Josh Waitzkin Interview | Full Episode | Tim Ferriss Show (Podcast)

Tim Ferriss 0:00 Hello, you sexy people out there. This is Tim Ferriss, and this episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast has a very special guest, Josh Waitzkin, whom I met in 2007 after reading his spectacular book, The Art of Learning. Josh, you may know from Searching for Bobby Fischer. He was the subject of both the book and the movie. He's thought of as a chess prodigy, although that term prodigy I don't believe applies to him well at all because he has a method for learning, mastering, refining any skill, whether that is chess, whether that is Tai Chi, in which he's multiple time world champion, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, in which he's a black belt under the, the phenom, the Michael Jordan of the sport, Marcelo Garcia, and he's worked with people ranging from Mark Messier, six-time Stanley Cup winner, to Cal Ripken Jr. to the top hedgefund managers in the world. He is a performance specialist and also a very dear friend of mine now at this point. And I ended up loving his book, The Art of Learning, so much that I acquired the rights to his audiobook. If you wanna find that, uh, it's read by Josh himself, and, uh, you can just go to Four Hour Blog, F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com and search for Tim Ferriss Book Club or go to Google and do the same. So without further ado, let's get straight to the meat of the interview. I hope you enjoy it.

1:20 Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

1:27 Can I ask you a personal question?

Josh Waitzkin 1:29 Now would have seemed an appropriate time.

Tim Ferriss 1:31 What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show.

Tim Ferriss 1:42 So Josh, I figure we might as well start at the top and do a little retrospective. Um, what led you initially to write The Art of Learning? And of course, that's how I was in many ways introduced to your work, and then through our m- our mutual friend Max ended up connecting. But what was the, what was the reason you decided to write that book?

Josh Waitzkin 2:03 Yeah, you know, I initially started thinking about, about the idea of the book about two years into my martial arts life. Um, so I transitioned from chess into studying, into meditating, into studying East Asian philosophy. Then I started getting into Tai Chi Chuan, and ultimately into the martial application of it, push hands. And I started to experience this very interesting transition from, from the principles. My level in chess just began to translate directly over into the martial arts, and I th- I think it was primarily one experience I had. It was something around two years into my Tai Chi training. I was giving a simultaneous chess exhibition in Memphis, Tennessee at a fundraiser, raiser for muscular dystrophy, and I was playing forty-five or fifty boards at once. I was... So I'm walking down the middle of this big square of chess tables. Everyone's playing one game. I'm playing each of them, and about forty minutes into the simul, I had this experience that was so interesting. I began to feel like I was riding the energetic wave of the game like I was in my push hands training. I wasn't playing chess. I wasn't thinking in chess language. I wasn't calculating variations. I was feeling the flow, feeling the space behind, like I would in the martial arts. And I had this realization, you know, I was playing beautiful chess, but I wasn't consciously playing chess, that the barriers between these two different arts had dissolved in my mind, and that's when I started to conceive of the idea of the book. And a lot of the process of... I spent five years taking notes, I mean, four or five hundred pages of notes in the book before I actually sat down and wrote it, and a lot of that process was deconstructing what I'd been doing rather intuitively. Um, so essentially what it felt like, what was translation of was in parallel learning. These are two rather abstract terms. That's the language that I was using internally when I was first thinking about the book, because it felt like I was just taking the essence of one art and translating it over into another. And in the process of writing it involved deconstructing what I'd been doing, um, somewhat abstractly into something that could be replicated more systematically.

Tim Ferriss 3:58 So [laughs] the, uh, the question that jumps out in my mind, which is a bit of a side note perhaps, but is simuls, playing your ten, twenty, thirty, forty boards simultaneously.

Josh Waitzkin 4:11 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 4:11 I, I'll try to ask a better question than how does someone do that, but at, at what point-- What happens to a chess player when they go from an inability to play multiple boards simultaneously to being able to play multiple boards simultaneously? What is the sort of framework or thinking or ex- or, or experience that someone builds up that allows them to do something like that, which to the average person seems like a Rain Man-like feat?

Josh Waitzkin 4:39 You know, I think it's different for every chess player. I mean, one of the beautiful things about chess is that you can approach it so many different ways, and to be world-class, what you need to do essentially is express the core of your being through the art. I think that's just-- this is true of many arts, and that's probably a subject we'll get into more deeply. Um, so you can have a very mathematical person who plays chess mathematically. You can have a very musical person who plays chess musically. Someone might be much more kinesthetic like myself, and sort of a, a feeling for flow and hidden harmonies and, and almost a physically energetic relationship to chess.

Tim Ferriss 5:10 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 5:11 Um, when I first learned to play chess when I was six years old in Washington Square Park, it was, it was a battle. I loved the feeling of, of the b- of just going to, into a fight with someone and finding these hidden harmonies and finding where these animal pa-passions mixed with this technical complexity. And when I get late, much later when I got much better playing simuls, um, it, it, it was sort of a higher level manifestation of that same kind of dynamic. I mean, for me, playing simuls w-was, it, it felt something akin to juggling a lot of balls and, and all of the... To each chess-- I wasn't playing forty different games, for example, separately. The flow of all forty games would sort of coalesce into one larger sense of flow, and it was actually really interesting. Whenever... So often when I'd, I'd give a simul and there'd be a, a youth competition and the, the winners of the youth competition would play against me. And so sometimes kids would, would cheat. They'd really want to beat me, so they would cheat. So I'd be walking around this big thing, and then I'd get to the table and they'd have mo- shifted the positions to try to win, because if they could win, it would be a big thing.

Tim Ferriss 6:11 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 6:12 And my experience when that happened was of as if you had... Imagine you had like 40 balls up in the air, and suddenly they would all crash onto the floor.

Tim Ferriss 6:20 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 6:21 And, and I, I would know that they had changed the position, not by reaching the board and remembering what the position was and then seeing they changed it. It would initially be this feeling of the energetic flow had been interrupted. Um, and then I'd have to reverse engineer myself back to that one m- well, that one game, that one component of the flow, and then I'd remember the game, and then I would remember exactly what the position had been, and then I'd say, "Ha ha, this was the position."

Tim Ferriss 6:42 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 6:43 Um, and then it would take me two or three times going back around to get that, all the balls back up in, up in the air to get back to the energetic flow. So actually for me, giving simuls sort of felt similar to playing chess, one chess game. Um, but that was my own relationship to it. I think that probably if you ask 10 different very strong chess players, they'd all give somewhat different answers.

Tim Ferriss 7:01 Got it. Yeah, this... You know, one thing that blew me away, uh, was spending time with a friend of yours, Maurice.

Josh Waitzkin 7:10 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 7:10 Uh, when we went to Washington Square Park, and, uh, seeing him play a game, uh, at least for the first portion without looking at the board, and I'm not gonna... I won't give away too much of the, too much of the, the punchline since we, [laughs] we captured it all on a film. It was pretty amazing, but just his ability to track the board, uh, it seemed like by chunking portions of the board into sort of larger, um, like gestalt pieces. I, I, I don't know if that's the best way to express it, but it seemed like his ability to seemingly remember all these disparate pieces was because he had it, uh, broken, the, the board broken down into sort of, uh, component chunks, as it were. But, uh, I don't want to take us too down that, that fun line.

Tim Ferriss 7:57 Um, let's, let's shift gears. I want to... What I'd be very curious to know is, um, you know, at this point, what, what... Because I, I know of course a little bit of the background, but, uh, I want to dig into the details. What, what type of people do you personally work with these days, and why do they work with you? What type of things do you do with them?

Josh Waitzkin 8:18 Yeah. Well, I have three major dimensions to my, my creative life right now. Uh, well, maybe four if... I guess the most important one is, is my son Jack, who, who, uh, he's a little over two years old and love of my life. So that's, uh, maybe the most important part of my life. No question about it. Um, I run a nonprofit educational foundation, and we have, um... called the JW Foundation, the Art of Learning Project. Um, and we have a couple hundred programs in schools around the country, internationally as well. And so this is integrating these principles that I've been developing in, in, in schools, working with teachers, parents, and children around this individualized and thematic relationship to learning that I've been developing. So this is one dimension. The other one is I own a, a martial arts school, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school with, um, Marcelo Garcia, who's the nine-time world champion. You know him well, Tim. He's just ma- really the, the Michael Jordan of the grappling world. Um, so there's just world-class athletes training there. And then I, I run a consulting business where I'm training people who are at the cutting edge of the finance world, and this is really interesting work because we're focusing on that last one or 0.1% of the learning process, which is really my specialty. It's, it's highly individualized. It's cutting edge work on their learning process, their idea generation, their creativity, their performance psychology, their resilience. Um, fascinating work. And, uh, you know, what, what I've discovered... It's interesting because I, I wrote this book called The Art of Learning years ago, and so people are always coming to me to speak about learning, but much of what I've been focused on in recent years has been unlearning. When I think, when I think about that last, that last movement, you know, from the equivalent of being say number 10 to number one in the world, to number five to being number one in the world, it, it's much more about finding subtle obstructions, finding friction points, releasing them, um, identifying cognitive biases that might be blocking your way. It's, it's sort of... It's the movement towards unobstructed self-expression. So if you think about, about your creative process as a hose with a, with a big crimp in it, if you release it, just unbelievable pressure can be released. Um, and a lot of what I'm doing with people is trying to move them from, from very good to great or from great to truly elite, um, by just deeply individualized work on helping them really find ways to express the core of their being through their art, which is, as you know, a big theme in my life from when I played chess at my highest level. That's what I was doing when I had a period of being really locked up in my chess career, which we can go into in more detail if you want. I was doing the opposite. I was trying to fit into someone else's mold. And then ultimately, when I transitioned away from chess into the martial arts, I returned to that experience of, of self-expression, and that's when I really started to understand it very deeply. I think it was the crisis towards the end of my chess career which really laid the foundation for the work that I do today with, with brilliant mental performers who are just trying to make that movement to the equivalent to world champion.

Tim Ferriss 11:07 To, to jump actually back to Marcelo for a second, because I've, I've-

Josh Waitzkin 11:11 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 11:11 ... of course met Marcelo, and, uh, he's just-

Josh Waitzkin 11:15 And you've, you, you've gone to war with him, and I've watched you.

Tim Ferriss 11:17 [laughs] I've gone to war with him, which I, uh, if there's anything at stake, I don't recommend. [laughs] And, uh-

Josh Waitzkin 11:25 He's a tough guy. He's caused me a lot of pain over the years.

Tim Ferriss 11:27 He's a tough guy, but, uh, also a sweetheart of a guy.

Josh Waitzkin 11:30 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 11:31 And, uh, w- he's so fluid. Uh-

Josh Waitzkin 11:35 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 11:35 ... what, what I'd love to hear from you, of course, because in the, the, uh, in, in The Art of Learning, which, which some people might be familiar with, they read about your experiences in chess, your experiences in Tai Chi, the parallels between them, and this sort of overarching, you know, framework, um, for optimizing mental and physical performance, um, if that's a fair way to put it, uh, which is, you know, the, the, the art of learning, these different techniques and strategies. What, what have you learned- Through this third art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, what are, what are some insights or strategies that, uh, you've had since moving from Tai Chi, which is in some ways similar, but also very different from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which a lot of people would be familiar with through the UFC and mixed martial arts?

Josh Waitzkin 12:25 Right. Right. Yeah, I mean, to put it in context relative to my life, so the, The Art of Learning ends with the 2004 World Championship. It ends with me describing the narrative of that. It was just absolutely harrowing, crazy experience. Um, I won't give the punchline, but, but it was, it was really intense. And, and after this, I just started-- I decided I wanted to be a beginner again to put on a white belt, um, literally and figuratively. And so I, I took on this third major mountain in my life, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I was training out in the West Coast for about a year when I was actually writing The Art of Learning. I was training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu twice, twice a day. Um, this was after I'd spent five years taking notes, then I had the 2004 Worlds, then I was writing it. Um, I started training with John Machado out there. Then I came back to New York. I started training with Marco Santos here, and I started to develop this relationship with Marcelo, who is just the greatest grappler to ever live. And we were doing a lot of private lessons. Um, I was-- uh, we developed a friendship. Um, then he moved to Florida, and I would travel to Florida to, to work with him. And ultimately, I, I made the decision I wanted to bring him to New York, mostly because I, I was at that point, planning to make a run for the world championship in this art, and there was no better way to do it than to get my ass kicked by the very best to ever live in the sport. And he's just a wonderful guy, um, and he's just unbelievable martial artist. And so we opened up a school together, and it-- and I've been on the mats with him, you know, other than when we-- one of us has been injured, and it's been a lot of injuries in these sports just all the time.

Josh Waitzkin 13:53 And it- it's been a fascinating experience. I mean, Marcelo is so profoundly different from me. I, I'm a really conceptual guy. I think abstractly. Of course, my foundation in chess. Mar- Marcelo is one of the most... Well, he's the most kinesthetically overdeveloped person I've ever met. And of course, overdevelopment and underdevelopment tend to come hand in hand conceptually. Um, so he's-

Tim Ferriss 14:14 Can you give, can you give me, uh, an example of that? What would be an example?

Josh Waitzkin 14:18 Of overdevelopment, underdevelopment?

Tim Ferriss 14:20 Uh, of kinesthetic, of what it means to be kinesthetically.

Josh Waitzkin 14:24 His physical intelligence is mind-boggling. I mean, when he'd come fishing with me, I... You know, you throw him on a stand-up paddleboard, um, in three-foot chop, and everyone just flies off of paddleboards when they j- just stand up on them. And he's just beautiful. I mean, he just finds the balance points. I mean, I've never seen one-- seen someone learn so quickly how to handle, um, waves, boats, handling fishing lines, being, you know, free diving, being on-- riding waves on paddleboards. You know, when you s- when you're in the marsh, I, I've been a stand-up fighter for many years. I mean, throwing is my core, my core art. When I'm doing stand-up training with Marcelo, I caught him with most of the throws in my repertoire one time. I don't think I've ever caught him with a throw twice.

Tim Ferriss 15:06 Wow. [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 15:06 Which is amazing. I mean, I mean, and I have guys who were world-class who I was training with, you know, I catch them thousands of times. This is a guy, he, he, he just-- y- you almost never see Marcelo get caught more than once with something. Um, and it, it's amazing to see how he relates to the world through his kinesthetic intelligence. So for example, if you're looking... When we were looking for spaces for our school, we'd walk into a big room and I'd be thinking about the dimensions, you know, the square footage, where the this would be, where that would be. Marcelo would know if it felt good or felt bad.

Tim Ferriss 15:36 Yep.

Josh Waitzkin 15:36 If he meets you, he's gonna know whether he feels good about you or he feels bad about you, and his intuition is incredibly dead on. But he, he navigates the world through this kinesthetic intelligence.

Tim Ferriss 15:45 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 15:46 And it's been a really fascinating having a school with him and diving deep with him, um, because we've been having conceptual dialogue for tho- these three and a half years or so, and he's really deepened con-- um, conceptually.

Tim Ferriss 15:56 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 15:57 Um, but I've learned even more deeply the, the importance of the lesson that there are many paths to greatness. And to take a guy like Marcelo and to try to fit him into a chess player's, you know, hyper conceptual mold would be terrible.

Tim Ferriss 16:12 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 16:12 Because you'd be killing his shine. And he is so great because of his just unbelievable commitment to doing it his way.

Tim Ferriss 16:19 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 16:19 I mean, he's done things in, in extraordinary ways. I mean, for example, you know how in these competitive arts, everyone's very secretive about their repertoires.

Tim Ferriss 16:25 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 16:26 Um, well, we have this program which you know well called MGE in Action, where people, jiu-jitsu guys from around the world log in to watch all of Marcelo's training sessions, his, his sparring sessions, his lessons, everything. When he was competing in Abu Dhabi Submission Grappling World Championship and Mundials, which is the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Championship-

Tim Ferriss 16:43 Mm-hmm

Josh Waitzkin 16:43 ... we were sp- we were s- streaming his sparring sessions every night. So he was basically showing his competitors what he was about to use against them in two weeks, in three weeks, in four weeks.

Tim Ferriss 16:52 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 16:52 And his attitude about this, which is completely unique, is if you're studying my game, you're entering my game, and I'll be better at it than you.

Tim Ferriss 17:00 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 17:01 So simple, so pure. And if you think about it, it's really deep.

Tim Ferriss 17:04 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 17:05 Um, the opposite of what most chess players would do and most jiu-jitsu guys would do. And so he's wide open to constant learning. And the other th- beautiful thing about Marcelo is, you know, he-- people call him the king of scrambles, and if you watch his training style, he's always in transition, which is a really interesting idea to think about in a cross-disciplinary manner. Because most people get their egos involved in their training, and they're trying to dominate all the time. And to dominate in almost anything, you find a position of dominance, and you keep it. But Marcelo always lets his opponents move, and so he's constantly playing in transition. And so if, if you think about what world-class martial arts means, and you brought up, for example, Maurice Ashley and it playing, um, chess in Washington Square, it's similar. If you're at a much higher level than someone, you can always seem mystical because you're doing things which are outside of their conceptual scheme. The way that operates in the martial arts is if you think about it through the lens of frames, right? If you and I are looking at a position, and in your mind, there's this position leads to this position leads to this position, um, so there's three positions. In my mind, if I'm constantly training at the transitions between these positions, these actually expand into these transitional frames become ... positions to me. And so if I'm seeing 100 positions when you're seeing, say, two, then I can play in your blind spots and it can seem mystical to you because you haven't trained there. And that's what Marcelo does. By spending all of his time in transition, he's cultivated the art to play in the in between, which is really what level is all about. Um, or one of the core things that high-level world-class martial arts is all about, playing in transition.

Tim Ferriss 18:38 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 18:38 In gaps that, you know, in your opponent's sight pattern.

Tim Ferriss 18:42 Oh, d- no, I mean, observing and practicing with Marcelo, say, on the, uh, the guillotine or the Marcelotine just blew me away because if you look at it as an uninformed spectator or even just a moderately informed spectator, you're blown away by how fast he is, how effective he, he is, but the, the nuance of sort of eliciting movement, allowing space to open, manufacturing space by, let's say, applying pressure and then relieving it is-

Josh Waitzkin 19:11 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 19:12 ... uh, so subtle and so incredibly effective. I mean, then you start to notice it from, uh, these, these principles that carry over to many, many hundreds of possible, uh, positions, let's just say. Um, it's really ... Yeah, it's, it's really amazing. I mean, it lo- re- reminds me of, uh, something I heard once from a musician, which was, uh, and I don't know who the original quote is from, but he said that, you know, music is the space between the notes. And I was like, huh, that's a really interesting way to look at it.

Josh Waitzkin 19:41 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 19:41 Uh, but, but, but what were you gonna say?

Josh Waitzkin 19:43 I was gonna say, I mean, that's, I think that's just a gorgeous quote, and I think that that's most great arts are, are, are defined by that, that space in between.

Tim Ferriss 19:51 Yeah. Well, it's like writing. Writing is the same way, right? It's like, uh, you know, when in doubt, leave it out. It's just like-

Josh Waitzkin 19:56 Right

Tim Ferriss 19:56 ... you know, it's, uh, I, I think, uh, yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 19:59 Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful point. And, you know, of course, the thing about Marcelo is that it can often seem initially that he's moving so fast, but what's incredible is that he can al- also move very slow.

Tim Ferriss 20:10 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 20:11 And do things that you don't see.

Tim Ferriss 20:13 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 20:13 Um, just like a great sleig- slight of hand artist who's just practicing the art of illusion when we're not practicing it. Um, it's amazing what can be done with intention, with controlling someone's intention. Um, and this is a lot of my training in push hands related to finding ways to, to essentially control someone's intention so that-

Tim Ferriss 20:32 Mm-hmm

Josh Waitzkin 20:33 ... you were ahead of them, even if, if they were ultimately moving first, um, you were there before they arrived. It's a fascinating, um, psychological component of, of really high level training in anything.

Tim Ferriss 20:46 Well, I, uh, I remember an interview, or it wasn't an interview. It wa- no, it was an interview actually with, um, one of the top K1 fighters back in the day.

Josh Waitzkin 20:54 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 20:54 Uh, and they were talking about Peter Aerts. I don't know if you remember the Dutch lumberjack. Huge guy.

Josh Waitzkin 21:01 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 21:01 And he al- he seemed fast, and I remember-

Josh Waitzkin 21:05 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 21:05 ... uh, what people said. A, a number of opponents said, you know, he's, he's actually not that fast. He's kind of a big lumbering guy, but he's so good at predicting timing that-

Josh Waitzkin 21:17 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 21:18 ... he sees you telegraph before you even have the thought to throw the punch [laughs] and he beats you to the punch as a result of that, but it's because he's, he picks up on the cues faster than other people, and I thought

Tim Ferriss 21:29 that was very interesting. To, uh, to try to bridge this to something else, I mean, what, uh, you work with, uh, of course I'm not gonna mention names, but you work with some of the most stunningly successful and famous, um, traders and, and people in finance. I mean, some real kind of Masters of the Universe type folks.

Josh Waitzkin 21:48 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 21:48 What, what have you, what have you found unique about that group of people? Uh, let's, let's, let's just start with that. I'm, I'm curious to know kind of what you've, what you've noticed being as observant as you are about that group of folks.

Josh Waitzkin 22:06 Oh, that's a big question.

Tim Ferriss 22:07 It is a big question. [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 22:09 Yeah. [laughs] Well, I mean, fir- first of all, I, I, as, like, a core principle to start with is that there are many paths to greatness. I mean, each one of these guys who's really world-class is doing it his way, and he's harnessing his eccentricities. Um, he's cultivating or, his or her strengths as a way of life. Um, there's not an excessive focus on weakness. There's just an embracing of, um, deep, deep studying of the preconditions to someone's finest moments of expression and building lifestyles around it, and that's a lot of what I do is help people understand what makes them tick on a very, very deep level relative to, um, you know, the cognitive biases, where they're locked up, and where their greatness has come. Um, what kind of external conditions, what kind of internal conditions. And the ones who are really at the top are, are people who, who have, have mastered this art of deep introspection and taking the result of these introspective processes and turning them into training systems and into a way of life. Um, and it's fascinating how, how, how, you know, the process works. And what, what I do with these guys is I, I, um, if after I do my initial diagnostic process, I have ways of revamping their daily architecture, the way they live their life, so that they're, for example, aligning their peak energy periods with their peak creativity work. They're building lifestyles that are just relentlessly proactive. Um, as opposed to reacting to inputs, they're building a daily architecture which is based on maximizing the creative process. And if you think about this relative to most people, um, a, a simple case in point is email checking, right? Most people when they finish a break, even, even top guys in industries, when they finish a break, whether they wake up first thing in the morning, what do most people do? They check their email.

Tim Ferriss 23:55 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 23:55 Um, when they come back from a workout, what do they do? They check their email. Um, when, you know, they come back from lunch, what do they do? They check their email. And so what you see is this, whenever they're coming back from something after a break, they're soaking in inputs, and so they live this reactive lifestyle.

Tim Ferriss 24:09 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 24:10 Their, their creative process is dominated by external noise as opposed to internal music.

Tim Ferriss 24:15 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 24:15 Um, and a lot of what I work on with guys is, is creating rhythms in their life that Really are based on feeding the unconscious mind, which is really, which is the wellspring of, of creativity-

Tim Ferriss 24:28 Mm-hmm

Josh Waitzkin 24:29 ... information, um, and then tapping it. So for example, ending the workday with high quality focus on a certain area of complexity where you could use an insight, and then waking up first thing in the morning pre-input and applying your mind to it, journaling on it.

Tim Ferriss 24:42 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 24:42 Um, not so much to do a, a, a big brainstorm, but to tap what you've been working on unconsciously overnight, which of course is a principle that Hemingway wrote about when he spoke about the two core principles in his creative writing process, were, one, ending the workday with something left to right.

Tim Ferriss 24:58 Yep.

Josh Waitzkin 24:59 And-

Tim Ferriss 24:59 Often mid-mid-sentence even

Josh Waitzkin 25:00 ... right. So not doing everything he had to do, which most people do because they feel this sense of guilt if they're not working. Um, you and I have discussed this at, at length. But leaving something left to right and then waking up. And then second principle, release your mind from it. Don't think about it all night. Really let go. Have a glass of wine. Then wake up first thing in the morning and reapply your mind to it, and it's amazing because you're basically feeding the mind complexity and then tapping that complexity or tapping what you've done with it. And I mean, this rhythm, you know, the, the, the large variation of it is overnight, then you can do microbursts of it throughout the day. Before workouts, pose a question, do a workout, release your mind. After a workout, return to it and do a creative burst. Before you go to the bathroom, before you go to lunch, before anything. And there's ways of systematically training yourself to generate the crystallization experience, the aha moment, that can happen once a month or once a year. A lot of what I do is work on systems to help it happen once a day or four times a day. Um, and when you're talking about guys who run financial groups of $20 to $30 billion, for example, if they have a huge insight, that can, that can have unbelievable value.

Tim Ferriss 26:04 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 26:04 And so if, if you can really train people to get systematic about nurturing their creative process, it's unbelievable what can happen. And most of that work relates to getting out of your own way at a very high level. It's, it's unlearning. It's the constant practice of subtr- subtraction, reducing friction. Um-

Tim Ferriss 26:22 What would be an example-- You've mentioned cognitive biases a few times. For those people who may not be familiar with that term, what would be an example of, uh, cognitive biases and how someone might work on them?

Josh Waitzkin 26:37 Right. Well, there are a lot of cognitive biases that are, that are specific to certain disciplines like chess or-

Tim Ferriss 26:43 Mm-hmm

Josh Waitzkin 26:43 ... finance or philosophy. Um, but if we just think about it in terms of everyday life, um, let's say we make a decision, and we then feel the need to justify that decision.

Tim Ferriss 26:55 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 26:55 And so we make more decisions to justify that initial decision, and then we basically get ourself into this deep wormhole, which is caused by the attempt to justify-

Tim Ferriss 27:05 The sunk co- like sunk cost fallacy.

Josh Waitzkin 27:08 Exactly. So this is in the financial gr- group or in the world of cognitive biases, it would be sunk cost fallacy, right?

Tim Ferriss 27:13 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 27:13 Um, but th- this is very interesting for, for example, a chess player who makes a certain decision, and there's a certain emotional and intellectual and time component to the value we put into the thought process behind that decision. And what we often have to do is release it because the, the, the position changes shape. A very interesting way that this manifests in chess, which you can think about rather universally, is let's say that there's a certain evaluation to the position, right?

Tim Ferriss 27:41 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 27:42 Um, you and I are playing Tim, and I have a slight advantage in the position, and I'm nurturing that advantage. I'm nurturing it, I'm nurturing it. Um, and a lot of complexity, I make a slight error, and suddenly the position is equalized, right?

Tim Ferriss 27:52 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 27:52 So if I'm holding on to the past evaluation emotionally where I had the advantage, then what I'm gonna do very subtly is I'm gonna reject positions that don't give me that advantage.

Tim Ferriss 28:01 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 28:01 But if objectively I no longer have an advantage, then I'm going to be reaching too far, right?

Tim Ferriss 28:07 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 28:07 Um, and then I'm gonna be rejecting things I should accept, which will make my position slip more and more and more, and you fall into what I call a downward spiral.

Tim Ferriss 28:13 Yep.

Josh Waitzkin 28:14 So this relates to a lack of presence, which really connects to a cognitive bias, an addiction to a past evaluation as opposed to a present one.

Tim Ferriss 28:20 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 28:21 Um, so that's a very simple example of, of a cognitive bias. Um, a mental addiction, a thought construct, something that we hold to be true because of some com- com- complicated twist in our mind, but it's no longer actually true. And so of course, a very simple antidote to mo- most of, most of this is presence.

Tim Ferriss 28:39 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 28:40 If we can look at a moment or a chess position or, uh, an investment decision or any decision with very clean presence outside of kind of emotional inertia, um, then we can often slice through just amazing amounts of, of fat with just very, very simple decisions. So if you think about the learning process, for example, this is one of the things I love about your approach to learning. I, I th- I-- A language that you and I use is, you know, I, I call you a master of deconstruction. You look at the way people approach different sports, and you find the biases, the, the false constructs.

Tim Ferriss 29:11 Right.

Josh Waitzkin 29:12 Um, and you find a way to learn to, to take a, a, a very straight path to learning as opposed to people getting mired in all sorts of tangled webs of complexity, which, which are, you know, essentially caused by cognitive biases. Wouldn't it-- Isn't that how you'd put it?

Tim Ferriss 29:26 Yeah. No, I think that's, I think that's true, and I obviously appreciate the, the kind words. I mean, I f- I think you and I have very complementary approaches and, uh, like you've, I think, said before, and I tend to focus on the sort of 80/20 analysis as it, as it applies to people getting up and off the ground as quickly as possible to say, you know, top whatever, five to ten percent in the general population. Whereas what's so cool about our conversations, what I enjoy so much in part is that, you know, you're really focusing on that f- that, that final leap. How do you go from being great to being the best, right? And they're, they're very, they're, they're very complementary, um, skill sets. I, I think that, uh, yeah, what I'm looking at, and this is a, is a, is a way to unearth cognitive biases. And just as a side note for people who wanna look into this, you can just go to Wikipedia and search list of cognitive biases, and there's, there's a long list, which is pretty fun to read. Um, and, uh, th- there are a number of books about these types of things too. Think Twice I think is another one.

Josh Waitzkin 30:29 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 30:30 The question that I ask myself, and I, I, I'm always interested in the questions that people ask themselves because I find it in my-- to, to my mind that those-- that internal dialogue is what defines your day-to-day thinking and what you think you become. So it's so critical that you ask yourself the right questions. And in my mind, what-- uh, or I should say rather when I'm trying to deconstruct, say, a sport, all, all I'll ask i-is to start with, you go, "What, what rules are people following that are not required," [chuckles] right? So, you know, outside of the law and science, um, and even within science and within law, uh, reality is kind of negotiable. So I mean, a good instance, uh, uh, of that is the high jump and, um, the Fosbury flops. Dick Fosbury was really the first guy to go backwards over the, the high jump. And up to that point, there had been straddle kicks and all sorts of different approaches, and he was-

Josh Waitzkin 31:26 Right

Tim Ferriss 31:26 ... you know, ridiculed at first, and then he was called a cheat because he won the gold medal, and now everybody uses that approach. And-

Josh Waitzkin 31:32 Right

Tim Ferriss 31:32 ... uh, so, you know, having a, a, a list of questions, right? Who's good at this who shouldn't be, is another one that I love to ask because you might find someone, for instance, you were talking about the different styles in, in chess or jujitsu or in chess, uh, you know, as sort of a reference to your first book. Uh, you know, you have, you have attacking chess players, right? Then you have-

Josh Waitzkin 31:54 Right

Tim Ferriss 31:54 ... you have very different stylistic differences, and you have very quantitative players. Um, and, you know, for the, for the, the TV show, for The Tim Ferriss Experiment, I did an episode on poker, and I've avoided poker my whole life because I viewed it as a game of chance. And I had a, a former computer science guy who said, "No, no, no, I'm not gonna teach you to be lucky because I can't teach you to be lucky. Uh, but I can teach you to run some probabilities and only bet when you have a good likelihood of a positive, uh, positive outcome," right? And what, what was so fascinating is you look at a guy like that, and you'll find highly quantitative, say, hedgefund managers, for instance, or, uh, or investors of different types, tech investors who, who go to the World Series of Poker, and they run the numbers. That's how they play. And then there are other guys who are completely seemingly flying by the seat of their pants. I mean, they're very kinesthetic. They're playing an intimidation game. They're very physical. Um, and, uh, so asking myself, for instance-

Josh Waitzkin 32:51 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 32:51 ... who's good at this who shouldn't be, if the assumption is you have to kn- be very good at math to be good at poker, right?

Josh Waitzkin 32:57 Right.

Tim Ferriss 32:57 Who, who, who admits to using no math, which might be misinformation, but-- and let me look into how they do it. And then the second question is, you know, have they replicated their results? Are there other people they've taught to do what they do to try to separate out the, the nature from the nurture where possible?

Tim Ferriss 33:16 But, uh, I, I wanna come back to, you know, the, the finance guys just for a second and-

Josh Waitzkin 33:22 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 33:22 ... to ask you about, uh, rituals and routines, then I'm gonna ask you about your own. But what, what are some habits, uh, and it doesn't have to be across the board with all these guys because they have such different personalities and approaches. But with, with some of these, uh, you know, really super high level finance guys who are managing tens of billions of dollars, what are some of the habits that you've observed that you find interesting, uh, or rituals?

Josh Waitzkin 33:47 Well, let me, let me answer that by describing some of the-- maybe, uh, the Keystone habits that I recommend for people to internalize in, in the field. Is that-

Tim Ferriss 33:54 Sure. Yeah

Josh Waitzkin 33:55 ... is that a good approach? Um, well, well, I mean, first of all, meditation.

Tim Ferriss 34:00 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 34:01 I mean, we're, we're speaking about this, this theme of cognitive biases or, or find-- basically observing your mental addictions the moment that they set in. Meditation is as deep and as powerful a tool as, um, as I could possibly describe. I mean, it's, it's-- and then-- and maybe six or seven years ago, when I was first talking about meditation with guys in the finance world, it seemed like some woo-woo strange thing for them to take on.

Tim Ferriss 34:24 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 34:25 Um, but as more and more people are, are integrating it into their process, I mean, you wouldn't believe how many of the most powerful players in the world are meditating very deeply. Um, it's just an amazing way of deepening, um, deepening the creative process, deepening presence, um, expanding your energetic relationship to the world, gaining insight, um, and realizing that most of the thinking that we do basically springs from mental addiction. And much of people's lives are spent in an emotional swirl, which is a reactive one. And having a relationship's presence, which allows you to see through the, the kind of-- the illusion of th-that emotional swirl or of those mental addictions. I mean, meditation is an incredibly powerful tool, which I know you know-

Tim Ferriss 35:06 Mm-hmm

Josh Waitzkin 35:06 ... quite deeply. I've been meditating since I was seventeen, eighteen years old. I know it's a big part of your life as well, Tim. So that's a very, very important habit. The idea of waking up first thing in the morning and turning your mind to creative work pre-input, as opposed to checking email and getting reactive, um, opening up your channel to the unconscious mind first thing when you wake up in the morning, doing the same-- ending the workday with quality, hugely important. Uh, I remember when I went skiing with Billy Kidd, who as you, you might recall-

Tim Ferriss 35:34 Yep

Josh Waitzkin 35:34 ... is one of the, the great downhill racers from back in, uh, I think the sixties Olympic ski team. Awesome dude. Now he's, he's out in Colorado wearing a cowboy hat.

Tim Ferriss 35:41 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 35:42 Um, just a timeless guy, brilliant dude. And you know, he was saying to me years ago when I first skied with him, "Josh, what do you think are the three most important turns of the ski run?" And you know, I, I've asked that question to a lot of people since, and most people will say the middle 'cause it's the hardest, the beginning 'cause they're getting momentum. Billy describes the three most important turns of the ski run are the last three before you get in the lift, and it's a very, very subtle point. And it-- for those of you who are skiers, you know that, you know, that's when the, the slope is leveled off. There's less challenge. Most people are very sloppy then. They're taking the muscles off of, um... they're taking the weight off the muscles they've been using. They have bad form. Problem with that is that on the lift ride up, unconsciously, you're internalizing bad body mechanics. As Billy points out, if your, your last three turns are precise, then what you're internalizing the lift ride up is precision. So I carry this on to, you know, the guys who I train in the finance world, for example, ending the workday with very high quality, which-

Tim Ferriss 36:35 Mm-hmm

Josh Waitzkin 36:36 Opens up, you know, for one thing, you're, you're internalizing quality overnight.

Tim Ferriss 36:40 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 36:40 And we're nurturing themes as well as skills, right? It's one thing to learn skills, but the higher art is to learn themes or, or meta themes that will ultimately spontaneously erupt into the men- into the internalization of hundreds of, of what I would call local habits.

Tim Ferriss 36:54 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 36:54 Um, and, and so if you're practicing quality, you're, you're deepening the muscle of quality.

Tim Ferriss 37:00 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 37:01 And you're also focusing the unconscious mind in an area of complexity which you'll then tap first thing in the morning.

Tim Ferriss 37:05 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 37:05 So this is a core habit. Um, journaling certain post-mortem processes, reflecting on the, you know, doing the, ending your day with a reflection on, of the quality of the work, um, what are the core areas of complexity that you're, that you're wrestling with, um, hugely important.

Josh Waitzkin 37:22 You know, one of the-

Tim Ferriss 37:22 Would, would you do that, would you do that immediately after the end of the workday per se, before bed? How would you time that if someone wanted to try this themselves?

Josh Waitzkin 37:32 I time it at the end of the workday before... The problem with doing these things end of d- right before bed is that then you're sort of consciously going to bed thinking about these things.

Tim Ferriss 37:39 Right.

Josh Waitzkin 37:40 At that point, I find you wanna release. So, and I mean, a very core idea is, you know, when you go home, as best you can, unless you're red hot inspired, release your mind from the work. Um, it's very important to give your s- your stress and recovery, um, core habit, right? You wanna be turning it on and turning it off, and keep, and teaching peop- people to turning it off is a huge part of teaching them to turn on much more intensely. And so stress and recovery workouts, interval training, um, and meditation together are beautiful habits to develop, to cultivate the art of turning it on and turning it off. So if you're undulating your heart rate, for example, between 170, 172, 174, and say 144, the practice of lowering your heart rate over the course of, say, 45 seconds is akin to falling asleep, releasing your s- your tension. Um, and then as you're pushing your heart rate back up, you're learning to turn it on, so you're using a physical metaphor to train at the art of turning on incredible intellectual energy-

Tim Ferriss 38:35 Mm-hmm

Josh Waitzkin 38:35 ... and then turning it off. Marcelo Garcia, who we were talking about, one of my most beautiful memories is of him in, you know, world championship right before going into the semifinals, raucous bleacher, everyone's screaming, yelling. He's sleeping.

Tim Ferriss 38:46 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 38:46 Sleeping in the bleacher. You wake him up, he sort of stumbles into the ring. You've never seen a guy more relaxed before going into a world championship fight. Um, and then he can turn it off so deeply. And man, when he goes in the ring, you can't turn it on with any more intensity than he can. And his ability to turn it off is directly aligned with how intensely he can turn it on. So training people to do this, have stress and recovery undulation throughout their day.

Tim Ferriss 39:09 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 39:10 Um, and then, you know, thematically, this ties into, again, this internal, um, proactive orientation and, you know, building a daily architecture which is around understanding your creative process as opposed to reacting to things, feeling guilty that you're not working, really teaching people to tap into their internal compass.

Tim Ferriss 39:28 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 39:29 Um, so those are some of the core themes and habits that I would, that I would, um, bring up first. But I could go on. That's-- I could spend three hours talking about this subject.

Tim Ferriss 39:37 [laughs] Let's do it. Uh, this, I, [laughs] I, we'll, we'll, we'll have, we'll have a part two. Uh, the-

Josh Waitzkin 39:44 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 39:44 ...

Tim Ferriss 39:45 the meditation I wanted to touch on for a second. I mean, uh-

Josh Waitzkin 39:48 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 39:48 ... as you, as you know, I've been taking that very seriously for particularly, particularly the last six months or so. Uh, and I received an email the other day from the, uh, the teacher that I used for transcendental meditation, and there are many different types of meditation. I'm, uh, I'm curious. I'm gonna ask you about what, uh, how you format your own meditating in a second. But-

Josh Waitzkin 40:09 Right

Tim Ferriss 40:09 ... uh, there are many different types. I have my issues, my likes and dislikes as it relates to almost all of them. But, uh, I received an email with a link to an article, uh, and the, the title is Bridgewater Founder Ray Dalio Credits Transcendental Meditation for His Success. And, uh, he's, he's, for those who don't know, he's the founder of the world's largest hedge fund, uh, Bridgewater Associates. They have, what? A hundred billion-plus under, under management, I think. Um, and his quote, his quote is, "Meditation more than any other factor has been the secret to whatever success I've had." Uh, that, that is a, a hell of an endorsement. Um, [laughs] so it's, uh, for me, it's been, uh, getting over that resistance to what I perceived as sort of a woo-woo new agey type thing. Um, and the, uh, the ability to sort of view it almost as just a warm bath for the mind, uh, where I'm taking a, a, a mini vacation from my own brain in a way, which may or may not, uh, depending on who you ask, be the most helpful way to look at it. But I found that, uh, a very, a very kinda useful lens through which to, to view it. But how do you, uh, what, what, uh, if there is a particular type of, of meditation you follow, what is it? Or, or how do you, uh, personally meditate? I mean, what do you think of or not think of? How long do you do it, et cetera?

Josh Waitzkin 41:25 Yeah, I mean, when I was in 17, 18, I started studying, um, very simple contemplative, um, and quiescent Buddhist sitting meditation, um, where I would focus on my breath. Um, and you know, this is when I was a late teenager, and then I, I, I started getting involved with Tai Chi and I started studying East Asian philosophy very deeply. And this is where I got increasingly into moving meditation, which, which is the, the, the most deep practice or the practice that I've personally done most deeply.

Tim Ferriss 41:58 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 41:59 Um, Tai Chi form meditation. Tai-- So the, the, the meditative form of Tai Chi is sort of the, the essence of the art, and then the fighting application is what I was competing in.

Tim Ferriss 42:08 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 42:09 And so I spent many years meditating four or five, six hours a day through Tai- with Tai Chi. Um, today I combine my, my Tai Chi practice with sitting meditation again.

Tim Ferriss 42:22 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 42:23 Um, I mean, I, w- most people when they, when they enter meditation, what I, what I suggest is they just practice very simple sitting meditation, um, following their breath. And it, it, it's a practice which doesn't have to be very complex. They can, for example, just sit either cross-legged or comfortably in a chair. And have their-- and follow their breath. And it's very interesting because they'll notice after one or two seconds that their mind starts racing off. And usually what happens when you have really driven guys who are s-- trying to meditate for the first time and their mind races off, they get, uh, they, they get all pissed off.

Tim Ferriss 42:52 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 42:52 They're just like, "Argh." Angry, frustration. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 42:56 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 42:56 They feel like they're failing at meditation. And one of the most important things to, to do is to embrace the fact that meditation isn't about perfection. It's about the return to breath.

Tim Ferriss 43:05 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 43:06 So when you find your mind racing, you observe that and you return to your breath. And that's a tough emotional hurdle for a lot of guys. And i-i it's very interesting because over time, you know, y-you know the metaphor of, of basically the mind is a, is a wild stallion that over time you're, you're taming and you-

Tim Ferriss 43:21 Yeah

Josh Waitzkin 43:21 ... you ultimately learn to still it. It's racing, it's, it's, it's bucking, it's, it's pulling against anything you put it, you-- any kind of line you put on it. Um, but ultimately i-i it, the circles get smaller and smaller and, and you, you learn to, to observe when your mind is getting caught up in some kind of mental or emotional addiction more and more quickly and fluidly, and the return to breath becomes easier and easier. And it's, it's very interesting, by the way, as a competitor because I relate to the theme of, of channeling emotion or fear, whatever is rising, you know, as a world-class competitor in very much the same way we might speak about meditation.

Tim Ferriss 43:57 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 43:58 Um, you know, I, I, I spoke at a, a conference on grit l- uh, recently, and it was very interesting for me because for the most part-

Tim Ferriss 44:04 Grit

Josh Waitzkin 44:04 ... when I listen-

Tim Ferriss 44:05 G-R-I-T

Josh Waitzkin 44:06 ... grit, resilience.

Tim Ferriss 44:07 Got it.

Josh Waitzkin 44:07 G-R-I-T, yeah, which is a, of, of course, a core educational principle in a lot of charter schools these days. Hugely important, teaching kids to be resilient.

Tim Ferriss 44:14 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 44:15 Um, and it's very interesting because what-- when I hear people speak about resilience, um, from... and this is sort of a-- we're, we're moving a little bit aside from meditation, but we'll bring it back. Um, the focus is on, for example, overcoming difficulty, um, suffering, learning to, to basically push through. What people don't realize is that world-class performers, what they've done is they've reoriented their relationship to suffering or that to the point of resistance. They've learned to embrace it. They've learned to see, um, the beauty in these moments where there's pain because that's incredible room for growth. And I think that a lot of what you learn to do in meditation is observe the addictive way you might be defining something. And if you want to, you can simply alter that definition. So you can change your relationship to pain or the rain or a huge storm or fear or anger.

Tim Ferriss 45:08 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 45:09 So for example, people from the outside will use the term fearlessness, right?

Tim Ferriss 45:13 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 45:13 Um, but if you speak to any great soldier or SEAL team member or fighter or UFC guy, they'll tell you-- mixed martial artist, right? Great w- you know, world-class fighter. They'll tell you that they feel fear. They just know how to sit with their fear and how to work with it and how to channel it. So the idea of fearlessness is sort of a false idea which is imposed from the outside by a spectator. Um, and when you observe world-class performers, what they've learned how to do is harness fear, nerves, anxiety, bring them in, embrace them, have a working relationship with them, and channel them into intensity. And meditation is an incredible forum or, or vehicle which you can do this because you learn to observe where you have addictive relationships and you realize that they're not absolute, and you can actually transform your relationship to any of these, um, thought patterns, thought constructs, cognitive biases, or emotional patterns.

Tim Ferriss 46:05 Yeah, I was, uh, [clears throat] you know, I was looking up a, a quote as you mentioned that because, uh, I wanted to get it right, but it's one of my favorite quotes, uh, from Cus D'Amato, who trained-

Josh Waitzkin 46:14 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 46:14 ... uh, boxers like Floyd Patterson, you know, José Torres, most famously perhaps Mike Tyson. And he would say, you know, the, the hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters.

Josh Waitzkin 46:31 Right.

Tim Ferriss 46:31 And I, um, I started meditating, uh, and gave up meditating many, many times because I had the, the response that you mentioned about Type A personalities, where I'd be sitting there and I thought the objective was to quiet my mind, and I'll come back to that in a second.

Josh Waitzkin 46:47 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 46:47 And so when, so when I failed at quieting my mind because it would be ticking off the to-do list or being like, "Oh, that fucker who said A, B, and C to me the other day," and it would just like harp on these ridiculous things and I'd get then pissed and then I'd get pissed that I was getting pissed and [laughs] I then I would get up and have a cup of coffee and like storm out of the house, which didn't seem like a productive meditation session. Um, I, I, I actually started doing it consistently when, uh, I kept it really short. And a friend of mine recommended this, where I would, number one, be comfortable. So I would s- I would sit down, but to avoid back pain, I would actually lean against a wall, which is very commonly thought of as a big no-no. So I would lean against a wall to, to keep my back straight, and I would listen to one music track. I would listen to one song every morning, the same song as a cue, and I would just pay attention to my breath and focus on being, uh, an observer of my thoughts, but not trying to control them at all. So if, if all I did was think about my to-do list the entire time, that's fine, as long as I'm paying attention to my breath. And that non-attachment to an outcome, i.e. controlling my thoughts, was, was very helpful. And the, the format that I followed subsequent to that, um, and you know, we can have a longer conversation about, you know, why it finally clicked, but the short answer is accountability. I had a teacher who was gonna give me a hard time if I didn't do my meditating and then report back. Uh, was tw- twenty minutes, let's just say ten to twenty minutes twice a day. And what I found was by allowing the thoughts to occur and not judging myself because let's say I'm thinking about email or the grocery shopping I need to do or whatever, just letting that happen, but getting good at observing it- I was able to then have more emotional awareness later, which would prevent cognitive biases and bad judgment. So what I mean by that is, as a concrete example, uh, I'm a, I'm an impatient guy. I always have been, uh, ever since I was a little c- literally a little kid, like 12, 13 years old, if I was at the restaurant with my mom and dad and, and, uh, the server didn't come over and pour water after we'd been gone dry for like five minutes, I'd just get up and walk into the kitchen and like grab a pitcher and walk out. [laughs] And, uh, I'm really impatient and, uh, I get angry. I, I mean, I get angry about, uh, things that I view as deliberately slow and sloppy. So for me, uh, and, and that anger can be harnessed sometimes into really productive aggression, but, uh, it's also, it wears you down at both ends. Um, and so what I found is after meditating consistently for even a week or so, uh, when that anger would start, I was better at not just become... I, I was better at observing Tim as a third person, right? Like to, "Oh, look at that," like, "Tim's getting angry about something really small and stupid." Uh, as opposed to simply becoming angry and then causing problems for myself, whether it's just internal or interacting with other people. So, uh, yeah, I, I agree with you, uh, completely on, on the meditation and-

Josh Waitzkin 49:53 I love that image of you as a 12-year-old racing into the kitchen to bring out the water. It's such a great metaphor for your life today.

Tim Ferriss 49:59 [laughs] Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 50:01 You find different examples-

Tim Ferriss 50:02 Yeah

Josh Waitzkin 50:02 ... of thatness in the process, and you race in there and you get the water and you slice right through.

Tim Ferriss 50:06 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 50:06 That's beautiful. I love it.

Tim Ferriss 50:08 Uh, so,

Tim Ferriss 50:09 uh, let's, let's do a couple of rapid fire questions that are, that are all tied into this, this, this stuff, but we can just do short questions with a couple of, of short answers. Um, s- uh, so complete the following statement. Uh, my favorite time of day is blank.

Josh Waitzkin 50:26 My favorite time of day is holding my son in my arms after I've done my... I've woken up, I've done a 20, 30 minute journaling session. I get my son, I g- and I bring him downstairs and I give him his bottle of milk, and I hold him and I, and I look him in the eye and I tell him how proud I am of him. And we talk about what he's thinking about and what he's working on while he has his milk, and I think it's the most magical part of my day these days.

Tim Ferriss 50:49 That's in the morning?

Josh Waitzkin 50:51 Yeah, that's, uh... I wake up, I, I, I wake up about half an hour before him. I do a big creative burst. Um, this is a thing with, you know, y- y- as a parent, your sleep patterns change, uh, you know, pretty dramatically. But I've, I've found this rhythm where I wake up and I do that burst and I, and I just love that first morning energy time with him, and we have this deep connection while he's having his, um, his milk. And, you know-

Tim Ferriss 51:14 Love it. What time do you wake up?

Josh Waitzkin 51:16 ... we talk about things. I usually wake up around 7:00, 7:05, and he's usually waking up around 7:30, 7:35.

Tim Ferriss 51:25 I'm endlessly fascinated by morning routines, so this might seem really digging, like I'm digging into

Tim Ferriss 51:32 the minutiae, but when you wake up, it sounded like you wake up and you have 30 minutes to journal before bringing your son downstairs. Do you brush your teeth, drink a cup of coffee, any of that before you journal, or do you just roll out of bed, walk into the office, and sit down to write?

Josh Waitzkin 51:49 My routine is that I, I roll out of bed, I brush my teeth, I go downstairs, and I sit down, um, with my journal and I start writing. And I immediately apply myself to, to a reflection that I'd sort of targeted my mind at in the, um, in the evening or late afternoon before. Um, and then when I, w- when, after... And I just let it rip. I have a big creative surge. Um, and then once I hear my son, I go get him and then w- then I have my breakfast, um, usually a simple oatmeal, um, while he has his, you know, after he has his milk, and then I, I have a cup of coffee about half an hour after that.

Tim Ferriss 52:28 Cool. Related to, uh, you know, you strike me as a happy guy. Obviously we all have our challenges [laughs] then and again.

Josh Waitzkin 52:37 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 52:38 Uh, like, uh, the place I'm getting remodeled at the moment, uh, [laughs] which, which, which I won't-

Josh Waitzkin 52:45 I've been down that road

Tim Ferriss 52:46 ... I, I won't, I won't go into diatribe at the moment. I'm very excited about it, but it's my, uh, you know, 12-year-old Tim wanting to go get the water pitcher that's not being very helpful right now. Uh, the, [laughs] what are three things, could be two, three things, that you believe you need in order to be happy? And that could be for you, uh, it could be for people in general. I'm just curious, uh, what, how, how you would think of that question or answer that question.

Josh Waitzkin 53:12 One of the, the great things about you and I being dear friends and having these conversations is that y- you tend to be very good at thinking in bullets and lists of three things, and that's just not how my brain works.

Tim Ferriss 53:20 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 53:20 And I can tell you the essence of how I relate to that question.

Tim Ferriss 53:22 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 53:23 So I, I'm not gonna give you a three, three bullet answer 'cause I just, that's just not how this brain operates. I-

Tim Ferriss 53:28 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 53:29 I mean, I, I've built a lifestyle around being true to myself.

Tim Ferriss 53:34 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 53:34 Uh, largely, maybe a big reason is because of, you know, my mom used to always tell me as a kid to follow my heart, follow my dreams. Um, I never made decisions for money or for external things. Um, and I always trusted if I was true to myself, these things would follow. And so, you know, my professional life, my foundation, my school, I, I, I only work with people who I feel are, are ethically aligned, who have a good energy, who I feel really good about intuitively. Um, I keep empty space in my life. Um, I rarely have more than one or two meetings a day. Um, my life is about quality and not quantity. It's about depth and not breadth. Um, my business is based on doing very, very deep and, and very excellent work with just a handful of people. And so I, I really like to cultivate quality as a way of life, and I, I, I believe that when you're not cultivating quality, you're essentially cultivating sloppiness. And so-

Tim Ferriss 54:31 Right

Josh Waitzkin 54:31 ... you know, the idea of building the musculature of quality and ha- and being like a heat-seeking missile for me, I take great pleasure- In observing the beauty of the little moments in life.

Tim Ferriss 54:41 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 54:41 Um, and so for me, my lifestyle is based on, you know, I, I'm working out every day. I, I am just focused on structuring-

Tim Ferriss 54:48 Mm-hmm

Josh Waitzkin 54:48 ... a day that will allow for my creative process to be rich. I'm present with my son. I have a-- my office is at home. I'm with him in the morning. I'm with him, I see him throughout the day. I'm with him, I give him his bath and read him a story at night. I'm with him. I've eliminated almost all travel that takes me away, um, from, from my boy. I'm going to a conference this weekend. I'm taking my wife, and my baby are coming with me. Um, and I, I, I really build a life around being true, and I don't build it around anything material.

Tim Ferriss 55:17 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 55:17 And, and that's really the essence of how, how I personally relate to this question. Of course, there's different solutions for everybody, but, um, but that's

Josh Waitzkin 55:23 what works for me.

Tim Ferriss 55:23 Well, this, this is something that, that is being true to oneself, I think, that most people struggle with, right? And I think it's, it's a, I think it's a goal that most people have, at least in the abstract. But I'd love to dig into, uh, some concrete details of that, and perhaps you could share, uh, an example of something you changed, like maybe where you got slightly off the path and made a correction to be true to yourself and what that looked like. Uh, I, I just-

Josh Waitzkin 55:53 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 55:53 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 55:55 Well, I mean, for me, a, a, a very clear example is, is my public life. So I, I was a young kid, fell in love with chess. Um, when I was, you know, I, I won my first national championship when I was a late eight, early nine. Um, when I was 11, a book came out, um, Searching for Bobby Fischer. Um, and then when I was 15, a movie came out about my life-

Tim Ferriss 56:16 Mm-hmm

Josh Waitzkin 56:16 ... based on the same book that my dad initially wrote. And so I was really thrust into the spotlight, and so I, you know, without me wanting to, I was just, you know, a young, passionate artist. I loved playing chess and competing in chess. I was put out there, and I had paparazzi following me everywhere. I was, um, you know, I was really living in the, in, in the spotlight in a way I wasn't necessarily emotionally prepared for.

Tim Ferriss 56:38 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 56:38 And I, I felt in my teens how that challenged my love for this art, 'cause my love for it was so pure initially. Um, and, and, and that tension, you know, that, that fight, that fight to stay true to my art-

Tim Ferriss 56:51 Mm-hmm

Josh Waitzkin 56:51 ... um, taught me some very deep lessons. And then I, you know, after I finished high school, I, I took off and I left the country largely to study chess very deeply, undistracted from publicity. I, I moved to Eastern Europe. Um, my girlfriend at the time was from Slovenia. Um, no one knew me out there, and it was a beautiful life, and I just left the public world. And since then I've, you know, when I came back, I've had these periods where I've been exposed to publicity and I've been at periods where I've been, you know, deep in a cave and, and moved away from it. And, and I think that this is a very clean example of, of... I mean, other than you-

Tim Ferriss 57:26 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 57:26 ... very few people drag me out into the public eye. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 57:29 Throw, throw a net over the bear and drag him out of the cave. [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 57:33 You have a way of doing that to me.

Tim Ferriss 57:34 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 57:35 Um, but, but in a beautiful way. And I mean, I, I've found that the privacy of my life, um-

Tim Ferriss 57:42 Yeah

Josh Waitzkin 57:42 ... not doing things, not getting caught up in, in, you know, the swirl of fame or, or seeking external adulation-

Tim Ferriss 57:49 Mm-hmm

Josh Waitzkin 57:49 ... is a very important thing for me personally. And more-- everyone's different, but, but for me, I mean, I, and maybe, maybe I have a little bit of a, um, an oversensitivity to this because of, of my, my youth, 'cause I was out there so intensely-

Tim Ferriss 58:01 Mm-hmm

Josh Waitzkin 58:02 ... as a young, as a young guy. And I think it, it really challenged my love for the game. Um, that was an example of, of the kind of decision that I'll make. I mean, I, I think it's very important for me to, to, to live the, the vast majority of my life privately. I, I don't do very much that will allow me to be recognized in the street and live my life as a celebrity.

Tim Ferriss 58:22 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 58:22 Um, 'cause I've gone down that path, and I, I love my privacy.

Tim Ferriss 58:25 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 58:26 Um, and I also have built, you know, a career around, uh, my business is working with people who are similar, who are not seeking the limelight, who are not out there on television every day, who are world-class, but are no one around them, um, other than people, you know, very close, have any idea that they have been so incredibly successful from a monetary way. They try to raise their kids, um, not to be spoiled. Um, the kids are gritty kids. They're, they're, you know, great philanthropists. Um, really good people.

Tim Ferriss 58:55 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 58:55 And, you know, I, I love-- I'm very drawn to people who have been enormously successful, um, but don't get caught up in the external crap that comes with success.

Tim Ferriss 59:05 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 59:05 Um, and are real, you know, who, who are living their life tapped into the love. Um, and that's how I, I

Josh Waitzkin 59:12 try to live.

Tim Ferriss 59:12 What are, uh, what are some of your... What are the books, let's just stick with books for a second, that you've, uh, either most gifted to other people or most recommended to other people? Uh, because there, there are many people listening to this probably who, uh, won't necessarily have the opportunity, uh, to interact with the types of, of high-level folks, uh, that, that you and I are, are so fortunate to have the chance to interact with. But they can do that vis-à-vis books or narratives, uh, documentaries, et cetera.

Josh Waitzkin 59:48 Right.

Tim Ferriss 59:48 What, what are some books that have had a formative impact on you?

Josh Waitzkin 59:52 I mean, s-so if we go back to when I was seventeen, eighteen, Jack Kerouac had a huge impact on my life, On the Road, Dharma Bums. This was, this was just some-- these are the, you know, his books were what initially kind of tapped me into the idea that life could be ecstatically beautiful.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:06 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 1:00:06 Then I moved into studying, um, Daoism, so Lao Tzu, um, the Dao De Jing, hugely, um, just unbelievably deep. But of course, the translation of that book that you read will be formative. And I, my favorite translation is the Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation of, um, the Dao De Jing. Um, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance-

Tim Ferriss 1:00:25 Yeah

Josh Waitzkin 1:00:25 ... I think one of the most important books ever written by Robert Pirsig, who has become a, a very dear friend over the years. He, he, he-- when my, when The Art of Learning came out, my publisher asked me, "Who would you love to read this book?" And I said, "Well, the one person I'd really wanna read that book-" ... is, um, Robert Pirsig. And, but he, uh, to me that was just, you know, he, he, he lived like a deeply secluded life.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:46 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 1:00:47 Um, but they somehow managed to get him a copy of the book. He got it in a big bushel from his publisher, and he read it, and he contacted me and wrote ... I mean, I was so honored that he, that he was moved by it. And he and I, and over the years have developed really interesting dialogue.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:59 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 1:00:59 Um, so that, hi- then we had Motorcycle Maintenance is one, I think, one of the most important books in the world to focus on quality, dynamic quality, um, finding art in, learning to find art in anything.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:11 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 1:01:11 Deeply, deeply brilliant, um, philosophical book. Um, Shantaram, one of the most beautiful novels I've, um, I've ever read. Gregory David Roberts also is someone I've gotten to know very well. Um, just a ecstatically beautiful, beautiful book. And, you know, of course I'm also a lover of fiction. I mean, Hemingway has been ... He's probably the most important writer of my life. Um, almost everything-

Tim Ferriss 1:01:34 Any particular-

Josh Waitzkin 1:01:34 ... of his I've read

Tim Ferriss 1:01:35 ... any particular novel stand out for you of his?

Josh Waitzkin 1:01:40 Oh, I, I mean, I think that For Whom the Bell Tolls, just exquisite novel. Green Hills of Africa, amazing. Um, his short stories are utterly magnificent. Um, I think Green Hills of Africa is one of the most, is one of the most underrated books that he's written.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:57 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 1:01:58 Um, his, his complete collection of short stories, I mean, there's one magnificent gem after the next. Um, of course Old Man and the Sea is, is-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:07 Yeah, it's a-

Josh Waitzkin 1:02:07 ... the one everyone speaks about, and it's a beautiful book. Um, I guess if I had to have a favorite it would be, it would be For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:14 For Whom the Bell Tolls. Yeah, for those people listening who also want insight into his writing style, uh, A Moveable Feast is, uh-

Josh Waitzkin 1:02:23 Oh, magnificent book, yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:25 Yeah, yeah. Also really-

Josh Waitzkin 1:02:26 And that's where Hemingway really speaks to his writing process.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:28 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 1:02:28 Fantastic book.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:29 So fascinating. Uh, uh-

Josh Waitzkin 1:02:31 You know, there's a great book by the way, Tim-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:34 What is that?

Josh Waitzkin 1:02:34 ... which I think, I think you've read. Um, which is I th- I think it's, it's Hemingway on Writing.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:40 Yeah, I read-

Josh Waitzkin 1:02:40 Have you read this book?

Tim Ferriss 1:02:41 I did read it, yep. I also read that. Yeah, the [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:02:44 Oh, I mean, if you wanna, if someone wants to get to know Hemingway, it's just, it's just a fantastic compilation of all of Hemingway's writing in letters, in his books, in his articles, everywhere, um, put together thematically, basically Hemingway on the writing process. I think it's one of the most important little collections of, of, um, on creativity that I've ever run into. Absolutely brilliant book. Hemingway On Writing.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:03 And it's really, and, and it's really short. I remember I read it on-

Josh Waitzkin 1:03:06 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:03:06 ... uh, I read it on, uh, Kindle on a short flight that I had, and just like jammed right through the whole thing. The, uh, [laughs] one of the recommendations was, uh, write drunk, edit sober, and I realize that write drunk, edit sober does not translate to podcasts very well. The last podcast that I did with, uh, a buddy, Kevin Rose, [laughs] if you record drunk and try to edit sober, it doesn't really actually work the same way. [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:03:36 Right. [laughs] That's interesting.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:40 Oh, man. What, uh, and we'll just do a couple more questions because this has been fun. The, uh, what if, if you had to run out of your house and just take a handful of things with you, obviously your family is safe, so that, that's accounted for, uh, what would you take and why?

Josh Waitzkin 1:03:58 In what kind of situation?

Tim Ferriss 1:04:00 Uh, in what-

Josh Waitzkin 1:04:00 Some kind of like in a very dangerous situation?

Tim Ferriss 1:04:02 [laughs] Not, you don't have to fend for yourself with, with weaponry or, or create fire with flint or anything like that. Um, uh, there's a, there's a fire in your house. You just have to get out to the street, and then you're gonna obviously sort things out later. But as- assuming your family is safe, um, what would you, what would you take with you? Just what you can carry, basically.

Josh Waitzkin 1:04:32 That's a really great question. I, I, I actually had that experience years ago when I was playing chess, and it speaks to how crazy I was. I was, um, there was a, I was studying chess with this brilliant Russian grandmaster named Yuri Averbakh, who I actually wrote about in my book, and there was a, I was on the fifth, fifth floor of a, of a walk-up. This was a old one-bedroom I had in my, my first apartment. And um, and there was suddenly we were deep, deep into chess study, and there was a huge fire.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:57 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:04:57 And I, I looked out, there were like five fire engines and dudes screaming at us, and, and we had to go out the fire escape. And I ended up going back in and grabbing my computer with all of my chess analysis, which was just such a random thing to do.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:07 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:05:07 I mean, it was so unimportant. I mean, it speaks to how different I've become.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:11 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:05:12 Um, yeah, and then ended up being, we, it had been seconds from being updraft and blowing the whole building up. Um, yeah, so I wouldn't do that.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:20 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:05:21 I don't know, man. I, I think I might, honestly, when you ask me that question now, if I think that my family was safe, I, I have nothing material that I would, um, that I would grab.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:30 That's great, man. That's, uh, that's a very stoic response in the most positive way. Uh,

Tim Ferriss 1:05:38 all right, my man. I'm gonna ask you one more. Uh, actually, and I'll, I'll give you a choice of two questions. Yeah, let's do that.

Josh Waitzkin 1:05:44 All right. Do it.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:44 Uh, so the, uh, the first option is what did you wanna be when you grew up, so when you were a kid, and what now, how would you answer the question, what do you wanna be when you grow up? That's, that's question number one. Uh, question number two is if you had a committee of three people, living or dead, to help you make decisions, who would you choose and why?

Josh Waitzkin 1:06:04 [laughs] These are, these are great questions, man.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:07 Thanks. I'm bor- by the way, I'm, I'm borrowing liberally from like every good interviewer I've ever [laughs] come in contact with. Uh-

Josh Waitzkin 1:06:15 Right

Tim Ferriss 1:06:15 ... but so it goes.

Josh Waitzkin 1:06:17 You want me to answer them both or you want me to answer one of them?

Tim Ferriss 1:06:19 Uh, you can answer them both.

Josh Waitzkin 1:06:20 'Cause they're two very different questions. I mean, this is tough, man.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:22 Yeah, I mean, if they, if they, uh, I'm just trying to be respectful of your time, but if, if you have time and you have some thoughts on both, let's, let's, let's go for it.

Josh Waitzkin 1:06:30 When I grew up I wanted to, when I was a, when I was a kid I wanted to be a professional baseball player. I just love, I loved, um, so there was something about sport. Um, so I, I, I think that there was a, I mean, and I spent a lot of my life as a, as a competitor from age basically six until- You know, 35 I was basically a professional competitor-

Tim Ferriss 1:06:49 Yeah

Josh Waitzkin 1:06:49 ... in different fields. Um, today, you know, but my mom always said to me that she felt like that was a phase and that I was a healer. That was-

Tim Ferriss 1:06:58 Hmm

Josh Waitzkin 1:06:58 ... her language. And, and a lot of what I do today is try to figure out how to help people express themselves in as pure a way as possible artistically.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:08 Hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 1:07:08 Um, in a way that gives them joy. I mean, I, I think that w- my plan is sometime in the next four or five year, years, I'm, I'm 37 now, I'm thinking about it when I'm 40, 41, um, I guess that'd be three, four years now. I'm getting old. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:07:23 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:07:24 To, to, to turn my mind to everything, taking everything I've been doing in these different laboratories and apply it to a, a world-changing education initiative.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:32 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 1:07:33 Um, helping children in a, just fulfill themselves in a very deep way, I think is a, is a, a central calling, which I'm... That's, that's, I'm not gonna say it's my end game, but that's, that's the next, um, major chapter I think of my life that I'm building towards. Um, been running my foundation for, for many years now, and we do beautiful work, but I have an allergy to scaling if it's gonna dilute quality in any way. And so I've been sort of building up the, the, the, the founda- like, the, the ground work to ultimately be able to, to do something hugely important in education. So I think that that's gonna be, um, the core of how I would, I would, um... I'm building towards that in a few years. Um, in terms of the committee of three people-

Tim Ferriss 1:08:14 Just to, just to interject for a second, that's, that's also, I think, my calling, and of course we've spoken at length about this. So if you need a co-conspirator, count me in for that one, certainly.

Josh Waitzkin 1:08:26 Yeah, dude, let's plan on this. Let's say four or five. We have to figure out when it's gonna be. Maybe four or five years we'll team up and we'll take the world by storm in education.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:32 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:08:32 I think that's a great plan.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:33 Sounds like a plan, man.

Josh Waitzkin 1:08:35 I love it. I love it. Just sort of as taps that, that movement away from self. I mean, as a competitor, you're, you're constantly, you're fighting in many ways. You're, you know, you're... There, there's something about the focus inward on, on oneself, and I, in becoming a parent, I, I've definitely felt this movement, um, away from that. I mean, my, my son is just, my love for him just so transcends anything I ever, I ever felt before. It's been really, really important to experience. When you become a dad, man, then we're gonna have some fun.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:06 I can't wait.

Josh Waitzkin 1:09:06 Look forward to your sleepless nights.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:07 Oh, man. Yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna see, uh, battle weary Timbo. I got, I need to, I need to work on my polyphasic sleep. Uh, [laughs] so-

Josh Waitzkin 1:09:17 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:09:17 ... this is a committee of, of three people. What are your thoughts?

Josh Waitzkin 1:09:22 Oh. [sighs] Well, one person who, who, who would be on that committee is someone who, who, um, I, I, who I know, very, a very deep friend of mine who happens to be in the, in, in the finance world, um, his name is Dave. I can't speak about what his last name is, but just a, a deeply meditative spirit, great wisdom, um, as insightful human being as I've ever known in my life, and I think that, that he would definitely be on, um, on that list.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:56 Mm-hmm.

Josh Waitzkin 1:09:56 Um, I mean, can we go, can we go into, can, can I say outrageous-

Tim Ferriss 1:10:02 Yeah

Josh Waitzkin 1:10:02 ... characters like, like Gandhi?

Tim Ferriss 1:10:04 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 1:10:04 Um-

Tim Ferriss 1:10:05 Go. Go for it.

Josh Waitzkin 1:10:06 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:06 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 1:10:06 I mean, it, I, I think about, about Gandhi, Lao Tzu, the Buddha. I mean-

Tim Ferriss 1:10:12 Hmm

Josh Waitzkin 1:10:12 ... my, my God, what, what a, w- w- what a, um... But you see, these, these, there's a certain... Yeah. I don't know, man. I don't know if I can answer this question very intelligently. [laughs] But I-

Tim Ferriss 1:10:23 That's a, that's the perfect way to end. [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:10:25 Yeah. I don't know. And Tim, of course, you, man. I mean, y- y- you give me, you give me so much crap in life-

Tim Ferriss 1:10:31 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:10:32 ... that I'd have to call you because you'd be the one just to, just to keep, you'd, you'd definitely be the one to slice through all the nonsense. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:39 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:10:39 You'd be up there, man. And my mom. That's the most important one, my mom.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:43 Yeah.

Josh Waitzkin 1:10:44 She has given me the most, um, deep advice in my life. I mean, my mom is the one person who has really embraced these crazy decisions that I've made when I've left arts, when I was at the tops of their field, of those fields, and because of some strange calling I had inside I, I think, um, my mom would have to be at the top of any list like that. She's my hero. My mom's the greatest person I've ever known in my life.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:07 Awesome, man. Well, this is, uh, this has been a lot of fun. Obviously, we're gonna have a lot more conversations. Uh, is there anything you want to, any parting thoughts, advice, suggestions, anything like that that you'd like to impart? If not, we can, we can, we can call it a day, but, uh, the mic is yours if you have anything you'd like to add.

Josh Waitzkin 1:11:28 No, I love this. It's been really interesting. I mean, I, I, um, I, I guess if I, if I'm gonna close with a thought, it would be that, you know, when I, when I... One thing that I've been doing in the last years, um, after, since writing The Art of Learning, is I've been exposed to some of the most brilliant thinkers in these different fields. Um, and I've, I've studied the patterns behind them, and I've studied the people who study them. And o- one of the things we have to be wary of in life is studying the, the people who study the artist as opposed to the artist themselves. Um, Persig, who, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that I mentioned, he uses this great term, the philosophers and the phil- philosophologists, right?

Tim Ferriss 1:12:09 [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:12:09 The philosophologists are the ones who are basically philosophizing about the philosophers as opposed to doing philosophy, and the vast majority of philosophers today actually are just philosophologists. Similarly, as you know, you and I have discussed, there's the writers and the literary critic. There's the artist and the art critic. And I think that we have to be very careful when we, when we study excellence, um, and we're thinking about our own path to excellence, um, that we're studying the, that we're tuning into the direct experience of people who've actually been there as opposed to the armchair professors who are talking about it.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:38 Right.

Josh Waitzkin 1:12:39 Um, because, you know, i- i- if we spend our life in the trenches and we spend our life studying that last, like, 0.1% of the learning process, what we see is that, that, that final passage to excellence is really about navigating that razor's edge where you have to be willing to go right up against, um, a potential enormous blunder. You have to improvise, for example, trust your intuition in moments where all the objective, um, mathematical faculties you've developed are telling you something else, but your intuition is operating at a higher level. Um, you have to really be willing to go up to, to the, like the brink of disaster, um, to, to succeed, you know, in moments where you're, for example, fighting in the finals of a world championship or in the very last seconds of a Super Bowl or an NBA finals. Um, and, and in navigating these things, the armchair professors will often have the exact opposite of good advice.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:31 Right.

Josh Waitzkin 1:13:32 And so, so what I would say is, is for one thing, you know, listen deeply internally to, to, to the core of your being and build your game plan from there, trust your gut, and then build a lifestyle, um, around listening to that and cultivate the love. And that's the other thing I'd say is that whether you're talking about the beginning of the learning process or the, or the very, you know, the very final surge, um, or, or surges, it's about the love. When we think about parenting, cultivating resilience, cultivating excellence, cultivating creativity, what the armchair professors all forget about is the love. Um, and that's what I see consistently with people who have found the most pleasure, the most happiness, um, and created the greatest art is that they have a profound passion for what they do, not only the big moments, but the little moments, the moments that others would call pain. They learn to love practice. They learn to love the point of resistance. Um, I, I, I don't forget about the love. I guess that's what I'd like to say.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:32 That's a, that's a beautiful way to end this, man. Well, Josh, uh, I'm sure we will be talking next time. We'll have some wine and, um-

Josh Waitzkin 1:14:41 Sounds good, Timbo

Tim Ferriss 1:14:42 [laughs] And, uh, yeah, I hope everybody checks out obviously The Art of Learning and, uh, really keeps an eye on, on what you have coming when you decide to, to push stuff out of the cave. So [laughs]

Josh Waitzkin 1:14:55 Thanks, brother. This was a blast, man. Enjoyed it.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:57 All right, buddy. I will talk to you soon. [upbeat music]

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