Tim Ferriss: Best-Selling Author of The Four Hour Work Week, Best of iTunes Podcaster, and Tech Investor

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I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. This episode's guest is the remarkable Tim Ferriss. Many of you know him as the author of five New York Times number one bestsellers, including, of course, the Four Hour Work Week. People sometimes refer to him as the Oprah of Audio because his podcast has been downloaded more than 500 million times. He's also got the angel investor golden touch with stakes in Uber, Facebook, Shopify, Duolingo, and Alibaba. But this episode isn't completely feel good pixie dust and unicorns. We delve into heavy topics such as depression and suicide. Tim also explains the role of physical exercise in his well being, why he doesn't use social media anymore, and how to grow a podcast. After the recording, I came to believe that Tim Ferriss is Arianna Huffington with a badass attitude. We did geek out about John McPhee after we discovered our mutual admiration for his work. I know this is off topic, but after you listen to this episode, do yourself a favor and read any of John McPhee's books. Be forewarned, Tim drops a few f bombs in the fine Remarkable People tradition of Margaret Atwood. Also, the interview got so hot a siren went off. This episode of Remarkable People is brought to you by Remarkable, the paper tablet company. Yes, you got that right. Remarkable is sponsored by Remarkable. I have version two in my hot little hands and it's so good. A very impressive upgrade. Here's how I use 1. Taking notes while I'm interviewing a podcast guest. 2. Taking notes while being briefed about a speaking gig.

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Drafting the structure of keynote speeches. 4. Storing manuals for all the gizmos that I buy. 5. Roughing out drawings for things like surfboards, surfboard sheds. 6. Wrapping my head around complex ideas with diagrams and flowcharts. This is a remarkably well thought out product. It doesn't try to be all things to all people, but it takes notes better than anything I've used. Check out the recent reviews of the Latest version. I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is remarkable people. And now here, here's the remarkable Tim Ferriss.

I am on undisclosed location farm on the east coast so I am outside of cities. We're going to have some exciting sounds in the background because at one o' clock the air siren goes off from the fire department but that'll end in a second.

I like it. We couldn't arrange for better B roll than that.

Exactly.

Tim Ferriss is in the house.

Yes sir. With the siren Go. Is that it?

That's the whole siren?

That's it. Just one.

Oh man.

Just one screech.

I'm glad we timed that perfectly. We couldn't have planned that better. I'd like to first take you back to high school of all times and I want you to tell me about the impact of your year of exchange.

Student ness in Japan it changed everything. It changed everything for me. I had not spent any time outside of the US prior to that I was born and raised on Long island very much confined to a tiny, tiny geography and I transferred to to a different school about halfway through high school or towards the end of sophomore year I had assumed I was bad at Spanish or concluded I was bad at Spanish I had some new friends who were in the Japanese class so I decided to take Japanese. I was also more interested in the culture and six months or nine months later was on my way to Tokyo. I landed in Tokyo. It took me about a month just to accept that I was in Japan. I would wake up every morning and go I'm in Japan.

I'm in Japan.

I couldn't even wrap my head around it but it taught me so much. It taught me that I could be somewhat self sufficient and survive and ultimately thrive. There were other exchange students and I was the only one who lasted a year which was in question at points I thought I would go back. It was very difficult because I anticipated that it would be me in Japan learning Japanese through Japanese classes and in my head Japanese classes meant Japanese language classes but that's not what happened. I showed up, they gave me a school uniform and then I was world history, calculus, regular high school curriculum in Japanese so I didn't understand a damn thing But I have a deep affinity for Japanese culture. I'm still in touch with my host family from when I was 15 so I'm still close to my host family 43 now and a lot of my friends from Japan will say to me they'll be like they think that I have some Japaneseness but coming back from that, I also realized how much of the rules that we follow in the US as an example, anywhere, are kind of arbitrary, right? Which side of the street you drive on, how you shower. I mean, Japan, it's a whole different thing. The whole sequence of events is totally different with showering and bathing and so on. Like you don't get into the Ohuro with a bar of soap. That's a big no, no. Right. So just the fact that things could be so different and work just as well, if not better was a huge eye opener for me. And I think that affected everything that I did afterwards.

You also mentioned that you went through a dark time, quote unquote, in college. What was that dark time? What happened?

Well, I suffered from extended bouts of depression starting in early teens. And in college that got particularly bad, which in retrospect is pretty common. A lot of things get magnified in college. Schizophrenia, for instance, is usually people begin to manifest symptoms of schizophrenia, which I didn't, it wasn't schizophrenia, but in the kind of mid-20s to late 20s. And so I almost killed myself in 1999. I mean, it got that close. I was in planning, like I had a whole plan for it. And the only reason that I didn't was that the book I had reserved at the library, I was taking a year away from school, but I reserved a book at Firestone Library, which was about suicide. And I forgot to change my mailing address at the registrar. So I was living off campus. But the postcard that said, you book on suicide has arrived. Went home to my parents. So I got a call from my mom and that sort of snapped me out of the spell. But wow, in this, in this day and age, if it had been right now, I would, I would have terminated myself, right? Because it would have been email or something else. So that was the darkest. And it's, it's a lot, it's a lot to discuss. But that, that was certainly the darkest period. But a lot has changed.

How did you work through it?

Exercise was the big constant. So what I did after that is I found a boxing gym in Trenton, which is a pretty rough neighborhood, depending on where you are. Found a boxing gym in Trenton and went there and just got out of my head by getting into my body. Basically that was the first key. And the second key was realizing that if you inflict pain on yourself, especially in the form of suicide, which might be short lived pain, but nonetheless pain, it's like taking the hurt that you're feeling, multiplying it by 10 and converting it into like a suicide vest and just walking into a room of the people you care most about and blowing yourself up like there is a wide and powerful impact on those you care about or at the very least those people who care about you. It's not just isolated to your own experience. So that's, that's something I think that also philosophically was important for me to, to try to incorporate into my life. And the pattern interrupt though was exercise for sure.

That's a great plug for exercise. I know I, I surf between two and four hours a day. It's the only thing that's keeping me sane right now.

So yeah, totally.

But I'm unlike you. I didn't master surfing in four hours or four days or four weeks.

It takes longer surfing, takes longer mastered surfing either. There's a really good book called Spark on some of the neurological effects and just biochemical effects of exercise on brain derived neurotrophic factor and things like that. So the effects of exercise, not just on learning, but really brain health are remarkable. And that book covers a lot of ground Spark.

How did the Four Hour Work Week book come to be?

Yeah, the Four Hour Workweek. The Blessing and the Curse. That is that title, that book came to be because around 2003 I was asked to guest lecture at Princeton where I went to undergrad in a class called High Tech Entrepreneurship. And the professor had been a real critical mentor to me. Professor Ed Hsiao Zschaut, a fascinating guy. He'd been, he, he'd been a congressman, a competitive figure skater, took a couple, couple of companies public, was, was I think the first or one of the first computer science professors at Stanford. I mean the guy just did everything. And I came back and talked about bootstrapping entrepreneurship because most of his guest speakers were venture capitalists or people who had built venture backed companies. And doing it with your personal savings and really scrapping is different. It's just a different, it's a different journey. And so I came back and talked about that. And around 2004, 5 the content of the lecture, I was giving it once a year, maybe twice a year. And the content kind of shifted to what I later called lifestyle design. Right. So talking about beginning with the end in mind. So rather than trying to win this race, compete and then figure out what's left over, which is your life, like what if we started with the end in mind and worked backwards, what would it look like? Because my own thinking and decision making was changing over that period of time. And I left for a couple of years or about 18 months to travel around the world because I had automated my business at that point and came back and I had this huge stack of notes. And Princeton students can be pretty snobby and pompous and smug. And look, I'm sure I've been those things too. But, like, at a place like Princeton or Harvard or any of these kind of blue chips, you get a fair amount of smug behavior. And I would always send this feedback form via email through Ed the Professor to students asking for their comments and feedback. And one kid sent this feedback could have been older than me. I mean, there were graduate students in the class too. And the comment was something like, I don't understand why you're teaching a class of like 40 undergrads and grad students. Why don't you just write a book and be done with it? And I don't think it was a serious recommendation. I think it was you, right? I don't think it was a serious recommendation. But that stuck in my head and I had really bad insomnia at the time. So I would wake up in the middle of the night and like, jot down ideas for chapter titles and stuff like that. I then reached out to a couple of friends who had been authors, and one of them was like, yeah, you should totally write a book, like, without question. And I had been traumatized by my senior thesis at Princeton, which everyone has to write. I didn't want to actually to write a book. I wanted someone to just say, no, you shouldn't write a book. And he introduced me to a bunch of folks and everybody turned me down in terms of agents, except for one guy, Steve Hanselman, who ended up becoming my agent. He had just moved from being an editor to an agent, then pitched the book to, I don't know, whatever. 29 publishers, got turned down by all of them, except for one, which was at the end, and that was Crown. Then Crown, they've changed their name within Random House. And they, they bought it for, you know, bargain basement pricing, split into five installments, which doesn't matter. Like, if your book does well, the advance doesn't matter. So I was very, very lucky. I mean, I don't know what kind of lightning got put in the bottle for that thing, but it was the right timing, right place. I was in Silicon Valley. Techies seemed to grab onto it. Sort of the getting things done demographic. And that put me on the map to the extent that I've ever been on the map, I suppose.

So after that, it's to infinity and Beyond. That's the.

To infinity and beyond.

I mean.

Yeah, to infinity and beyond. The. The four hour shtick stuck around and it's going to stick around forever. But I did the four hour shtick for a few other subjects. I think one key decision that came not too long after the four Hour Workweek was deciding to do the four Hour body. Now, that is not an obvious next book because. Because even though it has the four hour, the four hour jersey is still in play on the court. I knew that there would be a lot of pressure to do the three hour workweek and the four hour work week for, you know, single moms and the four hour work week for whatever, Christians. The four hour work week, you could just franchise the shit out of it. And that there would be that pressure, internal and external. And so I wanted to. I knew that I could always come back and do that. That option would remain. But if I, If I took advantage of it in 2008, 2009, so one or two years after the four hour work we came out, that I would paint myself into that corner and I would kind of have to be the work week guy forever. So I was like, well, if I'm gonna take a risk, this is actually a really good time to get it. As long as I get paid in a larger advance, because I didn't get paid anything for the first one, then let me take the payday. But do something in a totally different area. And if it works, I will have the confidence to explore other areas. But if I, If I stick with the crutch of what has been successful once, I could be dooming myself to feel constrained to that forever. So that was a really important decision.

But are you saying that the Four Hour Body was far enough away from the concept of the work week so that it was a stretch?

Yeah, I'm saying that if the four hour thing. So rather than be a business author. Right. Which is what I was considered when the Four Hour Work Week came out. If I could be someone whose readers follow him in this case for a way of thinking about different subjects. Kind of like Malcolm Gladwell, let's just say, as an example, or even a Michael Lewis. They're very different writers, but they, I mean. Or John McPhee. Right. John McPhee can write a book on oranges. And people are like, great, I'll read a book on oranges. Right. Or tennis. Or tennis. And then they'll read a book on tennis. Right. They're following his thinking. Not necessarily the subject matter, but there are many. So that was, to me, sort of a hypothesis worth testing. Like, could I make it work in another genre? Completely different. Part of the bookstore at that time, parts of the bookstore mattered.

Yeah. Did you read John McPhee's book about the birch bark canoe guy?

Yeah, the bark canoe, sure. Yes, I did.

Oh, man, I love John McPhee.

Yeah, he's great. And the tennis, you mentioned tennis. Levels of the game, if people want to read a short McPhee book, levels of the game is absolutely incredible. And if you prefer basketball, you could read a sense of where you are.

Yeah, the Bill Bradley book, right?

Yeah. I mean, they're both just amazing. And you'll get an appreciation for why people feel the way they do about John McPhee.

Yeah. So how has the pandemic and all its ancillary changes, how has that affected. If it has affected. You're thinking of the four hour work week in productivity.

That's a good question. Nobody's. Nobody's asked me about that. So I view the four hour work. My views on the four hour workweek and my views on productivity may be viewed as two different buckets. So I would say that the four hour workweek, in a sense, the trends and the convergence of trends that are described in the four Hour Workweek have been accelerated a thousand fold in terms of remote work, distributed work, everything has been accelerated. So the trends that were already in motion, which were just beginning to gain traction in 2007, where Elance was a platform that we would talk a lot about and so on. This is before people had Zoom. This is before people had Fiverr. This is before people had 99 designs might have just been getting, but this was early days. The infrastructure didn't really exist and AWS probably didn't exist or it was in its infancy. Right. So rentable infrastructure for startups and also just the ability to work in a distributed fashion was hamstrung in a lot of cases, that's changed. So I think the ethos and the trends described in the four Hour Workweek, I still stand by completely. So I do think that the principles still apply more than ever. Some of what I wrote in that book, I mean, I'm 43 now. I was 29 when I wrote it, or 28. I mean, some of it makes me cringe, right? Or you're just like, oh, Jesus. Like, of course, of course it makes me cringe. And I've been asked by the publisher to go back and revise it and I don't want to fuck with it because it really Struck such a chord with people that I feel like going back and stepping on the butterfly is a bad idea. So I've left it alone. On the productivity side, what has become very present for me in the pandemic. I've struggled quite a lot, as I think a lot of people have, as I know a lot of people have. And certainly my struggles, fortunately, because I'm in a position of privilege and have just ended up where I am, have not been existential. They're not figuring out food or rent or any of these basic necessities. And so many people struggle with that. Some of my family members have struggled with this and been laid off from service jobs, for instance. My struggles have been psychological and emotional. And I think that when it is easy to busy yourself with going to the office, staying at the office late, working, and I mean, I'm not staying at an office. I've always been remote. But the point being, when it, when it's harder to BS yourself into believing that you're doing a million things and that all those things are important, you end up sitting with yourself in the case of quarantine, at home with your significant other. And if there is stuff that has been safely kind of bubbling beneath the surface for you and your significant other for you personally, I think all of it has been sort of pulled up to visibility, at least for me, within the context of quarantine. So productivity, like productivity is not the end all be all right, because you can be really productive doing something unimportant, right? You can produce a lot that is not of great value, or you could be focused on the wrong things and still do stupid things very efficiently, right? And so it's, it's, it's reinforced for me the importance of having strong whys in place, understanding that the core drivers of why you are spending as much time and energy as you are and the things you're spending time and energy on. And I'd say, secondly, the importance for me, of some degree of self compassion, because as soon as quarantine hit, there are these stories of Isaac Newton and other people having the most productive years of their lives, creating their magnum opus while in a cottage in the British countryside or whatever. And that was my bar. I was like, okay, that's what I need to do. And I don't, I don't think I've been Isaac Newton. I really don't. I mean, I think I've been most of the time. I think I've been kind of a mess, pardon my French, but it's, it's and just being okay with that and allowing it to be there instead of trying to not feel things I don't want to feel. Productivity is a, it's sort of a. A morally and impact agnostic filter. And the why is incredibly important. So my, my, my reasons for doing things and the why has become even more than it was before, which it was a precursor to trying to maximize effectiveness or efficiency during quarantine.

Okay, so Tim, how do you define yourself today? What do you say you are?

That's a damn fine question. I don't think I have a great answer to this. What I would usually say, it really depends on who's asking, because sometimes it's just not even a conversation that I want to have. But if it's, if it's just a pleasantry, then I'll give one answer, right?

No. This is Guy Kawasaki's podcast.

It's you asking me. It's you.

I really want to know.

Yeah, I would say. I would say that I'm a human guinea pig. I just try a lot of stuff and I'm sort of the first line of defense for my listeners or my readers. That's how I view it. So if there is a problem that it's very similar to the entrepreneurship in my life experience where it's like, okay, I have a problem. Why do I know I have a problem? Because I'm cobbling together some half assed solution to something that doesn't really have an off the shelf ready answer. And I'm like, okay, this is stupid. Let me see if I can do a bunch of homework on this, test it a lot, throw a ton against the wall, treat myself as the human guinea pig, and then I'll try those hundred things and if 10 of them work and two of them really work, then great, then I'll share that with my audience. And therefore, while I'm creating stuff for my listeners or readers, I'm also scratching a very personal itch of some type. I mean, that's always been what I do. So if I were to shorten that, I would just say human guinea pig. Alternatively, I could say I'm a podcaster and sometimes writer.

But I'm curious because I am a writer and sometimes podcaster, but if I had to start today, it's not clear to me, I would write another book. I think that podcasting is much more powerful than authoring a book. What do you think?

I think they're powerful in different ways. I think that podcasting and they're powerful for different ways. The explanations of which aren't totally clear to me. So, for instance, podcasting each episode of my podcast and each episode of your podcast, I would. I would have to imagine. I mean, they hit big numbers. And so you. At least for me, I sit back and I'm like, why spend years writing a book exactly. When I can prototype and get this stuff out so much, so much more quickly? And what I've found is that the. The half life of the stickiness of a book, if. If it. If it works, is just longer than a podcast. So the podcast is. It's not as ephemeral as radio, because at least historically, radio appears and then it disappears. Right. It's just like a golf ball in a river going past. Podcasts are different because there is a record. You can go back and listen to them multiple times, they're available. But there's still an incredible power in text. I don't know if that'll change. It's true, also in comparison to video. But the price you have to pay as an author is just so high that podcasts are, at the very least, a great way to put off writing.

I think I've.

I think I've. I think I've used. I think I've. I think I've used them in that way myself quite a lot.

I mean, I would make the argument for your case that I doubt that 500 million people have read your books, but 500 million downloads have occurred, or something like that of your podcast.

Right. And so.

And the beauty for me of podcasting is not just the immediacy, because I.

Don'T know about you.

It takes from the time I start to the time I end a book, it's a year and a half or two years, and I know the day it ships.

It's wrong.

Imagine if you wrote a book about education, the future of education, and it's coming out right now, and you wrote it a year ago, you might just put that book away. And the other beautiful thing about podcasts is you can sell 52 sponsorships. Yeah.

You get some reinforcement along the way instead of sitting in your bedroom wondering if this thing's going to turn out well a year or two later or three years later. So there's definitely positive feedback, both from listeners and some like market validation or at least personal validation from sponsors along the way, which. Which on one hand is like such. It's so appealing. And I think there's also. I think it's. To quote Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, sometimes it's an opportunity to be seized, and sometimes it's a temptation to be resisted. Right. It's very, it's seductive. So I try to, I try to keep that in mind. But I do enjoy the podcast. I mean, the podcasting is especially in the lazy way that I do it. It's hard to, it's hard for me not to enjoy it. Yeah.

And I don't know how you do it, but podcasting has kind of taken over my life. And as I look back on my career and I've written 15 books and, I don't know, given thousands of speeches, I think my podcast is the best work I've ever done and maybe the most underappreciated at the same time. So I'm trying to rectify that. Do you have to deal? And how do you deal with skeptics? So I'll use my example. So a skeptic would say, you know, Guy, like 30 years ago you worked for Steve Jobs, you got on a tsunami and you rode that thing. And for the last 30 years you've been talking about Macintosh evangelism. What have you done lately? Like what? Why should I read your book or listen to your podcast? You're just a one trick pony, blah, blah, blah. So have you ever dealt with people who say that and you know, like, you're just a guru, you don't really do anything kind of thing.

I get all sorts of skeptics and I mean skeptic would be on the polite side. I get some very aggressive, I get some very aggressive detractors. And it depends on the nature of the criticism I try. I don't want to label all critics haters, which is a very natural. I'm not saying that's what you do, but a lot of people are like, ah, they're just haters. Don't listen to them. Which I think can, can create a blind spot when you're getting critical feedback that could be valuable. So I, I try to listen. If the emotional tone isn't just hyper aggressive, which it can be, right. So if the tone is just fuck you from the outset, then there's, I just don't have a conversation. And generally if they're like, here's my accusation, what do you have to say? I'm just like, well, that's, you know, I'm perfectly willing to accept that you're right. Like, let's, let's just, let's, let's just, let's just, let's just accept that you're right. Well done. You've, you've, you've deduced it. Sherlock Holmes. Pass the salt, please. I've used some salt on my salad and I just, I don't. I try not to take the bait if it's just looking for a fight. Like, if it's just pugilism and they want to have like a dance of sophistry and try to defeat me. Because they had a law degree they never used, which is very common, right? You get these folks who had a law degree and they just want to bash heads with somebody over dinner to show how smart they are, that I'm like, I'm stupid. Look, my brain's slow. I'm from Long Island. You're going to wipe the floor with me. Like, let's just have dessert and chill the fuck out. It's sort of cheesy to use the. I think it's the Roosevelt quote, the man in the arena and so on. But it's like I really try to focus on feedback from operators of some type, right? Like people who are actually getting their hands dirty and risking something. Nothing kind of makes me chuckle more than a journalist who has made a career of kind of taking cheap shots at people or being super snarky and then they publish a book and they have to face like the reality of rejection and difficulty and criticism and they fucking can't handle it. It's just like, ooh, tough, tough, tough rub on that one. Yeah, it's like, you should really make sure that you can take it if you're going to dish it out. And I don't have a lot of time for those folks. I also, I think early on went looking for feedback and would obsess over the negative stuff. And I've had all the social apps deleted from my phone for months now. I don't go looking for that anymore. I don't want to speak for everybody else, but if I go on, let's say Twitter and I'm looking at replies, I could see 99 replies that are incredibly life affirming and supportive and one that's just like, you're a shirt, you're a bald charlatan and you should crawl back into the hole you came from, you know, hashtag 4Hour Donkey or whatever. And I'd be like, oh God, that fucking guy. Like that would bother me for, you know, an hour. It's just such a piss poor use of energy. And to come back to productivity just briefly, I think a lot more about energy management these days than time management. Certainly, like energy. It doesn't matter how much time you have if you don't have the energetic Resources to apply to projects within those windows of time. So anything that. And look, I'm not getting any younger, right? It's like. It's like energy. Energy is at a premium for me and I expect that's going to continue to be the case. So, yeah, I don't. I solicit feedback actively from people I respect who I know are going to be straight shooters. Right. So that could be in the case of some of my writing or other things like Brian Koppelman, the. The co creator of Billions, who co wrote Rounders and many, many, many other movies. Or it could be Seth Godin or like people who I know don't give a flying about making me feel good for the sake of making me feel good if. If I'm asking them for feedback. Right. Sorry if this. I don't know. Am I allowed to curse on this show? I should have asked.

Why not?

Okay, all right.

I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. If this is family programming. You can put a warning. Well, but the first person to ever.

Drop the F word on my podcast was Margaret Atwood. So I figured you're in good company.

I mean, seriously, if that can be the association that people have, me and Margaret Atwood, then perfect. Perfect.

Okay. Yeah, that is good company to be in. You want me to tell you the story of how that came to be?

Yeah.

Okay. So I was interviewing Margaret Atwood for this podcast and I asked her about her method of writing. Her technique. Was she writing in a fountain pen on parchment or was she using a MacBook and Word? And so she explained it and I said, so, you know, what's your relationship with editors? And she said, well, basically I write my book and I seek feedback from people who are like the characters in my book. And then she says, so, guy, I once wrote a book and there was this young male, and I sent him the manuscript and he said, margaret, we don't say what in fuck. We say what the fuck. So that's why I changed my manuscript. Can it get any better than that?

That's great. That's really good.

Okay, so I'm. A few lighter, quicker questions. So your favorite books?

Favorite books? Dune Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. Zorba the Greek. Those would be a few. Okay.

I don't see any nonfiction in there. Or Seneca, I guess. I mean, I don't see the effect of. Or I don't see, you know, innovative dilemma.

The effective executive I would put up there as well. Yeah, I read a lot, so it's sort of. There's a recency binds as far as fiction. Little Big Little comma Big would be very, very high up there. Hard to read, but very, very good book in terms of nonfiction. The Effective Executive, certainly the Seneca letters that I mentioned, you can find it in public domain. It's the Moral Letters to Lucilius or Lucilius, depending on how you want to pronounce it. I've read so much nonfiction in my life. I mean, the 8020 principle by Richard Koch. Koch, I think, is excellent.

Are you a Bob Tordini fan?

I am, Yeah, I am. I haven't. I read his stuff very, very, very early in my entrepreneurial journey and I found it really helpful for thinking about ad copy and positioning and stuff like that. I am a fan of his, for sure. Favorite podcasts, favorite podcasts, favorite podcasts. Hardcore history is probably at the very top of the list. So Dan Carlin's hardcore history start with the Wrath of Khan, which is Genghis Khan, the story of otherwise known as Genghis Khan. It's just tremendous. I mean, the fact that Dan produces a podcast, one episode every few months that is as popular as it is is so gratifying and life affirming to me because we are moving in a direction right now where it's like everything should be true crime. Everything should be this, like, listen to the market, right? It's listen to the market. And that grosses me out because it's just going to become what we see everywhere else. I mean, you're going to have these a handful of genres that get a lot of clicks and listens. And no one in their right mind would have ever if Dan Carlin came to one of the big companies now and said, this is the show I'm thinking about doing, right? Like four hour episodes in multiple part series and I'll put out one every few months. No one would have said yes. And I would say that's top of my list for sure.

What's your tech setup?

My tech setup, pretty, pretty basic. MacBook Pro, a roost laptop stand normally and then Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad or mouse. That's it. I keep it basic.

Is that a yeti mic?

This is not. I'm used to saying ATR 2100, but it's a newer model. This is an Audio Technica ATR100X, I want to say, which is a USB C mic and I use this for everything.

And is this how you would conduct your podcast interview, same setup?

Yep, it's exactly what I would do. And Yeah, I don't have a studio. I have the back of a restaurant or an attic or an airplane lobby or airport lobby or, you know, I'm very expedient about the whole thing.

What do you want your epitaph to say?

Epitaph, you know, teacher who created students better than he was. Probably something like that. Okay.

I love it. I love it. What is your procedure in the morning?

My procedure. Procedure in the morning is right now. It sometimes changes, but right now I wake up, I sync my Oura ring with my phone to look at my sleep data. Then I use a device called Corsense Corsense, which is the hardware to take another HRV heart rate variability reading using an app called Elite hrv. So I'm tracking both of those, doing a bunch of heart rate stuff right now. Then go downstairs, I heat water to 180 degrees and make my tea, which this morning was actually some yerba mate, powdered yerba mate. So instantized. Plus layered superfood creamer, unsweetened. So it's sort of like powdered coconut oil, basically, or coconut milk. And gives you some mcts to keep your brain doing something functional. And put that in a yeti. In a yeti rumbler, which will keep it. I think it's a rumbler. Some Rambler maybe, which will keep it hot for a couple hours. Then I sit And I do 20 minutes of. I do 20 minutes of breathing. So I do 20 minutes of breath work, which is using an app called Breathe, which is pretty, pretty or might be awesome breathing. Something very basic. It's a circle that expands and contracts, and I do breath work for 20 minutes, and then I'm off to the races. I'll usually take a walk outside with my poosh as well. Get my dog right next to me now, as we record also.

So clearly you don't wake up and immediately start checking email. And you said you deleted all your social media.

Yeah, I got rid of all my social on my phone, so I definitely don't check social on the phone.

So you're way ahead of the social dilemma if you saw that movie yet.

I've actually just watched. I just watched about 3/4 of it last night. Yeah, scary. What did you think? Yeah, yeah, I'm only three quarters into it. I thought it was good. I've. I've interviewed Tristan Harris and I'm aware, acutely aware of a lot of the issues. I think I'm only three quarters of the way into it. So it paints a dark picture, certainly. And it is. Yeah. Paints A dark picture. And yeah, I mean, if you think you're going to outgun, if you think you're going to outgun billions of dollars and teams of hundreds of data scientists and engineers who are trying to capture your attention, you're really bringing a knife to a gunfight.

So you literally. I know I'm returning to this stuff. You literally. You have no social media apps on your phone.

I deleted all of them. Facebook is on here, but I don't use it. It's been asking me to update. I have no. Let me just take a look. Yeah, I don't have any social media apps on my phone, which is great also because if friends send me, which happens all the time, friends will send me links to stuff on social and I'll go to it and say on Instagram, it'll prompt you to download the app and you can basically only go in one layer before it blocks you. Right. You can't scroll and go to a bunch of photos. It won't let you engage in that behavior. It'll force you to download the app. And I'm not going to download the app. So it's very self regulating in that way, which is great. And I'll just tell you, I want to add something to that, which is I've not had social on my phone for four months. Yeah, three or four months.

Yeah.

No downside that I'm aware of. Like my, my life has continued. I'm not dead. I haven't lost all my friends. Like things, Things are great. So I, I've been convinced that it is. I don't have a social media deficiency. No blood tests have turned up anything funny.

So your downloads are not down or anything like that.

Everything's good. It's going to be the biggest month. I think this month will probably be the biggest month in the history of the podcast. So no, nothing is. Nothing's down.

Yeah, if that's what it takes, I'm going to quit social media too. I'd be happy to do that.

So, yeah, I think it's. Everyone's pissing in the pool. It's not very much fun anymore, social media.

I mean, we're both quote, unquote influencers, right? And people have this false belief that if I say go buy my book or if I say go buy Tim's book, if I say go buy, I don't know, lipstick. All of a sudden millions of people buy lipstick books or whatever. I wish that were tr. Not so true anymore. Maybe it's true for you.

It's not true. For me, no, I think social is very overvalued. Unless that's your career, right, where you're an Instagram influencer and you get paid whatever, 70, 100 grand per promotional post, which is. Which happens right then. Fantastic. I mean, I remember I spoke to this guy who had a multimillion dollar business built on Facebook pages, and I asked him what it felt like and he said, I feel like I have the most profitable McDonald's on the world built on top of an active volcano. And what he meant by that was, one algorithm change and you're roadkill. Your entire business is predicated on organic reach that could be removed at any time. Wouldn't let me sleep well at night. So I'd say email list. Build your email list, folks. That's the way to go.

That's good advice. Going a little bit deeper in podcasting. A lot of podcasters listen to my podcasts and I would like to know the answer to this question. So how do you grow a podcast?

I will give some answers, but I don't want to create the mistaken impression that I know exactly how the podcast has grown. But I would say there are a few things that come to mind. Number one is pick a format that is dead simple. Pick a format that you are confident you can do 100 episodes of before you quit. Because the podcasting elephant graveyard is full of three to five episode podcasts where Jimmy and Wisconsin decides that he's going to make the next this American Life and dies under the crushing weight of trying to build something that is like a lot of things, it's so elegant and beautiful in the listening experience that you think it might be beautiful and elegant in the editing process, and that's just not true. You go to the end of this American Life and listen to the credits. Like, unless you have an army of people to help you, don't try to be this American wife. So figuring out something that makes you excited, figure out a subject matter that also gives you some breadth. So format and subject matter simplicity and format and some degree of breadth in options for subject matter I think is really important. Right? If I had started the four hour Workweek podcast. Oh, my options for interview subjects, my options, they're really narrow. And there's something to be said for that, right? So a counter argument would be, hey, look at, say, the bigger pockets, guys who are really, really good. And you might niche into real estate and go an inch wide and like a thousand miles deep. That's an alternate strategy. But you have to pick a strategy that isn't just successful for podcasts in some abstract general way that. But it is successful and sustainable for you. So if you have the perfect strategy because you've done the market research and you're like, what the market needs is a podcast isolated on dyslexic pets. You don't give a shit about dyslexic pets. It doesn't matter what the market says. You're never going to make it because there are people like me or like you who actually enjoy what they're doing. And they're like, yeah, I could do this forever. I could do two of these a week forever. And you're just, you're not going to beat somebody who has that type of staying power and enthusiasm, which is very easy to detect or not detect. So those would be two. The third would be, at least, as far as I'm concerned, optimize for interesting content and compelling content, not celebrity guests. And this might seem counterintuitive because there are people who've taken the opposite approach. And you might say, hold on a second, though, like, look at Joe Rogan and look at Dax Shepard. And like, having these huge guests on helps them. And my answer be like, my answer would be, yes, it helps them. And they are native to that environment. These are people, they know, they live in that world. So it is both sustainable and interesting for them. But for people who are not in the LA or entertainment ecosystem to try to get celebrities, it is massively time consuming. It is possible. It can happen, but it takes forever. And even, even for me to get some of these major celebrities on the podcast. I mean, you're talking about a year or two just to get it done. Yeah, because who takes a year? I'm not gonna mention, I'm not gonna mention names, but, like, multiple guests have taken that long because they have, they have managers, they have agents, they have publicists, and then they have lawyers. And you got to deal oftentimes with every single one of those people. And they're just. And they are. All those people want to stick their thumbprints on everything to show how much hard work they're doing on behalf of their client who's paying them $20,000 retainer a month or whatever it is. It's exhausting. And some of those interviews turn out really well. But if you're just getting started, you're going to have. Or forget about just getting started. If you have a small operation that is a lot of cycles and it's expensive. Right. I mean, I spend money on lawyers because they're like, yeah, we're going to eviscerate your release. And I'm like, this is a standard release. Like, we need this so that we're not exposed from a liability perspective. And, like, that could take forever. So just to prove a point real quick, so if you look at my. If you look at my top 50 episodes, I would say half of them are names in terms of guests most people would not recognize. Still, even in audio. This is certainly true in text, but even in audio, if the episode is really good and you as the host, are excited about can travel, it doesn't have to be somebody super famous.

I think the most popular episode I've had is Stephen Wolfram, who is a physicist. And I would have never, ever, you know, I thought it would be Jane Goodall or someone who's dropped dead famous. By the way, let the record show that I got you Jane goodall in, like, 24 hours, right? I didn't need two years.

You did. I appreciate that. I appreciate that very much.

It was my pleasure.

Yeah. Very kind intro. She was great, and she'd been on my list for a long time, and a lot of it also. Let me just. This actually brings up another thing which is part of the reason that worked is that she had a movie coming out like two or three weeks later, Right. So don't chase guests who are not in their promotional cycle if that's how they operate. There are some people who will be on a podcast anytime if it's of interest to them. There are many, many other people who will not do any media whatsoever unless they are going into a promotional cycle where they're going to. They're going to do media. And so don't bang your head against a wall trying to get someone on your show if they're just off the playing field, which is going to be true for a lot of folks.

A couple weeks ago, I interviewed a reporter from the New York Times named Dionne Searcy, and she's the one who went to West Africa and did the whole Boko Haram. I mean, my God, the story she had. I asked her for tips about conducting great interviews, and she said, one thing you should always do is at the end of the interview, you ask your subject. Is there anything that I should have asked you?

Okay, so, yeah.

So, Tim, I'm asking you that now. Is there anything that I should have.

Asked you that I didn't? Is there anything that you should have asked me? I mean, should is a. Should is a strong word. I mean, if, If. If I were to throw a question at myself, the first thing that came to mind was like, what do you care more about now that you cared about, less about or not at all about, say when you wrote the four Hour Work Week. And the answer could be, that's a great question. The answer could be the opposite too. Like what do you care less about? Right. But in terms of caring more about, I would just say psychological and emotional health. So being fit, not just financially, not just physically, not just cognitively in terms of learning capacity, but really having an awareness of the flow of your emotions and not compartmentalizing, so having the fluency with feelings so that you can allow things to flow through you, and first and foremost, having some degree of self acceptance and self love, which I didn't have for decades. I was just a competitor and that seemed self indulgent and ended up being very destructive to have that lens. So books like radical acceptance practices like Mindfulness through, let's say the Waking up app with Sam Harris, talking to professionals and doing training like heart rate variability training, to be aware of when my system is overreacting because of a lot of childhood experiences that wired me to be hyper reactive. All of that for me has ended up being the foundational piece upon which everything else can be built. And you can avoid that for a long time, but you can't avoid it forever. And if you do try to avoid it forever, I think you end up being very, in the best cases, professionally successful, but personally unfulfilled and often miserable.

Would you say that this. Aha. That you have about this kind of wellness if a skeptic said, well, yeah, if I were Tim Ferriss and I had the world's most popular podcast and I was printing money, yeah, I could be thinking about wellness and mindfulness in my heart rate. But did this cause you to be successful or once you were successful, then you had the luxury of being able to focus on this?

Yeah, it's impossible to say. I think that certainly my drive to compete at all costs has, has helped a lot of the professional successes to manifest financially. But I also know people who never had that demon on their back who have more money than I do. So I don't think it's. I so right. I don't think it's a prerequisite. I don't think being a masochist and, and priding yourself on how much pain you can tolerate is a prerequisite because there are so many counterexamples of people I know who don't have that kind of shadow behind them. At all times. So I don't think so. And I would say also that if you look at my experience, let's just say in the last five or six years when I've taken this very seriously. Granted, one could argue that I'd already hit kind of escape velocity because I had successful books and everything else, but in the last five or six years, I've done more than I could have imagined. Even with my previous pride and pain tolerance and work capacity and ability to focus. Only since I've begun to accept these parts of myself that I divorced, people can look up ifs, which is parts, work, internal family systems, stuff like that. Only since I started paying attention to these things have all of these other pieces fallen into place where I am achieving more with more ease. That didn't happen until five or six years ago, and it may not be totally causal, but it's completely correlated with doing this type of work myself. So that may be a dissatisfying answer, but I think it's very helpful. I think it's very helpful because I've also seen friends who beat the shit out of themselves all the time and view that as their secret to success, who have actually agreed to experiment with this stuff and figure out that there are gears between park and sixth gear, right? Like, they can actually use the rest of the transmission. And none of them have complained about losing their edge professionally. They're. They're. They're just. They're no longer swinging at every pitch. That's exhausting. Like, swimming at every pitch, like it's going to be a home run and missing 90% of them, but swinging as hard as you can, that's exhausting. So I feel. I feel good. I feel good about it. Yeah. I think that it can help with everything else.

To use a surfing analogy, you don't paddle for every wave.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

I hope you found Tim's interview as remarkable, insightful, and funny as I did. He is truly one of a kind. I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. My thanks to Peg Fitzpatrick and Jeff C. Who are also each one of a kind. Until the next episode. Remember to wash your hands, maintain a good distance from other people, don't go into crowded restaurants and bars, wear a mask, and trust in Tony Fauci. It's so hard to get subscribers. I don't want any of you getting sick and dying. Mahalo and aloha. This episode of Remarkable People is brought to you by Remarkable, the Paper Tablet company. This is remarkable people.