Tools of Titans

by Timothy Ferriss

  The Buffet of Options

  * * *

  If I could only choose one physical exercise for the body, it would probably be the hex-bar deadlift or two-handed kettlebell swing. If I could only choose one exercise for the mind, it would be 10 to 20 minutes of meditation at least once daily.

  There are many options. Oddly, in polling readers, substantially more men end up at Transcendental Meditation (TM), and substantially more women end up at vipassana. Go figure. I currently use both in a roughly 60/40 split. But each person needs to find the shoe that fits.

  How to figure out what works best for you? Try one or more of the following. I have used each successfully and so have hundreds (and often thousands) of my fans:

  Use an app like Headspace or Calm. Headspace’s free “Take10” will guide you for 10 minutes a day for 10 days. A number of my guests also use Headspace to help them get to sleep. Some of my listeners in the media, like Rich Feloni of Business Insider, have written entire feature-length pieces on how this app has changed their lives. Amelia Boone uses both Headspace and Calm, depending on the circumstances. I prefer the narrator for Headspace (Andy Puddicombe), but Calm features background sounds of nature that soothe the nerves.

  Listen to a guided meditation from Sam Harris (page 454) or Tara Brach (page 555). Maria Popova of BrainPickings.org (page 406) listens to the same recording every morning—Tara Brach’s Smile Guided Meditation recording from the summer of 2010.

  Take a TM course (tm.org). It will probably cost $1,000 or more, but this option offers a coach and accountability. For me, this is what kicked off more than 2 years of consistent meditation. I’m not a fan of everything the TM organization does, but their training is practical and tactical. Rick Rubin and Chase Jarvis convinced me to bite the bullet on the cost when I was going through a particularly hard period in my life. I’m glad they did. The social pressure of having a teacher for 4 consecutive days was exactly the incentive I needed to meditate consistently enough to establish the habit. Rick and Chase both effectively said, “You can afford it, and it might help. What do you really have to lose?” In this particular case, I was penny wise and pound foolish for a long time. I was also afraid of “losing my edge,” as if meditation would make me less aggressive or driven. That was unfounded; meditation simply helps you channel drive toward the few things that matter, rather than every moving target and imaginary opponent that pops up.

  If you want to try mantra-based meditation without a course, you can sit and silently repeat one two-syllable word (I’ve used “na-ture” before) for 10 to 20 minutes first thing in the morning. TM purists would call this heresy, but you can still see results. Aim for physical comfort. No crossed legs or yoga-like contortion required. The default is sitting reasonably straight on a chair with your feet on the floor, hands on your thighs or in your lap, and back supported.

  Try one or more of Chade-Meng Tan’s suggested exercises, starting on page 154. They are simple and brilliant. I practice a few times per week, often in the sauna.

  How Long Does It Take to See Results?

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  Macro

  Commit to at least one 7-day cycle. I hate to say it, but I think less is worthless. There appears to be a binary not-boiling/boiling phase shift. If your doctor prescribes a week of antibiotics and you only take the medication for 3 days, the infection isn’t fixed and you’re back to square one. I believe there is a minimum effective dose for meditation, and it’s around 7 days.

  If you need a kick in the ass, consider using accountability partners or betting through a service like Coach.me or Stickk.com.

  Complete 7 sessions before you get ambitious with length. 10 minutes is plenty. Do NOT start with 30- to 60-minute sessions, or you’ll quit before hitting the phase shift. Start small and rig the game so you can win.

  The Dalai Lama was once asked how long it took for noticeably life-changing effects, to which he replied succinctly: “Around 50 hours.” That really ain’t much, and it might be less. Based on a number of recent studies, a mere 100 minutes of cumulative “sitting” time appears sufficient to produce subjectively significant changes.

  Curiously, for some outliers like Arnold Schwarzenegger (page 176), it appears that one year of diligent practice can provide a lifetime of recalibration, even if you never meditate again.

  Micro

  In my own sessions of 20 minutes, 15 minutes is letting the mud in the water settle, and the last 5 minutes are really where I feel the most benefit. For me, it’s much like training to failure with weight lifting. The benefits are derived from the last few reps, but you need all the preceding reps to get there.

  But what if you think of your to-do list, past arguments, or porn for 19.5 minutes out of 20? Do you get an F in meditation? No. If you spend even a second noticing this wandering and bringing your attention back to your mantra (or whatever), that is a “successful” session. As Tara Brach pointed out to me, the muscle you’re working is bringing your attention back to something. My sessions are 99% monkey mind, but it’s the other 1% that matters. If you’re getting frustrated, your standards are too high or your sessions are too long. Once again, for 7 days, rig the game so you can win. The goal is not to “quiet the mind,” which will give your brain a hyperactive tantrum; the goal is to observe your thoughts. If you’re replaying some bullshit in your head and notice it, just say, “Thinking, thinking” to yourself and return to your focus.

  Done consistently, my reward for meditating is getting 30% to 50% more done in a day with 50% less stress. Why? Because I have already done a warmup in recovering from distraction: my morning sit. If I later get distracted or interrupted during work hours, I can return to my primary task far more quickly and completely. (Tech nerd side note: Momentum extension for Chrome is also very helpful.)

  In Closing

  * * *

  “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

  —Abraham Lincoln

  Whacking trees with a blunt axe is no way to go through life.

  Try it for 7 days and sharpen your mind.

  As Rick Rubin and Chase Jarvis asked me: What do you have to lose?

  Spirit animal: Chinese dragon

  Three Tips from a Google Pioneer

  Chade-Meng “Meng” Tan (TW/FB: @chademeng, chademeng.com) is a Google pioneer, award-winning engineer, and best-selling author. Meng was Google employee #107 and led the creation of a groundbreaking mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course for employees called Search Inside Yourself, which regularly had a waitlist of 6 months. Meng’s work has been endorsed by President Carter, Eric Schmidt of Google, and the Dalai Lama. He is the co-chair of One Billion Acts of Peace, which was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015. His book, Joy on Demand, is one of the most practical books on meditation that I’ve found.

  Enter Meng

  How do you sustain your meditation practice up to the point that it becomes so compelling that it’s self-sustaining? I have three suggestions:

  1. Have a Buddy

  I learned this from my dear friend and mentor, Norman Fischer, whom we jokingly call the “Zen Abbot of Google.” We use the gym analogy. Going to the gym alone is hard, but if you have a “gym buddy” whom you commit to going with, you’re much more likely to go regularly. Partly because you have company, and partly because this arrangement helps you encourage each other and hold each other accountable (what I jokingly call “mutual harassment”).

  We suggest finding a “mindfulness buddy” and committing to a 15-minute conversation every week, covering at least these two topics:

  a. How am I doing with my commitment to my practice?

  b. What has arisen in my life that relates to my practice?

  We also suggest ending the conversation with the question, “How did this conversation go?”

  We instituted this
in our mindfulness-based emotional intelligence program (Search Inside Yourself) and found it very effective.

  2. Do Less Than You Can

  I learned this from Mingyur Rinpoche, whose book, The Joy of Living, I most highly recommend. The idea is to do less formal practice than you are capable of. For example, if you can sit in mindfulness for 5 minutes before it feels like a chore, then don’t sit for 5 minutes, just do 3 or 4 minutes, perhaps a few times a day. The reason is to keep the practice from becoming a burden. If mindfulness practice feels like a chore, it’s not sustainable.

  My friend Yvonne Ginsberg likes to say, “Meditation is an indulgence.” I think her insight beautifully captures the core of Rinpoche’s idea. Don’t sit for so long that it becomes burdensome. Sit often, for short periods, and your mindfulness practice may soon feel like an indulgence.

  3. Take One Breath a Day

  I may be the laziest mindfulness instructor in the world because I tell my students that all they need to commit to is one mindful breath a day. Just one. Breathe in and breathe out mindfully, and your commitment for the day is fulfilled. Everything else is a bonus.

  There are two reasons why one breath is important. The first is momentum. If you commit to one breath a day, you can easily fulfill this commitment and preserve the momentum of your practice. Later, when you feel ready for more, you can pick it back up easily. You can say you don’t have 10 minutes today to meditate, but you cannot say you have no time for one breath, so making it a daily practice is extremely doable.

  The second reason is having the intention to meditate is itself a meditation. This practice encourages you to arise an intention to do something kind and beneficial for yourself daily, and over time, that self-directed kindness becomes a valuable mental habit. When self-directed kindness is strong, mindfulness becomes easier.

  Remember, my friends, never underestimate the power of one breath. Mental fitness and joy on demand both start here, with one breath.

  My Two Favorite Exercises from Meng, in His Own Words

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  1. Just Note Gone

  There is a simple practice that can greatly enhance your ability to notice the absence of pain [whether physical, mental, or emotional], though it isn’t only concerned with pain.

  With “Just Note Gone” we train the mind to notice that something previously experienced is no more. For example, at the end of a breath, notice that the breath is over. Gone. As a sound fades away, notice when it is over. Gone. At the end of a thought, notice that the thought is over. Gone. At the end of an experience of emotion—joy, anger, sadness, or anything else—notice it is over. Gone.

  This practice is, without a doubt, one of the most important meditation practices of all time. Meditation master Shinzen Young said that if he were allowed to teach only one focus technique and no other, it would be this one. Here are the instructions for the informal practice of Just Note Gone, from Shinzen’s article “The Power of Gone.”

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  Whenever all or part of a sensory experience suddenly disappears, note that. By note I mean clearly acknowledge when you detect the transition point between all of it being present and at least some of it no longer being present.

  If you wish, you can use a mental label to help you note. The label for any such sudden ending is “Gone.”

  If nothing vanishes for a while, that’s fine. Just hang out until something does. If you start worrying about the fact that nothing is ending, note each time that thought ends. That’s a “Gone.” If you have a lot of mental sentences, you’ll have a lot of mental periods—full stops, Gones!

  * * *

  So what? Why should we care about whether we can detect the moment when a particular burst of mental talk, or a particular external sound, or a particular body sensation suddenly subsides?

  As a first step in answering this question, let’s start with an admittedly extreme example.

  Suppose you had to go through some horrible experience that involved physical pain, emotional distress, mental confusion, and perceptual disorientation all at once. Where could you turn for safety? Where could you turn for comfort? Where could you turn for meaning?

  Turning toward your body won’t help. There’s nothing but pain and fear there. Turning toward your mind won’t help. There’s nothing but confusion and uncertainty there. Turning toward sight and sound won’t help. There’s nothing but turmoil and chaos there.

  Under such extreme duress, is there anywhere you could turn to find relief? Yes.

  You could concentrate intently on the fact that each sensory insult passes. In other words, you could reverse the normal habit of turning to each new arising and instead turn to each new passing. Micro-relief is constantly available.

  2. Loving-Kindness and the Happiest Day in 7 Years

  In many of my public talks, I guide a very simple 10-second exercise. I tell the audience members to each identify two human beings in the room and just think, “I wish for this person to be happy, and I wish for that person to be happy.” That is it. I remind them to not do or say anything, just think—this is an entirely thinking exercise. The entire exercise is just 10 seconds’ worth of thinking.

  Everybody emerges from this exercise smiling, happier than 10 seconds before. This is the joy of loving-kindness. It turns out that being on the giving end of a kind thought is rewarding in and of itself. . . . All other things being equal, to increase your happiness, all you have to do is randomly wish for somebody else to be happy. That is all. It basically takes no time and no effort.

  How far can you push this joy of loving-kindness? One time, I gave a public talk in a meditation center called Spirit Rock in California. As usual, I guided the audience in this 10-second exercise, and just for fun, I assigned them homework. I was speaking on a Monday evening, and the next day, Tuesday, was a work day, so I told the audience to do this exercise for Tuesday: Once an hour, every hour, randomly identify two people walking past your office and secretly wish for each of them to be happy. You don’t have to do or say anything—just think, “I wish for this person to be happy.” And since nobody knows what you’re thinking, it’s not embarrassing—you can do this exercise entirely in stealth. And after 10 seconds of doing that, go back to work. That’s all. On Wednesday morning that week, I received an email from a total stranger, Jane (not her real name). Jane told me, “I hate my job. I hate coming to work every single day. But I attended your talk on Monday, did the homework on Tuesday, and Tuesday was my happiest day in 7 years.”

  Happiest day in 7 years. And what did it take to achieve that? It took 10 seconds of secretly wishing for two other people to be happy for 8 repetitions, a total of 80 seconds of thinking. That, my friends, is the awesome power of loving-kindness.

  Informal Practice: Wishing for Random People to Be Happy

  During working hours or school hours, randomly identify two people who walk past you or who are standing or sitting around you. Secretly wish for them to be happy. Just think to yourself, “I wish for this person to be happy, and I wish for that person to be happy.” That is the entire practice. Don’t do anything; don’t say anything; just think. This is entirely a thinking exercise.

  If you prefer, you can do this at any time of the day for any amount of time. You can also do it at any other place. If there is nobody present, you can bring someone to mind for the purpose of this exercise.

  Formal Practice: Attending to the Joy of Loving-Kindness

  Sit in any posture that allows you to be alert and relaxed at the same time, whatever that means to you. You may keep your eyes open or closed.

  Repeat this cycle once per minute: Bring to mind someone for whom you can very easily feel loving-kindness. Wish for him or her to be happy. The joy of loving-kindness may arise, and if that happens, bring full attention to the joy until it fades away. For the rest of the minute, just rest the mind.

  When the next
minute begins, start the cycle again, for a total of 3 minutes.

  You can do this for however many minutes you choose. You don’t have to stick to a once-per-minute regimen—feel free to rest your mind for as long as you want between each cycle. The timing is not important; the only thing that is important is attending to the joy of loving-kindness, that is all.

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  TF: I tend to do a single 3- to 5-minute session at night, thinking of three people I want to be happy, often two current friends and one old friend I haven’t seen in years. A mere three days into doing this in Paris, while working on this book, I found myself wondering throughout the day, “Why am I so happy?” Part of the reason I think it’s so effective is that meditation is normally a very “me”-focused activity, and you easily get caught in the whirlpool of thinking about your “stuff.” This loving-kindness drill takes the focus off of you entirely—which, for me, immediately resolves at least 90% of the mental chatter.

  Coach Sommer—The Single Decision

  We all get frustrated.

  I am particularly prone to frustration when I see little or no progress after several weeks of practicing something new.