The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck — Mark Manson on Writing, Career Reinvention, and More

1. 0:00 – 1:13

   Start

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      [upbeat music] Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers from all different walks of life, all different arenas, to tease out the habits, lessons learned, et cetera, that you can apply to your own lives. My guest today, long overdue, is Mark Manson. You can find him all over the webs, including on Twitter @IAmMarkManson. Mark is a three-time number one New York Times best-selling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, maybe you've heard of it, as well as other titles. His books have sold nearly two zero, 20 million copies worldwide, and have reached number one in more than a dozen countries. Since 2008, he has written articles at MarkManson.net, one of the largest personal development blogs in the world, with more than a million monthly readers. In 2023, a feature film about him and his work will be released in theaters by Universal Pictures. We'll link to everything in the show notes as per usual at tim.blog/podcast.

2. 1:13 – 4:52

   Difficult changes and modified default behaviors.

   1. TFTim Ferriss1:14

      Mark, welcome to the show. Nice to see you.

   2. MMMark Manson1:17

      It's a pleasure. Happy to be here.

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:19

      I read this profile of you in New York Mag, and it shared many different stories, and I wanna dig into maybe certain aspects of that. But what I'd be curious to hear, just off the cuff, because a lot has happened in your life [laughs]

   4. MMMark Manson1:35

      Mm-hmm

   5. TFTim Ferriss1:35

      ... in the last-

   6. MMMark Manson1:36

      Yeah

   7. TFTim Ferriss1:36

      ... five to seven years. What have been some of the most difficult changes to get accustomed to, or default behaviors to modify now that your reality has changed?

   8. MMMark Manson1:49

      Oh, man. I mean, I feel like we could do the entire show just on this.

   9. TFTim Ferriss1:54

      [laughs]

   10. MMMark Manson1:55

       You know, you, you could do a, probably do an entire episode, maybe you could get, like, an all-star guest list of, of, like-

   11. TFTim Ferriss2:00

       [laughs]

   12. MMMark Manson2:01

       ... what people don't tell you about success.

   13. TFTim Ferriss2:03

       Yeah. [laughs] Let's do it. [laughs]

   14. MMMark Manson2:06

       The most surprising thing and the most difficult thing at the same time was in, you know, Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck came out in 2016. It hit number one early 2017, and by mid-2017 it was just off to the races. I think it sold, like, two or three million copies just that year. And, and for me, it was very strange. I mean, obviously there was a lot of happiness and joy, but for me, it was very strange because as a young author with their first traditionally published book-

   15. TFTim Ferriss2:34

       [laughs]

   16. MMMark Manson2:34

       ... I had all of these long-term goals and dreams and visions for myself of, like, I'm gonna be writing till I'm 50 and, you know, maybe one day I'll be on the Times list, and maybe one day I'll, you know, get invited on a morning show.

   17. TFTim Ferriss2:48

       Mm.

   18. MMMark Manson2:48

       And, uh, I hit all those dreams in, like, three months, basically.

   19. TFTim Ferriss2:53

       [laughs]

   20. MMMark Manson2:54

       [laughs] And, and so my surprise is that there was just this profound kinda emptiness on the other side of that, of, "Oh, shit, what do I dream now?" Like, "What, what do I hope for in my future?" And so very unexpectedly, it kinda... I spiraled into a little bit of a funk, like a little bit of a depression, and the worst thing about that type of depression is nobody wants to hear you talk about it. [laughs]

   21. TFTim Ferriss3:18

       [laughs] There's no, no tears shed.

   22. MMMark Manson3:21

       Yes, no sympathy whatsoever. Like, oh, boohoo, poor author, sold three million books or whatever. So it really caught me off guard, and-

   23. TFTim Ferriss3:29

       Mm

   24. MMMark Manson3:31

       ... and there was a little bit, you know, there was imposter syndrome, which I think comes with any sort of m- monumental success. There was a little bit of, what do I do now? Like, how do I follow this up? A lot of insecurity of, am I ever gonna do anything this meaningful or noteworthy again? And I struggled with that for a number of years. And that was just kind of on the emotional and personal side. That doesn't even get into, like, relationships and money. I, I feel like th- it's almost like a, a prerequisite to being, quote-unquote, wealthy, is you have to spend money on something stupid that you regret. Like, I just feel like that is a, a non-negotiable. You're not really wealthy until you've done that at some point. So I went through a couple of those experiences.

   25. TFTim Ferriss4:21

       What would be the most notable?

   26. MMMark Manson4:22

       F*cking house. [laughs]

   27. TFTim Ferriss4:24

       Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.

   28. MMMark Manson4:26

       You know, the, the funny thing about me is I, I'm very, I'm very minimalist. I'm very spartan. I don't really like to have a lot of possessions. But for some reason, when it was time to buy a house, I'm like, "You know what? Let's just get all the rooms." [laughs]

   29. TFTim Ferriss4:40

       [laughs]

   30. MMMark Manson4:40

       You know? I have, I have nothing to put in them, but let's get them all. And that was just an unbelievable mistake that, that really made my life a headache for a while, so.

3. 4:52 – 6:59

   Be careful what you wish for.

   1. TFTim Ferriss4:52

      What are some of the things... And just so people listening understand where I'm probably going with this.

   2. MMMark Manson4:57

      Mm-hmm.

   3. TFTim Ferriss4:58

      There is a m- there is a meandering path, but there is a path, is I wanna talk about the present tense, and then I'm gonna rewind and do a, I wa- I wa- I don't wanna call it a life review, but look at some of the trajectory, at least insofar as I've been able to observe it in the course of watching you do what you've done from the, from the sidelines, but also having done research for the conversation. So present tense, though, building on what we were just talking about, what are some of the things you thought you wanted or needed that you got, and you're like, "Huh." [laughs]

   4. MMMark Manson5:35

      [laughs]

   5. TFTim Ferriss5:35

      "Uh." Hmm.

   6. MMMark Manson5:38

      I would say actually the biggest thing, and this is kind of a broad thing, but I, I think you and I are very similar in that we started as online blog guys.

   7. TFTim Ferriss5:50

      Mm-hmm.

   8. MMMark Manson5:50

      And I think when you come up in the internet world, even if you amass a very large audience, at least for me, there was always a little bit of this chip on my shoulder of like I'm not a real writer. Like, I don't, I, my ar- I don't have an article in a magazine. I haven't, there's, hasn't been a profile on me in a newspaper, and there seemed to be kind of like an invisible wall between me and that world. And so for a number of years, I, I really, really wanted that, for lack of a better term, mainstream media attention. Just kinda like that nod of respect of like-

   9. TFTim Ferriss6:28

      Mm-hmm

   10. MMMark Manson6:28

       ... Yeah, kid, you did it. And when I started getting that and started working and engaging with a lot of legacy media, I was like, "Wow, this sucks." [laughs]

   11. TFTim Ferriss6:45

       [laughs]

   12. MMMark Manson6:45

       I, I, I miss my blog. I miss, I miss getting-

   13. TFTim Ferriss6:47

       [laughs]

   14. MMMark Manson6:47

       I miss the emails from my readers. Like, I don't wanna do this. This is, this is such a pain in the ass.

   15. TFTim Ferriss6:52

       [laughs]

   16. MMMark Manson6:52

       We have, like, Zoom calls with 11 people on them, and I don't know who half the people are.

   17. TFTim Ferriss6:55

       [laughs]

   18. MMMark Manson6:57

       That's been a pretty eye-opening thing the last few

4. 6:59 – 11:00

   How Mark’s feature film deal came to be.

   1. MMMark Manson6:59

      years.

   2. TFTim Ferriss6:59

      Mm-hmm. And to flesh out the current state, [laughs] most people listening will have heard about Universal Pictures, [laughs] or have some passing familiarity, "Oh, maybe I saw that at the beginning of a movie, I think." Yes, you did. Not, not a small entity.

   3. MMMark Manson7:17

      Mm-hmm.

   4. TFTim Ferriss7:20

      And I would love to know how this feature film came to be. How did it come together? And related to that, what does your current team look like? Not only including any full-time employees-

   5. MMMark Manson7:34

      Mm-hmm

   6. TFTim Ferriss7:34

      ... but also agents, managers, et cetera. Just what does that constellation look like?

   7. MMMark Manson7:40

      The film I kind of Forrest Gump-ed my way into.

   8. TFTim Ferriss7:43

      [laughs]

   9. MMMark Manson7:45

      After the book blew up, a bunch of studios started sending offers to my agent.

   10. TFTim Ferriss7:49

       For sure. To your book agent?

   11. MMMark Manson7:52

       Yes, to my book agent.

   12. TFTim Ferriss7:53

       Mm-hmm.

   13. MMMark Manson7:53

       And, and I know you know this, but for everybody else, it's, i- it's pretty common for film and TV studios to buy up rights to bestselling books without any intention of actually doing anything with them. It's kind of just, like, a land grab, just in case, you know, so- so-and-so director one day is like, "I love that book. I wanna do a thing with it," they already own it. So out of all these offers that came through, you know, there was some pretty off-the-wall stuff. There was some stuff that I couldn't ever imagine myself doing, and I told my agent, I said, "You know, if we do any of these deals, it's really important... Like, the only reason I think I'm ever gonna do a film or a TV show is to simply spread these same ideas to people who don't read books. Like, to me, that's the only reason to do this."

   14. TFTim Ferriss8:41

       Mm-hmm.

   15. MMMark Manson8:41

       So when the offer for a documentary came through from a production company that specializes in documentaries and has done a bunch of them based on books before, to me it just seemed like a very logical fit. I was like, okay, if I was to ever have a movie, that is the kind of project that I would do-

   16. TFTim Ferriss9:01

       Mm-hmm

   17. MMMark Manson9:01

       ... I would feel good about. My agent told me, she said, "These things never get made. Don't get your hopes up." I was like, okay, cool. I don't really, I've never had any ambition to have a movie or be in the movies. So I was like, cool, kind of forgot about it. Like, a year and a half goes by and I get a phone call, and it's the production company, and they're like, "Guess what? We got financed by Universal." And I was like, "Okay, what does that mean?" [laughs] And they're like, "You're gonna have a movie, you idiot." [laughs]

   18. TFTim Ferriss9:28

       [laughs]

   19. MMMark Manson9:28

       "Do you wanna be in it?" You know? And I was like, "Sure, why not?" And then from there, you know, next thing I know I'm on a plane, I'm flying down to New Zealand, I'm meeting with the production company, I'm meeting with directors.

   20. TFTim Ferriss9:40

       Was New Zealand due to COVID? Is that why it was in New Zealand?

   21. MMMark Manson9:43

       Yes, it was.

   22. TFTim Ferriss9:44

       Mm-hmm.

   23. MMMark Manson9:44

       So originally we were gonna do it... The production company was, is actually based in New Zealand, but we were originally gonna do it in New York. But then when COVID happened, I used it also as an opportunity to just get the hell away from COVID. So during this whole process, they're telling me, "We're gonna have a theatrical release. We're gonna take it to festivals. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do that." And I, I don't know, like, I, maybe we, and I'm sure we're gonna talk about Will later, but maybe from being around Will, I just kinda became jaded of, like, Hollywood people. I, I was just like, "Yeah, sure," while not really believing it. And-

   24. TFTim Ferriss10:16

       Yeah

   25. MMMark Manson10:16

       ... sure enough, we're a month out and it's coming out. It's gonna have a limited theatrical release. It's gonna be available online. And I seem to be the one who's like, "Wait, this is actually happening." [laughs] Like-

   26. TFTim Ferriss10:30

       [laughs]

   27. MMMark Manson10:31

       ... it's one of those projects that I can't take a ton of credit for consciously, like, navigating myself into. Like, I don't have-

   28. TFTim Ferriss10:37

       Mm-hmm

   29. MMMark Manson10:37

       ... like, you know, the three bullet points of, like, how to get your movie made.

   30. TFTim Ferriss10:40

       [laughs]
5. 11:00 – 16:04

   The teamwork that makes Mark’s dream work.

   1. MMMark Manson11:00

      In terms, your question about team, so I have my agent at CAA, and she's phenomenal. She's amazing. And, and the, the amazing thing about her being at CAA is that it opens up all these crossover opportunities into film, into TV.

   2. TFTim Ferriss11:19

      Mm-hmm.

   3. MMMark Manson11:19

      It's how I, I ended up doing Will's book, or a big part of why I ended up doing Will's book. So she's great. I have my web team, which is four full-time people.

   4. TFTim Ferriss11:31

      Mm-hmm.

   5. MMMark Manson11:32

      I have a researcher. I have a content guy. That is his official title, content guy, 'cause it's just-

   6. TFTim Ferriss11:40

      [laughs]

   7. MMMark Manson11:41

      ... he just wears a lot of hats, and he kinda makes everything run. I have a tech developer, tech/development guy, and then I have a social media manager. It's all in-house. Everything we do is in-house, all the design, the tech stuff, the promotion, the marketing, everything. We use a few freelancers if we're doing, like, video content, stuff like that, but- But yeah, that's the team right now.

   8. TFTim Ferriss12:09

      Number of follow-up questions on this. The web team, you said four full-time people.

   9. MMMark Manson12:13

      Yep.

   10. TFTim Ferriss12:14

       Now, is that including the researcher content guy, tech, and social, or is that in addition to, so you end up having seven or eight full-time folks?

   11. MMMark Manson12:23

       No, those are the four positions that I have full-time right now.

   12. TFTim Ferriss12:26

       I see. I see. Got it. Got it. What does the researcher do? I mean, I know they do research, but what type of research?

   13. MMMark Manson12:32

       I don't have a graduate degree in psychology, yet I consistently find myself in the sticky situation of having to say something that feels somewhat authoritative. I mean, I'm sure you're in this position a lot, too.

   14. TFTim Ferriss12:45

       Yes. [laughs] Sure.

   15. MMMark Manson12:46

       [laughs] So, so at a certain point, I just went out and hired people with graduate degrees in psychology and said, "Look, like, can you just make sure I'm not putting my foot in my mouth or giving terrible advice?"

   16. TFTim Ferriss12:56

       Mm-hmm.

   17. MMMark Manson12:56

       So a lot of times I'll go to her and I'll say, "You know, I've been thinking about an article on, say, the negative side effects of self-esteem. Can you go out there, like find all the research and data? What are the studies? Are they good studies? Were they done well?"

   18. TFTim Ferriss13:13

       Mm-hmm.

   19. MMMark Manson13:14

       And then just summarize it for me. And then, you know, if I wanna dig into it with her, I can. She's been invaluable. It's like she's ... It's almost like outsourcing a piece of my brain-

   20. TFTim Ferriss13:25

       Mm-hmm

   21. MMMark Manson13:25

       ... to somebody. It's been very helpful.

   22. TFTim Ferriss13:28

       And I'm asking about the team out of personal curiosity, of course, but also because I enjoy and benefit from hearing how people think about teams. For instance, I'll give you an example. Kevin Kelly, arguably the most interesting man in the world.

   23. MMMark Manson13:45

       Mm-hmm.

   24. TFTim Ferriss13:45

       People should look him up, kk.org. Also the author of a famous article called 1,000 True Fans, which I encourage everybody to read. And he said to me once, or explained to me rather, that he has, he has an assistant and then he has a researcher, but they are not the same person. And he said i- in his experience, very often, to optimize for one or the other, you will find that they are somewhat mutually exclusive. In, in-

   25. MMMark Manson14:11

       Hmm

   26. TFTim Ferriss14:11

       ... other words, the, the traits are somewhat mutually exclusive. Now, I don't know if I agree or disagree with that, but it was an interesting observation based on the pattern recognition from someone I respect, right? So the, how did you choose full-time versus contractor, or internal versus external would be another way to put it, I suppose?

   27. MMMark Manson14:35

       Some of this is personal preference. I like working long-term with people.

   28. TFTim Ferriss14:39

       Mm-hmm.

   29. MMMark Manson14:39

       I like finding exceptional talent, paying them very well, and then sticking with them over a long period of time.

   30. TFTim Ferriss14:49

       Mm-hmm.
6. 16:04 – 20:56

   Sourcing talent.

   1. MMMark Manson16:04

      so long.

   2. TFTim Ferriss16:04

      Yeah. I feel the same way, which is why I have full-time team in addition to contractors. I do use-

   3. MMMark Manson16:10

      Yeah

   4. TFTim Ferriss16:10

      ... freelancers and contractors. How did you find the members of your team? And we don't necessarily have to go one by one, but do you have a particular approach to sourcing talent?

   5. MMMark Manson16:24

      Yes. So I've always, always find them through my email list and my subscribers.

   6. TFTim Ferriss16:32

      Hmm.

   7. MMMark Manson16:33

      I've tried through kind of conventional job searching venues, and I just ... You, you get so much extra leverage from, I guess, the fan relationship.

   8. TFTim Ferriss16:47

      Mm-hmm.

   9. MMMark Manson16:48

      Generally, every time I ask for applications through my own audience, the people who apply are almost comically overqualified.

   10. TFTim Ferriss16:58

       Hmm.

   11. MMMark Manson16:58

       And the talent level is, is through the roof, and a lot of that is just they love my work, they've been reading it for years, and that, that earns you a lot of, a lot of clout, you know?

   12. TFTim Ferriss17:11

       Mm-hmm. It does. That makes, that makes sense. And d- do you mail out a link to a page with a job description? Do you just simply put it at the end of one of your newsletters? You're like, "Hey, by the way, I'm looking for this." Is it dedicated? How do you do it?

   13. MMMark Manson17:25

       I will create a temporary page for the position. I usually go through three steps. So I have the initial application. It, you know, asks for the generic stuff, resume, cover letter. I'll u- I'll usually ask a few cute questions in there. You know, what are your three favorite books? What was the last risk that you took, major risk you took in your life, and what happened? Things like that. Although, I'm disc- you know, as the years have gone on, I'm discovering that those questions aren't really great filters. So I'll do that. You know, that's kinda the first round. I'll get hundreds and hundreds of applications, and then I narrow it down to, say, 20 to 30 people.

   14. TFTim Ferriss18:11

       Do you review all of those yourself?

   15. MMMark Manson18:13

       So sometimes I will have ... a team member kind of go through and just be like-

   16. TFTim Ferriss18:20

       Pick the highlights

   17. MMMark Manson18:21

       ... yeah, or anything that doesn't ... 'Cause I'll set standards on the application page. You know, so I, I'll tell them like anything that doesn't meet the application standards, like just kick out.

   18. TFTim Ferriss18:30

       Mm-hmm.

   19. MMMark Manson18:31

       So this most recent round of hire, I'm hiring a video team to start doing more video content, and I ask for at least three years of professional full-time experience in, in some form of, you know, whether it's TV, film, YouTube, whatever. And sure enough, you know, you get 200 applications from people who have never held a camera before, but, you know-

   20. TFTim Ferriss18:51

       [laughs]

   21. MMMark Manson18:52

       ... they're, they're, they're really ready to learn. They can't wait to learn, Tim. It's nice to have somebody to kind of just go and mark those all read for me.

   22. TFTim Ferriss19:01

       They want a scholarship ride to graduate school at Manson University. [laughs]

   23. MMMark Manson19:05

       Exactly. Exactly. So I'll filter those down to 20 to 30 strong candidates, people who meet the requirements and seem smart and talented and driven. And then I'll, I'll actually give them a few small pieces of work to do, like example tasks similar to what the position is hiring for, and I'll give them a deadline to meet it at. And it- it's always funny because there's always at least two or three people who immediately complain about this and they say, you know, "You ... This is slave labor. You're taking advantage of us. You know, you're using us to crowdsource ideas for yourself," which is silly 'cause, I mean, I understand why they think that, but I think anybody who is in our industry understands that ideas aren't the thing that matter.

   24. TFTim Ferriss19:57

       Yeah.

   25. MMMark Manson19:58

       And so, you know, from that I'll narrow it down to, to three to five people and then those people I'll do face-to-face Zoom interviews until I f- I find the one that feels like the right fit.

   26. TFTim Ferriss20:12

       What are you looking for in the interviews?

   27. MMMark Manson20:14

       By the time they get to the interview they've basically shown that they are completely qualified to do the work. They're probably gonna do a great job. The interview's for me, it, it's 99% looking for intangibles, looking for personality, character. I usually try to get a sense of what their values are, get a sense of how resilient they are, how do they take responsibility for themselves, little bit about their background, things like that. But also just like do I get along with them? Do I like talking to them? Do we have a sense of humor that meshes well? Things like that.

7. 20:56 – 24:58

   How Mark knew he’d found the right agent.

   1. TFTim Ferriss20:57

      Makes sense. Last question on the team.

   2. MMMark Manson20:59

      Mm-hmm.

   3. TFTim Ferriss20:59

      And there's a point to all this, people listening, part of which is just satisfying [laughs] my own interests.

   4. MMMark Manson21:04

      [laughs]

   5. TFTim Ferriss21:05

      [laughs] Big, big part of which. But CAA, this agent, there are a lot of agents-

   6. MMMark Manson21:11

      Mm-hmm

   7. TFTim Ferriss21:11

      ... and you've got quite a few three letter acronyms to choose from, right? You've got CAA, WME, UTA, and there are many other boutique agencies and so on. A lot of people out there who could ostensibly probably do a pretty good job, many who would promise the moon and do a terrible job. But how specifically did you decide on this, this agent that you work with at CAA?

   8. MMMark Manson21:37

      So my blog blew up in 2014.

   9. TFTim Ferriss21:41

      Mm-hmm.

   10. MMMark Manson21:42

       2013, 2014. It kind of went from maybe 100,000 readers to a million, million and a half. And around that time agents and publishers started coming knocking asking if I wanted to turn some of my work into a book. And so I had a number ... And at that time, again, you know, homegrown internet guy, I self-published my first book. I, I'd been selling online courses since 2010. I, I've always, I've always had a little bit of an irrational like I wanna do it myself mentality, but back then I had a very, very irrational I wanna do it myself mentality. So a lot of my calls with these editors and agents was basically me just being a bit of a dick and being like, "Why, why should I publish a book at all? Why shouldn't I just self-publish? I get way more royalties," or whatever. And it was funny because pretty much everybody in the publishing industry kind of stumbled over that question. They couldn't really give me a satisfying answer.

   11. TFTim Ferriss22:42

       [laughs]

   12. MMMark Manson22:44

       So my agent, her name's Molly, at the time she wasn't at CAA, she was at a small boutique agency in New York. So I get on the phone with her and we start having a conversation, and she's constantly interrupting me. She's constantly talking over me.

   13. TFTim Ferriss22:57

       [laughs]

   14. MMMark Manson22:58

       She's very aggressive and assertive to the point that I, I'm getting a little bit uncomfortable talking to her. And so I, I throw out my gotcha question. You know, like, "Why should I even publish a book at all? You know, I could self-publish a book and keep all the royalties for myself." And she kind of sat there silently, and she was like, "Well, figure out what the hell you wanna do. Stop wasting my time. Call me if you wanna publish a book," and like hung up on me.

   15. TFTim Ferriss23:26

       [laughs]

   16. MMMark Manson23:26

       And I was like, "Goddamn. All right."

   17. TFTim Ferriss23:28

       [laughs]

   18. MMMark Manson23:29

       And a couple hours go by and I start thinking to myself, I'm like, "That's who I want bargaining on my behalf," [laughs] you know?

   19. TFTim Ferriss23:37

       [laughs]

   20. MMMark Manson23:37

       Like if, if I have a six or seven figure negotiation with somebody-

   21. TFTim Ferriss23:42

       Yeah

   22. MMMark Manson23:42

       ... like I want her on my team.

   23. TFTim Ferriss23:44

       [laughs]

   24. MMMark Manson23:45

       So I called her back and I said, "I'm in." And she's a total rockstar in her field.

   25. TFTim Ferriss23:51

       Mm-hmm.

   26. MMMark Manson23:52

       And it was again Forrest Gump moment.

   27. TFTim Ferriss23:55

       Mm-hmm.

   28. MMMark Manson23:55

       So right around, right before Subtle Art came out she called me and she said, "Hey, I just wanna let you know I'm moving to a new agency. Nothing's gonna change. I'm going over to CAA." And I was like, "Oh, cool. What's CAA?"

   29. TFTim Ferriss24:08

       [laughs]

   30. MMMark Manson24:09

       And she was like, you know, kind of like thought I was joking, I guess. She didn't answer me. And I remember like I, I googled CAA, and if you go to their website it just has like a f- ... a snail mail address. There's, like, literally nothing on the website
8. 24:58 – 42:59

   From Entropy to F*ckery.

   1. MMMark Manson24:58

      [laughs]

   2. TFTim Ferriss25:00

      [laughs] Speaking of winning the lottery, let's, let's talk about, and this is gonna be a bit of a strained metaphor, but [laughs] putting yourself in a position where at least you have a chance at winning the lottery.

   3. MMMark Manson25:12

      Mm-hmm.

   4. TFTim Ferriss25:12

      And I'm gonna, I'm gonna further confuse matters by reading a paragraph from a Wikipedia entry on a video game, and this will hopefully make some sense for people in a second. There's a video game called, and I don't know how it's pronounced in English actually, but Katamari Damacy in English, but it's... In Japanese, it's Katamari Damashi, which literally means clump spirit. And the reason I learned about this video game was in a presentation by Matt Cutts, who at the time was at Google, and he was giving a presentation, I think it was at State of the Word or an annual WordPress meetup. I could be getting those specifics wrong, but I was there. And he described how he observed people building audiences over time. This is where we're gonna go through the looking glass and go back in time with your story. But here's, here's the plot. This is directly from Wikipedia. [laughs] The game's plot concerns a diminutive prince... I'm not saying you're a diminutive prince. But the game's plot concerns a diminutive prince on a mission to rebuild the stars, constellation, and moon which were inadvertently destroyed by his father, the King of All Cosmos. This is achieved by rolling a magical, highly adhesive ball called a Katamari around various locations and collecting increasingly larger objects, this is the key part, ranging from thumbtacks to human beings to mountains until the ball has grown large enough to become a star. It goes on and on. So that's Katamari Damacy, at least in Japanese. I suspect they changed the spelling D-A-M-A-C-Y so they could trademark it, but that's a side note. All right. Matt's point was when you first start, you are generally, in these success stories he has seen, starting very small with a ball that's rolling up thumbtacks.

   5. MMMark Manson27:02

      Mm-hmm.

   6. TFTim Ferriss27:02

      And then eventually it gets a little bit bigger, and you move to larger objects, and then you get to humans, then you get to mountains, and so on. And I thought maybe we could start, if you're open to it, with you telling the backstory on a character, maybe not a character, a person named Entropy.

   7. MMMark Manson27:20

      [laughs]

   8. TFTim Ferriss27:22

      [laughs] Could you explain who Entropy is or was?

   9. MMMark Manson27:26

      Oh my God.

   10. TFTim Ferriss27:27

       And then walk us through the development, because it seems to parallel this video game in actually a very similar way that my trajectory has mirrored this video game in a sense, the metaphor at least. So Entropy.

   11. MMMark Manson27:41

       [laughs]

   12. TFTim Ferriss27:42

       Who is Entropy?

   13. MMMark Manson27:44

       Oh God. Well it, ironically enough, it was originally my gaming handle when I was in high school.

   14. TFTim Ferriss27:50

       [laughs]

   15. MMMark Manson27:51

       But it was my, I guess you'd call it a pseudonym of my first blog. I started blogging... My roommate had a blog in college, and he and I, the, the pickup artist thing was popular at the time.

   16. TFTim Ferriss28:07

       Mm-hmm.

   17. MMMark Manson28:07

       And so there was a lot of kind of writing stor- like, "Oh, I went on a date last weekend. This is what happened."

   18. TFTim Ferriss28:15

       Mm.

   19. MMMark Manson28:15

       And my, him and another friend of mine were kinda always egging me to, "Start a blog, dude. Start a blog." And it was really just because, you know, we all read each other's stories and stuff, and they wanted to read mine. So that's actually how it first started, was just-

   20. TFTim Ferriss28:33

       Mm

   21. MMMark Manson28:33

       ... me, my, my roommate like peer pressuring me into sharing stupid drunk things I did. [laughs]

   22. TFTim Ferriss28:40

       And what year is this roughly?

   23. MMMark Manson28:42

       This was 2007.

   24. TFTim Ferriss28:43

       2007. Okay.

   25. MMMark Manson28:45

       I was 23 and doing things that 23-year-olds do.

   26. TFTim Ferriss28:48

       [laughs]

   27. MMMark Manson28:49

       And there was, there was really no, again, Forrest Gumping my way into it, right? Like, there was no ambition or... At that stage, there was no ambition or kind of-

   28. TFTim Ferriss29:01

       Mm

   29. MMMark Manson29:01

       ... vision for this. Like, it's just a cool thing that my friends want me to do. And I, I enjoyed it too. I found that was kind of actually the first point in my life that I discovered, like, hey, it's really fun to sit down and write something just because you enjoy it, not 'cause it's a term paper or whatever. So that went on for about a year, and I don't think, you know, the, quote-unquote, "readership" was probably never more than a dozen people. But then something strange started happening, which is people that I had never met started reading it and commenting on it. And I have no idea how these people found me or where they came from. And that was a little bit mind-blowing to me. And it was around that time I started to get very curious. This also coincides, I was just out of school. The Great Recession was going on, so there were no jobs at anywhere. I was basically living on a friend's couch. And it, it kinda opened up this idea of like, hey, there's internet stuff you can do. Like, you can... This blogging thing is a- actually a thing. You can promote products and get commissions. You can put ads on your, on your site. Like, you can make a little bit of chump change if you think about it and are strategic about it. And this is... So this story's gonna lead to you, Tim. I gotta, I gotta warn you. [laughs] So I started getting curious about, I guess you would call it like kind of the online marketing, online blogging world. And it was around that time I discovered Four Hour Workweek. I think it had just come out or been out for like a year or something.

   30. TFTim Ferriss30:39

       Yeah, that was April 2007 it came out. Seems like a lifetime ago.
9. 42:59 – 52:41

   Learning the subtle art of strategic F-bombing.

   1. TFTim Ferriss43:00

      If we then flash forward, so we have this like blurry Austin Powers kind of transition, and we end up, I believe, tell me if I'm getting this right, January 8th, 2015.

   2. MMMark Manson43:14

      Hmm.

   3. TFTim Ferriss43:14

      I may be getting this right. Blog post, 2,354 words, I believe.

   4. MMMark Manson43:20

      [sighs]

   5. TFTim Ferriss43:22

      So this is, this is the big one.

   6. MMMark Manson43:23

      Yeah.

   7. TFTim Ferriss43:23

      This is the motherload. And my question is, before the blog post became The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, what other names did you consider for that?

   8. MMMark Manson43:35

      [laughs]

   9. TFTim Ferriss43:35

      If you even remember. [laughs] And/or how did you just end up with the title? Because, uh, you think a lot about wordsmithing and-

   10. MMMark Manson43:44

       Yes

   11. TFTim Ferriss43:45

       ... and crafting, and I know you spend time on this, and I know you have spent a lot of time thinking about headlines and titles. So [laughs]

   12. MMMark Manson43:53

       Yep

   13. TFTim Ferriss43:53

       ... what was the process of getting to that?

   14. MMMark Manson43:56

       So there's, there's not really a way to answer that without kinda going back a little bit and talking about what that era of social media was and what kinda my whole process was back then.

   15. TFTim Ferriss44:07

       Great.

   16. MMMark Manson44:09

       I think I had my first like mega viral post in 2012, early 2013, and what I don't think... It took a while for everybody to figure out, but it was right around then that Facebook turned on the spigot of reach for outside published material. Like, Facebook kinda decided that they wanted to be the newspaper for everybody.

   17. TFTim Ferriss44:32

       Mm-hmm.

   18. MMMark Manson44:33

       And so if you were able to write an attention grabbing headline, you know, a little bit of copy, have a intriguing image, you would just go crazy on that platform. And so the big growth spurt that happened in my audience was on Facebook from 2013 to 2015. Subtle Art was actually one of the last viral articles I had in a series of probably eight or 10 viral art- very viral articles over that two-year period. I kind of discovered this and then started refining a process, and as you pointed out, like a huge part of the process was title. I just realized like-

   19. TFTim Ferriss45:12

       Mm

   20. MMMark Manson45:12

       ... the title is almost as important as the entire article itself. So I started spending hours just writing out dozens and dozens of titles. And I also just kept around title ideas that I had.

   21. TFTim Ferriss45:27

       Mm-hmm.

   22. MMMark Manson45:28

       You know, I just had a Google Doc that I'd be out at dinner with a friend, and he'd make a joke, and I'm like, "Oh, that'd be a really good article title," and I'd like pull out my phone and jot it down on the Google Doc. So The Subtle Art, the title had been sitting on that Google Doc for a while. So I'm a big metal fan, and the, the band Lamb of God has a song called The Subtle Art of Murder and Persuasion.

   23. TFTim Ferriss45:54

       [laughs]

   24. MMMark Manson45:55

       And it was right around that time, I forget, I had a couple articles with... Another thing about Facebook's algorithm at the time, I noticed that if I just put f*ck in the title-

   25. TFTim Ferriss46:04

       [laughs]

   26. MMMark Manson46:05

       ... you know, you, you would get like 50% more juice.

   27. TFTim Ferriss46:07

       Turbo boost. [laughs]

   28. MMMark Manson46:08

       So... Yeah, exactly. It was like a cheat code for Facebook. My mind was already in a spot where I'm like looking-

   29. TFTim Ferriss46:14

       Back in the wholesome good old days.

   30. MMMark Manson46:16

       [laughs] Yeah, right
10. 52:41 – 1:00:38

    Prioritizing health maintenance.

    1. TFTim Ferriss52:41

       what are the things that you most struggle with now or recently?

    2. MMMark Manson52:48

       So this is gonna be a bit of a blasé answer, especially f- probably for you and your audience. I have always struggled with the physical health side of things.

    3. TFTim Ferriss53:00

       Mm-hmm.

    4. MMMark Manson53:01

       I spent pretty much all of my 20s kind of getting my head, you know, in order, getting my baggage cleaned out, fixing my relationships, understanding my emotions, developing self-awareness, all these things. You know, I was always just so focused on that, that I never really developed good habits around taking care of myself, and so it's... I'm at that point now in my late 30s where you actually pay for those bad habits. You know, 'cause when you're 28, you don't really pay for it.

    5. TFTim Ferriss53:34

       Yeah.

    6. MMMark Manson53:35

       I hit a point a year or two ago where I realized it's never gonna get easier or better. So it's not a sexy answer. It's kind of a blah answer, but it's, you know, the last year especially has been very, very health focused. I've actually been listening to a shitload of your episodes on subjects like that.

    7. TFTim Ferriss53:50

       Appreciate that.

    8. MMMark Manson53:52

       It's been very helpful.

    9. TFTim Ferriss53:54

       Yeah, the health piece, you know, this is... I'm 45 now, and all of those little decisions add up, and I've, I've been pretty good at maintenance.

    10. MMMark Manson54:05

        Mm-hmm.

    11. TFTim Ferriss54:05

        But I've also, just through pure life aggression, sustained 30 plus fractures, a handful of surgeries.

    12. MMMark Manson54:15

        My God.

    13. TFTim Ferriss54:15

        And holy shit, do those-

    14. MMMark Manson54:18

        Add up

    15. TFTim Ferriss54:19

        ... do those start to reappear.

    16. MMMark Manson54:22

        Mm-hmm.

    17. TFTim Ferriss54:22

        And the degree of self-care, what I've realized, just needs to go up in a very nonlinear fashion the older you get, or you just start sliding in a really significant way. So- I'm in a, maybe a similar boat in the sense that I'm also in the last year, and certainly for this upcoming year, going to be focusing on the health component because it's this upstream variable that just affects positively or negatively everything else.

    18. MMMark Manson54:55

        Yeah.

    19. TFTim Ferriss54:56

        So for what it's worth, I'm happy to chat about that anytime.

    20. MMMark Manson54:59

        Thanks, Ben. I appreciate that.

    21. TFTim Ferriss55:01

        You know, whenever I feel like I'm getting off the rails, it's, just for, for what it's worth, I have found... And I have some degenerative disc issues in my back also, which is unfortunate, but congenital. Kettlebell swings-

    22. MMMark Manson55:15

        Hmm

    23. TFTim Ferriss55:15

        ... slow carb diet, perhaps also skipping one or two meals, let's just say breakfast, because I find that easier than portion control. [laughs]

    24. MMMark Manson55:23

        Yeah.

    25. TFTim Ferriss55:23

        And some type of core work, whether it's something like Pilates or really technical Pilates or let's just say gymnastic strength training also, but that's a bit more aggressive on the joints, so you have to have that stability/connective tissue strength. But if I just do core work, kettlebell swings, pushups, and some type of diet that restricts high caloric density carbohydrates to some extent-

    26. MMMark Manson55:57

        Mm-hmm

    27. TFTim Ferriss55:58

        ... it really makes a huge difference. What... Do you have pains? Do you have a lot of pains in terms of symptoms? Is that-

    28. MMMark Manson56:05

        I actually don't. I'm very fortunate in that regard. I just got fat. [laughs]

    29. TFTim Ferriss56:11

        Yeah. [laughs]

    30. MMMark Manson56:14

        I mean, especially-
11. 1:00:38 – 1:08:21

    Co-authoring a book with Will Smith.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:00:38

       inspiring. So let's, let's talk about the five-year period of projects. And three books at once. Oh my God. [laughs]

    2. MMMark Manson1:00:48

       [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:00:49

       Oh, boy. Yeah, that's a lot. Could you describe what you did with Will Smith, how it came to be, and your personal primary lessons learned? Doesn't have to be from the content of, of the book. It could also be from the interactions, exposure to LA, entertainment, et cetera. Just love to know what you did, for people who don't know-

    4. MMMark Manson1:01:12

       Yeah

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:01:12

       ... how it happened, maybe those are in the opposite order, and then what your personal primary lessons learned were from that.

    6. MMMark Manson1:01:22

       So I co-authored Will Smith's memoir, which came out last year. It's called Will. We worked on it for about, I think about two and a half years together. The way it came about was his team actually reached out to me. He had wanted to do a book for a little while, and from what I under- I wasn't there, but from what I understand, he had, you know, some kind of casual meetings with a few different authors just to kinda see what was out there. And when they contacted me about it, first of all, another story of my agent being great. My agent didn't tell me about it right away. The first thing she did is she sent me an email and she said, "Hypothetical question, if a celebrity wanted to write a book with you, on what terms would you be interested?" Which is smart, 'cause she didn't tell me who it was.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:02:14

       Yeah, that's smart.

    8. MMMark Manson1:02:16

       And I said, "It would have to be an A-lister, and they would have to want it to be more than just about their life. Like, they would wanna, like, dig into their problems and history and baggage, et cetera," which is, as it so happens, exactly what Will wanted to do. So after that, we set up the meeting. Super surreal. I don't know. [laughs] I always tell people, like, the craziest part about meeting a really, really famous person isn't actually the f- really, really famous person, it's all the shit that-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:02:54

       [laughs]

    10. MMMark Manson1:02:54

        ... goes on around the super famous person. It's hard to explain, but next thing I know, I'm getting whisked away to Atlanta, where I'm supposed to meet him on set of a film that he's working on. Turns out Ang Lee is working, is directing that film. So I start, like, "Don't fanboy it, Ang Lee. Don't fanboy it, Will Smith." Like, "Oh God, like, this is so stressful."

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:03:16

        [laughs]

    12. MMMark Manson1:03:17

        And you're supposed to just kinda act casual like this is all normal. So he f- he finishes. They're, like, rehearsing a scene or something, and I'm like, I'm, like, walking in circles not knowing where you're supposed to go and-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:03:28

        [laughs]

    14. MMMark Manson1:03:29

        ... his people are like, "Are you okay?" And I'm like, "Where should I sit? I've never been on a Hollywood set before." [laughs] Like-

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:03:34

        What do I do with my hands? What do I do with my hands?

    16. MMMark Manson1:03:37

        Yeah. [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:03:37

        Like Ricky Bobby. [laughs]

    18. MMMark Manson1:03:39

        I told one of his managers, I was like, "I've never been on a Hollywood set before. I don't know if I'm, like, in the right place or not." And she just kinda looked at me like, "Really?" [laughs] And I was like, "Sorry." You know, so next thing I know, they finish rehearsing. We go straight to an airstrip, getting loaded onto a private jet, and they're like, "No, no, no, you need to sit in the front with Will 'cause you're gonna talk about the book now." And I'm like, "Now?" Like, "This is... [laughs] Okay."

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:04:06

        [laughs]

    20. MMMark Manson1:04:07

        You know, first time on a jet. So the whole thing is just surreal and strange, and everywhere he goes, there's a mob of fans waiting for him, people shrieking. So it took a few days to kinda, like, get over that, get in a room with him privately where it's quiet, and actually have kind of an extended one-on-one conversation with him. And before I went to meet him, I had two conditions for myself, which was, the first one is he can't be an asshole, 'cause I just... Nothing is, no amount of money, [laughs] no amount of prestige is worth s- spending three years working with an asshole. And then two was, you know, there needs to be something legitimately... Like, he, everything needs to be on the table. He needs to be very willing to open up and kind of go anywhere. So we had a few really good, productive conversations, and I was blown away. The thing that really knocked my socks off about him, I mean, he's a smart guy, obviously. He's a very hardworking guy, obviously. His charisma and his ability to read a room and react in a way that makes people feel comfortable, and then also kind of talking to him a little bit about some of the, the hurdles that he went through in his life, his ability to adapt to setback, to reframe it in a way that is helpful to himself, it, it, it's really incredible. Like, he, he's one of the, and I know this seems strange to say after the Oscars incident, but he really is one of the most emotionally intelligent people that I've been around. And so we had a dinner the last night, and he kinda just out of the blue was like, "So what's up, Mark? We gonna do a book or what?" And I was like, "Well, I've got an outline in mind." And I said, you know... I told him the thing I just said about emotions and his ability to use his emotions to adapt to things. I also d- said it's probably why he's such a good actor, is that it's, he's able to summon emotions and play with them and react to them in a masterful way. And I said, "So I think the book should be built around emotion. It starts with fear. It moves through all your defense mechanisms, into your fame, into all the success, into all that facade collapsing, and it eventually, finally ends up at, at love, at a very genuine, authentic love," which is kind of something that it took him a long time to get to. And I said, "And as you move through all those emotions, there's, there's a word for somebody who's able to move through setbacks and, and deal with any sort of negative emotion and, and harness it To advantage them. And I, I said, "It's, it's Will. So that should be the name of the book." And it was like the Fresh Prince came back. Like, he was just like, "Hell yeah." He, like, gets up

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:06:59

        [laughs]

    22. MMMark Manson1:06:59

        starts, like, slamming stuff on the table. He's like, "Hell yeah. Hell yeah."

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:07:04

        [laughs]

    24. MMMark Manson1:07:04

        "We doing that." And I'm like, [laughs] "All right, so I, I got the gig," like... [laughs]

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:07:10

        [laughs]

    26. MMMark Manson1:07:10

        It was a-

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:07:12

        Good meeting. Good meeting.

    28. MMMark Manson1:07:13

        Yeah, good meeting. Good meeting. [laughs]

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:07:18

        [laughs]

    30. MMMark Manson1:07:18

        But it, it was a wild and fun two years with him. He is honestly, I mean, as you can imagine, I get so many questions since, since March about him, but honestly he's such a great guy deep down. Obviously he makes mistakes and does stupid things like the rest of us, but I have nothing but gratitude for that project. It was very easy to write. It was very enjoyable. The way we did it was I presented the outline, we kinda refined it together. I wrote the first draft, he did a revision of that, and then me and the editor at Penguin kind of, like, did a final pass. So it really is both of us in that book. Like, it's... A lot of people assume it was all me or assume it was all him. I don't know. But, like, it, it really was both of us. Like, he put a lot of work and effort into it, and he really cared

12. 1:08:21 – 1:13:55

    In a post-slap world, what should we know about the real Will Smith?

    1. MMMark Manson1:08:21

       about it.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:08:22

       So I'm gonna ask about what you learned about Hollywood and entertainment through the process of interacting with him and writing the book. I'll just open a door if you want to walk through it. If not, we can skip it. I know you just mentioned a lot of people have asked you about the Oscars and Chris Rock incident and so on.

    3. MMMark Manson1:08:42

       Mm.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:08:42

       Is there anything you wanna say about that, or about him with respect to that, or not? You can also just say, "Nope, not really," and we can move on. Totally up to you.

    5. MMMark Manson1:08:52

       So I, I publicly wrote a piece about it as a newsletter. It's on my website. The TLDR of it is basically, yeah, he did something really stupid and unacceptable, but as somebody who spent a lot of time around him, and not just him, his family, his friends, getting to know his kids, getting to know his brother, he is honestly... There is so much generosity that happens with him that nobody ever sees, and it's very much by design. Like, he doesn't, he doesn't feel a need to publicize it. And so just seeing what I've seen, being around him, I kind of told people, like, "Look, that's not the real him. That's, like, the worst side of him. You know, the, the Will that you know and that you hope is real is... That's the real Will. He's, he's a very great, loving, but flawed human being." In terms of what I learned... Oh, and you asked earlier what I learned from him. It's funny because that project, I didn't... You know, he, he does have a, a marvelous story of resilience and overcoming. I mean, he come, he comes from a very dysfunctional family, an abusive father, grew up on the streets of West Philly, like, very rough neighborhoods, and it's, it's actually very remarkable how he navigated that, avoided all the pitfalls that come with that sort of upbringing to get where he is today. It's definitely not an accident. So that story's amazing, but it, there was nothing in it that really... You know, there were n- there were no epiphanies for me personally.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:10:39

       Mm-hmm.

    7. MMMark Manson1:10:40

       The epiphanies for me personally were just being around him as a professional. You know, being around a guy like that who's been at the top of his game, top of his field for 30 years, one of the most famous human beings on the planet, I was blown away at the way he worked with his team, the way he was with his fans, the way he dealt with the media. I mean, to be honest, dude, like, I, the first time I hung out with him and I saw him get mobbed by fans, my immediate reaction was like, "Man, I should be nicer to my fans." [laughs] Like, I think-

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:11:12

       [laughs]

    9. MMMark Manson1:11:13

       ... Will is nicer to his fans than I am. And, and, like, he's, he is, he's Will Smith. Like [laughs] he should be-

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:11:19

        Yeah. He's paddling out through 100-foot waves every time he steps-

    11. MMMark Manson1:11:22

        [laughs]

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:11:22

        ... steps out of a door. Yeah.

    13. MMMark Manson1:11:24

        Yeah. But one of the things that he, he helped me see, and he, he said this to me too, is he said, you know, he was like, "I'm very aware that every encounter I have with a fan is a very asymmetric encounter. Like, for me, it's five seconds that I'm gonna forget about, you know, within a minute. For them, it's five seconds they're gonna remember for the rest of their lives." So he's like, "Just put in the effort for those five seconds. Like, it's not-"

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:11:53

        Yeah.

    15. MMMark Manson1:11:54

        "... the payoff is so monumental for the other person that it, there's kind of no ethical argument to not do it." The other thing that he said that was really profound for me, because as you can imagine, he's got this, like, full staff of people that just follow him around the world. He's got cooks and chefs and wardrobe people and security guys and everything, logistics. And I asked him once, I was like, "Do you ever feel like it's kinda weird just having this, like, team of people that just shadow you everywhere you go, cook your..." You know, I was like, "When was the last time you cooked a meal for yourself?" [laughs] And he like-

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:12:36

        [laughs]

    17. MMMark Manson1:12:36

        ... started laughing and he's like, "I don't know, man. Probably at least 10 years." But he told me, he said, he's like, "Look, it's really simple. Like, I, I am world-class at one thing, and Yeah, it'd be very easy for me to, like, be the humble guy and cook a meal for myself and send the chef home. But I'm only world-class at one thing, and that would take away from my time and energy from being world-class at that one thing. And not only that, but my chef is world-class at one thing.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:13:08

        Hmm.

    19. MMMark Manson1:13:08

        And by sending him home, I am taking away from his ability to be world-class at the thing that he's world-class at.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:13:16

        Hmm. That's cool.

    21. MMMark Manson1:13:18

        Yeah.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:13:19

        I saw potentially the first part coming, but not the second part.

    23. MMMark Manson1:13:23

        Yep.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:13:23

        That's, that's a significant addition, right? Looking through the mirror from the other direction, not just your direction.

    25. MMMark Manson1:13:33

        And he described it as robbing him of an opportunity to be excellent, which I just, to me, it was, like, such a beautiful... It's funny because, you know, y- [laughs] you hear so many outsourcing conversations in terms of business, of like how to hire and outsource and do all this-

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:13:48

        Yeah

    27. MMMark Manson1:13:48

        ... and automate and do all that stuff. He spoke about it in ethical terms, which-

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:13:52

        Mm-hmm

    29. MMMark Manson1:13:52

        ... was really profound for me.

13. 1:13:55 – 1:16:13

    How Will Smith depends on and interacts with his team.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:13:55

       Yeah. What did you observe or what stood out to you about how he worked with his team, outside of that example that you just gave?

    2. MMMark Manson1:14:07

       This kind of validates what we were talking about earlier. The first thing that really stood out to me about his team was they've all been with him forever.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:14:20

       Mm-hmm.

    4. MMMark Manson1:14:21

       And it was funny, I was talking to one [laughs] ... He's got one guy named Scotty, who I love. He's, Scotty's been in a few of his YouTube videos. Lovely, lovely guy. And Scotty was kinda joking with me. He's like, "Yeah, I'm the new guy on the team. I've only been here nine years."

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:14:34

       [laughs]

    6. MMMark Manson1:14:36

       Everybody in, like, significant roles in his team have been with him since at least The Fresh Prince days, many of them since, since the '80s, some of them since he was a kid. They're like childhood friends that he kind of put into the appropriate place. So th- that, that really blew me away. It also validated a lot of my beliefs around loyalty and trust. He also explained it to me once, as he said, he was like, "Look, when you become famous, nothing is scarce. Like, if you want money, you can go get money. If you want parties, you can go get parties. If you want sex, you can go get sex." He said, "The one thing that becomes more scarce as you become famous is trust." And so he said, "I very much tried to build my organization to optimize for trust first and everything else second," which I thought was very wise of him. But in terms of just operationally, like, he's, he, he's very good at including everybody. Like, he's very... You know, there's no, like, rigid hierarchy of like, "Oh, well, you're, you're the assistant of this manager, so, like, you shouldn't be in the room talking about these ideas." He loves to just joke and bounce creative ideas around, and if it's, like, the lowly production assistant who comes back with a, with a great idea, like, he's happy with that. Like, he'll run with it. He doesn't feel, like, a possessiveness around, like, who gets to tell him what.

14. 1:16:13 – 1:20:47

    Setting the course for the next few years.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:16:13

       Hmm. Fascinating. Super, super fascinating. What, what are your goals, desires, wants, maybe we, I don't know how crazy we wanna get, but in the next, say, you can choose the timeframe, three years.

    2. MMMark Manson1:16:31

       [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:16:32

       Right? Because there was a point, as you said, you're writing for your friends in college.

    4. MMMark Manson1:16:38

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:16:38

       Readership, per se, of no more than a dozen people. Not really thinking about where this is going or how you're going to optimize it. It was just writing, having fun with friends, and enjoying the process. Now you have, among other things, paradox of choice situation-

    6. MMMark Manson1:16:59

       Mm-hmm

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:16:59

       ... on your hands, where there's more inbound than you can probably even begin to process, even more than your agent can probably process. She has to have some quick means of eliminating things.

    8. MMMark Manson1:17:10

       Yep.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:17:12

       How are you thinking about what you want to do or not do over the next handful of years?

    10. MMMark Manson1:17:18

        The place I'm in now, I mean, I will write more books, but I'm kind of in this, like, almost, like, prodigal son coming back to the internet moment. [laughs]

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:17:30

        [laughs]

    12. MMMark Manson1:17:30

        Doing all of these projects over the last five years in legacy media, it's been, it's been very rewarding and it's been, in many cases, very fun and educational. But what I realized is that that's not where... It's not what I love doing. I love just the raw dynamism of posting something, getting immediate feedback, processing that feedback, understanding like, "Oh, people like that. Why did people like that? What is it about that idea that resonates with people?" And then trying to, like, figure out, like, "Okay, well, how could I do something more with that?" I just, I love that process so much, and the immediacy and the, the creative control that comes with that, that I, I'm kind of envisioning this place in my career as, like, I'm coming back to that. I mentioned earlier that I'm, I'm currently hiring out a video team, and before, like, 500 people listening to this [laughs] start, start sending me applications-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:18:34

        I can learn. I can learn, Mark.

    14. MMMark Manson1:18:36

        [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:18:37

        I'm willing to work for free, but you have to teach me everything.

    16. MMMark Manson1:18:41

        Exactly. [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:18:43

        [laughs]

    18. MMMark Manson1:18:43

        I have, I've already made the initial hires. If there are more people that I'm hiring, subscribe to my newsletter. It'll be announced there.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:18:50

        [laughs]

    20. MMMark Manson1:18:53

        I'm very bullish on online media and independent media in general, and I think it has a bright future. I think it's, it's ... You could argue it's already the predominant form of media in terms of just where the narratives come from and where the best content comes from, but I think it, that's only gonna continue over the next decade. And so I'm excited to be here for that. You know, I've ... There's two things that I love. One is what I just said, the, uh, kind of the immediacy of online content. The other one is just I have this very, very strong passion bordering on, like, a fury of a thousand suns to take the self-help world, which traditionally, you know, when I was growing up, when you were growing up, self-help was not something for the masses. It was like, if you, if you had a bunch of money in your savings and could fly to a city and sit in a conference room for five days, like, that's, that's where this content used to be. And I think over the past 20 years, we're living through kind of, I don't know if democratizing is the right word, but just a widespread dissemination of these very important concepts and ideas to the masses for either free or very, very, very cheap. And I, I just, I really deeply believe that a lot of these concepts, these basic things that you and I talk about week in, week out, they should be everywhere. They should be taught in school. They should be ... You know, basic relationship skills should be taught in school. Basic meditation, a lot of the exercises you do in therapy, CBT, like, these concepts should be taught everywhere. Like, everybody should have access to them all the time, and I'm very passionate about that idea, and I want to ... That has always been kind of like a chip on my shoulder that I've had throughout my career, and it's still there. There's still work to do. And so the marriage of those two things is kinda where my head is at right

15. 1:20:47 – 1:29:12

    How Mark says no to financially tempting projects he doesn’t want to do.

    1. MMMark Manson1:20:47

       now.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:20:48

       So to choose the things you want to do, which you've been describing, right? To hone in on the things that you know you enjoy, it would seem to me that a prerequisite of ensuring that happens, I have a number of follow-up questions, this is one, ensuring that happens requires you say no to a lot of stuff-

    3. MMMark Manson1:21:07

       Yes

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:21:07

       ... that you either ignore completely, don't respond to, or say no to a lot of stuff. And you're fortunate that you have a team, so Molly can also say no to a lot of things on your behalf.

    5. MMMark Manson1:21:17

       Yes.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:21:17

       I'm curious how you're thinking about saying no to very tempting things. And they may not be tempting, but I'll give you an example. Okay, so you get, you get an email from Molly. She's like, "Might be worth a five-minute conversation. Give me a call." So you get on the phone and she's like, "Steven Spielberg. You read Will. He's not done this for anybody. He wants you to write a three-part-"

    7. MMMark Manson1:21:43

       Oh, God. [laughs]

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:21:44

       "... book series."

    9. MMMark Manson1:21:45

       [laughs] I'm already facepalming.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:21:48

        Yeah, yeah, I know.

    11. MMMark Manson1:21:49

        I'm already facepalming. [laughs]

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:21:51

        And maybe I'm actually screwing up this thought exercise by making a three-parter. No, it's not a three-parter, but it is gonna be a year or two of focus on this, which would be the seminal definitive book with Spielberg's full cooperation, full access, journals, everything. Pay you some insane amount of money, right? Twice the number that you would pick as a stretch goal that you're like, "They'll never say yes to." He's like, "I'll just pay you twice as much. Let's get this over with so we can get to the work." What do you do when stuff like that comes up?

    13. MMMark Manson1:22:27

        [laughs]

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:22:27

        'Cause you know it's gonna come up.

    15. MMMark Manson1:22:29

        Well, [laughs] I don't know if that-

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:22:30

        Maybe not that specifically.

    17. MMMark Manson1:22:31

        Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:22:31

        Maybe not that specifically. I'm using an absurd goal to drive the exercise.

    19. MMMark Manson1:22:40

        Yeah.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:22:40

        Right? Because if it's, if it's like, ah, this is a B minus offer, easy to say no to, right? Because you wanna strive to do an A plus in the things you just described. So y- how do you think about saying no to the stuff that will be tempting?

    21. MMMark Manson1:23:00

        For lower level stuff, I think the best way is to simply set rules.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:23:04

        Mm-hmm.

    23. MMMark Manson1:23:05

        I've done that with speaking the last year or two.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:23:09

        What are your rules?

    25. MMMark Manson1:23:11

        So my rules are basically it either needs to be, like, an Uber away-

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:23:17

        Mm-hmm

    27. MMMark Manson1:23:18

        ... or it needs to be just, like, an absolutely, like, stupid amount of money, which nobody takes the stupid amount of money, so-

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:23:27

        [laughs]

    29. MMMark Manson1:23:28

        ... it's basically just an Uber away. And also, I, I decided too that I'm, I'm not really gonna do keynotes anymore. If you want me to sit on stage and answer questions, that's fine, but, like, the preparation, the thought, the practice that goes into a keynote, the mental energy-

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:23:43

        Yeah
16. 1:29:12 – 1:32:12

    The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck‘s cover story.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:29:12

       [laughs]

    2. MMMark Manson1:29:13

       Yep.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:29:13

       And these are the things you have to say no to now. It's a fun house mirror of psycho-emotional experience because [laughs] it's not like we've let go of all of our conditioning and hardwiring [laughs] that we've developed over decades.

    4. MMMark Manson1:29:26

       Yeah.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:29:27

       It just doesn't happen overnight. Let me fulfill a promise to my audience, because I did say I was gonna ask about it. The, The Subtle Art cover, what is the background story on the cover, and how do you feel about it? Do you like it when you first saw what ended up being the cover?

    6. MMMark Manson1:29:42

       So I love the cover. To Harper's credit, they did it.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:29:49

       Good for them.

    8. MMMark Manson1:29:50

       Yeah. [laughs] It's funny because when I went into that book, that was, you know, that was my first book with a publisher. All my friends who were published authors had all these warnings of like how horrible publishers are and how terrible mistake... like, decisions they make and all this stuff. And everything with Subtle Art was just a breeze. Everything went really well. Everybody got along. There were no problems. And I was like, "Wow, what's everybody talking about?"

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:30:13

       That's amazing. And I, I will just highlight this is extremely rare.

    10. MMMark Manson1:30:18

        Yes.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:30:19

        I just gave... I'm not a therapist. I don't play one on the internet, or I try not to, but was just doing my 100th iteration of, like, a three-hour therapy session with someone who's going through their first book experience.

    12. MMMark Manson1:30:32

        Yes.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:30:32

        And I'm like, "I'm sorry. I, I just, I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry. This is-

    14. MMMark Manson1:30:37

        Yeah

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:30:37

        ... this is the, this is the norm." 'Cause he was like, "Is this normal? This can't be normal. Does this actually happen all the time?"

    16. MMMark Manson1:30:43

        [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:30:43

        And I was like, "Yep, yep, it does."

    18. MMMark Manson1:30:45

        Yeah, it's actually kind of obnoxious. If you get any amount of authors in a room together-

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:30:49

        [laughs] Yeah, right

    20. MMMark Manson1:30:51

        ... inevitably the conversation just always ends up at bitching about publishers.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:30:56

        [laughs]

    22. MMMark Manson1:30:56

        So the funny thing about the cover though, they were very adamant on the orange. So initially it didn't have that splat- The splat was me. So I... And this, again, this is credit to them because this is... I didn't realize this was not normal. So they sent the initial draft of the cover. I took it, put it, like opened up Photoshop myself. I think I changed the font to be the same font as my website, and then I added the splat 'cause I wanted something kinda iconic.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:31:23

        Mm-hmm.

    24. MMMark Manson1:31:24

        It seemed fitting. And I sent it back to them, and they were like, "We love it. It's great. We'll do it." And I was like, "Wow, great. I love these guys." And [laughs]

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:31:33

        [laughs]

    26. MMMark Manson1:31:34

        You know, sure enough, you find out that that never happens.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:31:37

        [laughs]

    28. MMMark Manson1:31:37

        People never... You know, the publisher never listens to your feedback. They try to force things through. But it's, it's actually ironic because I think at the time I was just this, like, no-name internet guy, and so they're like, "Oh yeah, well, if that makes him happy, like, let's just put it on the cover." But then once you become, you know, Mark Manson or Tim Ferriss or Ryan Holiday, suddenly-

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:32:01

        Once they've got the sunk cost of a real advance, now things are a little different [laughs]

    30. MMMark Manson1:32:05

        Exactly. It's like everything is just murdered by committee-
17. 1:32:12 – 1:36:28

    Why Mark is pivoting to video production rather than podcasting.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:32:14

       [laughs] Ah. What excites you these days? And I'll give you two options. This is a multiple choice. So what excites you these days? I think in part you've certainly answered or alluded to that. And with video and the teams, and I think this is, this is maybe me as a, an avid horse buggy driver in a world where the Model T came out a few years ago and everybody's moving to cars, and I'm still digging my horses, trying to sell people on why my horses are so incredible. But is the drive to video something that you really want to do in your heart of hearts? Or, or, and this is not pejorative, option B, is it because inevitably everything is driving to video, and that if you're not capitalizing on that, you are simply going to be invisible to the algorithms that matter and the results that matter? Or something else.

    2. MMMark Manson1:33:12

       It's a great question. And I'm not gonna lie, there's definitely some of the latter in it-

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:33:16

       Mm-hmm

    4. MMMark Manson1:33:16

       ... of just like I love this business, I love what I do. And, like, blogs are dead. You and I both know blogs are dead. Like, you, you get no reach for any sort of written content whatsoever. Newsletters are getting super saturated. Like, it's just, it's hard to stay in front of eyeballs in our industry. That said, I wrestled with this this past year because I think it- it's been, like, four years now my team has been telling me, "Dude, you, you either need to do videos or have a podcast. Dude, you either need, need to have videos or have a podcast." I'm like, "Motherfuckers, I'm writing three books right now." [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:33:56

       [laughs]

    6. MMMark Manson1:33:57

       Like, talk to me in two years. But they were right. And I n- I, and I knew they were right. Like, it's just the way the world is going. So I, I actually dabbled a little bit with a podcast. It was funny. I went... Actually, I think you have an old article from years and years ago about, like, the starter kit of equipment.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:34:15

       Yeah.

    8. MMMark Manson1:34:16

       Bought all that stuff. I just wanted to do, like, a dry run just to see, do I enjoy this? Is it fun for me? And actually my first guinea pig was, was our mutual friend Ryan Holiday.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:34:29

       Mm-hmm.

    10. MMMark Manson1:34:30

        So I, I went over to his house down there in Austin, brought all the mics and everything, sat down, talked to him for an hour and a half, two hours, went home, opened up the audio, started listening to it, and I realized that it was probably the least interesting conversation Ryan and I had ever had-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:34:47

        [laughs]

    12. MMMark Manson1:34:47

        ... in our, like, five-year friendship. And that immediately gave me a respect for what you do and other podcasters do because on the outside it looks like, oh yeah, you just sit down and talk to somebody. Like, how hard is that?

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:34:59

        [laughs]

    14. MMMark Manson1:35:00

        You know? Like, you don't realize how much goes into being a good interviewer, how much thought you have to put into the questions you ask.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:35:07

        I usually have this out of frame. Yeah. [laughs]

    16. MMMark Manson1:35:09

        Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. It's not an accident. It's not an accident.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:35:13

        [laughs]

    18. MMMark Manson1:35:14

        I realized that it definitely wasn't grabbing me. On the video side of things, I initially did it for the reason you just said. I was like, well, having a YouTube channel just seems like a thing you're supposed to have. And so I started recording some short videos about two years ago, and sent it off to a freelance editor and kinda never thought about it after that. But as time went on, I started to enjoy it more and more. And I think the thing with video is that there's, there is a very long learning curve to it. Like, you, you have to understand it's not just about being good on camera. Like, you need to understand lighting, you need to understand audio, you need to understand editing, file types, resolutions, aspect ratios, like all this stuff. And, and usually the way you learn is by fucking it up [laughs] first.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:36:08

        Yeah. Also YouTube, right? Like, you have to pay attention to the headlines, the thumbnails, a million other variables, right? There's a lot.

    20. MMMark Manson1:36:16

        Yeah. So it's been a slow burn for me, but I think it, it started to kinda become the highlight of whatever I was doing that month.

18. 1:36:28 – 1:42:15

    What can we expect from Mark’s future video trajectory?

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:36:28

       Okay. This is interesting. So how did that shift happen? How are you making it fun for you?

    2. MMMark Manson1:36:36

       So I don't know if you run into this much, but one of the kind of the frustrations I've started running into is when it comes to personal development topics, there's nothing new under the sun. Like, all of these concepts and ideas-

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:36:48

       Yeah

    4. MMMark Manson1:36:49

       ... save for some recent psychological research or, you know, every couple times a year a really great new study will come out in psychology, and then three years later it's not replicated. So it's like most of what we're working with is, is ideas and concepts that have been around for decades, if not centuries.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:37:09

       Footnotes to Plato.

    6. MMMark Manson1:37:10

       Yeah, right. Exactly.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:37:11

       [laughs]

    8. MMMark Manson1:37:11

       Everything's a footnote to Plato There's only so many ways you can write about how to get over anxiety before you just start repeating yourself. There's only so many ways you can write about getting over a breakup before you just start repeating yourself. And I, I've definitely, the last few years, I've felt like I've hit that. And, and it's been frustrating. You know, you, you just, you feel like you're trying to reinvent the wheel all the time. And I feel like video, a new medium opens up opportunities to approach age-old topics from a new direction or a new dimension, and that's kinda my plan for that. I've become a lot more interested in, like, okay, I'm less interested in writing about theory and, you know, this is how your mind works, and this is why you get anxious, and this is, this is what resilience is. And I'm much more... I'm becoming far more interested in implementation. Like, okay, how do you actually get somebody who's read this stuff to f- to go do something with their life? And if you're limited to the written form, you can't really do anything about that. But if you've got a camera with you-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:38:26

       Hmm

    10. MMMark Manson1:38:26

        ... like, f*ck it, go visit the guy, see if he's getting off his couch, film it, ask him how he's feeling, you know? Like, I think there's just a lot of opportunity-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:38:35

        Hmm

    12. MMMark Manson1:38:35

        ... to explore things in that format that haven't been tapped into. And so that's what really excites me at the moment, the, the new creative opportunities in that sense.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:38:50

        So it sounds like format-wise, at least at first blush as you're describing it, it's not gonna be Between Two Ferns with Mark Manson, right? You won't be sitting down doing a video, what people might think of as a video podcast necessarily.

    14. MMMark Manson1:39:09

        Yeah, yeah.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:39:09

        They'll... You'll probably be featured and a part of the entire cocktail that makes it work, but do you envision a lot of it being case studies, so to speak, or kinda real-world tracking of different people, in a sense? I know tracking might be a strange word.

    16. MMMark Manson1:39:28

        So I think there's a lot of... Keep in mind, this is still super early days for me, but I've got a lot of brainstorms around this right now. So one idea that I've talked to the team about is you can kinda reinvent classic psych studies, you know? So there's the famous marshmallow study.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:39:50

        Yeah, yeah.

    18. MMMark Manson1:39:50

        Like, you could probably do a really fun and entertaining version of that with just random people off the street and, you know-

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:39:55

        Mm-hmm

    20. MMMark Manson1:39:55

        ... give them 100 bucks if they win or whatever. I think there's a lot of opportunity to do r- like, a real time... You can use things as incentive. You can kinda gamify it a little bit. So I don't know if you've watched, like, there's a new trend going on on YouTube of, like, kind of gamifying everything. It's... MrBeast has got huge and everybody's-

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:40:15

        Yeah, I've seen MrBeast, for sure.

    22. MMMark Manson1:40:16

        Yeah. So when I was watching MrBeast, I kinda... The thing that occurred to me was, okay, well, that's fun, you know? You put people in a circle and see if... how long they can stay and then give them $100,000, whatever, whatever amount he, he gives them. Like, what if you actually, like, took somebody who, who's, like, struggled to lose weight over the last five years and you're like, "Hey, I'll give you, I'll give you $50,000 if you lose 20 pounds in the next six months," or whatever, and then you track them and follow them and see what's their process, where do they get hung up, what are the self-defeating beliefs and doubts and stuff like that? And I think this is... What I like about it too is that if you look at, you know, research on motivation and people actually sticking to, to behaviors and goals and things like that, money is one of the most effective-

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:41:11

        Super effective

    24. MMMark Manson1:41:12

        ... inputs. [laughs] It's like-

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:41:14

        Yeah, people don't like to hear it-

    26. MMMark Manson1:41:15

        Yeah

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:41:15

        ... but man, do, do incentives work. [laughs] Man-

    28. MMMark Manson1:41:18

        Yeah. I mean, it's... What, what, what's that Charlie Munger quote? It's like, you know, everything is incentive.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:41:24

        Yeah, just follow the incentives.

    30. MMMark Manson1:41:25

        Yeah, just follow the incentives.
19. 1:42:15 – 1:44:23

    Staying relevant and creatively fulfilled in a crowded market.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:42:15

       Yeah, I dig it. I love, I love that you're tweaking and brainstorming to keep it fun and interesting for yourself. I've seen so many examples of YouTubers who have created a style, very successful style. They've been cursed with getting a lot of attention-

    2. MMMark Manson1:42:37

       Mm

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:42:37

       ... and ultimately a lot of money for creating a caricature of themselves that they then have to continue to be.

    4. MMMark Manson1:42:45

       Yep.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:42:45

       And the question therefore of, how do you do this in a way that is energy giving, fun, creatively satisfying on some level, without just being the nth person to come up with a 20-second dance routine on TikTok, hoping that you're gonna ride that wave?

    6. MMMark Manson1:43:09

       Yeah.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:43:09

       And i- if that's not something in a million years you would ever want to do otherwise.

    8. MMMark Manson1:43:14

       Yeah, I feel like I have a couple competitive advantages. Entering that space in a serious way, I feel like I have a couple of competitive advantages for the simple fact that I'm old. Because most big YouTubers are, like, they're 20-something-year-old dudes who have never had a real job, never been married, don't have kids. I feel like as somebody who has been doing this for a long time and has got... who has fallen into a lot of those traps of feeling like you have to please the audience all the time, or feeling like you have to publish all the time, or being terrified that, you know, you're gonna lose people or they're gonna leave you or whatever, like, you know, I, I've, I've gone through that in my own way, and I, I feel like I've got my head on straight about it at this point. And then I also just think it's an advantage to be older and know who you are. Be in a position where it's like, well, it's like the Spielberg thing, right? It's like, "Well, you know, dude, I, I got enough Skittles. Thanks, but [laughs] I don't need your views. Thank you." [laughs]

20. 1:44:23 – 1:45:36

    The software Mark uses to compose a book.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:44:23

       Yeah, you also are in the enviable position of having the ability to do a huge range of experiments.

    2. MMMark Manson1:44:34

       Yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:44:34

       Right? Because you have sort of the time and space if you choose to create it and protect it. You have resources, so if you wanted to do something out there that might cost a pretty penny, but you can afford-

    4. MMMark Manson1:44:47

       Yep

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:44:47

       ... to lose it, you can do that. So it's a great position to be in. I'm excited for you. Couple of boring tactical questions. Do you still use Scrivener when working on your books, or do you use other workflow?

    6. MMMark Manson1:44:59

       I use Scrivener for the first draft of my first two books, or for Subtle Art and for Everything is Fucked.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:45:07

       Mm-hmm.

    8. MMMark Manson1:45:08

       I find it great for if you still haven't quite nailed down the organization of a book. Scrivener is great for-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:45:14

       Yeah

    10. MMMark Manson1:45:15

        ... moving around large chunks of text-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:45:17

        Totally

    12. MMMark Manson1:45:17

        ... very easily. But its actual user interface, I think is, is inferior to Word. So if you're actually trying to go line by line and just make everything really polished and clear, I think Word. So usually I would do first draft on Scrivener and then port it over to Word and do all my revisions

21. 1:45:36 – 1:56:54

    Recommended reading,

    1. MMMark Manson1:45:36

       on Word.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:45:36

       And go from there. Sophie's World. So I have read, I don't know if you still feel this way, this is from an interview on nomadicmatt.com from a while back. And it has here, you can't believe everything you read on the internet, so feel free to confirm, deny, or modify. But if you're a complete newbie to philosophy and want to get a basic understanding of the Western canon, I recommend a book called Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, I want to say. It's a fun fiction book that acts as a kind of primer or primer [laughs] depending on how fancy you want to get to the most important Western thinkers. Is that still a book you would recommend?

    3. MMMark Manson1:46:16

       Yes, with the asterisk that I read it as a teenager.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:46:22

       Mm-hmm.

    5. MMMark Manson1:46:22

       It is a fun way to get, I would say, like, a Wikipedia understanding of each major thinker and their contributions and how they influenced Western civilization.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:46:33

       Which writers or thinkers or... Let's stick with writers first, and we can then talk about other people who might be influencing your thinking. But are there any particular writers or books that you have been paying particular attention to in recent memory? I can buy some time by giving examples.

    7. MMMark Manson1:46:57

       Okay.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:46:58

       I would say there are the longstanding influences, which we don't necessarily have to focus on, but we could if they're still highly relevant to you in your life now. So for instance, I believe that you've mentioned David Foster Wallace, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and others. Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt. In my particular case, for instance, I've had a number of books recommended to me, only one of the three of which I've read. So that would be, I believe it's Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, which I thought was a fantastic book.

    9. MMMark Manson1:47:35

       Yeah.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:47:35

        And there are a number of chapters that really stuck out as counterintuitively helpful, such as Cosmic Insignificance Therapy, which I ended up excerpting on the blog because I wanted to share it with people and share the book with people. Then there's another which I suspect I will find interesting, which is called Die With Zero, which is by, I believe, Bill Perkins. I've not read it yet, but these are books that seem to cohere in a puzzle of life philosophies and instructions that I think will be very relevant to me now and over the next, say, five years. So I'm paying attention to those books and the threads that appear to connect them. I'm also paying attention, because I'm working on fiction right now, in this highly absurd but very, very fun series of world-building exercises that I'm doing in fantasy, actually, [laughs] so it's very different from anything I've ever done. If people want to take a look, it's, the project is called Cuck Punch, and you can find it [laughs] online anywhere. So go to cuckpunch.com, and I bought that URL. [laughs]

    11. MMMark Manson1:48:49

        I tried to get on your whitelist, but it was impossible.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:48:52

        [laughs] Yeah, it was surprisingly, I think, surprisingly, surprisingly popular. There was a lot of demand. There's a lot of fun coming. So that is an example of me doing something for the pure fucking joy of it.

    13. MMMark Manson1:49:07

        Yep.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:49:07

        And I'm having a lot of fun with that. At the same time, I can study, say, Ursula K. Le Guin and these classic, iconic, highly skilled masters of the craft, whether that be fantasy or science fiction. So I'm paying attention to For instance, The Writer's Journey, which is effectively The Hero's Journey adapted but applied to writing. So those are the examples personally of things that are currently on my mind. And I've also realized that I've been over-caffeinating and inflicting biological anxiety on myself [laughs] in, in a very unnecessary way. So I'm gonna be revisiting some of the stoic writings, probably The Moral Letters to Lucilius by Seneca, which is commonly sold through, I think, Penguin Classics as Letters From a Stoic. So that would be a very long word salad of-

    15. MMMark Manson1:50:05

        [laughs]

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:50:05

        ... book- books, of books that are currently on my mind.

    17. MMMark Manson1:50:08

        Gotcha.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:50:08

        Right? There's like, there's like one that's kind of anchoring to two more I wanna read, and then with the craft that I'm currently involved with, let's call that fiction, a few things that tie into that.

    19. MMMark Manson1:50:17

        Okay. Yeah, it's hard because it's, I mean, there's so many books to talk about.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:50:21

        There are a lot of books.

    21. MMMark Manson1:50:22

        There's so many books.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:50:22

        There are a lot of books.

    23. MMMark Manson1:50:24

        But yeah, I mean, you, you, you definitely hit what I would consider my biggest influences. You know, David Foster Wallace's nonfiction is what made me want to be a writer. He's got, uh, particularly his piece, uh, Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, is just-

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:50:41

        [laughs]

    25. MMMark Manson1:50:43

        I go back and read it every couple years and am just in awe of how clever and observant he is. Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion. You know, uh, I, I kinda think there's, there's almost like different categories in my brain. So there's, there's nonfiction writers I appreciate for the quality of their writing, which they are in. There is nonfiction, I would call it academic nonfiction, which I mostly read just to make sure I'm, understand the prevalent research in the space.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:51:16

        Mm-hmm.

    27. MMMark Manson1:51:17

        Which would be Jonathan Haidt. I'm a huge fan of Dan Gilbert. He's got a great book called Stumbling on Happiness.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:51:23

        Yeah, excellent book.

    29. MMMark Manson1:51:24

        Yeah, it's such an, in my opinion, it's kind of the best book about happiness research and all the paradoxes and contradictions that come with it. And then in another category, I guess you would call it like contemporaries, so I, I also love Berkman's book. I'm actually friends with Oliver. He and I used to be meditation buddies in New York.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:51:43

        Oh, no kidding. Small world.
22. 1:56:54 – 2:01:09

    Parting thoughts.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:56:54

       Well, Mark, this has been a really fun conversation. We have covered a lot. Um, I don't feel the need to try to bleed the stone. I think people will, will find at least a few stories, a few tidbits in this that they can walk away with and ponder or use in some fashion. Is there anything else you'd like to say? Any closing comments, questions, anything you'd like to point my audience to? Anything at all that you'd like to add?

    2. MMMark Manson1:57:22

       No, I mean, just the usual, like, go to my website, read my shit type thing.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:57:27

       [laughs]

    4. MMMark Manson1:57:27

       I, I do wanna say thank you to you. I, I... Seriously, it's... I mean, you've been a pioneer for my generation and, you know, been a big fan for a long time. My adolescent anger towards you aside while I was sleeping on couches, seriously, you've... For, for those of us who are the generation under you, you've been showing us how to do it for a long time now, so I appreciate that.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:57:51

       Oh, thanks, man. I really appreciate that, and it's been, it's been really fun to see you on this rocket ship, and it's been very fun for me to have this conversation also because I've wondered often, I'm like, "I wonder how the fuck he's feeling about all this."

    6. MMMark Manson1:58:13

       [laughs]

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:58:13

       Like, "What is this experience like? I wonder what the experience might be to be in his shoes right now." So it's been fun to, to get a, a peek on the inside and to, to hear it straight from the man himself. So I, I really do appreciate it. Everybody, you can find all of Mark at MarkManson.net. The new redesign is beautiful.

    8. MMMark Manson1:58:35

       Thank you.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:58:36

       It's very elegant. It's very clean. I've been thinking of doing a complete redesign on my site for the first time in a long time, and went to your site just in the course of doing research for this conversation, and I was like, "Wow, that's clean. That's clean." [laughs]

    10. MMMark Manson1:58:54

        Yeah. The old design was, like, eight years old, and it was funny 'cause as soon as the first drafts of this new one came in, me and my developer, like, went and looked at the old site, and we were just horribly embarrassed. [laughs]

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:59:06

        [laughs]

    12. MMMark Manson1:59:06

        We were like, "How, how have we allowed this to be online for so long?" [laughs]

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:59:11

        So onward and upward. You're trending in the right direction. I look forward to seeing the video. I look forward to seeing the film also, so keep an eye out, folks. That'll be released in theaters by Universal Pictures. Wild. Who would've thought-

    14. MMMark Manson1:59:23

        Crazy

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:59:23

        ... back when you were working on teeth whitening and feng shui? [laughs]

    16. MMMark Manson1:59:28

        [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:59:28

        It's so fun. It's so... I find it so inspirational to track those things from the very early beginnings because you can't possibly... If you, if you had sat down, and maybe you did when working on all those many sites and throwing everything against the wall, and tried to form a 10-year plan that would get you here, it would've been impossible.

    18. MMMark Manson1:59:54

        Never.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:59:55

        Yeah, it just wouldn't have worked.

    20. MMMark Manson1:59:56

        It's like the Steve Jobs thing where you can connect the dots going back. Like, uh, I look back and it's, yeah, all those kind of bullshit SEO sites, I needed those to kinda build up the skill set to actually build a functioning company-

    21. TFTim Ferriss2:00:10

        Mm-hmm

    22. MMMark Manson2:00:11

        ... and a blog that got an audience, and then from there, you learn the skills h- to expand the audience. And like you said, it's the, it's the tacky ball.

    23. TFTim Ferriss2:00:19

        Yeah, it's the tacky ball, the katamaridamasii, the clump spirit. [laughs]

    24. MMMark Manson2:00:26

        [laughs]

    25. TFTim Ferriss2:00:26

        Sounds better in Japanese.

    26. MMMark Manson2:00:27

        Yeah.

    27. TFTim Ferriss2:00:28

        Well, Mark, I really appreciate the time. Thank you for taking it and being so open to discussing all of the things. Really, really do appreciate the time, and appreciate what you're trying to do in the world and what you are doing in the world, so keep it up. And to everybody listening, until next time, one step at a time. Keep that sticky ball rolling, and [laughs] don't underestimate what you can do over time, and try not to overestimate what you can do in a, a given week or month because you'll just end up beating the shit out of yourself, and that does not tend to help you in the long term. So be just a little bit kinder than is necessary to not just others, but to yourself, and thanks for tuning in.

Episode duration: 2:01:31