Seth Godin on The Game of Life, The Value of Hacks, and Overcoming Anxiety | The Tim Ferriss Show

1. 0:00 – 7:35

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   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job every episode to deconstruct world-class performers from all different disciplines, all different worlds. My guest today, a fan favorite, is Seth Godin. You can find him on Twitter at thisissethsblog. Seth is the author of 19 international bestsellers translated into more than 35 languages, can't wait until he has his 20th, that'll make that number so much cleaner, including Tribes, Purple Cow, Linchpin, The Dip, and This Is Marketing. He writes daily at Seths.blog, which is one of the most popular blogs in the world and has been for, God, decades, I would imagine at this point. He's also the founder of the altMBA and The Akimbo Workshops, online seminars that have transformed the work of thousands of people. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the ways ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership, and most of all, changing everything. His newest book is The Practice, subtitle Shipping Creative Work. You can find him online at Seths.blog or sethgodin.com. He's on Twitter, but he's not an active tweeter. You can find that @ThisIsSethsBlog, and on Instagram, handled by his team, @SethGodin. [upbeat music] This episode is brought to you by Pornhub. Just kidding. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic, which is part of my morning routine, also part of my afternoon routine. Routine saves me. So there are a number of ways that I use Four Sigmatic. In the mornings, I regularly start with their mushroom coffee instead of regular coffee, and it doesn't taste like mushroom. Let me explain this. First of all, zero sugar, zero calories, half the caffeine of regular coffee. It's easy on my stomach, tastes amazing, and all you have to do is add hot water. I use travel packets. I've been to probably a dozen countries with various products from Four Sigmatic, and their mushroom coffee is top of the list. That's number one. I travel with it. I recommend it. I give it to my employees. I give it to house guests. So if you're one of the 60% of Americans or more who drink coffee daily, consider switching it up. This stuff is amazing. That's part one. That is the cognitive enhancement side, easy on the system side, energizing side. The next is actually their chaga tea, which tastes delicious. It is decaf, completely decaf, and some may recognize chaga. It is nicknamed the king of the mushrooms. It is excellent for immune system support. So needless to say, I am focused on that right now myself, and so I will often have that in the afternoons. They make all sorts of different mushroom blends. If you are doing exercise, as I am on a daily basis to keep myself sane, cordyceps, excellent for endurance. They have a whole slew of options that you can check out. Every single batch is third-party lab tested for heavy metals, allergens, all the bad stuff to make sure that what gets into your hands is what you want to put in your mouth, and they always offer a 100% money back guarantee, so you can try it risk-free. Why not? I've worked out an exclusive offer with Four Sigmatic on their best-selling Lion's Mane coffee. I literally have a mug full of it in front of me right now, and this is just for you, my dear podcast listeners. Receive up to 39% off, [laughs] I don't know how we arrived at 39%, but 39% off, it's a lot, their best-selling Lion's Mane coffee bundles. To claim this deal, you must go to foursigmatic.com/tim. This offer is only for you and is not available on their regular website. Go to Four Sigmatic, that's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C, .com/tim to get yourself some awesome and delicious mushroom coffee. Full discount is applied at checkout. [upbeat music] This episode is brought to you by Tonal, T-O-N-A-L. I'm super excited about this one, and I was skeptical of it in the beginning. Tonal, quote, "Tonal is the world's most intelligent home gym and personal trainer," end quote. That's the tagline from their website, folks, to give you the one-sentence summary. And this device, it's really a system, is perfect for anyone looking to take their home workouts to the next level or someone who just wants to get maximum bang for the buck in a tiny, tiny footprint of space. Tonal is precision engineered to be the world's most advanced strength studio and personal trainer. It uses breakthrough technology of all different types to help get you stronger faster. I was introduced to Tonal by three different friends. All of them are tech savvy. One of them is a former competitive skier who's doubled his strength in a number of movements using Tonal, even though he has a long athletic background. And I'll paint a picture for you. By eliminating traditional metal weights, dumbbells, and barbells, Tonal can deliver 200 pounds of resistance, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's actually, [laughs] it feels like a lot more at the high end, in a device smaller than a flat screen TV. And you can perform at least 150 different exercises. And these different technologies are exclusive to Tonal, and you can dial weights up and down with the touch of a button in one-pound increments using magnets and electricity. So the movement is extremely smooth. And even though I have a home gym already in my garage, I'm still getting a Tonal installed. I've used Tonal for multiple workouts now to do things I just cannot do In my home gym, such as the chop and lift exercises from The 4-Hour Body, all sorts of cable exercises that would usually involve much, much bigger piece of equipment. Eccentric training. For instance, you can do, to give a simple example, bicep curls where you are lifting, let's just say, 20 pounds in each hand up, and then Tonal will automatically increase the weight, because you can lower more than you can lift, to, say, 25 or 30 pounds on the way down. And I do kettle bell swings, I do all sorts of dead lifts, this, that, and the other thing. And after one workout on Tonal focusing on pulling, I was blasted for a full week. It's really incredible what you can do with eccentrics. They also have all sorts of other really, really cool advantage that you can apply to any of your favorite movements. Tonal learns from your strength and provides suggested weight recommendations for every move, with detailed progress reports to help you see your strengths grow. Tonal also has a growing library of expert-led workouts by motivating coaches from strength training to cardio. So you can do really just about everything. 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   2. TFTim Ferriss7:11

      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 have seemed 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 – 9:21

   The hack and “The Practice,” Seth’s new book

   1. TFTim Ferriss7:36

      Seth, welcome to the show.

   2. SGSeth Godin7:38

      Thank you, Tim. It's great to talk to you.

   3. TFTim Ferriss7:40

      And I thought we would start where all good things start, and that is the etymology of the word hack [laughs] which you introduced me to. So, so what is this word hack, and what context would you like to provide?

   4. SGSeth Godin7:54

      Oh, so many ways to dig into this. So here's the deal. When London was smaller, on the outskirts of London was a borough called Hackney. And Hackney was a place where they would raise horses. They didn't raise thoroughbreds. They didn't raise extraordinary show horses. They raised just average horses. Average horses at an average price. And so if you got a Hackney horse, you probably did it 'cause you were, I don't know, a handsome cab driver, uh, and that's where your nickname came as being a hack, in that you didn't have a special horse, you simply had a horse. There's nothing wrong with raising a hack. There's nothing wrong with buying a hack. Being a hack is about giving the customer exactly what they want at a decent price. However, it is important to distinguish it from the magic/fraught topic of our art, of that thing that lights us up, the work that we actually want to do. And so my book The Practice is about that gap between being a hack, selling as if you're a hack, and the other thing, which is the generous act of doing something magic, of leading. And it really bothers some people to hear their work described as hack work. But I think there's nothing wrong with it. You should own it, because you need to distinguish it from that other work

3. 9:21 – 12:40

   What is quality?

   1. SGSeth Godin9:21

      you can do.

   2. TFTim Ferriss9:22

      Now, you're talking about something that bothers other people. I want to talk for a minute or five about things that bother you.

   3. SGSeth Godin9:29

      [laughs]

   4. TFTim Ferriss9:29

      So one of my favorite aspects of our conversations, to give a little slice of life for people, I picked up a book because I erroneously thought you had recommended it to me. It came up on the podcast somewhere else. I sh- I shan't name it unless you would like to. But I picked up this book. I really loved the introduction and the first chapter or two, and I prematurely sent a text to Seth [laughs] implying that I was impressed with this book he had recommended. And not too far thereafter, we had dinner, we sat down, and you're like, "Tell me about this book, because I could not disagree more with everything in these pages" [laughs] effectively. I'm paraphrasing. So I like how direct you are. You do not, uh, mince words when it comes to opinions that, that you've formed. [laughs] And I would love to know what other commonly used words or phrases bother you, whether it's the concepts of the words themselves or how they are wielded, right? Because in this case, you're taking a word hack, and you're going back to the roots, and you're recontextualizing it and showing that it can be a neutral or positive thing, not just a, a derisive term, right? Are, are there any other terms, phrases, concepts that are bandied about that, that bother you?

   5. SGSeth Godin10:41

      Well, there are a couple that I find really useful to question. And, uh, one is the way we interchange learning and education, and the other one is the way we play with the word quality. So I'm happy to start with either one, but quality might make an easier place to go.

   6. TFTim Ferriss11:00

      Let's go to quality.

   7. SGSeth Godin11:02

      Okay, so quality, if you want to be a perfectionist, is a great way to hide. Because you don't want to be an enemy of quality. That when someone says, "Well, I can't ship this yet 'cause the quality isn't there," when someone says, "Why are you racing through that? Don't you want to put quality into it?" Well, we're defenseless in the face of that. And so someone who doesn't want to ship their work is going to stand behind perfectionism. But perfectionism has nothing to do with perfect And perfect doesn't have a lot to do with quality. So quality has a very specific definition. It comes from Edwards Deming and the rest of the quality movement of the '40s and '50s, the people who gave us the Toyota, and what it means is meets spec. That's it.

   8. TFTim Ferriss11:47

      Hmm.

   9. SGSeth Godin11:47

      Meets spec. And so if I said, "What's a better quality car, a Toyota Corolla or a Rolls-Royce?" The answer is a Toyota, because a Toyota meets spec. It more reliably does exactly what it's supposed to do when it's supposed to do it than a Rolls-Royce does. A Rolls-Royce is a different thing. It's luxury. It's ostentatious spending of resources to create something most people can't have. And that's a fine thing, too, if you want it, and that kind of quality is also, uh, worth chasing if that's what you wanted. But it's easy to show that high fashion goods, uh, you know, luxury purses, things that we would say have quality, don't actually last as long as something from REI. So again, back to meeting spec. Then the third definition of quality is the magic of magic.

4. 12:40 – 16:49

   “Magic” and Hamilton, the musical

   1. SGSeth Godin12:40

      So in, in the book, I talk about the difference between Hamilton and West Side Story. Most people have never seen them on Broadway. Uh, Hamilton is famous because something changes in a lot of people in the audience when they see what Lin-Manuel built. On the other hand, West Side Story cost a fortune. The tickets were 400 bucks. The projection screen was the best I'd ever seen, and nobody remembers what happened on stage 'cause the quality of magic wasn't there.

   2. TFTim Ferriss13:09

      Hmm. What do you mean by magic, or how would you describe that magic to someone who isn't present? What, what is the magic?

   3. SGSeth Godin13:20

      So if we go to the colloquial understanding of magic, someone who does a, a coin trick where it disappears from one hand, it's just gone. For a moment, we feel real tension, and it's the tension of that couldn't happen and that happened at the same time.

   4. TFTim Ferriss13:37

      Mm-hmm.

   5. SGSeth Godin13:38

      Once you know how the trick is done, it's simply a trick. The magic evaporates. And in the case of great writing, great customer service, great theater, the first time you experience it, the unexpected moment when lights turn on for you, I wanna call that magic. So if you've ever been inside a Richard Serra sculpture at Dia Beacon, it's a two-million-pound piece of steel. If I showed you a sketch of it, you wouldn't get the joke. But if you saw it in real life, something would change in you if you understood the genre and what came before, et cetera. So-

   6. TFTim Ferriss14:14

      Hmm

   7. SGSeth Godin14:15

      ... I believe that now that we've got AI and robots and offshoring and the rest, the work that's left for us is the work to create magic.

   8. TFTim Ferriss14:27

      How do you think, and maybe this is a bad question, but Lin-Manuel Miranda and his team do that in Hamilton more effectively. Is it an unusual combination of elements? Of course it is. I mean, in many respects. I've seen the show. What else is there to that experience or that, that piece of art, that product in, in your mind?

   9. SGSeth Godin14:53

      So I was talking to someone the other day about this, and they were talking about the fact that they were eager to make some sort of creative magic, but they were just waiting for a really good idea. I said, "You mean a really good idea, like a multimillion-dollar Broadway musical based on an obscure Revolutionary War character with the entire cast played by people who aren't traditionally cast in those roles and a soundtrack sort of based on rap and hip-hop? Like that kind of really great idea?"

   10. TFTim Ferriss15:18

       [laughs]

   11. SGSeth Godin15:19

       "Because it's not a really great idea," right? And it doesn't work because when you read the paragraph about it or even if you read Chernow's book, it was obvious that this was a good idea. It's a good idea because it is a series of moments that create tension and then relieve it. It is based on a mixing of several genres by someone who really truly understands them. So the things that happen in Hamilton, um, rhyme with the things that came before. If you're a fan of Broadway, you notice things that fit in even though you're surprised that they do. If you're a fan of rap or hip-hop, you notice things that fit in even though you might be surprised that they do. He makes references in every single line to some giant who came before. And so that texture grabs people who have cultural awareness, and then he takes you every few minutes to a place where you're not sure it's gonna work, and then he relieves the tension and starts the process over again. And it's easy to hear this rant and think, "Well, that only happens in a good Broadway show." But I would argue it happens at a fine restaurant dinner that you're gonna remember, and it can also happen at a business meeting because we're humans, and that's the rollercoaster that informs how we remember the world.

5. 16:49 – 19:18

   “Perfection” as a cop out of taking risks

   1. TFTim Ferriss16:49

      You described just moments ago how people can hide behind the word quality or use it as a means of postponing action, right? It's a bit of a unfair trump card that can be used really effectively to not engage, right, to not take, take risk. There's a, I wanna say a corollary of sorts to that, that I wouldn't mind, I wouldn't mind, I would like if you could just reiterate for folks. We've spoken about it before, and that is kind of hiding behind the big-

   2. SGSeth Godin17:21

      Yeah

   3. TFTim Ferriss17:21

      ... hiding behind creating something gigantic or affecting a billion people, et cetera. Could you speak to that? Because I think this is, this is closely related, and then I have a follow-up.

   4. SGSeth Godin17:31

      Completely related. You know, we live in a crazy moment in time, and we're also in political season, and part of it is, where is the person on a white horse in shining armor who's going to come fix everything? And if we read the traditional business media, the folks who are lionized are running public companies, changing the fabric of our culture, racking up billions and billions of dollars as if that's the only sort of success that matters. And you almost never read a story about a kindergarten teacher like Lenny Levine who changed the lives of 20 kids by showing up day after day, "You can't say you can't play." And now 20, 25 years later, after Lenny has passed away, those kids are passing on that message to other kids. But we don't write articles about that. And one of the things I've been arguing is that the smallest viable audience is more attainable than ever before. That it didn't used to be possible, as Kevin Kelly would talk about a thousand true fans, impossible. But, you know, if you run an HVAC small business, 200 customers is plenty. And, you know, I am super pleased with how my books have done, but 99% of the people in America have never read a book I wrote. 99%. Plenty. Fine. The smallest viable audience means you're on the hook, because if you are specific about who it's for, then that group gets to say, "You made me a promise and you didn't keep it." Whereas if you say, "I have this big shiny idea, but this VC won't fund me, or this media company won't write about me, or Oprah won't call," now you have a great excuse.

   5. TFTim Ferriss19:13

      [laughs]

6. 19:18 – 24:59

   Writer’s block

   1. TFTim Ferriss19:18

      All right, so I'm gonna personalize this selfishly because that is my nature. Uh, [laughs] to flashback, now I'm gonna create a montage of dinners with Seth. This is, uh, this is just a portion of our exchange in the last dinner, same dinner where I misattributed this book to you a- as a recommendation, [laughs] where I asked you for advice because I was feeling stuck with writing. And [laughs] you very, very, uh, observantly replied, "Didn't we talk about that eight months ago the last time we had dinner?"

   2. SGSeth Godin19:51

      [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss19:51

      And I said, [laughs] "Yes, indeed, we did. It shows you how little progress I've made." And whether this is just an opportunity to showcase my insecurities, I don't know, but I would love to hear what you think it is that I torture myself with or that tortures me that leads me [laughs] to ask you these types of repeated questions on different occasions. Because you are, as much as anyone I know, you seem, right, from the outside looking in, and maybe it's like the calm duck on the surface kicking like hell underwater, I don't know. You seem to be a relatively unconflicted person. You're not, like, biting your nails, fretting about doing A or B. You seem to pretty calmly do your thing, and I wouldn't s- describe myself that way. So in what you've seen, is there, is there any, uh, sort of outside perspective where you're like, "I think that these are some of the reasons Tim gets tied up in knots"? Is there anything that you have to [laughs] -

   4. SGSeth Godin20:52

      Okay, well-

   5. TFTim Ferriss20:53

      ... say?

   6. SGSeth Godin20:54

      First of all, if I'm making you miserable at dinner, I apologize. That's certainly not-

   7. TFTim Ferriss20:57

      No, no, no, no, you're not

   8. SGSeth Godin20:58

      ... what I want.

   9. TFTim Ferriss20:58

      No, I, I love our dinners. I-

   10. SGSeth Godin21:00

       So, uh, I think that you left-

   11. TFTim Ferriss21:01

       This is just a segue into conversation

   12. SGSeth Godin21:03

       ... you left out the thing I said after I said the thing about eight months, which is where's your bad writing? And there's no such thing as writer's block. Uh, writer's block is real, but it does not exist. What it really is, is misnamed I have a fear of bad writing.

   13. TFTim Ferriss21:20

       Yeah.

   14. SGSeth Godin21:20

       I have a fear of what the world will say when it encounters my bad writing.

   15. TFTim Ferriss21:26

       Mm-hmm.

   16. SGSeth Godin21:27

       And the way through is to do your bad writing. You don't have to ship it to the world, but you have to do the bad writing. And bad writing, over time, if you do enough of it, can't persist. Good writing will slip through.

   17. TFTim Ferriss21:41

       [laughs] Right.

   18. SGSeth Godin21:43

       And I learned this from Isaac Asimov. He and I worked together on a project years ago. He published 400 books back when it was hard to publish a book. 400 books. And he told me that every morning... Sorry, that's the volunteer fire department. Every morning, for six hours, he would sit and type, and it didn't matter if it was good or not. He had to do six hours of typing. Now, obviously he didn't have a typing problem. Just about anybody can do six hours of typing. And then at the end of the shift, he would look, throw out the bad writing, and whatever was left, what was left. And the subconscious understood that if he's gonna type anyway, you might as well type something good. So he got through the bad writing thing. And in your case, you have so much skill and such a benefit of the doubt from people you've earned it from, that it's really likely that you're saying, "Why do I need to get back into that? There's nothing but downside for me." Because you know how to make one of the world's best podcasts. You do it on the regular. People really like it. When you write a book, they roll their eyes. "I read the whole thing. W- Aren't you proud of me? What a pain in the neck. It takes a year. Just do the other thing." And so I totally get that feeling, and this is where we lead to the second part about being conflicted, and it's, it's a small Nike riff, which is that just do it. We're not gonna go into the origin of that phrase coming from a, a mass murderer. But just do it imply-

   19. TFTim Ferriss23:16

       Hold on. Is this, like, a Manson Family reference or-

   20. SGSeth Godin23:19

       Gary Gilmore.

   21. TFTim Ferriss23:20

       Wow. I had no idea. All right.

   22. SGSeth Godin23:21

       Now-

   23. TFTim Ferriss23:21

       That'll be for people to re- research on their own. [laughs] Okay.

   24. SGSeth Godin23:24

       That was the last thing he said before they killed him.

   25. TFTim Ferriss23:27

       Wow.

   26. SGSeth Godin23:28

       Just do it. Now you'll never be able to unsee that image, sorry. Just do it implies what the hell. It doesn't matter That's not a good way forward because it pushes you to be a hack who's not responsible for your own work. The alternative is to replace the word just with the word merely. Merely do the work. That the time you are spending narrating yourself doing the work, the time you're spending catastrophizing the work, is not helping anything. And so I was a really insecure, flailing, failing entrepreneur for at least eight years in a row, just consistently failing, barely breaking even, getting close to bankruptcy on a regular basis, and I was willing things to work out, and I was spending a lot of time dramatizing all of the perfect problems that I was confronting. And then I was able to shift to merely doing the work without the narrative and without the drama. And as soon as we can merely do the work, then there's room to see what needs to be seen. So I don't believe in the muse at all. I don't think there's any outside force. I don't think talent really matters. I think what matters is choosing to find your smallest viable audience, understand your genre, and explore what it means to make magic in the small so you can do it again.

7. 24:59 – 33:21

   The road less challenging

   1. TFTim Ferriss25:00

      Two things. The first is you are a delightful dinner host, and I love our dinners. So not to-

   2. SGSeth Godin25:06

      Yeah. Ooh

   3. TFTim Ferriss25:06

      ... cherry-pick and make this look like a, uh, sort of a [laughs] picture-

   4. SGSeth Godin25:10

      Okay, you're invited back.

   5. TFTim Ferriss25:11

      [laughs] To make... Yeah, this is not sort of a collage, video collage of, like, NASCAR accidents that I wanna paint as the experience at, at your house. That's not, not the case at all. Number two, I would love to ask about the decision, the point at which you decide you have something that you would like to publish or share, and that quality cutoff or how you think about it. Because in my head, the helpful and self-defeating, depending on how you wanna look at it, perfectionist side of things will, for instance, look at something I wrote in 2010 and say, "I can't do that anymore," and if I practice, I could still practice for weeks and publish something on the blog, and it would not be that good, therefore, I'm not gonna publish because I feel like people will be disappointed, or I will be letting them down, and that the attention they'll spend on it will not derive or return as much value to them, right?

   6. SGSeth Godin26:10

      Mm-hmm.

   7. TFTim Ferriss26:10

      So this, that, that's the voice.

   8. SGSeth Godin26:13

      Yeah.

   9. TFTim Ferriss26:13

      That is the, the deliberation that I have in my own head. And I do actually have hundreds of drafts. Like, I have shitty stuff, but it's never quite crossed the chasm into good enough to publish. So I've been stymieing myself in that respect. And there is part of me that's like, "You know what? The podcast is easier. It's fun. I feel like it's a craft I'm still improving on. Why don't I just do that?" There is part of me that says that, and there's another part that says that's a cop-out. In fact, you know, the writing helps you to learn to think-

   10. SGSeth Godin26:47

       Mm-hmm

   11. TFTim Ferriss26:47

       ... as Kevin Kelly, to invoke that name again, right? He writes to think. He doesn't think and then write. And that I'm shortchanging myself by using perfectionism as an out.

   12. SGSeth Godin26:58

       Yeah.

   13. TFTim Ferriss26:58

       Uh, if hearing all of that, what, what comes to mind for you?

   14. SGSeth Godin27:04

       Well, I, I'll share my personal experience, but first I wanna challenge something you stated as fact, which is-

   15. TFTim Ferriss27:10

       Yes, please

   16. SGSeth Godin27:11

       ... that the writing isn't good enough to publish. Says who?

   17. TFTim Ferriss27:16

       Says me, right.

   18. SGSeth Godin27:16

       Ah.

   19. TFTim Ferriss27:17

       It's-

   20. SGSeth Godin27:17

       Right

   21. TFTim Ferriss27:17

       ... that, that's me. Mm-hmm.

   22. SGSeth Godin27:18

       Right. So it's not that the writing isn't good enough to publish. It's that when you look at the writing, your analysis of where you are in the marketplace and the promise you'd like to make and keep doesn't match the writing that's in front of you. But I dare say, as talented as you are at so many things, this might not be your best skill, knowing when it's ready to publish.

   23. TFTim Ferriss27:41

       [laughs] Yeah, true.

   24. SGSeth Godin27:44

       And it may make sense in this world where it is ever easier to hire somebody to do the thing they are good at, to say to this person, "Here's 5,000 words aimed at this kind of reader. Tell me where I'm got light, and tell me where I should take stuff out."

   25. TFTim Ferriss28:03

       Mm-hmm.

   26. SGSeth Godin28:03

       Because the way you get... My, my friend, uh, who I went to business school, Evan, climbed Mount Everest back when that was a very big deal. And I had never seen any- I mean, there was no YouTube or anything. And I was quizzing him. "What's that like?" Well, he said that the first weeks are just spent walking up this trail that's not that hard a trail to walk up, with teahouses along the way and stuff like that. It's only toward the end, once you've committed to climbing Mount Everest, that Mount Everest actually gets really hard to climb. And it's a fortunate coincidence for the climbers that it happens in that order because your sunk costs have increased so much by the time that it gets serious that you're too embarrassed to turn to your peers and say, "I can't put in the work." And so what you're doing before you get to the hard part is you're inventing a reason to stop. And you said something that was really poignant, which is you look at stuff you wrote in 2010, and you say, "I can't do that anymore." Well, two things happened to me. First, 20 years ago, I wrote a book called Permission Marketing. It became a New York Times bestseller, and I said, "I'm done. What could I do first time out of the gate?" 'Cause I had been a book packager before, but this is my first, quote, "real book." How could I beat that? So I stopped. I just stopped, and I sat in the dark for a year. I just didn't do much of anything because I said, "I can't hit lightning like that again." And thanks to Malcolm Gladwell, he sent me-- He was unknown. He sent me this new book called The Tipping Point, and he asked me to write a, a blurb for it. And I read it in one night and realized that without knowing it, I had been writing a book about how ideas spread. And in the next 12 days, I wrote a 225-page book.

   27. TFTim Ferriss29:58

       [laughs]

   28. SGSeth Godin29:59

       And I sent it to Malcolm and I said, "Look, I- if you want me to not publish this 'cause it seems like you unlocked the key and I don't wanna take away anything from The Tipping Point, I will stop and just throw it out, but I needed to get this out of my system." And he was such a mensch. He gave me his blessing and wrote the forward. And I realized in that moment I couldn't write Permission Marketing again. That day was gone. But I could write this book and someone would benefit from it.

   29. TFTim Ferriss30:27

       Mm.

   30. SGSeth Godin30:28

       And then 10 years later, the same 2010 you're saying, I wrote a book called Linchpin, and I will never be able to write a book that good again. I will never write a book that goes that deep, close to my bones, that makes me feel the way that book made me feel. And after that book came out, I felt the same way again, which is, well, the... I... if this is the journey, I've found the end of the journey. And I realized six, nine months later that that was selfish. And that leads to the other key thing I wanna talk about, which is generosity, 'cause generosity doesn't mean free. People pay for a surgeon who's gonna save their life. Generosity means that you're expending emotional energy, emotional labor to help somebody else. And as soon as I could shift it around in my head to say, "There's somebody over there who could use a hand," then it wasn't about me anymore and I wasn't parading anything, and it got way easier to merely do the work without commentary because there's somebody over there I'm doing it for. Here we go.
8. 33:21 – 35:08

   “Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.” —Elizabeth King

   1. TFTim Ferriss33:21

      You have a great quote in the introduction of the new book from, uh, sculptor Elizabeth King, and I'd love to hear you explain this or give examples of how it can apply or might apply. And the quote from Elizabeth King is, "Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions." What does that mean?

   2. SGSeth Godin33:41

      There would be no book if it weren't for that quote from Elizabeth King. Uh, I don't know how it ended up on my desk. It came from somebody else who took credit for the quote, and I started tracking it down 'cause it so resonated with me. And after talking to him, he acknowledged, "Well, someone else really said it first," and I found this woman. And if you close your eyes and visualize a sculptor, you might be visualizing her. And if you think about how she lives her life and the number of hours she puts into each piece of work, it's extraordinary. And they made a documentary of some of her work, which you can see on Amazon. I had never heard of her, but now she's my friend, and I've just learned so much from that one sentence. What she is saying is this: tomorrow morning when you wake up, you probably won't feel like engaging in the practice, and if you do, you probably won't feel that way the next day. That what we do is once decide. We decide that we're a runner, and runners go running every day. We decide we're a blogger, and bloggers blog every day. And that decision lightens the cognitive load so much 'cause there's no time, no reason to negotiate with ourselves because we already had the meeting. We already decided.

   3. TFTim Ferriss35:02

      [laughs]

   4. SGSeth Godin35:03

      Now the question is not should we go or not, the question is should we go left or right, but

9. 35:08 – 36:32

   Authenticity and action

   1. SGSeth Godin35:08

      we're going.

   2. TFTim Ferriss35:09

      Are there other macro decisions like that in your life that you could give as examples of saving yourself from the poverty of intentions or from the whimsy of how you feel on different mornings?

   3. SGSeth Godin35:23

      Well, so the, the other one, which is as big as that one, is I think authenticity is a crock, and I think authenticity is overrated and talked about far too much. The problem with authenticity is it's selfish. Authenticity enables us to say whatever we want, and if people don't like it, "Well, I was just being authentic." It is a ticket to self-absorbed inconsistency. And I don't think anybody we serve wants that. I think what they want is consistency. I think they want us to make a promise and keep it. And the reason it's called work, not my hobby, is because I made a promise. And so I decided a really long time ago that I was gonna be consistent, and it didn't matter if in a moment I felt like yelling at a customer service person or going up on stage when I'm supposed to be adding energy and just taking energy instead. And what I learned from that is the way we act determines how we feel way more often than the way we feel determines how we act.

   4. TFTim Ferriss36:31

      Hmm.

10. 36:32 – 40:47

    Attitude as a skill

    1. TFTim Ferriss36:33

       I've heard you... Well, I say I've heard you, I guess [laughs] because I know your voice, so I hear your voice when I read you.

    2. SGSeth Godin36:39

       [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss36:41

       Uh, that do what you love is for amateurs. Love what you do is the mantra for professionals. And I find this interesting on multiple levels because amateur [laughs] the sort of Latin root relates to love. So if, if do what you love is for amateurs, then love what you do is for professionals. We can dig into the sublayers of that, but I'll add one more thing, which is, 'cause it's three words, attitudes are skills.

    4. SGSeth Godin37:09

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss37:09

       And these, these, these might go together nicely like a, a BLT of concepts. Could you expand on any of those?

    6. SGSeth Godin37:18

       Okay, so let's talk about skills. You've come up first with wrestling and then with other skill-based activities that you excelled at by putting in an enormous amount of effort and practice and grit. But plenty of other people did too, and you somehow outperformed them. And you've done that beyond the physical realm. You've done it in culture and in writing as well. I would argue that's because in addition to the obvious easy-to-measure hard skills of how many words per minute can you type and how many pounds can you bench press, there are soft skills, and they involve curiosity, they involve experimentation, and 30 other things. These are all skills in the sense that we can learn them. We can learn to be more honest. We can learn to be more diligent. We can l- learn to be more persistent, and that's great 'cause if you can learn them, then you're not stuck where you are. You can become who you want to be. And so if we start by acknowledging that our attitudes are skills and that skills are learnable, suddenly talent recedes far into the rear view mirror, and we are gonna be rewarded not simply because we can beat someone on a test, but because our whole posture is based on the possibility of better and the possibility of, uh, if your goal is to win, to win. That's the second piece that goes right next to the other skills, and people overlook it because our industrial system doesn't really reward us for measuring that stuff.

    7. TFTim Ferriss38:59

       How do you take something that is considered an attitude and convert it into a skill? In other words, you h- it seems like you would have to take, say, honesty and [laughs] I'm not sure if Ben Franklin did this particularly well necessarily, but as one of the virtues convert it into some type of habit or action that you practice on a regular basis. Is that the right way to think about this? And if so, how might you approach taking something that is widely considered an attitude or a talent and, and translate it into a skill?

    8. SGSeth Godin39:33

       So let's pick being a good listener and being charismatic. I think-

    9. TFTim Ferriss39:37

       Perfect

    10. SGSeth Godin39:37

        ... most people, if they didn't think about it a lot, would say that those things are talents. Those things come naturally to some people. They're not skills. They're sort of hardwired attitudes. Is that fair?

    11. TFTim Ferriss39:51

        I think so. Mm-hmm.

    12. SGSeth Godin39:52

        But we know what makes someone be seen as a good listener and what makes someone be seen as charismatic, and you can do those things. And at the beginning, just like falling asleep, you will be faking it, but then just like falling asleep, you will be doing it. And in the case of being a good listener, it might sound stilted at first to ask follow-up questions. It might sound unnatural at first to leave a beat when you ordinarily would jump in, right? Most people don't think of me as a good listener 'cause I jump in, and other people who I know don't. They leave that extra beat. Well, that's a skill. And, you know, whether it's Dale Carnegie or anyone who's followed in his footsteps, you can learn those things. And at first, you seem as awkward as someone who just learned how to ride a bike. And then you don't.

    13. TFTim Ferriss40:46

        Got it.

11. 40:47 – 43:15

    Skills with a high ROI

    1. TFTim Ferriss40:47

       So, uh, I should also say that just to reinforce what you're saying, uh, becoming a better listener and that extra beat, training yourself to utilize that extra beat is absolutely a practice. I remember Cal Fussman, who wrote for Esquire for ages and ages and ages, and he's interviewed everybody, Muhammad Ali, I think Gorbachev, you name it, and his expression is, "Let the silence do the work." [laughs]

    2. SGSeth Godin41:14

       Mm-hmm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss41:15

       And, uh, you can remember that and then apply it. Uh, it is a learnable, practicable skill. Are there any particular or any other skills that you think are important for, say, entrepreneurs or creatives that have a disproportionate ROI if a listener can train themselves to view them and approach them as skills?

    4. SGSeth Godin41:42

       I think the, uh, combination of patience and impatience. Most of the struggling entrepreneurs I've seen are impatient when it comes to things that look like an external hustle. They're emailing people too many times. They're looking for a shortcut. They've got an elevator pitch. They've got the fancy business card. They're pushing and pushing externally. That's the wrong place to be impatient.

    5. TFTim Ferriss42:06

       Mm-hmm.

    6. SGSeth Godin42:07

       But when it comes to confronting the thing they're afraid of, they can just make a really wide berth around it instead of figuring out how to be honest, looking in the mirror and saying, "You know, this isn't that good. I should just do something else." The same thing is true with someone like Elizabeth King or a stand-up comic or Richard Serra. If we look... Yesterday I was listening to one of the earliest demos of Joni Mitchell, and I don't think there's anybody who wants to argue that Joni Mitchell was a hack, nor anybody who wants to argue that she didn't have a huge contribution to music. But her cover of The House of the Rising Sun, it wasn't just that I wasn't familiar with her version of it, it just wasn't any good. And fortunately, she was patient with herself. She didn't say, "Oh, I'm bad at this," and then go work at a 7-Eleven. And so where we need patience is in confronting the things we're gonna get better at and in strapping in for a useful journey. And where we need impatience is with our fear and with our selfishness.

12. 43:15 – 45:58

    Anxiety and the futility of reassurance

    1. TFTim Ferriss43:15

       What about worrying? What's your perspective on worrying?

    2. SGSeth Godin43:20

       So I had a riff a while ago. It was one of my most popular blog posts. Um, and I'm hesitant to dive too deep because I am not a medical professional, and there are people who are challenged by organic and, and trauma-related illnesses. But for leaving that group aside, anxiety is experiencing failure in advance. At least it is for me. Meaning that after it's over, we don't call it anxiety anymore. We're in grief or we're rebuilding. But when it might go wrong, worrying, anxiety is what we feel when we're imagining it did, and that's not helping anything. And so the question is, how do we focus that part of our attention on something generous instead? Because anxiety and worry is almost never in service of someone else. It's in service of our need for the status quo and reassurance. And I think that reassurance is futile because you never have enough of it.

    3. TFTim Ferriss44:26

       Can you say more about that, please?

    4. SGSeth Godin44:27

       So it feels-

    5. TFTim Ferriss44:29

       Reassurance is futile because we can never have enough of it.

    6. SGSeth Godin44:32

       Right. So it feels great to get reassurance. Um, I wish that, you know, the phone would ring and it's the head of the Pulitzer committee saying that they read this thing I wrote and it's fantastic. I would be high as a kite for at least a day and a half.

    7. TFTim Ferriss44:47

       [laughs]

    8. SGSeth Godin44:49

       And then you'd need it again because what it did for you was make you feel for a moment like bad outcomes weren't going to happen until you got new evidence that they might, and then you're back to anxiety and worrying again. So people who get hooked on reassurance might end up building an intimacy with the person who's reassuring them all the time. But it is not helping them do better work, nor is it making them happier. The alternative is to say, "This might not work. This thing I did, this thing I cared about might not work. Odds are it won't. But I have a portfolio, and then I'll make the next thing." Because we don't live on the savanna. This is not a matter of life or death most of the time. It is instead a matter of ego and self-esteem, and it's not fatal. And so all of the worrying is worse than the rejection when it finally comes. So better, I think, to merely do the work, be generous with the work, and improve our skills so we can do it again. And that gets back to Elizabeth King's

13. 45:58 – 50:06

    Ineffective teachers, effective learners

    1. SGSeth Godin45:58

       quote.

    2. TFTim Ferriss45:59

       You are a fantastic presenter, public speaker, teacher, of course. Th- these things tie together, although not all good public presenters are good teachers. But you are excellent at all those things. And I remember advice I was given, which I don't follow as, as, [laughs] as well as many, which is presentations fail more often from too much information rather than-

    3. SGSeth Godin46:22

       Oh, yeah

    4. TFTim Ferriss46:23

       ... too little. I think this is true of books also and part of the reason why, as one instance, The 4-Hour Chef was such a incredibly challenging and also confusing book, ultimately something I'm very proud of, but it tried to do more than any three books should try to do, and it, it ended up being very problematic for that reason, not... Uh, from the writing perspective, not so much from the reader perspective. In any case, how do you think about constraints? And can you give any examples of constraints, historical constraints that you like in your life or applied to other creatives, entrepreneurs, anything?

    5. SGSeth Godin47:02

       Okay, so it's a two-part question. The first part is about pedagogy and the thinking about how people learn. And I think one reason that a lot of people are bad at teaching is 'cause they don't think about pedagogy. All they know is they know something, and if they could just recite all the things they know, someone else will know it too. And that's not how learning works. So the, the challenge that we have is not seeking information density. And Tufte, I think, made a mistake with this, with his graphs, that trying to cram as much information in a square inch as we can about Napoleon's, uh, whatever, whatever. Yes, someone who's into that, who's willing to dissect it, will find a marvel of information inside. I look at a book like The 4-Hour Chef, and it's stunning, the scope of what you did, the depth of what you did, but it has a Tufte density problem

    6. TFTim Ferriss48:03

       Yeah. Very dense

    7. SGSeth Godin48:04

       ... right? In that you were counting on somebody to go deep into it, get inside your head, and learn what you learned. But that's not how the typical person we seek to serve learns something. That we learn things by becoming momentarily incompetent. We used to feel like we were in control, that we understood things, and then all of a sudden a new fact arises that counters what we know, and in that moment we're feeling incompetent, and that's when most people quit. But then we get through it, and now we know something more than we used to know, and now we're onto the next thing. And pacing that process is tricky. So, you know, if you're sitting listening to a high-level conversation between, uh, two extraordinary systems engineers, they're backing and forthing really fast 'cause they've got full throttle between them. But most of the time you don't get that privilege. And so the challenge is not to dumb it down, but to figure out what are the useful chunks of tension that you can create where someone can feel the tension, get through the tension, absorb it, and then be ready for another bit. And media challenges us because every once in a while something breaks through that's super dense. And, like, I wish I could write something that dense. I wrote one book that was that dense, Survival Is Not Enough. It sold 14,000 copies. Um, it's just hard to get to where people will sit with you for that long. Um, so I'm ranting here, but you asked about boundaries.

    8. TFTim Ferriss49:43

       I appreciate, yeah, the pedagogy is, is... I mean, that discussion is endlessly fascinating to me. The, the density question of sort of, uh, too much, not enough, too little, and then the Goldilocks for the person or, uh, avatar you're trying to serve, right?

    9. SGSeth Godin50:01

       Yep.

    10. TFTim Ferriss50:01

        [laughs] That is, is, uh, something that, that we could talk about for a very long

14. 50:06 – 1:06:09

    The gift of tension + positive constraints

    1. TFTim Ferriss50:06

       time. I'd also ask, and I think this applies in some respects, right? If you're trying to learn a skill, I think it's also very helpful to apply some constraints, at least to define what you're trying to learn with very tight constraints. So constraints or boundaries. Uh, I, I think there is a, a fetishizing of freedom-

    2. SGSeth Godin50:24

       Mm-hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss50:24

       ... uh, in a, in a very, uh, unhelpful, uh, actually, um, kind of debilitatingly nebulous way, uh, among many entrepreneurs, uh, among some creatives who view ultimate freedom, infinite choice, I could do anything at any time-

    4. SGSeth Godin50:45

       Mm-hmm

    5. TFTim Ferriss50:45

       ... as the ideal. I think, uh, the... Although I suspect very few people have experienced what that level of paradox of choice actually inflicts on the human mind. [laughs]

    6. SGSeth Godin50:58

       Mm-hmm.

    7. TFTim Ferriss50:58

       But could you, could you speak to, however you want, constraints, boundaries, and how you or other people have applied them? Actually, and hold that just as a bookmark. You've talked about creating tension a few different times. In your work or in your presentations, in anything that you do, could you give an example of how you create or have created tension and then had that release of tension? Since you've mentioned that a few different times, uh, I, I'd love to hear a real-world example, then we can zig back to constraints and, and boundaries.

    8. SGSeth Godin51:34

       Oh, well, let's start with a trivial example. Ready?

    9. TFTim Ferriss51:38

       I'm ready.

    10. SGSeth Godin51:39

        Knock, knock.

    11. TFTim Ferriss51:41

        Who's there?

    12. SGSeth Godin51:42

        Exactly. So there-

    13. TFTim Ferriss51:46

        [laughs]

    14. SGSeth Godin51:47

        We didn't agree in advance to have a back and forth that would lead to a stupid joke, but as soon as you say, "Who's there?" a tiny sliver of tension is created, which is, "Why is he doing this, and what's gonna make it worth it?" Right? Or calling a book Purple Cow instead of How to Grow Your Business by Becoming Remarkable. Because Purple Cow creates tension. Why is this in the business section? What does this have to do with anything? It's a mystery, and then the mystery is resolved. That tension is in all form of teaching and culture. If there is no tension, just like if you want to shoot a rubber band across the room, you have to stretch it backwards first. And so what I try to do when I'm building a workshop or something like the altMBA is to say, "How few minutes can I speak to lay the groundwork enough that tension will be created so that people will resolve their own tension by learning what it is I need them to learn?" And what the mistake we often make if you know a lot and are trying to teach someone who doesn't know a lot, is we tell them too many things and we relieve the tension. We steal the revelation. Don't steal the revelation.

    15. TFTim Ferriss53:09

        I love that.

    16. SGSeth Godin53:09

        Open the door and let them find the revelation.

    17. TFTim Ferriss53:14

        Could you describe an example from altMBA? I mean, the first thing that came to mind for me as you're describing this in terms of not stealing the revelation is actually the Harvard case study method at, at a place like-

    18. SGSeth Godin53:26

        Mm-hmm

    19. TFTim Ferriss53:26

        ... Harvard Business School. They do this other places like Stanford Business School, where you have effectively these two-part modules. Part one presents a real-world historical case study of a problem or opportunity or situation that a business, or more accurately, uh, leaders within a business are facing, and then cliffhanger. And the class then at that point has to determine the proper course of action, what they think should be done or not done, and then you have the revelation in part two where they talk about what was actually done and how it turned out. So that jumped to mind as an example of that, but I, I would imagine that is not the format you're using- Within something like the altMBA. So how do you not steal the revelation but create tension so that people will plow ahead with developing a skill or learning something?

    20. SGSeth Godin54:18

        It's such a cool idea to bring up the Harvard case study. Uh, the-- there is a reveal sometimes in a Harvard case, but it is not the revelation, and that's why it works. That if you knew the reveal, the class wouldn't go better. The revelation in a Harvard case is when a student comes up with a, an approach that they wouldn't have had if they hadn't heard the conversation, and that probably isn't what the company did. Because it's that furrowing around in a safe space that lets you experience years and years and years of strategic business thinking in one year. Because, you know, so, like, one of the most famous cases, uh, there was a gas chain called Atlantic Richfield, ARCO, and there was pages and pages of spreadsheets about, um, their credit cards and-- 'cause in the gas business, when gas was thirty cents a gallon, credit cards were a big chunk of what they did. And what it forced students to do, who had never thought about any of these issues, was dig in deep on where does the money flow? What's the difference between what you charge someone and what you make? What is it like to be the low-cost provider, et cetera? Well, the reveal is that ARCO just canceled all their credit cards, and they became the first chain that was just cash only in the seventies and eighties.

    21. TFTim Ferriss55:45

        Mm.

    22. SGSeth Godin55:45

        But it didn't matter that that's what they did. What mattered was thirty or sixty people together were digging into this situation. And so I didn't have any of that in mind when I built the altMBA and, um, just an aside, so we're up to five thousand, uh, grads, but I shouldn't say we anymore because it's now a B corp, and it's, uh, run by Marie and Alex. Um, so I've turned the reins over to them. I'm still involved in the-- Akimbo, the B corp, but I need to give them full credit for the institution that they're building.

    23. TFTim Ferriss56:22

        Mm-hmm.

    24. SGSeth Godin56:22

        What I said was, without the f- eighteen pages of Harvard case study, what's a nugget here? So a nugget is something like, let's talk about a decision, and tell everyone else in your cohort a decision you made and how you used decision thinking to make it, and then defend your decision for the five other people you're with, and they will do the same with you. And most of us have never actually had an emotion-free conversation about a decision that we've made, because usually we make them either after it didn't work out or we forget, right? But in this case, having to work your way through it, say, "Well, I decided this instead of that, and I did this instead of that," suddenly, without me telling you, without anybody telling you, you realize there's actually a calculus to making almost any decision, and you glossed over the parts that you were afraid of, and now you can see them differently. And when you add to that the persistence of the cohort, what you end up with is this increase in safety and enrollment, which are the two core elements of learning, that it'll enable you to deal with ever more tension, which leads to more incompetence, which leads to the revelation.

    25. TFTim Ferriss57:47

        Well, so many, so many different [chuckles] directions we could go-

    26. SGSeth Godin57:50

        Can we talk about con-

    27. TFTim Ferriss57:50

        From there.

    28. SGSeth Godin57:51

        But we skipped our constraints. I really wanna talk about-

    29. TFTim Ferriss57:53

        Oh, no, we didn't, we did, we didn't skip.

    30. SGSeth Godin57:55

        Okay.
15. 1:06:09 – 1:08:04

    On seeking joy

    1. SGSeth Godin1:06:09

       were something new.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:06:10

       S- so I wanna talk about the practice, and there's, there's a, there's a little nugget In The Elements of the Practice, this list of elements contained in the many chapters, uh, and bits of wisdom and tactical advice that you have in this book, one is seek joy. How does one do that?

    3. SGSeth Godin1:06:36

       Well, it gets back to, uh, enjoying what you do more than, uh, doing what you enjoy.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:06:43

       Mm-hmm.

    5. SGSeth Godin1:06:43

       And so the question is, you know, if, if Marshall Sahlins, uh, who just wrote a book with David Graeber, who recently passed away, but Marshall Sahlins wrote a breakthrough book in the '60s called Stone Age Economics, and it is about what it was like to be a caveman. And it turns out that cavemen, who in my view were wearing, like, these horrible Flintstones-like clothes and barely surviving, only worked three hours a day, and they spent the rest of their time being present and alive and with their family, and all the things that people say they wanna do more of. And what's fascinating to me about that is lots of the people that you and I know who go to work and just dig it out day after day don't do it because they need more money. They are seeking some sort of status, some sort of, uh, emotional engagement, some sort of energy. But they forget along the way, 'cause they signed up for this other game, that there is the game one can play of, "Wow, that f- really was cool what I just made. That fills me with joy. I just did something generous. I just connected with someone at an elemental level." That they're too busy playing somebody else's game to play that game.

16. 1:08:04 – 1:11:07

    Choosing the right game

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:08:04

       I've read in, uh, many books that some version of we're all playing games, right? And step, step one is to know which game we're playing, and maybe step two is to deliberately choose the game we're playing as opposed to something we absorbed or inherited or had imposed on us by s- by others or by upbringing. You have zigged quite a lot when others have zagged. W- how do you think about the game or games that you play? Because these are just like hockey, right? There are certain constraints-

    2. SGSeth Godin1:08:39

       Yep

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:08:40

       ... certain objectives, certain values that are given points positively or negatively. How have you chosen the games you have chosen, and how has that changed over time? I know that's like 15 questions in one-

    4. SGSeth Godin1:08:53

       No

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:08:53

       ... but I know you can handle it.

    6. SGSeth Godin1:08:54

       It's a great question, and there are few people I would answer it for, but I'm delighted to answer it for you. It's a great question. The first rule is you don't break your nose.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:09:01

       [laughs]

    8. SGSeth Godin1:09:02

       Really and truly, that is the first rule. And what I mean by that is I have been surrounded since I started one of the first internet companies, which was 1990, '91, before the World Wide Web. I have been surrounded by people who have been playing a game with very few elements of scorekeeping that generally revolve around wealth. And they will come up with all sorts of reasons why their Silicon Valley doohickey is gonna change the world for the better-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:09:35

       [laughs]

    10. SGSeth Godin1:09:35

        ... but it's not really true. And they will make decisions and compromises about who they hire and how they spend their day because that game is culturally sanctioned. It is a game that's truly deniable in the Milton Friedman sense, and, you know, you're getting what technology wants, you're getting what the market wants, turn the ratchet. And it has been thrilling every few years to be around that rush of growth, but early on with Yoyodyne, I saw what it would mean to take it to the next level. And when I got to 70 employees, I said, "I can't... These people should not be counting on me, and I can't play the way I like to play on behalf of 70 other people." And so I had to stop. And then a few years later, I did it again with Squidoo, which was before Pinterest and all the rest. Um, and so what I've learned is that veering away from the next two zeros of upside is really expensive and the single best way for me to live the life I wanna live. And so I didn't write the sequel to Permission Marketing, and I didn't start MailChimp, and I didn't... You know, there's all these things I coulda done if I was a b- a business builder, but I'm not a business builder. The game I'm playing is, have I earned enough trust to do another generous project that I'm proud of, and if so, do I get to do it

17. 1:11:07 – 1:16:14

    Fulfilling work vs. training for the outcome

    1. SGSeth Godin1:11:07

       again?

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:11:08

       What other elements of the life you wanted to live provided for you the tipping of the scales? Like you said, I mean, giving up those additional two zeros of upside has a cost. I mean, there is sort of an incremental return on dollar, right, at some point, like a marginal [laughs] use of each dollar. But th- there's a sacrifice being made. What... How would you describe the life you wanted to live that was on the other side of door number two?

    3. SGSeth Godin1:11:39

       So you mean the one I picked as opposed to the one I walked away from?

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:11:41

       That's right.

    5. SGSeth Godin1:11:43

       Um, I was so fortunate to have two amazing parents, and, um, we lived in Buffalo, New York, not a big town, and there were always people parading in our house. One night, uh, at one Thanksgiving, 18 Russian refuseniks showed up for their first Thanksgiving, all smoking like chimneys, right?

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:12:03

       [laughs]

    7. SGSeth Godin1:12:03

       That, uh, the way it felt to see them be part of the community of their choice and to simply commit to the work they were doing. So my mom worked as a volunteer at the museum and then got a job there and pioneered the museum store. And she just stuck with it and stuck with it and stuck with it without a lot of drama, but in terms of it was s- sustaining. And she could point to work that she did that others didn't think were gonna make a difference that really did. And, um, so that was my role model, and I was aware really early on that that was sort of unique, that I was really lucky to have that privilege and that head start. But I have been aware that it would be really easy to blow it. It would be really easy to say, "I need a seventh house or an eighth house as opposed to just one." And, um, so one of the constraints was there's enough, and knowing that there's enough opens the door to merely do the work. Whereas if you need to get attached to the outcome because you need more, now you're not doing the work anymore. Now you're just simply trading for the outcome.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:13:22

       What's, what's so bad about trading for the outcome? Is it because... And I'm, I'm playing a bit of a devil's advocate here, but is it that you ultimately cannot determine the outcome because so much is outside of your control? Is that what makes that unappealing? Is it just that day to day you're kind of trading misery now for some low probability, ill-defined happiness in the future that's probably not gonna come true? What are the main risks of, of kind of betting on outcome? Because that is what a lot of people do, right? I mean, I'm in-

    9. SGSeth Godin1:13:57

       Oh, yeah

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:13:57

        ... I'm in Austin, but it's, it's ... Right now as opposed to Silicon Valley, but the outcome driven decision making is the default, I would say-

    11. SGSeth Godin1:14:10

        Oh, yeah

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:14:10

        ... in the sort of individualized American culture at least. What are the, the main risks that you see that, that I, that I haven't mentioned?

    13. SGSeth Godin1:14:17

        So, so a couple ways to look at this. You're exactly right that the current Western mindset is, "Tell me if it's gonna work and then I'll do it."

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:14:24

        [laughs]

    15. SGSeth Godin1:14:25

        And part of, part of this comes from school, which is you know you're in school if someone says, "Will this be on the test?"

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:14:32

        [laughs]

    17. SGSeth Godin1:14:33

        The phrase, "Will this be on the test" means I am willing to momentarily memorize this if you're willing to trade me for an A. And if not, I'll zone out because I got plenty of other things to do. I'll be back when you're ready to trade. Uh, but then let's go one more step. There's a hackneyed ex- uh, there's that word. There's a hackneyed expression which is, uh, what would you do if you knew you could not fail?

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:14:56

        Mm-hmm.

    19. SGSeth Godin1:14:56

        And I find that completely unhelpful-

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:14:58

        [laughs]

    21. SGSeth Godin1:14:58

        ... because it, it's basically a genie question. You know, all right, I want invisibility and I want control over this and I want... You're never gonna get those things. Here's my question. What would you do if you knew you would fail?

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:15:11

        Ah.

    23. SGSeth Godin1:15:11

        What would be worth doing even though it's not gonna work? And if you've got things on that list that you haven't been doing, ironically those are the things that are most likely to work, because other people aren't doing them either. And this idea of attachment, I mean, you know, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche said, uh, "The bad news is we are falling, falling, falling. The good news is there's nothing to hold onto." And as soon as we explore there's nothing to hold onto, then we can get back to the work, right? Elizabeth King's practice that prevents us from wondering about what prize we're gonna get. This is just the work. Then you can merely do it. Most people who enter the, uh, Boston Marathon know they're not gonna win, but they enter anyway. And that's the way I think life is probably more like than I will only enter the marathon if I'm gonna win it.

18. 1:16:14 – 1:19:06

    The message of “The Practice”

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:16:15

       The Practice is your what book? Which number?

    2. SGSeth Godin1:16:22

       By the way I count it, maybe 20.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:16:25

       20. Why write this book?

    4. SGSeth Godin1:16:30

       So as you and I both know, writing a book is a ridiculous venture. It takes-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:16:35

       [laughs]

    6. SGSeth Godin1:16:36

       ... a really long time, and then when you're done with it almost nobody says, "Fantastic" the way they do say if you made a new record. Because when you make a, a record people go, "Oh, I'll listen to it" but when you make a book they ask for a prize because they finished reading it.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:16:52

       [laughs]

    8. SGSeth Godin1:16:52

       And, um, so I only write a book when I have no choice. And what makes me have no choice? Well, what I learned a really long time ago is once I start working my way through a set of ideas, I owe those ideas something. And they owe... I owe them a package and a way for them to come to people in a, a venue that I hope will help. And the thing about a book that isn't true for all other forms of electric media that... electronic media that are easy to share, is when you hand someone a book the whole package is right there, and when your book group goes through a book you get to do it together. And so yeah, I made a workshop about what's in this book, and I could've written 20 blog posts instead of writing a book, but I wanted to signal to myself and to other people that this one was book worthy. And probably for the last five books I felt like maybe I don't know when the next book's coming after it, and this one's one of those, which is if this has to be my last book, I'm proud to make this one my last book.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:18:00

       What should people hope to get from this book? What is the promise or premise of The Practice?

    10. SGSeth Godin1:18:06

        Well, the subtitle is Ship Creative Work.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:18:08

        Mm.

    12. SGSeth Godin1:18:08

        And either you do that for a living or you don't. If you don't do that for a living, good luck to you, because you're a cog in a system that wants to replace you. On the other hand, if you ship creative work, ship means if it doesn't ship it doesn't count. Work means you do it even when you don't feel like it, and creative is where the joy is, because creative is- No one's ever done it this way before, and here I made this. And all I know, for me anyway, is those moments, they're, they're bathed in golden light for me. When I feel like ... Like I just got a shipment in, uh, 10 minutes before we started talking of the dozen collectors packages that I designed and printed to go with, uh, this for 400 people, and I'm just holding them in my hands. And it was only three months ago, but I don't remember making them. I just remember the way it felt to make them, and I want other people to feel that feeling while they're serving the people

19. 1:19:06 – 1:21:32

    Juggling

    1. SGSeth Godin1:19:06

       around them.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:19:07

       This is gonna seem like a complete left turn, but I'm gonna-

    3. SGSeth Godin1:19:09

       Okay

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:19:09

       ... I'm gonna try to m- I'm gonna try to make it more of a, a mogul course that makes some sense. How would you suggest people learn to juggle?

    5. SGSeth Godin1:19:22

       So I've taught, uh, more people to juggle than most. I'm not a great juggler, but we're not talking about figuratively. I'm talking about actually juggling. So let's talk this through, 'cause I think it's a useful lesson. If you have ever seen a juggler on television or on video or in person, what you notice is that they don't drop the ball. Not dropping the ball is perhaps the driving force of what makes someone a juggler. And if you are, uh, enjoying the show, you're willing and wishing the balls not to drop. So if someone says, "You wanna learn how to juggle?" You might say yes, and this is what always happens when I teach people to juggle. They grab three balls. I say, "No, no, no. Don't grab..." They grab three balls, and they throw the first one. This is easy. They throw the second one, and then they go to catch it, 'cause they know catching is the key to juggling. And by the time they get to the second ball, they have to lunge for it. And once you lunge for the second ball, you're out of position for the third one, and then you're done. It's all on the ground, and you give up on juggling. Because if juggling is about catching, you're terrible at it. What's the alternative? Well, the way I've taught people how to juggle is simple. I give them one ball, and we spend between 20 minutes and 30 minutes throwing the ball and letting it hit the ground. No catching. Then we add the second ball. Throw, throw, drop, drop. No catching. Throw, throw, drop, drop. If you do that for 40 minutes total, you're gonna be really good at throwing. And if you get really good at throwing, the catching takes care of itself. And this is the part about divorce from the outcome. Because all we care about if we want to learn to juggle is to learn to throw. And the metaphor I cannot escape, which is getting better at throwing, is what we have to do to build resilience, and it's what we have to do to live in a world that's changing ever faster. Because if we try to anchor on outcomes and control results, we're in the catching business, and then we're

20. 1:21:32 – 1:25:13

    Counterintuitive can be effective

    1. SGSeth Godin1:21:32

       really in bad trouble.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:21:33

       So to continue with this, the throwing instead of catching, right? This inversion of importance that then allows someone to actually learn the skill they set out to learn but doing it in a very counterintuitive way. The first thing I'll say is that this reminds me a lot of how I learned to swim in my 30s. I couldn't swim until I got-

    3. SGSeth Godin1:21:56

       Wow

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:21:57

       ... into my 30s. And it was Terry Laughlin of-

    5. SGSeth Godin1:22:01

       Sure

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:22:01

       ... Total Immersion Swimming, may he rest in peace. Passed away a few years ago, who indirectly, I, I suppose, through his writing, I learned to r- I learned to swim through a book, which is just astonishing when you think about it, because he took out the base assumptions, or he corrected-

    7. SGSeth Godin1:22:18

       Yep

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:22:18

       ... the base assumptions of swimming.

    9. SGSeth Godin1:22:20

       Yep.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:22:20

        Namely, I thought I need to swim on top of the water and I need to kick, which is in fact how a lot of swimming is taught. And he said, "Nope, you're not gonna do that, and you're not even gonna focus on kicking. Like, we are not going to do anything that will make you tired. In fact, if you are tired when you are learning how to swim, you're doing it incorrectly. We're just gonna have you kick off the side of the shallow end of a pool and practice getting into a few slosh position." And the sequence, even though in retrospect it makes perfect sense, was so different from any other attempt-

    11. SGSeth Godin1:22:51

        Yep

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:22:52

        ... that I ha- that, that I had made through books, videos, instruction, coaching, you name it. It just worked, and it blew my mind, and now I swim. I mean, I have my swimming gear with me today to go swimming for relaxation, which I, I never thought in a million years would be the case.

    13. SGSeth Godin1:23:06

        I never... I'm not gonna let you ask your question yet, 'cause I have to interject here. I never knew this about you. I swim his method every single day. And-

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:23:14

        No kidding

    15. SGSeth Godin1:23:15

        ... I knew how to swim, but the year I was at Stanford, they had a master's class at the Stanford pool. And I couldn't resist. I went. And this guy comes out to teach it. He's the consultant to the US Olympic swim team, and he's assisted by the coach of the Stanford swim team. His name's Bill Boomer. Bill had a very significant potbelly and one arm. And I'm like, "This guy's gonna teach us how to swim." And the beauty of it was it's all about the process and not about the outcome, 'cause you don't get good at the outcome for a long time. And the second part, when we were talking about incompetence before, what you didn't mention is learning to swim Terry's way involves drowning for at least an hour and a half.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:24:05

        [laughs]

    17. SGSeth Godin1:24:06

        And that's why most people don't get to the other side.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:24:09

        [laughs] Just to be clear, it is an uncomfortable practice by design. There is, i- if done correctly, no ... risk. There's a physical-

    19. SGSeth Godin1:24:21

        Right

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:24:21

        ... risk involved if you're doing it with supervision. Uh, and he will do also things like remove breathing, right? In the sense that you are not swimming and learning how to breathe at the same time. It's just too much, right?

    21. SGSeth Godin1:24:33

        Yeah.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:24:34

        It's like giving... being given a unicycle and seven balls to juggle. It's like that's just not gonna work for the vast majority of folks. And so he says, "All right. Great. Well, let's take the breathing out of it. That, that failure point will be removed."

    23. SGSeth Godin1:24:45

        Yeah.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:24:45

        "Let's take out the breathing. We're just gonna focus on hydrodynamics and teaching you that naturally, because of the density of your body, you're gonna be 70-plus percent underwater when you swim, period, full stop. You're not a hydrofoil." And, uh, you gave then, uh, what, what I think is in, in some respects a comparable example of a logical but counterintuitive progression with the learning to throw-

    25. SGSeth Godin1:25:12

        Mm-hmm

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:25:12

        ... instead of catch.

21. 1:25:13 – 1:26:49

    Cultivating creativity

    1. SGSeth Godin1:25:13

       Yep.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:25:14

       If someone were to ask you, how would you teach someone to be creative? And I'm asking that in, in a deliberately maybe problematic way, but what would your answer be if they were like, "Great. I get the swimming example. I get the juggling example. I wanna be more creative." What's the equivalent for becoming more creative? What would you say?

    3. SGSeth Godin1:25:36

       It's exactly the same, and I've done it many, many times. Here you go. If you wanna learn how to juggle, you have to drop an enormous number of balls. If you wanna learn how to swim, you have to sort of drown. And if you wanna learn to be creative, you have to show me an enormous number of bad ideas. Pick the smallest region, domain, any segment you want. Start listing your bad ideas. Keep listing your bad ideas. Let's prove that your bad ideas are not fatal. That's part one. Part two, domain knowledge and genre. It is true that every once in a while an outsider shows up with something that nobody on the inside ever thought of, but that's not usually what happens. What usually happens is someone who has good taste decides to be willing to be creative. And good taste means you know what your audience wants 10 minutes before they do. That's all. You can't have good taste unless you have domain knowledge and understand genre. So if you combine those two things, shipping on the regular and good taste, you can be creative.

22. 1:26:49 – 1:29:40

    Genre, generic, and Earl Stanley Gardner

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:26:50

       When you say genre, what do you mean? Because this is a... If someone is accused of, and I use that word very deliberately [laughs] being a genre writer or a, a genre this, genre that, it can be used in a derisive way.

    2. SGSeth Godin1:27:05

       Sure.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:27:06

       Perhaps. What, what do you mean by genre and how would you prefer people to understand genre?

    4. SGSeth Godin1:27:13

       So, um, generic and genre are not being used by me in the same way. Genre means, what am I expecting when I encounter your work? So Earl Stanley Gardner wrote mystery novels, and they fit neatly into the genre of mystery novels. We knew which section of the bookstore to put them in, but they were nothing like Agatha Christie novels. And Earl Stanley Gardner sold a quarter of a billion books by writing his own distinct, idiosyncratic, peculiar, particular books that clearly were in a genre. And-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:27:48

       Can I just say for a second-

    6. SGSeth Godin1:27:49

       Yeah

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:27:49

       ... I apologize. You were talking about how 99% of the people in the United States haven't read your books. I am constantly both amazed and not surprised at all that you just mentioned someone who sold a quarter billion books, and I have no idea who this person is. [laughs]

    8. SGSeth Godin1:28:05

       May I hum a few bars?

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:28:07

       Yeah. Yeah.

    10. SGSeth Godin1:28:07

        [singing] Dana, Dana, Dana-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:28:11

        Oh [singing]

    12. SGSeth Godin1:28:12

        ... na, na, na, Dana, na.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:28:14

        Yeah. Got it.

    14. SGSeth Godin1:28:14

        He wrote, he wrote all the Perry Mason books.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:28:16

        Amazing.

    16. SGSeth Godin1:28:17

        And he wrote, uh... He had a secretary who was a little like Della Street. Della... I don't know what her name was. His secretary had a yellow legal pad. Earl dictated the books while she followed him around. Didn't edit a word. Every two weeks he had a new one.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:28:32

        [laughs] Wow. It's kind of... Yeah. Well, it's like James the, the, you know, the James Patterson machine, right? I mean-

    18. SGSeth Godin1:28:40

        Yeah, or James Bond. It l- it goes with the word James apparently. But the, the thing about genre is we don't know what to do with a creative idea that doesn't rhyme with anything else, right? So is Google a creative innovation after the world had seen Yahoo? Well, of course it is, because Marissa and the rest said, "Let's not have 183 links on the homepage. Let's have two." The search results themselves weren't that different for years, but the leap was you know what a search engine is. This is just like that search engine except it's different. But if they hadn't seen Yahoo and AltaVista, they never could have built Google, and we wouldn't have known what to do with it if we hadn't seen a search engine.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:29:21

        Mm-hmm.

    20. SGSeth Godin1:29:22

        And so what genre says is, there's a box, and I can't think outside the box 'cause it's dark. But on the edges of the box I have leverage. You gotta know what the box is before you can make a thing that is gonna be seen as creative.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:29:39

        Mm-hmm.

23. 1:29:40 – 1:33:01

    230 chapters in less than 230 pages

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:29:42

       If we look at the contents of The Practice, there's a lot. There's a lot here. 230 chapters.

    2. SGSeth Godin1:29:50

       It's 230, 230 chapters, and the book's less than 230 pages long. Yes.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:29:55

       Right. So 230 chapters, and I'm looking at a partial list, and I wonder which of these you hope people will pay particular attention to because they are mother qualities of a sense.

    4. SGSeth Godin1:30:14

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:30:14

       And what I mean by that is, and I can't recall the attribution so I, I won't try to make it up on the spot, but s- I've heard in different forms, you know, courage is the sort of mother- virtue of all virtues because at, at the breaking point, at the testing point-

    6. SGSeth Godin1:30:31

       Mm-hmm

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:30:31

       ... without courage, none of those virtues can be enacted.

    8. SGSeth Godin1:30:34

       Mm-hmm.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:30:34

       Something along those lines.

    10. SGSeth Godin1:30:35

        I like that, yeah.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:30:36

        Are there any particular chapters or qualities, principles that, that you really hope people will pay particular attention to that if not act as prerequisites in some fashion help the others?

    12. SGSeth Godin1:30:52

        So one of the reasons that this needs to be a book or a workshop that lasts 150 days is we're so complicated. Everyone's come up with their own combination of what's holding them back.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:31:07

        Hmm.

    14. SGSeth Godin1:31:08

        And the way to unlock it, I wish there was a hierarchy and a taxonomy that said, "This is how we get all the way up to the top." I don't feel like it's Maslow-ian in that way. I feel like we each find our own sinecure, our own way to hide out from the thing that is keeping us from the creativity that we want to deliver, and it starts to eat us up inside. And that the deeper we've built it, the harder it is for us to have an outsider help us. The list of excuses we have is infinite. And so I don't know if I could point to this one which unlocks all of them. I guess the juggling one has a big piece of it, which is throwing, not catching, and I think the generosity one, which is I'm not throwing for myself, I am throwing for other people.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:32:05

        Hmm.

    16. SGSeth Godin1:32:05

        When I add those two up, what I end up with is this: creativity is a generous act. Get out of your own way. Don't ask for a guarantee. Simply, merely ship the work without drama and without dialogue.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:32:22

        Hmm. Which is the opposite it would seem, please correct me if I'm wrong, of a word you just used that I did not know the definition to because I therefore had to look it up. Sinecure.

    18. SGSeth Godin1:32:31

        Mm-hmm.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:32:31

        S-I-N-E-C-U-R-E, noun, a position requiring little or no work but giving the holder status or financial benefit, from the Latin sinecura, cura, without care. So rather than do that, you're effectively it would seem like going to the opposite end of the spectrum. Is that fair to say? Although status or financial benefit could come along with it, but it is a very different combination of things that you are suggesting.

24. 1:33:01 – 1:34:47

    Why Joni Mitchell alienated her mainstream audience

    1. SGSeth Godin1:33:01

       So let's go back to Joni Mitchell because something happened to Joni Mitchell after I don't know which album number, and it was that she was unstoppable, that her albums w- were on every radio station and were s- in every college dorm room. And Joni was in danger of becoming a hack because the audience knew exactly what they wanted from a Joni Mitchell record and exactly what they wanted from a Joni Mitchell concert. And Joni Mitchell looked at that and she said, "I'm," whatever, "30 years old. I could do this quite profitably for the next 40 years." It's a sinecure, that she will be beloved and she will never fail, 'cause writing another Joni Mitchell song was pretty easy for her. And so she made a record called Don Juan's Reckless Daughter.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:33:49

       [laughs]

    3. SGSeth Godin1:33:50

       And then she made a couple other ones after that, that seemed intentionally designed to alienate her audience, but they weren't. They were intentionally designed to alienate the old Joni Mitchell's audience so that she could find her smallest viable audience and make the music she wanted to for them. Because her goal wasn't to sell more records. Her goal was to explore that golden place of, wow, this might not work, but if she kept making the things that would work, she would ruin her life. And I just... I'll listen to that record, uh, God Must Be a Boogie Man with Jaco Pastorius on the fretless bass, and there's still songs in there I don't get yet, but I'm so proud of her to have said, "Enough. I have enough. Now how do I make better?"

25. 1:34:47 – 1:35:54

    What would you do even if you knew you would fail?

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:34:47

       Hmm. What would you do even if you knew you would fail? [laughs] I love that. I love that recasting of the question that I've always enjoyed but, uh, for any number of reasons very often not come up with great answers to. [laughs] What would you do if, if you knew you could not fail? Uh, even if you knew you would fail, in a sense, I mean, it's, of course, there are some caveats to the question in a sense, but, uh, if you answer this or pursue the answers, explore the answers to that question, you also end up doing things for which you will have a, it will be natural, I was about to say unnatural, but an uncommon endurance or attachment which will then increase the likelihood that over time you will have some version of success. I mean, it seems that way to me at least. And if you don't, then you've chosen in such a way that at least the path along the way has some, has some nice scenery, so that you're just not, you know, a, a horse in Times Square with blinders on going around in circles. [laughs]

    2. SGSeth Godin1:35:53

       Well said.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:35:53

       [laughs]

26. 1:35:54 – 1:44:31

    Parting thoughts.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:35:55

       Seth, you're always so fun to chat with. I enjoy our conversations immensely. I've taken a bunch of notes for myself. People can find you at Seths.blog. They can find you on Twitter, Instagram, @ThisIsSethsBlog on Twitter, Instagram @SethGodin. I'll link to everything including the new book, The Practice, subtitle Shipping Creative Work, in the show notes at Tim.blog/podcast. Is there anything else you would like to say? Any recommendations, requests? Comments, complaints, anything that you'd like to put in front of the listeners before we wrap up?

    2. SGSeth Godin1:36:33

       Well, I would because, uh, you gave me the last word, which is it's easy to forget how hard you, Tim, have worked at leading, illuminating, and pushing yourself to become different better versions. And you show up on the regular and share it, and I, for one, am grateful you do.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:36:56

       Mm. Thank you very much, Seth. I, uh, really appreciate you saying that. Needed that today. That's a longer story, but I real- I really appreciate you saying that and hope to see you again soon. But in the meantime, thank you for taking the time today to share your life, your learnings, and the importance of the practice. I really appreciate it.

    4. SGSeth Godin1:37:19

       Thanks. We'll see you soon.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:37:21

       And to everybody else, until next time. Thank you for listening. [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 fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.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 Tonal, T-O-N-A-L. I'm super excited about this one, and I was skeptical of it in the beginning. Tonal. Quote, "Tonal is the world's most intelligent home gym and personal trainer," end quote. That's the tagline from their website, folks, to give you the one-sentence summary. And this device, it's really a system, is perfect for anyone looking to take their home workouts to the next level or someone who just wants to get maximum bang for the buck in a tiny, tiny footprint of space. Tonal is precision engineered to be the world's most advanced strength studio and personal trainer. It uses breakthrough technology of all different types to help get you stronger faster. I was introduced to Tonal by three different friends. All of them are tech savvy. One of them is a former competitive skier who's doubled his strength in a number of movements using Tonal even though he has a long athletic background. And I'll paint a picture for you. By eliminating traditional metal weights, dumbbells, and barbells, Tonal can deliver two hundred pounds of resistance, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's actually [laughs] ... It feels like a lot more on the high end, in a device smaller than a flat screen TV. And you can perform at least a hundred and fifty different exercises. And these different technologies are exclusive to Tonal, and you can dial weights up and down with the touch of a button in one-pound increments using magnets and electricity. So the movement is extremely smooth. And even though I have a home gym already in my garage, I'm still getting a Tonal installed. I've used Tonal for multiple workouts now to do things I just cannot do in my home gym such as the chop and lift exercises from 4-Hour Body, all sorts of cable exercises that would usually involve much, much bigger piece of equipment. Eccentric training. For instance, you can do, to give a simple example, bicep curls where you are lifting, let's just say, twenty pounds in each hand up, and then Tonal will automatically increase the weight because you can lower more than you can lift to, say, twenty-five or thirty pounds on the way down. And I do kettlebell swings. I do all sorts of deadlifts, this, that, and the other thing. And after one workout on Tonal focusing on pulling, I was blasted for a full week. It's really incredible what you can do with eccentrics. They also have all sorts of other really, really cool advantages that you can apply to any of your favorite movements. Tonal learns from your strength and provides suggested weight recommendations for every move with detailed progress reports to help you see your strengths grow. Tonal also has a growing library of expert-led workouts by motivating coaches from strength training to cardio. So you can do really just about everything. Every program is personalized to your body using artificial intelligence and other aspects of the engineering. And smart features check your form in real time just like a personal trainer. So try it out. Try Tonal. At least check it out. Watch the, uh, videos on YouTube and see if you can pick out a familiar voice. It's not me, I'll say that. But try Tonal, the world's smartest home gym, for thirty days in your home. And if you don't love it, you can return it for a full refund. So visit www.tonal.com for one hundred dollars off of smart accessories when you use promo code TIM, T-I-M, at checkout. That's www.T-O-N-A-L.com, promo code TIM. Tonal, be your strongest. This episode is brought to you by Pornhub. Just kidding. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic, which is part of my morning routine, also part of my afternoon routine. Routine saves me. So there are a number of ways that I use Four Sigmatic. In the mornings, I regularly start with their mushroom coffee instead of regular coffee, and it doesn't taste like mushroom. Let me explain this. First of all, zero sugar, zero calories, half the caffeine of regular coffee. It's easy on my stomach, tastes amazing, and all you have to do is add hot water. I use travel packets. I've been to probably a dozen countries with various products from Four Sigmatic. And their mushroom coffee is top of the list. That's number one. I travel with it, I recommend it, I give it to my employees, I give it to house guests. So if you're one of the 60% of Americans or more who drink coffee daily, consider switching it up. This stuff is amazing. That's part one. That is the cognitive enhancement side, easy on the system side, energizing side. The next is actually their chaga tea, which tastes delicious. It is decaf, completely decaf, and some may recognize chaga. It is nicknamed the king of the mushrooms. It is excellent for immune system support. So needless to say, I am focused on that right now myself, and so I will often have that in the afternoons. They make all sorts of different mushroom blends. If you are doing exercise, as I am on a daily basis to keep myself sane, cordyceps, excellent for endurance. They have a whole slew of options that you can check out. Every single batch is third-party lab tested for heavy metals, allergens, all the bad stuff to make sure that what gets into your hands is what you want to put in your mouth, and they always offer a 100% money back guarantee. So you can try it risk-free. Why not? I've worked out an exclusive offer with Four Sigmatic on their best-selling Lion's Mane coffee. I literally have a mug full of it in front of me right now, and this is just for you, my dear podcast listeners. Receive up to 39% off, I don't know how we arrived at 39%, but 39% off, it's a lot, their best-selling Lion's Mane coffee bundles. To claim this deal, you must go to foursigmatic.com/tim. This offer is only for you and is not available on their regular website. Go to Four Sigmatic, that's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C .com/tim to get yourself some awesome and delicious mushroom coffee. Full discount is applied at checkout. [outro music]

Episode duration: 1:44:31