Tools of Titans

by Timothy Ferriss

  Give Discomfort Its Due

  TIM: “Do you have any ask or request of my audience?”

  BRENÉ: “Lean into discomfort, because I think these seemingly impossible problems that we have around race and homophobia and the environment, and just the lack of love sometimes, are not going to be solved in a comfortable way. . . . So I guess my ask would be more of a big metaphysical ask: Give vulnerability a shot. Give discomfort its due. Because I think he or she who is willing to be the most uncomfortable is not only the bravest, but rises the fastest.”

  TF: One of the most common Kindle highlights from The 4-Hour Workweek complements this: “A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”

  When I Had the Opportunity, Did I Choose Courage over Comfort?

  Brené flew under the radar for a long time, until she came across Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “arena” quote (“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. . . .”). She decided to teach as a public figure, despite hurtful online comments and attacks.

  “In that moment, what I realized is, you know what? I do want to live a brave life. I do want to live in the arena. And if you’re going to live in the arena, the only guarantee is you will get your ass kicked. . . . Daring greatly is being vulnerable. So when you ask yourself, ‘Did I dare greatly today?’ The big question I ask is, ‘When I had the opportunity, did I choose courage over comfort?’”

  TF: This is a great question for daily review as part of a 5-Minute Journal or other evening journaling (page 146).

  How That Translates to More Than 30 Million Video Views

  “I went to the TED event and I experimented. I really put myself out there. I talked about my own breakdown, my spiritual awakening. I talked about having to go to therapy . . . and I remember driving home and thinking, ‘I will never do that again.’”

  She then watched the popularity of her video explode, now totaling more than 31 million views on TED.com and YouTube. “If I look back, my takeaway from that experience was this: If I’m not a little bit nauseous when I’m done, I probably didn’t show up like I should have shown up.”

  One of Her Rules for Public Speaking: House Lights

  “I require that the house lights are on, so I can see people’s faces. I rarely allow any of my presentations to be videotaped. If they’re taping you, you have to be super ‘hot’ [bright] under the lights, and the audience has to be dark. Then it’s performance, not connection, for me.”

  Shame Versus Guilt

  “Shame is ‘I am a bad person.’ Guilt is ‘I did something bad.’ . . . Shame is a focus on self. Guilt is a focus on behavior.”

  To Be Trusted, Be Vulnerable

  “One of the things that emerged from the data is this idea of trust and the relationship between trust and vulnerability. People always [think] you gain trust first and then you’re vulnerable with people. But the truth is, you can’t really earn trust over time with people without being somewhat vulnerable [first].”

  (See Gabby Reece’s advice to “go first,” page 94, and Neil Strauss’s pre-interview approach, page 350.)

  ✸ Who do you think of when you hear the word “successful”?

  “I don’t picture anybody. I picture the word ‘redefine.’ The word ‘successful’ or ‘success’ has been such a dangerous word in my research. My answer is: Be clear that your ladder is leaning against the right building.”

  ✸ Advice to your 30-year-old self?

  “It’s okay to be afraid. You don’t have to be so scary when you’re scared. . . . The 30s are so exhausting. It’s the age of perfecting, proving, pretending.”

  “Everything came when I completely dove in fearlessly and made the content that I needed to make as a kind of artist . . . I got out of my own way. I stopped doubting myself, and the universe winked at me when I did that, so to speak.”

  Spirit animal: Seagull

  * * *

  Jason Silva

  Jason Silva (FB: JasonLSilva; thisisjasonsilva.com) has been called a “Timothy Leary for the viral video age” by the Atlantic. He is host of Brain Games on National Geographic Channel. The show was the highest-rated series launch in Nat Geo’s history, with an average of 1.5 million viewers for the first two episodes.

  ✸ What is the best or most worthwhile investment you’ve made?

  “Investing in the editing of my videos 3 years ago, which kickstarted my career. I had left Al Gore’s Current TV in 2011 and was technically unemployed: a former TV host with limited savings. Deciding to spend money on editing these videos without an income was a leap of faith. The first two videos were ‘You Are a RCVR’ and ‘The Beginning of Infinity.’ Both of these were essentially proofs of concept for what would become my signature digital media style: philosophical espresso shots. I released both on Vimeo and immediately saw excitement and interest grow in my work. I knew I was onto something. Within months, I was being invited to give speeches and was eventually asked to make a video that opened TEDGlobal 2012. From there, things took off. A few months later, National Geographic became fans of the videos and invited me to host the TV series Brain Games, which was a huge global hit and garnered me an Emmy nomination.”

  TF: I love to study the early versions of current successes. Jason is quite polished, but the hatchling stages are often amusingly rough around the edges. For instance, search “old blog of Ramit Sethi,” “old blog of Gretchen Rubin,” or “old blog of Tim Ferriss,” or watch the first few episodes of Wine Library TV by Gary Vaynerchuk.

  ✸ What has become more important to you in the last few years and what has become less important?

  “I want to build my life around flow states [the sense of being ‘in the zone’].”

  TF: This is something Josh Waitzkin (page 577) talks about often: journaling and using tools like HRV (heart-rate variability) devices to identify the patterns and prerequisites that create peak flow states or their opposites.

  Being Jaded = Death

  “To me being jaded is almost like being dead. Nothing impresses you because you feel like you’ve seen it all before, and you go through life with dark lenses on . . . the curtain’s closed. No light gets in, no rhapsody gets in, and to me that’s death.”

  TF: Closely related advice from one of my own mentors: “Be a skeptic, don’t be a cynic.”

  ✸ Video and YouTube channel recommendation

  “Did Shakespeare Invent Love?” by Nerdwriter.

  TF: My favorite podcast is Hardcore History by Dan Carlin (page 285). Nerdwriter can be thought of as a short-form video complement to HH.

  ✸ Do you have any quotes that you live your life by or think of often?

  “We are simultaneously gods and worms.”—Abraham Maslow

  ✸ Advice to your 25- or 30-year-old self?

  “I would encourage my younger self to just not be afraid, right? To realize that a lot of things that were—I don’t want to say crippling anxieties, but—definitely ever-pervasive fears in my life growing up were unnecessary. A lot of time was wasted, a lot of energy was wasted, being worried.”

  TF: Across all guests, the most common answer to this question is some variation of “It’s all going to be alright.”

  * * *

  Jon Favreau

  Jon Favreau (TW: @jon_favreau, FB/IG: @jonfavreau) burst into the acting scene with his role in Rudy. He established himself as a writer with the iconic cult hit Swingers, in which he starred. Then, Favreau made his feature film directorial debut with Made, which he also wrote and produced. Other directing credits include The Jungle Book, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Cowboys & Aliens, Elf, Zathura, and Chef, which he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in. Lots of commas! Jon does everything.

  Go for Truth, and You’ll H
it Funny Along the Way

  Before we started recording our interview in Jon’s office, he mentioned the best advice he got from one of his teachers, Glenn Close: “Don’t go for funny. Go for the truth, and you’ll hit funny along the way.”

  Tell the Truth. It’s the Easiest Thing to Remember (And Write)

  “Although [Swingers] wasn’t really autobiographical, there were enough things that I could draw from. . . . What’s the expression from Glengarry Glen Ross? ‘Always tell the truth. It’s the easiest thing to remember.’ . . . If you’re going to talk about a neighborhood, talk about the neighborhood you grew up in. Talk about the neighborhood you know. Even if it’s not you, you’re going to have a more consistent world that you’re developing than if you’re putting them on Mars, and you don’t understand Mars.”

  Side note: Jon wrote Swingers in roughly 2 weeks and it was eventually made for less than $200K.

  On Cooking and Bonding

  The first time I spent a day with Jon at his house, I was immediately invited to help make beignets as part of a group (using a mix from Café du Monde in New Orleans, for those curious). Jon explains why:

  “Here we were. We didn’t really know each other that well. I’d read your stuff, you saw my stuff, and then lo and behold, you put some hot oil there, and the focus is no longer on each other. [It’s about] keeping all your fingers. . . . There’s so little overlap with most people that I meet, [which makes cooking great] because it creates this context where everybody is on equal footing, and everybody has a different skill set. It becomes a real task [where you become interdependent]. I find I have endless patience to spend time with people I don’t know very well, if you’re working on a really intimate cooking project. Then at the end, we all serve it together, and we really feel like we fought a war together. It’s a great bonding thing.”

  The Power of Myth

  For screenwriting, Jon recommends The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler, which he used to determine if Swingers was structurally correct. He is also a big fan of The Power of Myth, a video interview of Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers. “With The Jungle Book, I really am going back and doubling down on the old myths.”

  TF: We recorded our podcast during the shooting of The Jungle Book, in his production office next to set. Months later, The Jungle Book was the #1 movie in the world and currently has a staggering 95% review average on Rotten Tomatoes.

  Long-Term Impact Trumps Short-Term Gross

  “Thanks to video, and later DVD and laser disc, everybody had seen this film [Swingers], and it had become part of our culture. That’s when I learned that it’s not always the movie that does the best [financially] that has the most impact, or is the most rewarding, or does the most for your career, for that matter.”

  Another Reason to Meditate

  “In the middle of [a meditation session], the idea for Chef hit me, and I let myself stop, which I don’t usually do, and I took out a pad. I scribbled down like eight pages of ideas and thoughts, [and then I] left it alone. If I look back on it, and read those pages, it really had 80% of the heavy lifting done, as far as what [Chef] was about, who was in it, who the characters were, what other movies to look at, what the tone was, what music I would have in it, what type of food he was making, the idea of the food truck, the Cuban sandwiches, Cuban music . . . so it all sort of grew out from that.”

  Testing the “Impossible”: 17 Questions that Changed My Life

  “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”—Mark Twain

  Reality is largely negotiable.

  If you stress-test the boundaries and experiment with the “impossibles,” you’ll quickly discover that most limitations are a fragile collection of socially reinforced rules you can choose to break at any time.

  What follows are 17 questions that have dramatically changed my life. Each one is time-stamped, as they entered the picture at precise moments.

  #1—What if I did the opposite for 48 hours?

  * * *

  In 2000, I was selling mass data storage to CEOs and CTOs in my first job out of college. When I wasn’t driving my mom’s hand-me-down minivan to and from the office in San Jose, California, I was cold calling and cold emailing. “Smiling and dialing” was brutal. For the first few months, I flailed and failed (it didn’t help that my desk was wedged in a fire exit). Then, one day, I realized something: All of the sales guys made their sales calls between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Obvious, right? But that’s part one. Part two: I realized that all of the gatekeepers who kept me from the decision makers—CEOs and CTOs—also worked from 9 to 5. What if I did the opposite of all the other sales guys, just for 48 hours? I decided to take a Thursday and Friday and make sales calls only from 7 to 8:30 a.m. and 6 to 7:30 p.m. For the rest of the day, I focused on cold emails. It worked like gangbusters. The big boss often picked up the phone directly, and I began doing more experiments with “What if I did the opposite?”: What if I only asked questions instead of pitching? What if I studied technical material, so I sounded like an engineer instead of a sales guy? What if I ended my emails with “I totally understand if you’re too busy to reply, and thank you for reading this far,” instead of the usual “I look forward to your reply and speaking soon” presumptive BS? The experiments paid off. My last quarter in that job, I outsold the entire L.A. office of our biggest competitor, EMC.

  #2—What do I spend a silly amount of money on? How might I scratch my own itch?

  * * *

  In late 2000 and early 2001, I saw the writing on the wall: The startup I worked for was going to implode. Rounds of layoffs started and weren’t going to end. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I’d been bitten by the startup bug and intoxicated by Silicon Valley. To explore business opportunities, I didn’t do in-depth market research. I started with my credit card statement and asked myself, “What do I spend a silly amount of money on?” Where did I spend a disproportionate amount of my income? Where was I price insensitive? The answer was sports supplements. At the time, I was making less than $40K a year and spending $500 or more per month on supplements. It was insane, but dozens of my male friends were equally overboard. I already knew which ads got me to buy, which stores and websites I used to purchase goods, which bulletin boards I frequented, and all the rest. Could I create a product that would scratch my own itch? What was I currently cobbling together (I had enough science background to be dangerous) that I couldn’t conveniently find at retail? The result was a cognitive enhancer called BrainQUICKEN. Before everyone got fired, I begged my coworkers to each prepay for a bottle, which gave me enough money to hire chemists, a regulatory consultant, and do a tiny manufacturing run. I was off to the races.

  #3—What would I do/have/be if I had $10 million? What’s my real TMI?

  * * *

  In 2004, I was doing better than ever financially, and BrainQUICKEN was distributed in perhaps a dozen countries. The problem? I was running on caffeine, working 15-hour days, and constantly on the verge of meltdown. My girlfriend, who I expected to marry, left me due to the workaholism. Over the next 6 months of treading water and feeling trapped, I realized I had to restructure the business or shut it down—it was literally killing me. This is when I began journaling on a few questions, including “What would I want to do, have, and be if I had $10 million in the bank?” and “What’s my real target monthly income (TMI)?” For the latter, in other words: How much does my dream life—the stuff I’m deferring for “retirement”—really cost if I pay on a monthly basis? (See fourhourworkweek.com/tmi.) After running the numbers, most of my fantasies were far more affordable than I’d expected. Perhaps I didn’t need to keep grinding and building? Perhaps I needed more time and mobility, not more income? This made me think that maybe, just maybe, I could afford to be happy and not just “successful.” I decided to take a long overseas trip.

  #4—What are the worst things that could happen? Could
I get back here?

  * * *

  These questions, also from 2004, are perhaps the most important of all, so they get their own chapter. (See “fear-setting” on page 463.)

  #5—If I could only work 2 hours per week on my business, what would I do?

  * * *

  After removing anxieties about the trip with fear-setting, the next practical step was removing myself as the bottleneck in my business. Alas, “how can I not be a bottleneck in my own business?” isn’t a good question. After reading The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch, I decided that extreme questions were the forcing function I needed. The question I found most helpful was, “If I could only work 2 hours per week on my business, what would I do?” Honestly speaking, it was more like, “Yes, I know it’s impossible, but if you had a gun to your head or contracted some horrible disease, and you had to limit work to 2 hours per week, what would you do to keep things afloat?” The 80/20 principle, also known as Pareto’s law, is the primary tool in this case. It dictates that 80% (or more) of your desired outcomes are the result of 20% (or less) of your activities and inputs. Here are two related questions I personally used: “What 20% of customers/products/regions are producing 80% of the profit? What factors or shared characteristics might account for this?” Many such questions later, I began making changes: “firing” my highest-maintenance customers; putting more than 90% of my retail customers on autopilot with simple terms and standardized order processes; and deepening relationships (and increasing order sizes) with my 3 to 5 highest-profit, lowest-headache customers. That all led to . . .