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Every mental health complication or diagnosis is increasing and I've worked with different

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scientists and done a lot of experimentation on myself, having grown up with multiple

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depressive episodes every year to see if there are root causes that we can address.

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And so I'll just throw out a few things that have been very, very helpful.

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First, there's brain stimulation. When I did this, I had months of no anxiety.

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Then there's something called vagus nerve stimulation. And one of the most heavily sided

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scientists of the last 30 years has seen a wild collection of benefits.

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So let's talk about that. Tim Ferris has become a performance hacking expert

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after speaking with over 800 influential voices on his podcast.

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Now he's taking the most valuable frameworks and techniques to help you optimize productivity,

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health and performance. Tim, the variety of things that you write about talk about is so wide.

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So what is the question that most people should ask you?

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How do you break down complicated subjects and accelerate your ability to learn?

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Because the time is one of our most valuable non-renewable resources.

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And so I have a framework that you can apply to any subject matter, which consists of the 80-20

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principle, which is picking the 20% to focus on that will give you 80% of what you want.

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For instance, there's hundreds of thousands of words you could learn in Spanish,

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but with the most frequently used 1500, you can get to reasonable conversational

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fluency in almost any language and age to 12 weeks. And if you figure that out,

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you're ahead of 99.9% of the world.

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And what do you think is the question most people want to ask you?

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So there's a lot of questions around mental health, and I feel like I have a moral obligation

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to help people because I was sexually abused by a babysitter's son on a weekly basis.

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I was this close to killing myself, and it can have a lot of effects,

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but these are things that you can slowly chip away at.

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And instead of feeling like you're held captive by them, feel like you can take the pain and

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make it part of your medicine. So just give me 30 seconds of your time.

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Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into

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the show. Week after week means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we

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absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.

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But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.

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And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this broadcast

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regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you.

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I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.

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We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to,

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and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.

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Thank you.

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Tim, you're a remarkably interesting individual in part because the variety of things that you

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write about, talk about, clearly have deep curiosity in, is so wide that you're hard to put into

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any particular box. So my first question to you is how do you think about the work you do and

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how do you start sort of like self-define if you do it all? Who you are and what your mission is?

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I think of myself as a self-experimentary, slush student and teacher in that order.

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The purpose, though, ultimately is to try to find simplicity through complexity or topics that

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can be complicated and then provide some type of recipe or algorithm that people can test

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with low risk and hopefully a decent amount of upside.

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We're going to talk about a lot of different things today. So it's probably a good place to start,

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which is learning how to learn. And especially in a world that's changing at such speed,

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there's a lot of people that are being forced into re-learning of some sort, whether it's

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professionally or in other domains. So meta-learning, I've never heard this term before.

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How do I learn how to learn better? I would love to because I spend so long as you do,

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speaking to really interesting people. I sometimes worry that some of that information is being wasted.

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Yeah. The basic idea is this, that rather than treat different subjects or fields as the silos

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that need to be figured out independently, how can you develop just a broad framework that you

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can apply to any subject matter? And the acronym that I generally recommend, folks, DSSS,

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deconstruction, selection, sequencing, stakes, there's deconstruction, which is taking a

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fairly ambiguous goal, like learn to swim, or learn Japanese. None of those are actually very

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descriptive. So deconstructing any one of those is taking, let's just use learn to swim as an

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example and breaking it down into constituent parts. And you can do that very effectively with

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the help of an expert. You can try to do it yourself. But for instance, I mean, if you want to find

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a silver medalist from the Olympics to Olympics ago, you can probably get on a zoom call with them

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for $100 an hour, maybe $50 an hour. You do have access to world class talent. Then they would

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help you figure out, there are always different possible components when you get to the next part,

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which is selection. You're picking the 20%, this is the 80-20 principle run,

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pre-dose law. So you're picking the 20% that will give you 80% of what you want. Let's just use

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language learning in that case. Well, you can very easily find word frequency lists. So for any given

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language like Spanish, sure, or in English, hundreds of thousands of words you could learn. But with

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the most frequently used 1500, you can get to reasonable conversational fluency in almost any language

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in 8 to 12 weeks without question. If you approach it methodically, but you need the right material

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first. And then the next S is sequencing, putting it in the right order. And I feel like this is

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the magic sauce that gets lost a lot, which is what is a logical sequence for learning any given

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skill. What do you practice first? So in the case of swimming, for instance, forget about breathing.

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Like you need to figure out like fuselage right, fuselage left, and gliding kicking off a wall

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in the shallow end of a pool before you ever think about breathing. And getting comfortable

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putting your head underwater, et cetera, et cetera. So there's the deconstruction, selection,

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sequencing, and then the last S stands for stakes, which means incentives. So how do you ensure that

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you will do actually what it is you say you're committing to doing? If more information were the

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answer, we'd all be billionaires with six back abs. So information is clearly not sufficient. It's

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necessary, but not sufficient. Incentives drive behavior change. So you need good intentions are not

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enough. Even a system is not enough. You need strong incentives. So you could give

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500 bucks to a friend or a hundred bucks, whatever. The amount doesn't really matter. And if you

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don't do what you say you're going to do, they donate it to like your most hated political

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candidate in your name, right? That's another one that I've seen work really well.

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That's it. That DSSS, deconstruction, selection, sequencing, stakes. And if you just check those

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boxes moving that order, your ability to learn will hockey stick in a really meaningful way.

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And what's also important to realize when you're trying to tackle any new skill,

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doesn't matter what it is, it will not be just a linear climb from in a bottom left upper right.

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But if you know in advance that those are coming, then you can have a plan for it and weather

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the storm. So that's also very important. If people expect some kind of like linear incremental

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progress, it just ain't going to happen. And so most people quit before they hit any real

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inflection points. And how does one know what to pursue? Like how do you decide what's worth

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pursuing? Is there a framework for knowing what should be on the Sunday shelf and what should be

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today? Today's work. I do think about this a lot. And I've used this for a very, very long time.

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And I don't see it changing anytime soon. I've refined it here and there. Almost everything I do

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is a six to 12 month project with lots of two to four week experiments within that six to 12 months.

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I do not have and I've never had a long term career plan five years, ten years. If you have a

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reliable five to ten year plan, you're going to be playing so safely within the bounds of your

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capabilities that I feel like you're selling yourself short. So for me, it's projects and just going

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100% into those projects. How do you pick the project? I picked the projects based on

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relationships and skills. So new relationships or deepening important relationships.

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And my learning curve skills I'm going to learn. And there's a condition though. Those

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relationships and those skills have to be able to transcend that project. I'll give you an example.

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If I have a project which is working on a startup as an advisor that started with stumble upon.

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Okay, so I'm working on stumble upon way back in the day. Stumble upon was a huge deal and

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delivered a lot of web traffic to various websites. It's kind of like a Pandora for websites.

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The year two end of that didn't go anywhere. But who was it? I spent all my time with it stumble upon.

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It was the founder named Garrett Kemp. And I became really close friends. I learned a ton about

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web traffic. I was also able to use my own website and blog as a experimental destination.

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Right? So there was upside even if it went to zero for me. And few years later, I get a text from

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Garrett we meet up to talk about this new idea, which is solving the taxi problem in San Francisco.

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And then shortly thereafter it was called Uber Cab LLC. And I've been advised by that. And I could

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give you 12 more examples like that where like the first project failed. But I became friends with

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with person Airbnb learned C&D. And those were applied to projects later to something that was a

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home run. And should everybody at every stage in their journey have the same brain work? Or,

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you know, because if you think about the different things one could acquire from like resources,

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reputation, knowledge, skills, network. If I'm 18 and broke, should I be aiming at the same

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things as if I'm Tim Ferris? My instinct is to say yes. And the reason I say that is that

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Lady Fortune has a lot to say about what happens. There's so many things outside of your control

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that whatever game you choose to play requires a system that allows you to survive a string

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a very bad luck. Everything snowballs over time and compounds. And it's really hard to lose

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long term. As long as you're not over indexing and betting too much on any one project,

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say financially. It's like you need to be able to withstand as a team or as an individual

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a period of very bad luck in order for the law of big numbers and statistics to work in your

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favor with a system that gives you a slight edge. So that's just my lens on the world in general.

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At least professional choices. And I would say you mentioned a couple of other things, right? So

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like reputation and so on. I feel like a lot of those are second order effects. They happen

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automatically if you are optimizing for the relationships and skills. So this comes back to the

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sequencing, right? So it's like, which is the lead domino? So if you have 12 dominoes, you kind

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of have to decide in which order you're going to stack them. So that you knock over the small

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domino, knock over the bigger domino, then the bigger than the bigger than the bigger. And over time,

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if you're thinking about doing two projects a year, let's just say if they're six months each,

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that's going to add up. It's going to add up. So you can afford to be long term greedy instead of

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short term greedy. Is that what people call passion? You're using the same... I like energy over

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passion for a couple of reasons because you could have passion between the bedsheets, you could

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have the passion of the Christ, you had a different type of passion. I don't like imprecise terms.

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Energy for me, very simple. It's like, are you more awake or are you sleepy?

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Do you feel like you can do this for another five hours? Do you feel like you want to stop in 15

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minutes? These are almost biological questions, biological state questions. So it's pretty intuitive

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for people to get to it, yes or no. One of the subjects I've been thinking a lot about recently,

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why have I been thinking about this more recently? I don't know. Just a series of conversations I've

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had on the show, which make it kind of pushed me closer to trying to answer this question,

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is about about meaning and purpose and I guess religion. Because actually it's only in recent

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history that we've had so many answers to some of these bloody questions. Like the solar eclipse,

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we now know what's going on there. It's not God testing us. So the Vikings are throwing dead,

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like their spears at it. We know what it is now. So not believing atheism, agnosticism,

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is that a fairly new construct? And are we not meant to know so much?

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I think humans need certainty. They need something to believe. And if your belief is that

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non-belief is the way I will guess what? I mean, that's a belief, right?

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Okay. So I would say that my experience is if you want to experience self-transcendence,

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which I think is critical for mental health, you don't need religion per se.

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You can have, I think, a very wonderful life without religion. I don't think it's possible

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to have a wonderful life without awe and wonder. And those are things you can architect.

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Those are things you can very much architect and engineer and schedule in your life.

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Why have veganism and CrossFit done so well? They're religions. I mean, effectively,

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they may not have a God per se, but certainly they have thought leaders that need a glassman

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before his fall from grace and so on. Various athletes and so on. But it's like clear roles,

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community, self-enforcing. And it's going to be life sports. Yeah. I mean, it's like this is religion.

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Just goes by another name. It's a lot of the behaviors, collective behaviors, and tenets of

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religion, just lacking the R word. What do you wish it? I knew that was coming. I think the risk

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for me is that I feel like I have a moral obligation to help people, which can turn into a bit of a

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savior complex because of a lot of the pain that I've suffered in the past. I feel like I am

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not necessarily uniquely suited, but I have the experience and the perspective that allows me

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to be credible when talking to people who are experiencing certain types of pain. And that can

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become a huge, unhelpful, self-imposed burden where I feel a moral obligation to do things

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at the expense of my own mental health or physical health. So I would say that's something that I

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have very clearly on my radar as of a few years ago. When did the first domino fall in that regard?

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In terms of, you mean just general challenges personally? Well, I was might as well dig into it. So

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I was sexually abused by a babysitter son from two to four on a weekly basis, I would say. Very clear

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memories of all of it. And that will shape you. That will definitely shape you. And it can have a

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lot of effects. It can rob you of agency. It can certainly make you or contribute to me being

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hyper vigilant. I'm very slow to trust and so on and so forth. That is a formative experience,

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at a formative time. And then later I think number one, a genetic predisposition, if you just

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look at my family to a major depressive disorder. And that showed up as, let's call it, on average,

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starting in early adolescence, like three to four multi-week or multi-month depressive episodes

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per year. That is half of your lived time. And for people who may have experienced something like this,

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I will say that there are tools at work. So now, never thought it would be possible, but I would say

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now I have one depressive episode of a few weeks at most every two to three years.

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Now, the juxtaposition between those two people is hard to overstate. Those are two

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fundamentally different experiences of being human. And a lot of it ties back to some of the

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levers I was talking about, metabolic psychiatry, psychedelics, therapy, bioelectric medicine,

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including cellarate, TMS, these things for certain people really work and can be durable. They're

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not one and done. Very few things are. But these are things that you can slowly chip away at

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and become familiar with. And instead of feeling like you're held captive by them, feel like

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you can mold the experience into something that is at least not disabling. Sometimes you can make

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an enabling. I remember a very good psychotherapist said to me, maybe five years ago, six years ago,

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take the pain and make it part of your medicine. And it was basically like, all that stuff is

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horrible. Nothing can excuse it. Take that pain and make it part of what you offer the world.

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And there was, as I would say, the combination of that statement and also COVID during which my

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girlfriend at the time, because she knew about my history, at that time there were maybe two

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people in the world who knew about it. Two long-term ex-girlfriends I'd been with for like five to six

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years each. Parents didn't know you? Parents didn't know me. Really? Yeah. And I was sitting with her

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during COVID just as it was getting fully ramped. And I'd always plan on writing a book about it,

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or like my healing journey after my parents passed away, because I didn't want them to blame themselves.

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And my girlfriend at the time, over a meal, said something that she jimmed back, which was,

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have you ever thought about how many people are going to pass away from natural causes,

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or from COVID, or anything else before you ever have a chance to write this book?

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Because you're probably not going to write that book for 10, 15 years. Think of all the people you

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could have helped that you didn't know. And I was like, okay, maybe I should workshop it on a podcast,

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but keep in mind none of my family knew. And so I was very fortunate to have a very close friend who's

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based here in New York City, Debbie Millman, Design Matters podcast, one of the longest running podcasts

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in the world. Wonderful human. And she disclosed to me a number of years back for the first time in

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full fidelity, extended childhood sexual abuse. And we talked about it. And I came clean with her

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after that conversation with my girlfriend. And I asked her if she would be open to having a

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conversation with me that we could record, but as a conversation, so I knew I couldn't do it as a

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monologue. I just knew I couldn't do it. And I told her in advance, I said, I have no idea if I'm

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ever going to share this, but I feel, I feel compelled to at least record it. And so we did and

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ended up publishing that. I want to say in September 2020, something like that. And holy shit,

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I would say the most shocking thing about that to me, I knew the statistics, right? But statistics

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are very impersonal. These types of abuse, this type of sexual abuse is incredibly prevalent,

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not just involving young girls, but also involving a lot of young boys. I probably had a quarter

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to a third of my close friends reach out to me for the first time to talk to anyone and confess

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that they had some type of similar experience. I mean, the percentages were staggering.

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That was really hard. I was willing to absorb it. I have a lot of capacity for absorbing that type of

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thing, but it was hard because I would get these tearful voice memos from guys who had never told

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anyone, giving me graphic details of everything that happened. It's just got wrenching. I mean,

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I remember walking up and down my driveway just like tears running down my face and like,

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I don't cry much. That's not really a thing for me, but just the brutality of it.

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And then in retrospect, seeing so many things coalesce where I'm like, oh,

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that explains all of these unanswered questions I had about that friend. And also for me, looking back,

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again, hindsight being 2020, for a long time I had, let's just call it to pick a number out of

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thin air. It's like, okay, seven mental health psycho-emotional challenges I need to address.

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And I was viewing them's independent problems to address. But when I was willing to reopen the

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door and look at the childhood abuse, everything was tied to that. And sometimes you just have to

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put on your gas mask and go into the cellar and contend with that. And there's no one right

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way to do it. Psychiatry is still in the dark ages. It's where surgery was 300 years ago.

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But still, there are certain things that work often without knowing the mechanism seemed to

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help a lot of people. So there are tools, I think, internal family systems created by Dick Schwartz

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is very interesting. The MDMA, psychotherapy is certainly for PTSD, very interesting and generally

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well tolerated, not right for everybody. And then a number of the other things that I mentioned,

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family constellation therapy, also quite helpful for a lot of people. But it's not insurmountable.

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What I would not say is that some people, and I think that I would love to be able to do this,

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but I just can't get there. Or who would say, like, I don't regret it. I'm glad it happened

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because here's the silver lining. No. Like if I could control Z and remove that stuff, 100%

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I would. I mean, it did a lot of damage. But it gives me a credible voice when I am talking to

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people who have had these experiences. And that is valuable. Can you explain to me what you've

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learned about how you were two years old at the time? Yeah. Between the age of two and four you said.

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What is I'm kind of asking about the mechanism here? What is happening in a two to four-year-old child's

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brain? That causes the damage because presumably at two years old you don't understand what's

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happening. You don't understand what this individual, this person who's older than you, is doing

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and the context of it. Yeah. So I'm trying to understand how what the mechanism of harm is to

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to an innocent child who doesn't understand the context of what's going on here.

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Yeah. I don't think anyone can really answer that particularly well with high conviction,

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but what I'll say is that I am blessed and cursed with a near photographic memory for some

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things. So you have the original injury, the original insult. But if you have, as I do, which

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is weird, but like I can draw the floor plan of almost any building, any restaurant I've ever

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been in, even once. I don't know why that is, but I can do that. Now there are upsides to that,

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there are a lot of downsides too in the case of abuse. And as you have greater and greater

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ability to navigate the world and realize what has happened, what is happening, what might happen,

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and you can recontextualize high fidelity memories. Well, then you realize

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that that thing that was very weird at the time was a lot more than just weird, right? It was just

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straight exploitation and abuse. So that's the best answer I think I can give to that question.

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It's similar to what Lisa, Dr. Lisa Feldman told me, she was a neuroscientist who said,

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she told me this story is obviously an anecdote, so it's an end of one. So obviously taken

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with caution, but she told me the story of a young woman who was abused by her uncle and lived

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in normal life. Everything was fine, slept well, then watched Oprah. Oprah had on there an array of

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women that were abused when they were younger and she recontextualized what happened to her.

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And from that day onwards, she had all the symptoms of someone who was abused. She was

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sleep disruption, health disruption, all these things, because she had suddenly, as you use that

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term, recontextualized actually what had happened there. It's made me, you know,

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yeah, I mean, look, I think people who have been abused are those who survive and do well

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afterwards in some way are become very good by force, by necessity, at compartmentalizing.

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And if you look at some of the very, very top tier military,

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special forces units and so on, the percentages of those guys who have been abused very high.

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Now, why would that be an asset? Well, if you're in battle,

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if you're in a chaotic environment when people are dying or at risk of dying,

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and you need to act effectively and calmly in the most disruptive, unpredictable environment

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compartmentalizing is a superpower where you can basically detach and take this observer status

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almost as if you're watching yourself doing, you know, killing capture raids or whatever it might be.

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But when some of those folks come back to civilian life, the compartmentalization is a

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severe handicap and disruptor in family life, right? So that superpower becomes a super weakness.

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And I think that that is true outside of the military for people who survive abuse.

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They may bury it completely put under lock and key subconsciously so they don't even have

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explicit recall of the event until perhaps there's some triggering catalyst that brings

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it back up. They might just say, hey, look, that happened. It's terrible. Like, no need to dwell

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in the past. I want to move forward, which I think frankly is a viable strategy. I don't think

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everyone needs to go, you know, put on their hazmat soon on earth, everything bad that has ever

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happened to them. I don't think that is automatically productive or helpful can make people

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really despondent because you can't fix the past, right? So I would say that in my case,

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that compartmentalization was on some levels very enabling, right? Like I could outlast, out

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endure a lot of people in sports and work. My pain tolerance was incredibly high.

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But there's a there is a price to be paid when you cauterize certain aspects of yourself and

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disallow certain types of emotions. Like there are prices to be paid. And I will say that I think the

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potential and promises of psychedelics by and large are overstated. But in terms of bringing

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emotions back online, that was almost entirely due to psychedelic experience for me.

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Bringing emotions back online. Yeah. So I hadn't cried in like 20 years. Couldn't remember the

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last time I cried. And then I'd be like on a plane watching a really compelling kind of heart

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wrenching documentary and just start crying on the plane. I was like, what the fuck is going on

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here? What the fuck? And certain emotions just came back online. And I think that once those were

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online, that is in part what then pulled along with it. This revisiting of these high fidelity

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memories. And then I had a very rough period because of that. And ultimately decided, you know

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what? Like this is the lead domino that has already been tipped over that has affected so many

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things. I can continue to do patchwork like remediation with band-aid solutions for various things.

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But I'm just I'm plugging holes in the side of the boat not asking why it's filling with water

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in the first place. And I just decided, you know what? I'm just going to take six months and I know

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psychiatry is pretty messy. But priority number one is to try to find some resolution with this.

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And that's what I did. I canceled everything because I was having basically like a nervous breakdown.

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And it wasn't sure I would be able to sort of function in a business capacity anyway.

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So yeah, quite the adventure, quite the misadventure. But you know, you play your hand the best you can.

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So having a podcast, having the books, having a blog has actually been incredibly therapeutic for

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me in finding some way to extract value from those experiences. And let me just mention this

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because I don't make anything from it. If people are going through any experience like this or if

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they've had a history of trauma, you can just go to Timed Uplog slash trauma and it's got the

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conversation with Debbie. It's a hard conversation. But it also has a list of resources because what I

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used as a toolkit and what Debbie used are completely different. So you get two very different

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perspectives on things. And I would say if I had to pick one other blog post in this case that I

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was the hardest to put out. And also that I think I'm proudest of it would be some practical

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thoughts on suicide. There's a post called some practical thoughts on suicide. And I know that

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has I know directly that has saved a few hundred lives. And it details my personal experience

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of almost killing myself college coming very close like I had a date on the calendar. And the only

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reason it didn't happen is because I lucked out. This is luck. So at the time I was taking a year off

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of college to work in a few different jobs and ended up being very isolated because my whole class

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was graduating. My roommates at the time at full-time jobs. So I was just kind of stuck at home working

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on my senior thesis. Not a good recipe for mental health. And I reserved a book from the Princeton

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University Library about assisted suicide. And the book was out. Popular book it would seem.

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And back in the day, the way the system worked is they would mail you a physical postcard

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to your address that was at the Ridge stress office. I had not updated my address to my off-campus

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apartment. So the card that said, good news. Your book on assisted suicide has arrived at

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Firestone Library. Got mailed to my parents. And that's what snapped me out of it was realizing,

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oh, this isn't just about me. Right now I don't have the plausible deniability. I was going to make

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it look like an accident. It's like now I don't have it. That's been taken away. Retrospect, thank God.

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And so it didn't happen. But the reason I wrote that post is because I was at an event.

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It's actually being interviewed by Jason Calcanis on stage at this live this week in startups event.

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A few hundred people in the audience and stuck around afterwards and a bunch of people came up

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and wanted books signed and things like that. And there was one really nice guy,

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well-dressed, had himself put together, who asked me to sign two books, one for himself,

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and then he asked me to sign a book for his brother. And I said, well, we'd like me to say to your

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brother. And he just kind of froze. And I was like, huh, okay, well, I don't want this guy to feel

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stressed out. I was like, I'll tell you what, we can figure it out or you can just leave it to me.

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There's no rush like we can do this after the event. All right, so I took care of everybody else.

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And then the guy walked me to the elevator. And he explained. He said, yes, sorry about that. I

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froze because my brother committed suicide. And we kept his room exactly how it was. And he

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was a huge fan of your writing. And so I wanted to get a book signed by you and put it in his room.

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And he said, have you ever thought about talking about mental health? Because you could really

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help a lot of people, a lot of people listen to you. And unbeknownst to him, I had all the

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history was coming this close to killing myself. And I sat with that. And I was like, yeah, he's

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right. He's really right. I have a responsibility to write about it. And that blog post took me

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at least a month to write and rewrite and rewrite and have proofread consider deleting.

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And because that was also something that my family didn't know about. I mean, they knew about the

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book, but they didn't they didn't realize how close it was. So that was also another

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wonderful call with family to be like, so there's this thing about to come out.

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She'll probably give you a heads up so you don't hear about it from everybody in the extended

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family. But your parents received that thing in the post. Yeah, I slipped the library slip.

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Yeah. Did they call you? My mom called me with this very shaky voice being like, what is what is

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this? Why did you reserve this book? And that lied. You know, I said, oh, well, I have a friend at

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Rutgers and he was trying to get spoke for a research project and they didn't have it at their

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library. So he asked me to get one from through Firestone, but I was just lying. But I knew the

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the jig was up, right? And that was that was the turnaround point. And that was also because this

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was in 1999 where I just decided to go 100% into physical training.

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And there's a lot of backstory behind it. People can read about it. If they want on that post,

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it's some practical thoughts about suicide. But this is not it is so fucking common. It's very

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disturbing like when you realize it's disturbing and reassuring. It's disturbing because you realize

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how prevalent it is and how close so many people have come. It's reassuring because you realize

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also very quickly that you're not alone. You're not uniquely flawed. This doesn't need to be

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personal and permanent. People have solved for this. Looking at my audience over the last 10

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years, every mental health complication or diagnosis that I can think of is up into the right

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just hockey stick. So chronic anxiety, treatment, resistant depression, you name it, right? obesity,

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loneliness, which can take many different forms, usually self-imposed. And when I see a constellation

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of issues like that, I try to identify if I can, not just the symptoms because then you end up

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putting band-aids on things that are interrelated but treating them as silos. But looking

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underneath it to see if there are root causes that we can address. So let me speak to that first.

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So on the mental health side, I'll just throw out a few things that have been very, very helpful.

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There are the behavioral questions and I would agree that at its simplest level, you can just

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look at what we're involved for. Just take a close look at evolutionary biology. Independence,

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lone wolf is not in our programming. It just is not. So I would say when in doubt,

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revert on some level to what people were doing a few hundred years ago at the most recent.

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And that would be sort of assumption number one. Then I would say two people who are suffering

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right now. The social interaction, analog human interaction, I would just say, is the one target

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when hit that solves a multitude of other problems that otherwise you'll be playing whack them all

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with. But if there are then remaining problems with, say, chronic anxiety, OCD,

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when we get into some slightly trickier terrain, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder,

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etc. There are a few things that I have found in the course of doing a lot of work with different

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scientists and also a lot of experimentation on myself, having grown up with multiple long duration

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depressive episodes every year. And those are a short list of different types of brain stimulation,

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specifically something called accelerated TMS, the before and afters that I've seen with that are

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beyond incredible. And equal or surpass in some cases, the amplitude of effect and the durability

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of effect of psychedelic assisted therapies accelerated TMS. So transcranial magnetic stimulation.

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And Nolan Williams, Dr. Nolan Williams at Stanford is a good person to look up for more on that.

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What exactly is that? Is that putting something in your head? There are different ways to do it,

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depending on the hardware that you're using. But in effect, accelerated TMS refers to a new protocol

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with better hardware and software of a technology TMS that has existed probably for 40 years,

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if not more, on some level. And you will instead of doing two or three sessions a week for many

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months, you do 10 sessions a day for five days straight. So you are getting stimulated on the hour,

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every hour for about eight minutes. And you do that for 10 hours straight. And then you compound

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that over five days. And you see, for instance, to give one example,

384
00:40:57.280 --> 00:41:06.000
friend's child, very terrifying story. But he was a cutter this this 14 year old.

385
00:41:07.520 --> 00:41:14.320
Yeah. And the parents were just waiting for the call that their childhood committed suicide.

386
00:41:14.320 --> 00:41:20.960
And this went on for two or three years, I want to say. And then within three days of accelerated

387
00:41:20.960 --> 00:41:28.000
TMS treatment, it was like reversion back to old self. And then with boosters every say three to

388
00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:35.680
six months, that has been durable. It's the before and after is impossible to overstate. It's

389
00:41:35.680 --> 00:41:40.400
pretty wild. What are they doing to the brain is elect electrodes or is it music or is it magnet?

390
00:41:40.400 --> 00:41:46.640
It's magnets magnets. Yeah. And what it feels like is someone kind of like flicking the side of

391
00:41:46.640 --> 00:41:52.960
your head is sort of the sensation. It is from a safety profile perspective, really compelling.

392
00:41:52.960 --> 00:41:59.680
Like the downside risk is very, very minimal. And me with the most recent sessions that I've

393
00:41:59.680 --> 00:42:08.800
done myself, I had probably four to five months of no anxiety. Like all of that stuff vanished

394
00:42:08.880 --> 00:42:14.960
as if by magic wand. And I felt like I'd been meditating twice a day for a year. I mean, it was

395
00:42:16.400 --> 00:42:22.720
incomprehensible. It was really, really, really remarkable. And there's good clinical evidence

396
00:42:22.720 --> 00:42:29.680
for this. It's not just end of one anecdote. So so that's one is the kind of narrow stem piece.

397
00:42:29.680 --> 00:42:34.160
And there's a lot more that's going to happen in that space. But bioelectric medicine, that would

398
00:42:34.160 --> 00:42:40.320
be one big lever that I think is worth investigating if people are suffering with any number of different

399
00:42:40.320 --> 00:42:47.600
conditions. Then you have metabolic psychiatry. Primarily, that would be dietary intervention.

400
00:42:47.600 --> 00:42:51.760
Chris Palmer at Harvard is someone who's popularized this in the last handful of years.

401
00:42:51.760 --> 00:42:55.040
Metabolic psychiatry specifically putting people on a ketogenic diet.

402
00:42:56.240 --> 00:43:01.360
You have folks who have been treated with 15 different medications for schizophrenia for a decade

403
00:43:01.360 --> 00:43:07.840
who get off all of their medications within three to six months. And stay off. Simply by

404
00:43:09.840 --> 00:43:17.600
stabilizing a handful of things in the brain, including adding a very beautiful, clean energy

405
00:43:17.600 --> 00:43:24.080
source, which is ketones. There are also a lot of possible applications of the ketogenic diet

406
00:43:24.080 --> 00:43:30.000
or modified ketogenic diets, exogenous ketones, many supplemental ketones for neurodegenerative

407
00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:36.000
disease. So I have three relatives right now who have Alzheimer's. And genetically, I'm very

408
00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:42.800
predisposed. So I'm thinking a lot about this also from a preventative perspective. So can I

409
00:43:43.520 --> 00:43:51.120
potentially bolster mitochondrial health, cellular cleanup, reduction of plaque buildup, etc.

410
00:43:51.200 --> 00:43:59.120
By doing strict ketosis for a month or a year, fasting for a week, perhaps once a year,

411
00:43:59.120 --> 00:44:03.760
water only, I think there's actually pretty compelling evidence that those are all

412
00:44:04.640 --> 00:44:09.680
worthwhile interventions to consider if you're very highly predisposed as I am. And then I would

413
00:44:09.680 --> 00:44:14.480
say the last one I'll mention now, the psychedelic assisted therapies for various conditions.

414
00:44:14.480 --> 00:44:19.520
I do think that psychedelics, and this is to quote a very famous psychotherapist named

415
00:44:19.520 --> 00:44:24.960
Stanislaw Grough, Stan Grough, what the telescope did for astronomy, what the microscope did for

416
00:44:24.960 --> 00:44:30.560
biology. Psychedelics will do for the mind. I don't think that's an overstatement because a lot of

417
00:44:30.560 --> 00:44:36.320
the the clinical outcomes that we're seeing with treatment resistant PTSD, people who've had an

418
00:44:36.320 --> 00:44:42.880
average diagnosis duration of like 14 to 17 years, nothing succeeded. They do two to three sessions

419
00:44:42.880 --> 00:44:49.200
and then you see like a 50 plus percent complete remission of PTSD. What is going on there?

420
00:44:49.200 --> 00:44:54.000
I think in a very productive way leading us to question some of the very fundamental assumptions

421
00:44:54.000 --> 00:44:59.360
that are made in the world of psychiatry, particularly with pharmaceutical interactions or

422
00:44:59.360 --> 00:45:06.080
pharmaceutical prescriptions. And that's really exciting to me because I think there is an

423
00:45:06.080 --> 00:45:11.360
argument to me made that you can address certain root causes. And there are different explanations

424
00:45:11.360 --> 00:45:17.280
for this. Gould-Dolen, who's now at UC Berkeley, she was at Johns Hopkins, talks about the re-opening

425
00:45:17.280 --> 00:45:22.480
of critical periods for development. So you could potentially use psychedelics for

426
00:45:24.080 --> 00:45:30.000
stroke patients or trying to relearn motor control. So I would say that those are broadly kind

427
00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:37.040
of the three pillars. There's one other that I'm digging into that I think could end up being

428
00:45:37.040 --> 00:45:43.760
very, very interesting overall. This is one that is sort of TBD personally. I am experimenting with

429
00:45:43.760 --> 00:45:48.160
it, but Vegas nerve stimulation. There is a sea of bullshit floating around related to Vegas

430
00:45:48.160 --> 00:45:53.600
nerve stimulation. The vast majority of what you'll bump into is pseudoscientific nonsense.

431
00:45:53.600 --> 00:45:56.640
So if I had never heard about Vegas nerve stimulation before, how would you?

432
00:45:56.640 --> 00:46:01.200
Yeah, I can explain it. All right, so the Vegas nerve is a bit of a misnomer because there are

433
00:46:01.200 --> 00:46:07.440
actually two bundles of nerves that travel down from around your brainstem, down either side of

434
00:46:07.440 --> 00:46:12.160
the neck, kind of where you would feel your pulse. It's right alongside the chronic artery.

435
00:46:13.040 --> 00:46:19.840
And you can think of them as almost transatlantic cables. So you don't have, you have two primary

436
00:46:19.840 --> 00:46:26.880
Vegas nerves, but there are about 100,000 fibers in each of them. And we only know what a tiny

437
00:46:26.880 --> 00:46:32.400
fraction of those do. They then travel down and they innovate and touch pretty much everything

438
00:46:32.400 --> 00:46:39.520
you can imagine, including your gut. And there's some very interesting communication between

439
00:46:39.520 --> 00:46:46.960
the gut microbiome and the brain vis-a-vis the Vegas nerve. It's wild. And the most credible

440
00:46:46.960 --> 00:46:55.440
voice that I've found in the world of Vegas nerve stimulation, or VNS, for short,

441
00:46:55.440 --> 00:47:00.880
science is a guy named Dr. Brian Tracy, T-R-A-C-E-Y, he wrote a book called The Great

442
00:47:00.880 --> 00:47:05.840
Nerve, which is a very good introductory read on all this. One of the most heavily cited

443
00:47:05.840 --> 00:47:13.200
scientists in the last 30 years. He's incredibly incredible. And he co-founded a company,

444
00:47:13.200 --> 00:47:19.120
I want to say at least 10 years ago or 11 years ago, was involved at least as a primary scientific

445
00:47:19.120 --> 00:47:25.760
advisor for an implant. The implant is about the size of a omega-3, visual capsule, gets implanted

446
00:47:25.760 --> 00:47:32.400
right in the neck. So surgical procedure, but pretty minor. And that has just been approved. It was

447
00:47:32.400 --> 00:47:37.440
the cover of The New York Times a few weeks ago for rheumatoid arthritis. And the before and

448
00:47:37.440 --> 00:47:42.160
after that you see in some of these conditions, again, is something straight out of science fiction.

449
00:47:42.160 --> 00:47:48.240
You see someone who's been mostly bedridden, chronic fatigue, can't hold a job, struggling to

450
00:47:48.240 --> 00:47:52.960
interact with their kids, has this procedure. And then like two weeks later, they're running

451
00:47:52.960 --> 00:47:59.040
up a flight of stairs to catch a train on a trip to Europe. And have the problem of too much

452
00:47:59.040 --> 00:48:06.160
energy. It seems to have broad potential application to autoimmune conditions. So you might think

453
00:48:06.160 --> 00:48:16.000
of say a Crohn's disease or IBS. It seems to have applications to significantly enhancing

454
00:48:16.000 --> 00:48:23.120
HRV, heart rate variability. So I have a friend who for the longest time, he's former tier one operator

455
00:48:23.120 --> 00:48:30.160
military. He's got a lot of sympathetic overdrive, so he had trouble sleeping. And he tried all sorts

456
00:48:30.160 --> 00:48:35.600
of sophisticated breathing programs, which can help. He tried cold exposure, which can help. But those

457
00:48:35.600 --> 00:48:41.920
were all incremental gains on his HRV, maybe improved 10 to 15%. Lots of meditation twice a day,

458
00:48:42.720 --> 00:48:49.360
10 to 15%. Used Vegas nerve stimulation for somewhere between two and four weeks,

459
00:48:49.360 --> 00:48:54.480
tripled his HRV. What? Yeah, tripled. How did he stimulate his Vegas nerve?

460
00:48:55.440 --> 00:49:02.560
This is where we get into some controversial territory. All right. So the device he used is

461
00:49:02.800 --> 00:49:11.280
it is a device. It's called Gamma Core. It's by prescription. It is applied to the neck. It provides

462
00:49:13.360 --> 00:49:20.640
electrical stimulation for two minutes at a time. I believe it's very, very minute, two minutes

463
00:49:20.640 --> 00:49:27.440
twice a day. I want to say maybe it's five minutes twice a day. And that seems to have just a

464
00:49:27.440 --> 00:49:34.800
downstream collection of benefits or potential benefits. Most of the research for Gamma Core

465
00:49:34.800 --> 00:49:43.280
is for I believe migraines and or cluster headaches in terms of published literature or option B,

466
00:49:43.280 --> 00:49:50.240
which has a lot more in terms of published studies, would be a regular, so year stimulation.

467
00:49:51.600 --> 00:49:56.800
And that's stimulating something called the Simbukhansha right here. It's a very particular location.

468
00:49:57.440 --> 00:50:04.000
And so you apply stimulation to the ear. I'm experimenting with both the ear and also the neck.

469
00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:11.440
I would say Vegas nerve stimulation has top of mind access right now for me in terms of interest.

470
00:50:12.480 --> 00:50:17.440
I bought this bond charge face mask, this light panel for my girlfriend for Christmas. And this

471
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472
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So when they asked if they could sponsor the show, it was my absolute privilege. If you're not

473
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474
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475
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476
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478
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and you can return or exchange them if you need to. And I'll tell you what, it scares the hell out of

482
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me when I look over in the office late at night. And one of my team members is a sanitary desk using

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Before the dioreverseo was what it is today, it was just an idea. And it started with me

496
00:52:23.440 --> 00:52:28.720
a cheap plug-in microphone and my Mac right here. And I have to say when I first had the idea for

497
00:52:28.720 --> 00:52:33.280
the dioreverseo, my thinking was that the world might want to see into the diaries of some of the

498
00:52:33.280 --> 00:52:38.720
most interesting, successful people really in high places that were doing interesting things. So,

499
00:52:38.720 --> 00:52:43.040
now after recording that first episode under my duvet, I sat on my Mac which is from our sponsor

500
00:52:43.600 --> 00:52:47.520
Apple and spent hours editing and eventually uploaded it. And honestly, I thought that would

501
00:52:47.520 --> 00:52:52.400
probably be it. But a couple of my friends said they enjoyed it. So I kept on recording. And over

502
00:52:52.400 --> 00:52:56.640
time, the microphone has changed and we now have this incredible setup here. But the thing that

503
00:52:56.640 --> 00:53:03.360
has stayed the same is I'm still using the Mac. Even today, my entire team across our studio

504
00:53:03.360 --> 00:53:08.640
still uses the Mac. Our first few episodes maybe had tens of people listening, but now tens of

505
00:53:08.640 --> 00:53:12.720
millions of people tuning all over the world, which is still absolutely crazy to me.

506
00:53:12.720 --> 00:53:17.040
So if there is an idea that keeps tapping you on the shoulder, this is your sign to start. Your

507
00:53:17.040 --> 00:53:24.480
great ideas start on Mac and you can find out more apple.com slash Mac. Because of what you do

508
00:53:24.480 --> 00:53:29.040
and because of the way that you are in terms of your broad curiosity and the way that you think

509
00:53:29.040 --> 00:53:33.120
and the way that you learn, I have to ask you the question, what is it that you see coming down the

510
00:53:33.120 --> 00:53:39.040
pipe, like coming down the line in terms of macro trends? It probably makes sense for us to just

511
00:53:39.040 --> 00:53:43.200
stick with health for a second. You've talked about Vegas. Is there anything else that you think

512
00:53:43.200 --> 00:53:47.520
10 years from now? Everybody's going to be doing, but they're not currently doing.

513
00:53:48.160 --> 00:53:51.280
We're thinking about one of them out throughout though is something I've been thinking about as air

514
00:53:51.280 --> 00:53:58.080
quality. I think I see a rise in people's concern about CO2 levels and also outside air quality. So

515
00:53:58.080 --> 00:54:02.080
I imagine I'll be wearing some kind of device. My iPhone will be telling me about the air quality

516
00:54:02.080 --> 00:54:07.840
in the room or outside. Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me. I think biometric medicine is a big category.

517
00:54:07.840 --> 00:54:14.640
So whether it's accelerated TMS or focused ultrasound where you might take something that looks

518
00:54:14.640 --> 00:54:23.280
like a hockey puck and put it over your liver, for instance, or spleen to affect various things.

519
00:54:24.480 --> 00:54:36.080
Using microchips over pills, I think, is going to be a huge growth area and that will realize more

520
00:54:36.080 --> 00:54:42.880
and more how much is dependent on the immune reflex and different types of communication

521
00:54:42.880 --> 00:54:49.840
mediated by electricity that can be affected by external or internal devices like an implant.

522
00:54:49.840 --> 00:54:56.240
So for instance, I'll give you a wild factoid, which is people may have heard the story, which

523
00:54:56.240 --> 00:55:04.000
is based on real science where you transplant the microbiome from say obese mice into lean mice

524
00:55:04.000 --> 00:55:10.320
and those lean mice then become obese just by transplanting the gut microbiome.

525
00:55:11.520 --> 00:55:16.480
If you sever the vagus nerve before you do the transplant, that doesn't happen. They don't

526
00:55:16.480 --> 00:55:24.480
become obese. So what's happening there? It would seem that the microbiome is communicating with

527
00:55:24.480 --> 00:55:31.760
the brain vis-civ the vagus nerve and when you sever something experimentally in that way or

528
00:55:31.760 --> 00:55:38.960
bladed or whatever, oftentimes this might seem paradoxical, but you can achieve similar effects

529
00:55:38.960 --> 00:55:47.840
with stimulation that you can with severing. And I think many of the assumptions that we have

530
00:55:47.840 --> 00:55:53.200
currently, which form the bedrock of our, quote unquote, understanding of mental illness and so on,

531
00:55:53.200 --> 00:55:58.320
are just going to be completely false. They're going to be completely untenable within 10 years.

532
00:55:58.320 --> 00:56:05.200
A lot of that I think is going to be driven by a better understanding of the body electric.

533
00:56:05.200 --> 00:56:16.480
It will be driven by better understanding of how fuel utilization in the brain drives many

534
00:56:16.480 --> 00:56:23.120
different psychiatric conditions that can be mitigated or completely addressed by, say, providing

535
00:56:23.120 --> 00:56:27.280
an alternate fuel source instead of glucose ketones, right? That would be just kind of a simple

536
00:56:27.280 --> 00:56:31.840
example, but there's a huge, huge compliance issue with the ketogenic diet. My people don't

537
00:56:31.840 --> 00:56:37.040
do it for a lot of good reasons. So how do you people to stick with it? Well, maybe there are other

538
00:56:37.040 --> 00:56:46.240
options for achieving ketogenic-like effects such as systemic anti-inflammation with the use of

539
00:56:46.240 --> 00:56:52.480
electricity instead of diet, right? I think that's possible and I've invested in a few companies

540
00:56:52.480 --> 00:56:59.600
that are aiming to do that, which is very exciting because it means that you might have options

541
00:56:59.600 --> 00:57:05.520
for affecting brain function that do not require you to take molecules that get into your brain

542
00:57:05.520 --> 00:57:11.200
directly. That's really exciting. So the biometric medicine, I think, is going to be a very

543
00:57:11.760 --> 00:57:18.560
exciting space to watch. And there are a lot of researchers doing some wild stuff with biometric

544
00:57:18.640 --> 00:57:24.880
medicine. So we'll see where it goes. Where are you today in terms of your what's guiding you at

545
00:57:24.880 --> 00:57:29.840
the moment in the season of your life? What are your big goals? Are you spiring towards anything

546
00:57:29.840 --> 00:57:36.880
of a particular? It's relationships. It's looking forward to the next big chapter for me, which would

547
00:57:36.880 --> 00:57:45.360
almost certainly, it not almost certainly be partner, family, all of that. I mean, another startup

548
00:57:45.440 --> 00:57:49.840
is not going to make any difference to my life, you know, another podcast. I love all of those

549
00:57:49.840 --> 00:57:59.520
things. I love startups. I love the podcast. I love the books, but we're at the squeezing out of

550
00:57:59.520 --> 00:58:03.600
marginal gains at this point. Are you married? You're married or? I'm not married. Don't have any

551
00:58:03.600 --> 00:58:11.120
kids that I'm aware of. But dating a lovely woman right now, very excited about it. Do you

552
00:58:11.120 --> 00:58:14.960
think it's quite strange that a lot of podcasters don't seem to be like, I'm not married. I don't

553
00:58:14.960 --> 00:58:21.040
have any kids yet. I've just turned 33. But so many of the big podcasters don't seem to have kids

554
00:58:21.040 --> 00:58:25.200
will be married other than really rogan. Yeah. Yeah. Someone tweeted about the other day.

555
00:58:28.400 --> 00:58:34.320
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I think that I'm not pointing fingers at you, but I know quite a few of

556
00:58:34.320 --> 00:58:40.000
these guys. And if we're talking about guys, I mean, I know a bunch of female podcasters as well.

557
00:58:41.280 --> 00:58:46.960
Quite a few of which are married, but on the male side, I will say, you know, if you're a good

558
00:58:46.960 --> 00:58:57.040
looking guy and you're putting videos on YouTube, your DM inbound and your plethora of temptation

559
00:58:57.040 --> 00:59:04.880
that you need to resist is going to make remaining single, very attractive. And that's true for

560
00:59:04.880 --> 00:59:10.480
a lot of these guys. So I don't think there's a mystery to be solved. In other words, it's like if

561
00:59:10.480 --> 00:59:17.040
they go on the dating apps, it's just like shooting fish in a barrel. And I don't think

562
00:59:17.040 --> 00:59:21.120
ultimately that the dating apps, despite what they might say, are designed to be deleted. I do

563
00:59:21.120 --> 00:59:27.520
not believe that. They're casinos intended to keep you in the casino. Yeah. It's just follow the

564
00:59:27.520 --> 00:59:32.560
money. You know, follow the subscription plans. Well, you talk about the paradox of choice. Yeah.

565
00:59:33.200 --> 00:59:39.280
And so there are times and I think this is probably misplaced envy where I'm like, you know,

566
00:59:39.920 --> 00:59:44.960
maybe there was something to arrange marriages, you know, and this whole idea of like sole,

567
00:59:44.960 --> 00:59:51.440
mate, romantic love driving everything is a relatively new invention on the scale of human history.

568
00:59:53.200 --> 00:59:58.880
Now, what I want someone deciding who I marry enough kids with, not particularly,

569
00:59:58.880 --> 01:00:06.800
but there is a certain simplicity to it that I find enviable when you end up in the modern

570
01:00:06.800 --> 01:00:14.320
digital casinos of dating apps where yes, that person was an 8 out of 10, but man, that 9 or 10

571
01:00:14.320 --> 01:00:20.080
is just right around the corner. I know it's just a few thousand swipes away. And you get the

572
01:00:20.080 --> 01:00:30.320
variable reward at least if you're like a healthy, sexually vigorous male, I'm sure for women as

573
01:00:30.320 --> 01:00:36.000
well. I just think that men tend to think what they're smaller had a lot more often. You're going to

574
01:00:36.000 --> 01:00:42.640
get these incredible dopamine hits of variable reward. It's just like dog training, but you're

575
01:00:42.640 --> 01:00:47.840
training yourself with the dating app to continue using the dating app by getting these scooby snacks

576
01:00:47.840 --> 01:00:55.680
in terms of, you know, fill in the blank with your imagination. I don't meet, I have not met a

577
01:00:55.680 --> 01:01:00.880
single person who is like, I love dating apps. I have not met a single person. And yet,

578
01:01:01.840 --> 01:01:06.640
right? What does the crack edit want? More crack. And they might say, I just need one more hit.

579
01:01:06.640 --> 01:01:13.920
That's not how it works. So there is, I think, a lot to be said for applying positive constraints.

580
01:01:14.560 --> 01:01:19.280
Right. It's good to be single again. I just, the way I look out at the current mechanism of

581
01:01:19.280 --> 01:01:24.480
finding someone these dating apps and I just think, and also, I do understand it would be a

582
01:01:24.480 --> 01:01:29.120
significant distraction from whatever I'm doing here. Oh, can you imagine me being in New York City

583
01:01:29.200 --> 01:01:35.520
tonight single and like, and having the evening off and what would go through my head? And

584
01:01:36.240 --> 01:01:40.320
and then you'd have to go on a date with someone you've got to do all the small talk stuff. I

585
01:01:40.320 --> 01:01:46.000
got out the game before the game began like seven years ago. I saw this game. I saw this tweet

586
01:01:46.000 --> 01:01:52.400
from this. I think it was a Vietnamese woman who said, you know, I wonder if it wasn't Gen X. I was

587
01:01:52.400 --> 01:01:58.240
just like, I wonder if X, Y and Z people of this generation are looking at dating apps and

588
01:01:58.240 --> 01:02:06.560
thinking, wow, we got the last chop rat of NAM. Literally. And that's not far from the truth.

589
01:02:08.080 --> 01:02:13.200
Paradox choices are real problem. People think it's a quality problem of abundance. I'm not convinced

590
01:02:13.200 --> 01:02:18.480
that that's true. It's not possible. I have so many, my friends that struggle with dating the most

591
01:02:18.480 --> 01:02:24.160
date the most. Yeah, sure. I got two or three friends that I can think of. I won't name them,

592
01:02:24.240 --> 01:02:29.360
but two of them are women and one of them's a guy. They do 50, between 50 and 100 dates a year.

593
01:02:30.240 --> 01:02:35.440
And they're just convinced that it's through lack of option. And I just, it's impossible.

594
01:02:35.440 --> 01:02:41.600
But, you know, yeah, I'm very happy to be off of the dating apps. I was on the dating apps for

595
01:02:41.600 --> 01:02:46.960
two or three years. And it's just, it is a part-time slash full-time job.

596
01:02:46.960 --> 01:02:50.000
We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next

597
01:02:50.000 --> 01:02:54.400
guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. And you're, you know, the person who wrote your

598
01:02:54.400 --> 01:03:03.920
question sat there, I kid you not for 30 minutes in total silence thinking about these eight words.

599
01:03:03.920 --> 01:03:08.960
Oh, wow. They sat there for, I've never seen anything like it. And the eight words that they wrote.

600
01:03:08.960 --> 01:03:14.480
Oh, man. I know. That's my, what is your favorite color today?

601
01:03:14.960 --> 01:03:23.600
Do you imagine? Yeah. What's your favorite sandwich now, James? How would you spend your final day on

602
01:03:23.600 --> 01:03:32.800
earth with my closest friends and family? No doubt. I wouldn't be Peter. It wouldn't be, I mean,

603
01:03:32.800 --> 01:03:40.160
maybe it involves Peter, but it would be telling the people I love that I love them and spending

604
01:03:40.160 --> 01:03:44.000
time with them. It doesn't need to be anything fancy. It could be sitting on a porch on a rocking

605
01:03:44.000 --> 01:03:50.880
chair. And that might seem like a trite answer, but I am putting that into practice every year with

606
01:03:50.880 --> 01:03:56.640
periods of time that are blocked out for this. So I'm not waiting until my last day, but last day,

607
01:03:56.640 --> 01:04:05.440
certainly wouldn't be dating apps. Wouldn't be an opium bender. It would be, it would be time with

608
01:04:06.400 --> 01:04:13.040
my absolute closest friends and family. And I'll add a, a elaboration on the past year review

609
01:04:13.040 --> 01:04:20.240
when I'm looking at relationships. Before investing in new relationships, I look at my top, say,

610
01:04:20.240 --> 01:04:24.000
five to 10 relationships and ask myself, did I spend the amount of time I would want to spend

611
01:04:24.000 --> 01:04:31.440
with these people last year? And if the answer is no, I always reinvest in those people. And only the

612
01:04:31.440 --> 01:04:38.880
overflow gets allocated to new relationships. I really focus on the tried and true proven

613
01:04:38.880 --> 01:04:43.360
relationships with deep levels of trust over long periods of time. In terms of systems, have you

614
01:04:43.360 --> 01:04:48.560
put a system in place to make sure that life doesn't get in the way of those people coming together?

615
01:04:49.360 --> 01:04:57.520
Yeah, I mean, for 25 plus years, I've had an annual reunion around my birthday every year in

616
01:04:57.520 --> 01:05:05.440
the summer, where all of my, or those who can make it, but incredibly old friends show up. They

617
01:05:05.440 --> 01:05:10.720
know it's on the calendar. It's roughly the same date every year. And they fly in from all over

618
01:05:10.720 --> 01:05:15.760
the country, all over the world. And it has nothing to do with my birthday. It's just a reunion of friends.

619
01:05:15.760 --> 01:05:20.960
Tim, thank you. Thank you for several reasons. I think the first reason is you're one of the,

620
01:05:20.960 --> 01:05:24.400
I said to you before, one of the founding fathers of what we do here. And if it wasn't for people

621
01:05:24.400 --> 01:05:30.560
like yourself and Joe, there is a zero percent chance, I think, that people like me would be doing

622
01:05:30.560 --> 01:05:34.480
what we do now. And that's given us so much. There's really, really like a very extremely low chance

623
01:05:34.480 --> 01:05:39.280
that if people like you hadn't taken the risk and create the blueprint and shown that it was like

624
01:05:39.280 --> 01:05:44.720
an effective medium and the long form was interesting and everything that you guys proved. There's

625
01:05:44.720 --> 01:05:50.080
no chance that people like with me would exist. And so whenever I meet people like you that I

626
01:05:50.160 --> 01:05:55.680
consider to have to be standing on the shoulders over on or stolen a blueprint on I feel like I am

627
01:05:55.680 --> 01:06:00.640
obliged to say thank you. Because you've created it. But it's true. It's true. Yeah. And I was inspired

628
01:06:00.640 --> 01:06:06.640
also by people who preceded me, right? When I did the launch for the fire chef in 2012 with going

629
01:06:06.640 --> 01:06:12.160
on Joe Rogan and Mark Marin and Nerdist and so on. Like those guys also showed me that something

630
01:06:12.160 --> 01:06:18.720
interesting was a foot. So you're 33 said? 33. Yeah, you got a lot around way, man. You're in a good

631
01:06:18.720 --> 01:06:25.680
position. I see. See what happens. I'll add one last thing that I neglected to mention earlier.

632
01:06:25.680 --> 01:06:32.480
But in terms of productivity and we're talking about weekly architecture, I think everyone should

633
01:06:32.480 --> 01:06:39.840
put as a challenge for themselves, particularly if they're an entrepreneur. A four-week

634
01:06:39.840 --> 01:06:46.960
mini retirement once a year where you are unavailable. You're off the grid. No laptop, no phone

635
01:06:46.960 --> 01:06:54.640
outside of maybe Uber and Google Maps and open table where you are literally completely unavailable.

636
01:06:54.640 --> 01:07:00.960
And the reason I recommend that they're few number one, it's going to allow you to play the long

637
01:07:00.960 --> 01:07:07.120
game at high intensity. Having that de-loading phase, the second is it will force you to

638
01:07:08.080 --> 01:07:14.240
improve all of your policies, rules, guidelines for autonomous decision-making by employees,

639
01:07:15.360 --> 01:07:19.920
et cetera, et cetera. It will force you to clarify all of that on a regular basis. So when you come

640
01:07:19.920 --> 01:07:25.440
back, all of those systems improvements will endure beyond the mini retirement, but it's a forcing

641
01:07:25.440 --> 01:07:35.040
function. It also forces you to take a very close look at the non-business interests that you have

642
01:07:35.040 --> 01:07:42.720
either maintained or cultivated or let atrophy in complete disuse. And if you end up having a

643
01:07:42.720 --> 01:07:46.960
slight panic attack because you don't know what to do with your time, that's a great wake-up call.

644
01:07:47.840 --> 01:07:55.200
You need some other things to offset the type A maniacal focus on chasing that rabbit around the

645
01:07:55.200 --> 01:08:06.000
greyhound truck. Amen. Thank you Tim. Thank you. If there's anything we need, it is connection,

646
01:08:06.000 --> 01:08:10.640
especially in the world we're living in today. And that is exactly why we created these conversation

647
01:08:10.640 --> 01:08:16.320
cards, because on this show, when I sit here with my guest and have those deep, intimate conversations,

648
01:08:16.320 --> 01:08:21.520
this remarkable thing happens time and time again. We feel deeply connected to each other.

649
01:08:21.520 --> 01:08:25.680
At the end of every episode, the guest I'm interviewing leaves a question for the next guest,

650
01:08:25.680 --> 01:08:30.640
and we've turned them into these conversation cards. And we've added these twist cards to make

651
01:08:30.640 --> 01:08:35.440
your conversations even more interesting. And there are so many more twists along the way with

652
01:08:35.440 --> 01:08:39.200
the conversation cards. This is the brand new edition. And for the first time ever, I've added to

653
01:08:39.200 --> 01:08:45.760
the pack this gold card, which is an exclusive question from me. But I'm only putting the gold cards

654
01:08:45.760 --> 01:08:51.360
in the first run of conversation cards. So get yours now before the limited edition gold cards,

655
01:08:51.360 --> 01:09:08.640
are all gone. Head to the link in the description below.