2025-01-24 06:52:34
Chris Sacca is the co-founder of Lowercarbon Capital and manages a portfolio of countless startups in energy, industrial materials, and carbon removal. If it’s unf**king the planet, he’s probably working on it. Previously, Chris founded Lowercase Capital, one of history’s most successful funds ever, primarily known for its very early investments in companies like Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, Docker, Optimizely, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Stripe. But you might just know him as the guy who wore those ridiculous cowboy shirts for a few seasons of Shark Tank.
To purchase Chris’s ranch, schedule a viewing at FivePondsRanch.com.
Please enjoy!
P.S. This episode features a special, one-of-a-kind introduction that Chris recorded of yours truly. 
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The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
This episode is brought to you by MUD\WTR! With only a fraction of the caffeine found in a cup of coffee, MUD\WTR gives me all the energy I need without the jitters or crash. Their original blend contains four different mushrooms: lion’s mane for focus, cordyceps to promote energy, and both chaga and reishi to support a healthy immune system. And it’s delicious—like cacao and chai had a beautiful child. I drink MUD\WTR in the morning, and I’ll also sometimes add milk and ice for a 2 p.m. iced latte pick-me-up. I also love that they make monthly donations to support psychedelic therapeutics and research, including organizations such as the Heroic Hearts Project and The UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP).
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Want to hear the first time Chris Sacca was on this show? Listen to our conversation here, in which we discussed early-stage investing advice, traits of successful founders, two differentiators that shifted the nature of Chris’ business, what Chris looks for when hiring, and much more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
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“I feel very lucky to have grown up in a place where I had opportunities to commit small misdemeanors. And I had more than one detention. I definitely appeared before the principals on many occasions. Just some light mischief.”
— Chris Sacca
“The American social contract is that if you show up, you will get yours. And when you don’t give somebody that opportunity or you take it away from them and you take that ownership away from them and you take their house or you take their store and you take their farm, then you get the pitchforks.”
— Chris Sacca
“The number one thing you can be in this business is unpredictable. … I am known as mercurial. I burn bridges. I will not hesitate to fucking fight you. I wear the stupid shirts. I don’t give a shit about much. I’ve been known to just light it on fire. And guess what? People take me seriously as a result.”
— Chris Sacca
“Most climate investing and green investing … had been basically charitable, concessionary … But we started to actually see the math change to where the unit economics of making shit in climate, making shit clean, were starting to pay off.”
— Chris Sacca
“I think the biggest danger of raising kids with privilege is that they turn out to be assholes.”
— Chris Sacca
“The shit you own does own you. Every single object, at some point, has commanded some of your attention.”
— Chris Sacca
“I’m starting to believe more and more that trouble is actually one of those things that informs all the other things that we do.”
— Chris Sacca
“It just turns out that digging up and burning old dinosaur bones is fucking expensive, and using the sun to power the economy is just fucking cheaper. And that’s not a political statement.”
— Chris Sacca
“Clean, abundant power that is almost free is single digit years away, so that’s fucking great. I don’t even bother fighting with the oil and gas people. It doesn’t fucking matter. In fact, I actually want them to work with us more on carbon capture and sequester, putting more carbon back into the ground. Because they’ve got the trucks and they’ve got the pipes and they’ve got the engineering know-how, and they’re great at it. And so we do a lot of work with oil and gas companies going in reverse. I don’t have political battles with those guys.”
— Chris Sacca
“When you take away agency from somebody, you back them into a corner. So now do that for all the fucking white collar employees. Do that for everyone who stayed in and did their fucking homework and went to college and took out all those fucking student loans and who feel like they have played by the rules. They are the pride and joy of their families, who actually got their degree—in some cases, a master’s degree—who saw their career path laid out for them. And now they see that their life’s work is obviated by a machine that’s just better than them this fucking fast and costs $20 a month.”
— Chris Sacca
The post Chris Sacca — How to Succeed by Living on Your Own Terms and Getting into Good Trouble (#790) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-01-19 00:26:28
“I want to preserve interests. A kid that’s interested in something—that is absolutely precious, and I want to cultivate that. I want to pour fuel on that fire.”
— Aaron Stupple
This episode is more of a debate than my usual interviews. I hope you enjoy the extra spice, and if you like it, please let me know at @tferriss on X. This is a sharp contrast with the Dr. Becky Kennedy episode, and I encourage you to listen to both.
Aaron Stupple (@astupple) is a board-certified internal medicine physician. He focuses on reviving the non-coercive parenting movement derived from the philosophy of Popper and Deutsch called Taking Children Seriously. His book, The Sovereign Child: How a Forgotten Philosophy Can Liberate Kids and Their Parents, gives practical examples of this freedom-maximizing approach to parenting, gleaned from his experience as a father of five.
Naval Ravikant (@naval) is the co-founder of AngelList. He has invested in more than 100 companies, including many mega-successes, such as Twitter, Uber, Notion, Opendoor, Postmates, and Wish.
Please enjoy!
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The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
This episode is brought to you by Seed’s DS-01 Daily Synbiotic! Seed’s DS-01 was recommended to me months ago by a PhD microbiologist, so I started using it well before their team ever reached out to me. Since then, it’s become a daily staple and one of the few supplements I travel with. I’ve always been highly skeptical of most probiotics due to the lack of science and the fact that many do not survive digestion. But after incorporating two capsules of Seed’s DS-01 into my morning routine, I have noticed improved digestion, skin tone, and overall health. Why is it so effective? For one, it’s a 2-in-1 probiotic and prebiotic formulated with 24 clinically and scientifically studied strains that have systemic benefits in and beyond the gut. And now, you can get 25% off your first month of DS-01 with code 25TIM.
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Want to hear the episode with David Deutsch and Naval? Listen to our conversation here in which we discussed dispelling common misconceptions about science, the four strands and the benefits of understanding them, how quantum computing arose from trying to test a multiverse theory, what a good explanation looks like, how conjecture and criticism can give us a basis for optimism, AI vs. AGI, Taking Children Seriously, and much more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
“I think rules give kids a reason to present a false persona to their parents. … It’s a disaster for their own self-confidence. I think it’s a disaster for the parents because kids are entering into this kind of dark contraband world where they’re keeping their parents in the dark.”
— Aaron Stupple
“I want to preserve interests. A kid that’s interested in something—that is absolutely precious, and I want to cultivate that. I want to pour fuel on that fire.”
— Aaron Stupple
“Once a problem gets solved to the kid’s own understanding, it’s solved for the rest of their life.”
— Aaron Stupple
“Resilience comes from passion. It comes from an interest. When someone is just absolutely obsessed with some problem, they have the fortitude, the stick-to-it-iveness. Nothing approaches the stick-to-it-iveness of somebody who is just hell-bent on achieving something, building something, creating something.”
— Aaron Stupple
“The typical way of looking at parenting is the question of what do you allow and what do you disallow? … What my wife and I do is we step away from that question altogether and instead view problems as they arise and try to find solutions to those problems rather than appealing to rules.”
— Aaron Stupple
“Every time you force your child to do something, you inevitably set yourself up as an adversary to your kid. … If broccoli is really important, then it’s really important that broccoli is not confused by what your [parental] expectations are.”
— Aaron Stupple
“I think there’s a huge middle ground to relaxing rules. And one easy thing people can do right now is just say that instead of enforcing a rule, we think about it for 60 seconds. Just spend 60 seconds and think ‘Is there some solution to this that gets around this problem?'”
— Aaron Stupple
The post Naval Ravikant and Aaron Stupple — How to Raise a Sovereign Child, A Freedom-Maximizing Approach to Parenting (#788) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-01-14 06:37:36
“My tardiness in answering your letter was not due to press of business. Do not listen to that sort of excuse; I am at liberty, and so is anyone else who wishes to be at liberty. No man is at the mercy of affairs. He gets entangled in them of his own accord, and then flatters himself that being busy is a proof of happiness.”
— Seneca
“I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not a virtue. It was a disguise.”
— Anaïs Nin
For me, 2025 will be a year of shipping new things. There’s lots in the hopper.
Today, I’m pleased to announce my first book in more than seven years.
It’s been in the works for a long time and is currently 500+ pages. This time around, I’ll be doing things very differently.
The book, tentatively titled THE NO BOOK, is a blueprint for how to get everything you want by saying no to everything you don’t. Don’t let the title mislead you; it’s probably the most life-affirming book I’ve ever written.
It details the exact strategies, philosophies, word-for-word scripts, tech, and more that I and others use to create focus, calm, and meaning in a world of overwhelming noise.
THE NO BOOK contains all of the best tricks and tools that I’ve collected over the last 15 years, in addition to those of world-class performers. Lots of my friends make cameos, and I’m sharing details that I’ve kept closely guarded until now. If you’ve wanted to know how my life and business work with only three full-time employees, this will show you.
What else is different about this book?
– Though I drafted the bones years ago, I brought in a close friend as a co-writer and co-experimenter. This is my first time ever collaborating on a book, and it’s been an amazing and hilarious adventure. I’m thrilled with the results, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
– Unlike my last five books, we’re going to first release this one serially, one chapter or a handful of chapters at a time.
– We will also create a community for early readers, who will be able to read and experiment together, support one another, and provide us with feedback on the book. We want people to change their lives with this book, and for that, reading isn’t enough. It must be applied, and we feel that the community, combined with serial release, will help produce real action with real results.
– The plan may change. In keeping with the theme of the book, if the community or serial release turn into more headache than fun, or more emergency brake than accelerator, we’ll renegotiate and try something else.
– To read THE NO BOOK first and get other exclusives, you just need to subscribe to my free 5-Bullet Friday newsletter. That’s where the magic will happen. It’s easy to unsubscribe anytime.
***
Now, I don’t want to give too many spoilers, and the exact timeline will be announced soon, but I won’t leave you without a sample.
Two chapters are coming up tout de suite.
But first, what of that collaborator?
Well, he made an appearance in The 4-Hour Body when I force-fed him into gaining muscle, but he’s better known as the ten-time New York Times best-selling author of The Game, The Dirt, Emergency, and others. He’s written liner notes for Nirvana and received hate mail from Phil Collins. He did a decade-long tour of duty at The New York Times, wrote cover stories for Rolling Stone, and almost got killed by an ax-wielding polyamorous lunatic in The Truth. He and I even have the same haircut.
Most relevant here, he busted my balls for not finishing this book sooner, and that’s how we ended up here.
So why don’t I let him tell the story in his words?
The goal of life is to make good decisions.
And decisions are the simplest thing in the world. They just consist of a single choice between two words: yes or no.
Through this binary choice, much like the way a computer builds digital worlds out of 0s and 1s, we create our destiny.
These two options, however, are not created equal. There is just a tiny sliver of the world that we have the time to experience. So, we are called to filter through the nearly infinite spectrum of all that is available to us… and say no to almost everything. The more we can say no to the things that don’t serve us, the more we are living our purpose.
And I am failing at my life purpose.
I say yes to fucking everything.
This is why I decided to help write this book. Not just to help you but to help me reclaim my life.
When I was trying to decide what to share in this introduction, I called Tim for his thoughts.
“Can you think of a recent example where you said yes to something you shouldn’t have?” he asked.
My ex-wife was sitting next to me and it took her 1.5 seconds to come up with an example: “Janet’s costume party tonight.”
We all probably have a Janet in our lives. She is so pushy and persistent, in the kindest and most enthusiastic way, that I have trouble saying no to her. To her, a yes is a legally binding agreement. A maybe is a yes. And a no is the beginning of a guilt trip that ends when you fold and say maybe—which she then takes to mean yes, making it a legally binding agreement.
“So just cancel,” Tim wisely suggested.
“I can’t,” I replied unwisely.
“See?” Ingrid gloated. “I rest my case.”
Her case was indeed rested. On my guilty conscience.
I grew up in a home where saying no wasn’t an option. A no would get you a stern lecture, a long grounding, or worst of all, a withdrawal of love. So as an adult, I became existentially terrified that every no would come with some sort of blowback, such as losing a friendship, an opportunity, or someone’s good will. And now I give my time—and my life—away, sometimes to people who have been publicly shitty to me. They call this trauma bonding. It’s my specialty.
Not like Tim.
Tim is the master of no. As I write this in mid-October 2023, his text messages have an auto-response that reads:
I’m traveling overseas until Nov 7. If your text is urgent, please reach out to someone on my team. Otherwise, please resend your text after Nov 7 if it still applies. Since catching up would be impossible, I’ll be deleting all messages upon my return and starting from scratch. Thank you.
Deleting three weeks worth of messages! That is boss-level no.
It’s basically saying: The message you sent me is your priority, not automatically mine.
It’s a screaming yes to life.
It is truly an act of courage to not worry about how every single person who receives that text is going to react to being deleted. And this is just a small, everyday example of Tim’s time mastery. Here’s how incredible Tim is at saying no at a world-record level:
Five years ago, he called to tell me he was writing a book on how to say no. He wanted me to contribute an essay to it.
I didn’t have time to help out. So of course I shut it down with these four words: “Yes, I’ll do it!”
I didn’t want Tim to be mad at me or stop asking me to contribute to his books or abandon me as a friend and talk shit about me to Naval Ravikant.
Afterward, I spent a week writing a chapter for his project, and grumbling about how I should be spending the time working on my own book. After all, people pleasers like me live in constant resentment. We blame other people’s requests for our bad decisions.
I finished the essay and sent it to Tim, as did many others. Tim sent some follow-up questions, just to take up more of our time and make sure we regretted our decision, then he did something incredible:
He said no… to the whole book!
He has so thoroughly mastered the art that he actually said no to the book on no. And then went on to return the largest book advance he’d ever been given.
Wow, that was an impressive act of self-preservation. While it may take you five days to read a book, it can take him three years to write and research it. That’s three years of his life he gained back with a single no.
There was just one problem: I needed the book. As did so many others. It’s a war zone out here. Our devices and apps, even some of our home appliances, are constantly studying us, determining how to focus more of our attention on their business models. Under the guise of helping us, they drown us in inboxes, notifications, and alerts, synced to phones, tablets, watches, even our cars. And if you don’t respond to the Janets of the world within fifteen minutes, you get the inevitable “Are you okay?” or “Are you upset at me?” message. Or even worse, the insidious “???”
Whether the challenge is the phone, other people, or our own compulsions, most of us need help saying no to what doesn’t matter and drains our life energy. So, I reached out and told Tim that if he didn’t want to finish the book, I would.
On the condition that he could cancel the whole endeavor anytime he liked with one no, he eventually sent me a 72,000-word Scrivener file of his notes, thoughts, writings, and collected information. I then set about organizing it into a book that would help myself and others live a more meaningful, connected, purpose-driven life by following the path of no.
But simply dispensing rejections isn’t the goal. You need amazing things worth defending. The path of no is also the path of selective yesses. This book is a guide to finding the critical few among the trivial many.
It’s about finding the big yesses in our lives. Just a few. These may be people, partners, projects, places, and passions—yesses so incredibly fulfilling that they enable us to say no to everything else. In fact, you only have to get a few big yesses right to live a deeply successful and joyful life.
The book that follows was put together by the two of us from Tim’s notes and experiences; further discussions and research; lots of hilarious video calls; and contributions from other gurus of no, some of whom actually said no to us. We have included their rejections in the book as templates. Unless otherwise stated, every chapter and first-person anecdote that follows is from Tim’s perspective.
Hopefully by the end of this guide, we can all learn that there is a highway to happiness. And the borders that keep us on it, that prevent us from straying into the abyss of meaninglessness, are paved with the word no.
I first realized I had a problem when everything was going right for me.
The day was May 2, 2007, just after 5:30 p.m. in New York, when I received a phone call I’ll never forget. My editor at Random House wanted to inform me that my debut book, The 4-Hour Workweek, had hit The New York Times bestseller list.
As her words sunk in, I staggered backward and collapsed against the wall in shock, gratitude, and relief. Overnight, I was transformed from a guy begging people to answer his emails to someone on the other side. All kinds of requests and offers poured in. Speaking gigs, interviews, consulting, partnerships, brand deals—it was a tsunami.
Flattered, unprepared, and afraid this might be my only 15 minutes of fame, I said “yes” to nearly everything, especially anything six, nine, or twelve months off in the distance. My calendar seemed like pristine water, clear as crystal for a brief lull. Then I had to pay the piper.
Rarely in the same place for more than a week, I felt more like Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman than a jet-setting rock star. My assistants and I were getting hammered with hundreds, then thousands, of emails per day. 90% of the time, I had no idea how people got my private email addresses. We were drowning.
The irony was that my systems worked great. It was pure operator error.
In the deluge, I had slipped from a mindset of JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) and following my own priorities, to a mindset of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and reactively grasping at shiny objects and shiny people. I was succumbing to what the Germans call Torschlusspanik: literally, “door-closing panic.”
The term comes from the time of walled medieval cities, when the gates would close at night—and any resident left outside would be forced to fend for themselves. Getting through those doors often meant survival.
In survival mode, I panicked. I stopped following my own rules. Once I made the first exception, the game was lost. It was death by a thousand paper cuts.
So, what the hell happened? Why didn’t I see it coming?
These habits are formed early and embed themselves deeply. I come from a family full of lovely and conflict-avoidant folks. This isn’t true for everyone in the extended clan, but it’s enough for my default to be people-pleasing. Or, more accurately, people-fearing—a distinction we’ll dive into later.
Before the publication of my book, with little inbound, the effects of people-pleasing were negligible. I came up with wild plans, went out hunting for opportunities, cold-emailed people to pitch ideas, and knocked things off my to-do list. After the success of the book, with 1000x more inbound, the effects of people-pleasing were catastrophic. The underlying fear and guilt came out in full force and wreaked havoc. I was being emailed and called by a Genghis Khan army of versions of myself (surprise, bitch!), and I didn’t have a playbook. Saying yes to other people’s priorities made mine vanish like sand through my fingers.
It took a while to unwind and figure out that I was doing it all wrong.
Twelve months later, I had stemmed a good portion of the blood loss. It was only possible because I had found a big YES that allowed me to focus and say no to at least 50% of the noise:
Startups.
I used the book’s popularity with technologists to begin investing in and advising startups, and I soon moved to San Francisco to be in the center of the action. The timing was good, and I had incredible luck (Shopify, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Alibaba, and more).
One afternoon, I found myself in the office of a CEO and friend. His company would later become one of the fastest-growing startups in history. That day, he was calm as usual, despite the chaos and noise of Market Street a few floors below. Once we’d caught up on the latest developments, the conversation meandered into productivity systems, and I asked how he thought about managing email. He spun his laptop around on his desk to show me his Gmail account. Once my eyes adjusted, I stood there slack-jawed, fixated on one thing:
84,000+ unread email.
Smiling at my shock, he said, “Inbox zero is a fallacy.”
Completely unfazed, he went on to explain a few policies he had. He ignored 99% of what came in. For much of what remained, his answer was a short, “Not up my alley. Thanks.”
If 10 different but appealing people asked him to grab dinner, he would invite those 10 people to a group dinner and kill many birds with one stone.
If he wanted to preserve political capital but decrease contact with certain people, he’d do the “slow fade”: He might first reply to them in 5 days, then 10 days, and then 20 days. “They will stop asking,” he noted.
Clearly, there were levels to filtering, and then there were levels to filtering. I took a photograph of his 84,000 unread count as a reminder.
Right after that meeting, I created a digital swipe file called “polite declines” in Evernote, a product made by another startup I advised. Starting that week in 2009, if anyone said no in a way that struck me as elegant or clever, I saved it. If a rejection somehow made me feel good, I saved it. If someone had great policies on their contact form, I saved it. If I came across a trick, tool, or philosophical reset for saying no—whether over a meal, via email, or at the airport—I saved it.
This book contains the highlights from that swipe file.
It’s taken me an embarrassingly long time to implement the advice here, but I’ve found rules, systems, and tools that make life a lot easier. Of course, these strategies apply to dealing with other people, including strangers, loose ties, and family. But they also apply to managing ourselves, especially those glitches in our mental operating system that act against our best interests.
I’ve also found ways to idiot-proof things and bring the lifeboat closer, such that when you do slip into overcommitting (it’ll happen), it’s one step to recovery instead of ten.
This book was originally written like my other books (i.e., Tim tests everything, writes about what works, then publishes), until I called Neil to see how a rewrite was coming on a rough draft.
“Hey, Tim, I’m in Copenhagen,” he screamed over a cacophony of background noise. “I’m at this conference I agreed to speak at, but now I’m hosting the whole thing, and it’s been taking up all my time.”
“That’s not good. I hope they’re paying you well.”
“They’re not paying me anything.” He paused and sighed. “And you’re not going to believe this, but I told the guy running the conference he could stay at my house when he’s in LA next month.”
“You what?! Has this book been working for you at all?”
He stammered a response, and we both came to realize that for a die-hard people pleaser, information and templates aren’t enough. As my friend Derek Sivers puts it, “If more information were the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”
So, we rebuilt the book from the ground up as a daily, step-by-step experience with readings, exercises, and a complete plan that is relentlessly action-focused.
The first test subject was Neil. As he went through these exercises and steps, he added his own experiences, notes, and struggles. Afterward, seeing the eventual transformation, it’s clear that if you do the work, this book really, really works. The book is designed to meet you where you are on your no journey and take you further than you think possible.
And unlike most self-help programs, there is no set of one-size-fits-all rules. Through these readings and exercises, you will pick up a toolkit that is uniquely your own, tailored to your specific goals, challenges, strengths, and weaknesses. Some chapters won’t be for you, but some will be especially for you.
The No Book is a Trojan Horse for becoming better at decision-making writ large. Decision-making is your life.
Everything from a job offer to a marriage proposal is a yes to one thing and a no to hundreds of thousands of other opportunities. It’s easy—the universal default—to get pulled into the quicksand of half-hearted yesses and promiscuous overcommitment, ending up stressed and reactive, wondering where your time has gone.
The No Book re-examines how we navigate our finite path. It will help you build a benevolent phalanx—a protective wall of troops—that guard your goals, your relationships, and more, making everything more easeful.
As you get deeper into this book, you’ll begin to realize that how you handle no mirrors how you handle almost everything in life. Dramatically changing your nos will dramatically change your life.
If Neil can fix his Copenhagen debacle and do a 180—which he did—the sky is the limit.
So let’s start building you some wings.
###
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P.S. Any thoughts or suggestions? Please let me know in the comments below! Comments here are far better than social media, as I’ll actually see them. And thanks for reading this far.
The post MY FIRST BOOK IN 7 YEARS (AND SOME BIG EXPERIMENTS) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-01-09 19:47:14
“I think all of us are prisoners to the way our mind currently works, and we’re prisoners until we become observers to it.”
— Greg McKeown
Greg McKeown (@GregoryMcKeown) is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less and Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most. He is also a speaker, host of The Greg McKeown Podcast, and founder of The Essentialism Academy, with students from 96 countries. 200,000 people receive his weekly 1-Minute Wednesday newsletter, and he recently released The Essentialism Planner: A 90-Day Guide to Accomplishing More by Doing Less.
Please enjoy!
This episode is brought to you by Momentous high-quality supplements, Eight Sleep’s Pod 4 Ultra sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating, and Wealthfront high-yield cash account.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the conversation on YouTube here.
The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
This episode is brought to you by Momentous high-quality supplements! Momentous offers high-quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories, and I’ve been testing their products for months now. I’ve been using their magnesium threonate, apigenin, and L-theanine daily, all of which have helped me improve the onset, quality, and duration of my sleep. I’ve also been using Momentous creatine, and while it certainly helps physical performance, including poundage or wattage in sports, I use it primarily for mental performance (short-term memory, etc.).
Their products are third-party tested (Informed-Sport and/or NSF certified), so you can trust that what is on the label is in the bottle and nothing else. If you want to try Momentous for yourself, you can use code Tim for 20% off your one-time purchase at LiveMomentous.com/Tim. And not to worry, my non-US friends, Momentous ships internationally and has you covered.
This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat is my personal nemesis. I’ve suffered for decades, tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, pulling them back on, and repeating ad nauseam. But a few years ago, I started using the Pod Cover, and it has transformed my sleep. Eight Sleep has launched their newest generation of the Pod: Pod 4 Ultra. It cools, it heats, and now it elevates, automatically. With the best temperature performance to date, Pod 4 Ultra ensures you and your partner stay cool in the heat and cozy warm in the cold. Plus, it automatically tracks your sleep time, snoring, sleep stages, and HRV, all with high precision. For example, their heart rate tracking is at an incredible 99% accuracy.
Pod 4 Ultra also introduces an adjustable Base that fits between your mattress and your bed frame to add custom positions for the best sleeping experience. Plus, it automatically reduces your snoring when detected. Add it easily to any bed.
And now, listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show can get $350 off of the Pod 4 Ultra for a limited time! Click here to claim this deal and unlock your full potential through optimal sleep.
This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront is a financial services platform that offers services to help you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn 4.00% APY—that’s the Annual Percentage Yield—with the Wealthfront Brokerage Cash Account through its network of partner banks. That’s nearly ten times more interest than a savings account at a bank, according to FDIC.gov as of December 16, 2024. It takes just a few minutes to sign up, and then you’ll immediately start earning 4.00% APY interest on your short-term cash until you’re ready to invest. And when new clients open an account today, they can get an extra fifty-dollar bonus with a deposit of five hundred dollars or more. Visit Wealthfront.com/Tim to get started.
Tim Ferriss receives cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage, LLC for advertising and holds a non-controlling equity interest in the corporate parent of Wealthfront Brokerage. See full disclosures here.
Want to hear the last time Greg McKeown was on the podcast? Listen to our walk and talk conversation here where we discussed Greg’s system for effortless execution of daily tasks, poetic mysticism and matchmaking introspection, Maslow’s forgotten pinnacle of self-transcendence, why self-actualization is an insufficient foundation for meaningful relationships, the benefits of treating social media as an option rather than an obligation, blocking time for top priorities, why AI is a good servant but a poor master, and much more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
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“I think all of us are prisoners to the way our mind currently works, and we’re prisoners until we become observers to it.”
— Greg McKeown
“That process of screaming into the page, of letting it all out, separating ourselves from that discombobulating internal state, is extremely powerful because it helps us to go from prisoner to observer. And then from observer, I think once we start observing, we are better able to become a creator, so I think that’s the shift.”
— Greg McKeown
“Changing the ratio of consumption to creation is one self-evident shift that I think a lot of people would benefit in.”
— Greg McKeown
“Insecure overachievers can endlessly complicate any task to an infinite degree. … If you don’t know what done looks like, you cannot be done.”
— Greg McKeown
“Radical gratitude is expressing thanks for things you’re not thankful for, because that’s what gratitude actually is.”
— Greg McKeown
“Essentialism, in one word, would be ‘focus.’ Effortless, in one word, would be ‘simplification.'”
— Greg McKeown
“Essentialism is figuring out what the right thing is to do, and Effortless is to do it in the right way.”
— Greg McKeown
“One of the principles in Effortless is the courage to be rubbish and doing it in a shorter period of time.”
— Greg McKeown
“I think most addictions really are, at the core, to avoid the experience of being alive. And that’s because it’s so painful to be alive.”
— Greg McKeown
“We live in a time where it’s so easy to have what I would describe as counterfeit agility. So you’re moving fast, life feels fast, life is fast, and you’re taking messages, you’re sending messages, and you’re doing things, but actually, they don’t add up to a lot of progress toward what matters.”
— Greg McKeown
“What I have learned is this strange law of inverse prioritization. … The most important thing in our lives at any given time is the least likely thing to get done, which is really strange.”
— Greg McKeown
“Courage is a virtue, but courage always feels terrible. It is an awful feeling. It’s not like you imagine when you see other people being courageous.”
— Greg McKeown
“If you think about the future as only a perfect, best-case scenario, you are setting yourself up for really frustrating, stressful, poor execution.”
— Greg McKeown
The post Tactics and Strategies for a 2025 Reboot — Essentialism and Greg McKeown (#786) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-01-03 18:24:44
This time, we have a very special episode I recorded with my close friend Kevin Rose. We cover 2025 predictions, AI, Bitcoin, aliens, fitness goals, and much, much more.
Please enjoy!
This episode is brought to you by Ramp easy-to-use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and more; Our Place’s Titanium Always Pan® Pro using nonstick technology that’s coating-free and made without PFAS, otherwise known as “Forever Chemicals’; and Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the conversation on YouTube here.
The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
This episode is brought to you by Ramp! Ramp is corporate card- and spend-management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp has already saved more than 25,000 customers—including other podcast sponsors like Shopify and Eight Sleep—more than 10 million hours and more than $1 billion through better financial management of their corporate spending.
With Ramp, you’re able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting, allowing you to close your books 8x faster on average. Your employees will no longer need to spend hours submitting expense reports. In less than 15 minutes, you can get started issuing virtual and physical cards and making payments, whether you have 5 employees or 5,000. Businesses that use Ramp save an average of 5% on total card spending and related expenses in the first year. And now, you can get $250 when you join Ramp. Just go to ramp.com/Tim.
This episode is brought to you by Our Place’s Titanium Always Pan® Pro. Many nonstick pans can release harmful “forever chemicals”—PFAS—into your food, your home, and, ultimately, your body. Teflon is a prime example—it *is* the forever chemical that most companies are still using. Exposure to PFAS has been linked to major health issues like gut microbiome disruption, testosterone dysregulation, and more, which have been correlated to chronic disease in the long term. This is why I use the Titanium Always Pan Pro from today’s sponsor, Our Place. It’s the first nonstick pan with zero coating. This means zero “forever chemicals” and a durability that will last a lifetime. That’s right—no degradation over time like traditional nonstick pans.
This pan combines the best qualities of stainless steel, cast iron, and nonstick into one product. It’s tough enough to withstand the dishwasher, open flame, heavy-duty scrubbing—even metal utensils—without losing any of its non-stick properties. Go to FromOurPlace.com/Tim and use code TIM to get 10% off sitewide.
This episode is brought to you by Shopify! Shopify is one of my favorite platforms and one of my favorite companies. Shopify is designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. In no time flat, you can have a great-looking online store that brings your ideas to life, and you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day and drive sales. No coding or design experience required.
Go to shopify.com/Tim to sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period. It’s a great deal for a great service, so I encourage you to check it out. Take your business to the next level today by visiting shopify.com/Tim.
Want to hear the last time KevKev and I did a Random Show? Listen to our conversation here in which we discussed Kevin’s Jess Mascetti tattoo, vampire facials, publishing strategies, romance versus radical planning, hasty oral hygiene, the mysteries of mimetic contagion, Kevin’s AI-powered investment advisor experiment, Dena Dubal’s Alzheimer’s treatment breakthrough, how small expectations for a medium turned large, and much more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
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The post The Random Show — 2025 Predictions (AI, Aliens, BTC, and More), New Year’s Resolutions and Strategies, Smart Fitness, The Spinal Engine, New Apps, and Much More (#785) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2024-12-27 18:04:27
“This feels hard because it is hard, not because I’m doing something wrong.”
— Dr. Becky Kennedy
Dr. Becky Kennedy (@DrBeckyAtGoodInside) is the founder and CEO of Good Inside, a parenting movement that disrupts conventional parenting practices by empowering parents to become sturdy, confident leaders and raise sturdy, confident kids. Good Inside currently has members across more than 100 countries and millions of followers across social media platforms, including nearly 3M followers on Instagram alone. Good Inside released a mobile app that serves as a “24/7 parenting coach,” offering personalized, age-based support and an AI Chatbot trained on Dr. Becky’s entire library of content.
Dr. Becky is also behind the #1 New York Times bestselling book Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, a chart-topping podcast, a TED talk with nearly 4 million views on the power of repair, and an upcoming children’s book, That’s My Truck! A Good Inside Story About Hitting.
Please enjoy!
This episode is brought to you by GiveWell.org charity research and effective giving, Wealthfront high-yield cash account, and AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the interview on YouTube here.
The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
This episode is brought to you by GiveWell.org! For more than ten years, GiveWell.org has helped donors find the charities and projects that save and improve lives most per dollar. GiveWell spends over 30,000 hours each year researching charitable organizations and only recommends a few of the highest-impact, evidence-backed charities they’ve found. In total, more than 100,000 people have used GiveWell to donate as effectively as possible.
This year, support the charities that save and improve lives most, with GiveWell. Any of my listeners who become new GiveWell donors will have their first donation matched up to $100 when you go to GiveWell.org and select “PODCAST” and “The Tim Ferriss Show” at checkout.
This episode is brought to you by AG1! I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG1 further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.
Right now, you’ll get a 1-year supply of Vitamin D free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit DrinkAG1.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive your 1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive daily, foundational nutrition supplement that supports whole-body health.
This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront is a financial services platform that offers services to help you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn 4.00% APY—that’s the Annual Percentage Yield—with the Wealthfront Brokerage Cash Account through its network of partner banks. That’s nearly ten times more interest than a savings account at a bank, according to FDIC.gov as of December 16, 2024. It takes just a few minutes to sign up, and then you’ll immediately start earning 4.00% APY interest on your short-term cash until you’re ready to invest. And when new clients open an account today, they can get an extra fifty-dollar bonus with a deposit of five hundred dollars or more. Visit Wealthfront.com/Tim to get started.
Tim Ferriss receives cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage, LLC for advertising and holds a non-controlling equity interest in the corporate parent of Wealthfront Brokerage. See full disclosures here.
Want to hear another podccast episode that focuses on education and the intricacies of parenting? Listen to my conversation with New York Times bestselling author Jessica Lahey, in which we discussed confidence vs. competence when trying to foster a child’s self-esteem, why instilling hope in a child is so crucial to their lifelong well-being, books and activities that keep Jessica aligned along the path of hope and optimism, advice for parents who get the dreaded phone call that their child has been caught up in non-ideal behavior, and much more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
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“Parenting doesn’t come naturally. The only thing that comes naturally is how you were parented.”
— Dr. Becky Kennedy
“What scares you does not scare me. … What a sturdy leader really does is they say to you, ‘I see what’s happening for you. I see your feelings as real and your feelings don’t overwhelm me.'”
— Dr. Becky Kennedy
“This feels hard because it is hard, not because I’m doing something wrong.”
— Dr. Becky Kennedy
“We were never meant to parent on instinct alone.”
— Dr. Becky Kennedy
“When we’re completely out of control and overwhelmed and we scream things out in that state, our words are not our wishes; our words are our fears.”
— Dr. Becky Kennedy
“Do not deprive my child of finding their capability. Do not steal it. Do not steal their capability. A kid doesn’t feel capable when they do something easy.”
— Dr. Becky Kennedy
“Kids develop capability after watching themselves survive something that was really difficult and just get through it.”
— Dr. Becky Kennedy
“Our body has this remarkable way to act out conflict if we don’t kind of understand it and resolve it.”
— Dr. Becky Kennedy
“The most under-utilized strategy in parenting—and this sounds like a joke, but I do want to name it to make it official—is doing nothing.”
— Dr. Becky Kennedy
The post Dr. Becky Kennedy — Parenting Strategies for Raising Resilient Kids, Plus Word-for-Word Scripts for Repairing Relationships, Setting Boundaries, and More (#784) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
