The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Q&A with Tim — Reinvention, Visualization Techniques, Making “Risky” Decisions, Parenting Considerations, Intuition, New Hobbies, Dating, and More (#769)

Please enjoy this transcript of a special Q&A episode of The Tim Ferriss Show.

This past April was the podcast’s 10-year anniversary, and the platform River (getriver.io) helped listeners organize parties around the world in more than 180 cities! More than 4,000 people RSVP’d. I was able to join about 40 cities via Zoom for quick hellos and drinks (huge thanks to Rae and Ana for the quarterbacking), and I had a blast dropping in on the Paris meetup in person. Thanks to everyone who gathered for wine, celebration, and meeting like-minded people!

After all the parties, and as a thank you for their hard work, I invited all of the hosts to a private Q&A. That’s the format for this episode. I hope you enjoy it.

Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors.

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 Tim Ferriss: All right, first foremost, thanks, everybody. I really appreciate all the hosting and amazing celebrations and goings-on around the world. It was super fun for me to be part of and to watch and to participate in. Thank you very much for all of that.

And what I thought we would do is bounce back and forth between these questions here. And I’ll do improv jav — improv jav. Improv jazz as we go through and I’ll pick some questions. And then we will also do some live questions. Why don’t we start with some live questions? And then I’ll hop in here and I’ll answer as many questions as I can that were pre-submitted as well.

All right. RJ from Málaga, Spain. Believe it or not, I have some ancestors from Málaga, Spain. One of them was killed at a bullfight, so be careful with the bull fights. 

All right, here we go. “If you had to pick a topic for your podcast that I’d stick to from now on, what topic or theme would you pick?” Probably reinvention of different types. I think I would focus on people who have reinvented themselves instead of sticking with the tried and true groove. People who have taken the time or the space or just the attention to step back and reexamine their assumptions, reexamine the things that have worked up to this point that may not be those things directionally that they want to continue pursuing. Reinvention, I think.

Let’s see. Kate and Cody, “How do you think about optimization? Today, many of us have the resources to enable us to spend a countless percentage of our life tweaking and attempting to optimize every little thing.” I would say that you want to pick carefully what you choose to optimize. As a very dear friend of mine, I won’t mention him by name because he might not like that, but very top one percent of one percent in terms of performer, put it to me. He’s like, “You want to be incredibly excellent; the best you can be in one or two things. And then for everything else, it’s good enough. Passing grade for everything else.” And he walks that walk. And he’s got a great family, he’s a great husband and father. He’s very good at the things he chooses to optimize, and for the rest, he’s not worried.

Claudine, “What has brought [me] a ton of joy or fun recently?” Archery. I’ve been doing a lot of archery training. I’m not sure if you can see my forearms. They are all screwed up. I was shooting both right and left-handed. But find that incredibly joyful and meditative.

All right, Joel. Hello, Joel. “Our group had so much in common. It was so fun. Everyone wants to stay connected. They asked if there might be more opportunities for me to facilitate keeping us connected in the future.” The greatest joy that I got from the parties for the 10th anniversary and so on was how many people came together with some shared interests, or curiosities at least, who then wanted to hang out after the event, people who wanted to stay connected. That made me super, super happy. And that was really the not so secret agenda all along. That made me really happy, and I’d like to explore ways that I can facilitate that without having to manage it myself.

All right, Cindy has a question. “COCKPUNCH update, please.” Yes, I have a ton of artwork and a lot of material to share with respect to world building. And frankly, I’ve let perfection be the enemy of good. I’ve wanted to present all this stuff in this high production value video with all the bells and whistles. And I’ve been sitting on this stuff for many months now. And I think that is my perfectionism getting in the way of simply sharing these things. I have lots of stuff to share, and I need to get on that, I would say, in the next few weeks. It doesn’t need to be fancy. I feel at this point, expediting is more important than optimizing delivery.

All right. Let’s see. I’m looking for questions that I can answer. Oh God, “Worst/funniest date [I’ve] been on?” Yeah, we’ll need another live chat to cover that.

Irina, “How [am I] today?” I’m doing really well. Beautiful day here. It’s a little warm. I don’t handle heat terribly well. I’m going to go shoot arrows after this Q and A and hang out with Molly outside. I’ll have her behind the line of fire. She’s a very good archery dog in that way. And a little tired. I’m not sure why. I might have a fever. I’ve been training really hard, so who knows? Maybe there’s a bug in the food or something. I’ve been very tired today. It’s unclear why, because I got plenty of sleep. That’s how I am today. But happy to be doing the Q and A.

All right, this is from Andres, Andy, from Buenos Aires. “What place does Argentina occupy in [my] heart today and why?” I have deep affection for Argentina and the Argies. And I would like to get back down there, honestly. I recently, for the first time in 20 years basically, went to a tango festival in Austin. I bought new shoes. I didn’t even have shoes. I haven’t done tango in ages. And I’ve forgotten 99 percent of it, which is very painful for me, but had a blast. Just had so much fun. There’s nothing like it. I think at some point it’s possible I’ll go back to Argentina and do three to four weeks full immersion, tons of tango, lots of steak, and probably lots of malbec at the same time. I would say I’m very eager to get down there, revisit it, learn of the current events and leadership in particular in Argentina, which I find very interesting, and we’ll go from there.

What type of business/investment is the most exciting for [me] right now?” And this isn’t an invitation for pitches, but anything that’s really aligned with the ethos that I might be looking to incorporate more in my life. For instance, Maui Nui Venison from an ecological perspective, from a founder perspective, husband-wife team, incredibly high integrity, beautiful family, beautiful people, and also very good operators. It’s a good business, but it’s also doing a lot for the native ecosystem in Hawaii. That’d be an example of something that I feel very aligned with. Even though it’s not the tech multiples that we would be used to in potential outcomes, something I feel very good about. Also very involved with quite a bit of climate work. And let’s just call it technology intended to help with many of the extreme weather and climate challenges that we’re going to continue to face.

Let’s see here. “Top three snacks [I’m] eating right now.” Yeah, Maui Nui right around the corner, so the Maui Nui venison sticks. And then often it’s some type of mixed nuts minus peanuts and, let’s say, cans of lentils. So boring, but I find that very helpful.

There are a number of questions about AI. I would say I largely feel unqualified to have strong opinions about this, but if I invest — and I’ve invested in one or two AI-focused companies. They’re very niche and they have some type of at least intermediate term defensible mode. A lot of the AI stuff that’s trained on publicly available data is just going to get cloned as soon as it shows any traction. And as some people may have noticed, a lot of stuff that was Web3 at one point, those people have now pivoted into AI. And I’m trying to be cautious of anything that is the investment sector du jour. And there are still interesting things in Web3, although I think blockchain is probably a better way to put it. And there are very interesting things in AI. But I like to invest in what I know, where I think I have an informational advantage, and I do not think I have an informational advantage with AI.

All right. Well, let’s see. This is a question on a few different things. I’ll pick two of these. On modern dating. “As a public figure, how do you navigate the complexities of modern dating?” I would say slowly and very carefully. “What qualities do [I] look for in a partner to ensure meaningful and sustainable relationship?” Well, first and foremost, I would say the smaller the social media footprint, the more comfortable I am. But it also makes it very hard to find people if they’re not online since it’s not like I’m going out to bars and just doing cold approaches. I would say discretion, someone who prefers a certain degree of privacy. Those are all indicators for me in the positive direction for trustworthiness. I recognize a lot of people live online, so that’s just the nature of our current day, but I look for those things.

A demonstrated ability to do hard things over longer periods of time. I want to know that life isn’t always hard for someone. If they’re able to focus on, let’s just say higher education for four years at a demanding university, that doesn’t automatically make them a super genius who’s perfect for me, but it shows probably they’re able to focus on certain things that are challenging for extended periods of time. Same thing if they’ve been at jobs, at least some jobs for more than one or two years. If it’s constantly lily pad hopping all over the place, I don’t find that to always mean someone is very resilient when things get hard. And things always get hard at some point. Those are a few. And then there’s all the stuff you could guess: beautiful, feminine, all that stuff. But I would say those are a few.

Also someone who has an identity where they feel confident in having done hard things. That’s the other benefit of, I would say, people who have done something objectively, to the extent that it’s possible, difficult, is they have a certain confidence that helps the whole relationship. I feel like you need to have a certain identity, confidence in your own abilities and skills and selfhood, self-authoring before you can really be a good partner. I think that’s the case, as best I can tell. But I don’t think I’m the last person you would want relationship advice from, but let’s wait until I have it a little more figured out.

“On self experimentation, you’re known as using yourself as a guinea pig. What are the next five things [I’m] planning to experiment with?” I don’t do as much crazy experimentation as I used to. I am looking at some regenerative medicine protocols possibly for helping inflammation and some of the lower back stuff, which has greatly improved since I started doing a few things. But the jury is still out, so I’m not going to get into that yet. I don’t want to make any prescriptive recommendations until I’ve really tested things. And archery training, a bunch of new types of archery training that I’m excited to play around with. And beyond that, really a lot of it is just putting in the work with things that I believe will be high-leverage, like working on hips, internal and external rotation, and a few other things that I think directly contribute to overall core and low back functionality, for lack of a better way to put it. But nothing crazy, in my opinion. Some of the medical stuff people might think is crazy, but it’s pretty solid research that’s backing this stuff, 10 to 20 years of research, so I don’t feel like it’s high risk.

Let’s see. “What risks have [I] taken in the last 10 years that have really paid off? Are there any that did not pay off?” Well, the podcast we could look at as a risk. But risk for me is a very specific thing. When people say, “This is risky; this isn’t risky,” I think definitions matter a lot. For me, risk is the potential of an irreversible negative outcome. Very few things fall in that category. The podcast was very off the beaten path for me, but I didn’t view it as risky because I could always stop doing it, I could always just hit cancel. It was low cost to get started. I enjoyed the process. The outcome wasn’t the only measure of success for me. And that was quite a divergence that paid off. Certainly paid off.

I would say that I’ve made some good investment calls and I’ve made some bad investment calls. The good ones fortunately more than make up for the bad ones. But with, let’s just say Web3 as an example, I went very heavy and hard into a lot of Web3 and put money into a bunch of different funds and various things.

COCKPUNCH as an NFT project was successful. And I set expectations I think properly at the beginning. If you go back and read that FAQ, I’ve delivered on all of those, and I’m going to deliver continually beyond that. I have a lot more to share. And everyone else has run for the — not everyone else, but pretty much everyone else has run for the hills, and they’re like, “Forget about all that. No, no, forget about all that.” Sleep, sleep. They don’t want anybody to remember.

I don’t mind at all because I took all those proceeds and donated it to the foundation. The Saisei Foundation is going to do some amazing work with whatever it ended up being, $2 million or something; maybe a little bit more. A lot of good will come of that. And it was a huge creative catalyst for me. And I think that without that, I wouldn’t be working on a new book project right now, as an example. It checked all the boxes in terms of its objectives. But as a sector I would say took a lot of huge hits on that one. And you live and learn. I wasn’t playing with money I couldn’t afford to lose, but it was enough that it was very painful. There’s an experiment that didn’t pan out, but there’s a reason they call them experiments and not guarantees. But yeah, you’ve got to choose your bet sizing properly so you don’t put yourself in a bad situation. All right, that — risks that have paid off, that was from Rebecca.

Let’s see. Andres, “Currently in a moment where I don’t know what to do professionally. Have you had those moments?” Yeah, right now. I’m not sure what I want to be when I grow up. And some days it’s really stressful, to be honest, which sounds silly, I know, but it is. I like having a plan. I like executing to plan. The book is really the only thing that is in my sights at the moment that looks clear.

Otherwise, what I’m doing my best to do is try a lot of little things, little experiments, expose myself to new people, have couple of exploratory conversations a week or read things, listen to things I wouldn’t usually read or listen to, and have confidence because I figured it out multiple times in the past that I will figure it out again. I don’t need to flog myself unnecessarily. I’ve yet to find that helpful. That may not be super tactical at this point, but that’s what I’ve been telling myself on my good days when I’m not beating the shit out of myself in my own head.

All right, David, “What is your current next project that [I’m] excited about? How are you approaching it differently?” This is, I’d say, the new book. I’m actually being much more collaborative with this book than I have in the past. And that’s proving to be a godsend because I have people to bounce things off of and to interact with. It’s just psychologically, I think, much healthier, at least at this point in my life, than being a lone wolf on these projects because lone wolf, it’s not a thing, by the way. Look in nature; no, lone wolf survives. Doesn’t work. I am using that as a broad way to experiment. By the way, COCKPUNCH was a precursor to that because I worked really well with what you guys will see soon with the concept art and a lot of the collaborative writing that was done. And it was awesome. It was a great process. Really had fun. It wasn’t just locking myself in a cave like I’m in solitary confinement. And that is what I’m trying to emulate, also, in writing this new book. We’ll see. I have about 400 or 500 pages drafted, so it’s going to be another big one. But that’s what I do.

“Have you experimented with peptides?” I experimented with — what is it, BMP-157 or BPC-157 12 years ago. Long time ago. I am out of date with peptides, but I did experiment way back in the day. But I really need to educate myself before I can have any thoughts on that whatsoever.

And by the way, just as a quick aside, with anyone online, if they only have high conviction statements, if they really speak confidently all the time, be very wary of those people. People who are being honest should say, “I have no fucking idea,” all the time. Or they should say, “You know what? I’m not really sure. I need to educate myself.” Everyone online should have that response a lot. If they don’t, then you’re not going to be able to separate out the real from the fake because they’re everything with the high level of conviction. Be really careful about that.

Okay. Let’s see. What mindfulness practices do I use to prepare for high-stakes presentation or performances? I would say I don’t let fear make me afraid in the sense that I really remind myself if you weren’t nervous, then it would be a bigger problem. It is normal to be nervous before you go up. My hands are shaking a little bit. I’ve done these things hundreds of times and I still get nervous, I still get sweaty, I still drink too much Diet Coke or coffee or whatever beforehand as a ritual, which just makes me more shaky, obviously. And it’s like, it’s okay. It’s fine. Anyone who’s going out to perform at a high level or attempting to do it at a high level is going to be nervous, so just use it. Mike Tyson would puke before he went on stage. While on stage. In the ring. Dean Martin used to puke before he went on stage. These are legends. I’m not saying you want to emulate everything about them, but these are people who are at the top of their field. If it’s okay for them, it’s okay for you. I just remind myself of that.

And I will rehearse my ass off. There’s no mental trick you can do beforehand if you haven’t prepared. And for me, the preparation is the mindfulness practice. With my TED Talk, I rehearsed it so many times into voice memo and my phone walking around, hundreds of times, so by the time I got to the day of the presentation on the main stage at TED, I was like, “Well, I’ve put in the time, the deliberate practice. I’ve done everything I can do. I’m as prepared as I will ever be. Let it rip. Let’s see what happens.” I’d say that’s the mindfulness practice.

“Have [I] thought about doing content more geared at kids, teens?” Yeah, I’ve thought about that. I’ve thought about it. I’m not sure what the best venue is. But I am going to be doing some experimentation for students, probably older students though, university or business school level.

“What [am I] looking to get out of the TF meetups, and how can we help?” How can you help? That was a question. Some folks have asked what question came up a lot? Some of the questions are just like, “Hey, how’s it going?” Because the interactions are so short, they’re like, “Hey, how’s it going? Where are you? Where do you want to go?” And then we’d run out of time. But one of the questions was, “How can we be helpful to you?” And my answer was and is, now connect with like-minded people. Do stuff in real life. And this ties into AI.

But if you want to, I think, harness your humanity, do stuff in real life, like meet people, man, because the poison’s coming. In terms of information deluge, it’s going to 10 X in the next 10 to 18 months. And most minds and habits are not going to be ready for that. I think it’s impossible to be ready, but to be more resilient, I would just say do more in real life. Connect with like-minded people. Try to do meetups. You can do Zoom or something like that if you can’t do live, but really seek out your tribe. And if those people happen to overlap with the people who came to the meetups, which was my hope, then great. You just connected with a bunch of people who might be of similar tribe. I would say do that.

All right. “Will [I] plan any in-person conferences?” I don’t have any plans right this moment. Joel, I see your note on IBS. I don’t have a lot of thoughts on IBS. I apologize. I just don’t know much about it. What you could do, and I don’t know if this will work, but you could just use Metamucil or Citrucel beforehand. It does slow gastric emptying and it does also reduce glycemic index. If you’re going to eat a meal you know is going to spike your glycemic index, side note, you can take five of these capsules with fiber just to slow things down so that the release isn’t as intense. But I’m not a doctor; I try not to pretend to be one on the internet. But I really don’t know much about IBS, unfortunately. But I’m looking at anti-inflammatory protocols that could have an effect on this type of issue, but I haven’t looked at it well enough, so I don’t want to give you any opinions.

Let’s see. Okay, “What are some of [my] heresies?” I think a heresy that I have is just I think a lot of what we try to do in modern life is a very new experiment. I think if we look back at older societies, and they’re not all rose-colored, it’s very seductive to look back at indigenous group X, Y, or Z and say, “Oh, they had it all figured out. They were in tune with nature.” And it’s like, well, if you go back, you also very often even now see domestic abuse and lots of alcoholism, other issues, so it’s not ever perfect anywhere.

But I would say if we look at what gives people meaning, I think we’ve been led astray with a lot of brainwashing and theory that doesn’t map very well to anthropological study or really just common behaviors that you see around the world that seem to have some durability. And Nassim Taleb talks about this a lot. I would just say broadly thinking that in a lot of ways, individually, just in terms of rugged individualism, we’ve gone off track a bit and that a lot of the, I’d say, common ways that we plan our careers and lives are actually at odds with ultimately what’s going to give us fulfillment, I would say. Can unpack that more another time.

All right, let’s see. Okay. All right. A couple of people asking about conferences. Maybe. Maybe at some point I’ll do a conference. It would be quite small. It wouldn’t be more than 200 people. It’s a lot of work, frankly. And when I did it last time, it was basically not-for-profit because I spent so much money on the quality of the event. I don’t know, I’m not sure I have the energy to do it as a nonprofit. And if it were not to be a nonprofit, it would just be stupidly expensive. It would be $30,000 a person or something obscene, which I would feel silly putting out there.

All right. “How realistic is it to consider the healthspan possibility…” — RJ — “…to get to 150 years old in good health?” I’m not really sure how to evaluate this, to be honest. I’m more focused these days on experiential lifespan and trying to harness — and I’ve spoken about this before, but trying to organize events, gatherings of friends, in some cases very intense physical experiences like long, difficult hikes or pilgrimage trails with people I really care for to basically pack a few months into, say, a week at a time. I think that’s a reliable, actionable way to extend your experiential life, to feel like you’ve basically packed 150 years into your, let’s say, 85.

Most attempts at extending longevity in any meaningful way have all failed to date. And maybe we are in fact at this cusp of all these amazing discoveries that will lead us to live a really long time. Maybe that’s rapamycin, maybe that’s some type of time restricted feeding, maybe that is follistatin, maybe it’s — who the fuck knows? There’s always something. There’s always some new Ponce de León fountain of youth that people have found, especially on the internet. I’m not super bullish on that stuff.

Here’s the thing I would say for myself: They’re likely to fail, so I would rather have low expectations and be pleasantly surprised later than to take all of these things and suffer what will most definitely be significant side effects that we haven’t foreseen with a lot of this new stuff. Like follistatin, for instance, it basically cripples FSH in animal models, so it’s like, do you really want to be infertile? Can you reverse that after the fact? Yeah, great, you have an eight pack and you look younger than you did eight weeks ago, but now your balls don’t work. I’m not ready to make that trade. Maybe after I have three or four kids, sure. But I would just be very careful with that kind of stuff.

150, if we’re talking about that in the next — basically putting people on a glide path that will land them there in the next 10 to 15 years, I’m pretty skeptical. Especially with increases in environmental toxins and other issues that will besiege humanity over the next 10 to 20 years certainly, more weather issues, forced migrations, all sorts of shit, I’m not dystopian about it, but it should tell you something that I’m not — about my personal beliefs at least, that I’m not doing a lot of that stuff. Yeah. If you account for infant mortality and antibiotics and then you look at, say, my entire family history on both sides, it’s like, yeah, males tend to die around 85. That’s just the way it goes. I would love to live longer, but I’m not going to take a lot of unnecessary risks where I see significant potential downside. Long answer. I’m interested in it for sure. I track some of the science. 

All right, Andy Bruce, “Any tips on walking the Kumano Kodo while taking your 11-year-old son with you?” That’s cool. That’s fun. There are a million different ways to walk this pilgrimage trail in Japan, which is the sister trail of the Camino de Santiago in Europe. Those are the only two world heritage pilgrimage trails. There are a thousand different ways you can do the Kumano Kodo. It’s like tributaries that then filter down to the main shrine and temple because they basically took Shinto mapping and then put Buddhism on top of it. I would pick one that crosses rivers and water if you can. That’s just a really pleasant feature when you’re hauling ass and getting really sweaty and so on. Bring walking sticks for sure, like poles, especially for the downhill. You’ll be walking on rock a lot. It’s very hard on the joints, so nice, thick heels, HOKA shoes or something like that, I would suggest. You will feel it in your ankles and your knees.

And my thought is if you’re going to do something longer, because some people will do a week at a time or 10 days at a time, you could spend months on the Kumano Kodo, is do a little bit less than you think you can each day. Don’t push it super hard because you may be then handicapped the next day. If your knee really bothers you, you’re not going to want to put a lot of weight on that for the next 10 kilometers or 20 kilometers. I’d do a little bit less than you think you can each day.

All right, something about the tweet — “If the kettlebell swing is king of the exercise, where else can you find the king of X? Could be your relationships, finance, anything.” I think a lot about barbell approaches to life. For instance, high risk angel investing and then muni bonds; as boring and as stable as you get. It’s one or the other. High risk, high return with small amounts of money or very stable, predictable, boring and not playing in the middle. As soon as you start playing in the middle, you’re like, “Oh, I’m going to play with tech growth stocks,” da, da, da. At least in my experience, that’s how you get your face ripped off, or that’s how I get my face ripped off. I think about barbell distributions a lot in physical fitness and finance and everywhere.

Okay. “Aside from Richard Feynman, if [I] could bring back one person from the dead for a podcast episode, who would it be?” Oh, man, there’s so many. I’m tempted to say Marcus Aurelius or something. Seneca. Who knows? Probably Seneca because I’ve just read so much of his stuff, and I’m curious if I would find the guy to be an arrogant prick or what the vibe would be in person, assuming we’re speaking the same language. I would be super curious about Seneca. He gets very mixed reviews. But I’m once again listening to an audiobook on anger or on Ira, I-R-A. His writing’s amazing. The guy’s writing is amazing, but what would he be like in person? Would I be like, “Oh yeah, this is the uncle who talks too much. God, this guy’s long winded.” Maybe. Ben Franklin I’d be interested, very interested in. Those are a few that come to mind. I could come up with 100 more for sure, but those are two off the top of my head.

“Do [I] have any mentors that [I] contact regularly for life advice?” This is from Jeff. “I found in midlife that I really missed out on having fatherly mentors in my 20s and 30s.” Yeah, there are. I talked to one this morning, in fact. He’s early 70s, very healthy, really takes care of himself, great marriage, close to his kids. And I think he has grandkids now. And so we did a check-in for about an hour today, caught up. And this is a good reminder for me to do that more often. I do feel good about that.

Let’s see. Paula, this is “What are [my] thoughts on ayahuasca and antidepressants? [You’ve] been doing ayahuasca for 13 years, only just started taking antidepressants, unsure if I should mix both.” This is from Brazil. You need to be very, very, very careful. Ayahuasca plus certain antidepressants like SSRIs can cause a potentially fatal serotonin syndrome, so you need to be very, very, very careful with that. I would absolutely speak with doctors about that. I would not mix them until you get the go ahead from doctors, and I imagine a psychiatrist who prescribed the antidepressants. I’d be very careful with that. Ayahuasca is one of the riskier compounds, at least of the, let’s call it classically known psychedelics with respect to combining with antidepressants, so I’d be very careful with that.

And side note, I learned not too long ago that people who were taking lithium should really not screw around with psychedelics. A lot of adverse events have been reported, at least with some of the classical, let’s just call it not entirely tryptamine, but LSD, psilocybin, et cetera. If you’re taking higher doses of lithium — now, there are some ways that could be conflated because if people are taking lithium, what are they taking it for? They might be taking it for any number of conditions that would be contraindicated with psychedelics in the first place. Who knows? But I wouldn’t mix lithium with these things either.

All right. Let’s see. “How can you incentivize someone to mentor you?” I’m not sure how to do that. I think you need to be a really good student, number one. You said no money possible. Frankly, I pay for it a lot. I have friends who learned from me and I learned from them. And they’re older than I am and I consider them mentors. But at the end of the day, I actually find it in some ways cleaner to just pay someone. And if you wanted to get mentorship that isn’t expensive, maybe you go to Toastmasters or you join the EO, like Entrepreneurs’ Organization, or YPO. It depends on what you’re looking for, but mentors don’t need to be expensive at all. I have a mentor in archery, and he’s also a mental performance coach. Doesn’t need to break the bank. I would say you can go to your local YMCA and find a coach in some sport. And if they’re good at all at anything, they will have life lessons for you, especially if they’re a bit older. I would say that’s my advice for the moment.

“Do [I] babysit sometimes for some of [my] friends?” Not really babysit, but I’ll watch their kids for a little bit or watch a Disney movie with their kids, young kids. How did I find it? Look, I think I’m a kid at heart, so for me, animals and kids are I don’t want to say easy, but especially if they’re little, I find them pretty easy. I think if I have kids, which is the hope, at least, if they get to the point where they’re petulant, mean-spirited kids where they’re just being assholes, I think I’ll have a hard time with that. I think I will have a hard time once they know which buttons they’re pushing and they’re just drilling it in, that I’m going to have trouble with. But little kids who just are dysregulated and lose their shit because they haven’t developed their prefrontal cortex, I can deal with that pretty well.

Let’s see. “[My] opinion of…” — this is from Judy — “…GLP-1 medications.” This would be like Mounjaro or Ozempic GLP-1, agonists. “I believe they’re in clinical trials now for depression/anxiety.” Yeah, I haven’t looked at them specifically for that. Did put up a blog post recently from Johann Hari on GLP-1 specifically. If you want to get some of the science and also a firsthand report of that, I would just go on tim.blog and search Johann, J-O-H-A-N-N, last name Hari, H-A-R-I.

All right, let me look here. Okay, cool. All right, this piece of artwork, people love this. I love it, too. I bought this for $80 at an antique warehouse in the middle of nowhere. I saw it and I just loved it and grabbed it. And I love it every time I see it. Maybe it was less. $60, $80 at an antique warehouse. Yeah, that’s one of my favorite pieces of art. That’s a turkey tail below it because I’ve got a lot of turkeys around here. Or not tail, turkey feather.

For book agents and stuff. Last time I checked, which was a long time ago, Publishers Marketplace is a great place to look. Also, find books that are in the same category or vein as yours. Look at the acknowledgements, and you’ll very often see the agent there, and then you can reach out to them directly through something like Publishers Marketplace. Or these days, a lot of these agents or agencies have their own websites.

“Thoughts on how to approach making some great in-person connections.” Yeah, I would look at my talk I gave at South by Southwest, which had the title, “How to Build a World Class Network in Record Time,” something clickbaity like that. But it actually delivers. I would check that out.

All right, this is from Dolan. Okay, the last set was from Claudine. Thank you for those. This one’s from Dolan, if I’m pronouncing that correctly. Basically, “Anything that [I] would like to talk about that [I] haven’t had an opportunity to talk about yet,” for instance, my interest/journey in connecting with animals in nature; maybe some insights from my personal exploration of psychedelic and non-ordinary states of consciousness over the last 10 years.

I have probably a thousand pages of notes on all this. And at some point, I feel like that might be the most important book that I write, but it’s going to be a lot to put it together. In a way, the book I’m doing now where I’m collaborating is a possible warmup for that because I don’t think it’s a book that I would want to do by myself. It would just be such a heavy lift. And yeah, we’ll see, we shall see. But I think if I talk about that at some huge length, it’ll probably be in a book. I’d want to think about it because it’ll get so strange. It will get so unbelievably strange.

Number one, first, all the scientific regulatory, on the radar, above the line, logistical stuff that I want to handle in the psychedelic therapeutics world I want to handle first because if I ever write this book, it is going to get so weird that at least 20 percent of the people who read it are going to think I’m completely insane. It’ll just be so strange. I wouldn’t want it to damage my current credibility that I have to get things done in those worlds, and including some of the stuff with animals. If you talk to people who’ve been in this stuff let’s just say culturally for hundreds or thousands of years, it’s not weird. But to most folks, it’s going to sound pretty fucking weird, which I get excited about. But I’m going to wait until I’m like, “You know what? I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks because it’s not going to interrupt anything else that I’m doing. I don’t care.” Then maybe that book. But it’s going to be a little while.

This is from Andres. Let’s see here. I’ll paraphrase here. “Basically, [I’m] very rational and methodical about decision-making and so on. Rational approach is admirable, but sometimes being irrational or spontaneous can inject a lot of energy and fun.” Have [I] found space for rationality to play a role in [my] life, the irrational and emotional for decisions? And if so, have they ever led [me] to alter [my] well thought out plans for the year?”

I would say yes. I don’t know if irrational it would be the word I would use. Because you have, let’s take moral. I don’t know what the proper word would be here, but you have moral behaviors, you have immoral behaviors. Let’s just call those non-moral behaviors. Then you have amoral behaviors that are in this no man’s land. I would say if you have rational — rational. Irrational, the opposite, then there’s arational, I don’t think that’s a word, but somewhere in the middle where it’s not driven by logic, it’s driven more by feeling, I’m doing more and more of that these days for sure. Our evolved system here with lots of valuable apparatus for navigating reality predates language, at least this kind of language, by millions of years. Yes, I found space for that.

Although I’d be very careful about — I see this quite a bit in Austin and places like it where there’s this neo new-agey stuff where people are like, “I’m just using my intuition.” And I think very often that is used by people who just wanted justification for doing what they want to do or doing something that is easier than the hard thing, and they’re like, “Well, I’m just using my intuition.”

Intuition is interesting to me when it points you in a direction you didn’t expect, where let’s just say you go on a date. And on paper they’re perfect. You’re like, “I’m going to love this person.” And then you meet them and you’re like, “Something’s a little weird here. I want to like them, but this isn’t right.” That’s where intuition is valuable. Or a business deal. Everything looks perfect, and then there’s something about it where you’re like, “My gut just doesn’t feel right.” That’s where intuition is interesting. If you’re like, “This all looks perfect on paper, and you know what? Even though all my friends are telling me it’s a terrible investment, my intuition tells me to do it,” that’s where I’d be like, “Well, wait a minute here. Is this just confirmation bias?”

“What are [my] thoughts on blogging in the age of AI?” Look, AI is amazing, it’s really incredible, but writing, for me, is a way of clarifying my own thinking, and I do think that taking the time to craft words without the assistance of AI is helpful. I might use AI to get past the blank page, but I think it’s seductive as a drug. And just like most people can’t tell direction without Google Maps now, I think it’s very possible, almost inevitable that people will lose certain faculties that they currently have by overusing AI. We shall see. But I plan on doing more writing the old-fashioned way.

I have not used binaural beats. I am very interested in that. And actually, I just reminded me, somebody owes me something on binaural beats. If you have any recommendations for what types of binaural beats, let me know.

Let’s see. “4-Hour Dog Training?” Yeah, maybe. I never say never.

Let’s see here. “Best $1,000 [I] spent lately.” I mean, it was more than that, but on the archery training, it’s always something like that. It’s very rarely stuff. Sometimes it’s stuff. I bought an extra, PSO-RITE, P-S-O R-I-T-E, and a mini rumble roller that I can travel with. And those have been amazing for just rolling out my glutes and piriformis and my legs and stuff before bed. Really helps with sleep a lot. But that’s, I don’t know, $100, $150. I buy very — well, I try to buy very little stuff. It just ends up causing me more stress as clutter around my house than the value that it adds, so I try to get rid of a lot of stuff. Good question. What was the last $1,000 worth of clutter that gave me the most relief when I gave it away? That’s one I should think about.

Okay. “[Am I] aware of Javier Milei…” I think that’s how you say his name, “…in Argentina?” I am. I’ve actually listened to some of his speeches. Pretty interesting stuff. I don’t know enough about him, but a number of my friends are big fans, so I need to do more research.

“Best thing that [I] spent an assload on.” What’s the best thing I spent an assload on? Not to get too technical. Would be family trip. I took my parents and brother and his wife on a trip around Europe. And that was definitely an assload of cash, but I think that was a good investment. And I would recommend everyone read something called “The Tail End” by Tim Urban. That is a good investment of time. It’s very short.

All right. “Do [I] like painting, not sketching, as a hobby?” I haven’t learned how to paint. I would like to dabble in, ideally, watercolor, I think. “Do [I] have any quick tips for getting up to 10 to 20 minutes on the acupuncture mat?” Yeah, that’s, for people who are curious, the Nayoya acupressure mat, I think, or other. There are a lot of invitations that I’m sure are just as good. I don’t go to 20 minutes typically, but 10 to 15 if I’m going to do it. The first three minutes are going to be torture, so you just have to get through the first three to four minutes is my experience. Otherwise, I don’t have much to tell you. It can be pretty intense.

All right, let me see what else we have here. “Thoughts on dating apps?” Oh man, this is like Warren Buffett covering his eyes and pointing towards Wall Street because half the people are going to have terrible experiences. I don’t know, to be frank. I think Hinge has been one of the better options so far, I think that in terms of just quality. People have to pass some hurdles and add some information. The League is pretty interesting also because you can search by interest, which is so critical. I don’t know why you can’t do it on any other app. But you can search for skiing or whatever to find somebody who has similar interests. But The League is really only effective in certain cities. It’s not used widely everywhere. But in a place like New York City or L.A. or whatever, you could find people who are pretty well-educated, interesting. But a downside is people tend not to use it that frequently, so you might have a great match and they don’t see your message for six months. Go figure. It’s a jungle out there, folks. Be careful. And there are a lot of people catfishing, so watch out for that too. Do a video call before you meet up with someone.

“What’s [my] favorite science fiction movie and why?” Big fan of the second Dune movie, frankly. Ex Machina I remember really enjoying. There are a lot of great science fiction movies. I think Her was fantastic. And at the time, it seemed insane, and it’s basically already there if you look at the latest editions of ChatGPT and so on, things like Replika with a K, Replika. Yeah, Her is basically already here. It’s pretty nuts.

All right, give me a second. Taking a note. Thank you for the binaural thing, Brainwave Smart Mind. Okay, I’ll check it out. Okay. Yeah, with questions about COCKPUNCH, it’ll be more interesting once I release the rest of the stuff, or a bunch of it. Then you’ll have a lot more to chew on. And I’ll give you a foreshadowing. It’s not really a foreshadowing, it is a statement that I hope is a statement of fact, and that is I will have some fan fiction writing competitions, elimination competitions. And so that will reward people who really dig into the details. They’ll also have to be decent at writing, of course.

Let’s see. Claudine, “Have [I] let the enormity of 10 years of TFS really land, not just from a metrics POV but from a positive kindness deepening, et cetera, human level? It’s been such a force for good and light in this world.” Thank you, Claudine. That’s very kind of you to say. I would say that I did when the celebrations were happening, but I could do a better job. I could do a better job of sitting with that. Thank you for the reminder. It’s easy for me to just move on, “Yeah, yeah, good job,” but you just did your job, so don’t get too happy with yourself and what’s next? What’s next? Yeah, you did your job, and that’s fine, but don’t get too smug about it or self-satisfied. But I find that can be very self-defeating. I did take time to celebrate for the 10th anniversary. And I had a great time. The in-person meetup in Paris was great. And it was really fun to, in person, hear the stories from people who were deeply affected by the podcast, so thank you for the reminder. I will take a moment today to revisit that. Thank you.

“[I] should travel to meet girls.” Well, why was I in Europe for six to eight weeks? Who knows? Maybe it was related to that.

All right, let’s keep going here. Bear with me, folks, for one second. All right. “Is it possible that [my] mood improved during this Q and A?” Yeah, it’s entirely possible. I was exhausted, guys, I’m not going to lie, at the beginning of this. But I enjoy these interactions, so it is certainly possible that my mood improved as a function of my energy going up. Thanks for that, everybody.

“Where do [I] see [myself] in 30 years?” Good lord. I don’t know. Hopefully not six feet under. We’ll see. 30 years, I’ll be 40. No, 76, 77. Fuck. I don’t know, hopefully I’ll be doing Black Diamond skiing because we found the fountain of youth.

“Have you suggested a workout routine,” this is Mags, “for [my] parents? If not, what would it potentially look like? How would you approach it?” Yep, I would say super slow protocol. Look up Ken Hutchins and the super slow protocol. And yeah, my dad’s lost, I don’t know, 80 pounds, let’s call it 40 kilos in the last year. He’s made a lot of progress. That’s slow carb diet. It’s all straightforward from 4-Hour Body. And then super slow as applied. It’s super slow in very basic terms. Is minimum five seconds up, five seconds down. If you’re doing a pressing movement, five seconds slow up, five seconds down. One set to concentric failure. Could be even slower. Could be 10 seconds up, 10 seconds down. But especially in elderly, quite effective for building muscle mass and increasing bone density without injury. That’s what I’ve prescribed to my parents, that plus walking to the extent that it’s possible; barbell, once again with slow carb diet is the glue that holds everything together.

“How do [I] record a podcast while walking?” This right here. This is ATH-M50x. It’s an Audio Technica headset. It has a USBC attachment. Plug that into your iPhone, and then you can use Riverside or some other app. There are a lot of different ways to record.

All right. Let’s see here. This is from Mariana. “Over the years, I’ve followed and learned from you and your guests. I’ve heard you say several times that I’m interested in parenting. Have you ever considered being a single parent family by choice? I, too, for many years, was trying to find the perfect partner until I turned 41 and my doctor told me it was time to unfreeze my eggs. Since I was still single and looking for a partner, I decided my best option was to be a single parent so I got a non-anonymous donor and had my son when I was 43. He’s almost six now. We travel the world together. Could not be happier with the drama free life we have. Just wishing to see you fulfill your parenting dream,” and wondered if I would consider this option too. Yeah, I would consider it, I would consider it. I think for a long time it was no, but I would consider it. I would. Of course, ideally I would have the partner, but I would consider it. Yeah, it’s not off the table, but I’m still fighting the good fight, getting back into the dating as much as I’m just like, “Fuck, this is a young man’s game, doing this online dating bullshit,” frankly. Just the communications burden is so much. Yeah, anyway, but to answer your question, yeah, it’s on the table for me.

Okay. All right, Joel, I see yours. “One of my big goals is to create the world’s first coffee mug to sell for more than $1 million.” I like that. I like that as a goal. I don’t really have a great recommendation for how to chip away at it. You could look at, from a PR perspective at least, people who have sold pieces of the Brooklyn Bridge or sold hamburgers that are gold-plated or have some type of gold on them for $300 at some pizza joint. And the reason they’re doing it is to get attention for everything else. What I would say is you could think about selling a $1 million coffee mug and make that your pass fail or you could come up with a compelling argument for why a coffee mug, a particular coffee mug, should sell for $1 million. And then use that as a PR hook to bring attention to everything else that you’re doing, which is probably quite a bit easier. But if you do that and someone buys it, great, fantastic. You did it. You sold one for $1 million. Now, that said, if that is the only measure of pass fail, then it’s extremely binary. But if you were to use it as a means by which you draw attention to everything else that you’re doing, then I think it’s pretty interesting. There you have it.

Let me take a look at a few more. “Have [I] been to Brazil?” Yes, I’ve been to Brazil five or six or seven times, actually. All over the place, in fact.

“How big is [my] staff?” Pretty small. Few people. Two, three people, four. Yeah, something like that. Three or four, I guess, at this.

This is from Hussein in Toronto, “After the 10th anniversary, I tried to organize a follow-up meeting. However, I had to cancel due to little interest. I’ll try again at the end of the summer. Can you think of a cost-effective Tim Ferriss way to make attendance at these events irresistible?” I’m just making this up, so this is on the fly, but you might consider partnering with another organization like EO or YPO or whoever might be looking for membership. And you could say, “I’d love to host this type of event for fans of Tim Ferriss,” or however you want to phrase it. “Listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show,” or, “Readers of such-and-such book.” And perhaps we can do an event where they come for free, get exposed to these following speakers. I think having speakers would be helpful. You could try to do that on your own or you could make it more of an event, some type of activity. You could do, I don’t know, Tim Ferriss Show paintball extravaganza and get 10 people to go do paintball or something. Who knows? What are they considering as alternatives?

It’s like with Molly, let’s just say, my dog, Molly. I remember at one point, I was working with this dog trainer, and she saw me giving kibble to Molly as the treat; just her regular dog food, but in little pieces. And she goes, “What is that?” And I was like, “Oh, it’s kibble.” And she’s like, “Oh, man.” She’s like, “You’re not going to train your dog that way.” She said, “It’s a crowded bar. You’ve got to tip with $20s.” She’s like, “You’re giving her bullshit. You have to have really good treats. You have to tip with $20s. It’s a crowded bar,” to compete with the squirrels and the dogs and the other stuff, the smells. I would say those are a few ideas. But if you have a small group of friends, you could just take their temperature with a couple of different options and see how it goes. Those are a few initial thoughts, but maybe helpful, maybe not.

All right, let’s see here. All right. I think those are the only ones that I can really answer well from the pre-submitted questions. I’m going to take a look at a few things that are left here. Timothy Kean. “This is visualization or affirmations?” I haven’t used affirmations much, to be honest, I don’t think. Actually, that’s not true. With Five-Minute Journal and things like that, with these statements like, “I am,” or whatever, I’ll frequently have something like, “You have plenty of time,” or “There’s plenty of time,” so that I don’t feel artificially rushed, which never produces great results, or great feelings for that matter.

Or something like — frankly, this is true for a lot of people on this Q and A. You’ve already won the game. You speak English, you have a computer, hopefully you’re healthy. You’ve already won the game. Just number one, take a breath. Realize there’s no game on some level left to win. You’ve already done it. You’ve already crossed the finish line, so everything else is gravy. Just take a chill pill and breathe.

And then for visualization, I use that mostly with athletic stuff. Sometimes if I’m going to get on stage for a speaking engagement, I’ll visualize how it’s going to go. I’ll run through it visually, just like I have a VR headset on. I’ll close my eyes. I’m very visual, so I’ll imagine the whole thing: walking out, sitting in the right chair, looking to the audience, how I’m going to hold the mic, et cetera. And I’ll run through some of that as rehearsal. I’d say those are what come to mind.

Yeah, Czech names. I didn’t realize that “hodinky” was Czech for watches. That’s hilarious.

Yeah. “What would this look like if it were easy?” Cindy. Question that I still ask myself all the time.

Let’s see here. “What do [I] like to ask [my]…” this is Victoria, “…ask [my] fans when [I] meet them?” I ask who they would like to hear on the podcast, and if they could only pick one or two guests. And they can’t say Elon Musk or some huge name. No huge names allowed. Who would you like to have on the podcast? That’s a question I ask. And I actually have had a lot of those answers translate to guests on the podcast.

Let’s see. Let’s see here. Randy, “If we did a fan meetup, would you endorse it or say it’s okay?” This is where I have to be careful about taking on too much responsibility with these things, so probably not because if I did that, then anyone who’s ever hosting a meetup would come to me for the same thing, and it would just create a huge comms problem for me and my team. I’d probably need to be hands off. Yeah, to have a fan meet up, I don’t think you need my permission. If you’re turning into some crazy business using my name, then it turns into a separate thing.

But “Do [I] like electronic music?” Yes, I do. I’m pretty old school. I listen to Shingo Nakamura quite a bit for chill mixes, deadmau5; pretty old school. But I wrote 4-Hour Body to a continuous mix, a three-hour set of deadmau5. There’s all sorts of stuff, but it’s usually something that’s going to give me a fair amount of energy. I listen to low-fi beats type stuff when writing sometimes if I need something a little down tempo for God knows where. I listen to a lot of heavy, heavy metal when I’m writing, oddly enough.

Okay. “State, story, strategy.” Yeah, I still use state, story, strategy. People can look that up. I got that from Tony Robbins.

And I would consider having more comedians on the podcast, but I feel like other people do a better job, honestly, like Rogan. There’s so many comedy podcasts out there. I want to differentiate myself in some way that feels authentic to me. Category of one kind of stuff. But yes, Austin is now a comedy center. It’s pretty wild.

All right, you guys, I think that’s me for now. I’m going to get outside and shoot some arrows. And I really appreciate everyone’s time. Thank you for the hosting, first and foremost. So awesome. So fun to see all of these events around the world. And would love people to stay in touch with anyone they met at those events or look to explore, explore, see what we can learn from each other. It doesn’t have to be limited to anything I talk about. Just find people who are philosophically values aligned and see what you can learn from each other. Go for some bike rides or something. It doesn’t have to be coffee and wine. Get out and do something. Try something new together. Anyway, that would be my wish for you all. And really appreciate everybody being so engaged. And I hope you have a wonderful week. And to be continued. Maybe we’ll do some more meetups. All right, you guys. Thanks, everybody. Bye.

The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.