The Blueprint for living a Dope Life | Tim Ferriss

Shaan Puri

We have a bunch of friends — I'm not going to name names — but they've already earned the last dollar they will ever spend in their life. Now they're trading great hours for useless dollars, which is such a wake-up call of a bad trade to make. Once you have the power to get whatever it is that you want, the priority shifts to wanting the **right shit**.

Sam Parr

"Sean, do you want to kick things off?"

Shaan Puri

Yeah, where to start. It's so funny — I did a podcast with **Tim**, I don't know, last year or something like that, and I hyper‑prepared for it because I was like, "Oh my God, it's **Tim Ferriss**. This is the guy. This is the reason I did a podcast in the first place. I wanted to be a Tim Ferriss." That was a... that was a... that was part of

Sam Parr

The *North Star* this time I had.

Shaan Puri

The exact opposite opinion. I was like, I don't have any agenda coming into this, meaning I just want to know "what's up." I want to know what's new, what's exciting, what are you nerding out about. I just kind of want to hear what's going on—what is **Tim Ferriss** up to nowadays? I have your game here, and actually you told me about this even when we were doing that last podcast. You said, "I just spent a few days with one of the world's best game designers." I didn't realize that was our mutual friend **Elon**. And yeah, he's the man. He came on this podcast here recently—he's the man. So you went and did a—you went and made a game with him. Maybe just, I don't know, let's start there: why'd you—why'd you make a game?

Tim Ferriss

Yeah — two years in the making, believe it or not. I grew up with Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). I still have all my original modules. I played a lot of video games, and as I was looking at what to potentially experiment with next — because every few years I try something that's very much off-menu or unrelated to what I'm currently doing — there was the first book, then angel investing as a way into identity diversification so I wouldn't get pigeonholed in one place as a business author, and then the podcast after *The 4-Hour Chef*. There have been a number of other examples; some work out, some don't. In the case of the game, this came about pretty naturally. I was kinda late to therapy in life, but better late than never, I guess. When people do a lot of therapy, have psychedelic experiences, or just a couple of glasses of wine with friends, what comes up a lot is: “I take stuff so seriously, it's so heavy, I'm constantly doing A, B, or C — I just need more play.” If I look back at the books I've written, there's a serious tinge to them — productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, learning. But I feel like analog, getting off screens, and play are more important than ever. Trying to find something lighter than Dungeons & Dragons seemed like a fun challenge. I love Elan Lee. The guy is such a polymath of epic proportions. He worked on the first Xbox, on *Halo*, and has created entire genres of gaming. He hasn't just had one hit — he has a track record of hit after hit with tabletop games. He's a sweet, soulful, hilarious guy. To develop a friendship with him felt right. If I'm choosing projects — as I usually do — based on the skills I'll develop, the knowledge I'll gain, and the relationships I'll build that could translate outside that project, then because a lot of projects are going to fail, I'm trying to set things up so you “win even if you lose.” This seemed like a very good bet. It's something that's near and dear to me and something I want more of in my life. If you're going to make a game, you have to play a lot of games, so it was also a way to force myself off laptops and phones, spend time with friends, and just play. And here we are: it's landing in about 8,000 retail locations — Walmart, Target, everywhere. It was exclusive to Walmart for a few months and has been a best seller. There are 300 million+ social views of gameplay, which is nuts. We'll see what happens next.

Sam Parr

By the way, in 2014 you had a guy working with you named **Charlie Hone** that I've talked to a little bit. Charlie's really cool. Yeah, Charlie's great, and I remember he wrote a blog post on play. Yeah.

Shaan Puri

"Do you remember that? Totally."

Tim Ferriss

I do. I *absolutely* do.

Sam Parr

Yeah. In the whole blog post I was like, "These guys are idiots. They don't know how to have fun. You can't just go out and play." Then, as I've gotten older and I take things way more seriously... it's very strange that I have empathy for that now. I feel like, "Oh my God, I need to go out and have fun." Not everything needs to make money or have a purpose, or be an ice plunge that helps me optimize my morning. I just need to do stuff just because it's fun. That's what I used to do.

Tim Ferriss

Oh, totally. And it's— I mean, I shouldn't say *all*, but a lot of the socially reinforced drivers and behaviors are around this. They're orbiting around this emotional valence of taking things seriously. There's a place for that; there are a lot of places for that. But what I've also realized is if you're serious all the time, you're going to burn out, implode, or just wear yourself out before you get the truly serious stuff done. Right now I'm dealing with family medical crises that I don't want to get into, but there's a bunch of hairy shit going on. Obviously the state of the world is... pretty exciting, to put it one way. Having some type of recreation—*play for play's sake*—with social interaction doesn't have to be a game. It doesn't have to be a card game or a tabletop game; it could be playing tennis, watching UFC with your friends— it doesn't really matter. I think, as a psychological release valve and as a way to recharge your batteries so that you can get back into the fray fully charged and resilient, it's **super, super, super important**. For all those reasons, and frankly, it's like—look, I want to have a family; that's my top priority. There are certain things you want to practice before you need to have them. I feel like getting back into exploring some of the things that made me so happy and gave me so much joy as a kid makes sense. The older I get, the more I realize how reliable a lot of that stuff is. I wanted to be a comic-book penciler forever, and just getting into digital painting on an iPad and walking through some tutorials on YouTube with Procreate—it's like, "Oh wow, how did I forget about this? This is just so nourishing for me."

Shaan Puri

"Is this going to be, like, a *good moneymaker* for you? Is it a *good business decision* in addition to being a fun, creative life quest—a creative *side quest* you went on?"

Tim Ferriss

I think it could be, if it's successful: a nice little annuity that rolls in and is reasonably passive — if it hits *escape velocity*. If I were just trying to make money, this is not the way to do it. A low-priced physical product that is shipped from overseas, particularly with tariffs and everything, is not how you're going to get rich. I would put this kind of thing in the same category as streaming music on Spotify or writing books.

Sam Parr

Do you care about *making money*? Are you *motivated for more*?

Tim Ferriss

Not really.

Sam Parr

What did that do? Do you remember when that happened, where you're like, "My cup is full"? </FormattedResponse>

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, it was probably when I had my *first one or two real startup exits*.

Shaan Puri

Which was what? That's Shopify. What was the—where were... </FormattedResponse>

Tim Ferriss

There were a bunch. The first few hits that were meaningful were like **Shopify** and **Uber**, both of which were sizable, right? For me, it's not like—look, I'm not going to be subsidizing a presidential campaign or buying a mega yacht, but I don't want to do any of those things. Are you? </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Are you comfortable saying publicly a number where you're like, "You know, I don't—I'm not motivated by more"? 'Cause a lot of people will listen to this pod and they're like, "When will I ever feel like that?" I'll give you an easy pass if you don't want to say that number.

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, I don't want to say it. What I will say is that the target number for most people will move, and I think that's both unsurprising and dangerous. A lot of my friends were like, "Once I have $5,000,000 I'm going to create a woodworking shop in Oregon and just do the things I really enjoy doing." Then they get to five, and it goes to ten, then it goes to fifty, then to a hundred — it just keeps going. Part of that is because they haven't developed other gears and other interests. The only thing they know how to do well, where they feel confident, and what they have their self-worth wrapped up in is putting points on the scoreboard in the form of money. That's why I think **identity diversification** and trying other things where you can feel good about yourself in sharp progress is important. Whether that's piano, archery, or any number of other things — doing completely off-menu, weird stuff like making a board game or a card game — it also acts as insurance against having a fixed-gear cycle, a fixed-gear psychology. That is a risky, risky place to be. For me, I think I'm maybe fortunate in that I was raised in a family that didn't have a lot of money. We were always looking for interesting adventures that didn't cost very much. As I've gotten older, when I block out, say, a week to do stuff with my friends — these are my very old friends in some cases — some of them do not have or make much money, and that's totally fine. I mean, I pay for stuff in some cases, not always, but the stuff that we actually want to do together is some type of activity. It's doing wilderness training in the Rockies, which I'm doing in two weeks. It's going on a ski trip. It doesn't have to be to Niseko in Japan — you can go to Colorado, Utah, whatever. It doesn't need to be crazy. Or it could be backcountry skiing where you're touring, in which case you have many more options. It does not have to be expensive. The stuff that we talk about in the WhatsApp groups that started for an event and are still active are always some activity like that. The stuff that I spend my money on is stuff like that. I'm not afraid to spend money — don't think money is evil. I think it's a great tool. But it took me a while to psychologically get comfortable with a bunch of other gears. It wasn't the number, right? Like, I passed my number and I felt like I needed more. I didn't have a fixed number, but I felt like I needed more to have some degree of psychological safety and then everything would be okay, and then my problems would go away. Then you realize that's bullshit. Money solves money problems — you still have plenty of work to do.

Sam Parr

Alright. I read a ton—almost a book a week. The reason I read so much is because my philosophy toward reading is that I want to see what works for the winners I love and what strategies they use. I also want to see what mistakes they made, what common flaws they shared, and then avoid those mistakes. **HubSpot** asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in 2025, so I did. I listed out **seven books** that made a meaningful difference and explained the impact each had on me and the actions I took because of them. I also described my particular ways of reading—I'm pretty strategic about how I read, how I read so much, and how I remember what I read. I put this together in a very simple guide: **seven books** that had a huge impact on my life. You can scan the QR code below if you want to read it, or there’s a link in the description—just click it and you’ll see the guide I made. Have you guys read that? I think **Bloomberg** has a great article where they had ultra-high-net-worth bankers survey their clients. It was fairly consistent: from $50,000 in net worth all the way up to $50,000,000, the answer to the question > "When do you think you're going to have enough?" was almost always about two times what they currently have. For example: - "If you have $50,000, you think, 'When I have $100,000 I'll be able to breathe.'" - "If you have $1,000,000, you think, 'When I have $2,000,000 I can breathe.'"

Tim Ferriss

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

So when I had heard that, I was like, "Yeah, that makes sense. Relatable — I've been there." I could see that, but it also left me defeated. I was like, "Okay, so then what is there? Is there simply no answer? Is that the right answer?" I think what Tim is saying is kind of where I've landed: for most people it's an *imagination problem*. They haven't spent the time to think about what else they want in life and, therefore, they just move the goalpost a little further on the "money game" or the "success game" that they are super familiar with. So it's not even a question of hitting a benchmark. It's simply that you have not put sufficient resources into thinking about the other things that will give you that same sense of purpose, progress, achievement, and fulfillment.

Sam Parr

But what framework, Sean, do you use? I mean... I struggle with that. I'm like, "Well, I don't know what to do — I've been doing this."

Tim Ferriss

I've got one. I've got one. Okay — that's maybe a little less visible, which is the **social traps involved with making more money**, and here's what I mean by that. As people make more money, sometimes they end up hanging out with people who have more money. A lot of humans, if they have enough wherewithal to make like $100k a year, want to make $200k a year. Now they start hanging out with people who make $250k a year. Those people have new toys, new goals, more ambitious — *fill in the blank* — and it becomes this social relative-wealth competition. I've seen this over and over again. People kind of "trade up" in a sense. They start spending more and more time in wealthier circles and now people are comparing which jets they have and, "Oh really, you have that place in [state]?" — "Oh yeah, well if you're ever interested, I think there might be one lot left at the Yellowstone Club," or whatever. There's a social risk of having people who are at your level of wealth or above, because the natural inclination is going to be to **roll uphill**. For that reason, I try to spend a lot of time around people — not just old friends. Some people say, "Where I grew up, we diverged so far in our paths I don't have those friendships anymore." That's fine. But I spend time with some of the world's best *fill in the blank* — archers, swimmers, super-high-level piano players — who make next to no money but whom you can respect really, really deeply. They're fun to spend time with, they often seem to have great lives, and in many instances they're more content than the rich people who are chasing the next phantom, whatever that happens to be. There are well-adjusted, awesome people with wealth who don't suffer from this "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality, but they are actually very few in my experience. So the **social piece** is really important: who are you spending time with? If they're all at your level of income, net worth, or higher, the very natural, evolved instinct is going to be to roll uphill into a more and more expensive and money-dependent path.

Sam Parr

Yeah, what's your answer to that, **Sean**? Do you have a framework or anything to say about it?

Shaan Puri

Well, first was kind of the *wake-up call*, right? At the beginning of my career—in my twenties—I didn't even have the ability to get what I wanted. Regardless of what I wanted, I lacked the skills. I was too feeble, too passive, too dumb, too unskilled. I didn't have the... hustle. I didn't have the marketing chops. I didn't know how to even get what I wanted. The first part of my career was just figuring out how to get what you want. I started with a very simple want: "I wanted to be successful. I wanted to make money. I wanted to be financially independent." I looked around and saw that most people were on a bit of a *financial treadmill*. They were never going to make enough to be financially free—to have total freedom to choose what they wanted. They seemed to dread going to work and didn't enjoy what they were doing, so they couldn't get out and they didn't like where they were. Then you saw a few people who made a lot of money but didn't really like the way they had to make it—bankers, consultants, and others whose jobs maybe involved a lot of travel or were low on creativity. But they were paid really well. And then there was the lucky few who seemed to have both: they were making gobs of money doing creative work they loved. They forgot what day of the week it was because they were so excited to get up and work on their projects. I thought, "Okay, cool—that's the first thing to want." Then, when I got to that...

Shaan Puri

Then I realized, and looked around me — you and a bunch of our mutual friends, Sam — and I realized that some people never went back and asked the question: *What do I want now?* Maybe that was the right thing to want when I was 20. It was my best idea then. But when I turned 30, that wasn't the best idea anymore. We have a bunch of friends — not gonna name names — who just keep putting points up on the scoreboard. They've already earned the last dollar they will ever spend in their life, and so now they're trading great hours for useless dollars. It's such a wake-up call of a bad trade to make. You know, at least they have fun doing it. They do feel a sense of power, autonomy, and creativity in making it happen. But it became pretty clear that once you have the power to get whatever it is that you want — once you believe in yourself to be able to make it happen — the priority shifts to *wanting the right shit*. What do you actually want? I looked at myself and thought, "Cool — my bank account got fat, but then so did I." So this became a new thing to want. I want to not be embarrassed at how I look. I want to feel proud of myself for having self-control and for breaking some of these terrible habits that are going to cut my life short and make me immobile as I get older. That became something to want. Why did I pick the piano this year? Because I was like, I don't know — what are the real joys that make me happy? I love playing basketball. I love sport. Another thing that people really can get lost in, get into a flow state, and truly enjoy themselves is music. One option is to go to a bunch of concerts, but I have three little kids, so that's probably not in the cards for me this year. What if I played music? What if I made a little dad garage band? That seems like fun. I stole a word from Tim on this. I think he was talking to Biology, and he called him "post-economic." I don't know, Tim — I don't think you had ever used that before; at least I hadn't heard anyone use that before. Did you make...?

Sam Parr

That up.

Tim Ferriss

"No, I didn't make it up. I heard it from somebody in Silicon Valley."

Shaan Puri

Oh, we—totally. From you, and sort of almost like as a joke. It's just like a cool... it's like people who, instead of being, you know, investors, they're *capital allocators*. Or, like, you know, the aioli versus mayo. So I was like, "post-economic is a great way to say I'm rich." </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

We had an MFM T-shirt that said "post economic."

Shaan Puri

So, I *kinda* laughed about it.

Tim Ferriss

It's **people-centric** versus **fucking crazy**. Yeah, right. So...

Shaan Puri

Then I was like, well, what does that actually mean? The definition isn't that you have all the money you ever want. It's that you no longer need to make decisions based on money as the primary motivator — which is how I had made a lot of decisions. So, Sam, to answer your question: I think it's all of that. It's getting to the point of realizing that the most important question now is, *what are the right things to want?* Realizing that the decider of what to want isn't money anymore. Maybe that was right when I was in my twenties; maybe it was wrong. But at least it's no longer necessary, and you can now pick a new word. Mine is *fun*. I want to do the things that I enjoy — the act of doing them, not doing them for some future payoff. I told you this: piano is a great example. I thought, "Oh man, it's so cool to be able to play this song," and then I realized nobody gives a shit if you can play the piano. If anyone could play the piano, they just sort of nod like, "Oh, you can play the piano — cool," and they've moved on. They don't want to sit there and listen to a seven-minute Beethoven piece; they don't care about any of that. So you literally can't show it off even if you wanted to. It's only fun because it's really fun to play. It's a great example — pick things that are in that category. The other trick, Sam, is writing it out. When you write, you force a level of honesty in yourself, if you do it right. If you write something that doesn't feel true, it stands out as soon as you put it down on paper, and then you can edit it. I find that most people do not edit their thoughts very much. They're only the author; they're rarely the editor. I take most of the things I think and do as first drafts that need a really great editor to come back and try to make them good, so I try to edit them. I have a post on Medium — I don't use Medium anymore — but I wrote "What I Want Out of Life, Age 28." It was a stream-of-consciousness ramble, but I wrote that like I kind of wrote that every year. In the post I wrote that I want to rewrite it every year so I can see myself evolving and figure out what I actually want out of life. I think being intentional in that way has helped.

Sam Parr

"Trading great hours for useless dollars."

Tim Ferriss

That's great. That's cool.

Shaan Puri

"Yeah, Tim — you said this on the last pod. You go, 'I've been around. I've met enough wealthy people to know *it's like food*.' You know, you could be starving; you can eat until you're full, you can eat until you're stuffed, you can eat until you make yourself sick. You know, it's not — money isn't the answer; it's sort of obvious once you say it like that."

Tim Ferriss

Yeah — let me just riff on that too. As you were mentioning how you think about this and approach it, a couple things popped to mind. I've seen dozens, and probably 100+ people, go from not having money to having more money than they'll ever need. I've also seen people do well — they don't have to be millionaires, but they've done really well for themselves. *They have enough.* The first thing I would say is, much like you hear: **"It's the economy, stupid."**

Shaan Puri

I see it.

Tim Ferriss

"Duh — it's the economy, stupid." I think it's *the relationship, stupid*. Let me explain what I mean by that. If you want to be — everybody wants to be happy. That's a very old, well-defined term, oftentimes, but it's like: try to spend your time around happy people. That's it. I mean, sounds so dumb and obvious, but it took me a while to figure this out. It's the most reliable way to make yourself happier, more upbeat: spend time around default upbeat people. It works all the time. Similarly, if you don't want to complain, don't spend time around people who complain. If you want to be around people — if you want to make a lot of money, sure, you can spend time around people who make a lot of money, but those are often not the same people. For me, when I'm booking these trips every year, I'm blocking out time to be with those types of people because my defaults historically are hypervigilant, super focused, obsessed with detail. A lot of humans don't love the overwhelming uncertainty of the world, so I like to exert control on something to feel like I have a toehold. If I can't find anything else, it's probably going to be investing, making money — who knows, right? For lack of a better option. So, blocking out that time — it's *the relationship, stupid.* If you want to have a low-conflict life, spend time around low-conflict people.

Sam Parr

Have you, because of your job, experienced this? Maybe only a bit, but because of your job you're able to meet people. You have the *best kind of fame*: you're still mainstream-famous, but the famous people—the cool people, the experts—like you. They love you, which is really neat. Who would you put in your top three of your *best buddies* from your podcast?

Tim Ferriss

Oh, good question. Well, I mean, just because it's top of mind: **Alon Lee**, honestly — we've become *super close*, and that is hard for me as an adult. I've always been very guarded and slow to trust. Even when I was in college, I didn't make a lot of friends; I was very hesitant. So the fact that we gelled so well and have become really close is just awesome. If you had asked me, like, "Do you think you're going to make any super-close friends?" — if you had a parking lot of 20 spots for your absolute closest friends in the world, is anyone new going to potentially take one of those spots? I'm like... absolutely no way. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

So **Alon** was on the pod—our pod—probably six months ago. If you're listening to this, go back and listen to Alon. He's the man.

Tim Ferriss

He's awesome, so he would be one. I would say there are a lot of friends with whom I've just deepened relationships, and the podcast has been a *pretext* to just hang out. In person, we'll have dinner the night before, hang out, do a podcast, but there's all of this social interaction around it. That's true for a lot of my friends. I mean, I will use the podcast just as a way to ensure that two busy friends actually remain friends.

Sam Parr

**"Who's on your list?"**

Tim Ferriss

Oh, there's so many. I mean, **Josh Waitzkin** would be one. People don't know who he is; they should check him out — an absolute master class in just about every type of skill acquisition. The people who come to mind are someone like **Scott Belsky**, maybe having **Chase Jarvis** and **Kevin Rose** doing the *Random Show* on a regular basis. That's this format where we just catch up — kinda like we're catching up right now — talking about what's new, what's going on, what's on our minds, new technology, whatever we've come across. Doing that regularly with Kevin is a foundational way we actually keep connected in real time. I probably text with Kevin every other day, but it's not the same. It is not the same as sitting in person or even on video and having a long-form conversation. I'd say I used the podcast for that. **Rick Rubin**'s first long-form podcast ever was on my podcast; we did it in his sauna at **Shangri-La** before it burned down in **Malibu**. I had met him prior to that a bunch, and we became pretty close. We're not in touch all the time, but we're definitely friendly. People like **Laird Hamilton**, the surfer, and **Gabby Reece** — I'm just thinking of Malibu now; the list is really, really long. If you look at the people I initially met during the launch of *The 4-Hour Workweek*, I try — I'm borrowing from **Naval Ravikant** here — but it's like he says, "If you're not going to work with someone for a lifetime, don't work with them for five minutes," or something like that. I'd trust Naval to actually stick to that. I think mine is a little softer around the edges. It's like: if you can't see yourself spending real time with someone for five years, it doesn't have to be personal — it could be professional or a combination. Don't spend five hours with that person or five weeks with that person. There are going to be exceptions, of course, that you have to make just to make life work, but I really try to select my guests that way when possible.

Shaan Puri

You also—one of the things you just said: you do the podcast, but you get dinner the night before, you hang out, maybe you work out together, or you go for a hike—whatever those types of things. One of the great, I think, hacks is you had this term "lifestyle design," but there's sort of like "lifestyle sampling," because when you go hang out with somebody, you go into their world for a little bit. </FormattedResponse>

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, totally.

Shaan Puri

You could see, like—yeah—what are they thinking about all the time? What do they do? How do they interact with their family? What is their day-to-day like? I think, from the outside, it's pretty easy to see what somebody's accomplished after, like, a ten‑year arc or what they have, versus how they live. And I think **how they live is much more informative**. It helps you pick up things like, "they're sampling at Costco"—oh, I like that. Actually, I wouldn't have ever really thought of it; I couldn't have really experienced it, but once I saw it I couldn't unsee it. Figuring out how to sample from other people does a lot for the imagination. There's a lot for you in figuring out what you really want, or in providing contrast. It's like, "Oh my god, I thought what this guy's done was so respectable and admirable, but I would not want to live this day." This is his day—he lives this day three hundred days a year. I would not want this day for three days. But he does—sure, great for him. But I now know with absolute clarity—it's not an intellectual exercise; I felt it. I know it *viscerally* now that that's not what I want.

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, yeah. The **sampling window** is incredibly helpful, also for deciding who you actually want to model and who you might want to imitate. It's very easy to look at "such and such" — I know some amazing, awesome, say, hedge fund managers — but there are also a lot of very, very wealthy, miserable cunts out there. You know, like, one guy carries divorce papers and takes his briefcase around just in case, and it's like...

Sam Parr

"Wait, what?"

Tim Ferriss

*Incredible.* Yeah... and it's like, "Okay, you could look at the..."

Sam Parr

"Douche."

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, no — you could look at the scoreboard, right? If you just read the profile on the Midas List or whatever, you'd be like, "Oh my God, I want that guy's playbook. I want to imitate it." But there might be side effects to that playbook. Sure, maybe the guy's a douche out of the gate, but it could also be that the behaviors, habits, and the way he or she has built their company and managed their people directly contribute to family strife, multiple divorces, and disasters. It could be that there's a **causal link, not just a correlation**. For that reason, I really do try to spend time getting into the personal with a lot of my guests. I spend time with people who have cross-functional ability professionally and personally. So, people for instance like—I've mentioned Laird and Gabby—amazing parents, really tight family. I really like their dynamic as a couple and their parenting style. I've seen a lot of it. Kelly Starrett and his wife, Juliet Starrett, who's a powerhouse behind the scenes with everything: the way they've raised their kids—I've known them since they were really small; now they're in college—and they've turned out great. It's like, okay, they've raised a fully awesome human, and they have a very tight relationship with them. That is not the standard, at least in the United States from what I've seen. For that reason, we might as well take whatever their professional accomplishments are. I mean, if they had ten or twenty times as much money, it would not necessarily increase the amount that I want to emulate them.

Sam Parr

Sean and I referenced this all the time. We were like, "Whose life do we admire?" *Mhmm.* Like, all facets of it as a whole. My answer was **Laird**. Did you have an answer, Sean?

Shaan Puri

**Jesse Itzler**

Sam Parr

Yeah, Jesse Itzler would also be—yeah, yeah.</FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

Great answer. I hate to name someone because it's like — no, I'm not trying to... I don't know the guy that way, and I'm not trying to make him a god. But if I think about blueprints, he has this approach to adventure that I didn't have in my game. You see it and you're like, "Oh wow — this guy really has more unforgettable days." I have this... *this is cheesy*, but I'm going to debut this. I'm going to take this out of the closet. Alright, Sam: this is how I've been living my year. Okay, Sam, you're not a real sports guy — you're more of a skateboarding and weightlifting type. But in real sports, where people play games and there are the famous guys we admire, there are these statistical clubs. So, in baseball there's the **30-30 club**, which is when you hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases — two things that usually don't go together: power and speed. This year I haven't even cared about baseball for, you know, ten years, but Shohei Ohtani — I'm like, "Oh, this Japanese guy... he hit the 50-50 club, first guy ever." Oh, and he's actually a pitcher too, like Babe Ruth. Who is this guy? I must know who has put this on these things that each individually are great, but it's like ambidextrously great — he could do it with both hands, type of thing. And so, in basketball there's the **50-40-90 club** — it's who is truly an elite shooter you can measure statistically. So I created the **20-20-20 club** for myself, and it was basically...

Sam Parr

Hold on — you're going to make fun of me for exercising, but you could have your own *"twenty-twenty club"* that you've written down. Come on. Yes, these are of similar levels of nerdiness. </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

Of course, if you spot it, you got it, baby. My **"20-20-20" plan** here is: **lose 20 pounds** — that's the fitness side of where I'm trying to be greater than I was last year. Then there's the business 20 — as I add **$20,000,000** of equity to mine and Ben's "small-boy" portfolio. And then there's **20 off-script days**. This is what I really stole from Jesse and what got me excited about doing this. I love my routine; I love my normal day. But, like you said, any extreme strength carries with it an extreme weakness. I can just live a routine life and all my days blend together and I just do the same shit. I really have low adventure because I'm so comfortable and so content with my day-to-day. So creating these twenty off-script days — where I'm like, "No, I'm going to throw away the routine and I'm going to plan out 20 off-script days this year" — I've been doing it, and it's led to a different level of intentionality about how to live life. That's been good for me this year, but I felt so cheesy about it I didn't tell anyone.

Sam Parr

"That's *pretty good*."

Tim Ferriss

"That's... How do you have an *unscripted day*? What does that look like?"

Shaan Puri

It's off of my normal *script*, you know. It's... it's nice. So, you know what I mean? It's like I have a *script*: I wake up, I go work out, I do this, I do that, and I like that day that I've *architected*.

Tim Ferriss

Yep.

Shaan Puri

But I need some *serendipity*. I need some *forced adventure*. It was not just going to happen by default — by default I won't do it. So I have to block out the day. When that day is on the calendar, it's a *"blue day."* I know what a "blue day" is: a blue day means I have to do something I totally wasn't going to do — I totally never do.

Sam Parr

So what's an example of that? That's *every two weeks*, basically, or something like that.

Shaan Puri

Roughly every two weeks, yeah.

Sam Parr

Yeah. Give me... what were your last three?

Shaan Puri

Okay. So my last three—the last one was on Friday. I hired a professional basketball trainer to take me through a workout that he puts pro basketball players through. So I woke up and I cleared the calendar. *This is why I missed the podcast, by the way.* I cleared the calendar. I woke up at 6 a.m. and I went and trained for three hours.

Tim Ferriss

Sounds like you said you were sick?

Shaan Puri

Yeah—like, I was late because I was doing this and I lost track of time. I was so engrossed in it. Another time I cleared the whole calendar and just read all my favorite fiction from when I was a kid. I read two Harry Potter books in a two-day span, just to indulge in something fun and nostalgic. I would never have had the time to do that, but oh my God—I had such a blast. Another experiment: I tried to make a song. I had never made a song before, so I thought, *today I shall try to make a song*. In some ways I was inspired by Tim. When we were hanging out he said something that stuck with me. I asked, “So what did you do today? What’s a day in the life?” He told me he had been painting or doing archery or some random fun pursuit. But the way he described it—in classic Tim Ferriss fashion—it wasn’t just, “Yeah, I did this because I liked it.” He framed it more systematically. He basically said: > “I have a creativity gym. It’s a place I go for an hour or forty-five minutes and I get creative reps, and it just helps me be more creative.” I liked that justification. I thought, *I’m good with that*, so I started doing a creative gym. This year I picked a Miss Sogi. Jesse Itzel came on here and talked about the concept of Miss Sogi—a one-year challenge that sort of defines the year. I should have chosen something practical. When I sat down with pen and paper I thought, “Cool. This is definitely going to be about getting in shape, or making money, or growing the podcast.” But thirty minutes later I was like, “I’m going to learn to play the piano.”

Tim Ferriss

"That's going to be *so much* better for you."

Shaan Puri

It already is—I mean, I'm six months in now. I've been going to these lessons. I go to my teacher, I walk in with my **Beginner's 1A** book, and I'm giving Brandon a fist pound on the way in. Everyone else in the room is seven years old. There are other parents there with their kids, and they're like, "Where's your kid?" I'm like, "No, no—I'm the kid here." I just started taking this philosophy more and more seriously. My trainer says this great thing: > "Kids, dogs, and dead people." I was like, "What does that mean?" He said that's who you want to spend your time with. Dogs have it figured out. Dogs are unconditional lovers—they're here for play, they're loyal. There's so much you can learn from a dog. Kids—my kids come in and interrupt our workouts all the time. They want to play obstacle course, they want to play this, they want to play that. We actually integrated them into our workout because my trainer wants to spend more time with kids. And the last one is dead people, which means the wise people who've written books over time. It's about how to spend more time with the timeless versus the timely. It's easy to get caught up in the news instead of going to read Seneca or something like that. So those have been parts of my compass—where I put my focus, where I put my attention.

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, totally. I have just a quick sidebar story that's similar to your piano story where they're like, "Where's your kid?" So, as you alluded to, I've been taking archery super seriously. I mean, it's fun; it's definitely not practical. I also like trying to figure out a system for training and all of these things — they're not mutually exclusive. I just love archery, and I've had the opportunity to train with some amazing folks, like **Jake Kaminski**, a two-time silver medalist. I've trained with a number of kind of legendary people in short stints. I flew to California and trained with one such person. He invited me to his house: "Come train at my house." I show up, and every single person shooting on the line is somewhere between, I would say, six and twelve [years old]. Every single one Asian. A lot of the Asian countries, especially **South Korea**, just dominate everyone historically. They are many standard deviations beyond anyone else — it's pretty phenomenal. South Korea is an interesting case study, kind of like Singapore. Anyway... [trailing off / unintelligible]

Tim Ferriss

I'm doing my thing off to the side because I'm still very remedial — I'm like the short-school-bus version — and these kids are just slaying. They're all training to compete and stuff. At one point the coach pulls me over and says, "Join the circle. Join the circle." I go over, and he pulls all the kids together and gives them a motivational speech. It's a very tough-love *East Asian* motivational speech. Anyone listening who has first-generation parents or parents who were born in Korea, Japan, or China will know what I'm talking about. Then he turns to me and says, "This is Tim. He is an old man — very old man — but he is taking this very seriously and training hard." I was like, "Oh, I see — the case-study old guy." I was totally fine with it. I find that freeing, though. I'm not competing against these kids — they're going to grow up to be far better than I am. The kind of "I need to do this to be the best" mindset is something you can't even justify as a delusion or an obsession. Do you know what I mean? You have to figure out how to enjoy it for what you're able to do.

Sam Parr

Dude, I still haven't left the *Uncle Rico* phase, where I'm like, "You know, I was pretty fat. I could still — I might be able to make the Olympic team in the bobsled." I still, like, you know... I'm not old. I'm getting to the — now I'm about phased out of that, where it's like, "Dude, you're past your prime. Not a chance." But I still am like, "I could — I think I could probably do that," you know what I mean? Yeah. And it makes exercise not fun sometimes because you're always so serious: "I need to..." But in about two years it's gonna be, "Well past my prime — you don't have a chance." I do find it hard. You did something funny one of the first times we hung out. I asked you — it's very similar to what Sean just said about how you had a very specific reason about something. I said, "You know, that's a cool dog leash," and you're like, "Oh, this dog leash — you see this dog leash? It's made of horsehair and it's perfect because it doesn't have any allergen." You had a very specific reason for something relatively small, and I was like, "That's exhausting." Have you had to tell yourself sometimes, like, "I need to be..." It's hard. The reason you are where you are is because you are so precise and so exact, which I don't think a lot of people know. I've worked with you and I've quoted you in [The Hustle] before, and I think I messed up an apostrophe and you got on me and you're like, "No, I said it this way," and I was like, "You're totally right." You are — this is why you are who you are: because you're so precise. And also, that can wear you out sometimes. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, yeah. It can be exhausting. I mean, I have—I think—a certain unusual endurance for that type of thing. I'll read legal documents that three or four lawyers have combed over, and within thirty seconds I'll spot stuff. I just have an eye for that, which is *a blessing and a curse*, right? If I walk into a room and something is off... I remember—this is going to sound weird—but I did a bathroom renovation once. My girlfriend at the time loved how everything turned out. I walked in and I was like, "the mirror's off-center." She's like, "what are you talking about? You can't even tell," and she was standing like 15 feet away. I was like, "no, it's an eighth of an inch too far to the left." So we measured, and it was an eighth of an inch too far to the left. So the downside is that kind of stuff can drive you crazy and exhaust you. You also cope with the dog training—that would have been right in my, like, obsessive... [final phrase unclear].

Tim Ferriss

I was trying to figure out dog training with my first dog as an adult, so yeah—I would have had a reason for everything. What might be unexpected for folks is that, actually, as a kid—and certainly with my friends—I can be goofy. If I had a gathering with friends (just five days ago, with a couple of my oldest friends), that side comes out. I'm a *goofy motherfucker*, but it doesn't come out that much. I subconsciously (or consciously) don't let it show a whole lot. Something I've done with friends in the past: we don't do a lot of New Year's resolutions, but occasionally we assign them to each other. If there's a "word to focus on" for the year, we'll assign those too. We'll be like, "Okay—we get to assign each other those things." I'll give you a New Year's resolution; you give me one. You give me a word to focus on; I'll give you one. One of my friends said, "Goofy—that's your word for the next year." He said, "I see that side of you. Nobody really sees that side of you." He added, "Not just for other people, but especially for you—you need to do more of that." So I really try to block out time—especially a week with friends or a long weekend. That's one of the first things I do every year: I block it out, reserve it, pay for it, and tell them, "You guys just have to show up." It's a sunk cost—the right kind of sunk cost. I do think about this, and yes, the precision and all that can be exhausting.

Shaan Puri

You know, at least what I like about you is you don't do the *Elon Musk* thing, where he's like, "You don't wanna be me; it's painful being me," right? He almost martyrs it up—like, you know...

Tim Ferriss

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

He looks off into the distance, pauses dramatically, and then just sort of... really *hams it up*.

Tim Ferriss

It up about that stuff or anything, yeah.

Shaan Puri

A more balancing [approach] is like, "Well, it really serves me in this way." Yeah, and it's not fully true — I also do these other things, and I'm working on that. It's like, "I don't know," just a much more human way to deal with it. </FormattedResponse>

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, yeah. It's a useful tool. I mean, it's like a really sharp knife. But imagine if you had a really sharp knife that was all blade, no handle. Right? If you squeeze that too tightly, you're going to hurt yourself. I feel like that's true with a lot of *superpowers*. When you find somebody who seems to have a strong power — whether that's nature, nurture, or some combination — the biggest weaknesses, or the biggest curses, are typically sitting right next to it, or just the other side of the same coin. They're typically very, very closely related.

Sam Parr

What do you think was their **superpower**? Because... you — for anyone listening, I assume you're definitely still a big deal for the 20‑somethings — but when Sean and I were 20, you were the guy. You still are the guy. You inspired all of us to do this. It sounds funny to say because what you were doing then is so common now. But it was so weird that when you wrote—when you wrote some of these things—they were like, "That's so obvious." You taught all of us how to do it. You sort of coined a lot of terms; you invented a lot of the stuff. What do you think was your **superpower**? If you had to pick one that allowed you to kind of be— I mean, *Tim Ferriss* is like a noun. You're the *Tim Ferriss* of this. What allowed you to become that?

Tim Ferriss

I think there are a few things. One that comes to mind is that I was **born premature** and had a lot of health issues as a kid. When my mom put me into kiddie wrestling, I couldn't thermoregulate—I would overheat—and that's still true to this day. I started experimenting with different ways to train and compete. I didn't do that seriously until maybe 12 or 13, but wrestling has weight cutting, so you have an in-built experimentation at a certain point. I remember thinking, "How can I wake up more effectively? I need to figure out how to lose water weight." The things that affect water loss are called diuretics. Questions followed: *What are the risks of diuretics?* Is there anything over the counter that I, as a high-school student, could get that acts as a **potassium-sparing diuretic**? [By the way, don't do that—it's terrible for your body.] That kind of experimentation became a habit really early on. For **The Four-Hour Workweek**, I wrote and tossed a lot of that book multiple times. The only way I was finally able to write it and feel good about it was to sit down and write it as if I were writing an email to two very specific friends. One friend felt trapped in a finance job—golden handcuffs—knowing he was headed down a path he didn't want but couldn't extricate himself from. The other had started his own business and felt the same way: he'd created something and couldn't just quit like an employee. I wrote the book as if I'd had two glasses of wine and was emailing those two friends. That meant laying out all the warts, worries, petty concerns, and weirdness they would know about me. I think that contributed a lot—the personal being the most universal. If you're writing and you try to sound smart, you're almost handicapping yourself. The possibility of being "dead on arrival" is high. Embracing your weird self can go a long way. I'm naturally very curious and I have a tolerance for monotony and repetition that many people struggle with—whether that's language learning, archery, or other pursuits. In the early days, before Oura and before Whoop—before any of this—some people I knew were trying to find a first-generation continuous glucose monitor, which I wrote about in **The Four-Hour Body**. I probably started messing around with one in 2008–2009 and, as far as I know, may have been the first non-diabetic to use one. Dealing with the pain and frustration—using a beeper-side holster to capture data, export it, and comb through it—was very manual. For whatever reason, that kind of stuff doesn't bother me, so I was able to run experiments others would find torturous. One more thing: I think I'm pretty good at identifying trends, and at spotting trends that will converge in interesting ways. I don't know exactly why that's the case, but I think I'm good at it. Being in Silicon Valley—relatively early for my generation, arriving in 2000 and staying through 2017—also created a very high density of serendipity. Even if you're not a venture capitalist or an angel investor, if you live right there in the switch box, it's in the air: you overhear conversations, bump into people at events. If you're paying attention and taking notes, you can sometimes figure things out. Those are a few that come to mind.

Shaan Puri

When you create content—when you blog, write, or podcast—it seems like you make a decision about what you're interested in, but it's also kind of about who would be interested in it. That's baked into the process. For example, there are things you can do that might get more views on YouTube, but those views might come from people you aren't actually interested in attracting. I've seen that with you: the people you—and I—probably respect, they respect your work, and you've arrived at this wonderful outcome of what I call "luxury" or *upmarket* content. It's definitely not lowest-common-denominator content. Were you intentional about that? How do you think about it? I'm not saying this is just content nerdery, but from one creator to another, how do you balance those trade-offs—those opportunities, those options, those forks in the road? I'll give you an example. We just had Alex Formosie on the podcast, and I think he's doing a great job on YouTube. But there was a season where, if you looked at his YouTube thumbnail history and title history, every title was like, "If you're broke, do this" or "If you're totally stuck, do this." Every single title had that "If you're broke, do this" framing, and then he was surprised that he was attracting a bunch of people who were broke to his content. Well, that was the magnet he created. That's an example of how different creators make different choices. He's made adjustments, by the way—that's not his whole thing—but it's just an example.

Tim Ferriss

Yeah. So it has been super, super deliberate on my side not to aim upscale—but never to deliberately dumb things down or pretend to be interested in things that I'm not interested in. I would say one thing I left out of that prior list of factors is that I took, and still take—especially during, let's just call it, kind of 1998 (even prior to that, but especially from 1998 to the publication of the first book)—writing *incredibly, incredibly, incredibly* seriously. I don't think that is a skill that is going to go out of style, even with **AI**. I really feel like part of that is the practice of writing makes you a cleaner thinker, a crisper thinker, a more capable thinker—even if you never share what you're writing.

Sam Parr

What does *taking it seriously* look like on a daily basis?

Tim Ferriss

Taking it seriously for me looked like this: at the time I was in school and I took the hardest writing classes I could find. I took one class taught by **John McPhee**, who has won a **Pulitzer Prize**. He's just a legend in nonfiction writing, and that was an ass-kicker of a class. Just to make it really concrete what can happen, I was shocked by this because I didn't expect it.

Sam Parr

This was, as a kid, a college kid.

Tim Ferriss

This was in college. It was my senior year, and the class consisted of about 12 students. You had to apply; it was hard to get into. There was a three-hour seminar each week where **John McPhee** would talk about structure. He's very well known for how he structures different pieces of writing. Then you'd have a writing assignment, and he'd do a one-on-one with you to review it. These were typically three- to ten-page pieces. He would hand-edit those pieces and give them back to you. You might bring in three pages of typed writing and get it back with his red ink — it would look like the same amount of ink as your black ink. Most of his comments were blunt. For example, he would write: > "This word makes no sense. You have no idea what this means. This is pea soup." He'd point out redundancy and say he could make the piece 50% shorter without losing anything. As I learned to be more concise and to increase the density of meaning without the fluff, my grades in all my other classes went up — even though that class took a ton of time, which is wild. Taking it seriously also meant reading books on writing — anything I could get a hold of, like books on writing by **Stephen King**. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

It's my favorite.

Tim Ferriss

Which is not even my genre, right? *Bird by Bird* by Anne Lamott—also not my genre. These are both mostly focused on fiction. Books on screenwriting—I read screenwriting to try to understand story arc. By the way, you can apply that to nonfiction. Now, you can get all sorts of other books: *Draft No. 4* by John McPhee, which is based on the class that he taught at Princeton for ages and talks a lot about structure. I think it's *On Writing Well* or something like that—it's by William Zinsser. But I just devoured all these books and kept my notes. I still have a three-ring binder with my notes from John McPhee's class from college. I still have all of my notes. Also: paying people to review your stuff or asking people to review your stuff. Even before I had published anything, when I would write something, if you have friends who are in law school or went to law school—even if they don't practice law—great proofreaders. What are they paid to find? Anything that's ambiguous, anything that's redundant. If they're accustomed to doing contract review—like lawyers or people who are trained to be lawyers—they're great at proofreading.

Sam Parr

Is this only *non-fiction* stuff that you like, that you were referring to?

Tim Ferriss

I was—I was exclusively nonfiction for...</FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

So what does that mean—like, "advice"? I mean, you're only 21. Were you giving advice, or is it just... like?

Tim Ferriss

No — it could be. Not necessarily advice. Actually, most of it would not be advice. Most of it would be something like, for instance, a writing assignment might be really broad. He might say, "There's a statue in this courtyard a mile from here. Write three pages, and it has to have as a theme that sculpture." The students in the class would approach it from every possible angle. You could take it anywhere: it could be the grandson of the person who made it and you tell the story of the grandson and the motherland. It could be about aesthetics — anything. He would deliberately keep it pretty broad. Or he'd say, "Have an assignment like: interview someone." Again, he'd keep it broad. "Go interview someone you would normally never have a reason to talk to." So you might find somebody who's sweeping the floors, interview them for an hour or two, and write your entire piece on that person. Because the prompt is broad, you get a lot of different types of pieces. I would have something like that that you could get proofed. When I graduated I was still practicing writing but I didn't have a class, so I tried to write pieces for, at the time, magazines like Black Belt or Maxim — even as a student, just for fun. I was trying to get stuff published in big magazines. I didn't always succeed, but occasionally I got something in. Fortunately now you can find the curricula of so many good classes online from amazing universities and teachers. Just get a couple of friends and go through it together, proofread each other's stuff, critique each other's work. It takes some planning, but you certainly could do it. To come back to your question, Sean: I figured out pretty early on — and I'm not sure when I first read it — that Kevin Kelly's "1,000 True Fans" philosophy was tightly aligned with what I was doing. When I launched my sports nutrition company way back in the day — the first real company I launched; I'd tried various things before — it finally worked when I applied very tight constraints. I said, "Okay, I'm not going after X market," which is huge. I'm not going after Y market like sports performance, which is still too big and too expensive for me to reach with paid marketing. This was before effectively all social media. I decided to focus on certain power sports: powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, boxing — particularly MMA, which was very early days. To give you an idea, it was affordable for a startup to sponsor the UFC and be on pay-per-view. It was early. I was just going after these very small segments with the idea that, as Matt Cutts had a great presentation on, called "katamari" — a video game reference — you start very, very narrow. He was talking about it in the context of a blog: start narrow, and then over time as you build an audience you can broaden. You're sort of rolling a ball that collects more and more until you have a lot of latitude to write about or do whatever you want. Fortunately, that's more or less where I feel I am now. But in the beginning it was very tightly constrained. I suppose, if you're honest with yourself and your weird self, the personal is the most universal. If you're scratching your own itch — for me, The 4-Hour Workweek was the book I couldn't find for myself — you'll find an audience. You'd go to the bookstore and either it was "How to Run a Fortune 500 Company" by Jack Welch or it was the minimalist guide to convincing yourself that money doesn't matter. I wasn't going to recycle my lint and make my own sheets; I wasn't that person. I also had no desire to be Jack Welch. Where was the stuff in between that I actually cared about? There were some books on small and medium-sized businesses, but I couldn't find what I wanted. So I scratched my own itch, did experimentations, and then wrote it. If you are sufficiently authentic to yourself — and that word is overused — but if you actually are truthful in how you represent yourself, quirks and all, it's not going to resonate with 8 billion people off the bat. Your early adopters are going to be pretty tightly confined. There was an element of luck: I was in Silicon Valley, tech-forward, focusing on new tools. Some of that ended up being deliberate in the launch strategy for The 4-Hour Workweek, but they also happened to have incredible capability for broadcasting, and that contributed. My feeling is this: when I put up a blog post or put out a podcast episode — and my team has been indoctrinated into this because I've been doing it for so long — I don't want 100% of my audience to like any episode. I want 10% of my audience to love each episode or each blog post. I want a very strong positive reaction. I don't fully subscribe to the P.T. Barnum "measure the value of PR by the inch" kind of thing. People are too busy to read all my stuff or listen to all my podcasts anyway. Over time, if one out of every ten is like, "Holy f---, this is for me," then that's a win. The endurance part of that is scratching your own itch. I think it's very hard to sustain something — a podcast that's ten-plus years now — if you're not scratching your own edge. If you are, you end up occupying a very unique type of mindshare for your audience, and they are much more interesting and much more powerful as a result.

Shaan Puri

One thing I wanted to ask you guys: you know, this is where sometimes we ask you about stuff — like, basically *The 4-Hour Workweek*, which is... I don't even know how many years old it is at this point. But, like...

Tim Ferriss

Almost 20 years old.

Shaan Puri

**18 years old.**

Sam Parr

That's crazy.</FormattedResponse>

Tim Ferriss

Yep, and that's, like, what you...

Shaan Puri

You were interested in *nerding out* about things like: how do I free myself? How do I dissociate my time and my money? How do I automate things? How do I delegate things? How do I do fear-setting so that I can live the rich life that I want to live right now? I'd be really intentional about it. I'm sure some of those things are still of interest to you, but some of them are probably like, "Cool—that's a mountain I climbed ten years ago," and you're less interested now. So I'm curious: **what are the things you're most interested in right now?** What are you nerding out about? What are you obsessed with? What do you find yourself drawn to right now?

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, we can go in all sorts of weird directions. I'll also say—for people who might just be curious—I still use almost everything in *The 4-Hour Workweek*. The tech tools obviously, like GoToMyPC, are not something people are going to default to, but I still use all that stuff. It's necessary, not sufficient. Same story for *The 4-Hour Body*. A lot of that material came out in 2010—exercise, micro-snacks, glucose transporters on muscle cells—that's in *The 4-Hour Body*. It's making the news rounds now because there's more scientific literature to support it, but I still use all that stuff: kettlebell swings, the slow-carb diet, myotatic crunches, and all that. I still use it all. As I've progressed, I've identified more and more missing pieces—for me, and maybe for other people—in the game. Coyote is a good example of that. You can be the most incredible productivity machine of all time and still be miserable and make your friends and family miserable. That's actually more the rule than the exception. There are a lot of people who fit that bill. A lot of my exploration these days—since 2015 when I started the Sisay Foundation for funding science related to mental health therapeutics primarily—has focused on that. A huge chunk of the funding was for psychedelic-assisted therapies, starting with some of the earliest dedicated centers: Imperial College London, Johns Hopkins, etc. But it's not just that. It's also brain stimulation of different types, and some longevity research—for instance related to rapamycin and canines—among other things. These days I am spending a lot of time on science. Specifically, my working hypothesis—I'm not the only person thinking this—is that looking cross-disciplinary at a number of different areas reveals a commonality: maladaptive or chronic inflammation as a shared underlying driver of many problems that are helped by different tools. For instance, psychedelics are the "topic du jour"—heavily destigmatized, with a lot of experimentation at state and national levels and some fascinating scientific work. Some people say the effects are because of the content of the experience. Other people point to pharmacology—serotonin 2A receptors for certain psychedelics. There are also incentives at play: some people want to strip out the hallucinations because it makes for an easier business model. But it turns out that many of these compounds have profound, very strong, and in some cases durable anti-inflammatory effects. Putting that aside for a moment, I do think some of the anti-inflammatory effects of psychedelics could account for a lot of what we see that is now often explained by other means. For example, if you give people with depression straight-up anti-inflammatories—and you can find this on PubMed pretty easily—you frequently see an antidepressant effect or reported improvements. So what's going on there? If you look at Long COVID, Lyme disease, Alzheimer's—Alzheimer's is often referred to as "type 3 diabetes"—you see elevated levels of certain inflammatory cytokines. The list goes on and on. I've been doing a deep dive on different means of safe anti-inflammatory approaches to address chronic conditions. That could include, for instance, cold plunges. I think there's a place for that. There's a lot of bullshit floating around about this, but I'm going to interview who I consider to be the most credible scientist in this domain shortly. Vagus nerve stimulators are another area. There's a lot of charlatan action in this subject—questionable devices being sold—but I do think there's something interesting with vagus nerve stimulation. The vagus nerves are basically two transatlantic cables running down either side of your neck, with something like 100,000 fibers on each side. Some of the effects you can see with respect to autoimmune disorders are notable. By the way, some psychedelics seem to help with autoimmune conditions—so what the hell is going on? Inflammatory conditions can present in different ways: depression, anxiety, and so on. When you look at the effects of psychedelics on inflamed microglial cells in the brain—microglia are kind of the cleanup crew—what happens if they're not functioning properly? It's interesting. I have a bunch of neurodegenerative disease in my family, and the more you look at this, the more inflammation seems central. I'll shut up in a second, but it's kind of like asking, "Do you do business?" Well, what kind of business? There are a million types of business. Same thing with inflammation: there are so many different markers, inputs, and outputs. Currently, that's where I'm putting my focus. I've been diving into the science: calling and emailing scientists, reading books, going through all the dense material. Another piece that people may be immediately interested in—and I think some of the pathways are the same—is fasting. I've paid a lot of attention to fasting and have written about it.

Shaan Puri

About

Tim Ferriss

*I mentioned it in Tools of Titans* and kind of gave some of my protocols that I tend to follow. For many, many years I was doing a three-day water fast every quarter and a week-long fast every year. Then I lapsed and I stopped doing that. But intermittent fasting is, I think, a more easily complied-with experiment that people can run. So, looking at 16/8 fasting, there's a lot of good science out there about this. The person who popularized it is really Martin Berkhan, who's a Swedish bodybuilder. He has a pretty abrasive personality, but he's quite smart.

Sam Parr

And I love that guy's blog.

Tim Ferriss

Yeah. Starting back in the day, **Leangains** had one of the largest cohorts of people experimenting with these protocols — combining weight training with *16:8 fasting*. *16:8 fasting* just means 16 hours of fasting and an eight-hour feeding window. That could be like noon to 8 p.m. or 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. Credit where credit's due: he had, for a long time — and maybe still does — one of the most interesting cohorts and datasets of real-world results. I've done all sorts of extended fasts — three days, seven days, ten days. I don't recommend people just hop into those without proper medical supervision, because you can get yourself into trouble doing that degree of pure fasting. With the *16:8*, as I mentioned, my family has a bunch of health issues at the moment. There's a lot of metabolic dysfunction across the board, and much of it seems genetically driven. I can try almost any dietary or exercise intervention and it really doesn't seem to move the needle much. I get comprehensive labs and analyses — probably every three months. After doing relatively short periods (four to eight weeks) of intermittent fasting, my results on an *oral glucose tolerance test* — to look at insulin sensitivity and so on — were remarkable. The turnaround was absolutely incredible. If you do it right — say you follow something like what Martin does and combine it with proper weight training — you can gain muscle mass and not lose muscle mass.

Sam Parr

Let me ask Sean real quick: do you know who he's talking about with this guy, Martin?

Shaan Puri

No, I've **never** heard of this person.</FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Oh my gosh. If you're listening to this and you're below the age of 30, you should go learn about this person. This was right when Tim was coming up. Martin was a blogger. This was around the pickup-artist days — *The Game* and things like that. He was a guy who taught you how to get ripped and look good. He was sort of like everyone's father and he had this real fame. It was called *Leangains* (leangains.com). By the way, Tim, the website's not even around, but he had a cult following. It was mostly centered on one attitude: he had a very strong stance, and he had this famous blog post called "Fuckarounditis."

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, *fuck around*, Titus. Yeah.

Sam Parr

And it was this: his whole philosophy on life was that most people have *"fuck-around Titus"*, which is—you just go in the gym and you're gonna lift a little however you feel. You're gonna do this, maybe you'll eat a little food, you'll get a little protein, but, you know, we're just gonna do everything average. His whole thing was, "Nope — that's fuck-around Titus, and that's how you live a life of mediocrity. If you wanna get after it in the gym, you gotta get rid of fuck-around Titus."

Shaan Puri

This guy's copy on his stuff is great. His Instagram bio is: **"The High Priest of Intermittent Fasting."** On his website, his book thing is: **"The Leangains Method — The Art of Getting Ripped: Research, Practice and Perfected."** And then he said, **"I'm Martin Birkin, the thinking man's muscle hut."** Not my words, but hey—it's true.

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, he's not going to die of lack of confidence.</FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

If anyone is reading this or listening to this and you want inspiration on how to be a *great creator*, go back. It's been a long enough time that most people will have no idea who this guy is. Just steal a lot of his stuff — I mean, he was really good.

Tim Ferriss

He was ahead of his time. He was also a massively prolific and thoughtful contributor on some of the very, very early message boards—alongside Lyle McDonald and other folks. This was around the same time I was getting online in college and then just post-college, so I was a lurker on a lot of these message boards. He was very, very productive and would always try to cite research when possible. To his credit, he also demonstrated real strength. Intermittent fasting, for a lot of people, is not just something that will be easier to adhere to. The first week is gonna suck—I'm just gonna tell you: for most people you'll be grumpy, you'll be pissy. *Don't send too many sensitive emails*, because you're definitely gonna regret it. After a week or so your body adapts and you really start feeling very, very sharp. At least that's true for me. It affected me in a way that makes me think that three days once a quarter, or one week once a year, has some benefit with respect to possible purging of precancerous cells and things like that. That's not pure speculation—there's something to it. The purposes, in some senses, are different, and I would say very much *complementary*. Rhonda Patrick has had a number of scientists on her show, FoundMyFitness, related to this, and those episodes are worth checking out. It's easy to test. Along with that, I've been geeking out on exogenous ketones again—supplemental ketones to make the transition periods a little easier. Sometimes I'll just not eat for a day and then eat the next day. In the first week of that transition I use supplemental ketones to boost cognitive performance. There's one that's pretty easy to find—called, I think, "ketone q i t o n e"—that you can add into your coffee in the morning and treat as creamer. If you've never had this stuff before, I would recommend—most people are fine, but *stay close to a bathroom*. You may have a rapid onset of possible *"disaster pants"*, and you'll want to be close to a bathroom. So don't have it for the first time while you're driving to the airport for an international flight. Don't do that. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Hey, have you ever heard this idea? There's a funny phrase: "*Whatever the Silicon Valley nerds are doing on their weekends, that's going to be mainstream in five...*"

Tim Ferriss

Years — **100%**

Sam Parr

"You're who they were talking about. You know, many of the things you wrote about in *The Four-Hour Workweek* are now common, and you were one of the guys. You also said one of your skill sets was spotting trends. What do you think are the things now—what are the early things now that, in five years, are going to be quite common?"

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, I think—one is definitely, in simple terms, **"electricity over pills."** So different types of... whether it's brain stimulation, something like accelerated TMS [transcranial magnetic stimulation]. People should look into accelerated TMS and take a look at that. The interview I did with Nolan Williams of Stanford is a good starting point. But the results that a lot of patients are able to get for treatment-resistant depression, OCD, anxiety, etc., with five days of accelerated TMS rival a lot of the results you would see with some of the best outcomes with psychedelics, which are already, in terms of effect size and so on, well beyond most conventional treatments.

Sam Parr

That's a — that's a great phrase, too: "*electricity over pills.*" Like... that's... yeah.

Tim Ferriss

And I think I'm borrowing, because I think—one of the many things I've been reading is from a scientist named **Kevin Tracey**. I think he said that maybe it was "microchips over medications," so I want to give credit where credit's due. I have been looking at this very, very closely because **psychedelics are not for everyone**. Let's be very clear: I mean, that is nuclear power within the psychiatric and psychological realm. There are people who should not take psychedelics—there are very real risks. It's like seventeenth-dimension neurosurgery; there's a lot going on, and a lot to be learned. There are certain conditions that are typically exclusionary criteria [for clinical trials]. If you have these conditions you cannot be part of a clinical trial taking psychedelics: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc., etc., borderline personality disorder—there's a pretty long list. It looks like these conditions might be treatable through different types of brain stimulation, and the safety profile is very, very good. Separately—and this comes back to anti-inflammation and all of these things tying together—it's not just anti-inflammation, to be clear, but **metabolic psychiatry** is another thing that is very interrelated. **Chris Palmer of Harvard** is someone to look up on this front. Basically, the **ketogenic diet**—people may know the Atkins diet; people may have heard of the ketogenic diet—was used very effectively, I want to say in the early 1900s, with epileptic children for whom it was devised in this particular way with heavy cream. Similarly, when people would be having a schizophrenic or psychotic break, sometimes hundreds of years ago they'd just be put in a room and fasted, and then lo and behold after a few days, "the demons would go away." Okay—well, what's actually happening there, right? So metabolic psychiatry, along with brain stimulation, I think can address a lot of segments of the population that will not be candidates for something like **psychedelic-assisted therapy**. And also—well, I could go on and on—but those are a few examples.

Sam Parr

"Do you have electric over pills, metabolic psychiatry, anything else?"

Tim Ferriss

I'm very curious to continue looking at the vanguard of exogenous ketones, because getting people to follow a ketogenic diet is very difficult. I have a lot of discipline in the dietary area. I did a cyclical ketogenic diet for a very, very long time. That approach has gone by different names — I think Mauro Di Pasquale (if I'm saying his name correctly) called it *The Anabolic Diet*. It requires you to be very, very meticulous, and I did that for years. But today in my life I find the ketogenic diet — not to get too technical — *boring as fuck*. It is so boring, and you end up feeling like a human cheesecloth. It's just not that fun. You think it's going to be fun, like "cheeseburgers every day — that sounds awesome," but talk to me on day 20. For that reason, and particularly when we're dealing with older people or elderly patients who are not going to change their ways, is it possible to use supplemental ketones to get some of the benefits? It seems like the answer is yes. There are case studies in the literature you can find, but there are some open questions. This is beyond my pay grade, so I need to talk to someone. For example, if you have really elevated glucose levels and you also have very elevated levels of BHB (beta-hydroxybutyrate), is that good for you long term? What are the implications, if any? It sounds a lot like ketoacidosis in diabetics, which is not a desirable condition. So I do think there's a lot to uncover here. Unfortunately, some of the higher-quality ketone esters — monoesters and diesters — can be very expensive. By expensive I mean you're spending $40 a serving. TBD. I hope more people begin to look at this, because the more demand and experimentation there is, the cheaper these things will get with economies of scale. We could talk about tech stuff, but I'll give you one more thought: I am very analog and social. I'm not sure we're going to have a full-blown *Butlerian Jihad* (to refer to Dune — the rising up and destruction of the thinking machines), but I think there will be a lot of pushback and blowback and a kind of retro shift toward human-made, analog, and social interaction. You already see signs of that: a lot of younger people are like, "fuck this dating app nonsense" and social media, and they're joining running clubs to try to find people to date.

Sam Parr

Have you seen that, Sean? Do you know about this?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we've talked about running clubs. One I was just reading about recently was **book clubs**. Book clubs are apparently really popular right now, and they're doing a twist on the usual format. Basically, they'll do silent reading: everybody gets together, you don't talk — you're just reading to be in the presence of each other. Or it'll be like a "wine and read" or beers, using books as an excuse to hang out in person together.

Tim Ferriss

"Doing that, yeah."

Sam Parr

Have you guys seen that young kids—like the 20- and 19-year-olds—are using the same cameras that you and I all used when we were 17? You remember when you were 17 and you'd use a "Canon" digital camera and make a "Facebook" photo album on whatever. That's what kids are doing now. Yeah—they don't want to use their phone; they *wanna* use...

Shaan Puri

Oh, like...

Sam Parr

Develop a.

Shaan Puri

Film: 30 pictures type of thing.

Sam Parr

Well, they'll—no, they'll use... *Remember the Canons?* They have a much simpler LCD screen. And there's, like, when you go out with your friends and you post "Friday, October 14, 2014" — that's the title on Facebook of your photo album. That's what kids are doing now. I think that's just the *very, very, very* tip of the iceberg of this feeling of *less connection*, or less... digital. </FormattedResponse>

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, and isolation, loneliness — all this stuff. I mean, the younger generations aren't stupid, right? Sometimes there are these sort of commentaries from the older, wizened folk, like: "Those kids don't know what they're doing to themselves." I'm like, "Oh, I think they have a *pretty fucking good idea* — probably more so than you do." Other examples would be huge game nights in, say, New York City and other cities — huge events with **hundreds** of people. They started with two or three people and now it's hundreds of people playing games simultaneously. I find that an interesting thread to pull on. Do I know how to bet on that? No. I'm not in a rush.

Sam Parr

"Tim, I feel this way oftentimes when I get done talking with you. I'm like, 'You're *cooler than I remember.*'" "Oh, thanks." "Basically, it just means we don't know each other that well, but I read about you and I listen to your podcast. Then I actually hang out with you every once in a while, and I'm like, 'That's why he is who he is,' you know."

Shaan Puri

Doesn't it feel like you just had a podcast guest from the future come in? He's saying words — he's like, "Oh yeah, no, **accelerated TMS**." I don't even know what TMS is, let alone accelerated TMS. I'm writing down words. I know enough to know that these are going to be a big deal in 5 years. I should probably start paying attention, because he's done that four times already over the last 20 years. I should just — I should just pay attention to this *alien from the future* who just came in.

Sam Parr

And started doing things. You know, it's sort of like—have you guys ever met a professional athlete? You watch them on TV, then you meet them in real life. I remember meeting one in real life: he just jumped to do his warm-up, and his jump in the air was—I'm like, "Oh my God." **That's kinda how I feel when I hang out with Tim**: you're like, "Oh yeah, that's why he's a pro."

Tim Ferriss

Thanks, guys. It's... you've got to *sacrifice some hair* along the way.

Shaan Puri

That's... that's all.

Sam Parr

"You look great. *Forget that.*"

Tim Ferriss

**Thanks, thanks, thanks — so much.**

Sam Parr

Alright. That's it. That's the pod. Thank you, Tim.