Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success | The Tim Ferriss Show

1. 0:00 – 7:35

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   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      Well, hello, boys and girls, lemurs and squirrels. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode was just a blast, and part of me still doesn't believe that it happened. Of course, my job is to interview and deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, of all different stripes, from all different fields, and my guest for this episode is none other than the icon Jerry Seinfeld. So who is Jerry Seinfeld? Entertainment icon Jerry Seinfeld's comedy career took off after his first appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1981. Eight years later, he teamed up with fellow comedian Larry David to create what was to become the most successful comedy series in the history of television, Seinfeld. A lot of you have heard of it. The show ran on NBC for nine seasons, winning numerous Emmy, Golden Globe, and People’s Choice Awards, and was named the greatest television show of all time in 2009 by TV Guide, and in 2012 was identified as the best sitcom ever in a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll. Seinfeld made his Netflix debut with the original stand-up special Jerry Before Seinfeld, along with his Emmy-nominated and critically acclaimed web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, which has garnered more than 100 million views and which The New York Times describes as impressively complex and artful and Variety calls a game changer. His latest standup special, 23 Hours To Kill, was released by Netflix earlier this year. He is also the author of Is This Anything? Or Is This Anything? It's a question with a question mark at the end, [laughs] which is a brand-new book and features his best work across five decades in comedy. It is a collection of his notes, his journaling, and certainly his process. You can find him on Twitter, @JerrySeinfeld, INSTAGRAM, @JerrySeinfeld, FACEBOOK, @JerrySeinfeld. And if you have interest in creative process, gamifying life, mastering the mind, comedy, habits and systems of someone who can operate at the top of their field for decades, this conversation touches all of those things. Please enjoy a wide-ranging conversation with none other than Jerry Seinfeld. [upbeat music] This episode is brought to you by Oura, O-U-R-A. It is the only wearable that I wear on a daily basis. Oura is the company behind the smart ring that delivers personalized sleep and health insights to help you optimize just about everything, and I've tried every device out there that you can imagine. This one really makes the cut. I've been using it religiously for at least six months now, and I was introduced to it by Dr. Peter Attia, who's also vetted just about everything. With advanced sensors, Oura packs state-of-the-art heart rate, heart rate variability, HRV, super important to me, temperature activity, and sleep monitoring technology into a convenient, non-invasive ring. It's tiny. It weighs less than six grams and focuses on three key insights, sleep, readiness, and activity. So I can use it to help focus my attention on the type, volume, intensity of exercise that I should do in a given day. I use it to determine how certain types of alcohol at different times of the day affect my sleep, which they do, and I can see all of that in graph form trended over time. There are tons of actionable insights that have come from using this ring for me. They have a number of incredible people on their team. Dr. Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley, and also author of Why We Sleep, the mega hit, is Oura's chief science advisor, as just one example. The Oura Ring is one of the most accurate wearables available because it measures your vitals directly from your finger, so it's not deducing that or, uh, making a best guesstimate based on a bunch of other things and trying to triangulate. Compared to a medical-grade electrocardiogram, the Oura Ring is 99.9% accurate for resting heart rate and 98.4% accurate for heart rate variability. And I work with HRV doctors, and they recommend that I use the Oura Ring. So try it yourself. It is super cool and super practical, very actionable. The Oura Ring comes in two styles and three colors, silver, black, and matte black. I use matte black. For $299, you can give or get the gift of health by visiting ouraring.com. That's O-U-R-A-R-I-N-G dot com. Again, that's ouraring.com. [upbeat music] This episode is brought to you by Rokform. That's without a C, R-O-K-F-O-R-M. Rokform is the active lifestyle iPhone and Galaxy protective case company. I've been using their stuff for a few months now, and good God, they can survive anything. First off, Rokform protection is beyond great. You can find thousands of five-star reviews and customer testimonials, which the team at Rokform calls survival stories, that include things like a drop from the upper deck of a baseball stadium and a 75-foot cellphone tower fall. [laughs] It's kind of unbelievable, but these cases make your phone virtually indestructible. Each case is built also around an integrated magnet that is completely safe for your phone. The magnets are incredibly strong and allow you to instantly attach your device to any magnetic surface, toolboxes, file cabinets, refrigerators, golf carts, you name it. I use it in the gym to check my form a lot of the time. You can just slap it on just about anything. Rokform pioneered magnetic technology in the mobile accessory space in 2011, and I've never seen anything quite like these magnets. I will use mine on my Peloton bike so I can watch, listen, or take calls during workouts. It fits my iPhone 11 Pro Max perfectly and allows me to keep my hands free for all sorts of stuff. All their cases also come with a built-in twist lock system that can be used with any of Rokform's optional mounts for bike, motorcycle, car, and much more. These machined aluminum mounts are built to last and are compatible with every Rokform case. So If you get a new phone or whatever, you just need a new case, and it will still attach to all of the mounts. Rokform also has a portable golf speaker, this is Bluetooth, that instantly mounts to a golf cart with mind-blowingly strong magnets, like I mentioned. I don't really golf, but I will use this Bluetooth speaker to listen to music in the kitchen. I'll slap it on the refrigerator. I will use it in the gym and hang it from a carabiner, which is included with the speaker, and so on and so forth. So upgrade to a Rokform case today because you have better things to hold onto. You can use your hands for other stuff. And like I mentioned, these things make your phone bulletproof. And as a special offer for Tim Ferriss Show listeners, that's you guys, get 25% off. That is a good discount. 25% off at rokform.com. That's R-O-K-F-O-R-M.com when you use promo code Tim. That's 25% off at R-O-K-F-O-R-M.com when you use promo code Tim. One more time, rokform.com, promo code Tim.

   2. SPSpeaker7:11

      Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would seem an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show.

2. 7:35 – 11:41

   Childhood and The Last Laugh by Phil Berger

   1. TFTim Ferriss7:35

      Jerry, welcome to the show.

   2. JSJerry Seinfeld7:37

      Thanks, Tim. Great to be here.

   3. TFTim Ferriss7:38

      I really appreciate you making the time. And I thought we would start with the beginning of Is This Anything? And in the, I suppose you could call it the introduction or the preface, another book pops up, which is The Last Laugh by Phil Berger. And I would love to just know how that book entered your life.

   4. JSJerry Seinfeld7:58

      How did I find that? I really don't know. But, but I still have it. I have the copy that I bought wherever I found it. I mean, I was in high school, and I did the absolute minimum you could do to, to survive in high school. I never read anything outside of high school except magazines, car magazines, comic books, and Esquire.

   5. TFTim Ferriss8:26

      [laughs]

   6. JSJerry Seinfeld8:27

      'Cause, uh, I don't know, in those years, you know, um, early, early '70s, Esquire was really full of character and about encouraging male boldness and inventiveness in lifestyle, and just life in general, you know? They were very sophisticated, and it was everything I wanted to be. I wanted to be urban, and I wanted to be smart, and smarter than I was, and I wanted to have, like, this cool, adventurous life, and they, they were very encouraging to that. I don't, I don't think there's anything like that around today. I, that was essential. And the same with the, that book, The Last Laugh. It was, it, it was just like whatever made men in centuries past become explorers, you know?

   7. TFTim Ferriss9:19

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JSJerry Seinfeld9:19

      I don't know how they became that. I guess I, I, I remember he- reading about explorers' clubs, like, in 17th, 18th century London, you know? I have two sons and a daughter, and that's the, that's the thing I really wanted, if I could pass along, the two things I would wanna pass along would be ethics and boldness in life. But that doesn't answer your question of where I got the book. I don't know where I got-

   9. TFTim Ferriss9:47

      Well, that's okay, though. The Genesis story is, is secondary. It's really the, the context that you're providing. And just as a quick side note, a friend of mine, Cal Fussman, used to write the What I've Learned interview series in Esquire-

   10. JSJerry Seinfeld10:02

       Yeah, I remember that

   11. TFTim Ferriss10:03

       ... back when it had that-

   12. JSJerry Seinfeld10:03

       I remember that

   13. TFTim Ferriss10:04

       ... back when it ha- when, you know, when it had, and maybe still does on some level, that character that you're describing, that boldness. What was it inside The Last Laugh that grabbed you so much?

   14. JSJerry Seinfeld10:12

       Yeah. So if I look back at my whole life, starting, you know, about, like, second or third grade, it was all this inexorable march towards this pursuit of the comedy arts. And there was nothing else about comedy. Albert Brooks did a album, or did an article in Esquire called School for Comedians, and it was a parody. And I had no idea it was a parody-

   15. TFTim Ferriss10:43

       [laughs]

   16. JSJerry Seinfeld10:43

       ... you know, because he grew up in LA, and he was making fun of what comedians might need to learn to be comedians. And, uh, it was an early '70s Esquire article, and I had no idea it was a parody. I mean, I just thought, "Oh, there's a school," or I just wanted to learn about this world. And The Last Laugh really took you deeply into the world. And it is a completely hermetically sealed world that is, frankly, unrelated to the rest of the entertainment industry. And it's really unrelated to almost all other creative arts. It is a very sealed ecosystem, the world of comedy, particularly stand-up comedy. And I was desperately thirsty for any scrap of data about it.

3. 11:41 – 18:42

   On writing

   1. TFTim Ferriss11:41

      Now, you have, much like an Olympic athlete of sorts with training logs and workouts and so on-

   2. JSJerry Seinfeld11:47

      Mm-hmm

   3. TFTim Ferriss11:47

      ... you have 45 years of hacking away-

   4. JSJerry Seinfeld11:51

      Mm-hmm

   5. TFTim Ferriss11:51

      ... as it's put in the book's description-

   6. JSJerry Seinfeld11:53

      [laughs] Yeah

   7. TFTim Ferriss11:53

      ... on [laughs] yellow notepads and so on.

   8. JSJerry Seinfeld11:56

      Yeah.

   9. TFTim Ferriss11:56

      You've preserved all of this. And I'd love to speak, or to hear you speak more accurately, a bit about your writing process and the preparation that it did for this. I read in the- New York Times, and I'm just gonna read this short bit. You can fact-correct this, uh, if need be, but here's how it reads. "I still have a writing session every day. It's another thing that organizes your mind. The coffee goes here, the pad goes here, the notes go here. My writing technique is just you can't do anything else. You don't have to write, but you can't do anything else." I would love to hear you elaborate on that because it, uh, actually sounds very similar to what the fiction writer Neil Gaiman has as his first rule-

   10. JSJerry Seinfeld12:32

       Oh, really?

   11. TFTim Ferriss12:33

       ... with writing as well. Yeah.

   12. JSJerry Seinfeld12:34

       Yeah.

   13. TFTim Ferriss12:34

       But what, but what does that look like for you, and what do your writing sessions tend to look like if we look back over the last, I don't know, 10 years? Because I'm sure it's changed over time.

   14. JSJerry Seinfeld12:44

       No, it, it hasn't changed. [laughs]

   15. TFTim Ferriss12:46

       It hasn't?

   16. JSJerry Seinfeld12:47

       The only thing that's changed is the coffee, which I didn't know about coffee in my younger years. I think I discovered coffee after I had kids, and I didn't have time to have, uh, long meals with my friends anymore, but we could meet for coffee. And then I realized, boy, this coffee really gets you talking.

   17. TFTim Ferriss13:06

       [laughs]

   18. JSJerry Seinfeld13:07

       And, and I thought, "Maybe I'll do a show where you just talk with coffee," and [laughs] that's-

   19. TFTim Ferriss13:13

       [laughs]

   20. JSJerry Seinfeld13:13

       ... kinda where that came from, that Comedians in Cars show. But my writing sessions used to be very arduous, very, uh, painful, pushing against the wind in, in soft, muddy ground with, like, a wheelbarrow full of bricks. And I had to do it because there's just, uh, as I mention in the book, you either learn to do that or you will die in the ecosystem. And I learned that really fast and really young. And that saved my life and made my career, that I grasped the essential principle of survival in comedy really young. And that principle is you learn to be a writer. It's really the profession of writing. That's, that's what stand-up comedy is. However you do it, y- y- anybody, you can do it any way you want, but if you don't learn to do it in some form, you will not survive.

   21. TFTim Ferriss14:19

       And when you sit down, is it an empty page? Is it s- bits and pieces that you've noted through the week as observations that you then flesh out? What, what is actually in front of you when you start?

   22. JSJerry Seinfeld14:30

       What's in front of me is, um, usually about 15 or 20 pages of stuff that's in various states of development, and then there's a smaller book of just really, really random things like, um, when you're on a cell phone call and the call drops, and then you reconnect with the person, they'll go, "I don't know what happened there."

   23. TFTim Ferriss14:59

       [laughs]

   24. JSJerry Seinfeld15:01

       As if anyone is expecting them to know anything about the incredibly complex technology of a cell phone. They, they offer this little, I don't know if it's, it's an excuse or an apology. They go, "I don't know what happened there." So anyway, so I don't know. So that's, that's an example of something in that, my little, little, tiny notebook that I don't know what to do with that, but it's just so stupid to me and funny. So that to me is like a, it's like an archery target 50 yards away, and then I take out my bow and my arrow and I go, "Let me see if I can hit that."

   25. TFTim Ferriss15:39

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JSJerry Seinfeld15:40

       Let me see if I can create something that I could say to a room full of humans in a nightclub that will make them see what I see in that. There's something stupid and funny about that to me. That's the very, very beginning. So then I'll write something about it. It'll be, if I'm lucky, it'll be a, a half a page or a page on a yellow legal pad, and I'll write that. And then in the session the next day, if I get around to it, I will see it again, and I will see what I have and what I like and I don't like, and as any writer can tell you, it's 95% rewrite. So I have two phases. There is the free play creative phase, and then there is the polish-and-construction phase of... And I, I love to spend inordinate, I mean, it's not wasteful to me 'cause that's just what I like to do, amounts of time refining and perfecting every single word of it until it has this pleasing flow to my ear. And then it becomes something that I can't wait to say. And then we go from there to the stage with it. And then from the stage, the audience will then... I, I imagine, you know, it's a very scientific thing to me. It's like, okay, here's my experiment, and you run the experiment, and then the audience just dumps a bunch of data on you of this is good, this is okay, this is very good, this is terrible. And that goes into my brain from performing it on stage, and then it's back through the rewrite process. And then new ideas will come. And it's, you know, it's just millions of different kinds of development. It's just that... So you're just trying to get your, you're just going to that place of creating, fixing, jettisoning. It's extremely occupying. It's never boring. It's... The frustration I'm so used to at this point I don't even notice it. And it's just, uh, work time. It's just work time-

   27. TFTim Ferriss17:57

       Yeah

   28. JSJerry Seinfeld17:57

       ... which, and that's my... I like the way athletes talk about, "I gotta get my work in." That you get your work in. I like that phrase. One of the reasons I was looking forward to doing this show with you is I know that it's something you are very interested in.

   29. TFTim Ferriss18:14

       The craft

   30. JSJerry Seinfeld18:15

       The, yeah, the systemization of the brain and creative endeavor or s- you know, I really think when I'm working, it's very much like when you're watching a pitcher working on stage. And now we're going-
4. 18:42 – 21:05

   The real wellspring of ideas

   1. JSJerry Seinfeld18:42

      endless.

   2. TFTim Ferriss18:42

      The process, and the repeatable process, the experimentation, like you phrased it, is extremely interesting to me. And if we took or take that cellphone example, the dropping of reception, that's an observation. It seems to me that you are a real connoisseur of questions, whether those questions are being used as part of a bit or possibly as prompts. And t- you mentioned the coffee in part leading to Comedians in Cars. In a Harvard Business Review interview, you also mentioned that it's important to know what you don't like. A big part of innovation-

   3. JSJerry Seinfeld19:19

      Yes

   4. TFTim Ferriss19:19

      ... is saying, "You know what I'm really sick of?" Question mark, right? And for you, that was talk shows where the music plays, somebody walks out to a desk, shakes hands-

   5. JSJerry Seinfeld19:26

      Yeah

   6. TFTim Ferriss19:26

      ... with the host-

   7. JSJerry Seinfeld19:26

      Right

   8. TFTim Ferriss19:26

      ... sits down.

   9. JSJerry Seinfeld19:27

      Yeah.

   10. TFTim Ferriss19:28

       And what am I really sick of being a departure point for innovation. I would love to hear about any questions, if there are questions, that you use as prompts to help elicit observation or materials for yourself.

   11. JSJerry Seinfeld19:43

       No, no. The, that's, that part is somewhat having a very cranky nature and being a, a-

   12. TFTim Ferriss19:51

       [laughs]

   13. JSJerry Seinfeld19:51

       ... a sensitive kind of, I don't know if it's percep- perception, but you're just provoked by a lot of things, [laughs] you know?

   14. TFTim Ferriss20:01

       [laughs] Yeah. Right

   15. JSJerry Seinfeld20:02

       And that, if you're lucky enough to have that, the next thing you must do is nurture and protect it, and never lose it. And the enemy of it is success.

   16. TFTim Ferriss20:16

       Hmm.

   17. JSJerry Seinfeld20:16

       Success is the enemy of irritability and crankiness because now you have money, and you can remove the difficulties from your life, and that's not good.

   18. TFTim Ferriss20:29

       How do you contend with that? Because you've had, certainly you've, I, I would imagine have had to do things to offset, in that case, the creature comforts and so on that come along with the amount of success that you've had.

   19. JSJerry Seinfeld20:42

       Yes. The thing I did that really solved almost all of that issue is I got married.

   20. TFTim Ferriss20:48

       [laughs] Okay.

   21. JSJerry Seinfeld20:51

       And-

   22. TFTim Ferriss20:51

       Please elaborate.

   23. JSJerry Seinfeld20:52

       That w- you'll never run out-

   24. TFTim Ferriss20:53

       [laughs]

   25. JSJerry Seinfeld20:55

       ... if you get married, and if you have kids, then, then, then you've got a goldmine.

   26. TFTim Ferriss20:58

       [laughs]

5. 21:05 – 24:51

   Steering Seinfeld for nine seasons

   1. TFTim Ferriss21:05

      You mentioned just a few minutes ago about wordsmithing until you get everything pleasing to the ear and really o- obsessing over-

   2. JSJerry Seinfeld21:15

      Mm-hmm

   3. TFTim Ferriss21:15

      ... the, the prose. I've read that one of your explanations for the success of all of your television was that, quote, "The show was successful because I micromanaged it. Every word, every line-

   4. JSJerry Seinfeld21:29

      Mm-hmm

   5. TFTim Ferriss21:29

      ... every take, every edit, every casting. And then later on, if you're efficient, you're doing it the wrong way." There are a lot of questions I could ask about this, but I suppose one is, if you are for such a period of time... I understand the logic of it, but if for such a long period of time obsessing over the details like that, did you not find yourself at risk of burnout or just hitting a point of overwhelm, or did that not happen to you?

   6. JSJerry Seinfeld21:56

      Are we talking about the series now or just-

   7. TFTim Ferriss21:58

      Yeah, we're talking about the series. Mm-hmm.

   8. JSJerry Seinfeld22:00

      The series, well, the series is a, um, you know, uh, if, if you wanna look at... The comedy arts is, is the only thing that interests me creatively, I, I think, or the only thing I'm any good at. But if you look at the different comedy arts sh- uh, if, if, you know, if I was to break it down, let's just say into, like, basics of stand-up comedy, a television series, or a movie. I would analogize those to different vessels on the water. So a TV series is like a pretty big boat that you can run with a couple of people. A movie is a, a yacht. There are so many people. It's a beautiful thing. There's a lot of money involved. Everybody wants it. Everybody thinks it's the ultimate way to go across the water. And stand-up for me is a surfboard. It's just you.

   9. TFTim Ferriss22:53

      Hmm.

   10. JSJerry Seinfeld22:53

       You paddle out, and you try and catch, uh, the energy, and you're all on your own. And you can do it and go home, and nobody but you really even knows what happened. I think the more people you add to the, the vessel, the faster you're going to struggle to maintain its progress through the water. For sure, the TV series got to a point... We did it nine years, and the way I was doing it, that was as far as it could go before it was really going to stop cutting through the water in that beautiful way that it was doing. That's why I, I pulled out of it before I had to, before anyone wanted me to, because I didn't wanna be on a boat that was starting to struggle. I didn't wanna have that experience, and I, even more than that, I didn't want the audience to have that experience. I wanted to complete this gift to them in a way that they would always go, "Oh, I was given a, a lovely thing one time in the '90s, and it was just lovely." I, I wanted them to have it like that. No excuses, no if onlys, no it did go on a bit, maybe longer than it should have. I didn't want to... I just wanted them to have this lovely gift. That's why I stopped- The TV series. I, I could also describe the TV series to you as a weather event that has an energy that gathers and becomes cyclonic, but every storm blows itself out, and that, that storm was about to run out of energy. And, um, so was I. It's the same thing, 'cause I, I'm, I was at the center of the storm and I could feel the slowing of the cyclonic curve, the funnel.

6. 24:51 – 26:01

   On stepping away from massive success

   1. TFTim Ferriss24:51

      Is that something that you had a role model for? Is that something you simply perceived? Because it's very rare for someone to step out like Rocky Marciano. Usually they go a bit too far, they get slapped around a bit, or they end up signing, you know, baseball mitts at Caesar's Palace or whatever it is.

   2. JSJerry Seinfeld25:08

      Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

   3. TFTim Ferriss25:09

      Did you have any model for that? Was that something you decided entirely on your own?

   4. JSJerry Seinfeld25:15

      The closest I had, and I, I would never compare myself in any way, shape, or form, was The Beatles.

   5. TFTim Ferriss25:23

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JSJerry Seinfeld25:23

      The timeframe of The Beatles was nine years. They broke up for different reasons. We had no discord on my show like they, uh, struggled with. But the portion size of The Beatles just felt so right to me, and I thought... Th- and they were together about nine years, and we were together about nine years, and there was something about adding that other digit to go to 10. You know, like if people said to me, "How long did you do that series for?" And if I said, "10 years," I, I could just hear people go, "Wow, wow, 10 years." It just, just the portion size just felt too big to me.

   7. TFTim Ferriss25:59

      [laughs]

7. 26:01 – 28:23

   Irritability as inspiration

   1. TFTim Ferriss26:02

      Is the... You mentioned, I guess, irritation as a wellspring of-

   2. JSJerry Seinfeld26:07

      Mm-hmm

   3. TFTim Ferriss26:08

      ... uh, sort of comedic material. Is it irritation or is it sensitivity in the connotation of a very sensitive scale where you're just perceiving more? Is it a dissatisfaction or a irritability, or is there-

   4. JSJerry Seinfeld26:24

      I think your five senses have been made a little too good-

   5. TFTim Ferriss26:31

      Mm-hmm

   6. JSJerry Seinfeld26:31

      ... and it's not quite comfortable. I have a friend, actually two friends, it was really weird, and they're married. This is a really weird story. And they both suffered from this breakdown in their hearing. There's a bone in the hearing canal that's, I guess, it's like a... I think it looks like a little wishbone or something. You know, there's all these little fine bones in there.

   7. TFTim Ferriss26:54

      Yeah, the stirrup. All these tiny bones.

   8. JSJerry Seinfeld26:56

      Yeah.

   9. TFTim Ferriss26:57

      Yep.

   10. JSJerry Seinfeld26:57

       So both of them, the husband and the wife, first the wife and then the husband like six months later. It's a very rare condition. So anyway, they both had to get this very delicate surgery on their inner ear, and they replaced that bone with a piece of titanium that's made to do the same thing, and it's actually this fantastic cure for this problem. And so they both have these titanium [laughs] ears now. And when they first got it, their hearing was, like, too good-

   11. TFTim Ferriss27:32

       Right

   12. JSJerry Seinfeld27:32

       ... and it was a, a little uncomfortable for them. And I think now they've adjusted to it fine, but it reminded me of how I feel like my senses are. My eyes-

   13. TFTim Ferriss27:44

       Mm

   14. JSJerry Seinfeld27:44

       ... and my ears and my skin, and I just feel everything just a little more than I think I would even like to.

   15. TFTim Ferriss27:52

       Right.

   16. JSJerry Seinfeld27:53

       And so that's... Yeah, I think that's just kind of a genetic thing, but I, I, I don't know another comedian that isn't the same-

   17. TFTim Ferriss28:01

       Mm-hmm

   18. JSJerry Seinfeld28:01

       ... and just has this hair-trigger reaction to anything that is, irritates them. And a lot of it is visual, I think. I think I mentioned that in my introduction, that I think jokes come from a, a kind of intense visual acuity.

   19. TFTim Ferriss28:19

       You did, mm-hmm.

   20. JSJerry Seinfeld28:20

       Yeah, so I think that's part of where it comes

8. 28:23 – 32:17

   Harmony and the cast of Seinfeld

   1. JSJerry Seinfeld28:23

      from.

   2. TFTim Ferriss28:23

      If we imagine, uh, we meaning a lay audience imagines comics in our mind's eyes, [laughs] you have these sort of hypersensitive cat-like creatures-

   3. JSJerry Seinfeld28:35

      Yeah

   4. TFTim Ferriss28:35

      ... who might be very difficult to put into any type of group.

   5. JSJerry Seinfeld28:39

      Yes.

   6. TFTim Ferriss28:39

      But yet you mentioned a lack of discord on the show, which I'm not a Hollywood wonk, but I have a little bit of mileage, and that seems to be not altogether common. To what would you attribute that lack of discord?

   7. JSJerry Seinfeld28:54

      I don't like discord.

   8. TFTim Ferriss28:56

      [laughs]

   9. JSJerry Seinfeld28:58

      And I, I don't like it, and I h- am fearless in rooting it out and solving it. And if anyone's having a problem, I'm gonna walk right up to them and go, "Is there a problem? Let's talk about this." Because I cannot stand that kind of turmoil.

   10. TFTim Ferriss29:17

       That approach to conflict resolution is very proactive. It's not like you're being passive-aggressive.

   11. JSJerry Seinfeld29:22

       Yeah.

   12. TFTim Ferriss29:22

       It's not like you're conflict avoidant. Is that something you got from your parents? Is that something that you just came out of the womb having, that direct addressing of, of discord or, or problems?

   13. JSJerry Seinfeld29:35

       I don't know where I got that. I feel like if you break the human struggle down to one word, it's confront. And so I kind of approach everything that way. And just the, the act of the confront is like... You know, what do, what do people always say? Like, admitting you have a problem, all that nonsense. But I did read some pop psychology books. I s- I was very much a searcher in my younger years. Yoga and Zen and a little Scientology, transcendental meditation, Buddhism. You know, I, I read a lot of stuff, looking... I don't know what I was looking for. I think I was, uh, uh, I was looking for a, a working philosophy, I think is what I was looking for in life to apply.

   14. TFTim Ferriss30:21

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JSJerry Seinfeld30:21

       And I kind of formed my own little... I don't know if religion is the right word, but I've definitely created my own belief- Or operating system. I, I think-

   16. TFTim Ferriss30:32

       Operating system

   17. JSJerry Seinfeld30:32

       ... operating system would be the best term for what-

   18. TFTim Ferriss30:35

       Right

   19. JSJerry Seinfeld30:35

       ... I've created because it's very pragmatic. It's not faith-based in any way. But that's my, one of my biggest principles is confront.

   20. TFTim Ferriss30:48

       Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Did you know if you missed 10 of the best performing days after the 2008 crisis, you would have missed out on 50%, 5-0-0%, of your returns? Don't miss out on the best days in the market. Stay invested in a long-term automated investment portfolio. Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement sometimes referred to as robo advising, and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. Wealthfront can help you diversify your portfolio, minimize fees, and lower your taxes. Takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite, and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost. Wealthfront's software constantly monitors your portfolio day in and day out so you don't have to. They look for opportunities to rebalance and tax loss harvest to lower the amount of taxes you pay on your investment gains. Their newest service is called Autopilot, and it can monitor any checking account for excess cash to move into savings or an investment account. They've really thought of a ton. They've checked a lot of boxes. Smart investing should not feel like a rollercoaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to wealthfront.com/tim and open a Wealthfront investment account today, and you'll get your first $5,000 managed for free for life. That's wealthfront.com/tim. Wealthfront will automate your investments for the long term, and you can get started today at wealthfront.com/tim.

9. 32:17 – 36:23

   The importance of systems

   1. TFTim Ferriss32:17

      Are there any other examples that you could give from your operating system? Any other guiding rules or principles, or anything that stuck from that seeking period?

   2. JSJerry Seinfeld32:27

      Well, uh, it's, well, my, my guiding rule is systemize. What's the problem? The problem is, like my daughter, my daughter is very creative. She's extremely bright. She's got an incredible head on her shoulders, and I see myself in her at that age. She's way farther advanced than I was at that age, but she doesn't know... I, I said to her, "You..." She has a creative gift, okay? So I say to her, "When you have a creative gift, it's like someone just gave you a horse. Now you, you have to learn how to ride it. You gotta learn how to ride this horse." And I've seen people that are born by the dozens and dozens, I've seen people that were given black stallions, and it usually kill... If you, if you have a black stallion, like from that movie-

   3. TFTim Ferriss33:18

      Mm-hmm

   4. JSJerry Seinfeld33:18

      ... and you're born and they just put you on it, and that's what happens. They just put you on it, and you either learn to ride this thing or it's gonna kill you. And we have many, many examples of that. So she's trying to write this thing. She's struggling. "I can't write. I keep putting it off." So I explained to her my basic system, which you already talked about at the top of the show, which is if you're gonna write, make yourself a writing session. What's the writing session? I'm gonna work on this problem. Well, how long are you gonna work on it? Don't just sit down with an open-ended, "I'm gonna work on this problem." That, that's a ridiculous torture to put on a human being's head. It's like you're gonna hire a trainer to get in shape and he comes over, and you go, "How long is the session?" And he goes, "It's open-ended." Forget it.

   5. TFTim Ferriss34:06

      [laughs]

   6. JSJerry Seinfeld34:07

      I'm not doing it.

   7. TFTim Ferriss34:08

      [laughs]

   8. JSJerry Seinfeld34:10

      It's over right there. You've got to control what your brain can take, okay? So if you're gonna exercise, God bless you, and that's the best thing in the world you can do. But you gotta know when's it gonna end. When's the workout over? It's gonna be an hour. Okay. Or you can't take that? Let's do 30 minutes. Okay, great. Now we're getting somewhere. I can do 30. I'm trying to teach my son, who knows how to do transcendental meditation, how to do it. I assume you know about that.

   9. TFTim Ferriss34:42

      I do.

   10. JSJerry Seinfeld34:43

       Yeah.

   11. TFTim Ferriss34:43

       Yeah, I practiced this morning.

   12. JSJerry Seinfeld34:44

       Okay, so he says, "I can't do it 15 minutes." Like, okay, let's do 10. Let's do 10. Let's come up with something you can do. That's where you start everything. That's how you start to build a system. So my daughter, so I said to her, "You have to have an end time to your writing session. If you're gonna sit down at a desk with a problem and do nothing else, you gotta get a reward for that, and the reward is the alarm goes off and you're done. You get up-

   13. TFTim Ferriss35:12

       Mm

   14. JSJerry Seinfeld35:12

       ... and walk away and go have some cookies and milk. You're done. If you have the guts and the balls to sit down and write, you need a reward at the other end of that session, which is stop now. Pencils down." So that's the beginning of a system that, to me, will help almost anybody learn to write, uh, which is something, you know, I kinda wanted to teach in a way because I find it... I think it's so simple. I think exercise is pretty simple, too.

   15. TFTim Ferriss35:44

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JSJerry Seinfeld35:45

       And, but people don't, they don't come up with ba- good, simple little systems. They just try and do it.

   17. TFTim Ferriss35:51

       Yeah.

   18. JSJerry Seinfeld35:51

       And that's, to me, that's, you're gonna fail.

   19. TFTim Ferriss35:53

       The simple doesn't mean easy, and the point you made-

   20. JSJerry Seinfeld35:56

       No, no, no. Not easy

   21. TFTim Ferriss35:57

       ... is s-

   22. JSJerry Seinfeld35:57

       But simple

   23. TFTim Ferriss35:58

       ... so important. The incentives, right? Having a reward, having a defined format. How long did your daughter end up choosing for her writing duration, or how long-

   24. JSJerry Seinfeld36:08

       I told her-

   25. TFTim Ferriss36:08

       ... have you chosen? Yeah

   26. JSJerry Seinfeld36:08

       ... I told her, "Just do an hour. That's a lot." She says-

   27. TFTim Ferriss36:12

       That's a lot

   28. JSJerry Seinfeld36:12

       ... "I'm gonna write all day." No you're not. Nobody writes all day.

   29. TFTim Ferriss36:15

       [laughs]

   30. JSJerry Seinfeld36:18

       Shakespeare can't write all day. It's, it's, it's torture.
10. 36:23 – 38:43

    If he taught a class on writing

    1. TFTim Ferriss36:24

       If you taught a class on writing, what other lessons might you have, or resources, or anything? Exercises? 'Cause I'm imagining that your daughter could sit down, she says, "All right. I have an hour," and then you ask her how her writing session went and she said, "Well, I didn't have any idea what to write." So you'd have, I don't know what age the students would be in your course, but what else would be a component of your class on writing?

    2. JSJerry Seinfeld36:44

       Well, I would teach them to learn to accept your mediocrity

    3. TFTim Ferriss36:49

       [laughs]

    4. JSJerry Seinfeld36:50

       You know? No one's really that great. You know who's great? The people that just put tremendous amount of hours into it. It's a game of tonnage. You know?

    5. TFTim Ferriss36:59

       Totally.

    6. JSJerry Seinfeld36:59

       How many hours are you gonna work per week, per month, per year? You might even wanna chart that. Or with your exercise, if you wanna get in shape. I couldn't get in shape. I was like a... Started out as a jogger, you know, like in the '70s, and I would run three miles a day. And then I got older, and I got married late, and I had young kids, and I really had to get in shape, and I picked up this book, uh, by Bill Phillips called Body for Life.

    7. TFTim Ferriss37:27

       Body for Life, yeah.

    8. JSJerry Seinfeld37:28

       And it's really, really so... It's such a system for a primitive, you know, brain. I do it to this day. I think it's a work of genius, this book, and it really got me in shape because he broke it down to, here's what we're gonna do in minute one. Here's what you're gonna do to minute five, minute 12, and this is gonna end in the 45 minutes or whatever it is. And every minute I know exactly what I'm doing.

    9. TFTim Ferriss37:59

       Yeah.

    10. JSJerry Seinfeld37:59

        And that, like, turned the key for me, and all of a sudden I was getting in shape. I never had to ask, "What am I doing now?" or, "What are we doing next?" It was very... It's like you gotta treat your brain like a dog you just got. You gotta-

    11. TFTim Ferriss38:16

        [laughs]

    12. JSJerry Seinfeld38:16

        It's a stupid... The brain-

    13. TFTim Ferriss38:18

        Yeah

    14. JSJerry Seinfeld38:18

        ... the mind is infinite in wisdom. The brain is a stupid little dog that is easily trained.

    15. TFTim Ferriss38:25

        [laughs] Yeah.

    16. JSJerry Seinfeld38:29

        Do not confuse the mind with the brain.

    17. TFTim Ferriss38:32

        Yeah.

    18. JSJerry Seinfeld38:32

        The brain is so easy to master. You just have to confine it. You confine it.

    19. TFTim Ferriss38:39

        Yeah.

    20. JSJerry Seinfeld38:39

        And it's done through repetition and systemization.

11. 38:43 – 42:29

    On feedback

    1. TFTim Ferriss38:43

       So let's talk about feedback in the experimental loop that you mentioned earlier, which was desk stage, desk stage, desk stage. One form of feedback would be audience feedback, and I'm curious what other forms of feedback you have.

    2. JSJerry Seinfeld38:58

       Oh, there is no other feedback that means anything.

    3. TFTim Ferriss39:01

       [laughs] Okay. Got it. Yeah.

    4. JSJerry Seinfeld39:03

       Well, I'll tell you. He- here's a, here's a little, a fine point of writing technique that I'll pass along to you writers out there. Never talk to anyone about what you wrote that day, that day. You have to wait 24 hours to ever say anything to anyone about what you did because you never wanna take away that wonderful, happy feeling that you did that very difficult thing that you tried to do, that you accomplished it. You wrote. You sat down and wrote. So if you say anything... It's like the same reason I... You ever heard the thing, like, you never tell people the name you're gonna give the baby-

    5. TFTim Ferriss39:52

       Sure

    6. JSJerry Seinfeld39:53

       ... until it's born? Because they're gonna react, and the reaction is gonna have a color. And if you've decided that that's gonna be the baby's name, you don't wanna know what anybody else thinks. So I will always wait 24 hours before I say anything to anyone about what I wrote. So you wanna preserve that good feeling, 'cause if you... If... Let's say you write something and you love it, and then later on that day you're talking to someone and you go, "Hey, what do you think of this idea, uh, blah, blah, blah?" And they don't love it. Now that day feels like, ugh, I guess, you know, that that was, uh, wasted effort.

    7. TFTim Ferriss40:27

       Right.

    8. JSJerry Seinfeld40:28

       So you always wanna reward yourself. The key to writing, to being a good writer, is to treat yourself like a baby, very extremely nurturing and loving, and then switch over to Lou Gossett in Officer and a Gentleman-

    9. TFTim Ferriss40:44

       [laughs]

    10. JSJerry Seinfeld40:45

        ... and just be a harsh prick, ball-busting son of a bitch about that is just not good enough. That's gotta come out, or it's gotta be redone or thrown away. So flipping back and forth between those two brain quadrants is the key to writing. When you're writing, you wanna treat your brain like a toddler. It's just all nurturing, and loving, and supportiveness. And then when you look at it the next day, you wanna be just a hard-ass, and you switch back and forth.

    11. TFTim Ferriss41:23

        When you would come off stage and feel like you had really nailed the set, you just killed-

    12. JSJerry Seinfeld41:31

        Yeah

    13. TFTim Ferriss41:31

        ... would you ask for feedback from other comics who you might respect, who are there? Would you do something to celebrate instead of not?

    14. JSJerry Seinfeld41:40

        Well, you just got feedback. You don't need to-

    15. TFTim Ferriss41:42

        [laughs] You don't need to ask the-

    16. JSJerry Seinfeld41:44

        That, that-

    17. TFTim Ferriss41:44

        ... the professionals

    18. JSJerry Seinfeld41:45

        ... that's the, that's the paradise of stand-up comedy. You don't have to ask anyone anything. Uh-

    19. TFTim Ferriss41:52

        Right

    20. JSJerry Seinfeld41:52

        ... stand-up comics receive a score on what they're doing more often and more critically than any other human on Earth. You know, even a pitcher, he's not on the mound for an hour and 20 minutes straight, [laughs] you know-

    21. TFTim Ferriss42:08

        Right

    22. JSJerry Seinfeld42:08

        ... having his pitches judged by the umpire. And by the way, some of those calls are opinions of the umpire that may or may not be true. Every opinion the audience gives you is 100% accurate.

    23. TFTim Ferriss42:21

        [laughs] Right. How they feel is fact. Yeah.

    24. JSJerry Seinfeld42:26

        Suffer that pain or have that advantage.

12. 42:29 – 47:49

    On self-rewards

    1. TFTim Ferriss42:29

       When you did well, much like after checking the box of doing an hour-long writing session, would you reward yourself, or was that not part of the process for you?

    2. JSJerry Seinfeld42:41

       I reward myself constantly, I mean, but there's no greater reward than that state of mind that you're in-

    3. TFTim Ferriss42:48

       Mm-hmm

    4. JSJerry Seinfeld42:48

       ... when that set is working. If you can extricate yourself from your- ... self, which is the goal in all sports and performance arts. If you get out of your mind and are able to just function, you know your sense technique that you have, there is no greater reward. But, you know, if you wanna have an ice cream sundae, go ahead.

    5. TFTim Ferriss43:12

       [laughs]

    6. JSJerry Seinfeld43:13

       But it's gonna, it's gonna pale in comparison.

    7. TFTim Ferriss43:16

       Yeah. Did you have a long-term plan? Let's just, if we go back to the, the early days, did you have any type of long-term career plan for yourself, or was it really the ball in front of you and executing on that one next step, and then the career emerged from that approach, or something else?

    8. JSJerry Seinfeld43:37

       Are you asking me if I had a backup plan if stand-up didn't work out? Is that what you're-

    9. TFTim Ferriss43:41

       No, I'm asking you if you had a long-term career plan within-

    10. JSJerry Seinfeld43:44

        A career plan?

    11. TFTim Ferriss43:45

        ... the world of comedy.

    12. JSJerry Seinfeld43:45

        No, I didn't even know if you could make a living as a stand-up comedian unless, you know, you were George Carlin.

    13. TFTim Ferriss43:53

        Mm-hmm.

    14. JSJerry Seinfeld43:53

        So I didn't, I didn't know anything about it. I didn't... And the, the truth was there really wasn't, there really wasn't a, a world, i- an infrastructure that, that like exists today. We didn't know if there was any jobs out there even if we were able to learn how to do it. We had no idea what we were doing. We, it was completely blind leap of faith out of the plane with the, the parachute hoping there wasn't laundry in there.

    15. TFTim Ferriss44:21

        [laughs] What is the feeling? I mean, you mentioned it. I would love, as someone who is hypersensitive, for you to describe that feeling that would make an ice cream sundae superfluous, right?

    16. JSJerry Seinfeld44:33

        Yeah.

    17. TFTim Ferriss44:33

        That feeling of getting that feedback. What is it in the body? What is it... Or in the mind, however you want to answer that. What does it feel like to you?

    18. JSJerry Seinfeld44:42

        I, I sometimes will describe it as math and music, which is kind of the same thing. Uh, music is so mathematical, as is stand-up is extremely mathematical. So, you know, I mean, I, I certainly don't have to tell you, uh, what... That you're just looking for a state of mind. You're trying to maneuver yourself into a state of mind that you know is your highest function level. But there are many levels below that that are good enough to get the job done so that you can call yourself a professional. So that's all there is, you know? Is it's musical. It's very rhythmic and musical. It is for me. I'm looking for the, to get myself in a rhythm, and then to get the audience in, in a rhythm, very much like a, a conductor I think would feel. You know, a, a conductor has a piece of music. I have a piece of music in front of me. And now I have to get the symphony to be doing it the way we know it can be. And then the audience comes along and supports that, and it's this absurd struggle. And I really think being a conductor or a surfer is the best analogy because the forces that you're attempting to corral are so much greater than you. The wave has so much more strength than you have. All you can hope to do is navigate within it. That's the goal, to just get to that very brief, very transitory perception of mastery. It seems in this moment that I am completely mastering this audience, but it's only a moment. It's only a moment. I couldn't stay up there very long. Even an hour is not a long time.

    19. TFTim Ferriss46:28

        Totally.

    20. JSJerry Seinfeld46:29

        You know, it's not a long time. And it takes years and years and years of work and study and practice to be able to do that, to do the hour. The hour is really the standard in my business. A lot of people can do 20. Some can do 35. There are a lot of really good guys at 45. An hour, an hour 15, I, I think again, I, I, my... I'll go to my favorite, uh, which is baseball, for analogies. It's the complete game. Can you finish the game? And that's, that's the hour 10, hour 20. That's nine innings of mastery.

    21. TFTim Ferriss47:11

        Yeah. You need to have not just a lot of material, but a lot of practice and tonnage, as you put it-

    22. JSJerry Seinfeld47:18

        Yeah

    23. TFTim Ferriss47:18

        ... to perform at a high level for that period of time and-

    24. JSJerry Seinfeld47:21

        And manage their energy and yours. And, and it has to-

    25. TFTim Ferriss47:24

        Totally

    26. JSJerry Seinfeld47:24

        ... it has to ebb and flow.

    27. TFTim Ferriss47:27

        Mm-hmm. And that's, just to piggyback on the analogy you used, uh, very much similar to sports. And, you know, I've had a lot of athletes on the show, and even some surfing legends, like Laird Hamilton, they'll say they should call surfing paddling, 'cause that's what you're actually doing most of the time.

    28. JSJerry Seinfeld47:42

        Yeah.

    29. TFTim Ferriss47:42

        And what you get to show at the end of the day is the cover shot surfing the big wave, but that's really the output of a lot of tonnage.

13. 47:49 – 52:27

    Other routines

    1. JSJerry Seinfeld47:49

       Right.

    2. TFTim Ferriss47:49

       And I know you, you've been quoted as thinking of yourself more as a sportsman than an artist.

    3. JSJerry Seinfeld47:55

       Mm-hmm.

    4. TFTim Ferriss47:55

       And for a lot of athletes, routine is, is super key to managing energy and putting in the reps and producing good results.

    5. JSJerry Seinfeld48:05

       Mm-hmm.

    6. TFTim Ferriss48:05

       There's a quote from you in The New York Times, and the quote is, "I'm not OCD, but I love routine. I get less depressed with routine." Aside from the writing sessions, are there any other routines for you that are particularly important as scaffolding or automatic behaviors?

    7. JSJerry Seinfeld48:24

       Yeah. Exercise, weight training, and transcendental meditation. I think I could solve just about anyone's life, and I don't care what you do, with weight training and transcendental meditation. I think your body needs that stress, that stressor, and I think it builds your, the resilience of the nervous system, and I think transcendental meditation is the absolutely ultimate work tool. I think the stress reduction is great, but it, it's more the energy recovery and the Concentration fatigue solution, which is of course... You know, as a stand-up comic, I can tell you my entire life is concentration fatigue. Whether it's writing or performing, my brain and my body, which is the same thing, are constantly hitting the wall. And if you have that in your hip pocket, you're Columbus with a compass.

    8. TFTim Ferriss49:22

       [laughs] Yeah, just chatting with Hugh Jackman on the podcast and, uh, he's also a... Devout seems like an odd word to use since it's, it can be used quite secularly, but, uh-

    9. JSJerry Seinfeld49:35

       Yeah

    10. TFTim Ferriss49:35

        ... proponent-

    11. JSJerry Seinfeld49:36

        Yeah

    12. TFTim Ferriss49:36

        ... of TM. How many times... What does your weekly schedule look like for weight training? When do you do it? And do you do TM twice a day, or do you-

    13. JSJerry Seinfeld49:45

        I do it, uh, at least twice a day, but I will do it any time I feel like I'm dipping.

    14. TFTim Ferriss49:51

        Energetically?

    15. JSJerry Seinfeld49:52

        Yeah, yeah. Any, any... Yeah. If, if I sit down and the pen doesn't move for, like, 20 minutes, I know I'm out of gas.

    16. TFTim Ferriss50:01

        Yeah.

    17. JSJerry Seinfeld50:01

        Why isn't the pen moving? My weight training routine is three times a week for an hour a session, but I'm into that... I've been into that, you know, I, I mentioned the Bill Phillips', uh, Body for Life-

    18. TFTim Ferriss50:13

        Body for Life

    19. JSJerry Seinfeld50:14

        ... program. Uh, the, the HIIT training. So it's three times a week of, uh, weights, and three times a week the, uh, interval cardio training. There are a, a lot of days where I, I want to cry instead of do it because it really, it really physically hurts, but I just think it's balancing, it's very balancing to the forces inside humanity that I think are just, they overwhelm us. We're overwhelmed by our own power, and you gotta put that ox in the plow. Make it do the stuff that it doesn't wanna do. It just keeps it... What the hell do oxes do in the wild? I, I can't imagine they were happy.

    20. TFTim Ferriss50:54

        [laughs] Checking Twitter.

    21. JSJerry Seinfeld50:57

        [laughs]

    22. TFTim Ferriss50:57

        Just developing neuroses. [laughs]

    23. JSJerry Seinfeld51:01

        Yeah. So, you know, put, put it in the harness. Keep... I mean, I, I don't know. A lot of my life is I, I don't like getting depressed. I get depressed a lot. I hate the feeling. And these routines, the, these very difficult routines, whether it's exercise or writing, and both of them are things where it's like, it's, it's brutal. That's another thing I was explaining to my daughter. She's, she's frustrated that writing is so difficult 'cause no one told her that it's the most difficult thing in the world. It's the most difficult thing in the world is to write. People tell you to write like you can do it, like you're supposed to be able to do it. Nobody can do it. It's impossible. The greatest people in the world can't do it. So if you're gonna do it, you should first be told what you are attempting to do is incredibly difficult. One of the most difficult things there is. Way harder than weight training. Way harder what you're summoning, trying to summon within your brain and your spirit to create something onto a blank page. So that's another part of my systemization technique. Learn how to encourage yourself. Th- that's why you don't tell someone what you wrote. And be proud of yourself. Encourage, y- you know, treat yourself well for having done that horrible, horribly impossible

14. 52:27 – 53:56

    Pain is knowledge filling a void at great speed

    1. JSJerry Seinfeld52:27

       thing.

    2. TFTim Ferriss52:27

       I would have to imagine, and maybe this is just a projection because I, I hope that when I have kids, which I don't have yet, that this will be true for me. But that being kind to your creative self and offering positive reinforcement-

    3. JSJerry Seinfeld52:42

       Mm-hmm

    4. TFTim Ferriss52:42

       ... for yourself through the process would affect how you parent, I would have to imagine.

    5. JSJerry Seinfeld52:46

       Yes, yes. Unfortunately, we seem to have lost the Lou Gossett side of parenting, so. [laughs]

    6. TFTim Ferriss52:57

       [laughs] Pesky Child Protective Services.

    7. JSJerry Seinfeld52:59

       Yeah.

    8. TFTim Ferriss52:59

       What do they know? [laughs]

    9. JSJerry Seinfeld53:03

       But yeah, it's, it is similar. You wanna be very encouraging, but you also want to explain there are laws in life that you need to know about or you, it's gonna hurt. I think one of the better lines I've come up with over my life is that pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a void with great speed.

    10. TFTim Ferriss53:26

        Huh. Can you say that one more time, please?

    11. JSJerry Seinfeld53:27

        Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a void. You don't know that that post of your bed was not where you thought it was, but when your foot hits it, that knowledge is gonna come rushing in really fast.

    12. TFTim Ferriss53:44

        [laughs]

    13. JSJerry Seinfeld53:46

        And gonna really hurt when your foot hits that post, 'cause that was a piece of knowledge that you didn't have that, that you're gonna get, you're about to get.

15. 53:56 – 56:24

    On the allure of depression

    1. TFTim Ferriss53:56

       You were talking about black, black stallion and learning to ride black stallion lest-

    2. JSJerry Seinfeld54:00

       Right

    3. TFTim Ferriss54:00

       ... you be broken yourself by your superpowers-

    4. JSJerry Seinfeld54:04

       Oh, yeah

    5. TFTim Ferriss54:04

       ... slash potential murderers. I've struggled with depression for decades and have found some respite in the last five or six years for a whole host of reasons, but aside from the writing and weight training, is there anything else that has contributed to your ability to either stave off or mitigate depressive episodes, or manage?

    6. JSJerry Seinfeld54:24

       No. I, I still got 'em.

    7. TFTim Ferriss54:27

       Mm-hmm.

    8. JSJerry Seinfeld54:27

       Still got 'em. The, the best thing I ever heard about it was that it's part of a kit that comes with a creative aspect to the brain.

    9. TFTim Ferriss54:36

       Mm-hmm.

    10. JSJerry Seinfeld54:37

        That a tendency to depression seems to always accompany that. And I read that like 20 years ago, and that really made me happy. So I realized, well, I wouldn't have all this other good stuff without... That that's just comes in the kit, that you have an, a tendency to depression. But I, I think it's fair to say that I don't know a human that doesn't have the tendency. I, I'm sure it varies.

    11. TFTim Ferriss55:00

        I have a number of friends who are in comedy, and a lot of them are afraid of getting any type of treatment or taking antidepressants because they worry that it would rob them of their comedic insight. I don't know if that's something you've run into yourself, or is it more that you accept it as a natural byproduct or companion to the sensitivity?

    12. JSJerry Seinfeld55:24

        I, I would agree. W- A, a chemical intervention in to stabilize your mood, I would be nervous about that also. And besides which, a- as you know, as we all know, there are many other better remedies that... You know, basically a pair of running shoes is probably better than any of the drugs they have on the market.

    13. TFTim Ferriss55:47

        Yeah.

    14. JSJerry Seinfeld55:48

        Depending on the severity, of course.

    15. TFTim Ferriss55:50

        Yeah. Or at least make sure that you're adding those elements into your life, since I, I think we all know people who take antidepressants and are still depressed. So it's worthwhile to kind of tick off the bigger boxes, uh, behaviorally speaking.

    16. JSJerry Seinfeld56:04

        I don't think depression is really a creative source. I, I, I think irritability and crankiness is.

    17. TFTim Ferriss56:10

        Mm-hmm. Right.

    18. JSJerry Seinfeld56:12

        But not depression. Depression is just an annoying thing we have to deal with.

    19. TFTim Ferriss56:15

        You gave me a quote. I'll ask you one more question and then, uh, we can, we, we close it.

    20. JSJerry Seinfeld56:19

        We can go a little more. I, I'm, I'm enjoying this so much. Let, let's go a little more.

    21. TFTim Ferriss56:23

        All right. Let's do

16. 56:24 – 1:01:14

    Favorite failures

    1. TFTim Ferriss56:24

       it. So I'd, I'd love to ask about... Following up on depression, I'd love to ask about failure, [laughs] uh, just to keep this bright-

    2. JSJerry Seinfeld56:30

       Mm-hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss56:30

       ... and shiny. Uh, can you think of how a particular failure or apparent failure set you up for later success? Uh, in other words, do you have a favorite failure of any type, something that seemed catastrophic at the time that in fact set you up for great things later?

    4. JSJerry Seinfeld56:49

       Yeah. Yeah. I have a couple really good ones. And this is another thing I try and teach the kids, you know, when something horrible happens and I, I think, of all the things I would trade, if you could take your experiences and, and ask to trade them in, the last ones I would trade would be the failures. Those are the most valuable ones. When I, uh, moved to LA, I was only doing comedy four years, but I, I had built up a pretty good reputation in New York. And New York was really in those days still very much the minors to LA, which was the majors. And so I went out to LA, and, uh, people talked that I was coming and that I was, you know, one of the hot guys coming out of New York. And I was only doing it four years. I was, you know, 25 years old. I, I mean, I... Really still just starting. And The Comedy Store was the club in LA that you had to break into. That, that was the club. And the guys that worked there and the women were killers. I mean, these people made the room just shake with laughter. It was very intimidating to go on there. And I went on there and I did very well. You know, in those days you would, you would call and they would give you spots if you were good. And I would never get spots. I would get, like, one spot a week, and... You know, one spot a week is like one pushup a week.

    5. TFTim Ferriss58:17

       [laughs]

    6. JSJerry Seinfeld58:17

       It's like, you're, forget it. Why- don't even bother. And so I asked to meet with Mitzi Shore, who's the owner of the club and person who ran the whole thing there, and she said to me, she said, "I'm the kind of person that needs to get stepped on, and, uh, that's what you need. You need someone to step on you, and I'm gonna be that person."

    7. TFTim Ferriss58:37

       [laughs]

    8. JSJerry Seinfeld58:39

       And, uh, she said, "If you called and said... If I had four spots available and you called in, I would give all four spots to this other guy." She mentions this other guy. And I sat there in her office and I nodded. [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss58:56

       [laughs]

    10. JSJerry Seinfeld58:57

        I nodded and I said, "Well..." Uh, I won't mention the name of the guy she said she was gonna give the four spots to. She- I said, "Well, if maybe he can't do all four, I'd be happy to take any of the ones he can't do." And I walked out of there and I never worked at The Comedy Store again. And saying you're, you're not working at The Comedy Store in LA, it's like saying, "I want to be a baseball player, but not the majors. Not the majors of the United States."

    11. TFTim Ferriss59:23

        [laughs]

    12. JSJerry Seinfeld59:26

        I'm gonna ply my trade someplace else.

    13. TFTim Ferriss59:29

        Yeah.

    14. JSJerry Seinfeld59:29

        You know what I mean?

    15. TFTim Ferriss59:29

        Try Li- Lithuania.

    16. JSJerry Seinfeld59:31

        Yeah. [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss59:33

        Yeah.

    18. JSJerry Seinfeld59:33

        And so from there, I, I went from, I hope it doesn't sound immodest, from being absolutely at the top of the heap in New York City to playing at discos in the basement in LA. You know, to, like, eight people. But my resentment and hostility to her... I was a guy who w- I would say I was a, a three-day-a-week guy in terms of my writing discipline in those days, and I went from three days a week to seven right there.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:00:07

        [laughs]

    20. JSJerry Seinfeld1:00:08

        And I was like, "Okay, we're not... This is, this is, uh..." I was angry.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:00:13

        Yeah.

    22. JSJerry Seinfeld1:00:13

        I was angry. I was frustrated. I was resentful. But I used that. It was just fuel for me. She wasn't stopping me. Nobody was gonna stop me. But when someone is that hostile to you, that can be a very good thing.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:00:27

        [laughs]

    24. JSJerry Seinfeld1:00:29

        [laughs] If you're tough. If you're tough enough to eat that-

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:00:33

        Yeah

    26. JSJerry Seinfeld1:00:33

        ... shit and say, "I'm, I'm... She's not stopping me"

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:00:36

        [laughs] I love... That's a great story. I-

    28. JSJerry Seinfeld1:00:39

        Yeah.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:00:40

        It, it, uh, makes me think. I... One of my friends, uh, Alexis Ohanian, co-founded Reddit, and at one point-

    30. JSJerry Seinfeld1:00:46

        Mm
17. 1:01:14 – 1:03:00

    Writing three days a week vs. writing seven

    1. JSJerry Seinfeld1:01:14

       right.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:01:14

       It, it worked. So what then transpired after you went from three days a week to seven days a week? When did you get a glimmer of hope or vindication?

    3. JSJerry Seinfeld1:01:27

       The Tonight Show saw me, and every comedian in, in the world wanted to get on The Tonight Show in the, uh, '70s and '80s. It was the only way out of-

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:01:38

       Mm-hmm

    5. JSJerry Seinfeld1:01:38

       ... the clubs to real gigs, was to be on The Tonight Show. The clubs was... You're working for free.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:01:46

       Right.

    7. JSJerry Seinfeld1:01:47

       Free. Zero. You know? That's not really the object. The object is to get paid. [laughs] The object is to be a professional.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:01:56

       [laughs]

    9. JSJerry Seinfeld1:01:57

       So, uh, and you're... When, when you're on The Tonight Show, you're going from the service road to lane one.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:02:04

        [laughs] No more, no more Applebee's. Yeah.

    11. JSJerry Seinfeld1:02:09

        In five minutes.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:02:10

        Yeah.

    13. JSJerry Seinfeld1:02:10

        And I, and I told that story in the book too.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:02:13

        Mm-hmm.

    15. JSJerry Seinfeld1:02:13

        What that felt like. You know, my favorite sporting thing... I mean, I have a... I'm a baseball maniac, but the 100 meters in the Olympics is a, is this thing I l- I love. I love the 100 meters. And that's what happened when you did The Tonight Show in, in those days. You... I, I... When I see Lindsey Vonn at the top of a mountain, or I see those guys kicking their legs when they're in the blocks, you know, I know what that feels like.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:02:40

        [laughs]

    17. JSJerry Seinfeld1:02:41

        I know. And I'm very grateful that I know that. You know, if you're an adrenaline junkie, which I am, there's no good comedian that isn't, that's a big treat in life, to know how that feels, that I'm gonna change my whole life in the next three minutes.

18. 1:03:00 – 1:03:13

    The Tonight Show: the first appearance

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:03:00

       How many times did you rehearse that three-minute [laughs] segment of material? I mean, I would imagine you must have done it 1,000 times before you-

    2. JSJerry Seinfeld1:03:10

       1,000 times.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:03:11

       Yeah.

    4. JSJerry Seinfeld1:03:11

       1,000 times.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:03:12

       [laughs]

19. 1:03:13 – 1:06:40

    Mitzi Shore of The Comedy Store

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:03:13

       Did you ever have another conversation with Mitzi Shore, or did any... Did you ever convey any message to her, or an- or have any communication?

    2. JSJerry Seinfeld1:03:23

       I, I did. When I got my TV series in the '90s, I moved up to this fantastic house in the Hollywood Hills that overlooked all of LA. Every day, I would drive down the hill to go to the studio to work on the show. I would see Mitzi taking her walk on a nearby street that we happened to have in common, and I would always give her a nice look. [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:03:49

       [laughs]

    4. JSJerry Seinfeld1:03:50

       I wouldn't wave or honk, but, uh, our eyes met. [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:03:56

       [laughs] Numen.

    6. JSJerry Seinfeld1:03:57

       Many times.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:03:57

       Numen.

    8. JSJerry Seinfeld1:03:58

       Many times.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:03:59

       [laughs]

    10. JSJerry Seinfeld1:04:00

        And you know what? Maybe she was right. Maybe I did need someone to step on me.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:04:05

        Why did she respond that way? That just seems so aggressive. Did you do anything-

    12. JSJerry Seinfeld1:04:10

        Because I would never be the broken... the type of broken-winged bird that she wanted to have in her little chicken coop of dysfunction-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:04:21

        [laughs]

    14. JSJerry Seinfeld1:04:21

        ... that was The Comedy Store in those days. I was not built like that. The only reason I wanted to be a stand-up comic is 'cause I wanted to say to myself and to the world, "I don't need you."

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:04:34

        Hmm.

    16. JSJerry Seinfeld1:04:34

        "I can do this myself." And The Comedy Store was filled with people that needed her. The comedy world in those days was a druggy... You know, it's a very dysfunctional world, the comedy world. Because you're taking these people that, uh, that, that can't fit in. They can't... You know, they have this one skill, and then you put them in a situation where they can get anything they want. Uh, uh, so whatever dysfunctional chemical, sexual, you're lazy, you're broken, you're messed up, you know, now you got... you have no structure around you to fix it.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:05:10

        Yeah.

    18. JSJerry Seinfeld1:05:11

        You know what I mean? You're, you're out in the world. You're completely on your own.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:05:16

        Yeah.

    20. JSJerry Seinfeld1:05:16

        It's designed to break human beings-

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:05:18

        Hmm

    22. JSJerry Seinfeld1:05:19

        ... stand-up comedy. It's a perfect way to break a person psychologically.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:05:24

        You know, I've only been to The Comedy Store once. I was brought there by a friend, and I went into one of the back rooms. I'm sure you would know the name of this room. But they, they listed off a whole lot of old names. I wanna say Sam Kinison and a bunch of others. And they said, "This is where they used... This was the green room," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there was this huge table with a mirror top with thousands of scratches on it, [laughs] and-

    24. JSJerry Seinfeld1:05:48

        Right

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:05:48

        ... not from fingernails.

    26. JSJerry Seinfeld1:05:49

        Mm-hmm.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:05:49

        Right? [laughs] And you just think-

    28. JSJerry Seinfeld1:05:51

        Yeah

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:05:51

        ... "My God. If you don't have rails to stay on, I mean, pun intended, I guess, the environment is just designed to destroy." And-

    30. JSJerry Seinfeld1:06:01

        Yes, but that's part of the fun also. [laughs]
20. 1:06:40 – 1:14:22

    Self-sufficiency and gamification

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:06:40

       The self-sufficiency or desire for self-sufficiency that you gave voice to, the, uh, proving to others that you don't need... that you can do it on your own-

    2. JSJerry Seinfeld1:06:48

       Mm-hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:06:48

       ... seems to be a very sharp contrast to a lot of entertainers I know, including comics, who seem to have a lot of codependency, right? Like, they need the audience to validate, like they need life support if they had respiratory collapse. And was that perspective and that character or constitution- ... rare

    4. JSJerry Seinfeld1:07:12

       I, I have to say the constitution is, is, is kind of rare. But I also have to say I don't know anyone who made it over a long period of time that didn't have it.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:07:23

       Yeah.

    6. JSJerry Seinfeld1:07:24

       And that's another thing that kind of led me to, that leads me to the weight training aspect. I think it, I think it builds your constitution.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:07:32

       Mm-hmm. Yeah. The weight training, you know, and I, I just want to give credit where credit is due with Bill Phillips. I read that book long time ago. This is before my second book, which was on physical performance, and I was really impressed because it is, to me, first and foremost, a book about behavioral modification and-

    8. JSJerry Seinfeld1:07:52

       Mm-hmm

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:07:52

       ... behavioral psychology. And it really-

    10. JSJerry Seinfeld1:07:54

        Yeah

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:07:54

        ... nails those elements really-

    12. JSJerry Seinfeld1:07:57

        Yeah

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:07:57

        ... really well. And, you know, if I think back across, you know, the hundreds of interviews on this podcast, whether it's Bob Iger in the world of business and heading Disney, or an athlete, or otherwise, if you look at the people who have really performed at a high level for decades-

    14. JSJerry Seinfeld1:08:14

        Mm-hmm

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:08:14

        ... weight training seems to be one of the constants, or one of the near constants.

    16. JSJerry Seinfeld1:08:18

        Yeah, because you're deteriorating. You're just trying to bend that curve a little bit. You know, I'm 66. I shouldn't be performing at this level at 66. I should be over.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:08:29

        Mm.

    18. JSJerry Seinfeld1:08:30

        So you have to, you have to cheat the, the biology.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:08:33

        Yeah. 66, I never... I mean, I suppose I could have tried to do the math. I never would have guessed. Do you just wake up some days and find that number to be unbelievable to you, or is it a foregone conclusion, I guess, because you're in your own body and go year by year? [laughs]

    20. JSJerry Seinfeld1:08:47

        I, I find it, I find it funny, and I, I find it very... It ma- it really makes the game fun. 'Cause I know this should not be happening. I am getting away with murder.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:08:58

        [laughs]

    22. JSJerry Seinfeld1:08:58

        So I love... I m- it really makes it... That's another thing I b- I believe in. We were talking about systemizing. Gamifying is another thing I'm very big on.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:09:08

        Mm-hmm.

    24. JSJerry Seinfeld1:09:09

        Let's make this into a game. You know, whatever the problem is, let's make it a game. To me, it's a fun game. I, I honestly... You know, I, I wouldn't say this a- around my family, but I, I don't care if I drop dead tomorrow. It's like I just wanna to, uh, I still feel like I played the game well, you know?

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:09:26

        Yeah. [laughs]

    26. JSJerry Seinfeld1:09:28

        That's all I wanna feel. I just wanna feel like I, I played the game well.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:09:31

        What would be an example of gamifying? I mean, I've read, of course, the, [laughs] about the, you know, Seinfeld's productivity secret, the marking the crosses on the calendar-

    28. JSJerry Seinfeld1:09:40

        Yeah

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:09:40

        ... which I guess some people get-

    30. JSJerry Seinfeld1:09:41

        Yeah, that's, that's, that's not really a game.
21. 1:14:22 – 1:20:21

    Survival as the new success

    1. JSJerry Seinfeld1:14:22

       win.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:14:23

       When you hear the word successful, who comes to mind for you, and why? Could be parents, could be outside of parents, could be anybody. But for you, when you hear that word, is there anyone who is really a sort of paragon of what you would consider success, or someone you have looked up to as someone who is successful?

    3. JSJerry Seinfeld1:14:43

       Well, that's a pretty broad-

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:14:46

       Hyper-

    5. JSJerry Seinfeld1:14:46

       ... term

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:14:46

       ... hyper broad. It comes down to kind of how you define it also.

    7. JSJerry Seinfeld1:14:49

       You know, I, I think, I don't know if I mean it as a joke, but I, I say a lot these days, survival is the new success.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:14:56

       [laughs]

    9. JSJerry Seinfeld1:14:58

       And-

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:15:00

        Yep

    11. JSJerry Seinfeld1:15:00

        ... and I'm a big, uh... Look, Tim, what do you want me to tell you? In my business, if you're 60 plus, or I'll even, if you're 55 and you're getting paid to work, paid well, you have crushed it.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:15:20

        Yeah.

    13. JSJerry Seinfeld1:15:20

        So stand-up comedy, you know, uh, this... I, I would, I would move this p- piece of our conversation next to the toxic ecosystem-

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:15:30

        Right

    15. JSJerry Seinfeld1:15:30

        ... of, of this world.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:15:32

        Yep.

    17. JSJerry Seinfeld1:15:32

        When you have seen the attrition that I have seen-

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:15:34

        [laughs]

    19. JSJerry Seinfeld1:15:37

        ... it's like In the Heart of the Sea. You know that book?

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:15:40

        Yep.

    21. JSJerry Seinfeld1:15:41

        Uh, Ron Howard made the movie. When, when they're dropping like flies and, and the, the, the handful, the small handful. Somebody asked me the other day, "How many people whom- whose careers were made on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson are still working?" I didn't even wanna answer the question. So longevity is what I... 'Cause, 'cause you had it. You know what I mean? You had it.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:16:08

        Mm-hmm.

    23. JSJerry Seinfeld1:16:08

        You had... Y- y- you had it. So once you have it, you can only lose it.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:16:15

        Hmm.

    25. JSJerry Seinfeld1:16:16

        You know?

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:16:17

        Yeah.

    27. JSJerry Seinfeld1:16:17

        Uh, you can only fail to take care of it.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:16:20

        Mm-hmm.

    29. JSJerry Seinfeld1:16:21

        And that's when we get to health and work ethic and managing yourself so that you don't break. Because they're trying to break you. I always tease my friend Jimmy Fallon that this is like a sick experiment, these talk show gigs.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:16:41

        [laughs]
22. 1:20:21 – 1:29:48

    Jerry’s billboard

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:20:21

       This is a question that sometimes hits a dead end, and I'll take the blame for that if it does. You've already given a bunch of possible answers to this, but if you had a billboard, metaphorically speaking, that could get a message, a quote, an image, question, anything out to billions of people-

    2. JSJerry Seinfeld1:20:38

       Mm-hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:20:38

       ... what might you put on that billboard?

    4. JSJerry Seinfeld1:20:41

       Back in the '80s, I had a friend who was teaching a comedy course at the Improv on Melrose in LA, and he asked me if I would come in and talk to the class. And I said, "Sure." I went in, and there was like, uh, I don't know, may- maybe 20 people in the class in the a- it was in the afternoon. And I went up on stage and I said, "The fact that you have even signed up for this class is a very bad sign-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:21:06

       [laughs]

    6. JSJerry Seinfeld1:21:07

       ... for what you're trying to do."

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:21:08

       [laughs]

    8. JSJerry Seinfeld1:21:11

       "The fact that you think anyone can help you or there's anything that you need to learn, you have gone off on a bad track-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:21:20

       [laughs]

    10. JSJerry Seinfeld1:21:22

        ... because nobody knows anything about any of this. And if you wanna do it, what I really should do is I should have a giant flag behind me that I would pull a string and it would roll down, and on it the flag would just say two words: just work."

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:21:43

        [laughs] Just work.

    12. JSJerry Seinfeld1:21:48

        Just work.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:21:50

        Yeah. I love it. Well, that is, I think, an excellent place to wrap up. Jerry, people can find you on all the socials, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, @JerrySeinfeld. The new book is Is This Anything?, which features your best work across five decades, that's nuts, in comedy, and it's a fascinating book and a hell of a ride. I highly recommend people check it out. For anyone who's a student of creative process, doesn't have to be comedy, but craft, whatever that craft happens to be, I think you're a real exemplar of just doing the work, but doing it in a s- also a systematic way, which is a particular species of working that I think makes a beautiful case study. And this has been so much fun for me. I, I really appreciate you taking the time, Jerry.

    14. JSJerry Seinfeld1:22:38

        Thanks. It was... I, I loved talking with you, Tim. And, and your podcast is the best.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:22:42

        Oh, thanks so much. It really [laughs] makes my day to have the chance to have a conversation with you. I've had the bass riff from Seinfeld going through my head all day in-

    16. JSJerry Seinfeld1:22:53

        Uh-huh

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:22:53

        ... in prep for this. And it's a real gift that you're showcasing and sharing your notes with the world over such a period of time. I mean, it is, I think, something that will really provide, you know, [laughs] like you said, just work, but nonetheless will provide so much, so much help to, and inspiration to, people who are just setting out, unlike the 43-year-old eight-foot sturgeons, those 15-year-olds and-

    18. JSJerry Seinfeld1:23:22

        [laughs]

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:23:23

        [laughs] 15 to 20-year-olds. And I will, uh, let you get back to your day, but this has been great, and please do let me know if I can help in any way or with anything else.

    20. JSJerry Seinfeld1:23:34

        Oh, it's been a great pleasure, Tim. Great pleasure. And thank you for the kind words. It's, it's, um, much appreciated.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:23:41

        Absolutely. And to everybody listening, we'll have links to everything, including Is This Anything?, in the show notes, as per usual, at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, thanks for tuning in. [upbeat music] Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is 5-Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And 5-Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up [laughs] in the, uh, the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little, tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out, and just drop in your email, and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Rokform. That's without a C. R-O-K-F-O-R-M. Rokform is the active lifestyle iPhone and Galaxy protective case company. I've been using their stuff for a few months now, and- Good God, they can survive anything. First off, Rokform protection is beyond great. You can find thousands of five-star reviews and customer testimonials, which the team at Rokform calls survival stories that include things like a drop from the upper deck of a baseball stadium and a 75-foot cell phone tower fall. It's kind of unbelievable, but these cases make your phone virtually indestructible. Each case is built also around an integrated magnet that is completely safe for your phone. The magnets are incredibly strong and allow you to instantly attach your device to any magnetic surface, toolboxes, file cabinets, refrigerators, golf carts, you name it. I use it in the gym to check my form a lot of the time. You can just slap it on just about anything. Rokform pioneered magnetic technology in the mobile accessory space in 2011, and I've never seen anything quite like these magnets. I will use mine on my Peloton bike so I can watch, listen, and take calls during workouts. It fits my iPhone 11 Pro Max perfectly and allows me to keep my hands free for all sorts of stuff. All their cases also come with a built-in twist lock system that can be used with any of Rokform's optional mounts for bike, motorcycle, car, and much more. These machined aluminum mounts are built to last and are compatible with every Rokform case. So if you get a new phone or whatever, you just need a new case and it will still attach to all of the mounts. Rokform also has a portable golf speaker that's Bluetooth that instantly mounts to a golf cart with mind-blowingly strong magnets, like I mentioned. I don't really golf, but I will use this Bluetooth speaker to listen to music in the kitchen. I'll slap it on the refrigerator. I will use it in the gym and hang it from a carabiner, which is included with the speaker, and so on and so forth. So upgrade to a Rokform case today because you have better things to hold on to. You can use your hands for other stuff. And like I mentioned, these things make your phone bulletproof. And as a special offer for Tim Ferriss Show listeners, that's you guys, get 25% off. That is a good discount. 25% off at Rokform.com. That's R-O-K-F-O-R-M.com. When you use promo code Tim, that's 25% off at R-O-K-F-O-R-M.com when you use promo code Tim. One more time, Rokform.com, promo code Tim. This episode is brought to you by Oura, O-U-R-A. It is the only wearable that I wear on a daily basis. Oura is the company behind the smart ring that delivers personalized sleep and health insights to help you optimize just about everything. And I've tried every device out there that you can imagine. This one really makes the cut. I've been using it religiously for at least six months now. And I was introduced to it by Dr. Peter Attia, who's also vetted just about everything. With advanced sensors, Oura packs state-of-the-art heart rate, heart rate variability, HRV, super important to me, temperature activity, and sleep monitoring technology into a convenient non-invasive ring. It's tiny. It weighs less than six grams and focuses on three key insights, sleep, readiness, and activity. So I can use it to help focus my attention on the type, volume, intensity of exercise that I should do in a given day. 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Episode duration: 1:29:59