you wanna become as perfect a player as possible by yourself before you ever actually get on the field and play the game of soccer. And you can start to believe that you're playing soccer by yourself. There's always more room for improvement. You're never going to be perfect, and if you get caught in that trap, which is the partial trap of self-help, you're always polishing this self and you never actually fucking play soccer. [laughs]

2. 0:41 – 4:52

   The simple social secret that has me feeling better than self-help and isolation ever did.

   1. DHDan Harris0:45

      [mouse clicking] [bell dings] Tim Ferriss, welcome back to the show.

   2. TFTim Ferriss0:48

      Thank you, sir. Nice to be back. Nice to see you.

   3. DHDan Harris0:51

      Likewise. Let me ask you a, a [chuckles] a ridiculously basic question, but I think maybe deceptively, um, simple. I actually never know how to s- ... Is it deceptively complex or deceptively simple? Anyway, um, my question really is, how are you? Like, how you doing these days? Um-

   4. TFTim Ferriss1:09

      Mm-hmm

   5. DHDan Harris1:09

      ... uh, you've, you've f- you've publicly kind of gone on a, on a ride, um-

   6. TFTim Ferriss1:15

      Mm-hmm

   7. DHDan Harris1:15

      ... with your own, uh, talking about your own stuff, some of it-

   8. TFTim Ferriss1:18

      Mm-hmm

   9. DHDan Harris1:18

      ... quite heavy, and I'm just curious, like, how, how are you?

   10. TFTim Ferriss1:23

       That is a both deceptively simple and complex question. My answer, thankfully, is really straightforward. Better than ever. I feel absolutely fantastic. We could dive into how and why that's the case if you'd like, but I would say, keeping it short and sweet for the moment, I would say fantastic. Better than ever, mind, body, soul, psycho-emotionally, f- musculo-skeletally. [laughs]

   11. DHDan Harris1:53

       [laughs]

   12. TFTim Ferriss1:53

       Uh, really feeling, uh, holistically very good, optimistic, and we could keep going, so I'll let you take that anywhere you'd like to.

   13. DHDan Harris2:06

       I love to hear it, and, uh, seriously, I really do love to hear it, and, and-

   14. TFTim Ferriss2:10

       Yeah

   15. DHDan Harris2:10

       ... I would be curious to follow up and hear from you, like, what, what, what has brought you to this point?

   16. TFTim Ferriss2:16

       Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would say a few things. So one of the risks of personal development, or let's just call it more broadly self-help, is that it can very easily become self-infatuation or self-obsession.

   17. DHDan Harris2:34

       Yes.

   18. TFTim Ferriss2:34

       And the counterbalance to that, the bet that offsets it is, dun, dun, dun, it's very simple: relationships, really doubling down, tripling down on relationships. We are evolved to be a social species, and whenever you are in isolation, physically or simply in thought loops in your own head, that tends to catalyze or f- worsen tremendously any type of instability, or OCD, or depression, or anxiety, or fill-in-the-blank psychiatric condition. So my policies that, which were already in place last time we spoke, that I have really continued to invest into are doing a past year review every year, looking at my top relationships that are nourishing, energizing, energy in as opposed to energy out, and then blocking out time in advance for the entire year for extended periods of time with those people. Now, extended will depend on your circumstances. For me, that could be anywhere from a long weekend to a week, spending, say, five days in the wilderness in Montana with some of my oldest, closest friends, et cetera, et cetera. And that will do, not to denigrate therapy in any way, but sometimes talking more about your problems, if it were to solve all of your problems, would have worked already. And there's a place for talk therapy.

   19. DHDan Harris4:13

       [laughs]

   20. TFTim Ferriss4:13

       [laughs] There's a place for talk therapy, but it is not, nor does it need to be, the only tool in the toolkit. So simply spending time around your silly, dumb, amazing friends and laughing, whether it's around a bottle of wine, or a meal, or a campfire, really, really goes a long way. So that's one piece of it. Second piece is to maybe, uh, hit a familiar thread, is very consistent meditation, typically twice daily, 10 minutes, very, very straightforward in my case.

3. 4:52 – 9:25

   70%–80% depression remission with accelerated TMS and the SAINT Protocol.

   1. TFTim Ferriss4:52

      And then also, if we're going out to the edges a bit, technologically speaking, there is something that some of your listeners may have never heard of, which is accelerated TMS. TMS stands for transcranial magnetic stimulation. It's a type of brain stimulation that has existed for decades, but the hardware and the software, everything about these technologies has improved dramatically in the last five to 10 years, particularly in, I would say, the last five years, uh, thanks to certain researchers like Nolan Williams out of Stanford, who sadly passed away in the last six months, and others. But what accelerated TMS looks like is typically up to, let's just call it maybe one or two years ago, accelerated TMS takes what you might do in conventional TMS over several months, where you go in and you, you have this paddle put against your head. It produces a magnetic field that, just to keep it very simple, either, uh, excites or inhibits certain parts of your brain, certain types of circuitry, and that can be applied to depression, it can be applied to neurodegenerative diseases, in fact, in some cases. It can be applied to anxiety, OCD, and so on, depending on the target where, where you place these coils. And in the case of accelerated TMS, you're taking what you might do over three, four, five months, and you're compressing it into one week. So every hour on the hour, 10 hours a day for one week, you're going in and getting, let's just call it a few minutes, three to nine minutes of pulses on your brain, and then you take 50 minutes off, you go back in, you get hit again. And that has been referred to, at least in one format, the SAINT Protocol, S-A-I-N-T. They've shied away from it, but it was developed at Stanford, and the SAINT Protocol in many, let's call them patients, produces 70, 80% remission of depression that is quite durable. It's not one shot, you're done. Typically, people will, let's just say, do a five-day sequence, then they might go in and have one to three-day booster sequences three months, six months later. Um, and this technology has tremendous effects. I've experimented with this over the last handful of years, and the first time I did it, it had near miraculous results. I had-- I went from having severe, and I've been officially diagnosed, so this is not, uh, just throwing it around loosely, but, you know, moderate severe OCD with lots of rumination. I'm not flipping light switches or washing my hands, but I have these ruminative loops that I get caught in. People, I'm sure some listening can identify with this, where you just can't turn off these kind of compulsive thought loops. Could be a grudge, could be a fear, could be something you're planning for, could be a conversation you need to have. It just loops and loops and loops, which causes insomnia, which causes, uh, fatigue and just general, uh, general wearing down of the system, which leads to depression. That's-- I've realized that's my sequence. It actually starts with anxiety, not depression out of the gate. And I was having, let's just call it seven, eight out of 10 symptoms when I went in to the first treatment I did of five days. That's really severe for people who are [chuckles] not clear. Like, it's really, really severe. Like, it's affecting every aspect of my life. Had the treatment. There was a delayed onset, and even the scientists most involved with this don't really have a great explanation for how or why this would happen. But nothing really happened for two, three weeks, and then f-flipped a switch and had basically zero anxiety, zero rumination for let's call it three to four months. I've never experienced anything like it, and that includes psychedelic-assisted therapies, which I know very well and have supported a lot of science, uh, underlying. Now, this is a bit of a long answer, I realize, but for people who are interested, I really recommend the conversation I did with Nolan Williams. Then there are different types of hardware. But I tried it then with boosters several times afterwards. Null effect. Zero. Didn't work.

4. 9:25 – 13:32

   One day of TMS + an old tuberculosis antibiotic flipped the OCD switch to near-zero.

   1. SPSpeaker9:25

      Hmm.

   2. TFTim Ferriss9:25

      And I started to lose hope again s-because I thought-

   3. SPSpeaker9:31

      Hmm

   4. TFTim Ferriss9:31

      ... this was gonna be a replicable, reliable tool that I could use. I was so excited, and then f- I did a Hail Mary kind of last-ditch round with the accelerated TMS recently. I did this in Northern California. And instead of doing five days, so keep in mind, it's like let's just call it three months of TMS gets compressed into five days. Instead of doing five days, I did one day, but I pre-dosed with something called dicycloverine. And dicycloverine, [chuckles] or DCS as it's sometimes referred to in the literature, is h- in many ways an antiquated antibiotic that used to be used for tuberculosis, uh, and sometimes urinary tract infections, which affects the NMDA receptors in such a way. I think it's a partial antagonist. It might be an agonist, so don't quote me on it. But the, the point is, this, this little drug that is not typically used anymore is a catalyst for neuroplasticity, and when you take this beforehand, you can do something like one day of accelerated TMS, and sometimes the results are better than what you previously, let's just call it seven years ago, would get from three, four months. And I did one day, and Dan, y- this time around, boom, it was just like a switch basically the next day, and it has now been two or three months, and I don't want to set expectations that it'll be this way for everyone. It seems to be particularly effective, yes, for depression, but per-- it seems to be particularly effective in a very small sample size at this point for anxiety and OCD. Uh, and man, it's just, it's just a different life. It is a different life. So all of those things in combination, plus the basics, right? The kind of bac- basic macronutrients of health, exercise, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, diet, and so on, um, are just, are just doing their job together. The last one I'll throw in, and then I'll shut up because I realize this has turned into a TED Talk, is, um-

   5. SPSpeaker11:53

      [laughs]

   6. TFTim Ferriss11:54

      [laughs] Intermittent ketosis. So the ketogenic diet and ketosis overall, which can be achieved a few different ways, which I'm in right now, is absolutely phenomenal for addressing a lot of psychiatric pains, psychoemotional pains that Are failing to be treated by medication. And there's something called-

   7. DHDan Harris12:18

      Mm

   8. TFTim Ferriss12:18

      ... metabolic psychiatry. Chris Palmer out of Harvard and other have, have looked at this very closely. All right. [laughs] Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. [laughs]

   9. DHDan Harris12:29

      I just want to assure you, TED Talks are welcome here. Yeah, you're a podcaster. Uh, you know-

   10. TFTim Ferriss12:33

       [laughs]

   11. DHDan Harris12:33

       ... uh, um, long answers are fine. Um, so please delete that sheep- sheepishness from, from your mind. Um-

   12. TFTim Ferriss12:40

       [laughs] All right, will do.

   13. DHDan Harris12:42

       I have a million follow-up questions. Let me just say, just high level, a different life, those three words really-

   14. TFTim Ferriss12:50

       Mm-hmm

   15. DHDan Harris12:50

       ... I- just makes me very happy to hear that that's-

   16. TFTim Ferriss12:53

       Thank you

   17. DHDan Harris12:54

       ... what's going on for you.

   18. TFTim Ferriss12:55

       Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Yeah, it's, it is impossible, I think, to overstate the difference between an 8 out of 10 of nonstop ruminative monkey mind with a fixation on, uh, things that are anxiety-producing to getting to like a one or two out of 10. Like, those are two different lived experiences. They are not-

   19. DHDan Harris13:19

       Yeah, yeah

   20. TFTim Ferriss13:20

       ... they, they are so far apart from each other. It's, it's really remarkable.

   21. DHDan Harris13:25

       So you mentioned transcranial, is it magnetic stimulation, TMS?

   22. TFTim Ferriss13:29

       Magnetic stimulation.

   23. DHDan Harris13:31

       Yeah.

   24. TFTim Ferriss13:31

       Mm-hmm.

5. 13:32 – 18:11

   The pros and cons of TMS accessibility.

   1. DHDan Harris13:32

      I will drop a link in the show notes for people who want to listen to Tim's, uh, conversation with Nolan Williams. Um, but I, with the caveat of course that you're, you're not the, the, the researcher doing, you know-

   2. TFTim Ferriss13:45

      Right

   3. DHDan Harris13:45

      ... the, the, the world's leading expert. You're, you're, um, more of the guinea pig and the, the patient. But can you tell us like a little bit more about how, uh, or is TMS widely available? Is it a th- a-

   4. TFTim Ferriss13:56

      Yeah

   5. DHDan Harris13:56

      ... thing that average people can access? And also like-

   6. TFTim Ferriss13:59

      Mm-hmm

   7. DHDan Harris13:59

      ... how strong is the evidence?

   8. TFTim Ferriss14:02

      All right. I'm happy to tackle that with, as you said, the disclaimer, I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on the internet. But I do spend a lot of time in these waters. So what I'll say is that the evidence for TMS broadly, there are decades of evidence with different applications of TMS. And then if, as we look at accelerated TMS, there's actually, I would say, a very compelling body of evidence. Once we get into the, the vanguard, which is always risky, right? You don't necessarily want to be one of the first hundred monkeys shot into space, but in this particular case, the pain was great enough that I decided to opt in. Then you're getting into the bleeding edge, which is this d-cycloserine, so DCS plus TMS. That's very much at the outer reaches. I would say at least based on the clinic that I went to and maybe overall for all I know, I am one of perhaps 60 patients with OCD/generalized anxiety disorder who have been treated that way. So it's a very small number. In terms of accessibility, there are... Let me start from the top in, in no particular order, but I'll just say that there's a hardware stack so that the two companies that I'm most familiar with which make hardware that I've used myself are Brainsway, that's one company, and then another one is MagVenture. And the, the hardware are different, but th- I know people who have responded very well to both of them, right? So you can-

   9. DHDan Harris15:49

      Mm

   10. TFTim Ferriss15:49

       ... you can vet certain providers, I would say. Not saying this is the only way. I'm not saying it's fair. Perhaps there are other technologies out there. But there, there, as you would expect, is a, is a fair, there's a fair bolus of fly-by-night operations that are promising miracles and offering quote unquote TMS that is actually not following any protocol whatsoever. And, uh, I, I think that's very unethical. But Brainsway, MagVenture are two types of hardware and then you really want to look... It is c- it, it is available is the short answer. Accelerated TMS is available in a lot of major cities. It is not as widely distributed as I would like, uh, because it is generally not covered by insurance. Accelerated TMS is generally not covered. TMS, let's just call it conventional TMS, is often covered by insurance depending on the indication. But accelerated TMS where you're basically taking a week off work and just getting your brains zapped 10 hours a day [laughs] for five days straight, typically not covered. And, um, part of why I'm so excited about the implications if the data scale and are robust and show con- uh, comparable or superior results with the, with this pre-administration of this drug, is that the ability of anyone, whether they are average, uh, less kind of financially stable or very well-heeled of taking one day off of work is not only logistically so much easier if they're able to pre-administer with this DCS, but it should be much less expensive. Right? So I'm hoping even if people have to pay out of pocket that these breakthroughs, hopefully they're breakthroughs with, uh, combination therapies of TMS, accelerated TMS and d-cycloserine will, will really make it much more widely available. That's my hope.

   11. DHDan Harris17:59

       Yeah.

   12. TFTim Ferriss17:59

       It's gonna take a little while, but it, it, it is available. I know there are clinics in, for instance, New York. I know there are clinics- in California and Chicago that are credible. Um, they may exist in other places

6. 18:11 – 22:33

   Dan's parallel confession: The "desertification" of social life under workaholism.

   1. TFTim Ferriss18:11

      as well.

   2. DHDan Harris18:11

      The other thing you mentioned in terms of, you know, having a different life is, is your focus on relationships. I s- I saw myself in that answer. You know, that was a thing I... There was a kind of desertification or desertification, or I don't know how you pronounce it, of my social life for many years because I was-

   3. TFTim Ferriss18:28

      Mm-hmm

   4. DHDan Harris18:28

      ... such a careerist and such a workaholic, and then in recent years have really turned that around, and I see such a massive difference in my mental health. I, I'm curious, like you, you mentioned that in recent years you've, at the top of every year, you kind of make a plan to see the people who, to use the cliche, fill your cup. Um-

   5. TFTim Ferriss18:48

      Mm-hmm

   6. DHDan Harris18:49

      ... had you gone through a period like I w- like I did, where there was a, a certain amount of isolation or, um, a, in at- inattention to this, to this lever?

   7. TFTim Ferriss19:00

      Oh, for sure. And I think there were a few different reasons for that. Uh, I don't know if hindsight's 20/20, but I think it's easier to see from my vantage point now that... And it's a balancing act because there's, there's compulsive socializing because you are incredibly uncomfortable or afraid of being alone-

   8. DHDan Harris19:26

      Yeah

   9. TFTim Ferriss19:26

      ... or with yourself.

   10. DHDan Harris19:28

       Yeah.

   11. TFTim Ferriss19:28

       Right? There's compulsive socializing to distract yourself, like protect yourself from yourself, which is problematic. And then there's compulsive isolation, and I would say I probably leaned far more towards the compulsive isolation, and there were two reasons for that. One was workaholism back in the day, for sure, and I just felt like I was more effective, able to produce more, able to focus on business, finances, whatever it might be, in isolation, and there might be some truth to that. Then I would say there was also this belief that I think at the time was really implicit, I don't think I explicitly grasped it, which was, and I've, I've written this incredibly long essay that maybe I'll publish at some point, but [laughs] talking about some of the dangers of self-help, and one of them is the following, which ties into what we're talking about and leaning towards isolation. This implicit belief, or explicit, that you need to work on yourself and fix yourself and, quote unquote, "do the work," and then you'll be ready to interact with other people and have a significant relationship and engage with your family, if that is an option [laughs] or you want it to be an option, et cetera, et cetera. So in effect, the, the analogy that I've drawn for some friends is you wanna play soccer, but first you're gonna read all the textbooks and get a master's degree and PhD in soccer. And then you're gonna practice dribbling and penalty shots and so on by yourself. And, m- and you wanna become as perfect a player as possible by yourself before you ever actually get on the field and play the game of soccer. And you can start to believe that you're playing soccer by yourself. There's always more room for improvement. You're never going to be perfect. And if you get caught in that trap, which is the partial trap of self-help, you're always polishing this self, and it can become this real recursive, dangerous trap, this fixation on the self. And you never actually fucking play soccer. [laughs] Like the whole-

   12. DHDan Harris21:54

       [laughs]

   13. TFTim Ferriss21:56

       And at a point, you start to believe that you are, but you're not. You're simulating by yourself life, but not actually engaging with life. And I have, who knows, maybe this is a function of getting older. I don't think so necessarily, but for so many decades, I was interested in the cutting edge, the cutting edge of everything. And I still am, but I've become interested equally in things that have lasted millennia, [laughs] or more than millennia. And

7. 22:33 – 23:35

   "It's the relationships, stupid." Evolutionary biology meets self-improvement.

   1. TFTim Ferriss22:33

      I recommend if you're trying to learn how the latest LLMs differ from one another, et cetera, you also spend some time looking at evolutionary biology and studying [laughs] the things that we have evolved to optimize for, to experience. And man, it's just like, I think it was Reaganomics, right? It, it's the economy, stupid. It's the relationship, stupid, right? If you don't have like physical contact with people, if you don't [laughs] have these in real life physical experiences, if you model that in animals, they become a complete disaster, right? They exhibit the same types of behaviors that we now see spiking in humans, anxiety, depression, lethargy, sitting in a cage not doing anything. Like we need this type of contact. Um, so, uh, I, I'd say that I've sort of offset the bleeding edge with the very, very super dull edge of things that have lasted a long time.

   2. DHDan Harris23:33

      Amen.

8. 23:35 – 25:30

   What you're optimizing for should come before how.

   1. DHDan Harris23:35

      Um, you, you, you mentioned, and th-this may... What, the question I'm about to ask might bring us back to your unpublished essay about the dangers of self-help. Um, but you, you mentioned the word optimizing, and in some way, in some ways, I kind of think of you as like the proto optimizer, um, you know, four-hour workweek and, um-

   2. TFTim Ferriss23:57

      Sure

   3. DHDan Harris23:57

      ... and I'm just curious where you are on self-optimization now.

   4. TFTim Ferriss24:05

      Yep. I would say that I still focus on certain areas to optimize. I still pull certain lever, levers and what I would say I have become much better at, and it takes practice, it's gonna sound so rudimentary, is asking simply, "What are you optimizing for?" before you optimize. [laughs] "What, why are you optimizing?" And it's easy, I would say, particularly if you are being shaped by social media, which seems to basically offer you the seven deadly or cardinal sins on a silver platter. You get to take your, pick your poison. If you're being shaped by that, then you can end up optimizing without a direction necessarily or a question. You haven't interrogated the direction, and that could be because you're following someone online who's a multi-billion dollar real estate developer/serial entrepreneur/fill in the blank, and the chase for money is on. But that never really gets interrogated. I think The 4-Hour Workweek does a good job of, of breaking down kind of work for work's sake and money for money's sake.

9. 25:30 – 28:23

   Health optimization made personal.

   1. TFTim Ferriss25:30

      So for me, I have three relatives right now with rapidly progressing Alzheimer's disease, including those who do not have the genotype if we look at, say, APOE status, right? They're APOE 3-3, whereas I'm APOE 3-4, so that's scary. There are other factors to consider for Alzheimer's. I am doing things to try not to die from something that is hopefully preventable on the, uh, from the perspective of cardiac health, cardiovascular health, and then also trying to mitigate my risk of neurodegenerative dis- uh, disease. And that's why I'm in ketosis right now, for instance. And, you know, jury's out on some of this, but very plausibly there are mechanisms by which going into ketosis on a fairly regular basis for a few weeks at a time, let's just say in my case two or three times a year, sh- may have neuroprotective effects, also anti-cancer effects. And people can listen to my interviews with Dominic D'Agostino, who's a researcher out of Florida, or other people for the, the science behind this. And it's, it's, it's a, it's also an intervention, and this comes back to your question about optimizing, that is very, very well studied in the sense that I h- I have very high confidence that the downside risk is low and very manageable. Whereas if you're just mainlining GLP-1 agonists, amazing results that we've seen in the literature so far, but have we had anyone on these for 10, 20 years? No. Uh, at least not 20 years. Maybe some w- of the, one of the first monkeys shot into space, like me with the accelerated TMS and the DCS, has been on for that period of time. And that doesn't mean don't use GLP-1 agonists, but understand that there are a lot of unknown unknowns. With the ketogenic diet, it's like, look, kids... The ketogenic diet in its modern incarnation using heavy cream or other types of fats was designed for epileptic children, right? And this goes back probably 100 years at this point, if not 100 years close to it. And, uh, humans have the metabolic machinery to go into ketosis and have had that machinery for millennia upon millennia upon millennia. So that would be an example of something that passes th- it passes the test for me of th- s- seemingly credible upside potential, even if we don't understand all the mechanisms, limited downside potential, uh, that I can offset with certain prescription drugs, let's just say, because I'm a cholesterol hyperabsorber, and okay, great. We're gonna do that.

10. 28:23 – 30:28

    Intermittent fasting: Just changing when I eat has been the single biggest needle-mover for my bloodwork.

    1. TFTim Ferriss28:23

       Intermittent fasting would be another one. So eve- during ketosis or outside of ketosis, the one thing that has most dramatically changed my blood tests with respect to specifically insulin sensitivity and avoiding pre-diabetes, which runs rampant in my family, intermittent fasting. In my case, that means I'm eating within an eight-hour window each day, typically like, might be even a little shorter, like 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., and that's it. I just don't eat until 2:00 p.m. or 3:00 p.m. And for some folks, it's probably argu- arguably better for you if you do like a 12 noon to 8:00 p.m. kind of eating window. It's also called time-restricted feeding. There's a lot of good science for this, not just in animal models, but in humans. And the results I've seen from that are just absolutely incredible, and it's so simple because you don't actually need to change what you eat, you're just changing when you eat. Um, so those would be two that people might think of as optimizing. And then I'm taking a handful of prescription drugs to offset the cardiovascular risk because y- it doesn't matter if I am eating an all-fat diet, an all-protein diet, a vegan diet, a fill-in-the-blank diet. There are certain biomarkers that are just trash. They're so bad [laughs] and that seems to be just straight from the code, straight from DNA. And for that reason, I'm like, "Ah, I'm no spring chicken anymore. You know what? I think I'll just bite the bullet and, and take some of these." And if it's helpful for folks, the way I think about that, because I think I, I have-- And, uh, I'm partially to blame for this, 'cause I did a lot of really out there stuff in, say, "The 4-Hour Body" which, uh, much of which, most of which stands up to scrutiny now 15 years later. But I was pushing the envelope with that.

11. 30:28 – 35:12

    Working with your doctors: Replicate tests, respect diurnal cycles, and resist the four-drug opening salvo.

    1. TFTim Ferriss30:28

       When, for instance, I talk with my doctors now, then I'll... This is only gonna take another minute or two, but it might be helpful to people. The first thing is, if you have a blood test and something is out of range, my recommendation would be before you get on 12 different drugs to deal with it... And if it's an emergency, it's an emergency. But if it's not an emergency, right, like your triglycerides are, are high. All right. Well, it's probably not gonna kill you in the next week. My recommendation would be talk to your doctor, replicate the test. Do the test again the next week, maybe on a different day, and see if you can replicate the error. Because, for instance, if you had a heavy weekend of drinking or ate a fatty meal the night before, and then you do your blood test 8:00 AM the next morning fasted well, [chuckles] you might look like you're on the road to having a heart attack in two months, but actually it was just behavior and diet. So replicate, replicate. And, uh, that would be number one, right? Like, don't base the outcome of th-the, like, the basketball match on one photograph. Like, try to-

    2. DHDan Harris31:43

       Mm

    3. TFTim Ferriss31:43

       ... try to get tested more frequently, and pay attention to when you're getting tested. So if you're-- for instance, coming back to the example I gave, if you're, if you're taking your test, your blood test on Monday mornings, make sure your next test that you're comparing it to is also on Monday morning.

    4. DHDan Harris32:00

       Mm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss32:00

       If it's Wednesday morning, it might be completely different. By the way, if it's something like cortisol, testosterone, et cetera, these things have diurnal cycles. They really fluctuate throughout the day. So if you get a test at, uh, 8:00 AM, I've seen this with friends of mine who, male friends, who get a test at, like, 8:00 AM, uh, and I have to interrogate how they did things for them to Sherlock Holmes this. But they do a, they do a, a test. Like, they're concerned about their testosterone levels or their free testosterone. They take a test at 8:00 AM. It looks great. They do another test th-three months later, six months later. They do it at 11:00 AM, and it's 200 points lower. Looks crazy. And it's not crazy. They don't actually... In this case, this guy had no problem. He was about to get on all sorts of hormone replacement therapy and all this stuff that is, is pretty powerful. And I said, "Go back. Do it at 8:00 AM again. Two weeks, let's see what happens." Guess what? It was the same as the first test.

    6. DHDan Harris33:02

       Mm.

    7. TFTim Ferriss33:02

       So that, that's step number one. And then when I'm looking at possible interventions for me, again, I'm not a doctor. Don't play one on the internet. But the way I approach it, and people get very little guidance on this, right, is most doctors are overstretched, right? They get 11 minutes per patient. The easiest thing for them to do is say, "Look, this guy has a problem," or, "This gal has a problem. If we throw these three drugs at it, it's probably gonna fix it. My job as far as I'm concerned, as far as my time allows, is to keep this person from dying. Okay. Start these three drugs." But what I have tried to do, and I did this with my own particular, uh, cardiac situation, and I think Boston Health is the testing that I did to get a more granular understanding of things with a little higher resolution. But since I am a cholesterol hyperabsorber, that affects, that informs the type of drug I might take. Doesn't necessarily have to be something like a statin. And there were three or four drugs that I was, was suggested to take and I said, "What is the longest studied of these with the best side effect profile that is the most innocuous that I can start with? And we can do another test in two months. This is not an emergency. I'm not about to have a pulmonary embolism or a, [chuckles] a heart attack. Don't have any arteries blocked. Like, what is it?" And it was, in my case, not everybody, something called ezetimibe, otherwise known as Zetia. Very well-studied, very well-tolerated. I said, "Let me try this in case I am a hyperresponder." 'Cause sometimes you can be a hyperresponder or a non-responder, but I was like, "Let me just try it out." And statistically very unlikely that I would be, the doctor said. Nonetheless, tried it. Two months later, retest. Guess what? I'm a hyperresponder. So I was able to use the minimum effective dose for medication and ultimately added one more thing. But how many decades of possible side effects did I just spare myself-

    8. DHDan Harris35:05

       Hmm. Yep

    9. TFTim Ferriss35:06

       ... by doing basically, like, one and a half drugs instead of starting with four or five and doing that indefinitely from that

12. 35:12 – 40:35

    AI as health co-pilot: Use LLMs for medical literacy and contraindication checks — but always fact-check one tool with another.

    1. TFTim Ferriss35:12

       point forward.

    2. DHDan Harris35:12

       When you're dealing with your doctors, to what extent-

    3. TFTim Ferriss35:15

       Yep

    4. DHDan Harris35:15

       ... do you con-consult AI? I have found personally-

    5. TFTim Ferriss35:19

       Mm-hmm

    6. DHDan Harris35:19

       ... that talking to a chatbot has been incredibly helpful. Now, with the caveat that they hallucinate, and they fuck things up all the time, and so I'm not-

    7. TFTim Ferriss35:29

       Yeah

    8. DHDan Harris35:29

       ... taking it as gospel, but I am running a... I'm in-- Because, uh, your chatbot doesn't get bored of you and doesn't have a, um, a-

    9. TFTim Ferriss35:37

       [laughs]

    10. DHDan Harris35:37

        ... a, an 11-minute window to talk to you-

    11. TFTim Ferriss35:40

        Yeah

    12. DHDan Harris35:40

        ... so you, you can really spend a lot of time. And then what I've found is that I can then run what I've learned by my doctors. Um, does-

    13. TFTim Ferriss35:50

        Mm-hmm

    14. DHDan Harris35:50

        ... is that an experience you've had?

    15. TFTim Ferriss35:53

        Oh, for, uh, it, d- for sure. And, uh, I do use AI and these LLMs a lot. Uh, what I would say is that If you're gonna do something like that, my recommendation would be, and I'll give a shameless plug just 'cause I'm involved with this company, I think they're doing great things, but you could use something like a ChatGPT, but there's some tools that are designed for learning. Like, there's, there's one called Oboe, O-B-O-E.com. Get some basic literacy, just the ABCs of basic medical terminology that would be helpful for understanding things like blood tests.

    16. DHDan Harris36:31

        Hmm.

    17. TFTim Ferriss36:31

        Just it's like 100 words maybe, 200 words perhaps at the very, very tippity top if you wanna be an overachiever. [clears throat] Develop an understanding of the basic vocabulary so that you can also discuss these things in shorthand with your doctors, right? All right, so once you develop basic medical literacy, you could also use that to learn how to read studies, right? Learn how to read a scientific abstract in a study. Uh, that would be one of the best investments you could ever make with your time. Spend an afternoon doing that or two afternoons. Holy shit, the ROI on that is unbelievable. Like, the number of medical problems averted, the number of medical procedures averted, the number of non-obvious solutions found that my basic literacy has helped to f- to, uh, sort of, uh, solve for is unbelievable. It doesn't take very long. So I would, I would use the tools to kind of do that first, and then I would say... 'Cause that'll help you with prompts. Like, the answers are only gonna be as good as your prompts. So-

    18. DHDan Harris37:43

        Hmm

    19. TFTim Ferriss37:43

        ... once you've done that, then I use, I use AI all the time. Uh, and there, there's an expression which has been helpful for me. Uh, [chuckles] uh, I tend to r- I r- I can run pretty hot. I think that's chilled out a lot, but I can run pretty hot. I'm, I'm v- typically very impatient. I have been since I was like a toddler. And, uh, the expression is, "Don't attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence," right? But it goes further than that, right? Because just because it doesn't so- you know, somebody doesn't reply to you doesn't mean it's a personal fraught. Just because someone does something stupid and they answer one of your questions out of the three you emailed them, you can be like, "Oh." Uh, you can get really wound up. But I would go further th- uh, than that, which is don't attribute to malice or incompetence what can be explained by a busy schedule. [chuckles] Right?

    20. DHDan Harris38:32

        Hmm.

    21. TFTim Ferriss38:32

        People are busy. Everybody's busy. Nobody... By the way, AI is not gonna give us more free time. Just to like [chuckles] this whole idea of, like, the future of living in this leisure society where everybody can crochet and do Sudoku all day and make, you know, mandalas on the floor, it's just ri- completely ridiculous, uh, for reasons we can get into. But the-- what you, what you can do, right, is you can, after developing this basic literacy, you can go in and then you can ask questions that your doctors may not have time for. Uh, I am always checking for contraindications between medications and also-

    22. DHDan Harris39:13

        Hmm

    23. TFTim Ferriss39:13

        ... supplements because doctors will miss these. They will miss them. They might not miss the most obvious, but there are some that are not as obvious. For instance, like there are sleep medications like Trazodone, which really affect the serotonergic system. It's effectively, this is an overstatement, but it's effectively a failed antidepressant. So if you don't know that, and it's not technically exactly an SSRI like a Prozac, but there are some similarities, if you don't know that because you're, quote-unquote, "taking a sleep medication," and then you go out and take something that's contraindicated for this entire class of sort of, uh, serotonin-specific antidepressants, like you can get yourself into trouble. So I will regularly check for contraindications. That's one thing I do. I have friends who've uploaded their whole genome to some of these LLMs and asked for insights, and they've f- they've identified some remarkable things. Um, the risk in doing all of this is that you may uncover issues that if you are prone to anxiety, f- for a lot of reasons I'm kind of inoculated against this with medical stuff because I've spent so much time in the, the, the medical and scientific worlds, but, uh, I'll give

13. 40:35 – 44:50

    Full-body MRIs: Over 40, you will find something. But Dan's wife (a doctor) says skip 'em — and Rumi might have agreed with her.

    1. TFTim Ferriss40:35

       you an example. Another thing that I do once a year or twice a year is a full body MRI, and there are companies that do th- do, do this. I think Biograph is the highest level. Prenuvo is also pretty good, but I've seen a couple of people have cancers missed, which isn't great. So if you get a full body MRI and you are over the age of 40, you're gonna find something. You're probably gonna find some type of internal cyst. You might find you had, as a friend of mine did, like a small brain aneurysm. Like you, you're probably gonna find something, and the question is, [chuckles] can you handle that? Can you handle either doing something about it, which is presumably why, why you're doing it in the f- the first place, or can you deal with the overwhelming likelihood statistically that the doc- the doctor's gonna say, "Yeah, we found X, Y, or Z. You don't need to do anything about it. We'll just keep an eye on it." Are you gonna be able to handle that with- without becoming a stress case who's going combing through LLMs and WebMD all day making yourself crazy? [chuckles] Anyway, I'll stop there. But yes, I use these tools all the time. If you're gonna use one tool, use another tool to fact-check it. So if you get something-

    2. DHDan Harris41:53

       Yeah

    3. TFTim Ferriss41:53

       ... from ChatGPT, absolutely have that thing cross-examined by Claude or another tool, right? Like do not trust these tools with their first answers.

    4. DHDan Harris42:04

       Just on the pan scan thing, the full body MRI, um, uh- The ultimate, um, uh, this is a bit of an aside, but I have figured out the ultimate health hack, which is marry a doctor.

    5. TFTim Ferriss42:17

       [laughs]

    6. DHDan Harris42:19

       Um, because she can't get out of here, and I ask her a lot of questions. Um, but she, uh, she is really against these pan scans for the very reason that you just stated, which is-

    7. TFTim Ferriss42:29

       Yeah

    8. DHDan Harris42:29

       ... you will find something, and it may stress you out, or it may put you in the market for a procedure you don't need. Um-

    9. TFTim Ferriss42:36

       Yeah

    10. DHDan Harris42:36

        ... yeah, so it's, it's, it's interesting the, the p- the differing POVs on this. Um, but let me-

    11. TFTim Ferriss42:44

        Yeah.

    12. DHDan Harris42:44

        Oh, sorry. Did you want to say something on that?

    13. TFTim Ferriss42:46

        No, I was gonna say it's, um, it's like be, uh... One of my favorite quotes is, "Be suspicious of what you want." That's a Rumi quote, going way back.

    14. DHDan Harris42:56

        [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss42:56

        It's like you, we think that we want all of the health information we can possibly get, but you should be a little skeptical and suspicious of that if you've never dealt with a huge amount of health information at f- high resolution. [laughs] So yeah, it's, it's a, it's a very personal thing. In my case, you know, psychologically, this particular type of kind of data overwhelm, I'm pretty good with.

    16. DHDan Harris43:21

        So I asked before about where you are with optimizing now, and you, you, you, you listed a, a bunch of... You said you're more surgical now in how-

    17. TFTim Ferriss43:30

        Mm-hmm

    18. DHDan Harris43:30

        ... in how you optimize, and you listed a bunch of areas in- in- including, um, uh, um, how you eat. Um, uh, you did put out a, a podcast in August of 2025 talking about some of your rethinking of optimizing. Um-

    19. TFTim Ferriss43:47

        Mm-hmm

    20. DHDan Harris43:47

        ... I'd just be curious, like, where are you at with that now?

    21. TFTim Ferriss43:50

        Yeah, I mean, I th- I think that [clears throat] optimizing is the how, right? Broadly speaking, right? So optimizing is how you do something. Much more important than how you do something is the few somethings that you choose in the first place to do, right? So th- this applies to learning quickly. This applies to making a lot of money. This applies to getting in great shape. Like, what you do, in a sense, matters a lot more than how you do anything. You can get very, very, very good, very optimized, very efficient at doing something unimportant. That does not make it important. Just makes you very good at doing something that you probably shouldn't be doing in the first place. And I think modern productivity porn is sort of indiscriminate in how it [laughs] applies optimizing to everything and everything, right? [laughs]

14. 44:50 – 47:13

    How my actual daily life compares to a poorly programmed Roomba.

    1. TFTim Ferriss44:50

       There's some very funny, uh, we don't have to link to them, but kind of morning routines that are these YouTube videos that are, like, four or five hours long, right? Of people going through their day. [laughs] There's a point at which your morning routine just turns into, like, a, a five-hour warm-up, uh, for life each day. And, uh, that's obviously a really extreme example. But for me, I... If you were to have a nanny cam, like, hidden in a little stuffed, like, stuffed bear in my house, my office, th- th- th- this Airbnb where I am right now, and you watched me on any given day, you would just be like, "What is this guy doing? I mean, it's like a, a poorly programmed Roomba. Like, I don't... Is this, like, Blair Witch Project? Like-

    2. DHDan Harris45:37

       [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss45:38

       ... it doesn't seem to be doing much work. Like, what is he doing?" And the v- part of the reason I can get away with that is that I think I am very good at measuring twice and cutting once. In this context, what that means is I'm spending a lot of time looking at doing 80/20 analysis, asking myself, you know, what can I do that is not easily replicated by someone else that I find easier to do than other people, which is kind of a shortcut to finding things that you're good at, that you will also have the endurance for because you're kind of... it's easier for you or you're obsessed with it. Okay, what am I obsessed with? What am I doing in my off hours? Okay, let me try to find a Venn diagram of that and then focus on those things. I'll test it for a very short period of time to see if it, if number one, I can sustain it, if I am actually as good as I thought I would be, and I don't have... I don't need to be the best in the world, but, you know, better than average. And then over time, as I'm throwing a lot against the wall, and then I'm looking back and saying, "Okay, I tried these three things," or, "I made these four investments. I had these assumptions at the time. Did they pan out? Why or why not?" And then course correcting. There are actually very, very, very, very few things you have to get right, in my opinion, to have an incredible life. You don't need-

    4. DHDan Harris47:06

       Yeah

    5. TFTim Ferriss47:07

       ... to be great at a lot of things is my perspective. It's like, look, if...

15. 47:13 – 49:47

    Jerry Seinfeld's grand unified life theory: Lift weights and do TM. That's pretty much it.

    1. TFTim Ferriss47:13

       I remember talking to Jerry Seinfeld and, uh, one of his conclusions was, you know, if you lift weights and do transcendental meditation, that'll solve pretty much all your problems. [laughs] It's just like... And I'm paraphrasing, but it wasn't too far from that. He's like, "If you lift weights and do TM, it will solve most of your problems." And I like that because I think there's a whole hell of a lot of truth to it, that distilling down, and it makes life seem much more manageable, right? If people feel like they have to win the super ultra decathlon of life, where instead of 10 sports, there are 150 sports you have to be good at, who's, who's gonna actually surmount that and cope with it well? Nobody. So for me, it's like, look, if I had to just pull a rabbit out of a hat right now to pick a few, I'd be like, read Nonviolent Communication. Like, figure out how to talk to people without sounding Overly defensive or aggressive. Okay. [laughs] Like, life, unless we're gonna be a monk of some type or a nun, like, and even then probably there's some crazy internal politics at the hamlet in China if you [laughs] you know, the abbot, you're gonna have to deal with that abbot. Uh, so work on your communication, right? Take that very seriously as, like, the connective tissue for everything. Don't invest in things you don't understand. [laughs] It's like when in doubt, like read a few books on like low-cost index funds and the S&P 500. Like, go look at the graph over the last five, 10, 15, 20 years. Like, you might have some hard dips here and there, but if you're trying to get fancy and invest in like individual AI stocks, like, wow. Like, maybe you'll pick Amazon and Google out of all the trash there is right now, but most of us won't. I don't think I can do it. Uh, lift weights, right? Try to do some zone two training where it's like you, you could speak in single sentences, but you don't really want to. Do that for like 30 to 60 minutes a few times a week, okay. And then, like, don't eat processed crap like Michael, Michael Pollan rules, right? It's like if your grandmother wouldn't recognize the ingredients, don't eat it. Okay, try that. Like, [laughs] I think, think you'll do pretty well.

    2. DHDan Harris49:37

       Hard to argue with any of that. Um, and it-- and I, I think the question I'm gonna ask next is apropos. Um-

    3. TFTim Ferriss49:46

       Mm-hmm

    4. DHDan Harris49:46

       ... you--

16. 49:47 – 54:28

    The No Book: 800 pages, six years deep, co-written with Neil Strauss — because even the most accomplished people can't say no.

    1. DHDan Harris49:47

       one of your current projects is called The No Book. Um-

    2. TFTim Ferriss49:50

       Yeah.

    3. DHDan Harris49:51

       And, uh, y- uh, the book, as Tim has, uh, pointed out, may come out in 10 years because he's working on it slowly. But he has released a couple of chapters online, and I've-

    4. TFTim Ferriss50:02

       Mm-hmm

    5. DHDan Harris50:02

       ... read at least one of them, um, and it's really interesting. Um, uh, so before I say too much, m-maybe you could describe what is The No Book-

    6. TFTim Ferriss50:12

       Mm-hmm

    7. DHDan Harris50:13

       ... and, and why are you writing it if, if only slowly?

    8. TFTim Ferriss50:17

       Yeah. Yeah, I have an 800-page draft right now, so it's gonna need to get whittled down a little bit. But The No Book started something like s- boy, six years ago, where I noticed a lot of people in my audience, my listeners, my readers, struggling with focus and saying no. 'Cause fundamentally, like, the, the road to where you want to be in life is the, sort of the, the Wizard of Oz, you know, golden brick road, is saying yes to a few things. A few things, right? Th-th-I guess, there are really... There are just a few things you have to get right. And then the, the guardrails for that are n- that's n- that's the yes road, and it's very few things. The guardrails for that are no. You have to say no the entire way. And I was, I was writing this book. I reached out to a bunch of my f- my friends, these are very accomplished friends in this case, to ask them for their recommendations. I thought they would help me write this thing, and they were like, "Oh my God, are you kidding me?" Like, "This is the biggest pain in my life. Please send me an early copy when you can." So my friends were... Uh, there were, there were a few who were actually very helpful, but the vast majority were like, "Oh my God, I thought that life was gonna get easier. It has only gotten harder with respect to saying no." And I'll-- And I-- It just became this massive project, so I put it, I put it on the back burner. And then a friend of mine, Neil Strauss, some people might recognize that name. He's written something like 10 New York Times bestsellers. He wrote The Dirt. He's written these biographies of Mötley Crüe and, like, all these celebrities, and he also wrote The Game and Emergency and many other books. And he's terrible at saying no, it turns out. And he was busting my balls about not writing this book, and he kept harassing me about finishing it, and he was actually kind of creating a kerfuffle over a group dinner after a few drinks. And I was just like, "Neil, if you wanna read this book so badly, why don't you just help me finish writing it?" And I thought that put it to bed, and then the next day when he-- we all sobered up, he was like, "You know, if you're serious, why don't we talk about it?" And at the same time, I was noticing with social media certainly, with AI, it's gonna get a thousand times worse. The ability... Well, first of all, like, the external forces that want to distract you are almost unbeatable. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's incredible how sophisticated they are. Secondly, the way that enables self-interruption and distraction is something that humanity has never seen before. And there is this incredible pain in terms of paradox of choice, right? What should I do? Who should I listen to? What should I watch? What should I pay attention to? That is fracturing the psyches of people. And this, by the way, does not discriminate geographically, it does not discriminate economically. It's like up and down the chain, left, right, front, center, everywhere. Uh, so the problems just seem to be getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So wrote this book with Neil basically as the, the student. And what's, what's fun about it, I think it's my most entertaining and hilarious book in a way because I'm giving Neil these assignments, and then he'll try them, but he'll be like passive-aggressive, and he'll screw one up, or he'll, like, he'll, he'll actually not do 50% of the assignment, and then I'll follow up, and he'll have all this guilt. But we have real examples of, like, emails he tried to send, text messages he's trying to send. He's trying everything in the book and learning as he goes. And I would say, uh, there are a few people who have proofread the whole thing And they'd proofread it like a year ago, and they've, they've come back and s- and these are fans of my stuff who've read my other books, and they're like, "This book has had a huge impact on my life," and they still give me examples. So

17. 54:28 – 58:33

    "I can't do the life Tetris." Martha Beck's masterclass in declining without defending.

    1. TFTim Ferriss54:28

       to, to then s- answer the question of, well, what exactly is the book talking about? The book is talking about how to say no in a world of compulsive yes, right? But what I've, what I've, what's important to note about this is that this is also true with "The 4-Hour Body" and like why that worked for so many people when other books, kind of diet, exercise books had failed. It's not enough to just have a couple of index cards or templates for doing exercise, for saying no. If that would have worked, it would have worked already, right? And sure, I can give examples, and I give tons of examples of lines that are helpful for saying no, like Martha Beck, who is like Oprah Winfrey's life coach and is an amazing woman in her own right for a lot of reasons. Uh, she turned me down for something, and I include these real nos, right? Because I kept my favorite declines and people, like rejections over 10 years and [laughs] and so I share a bunch of them. And she said to me, "I really wish I could, but I can't due to life Tetris." Right? I'm like, "Due to life Tetris." And I was like, "Wow, that is so good." You're not explaining, you're not defending, you're not giving a bunch of stuff that someone can try to negotiate around. It's just like, "Hey, I really wish I could. I just can't due to life Tetris." And so I give examples like that, but that is not enough. Uh, once you start really digging into why people have trouble saying no, it's not only because they lack templates. It's because of certain core beliefs, which are thoughts we take to be true, to kind of quote Byron Katie, and philosophies they have that they're not even aware of that make it almost impossible to say no, right? And that could relate to FOMO. It could be related to a very scarcity-minded, limited number of opportunities, right? A belief that you can't generate opportunities yourself. You have to wait for things to come as inbound. It could relate to... And I hit these very early on, and actually, I think they're in the sample chapters that people can get, uh, if, if people go to tim.blog/nobook. So tim.blog is the actual URL, /nobook, one word. I think it's like 30 or 40 pages of the book that will get into this. But a lot of folks will say, "I'm too nice for that." Okay, we unpack that because there's a lot there, right? Must be nice for Tim or fill in the blank because they're already successful. I don't have that luxury, right? Okay, well, let's actually double-click on that and start to interrogate some of these beliefs and on and on and on. So saying no in a durable way, like really developing a toolkit, which as far as I'm concerned is like a self-preservation necessity now. When I first started it six years ago, I was like, if people really want to get kind of 10X results in their life and continue to apply the things from "The 4-Hour Workweek," like 80/20, et cetera, they really need to have a reliable toolkit for n- saying no. But now looking at social media, AI, social media-enabled AI, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, what it's going to do to inboxes, messaging, et cetera, with personalization, spam, you fill in the blank, that are indistinguishable from humans. Uh, this is, it's, this is like knowing how to breathe as far as I'm concerned.

    2. DHDan Harris58:02

       Mm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss58:02

       You have to have a toolkit like this, or you're just gonna get, you're gonna be roadkill, I think. And I, that sounds probably very dramatic, but it's like I'm sitting in Silicon Valley right now for my first trip here for a few weeks, um, of, in duration in like eight years. I'm telling you guys, the stuff that's coming is gonna be amazing. It's gonna be incredible. It's also just gonna be, it, it's gonna be catastrophic for, I think, a lot of minds that are unprepared with the proper toolkits. So saying

18. 58:33 – 1:05:11

    Rocks, gravel, and sand: How to protect your life-changing commitments from death by a thousand small distractions.

    1. TFTim Ferriss58:33

       no is important.

    2. DHDan Harris58:34

       Agreed, and it's a huge struggle for me. You have a beautiful phrase in your book, uh, "promiscuous overcommitment," and I-

    3. TFTim Ferriss58:41

       [laughs]

    4. DHDan Harris58:42

       ... um, am really, really guilty of that. Uh, you also, there's another nice phrase. You, you, you say the book will help you build a benevolent phalanx, a protective wall of troops t- to guard your goals. Uh, w- we don't have time to talk about all of the tools in there, but-

    5. TFTim Ferriss58:59

       Yeah

    6. DHDan Harris58:59

       ... is there a tool in particular you think that is, that would be very, very powerful for people?

    7. TFTim Ferriss59:04

       Yes, absolutely. Um, so there's, a lot of folks have perhaps heard the apocryphal story of, and I think I, I, I give proper credit in the book, and this is one of the chapters that people can get. Um, so there's plenty of value that people can get from the, from the free stuff. But I mean, I'm not even selling it yet, so maybe I'll give away more. But the, uh, the, the one of the culprits, one of the biggest causal factors for why people have trouble saying no is they don't have big enough yeses to defend.

    8. DHDan Harris59:39

       Hmm.

    9. TFTim Ferriss59:41

       Right? And for instance, if you don't ha- uh, if you had a brand-new child, if you had, or someone you loved, God forbid, had a serious cancer diagnosis, if you had tiger by the tail and knew that you were working on a business, I'm using an extreme example on purpose, that could be worth billions of dollars, you would not have trouble saying no to things. [laughs] Right? And so then, like we go back to the other end of the spectrum. It's like, well, if you don't have really clearly defined big yeses- that get you excited, that have the potential for huge payoff, not necessarily financially. And you're kind of searching around your inbox for things to answer, right? When people send you an invite to a dinner or they want to have coffee to pick your brain, or it could be anything, a costume party you don't want to go to. That's a real example from Neil, [laughs] actually. And you're gonna say yes, because what's scarier than having lots of little o- promiscuous over commitments? It's a big void. Mm. Right? So the apocryphal story that I was hinting at, um, is the story of the professor who comes in and this... I, I wanna say this was from o- originally Stephen Covey, or maybe Stephen Covey adapted it. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I believe was the book. And, uh, it might have been in his teaching and not in the books themselves. But the, the story is along these lines. Professor goes in and he puts out on the desk in front of the students like a large mason jar, a handful of big rocks, right, like th- like three or four, a bunch of gravel, and then a bunch of sand. And he challenges the students, asks them first how they would fit as much as possible into the mason jar, and they try different approaches. And if you put in the sand first, you get a little bit of gravel, can't fit the rocks, right? You put in the gravel first, um... Actually, um, let me s- make sure I'm getting this right. All right, we'll, we'll snip that part. So let me, let me start that over again. Right. So if you put in the sand first, then you get a little bit of gravel in, can't fit the rocks. Okay. Well, ditto, if you put the gravel in first, then you put in the sand. Maybe you fit one rock. Okay. And ultimately, the lesson is you have to put in the big rocks first, then the gravel fits around that, and then you can fit in the sand. In the version that I tell, I make a, I, I make a modification to that and I say, "No matter what they do, there's still sand left over on the table." And I think the lesson is, if you're looking at this in terms of commitments, right, the big rocks are those kind of life-changing yeses, the few things you need to protect on that golden road to get really where you want to be. Then the gravel to me are like the smaller but critical things you need to do. Gotta file your taxes, gotta do A, B, or C. And then the sand is all that extraneous stuff, mostly distractions. You can fit some of it, but if you schedule all that stuff first, it's gonna crowd out the gravel, or it's, it's certainly at the very least gonna crowd out all the big yeses, right? And so in the, in the sample chapters, I just walk people through how I do this past year review, right? And like how I actually pick the big yeses. Because the, the book on no is equally a book on h- to answer the question, how the hell in a world of infinite options, in a world of temptation around every corner, do you pick a few things to focus on that are really high leverage? How do you do it? Like, that seems like a s- it's a simple question, but it's actually a very hard question to answer. Um, and so I would say that if you're having trouble saying no, underneath that probably is the fact that you don't have a, you don't have big enough yeses that are worth defending. Uh, and then there's a lot that leads from that, right? There are ways, how do you commit to a yes and ensure against reneging or something else? Um, and th- there's also... Like, this is intended to be, hopefully like all of my books, a very practical book, right? So what happens when you screw up, right? There's an entire chapter on how to renegotiate commitments after you have already overcommitted. Mm. Because guess what? Mm. If you have that tendency, you're going to overcommit. You're going to look at your calendar for the next few weeks or month and say, "Good Lord, I'm screwed." [laughs] And then what do you do? You're gonna have to have some very potentially uncomfortable conversations. So we're learning to renegotiate commitments is also an art form that is gonna be included in it. Uh, but fundamentally, it's, it's big yeses worth defending, [smacks lips] um, I would say i- is another one.

19. 1:05:11 – 1:09:23

    Three years without social media on my phone, fear-setting as clarity, and two hours of daily focus as the new top 1%.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:05:11

       And sure, there are lots of things that you can do that you could do today. You don't have to look at any of these chapters, right? It's like I have not had social media on my phone in three years. Hmm. Uh, why? Because I feel like you are bringing a butter knife to a gunfight if you have these tools on your phone. Uh, [laughs] and if it's too scary to unplug for a f- uh, you know, three years, you don't have to commit to that. I didn't in the beginning. It's like do a one or two week social media fast, at least on your phone. So I can still access social media if I need a hit of the heroin. I can still access social media through my laptop, but it adds enough friction that I'm not gonna end up looking at Instagram while I'm on the toilet and wondering why I can't feel my legs 40 minutes later, right? [laughs] It's gonna avoid that type of thing. Or the compulsive sort of dopamine scratching whenever you have a free 30 seconds jumping into social media. This is not good for your ability to focus. It's not good for your ability to single task. It's not good for your mental health when you always have that escape It's, it's-- I, I mean, look, I'm telling people things they probably agree with, but perhaps haven't implemented, right? So you could do something like that. You can use an app like Freedom. There's an app called [chuckles] Freedom that you can use to block certain things for certain periods of time. I mean, there are these technical tools that you can use. Uh, but at the very base, you can't use more window dressing technical tricks to fix, like, fundamental problems with goal selection, big yeses worth defending, and core beliefs, right? If I say no to this person, they're-- something bad is going to happen, and they're not going to like me, or they'll stop inviting me to things. Like, if you have these and that is going to what, right? You have to ask, "And then what? And then what?" Right? I'm gonna end up alone. Okay. Well, y- these are, these are sort of Rubicons you need to get comfortable crossing in the sense that my experience is, this is also Neil's experience. He had tons of fears, as did I at the beginning stages. It's like, when you start to stand up for the things that are important in your life, uh, I th- I think this is a Dr. Seuss quote, but it's like the, "The people who mind don't matter and the people who matter don't mind." Like, you actually do a lot of pruning in your life that you should do anyway, and it's a-

    2. DHDan Harris1:07:51

       Hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:07:51

       ... it's a forcing function for that.

    4. DHDan Harris1:07:53

       Hmm. That's so interesting. It really is about courage in the end. Um-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:07:59

       It is, and you can-

    6. DHDan Harris1:08:00

       Uh-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:08:00

       ... train that. You can train that. It's not something you are born with or without. Like, that is something through actually understanding what your fears represent and, like, what's underneath them, it could be from childhood, it doesn't necessarily have to be, but when you start to actually examine them... There's an exercise people could do today also. They can find a d- TED Talk on this called fear-setting. You start to do fear-setting-

    8. DHDan Harris1:08:27

       Hmm

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:08:27

       ... around these fears. You defang them, and guess what? Suddenly you have this thing that others might call courage, but what it is, is it's clarity. It's clarity around the actual downside, which is limited, versus the upside of protecting these big yeses over a year, two, or three. And I will say, not to continue to beat this dead horse, but with all of the noise that is here but that is coming with AI, it's gonna be 10, 100, 1,000 times worse within two years. Y- if you can single task on important things for not even four hours a day, two hours a day without interruption, you are going to be from, uh, the perspective of, let's just say an attention economy, in the top 1% of performers.

    10. DHDan Harris1:09:17

        Hmm.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:09:18

        It's, it's, uh, it's never been easier and it's never been harder in a way.

20. 1:09:23 – 1:14:13

    Coyote: My card game with Exploding Kittens, and why I only choose projects that let me win even if they fail.

    1. DHDan Harris1:09:23

       I'm gonna lose you in nine minutes, so I do wanna make sure I quickly ask you about Coyote, uh-

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:09:29

       [chuckles] Sure

    3. DHDan Harris1:09:30

       ... other projects. Uh, this is a game that you've, uh, um, uh, designed. Can you-- W- w- what is it and why?

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:09:38

       Yeah. Yeah. So Coyote [chuckles] is a, is a, s- it's a tiny little card game that I designed with, um, some of my friends at Exploding Kittens, which people might recognize. They have a lot of very, very popular games. And, uh, [chuckles] it's a, it's a fun family game. It's, it's something like, if you could imagine Charades meets Hot Potato meets, uh, Brain teaser, something that I, I hope, uh, at some point I'd actually like to do a, a clinical study on this, but, you know, makes you just a little bit smarter than the people who play. Uh, it is, it is a, um, casual card game. You can learn in a few minutes. Each game lasts about 10 minutes. And the reason I created it, I always wanted to make a game, number one. And I ch- this is actually a good illustration of some of the stuff that is in the book that'll come out in, you know, 100 years. Uh, but people can apply it today, which is, uh, I choose projects based on which projects will allow me to win even if they fail. What does that mean?

    5. DHDan Harris1:10:47

       Hmm.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:10:48

       Um, I assume that any project could fail for reasons totally outside of my control. It's happened before. It'll happen again. Happens to people every day. And so how am I then choosing things to commit to? Well, generally I'm, you know, I'm doing all these two-week experiments on various things like the diet and this, that, and the other thing. With projects, it's kinda like a six-month commitment, right? I'm looking at like a six to 12-month project where I really go all in. By the way, that makes it easier to say no to things when you're doing a sprint as opposed to a very slow walking marathon. So I'm committing to something that I think will be six to 12 months, and I am optimizing for what I will learn, right, the density of learning, and also the relationships that I'll deepen or develop. So it could be with new people, could be with people I already know. With the belief that those relationships and those skills or knowledge will transcend that project, even if the public hates it, even if, in my case, for instance, China tariffs for a nine-- like, game that sold for nine or $10 coming from China, that, that just kills the economics, right? So not that this was ever a money-making thing for me, but it's like there are things that came up that made this suddenly much harder from a kind of business perspective. And Thank God I checked those other boxes, right? Because, uh, fortunately, it's got like 9.7 or 9.8 stars on Amazon, and it's available everywhere, and it's doing really well. But what I really care about is, like Elan Lee, who's the co-founder and CEO of Exploding Kittens, has become a super close friend. He was a good friend beforehand. We're even closer now. This guy's one of the most amazing polymaths I've ever met in my life. Awesome, hilarious guy. And I have learned so much about mass retail, you know, the Walmarts and Targets and so on. I've learned so much about how you have to play the politics and the game of thrones with that.

    7. DHDan Harris1:12:49

       Hmm.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:12:50

       I've learned about overseas manufacturing. I've learned about you name it, right? I've learned so much, and those were the reasons for me picking this. And if you look at, for instance, there's a blog post people can find for free, angel investing, like investing in early-stage companies, which is like 90% of my net worth, which I started well before I could, quote-unquote, "afford it." Um, there's a blog post called, uh, I think it's Creating a Real-World MBA, which explains kind of how I approached it, which was the same way I approached this, learning and relationships that I think will transcend that project and snowball over time so that it's very hard to lose long term.

    9. DHDan Harris1:13:32

       Hmm.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:13:32

        But the-- But coming back to the game itself, I mean, look, if, if you've got kids in between the ages of, let's say, like most k- it says 10 on the box, but really it's kind of like age eight if your kids are pretty smart to like age 15, this is kind of a no-brainer. Like the game works-

    11. DHDan Harris1:13:49

        Hmm

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:13:49

        ... really, really well. Adults also really like it, so it's not just for kids. But if you've got some kids around or adults who don't care being a little goofy, then, um, I think it's a really simple, fun game that hopefully does something cognitive for folks as well. That was kind of the goal. And Coyote, you can just... Yeah, Coyote Game, you can find it everywhere.

21. 1:14:13 – 1:15:05

    Parting thoughts.

    1. DHDan Harris1:14:13

       It is always an enormous pleasure to talk to you, Tim, and, uh, I know you say no to most shit, so thank you. Thank you for saying yes to this.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:14:19

       [laughs] Yeah, I love what you do, man. I love what you do. Uh, one of my very close friends who's a professor at a very well-respected university, had pains in his body, this just horrible, pervasive pain in joints in his body for years and years, started using Ten Percent Happier, meditating every day, and it was like, boom, within four weeks, pains went away. Crazy. I have some theories on that. I think it's actually-

    3. DHDan Harris1:14:47

       Hmm

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:14:47

       ... might be synchronized breathing and, and vagus nerve stimulation, but that's a separate conversation. Um, and, uh, I just think you put a lot of, uh... You're very thoughtful, and you do a lot of good in the world, so it's always... And I just enjoy hanging out, so it's always a pleasure to connect.

    5. DHDan Harris1:15:04

       [laughs]

Episode duration: 1:15:15