This episode is brought to you by HelixSleep.
Helix Sleep is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your sleeppreferences.
Their lineup includes 14 uniquemattresses, including a collection of luxurymodels, a mattress for big and tallsleepers, that's notme.
And even a mattress made specifically forkids.
They have models with memory foam layers to provide optimal pressure relief if you sleep on yourside, as I often do and did last night on one of theirbeds.
Models with more responsive foam to cradle your body for essential support in stomach and back sleeping positions and on andon.
They have youcovered. So how will you know which Helix mattress works best for you and yourbody?
Take the Helix Sleep Quiz at helixleep.com slash Tim and find your perfect mattress in less than twominutes.
Personally, for the last fewyears, I have been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxmattress.
Three of which is insane to think about and past one billiondownloads.
Tocelebrate, I've curated some of the best of thebest.
Some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the lastdecade.
I could not be more excited to give you these super comboepisodes.
Andinternally, we've been calling these the super combo episodes because my goal is to encourage you toyes, enjoy the householdnames, the super famousfolks, but to also introduce you to lesser known people I considerstars.
These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many ofyou.
Ofcourse, they got lost in a busy newscycle.
Perhaps you missed anepisode.
Just trust me on thisone.
We went to great pains to put these pairingstogether.
And for the bios of allguests, you can find that and more at Tim.log slashcombo.
And now without furtherado, please enjoy and thank you forlistening.
Firstup, DerekSivers, formermusician,programmer, Ted Speaker and circus clown who sold a professional musiciannow.
This isamazing. So I said yes toeverything, which is going to come uplater, youknow, with the hellyeah, or no thing that I think it's really smart to switchstrategies.
But when you're earlier in yourcareer, I think the beststrategies, you just say yes toeverything, every pillie littlegig.
You just never know what are the lotterytickets.
So this one ended up being a real lottery ticket for me because as soon as I joined thecircus,again, I'm18.
I had no stageexperience.
And after a fewgigs, theysaid,hey, so the previous musician used to go out and open the show with this big theme song and get everybody up anddancing.
Could you dothat? And Isaid,yeah,sure.
And another gig or twolater, theysaid,hey, the previous musician used to close the show also with that themesong.
Could you dothat? Isaid,yeah,sure.
And then it was the previous musician used to go out in between every act and like get the audience to applaud and thank them and introduce the nextact.
Do you think you could dothat?
Isaid,yeah,sure. And I was really bad at it atfirst, but I got goodeventually.
I became like the ringleader MC of this whole circus and I was 18 yearsold.
So if you were to go to thecircus, it would have looked like myshow.
And I did that for 10 years from the age of 18 to28.
I did over a thousand shows and eventually by theway, got paid more than 75bucks.
Eventually I was getting like 300 bucks a show and it became my full time living and I even bought a houseact.
I think I was trying to be cool because I thought that people were judgingme,right?
And shesaid, these people came here for ashow, go give them what they came herefor.
And so one time I decided to go out there and just be over the topridiculous.
I went on stage and Isaid, ladies andgentlemen, what you're about to see is one of the most amazing things youget.
We have an elephant that is going to be coming from backstage and I did this whole thing and the fast talking voice and real like pizzazz toit.
And the audience loved it and I came backstage and shesaid, there yougo.
That's what people come to the circusfor.
So and chemo Williams told the story to myfamily.
Hesaid, youknow, I tell people all thetime.
I get all these kids thatwant, youknow, want to befamous.
And Isay,yep, show up my studio at 9a.m.
and hesaid, nobody everdoes.
Nobody has their shit together to show up when I tell themto.
And hesaid, so I'd honestly forgotten that there was this kid that called from a classifiedad.
That was his wife sayingno.
I gotit. He was notno. He waslike,yeah, I can'tsure.
Here's a seven foothurdle.
Let's hear youdo.Exactly.
So hesaid,so, youknow, my doorbell rings some Thursday morning at or listen to how did it come about and what is the gist ofthat?
There was a music conference in Australia that I had told my friend I would go with hertoo.
It wasn't even like the conference themselves were really expectingme.
It was myfriend, ArielHyatt, is one of the best publicists Iknow.
And she was speaking at that conference and asked if I would come with her as like a co-presenter in her mentor session orsomething.
So I had saidyes, like six months bething.
Ithink, youknow, am I really excited aboutthat?
And youknow, almost every time the answer'sno.
So I say no to almosteverything.
And then occasionally something will comeup.
And a little surprise will be dropped in my lap like this thing that happened just two months ago called the now now nowproject, which we don't even really need to talkabout.
The details don't matter somuch, but it was just something that popped up that seemed really interesting and people reallywanted.
And luckily because I say no to almosteverything, I had the time in my life to make itflourish.
So for the last like in VanillaSky, Tom Cruise is like the owner of this big publishingcompany, but he gets all caught up with these crazy women and gets too overwhelmed with his life and focusing on his own happiness and or unhappiness and allthat.
And pretty soon his company is just wrestled away fromhim.
And Ithought,oh, I don't want that tohappen.
Like I don't want to just plug myears, close myeyes, run away and have my company taken away fromme.
I need to deal with my problems instead of running fromthem.
So I canceled the trip to Hawaii and went into work the next day and decided to fix thisthing.
So then next time somebody asked me aquestion, hedid, he'd clearly realize that he could just go first drink the water and then go eat thehay.
So my advice to my third year old self is don't be adonkey.
You can do everything you want todo.
You just need foresight andpatience.
Right. Say for somebodylistening, if you're 30 years old now and say you have like five different things you want topursue,well, then you can do each one of those for 10 years and you'll have them all done by the time you're80.
You're probably going to live to be80.
So it's ridiculousto, Imean, it sounds ridiculous to plan to the age of 80 when you're30,right?
But it's a fact that it's probablycoming.
So you might as well take advantage ofit.
It's like use thefuture.
That way you can fully focus on one direction at a time without feeling conflicted or distracted because you know that you'll get to the others in thefuture.
And I think you'dalso, I just to build onthat, Iagree.
I think mostpeople, and this is not something I've thought up on myown, but they overestimate what they can achieve in a day or aweek.
So they have 20 items on there to dothis, but they underestimate what they can achieve in a year or even twoyears.
Yeah. So you can get to earn more on your savings and that's wealthrun.
Wealth run is an app that helps you save and invest yourmoney.
And right now you can earn5%APY.
That's the annual percentage yield with the wealth front cashaccount.
That's more than 10 times more interest than if you left your money in a savings account at the averagebank, according toFDIC.gov.
So whywait? Earn5% on your cashtoday.
Plus it's up to $8 million in FDIC insurance through partnerbanks.
When you open an accounttoday, you'll get an extra $50 bonus with a deposit of $500 ormore.
Imean, otherthings, especially inAsia, was I could be very happy withvery, verylittle.
And go onto websites and stuff and look at the minimum amount ofstuff, the food say that you need tolive.
Youknow, you're basically purchasing carbohydrates andvitamins.
And howmuch,actually, if you bought them inbulk, how much you wouldcost?
Imean, you build your ownhouse, live in ashelter, a tinyhouse.
You don't need verymuch.
And I think trying thatout, youknow, building your house on the pond like therow, is a hero of mine in highschool, is not just a simpleexercise, it's a profound exercise because it allows you to get over theanxiety.
Even if you aren't living likethat, you know that if the worst came toworse, you could keep going at a very low rate and becontent.
And so that gives you the sort of confidence to take a risk because yousay, what's theworst?
It couldhappen.Well, the worst thing happened is that I'd have a backpack and it's sleeping like I think I have anidea.
But when I begin to writeit, I realize I have noidea.
And I don't actually know what I think until I try to writeit.
So writing is a way for me to define out what Ithink.
It'slike, I don't have anyideas.
It'strue. But when Iwrite, I get the ideas and that was therevelation.
And so by being forced to communicate online and there was none of thisexpectation, it was justlike,okay, just write anemail.
I can dothat. I don't have towrite.
Nestle, I don't have to write somethingnice.
I'm just going to write 140characters.
I can dothat. But while I feel like I was maybe adding value orsomething, so I came awaythinking, youknow, I guess I could do this frommoney, but I'm not going to behappy.
I think it's just the personalitything.
I don't think of myself as ateacher.
I don't do many workshops orclasses.
So I think a different person might thoroughly enjoyit.
And I know they do and they have a great time doingit.
Forme, it was just not forme.
Gotit. No bigdeal. I think this is an important thing isthat, youknow, it takes a long time to kind of figure out what you're goodfor.
And part of where I'm at right now and where I got eventually was really trying to spend time on doing things that only I coulddo.
And even when I could do somethingwell, but someone else could doit, I would try and let thatgo.
That's a discipline that I'm still workingon, which is not just things that I'm goodat, but things that only I'm goodat.
So that was something I was sort of trying to start earlyon, which islike, youknow, a lot of other people can dothis.
And they're happy doingit.
So I don't want to go somewhere where it requiresmore, oh mygosh, I need to dothat.
It'slike, I'm the only one who can seethis.
I've tried to give itaway.
I have tried really hard to give itaway.
I've tried to kill it and just keep comingback.
Comingback. And it'slike,okay.
And then I would doit. And there would be one of my bestpieces.
And so it was this idea oflike, so I became really an important proponent of trying to give things awayfirst.
Tell everybody what you'redoing.
And basically you try to give these ideasaway.
And people were happy because they love greatideas.
And you can't doit. It's a greatidea.
So the whole entiremovement, which is you moveuphill, you keep optimizing what youknow.
And that by far is thesanest, the mostreasonable, the smartest thing todo.
But when you have a very fast-changing landscape like we live in rightnow, you get stuck on a localoptimal.
You getstuck. And the problem is that the only way you can get to ahigher, more bit place is you actually have to godown.
You have to head into a place where you are lessoptimal.
You have noexpertise. There's very lowmargins.
There's lowprofits. You lookfoolish.
Very wealthy people on their one week organizedtour.
Looking at these youngtravelers, justsaying, I wish I had moretime.
Yeah, you see itevery,well, I see it almost every time I gotraveling.
And it reminds me of conversations I've had with Rothpots and also hisbook,Vagabonding, which I just absolutelylove.
And it was that book and Walden that I took with me traveling when I had my own two year or so walkabout.
And he points out in the beginning of Vagabonding that many people subscribeto.
I don't know how public thisis, but one of his solutions was the most radical one I've everheard.
The force himself was that he gave up UScitizenship.
Oh,wow. And that'll doit.
It waslike, he was likesaying, I just feelso, youknow, and it waslike, oh mygosh, that's soradical.
He was telling me about what is involved inthat.
And it wasn't for tax purposes because actually before you can doit, the US actually requires that you square up on alltaxes.
Right. It waslike, but that was soradical.
And I don't recommendthat.
Imean, he's goingfine, but I'mjust, maybe you could talk aboutit.
And I had noidea. I'm not sure if you would self describe yourself as a devoutChristian, but that's certainly writtenhere.
Maybe you could talk a little bit about thatexperience.
Yeah. One thing I would cross warn people is that not everything on Wikipedia iscorrect.
No, that's why I'm bringing itout.
But it is true that I got this assignment inJerusalem, which by theway, if you want to hear the full version ofit, listen to one of the very first this Americanlives, whichI, an Irishglass, and I told the story for the very firsttime.
And it's a story about how I got this assignment to live as if I was going to die in sixmonths, even though I was like perfectlyhealthy.
And I knew that it was alreadyintrobable.
But I decided to take the assignmentseriously.
And that's what Idid. And my answer kind of surprised me because I thought that I would kind of have this sort ofmad, high riskfling, youknow, do all thesethings.
But actually what I wanted to do was to visit my brothers andsisters, go back to myparents, helpout, but then my mom was well at thetime.
But that lasted for three months before I decided I needed to do somethingbig.
So I actually wrote my bicycle across the US from San Francisco to New York where I was going to New Jersey where I was going to basicallydie.
And I kept a journal ofthat.
And that question was something that I keep asking myselfnow.
I actually have acountdown.
And if you think of it in terms of five yearprojects, you can count those off on a couple of hands for even if you'reyoung.
And so the sense of mortality of understanding that it's not just old people who don't haveany, youknow, you're 20 yearsold.
You don't have that many five year projects todo.
And so I think it is that's maybe part of the philosophy of thinking about ourtime.
And whether even if you believe in the extension oflife,longevity, living to120, you still have to think in these terms of what are you going to do ifyou, because you're goingto, you don't know if you'll live to be under20.
What do you do if you have a year and what would you do with a billion dollars and a religious or a spiritualorientation, even if they'reeighths, they still haveone.
And so there are some assumptions that are at the basis ofit.
And I liked questionassumptions, including my ownassumptions.
Twothings. I can't resist asking and we can spend as much as the whole time and this is he'dlike.
But recently grappling with a lot of these issues that I've been grapplingwith, some of which areexistential, some which are related todeath, limited time on theplanet, I've become deeply fascinated by indigenous use of plantmedicine.
And I've had some very transformative experiences that are difficult to put into words because they make you sound like a complete crazyperson.
Byrnes,yes.Yeah,yeah,yeah.
There's a somethingness that is very difficult to communicate without sounding like you should beinstitutionalized.
What do you think the role for people who aspire to do the greatest good in theworld?
And what I discovered that was helpful in trying to get away from the kind of assumptions that bind us to just kind of extrapolate was to think laterally was to gosideways.
Onething, just take whatever was everybody's certification of the populationcontinuing.
And I can't think of any counter force to stop this huge migration at the scale that we're seeing into thecity.
And as thathappens, the birth rates dropdown.
And even in places like Singapore or other places where they have takenvery, very active countermeasures of cash for having kids andwow,daycare,forever,bonuses, none of these work in terms of actually trying to raise fragilitylevel.
So you have to understand really matter in terms of theparents.
Gotit. I have one friend who has ninekids.
I have another friend who hasseven.
Wow. And basically how do they dothat?
Well, the older kids were helping to parent the younger kids as the only way that reallyworks.
But that is actually basically they have five parents instead of having twoparents.
Right. It's very traditional in away.
Traditional meaning reaching back thousands or tens of thousands ofyears.
Itis. Ofcourse, in the olddays, maybe a 12thWarren, but they rarely had 12 kidssurvived.
Right. It's like the 1800s kind of on amurk.
I hang out with the Amish a lot and they still have these very large families and they allsurvive.
So they have kind of in some sense is sort of an unnaturalexpansion.
That's theAmishers. There are separate community closerby.
And thensecondly, what have you incorporated into your own life or your own family that originated from theAmish?
Yeah. So I don't get to see them as often as theywant.
Andactually, when I goeast, I have some contacts that I will exercise and I try to get like to stay overnight and go to church and a buggy orsomething.
And this isPennsylvania.
Well,actually, Pennsylvania is the heart ofit.
But actually there are more communities in Ohio where my brotherlives.
Oh, look atit.Iowa, there's a lot more happening in NewYork.
So the Pennsylvania are the kind ofgrounds,zero, but infact, they'rebigger, more extensive communities outside ofPennsylvania.
I didn't realizethat.Yeah.
The Amishdiaspora. Itis.
And it's verymeager. It's sixweeks.
Mm-hmm. Ofcourse, youknow, a six week sabbatical is basically a European annualvacation.
Right.Right. Many of the seminars and speeches of the Long NileFoundation.
I'm asupporter. I suppose I've even spoken there on stage and love the email synopsis that Stuart sendsout.
What is the function of the Long NileFoundation?
And what is thevalue? The Long Nile Foundation is kind ofreactive.
It's reacting to the very inherent short-term bias that oursociety, particularly this technologicalsociety, particularly say the Silicon Valleyexhibits, which is often a focus on the nextquarter, the next twoquarters, the next year results needing to beimmediate, youknow, instantsatisfaction, something without a Netflixstreaming.
We don't even wait for theDVD.
It's just fairly kind of very fastpace, short-termthinking, and also somewhat blinded by the fact that we don't have a lot of a sense of history either that we're kind of ignorant about what's happened in thepast.
So the term the Long Nile came from Brianino who noticed that we have a very shortnow, which is like the next five minutes and last fiveminutes.
So the Long Nile is a wayto, is an attempt to kind of expand that so thatwe, as a society and asindividuals, would try to think about things at a generational or civilizationalscale.
How about like working on something that might take longer than 50 years when they'regone?
Nobody will believe that that was evenpossible.
And this documentary will be there sayingno,no,no, they really was a nationwide cult and they really did believethis.
It really is amazing to see what's going onthere.
Allright.Well, I know what I'm doing for the next fewdays, next fewevenings.
I could goon,unfortunately, because I have a lot ofthem, but go to the truthfilm.
I only knew when's it orgreat.
So I don'tdo.Awesome. These arefantastic.
Oh,man. Allright. I've been looking forthis.
I cannot believe that I'm only learning thisnow.
I'm kind of embarrassed aboutthat.
When you think of the word or hear the wordsuccessful, who's the first person who comes tomind?
Jesus. Allright. Why would you saythat?
Well, there aren't that many people who'veleft.
Those that you find contribute to betterdays.
Yeah.Yeah. I'm a very goodsleeper.
I don't sleep alot. These days I get up at 730 and I have somerituals.
But I don't vary themenough,maybe, to know whether theyare...
I'm not a morningperson,okay?
To beginwith. You're not a morningperson.
Well, Imean, the fact that you don't vary them isperfect.
Well, Iknow, but that means that I'm not necessarily optimizinganyway, or I can't tell which isbetter.
But for better orworse, one of the first things I do is I read the paper version of the New YorkTimes.
It's a kind of likea, that's what I call a guiltypleasure.
I don't know whether that makes me better or anything else Ido, but I don't drink coffee oranything.
This is sortof, it's aritual.
And when I'm nothere, I don't readit.
So it'slike, I don't missit.
It's kind of righthere,yes.
But like if I'mhere, if I wanted abook, I would buyit.
Right. And the result is I'm right now speaking in a two-story high library of books that Ihave.
And I don't do the same with digitalbooks, because I finally figured outthat,oh, if I purchased a digital book before I'm readingit, it's not goinganywhere.
It's just sittingthere.
So I shouldn't really purchase a digital book until like five seconds before I'm going to readit.
I have exactly the oppositehabit.
Because right because it'slike, it's justthere.
The whole point of Kindle is that you don't have to have it until I dabble inthings.
So I have built stonewalls.
More thanwhat? I have doneorigami.
I have madebeer. I have madewine.
Ihave, youknow, whatever itis, I've tried to do these things in my life and I continue to try and dothem.
I have homeschooledways.
So Ihave. And so as much aspossible, this is what I was talking before about myday.
It's irregular in a sense that I'm here and I havethings.
But I'm doing new things and I'm reading new things all thetime.
So I'm in myoutside. I'll make a go-card or will do something that I haven't donebefore.
And that's the basis for helping decide about thesebooks.
I don't have to be an expert inthem, but I can know enough to tell whether ornot.
Imean, I actually built one from cutting down thelogs, cutting down the trees in upstate New York and doing the stonehers.
And youknow, Imean,unfortunately, I don't recommendthis.
We made like two by fours fromtrees.
You don't want to do that because it's a painbecause, youknow,standard, standard lumber isvery, it's very good if you're saying things are off a little quarter of aninch.
And as I wasrough, saw inlumber, it's amess.
Butnonetheless, a large portion of the people in the world have made their ownhomes,Adobe,Ramdor,Bamboo, whatever itis.
And like going back to what we originally started offwith, even if you don't wind up living init, it's empowering to know that you can doit.
If you do wind up living init, I have afriend, LloydKhan, who built this magnificent place inBolinus, that he built with salvage material from scratch over the manyyears.
He gives you the power to alterit.
So Iblog, I wish I'd known that I could have hired a programmer to dosomething.
I could have hiredsomeone.
It took me a long time to understandthat.
And thenrecently, I've been really big onit, hiring people throughE-Lance.
Youknow, because I came from a little bit of kind of ado-yourself, Imean, I made a nature museum when I was12.
I had a chemistry lab that had builtmyself, youknow, building thestuff.
I could buy in theclassroom, but I had a whole chemistrylab.
I had naturemuseums. I did all thisstuff, and I did itmyself.
And then ofcourse, moving into the whole Earthcatalog, which is a kind of a do-yourselfthing.
I reallywas, youknow, I just talked about building my ownhouse.
Well, now I will hire professionals towork.
And it just took me a long time to realize that there's somethingabout, youknow, being able to pay a professional to do what they do really well is not like aweakness.
It's like it helpsthem.
I'mhappy. They'rehappy.
We're allhappy. And I can do a lotmore.
Now there's certainly a pleasure in doing things yourself and dabblingit, but there's also this otherthing, which I didn't really buy the power of this medium to teach and toinform.
Sometimes toentertain.
Again, I'm thankful to you Tim for having me on and having a chance to gabhere.
So the people who arelistening, I think keepgoing, listen to morepodcasts, try to gowide.
No tin mentions them here andthere.
Take achance, listen to somemore.
And so that's one thing I wouldsay.
And as far as finding out more aboutme, I lucked out with a veryeasy, youknow, website is myinitialsKKKK.org.
I have a very public email for past 25years.
You can find it very easily on my website if you want to emaildirect.
More thanweekend. Between one and a half and two million people subscribed to my freenewsletter, my super short newsletter called Five BoldFriday.
Easy to signup, easy tocancel.
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 thatweek.
It's kind of like my diary of coolthings.
It often includes articles onreading, books onreading,albums, perhapsgadgets,gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and soon.
Like it's sent to me by myfriends, including a lot ofpodcasts, guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them withyou.
So if that soundsfun,again, it's veryshort, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for theweekend, something to thinkabout.
If you'd like to try itout, just go to tim.blog slashfriday.
Type that into yourbrowser, tim.blog slashfriday.
Drop in your email and you'll get the very nextone.
Thanks forlistening. This episode is brought to you by helixsleep.
Helix sleep is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your sleeppreferences.
Their lineup includes 14 uniquemattresses, including a collection of luxurymodels, a mattress for big and tallsleepers, that's notme.
And even a mattress made specifically forkids.
