The Art of Manliness - #359： Tribe of Mentors： Short Life Advice from the Best of the Best

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Do you sometimes

00:00:19.280 wish you had a cabinet of counselors you could go to for advice anytime you wanted on how

00:00:23.500 to make life better and easier for yourself? Well, my guest today created his own board

00:00:27.720 of Mighty Mentors, a metaphorical roundtable of some of the most successful people in the world

00:00:31.500 and asked them all the same 11 questions on how to live a more fulfilling and productive life. And

00:00:36.400 after that, he wrote a book to share all those insights with the rest of us. His name is Tim

00:00:39.820 Ferris. He's an author and host of the Tim Ferris podcast. We had him on our podcast discuss his

00:00:43.760 last book, Tools for Titans. In his latest book, Tribe of Mentors, short life advice from the best

00:00:48.640 in the world, Tim shares the answers he got to the 11 questions he posed to a diverse range of

00:00:53.240 successful people like Steven Pressfield, Jocko Willink, Bear Grylls, and Greg Norman, among

00:00:58.520 many. Today's episode, Tim shares insights from the people he interviewed on how to say no without

00:01:02.960 feeling guilty or looking like a jerk. The book, successful people frequently gift others and what 0.91

00:01:08.020 to do when you're feeling overwhelmed, distracted, and just generally down. This episode is packed

00:01:12.980 with actionable advice. So we want to take notes after the show's over, check out our show notes at

00:01:17.220 aom.is slash mentors. Mr. Tim Ferris, welcome back to the show. Thank you, sir. Always a pleasure.

00:01:27.260 You've got another tome of a book out. Tribe of Mentors. Yep. Short, like, yeah, all your books have

00:01:32.960 like taken up an entire shelf on my bookcase. You know, every time I say, and I should probably start

00:01:39.440 saying, I'm going to write a really long book, and then maybe it'll end up really short. Because

00:01:43.900 every time I say, this time it's going to be a really short book, it ends up 600 plus pages. But

00:01:49.600 yes, it's another book that, oddly enough, is almost exactly the same weight as Tools of Titans,

00:01:57.320 so you could do bicep curls and be very symmetrical. There you go. I mean, yeah, even the title says

00:02:03.680 Short Life Advice, but again, the book is 600 pages long. But there's lots of short life advice

00:02:08.960 here. So let's talk about what was the impetus behind this book? And it weighs the same as Tools of

00:02:12.920 Titans, but how is it different from Tools of Titans?

00:02:15.180 Yeah, there's some critical differences. The similarity is really mostly format in the sense

00:02:22.000 that people really loved the short, actionable profiles of Tools of Titans. So that has persisted

00:02:30.420 into Tribe of Mentors. But Tribe of Mentors, the origin story is totally different. I had a very,

00:02:35.080 very difficult and very intense year in 2017. It seems like a lot of people did. It was a really

00:02:41.300 gnarly year. And I turned 40, which wasn't that big a deal to me. Didn't run out and buy a Corvette

00:02:48.580 or anything. But the number was meaningful in the sense that I felt like I had passed the midway

00:02:57.660 point, at least based on averages of lifespan in the US. I was like, you know what, now maybe I'm

00:03:02.620 finishing the second half of this one lap that we call life. That was one piece. And a lot happened

00:03:09.920 within a four to eight week period. So that happened. The 10th anniversary of the four-hour

00:03:16.700 workweek coincided with the exact day. I mean, 10 years to the day of the publication of the four-hour

00:03:23.700 workweek found me stepping on the stage at TED for the first time to talk about how I came very close

00:03:34.320 to committing suicide in college and how I've battled with bipolar depression my entire life,

00:03:38.880 which was a really odd, surreal juxtaposition. And that led to a lot of conversations with other

00:03:43.300 people who are struggling with darkness. And you think of the room at TED, everybody has everything

00:03:47.600 figured out. But a really high percentage of people reached out to me to tell me about their demons and

00:03:53.220 how close they'd come to the brink. So that happened. Then a bunch of my friends died, not to make this

00:03:58.400 super heavy really quickly, but a bunch of my friends died from natural causes, but very unexpectedly or

00:04:03.320 via accident. One person I knew, well, yeah, knew past tense, committed suicide. And just a lot hit me

00:04:11.120 at once. And I thought, you know, maybe I'm spending time on things I don't want to be spending time on.

00:04:18.440 Maybe I've overcommitted. Maybe I want to double down on my family and a handful of loved ones and

00:04:24.160 learned to say no to everything else. And I sat down with some tea one morning and journaled on

00:04:30.140 questions I wanted to answer. And it was really hard. I've had it overwhelming. The list got really

00:04:36.300 big. And I asked myself one question towards the end, which I've learned to use a lot in the last

00:04:43.720 two years. And that is, what might this look like if it were easy? And I wrote down many, many, many,

00:04:50.900 many different ideas. And there's only one that really stuck, which was, why don't I take these

00:04:54.740 questions and ask a hundred plus people who are the best at what they do in many different areas of

00:05:02.420 many different ages, say from 20s all the way up to 70s and 80s and borrow from them, just take their

00:05:14.620 answers and try them out and see what works for me. And that's, that's how the book came to be.

00:05:21.120 And it's very different from Tools of Titans in the sense that there's a lot of advice that I wanted

00:05:27.300 to include and solicited about overcoming failure and dark periods and creating those emotional safety

00:05:35.320 nets to prevent you from downward spirals. There's a lot about how to say no, different techniques and

00:05:42.140 strategies that people have ranging from say, co-founder of Facebook, Dustin Moskovitz, all the way to

00:05:46.800 writers and so on, who have had to learn to say no. I even included rejection letters that I got from

00:05:55.280 people who said they had to decline being in the book, which is a whole separate story. And what to do when

00:06:01.200 you feel overwhelmed, distracted, unfocused, you know, what do these people do tactically, very concretely. So the

00:06:08.100 subject matter is quite different, I would say. And I suppose what I've explained so far alludes to the

00:06:14.000 fact that in Tools of Titans, it was basically a highlight reel from the podcast. I mean, you had

00:06:19.620 95% of the people in the book were from the podcast and I was pulling out my favorite pieces.

00:06:26.000 In Tribe of Mentors, it's a completely new cast of characters and nearly no one in the book has been on

00:06:32.980 the podcast. And I asked them all the same 11 questions. So it's easier to spot patterns in

00:06:40.700 the responses that you see. So long story long, that's Tribe of Mentors. And like pretty much all

00:06:49.600 of my books, but particularly, I would say this one, I needed this book and I couldn't find it. So I had

00:06:56.340 to write it. And writing, let's, maybe not for you, but for me at least, it's painful. It's a really

00:07:02.740 hard process. And- No, it is. I hate it.

00:07:05.640 It takes a lot to get me to write a book, but 2007 was really brutal and I needed help. So I went out

00:07:12.740 and I found the help and then put it into the book. Yeah. You asked the same 11 questions. You

00:07:17.060 had a ton of them. So, I mean, how did you hone in on these 11? I mean, what was it about these

00:07:21.860 questions you were like, this is going to make my life easier or somewhat more easier if I know the

00:07:25.840 answer to these? Yeah. A lot of them were variations of the questions I had been asking

00:07:33.440 myself or the tactical versions of the questions I'd been asking myself. So separating, say the

00:07:40.400 critical few from the trivial many and saying no to more things, categorically just across the board

00:07:47.760 saying no to many different types of things as policies. What's the best way to do that?

00:07:50.920 And I would ask then people about what they've learned to say no to more in the last year or

00:07:58.760 two and what tactics or techniques, what wordings had they found helpful? The overwhelm and distraction.

00:08:07.520 I feel like this past year, there's just so much anger and doubt and so much bold news. I mean,

00:08:17.540 that's not a fake news comment that meaning just like salacious headlines that are effectively like

00:08:24.660 five new ways to hate your neighbor. I mean, it's really a difficult time to be on any device or

00:08:30.920 laptop of any type that is connected to the internet. I wanted to learn how to really block out that noise

00:08:37.160 more effectively. And on and on it goes. So for every one of these, I wanted to figure out very specific

00:08:45.820 next steps that I could take. And I also took many of the questions, at least half from fine tuning on

00:08:56.580 the podcast where there were certain questions I found that reliably got really good, useful stories

00:09:03.620 or really good actionable advice. Like for instance, some of the, some of them are not as profound as

00:09:10.860 the, what would you put on a billboard if you had to choose one word or a quote of yours or anyone else

00:09:16.420 to convey to millions or billions of people. That's a deep, heavy question. It does get good answers,

00:09:21.800 especially if you add the end why to the end of it. So that's one of the questions I ask.

00:09:26.540 But conversely, if you're just looking for, I want to just order something on Amazon prime,

00:09:35.160 like a little magic bullet that helps some aspect of my life. Okay. Well then you can ask everyone,

00:09:42.720 you know, what purchase of a hundred dollars or less has most improved your life in the last year

00:09:47.720 or in recent memory. And then wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. You have something that's lighter weight

00:09:52.080 that you can use. So that's also one of the questions.

00:09:55.000 So let's get into some of these questions and I'm going to ask you about the ones that I was

00:09:58.240 drawn to. That was funny. As I was reading it, there'd be answers that I would read every single

00:10:02.920 time. It was like, like the, how to say no. Cause I have, I suck at saying no and I'm still working

00:10:08.340 on it, but there was some, I kind of glanced over cause this didn't resonate with me. And I'm sure

00:10:11.580 that's how you're supposed to read the book. Yep. Let's, let's talk about how to say no. I mean,

00:10:14.840 it must be something you've had a problem with. Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. It's, I mean,

00:10:19.260 it's a continual uphill battle for people. And every time you think you've improved,

00:10:24.040 there's a new channel of inbound fill in the blank or invitations or feelings of obligation

00:10:30.420 and guilt and so on, whenever you think you have it somewhat figured out, then there's,

00:10:36.780 there's more added to it. But this is a toolkit that is, I mean, I'm not going to spend too much

00:10:44.420 time on defining the problem because I think it's so obvious, but in a world where there's

00:10:49.560 more information and noise and invitations and email and social notifications and so on,

00:10:55.540 then you could possibly consume or act on in a lifetime. Like there's more generated every

00:10:59.940 day than you could possibly consume or respond to. You have to get really good at a ignoring things.

00:11:07.420 So cultivating selective ignorance and being able to live with that conditioning yourself to accept

00:11:12.680 that as a binary reality. And then secondly, you have to get very good at declining things.

00:11:18.020 And there are different categories of declining. There is, for instance, there are different

00:11:24.140 approaches ranging from using email autoresponders, which say something like, as a policy,

00:11:31.700 unfortunately, I receive more volume of email than I can physically respond to. But below are a couple

00:11:39.460 of answers to very common questions. Please take a look. And then you have, for instance, bullet number

00:11:45.820 one, as a policy, I'm no longer doing X, Y, and Z. And that could be speaking engagements.

00:11:50.840 It could be in-person meetings, for instance. It could be conference calls. It could be coffee dates

00:11:59.320 where people pick my brains. It could be anything. That is one level of refusal. Then you have,

00:12:05.820 say, acquaintance or stranger refusal. And that could be the approach of, like I mentioned,

00:12:13.680 a Dustin Moskovitz or an Andrew Ross Sorkin, very well-known journalist, where you give no reason

00:12:19.460 for the decline. You simply say, thanks so much for your thoughtful email. I'm really sorry, but I

00:12:27.200 cannot commit to anything like this right now, or I don't have bandwidth for this right now. Wishing

00:12:31.700 you all the best of luck. Tim, right? It's very straightforward. You're not offering a reason

00:12:38.440 because then that offers the opportunity for a rebuttal or a counter. And I'm sure you've seen

00:12:44.020 this happen, right? That's one level down from autoresponder. You have a blanket template response,

00:12:51.640 which you can, on your iPhone, for instance, in settings or using a program like TextExpander,

00:12:58.080 create short two-letter combinations that automatically auto-populate these template responses.

00:13:06.540 And that'd be one angle. Then one level below that, perhaps, you have semi-acquaintance or

00:13:13.720 acquaintance asking you for something. And then you might add in a personal touch that could be just

00:13:21.000 one additional line. And this is what, for instance, Danny Meyer, famous restaurateur,

00:13:26.660 Shake Shack, et cetera, used in his rejection letter that was sent to me, which I included in the book

00:13:32.000 with permission, or Neil Stevenson, famed science fiction author of Snow Crash and so on, same story,

00:13:38.060 where they might say something along the lines of, I'm struggling so much with my own to-do list

00:13:44.500 that every time I knock off one of my own items, it seems to spawn 10 more just in the hopes that

00:13:51.040 I'll get to the point where someday it becomes shorter rather than longer. I'm saying no to all

00:13:56.580 outside invitations or commitments for X period of time, right? And that takes the sting out of it

00:14:03.100 a bit. It lets you know where they are and allows you to consider walking a mile on their shoes so

00:14:10.600 you understand exactly why they're refusing it, even though they might want to accept. And very often

00:14:17.660 that comes along with phrasing along the lines of, I realize this is a great opportunity and I'm sure

00:14:24.000 I'll be kicking myself later for saying no, but just for my sanity right now, I can't commit.

00:14:28.880 Very common that there's some phrasing along those lines. Wendy McNaughton, very famous illustrator,

00:14:35.020 did that in her email to me. And that can also be used for friends, of course. So there are different

00:14:41.500 ways to go about it. But I think underlying all of those very specific lines and so on that you can

00:14:47.880 copy and paste. Another common pattern is making something a policy or a diet. And what I mean by

00:14:55.560 that is I remember receiving a refusal from a polite decline from a billionaire investor when I asked him

00:15:03.940 if we might be able to have lunch or breakfast and chat about A, B, and C. It was very specific.

00:15:08.400 And I'd spent time with him before. And he said, really sorry. I'd love to, but I'm going on a no

00:15:15.580 meeting diet. No meeting diet for the next quarter because I've gotten so behind in other channels. I

00:15:24.400 just need to catch up. And I was like, wow, no meeting diet. That's interesting. And I started using

00:15:28.460 it. No meeting diet, no conference call diet for X period of time. And for whatever reason,

00:15:32.960 maybe it's because it's depersonalized. People respond really well to it generally, but people

00:15:40.680 are going to get hurt feelings. People are going to get upset. There are people who will take it

00:15:46.560 incredibly personally. And you have to accept that as a tax of having been fortunate enough to be in a

00:15:53.980 position where you have more inbound than you can handle. Does that make sense? That makes sense.

00:15:58.620 Yeah. Some variation of the following has also popped up over and over again in

00:16:02.780 Tribe of Mentorers, which is there's no one sure path to success, but there is one sure path to

00:16:07.600 failure. And that is trying to please everyone. Yeah. That's where that stoicism comes in, right?

00:16:12.880 Exactly. Exactly. Which also crops up a lot. Like Ariana Huffington, her most gifted book is

00:16:19.240 Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Yeah. And we'll talk about that gifted book

00:16:22.640 question because I thought that was another section I focused on a lot. But one of the most powerful

00:16:26.220 bits of advice I got from the how to say no, the issue that I often have is someone will ask me

00:16:32.180 something that's like three months from now. And I'm like, yeah, of course. And then when it comes,

00:16:36.860 you're like, damn it, I don't have time for this. And so I forgot who said it, but it was like, 0.95

00:16:41.460 imagine if the event was this Tuesday. Would you say yes to that?

00:16:45.440 Esther Dyson. Yes.

00:16:46.880 And I think Tim O'Reilly and Kevin Kelly, all three of them, but they got it from Esther Dyson.

00:16:52.000 Yeah. Would I say yes to this if it were next Tuesday?

00:16:55.860 Right. I've caused more problems for myself saying yes to things that are months in advance. That,

00:17:01.280 man, that was a game changer for me. That's a really good one. Another one

00:17:04.420 from Kyle Maynard, who was born a quad amputee. So he's a congenital quad amputee. He has no arms,

00:17:11.040 no legs. His arms are cut off basically mid-arm, legs just basically at the hip, but let's just call

00:17:17.820 it mid-thigh. And he's the first quad amputee without the aid of prosthetics to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

00:17:26.240 And to put that in perspective, there are able-bodied athletes who have died climbing

00:17:30.800 Mount Kilimanjaro. He military-crawled the entire thing. He's a stud in many other ways,

00:17:37.080 but he's gotten to know a lot of people at the top levels of special operations. And he's also

00:17:42.360 spent time with many, many well-known CEOs. And one CEO gave him great advice that had a huge impact

00:17:49.380 for him. And it's had a huge impact for me. And that is if you're considering an opportunity or an

00:17:54.520 invitation project or an employee, it doesn't really matter, or even an entree at a restaurant

00:18:00.120 and you want to get an honest opinion on an entree you're considering ordering,

00:18:03.820 you can rank or ask someone else to rank it from one to 10, but a seven isn't allowed. This is really

00:18:12.840 subtle, but very, very, very powerful. I've been using it all the time. So you can rank from one to

00:18:19.380 10, but you can't use a seven. Why? Because the seven is the non-committal or semi-ambiguous

00:18:27.900 Switzerland of answers. It doesn't really give you a lot of meaningful information. On the other hand,

00:18:33.900 if you're considering an invitation and a six is barely passing, that's a no. And an eight is,

00:18:40.940 you know, I'm 80% stoked on this. I'm actually really excited, nine, 10 or above and beyond.

00:18:48.400 When you remove that seven, it becomes a very clear yes, no answer. And what Kyle noticed for

00:18:53.320 himself is that when he looked at things he would give a seven, it was almost always out of guilt or

00:18:59.640 obligation or fear of missing out, which are not good reasons to commit to time-consuming anything

00:19:06.620 when time is a finite, non-renewable resource. So that's been hugely helpful for him and also

00:19:13.800 hugely helpful for me. Rank it from one to 10, you can't use a seven. And by the way, testing this in

00:19:18.620 restaurants, because you always hear the, oh, well, everything is good on the menu. And you're

00:19:22.460 like, thank you very much for no information. But if you ask them for a specific entree,

00:19:27.420 how would you rank this one to 10? You can't use a seven. Something's going to happen. Either they're

00:19:31.440 going to waver. And then, yeah, I'm not sure. That's a six or less. On the flip side, if someone

00:19:38.780 says eight and they do it quickly, you know, it's a good dish. And I've had a hundred percent success

00:19:43.400 rate with that so far. And the other thing that was encouraging about some of the answers in the

00:19:48.360 book to that question was that some of these people, very successful people said, I can't answer

00:19:52.980 that. I'm terrible at saying no still. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I left those in very deliberately,

00:19:58.480 right. Just to show that if you're terrible at this, you're not uniquely flawed. Like some of

00:20:05.200 these people who, who many would assume are just hitting home runs with everything are terrible,

00:20:11.600 terrible, terrible at it. Right. So it's a lot of very accomplished people just answer. I'm terrible

00:20:18.580 at this. I can't wait to read other people's answers. All right. So let's go to that question.

00:20:22.340 What book do you gift most frequently? And that was, I've, man, I've gotten like, I've had like

00:20:27.340 50 new books on my Amazon wishlist because of this, but, um, why ask that question instead of

00:20:33.680 like, what's your favorite book? Why ask what gift, what book do you gift most frequently?

00:20:38.220 Yeah. Uh, because of several reasons. Number one, the people I interview tend to be very well

00:20:47.360 read. They've read hundreds or thousands of books. And if you ask them, what is your favorite book or

00:20:52.120 what are your favorite books? It's too long of a search or it's too broad of a search query.

00:21:00.500 It would take too long typically for them to figure it out. And they, they normally come up

00:21:06.060 with one or two books that they've really liked in the last year or two, which is not what you're

00:21:11.460 looking for. Second, they're very often well-known people who are aware of the risk that if they say

00:21:20.940 X, Y, and Z is my favorite book, that it will end up in Wikipedia haunting them forever. And they'll

00:21:26.440 look back and they'll say, good God, if I had 10 minutes to think about it, I would have given you a

00:21:30.280 different answer. Most gifted conversely, usually it produces a very, very clear, very short list.

00:21:39.960 Almost nearly everyone, not everyone, but nearly everyone has their go-to two to four books that

00:21:46.740 they gift to many people. This is important for another reason. Favorite book means favorite book

00:21:54.360 for the person you are asking. Most gifted book means it is one of their favorite books they feel

00:22:01.620 applies to more people than just themselves. It's more broadly applicable. So those are a number of the

00:22:09.200 reasons that I've chosen to tweak it and make it what book or books have you gifted the most to

00:22:14.780 other people and why. Right. You're kind of using the market to figure out, right? They're putting

00:22:18.140 skin in the game when they actually go out and buy a book for somebody. Exactly. You mentioned there

00:22:22.040 was patterns you saw and there are. What was the book you saw brought up over and over again that

00:22:27.380 surprised you? You know, maybe it shouldn't surprise me, but Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

00:22:33.800 popped up a ton. The one that popped up more than I might expect that is lesser known is Poor Charlie's

00:22:41.900 Almanac by Charlie Munger, who's the right hand and investing partner of Warren Buffett, most famed

00:22:48.900 investor in history, arguably. Then there were books that also came up, even fiction like Siddhartha,

00:23:00.680 for instance, by Herman Hess came up repeatedly, which I went back and reread as a result because

00:23:08.700 I'd read it in high school or college and really taken nothing from it. And I went back and I read

00:23:15.420 it now at age 40. And I think this is true for many books, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, and so on.

00:23:23.580 You may have read a long, long time ago that they don't fully have an impact until a little later in

00:23:30.160 life when you've put on a bit more mileage, had more experiences, have seen or experienced death

00:23:36.860 in some capacity. And then you really have the life experience and lenses through which

00:23:45.320 to view the pages and get something from them. So Herman Hess, Siddhartha was another that cropped up.

00:23:53.900 Those are a few that come to mind.

00:23:56.340 The one that I was surprised by was Ayn Rand. There were a few people who said that. I knew

00:24:01.680 something about their politics a little bit and I was like, they're not objectivists, but they're

00:24:05.720 like, that book changed me. That surprised me.

00:24:09.740 Yeah, Atlas Shrugged came up a lot, certainly came up a ton. And so Ayn Rand or Ayn Rand, depending

00:24:18.560 on how you say your name, came up a lot as setting the stage for these people to strive

00:24:27.300 for self-reliance. And it's important to note that you don't have to agree with everything

00:24:36.500 in a book to make it one of your favorite books or one of your most gifted books at all.

00:24:43.560 Right. It just has to net, net have a huge positive impact. And Atlas Shrugged certainly

00:24:50.860 came up a ton. One that has come up a lot is the five love languages also.

00:24:58.620 Yeah. I've been hearing that more and more from people.

00:25:01.660 Yeah. It's a really, for intimate relationships, even just familial relationships, very fascinating

00:25:07.980 book. And some of the icons of the icons of the business world and private conversations

00:25:15.080 not in this book have also mentioned the five love languages. And the list goes on.

00:25:20.360 And then there are the esoteric books, the really weird books.

00:25:23.400 That was really interesting. That makes up like the bulk of my Amazon wishlist or these

00:25:27.520 just really weird things I've never even heard of.

00:25:29.060 Yeah. So for instance, I mean, the books that have informed the world's best poker players

00:25:34.820 that tend to be pretty out there, or a lot of them are pretty out there and very

00:25:40.440 fringe books on rational decision-making. Those are some of my favorites to dig into.

00:25:49.200 You know, weird ones. They're really weird ones.

00:25:52.160 What I like about this, I mean, I hate reading like airport pop business books because they usually

00:25:57.520 just tell you what you already know.

00:25:59.280 Yeah. They spent 50% of the book defining the problem that you already know, or you

00:26:03.920 wouldn't have bought the book.

00:26:04.600 Right. Yeah. Right.

00:26:05.580 And then they mentioned the marshmallow test somehow. And then you're like, all right.

00:26:10.000 Right.

00:26:10.280 But yeah, reading those like really theoretical books gives you insights that you can apply

00:26:15.540 to other parts of your life, whether it's your business, your personal life. I found that

00:26:19.260 to be the case in my own life.

00:26:20.640 Yeah. Oh, definitely. And many of these folks, just to note another,

00:26:25.560 perhaps unexpected pattern is that if you look at the many of the best investors in the book,

00:26:33.620 so you have Ray Dalio, founder of the world's largest hedge fund, $160 billion under management,

00:26:38.480 Bridgewater Associates. If you look at some of the books he has gifted the most, if you look at

00:26:44.000 the books that say Esther Dyson who came up earlier, who's one of the, one of the best investors out

00:26:53.140 there and just fascinating. I mean, she trained as a cosmonaut in former Soviet union for a period

00:27:00.760 of time as well. Many of these investors pay a lot of attention to books on evolution, different types

00:27:10.340 of evolution. So for instance, her most gifted books, Esther's most gifted books include

00:27:17.760 The Biology of Desire, Why Addiction is Not a Disease, looking at addiction and the evolution,

00:27:25.640 evolutionary basis or biological basis for that. Two of her books are very closely related.

00:27:30.280 This one is From Bacteria to Bach and Back, subtitled The Evolution of Minds by Daniel Dennett,

00:27:37.420 How Consciousness Arises, How Much It Depends on the Sense of Past, Present and Future. And when you dig a

00:27:42.140 little bit and you ask these folks why they pay so much time reading about evolution, it's because

00:27:50.180 they want to be able to spot the cognitive biases and the consensus realities and the uninformed

00:28:01.080 conclusions we come to based on millions of years of hardwiring that is optimized for a reality that

00:28:09.620 existed say 50,000 years ago. Right? I mean, we're really not designed to be living in cities

00:28:16.820 with a constant barrage of information and sensationalistic headlines and so on. Biological

00:28:26.720 evolution is very, very slow. And in the grand scheme of things, if you look at, say, from the

00:28:31.840 agricultural revolution to industrial and now to where we are, it's just the blinking of a firefly and

00:28:40.860 we're not prepared for it. So by studying what we are hardwired to do, which is very often exactly the

00:28:47.740 opposite of what is in our best interest, you can spot uncrowded bets. You can spot contrarian

00:28:56.020 thinking when it is most advantageous. And that's exactly what good investors do in many, many, many,

00:29:01.780 many cases. So that was another cool, I thought, connection that was very obvious when you read

00:29:07.540 through the book is that really good investors who are consistently, and when I say consistently,

00:29:11.780 I mean for decades beating the market and at the top of their game, pay a lot of attention to

00:29:17.580 evolution. Yeah. I'm going to ask you this question. What book do you give most frequently?

00:29:21.640 The book that I give most frequently for many, many years was a Penguin Classics book,

00:29:31.500 Letters from a Stoic. It is a compilation of letters written by Seneca.

00:29:37.540 A Stoic figure, a Roman, famous playwright, arguably the most famous playwright of his day,

00:29:43.540 also the wealthiest investment banker, or its equivalent, and an advisor to the emperor at the

00:29:48.420 time. And these are very pragmatic letters to one of his students or protégés named Lucilius.

00:29:56.380 Like, oh, Lucilius, I hear that so-and-so is smack-talking you behind your back in the Senate.

00:30:00.940 Like, here's how I would handle that. Dear Lucilius, I'm so sorry to hear of your mother's passing

00:30:05.940 and your difficulty with grief and how it's affecting your work and your family life.

00:30:10.860 Here's what I would suggest. Very concrete. I've given out hundreds and hundreds of copies of

00:30:18.020 Letters from a Stoic directly to people who have visited my homes over the last, say, 15 years.

00:30:25.120 Had a huge impact on me. Those can be found for free online as the Moral Letters to Lucilius.

00:30:33.640 L-U-C-I-L-I-U-S. And they had such a tremendous impact on me that I ended up spending six months,

00:30:42.100 and this just goes to show when you say to yourself, oh, I'm going to do this, it'll be really easy,

00:30:46.160 you should stop and really think about it. Putting together a free set of PDFs, e-books,

00:30:53.560 called The Tao of Seneca, T-A-O, like The Way of Seneca, The Tao of Seneca, which are all of these

00:30:59.240 letters plus interviews with modern thinkers and illustrations and stuff that's completely free.

00:31:05.640 So the book I've given away the most was originally the Penguin Classics version,

00:31:11.200 Letters from a Stoic, which I would keep stacks of at home in the closet.

00:31:14.920 And if anyone came to my house who hadn't ever read these letters, I would give them a copy before

00:31:20.420 they left. That would definitely be far and away number one. I've also given away a lot of copies

00:31:25.260 of the fiction book Zorba the Greek, which I think is great for people who tend to be very

00:31:30.460 hyper-analytical and trapped in their own heads because it chronicles the adventures and

00:31:36.800 misadventures of a very type A analytical driven person. And Zorba, this character who's

00:31:44.920 exactly the opposite, just a wild man who enjoys life and is very Epicurean, throw caution to the

00:31:52.240 wind type of character. So the two of them make for a really entertaining and very informative

00:31:58.620 contrast as they go through all of their various adventures.

00:32:02.140 Yeah. Seneca sounds like the proto-tribe of mentors then.

00:32:05.200 Yeah, in a way. In a way it is, in some senses.

00:32:08.340 And Zorba the Greek, the movie's also fantastic.

00:32:10.900 Yeah, I haven't yet seen it. I haven't yet seen it. Now, based on that, I might actually see it.

00:32:15.500 I didn't want to see it because I didn't want to sully how much I love the book. Because for

00:32:20.620 instance, you take His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman and The Golden Compass and so on. That

00:32:25.820 movie was terrible. It was so bad. It just made me angry that they desecrated this incredible work

00:32:30.880 of fiction. So I'm glad to hear that Zorba the Greek is good. I might watch that over the holidays.

00:32:35.540 Yeah, Zorba, teach me to dance. You want to dance? That's great. Anyways, let's get to

00:32:41.820 this question about being unfocused, feeling overwhelmed, because I think that's what a lot

00:32:46.280 of people are feeling these days. What were some of the most common answers you got from folks on

00:32:52.560 how to combat that? Some of the most common answers were some variation of to get out of your

00:33:00.120 head, get into your body. That was one. So some component of exercise. And people have many

00:33:07.820 different approaches to this. So you can pick your favorite version of it. Another was that came up

00:33:15.100 again and again and again and again was journaling in different capacities, whether that's Richa Chata,

00:33:23.040 who's a very famous Bollywood actress, who will, if she's anxious or feeling overwhelmed, will write

00:33:31.600 about her problem or fear. She'll say, I am worried about X because, and then just write,

00:33:39.560 write, write, write, write, write. And then once she hits a pausing point, she'll ask the question,

00:33:45.320 so what? What then? What happens if that happens? And then she'll write again, so what? And she'll

00:33:51.080 keep asking, so what? Until the fear has been disarmed. And she finds that to dramatically lower

00:33:58.640 stress and anxiety, which is something I also do effectively. There are other people who,

00:34:06.500 like Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, or Josh Waitzkin, who's thought of as a chess prodigy,

00:34:11.580 who will pose a question to themselves, say after dinner, go to sleep. Thomas Edison did this exact

00:34:18.300 routine as well. Then they wake up and before any input from their devices, before breakfast,

00:34:24.260 before any of that, they sit down and they journal on the question that they asked themselves the day

00:34:28.380 before or the situation that they posed to their subconscious mind. That's also very common.

00:34:34.340 There are, I would say, perhaps a dozen or 20 different approaches to journaling that people

00:34:40.760 describe in Tribe of Mentors, but the underlying point being to take what might be very nebulous

00:34:49.000 or disconcerting thoughts in your head and to trap them on paper so you can look at them under a

00:34:54.600 magnifying glass and either completely diffuse the boogeyman and realize that you have no real reason,

00:35:03.280 no real need to fear what you're afraid of, or to gain clarity on whatever the next steps might be.

00:35:09.340 No, I think writing is powerful because, as you said, emotions are irrational, they're nebulous,

00:35:13.500 but when you start writing, your brain kicks into analytical mode, like linear mode.

00:35:19.120 Yeah, exactly.

00:35:20.080 I think it's interesting, the Stoics, they used writing as a way to do that, to practice Stoicism.

00:35:26.500 They did, and I think it's very underutilized. And when I say writing, also, in today's day and age,

00:35:36.100 given what happens when you turn on a laptop, I think it is a competitive advantage, or at the very

00:35:45.280 least, very valuable to do this by hand. And just because I have it open to this page, you know,

00:35:52.680 Esther, not Esther Perel, different. Esther Perel is also in the book, is amazing. But Esther Dyson,

00:36:00.000 her answer, when she feels overwhelmed, is she asks, what is the worst thing that could happen?

00:36:06.660 And what she says is, fear of the unknown is generally far worse than the fear of something

00:36:10.540 specific. And that, and I'll just finish it because it's super short. If it's not the death

00:36:15.740 of yourself or those you are responsible for, there's probably some reasonable set of options

00:36:20.140 you should consider calmly and thoughtfully. This is straight out of Seneca, right? I mean,

00:36:25.240 this is straight out of stoicism. And it's most valuable when you put it on paper.

00:36:31.180 Yeah. No, Dwight Eisenhower did the same thing throughout his career. People don't know this.

00:36:34.600 He would just, if he had a problem, he would just write a memo to himself and then he'd throw it away

00:36:38.740 when he was done. What was the most unusual way to get focused or combat the overwhelm?

00:36:45.160 Uh, you know, I'm not going to get it totally right, but Greg Norman,

00:36:51.500 the golf player. Yeah. Golf legend, Greg Norman. I think he starts with like yelling at the top of

00:36:59.960 his lungs. That's stage one. And then there are other steps after it, but I remember just cracking

00:37:07.720 up when I first got his responses. Right. And I think it was funny because he all said like,

00:37:12.360 Oh, Buddhism changed my life. But then right after that, I was like, I yell this obscenity 0.86

00:37:16.440 as loud as I can. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There are some people stick their head in a bucket of ice.

00:37:23.020 It was a rather unusual one, I suppose. And I do ask people, I ask everyone, I mean,

00:37:29.300 this is one of the questions, what is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

00:37:34.180 And you get some really weird answers. And the point of that question is to

00:37:41.000 I suppose accomplish two things. One is to just humanize these people so that you realize

00:37:47.940 everyone's crazy. It's not just you. And that if you think anyone's normal, you just don't know

00:37:53.700 them well enough yet. So there's, there's that piece just to make everything more approachable.

00:37:59.320 But you also get some ideas for cool hobbies or weird superstitions that you might find kind of

00:38:06.160 cool. So if you're hyper rational, it might be kind of fun to adopt like arbitrarily two or three

00:38:11.840 superstitions that you find really enjoyable, which is something that I do.

00:38:17.140 Yeah. What are the, what are those superstitions? Or is it something you can't say because they're

00:38:20.720 like totems? No, no, no, no. I can, I, it's not like Candyman. I can, I can, I can mention

00:38:25.920 what they are. For instance, I don't like using red ink to sign anything. I'm pretty sure I picked

00:38:33.060 this up in China. It might've been somewhere else in Asia where in certain instances, red ink is

00:38:39.320 considered bad luck or for breaking contracts. So I don't like using red ink for signing anything.

00:38:44.440 And there are good superstitions and then bad superstitions, or you can think of things of

00:38:48.560 omens for good or omens for bad, right? So the number five, five, five is a good omen because I

00:38:54.900 finished copy editing the very last line of my second book, the four hour body looked up in a tea shop

00:39:02.740 and it was five 55. I already like repeating numbers. So now if five 55 pops up on my phone,

00:39:10.000 I always take a screenshot. So that's another weird one.

00:39:14.040 What do you do with the screenshots? I just keep, I just keep, I don't do anything with them. I just

00:39:19.500 like the act of taking the screenshot to pause and capture that moment. I don't cheers with water.

00:39:26.240 So if people are doing some type of toast with alcohol, I have to have some alcohol in my beverage

00:39:32.200 or I will not toast with a non-alcoholic beverage. So it's not just water. It's, it's also any non-alcoholic

00:39:39.800 beverage. I won't toast with it, but I will do a fist bump. I will, for some reason, I allow myself

00:39:44.340 to like fist bump other glasses, but I won't clink the glass together if it's say water. And I'm pretty

00:39:51.620 sure I got that from some Italians. So I have a handful here or there and I'm fully aware of how

00:39:56.800 ridiculous they are, but I just enjoy having a little bit of a rationality injected into my

00:40:05.400 life that can otherwise be like so quantified and so serious and blah, blah, blah. That's like, 0.98

00:40:10.980 you know, all, all work and no play makes Timmy a doll boy. Exactly. Well, Tim, there's a lot more

00:40:16.620 questions we could dig into. We're gonna have people go out and get the book. Where can they find out

00:40:20.160 more information about the book? Do you have a website for it? Yeah. Tribeofmentors.com.

00:40:24.000 You can find sample chapters. I put up, if you search Tribe of Mentors, Terry Cruz, I put up

00:40:29.800 six life lessons from Terry Cruz, but the best place to go is just tribeofmentors.com. And you

00:40:35.580 can find the entire list of mentors. You can find sample chapters, the whole nine yards. And certainly

00:40:41.580 I think it's number three on Amazon right now. Overall, every book, it's doing really well. Just

00:40:47.180 overtook Obama. So people seem to really be enjoying it. You can find it anywhere books are sold.

00:40:52.060 And I would just say to folks, it's a choose your own adventure guide. It's a buffet. So it's not

00:40:59.180 intended to be read cover to cover. You just pick and choose just like you did and find the things

00:41:05.040 that grab your attention. That's it. So if you even read 50 pages out of the 650, I consider that having

00:41:13.240 read the book. So it's really just finding the bits and pieces that grab your attention. And that's

00:41:18.740 really proud of it. It's been really helpful to me. I couldn't find it. So I had to write it. And

00:41:22.880 this is a reference book. It's the playbook that is a collection of playbooks. So I hope people enjoy

00:41:27.620 it. Awesome. Well, Tim Ferriss, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:41:30.540 Thanks so much.

00:41:31.300 My guest today was Tim Ferriss. He's the author of the book Tribe of Mentors. It's out now. It's

00:41:36.280 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about the book at

00:41:39.800 tribeofmentors.com. Also check out Tim's podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, and his new podcast called

00:41:44.420 Tribe of Mentors. Find those on iTunes, Stitcher, wherever else you listen to podcasts.

00:41:47.680 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash mentors, where you find links to resources,

00:41:52.200 where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:42:05.900 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:42:10.120 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy the show,

00:42:13.900 I've gotten something out of it. I appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on iTunes or

00:42:17.420 Stitcher. Helps that a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. And please share the show

00:42:20.800 with other, your friends and family members really would appreciate it as well. This show is recorded

00:42:24.620 on clearcast.io. If you are a podcaster who does remote interviews like myself, check it out. The

00:42:29.200 service I developed to make our podcast sound better, clearcast.io. As always, thank you for

00:42:34.080 your continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - November 28, 2017

#359： Tribe of Mentors： Short Life Advice from the Best of the Best

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