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If the spirit moves you.
I'm a cyber nettie organism living this show where metal and the skull are.
Hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris.
Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show.
Here is my job to deconstruct world class performers of all different types to tease out routines
habits and so on that you can apply to your own life.
This is a special in-between a sod which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last
month.
Features a short clip from each conversation in one place so you can jump around, get a
feel for both the episode and the guest and then you can always dig deeper by going to
one of those episodes.
View this episode as a buffet to weight your appetite.
It's a lot of fun.
We've been putting it together and for the full list of the guests featured today see
the episodes description probably right below where we press play in your podcast app
or as usual you can head to Tim.blog slash podcast and find all the details that there.
Please enjoy.
First up, Greg McKeon, author of Essentialism that Discipline Pursuit of Less and Effortless
make it easier to do what matters most.
So you have that farewell with your daughter sending off to Manaus.
Right.
She always wanted to visit but that's a separate story.
So where do you go from there?
Right because people have these realizations.
Maybe they go, I have no idea.
They go on a rafting trip with friends.
They think themselves, oh my god this was so nourishing.
I deepen my relationships with three of my most cherished friends and I need to do more
of this.
But then it like sand through the fingers slips away as they re-enter their daily lives and
that's kind of it.
Things get busy, things get crowded out.
So what do you do or what did you do or what are you doing after you have that realization?
Let me answer this in a conceptual way.
Like, why have all sorts of limitations that make focus challenging, that make prioritization,
challenging, that make relationships challenging and all of us have our own mix of literally
our DNA can predispose us to various weaknesses.
And so the key for me seems to have been I have to build, I mean the word gets overused,
I build a system that's equal to that challenge.
And so I have like a paper brand that I built and designed myself and keep adapting all
the time as soon as I learn, oh that's kind of a weakness for me, I build something
in and oh that's a tendency where I make trade-offs that not pleased with later, I build
something in so that it act on me.
And this really is the whole idea of effortless, right?
Like effortless execution is I don't want to trust my weaknesses.
I want to build a system that means my weaknesses become something like irrelevant.
That's what I'm trying to build.
So one of those things, like I mean literally physically, I take it with me everywhere.
My personalized plan, I take everywhere, literally everywhere I go, I will have it.
And so in it, I have the key relationships of my life, right?
And that for me is very simple, that's my wife Anna, that's our four children, they
are the thousand exes in my life.
And then there is a select group of friends.
And then there's a much broader group of people that I also am building relationships
and making sure I'm checking in on the really matters to me.
If I fail in those relationships, then probably everything's probably okay.
But if I fail in my relationship with the thousand exes, it's like no, nothing's okay.
You're like, what my wife Anna, like let me use that as an example.
I mean, it's an old saying, but it's like if things are bad in your marriage, it doesn't
matter how good anything else is, nothing's good.
And if everything's good in your marriage, like it doesn't matter how bad everything
else is, everything is good.
It's like this is so disproportionately important.
And so I don't think I can separate my answer to your question without saying, yeah, it's
actually the establishment building of this family that means there is a permanent system
in place to help me remember what matters and who matters.
When do you revisit that?
In other words, if you're carrying this with you everywhere and it seems like, and again,
I'll just, I'll add in my thoughts and then you can refine as we go.
But it seems like unlike a lot of folks, and this would include me who probably start
with what should I do, right?
What should my priorities be?
Seems like you are starting with Koo.
And if you have this constant reminder, which acts as a system, I'm wondering how you
use that system, right?
Because I think about my phone, I have 1,379,000, make of that up, notes on my phone.
And I'm like, oh, I, this is so important.
I'm definitely going to come back and read this.
And 99% of the time, I never look at it again.
So how do you use this list of people?
The way that my binder works, like the first section is all about direction.
Sort of, let's say, essential intent for my whole life.
Like what really, really matters?
It's as succinct as possible.
It's a few pages in total.
That's always the place to begin, right?
Because I want to come back and get centered in what I have come to learn is closest approximation
to the purpose of it all.
And I literally have to come back to it, right?
Like you've heard the metaphor before, but you know, the idea of a flight is off track
90% of the time, like an airplane literally only gets to where it's supposed to get to
at the time it's supposed to get there because it readjusts constantly along the way.
And I feel like that myself.
So like, for example, I don't think that I'm better at being an essentialist than anybody
else.
I think if there's any advantage I've had in that journey, it's that I just really admit
that I'm a non-essentialist easily.
And so it's this idea, like there's only two kinds of people in the world.
There are people who are lost and there are people who know they are lost.
It's like, I know how easy it is to get lost.
Never heard that.
That's good.
I'm looking at definitely I will look properly at those few pages once a week, right?
Like every Sunday morning, I will look through that.
I will read through it all in the long schedules.
That's in your calendar.
Yes.
Sunday morning.
That's right.
And, but then at other times through the week, if I feel that sensation, I know people
feel this.
You know, that just sort of feels a bit crazy.
It's feeling just a bit frenetic and friendly.
Like, what?
I just texted Anna yesterday like, Matt, in the morning, I'm like, Matt, I just feel so
lost.
And I don't mean for the last six months, I mean for the last half hour.
I mean, what is, I don't feel so lost right now.
Okay, that's right.
That's the signal.
Go back, get centered.
Take a moment.
What really is the intent?
What matters in your life?
Okay.
Now from that, you know, and then you start designing your day and I have some thoughts
specifically about that, but you know, you're asking the year process, I guess you're asking
my system.
So that's once a week.
Okay.
So for per day, let's get to that.
So I've come to call this the one, two, three method.
I do not do it every day.
Man, I wish I was doing it every day, but I do it more often than I don't do it.
And it's simply this and it has to be written down for me in paper and pen, like not in
technology, free of technology, and I try now more often than not to have this power
half an hour, right?
Like where I don't go to text an email or apps or my phone for the first 30 minutes.
And I do that.
I haven't been doing great at that recently, but I still do that more often than I don't.
And so in that, then instead of doing that, I'm in my planner and I'm literally writing
okay, what's the essential for today?
What's the one most essential today?
Most important person, most important action for that person.
Number two is I write two things that are essential, but urgent.
That's like, you know, it could be all sorts of things.
Any, you know, whatever's got a deadline on it, finish this writing assignment by this
deadline.
It could be finished these financial things for, you know, retirement, documentation stuff.
But I don't really want to get to, but I know it's important and there's a deadline.
And then the third thing is three things that are maintenance items, right?
So that's just, I mean, that's anything that if I don't do it, it's not important today,
but if I don't do it, it will make life a lot harder later.
It's like an effortless strategy.
And so that's the one, two, three method, right?
One essential two things that essential, urgent three maintenance items.
Would you mind, Greg, giving me just some concrete examples so we can visualize what this
looks like, they don't have to be real, I mean, they could be hypothetical.
But just to give an example of what a one, two, three might look like, I'll just sort
of talk through, as I talked through yesterday.
So yesterday I was in California, in LA, or an event as doing a keynote.
I had my oldest daughter grace with me.
So the, when I was, takes an analyte, oh man, I'm just kind of feeling a bit lost.
After I expressed that, I was like, okay, get focused.
What is the essential for today?
The number one thing, oh, it's grace is here.
It's my relationship with grace.
I need to make sure that we connect today that we're not just with each other all day.
Like I tried to travel with one of my children at 80% of the time for keynotes.
And so that's built into the system, but you still have to be present and connected.
And so that was the priority.
The two things that are essential and urgent, right, like one of them, the keynote, right,
that's coming up.
And I don't really know how to phone it in on a keynote.
And I certainly fear phoning it in because it's like such an opportunity missed.
The thing is coming like that, that moment will arrive and you're going to be on stage
and it was for, there's 500 people.
It's the non-trivial event and all the senior leaders of the organization.
And that was one of the key urgent tasks.
And then the next urgent task was to do it.
And family members who won't get into the precise details of it, but there's some health
challenges involved.
So I've sort of taken it upon myself to say, okay, how could I maybe kind of be a little
bit of a coach, which is not really the natural relationship I have with them.
But I'm risking it because I think it really matters.
And they seem to have responded really positively.
And so I wanted to keep that going.
That would be the next thing.
And then of course, maintenance items from there.
Maintenance items literally included was a far out of the couple of days before California.
So like literally I have to unpack everything, put everything back in its place.
Make sure that that's just in order so that you don't get behind on those things.
I needed to respond to a key email about a contract that we've been in negotiation
with over the last couple of months.
That would be an item of maintenance.
So when you're talking about the few pages that you would review on Sunday mornings,
what would be an example of something from those few pages?
Because I feel like this would be very helpful for me in the sense that I feel like I am
pretty good at staying on task.
I'm pretty good at keeping the important things in mind and majoring in the major things.
However, there are certainly times when and weeks when I get a little lost and end up
doing a lot of minor things.
And at the end of the week, couldn't really point to what I've achieved.
There might be some examples from those few pages if you don't mind, Sherry.
I have two pages at the beginning that I don't share anywhere, but it's very carefully
worded.
The highest expression of what I think the fullest manifestation of my life can be.
It's not goals.
It's beyond that.
It's like who you can be, what your most important relationships can look like.
And it's sacred.
That's how I feel about that.
And so that's all the most important centering part of it.
Because literally, if you don't get clear on that, nothing else matters in the system.
If you execute superbly on things that end up not being what your life needed to be
about, then it doesn't matter.
Efficiently doing what should not be done at all, of course, is like to form a madness.
Like it's you speedily going the wrong direction.
Next up, Dr. Nolan Williams, Associate Professor at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral
Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and Director of the Stanford Brain
Stimulation Lab.
So Dirtra is maybe in her 50s, 60s female in Bay Area who has suffered from bipolar disorder
much for life and pretty successfully treated for the mania side of things over the years
as a psychiatrist taking care of that partner, Marin, and happened to slip into this pretty
severe depressive episode.
A couple of years back, it's been maybe like four or five years now.
And her psychiatrist had actually gone to see a talk that I gave at this mood disorders
day.
Like the year before, we were talking this really early on when we were working on our
rapid acting and her stimulation approach.
So the psychiatrist had heard the talk and then her patient kind of fell into this really
bad suicidal depression.
And so she reached out to me to treat her and I got on the phone.
I'll never forget it was like a Wednesday and I got on the phone with her psychiatrist
and she was telling me symptomatically how bad off she was and I was like, I don't think
we can treat her out patient.
She's like way too ill.
I think she's going to the impatient hospital.
So essentially gave her some information on how to do that.
So I see her the next morning and she's in really bad shape.
What does that mean?
Like how did that show up?
When people are at the level where they like kind of definitively need to go into the hospital,
they're not really totally communicative anymore and they've got some cognitive issues sometimes
and so in her case, she couldn't look you in the eyes.
You look at the ground and she was doing this rocking thing.
What you can see in pretty severe depression is kind of this kind of tonia overlap symptoms.
You know, I mean she's like at the very end of the spectrum or the highest severity patients
we've ever treated.
So she was like a score of 50 in the moderate of 60, like very, very severe, right?
And just rocking and not really talking and husband's recounting everything.
She had bipolar one.
She was hypomanic, I think, or manic.
Like two weeks before and then dropped into this very, very severe depression.
So it was her daughter and the husband.
They're sitting in the room with me and I said, they want me to treat her and I say,
listen, like it's Friday, we go Monday to Friday, like you have to find a way basically
to keep her well from now until Monday and that means...
And by well you mean safe, like preventing self-hunt.
Yeah, exactly.
So keep her not having a suicide attempt basically from now until Monday.
She was very suicidal and I said, you're going to have to like take every knife.
I don't think any guns, but gun, chemical like scissors, everything out of the house, the
whole, all of it has to go.
And you guys have to be on like a 24 hour, you know, watch until Monday.
And so Monday morning rolls around and we bring her in.
And it's the craziest thing.
We had like a repair on the motor threshold coil, which is the coil you use to kind of
get calibrated on the intensity and it shorted out the device.
Blue, the capacitor bank up on the first stimulator.
Blue your flux capacitor.
Yeah.
It like 7am.
And I mean, you can't imagine how stressful that was.
So we had a second machine, I'll tell you about this later, we were running this, you
know, trait hypnotizability modulation study and it was over at the scanner.
So it was like pretty far away and this thing's way like 100 pounds.
So I had to send my team over there, run over there and grab it, bring it over and luckily
we were able to kind of get her going and treat her with a second machine.
She was in really, really bad shape that morning and by 5 o'clock that afternoon, she was
basically normal.
And the next morning she was like totally zeroed out and completely normal, meaning no
suicidality, meaning no depression or nothing.
I mean, she looked like any person walk in the street, like totally normal.
And that was in 24 hours.
And we've seen this with bipolar patients quicker, right?
It'll happen really quick for like a bipolar one patient, you can get it done in sometimes
in a day.
Just for clarity, by get it done and don't worry people listening, we're going to define
terms and get into all this, but you're talking about accelerated TMS.
Yeah, we're talking about accelerated TMS.
Our rapid acting or stimulation approach, we're able to get people out of these states
in an normal mood, you know, and in short periods of time generally, like 2.6 days on average
for major depression patients, but it's quicker with bipolar, we've seen especially with
bipolar one patients.
So she was totally out of it in 24 hours.
I remember it was like right around July 4th or something.
And so we, you know, the whole team left, I guess we'll talk about caffeine later too.
So my wife and I are like big Phyllis coffee fans.
And so I'll never forget this either.
So we go down to the Phyllis coffee in Palo Alto.
After I saw them, I'll never forget it Clark Leaman.
Her husband was also went to Phyllis, I know I was going to be there.
And I look over and the guys just kind of stare at me.
And I was like, hey, how are you?
I just saw like 10 minutes ago.
And he's like, I still don't understand what happened.
And it makes sense, right?
To take somebody from the worst you've ever seen them mood wise to normal in such a short
period of time was remarkable for him.
And you know, it ended up being that, you know, after that period, they actually went out
and really were helpful with a lot of the philanthropy that led to the trials being funded.
And ultimately the clearance and Clark and Dirtra really were advocates and have continued
to be advocates for this to kind of get it out into the world.
And he, it was totally based off of that experience of feeling him feeling helpless, you
know, and going from that to feeling like it was all solved.
And I think she went maybe a year completely symptomatic and it ended up needing it retreated
again at some point, but gets like these little touch ups here and there and is able to stay
well on going and depression as they tell me depression's not her problem anymore.
And so that's good.
She's a great illustrative case of what this can do.
And I think with the promise of it can be.
Next up, Noah Kagan, founder of app sumo.com and author of Million Dollar Weekend, the surprisingly
simple way to launch a seven figure business in 48 hours.
Just to share another story of that, I noticed through all of my work that I was like, I
like deals, I like marketing and I think the software thing is going to be big.
How do I do this very quickly to find out if there's something people actually want?
And that's the reason you have weekend because you have 52 chances to change it.
If it doesn't work one, guess what?
You have another one and another one.
And at least understand a process.
You're so good at this, you're so good at thinking about that.
So how do you experiment?
And so with app sumo, I was like, I think there's something with these three things.
I'm going to try to do a weekend.
I called emailed Imger, this college kid, said, hey, I want to do software deals.
I'll pay $7 for when I sell.
For him, he's like, I'll get free money.
That's cool.
So it called email.
It was just, and it was funny.
It had to find the college good to call email because I went to Imger.com.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah.
No, no, not a right now.
I thought it was some like name for Mazder by John.
Okay.
No, no, no, no.
The website.
I knew that the problem with software deals like good prices.
I knew that I'm a redditor and I was like, well, that's where the customers are.
And then that's who the customers are and where they are.
And I was like, they want Imger.
That was the most popular product at the time.
That was all over it.
So basically, cold emailed Allen, just Allen at Imger.com.
It was like, hey, I want to promote you.
$7 for deal.
You get free money.
It's no cost to you.
And then I was like, well, I can get this posted on Reddit.
And I even cold emailed the founders of Reddit and was able to get them to give me free ads.
Yeah.
How did you do that?
Security asked.
I know.
Why would they give you free ads?
I don't really know, actually.
That's bullshit.
No, no, no.
What was the pitch, though?
The pitch was too full.
One, I said I knew someone they knew.
So I worked with Chris Smoke when I started previous companies.
He knew Chris slow.
So we're at Chris Smoke's system.
So when you're sending an email, it's really strong subject line or any messages like
referred by blah.
At least you're going to get open or reply.
Said, hey, I'm working on it.
By the way, don't bullshit that because you'll get fact checked.
I just got someone fact checked with me.
Like Jordan Hart, you know, Jordan Hartman, you're an manager.
Yeah.
He's a good buddy.
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I didn't let all these other things get in the way.
Yeah.
And also, that super primitive back and that you're talking about, highly manual, but high
touch with the customer.
Yes.
Yes.
It gives you a lot of really valuable input.
And even though we've been talking about the word scale is kind of a four-letter word.
In one of the very first episodes of Masters of Scale that Reid Hoffman did, he interviewed
Brian Cheskiff, Airbnb, and it's a great episode.
One of the key tenets in the beginning for Airbnb was do things at Don't Scale.
Those things tended to be highly manual, helping people take photographs of their places,
and what they learned then led to a lot of what we've seen.
Next up, Dr. Andy Galpin, Professor of Kinesiology and co-director of the Center for Sports
Performance at California State University, Fullerton, and host of the new podcast, Perform.
Last year, slash this year, do you have a plan for supplementation?
What I have done over the last, say, nine months, which has, and this is going to sound like
a shameless plug, some involved with these guys.
But probably what I would do this ski season is I would have a never-ending supply of
Maui Newi venison sticks, like the unsweetened, like no additional sugar.
And that has proven for me to be just about the easiest way to get nutrient-dense 30 grams
of protein in the morning.
I can just throw those in my ski jacket, too.
So that will probably take the place of eggs, also just for convenience.
In terms of supplementation, I would say last year, I kept it pretty simple.
I would say I was taking magnesium, some electrolytes, generally magnesium in the morning.
And then I went back and forth on creatine.
I know that there are so many different benefits to creatine.
I was cognizant of not wanting to carry too much weight, like additional water weight,
if I was going to retain a lot more water.
Oh, yep.
So use that intermittently.
I would often use that around cross-training, so I was like, kind of going to the gym.
Athletic greens, again, this can sound like a plug, but I've been using that stuff since
2000, whatever, 9 or 10.
In supplementation, we could say, you know, I could be brief here if you'd like.
But absolutely making sure magnesium is there.
Magnesium is released in sweat at very low quantities, but it's still enough when you sweat
in the amount that you're potentially going to sweat.
Oh, yes, also with skiing, like I'm going to sweat my ass off.
Yep.
I'll be working.
So we want to make sure that that stuff is high.
Creatine is great.
If you're going to use it, I wouldn't use it the way you did.
Okay.
Or don't.
Okay, so having it like on certain days or not is probably not making it daily or not.
Yeah, because it takes a chronic effect for it to really start to matter unless you're
going a really high dosage.
So I wouldn't be super concerned about the water retention aspect of it because you're
going to be a plus.
Yeah, let's go say we're having a good time with that anyways, right?
Any recommendation if you try and doesn't work, you don't like it.
And what are we talking about?
It's like 5 grams a day or what would be?
That's the number.
That's the standard.
That's what one throws out.
But I would say the same thing of like like the protein.
Yeah.
Canally for guys, our size is fine.
I'm probably going higher.
I'm also never measuring creatine to be totally honest.
Like I'm just taking big scoops and throwing it in there.
Like seeing what happens.
There's actually really interesting data on the more recent stuff, the more interesting
stuff on creatine is around bone health, brain health and overall even like mood.
Brain health is no joke.
Yeah, but that's been 10 to 20 grams a day.
I have experimented with that chronically and just looking at verbal, I mean, recall.
Yeah.
Like verbal acuity and stuff in podcasts.
I mean, I've looked at this someone.
It's end of one.
It's just self reporting.
But for me, it's pretty noticeable.
You don't have to do end of one.
There's data.
There's tons of it out there that's nothing's perfect.
Yeah.
There's actually another review article just this week came out also on creatine and brain
health.
So whether you're looking at dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's stuff like that, there's
no perfect answer there.
But you can see the data.
Anything else you'd add to the list?
The rest of it would be dependent upon your labs and your physiology, what we knew there.
You could throw in your never going to be hurt for the most part, adding vitamin D.
It's a very common one.
You're going to be on the sun all day.
Well, half of my face will be on the sun all day.
There'll be significant sun blockage, I hope.
So yeah.
Yeah, I did supplement with D last year.
Yeah.
And fish oil.
I also supplemented with fish oil.
Yeah.
I have placebo who knows, there's probably literature out there on this, but I found it
to seem mainly help asleep quite a bit.
Those would be the standard kind of without knowing anything about you.
You throw in that cocktail, you're talking about things that are fairly cheap.
Yeah.
Yeah, again, relatively.
Yeah.
They have very little cross reaction.
Unlike minerals.
Yeah.
Unlike even high doses vitamins.
You're playing a game there that you may want to be a bit careful of.
But things like vitamin D and things like omega-3.
Meaning just unintended sun.
Unintended, yeah.
Side effects, yeah.
Yeah, you don't want to know what problem you're solving really, and so you just sort of
throw on stuff in there.
That's connecting to happen to anything, even vitamin D and heavy metals.
It can be concerned there, but it's a very rare thing.
So most of the time, like you're fine.
I feel comfortable saying like most people can jump on that train for all those and
be totally fine.
That's but not least Chris Beresford Hill, Chief Creative Officer of the Americas at
BBDO Worldwide.
So who is David?
And what does this mean?
And any other lessons learned or principles?
So David is the Worldwide Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of BBDO.
I worked for him for eight years, and I've kind of not shy of saying he was the best boss
I ever had.
He was very clear and he was very consistent, and that's what you need in leadership.
And so you could show him a bunch of work, and he would tell you what he liked and what
he chose right away.
And that was that.
And he didn't need to split hairs.
He would come give you his response, and he knew that he would make a bigger impact
in this giant company by going around and saying, I think this is the most right thing,
the most creative thing, the most interesting thing, and just go and do that and not be afraid
to make decisions, create progress.
And by the way, if he picked something that was wrong, what'd he do?
We'd have to go back and do it again, or maybe we had one that wasn't as good as it
could have been, but he never inhibited progress.
He always facilitated progress by doing that.
Meaning, sort of catalyzing some type of forward motion.
Exactly.
He never would say, let me take this back, let me think about it, or let's pull more people
into it.
He would just give you these gut reads, and it always gave you permission to go forward.
And it really taught that someone who's really pushing everyone and keeping everyone in motion
just happens to always be at the center of so much.
And that's why, for that eight years, I mean, the agency was one of the most awarded in
the world.
And there was my little corner of the universe, but there was all these other corners,
and he just amplified himself by empowering his people and saying a lot of yes.
Sometimes a no, but he was always game to move forward.
Were you able to emulate that at the time in some small way, or is that something that
you were only able to implement later as you had more and more direct reports?
Or I used it.
I used it then because BBO at that time was David's place.
So David said to do it, David said, let's go.
I don't think we ever got to look at an org chart or reporting structure.
I don't think we ever knew that that carried mustard, but a lot of us loved the decisions
he was making.
And so enough of us would constantly say, that's what David wants.
And so whether or not that was be all end all, it became be all end all.
And so we were all involved in to make moves by myself.
Couldn't there wasn't much I could do.
It turns into making your own decisions.
No, no, I was kind of probably working through my own process, but it was invaluable
later because you do see people that in a high creative role, you've really got to make
things happen.
And you will see some people in very senior roles that really gild the lily and that really
obsess over such a great expression.
It is. And by the way, the building the lily of someone who's looking at a two minute
case study for an award show and changing the mix on the music eight times and you're
like, listen, it doesn't really matter.
And there's times to craft the hell out of it, but there's also this step back.
And I think in our industry and in creativity, fast decisions are really stepping back,
you know, as opposed to getting in the weeds.
Can you say more about that, what I'd like to hear you riff on a little bit is how you
think about fast decisions.
This is a source of constant fascination for me is something I revisit a lot.
To what extent do I prioritize like speed and just catalyzing things happening versus honing,
minimizing mistakes?
I think that's what it comes down to for a lot of people is like, what error rate are
you willing to accept?
Right?
Is it 10%?
I know it's hard to track these things, but is it like you're willing to accept a kind
of breakage of making the wrong call 10% of the time because the speed net, net over
time is just a huge competitive advantage and good for what you're doing.
That's a long question, but with the very mental lead of how do you think about that?
I remember that at the end of the day, it's subjective.
It's not mathematics.
It's not mathematical.
And so, you know, I've learned to trust myself and I've learned that if you AB something
too long, you're lost.
So I think the more I get stuck in something, the more I realize I need to make a fast
decision because I don't think obsession when you're really deciding, go, no, go, good
idea, bad idea.
Excited about this, not excited about this.
I don't think time is your friend.
I think time pulls everything.
It slows everything down.
It takes the energy out of it.
So I think sometimes you just got to let it fly.
And then by the way, you can correct and you can change as you go.
I mean, I've approved ads that wound up being completely different ads that were really
proud of.
So that's the other thing is that nothing is totally fixed.
It also strikes me that there are so many things just pulling from my own experience that
get worse with time and more deliberation.
Like deals and just deal structures, right, negotiating, often in my experience.
It's like the longer it takes, the more that is a harbinger of pain to come, right,
or just a bad wasteful outcome that ends up stalling out.
There are so many things like that where it's like, okay, if there's in some speed to
this, likely the outcome's going to be worse.
For sure.
Time kills all deals.
Yeah.
For sure.
And it kills momentum and it kills energy.
And it takes people.
So if you've got people going, if you need to take something offline for yourself, just
know that their muscles are going to cool.
They're going to take a break and they're going to restart.
And many times the wrong decision can become the right decision.
And now here are the bios for all the guests.
My guest today is a guest who is very relevant for me personally right now, Greg McEwan.
And he is relevant because he is easily one of my favorite thinkers on all things related
to effectiveness, efficiency, and at the end of the day, quality of life, and keeping
your priority or priorities top of mind so that you are laser focused to do what really
matters the high leverage things, which are sometimes the small things done with relentless
focus that deliver incredibly, incredibly important outcomes.
So let's get to it.
This is a walk-in talk with Greg McEwan.
How to find your purpose and master essentialism in 2024 or in the new year if you're listening
to this later.
And the walk-in talk format is something I wanted to experiment with because let's face
it, most of us sit too much.
And if we consider sitting the new smoking on some level with its health implications,
I want to give credit to Kelly Starrett, who is also a multiple time podcast guest for
I believe coining that expression.
We should get out and walk more.
Part of what makes us human, part of what enabled our brains to become these incredible
machines they have become.
So powered on less electricity than a light bulb, by the way, is walking the fact that
we perambulate the fact that we walk historically much of the day.
And I wanted to also contend with some back issues that I have that are exacerbated by
I extended sitting and many different health issues are correlated to extended sitting.
So this is a direct oppositional approach to perhaps the YouTube build TV show approach,
which is this is audio only.
And when I'm recording this, I am out walking.
I have a high fidelity headset on and Greg is doing the same.
We are doing something good for our bodies while we are having a fun and productive conversation.
And my suggestion to everyone listening is if you can do a walk and listen, there is
no reason for you to be parked in front of a laptop watching a video contributing to your
own physical demise hour by hour.
If you can be out walking around listening to this also doing something good for your
body and therefore for your entire life.
So get out, try a walk and listen while we walk and talk.
You can be part of the conversation and that's enough preamble on the format.
But I really feel strongly that this is something I'm going to do more of.
I love to doing it.
And my hope is that you will join us in walking more.
It is the cure all for so many things.
Greg McEwan, who is he?
You can find him on Twitter at Gregory McEwan, spelled MCKEOWN.
Greg is the author of Two New York Times Best Sellers, Megabest Sellers, Essentialism,
The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, which is a book I have read many times and then I have
reread my Kindle highlights probably 15, 20 times.
And his second book, Effortless Subtitle, Make It Easier To Do What Matters Most.
Together they have sold more than 2 million copies in 37 languages.
He's also a speaker, host of the Greg McEwan podcast and founder of the Essentialism Academy
with students from 96 countries, more than 175,000 people have also signed up to his one
minute Wednesday newsletter.
He is currently doing a doctorate at the University of Cambridge and he is, as I mentioned,
easily one of my favorite thinkers on many, many, many, many different areas.
And he is intensely practical.
Originally from London, England, Greg and his wife Anna are parents to four children
and you can find everything Greg at Greg McEwan.com.
My guest is Nolan Williams MD.
You can find him on Twitter at Nolan Rye, RY Williams.
And Nolan is an associate professor within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral
Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and Director of the Stanford Brain
Stimulation Lab.
And we're going to go deep into a lot related to brain stimulation.
He has a broad background in clinical neuroscience and is triple board certified in general neurology,
general psychiatry and behavioral neurology in neuropsychiatry.
Themes of his work include examining spaced learning theory and neuro stimulation techniques,
development and mechanistic understanding of rapid acting antidepressants and identifying
objective biomarkers that predict neuro modulation responses in treatment resistant neuropsychiatric
conditions.
That is a long way of saying that he specializes in looking at, I would say, and these are
my words, of course, cutting edge treatments and new technologies that can be applied to
treatment resistant psychiatric disorders.
Let's just say so treatment resistant depression.
Is it a notoriously difficult to address like OCD?
There are many others.
Nolan's work resulted in an FDA clearance for the world's first non-invasive rapid-acting
neuro modulation approach for treatment resistant depression.
And I've tested this myself and we get into this in the conversation.
He has published papers in Brain American Journal of Psychiatry and Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
Results from his studies have gained attention in science and the New England Journal of
Medicine Journal Watch.
We received two Narsad Young Investigator Awards, the Gerald L. Claremont Award, and the
National Institute of Mental Health Bio-Bahavioral Research Award for Innovative New Scientists.
Again, you can find him on Twitter or X at NolanRy Williams.
We'll link to this in the show notes as well.
And you can find him online at NolanRWilliams.com.
No, Kagan.
Tim Ferriss.
Tim Ferriss.
It's been a minute.
Nice to see you.
Great to see you.
Really?
So our last rodeo from an audio perspective was ages ago.
Number 75 on the podcast, now close to 700 episodes.
Wow.
Yeah.
And at that time, it was how Facebook's number 30 employee quickly built four businesses
and gained 40 pounds with weight training.
I feel like my headlines have deteriorated over time.
They become very set of pedantic and pedestrian and descriptive.
That is better copies.
So I need to work on that copy.
Maybe you drafted that copy yourself, actually, for all I know that could have been the case.
We have a lot to talk about.
But for people who don't have any context, can you give a little self intro?
Great to see you first off.
Yeah, great to see you too.
Great to see you.
Now we're at $8 million businesses.
This is pretty amazing.
I was number 30 at Facebook, number 4 at Mint.com.
I was a cubicle monkey at Intel for a very brief moment, which sucked, which led me to this
entrepreneurship journey.
And then I've started so many different businesses that failed some work and now I help run
appsu.com, number one, side online for software deals would do about $80 million a year,
which is unreal.
It started bootstrapped in a weekend.
I couldn't believe it when I saw that.
I can't believe it.
I remember day one of appsu.
Effectively.
It's back in the day.
It's been crazy.
And you're a big help with it.
You're superly help with getting it going.
So thank you.
You're welcome.
YouTube channel has done pretty well in million subs.
Got a book in a million dollar weekend coming out to help people.
Very similar complimentary to for our work week.
And we're here today.
Andy Galpin.
Who is Andy?
Andy Galpin is a tenured full professor at California State University Fullerton, where
he is also a co-director of the Center for Sport Performance and Founder Director of
the Biochemistry and Molecular Exercise Physiology Laboratory.
He is a human performance scientist with a PhD in human bioenergetics and more than 100
peer-reviewed publications and presentations.
Turns out he has done research.
His team has done research on many things that have been on this show.
I didn't realize some of it in advance.
Dr. Galpin has worked with elite athletes, including all stars, all pros and MPs, Sai
Young and major winners, Olympic gold medalists, and world titleists and contenders across
many, many different sports that include MMA.
So for instance, UFC, MLB, NBA, PGA, NFL, all the acronyms, Olympics, boxing, military
special forces, and much more.
He is also a co-founder of Bio-Molecular Athlete by Tality Blueprint, Absolute Rest and Rapid
Health and Performance.
You can find all things Andy Galpin at AndyGalpin.com and you can find him on Twitter and Instagram
at Dr. Andy Galpin, spelled G-A-L-P-I-N.
The guest, Chris Beresford Hill, is best known as a creative leader in advertising.
He's an admin.
He's a very, very good admin.
He started off as an unpaid intern.
The journey is wild.
His technique is highly effective.
But he's not just an admin.
This conversation is really about coming up with good ideas.
How do you come up with original and good ideas that not only can say sell product, but
also change narratives, change stories, change the stories people tell, change culture
on some level.
And I loved this conversation.
So let me get to the bio and then I will give some teasers.
Chris Beresford Hill is one of the most sought after creative leaders in advertising and
has led brands with a combined market cap of over $1 trillion.
He was recently named Chief Creative Officer of the Americas, BBDO.
Previously, Chris served as North America President and Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy
and Chief Creative Officer at TBWA Shia Day.
His work for clients like Guinness, Mountain Dew, Dove, Workday, Adidas, FedEx, McDonald's,
HBO, and Foot Locker have driven sales while putting dent after dent into pop culture.
But it's not just these huge brands.
We also get into the early stories of how cold email to Mark Cuban changed the game for
him completely.
So we do talk about the super scrappy bootstrapped, very, very novice days when he made a mark
and slowly built his trajectory up to the stratosphere back to the bio.
Christmas teams have won every award for creativity and effectiveness many times over.
They even have, and I didn't even realize this was a thing, five campaigns in the permanent
collection at MoMA is been named to Adweeks list of best creatives, Adweeks Creative 100,
Business Insiders most creative people in advertising and the ad age 40 under 40 back
when he was under 40.
And you can find Chris Barrett's Ferd Hill on LinkedIn.
That is the best place to connect.
And we'll link to that in the show notes at Tim.log slash podcast, but it is LinkedIn.com
slash I N slash Chris Barrett's Ferd Hill, the E R E S F O R D L L.
Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off.
And that is five bullet Friday.
Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun
before the weekend?
Between one and a half and two million people subscribed to my free newsletter, my
super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.
Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.
It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things
I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.
Kind of like my diary of cool things.
It often includes articles on reading, books on reading, albums perhaps gadgets, gizmos,
all sorts of tech tricks and so on.
It gets sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast.
Guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and
then I share them with you.
So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before
you head off for the weekend, something to think about.
If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blogslashfriday.
Type that into your browser.
Tim.blogslash.
Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.
Thanks for listening.
