#718: In Case You Missed It: December 2023 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

0:00Hey folks, Tim here. Before we get started, just a quick heads up. My new card game, Coyote, which I made with the amazing people at Exploding Kittens is now a national bestseller. Things are going completely bananas. It just launched everywhere. Amazon, Walmart, Target, 8 ,000 plus retail locations, anywhere you can buy games. So check it out. See some videos of gameplay at coyotegame.com. 300 million social views so far of gameplay. It's kind of mind-blowing. It takes just minutes to learn. I guarantee you'll have a lot of laughs. This has been in the works for two years. Please enjoy it. Check it out.

0:34Coyotegame.com. Now back to the episode. This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday. my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers. And it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short of the coolest things I found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time because after all the podcast the books they can be quite long and that's why I created five bullet friday it's become one of my favorite things I do every week it's free it's always going to be free and you can learn more at tim.blog forward slash friday that's tim.blog forward slash friday I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with.

1:35And little known fact, I've met probably 25 % of them because they first subscribed to 5 Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. 5 Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with 5 Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out. tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot. And you can, of course, easily subscribe any time.

2:12So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you.

2:32cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show.

2:44Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply to your own life. This is a special in-betweenisode, 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 whet your appetite.

3:13It's a lot of fun. We had fun putting it together, and for the full list of the guests featured today, see the episode's description, probably right below wherever you press play in your podcast app, or as usual, you can head to tim.blog slash podcast and find all the details there. Please enjoy.

3:35First up, another ridiculously entertaining edition of The Random Show with serial entrepreneur and world-class investor Kevin Rose.

3:48My wrapping up comments would be this. I recently went out to dinner with five close friends of mine, of which you know most of them. Yeah. You know, just like the crew. The Wu-Tang Clan. Yeah. Just good friends. And one of the things I did is I went around the circle and I said a few words of gratitude. And I think to my earlier point, one of the things that's really important to me after coming out of this therapy is just this vulnerability that allows us to speak from the heart because we don't know what tomorrow brings. And I just want to say that, Tim, you have been a friend of mine for so long now.

4:29and I have appreciated the fact that my career has been a series of ups and downs and all over the place and you have been a steadfast friend someone that sends me some of the funniest videos I've ever seen in my life always keeps it light-hearted and fun but I know that you care deeply about me and I just want to let you know that I love you and I care deeply about you and I will always be here to have your back and I'm wishing you a fantastic new year. I hope that you hit all these milestones and more that you want to hit because I know that you are someone that I've always looked up to and someone that is just so inspirational to us all that listen to your show and your podcast because you inspire us to do more and to be better humans and I just want to let you know that that means a lot to me and I love you.

5:25Thanks, Kevin. That's amazing. That makes my night. Happy to say it. Yeah. It's the truth. I love you too, man. Our friendship has been such a constant for me, such a lifeline in a way with all the ups and downs. And holy shit. I mean, both of us have had some pretty wily ups and downs. You've had a lot of hot chicks you've done. I will say. I didn't see that coming. When you talked about the ups and downs, I was like, you've had a lot of ups, my friend. Yeah. I mean, look, that's one category. That's one category. I had to lighten up the mood a little bit. And I'm grateful for that. And life is like a box of chocolates, right?

6:06You just never know what's around the corner. It's true. It's true. That's why it's important to say these things. It is. It is. And I'll tell you something you don't know. I have your Christmas slash New Year's card from like two years ago. So obviously out of date. It's like you and Daria and the kids. And it's up in my kitchen. Amazing. And I kept it there because I love seeing you guys every day. And I think about you guys all the time. And just have such love for your family. And I'm so grateful for our friendships. I love you too, man. As you said, it's important to say things are so uncertain.

6:46Uncertain. And I've never experienced, I've had friends pass from cancer before. Yeah. But I've never been there every step of the way from diagnosis to last conversation a few days before they passed. That was new for me. And it really deeply affected me on a bunch of levels. And I want to be deeply affected by that. I don't want to push that aside. In part because Roland was so joyful and curious and optimistic until the end in a very genuine way. It wasn't an act. It wasn't theater. That raised a bunch of aspirations in me because he was first and foremost a very dedicated seasoned meditator.

7:33Psychedelics were a piece of the puzzle, but first and foremost, he was a dedicated meditator for decades. That's amazing. And attributed a lot of his equanimity and preparation for death, which I got to see firsthand. A lot of people talk about it, right? But let's be honest, or I'll be honest, I've read all the Stoics or a lot of the Stoics, and I've read all sorts of Buddhism and rehearsed death and memento mori and this, that, and the other thing. But when I'm actually on, as Roland said, the final glide path, I don't know how I'm going to respond. I don't know. I have no idea. So to see someone who really walked the walk in such a life-affirming way that lit everyone up around him was tremendous.

8:18And he said what he was able to and he was willing to say what he meant to those people around him who meant things to him and you don't have to wait until you have terminal cancer diagnosis you shouldn't wait just because it may not be that right it may be a car crash it may be something where you don't get the chance to say these things and so i just yeah it's important to do it now yeah you gotta do it great to see you man yeah good to see you happy new year excited for this is gonna be uh oh don't Just a little bit of cheers to the new year and to all the listeners out there, you know, wishing you a happy and healthy new year.

9:01And yeah, I'm excited to, I mean, it's always a new year of change, a new year of change and exploration. I think the one thing that you and I, let's take a sip. The one thing that you and I have in common is just this lifelong pursuit of evolution, of figuring out. Because the secret that no one will tell you is no matter how much money you make, no matter how much success you have, we're all still figuring it out. And in Ram Dass's words, we're all just walking each other home. Yeah, well said, man. I'm going to leave it there. There we go. Cheers, buddy. Happy New Year. Happy Early New Year.

9:38And happy New Year to everybody listening. and as always be just a little kinder than is necessary until the next episode that applies to other people but also applies to yourself take it easy take it easy you know life is short but life is long and we're all just figuring it out and by the way as far as i can tell you never really figure it out no you don't so true so so true ctfo chill the fuck out a little bit be a little easier on yourself.

10:14Next up, Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automatic and co-founder of WordPress, the open source publishing platform that now powers more than 40 % of all sites on the web.

10:33For someone who's like having a hard couple of weeks, and you mentioned Tony Robbins earlier, I will mention something that I learned from him. I don't know if he's the original source of this, but I used to put this at the top of my journals. I would write it out at the top of my journal so that I would see it every morning. And it was basically, let's call it a flow chart. That's an overstatement. And it said, state in all caps with an arrow that went to story. And then that went to strategy. So state, story, strategy. And what that meant to say is what happens to many people who are depressed or anxious or whatever is they sit down and they try to figure out how to fix the thing.

11:16They go straight to strategy. What should I do? The challenge there is that if you're looking at the world through gray glasses, the story that you're going to come up with is going to be most likely a disabling story. And then you're going to come up with strategies that are by and large pretty ineffective. If on the other hand, you start with state. So if you're in a low energy state, you hop in a cold shower for five minutes, or you do 50 jumping jacks, or you do 20 pushups, anything to change your state from a low energy state to a higher energy state. And that's governed by all sorts of things.

11:55Well, let's keep it simple. So low to higher energy state. Then you sit down and you're able to, because of changes in neurotransmitters or any number of things, you have a more enabling story. So you've turned the gray, maybe a tint or two brighter. Then the strategies you come up with are going to be more effective. So just reminding myself constantly, before you jump to the strategy, like the what to do, the how to fix, have you addressed the state? Because this thing in between, the story really matters. Because if your narrative is, oh, I'm always pessimistic. I've never been able to fix this.

12:35You're starting at a deficit. You have a severe handicap in coming up with approaches that are going to help you. So that might be helpful to people as well. Like state, story, strategy, that is the order. I give credit to my mom too. She gave me a list of three things that I found really helpful. She Did you sleep? Are you drinking water? So sleep, water, and then you've been in nature. It's a good checklist. I like that because it's three. And so sometimes I just do like a check. I'm being like, ah, man, this morning is so tough. I felt like I wasn't great in that meeting. And I'll just like can run that.

13:08Sometimes the body scan, I also ask myself, like, am I hangry? Yeah. You know? The basics. Because our body kind of emotions come from our system. And sometimes it's saying I'm hungry, I'm hungry. and it's coming through as like something else our brain interprets it. Yeah, totally. And to invoke our mutual friend Kevin Kelly in his book of excellent advice, which came out not too long ago. Great book, very pithy. And one of them is if you don't know what you need, chances are it's sleep. Or if you don't know what to do, chances are you need more sleep. And if you're in a depressed state, and this is something I have to remind myself of, I would be inclined, even subconsciously, to consume stimulants, because that does change your state.

13:52But if you consume stimulants, and then that disrupts your sleep architecture, and then maybe you drink a little booze to take the edge off because you're trying to get to sleep, this is a vicious cycle. And I had Richard Branson on the podcast years ago, and his advice was stop drinking. As far as depression goes, he was just like, in nine out of 10 cases, alcohol is somehow in that picture, in his lived experience, in his social circles. So those are a few things that come to mind. There are other things, certainly. I mean, I could go on and on. I think the work by Byron Katie and doing turnarounds, interrogating your beliefs is very valuable.

14:31So if you have a belief that I'm making this up, but my sister is selfish and always does what she wants. There are many work pages and exercises that are available for free on Byron Katie's website. So if you just search Byron Katie, B-Y-R-O-N-K-D-K-T-I-E, the work, you'll find the website, all sorts of PDFs you can take down. But let's just say, my sister's selfish, she only does what she wants. You would then create alternative sentences and find supporting evidence for each one. So my sister isn't selfish, she never does what she wants. And you have to come up with some examples. You might also replace it with, I'm selfish, I always do what I want.

15:11And then you come up with some examples. and I and others have found these exercises to be incredibly powerful. There are a million and one different varieties of this. For me, the turnarounds where you have to come up with confirming evidence for statements that were not your starting statement, I find defangs your beliefs, which are thoughts we take to be true. I like that a lot. Take back to Charlie Munger. He says you should be able to argue the opposite Yeah, just as well as you can argue your case.

15:47Last but not least, recorded in Lisbon, Portugal, Andrew Rosner, founder and CEO of Media Options, an industry leading domain broker.

16:02Pursuit of happiness. Small one. How do you think about pursuit of happiness? Because I will say, having spent time with you, you strike me as overall pretty happy guy. You got a little meth-y edge to you, a little twitchy, a little bouncy, but you smile a lot of the time. I don't know if you're crying on the inside, but you seem like generally a pretty happy-go-lucky guy. I'm a pretty content person. Content. I have moments of happiness, but I'm pretty content. Okay. So tell me more about this and what you - So I guess the way that I think about it is that I generally want to be content. I don't necessarily pursue happiness.

16:37I pursue contentment. Is that wanting what you have or being grateful? What does that mean? Yes. I think that's another way of saying it, but it's for me personally, it's a bit more that Terrence McKenna had this theory of novelty that ultimately that's what evolution is all about. It's just about the pursuit of novelty. And that resonated with me. And I basically surmise that I think the purpose for each of our individual lives is truly, if you zoom out and you look at it from a species focus as opposed to an individual focus, the purpose for each individual life is actually just novelty. It's about unique characteristics that make you, you, and how you engage with the world around you and what that leads to.

17:20And this novelty is actually the objective or should be the objective, again, in my opinion. meaning there's like a variety of different characteristics survival of the fittest is that not necessarily i think survival of the fittest is a mechanic in the game but it's not necessarily the end all be all of the game i think it's really just about the pursuit of novelty that you need to do things that nobody's done before you need to react to things in a way that is not typical if you do things like everybody else has done things or like everybody else does things then you can't expect a different outcome than what everybody else has had.

17:59And I certainly am not looking for the outcome that everybody else has. You got one shot at this thing. I want to do something else. I want to stand out. I want to pursue greatness, whatever that means. But I certainly, above all else, I don't want to be like other people. I don't want to be like anybody else, like any other individual or like any other group of individuals. I don't like labels. I just want to pursue novelty. And what I found that to mean, once you go another layer, is that really what most of life is, is actually friction and pain and suffering. And we have developed our society to run away from that.

18:41You have a right to happiness. You should be in the pursuit of happiness. And I think that makes us soft. I think that makes us avoid risk. I think that makes us avoid pain. It makes us avoid hard work. And everything that I've seen, everything that I enjoy, comes at the expense of pain, suffering, hard work, whether that's my marriage. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of pain and compromise. But through that, you achieve love. And you achieve this amazing relationship that's irreplaceable. through those days of suffering and doing whatever it takes to make$250 a day, I was able to build a business that makes a lot of money and fits my lifestyle.

19:29I've optimized it for exactly the way I want to live. I don't want to scale it. I want to have 60 employees. I want to have four or five. I want to just keep doing what I'm doing. Just hone my skill and hone my skill and just, I love what I do. But all of that takes suffering and pain. I think the best way to highlight it is like art. Show me one meaningful piece of art, cultural art that came as a result of like rainbows and butterflies and happiness. Great art comes from pain, suffering, heartache, mental illness, just terrible circumstances. It's really great art comes from the darkness, not from the light, but you need both.

20:10And if you ignore the darkness, you will never get the light or you'll always be chasing the light. The light will always be in the distance, but you have to lean into the pain. You have to, off camera, we were talking about something else and you were saying, you know, I had to sit with it. And that's precisely it. You have to sit with the pain. Don't block it out. Don't ignore it. Don't push it away. Run into it. Run into the pain. Run into the hard stuff. Run into the stuff that nobody else wants to do because that's how you achieve novelty. And through novelty, you achieve everything. Anybody, it doesn't matter what your definition of success is, I can assure you that that person is successful by whatever definition you're holding them up to be through novelty.

20:53They did something that other people were afraid to do, that other people didn't think of. Whatever it is, it was achieved through novelty. And as far as I can tell, all greatness is achieved through novelty. It's doing things that other people don't want to do, doing things that other people are afraid to do, doing things that other people wouldn't even think about doing.

21:15And now here are the bios for all the guests. Matt Mullenweg, domain ma.tt, which is pretty fun. So I go by ma.tt sometimes. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, a few hours from here in Austin. And at the age of 19, I co-founded open source software called WordPress, which is a blogging content management system. Fast forward 20 years, it's been 20 years now, and runs over a third of all websites in the world. A few years after that, I founded a company called Automatic, which is kind of like the for-profit side of commercializing things around WordPress. Automatic, M-A-T-T. Yes, it's like any egotistical founder, I snuck my name into the company.

21:58And we started with just sort of a kismet anti-spam and wordpress.com, kind of easy ways to get going with WordPress. But since have expanded to e-commerce with WooCommerce, one I'll talk about with messaging, like we've done a number over like 25 acquisitions. So we're trying to be like a digital Berkshire Hathaway, like a buyer of first resort for amazing things on internet. Pretty much everything we do is open source or open web. So we bought Tumblr. So we're running Tumblr for the last few years. Basically trying to, yeah, I would like future generations to grow up with a web that is more open, more free, gives more liberty.

22:31And so open source is really my life's work, even above WordPress and anything else. And yeah, I hope to work on it the rest of my life.

22:42Andrew Rosner. Andrew is the founder and CEO of Media Options, which has been the number one domain broker in the world for the last six consecutive years. We talk about a lot more than domains and his life trajectory, his adventures are amazing. His mentors are characters to put it mildly, but let's focus on the bio. Since 2008, Andrew has been involved in more than$600 million in domain sales and has played a pivotal role in numerous high-profile domain name transactions, including x.com to Elon Musk, zoom.com to zoom and prime.com and podcast.com to Amazon, as well as thousands of others. So we get into how this business works, what the ecosystem looks like, what best practices look like, what differentiation looks like.

23:32And we also talk about all of those things and how he cut his teeth in the seafood arbitrage business and in other areas. Andrew is an inductee of the Domain Name Hall of Fame. He was named Domain Investor of the Year by Traffic, and he is the creator of the Rosner Equation, which he did not name himself. It was named after him, a formula for objectively valuing domain names widely adopted by the industry. Andrew is also the owner of DomainSherpa.com, the industry's leading educational podcasts on all things domains. You can find him on Twitter at Andrew Rosner, R-O-S-E-N-E-R. Hey guys, this is Tim again.