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The dataset generation failed because of a cast error
Error code: DatasetGenerationCastError
Exception: DatasetGenerationCastError
Message: An error occurred while generating the dataset
All the data files must have the same columns, but at some point there are 1 new columns ({'embedding'})
This happened while the json dataset builder was generating data using
hf://datasets/HangenYuu/tim-ferriss-transcript/chunked_embedded_data.json (at revision 5bb4a397959c2f32d8482c3e1cd6c08576c088f1)
Please either edit the data files to have matching columns, or separate them into different configurations (see docs at https://hf.co/docs/hub/datasets-manual-configuration#multiple-configurations)
Traceback: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1869, in _prepare_split_single
writer.write_table(table)
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/arrow_writer.py", line 580, in write_table
pa_table = table_cast(pa_table, self._schema)
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/table.py", line 2292, in table_cast
return cast_table_to_schema(table, schema)
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/table.py", line 2240, in cast_table_to_schema
raise CastError(
datasets.table.CastError: Couldn't cast
id: int64
title: string
url: string
chunk_id: string
chunk: string
embedding: list<item: double>
child 0, item: double
-- schema metadata --
pandas: '{"index_columns": [], "column_indexes": [], "columns": [{"name":' + 787
to
{'id': Value(dtype='int64', id=None), 'title': Value(dtype='string', id=None), 'url': Value(dtype='string', id=None), 'chunk_id': Value(dtype='string', id=None), 'chunk': Value(dtype='string', id=None)}
because column names don't match
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/src/services/worker/src/worker/job_runners/config/parquet_and_info.py", line 1392, in compute_config_parquet_and_info_response
parquet_operations = convert_to_parquet(builder)
File "/src/services/worker/src/worker/job_runners/config/parquet_and_info.py", line 1041, in convert_to_parquet
builder.download_and_prepare(
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 924, in download_and_prepare
self._download_and_prepare(
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 999, in _download_and_prepare
self._prepare_split(split_generator, **prepare_split_kwargs)
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1740, in _prepare_split
for job_id, done, content in self._prepare_split_single(
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1871, in _prepare_split_single
raise DatasetGenerationCastError.from_cast_error(
datasets.exceptions.DatasetGenerationCastError: An error occurred while generating the dataset
All the data files must have the same columns, but at some point there are 1 new columns ({'embedding'})
This happened while the json dataset builder was generating data using
hf://datasets/HangenYuu/tim-ferriss-transcript/chunked_embedded_data.json (at revision 5bb4a397959c2f32d8482c3e1cd6c08576c088f1)
Please either edit the data files to have matching columns, or separate them into different configurations (see docs at https://hf.co/docs/hub/datasets-manual-configuration#multiple-configurations)Need help to make the dataset viewer work? Make sure to review how to configure the dataset viewer, and open a discussion for direct support.
id
int64 | title
string | url
string | chunk_id
string | chunk
string |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_0 | The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts Episode 1: Kevin Rose Show notes and links at tim.blog/ podcast Tim Ferriss: This is Episode 1 of the Tim Ferriss podcast. For those of you who don’t have any context on me, I’m the author of The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, and The 4-Hour Chef, which have been translated into more than 35 languages, and all three books are comprised of self-experiments. I travel the world and find people who are world-class in different skills, and then I try to dissect that skill and test it on myself. That can range from performance-enhancing drugs, to hacking the NFL combine, to outsourcing my life to India, to cramming two years of culinary school into 48 hours, or trying to learn a foreign language in a few days well enough to go on live television and be interviewed. It’s in search of a toolkit. You do not have to be super-human to get super-human results. To that end, this podcast is going to be a lot like Inside the Actor’s Studio, but not limited to actors. We will have in-depth conversational interviews with actors, investors, hackers, professional athletes, black market chemists, and everybody in-between. It will be very wide-ranging, but covering it all is really the 80/20 analysis. In the process of speaking with these people we’ll try to suss out what are the critical few things versus the trivial many. What are the 20% of tactics, philosophies, or principles that they use to get 80% of the results they’ve had? There should be a lot of actionable bits hidden in there, or not so hidden in there, for you to use in your life or at least to inspire you. It will range from tactics to strategies to philosophies to motivations that they use to become the best in the world. Without further ado, I would like to introduce you through the interview to our first guest, who is Kevin Rose, a very good friend of mine, a world-class investor and entrepreneur in his own right. His thoughts on investing translate to many different areas of life, so I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for listening. Tim Ferriss: Kevin, would you mind doing the honors? Kevin Rose: I’ll do the intro as long as you promise I don’t have to do this every single time. Tim Ferriss: You do not. Once it’s recorded I’ll just use it repeatedly. Kevin Rose: “Tim Tim Talk Talk, Episode 1.” [laughing] Tim Ferriss: Welcome everybody, sexy and smart ladies and gentlemen. This is not Tim Tim Talk Talk. We have to think up a better name, although I do like the idea of calling it T4, which stands for Tim Tim Talk Talk, but it cannot be. Kevin Rose: I love that. It also sounds like a terminator. It sounds like you’re hard-core like that. Tim Ferriss: T4 hormone, but that’s too boring. Everybody out there, this is Tim Ferriss, author of a few books that all sound like infomercial products you’ll see after the rotisserie chicken at 3 in the morning. This is an experimental podcast. I have my good friend, Kevin Rose, with me to make it a low-stress no-stakes experiment for my Episode 1. Thank you, Kevin. Kevin Rose: No problem. It’s funny, you said that we should do this and I said, “Why do you want me as your first guest?” because we do The Random Show together, which appears on your blog from time to time. It’s like I think your audience would be like, “Oh, this is just The Random Show audio.” Tim Ferriss: It’s going to be so much better, #1 because the audio is going to be incredibly impressive. Kevin Rose: High bit rate? Tim Ferriss: High bit rate, assuming I don’t mouth the mic and screw it up with my spittle, and I’m going to ask you questions that I normally wouldn’t ask on The Random Show as well. Kevin Rose: One thing I want to ask you is why did you want to do this? What’s the inspiration behind this? Tim Ferriss: The inspiration behind doing this is multi-fold. First, over the last year I had |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_1 | the inspiration behind this? Tim Ferriss: The inspiration behind doing this is multi-fold. First, over the last year I had a chance to be on a couple of podcasts that I really enjoyed, like the Joe Rogan Experience, Mark Maron WTF podcast, Bryan Callen, and Adam Carolla, and I really enjoy the longer format, having time to deep-dive and also be really informal. I assumed it had to be very produced and edited and involve a lot of labor after the fact, and for instance with the Joe Rogan Experience I was able to see it could be done really easily, casually, and still be fun for everyone involved. I have a great time as a participant, and also it seemed like over the next few months I’ll be doing a lot of travel – I can’t say all too much, but doing a prime time TV show on maximizing human performance, using myself as the guinea pig, which starts filming very, very soon, and I’ll be on the road a lot. So I figured this would be a fun way for me to get to know people I want to get to know. Just spend two hours drinking wine and digging in. The other purpose of the podcast – and this might evolve over time – is very similar to all three books, to kind of deep-dive with people and try to extract small actionable bits that people can use. Kevin Rose: It seems to me that you’re on the road so much and you’re constantly bumping into obviously really interesting folks. It’s just a shame that you’re not capturing those conversations that you’re having anyway and just put it out there for people to consume. Tim Ferriss: Right, because I’ll go to these dinners or have wine – and we’ll get to that in a second – and learn so much. I’m like, “It’s a shame there’s only two people here, or three people here, or four people here. Nothing super-confidential was said. It would be amazing to just offer people the opportunity to be a fly on the wall listening to some of the people I bump into, who are far smarter than I am.” What are we drinking, Kevin? Kevin Rose: We are having a bottle of wine from a friend of mine, Chris, who owns a little tiny tiny tiny wine bar in San Francisco. When I say tiny I mean you can probably fit like 35 people in the entire place. It’s a little hole in the wall down an alleyway. It’s actually where I met my wife for our first date. It’s called Hotel Biron. If you’re ever in San Francisco, go there and say hi to the owner. His name is Chris, if he’s there, and tell him that you heard this on Tim Tim Talk Talk and you’ll get a discount. No, I’m just kidding, but you probably could say that and he probably would give you a discount, because he’s a cool guy like that. I was just there actually meeting another friend and hanging out, and he was like, “Do you want a bottle to go?” and I was like, “I’m going to do Tim Tim Talk Talk. I need a bottle of wine.” The reason I’m saying the name over and over is I want it to stick. Tim Ferriss: I know, you’re incepting people. I know how you operate. Kevin Rose: So anyway, the name of the bottle of wine is Gamling & McDuck. Tim Ferriss: As in Scrooge McDuck. Kevin Rose: Scrooge McDuck. The thing is, what you’ll find there is that he is a fanatical kind of crazy wine connoisseur that likes really rare obscure wines and great stories, so every wine that he’ll pour you he’s like, “Oh, I’ve got this crazy story. I met this winemaker, blah blah blah. They live in this little region and I like it because it’s this really obscure hard-to-find grape.” It’s not really expensive wine, like you go in there and they don’t have multi-hundred-dollar bottles of wine. It’s just good prices and heavy pours. Anyway, he’s a good dude. Tim Ferriss: That should be his tagline |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_2 | wine. It’s just good prices and heavy pours. Anyway, he’s a good dude. Tim Ferriss: That should be his tagline – “Good prices, heavy pours.” And also for people who are say visiting San Francisco, it’s right around the corner from a restaurant called Zuni Café, which is very, very well-known. Judy Rodgers originally I believe had [inaudible] They do incredible things with their food. You could look into something called dry brining, which they do with their roast chicken, which is amazing. So Kevin, for those people who are listening and do not know who you are, let’s start at the beginning. You know that phrase because you use it. Why don’t you tell people a little bit about your background, where you grew up, etc. Kevin Rose: Sure. I grew up with kind of a boring life in Las Vegas, of all places, which I don’t like to admit to many people because it’s a fun place to visit but it’s not really a place I consider home anymore. I do like going and hanging out with friends obviously, the occasional bender out in Vegas is always fun, but I moved to the Bay Area in 2000 and started working at dot coms at the tail end of that in the tech space. I ended up working at Tech TV and starting there in late 2002 kind of behind the scenes, and eventually ended up doing segments on a show called The Screen Savers, so I was actually on-air talent. Tim Ferriss: Where is this? Kevin Rose: This is in San Francisco. Tim Ferriss: And how did you end up in SF? Kevin Rose: I just moved out here working. I was actually doing some marketing, doing ad buys and helping them track the conversions for a little CMGI-funded start-up. It was an online furniture store and we thought we were going to make billions, but it turns out people don’t like to pay the shipping for really heavy furniture on the internet. Tim Ferriss: Kind of like kettlebells. Kevin Rose: Yeah, so it didn’t work out. It was very heavy stuff. Anyway, I ended up hosting a television show, The Screen Savers, on Tech TV, and then started my own first start-up called Digg, which is a social news site, and grew that to a pretty decent size. I started a couple other companies and ended up angel investing. I sold a few companies, got acquired by Google, and long story short had a big long 7-, 8-, 9-, 10 year run in the tech space and then eventually ended up as a venture capitalist at Google Ventures, so I’m a VC there. That is funding companies and helping find the next big thing. Tim Ferriss: That was a very efficient self-introduction. Thank you for that. I should give some background I suppose, or just my personal views on things, since that’s part of the podcast. I think you’re one of the best product guys in Silicon Valley, meaning your ability to not only conceptualize and come up with product ideas, which you do all the time and then you just give them away or drop them or whatever, but you come up with a different company idea that could work ostensibly I think every week just about. You’re also extremely good at betting on the right horses. Of course, no investor is 100%. They can’t bat 1,000, but what do you think makes you good at that, because I think many people would share that same opinion. You’re good at guessing what’s coming next or predicting what will pop or what will not pop. Is that just genetic ability? You’re just the LeBron James of angel investing? Or are there characteristics that you see in yourself or in other people who are also good at it that you can explain? Kevin Rose: That’s a great question. I think for me I can remember analyzing people and trends all the way back in high school. The first time I remember it, I remember there was this one kid in my class who wore a fluorescent orange jumpsuit to school. It was like what a garbage man would |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_3 | kid in my class who wore a fluorescent orange jumpsuit to school. It was like what a garbage man would wear. Tim Ferriss: Or an inmate. Kevin Rose: Yeah, or an inmate, exactly. He was wearing that and I remember everyone thought that was the coolest thing. Everyone was like, “Oh, he’s got that jumpsuit on,” and kids started going out and literally buying these. They weren’t made by Dickies, but a very similar brand. Actually I think maybe they were made by Dickies but they sold them at K-Mart so kids started buying them and wearing them to high school. I remember at that point I realized there are certain very early adopters, like taste makers. I was like, “This person can spread a trend.” At the time I was thinking about fashion because this kid was considered by many other classmates to be the cool kid, so once he did something he would influence all these other people. It just made think, “What could I make that he would think was cool and then it would spread throughout the class?” That’s what I got excited about, and I just kept coming up with all these ideas. I’ve always been the kind of person that just starts to think about that. I think honestly it was just something that actually hurt me in school because I was always daydreaming about different things, and I actually got really crappy grades and didn’t do well in school because my mind was always someplace else. Once I got connected up with computers and I got really into computers, it was always about what I could build with software. I built a couple little things that I launched as shareware and had on shareware blogs and stuff like that and made some money, and then it kind of clicked that you write this software once, you charge for it, and you don’t have to keep paying to have it made. You can just make more and more copies. Tim Ferriss: Money while you sleep. Kevin Rose: It was insane. So that clicked, and then I started thinking about what are the things that I would like as a consumer and that I feel could spread and really take off. It was kind of like analyzing these companies and looking at these different things and seeing them, and being that early adopter where you want to play with everything. Tim Ferriss: The number of apps you have on your phone is incredible to me. Kevin Rose: You have to have like a natural curiosity. I get excited. I get a hit of freaking dopamine and flutters in the stomach when I see something that is new and original and has never been done before. Tim Ferriss: What would be a few examples of that? What are some companies you’ve invested in, or missed for that matter, where you got the flutters in your stomach? Kevin Rose: Twitter, for example. It was very early days when I invested in Twitter, and you were shortly thereafter. We were both investors early on. Tim Ferriss: Two weeks later. I managed to come in after [inaudible]. [laughing] Kevin Rose: You got screwed. Tim Ferriss: The person selling it to me was very smart, very shrewd. They held out. Kevin Rose: We got two very different valuations. I got really lucky and Tim kind of got screwed. But the thing is, when we were looking at Twitter there were two things that really caught my attention. One was that Jack Dorsey, the guy that created it, had created a model that was not about mutual friendship. Up until this point it was about Facebook and MySpace and other. You had to send a friend request and someone had to accept your friend request, and that’s the way that a social relationship happened on the internet. Jack was smart enough to think like, “Hey, maybe it doesn’t have to be like that. Maybe you can tail or follow someone that you don’t actually know.” When he created that I remember thinking, “Wow, this is crazy.” There were a bunch of influential people that started to sign up, and I was |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_4 | thinking, “Wow, this is crazy.” There were a bunch of influential people that started to sign up, and I was like, “I can kind of peek over their shoulder and kind of be with them on this journey that they’re going on, and watch what they’re up to, without actually knowing them.” I was like, “Wow, what if celebrities actually figure out how to use this thing?” It’s really easy because all you have to do to tweet is send a text message, and then you saw a celebrity or two sign up and I’m like, “Okay, this is going to be pretty huge, because if this keeps happening and more and more celebrities sign up, it’s going to be their platform because they don’t know how to blog.” The barrier to entry is extremely low. You can misspell everything and it can be two sentences and it’s still content. So seeing that and then also figuring out that a follower count wasn’t portable. If you think about how you have an email newsletter. You can move that from email provider to email provider. Tim Ferriss: Right, from Aweber to Mail Chimp to whatever. Kevin Rose: You can’t move your followers to Facebook, so it was very defensible in that way. Seeing those couple things and thinking, “Okay, this could be something” – and again, I didn’t know. It was a gamble, and a lot of angel investing for me is going on your gut, so I placed a bet and just happened to win there. For me it’s hopefully finding an insight like that, and then also finding something that plays to me as a consumer. I think I’m kind of an everyman or everywoman – I don’t know if everywoman – I didn’t mean that… Tim Ferriss: You aren’t like every woman. Kevin Rose: I’m not like every woman, but seriously I kind of feel like if it’s something that will appeal to me and I can see myself using it on a daily basis, like I’m going to open my phone to do this two to three times per day, it could be a big deal. That’s what I look for. I’m trying to find the next Instagram or whatever it may be. I’m looking for something I’m going to use on a daily basis. There’s like 20 spaces on your iPhone in the default screen. What is one of those icons going to be? Is there going to be something that is that prominent, that is that important that it will take up some of that default real estate on my home screen? Tim Ferriss: We’ll talk about a lot more than investing, but I think it’s a good way to look into how you think about people and companies and just creation in general. What are examples of companies you invested in that other people did not invest in, where you were not necessarily investing alone, but going against maybe the consensus, and what were the factors that led you to decide to go in – investments that worked out. We’ll also talk about ones that didn’t. Kevin Rose: There’s always investors that say no, including myself, in a lot of things that actually end up being really successful, so you can’t really blame somebody. I feel like – and I’m sure it’s the case for you – you look at 20, 30, 50 as a professional venture capitalist, hundreds of deals per year, and you’re going to say no to a lot of winners out there. For me it’s like I don’t feel as though I’ve gone all in to something that everyone was against, because there’s always somebody willing to invest in that start-up. Tim Ferriss: I guess a start-up where it wasn’t the hottest girl at the dance of the moment, because you know exactly what I mean by that. There are some deals where everybody wants in, everybody thinks it’s amazing. Not one of those deals, a deal that had less hoopla surrounding it. Kevin Rose: There’s been a few of those even within the last year and a half or so. I’ve gone into a handful of deals that are |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_5 | those even within the last year and a half or so. I’ve gone into a handful of deals that are now starting to work out, like Nextdoor I think is a great example of one I invested in maybe a year and a half ago. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, one we both invested in. Kevin Rose: It’s a neighborhood social network and I think that there were a lot of people that were like, “Oh, I don’t know what that’s all about or what it means.” For me, it’s funny, I don’t want come off on this broadcast sounding like I’m a know-it-all, because I’ve been wrong on a lot of deals, but every once in a while you kind of see a market before it’s about to happen, and then sometimes you just miss it all together, like Pinterest. I had an opportunity to invest early on, saw it, liked it, ended up passing, and I’m kicking myself every single day. But Nextdoor was one where I saw it was like, “Okay, this is connecting neighbors on a very social level,” which I like because in San Francisco and big cities we don’t know our neighbors. It’s not like you can walk across the street and be like, “Hey Jim, how’s it going?” You might know one house in any direction, but not two or three houses. You don’t know who those people are, so the idea of creating that social fabric so you can have ad hoc things come together like neighborhood watch programs, and eventually commerce on top of a neighborhood graph, which I think is really interesting. Tim Ferriss: What types of commerce? Kevin Rose: Like goods being sold. I see couches for sale on Nextdoor, which were for sale on Craigslist six months ago, things like that. That trusted neighborhood network is starting to create really unique opportunities for people to exchange goods and services. There’s a plumber that was on there last week like, “Hey, I’m a plumber. I live in the neighborhood if anybody ever needs me.” It’s just a different platform that was created out of people getting to know each other in their local neighborhood that I thought was interesting. I think a year and a half ago nobody was really talking about it. Nobody really thought it was that exciting. Tim Ferriss: What do your investment mistakes have in common, if anything? If you were to say, “You know what, I should have known better because X. I did X, I didn’t do X, such and such happened, I shouldn’t have done that.” Kevin Rose: For me the mistakes that have occurred are, first, in passing on deals. I think when you’re using your own money, especially when you’re an angel investor, you are extremely picky, almost too much so. On a 1 to 10 – 10 meaning is you’re just over the moon excited about doing this deal – when you’re an angel and you have limited capital you’re thinking, “Okay, I have to be a 9 or higher to make this happen, to actually want to put money into this company,” and I think there were a lot of great 8’s in there that I just passed on. Had I had more cash at the time, I probably would have done those deals. Tim Ferriss: That’s also because as an angel you have very significant downside, meaning you can lose all of your own capital, and then you have the potential upside of a relatively small investment because you’re on [inaudible]. If you’re working at a fund like Google Ventures you have hundreds of millions of dollars to deploy. Kevin Rose: Sure, so you can make $100K bets all day long. Tim Ferriss: Right, and there’s zero downside, and ride the winners. Kevin Rose: So I think a lot of mistakes have been there. There’s always the deals that you fund because as an angel you’re friendly with some people and you’re backing them as an entrepreneur because you really like the person, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re betting on a person. You might not necessarily like the general space that they’re in, but you’re betting they |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_6 | You’re betting on a person. You might not necessarily like the general space that they’re in, but you’re betting they can kind of figure it out. Sometimes you lose on those and that’s fine. Tim Ferriss: That’s true also even with the example you gave, which was Twitter. I mean if we’re looking at Odeo… Kevin Rose: For people that don’t know, Odeo was the start-up that became Twitter. Tim Ferriss: Right, and he’s had a lot of businesses, as you’ve mentioned in interviews before or he’s mentioned in interviews before, like VHS tapes to teach people how to use the internet. What was your first business? Kevin Rose: My first business was a piece of software. Well, it goes way back before that. When I was like 12 I had a little software company called Foliage Software. It wasn’t actually a software company but I had business cards made so it felt like a software company. Tim Ferriss: How old were you? Kevin Rose: Maybe 12, something like that. I basically wrote little programs in Basic, and then I found this program that would compile – actually it wasn’t Basic. I wrote some tricky little utilities using batch, like in batch files, and then I got some software that compiled them into exe’s and then tried to sell them to shareware. That was super geeky, but I’ve always been tinkering for a long time. Tim Ferriss: What was the shittiest job you’ve ever had? Kevin Rose: Working at Olive Garden. I made breadsticks there and smelled like garlic all the time. Tim Ferriss: This is something a mutual friend of ours has said as well, Chris Sacca, that it’s important to have had one shitty job, preferably in the service industry. I think it really teaches you a lot about yourself and service and humankind in general. So you were making the breadsticks in the back. Did you ever have a busboy or waiting job or anything like that? If not, I forgive you. Kevin Rose: Not really. I was never a waiter. I mean I would seat people at tables at Olive Garden as well, but don’t hate on my breadsticks. Breadsticks were a tough job, dude. Those waiters would get pissed at you if you didn’t have the breadsticks out on time, because they made their tips on breadsticks. Tim Ferriss: How did they make their tips on breadsticks? Kevin Rose: Because you had to have breadsticks on the table, dude. Breadsticks always have to be on the table. I still have dreams about this. Breadsticks need to be on the table. If the customers don’t have their breadsticks, they’re not happy. Tim Ferriss: [laughing] They’re pissed, yeah. Kevin Rose: It’s all-you-can-eat breadsticks, and salad. Tim Ferriss: That’s a lot of breadsticks. Kevin Rose: Dude, it’s a lot of breadsticks. At any given time there’s two big-ass trays of breadsticks at Olive Garden going into the oven. Tim Ferriss: Okay, I’m going to do a couple of rapid fire questions just to mix things up. Actually, I wanted to also just add a bit of context to the angel investing discussion, because it may seem outside of the scope of your daily life, but things are going to change very dramatically very soon. On September 23, something called general solicitation is going to have a big impact on investing in general, where Average Joe or Jane, so to speak, the public will have access to deals that are advertised or promoted by angel investors, venture capitalists, hedge fund managers, and so on and so forth. This is something that’s unprecedented and related to the JOBS Act. Previously people had to be part of a very small club to have access to these deals, and they will now see them promoted on the internet and elsewhere – who knows, television perhaps. I think the mechanisms for determining your own risk tolerance and deciding on investing will become in some ways more complex, because people are going to get hit with a lot of promotion, so just a passing recommendation to people would be to read the annual letters by Warren Buffett, which are compiled and gathered in paperback |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_7 | recommendation to people would be to read the annual letters by Warren Buffett, which are compiled and gathered in paperback form. Of course, the first rule of investing is, “Rule #1, Do not lose money. For Rule #2, see Rule #1,” according to Buffett, but as an annual thing it’s important. You need to develop rules. You’re going to miss some winners, but develop rules so that you can at least avoid losing a large chunk of capital. That’s all I have to say about that. Kevin Rose: It’s interesting to think that this Act is going to open up new worlds for everyday investors to come in and do more angel-style investing. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, the way that people go onto Kickstarter and give money to people for prizes or rewards of different types, they’ll be able to do that but for equity, actual percentages in a company. Kevin Rose: It’s crazy. When you hear about most of this stuff you think, “Oh, it’s those people out in Silicon Valley in California doing all this stuff,” and you’re right to be thinking that. Obviously a lot of that stuff gets funded and everything out here, but when this happens and eventually the tools that form around it will enable anyone anywhere to participate and get involved at a much earlier stage, which is exciting. There’s a lot of risk, but there’s also potentially a lot of reward on that stuff. Tim Ferriss: Definitely. We’ve talked about this before, but I tend to take a barbell approach to investing, which is say 20% in highly speculative start-up stuff and then 80% in just safe cash-like equivalents of some type. Don’t gamble with more than you can afford to lose, is I think a good way to go about it. Let’s do a couple of rapid fire questions. I’m borrowing these from all over the place. If you could be a breakfast cereal, what breakfast cereal and why? Kevin Rose: Oh boy, it’s these types of questions. This is like the Google interview questions. They’re like, “How many ping pong balls can you…” Tim Ferriss: This is easier. What kind of breakfast cereal? Kevin Rose: I hate the “…and why?” part. Tim Ferriss: Okay, you can just give a cryptic answer. No why required. Kevin Rose: I’m going to go with steel cut oats. Tim Ferriss: That’s very Amish of you. Kevin Rose: Are we talking like kids’ cereal? Tim Ferriss: Whatever, man. Kevin Rose: I don’t want to suggest something that’s bad for people’s health out there, and they start consuming it and all the sudden… Tim Ferriss: We’re like double-fisting wine here and you can’t suggest a cereal? [laughing] Kevin Rose: I would say straight-up kids’ breakfast cereal would probably be like the Choco Puffs. Tim Ferriss: Now I’m going to go back on my word. Why Choco Puffs? Kevin Rose: Just because I really like chocolate. I don’t have any great answer. Tim Ferriss: That was a terrible question and an even worse answer. [laughing] Let’s continue. Kevin Rose: This in beta, man. Never again will the breakfast cereal question come up. Tim Ferriss: That was a shitty lead on my part. Complete this statement: “My favorite time of day is ___” and why. Kevin Rose: Probably evening, just because I get to decompress a little bit. Tim Ferriss: How do you decompress in the evening? Kevin Rose: It’s dinner with my wife and just kind of hanging out and having a glass of wine or something, especially wine with good food is awesome. We cook a lot at home. Tim Ferriss: What is your favorite meal and wine to decompress? Kevin Rose: I found this little charcuterie place around the corner from my house that sells aged beef, 100-day dry-aged big old chunk of beef sous-vide in a water bath at medium rare, and then it’s like flash-grilled so you render all the fat, then just a big old tasty cab. Tim Ferriss: Sounds great. Kevin Rose: You’d like that, right? You’re a meat eater. Tim Ferriss: I would, so medium-rare would be what? Like 125? Kevin Rose: 130-135 is medium rare. How did I know that |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_8 | I would, so medium-rare would be what? Like 125? Kevin Rose: 130-135 is medium rare. How did I know that and you don’t, and you have a cooking book? You should cut this out of the podcast. Tim Ferriss: I’m not going to cut it out. 125 is fine. Kevin Rose: That’s on the rare side. Tim Ferriss: Yeah I know, but if it’s thin and then you sear it… This is a two-parter. As you’ve gotten older, what has become more important to you and what has become less important to you? Kevin Rose: More important to me as I’ve gotten older is honestly like time to stay in shape, more gym time, more time to actually keep the beer gut down. It’s harder as you get older. And less important I would say is some of the hard-core tinkering, like I used to like to build computers from scratch. I just want my computer to work now. I put freaking OS X Mavericks on my laptop, which is like the beta version of OS X, and it’s crashing shit. I’m just like, “Are you kidding me? What am I doing?” I don’t know why I had to have it, but I did and now I can’t even write an email or my browser locks up. It’s like “Get off my lawn!” like a grandpa. I just want shit to work. It’s weird how that happens. Tim Ferriss: I have the same thing. I mean there’s a point where you feel the scarcity of time and the value of time increasing because you start seeing gnarly shit happen to people, or friends dying or whatever. It freaks you out. Kevin Rose: Oh, I know, that’s the scariest part, man. Tim Ferriss: You’re like, “You know what? I’m not going to spend a week figuring this out. That’s bullshit. I just want this to work.” Kevin Rose: You know what’s funny is when you’re a kid you think everyone’s just healthy, and then all the sudden you become an adult. Gosh man, I’ve had some really bad experiences. I’ve seen friends of mine that aren’t that much older, like a good friend of mine’s wife has cancer now and he’s only a few years older than me and that’s scary as hell, so you start to value time a lot more. Tim Ferriss: Who’s the first person that comes to mind when you hear the word “successful” and why is that? Kevin Rose: I think Philip Rosedale is the first person to come to mind. Tim Ferriss: Philip is awesome. Do you want to tell us a little bit, just so people know who Philip is? Kevin Rose: It’s weird that when I think about that that I would pick Philip. Philip created a virtual world back in the day that was really popular, way before its time, called Second Life. It became extremely popular and later, like all internet things, eventually declined in usage because it just wasn’t as cool as it was when it came out. He then went on to start a company. He tinkered around with a handful of different things that didn’t quite work out, and now he’s on to his next thing called High Fidelity. The reason that I say Philip is that success in my mind doesn’t necessarily mean high IPOs and exits and things like that. The thing that I like about him – I shot a couple video interviews with him on my series on Foundation that you can search Philip Rosedale Foundation on Google and find. Tim Ferriss: Foundation.kr because you let the .com slip. Kevin Rose: Yeah, right. No, Foundation.com was not available. Tim Ferriss: The .net? Which one was it? Kevin Rose: It was .biz or something like that. I let .kr slip, but I got it back. Anyway, the thing I like about Philip is that he is such a rare person to discover. I feel like I’m lucky to even know him because he’s a big thinker. He’s a crazy mad scientist. When you watch his interview you realize that his ideas and his passion and just where his head takes things is so unique and |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_9 | interview you realize that his ideas and his passion and just where his head takes things is so unique and so big-picture, bigger than you could ever dream up on your own. Like when you think of ideas we’re like, “Oh, wouldn’t it be better if there was a better way to…” and it’s something super stupid that you want. I feel like our ideas are just incremental improvements of pre-existing little problems that we have. “My toilet paper runs out. I’d like to get a notification.” It’s dumb stuff. You talk to him and you realize that he is thinking about things like virtual economies and currencies and using your iPhone as a miniature computer while you’re sleeping that does little virtual tasks and assists people in other places. You’re like, “Dude, someday when you finally have that moment, that idea that is the right idea at the right time…” – when it hits they will write books about this guy and movies about this guy. It’s rare to find those people. It’s a Tesla. Elon Musk is another one of those. Tim Ferriss: What do you think enables them to think that way? Is it something that can be taught? Is it something that they learned how to do or are they just genetically predisposed? Kevin Rose: I think a lot of it comes down to fear. Tim Ferriss: How so? Kevin Rose: When people don’t have fear they aren’t scared of big ideas. I meet a lot of entrepreneurs every single day, and all they want to do is do incremental improvements on pre-existing stuff because it’s safe. They can sell it for $20 million to Yahoo. They can sell it for $10 million to Google or whatever it may be. There’s a safety net there. Who wants to go and create an electric car company? Who wants to go and create a freaking next-generation spaceship company? These are hard problems and it takes a certain kind of person. Tim Ferriss: And they’re binary, too. You don’t partially succeed. Kevin Rose: Right, you either succeed or fail. Philip is one of those guys that he’s just like, “I have a crazy idea. I’m going to go build it, and nothing’s going to get in my way. I can just do it. I don’t know how to do it right now, but I can figure it out because I’ll surround myself with smart people,” and that’s what he does. Those people are really rare, man. There’s not a lot willing to throw everything out and just start from scratch and tackle something that’s going to change the world. When you find those people – and I’ve only met a couple – then you get really excited and you feel lucky just to know them. Tim Ferriss: Any other examples that immediately jump to mind besides Philip and Elon? Kevin Rose: I think Reid Hoffman is another really big idea guy. I’m excited to see if he eventually decides to get back in it. He’s Chairman at LinkedIn, and if he ever decides to go and tackle something, like what that will become. Tim Ferriss: Do you have any idea about Philip’s educational background? Did he finish school? Did he study anything in particular? Kevin Rose: Yeah, he’s a super hard-core machine code computer science guy. I don’t know if he dropped out or got his degree. Tim Ferriss: I’m trying to see if there’s any commonalities, because Reid – many people don’t know this – but I think he has either a Master’s or Ph.D. in philosophy, a very big thinker, as you know. He’s regarded as one of the oracles, or the oracle of Silicon Valley. The guy’s brilliant. What is your – not policy really, but do you keep in touch with friends from back in the day? Childhood friends, any of them? Kevin Rose: Yeah, there’s a couple. Tim Ferriss: I’d be curious to hear what your experience has been as you’ve had more and more success in various ways and entered new peer groups and so on and so forth. How has that affected your relationships with people that you grew up with, if |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_10 | and so on and so forth. How has that affected your relationships with people that you grew up with, if at all? And from what period of time? Kevin Rose: It’s hard because growing up in a city like Las Vegas, no one really stayed there so it’s not like when I go back to town I see all my friends from high school or college. We all split off and went to different places. I have one friend that’s still there, but other than that everyone’s in different cities. Some are back east, some are in LA, they’re just all over the place, but I try to keep in touch. I’ll trade texts. There’s certain times of the year or certain things that come up in your head that pop into your mind and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, that was so crazy when we did this,” and you’re texting everybody like, “Remember when we broke the law this way,” or something like that, so there’s that kind of stuff. Is this something you’re having a hard time with? Tim Ferriss: It’s a challenge in some cases for me. I grew up in a very odd place. I grew up on the eastern end of Long Island in the Hamptons, where you have two groups. Actually there’s more than two groups, but for simplicity’s sake you have the city people, rich Manhattan-ites who come out to ‘summer in the Hamptons’ and then you have the townies. The townies range, but typically include people involved in service industries – landscapers, waitresses, waiters, real estate brokers, although they’re getting pushed out by people like Sotheby’s, who are based in Manhattan. There’s a lot of alcoholism, not very good education, and it’s a pretty dismal picture. I found it very difficult for myself to transition from having more in common with the townies to having more in common with the city people. It’s been a real existential issue for me. Kevin Rose: So you don’t have things in common with the city people anymore? Tim Ferriss: No, no, as I went through high school and then left Long Island, I initially was 100% townie and then I started to move where I was like 90% townie, 10% city person, as I went to undergrad, then 70% townie, 30% city person. Kevin Rose: Where do you think you are now? Tim Ferriss: I can empathize with the city people now and I feel like I’m straddling both. I go back and it’s like I have some of my closest friends who have died in the last two years of drug overdoses, so I feel like I’m kind of trapped in-between these – not trapped, that’s a dramatic word, but I’m straddling these two worlds. I grew up hating people who came in from Manhattan. They were just so rude and entitled and annoying and irritating. Part of it was that I was working as a busboy, so I saw the worst that humanity had to offer. Now it’s difficult for me sometimes to identify and have a conversation with a shared interest with some of the friends I grew up with – not because I’m better, by any stretch of the imagination. We’re just in such different tracks. Kevin Rose: I still feel more at home with my younger friends. I feel like a fish out of water in the Bay Area. Tim Ferriss: I would caveat what I just said with the fact that I left Long Island – I actually petitioned my parents to do this – to go to boarding school in New Hampshire, and that’s where I forged my closest friendships that I still have to this day. I am absolutely closest to those people. When I went to college I didn’t have a lot of close bonding experiences, because I already had the “away from home” scenario. I don’t feel like a fish out of water in the Bay Area, but it’s proven harder to develop really close friendships, I think, the further you get along in a certain professional track. Not always. I mean I do have close friends in the Bay Area…not to meander too far, |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_11 | certain professional track. Not always. I mean I do have close friends in the Bay Area…not to meander too far, but it’s just something that I’ve seen some people have a lot of challenges with, and other people don’t have any. Kevin Rose: I think for me, I grew up in a pretty lower-middle income family. That’s always felt like home. I have a bunch of really crappy 90’s tattoos. Tim Ferriss: What’s your worst tattoo? Can you explain to everyone? Kevin Rose: Like a freaking flame on my legs. I’ve got really bad tattoos. They’re in the process of getting removed. Tim Ferriss: I will pay you $10,000 if I can put a tramp stamp on your lower back. Kevin Rose: I’ll give you $20 and we’ll do the same thing. Tim Ferriss: [laughing] You’ll give me $20 if I put a tramp stamp on your lower back? Kevin Rose: [laughing] Here’s the deal, though. I feel most at home with people that understand that. I go to this really meathead gym and I’m surrounded by dudes with really crappy 90’s tattoos. It’s like, “Oh, I feel at home here.” Tim Ferriss: You mean like Tasmanian devil tattoos on their arms? Kevin Rose: Hell yeah. “What’s up, bro?” It’s the best. Tim Ferriss: Alice in Chains – “What’s up?” What did you want to be when you were growing up? Kevin Rose: I always knew I wanted to be in computers ever since I was probably 10 or 12 years old. Tim Ferriss: Really? Nothing else? Kevin Rose: I knew. I knew the second I got a computer that I was hooked. I moved the computer into my bedroom and my parents thought it was weird. I was like, “I need to have this machine as close as possible so I can hear the fan at night. It makes me sleep.” I’m serious. I loved it, everything about it. I’d leave it on all the time. I learned every single DOS command. You can ask me how to do anything in DOS right now and I can tell you how to do it. I loved it. Tim Ferriss: I wish I could. I definitely have non-coder’s insecurity when it relates to tech and start-ups. I really should learn how to code at least in one language. A handful of friends have been telling me I should go after Python, which I’m inclined to do. I’ll get to it eventually. Kevin Rose: Natural languages first, programming languages second, I guess. Tim Ferriss: Outside of computers, if you could study with any expert in the world, who would you study with and what would you study? Kevin Rose: I would probably pick some type of meditation guru. I know this is totally doable, but the issue that I have now is that I feel that the computer’s a constant stimulus. I don’t know about you but it’s extremely blurred, the personal time versus work time. I’ll be at dinner and – it’s not this bad because Darya makes me shut down the laptop at dinner – but you know what I mean. It bleeds into everything that you do. Because of that I feel like my brain is being slowly scrambled. I feel like it’s always on edge, it’s being fragmented, and I feel like we’re going to realize in short order here in the next 10-20 years that all this distraction stuff is really messing with our brains. I feel like I need to find that balance and I haven’t done that yet. If I could study with anyone it would probably be a 2- or 3-month just straight-up retreat with some awesome Buddhist monk somewhere that would teach me walking meditation or whatever it may be, some way to gain my soul back. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: Kevin has lost his soul. That’ll be the title of this podcast – “Kevin Rose Loses His Soul” Kevin Rose: As long as it’s Tim Tim Talk Talk – Kevin Rose Loses His Soul. Seriously though, it’s so hard, man. Tim Ferriss: I hear you. It’s easy to feel lost. I don’t think I’ve talked about this typically. I feel like I’m in |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_12 | hear you. It’s easy to feel lost. I don’t think I’ve talked about this typically. I feel like I’m in AA or something, wording it this way, but it’ll be 11 weeks as of this Sunday that I’ve meditated twice a day, every day, for that period of time. It would have been incomprehensible to me that I would actually do it that consistently. Kevin Rose: You’re not counting masturbation as meditation, though, because if you are then that wouldn’t count. Then you’re like four a day. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: [laughing] I’ve never masturbated. I have no idea what you’re referring to. Kevin Rose: It’s a late night show, people. Tim Ferriss: It’s a late night show. Sorry, all you 7-year-olds listening, but in three years you’ll learn – but not counting masturbation. Kevin Rose: Is this a late night show, seriously? Tim Ferriss: Because we talk about vulgar stuff? Kevin Rose: Oh, we can talk about whatever. Tim Ferriss: You want to talk about penises? Kevin Rose: No, there’s nothing else, I was just worried. Tim Ferriss: You always talk about penises. Just admit it to everybody. Kevin Rose: You know what I heard? No, I won’t even go there. Tim Ferriss: Yes, say what you didn’t want to say. Kevin Rose: It’s nothing that’s interesting. Tim Ferriss: That’s fine. It sounded offensive. Kevin Rose: My buddy that owns this wine bar that we were talking about, he got Square – you know that credit card system? Tim Ferriss: Of course I know Square. Kevin Rose: I’m explaining to the users out there. Square is basically like this little tiny dongle that you can plug into your iPad or iPhone, and you can swipe your card and that’s how you pay for things. Everyone’s kind of seen this now. So basically he was telling me that 30% of his signatures – you know how you have to sign the iPad with your finger – 30% are penises. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: [laughing] That is awesome! I’m going to start doing that. Send that to the credit card company and they’re like, “Is that your signature?” and I’m like, “What the fuck do you think? It’s a penis. Of course it’s not my signature.” Kevin Rose: He said, “I see more scribbled penises than you’d believe. People are drunk and they just sign a penis.” I thought that was pretty funny. Tim Ferriss: [laughing] That is awesome! Why have I never done that? Kevin Rose: I don’t know. Tim Ferriss: I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never signed with a penis before. Kevin Rose: So if you go there and you see Chris and you get that discount, sign with a penis. Tim Ferriss: Speaking of balance, technology, and so on – I don’t count masturbation, just to come back to that – but 20 minutes a day, twice a day, transcendental meditation blah blah blah – I’ll talk about it more another time, I want to focus on you, Kevin Rose. So technology. It does cause a lot of blurring, so you get this work/life blending instead of balance. What is one technology you think you could live without? Kevin Rose: Television, absolutely, except for football. Tim Ferriss: There are a lot of self-righteous San Francisco techies – and I’m sure they’re elsewhere – who are like, “Oh, I never watch television. I don’t even have a television,” and they watch five hours of fucking YouTube every day, and that’s just ridiculous. You can’t say you don’t watch television. Kevin Rose: I watch TV. Tim Ferriss: That’s fine, but if you’re watching something like jaguars attacking crocodiles and kitten videos and parkour for four hours on the internet, it’s the same thing. Kevin Rose: Timewise, yeah. They talk about how much the average American household watches TV. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy a great movie. I enjoy a miniseries like Battlestar Galactica or something like that, but only once it’s been a few seasons in and people are like, “Oh, you’ve got to see this.” Other than that, I would rather spend time working on businesses. You were talking earlier about traits that successful entrepreneurs have. All the |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_13 | I would rather spend time working on businesses. You were talking earlier about traits that successful entrepreneurs have. All the great entrepreneurs I know, their projects bleed into their personal lives. It’s sad, but it’s true. They’re focused on that. When I was building some of the companies I built in the past, it’s always been about cutting out that type of stuff, like figuring out where you can prune and cut and create more space so that you can actually have the time to put in the 10- to 12-hour days, and it doesn’t feel like it, especially when it’s something you’re really passionate about. It doesn’t feel like you’re putting in that much time, but you can’t expect to be a successful entrepreneur just working 9-5. It just doesn’t work that way. Tim Ferriss: Just to address common misconceptions of the whole 4-hour shit…. Kevin Rose: Oh, somebody said that. They’re like, “Kevin’s right.” Tim Ferriss: “Tim Ferris, what the fuck?” so let me address that. For people who haven’t read it, The 4-Hour Workweek is about optimizing per-hour output, end of story. You maximize your per-hour output, increase it 5-10X. Then if you’re a VC or investment banker or whatever, you still work the same number of hours but you have an improved volume of output. The same for start-up people. The objective is to use your time wisely and allocate it to the things that you’re passionate about. In that case for you it would be let’s say some of your start-ups that you’ve worked on. For me, where I feel like I’m an Archimedes lever or can utilize an Archimedes lever to really have the broadest impact is say with the books, so I’ll spend three years on a book. That’s a serious investment of time. The objective is not to be idle, just to emphasize that. I think you should be looking for something that consumes you, in a way. I know that might sound negative to some people, but if you’re not at “Hell yes!” about what you’re doing, then why are you doing it, or should you be looking for something else? So television, fair enough. Let’s drop TV. You mentioned documentaries. Any favorite documentaries? Kevin Rose: Gosh, I’d have to go back and look at the stuff I’ve watched, like Food Inc is a great one. I really enjoyed that one. It kind of sheds some light on the industrial food process and how nasty and horrible it is. That’s definitely top of my list. I don’t really have any that jump out as being very exciting. Tim Ferriss: Man on a Wire is worth watching. Kevin Rose: Have you seen Who Killed the Electric Car? Tim Ferriss: No. Kevin Rose: I heard that was pretty good. Tim Ferriss: Graham’s giving the thumbs up. Graham’s our silent partner in this 3-person podcast. Who Killed the Electric Car – what’s it about? Kevin Rose: Just how the electric car died the first time around when they tried to get it off the ground, the GM EV1. Who was it that came out with the Nova at one point, and then they tried to sell it in Spanish-speaking countries and it was the Nova – “doesn’t go” – so they couldn’t sell the car. Oops. Tim Ferriss: If you could stop the clock and live forever at a particular age, what age would you choose? Kevin Rose: That’s a good question because obviously you don’t know how things are going to feel in the future, but I would say as far as my general… Tim Ferriss: I’m sure your joints and muscles will improve as you get older. Spunk, eh? Kevin Rose: Your spunkiness and just ability to recover… Tim Ferriss: You’re doing a shitty job on your wine. Kevin Rose: Dude, I told you I had two glasses before I got here. Tim Ferriss: I’m not trying to be an enabler, I’m just saying you’re doing a shitty job with your wine. Kevin Rose: You’re trying to promote alcoholism on your first podcast. That’s a little hard core. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: I’m waiting for the alcohol brands to sponsor me for my |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_14 | podcast. That’s a little hard core. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: I’m waiting for the alcohol brands to sponsor me for my next episode. Kevin Rose: So what was the question again? Tim Ferriss: Any age… Kevin Rose: Oh, 24. That sounds about right. Your mid-20’s are kind of like your prime, right? Tim Ferriss: What are some of your pet peeves? What are some things that drive you insane? Kevin Rose: One of the things that drives me insane is that I feel as though in our industry there are a lot of people that are tech that aren’t really direct. It drives me nuts when people beat about the bush. Really, you just need to say the truth. Even though it’s painful and it stings now, at least people know where you stand. Tim Ferriss: It saves everyone a lot of time. Kevin Rose: It saves everyone a ton of time. Tim Ferriss: What would be an example of that? What circumstance? Kevin Rose: I see this all the time in my world and the venture capital world. I recently changed the way that I say no to people now. Tim Ferriss: Hmm, this is of great interest to me. Kevin Rose: I would say that the majority of time with venture capitalists, when you’re an entrepreneur and you go out looking to raise some money, you meet with someone at a VC firm and they sit down and say, “Show my your idea,” and then you go through it. Then typically you get an email 24-48 hours later saying, “This is how we want to proceed or not proceed.” Oftentimes the email on not proceeding is like, “You know, I talked with our partnership and I don’t think it’s a good fit at this time,” or “I’m so busy with my current investments that I don’t think I have time to take on anything new, but thank you for your time.” Tim Ferriss: “Let’s talk in six months,” or whatever. Kevin Rose: It’s such BS, man. It’s a soft no. It’s funny, the other day I was sitting there writing a no to someone in email, which for me in the past has typically been like, “I thought about it. We really don’t think it’s something that we want to invest in. Thanks and we’d love to talk to you in the future,” blah blah blah, right? The typical one that you read everywhere else, right? Then I just started thinking, “I’m going to try to be very direct with the entrepreneur and just see what the response is like.” I feel like I might come off as a dick, and that’s the worry. The concern is that you come off like you’re just being… Tim Ferriss: [inaudible] other places Kevin Rose: I think at least people would be like, “You know what, you know where he stands,” so I tried it for the first time last week, actually. The entrepreneur wrote back and he was like, “Dude, thanks for being honest. I appreciate it.” Tim Ferriss: What was your wording? I’m curious because this is something I know a lot of people battle with – how to say no. Kevin Rose: I liked the idea. I thought that the space was generally really boring. I didn’t know how bit a business it would become. I thought that they had decent traction. They were clearly going to get their next round of funding because of that traction, but it wasn’t something where I was going to be over-the-top excited to answer their emails and get pumped up about. So I wrote the guy an email and I said, “Listen, I don’t think I’m the right partner for you. I think the idea is sound, but I’m not excited about this space at all. It doesn’t get me excited and I just don’t think when you need someone to reach out to and to help you out, that I’m going to be the one that’s going to jump back and be the right partner.” He wrote back and was like, “Dude, thanks for the direct feedback or honesty. I look forward to seeing you next time you’re in town,” because |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_15 | “Dude, thanks for the direct feedback or honesty. I look forward to seeing you next time you’re in town,” because he’s out of town. It was the first time where I was like, “Wow, that actually…” Tim Ferriss: It’s also a good founder who can take it. Kevin Rose: I’ve done that before in working with some engineers, and I want to start living by that because I think it’s the right thing to do. Tim Ferriss: I think you’re a very good communicator. You’re also a very good negotiator. I’ve seen you live, and both are very inter-related. Do you think you’re a good communicator, and why or why not? Let’s do that first, and then obviously the overarching question is what makes a good communicator/negotiator? I think they go together. Kevin Rose: That’s hard. It’s funny because I was just negotiating a car lease today and I don’t think I’m that good of a negotiator because this guy just mopped the floor with me. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: Yeah, but you don’t give a shit about your car. That’s why. I’ve seen you negotiate things you care about, and you’re good. Kevin Rose: That’s probably true. So on the communication front I feel like… Tim Ferriss: Plus that guy’s done the same fucking negotiation a million times. He’s like, “I’m so glad you asked that blah blah blah bullshit. Let me verbally punch you in the solar plexus.” Kevin Rose: I know. I literally walked out of the place today, walked down the street, and the guy’s texting me like, “Come back. We could talk about this,” and I’m like, “Why didn’t we talk about this 20 minutes ago when I sat in your office for 45 minutes?” He’s like, “Oh, there’s wiggle room now,” and I’m like, “How is it there wasn’t wiggle room 45 minutes ago, and you’ve brought me the crappy coffee and I’m sitting there in the office sweating my ass off because it’s hot?” I need to invent a new car start-up because there needs to be straight transparent real talk, no negotiation. I don’t know, there’s a lot of car companies out there. But communication-wise, I appreciate the compliment but I think for me, what people have said – and sometimes I get in trouble for this, I always did when I was doing PR at Digg – I would just say whatever was the truth, and not necessarily the best thing to say, but just really the honest thing. Like when we were having user revolts on our site when I was running Digg – it was a very social site so we had like millions of users revolting against us online – I would get in front of the camera and just be like, “Yeah, it sucks. Our servers are falling over. We’re getting crushed right now,” and PR would be like, “Okay, you can kind of say this, and you should word it like this next time.” I don’t know, man. Tim Ferriss: I suck at that, too, because people don’t trust you if you’re reading a script. Kevin Rose: Exactly, and that is an old process and old way of thinking. People nowadays can see right through that crap. Literally you just have to tell the truth, whether it sucks or it doesn’t suck. I got in trouble another time when I was on stage and I was talking about our engineering problems at Digg. Tim Ferriss: Who chastised you? Was this the board of directors, investor types? Kevin Rose: No. Well, I’m sharing some insider information here, but we had this group on Facebook that was a bunch of ex-Digg employees. Tim Ferriss: Dedicated to being ex-Digg employees. Kevin Rose: They were, but I was also a member of that group because I had since left Digg. The blame is definitely on me from the get-go because I’m the one that founded the company, so the buck stops with me, but I’m allowed to tweak and figure out what I did wrong so I can hopefully avoid those mistakes in the future. So I was saying a lot of what I thought I did wrong, including, as Jack |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_16 | mistakes in the future. So I was saying a lot of what I thought I did wrong, including, as Jack Dorsey puts it in the interview that I did with him – he says you need to constantly be pruning and editing your team to make sure that you have the right people in the right roles. That’s something, as a successful entrepreneur, he has constantly done. That means sometimes having very difficult tough conversations with employees and letting people go. So I talked about that on stage and talked about how I would have done things differently, blah blah blah, and I upset a lot of past employees. Tim Ferriss: What upset them? Kevin Rose: Just that I would put the blame on engineering when they thought the blame was on upper management and blah blah blah. Don’t get me wrong. The blame was absolutely on upper management. I think there’s blame to be put all over the place. I could point to 1,000 different things that we would do differently next time around. Tim Ferriss: If I were to just try to bring it back to this original question, it seems like you’re surprisingly comfortable having uncomfortable conversations. I’ve seen you do this live a couple times, where you’re asking for things that perhaps other people wouldn’t ask for but that you should ask for, or you’re saying things that maybe you shouldn’t say by some politically correct standard, but you do. How did you get to that point? It seems like the reason a lot of people fail, whether it’s negotiating for a raise or negotiating any type of deal or asking for anything they want or coming clean and avoiding some huge fucking PR scandal just by being honest at the outset, they’re not willing to have those uncomfortable conversations, so why do you think you’re so comfortable doing that? Kevin Rose: I think it’s probably because I want to avoid an even more difficult conversation down the road if I’m caught not speaking the truth the first time around. It’s a lot more difficult to have the conversation to say like, “Oh yeah, I kind of wasn’t fully bringing everything to light in this original conversation.” I don’t know, man. If you admit your faults then other people can’t point them out in you, you know what I’m saying? Tim Ferriss: Yeah, definitely. It’s the same thing with stand-up comics who make fun of themselves before the audience can, to just steal the thunder in that way so that they can run the show and do what they want to do. Kevin Rose: I never thought about this before. It’s funny that you bring it up. I feel like that’s probably the reason why, because I want to say everything there is to be said that’s negative so we can get that out of the way so I don’t have to be ridiculed in some way. I think that at Digg especially we were under a lot of scrutiny all the time because we had such a very vocal audience that was taking down sites and servers because we had so much traffic. Tim Ferriss: It took down my server. The first time my servers got taken down I remember very clearly I was in New York City and I had this very odd blog post called “ From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 Pounds of Muscle in 28 Days” that hit the Digg front page and took down my whole fucking site, and it was a big deal. That was a very important defining moment for me. I remember that. Digg was extremely powerful for a very long time. Kevin Rose: And because of a lot of that, the press used to always sit down with us and be like, “What do you think about your audience and the fact that they make these types of comments about certain users? Or there’s a post about certain ladies in bikinis and that hit the front page and got all these clicks, and all these men are saying these really crude things. How does that make you feel?” I felt like I was always |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_17 | these men are saying these really crude things. How does that make you feel?” I felt like I was always being hit with all these kind of like, “You suck. Tell us why you don’t suck” questions. I was just like, “You know what? You’re right, we do suck.” That’s the only thing you can do. Tim Ferriss: [laughing] Like, “Look, humanity’s fucking brutal. I’m sorry.” How many monthly unique visitors did you have at the height? Kevin Rose: 38 million was the highest. Tim Ferriss: If you take 1,000 people in an auditorium – like think of any school play or any Little League game and you have like 300 dads. There are always going to be four fucking asshole dads who are like yelling and screaming and blue in the face. So you take 38 million people and you extrapolate it out and of course you’re going to have a fucking mess on your hands. Kevin Rose: I just realized at that point you’ve just got to surrender and not fight. It actually helps out a ton because people are like, “Oh, he’s just human.” Tim Ferriss: That’s really important I think is to at least mention. The things you suck at is a way of not only credentializing everything you say after that, but also qualifying the users that come to your site or that use your product, by explaining who should not use your product, if that makes sense. What would you say that you are world-class at? Kevin Rose: I would say every couple years I will come up with something idea-wise that I have never seen done before. The thing that I enjoy more than anything else out of anything I’ve ever done in life, outside of the emotional side of finding your wife and dating and things like that, has to be…. Tim Ferriss: Things like that? Kevin Rose: I’m just saying that’s another thing, because that’s awesome too, but I’m saying career-wise it has to be those moments where you have those original ideas that come to you and you’re just like, “This has never been done before.” You prototype it, you build it, and you look at it and you’re just like, “Wow. I don’t know if this is ever going to be anything big, but I’m the first person that thought of this.” That is a really cool idea. We had maybe 10 or 15 moments throughout Digg’s history where we were the first ones to do some of these things, and that is coolest feeling, man, when you create something that millions of people end up using and you’re just like, “Dude, I made that.” You feel so emotionally tied to it. It’s funny because we built a lot of stuff in the very early days of Digg that went on to be used in many other products, including stupid things like Facebook using a Like button. We created social voting way back in the day and had it spread to profiles, and the nuts and bolts of how that stuff worked – some of the comments stuff that we did with the voting, and a lot of really crazy stuff we did like showing real-time data around votes – all this stuff eventually made it into much bigger products than what we had created. But dude, to know that you were there for a minute and played a little role in that, that was really cool. I can remember when Zuckerberg came down to my office at Digg and sat on my floor with his flip-flops on. Facebook at the time was smaller than Digg, and he was shooting the shit with me about what he wanted to build at Facebook, and thought we were the shit. I was like, “Damn.” At the time I was thinking, “Who is this kid?” Now I look back on that and I’m like, dude, that’s so cool. That was a moment where we had created something that he was caught up in and thought it was really cool, and baked some of those ideas into some of the stuff that he built and went on to obviously launch to an audience |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_18 | of those ideas into some of the stuff that he built and went on to obviously launch to an audience that’s 100X of what we ever were. Dude, just being a part of that, like that whole movement was something that I will forever cherish. So your question was what am I really good at. I enjoy those moments, and if there’s anything I can bring to the people that have followed my work and that continue to follow the stuff that I do, I hope to have a few more of those in my lifetime and be able to actually launch some stuff where people are like, “Wow.” It doesn’t have to be big. It can be super-small. I just want people to think, “Wow, that’s something I’ve never seen before.” I love that feeling. Tim Ferriss: I feel exactly the same way. I enjoy the newness, the inventiveness, the aha moment more than the scaling. I think it’s sometimes to my detriment. Look at the quantified self movement and so on. I was at the first meeting, been there since the beginning, did The 4-Hour Body, published in 2010, which means that I was doing research in 2007-2008, there’s a recording I did even before that… Kevin Rose: Did you see the iPhone announcement a couple days ago? Tim Ferriss: Biometrics? Kevin Rose: No, not that, the new chip. What is it called, the M7 chip. They’re building into a chip – they’re off-loading all the pedometer stuff. They can tell when you’re in a car, when you’re walking, when you’re running – all that stuff is going to be built on a chip, super low power, always on, so it’s going to power like a whole other suite of quantified self stuff. To your point, you were on that shit a long time ago and now it’s actually hitting mainstream. Tim Ferriss: Right, now it’s hitting mainstream. I think people like Dave Asprey are quite smart – Bulletproof Coffee and so on – and will probably generate more revenue for himself than I ever will personally, but I enjoyed being there at the inception, at the Big Bang moment, more than scaling. It’s something that I struggle with because I feel like, “Fuck. If I could’ve caught that wave a year or two later, let someone else do all the R&D,” you could monetize it so much more effectively. Kevin Rose: Dude, it’s not too late, man. Tim Ferriss: But I enjoy the inception moment more than anything else. So fine, what do you think I should do, in terms of not being too late. I’m curious. Kevin Rose: Honestly, the quantified self stuff – just now in the last Android release they’re now automatically building in at the API level, they can tell whether you’re walking, running, in a car. Apple just announced that in their latest chip like three days ago, same thing. The APIs and the hooks for all this stuff are there. It’s up to you what you want to build on top of it. You could do so many different things on top of that, and it’s early days, man. Tim Ferriss: Oh, it’s so early. Kevin Rose: If you think about all the stuff that you’ve looked at, like as far as reading – dude, it’s funny. Also a great Tim Ferriss story, and I think this is in your book, too. When we were hanging out and watching a movie – do you remember what movie that was? This was years ago. Tim Ferriss: [laughing] It was Inglorious Bastards, right? Kevin Rose: Oh man, that was such a great movie. I love that movie. So we were watching Inglorious Bastards and Tim’s doing research for his book. Tim Ferriss: [laughing] This is in my book. Kevin Rose: You were doing something for your book, right? Tim Ferriss: I was. We haven’t talked about this, though. Kevin Rose: Okay. So we’re sitting there in a movie theater and we sit down, and literally you didn’t even think to say a thing to me until we had sat down. We were hanging out before or something, and you sit down and you’re |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_19 | to me until we had sat down. We were hanging out before or something, and you sit down and you’re like, “Dude, I’m doing this crazy experiment,” or something like that. I’m like, “What’s up?” and you pull up our shirt and you have some kind of syringe in your side. Tim Ferriss: I had a continuous glucose monitor implanted into my abdomen. Kevin Rose: You had a needle in you and then a wireless little thing. Tim Ferriss: Yes, two or three needles stuck under my skin implanted into a transmitter that then went to a wireless receiver that was on my belt. Kevin Rose: I was like, “What is this guy doing?” Talk about quantified self stuff. This was years ago, and we still don’t have that data available to us, but there’s a lot of talk, at least in some of the start-ups that I’ve seen, at external ways of gathering very similar data. They’re doing a bunch of new ways to get a heart rate, the perspiration you have coming off of you, a bunch of different things. Tim Ferriss: There’s the galvanic skin response that’s common. There’s a start-up I haven’t talked about it. Kevin Rose: Basis. Tim Ferriss: Basis is cool. I’m an investor in Basis. The Basis watch is very cool. There’s another start-up that hopefully I can talk about sometime soon, which is basically like a nicotine patch. It tracks all that stuff 24/7. It’s fucking cool, super super cool. Kevin Rose: Anyway, what I’m getting at is obviously I feel like especially in this sector there’s a lot of talk and like the origins of something, which obviously you were a big part of, and then there’s that inception point where the hardware catches up with the general discussion, and then the hardware enables… Tim Ferriss: I thought you said ‘harbor.’ We’re getting to a great blood alcohol point now. Kevin Rose: No, the hardware. The hardware is finally up to speed now to where you’re going to see in the next few years a lot of this stuff that we thought was impossible will actually make it into devices that we wear. Tim Ferriss: Exactly, and the issue has been up to this point quite frankly data entry, because you have shitty devices – or I shouldn’t say shitty, but very primitive devices that only capture accelerometer data, and every other biometric data point that you want – say blood values – is really intrusive. You have to have someone come to your house or you have to go to LabQuest… Kevin Rose: Unless you’re a cutter. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: Unless you’re a cutter, right. Watch The Secretary, everyone. It’s a great movie. Kevin Rose: It’s hard core. Tim Ferriss: Oh, such a good movie. But the point being, you would have to have these invasive tests done to get the data that you want. Kevin Rose: Sure, and there’s time around that, too. It takes time to get the tests back. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it takes a lot of time. I think the latency on that is say 3-7 days, whereas as soon as that nut is cracked where you have something like a nicotine patch that you can slap on that’s good for 7 days that tracks… Kevin Rose: Why does it have to be nicotine? Tim Ferriss: No, it’s not nicotine, it’s just like a patch. Kevin Rose: I thought you were like, “It’s a 2-fer. You get a little high…” Tim Ferriss: No, no. “It’s a 2-fer, you get nicotine.” That stuff makes me so sick. Nicotine is so strong. We can talk about that another time. Kevin Rose: Dude, you need to trim your toenails. That one is really long. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, they’re gross, I know. I have talons, people. Kevin Rose: Those are literally like dragon talons. Tim Ferriss: What’s that bird, Graham? There’s a bird – a cassowary, an Australian bird that will rip your heart open with the nails on it’s feet. Kevin Rose: That should be the title of your first show, The Cassowary. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: No one will be able to spell it. It’ll be like 17 SEO’d |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_20 | first show, The Cassowary. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: No one will be able to spell it. It’ll be like 17 SEO’d versions. That would suck. [laughing] “If you were a colored jelly bean, what color would it be?” Suck my balls. Not literally, figuratively suck my balls. If you could outsource one of your daily tasks, what would it be and why? Because you have no fucking excuse, right? You’re doing well. You can pay whatever for whatever, but what of your current daily tasks, your repetitive tasks, daily or weekly, would you like to outsource, and why haven’t you? Kevin Rose: I don’t think there’s anything else left that I want to outsource. I think I’m actually pretty set. Tim Ferriss: So what do you bitch about that you don’t want to outsource? How’s your wine, by the way? Kevin Rose: It’s great. I’m still working on it. I’m like a 3. I think if there’s anything I complain that I don’t have time to focus on it’s some of the things I’d really like to get behind, like I want to learn how to garden properly. I know that sounds lame. Tim Ferriss: No, are you kidding? That sounds amazing. What type of gardening? Kevin Rose: I’ve got a vegetable garden right now. Tim Ferriss: We’re both into Dr. Weil, you remember his garden? Holy shit. Kevin Rose: Dr. Weil is my freaking idol, man. Tim Ferriss: That guy’s garden is amazing. Kevin Rose: We were lucky enough to go up to Dr. Andrew Weil. You probably know him as the dude with the big white beard on all the Whole Foods store shelves. Tim Ferriss: The MD who looks like Santa Claus. He’s amazing. Kevin Rose: He looks like Santa Claus. We got lucky to go to his house up in Canada, and the dude is like the master. He had an amazing garden, so anyway I’d like to learn more about that. Right now I have someone help out that comes by who basically helps with the garden, and I understand the basics but I want to get to the level of understanding the soil composition and a bunch of other things, and I just don’t have the time to do it. I wish I did. I think there’s a bunch of little hobbies. I think you’re getting that with the meditation, with the garden. There’s probably a handful of things. I’d like to work in fast food again. Tim Ferriss: Elaborate, please. Kevin Rose: I have this really weird thing where I want to go and work in fast food again. Tim Ferriss: We talked about this, reality cam. Kevin Rose: Until someone comes up and is like, “Kevin?” and then I’m going to run out. Tim Ferriss: Chipotle line. “Extra guacamole is $1.50, sir.” Kevin Rose: I’m being dead serious. I’d like to do some of that. Tim Ferriss: We’ve talked about this, like the cognitive tax that comes along with white collar work, in the sense that when you’re in front of an inbox constantly and you’re on the phone on conference calls constantly, there’s a mental and soul tax you occur. Kevin Rose: You don’t interact with people. Tim Ferriss: You’re on your own. It does not allow you to interact with other people, so we’ve both had this fantasy of working on the Chipotle line in meditative, repetitive context. How fucking awesome would that be? Kevin Rose: I want to understand businesses that are fine-tuned. One of the things I respect about these businesses, like Chipotle is decent and I’ve heard their ingredients are pretty good, but like McDonald’s, a place that I would never ever really want to work at, but I kind of do. The reason I want to go work there is because I want to understand what processes they put in place to get the efficiencies that they do. Imagine that you’re dealing with 16- to 18-year-old kids as the majority of your work force. These are the most unruly, crazy, spit in your hamburger type kids, and how do you manage that? That’s got to be the hardest segment of people to manage. I know when I |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_21 | how do you manage that? That’s got to be the hardest segment of people to manage. I know when I was 16-18 I was doing all kinds of stupid crazy stuff, so I imagine they have systems in place. Tim Ferriss: I wouldn’t want you making my burgers when you were 16. [laughing] Kevin Rose: No, I know. You still wouldn’t today, but I would imagine when you look at what they have in place, everything from the ways that they monitor their employees, to the system they have set up to “Here are the three things you have to do to make this burger. Here are the seven things you have to do to make this burger,” I just want to understand that process so I can figure out how someone would successfully franchise and scale a business like that. I’m just curious. And also there’s something about actually serving people. I think that’s a cool thing to do, and I’d actually like to talk to you about this. I wouldn’t mind donating some of my time. I actually want to join the Boy Scouts again and help out, because I was an Eagle Scout and I was in Scouts all growing up. One of the things that my dad did when he was alive is that when I was a little kid, he was a mentor to a lot of other kids in our troop. I think that was really important and he enjoyed it. You have to understand in the Boy Scouts, one of the things that nobody ever really talks about, at least in Las Vegas, was that there were a lot of kids that were dropped off by their moms who didn’t have father figures. They were like, “This is the only way they’re going to get a father figure in their life.” There were a lot of boys there that just never knew their dads, and my dad was like a second dad. At my dad’s funeral there were a couple people, one in particular that was a long-time friend of my dad’s and now is in his late 30’s, that was a scout that my dad kind of mentored because he considered him like a second father. Tim Ferriss: That’s awesome. Kevin Rose: I would like to figure out a way to get back involved in that and actually do something outside the computer and just help some people out. Tim Ferriss: Dude, I’ll do that with you. That would be amazing. I saw a poster today. I went to a meditation class, my check-in like Alcoholics Anonymous, and there was a poster for the Girl Scouts and I was actually really inspired by this today. It was a picture of this bad-ass chick doing Taekwondo and doing a high kick and it said, “Cleopatra ruled Egypt when she was 18 years old. What are you doing?” It was a Girl Scout poster and I was like, “Fuck. That is a good poster. Now I feel like a lazy asshole. I need to go do something,” but it was very inspiring. I feel like that’s a place where you could have a huge amount of impact, certainly. For me, I always thought I was going to be a 9th or 10th grade teacher because I felt like that was a really critical time for me where I was deciding where my life was going to go. I had a lot of bad influences to choose from and a lot of good influences to choose from. Kevin Rose: Actually 9th grade is so key. That’s the one. Tim Ferriss: It’s so key, so I always thought I was going to go back and teach 9th or 10th grade. Kevin Rose: You would be an awesome teacher, by the way. You should do it. Tim Ferriss: I would enjoy it. I always thought I was going to, and it just turned out that the books and the blog and blah blah blah, everything came up as a vehicle for teaching. Kevin Rose: Here’s one thing I just want to throw out there real quick. There’s a lot of people talking about this unschooled movement where |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_22 | I just want to throw out there real quick. There’s a lot of people talking about this unschooled movement where it’s like open source school where the kids can pick the different classes kind of like at their own leisure. You could put out episodes that are some courseware and the class is online, as long as you adhere to some of the unschool stuff. You could basically create your own class for the same age group. Tim Ferriss: I’d be open to doing that, and I’d be curious to get your thoughts on this, Kevin, too. I feel like the figures that had – again, speaking as a male, so this may be unique to men or to me – but many of the people who had the biggest impact on me were males who were just like, “Here’s the fucking way it is and this is the program we’re going to follow,” whether that was wrestling coaches or teachers in specific subjects who gave me structure that I lacked. Kevin Rose: You needed a little bit more discipline. Tim Ferriss: I think that in order to be a good leader you have to learn how to be a good follower first. Kevin Rose: I feel like that’s a famous quote that you just took from somewhere. Tim Ferriss: I may have stolen that from somewhere but that’s my belief, that learning to be a good follower or disciple or soldier underneath someone else is very useful training for then being a leader later. I don’t think it would have been a service to me as say a 15-year-old – and I can very clearly identify this, like 14, 15, 16-year-old period where I was very lucky to encounter certain people who had a huge formative impact on my development. In that period I feel like I needed good guidance. I needed good leaders. I didn’t need, nor in retrospect would I have wanted, someone to say, “You decide what you want to do.” I don’t know, maybe that’s me being naïve, but I really feel like at that point in time I needed someone to show me how to follow a good structure, as opposed to doing it on my own. What are your thoughts? Kevin Rose: I think everyone’s different. Certainly that approach is probably a little more traditional. That’s the way things are today, right, like people are saying, “This is the class you have to take. This is the thing you have to do.” Tim Ferriss: But there’s a difference between taking say four years of undergrad and doing all the fucking bullshit. I got my degree from Princeton, great, fantastic, and there’s a lot of fucking retards who graduate from Princeton and every other Ivy League school, but people think I’m smart because I have that on my resume or whatever, which is silly but that’s the way it is. I think there’s that, which is four years, versus having a good Obi-Wan Kenobi. It’s hard to go from being born to being your own Obi-Wan Kenobi, as opposed to having someone in-between who really puts you in check when you’re just being an arrogant prick as a 15-year-old, which perhaps isn’t applicable to females. I can’t speak to that because I’m not a woman, but every 15-year-old dude thinks he knows everything about fucking everything, you know what I mean? You need an elder to just be like, “That’s great, I’m glad you’re confident, but let me show you how this shit actually works. I’m going to push you to the breaking point. You don’t think you can do it, but I think you can do it so I’m going to push you even further.” I remember just having this particular mentor of mine, Mr. Buxton, who was an amazing, amazing guy, or the CEO of DonorsChoose, for instance. You look at my wrestling team and you can telescope them out to these amazing outcomes, and all of them without exception, in my experience so far, have attributed back to Mr. Buxton being a fucking brilliant hard-ass in wrestling. Like you thought you could give 7 and he’d be like, “No, no, no, |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_23 | a fucking brilliant hard-ass in wrestling. Like you thought you could give 7 and he’d be like, “No, no, no, you can give 10.” He would just push you to the breaking point. Whenever I face anything that is difficult in my life, I look back on my experience when I was in high school and I’m like, “All right, is this harder than what Mr. Buxton pushed me to do? No, it isn’t. Therefore, I can do it.” Kevin Rose: There’s something to be said about choosing your own path. I think that once you’ve chosen a path, I agree there’s no reason why you can’t have a hard-ass under that particular vertical of whatever you’ve chosen. Like if you say, “Okay, I want to get into computer science,” you can have a bad-ass in computer science that drives you to be the best. I feel the same way. I have a trainer at the gym, and why? Because I’ll push myself to a freaking 6 if I’m left to my own devices. If I go in with the trainer I’m going 11 and walking out of there sore as hell and can barely limp back to my vehicle. Tim Ferriss: Back to your vehicle? Kevin Rose: Well, I want to say scooter because I have a scooter. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: [laughing] I like ‘vehicle.’ Kevin Rose: I take a little scooter to and from the gym. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: I love that you get like super jacked at the gym and then jump on a Vespa to go home. [laughing] Kevin Rose: I’m really embarrassed because I got the wrong color. I got a freaking gold Vespa. It’s so ugly. Tim Ferriss: Dude, that’s ballsy. It’s like being the fucking fat guy in like [inaudible] wearing the fucking man-thong just walking around. Kevin Rose: I wanted black and Darya didn’t like black. She’s like, “Gold’s nice,” and I’m like, “Yeah, gold’s kind of nice,” and ended up getting the gold one. Who wants a gold scooter? It’s the worst. Tim Ferriss: It’s very confident. I like that. So if you could find a mentor of some type, what type of mentor do you think you need? Kevin Rose: For me it’s finding someone that fills in the gaps. I think that when you want to run a business or you want to start something new, the best thing that you can do, and the thing that one of the big learnings that I had when I was a lot younger in my early 20’s and started Digg, was that I put my head down, I put my headphones on, and I said, “I’m going to focus on product.” It was the thing that I was comfortable with and it was the thing that I understood and I knew how to do well. I kind of closed my eyes to every other aspect of the business, whether it was financials, whether it was running the business, whether it was hiring and firing people, or whether it was scaling. There were a bunch of pieces that I just was like, “I don’t understand those. I’m going to close my eyes and pretend they don’t exist. I’m going to hire other people to run them and I’m going to just focus on what I know best.” In retrospect I would probably go in and say – well, I know for a fact I would be honest with myself about what I don’t know, and go and absolutely try and pair up with mentors that can help me out. I think if I’ve learned anything in the last 10 years of doing this it’s that there is no shame in admitting that you don’t understand something, because you can either fuck it up, and that’s when you act like you understand something and you actually don’t, or you can admit it one time, learn it, and then move on and become a better person and just more well-rounded and actually get serious about building a business. If you’re ever going to be a founder and you’re going to run that business, you have to understand that you can’t just be good at |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_24 | a founder and you’re going to run that business, you have to understand that you can’t just be good at one thing. You have to understand the whole gamut, the A to Z, and at least have enough knowledge to be able to make an educated decision around certain things. I think that I was very immature and I hid from the things that I didn’t understand. Even today there’s a lot of things I still don’t understand when it comes to finance. Tim Ferriss: What are you worst at right now? If you could conjure the perfect mentor from the ether, what are the things you most want to improve upon? Kevin Rose: I think that for me currently, I’m decent at reading legal documents but I’m by no means a pro. There’s a lot of little weird things that attorneys like to throw in, these little curve balls and weird things into financing documents that as a VC you have to go through and pore through and look at certain terms, understanding how they might impact the company. Even today there was a term that I had never seen in a document. I thought it meant one thing and it actually meant something else. Our attorney IM’d me and she’s like, “Do you actually realize that this means this and not this?” and I was like, “Oh shit, I didn’t know that.” That was awesome. I had no idea it really would impact us if we ever decided to do XYZ. Just sitting down and saying, “Can you explain these things,” it just takes time. You can’t be expected to know every little facet of every business, like you don’t go and get a degree in business and finance and marketing and all these different areas. You get one degree, if that. Tim Ferriss: Plus, none of those teach you how to analyze a venture capital agreement at the end of the day. There is a very good book. I believe it’s called Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson, which is very good at introducing people to some of the common terms of venture capital and just general start-up finance agreements. Outside of that, what else? We’ve got that. We’ve got meditation. Kevin Rose: The meditation, the gardening. The other thing I’ll say is it’s really good to have an outlet to just vent. That can be with your spouse. It’s funny, and we’re getting really deep here. Do you want me to keep going? Tim Ferriss: Let’s do it. Kevin Rose: It’s one of those things, and I think you’re like this too, dude, having known you long enough now. You’re kind of a closed-off person, and so am I, in that you hide some emotional stuff and you keep it close to the chest. Tim Ferriss: You do, because people will fucking kill you if you don’t. Just dealing with like [inaudible] and shit, you’ll get fucking slaughtered if you don’t have some degree of protectiveness. Kevin Rose: I know that, but I’m saying understanding the value in being able to freely vent to a significant other, or to talk to someone or have a good bro, or even to seek counseling or whatever it may be – having an outlet to be able to go out there and get gut checks on different things I think is a really healthy thing. For me, I’ve had some good friends in the Bay Area, like you for example. We’ve talked about a bunch of deep stuff before. I’ve done that with [inaudible] and some other friends and things like that. I think just having that is a really healthy thing, so those act as mentors in a way, you know what I mean? I think that your close friends can act as mentors. Tim Ferriss: Here’s a question for you. This is nothing I’ve talked about before, but I recently went to a therapist for the first time, two or three months ago, and I found it extremely helpful to speak with someone who is completely non-biased. I viewed it as a bit of a cop-out in the beginning because I felt like it was |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_25 | completely non-biased. I viewed it as a bit of a cop-out in the beginning because I felt like it was an admission of weakness to go to a therapist. Kevin Rose: It absolutely is. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: [laughing] For the same reason I’ve never used anti-depressants, even though I’ve dealt with that shit in my own life. I’ve never taken Prozac or SSRIs or anything like that, because I feel like it’s an admission of weakness and that I should be able to deal with it in other ways, so I’ve never gone to a therapist per se. Many people might call it a business coach or whatever, just to hide the fact. But I went to this therapist, found it very helpful, and have not gone to a second session, even though I found the first session extremely helpful. Kevin Rose: Why was it? Did you just feel like afterwards, “Oh god, I can’t…” because there’s a stigma attached to that. Tim Ferriss: No, there was no over-thinking it. I was just like, “Oh, I’m fucking busy, I’m not going to do it.” Kevin Rose: Why not though? There’s no reason not to. Tim Ferriss: It’s funny you should mention that. I did two hours of physical therapy today because I fucked up my right shoulder doing crazy shit. Kevin Rose: I think we need to treat our brains like that, though. You need to treat it like another muscle you would work out, and you need to figure out that that’s actually a good positive thing. I wish there were more casual therapists, something where you’re just like, “Oh, let’s meet for coffee,” somebody that’s a friend, but you’d pay them. [laughing] Tim Ferriss: PaidFriend.co. Kevin Rose: There’s got to be a way to lighten it up a little bit so it’s not like, “Lay in the chair and let me take out my notepad.” Tim Ferriss: I think people have so much baggage associated with the title of ‘therapist’ that it never happens, whereas it was just useful and may have been, quite frankly, just the fact that I was able to hear myself talk for an hour and think through shit, without a friend who was subjectively trying to help me. What advice would you give to your 20- or 25-year-old self, given everything that you’ve gone through and everything you’ve learned? Say 25. Kevin Rose: I would say drink a little bit less. That’s a good question, actually. I haven’t thought about it. I think a lot of the things that we talked about today, like surrounding yourself with mentors and understanding to confront the things that you don’t understand, rather than hide from them. If it’s from a straight business point of view I would say you can do more with less. I think that business temptation when you start seeing some success to throw bodies and servers and more people at the problem, when in reality it’s just making sure that you have the right people in the right roles. They have this rule at Google. I’m going to screw this up but you get the gist that it’s like the 10X rule. The right person in the right role can do the work of 10 people in the wrong role. They’ve got this thing where if they can find the right person for the right role you’ll get 10X the performance, and I totally believe that’s true. There’s a reason why Instagram grew to, I don’t know, when they sold it was 50+ million people or something like that using their product, with 10 people. Tim Ferriss: Kevin’s a smart dude. Kevin Rose: He was good like that. Tim Ferriss: [inaudible] the whole team [inaudible] obviously. Last question, because I want to be sensitive obviously to everyone’s time, you guys listening to the fine Kevin Rose III, Esquire involved with this interview. Kevin Rose: I am the third, actually – not Kevin but Robert Rose, my first name. That’s funny. Tim Ferriss: Nice. I got that right. Who do you think I should interview on this podcast in the future? Any nominations? I’ve had a lot of people say Dana White, President |
1 | #1: Kevin Rose | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01-kevin-rose.pdf | 1_26 | should interview on this podcast in the future? Any nominations? I’ve had a lot of people say Dana White, President of the UFC, which I’d totally be down for obviously, being a big UFC fan. Kevin Rose: The thing that would be fun is you’ve got to get outside of tech. Obviously there’s a lot of tech people in the Bay Area, but the thing that I would love to hear about, because you’ve traveled the world so much, you’re like always all over the place in weird crazy countries – you need to bring some of that culture to the show. Even if you did something where you spliced together a bunch of different interviews to fill out like a half hour or 45 minutes, if you were in the Philippines or Thailand and you met some phenomenal freaking chef making amazing noodles and you do like an on-the-street interview about what drives them, what they use in their ingredients, what they love about their life – you see so much interesting stuff like that, that I would love to get a little taste of that. That’d be cool. I know that you’re always about the really minimalist crazy getting the actual feel of the culture. You’re not the average “I’m just going to go a third-world country and stay in the Four Seasons,” so I think bringing that flavor to the show and bringing some of those personalities that are outside of what we get here in the States I think would be pretty awesome. Tim Ferriss: Cool. I am up for all of it. Guys, I want to be respectful of Kevin’s time and Graham’s time and your time, so I’m going to bring this to a close. Kevin Rose: This 3-hour podcast to a close. Tim Ferriss: This 3-hour podcast to a close. Kevin Rose: How long was it? An hour 45? That’s a little long. Tim Ferriss: It’s like half the length of Joe Rogan’s podcast. Kevin Rose: I think we lost pretty much everyone. @ reply me at @kevinrose on Twitter with #timtimgoodgood as the hash tag if you even listened to it this far. I bet there’s like four people. Tim Ferriss: Two or three people. Let me know what you think. I would love to hear your suggestions – what you liked, what you didn’t like, what you’d like to hear more of, less of. Send me a note @tferriss and let me know what you think. Thanks for listening so far, and I hope to do more of these but only if you guys like it, so let me know what you think. To that point, Kevin, cheers. Kevin Rose: Cheers. Thanks for having me. Namaste. Tim Ferriss: Namaste. Till next time. Good night guys. |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_0 | The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts Episode 2: Josh Waitzkin Show notes and links at tim.blog/ podcast Tim Ferriss: So Josh, I figure we might as well start at the top and do a little retrospective of what led you initially to write The Art of Learning. Of course, that's how I was, in many ways introduced to your work, and then through our mutual friend, Max, ended up connecting. But what was the reason you decided to write that book? Josh Waitzkin: I initially started thinking about the idea of the book about two years into my martial arts lessons. So I transitioned from chess into studying, into meditating and into studying East Asian philosophy. Then I started to get into Tai Chi Chuan and ultimately into the martial application of push hands and I started to experience this very interesting transition from the principles. My level just began to translate directly over into the martial arts. I think it was primarily one experience I had that was something around two years into my Tai Chi training. I was giving a simultaneous chess exhibition in Memphis, Tennessee at a fundraiser for my school district and I was 45 or 50 boards at once. I was walking down the middle of this big square of chess tables. Everyone's playing one game. I'm playing each of them, and about 40 minutes into the simul I had this experience that was so interesting. I began to feel like I was riding the energetic wave of the game, like I was in push hands training. I wasn't playing chess. I wasn't thinking in chess language. I wasn't calculating variations. I was feeling the flow. Feeling my space out behind, like I would in the martial arts and I had this realization. I was playing beautiful chess, but I wasn't consciously playing chess, that the barriers between these two different arts had dissolved in the mind and that's when I started to conceive of the idea of the book. A lot of the process I spent five years taking notes and I had 400 or 500 pages of notes before I actually sat down and wrote it. A lot of that process was deconstructing what I'd been doing rather intuitively. So essentially, what it felt like before this translation along parallel learning, which is two rather abstract terms, that's the language that I was using internally when I was first thinking about the book. As if I were just taking the essence of one art and translating it over into another and the process of writing it involved deconstructing what I'd been doing, somewhat abstractly into something that could be replicated more systematically. Tim Ferriss: So the question that jumps out in my mind, which is a bit of a side perhaps, but in simuls, playing your 10, 20, 30, 40 boards simultaneously -- I'm trying to ask a better question than how does someone do that. But at what point what happens to a chess player when they go from an inability to play multiple boards simultaneously to being able to play multiple boards simultaneously? What is the framework or thinking or experience that someone builds up that allows them to do something like that? Which to the average person seems like a Rain Man-like feat? Josh Waitzkin: I think it's different for every chess player. One of the beautiful things about chess is that you can approach it in so many different ways and to be world-class what you need to do essentially is express the core of your being through the art. I think that's true of many arts and that's probably something that we'll get into more deeply. So you can have a very mathematical person who plays chess mathematically. You can have a very musical person who plays chess musically. Someone might be much more kinesthetic, like myself and it's sort of a feeling for flow and hidden harmonies, and almost a physically energetic relationship to chess. When I first learned to play chess, when I was six years old in Washington Square Park, it was a battle. I loved the feeling of going into a fight with someone and |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_1 | in Washington Square Park, it was a battle. I loved the feeling of going into a fight with someone and finding these hidden harmonies and finding where these animal passions mixed with this technical complexity, and much later when I'd gotten much better playing simuls, it was a higher level manifestation of that same dynamic. For me, playing simuls is something akin to juggling a lot of balls and I wasn't playing 40 different games for example separately. The flow of all 40 games would coalesce into one larger sense of flow and it was actually really interesting. Often when I'd give a simul and there'd be a youth competition the winners of the youth competition would play against me, so sometimes kids would cheat. They'd really want to beat me, so they would cheat. So I'd be walking around this big thing, and then I'd get to the table, and they'd have shifted their positions to try to win because if they could win it would be a big thing. And my experience when that happened was as if you had -- imagine if you had 40 balls up in the air and suddenly they all crash onto the floor. I would know that they would change their position. Not by reaching the board nor remembering what the position was and then seeing it changed. It would initially be this feeling of the energetic flow had been interrupted and then I'd have to reverse engineer myself back to that one game. That one component of the flow and then I'd remember the game. And then I would remember exactly what position it had been and then I'd say "Ha-ha, this is the position." Then it would take me two or three times going back around to get all the balls back up in the air and get back to that energetic flow. So actually, for me, giving simuls felt similar to playing one chess game, but that was my own relationship to it. I think that probably if you ask ten different very strong chess players they'd all give somewhat different answers. Tim Ferriss: Got it. Do you know what blew me away was spending time with a friend of yours, [Maurice], when we went to Washington Square Park and seeing him play a game at least for the first portion without looking at the board. I won't give away too much of the punchline, since we captured it all on a film, but it was pretty amazing. But his ability to track the board it seemed like by chunking portions of the board into larger gestalt pieces -- I don't know if that's the best way to express it -- but it seemed like his ability to seemingly remember all these disparate pieces was because he had the board broken down into component chunks, as it were. I don't want to take us too down that fine line. Let's shift gears. What I'd be very curious to know at this point because I know, of course, a little bit of the background, but I want to dig into the details. What type of people do you personally work with these days and why do they work with you? What type of things do you do with them? Josh Waitzkin: I have three major dimensions to my creative life right now. What made a fourth and I guess the most important one is my son, Jack. He's a little over two-years-old and the love of my life. So that's maybe the most important part of my life, no question about it. I run a nonprofit educational foundation and we have our own JW Foundation, The Art of Learning Project, and we have a couple hundred programs in schools around the country, internationally as well. So this is integrating these principles that we have been developing in schools working with teachers, parents, and children around this individualized and thematic relationship to learning that I've been developing. So there's one dimension. The other one is I own a martial arts school, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu School with Marcelo Garcia, who is the nine time world champion. You know him well, Tim. |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_2 | a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu School with Marcelo Garcia, who is the nine time world champion. You know him well, Tim. He's really the Michael Jordon of the grappling world. So there are world class athletes training there. Then I run a consulting business where I'm training people who are at the cutting edge of the finance worlds and this is really interesting work. Because we're focusing on that last 1 or .1% of the learning process, which is really my specialty. It's highly individualized. It's cutting edge work on their learning process, their idea generation, their creativity, their performance psychology, and their resilience. Fascinating work and what I've discovered it's interesting because I wrote this book called The Art of Learning years ago, and so people are always coming to me to speak about learning. But much of what I've been focused on in recent years has been unlearning. When I think about that last movement the equivalent, say number ten to number one in the world, to number five to being number one in the world, it's much more about finding subtle obstructions. Finding friction points and releasing them, identifying cognitive biases blocking your way. It's the movement towards unobstructed self-expression. If you think about your creative process as a hose with a big crimp in it, if you release it, just unbelievable pressure can be released. And a lot of what I'm doing with people is trying to move them from very good to great or from great to truly elite, deeply individualized work. I'm helping them really find ways to express the core of their being through their art, which is as you know a big theme in my life from when I played chess at my highest level. That's what I was doing when I had a period of being really locked up in my chess career which we can go into in more detail if you want. I was doing the opposite. I was trying to fit in someone else's mold and then ultimately when I transitioned away from chess into the martial arts I returned to that experience of self-expression. And that's when I really started to understand that very deeply. I think it was the crisis towards the end of my chess career which really laid the foundation for the work that I do today with brilliant [inaudible] who are just trying to make that movement to the equivalent world champion. Tim Ferriss: To jump actually back to Marcelo for a second, because I've of course met Marcelo and he's just -- Josh Waitzkin: You mean you've gone to war with him, man. I've watched you. Tim Ferriss: I've gone to war with him, which if there's anything at stake, I don't recommend. Josh Waitzkin: He's a tough guy. He's caused me a lot of pain over the years. Tim Ferriss: He's a tough guy, but also a sweetheart of a guy. He's so fluid. What I'd love to hear from you, of course, because in The Art of Learning, which some people might be familiar with, they read about your experiences in chess, your experiences in Tai Chi and the parallels between them. And this overarching framework for optimizing mental and physical performance, if that's a fair way to put it, which is The Art of Learning through these different techniques and strategies. What have you learned through this third art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu? What are some insights or strategies that you've had since moving from Tai Chi, which is some ways similar, but also very different from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu which a lot of people will be familiar with, through the UFC and mixed martial arts? Josh Waitzkin: All right, I mean the pertinent context relevant to my life. So The Art of Learning ends with the 2004 World Championship. It ends describing a narrative of that. It was just an absolutely harrowing and crazy experience. I won't give the punchline, but it was really intense. And after this I had decided I wanted to be a beginner again, to put on a white belt literally and figuratively and so I took on this third major mountain in my life, |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_3 | put on a white belt literally and figuratively and so I took on this third major mountain in my life, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I was training out on the West Coast for about a year when I was actually writing The Art of Learning. I was training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu twice a day. This was after I'd spent five years taking notes. Then I had a 2004 World's. Then I was writing it. I started training with John Machado out there. Then I came back to New York. I started training with Mark [Mosantos] here, and I started to develop this relationship with Marcelo, who is just the greatest grappler to ever live, and we were doing private lessons. We developed a friendship. Then he moved to Florida and I would travel to Florida to work with him. And ultimately I made the decision that I wanted to bring him to New York. Mostly because I was at that point planning to make a run for the World Championship in this art, and there was no better to do it than to get my ass kicked by the very best to ever live in the sport. He's just a wonderful guy and he's just unbelievable martial artist and so we opened up the school together and I've done the mats with him other than when one of us has been injured. There have been a lot of injuries in these sports, all the time. And it's been a fascinating experience. Marcelo is so profoundly different from me. I'm a really conceptual guy and I think abstractly, of course, with my foundation in chess. Marcelo is one of the most kinesthetically overdeveloped persons I've ever met and of course, overdevelopment and underdevelopment tend to come hand and hand conceptually. Josh Waitzkin: Can you give me an example of that? What would be an example? Tim Ferriss: Of overdevelopment/underdevelopment? Josh Waitzkin: Of kinesthetic, what it means to be kinesthetically -- Tim Ferriss: His physical intelligence is mind boggling. When he'd come fishing with me I'd throw him on stand up paddle board in three foot chop and everyone just flies off of paddle boards when they stand up on them. And he was just beautiful. He'd find the balance points. I've never seen someone learn so quickly how to handle waves, boats, handling fishing lines, free diving, riding waves on paddle boards. I've been a stand up fighter for many years, as strong as my core art when I'm doing standup training with Marcelo I caught him with most of the throws in my repertoire one time. I don't think I've ever caught him with a throw twice, which is amazing. I was world class where I'd catch them thousands of times. You almost never see Marcelo get caught more than once with something. It's amazing to see how he relates to the world through his kinesthetic intelligence. For example, when we were looking for spaces for our school we'd walk into a big room and I'd be thinking about the dimensions, square footage, where this would be, where that would be. Marcelo would know if it felt good or felt bad. He's going to know whether he feels good about you or he feels bad about you and his intuition is incredibly dead on. But he navigates the world through this kinesthetic intelligence and it's been really fascinating having the school with him and diving deep with him. Because we've been having conceptual dialog for these three-and-a-half years or so and he's really deep conceptually. But I've learned even more deeply the importance of the lesson that there are many paths to greatness. And to take a guy like Marcelo and to try to fit him into a chess player's hyper-conceptual mold would be terrible. And he's so great because of his just unbelievable commitment to doing it his way and he's done things in extraordinary ways. For example, you know how in these competitive arts everyone's very secret about their repertoires? We have this program, which you know well called MG Action, where people, Jiu Jitsu guys from around the world login to watch all of Marcelo's shows, training sessions, |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_4 | MG Action, where people, Jiu Jitsu guys from around the world login to watch all of Marcelo's shows, training sessions, his sparring sessions, his lessons, everything. When he was competing in Abu Dubai is when he got the World Championship and when [inaudible] which is the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu World Championship we were streaming his sparring sessions every night. So he was visually showing these competitors what he was about to use against them at two weeks, three weeks, at four weeks, and his attitude about this was just completely unique. "If you're studying my game, you're entering my game and I'll be better at it than you." So simple, so pure, and if you think about it, it's really deep. The opposite of what most chess players would do and most Jiu Jitsu guys would do. So he's wide open to constant learning. The other beautiful thing about Marcelo is people call him the King of Scrambles and if you watch his training style, he's always in transition which is a really interesting idea to think about in a disciplinary manner. Because most people get their egos involved in their training and they're trying to dominate all the time, and to dominate in almost anything, you find that there's no dominance and you keep it. But Marcelo always lets the opponents move and so he's constantly playing in transition. And so if you think about what world class martial arts means and you brought, for example, Maurice Ashley and you're playing chess in Washington Square, it's similar. If you're at a much higher level than someone you can always seem mystical because you're doing things which are outside of their conceptual scheme. The way that operates in the martial arts is if you think about it through the lens of frames, if you and I are looking at a position and in your mind, there's this position, this position, and this position so there are three positions. In my mind if I'm constantly training at the transitions between these positions, these actually expand into these transitional frames and become positions to me. So if I'm seeing 100 positions when you're seeing two, then I can play in your blind spots and I can seem mystical to you because you haven't trained there. And that's what Marcelo does by spending all of his time in transition, he has cultivated the art to play in the in-between, which is really what level is all about or one of the core things that world class martial arts is all about, playing in transition, in gaps in your opponents’ fight pattern. Tim Ferriss: Observing and practicing with Marcelo say on the [inaudible] team or the Marcelo team just blew me away. Because if you look at it as an uninformed spectator or even a moderately informed spectator you're blown away by how fast he is and how effective he is. But the nuance of eliciting movement, allowing space to open, manufacturing space by applying pressure, and then leaving it is so subtle and so incredibly effective. Then you start to notice these principles that carry over to many, many hundreds of possible positions, let's just say. It's really amazing. It reminds me of something I heard once from a musician. I don't know who the original quote is from, but he said that "Music is the space between the notes." And I was like, "Huh, that's a really interesting way to look at it." But what were you going to say? Josh Waitzkin: I was going to say I think that's a gorgeous quote. Most great arts are defined by that space in-between. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it's like writing. Writing's the same way, right? It's like when in doubt, leave it out. Josh Waitzkin: Beautiful, and of course, the thing about Marcelo is that it can often seem initially that he's moving so fast. But what's incredible he can also move very slow and do things that you don't see. So the great sleight of hand is practicing the art of illusion when we're not practicing. It's amazing what can be done with intention, with controlling someone's intention. This is a lot of |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_5 | we're not practicing. It's amazing what can be done with intention, with controlling someone's intention. This is a lot of my training in Push Hands related to finding ways to essentially control someone's intention so that you are ahead of them, even if they were ultimately moving first. You were there before they arrived. It's a fascinating psychological component of really high level training in anything. Tim Ferriss: I remember an interview with one of the K1 fighters back in the day and they were talking about Peter Aerts. I don't know if you remember the Dutch Lumberjack, huge guy and he seemed fast and I remember what people said. A number of opponents said, "He's actually not that fast. He's kind of a big lumbering guy, but he's so good at predicting timing that he sees you telegraph before you even have the thought to throw the punch. And he beats you to the punch as a result of that. But it's because he picks up on the cues faster than other people." I thought that was very interesting. To try to bridge this to something else, you work with -- of course I'm not going to mention names -- but you work with some of the most stunningly successful and famous traders and people in finance. I mean some real masters of the universe type folks. What have you found unique about that group of people? Let's just start with that. I'm curious to know what you've noticed being as observant as you are, about that group of folks. Josh Waitzkin: That's a big question. Tim Ferriss: It is a big question. Josh Waitzkin: First of all, I think a core principle to start with is that there are many paths to greatness. Each one of these guys who's really world class is doing it his way and he's harnessing his eccentricities. He's cultivating his or her strengths as a way of life. There's not an excessive focus on weakness. There's just an embracing of deep, deep studying of the preconditions to someone's finest moments to expression and then they build their lifestyles around it. That's a lot of what I do is help people understand what makes them tick on a very, very deep level, relative to the cognitive biases, where they're locked up and where to [inaudible] come. What kind of external conditions, what kind of internal conditions. The ones who are really at the top are people who have mastered this art of deep introspection and taking the result of these introspective processes and turn them into training systems and into a way of life. It's fascinating how the process works. What I do with these guys is after I do my initial diagnostic process, I have ways of revamping their daily architecture, the way they live their life. So that they're, for example, aligning their peak energy periods with their peak creativity work. They're building lifestyles that are relentlessly proactive as opposed to reacting to inputs. They're building a daily architecture which is based on maximizing their creative process. If you think about this -- to most people a simple case in point is email checking. Most people when they finish a break, even top guys in industries when they finish a break, when they wake up first thing in the morning what do most people do? They check their email. When they come from a workout they check their email. When they come back from lunch what do they do? They check their email. So what you see is whenever they're coming back from something after a break, they're soaking in inputs. So they live this reactive lifestyle. Their creative processes are dominated by external noise as opposed to internal music. And a lot of what I work on with guys is creating rhythms in their life that really are based on feeding the unconscious mind, which is the wellspring of creativity information and then tapping it. So for example, ending the workday with high quality focus on a certain area of complexity where you can use an insight and then waking up first thing in the morning creating input and applying your |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_6 | where you can use an insight and then waking up first thing in the morning creating input and applying your mind to it, journaling on it. Not so much to do a big brainstorm, but to tap what you've been working on unconsciously overnight. Which of course, is a principle that Hemingway wrote about when he spoke about the two core principles in his creative writing process, number one ending the workday with something left to write and -- Tim Ferriss: Yeah, often in mid-sentence even. Josh Waitzkin: Right. So not doing everything he had to do. Which most people do, but they feel this sense of guilt if they're not working. You and I have discussed this at length, but leaving something left to write and then the second principle, release your mind from it. Don't think about it all night. Really let go. Have a glass of wine. Then wake up first thing in the morning and reapply your mind to it. And it's amazing because you're basically feeding the mind complexity and then tapping that complexity or tapping what you've done with it. This rhythm, the large variation of it is overnight, and then you can have microbursts of it throughout the day. Before workouts pose a question, do a workout, release your mind after workout, return to it, and do creative bursts. Before you go to the bathroom, before you go to lunch, before anything. And in that way you're systematically training yourself to generate the crystallization experience, that ah-ha moment that can happen once a month or once a year. A lot of what I do is work on systems to help it happen once a day or four times a day, and when we're talking about guys who run financial groups of $20 to $30 billion, for example, if they have a huge insight that can have unbelievable value. If you can really train people to get systematic about nurturing their creative process, it's unbelievable what can happen and most of that work relates to getting out of your own way. It's unloading. It's the constant practice of subtraction, reducing friction. Tim Ferriss: What would be an example? You've mentioned cognitive biases a few times. For those people who may not be familiar with that term what would be an example of cognitive biases and how someone might work on them? Josh Waitzkin: Right. Well, there are a lot of cognitive biases that are specific to certain disciplines, like chess or finance or philosophy. But if we think about it in terms of everyday life, let's say we make a decision and we then feel the need to justify that decision, and so we make more decisions to justify that initial decision. Then we basically get ourselves into this deep wormhole which is caused by the attempt to justify. Tim Ferriss: Like Sunk Cost Fallacy. Josh Waitzkin: Exactly, so in the financial group in the world talking about it these will be Sunk Cost Fallacy, you're right. But it's very interesting for example, for a chess player who makes a certain decision and there's a certain emotional and intellectual and time component to the value we put into the thought process behind that decision. And what we often have to do is release it because the position changes shape. A very interesting way that it's manifested in chess, which you can think about rather universally, is that's there's a certain evaluation to the position. You and I are playing, Tim, and I have a slight advantage in the position. I'm nurturing that advantage. I'm nurturing. I'm nurturing it and a lot of complexity and I make a slight error and suddenly your position is equalized, right? So if I'm holding on to the past evaluation emotionally where I had the advantage, then what I'm going to do very subtly, I'm going to reject positions that don't give me that advantage. But if objectively I no longer have an advantage, then I'm going to be reaching too far. Then I'm going to be rejecting the notion of accept which will make my position slip more and more and more and you fall into what I |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_7 | notion of accept which will make my position slip more and more and more and you fall into what I call a downward spiral. So this relates to a lack of presence which really connects to a cognitive bias, an addiction to a past evaluation as opposed to a present one. So that's a very simple example of a cognitive bias. A mental addiction, a thought construct, something that we hold to be true because of some complicated twist in our mind that's no longer actually true. And so of course, a very simple antidote to most of this is presence. If we can look at a moment or a chess position or an investment decision or any decision with very clean presence, outside of emotional inertia, then we can often slice through just amazing amounts of fat with very, very simple decisions or if you think about the learning process, for example. This is one thing I love about your approach to learning, the language that you and I use is -- I call you a master of deconstruction. You look at the way people approach different sports and you find the biases, the false constructs and you find the way to learn a very straight path to learning as opposed to people getting mired in all sorts of tangled webs of complexity which are essentially caused by cognitive biases. Isn't that how you'd put it? Tim Ferriss: No, I think that's true and I obviously appreciate the kind words. I think you and I have very complimentary approaches and like you've said before, I tend to focus on the 80/20 analysis as it applies to people getting up and off the ground as quickly as possible to stay in the top 5-10% of the general population. Where what's so cool about our conversations, what I enjoy so much in part, is that you're really focusing on that final leap. How do you go from being great to being the best? They're very complimentary skill sets. What I'm looking at is a way to unearth cognitive biases and just as a side note for people who want to look into this you can go to Wikipedia and search cognitive biases and there's a long list which is pretty fun to read. There are a number of books about these types of things too. Think Twice I think is another one. The question that I ask myself -- and I'm always interested in the questions that people ask themselves, because I find to my mind that that internal dialog is what defines your day-to-day thinking and what you think you become. So it's so critical that you ask yourself the right questions, and in my mind, or I should say rather when I'm trying to deconstruct say a sport, all I'll ask is to start with what rules are people following that are not required? So outside of the law and science and even within science and within law reality is negotiable. So a good instance of that is the high jump, and the Fosbury flops. Dick Fosbury who's really the first guy to go backwards over the high jump, and up to that point there'd been straddle kicks and all sorts of different approaches, and he was ridiculed at first and then he was called a cheat because he won the gold medal and now everybody uses that approach. So having a list of questions, who's good at this? Who shouldn't be, is another one that I love to ask because you might know someone. For instance, you were talking about the different styles in chess or Jiu Jitsu, where in chess, as in a reference to your first book, you have attacking chess players. Then you have very different stylistic differences and you've got very quantitative players. And for the TV show, for the Tim Ferriss Experiment I did an episode on poker, and I've avoided poker my whole life because I viewed it as a game of chance. And I had a former computer science guy who said, "No, no, no I'm not going to teach you to be lucky because I can't teach you to be |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_8 | said, "No, no, no I'm not going to teach you to be lucky because I can't teach you to be lucky. But I can teach you to run some probabilities and only bet when you have a good likelihood of a positive outcome." What was so fascinating is you look at a guy like that and you'll find a highly quantitative -- say hedge fund managers for instance, or investors of different types, tech investors who go to the World Series of Poker and they run the numbers. That's how they play. And then are other guys who are completely seemingly fly by the seat of their pants. They're very kinesthetic. They're playing an intimidation game. They're very physical. So asking myself for instance, who's good at this, who shouldn't be? If the assumption is you have to be very good at math to be good at poker. Who admits to using no math which might be misinformation and let me look into how they do it. Then the second question is how have they replicated their results? Are there other people they've taught to do what they do to try to separate out the nature from the nurture where possible? But I want to come back to the finance guys, just for a second, and to ask you about rituals and routines. Then I'm going to ask you about your own. But what are some habits and it doesn't have to be across the board with all these guys because they have such different personalities and approaches. But with some of these really super high level finance guys who are managing tens of billions of dollars what are some of the habits that you've observed that you find interesting or rituals? Josh Waitzkin: For me, it's like describing the keystone habits that I recommend for people to internalize in the field? [inaudible]. Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Josh Waitzkin: First of all, meditation. Where we're speaking about this theme of cognitive biases or basically observing your mental dictions the moment that they set in. Meditation is as deep and as powerful a tool as I could possibly describe. Maybe six or seven years ago when I was first talking about meditation with guys in the finance world it seemed like some woo-woo strange thing for them to take on. But as more and more people are integrating in their process, you wouldn't believe how many of the most powerful players in the world are meditating very deeply. It's just an amazing way of deepening the creative process, deepening presence, expanding your energetic relationship with the world, gaining insight, and realizing that most of the thinking that we do basically springs from mental addiction. And much of people's lives are spent in an emotional swirl which is a reactive one. And having a relationship to presence which allows you to see through the illusion of that emotional swirl or of those mental addictions, meditation is an incredibly powerful tool, which I know you know quite deeply. I've been meditating since I was 17 or 18 years old. It's a big part of your life as well, Tim. So that's a very, very important habit. The idea of waking first thing in the morning and turning your mind to creative work, pre-input as opposed to checking email and getting reactive, opening up your channels to the unconscious mind first thing when you wake up in the morning, and doing the same, ending the workday with quality, hugely important. I remember when I went skiing with Billy Kidd who is one of the great downhill racers from back in the '60s Olympic ski team. He's an awesome dude. Now he skis out in Colorado wearing a cowboy hat, just a timeless guy, brilliant dude. And he was saying to me years ago when I first skied with him, "Josh, what do you think are the three most important turns of the ski run?" I've asked that question to a lot of people since. And most people will say the middle because it's the hardest, the beginning to get up momentum really describes the three most important turns of a ski run are the last |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_9 | the beginning to get up momentum really describes the three most important turns of a ski run are the last three before you got in the lift and it's a very, very subtle point. For those of you who are skiers, that's when the slope is leveled off, there's less challenge. Most people are very sloppy. Then they're taking away a lot of the muscle they've been using. They have bad form. The problem is that on the lift ride up unconsciously you're internalizing bad body mechanics. As Billy points out, if your last three turns are precise, then what you're internalizing on the lift ride up is precision. So I carry this on to the guys who I train in the finance world, for example. Ending the workday with very high quality which opens up, for one thing, you're internalizing quality overnight. We're nurturing themes as well as skills. It's one thing to learn skills but the higher artist has to learn themes or meta-themes that will ultimately, spontaneously taps into the internalization of hundreds of what I would call local habits. If you're practicing quality, you're deepening the muscle of quality and you're also focusing the unconscious in that complexity which we then tap first thing in the mornings. This is a core habit, journaling, certain post-mortem processes, ending your day with a reflection of the quality of the work, where the core is, complexity that you're wrestling with, hugely important. Tim Ferriss: Would you do that immediately after the end of the workday per se, before bed? How do you time that if someone wanted to try these themselves? Josh Waitzkin: I find at the end of the workday the problem with doing these things right before is then you're sort of consciously going to bed thinking about these things. That's why I find you want to release. The very core idea is when you go home, as best you can, unless you're red hot inspired release your mind from the work. It's very important to give your stress a recovery. Core habit, you want to be turning it on and turning it off. And you can teach people that turning it off is a huge part of teaching them to turn it on much more intensely. Stress and recovery workouts, interval training, and meditation together are beautiful habits to develop to cultivate the art of turning it on and turning it off. So if you're undulating your heart rate, for example, between 170-172-174, and say 144, the practice of lowering your heart rate over the course of 45 seconds is akin to falling asleep, releasing your tension. And then as you're pushing your heart rate back up, you're letting it turn on. So you're using a physical metaphor to train at the art of turning on incredible intellectual energy and then turning it off. Marcelo Garcia, who we were talking about, one of my most beautiful memories of him in the World Championship right before going to the semifinals, [inaudible] this bleacher. Everyone's screaming and yelling. He's sleeping, asleep on the bleacher, can't wake him up. He took a stumble into the ring. You've never seen a guy more relaxed before going into a world championship fight, and then he can turn it off so deeply, and man, when he goes in the ring you can't turn it on with any more intent than he can. And his ability to turn it off indirectly aligned with how intensely he can turn it on, so training people to do this, have stress and recovery, undulation throughout their day. And then thematically this ties into again, this internal proactive orientation, building a daily architecture which is around understanding your creative process as opposed to reacting to things, feeling guilty that you're not working, really teaching people to tap into their internal compass. So those are some of the core themes that I would bring up first. I could spend three hours talking about this subject. Tim Ferriss: Let's do it. We'll have a Part 2. The meditation I wanted to touch on for a second, as you know I've been taking that very seriously for particularly the last |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_10 | wanted to touch on for a second, as you know I've been taking that very seriously for particularly the last six months or so. And I received an email the other day from the teacher that I used for a transcendental meditation and there are many different types of meditation. I'm curious. I'm going to ask you about how you format your own meditating in a second. But in many types I have my issues, my likes, and dislikes as it relates to almost all of them. But I received an email with a link to an article, and the title is "Bridgewater Founder Dalio Credits Transcendental Meditation for His Success." And for those who don't know he's the founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. They have what, $100 billion plus under management I think. And his quote is, "Meditation more than any other factor has been the secret to whatever success I've had." That is a helluva endorsement. So for me, it's been getting over that resistance to what I perceived as a woo-woo new age type thing and the ability to view it almost as just a warm bath for the mind, a warm taking of a mini-vacation from my own brain in a way. Which may or may not -- depending on who you ask -- be the most helpful way to look at it, but I found that a very useful lens through which to view it. If there is a particular type of meditation you follow what is it? How do you personally meditate? What do you think of or not think of? How long do you do it, etc.? Josh Waitzkin: When I was 17-18, I started studying very simple, contemplative, acquiescent Buddhist sitting meditation where I'd focus on my breath and this is when I was late teenager. Then I started getting involved with Tai Chi and I started studying East Asian philosophy very deeply. And this is where I got increasingly into moving meditation, which is the most deep practice or the practice that I've personally done most deeply. Tai Chi for meditation so that the meditative form of Tai Chi is the essence of the art and then the fighting application was what I was competing in. And so I spent many years meditating four, five, six hours a day with Tai Chi. Today I combine my Tai Chi practice with sitting meditation again. Most people when they enter meditation what I suggest they just practice very simple sitting meditation following their breath. It's a practice that doesn't have to be very complex. They can for example, just sit cross-legged or comfortably in a chair and follow their breath and it's very interesting. Because they'll notice after one or two seconds that their mind starts racing off and usually what happens when you have really driven guys who are trying to meditate for the first time and their mind races off, they get all pissed off. Ah, angry, frustration, they feel like they're failing at meditation. And one of the most important things to do is to embrace the fact that meditation isn't about perfection. It's about the return to breath so when you find your mind racing, you observe that, and you return to your breath and that's a tough emotional hurdle for a lot of guys. It's very interesting because over time, you know the metaphor of basically the mind is a wild stallion that over time you're taming and ultimately learn to still it. It's racing. It's bucking. It's pulling against any kind of line you put on it. But ultimately the circles get smaller and smaller and you learn to observe when your mind is getting caught up in some kind of mental or emotional addiction more and more quickly and fluidly. And the return to breath becomes easier and easier and it's very interesting. By the way as a competitor because I relate to the theme of channeling the emotion or fear whatever's rising as a world class competitor in the same way we might speak about meditation. I spoke at a conference on Grit recently and it was very interesting for me |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_11 | we might speak about meditation. I spoke at a conference on Grit recently and it was very interesting for me because for the most part -- Tim Ferriss: Grit, G-R-I-T? Josh Waitzkin: G-R-I-T, yeah, which is a first core educational principle in a lot of charter schools these days. It's hugely important, teaching kids to be resilient. It's very interesting because when I hear people speak about resilience -- and this is we're moving a little bit aside from meditation, but we'll bring it back. The focus is on, for example, overcoming difficulty, suffering, learning to basically push through. What people don't realize is that world class performers what they've done is they've reoriented their relation to the suffering to the point of resistance. They've learned to embrace it. They've learned to see the beauty in these moments where there's pain because that's incredible room for growth. I think that a lot of what you learn to do in meditation is observe the addictive you might be defining something and if you want to you can simply alter that definition, so you can change your relationship to pain, or the rain, or a huge storm, or fear, or anger. So for example, people from the outside will use the term fearlessness. But if you speak to any great soldier or SEAL team member or fighter, or UFC guy, mixed martial arts, a great world class fighter, they'll tell you that they feel fear. They just know how to sit with their fear and how to work with it, channel it. So the idea of fearlessness is a false idea which is imposed from the outside by a spectator. And when you observe world class performers what they've learned how to do is harness fear, nerves, anxiety, bring them in, embrace them, have a working relationship with them, and channel them into intensity, and meditation is an incredible form or vehicle. You can do this because you learn to observe where you have addictive relationships and you realize they're not absolute. And you can actually transform your relationship to any of these thought patterns, thought constructs, cognitive biases, or emotional patterns. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I was looking at a quote as you mentioned that because I wanted to get it right, but it's one of my favorite quotes from Cus D'Amato who trained boxers like Floyd Patterson, Jose Torres, most famously perhaps, Mike Tyson and he would say, "The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent while the coward runs. It's the same thing fear, but it's what you do with it that matters." I started meditating and gave up meditating many, many times because I had the response that you mentioned about Type A personalities. I'd be sitting there and I though the objective was to quiet my mind and I'll come back to that in a second. So when I failed at quieting my mind because it would be ticking off the to-do list or being like, "Oh, that fucker who said A, B, and C to me the other day." I would harp on these ridiculous things and I'd get then pissed. And I'd get pissed that I was getting pissed and get up and have a coffee and storm out of the house which didn't seem like a productive meditation session. I actually started doing it consistently when I kept it really short. A friend of mine recommended this where I would number one, be comfortable. So I would sit down, but to avoid back pain I would actually lean against a wall which is very commonly thought of as a big no-no, so I'd lean against a wall to keep my back straight. I would listen to one music track. I would listen to one song every morning, the same songs as a cue and would pay attention to my breath and focus on being an observer of my thoughts, but not trying to control them at all. So if all I did was think about my to-do list the entire time, that's fine, as long as I'm paying attention to my breath. |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_12 | was think about my to-do list the entire time, that's fine, as long as I'm paying attention to my breath. That non-attachment to an outcome i.e. controlling my thoughts was very helpful. And the format that I followed subsequent to that we can have a longer conversation about why it finally clicked, but the short answer's accountability. I had a teacher who was going to give me a hard time if I didn't do my meditating and then report back. It was 10 to 20 minutes twice a day. What I found was by allowing the thoughts to occur and not judging myself -- because let's say I'm thinking about email or the grocery shopping I need to do -- just letting that happen but getting good at observing it, I was able to then have more emotional awareness later which would prevent cognitive biases and bad judgments. So what I mean by that is as a concrete example, I'm an impatient guy. I always have been ever since I was literally a little kid, like 12 or 13 years old. If I was at the restaurant with my mom and dad and the server didn't come over and pour water after we'd been gone dry for five minutes, I'd get up and walk into the kitchen and grab a pitcher and walk out. I'm really impatient and I get angry. I get angry about things that I view as deliberately slow and sloppy and that anger can be harnessed sometimes into really productive aggression. But it also wears you down at both ends. So what I found is after meditating consistently for even a week or so, when that anger would start, I was better observing Tim, as a third person. Like, "Oh, look at that, Tim's getting angry about something really small and stupid." As opposed to simply becoming angry, and then causing problems for myself, whether it's just internal or interacting with other people. So I agree with you completely on the meditation. Josh Waitzkin: I love that image of you as a 12-year-old racing into the kitchen bringing out the water. That's a great metaphor for your life today. You'd race in there and you'd get the water and you slice right through them. I love it. Tim Ferriss: So let's do a couple rapid fire questions that are all tied into this stuff, but we can just do short questions with a couple of short answers. Complete the following statement, "My favorite time of day is blank." Josh Waitzkin: My favorite time of day is holding my son in my arms after I've woken up with a 20-30 minute journaling session. I get my son. I bring him downstairs and I give him his bottle of milk and I hold him and I look at him in the eye and I tell him how proud I am of him. We talk about what he's thinking about and what he's working on when he has some milk. I think it's the most magical part of my day, these days. Tim Ferriss: That's in the morning? Josh Waitzkin: Yeah, I wake up about a half-an-hour before him. I do a big creative burst. As a parent your sleep patterns change pretty dramatically, but I've found this rhythm where I wake up where I do that burst and then I just love that first morning energy time with him. And we have this deep connection while he's having his milk and talk about things. Tim Ferriss: What time do you wake up? Josh Waitzkin: I usually wake up around 7:05 and he's usually awake around 7:30-7:35. Tim Ferriss: I'm endlessly fascinated by morning routines so this might seem really digging, like I'm digging into the minutiae. But when you wake up it sounds like you wake up and you have 30 minutes to journal before bringing your son downstairs. Do you brush your teeth, drink a cup of coffee, any of that before you journal or do you just roll out of bed, walk into the office, and sit down to write. Josh Waitzkin: My routine is that I roll out of bed. I brush my teeth. I |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_13 | sit down to write. Josh Waitzkin: My routine is that I roll out of bed. I brush my teeth. I go downstairs and I sit down with my journal and I start writing and I immediately apply myself to a reflection that I have targeted in my mind in the evening or late afternoon before and I just let it rip. I have a big creative surge. Then once I hear my son I go get him and then I have my breakfast usually a bowl of oatmeal after he has his milk and then I have a cup of coffee about a half an hour after that. Tim Ferriss: Cool. Related to you strike me as a happy guy. Obviously we all have our challenges then and again, like the place I'm getting remodeled at the moment which I won't go into a diatribe at the moment. I'm very excited about it. It's my 12-year-old, Tim, wanted to go get the water pitcher that's not being very helpful right now. What are three things, could be two, three things that you believe you need in order to be happy? That could be for you. It could be for people in general. I’m just curious how you would think of that or answer that question. Josh Waitzkin: One of the great things about you and I being different and having a conversation is that you tend to be very good at picking up bullets and lists of three things and that's not how my brain works. I can tell you the essence of how I relate to that question. I'm not going to give you the three bullet answer because that's just not how this brain operates. I have built a lifestyle being around true to myself. Maybe a big reason is because of my mom used to always tell me as a kid to follow my heart, follow my dreams. I never made decisions for money or for external things. I always trusted that if I was true to myself, these things would follow. And so my professional life, my foundation, my school, I only work with people who I feel are ethically aligned, who have a good energy, who I feel really good about intuitively. I keep empty space in my life. I rarely have more than one or two meetings a day. My life is about quality and not quantity and it's about depth and not breadth. My businesses are based on doing very, very deep and very excellent work with just a handful of people. And so I really like to cultivate quality as a way of life and I believe that when you're not cultivating quality, you're essentially cultivating sloppiness. So the idea of building the musculature of quality and being like a heat seeking missile, I take great pleasure in observing the beauty of the little moments in life. So for me, my lifestyle is based on working out every day. I just focus on structuring a day that will allow for my creative process to be rich. I'm present with my son. I have my office is at home. I'm with him in the morning. I'm with him and see him throughout the day. I'm with him and give him his bath and read him a story at night with him. I've eliminated almost all travel that takes me away from my boy. Going to conference my wife, and my baby are coming with me. I really build a life around being true and I don't build it around anything material. That's really the essence of how I personally relate to this question. Of course, there are different solutions for everybody, but this works for me. Tim Ferriss: This is something that is being true to one's self, I think that most people struggle with. I think it's a goal that most people have at least in the abstract, but I'd love to dig into some concrete details of that and perhaps you could share an example of something you've changed. Like maybe where you got slightly off the path and made a correction to be true to yourself and what that looked |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_14 | where you got slightly off the path and made a correction to be true to yourself and what that looked like. Josh Waitzkin: Well, for me, a very clear example is my public life. I was a young kid, fell in love with chess. I won my first national championship when I was late eight, early nine. When I was 11, a book came out, Searching for Bobby Fischer, and then when I was 15, the movie came about my life based on the same book that my dad initially wrote. So I was really thrust into the spotlight, without me wanting to. I was just a young passionate artist. I loved playing chess and competing in chess. I was put out there and I had paparazzi following me everywhere. I was really living in the spotlight in a way I wasn't necessarily emotionally prepared for. I felt in my teens how that challenged my love for this art because my love for it was so pure initially. That tension that fight to stay true to my art taught me some very deep lessons. After I finished high school I took off and I left the country, largely to study chess very deeply undistracted from publicity. I moved to Eastern Europe. My girlfriend at the time was from Slovenia. No one knew me out there and it was a beautiful life. I just left the public world, and since then when I came back, I've had these periods where I've been exposed to publicity. And I've been in periods where I've been deep in a cave and moved away from it. I think this is a very clean example. Other than you, very few people drag me out [inaudible]. Tim Ferriss: Throw a net over the bear and drag him out of the cave. Josh Waitzkin: You have a way of doing that to me, but in a beautiful way. I've found that the privacy of my life, not doing things, not getting caught up in the swirl of fame, or seeking external adulation is a very important thing for me, personally. Everyone's different. But for me, maybe I have a little bit of oversensitivity to this because of my youth, because I was out there so intensely as a young guy. I think it really challenged my love for the game. There's an example of the kind of decisions that I'll make and I think it's very important for me to live the vast majority of my life privately. I don't do very much that will allow me to be recognized on the street and live my life as a celebrity because I've gone down that path and I love my privacy. I also built a career around my businesses, working with people who are similar, who are not seeking the limelight. We're not out there on television every day. We're world class, but no one around them other than people very close have any idea that they have been so incredibly successful in a monetary way. They try to raise their kids not to be spoiled. The kids are gritty kids. They're great philanthropists, really good people. And I love, I'm very drawn to people who have been enormously successful, but don't get caught up in the external crap that comes with success and are real, who are living their life tapped into the love. That's how I try to live. Tim Ferriss: What are the books -- let's just stick with books for a second -- that you've either most gifted to other or most recommended to other people. Because there are many people listening to this probably who won't necessarily have the opportunity to interact with the types of high level folks that you and I are so fortunate to have a chance to interact with. But they can do that vis-à-vis, books, or narratives, documentaries, etc. What are some books that have a formative impact on you? Josh Waitzkin: So if we go back to when I was 17-18, Jack Kerouac has a huge impact on my life, On the Road, Dharma Bums. His books were initially tapped me into the idea that life could |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_15 | on my life, On the Road, Dharma Bums. His books were initially tapped me into the idea that life could be ecstatically beautiful. Then I moved into studying Taoism, so Lao Tzu, the Tao Te Ching, hugely just unbelievable deep. But of course the translation of that book that you read will be formative and my favorite translation is the Gia-Fu Feng in the English translation of the Tao Te Ching. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I think one of the most important books ever written by Robert Pirsig who has become a very dear friend over the years. When The Art of Learning came out, my publisher asked me, "Who would you love to read this book?" And I said, "Well, the one person I'd really want to read that book is Robert Pirsig." He lived a deeply secluded life, but they somehow managed to get him a copy of the book. He got it in a big bushel from his publisher and he read it and contacted me and wrote. I was so honored that he was moved by it and he and I over the years have developed really interesting dialog. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is one of the most important books in the world to focus on quality than inequality, learning to find art in anything, deeply, deeply brilliant, philosophical book. Shantaram, one of the most beautiful novels I ever read by Gregory David Roberts, is one I've gotten to know very well, just an ecstatically beautiful book. Of course, I'm also a lover of fiction. I mean Hemingway has been -- he's probably the most important writer of my life. Tim Ferriss: Any particular novel stand out for you of his? Josh Waitzkin: I think that For Whom the Bell Tolls is just an exquisite novel, The Green Hills of Africa, amazing. His short stories are utterly magnificent. I think we have The Green Hills of Africa is one of the most underrated books that he's written. His complete collection of short stories, there's one magnificent gem after the next. Of course, Old Man and the Sea is the one everybody thinks about and it's a beautiful book. I guess if I had to have a favorite it would be For Whom the Bell Tolls. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for those people who are listening you also want insight into his writing style, A Moveable Feast. Josh Waitzkin: It's a magnificent book, yeah. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, also. Josh Waitzkin: That's where Hemingway really speaks to his writing process, it's fantastical. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it's so fascinating. Josh Waitzkin: You know there's a great book by the way, Tim, I think you've read which I think it's Hemingway on Writing. Have you read this book? Tim Ferriss: I did read it, yeah. I also read that. Josh Waitzkin: Ah, if someone wants to get to know Hemingway it's just a fantastic compilation of all of Hemingway's writing in letters, in his books, in his articles, everywhere, put together thematically. Basically Hemingway on the writing process, I think it's one of the most important little collections on creativity that I've ever run into. Absolutely brilliant book. Josh Waitzkin: And it's really short. I remember I read it on Kindle on a short flight that I had and just jammed right through the whole thing. One of the recommendations was write drunk, edit sober and I realized that write drunk, edit sober does not translate to podcasts very well. The last podcast that I did with a buddy, Kevin Rose, if you record drunk and try to edit sober it doesn't really actually work the same way. Tim Ferriss: That's interesting. Let's do a couple more questions because this has been fun. If you had to run out of your house and just take a handful of things with you, obviously your family is safe, so that's accounted for. What would you take and why? Josh Waitzkin: In what kind of situation? Like in a very dangerous situation? Tim Ferriss: You don't have to fend for yourself with weaponry or create fire with flint or anything like that. There's a fire in your house, |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_16 | fend for yourself with weaponry or create fire with flint or anything like that. There's a fire in your house, so you just have to get out to the street and then you'll obviously sort things out later. But assuming your family is safe what would you take with you, just what you can carry basically? Josh Waitzkin: That's a really great question. I actually had that experience years ago when I was playing chess and it speaks to how crazy I was. I was studying chess with this brilliant Russian grandmaster name Yuri Averbakh. who I actually wrote about in my book. I was on the fifth floor of a walkup. It was an old one bedroom. I had my first apartment and we were deep, deep into chess study and there was a huge fire. And I looked out and there were five fire engines and dudes screaming at us and we had to go out the fire escape. And I ended up going back in and grabbing my computer with all of my chess notes. It was just a random thing to do. It was so unimportant. It speaks to how different I’ve become and it had been seconds from being up drafted, blowing the whole building up. Yeah, so I wouldn't do that. I don't know, man. Honestly when you asked me that question now if I think that my family was safe, I have nothing material that I would grab. Tim Ferriss: That's great. That's a very stoic response in the most positive way. All right, my man. I'm going to ask you one more and I'll give you the choice of two questions. Let's do that. So the first option is what did you want to be when you grew up, so when you're a kid and now how would you answer the question? What do you want to be when you grow up? That's question number one. Question number two is if you had a committee of three people living or dead to help you make decisions, who would you choose and why? Josh Waitzkin: These are great questions, man. Tim Ferriss: Thanks and, by the way, I'm borrowing them really from every good interviewer I've ever come in contact with. Josh Waitzkin: Do you want me to answer both of them or do you want to answer one of them? Tim Ferriss: You can answer them both. Josh Waitzkin: These are two very different questions. I mean this is tough, man. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, and if they -- I'm just trying to be respectful of your time, but if you have time, and you have some thoughts on both, let's go for it. Josh Waitzkin: When I grew up when I was a kid I wanted to be a professional baseball player. I loved something about the sport. I spent a lot of my life as a competitive from age basically six until 35 I was basically a professional competitor in my field. But my mom always said to me that she felt like that was a phase and that I was a healer. That was always her language. And a lot of what I do today is try to figure out how to help people to express themselves in as pure a way as possible; artistically in a way that gives them joy. I think that my plan is sometime in the next four or five years -- I'm 37 now. I'm thinking about it when I'm 40-41. I guess that would be three, four years now. I'm getting old. To turn my mind to taking everything I've been doing in these different laboratories and apply it to a world changing education initiative. Helping children fulfill themselves in a very deep way I think is an essential calling. I'm not going to say it's my end game, but that's the next major chapter I think of my life that I'm building towards. I'm laying my foundation for many years now and we do beautiful work, but I have an allergy to scaling if it's going to dilute quality in any way. So I've been sort of building up the groundwork to |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_17 | scaling if it's going to dilute quality in any way. So I've been sort of building up the groundwork to ultimately be able to do something hugely important in education, so I think that that's going to be the core of how I would -- I'm building towards that in a few years. In terms of the committee of three people -- Tim Ferriss: Just to interject for a second. That's also I think my calling, and of course, we've spoken at length about this. So if you need co-conspirator, count me in for that one. Josh Waitzkin: Yeah, dude. Let's plan on this. Let's say four or five. We have to figure what it's going to be made. Four or five years we'll team up and we'll take the world by storm in education [inaudible]. Tim Ferriss: Sounds like a plan, man. Josh Waitzkin: All right. I love it. It caps that movement away from self. As a competitor you're fighting in many ways there's something about the focus inward on one's self and becoming a parent I've definitely felt this movement away from it. My son is -- just my love for me so transcends anything I ever felt before. It's been really important to experience. When you become a dad, man, then we're going to have some fun. Tim Ferriss: I can't wait. Josh Waitzkin: Looking forward to your sleepless nights. Tim Ferriss: Oh, man. Yeah, you're going to see battle weary Timbo. I need to work on my polyphasic sleep. Is there a committee of three people? What are your thoughts? Josh Waitzkin: Well, one person who would be on that committee is someone who I know a very deep friend of mine who happens to be in the finance world. His name is Dave. I can't speak about what his last name is, but just a deeply meditative spirit, great wisdom. As an insightful human being that I've ever known in my life. I think that that he would definitely be on that list. Can we say outrageous characters like Gandhi? Tim Ferriss: Yeah, go for it, yeah. Josh Waitzkin: I think of Gandhi, Lao Tzu, and Buddha. If you need to be at certain -- I don't know, man. I don't know if I can answer this question very intelligently. Tim Ferriss: That's a perfect way to end. Josh Waitzkin: Yeah, I don't know and Tim, of course, you man you give me so much crap in life. I'd call up you because you'd definitely be one to slice through all the nonsense, yeah. And my mom, that's the most important one, my mom. She has given me the most deep advice in my life. I mean mom is the one person who has really embraced these crazy decisions that I've made when I left arts when I was one of the tops of those fields because of some strange calling I had inside. I think you can be at top [inaudible]. She's my hero. My mom's the greatest person I've known. Tim Ferriss: Awesome, man. Well, this has been a lot of fun. Obviously, we're going to have a lot more conversations. Is there anything you want to -- any parting thoughts, advice, suggestions, anything like that that you'd like to impart? If not, we can call it a day. But the mic is yours if you have anything that you'd like to add. Josh Waitzkin: No, I love this. This has been really interesting. I guess if I'm going to close with a thought it would be that one thing that I've been doing in the last year since writing The Art of Learning is I've been exposed to the most brilliant thinkers in these fields. I've studied the patterns behind them and I've studied the people who study them. And one of the things we have to be wary of in life is studying the people who study the artists as opposed to the artist himself. Pirsig, the author who I mentioned, he uses a great term. The philosophers and philosophologists, the philosophogists are the ones who are basically philosophizing about the philosophers as opposed to do doing philosophy. And the |
2 | #2: Joshua Waitzkin | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pdf | 2_18 | the philosophogists are the ones who are basically philosophizing about the philosophers as opposed to do doing philosophy. And the vast majority of philosophers today actually are just philosophologists. Similarly you and I have discussed there's the writers and there's a literary critic. There's the artist and the art critic and I think we have to be very careful when we study excellence and we're thinking about our path to excellence. That we're studying and we're tuning in to the direct experience of people who have actually been there as opposed to the armchair professors who are talking about it. Because if we spend our life in the trenches and we spend our life studying that last .1% of the learning process, what we see is that that final passage to excellence is really about navigating that razor's edge where you have to be willing to go right up against a potential enormous blunder. You have to improvise, for example, trust your intuition in moments where all the objective, mathematical faculties you've developed are telling you something else, but your intuition is operating a higher level. You have to really be willing to go up to the brink of disaster to succeed in moments where you're, for example, fighting in the finals of the world championship or in the very last seconds of the Super Bowl or NBA finals. And in navigating these things, the armchair professors will often have the exact opposite of good advice. And so what I would say for one thing, listen deeply, internally to the core of your being and build your game plan from there. Trust your gut and then build the lifestyle around listening to that and cultivate the love. And that's the other thing I'd say. Whether you're talking about the beginning of the learning process or the very final surge or surges, think about the love. Think about parenting, cultivating resilience, cultivating excellence, cultivating creativity. What the armchair professors all forget about is the love and that's what I see consistently with people who've found the most pleasure, the most happiness and created the greatest art is that they have a profound passion for what they do. Not only the big moments, but the little moments. The moments that others would call pain. They learn to love practice. They learn to love the point of resistance. Don't forget about the love. I guess what that's what I meant to say. Tim Ferriss: That's a beautiful way to end this, man. Well, Josh, I am sure we'll be talking. Next time we'll have some wine and -- Josh Waitzkin: We're good to go. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I hope everybody checks out obviously The Art of Learning and really keeps an eye on what you have coming when you decide to push stuff out of the cave. Josh Waitzkin: Thanks, brother. This was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. Tim Ferriss: All right, buddy. I'll talk to you soon. |
3 | #3: Kelly Starrett and Dr. Justin Mager | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/03-kelly-starrett-and-justin-megar.pdf | 3_0 | The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts Episode 3: Kelly Starrett, Justin Mager Show notes and links at tim.blog/ podcast Tim Ferriss: We are fucking live at Casa Ferriss, and this is the first podcast threesome that I have dared to venture into. But I have two fine gentlemen, two scholars and gentlemen. Because you're a doctor, professor, Dr. Mager. And yes, I've been fucking with the audio and it took me so long. We've already had two and a half glasses of wine on empty stomachs, but I think this is going to be a good session. It's an experiment, like everything else. So, it'll take us a little while to get past the awkward formality of this extremely clumsy podcast intro, but, Kelly, for those who don't you know, who is Kelly Starrett? Kelly Starrett: Dancer? Well, you can't see on the podcast that these are my real calves. Tim Ferriss: Even through the table, I can feel them pulsating, engorged calves. Kelly Starrett: People may know me because I showed up a little bit in 4-Hour Body. You sent a tweet out in the universe, "I need some deadlifting help." We kind of went down the rabbit hole a little bit on that. Tim Ferriss: I have tight quads. My back has been out of shape. Kelly Starrett: You're a male athlete, check the box. Our handle is @MobilityWOD. We started a little project on Open Source. "Why doesn't everyone know how to fix themselves?” I'm sitting here with Dr. Mager, which is so good. Tim Ferriss: And we have this Bermuda Triangle of knowledge sharing. We've all known each other for a while. Kelly Starrett: What's interesting is the shift for me is we kind of we're gearing up and talking about this, is the shift away, personally, around performance. I've sort of been obsessed and a performance whore for as long, "Let's lift more, let's go faster." That's always our proof of concept. You're in a better position, let me show you because you can generate more wattage. But I have to be honest. I feel like that's this 1 percent and that the people we need to be talking about are our moms and dads, people who are in pain, how to prevent this stuff in the first place. This is a bigger conversation. Tim Ferriss: Now, you're co-founder, co-creator, co-conspirator of SF CrossFit? Kelly Starrett: Yep. With my wife, Juliet. Tim Ferriss: That's right. Sweetheart and can probably out-lift me also. As well as your-, how old? Five-year-old? Kelly Starrett: I have an eight-year-old and a five-year-old. Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I think your five-year-old can also out-front squat me. Kelly Starrett: Can I jump in just for one second? "60 Minutes" has been following us around since October. And they were like "Hey, can you show--" Tim Ferriss: Since October? That's a long time. That's a lot longer than "60 Minutes." I had to pull it because everyone gives me the 4-Hour shit. Kelly Starrett: Do they really? Funny how that works. I don't know how many hours they're going to use, but the best moment for me was we have...they were like "Can you show proof of your concept with a correspondent"? I was like "No problem." Let's do something easy like picking something up. So, here's this bar. Everyone should be able to bend over. Keep your back flat. Everyone agrees you shouldn't round your back when you lift something heavy, right? Well, that actually is easier said than done. And, of course, she just rounds and rounds. And just teach her "Hey, just gotta to be able to reach into the crib without rounding your back and pick up your baby." Tim Ferriss: Just hit her with the birch stick? Kelly Starrett: Basically [inaudible]. And she couldn't do it. On camera, everything's there, live. And I was like "Well, why don't we pull in an athlete who can do it"? So, I was like "Georgia," my eight-year-old. She comes right in, she must be my daughter, doesn't even flinch on camera. Like producers, microphones. Just deadlifts it up. Like 25, 30 pounds, not a big deal. And she kind of looks at |
3 | #3: Kelly Starrett and Dr. Justin Mager | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/03-kelly-starrett-and-justin-megar.pdf | 3_1 | producers, microphones. Just deadlifts it up. Like 25, 30 pounds, not a big deal. And she kind of looks at the correspondents like "What's your problem"? And literally, you can see the producers back and they're like, "That's good TV." I have daughters, we don't want them to be professional athletes. I'm interested to get your takes on this. If you could have a kid and we'll ask this later on, but would you let them be athletes? Tim Ferriss: That's a great question. Well, we'll come back to that. Because I think that's a big topic. That's an important topic. But before we do that, part three of this amazing trilogy. Dr. Mager, Dr. J, Justin. We've known each other for a while. You've been my doctor for many different things. Help me review blood tests and all the ridiculous, various, masochistic things that I do to myself. What appealed to me about your background, among other things, is you do have a sports background yet you also have a practicing medical background. And I think that combination sort of allows you to understand the malfunction that I have, which is this compulsive self-testing. So, I'm really happy that the three of us are here because I feel like you guys cover so much complementary ground. But maybe you could give people a little bit of background on yourself and just what you're up to these days? Justin Mager: Just as you said, we'll henceforth refer to me as "Justin," for Christ's sake. I will refer to myself in the third-person as "Justin." I have an exercise physiology background and degree. And really, I had no agenda towards medicine. I was just kind of curious to go to college after my football career was not going to make it much further than high school. But I was interested in human performance and just human experience like what makes alive, what makes us tick? Kelly Starrett: True or false, did you have a pull-up rack in your office? Justin Mager: I do, absolutely. Kelly Starrett: There you go, bam. New screen device, do you have a good doctor, yes or no? Justin Mager: When you showed up, you were like [inaudible]. Tim Ferriss: Is my doctor going to die before I do? If yes, find another doctor. Justin Mager: Right, absolutely. So, I actually just wanted to study physiology. How does our body work and how can we have it perform? And by the way, my fifth year of undergrad... Tim Ferriss: I was on that plan, too. Justin Mager: Absolutely. Fantastic. That's a lot of fingers and toes. I overheard two classmates behind me just lamenting how difficult it was to get into physical therapy school at the time. And they said "Wow, it's almost as difficult as medical school" and we have all the prerequisites. And it was a first time in my mind. I'm like, you know what, I don't really want a fucking job and I'm really interested in the human body so why don't I just kind of delve into med school? So, I looked into it, took the few remaining classes I need to get and went into it. I had no idea. I didn't even have healthcare growing up. No concept of it. Kelly Starrett: My father's position, my grandfather's position. I was like, "No way I'm going to PT school." That was like med school, no; PT school yes, it's so interesting. You just need to know one doctor so I think I'm like -, and Mager is my doctor, too. Justin Mager: Here we are. Justin Mager: Absolutely, that's scary. Tim Ferriss: I hope he hasn't been looking at your blubber. Kelly Starrett: True fact, has he? Justin Mager: You're definitely going to live through the weekend. Tim Ferriss: True or false, Kelly Starrett eats more fish oil than fishes can consume? Justin Mager: Anyways, I went through the training with some interest in orthopedics. But the more I got into it, the more I was still interested in sort of, okay, what makes us well, what makes us thrive? I mean, it just made the most sense. So, that's kind |
3 | #3: Kelly Starrett and Dr. Justin Mager | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/03-kelly-starrett-and-justin-megar.pdf | 3_2 | okay, what makes us well, what makes us thrive? I mean, it just made the most sense. So, that's kind of what I went through. I became interested in endocrinology because I just felt that if you can kind of understand the hormone systems and how they would have such local effects on cells and global effects directly on your physiology and secondarily, on your behavior, which obviously, is going to feed back and affect your physiology, it made the most sense. And I also became really interested in, kind of, Eastern philosophy. I've always been sort of a searcher and I found it fascinating that the chakras that are described in yoga culture, ayurvedic culture, correspondent to these nerve plexi, which are these little mini brains outside of our brain and also, these endocrine hormone glands. And so, I came across some work from Joseph Campbell and Heinrich Zimmer [SP] where they're talking about the relational issues of the chakra and it just made so much sense, so that was my intention. Other than once I got further along in the conventional medical model, I just could not understand their black and white ideology. We're going to treat the absolute abnormal highs and the absolute abnormal lows, but this very wide range of grey that we all live and function with, we're not going to touch that. That's normal. Kelly Starrett: If you're listening and you don't know-, people may not know, but you have worked as a functional medicine...basically, let me just tell a back story. My wife, after her second child, basically bled to death during birth and had seven transfusions, I think. And when we finally bumped into Dr. Mager, Juliet's hematocrit was terrible, ferritin was zero. I mean, just really low. B-vitamins tanked. And you were the physician who started to put the pieces together in taking this global approach. And I was always like, hey, why are we working mechanically as a physio off the limits of your range? Why can't you just be full human? And he was the first person I had ever run into as a physician who said, "Being down at this bottom end, that means you're alive. That's the RDA." The minimum dose of Vitamin C to keep you as a human being, that's not thriving. And you changed my family's life. You resurrected Juliet from headaches and death and all the gnarliness back into a full-fledged woman. You changed so many of my friends' lives by just taking a bigger picture, which is what we've got to get people to do. That's what's so interesting. Justin Mager: I appreciate that. It's very humbling because the more that I look into things, the more blown away at the complexity of trying to understand how all the pieces of physiology work together and how the human body works together. And to me, I think that looking down the road when we start leveraging the power of technology intelligently to apply it to health and human performance. We're going to have some really incredible finds. But one thing that we had said off-recorder, I should say, is is that when we're looking at high-end performance, it is so fancy and it is beautiful. It's a beautiful art form to see people perform at their highest. But I think that where humanity and where we as individuals stand to gain the most is to actually take those principles and apply it to the rest of us, you know what I mean? So like, whereas like you guys, Tim, you're out here experimenting on the fringes of physiology and what limits can you push? And Kelly, you're over here working with really impressive high-end athletes and military and all the people that you've shared with me that you've worked with. And you're trying to get that extra 1 or 2 or 3 percent that's going to make a difference between a 10th place finish at the CrossFit games, say in a second place or first place finish. When you can actually take those same principles and apply them to the rest of us, then you're going to see 30, 40, 50. 60 percent |
3 | #3: Kelly Starrett and Dr. Justin Mager | https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/03-kelly-starrett-and-justin-megar.pdf | 3_3 | same principles and apply them to the rest of us, then you're going to see 30, 40, 50. 60 percent gains in function and health and vitality. Kelly Starrett: People don't understand that it's not-, we move the needle 1 percent. I read your book, The 4-Hour Body legitimately and was like, "This is like reading best practice." Because you basically took "Best Practice" for people. And I'm not eating cinnamon and doing squats in the stairwell, but you get the idea. We all have our own brand of weird, so that's my choice. But what you did was really give people a manifesto for pulling out the big holes about, "Are you sleeping enough?" The more and more I realize is you can't cheat your physiology, you can't deny your stress level. You can't deny your sleep. You can't deny your nutrition. You can't deny your hydration. You can't devalue your movement practice. Now, having written a book... Tim Ferriss: A big book. Kelly Starrett: A big, heavy book and we're on the second edition. Tim Ferriss: Congratulations. Justin Mager: I'm on the second page. Tim Ferriss: I'm on the third, fourth. Kelly Starrett: Be careful what you ask for, but that book's tough. Justin Mager: Again, I keep reading it. Kelly Starrett: When I think about the daunting task about putting ppl out, of getting this out of the way. Because we were just talking to someone the other day, our next-door neighbor who has chronic headaches, is out of shape, is French, eats a wretched diet, doesn't exercise, and she's getting botox injections in her neck. Tim Ferriss: In her neck? Why in her neck? Justin Mager: Because the neck is causing the tight muscles causing the headache. Tim Ferriss: I thought maybe she had turkey neck, so she was tightening it up with the botox. Justin Mager: You just have to tap the [inaudible]. Kelly Starrett: But I think the problem is the people, there's so much misplaced precision. And you've said, why aren't you looking at this? How are you measuring lifestyle nutrition? You are saying, why aren't you just doing these basic things and why can't you experiment on yourself? I think there's a tight change where people are being responsible for their own health and nutrition differently, because we have access to technology. The [inaudible] movement has qualitative self, has blown open what's possible. You really get permission to think of like [inaudible] one like I'm going to stop eating carbohydrates and see what happens, like you have that right to tinker. You came in and we're like "Hey, we can measure that." And if you're already doing this best practice, how do you know it's best practice? And that was what's so amazing because...we have complex friends, I refer them to Mager. I say, "You should really talk to what's going on, our guy." And what this has really done is saying, "Once you pull out the roadblocks, you may need some additional help to reset the system, the stasis." But now, we're left with, "How do we deal with people who we know are going to be compromised?" Your job is going to compromise you because you're just under so much stress. You're a solider, you're not going to sleep. You can't deny your Now what? Tim Ferriss: And if any of you can hear the odd "tak tak tak tak", that is a senile cat that lives above me that loves playing with a screwball, so there you have it. That deserves more wine. Thank you, Kelly. Justin? Justin Mager: Yes? Tim Ferriss: I really do want to call you Dr. Mager, which just sounds so credible, which you are, of course. So, I just want to ask you, of the common practices that you see in medicine, particularly as it pertains to blood testing or testing, in general. Just establishing a baseline, figuring out where you are, what are some of the tests that you think are neglected? What are some of the common, perhaps, mistakes or glaring deficits of how traditional medicine approaches testing? So, you can tackle that from any direction. I'm just trying to figure out...because |
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